The Craigslist Murders - Brenda Cullerton [0]
Copyright © 2011 by Brenda Cullerton
All rights reserved
First Melville House Printing: January 2011
Melville House Publishing
145 Plymouth Street
Brooklyn, New York 11201
mhpbooks.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the paperback edition as follows: Cullerton, Brenda.
The Craigslist murders: a novel / Brenda Cullerton.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-61219-020-4
1. Murder–Fiction. 2. Rich people–Fiction. 3. Manhattan (New York, N.Y.)–Fiction. I. Title.
PS3603.U584C73 2011
813’.6–dc22
2010049601
v3.1
With the exception of references to BBS (Birkin Bag Syndrome), PJNS (Private Jet Neck Syndrome), and the contents of a Golden Globe swag bag, this is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
For Richard and Rachel
“Men are not punished for their sins, but by them.”
—E.G. HUBBARD
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1 - August
Chapter 2 - Four Weeks Later
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46 - Eighteen Months Later
Acknowledgements
1
AUGUST
Charlotte had been getting away with murder for years. Most interior decorators—desecrators, she called them—got away with murder. Her killings usually came in the form of modest mark-ups and kickbacks. Modest compared to her colleagues, anyway. It was unbelievable. Forget the famous $6,000 Tyco shower curtain. That was old news. Yesterday, some dealer at an art show in Dallas had called her about a nice pair of $25,000 vinyl-sculptured, light switches. But enough about work, she couldn’t wait to shut this girl up. A nail-thin, Nordic blonde, she was jabbering away on her iPhone to some friend who had just harvested her eggs.
Privacy and God. Both dead! Charlotte muttered, as she pretended not to listen and scanned the room. The French ultramarine blue walls, yellow ochre trims, and low chrome couches were nice. But whoa! The lamp? It looked like some kind of grotesquely bloated sea urchin. Something that might sting you when you turned it on. The wall near the picture window was covered with photographs of the girl’s geriatric husband, mingling with the city’s powers-that-be, and showing off his lovely new acquisition. The “acquisition,” now puckering her lips and blowing kisses into the phone, was wearing more logos than a NASCAR driver.
For Charlotte, logos were the symbol of an insidious form of identity theft. The theft began as early as infancy when her clients swaddled their newborns in itty bitty blankets of “F” for Fendi cashmere. F for all F’ed up, Charlotte had thought the last time she ooh’ed and ahh’ed over a baby in a $3,000 Corsican Paris iron crib on New York’s Upper East Side. Charlotte herself loved beautiful things. Some of them even had logos. But everything she owned had an emotional presence; something that spoke of her own hunger to be understood, her passion for beauty itself.
The delicately painted porcelain cup balanced on her knee, for example. It was Herend. She’d checked. Herend had a history. It bore the hallmark of the Hungarian royal family. Charlotte imagined that this girl associated Hungary, like Turkey, with something to eat. Pulling her mass of long red hair tightly back from her face, Charlotte stuck a pen in the knot to hold it, and focused on the mission ahead.
“So who gave you the bracelet?” she asked as the girl pressed “End Call” and placed the phone on the coffee table.
“Yes, well … an old boyfriend in Chicago gave it to me when I graduated from Joliet Junior College,” she replied. “It’s Bulgari. See?