Read Online If Looks Could Kill by Eileen Dreyer - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Eileen Dreyer
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slow, deep breath, smelling roses and chrysanthemums and daisies, reading the messages on Mylar birthday balloons that floated toward the ceiling. You're 40 and I'm Not. Over the Hill. Old Fart.
Normal stuff. Solid, familiar sensations, cats padding back and forth, the sun gleaming in the genuine plastic cemetery bouquets along the far wall, Millie Wyler tapping a hello on the window on her way by. Small, simple everyday things that made sense.
Flower shops made sense. Murder didn't. Even murder that's expected, that explodes from the most violent and primal of human emotions. Chris knew. She was a student of murder, murder by reason of insanity, born of jealousy, revenge, fear. Murder committed as the desperate act of a driven, tormented person.
Not cold-blooded murder. Not the murder of a victim chosen with the deliberate care of a man picking roses for his lover. Not murder without reason.
Chris instinctively retrieved her pen, only to find the sharp-edged, weeping expanse she'd left on her scratch pad. She set the pen back down without using it. She had nothing left to do but stare.
"Why?" was all she could ask. "Why would somebody want to do something like that?"
"Hey," the policewoman protested brusquely. "We got people who like to chop women into totem poles and stand 'em out in the front yard to ward off aliens. Don't ask me about motives. Do you have any ideas about who we might be looking for here?"
Chris laughed. "Why should I?"
"Well, that psychic thing. You know. Livvy Beckworth."
From the terrible to the absurd. "The heroine in my series is psychic, Detective Lawson, not me. I'm just a writer."
She got another stretch of dead air, although this one sounded different than the pause to New York. This one, traveling only as far as Clayton, Missouri, where the St. Louis County police detectives were officed, crackled with activity. Not just physical, like the voices and phones and beepers Chris could hear in the background. She could have sworn she heard mental wheels turning.
"I'm sorry I can't be of any more help to you," she tried, her gaze once again on the doodling, on the jagged peaks of her imagination. "I've never gotten letters from anybody protesting that they wanted to commit murder. Nobody I know enjoys it as a hobby, and I only do it in my imagination." Deep in the night, when her defenses were friable as old skin, when reality lived in dreams.
Could there possibly be someone out there who kept the same hours? Who sought a twisted kind of communion with her? Chris shook her head, took a breath, tried her best to clear the image. To shake off the suspicion. It was ridiculous. She was just a writer.
"Well, you'd better come up with some kind of idea, Ms. Jackson," the detective assured her, "because you have a real problem on your hands."
"Me? What did I do?"
"Who knows if it's something you did? Maybe it's just something you knew. But somebody out there sure likes the sound of your words enough to turn them into three-act plays."
"One murder..."
"One?" Lawson retorted sharply. "You think I'd be on the phone if we just had one?"
This time Chris knew her heart had stopped. "What?"
"Nine months ago we had a woman drowned in the bathtub. Blond, real pretty, ran with a real fast crowd out in West County. The P.A.'s going on the assumption that the poor asshole she was married to finally found out she was running around on him. The asshole swears he's innocent."
Chris couldn't even manage an answer.
"Yeah," the detective retorted as if she'd heard something anyway. "I thought it might sound familiar. Too Late the Hero, wasn't it? Unfaithful, scheming wife, desperate husband. Her name was Deborah, right?"
Chris could hardly hear her own voice. "Right."
"Eight months before that, a young gay actor was shishkebobbed with a long, sharp instrument in the rehearsal hall of the Loretto Hilton Theatre in Webster. Medical examiner's talking something like stiletto, but I'd bet you money that one
Normal stuff. Solid, familiar sensations, cats padding back and forth, the sun gleaming in the genuine plastic cemetery bouquets along the far wall, Millie Wyler tapping a hello on the window on her way by. Small, simple everyday things that made sense.
Flower shops made sense. Murder didn't. Even murder that's expected, that explodes from the most violent and primal of human emotions. Chris knew. She was a student of murder, murder by reason of insanity, born of jealousy, revenge, fear. Murder committed as the desperate act of a driven, tormented person.
Not cold-blooded murder. Not the murder of a victim chosen with the deliberate care of a man picking roses for his lover. Not murder without reason.
Chris instinctively retrieved her pen, only to find the sharp-edged, weeping expanse she'd left on her scratch pad. She set the pen back down without using it. She had nothing left to do but stare.
"Why?" was all she could ask. "Why would somebody want to do something like that?"
"Hey," the policewoman protested brusquely. "We got people who like to chop women into totem poles and stand 'em out in the front yard to ward off aliens. Don't ask me about motives. Do you have any ideas about who we might be looking for here?"
Chris laughed. "Why should I?"
"Well, that psychic thing. You know. Livvy Beckworth."
From the terrible to the absurd. "The heroine in my series is psychic, Detective Lawson, not me. I'm just a writer."
She got another stretch of dead air, although this one sounded different than the pause to New York. This one, traveling only as far as Clayton, Missouri, where the St. Louis County police detectives were officed, crackled with activity. Not just physical, like the voices and phones and beepers Chris could hear in the background. She could have sworn she heard mental wheels turning.
"I'm sorry I can't be of any more help to you," she tried, her gaze once again on the doodling, on the jagged peaks of her imagination. "I've never gotten letters from anybody protesting that they wanted to commit murder. Nobody I know enjoys it as a hobby, and I only do it in my imagination." Deep in the night, when her defenses were friable as old skin, when reality lived in dreams.
Could there possibly be someone out there who kept the same hours? Who sought a twisted kind of communion with her? Chris shook her head, took a breath, tried her best to clear the image. To shake off the suspicion. It was ridiculous. She was just a writer.
"Well, you'd better come up with some kind of idea, Ms. Jackson," the detective assured her, "because you have a real problem on your hands."
"Me? What did I do?"
"Who knows if it's something you did? Maybe it's just something you knew. But somebody out there sure likes the sound of your words enough to turn them into three-act plays."
"One murder..."
"One?" Lawson retorted sharply. "You think I'd be on the phone if we just had one?"
This time Chris knew her heart had stopped. "What?"
"Nine months ago we had a woman drowned in the bathtub. Blond, real pretty, ran with a real fast crowd out in West County. The P.A.'s going on the assumption that the poor asshole she was married to finally found out she was running around on him. The asshole swears he's innocent."
Chris couldn't even manage an answer.
"Yeah," the detective retorted as if she'd heard something anyway. "I thought it might sound familiar. Too Late the Hero, wasn't it? Unfaithful, scheming wife, desperate husband. Her name was Deborah, right?"
Chris could hardly hear her own voice. "Right."
"Eight months before that, a young gay actor was shishkebobbed with a long, sharp instrument in the rehearsal hall of the Loretto Hilton Theatre in Webster. Medical examiner's talking something like stiletto, but I'd bet you money that one
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