Nine
The Canceled Killer’s habit of leaving three skull emojis to taunt his victims soon went viral. Someone began selling shirts and overnight, it seemed, the Canceled Killers fans were visible all over Chicago and much of the nation.
—Crime Hive podcast
As soon as we approached the front door and rang the doorbell cam button, I half expected a butler in tails to answer the door, but instead, Kenzie herself did.
She looked stunning, per usual, her long, wavy blond hair cascading down her shoulders and her designer leisurewear pristine.
Even in the comfort of her own home, she wore designer platform sneakers and full makeup.
Kenzie was the daughter Mom always wished she’d had.
“Ella’s here to help, too,” Jude said. “She’s the best detective I know.”
Even better than Oscar? Huh. I was going to file that fact away for later so I could throw it in Oscar’s face at the perfect moment.
“Uh, yes. Of course.” Kenzie definitely did not want me here.
I glared at Jude, and a guilty look flashed in his eyes.
He’d lied about Kenzie asking me to come.
Jude moved a little closer to me, and it was then that I realized he simply wanted a buffer.
Even now, Kenzie was clutching his arm with her perfectly manicured, sharply pointed nails.
“Come in,” she said, pulling Jude inside.
I tagged along behind them as we walked into the decadent foyer with the crystal chandelier.
The engraved wood walls and intricately painted ceilings looked, frankly, as if Marie Antoinette had thrown up on every available surface.
We walked through two sitting rooms before Kenzie decided to plop down in the third, a library study with darkened oak walls, a massive desk with a leather blotter, and floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with gold-embossed leather books.
Unfortunately, this was also the room sporting the bearskin rug, and I was almost certain I could see Allen Gordon’s stomach imprint in the fur.
I swallowed my nausea and focused again on Kenzie as I sank into the chair opposite her, in front of the fireplace large enough that you could burn a body in it. Kenzie patted the seat next to her, and Jude dutifully sat.
“Why do you think your dad is missing?” I asked.
Gordon owned a private plane. He could jet anywhere he wanted at any time.
Kenzie reluctantly pulled her attention from Jude. “He didn’t show up for dinner last night, which he wouldn’t have missed because it was his birthday. Daddy lives for his birthday,” Kenzie said.
The way Kenzie singsonged Daddy made me cringe, and I hoped I was keeping my face neutral and not looking like I was about to retch.
“He looks forward to celebrating his birthday with family?”
“Yep. Just me and my cousins and uncles. It’s his time to make us all grovel.
He lives for it. He orders ridiculously expensive wine and surf and turf and then tries to figure out who loves him most by pitting us against each other to figure out who pays the bill.
He loves the little psychological game of watching us all fight each other to show him affection. ”
“Sounds like a real gem,” I muttered. Jude gave me a look.
“It’s not easy for us, you know,” Kenzie continued. “Especially since Mom died last year.” I seemed to remember this. Cancer, I thought. Kenzie blinked at Jude, and he gave her shoulder a dainty pat. I tried to ignore how much she leaned into his touch.
“Was he seeing anyone?” I asked.
Kenzie shrugged. “He was on the Spark app.”
“Oh?” I pretended to be surprised.
“But I don’t think he was seeing anyone regularly.”
“Would anyone want to hurt your dad?” Jude asked.
Kenzie snorted. “Only everyone. You know he wasn’t well-liked.”
He might have been booed at the Fourth of July parade last year.
“Right, but any specific threats—other than from the Canceled Killer?” I wasn’t going to focus in too soon on a suspect this time.
Even though part of me worried—would someone be interviewing my relatives when the Canceled Killer finally came for me?
Would Oscar be dutifully taking down notes on the last time I was seen alive?
I pushed down the fear and focused again on Kenzie.
“I heard him have an argument with Dave Simpson,” she said.
“The president of Gordon’s?”
She nodded. “They were fighting about the listeria outbreak. About when Daddy knew about it. About the skull emojis. We all knew what they meant. I watched the Streamberry series.”
I sighed. The Streamberry documentary on the Canceled Killer was a hack job thrown together by a bunch of opportunists who didn’t cross their t’s or dot their i’s and just copied everything we’d discovered in Crime Hive and set it to ominous music and blurry reenactments.
Everything but Jared as a suspect, that is, so they looked legitimate and we looked clueless.
They stretched a half hour of information into a four-hour series, padded with a lot of dramatic pauses and creepy piano music.
“But the thing was, Dave said, ‘If the Canceled Killer doesn’t get you, I may kill you myself.’”
Jude and I exchanged a glance. Well, that didn’t sound good.
“Do you think he could’ve had something to do with Daddy’s disappearance?” she asked us.
“I don’t know,” Jude admitted.
“You’ll figure it all out, won’t you, Pooh Bear?” Kenzie asked as she put her hand on his knee.
I barely held my laughter until after we were outside Kenzie’s house.
“Pooh Bear!” I screamed as Jude hustled me away from the house, sending terrified glances back over his shoulder at Kenzie’s door.
“Shhh!” he whispered urgently. “She’ll hear you.”
“I don’t care. Pooh Bear? What? Were you always trying to get her sticky honey pot?” I cackled to myself, until I realized Jude wasn’t laughing. A spot of red appeared on his cheekbones. The laughter died in my throat. “Oh, God. You were.”
“Not your business. You can butt right out,” Jude said coolly as he stalked to his car, a white Volvo SUV, just the reliable kind of car a cheese scientist would drive.
I went from amusement to wonder. I was trying to imagine Jude hot and heavy for Kenzie’s honey pot and my mind short-circuited.
It was hard to imagine Jude passionate about anything except what he could peer at through a microscope.
Did he mumble sweet nothings about the formation of cheese curds?
“Damn, does the Cheese Doctor have game?” I teased.
Jude groaned and unlocked his doors with a click of his key fob. “I’m already regretting asking for your help.”
“I’m not. Pooh Bear!” I cried again. I wasn’t going to let this little morsel go. “How did you two really get together?”
“I don’t think you seriously want to know.” Jude slipped into his driver’s side door and slammed it. I ducked into the passenger side.
“Oh, I do. I’ve never wanted to know anything more in my life. I want all the details. Skip none.” I clapped my hands in glee.
Jude groaned. “Kenzie hired me as a consultant a few years back. To help develop a new custard production mechanism. Back when they were first wanting to expand into grocery stores. I came up with a new production technique that doubled their daily output.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You basically single-handedly tripled the value of Kenzie’s family fortune, then.”
Jude seemed surprisingly humble. “Yeah.” He turned over the engine, and then he glanced at me. The annoying dinging from the dashboard told me I’d yet to put my seat belt on.
“Ahem,” he said, nodding to my belt. Jude was waiting until I did before he put the car in reverse.
Annoyed, I grabbed the belt and slung it across me, clicking it into the latch and stopping the annoying dinging.
Slowly, Jude checked every available angle and then slowly slipped the car into drive. He drove like my grandma’s grandma.
“So, wait, did you get royalties? A patent? Anything?”
Jude shrugged. “No,” he said as he inched the car forward around the fountain in the circular drive so slowly I almost wanted to get out and push.
“Do you always drive this slow, or only when you’re in a driveway?”
“I’m looking for cars,” Jude pointed out.
“We’re on a massive estate a mile from the road. There are no cars.”
He puttered down the wide private drive lined by old oak trees.
“You could floor it,” I suggested.
“You can stop your side-seat driving any time you please.”
Jude came to a stop at the end of the long drive, looking both ways four times before easing out onto the main road and barely hitting the gas pedal. We puttered up to two miles below the speed limit, Jude’s sweet spot.
“You are the only person I know who actually obeys the speed limit.”
“It’s the law!” Jude exclaimed. “If we start breaking the ones we don’t like, then society will collapse and chaos will follow.”
I snorted a laugh. “I doubt it’ll be that serious.”
“Well, I don’t want to find out,” Jude said, double-checking his rearview mirror.
“So, while you, Mr. Rule Follower, made Gordon’s Frozen Custard bundles of money for basically free, Kenzie fell in love with your brain.” I could see it happening. Jude was stupid smart, and he did have a habit of solving complicated problems and saving the day.
Jude sent me a sidelong glance. “They hired me on as a consultant. They paid me.” Jude slowed to the recommended twenty miles per hour to take a turn that most people would take at forty.
“Just curious: Did you start going to the gym before or after you two met?”
“After,” he said sheepishly. “And nice of you to notice.”
“Notice? Your biceps are practically bursting out of your half-zip, bro. You look like you actually know what a bench press is now.”
Another spot of red appeared on Jude’s cheek. It was kind of adorable. So was the thought of him hurrying to the gym five days a week to make sure Kenzie noticed more than his brain.
“Why’d you two break up?”
Jude shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Maybe we should talk about something else. Should we go interview Dave Simpson? I know how to get to his place.”
“Sure. Fine. Whatever. Why did you two break up?”