A Killing in Costumes by Zac Bissonnette

Author:Zac Bissonnette
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CROOKED LANE BOOKS

15

It took Jay ten minutes to get to the small home where Lenae had lived for the past fifteen years, though finding it had been something of a challenge. Google and property records didn’t turn up an address, which Cindy had once told him was common for older people who’d already put their homes in trusts for estate planning purposes. But he did find a photo of the home on a clickbait article about celebrities who lived in surprisingly modest homes. He’d then downloaded the photo from that slideshow and done a reverse image search to find it on a real estate site. And now, here he was, rather impressed with his sleuthing.

It was a mid-century ranch, but not a modernist one, in a development surrounded by similar homes—middle-class, style-free homes designed after World War II. Eight hundred and fifty square feet each, available in one of four styles from the company that had built the whole neighborhood.

With minimal coaxing at the door, he made it into Lenae’s home. She had already changed into her pajamas but went to the kitchen to prepare him a cup of tea like a good host. While he waited for her, he looked around. The home was modest and cluttered with what used to be called “collectibles” but were now just called junk: Hummel figurines, limited edition Elvis Presley plates, that kind of thing. The key to collectibles, Jay had once been told by an antiques dealer, was that anything marketed as a collectible would never actually be valuable because everyone saved them and thus they never became rare.

Lenae returned to the living room with a steaming emoji-covered “I Love Hallmark Movies” mug for Jay and a small glass of milk for herself. He took the leather couch—the one recent piece of furniture—and she sat facing him in a plaid recliner. The table between them was covered with gossip magazines, sticky notes scattered through them. “My office,” she told him.

When he asked her about the police scanner discrepancy, she shut him down immediately.

“I’m not going to discuss sources with you,” Lenae said. “I won’t discuss you being a source with anyone else, and vice versa.”

“My life is being threatened,” Jay said, “and so is Cindy’s.”

“And I’m a journalist,” Lenae said. “Let me explain something to you. I might be an old woman, and the topics I cover might not be as important as Woodward and Bernstein’s. But to me, they’re important. And the standards of the fourth estate are important to me. That means I don’t tell people how I find things out. Ever. Period. I’ll go to jail for contempt of court before I reveal sources.”

“Am I getting a morality lecture from a Twitter-famous tabloid writer?” Jay asked. He said it with a smile, so it was more disarming than it might have been if delivered by anyone else.

“Twitter-famous?” Lenae said. “What’s that mean?”

“It means you became famous on Twitter. You’re a social media celebrity.”

Lenae waved a dismissive hand, her face wrinkling with distaste.

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