Brenda Cullerton - The Craigslist Murders

To the seventy-eight editors/publishers who turned this novel down. Without them, I might never have found such a happy home at Melville House. Thanks also to the believers, to those whose faith (blind as it might have seemed) kept me hoping To the Almighty Wolcott (a/k/a James) and Laura Jacobs, writer and friend extraordinaire. To the agent, Yfat Reiss Gendell, who took this book on as her very first project at Foundry Media and whose phenomenal success since has had nothing to do with me. To Brendan Bernhard who opened the door at Melville and my sister, Rachel, and reader Akiko Busch, both of whom loved Charlotte even in her fetal stages. Last but hardly least Huge thanks to my husband, Richard, and to Jack and Nora who lived with a murderous mother for as long as it took to get Charlotte, her fire poker, and her yoga mat out there.

Charlotte had been getting away with murder for years. Most interior decoratorsdesecrators, she called themgot 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 couldnt 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 girls geriatric husband, mingling with the citys 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 Fed up, Charlotte had thought the last time she oohed and ahhed over a baby in a $3,000 Corsican Paris iron crib on New Yorks 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. Shed 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. Its Bulgari. See? And this is the Tour Eiffel. He collected all the charms on a trip we took to Europe before I started modeling.

How charming, Charlotte replied. Pun intended, of course. Blowing on her tea, shed cringed at the French words Tour Eiffel. It was so affected, like when people raved about Habana or Barthelona. The sharp cramp in her abdomen forced her to take a deep breath. Was it the girls smug, vacuous smile? Or the way she kept flashing her grotesquely oversized canary yellow diamond ring?

The problem is, my husband doesnt really appreciate its sentimental value. And Id rather not have it in the house as a reminder, you know?

Well, you must love him very much, Charlotte said, feeling queasy. And where is your husband now?

For the next twenty minutes, Charlotte listened to her recite the guys whole resume, including his nine million dollar Christmas bonus, while also sniveling on about how long hed been gone (five days) and how awesomely happy they were as a couple.

What is this sob story about missing husbands? Charlotte wondered. He isnt Daniel Pearl, for Christs sake. Hes some ancient I-banker screwing interns on a business trip. The more the girl whined and the more she fiddled with her enormous ring, the more angry Charlotte became. Her teeth chattered. She shivered. People always talk about the heat of anger. For Charlotte, it was the cold. She was so cold. She even looked to see if her own skin had stuck to the fire poker before rolling it back up in her bright yellow yoga mat.

Much like her encounter with the divorcee months earliera woman unloading a case of vintage Doma couple of heavy blows to the head from behind was all it took to send the girl whimpering to the floor. After eight years of Pilates, Charlotte was pretty pumped. Shed hit her so hard the first time, the poker had vibrated in her hand. Shed had to tighten her grip. It was weird, the way the girl seemed to drift down, lazily, like leaves falling from a tree, into a sitting position on the floor.

But the mechanics of killing bored Charlotte. It was the small, seemingly insignificant details that moved her. They were so preternaturally vivid: the dribble of bright red seeping into a blond sisal carpet, the darker splatter, the smears, on a shiny chartreuse chintz pillow, the pale pink sugary residue in the bottom of the teacup that matched the color of the girls nails. It was surreal, this saturation of color. Like being trapped in the frames of an Almodovar movie. This vividness was precisely what Charlotte enjoyed most about these moments. It made her feel so acutely, so exquisitely, alive.

Being a bit of a neat freak helped a lot with the tidying up after. The swiping of surfaces with her Handi Wipes, the change of exercise leggings, the removal of the bracelet and the cup. (The cup would make a lovely new addition to her collection of mismatched quality china.) By the time Charlotte had completed these rituals, her cramps had gone, and the girls bleating cries had finally stopped.

It wasnt until she got home that she noticed the blood on the collar of her cream silk shirt. God damn it! she said, furiously scrubbing away at the stain and leaving it to soak in the kitchen sink. She also washed her yoga mat in the laundry area and polished the poker (a filthy job) before replacing it next to the fireplace. The scalding hot rainforest shower had never felt so good.

Unlike her mothers spartan, functional bathrooms, Charlotte believed in the sanctuary concept. So what if people laughed at her silver-leaf tiles, the fuchsia pink egg-shaped tub, and her $15,000 Toto toilet? Nobody knew about clean like the Japanese. It was a cultural obsession, wasnt it? And there was something so soothing about the toilets water wand, the warm air dryer, the heated seat.

Jesus! It does everything but kiss your ass! one of her clients husbands had exclaimed, after shed installed three Totos in their brownstone.

At fifteen grand a pop, she wasnt surprised to see that another had somehow fallen off the truck and found its way into her loft. Volume discounts were how her business worked. You spent thousands, tens of thousands, buying merchandise for clients from a vendor and the vendor owed you. Period. Hell, she knew interior designers who had furnished entire country homes, right down to their Sherle Wagner gold-plated faucets, from volume discounts.