Page 117 of XO Karma

“This city just keeps getting weirder and weirder.”

“I fear we don’t know the half of it.”

“But how does the murder art tie in with the Kodak Killer?”

“Maybe they’re using him to get the victims?”

“When I asked Vetrel about the skull, he said it meant, ‘Don’t fuck with the Vetrel family.’”

“Maybe it’s the skull of someone who wronged him?” he suggests.

“I guess that could make sense. Kodak gets the victims, and the Westerfords dispose of the bodies.” A sickening thought settles inside. “Do we think Jude could be the Kodak Killer?”

Aster shakes his head. “There’s no way that wimpy-ass pretty boy is intelligent enough.”

“Intelligent?”

“Kodak has been around for years and never been caught. Never so much as a lead. They’re meticulous and careful. Jude is just… a prick.”

“Do you think people in your life would believe that the pretty boy journalist moonlights as a serial killer?”

He grins. “I should add that to my dating profile.”

An unfamiliar flicker of jealousy trickles through me. “You have one?”

“Of course.” He laughs, and my jaw clenches. “My bio says, ‘Hi, I’m Aster Blake. Capricorn. Journalist. Local Hero.’”

“Local serial killer,” I correct, and he waves me off.

“I like long walks through the woods, painting garden gnomes, and disposing of corpses.”

I realize he’s clearly kidding, and oxygen returns to my lungs. “My kind of man.” Do I even have the right to be jealous?

He grins, returning his attention to the board. “Jude can stay up there, but…” He pauses, writing on something, then slaps it on Jude’s picture. “He’s low on the list.”

I snort a laugh at the sticky note of a smiley face with x’s for eyes, devil horns, and its tongue sticking out. “Maybe he’s pulling the strings?”

“That I would believe. Rich guy having someone else do his dirty work? Classic.”

“But why would he have Kodak target Violet?”

“Is there anything you can think of, anything at all, for why someone would have wanted her killed?”

I laugh, a full belly laugh. Because that thought is ridiculous. “Not unless you count taking the last parking spot at Trader Joe’s.” She almost lost an eye for that one.

“Is it…” He trails off, and I can tell he’s trying to use kid gloves, which piss me off more than they make me calm.

“You can speak freely,” I assure him. “You didn’t know Violet, but I did. It’s fair of you to wonder.”

“Is it possible you didn’t know her as well as you think you did?”

“We’d been best friends since we were seven. Grew up together. Shared clothes, boyfriends, just about anything you could think of. If she was hiding something from me”—a pit settles in my stomach—“I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“What did she do for work?”

I want to slap myself in the head for not thinking of this sooner. “She was an arts and antiquities dealer.”

Aster’s eyes widen. “So an art dealer is dead and a creepy art-making family is a suspect?” A pit twists in my stomach at how related those two things feel. I’ve focused so much on her death, not considering any clues from her life. Was she their broker? “Did she ever mention them?”