The Axeman's Jazz (Skip Langdon Mystery Series #2) (The Skip Langdon Series) Read Free

I don’t really know much else about her. I sure wish I could help you on that, but I don’t think I can.”
    “Did you meet any of her friends?”
    “I never saw anyone there. She was a quiet girl—real good tenant.”
    “Was she friendly with anyone else in the building?”
    “I don’t know anything about her personal business.”
    He spoke so primly Skip suspected the other tenants were men. Sure enough, they were Mr. Davies, who “traveled for” a cosmetics company, and Mr. Palmer, who worked “for the city.”
    Honorifics only.
Curtis Ogletree, you should be in a museum
.
    After reassuring him once more that he’d done just fine, Skip returned to Linda Lee’s. The body was gone; Paul Gottschalk from the crime lab had removed the purse and said she could go through it.
    In it was a wallet containing Linda Lee Strickland’s credit cards and driver’s license, comb, blusher, and address book. No lipstick.
    No lipstick? Did the asshole open the bag, take out her lipstick, write the A on the wall and leave with it? Keep it for a souvenir, maybe?
    “Paul, was she wearing lipstick?”
    “You mean you didn’t notice?”
    “I don’t think she was.”
    “She was. Tiny trace left. Like she’d put it on a long time before and maybe eaten or drunk something that took it off.” He sounded bored, nodded at the A on the wall. “We’re comparing samples.”
    “Any other lipsticks found in the house?”
    He shrugged. “Two or three. Wrong colors, but we’re checking anyway, Officer Langdon.”
    “Excuse me, but do I detect a note of testiness? Am I being pushy or something?”
    “Shit.” He shrugged again. “It’s the heat.”
    Understanding completely (but resenting the fact that he hadn’t apologized), she more or less tiptoed around after that, trying to figure out who Linda Lee Strickland had been.
    Everything screamed small-town girl without much money or education. A nice respectable girl from a blue-collar family grown into a woman who had to get married or go back to school if she didn’t want to live on the edge of poverty the rest of her life.
    Apparently, Linda Lee had been working on the former; the only books in the apartment were the ones on the front table, most of which had titles like
Smart Love
. There were two by John Bradshaw on other subjects, but all the rest seemed to be self-help books geared to relationships. Skip sighed. Linda Lee had been Cinderella looking for her prince. But what had she had to offer him?
    It was almost eerie how little of herself she’d left in the apartment. There were no magazines, no letters—she had probably gotten her news from television, and phoned her relatives rather than writing.
    The address book was the only thing remotely useful—and all it contained were Curtis Ogletree’s number, that of Simonetti’s Restaurant Supply, and ten or twelve more in Indianola, Mississippi.
    Neither of the building’s other occupants, Mr. Davies nor Mr. Palmer, was home. Skip canvassed neighbors in nearby buildings, those few who weren’t sweating it out nine to five, but no one had known Linda Lee, had ever seen anyone of her description, or had heard or seen anything relevant.
    So Skip went over to Simonetti’s and asked for Lucy McKinnon. McKinnon was an older woman, apparently what passed for an office manager at the small operation, and she seemed to have taken quite a shine to Linda Lee, who’d answered the phone and done clerical work. A “gal Friday” in less enlightened times.
    She’d often asked Linda Lee to lunch, but Linda Lee had usually said she “had plans.” McKinnon thought that a little odd, since often Linda Lee walked out of the office carrying her brown bag. But not too odd—it occurred to her that Linda Lee couldn’t afford to go out for lunch but didn’t want to say so. Or perhaps met someone for picnics. McKinnon doubted that, though, because sometimes she brown-bagged it in the rain.
    Skip went back to the office, hoping the