telling me that someone sent you a letter, and signed my name?”
“That’s about it, Auntie. Except for the picture. That almost killed me.”
“Picture?”
“I’m going to leave orders that it be buried with me. Or cremated, I haven’t decided which I favor, yet. The jury’s still out on the afterlife.”
Michael might have been a philosopher, but it never seemed to do anything for him, except provide rationalizations. “What kind of picture?”
“As a man, I’m a connoisseur of pornography. As, well, me, I take my hobbies seriously. This…whew. Like I said, if I had really believed you’d sent it to me, I would have dropped everything, run out, and bought new underwear, just on the possibility.”
I took a deep breath. “Michael, please! Start over. Someone sent you a dirty picture?”
“Yes. One of you.”
I gasped. “It couldn’t be—”
“No, of course not. But it was a good enough fake to keep my interest. Someone put your head on an astoundingly inventive, and might I add very flexible, body. God bless the Internet. Not that you aren’t flexible—I’m sure you are—and frankly, since I got the picture, I’ve been speculating about that. But there was a certain quality about the upper body that, while similar to yours, was just a trifle too…enthusiastic. Enhanced, but an outstanding job, in my considered opinion.”
“Damn it, knock it off, Michael!”
“I’m just building the proof, don’t take it out on me.” Another pause, and I could almost hear the effort it took to wrench the conversation back around to me. “So it seems like you’ve got some problems. Someone’s got it out for you, and they’re not playing nice, are they? Am I the first?”
“The first to get smut,” I said.
“Why me?”
“I couldn’t tell you.” I told him about the “gifts” sent to my family, the fire at the animal hospital, the picture of Sophia. The site, the chase. The art museum guard, the painting, and Dora’s parents.
“It’s not like you’re a member of my family. Or a particularly close friend.” As soon as I said it, I felt uncomfortable, but it was the truth.
It didn’t seem to even register with Michael. “Hardly. I would have said that the odd email now and then didn’t actually constitute a relationship. But people are getting married on the strength of just that these days, and the odder the email, the better, in some cases. Perhaps, if you’ve got a stalker, which it seems to me you do, he’s trying to indicate how well he knows you, knows your movements. How long’s it been since we were at Shrewsbury? Year and a half?”
“Something like that.” I shuddered, thinking that if he was right, Tony’d been very, very busy.
“Huh. That’s scary, isn’t it? Someone who’s willing to go to that kind of trouble, spend that kind of time?”
“Yeah.” Suddenly, I felt my eyes welling up. As much of a weirdo as Michael could be, he was taking my fears seriously, and I found myself promoting him to friend status on the spot. “It is scary.”
“Hmm. Kind of obsessive, if you ask me.” Asking Michael about obsession was kind of like asking the Pope about Rome. “Once I started really studying the letter—”
“Oh, enough already!”
“Emma, please.” His disdain was so palpable I could almost hear Michael drawing himself up out of his perennial slouch over the phone lines. “I meant, once I realized it wasn’t you, I started to analyze it. I’ve picked up a thing or two about graphology, studying personal documents as I do, and a little bit about forensic attribution along the way. And it’s my informed opinion that whoever’s responsible for this is a nut case.”
“That’s a big help. Huge.”
“Also highly intelligent, perceptive, inventive. An egoist of galactic proportions, he’s as desirous of an audience as he feels impossibly superior to any one else in the world.”
“You got all that from the handwriting?” Frankly, the description sounded like Michael himself.
“Not all. Handwriting is not a good indication of gender, but, well, men and women write porn differently. In my considered opinion, this felt like a guy trying to sound like a woman to me. Do you have any idea of who might be doing this?”
The flesh at the back of my neck crawled. “I’ve got an idea.”
“Presumably you’ve been to the authorities?”
“Yes, but it’s only recently that there’s been a crime—or any evidence—worth troubling about. No one’s seen this guy, and they’re also mostly convinced that Tony is dead.”
“Well, that’s what I call dedicated. Good work, from beyond the grave. Do