The 8th Confession (Women's Murder Club 8)

Hate to admit it, but she brought light into the gloom.

“Want to see what tomorrow’s paper will look like?” she asked me.

“No.”

“I’m a rock star, Richie. Look,” she said, slapping the paper down on my desk. Conklin tried to stifle a laugh and failed.

I said to Cindy, “You’ve heard the expression ‘misery loves company’?”

“You’re miserable and I’m company. What’s your point?”

“Misery loves miserable company.”

Conklin snorted and Cindy har-de-har-harred and I couldn’t keep stone-faced for another second.

Cindy gloated, “Don’t you just hate it when I’m right?”

She lovingly smoothed out the newspaper so I could see the picture on the front page of the Metro section, the photo of Rodney Booker, aka Bagman Jesus, under the headline $25,000 REWARD. DO YOU KNOW WHO KILLED THIS MAN?

So there it was: Rodney Booker was Bagman Jesus.

Rodney Booker had been identified by his father from the morgue photos, which showed three raised lines on Rodney’s shoulder, a crude slash-and-rub-with-ashes tattoo he’d gotten while in Africa.

Rodney Booker’s death was a homicide. And my name was associated with his case file. All I needed to do was find out who killed him, and while I didn’t have the time to do that, Cindy Thomas was both high on success and hot on the trail.

“I’ve been thinking,” Cindy said. “I can just keep working the case, turn over anything I find out to you. What, Lindsay?”

“Cindy, you can’t work a homicide, okay? Rich, tell her.”

“I don’t need your permission at all,” Cindy said. Then, eyes brightening, “Here’s an idea. Let’s go to Susie’s and map out a plan we can all live with —”

I rolled my eyes, but Conklin was shaking his head and grinning at Cindy. He liked her!

I was ready to call Jacobi, let him straighten her out, when Claire blew through the gate, stomped toward us with a bad look in her eyes.

“Dr. Washburn is on her way back,” Brenda’s electronic voice cawed from my intercom.

Claire was busy. She didn’t like to pay house calls to Homicide. Cindy, oblivious, called out, “Claire! We’re off to Susie’s. Come with us.”

Claire fixed her eyes on me.

“I can’t go to Susie’s,” she said, “and neither can you. Another one just came in. Killed just like the Baileys.”

Chapter 49

THE DRAPED BODY on the autopsy table was female, thirty-three, her skin as white as my mom’s bone china. Her hair was a shimmering shoulder-length cut in four shades of blond. Her finger- and toenails had been lacquered recently, oxblood red, no chips.

She looked like the sleeping princess in the fairy tale waiting for the prince to chop through the briars and kiss her awake.

I read her toe tag. “Sara Needleman.”

“Positively ID’d by her personal assistant,” said Claire.

I knew Sara Needleman by her photographs in Vogue and W. She was a big-name clothing designer who made custom gowns for those who had thirty grand to throw down for a dress. I’d read in the Gazette that Needleman often did gangs of bridesmaids’ dresses, each gown related in color but distinctly different in style, and that during the debutante season, Needleman’s shop was in overdrive, designing for both the moms and the debs.

Surely Sara Needleman knew the Baileys.

Claire picked up her clipboard, said, “Here’s what I’ve got. Ms. Needleman called her personal assistant, Toni Reynolds, at eight this morning complaining of abdominal cramps. Ms. Reynolds says she told Sara to call her doctor and that she’d check in on her when she got to work.