The Axeman's Jazz

could I just ask you something? Do you know if your daughter had any enemies?”
    “Linda Lee? She was the most popular girl in town.”
    “I see. Then perhaps someone was jealous of her.”
    “I didn’t mean she ran around. I meant people liked her.”
    “Did she know anyone whose name began with A?”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “I can’t tell you why I’m asking, but it’s important.”
    “First or last name?”
    “Either one.”
    “I sure can’t think of anyone, except maybe Tommy Axelrod, used to live next door to us. But he and his folks left town about ten years ago. Linda Lee used to babysit for him. ’Course, she knew his folks too, but that was different.”
    “Has she heard from Tommy at all?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Does the letter A mean anything else to you?”
    “Nothin’ except ‘angel,’ and that’s what my baby was.” A freshet of tears drowned her voice.
    Skip kept her on the phone long enough to assign Miss Kitty to Mr. Ogletree. Then she phoned the Sunflower County sheriff’s department, and got a lieutenant named Mike Bilbo, who said Harry Beaver was out. He said Harry was a good officer and didn’t have a mean bone in his body, but he hated to see what was gon’ happen when he found out somebody’d killed Linda Lee. They’d been living apart for six months before Linda Lee left town, but Harry never could accept it—said Linda Lee’d come back to him, it was just a phase she was going through.
    Not only had Harry been at work every day of the last week, but he was reliable as a Japanese car, never did miss a day. Bilbo had personally seen him at church on Sunday and a barbecue Saturday evenin’.
    So if he’d killed his ex-wife, he’d have needed wings.
    Time to discuss the case with Cappello and Joe, a not unpleasant thought. She called Joe “lieutenant” now, out of respect for his rank, but she still thought of him as “Joe,” a friend. A warm friend. He’d turned into the kind of executive who liked to shoot the breeze with his detectives, find out how each case was going, help out when he could, and she looked forward to running things by him, enjoyed the hell out of their rapport.
    Cappello wasn’t nearly so warm. She was all business, almost brusque, but she was a dynamite officer. When Skip got her transfer, she’d wanted Cappello for a partner, but had ended up working under her instead. Which was okay. Very much okay. Skip had wanted to learn from her. This way she could do that and still work alone, a situation she cherished sometimes. Skip found she tended to reinvent police work with each new problem, and she didn’t always like to be observed. Cappello was a straight by-the-book type who might not appreciate a lot of free-wheeling creativity.
    Skip checked with Cappello, then Joe. Both were free and ready to listen. Neither said a word until she got to the part about the A. Joe had started to look grim at the mention of the bag slung over Linda Lee’s shoulder, and the A did even less for his mood.
    “I got a bad feeling, Skip. Writing on the wall isn’t normal.”
    She bit her tongue, forebore to say the obvious. She understood what he meant, and murmured, “No.”
    “Look, girl with a good reputation, in town for six weeks, doesn’t know anybody—it doesn’t wash. How does a girl like that get killed in her own apartment? If nobody’s mad at her, and nobody knows her, who’s gonna kill her? Pervert, right? That’s bad enough, but she had all her clothes on. All right then, maybe not a pervert. So what’s left?”
    Skip shifted uncomfortably. “Another kind of crazy.”
    “Yeah. That’s what I’m worried about. Somebody she let into her apartment; somebody who didn’t grab her on the street; guy who looks okay to some girl from Mississippi. Where does she meet a guy like that?”
    “At a bar maybe. I don’t know.”
    “Okay, a bar. But why’d he kill her?”
    Skip sighed. “She was there.”
    Joe wagged his head back and forth, as if to rid it of the thoughts it was generating. “This ain’t normal. It just isn’t, that’s all.”
    “Maybe it was someone she knew—maybe the A meant something between them.”
    “Yeah. And maybe you want to go see your boyfriend so bad your judgment’s messed up.”
    Skip smiled. “Oh, it’s not that bad.” She produced a snapshot of Linda Lee, taken from an envelope in a vanity drawer. “I thought I could show this around.”
    “Yeah, but where?”
    That was the