Murder of a Royal Pain

“I’m sorry to say, in a twisted way, her actions do make sense.” Skye gave an uncomfortable laugh. “She thought she was entitled to my life, that it had been stolen from her.” After explaining what Jackie had told her about her background and her thought processes, Skye concluded with, “She is a classic case of narcissistic personality disorder.”

“You mean someone who is charming, but has no conscience?” Charlie asked.

“No. That’s a sociopath. A narcissist can win people over only in the short term. He or she can’t maintain the illusion of friendliness and caring for very long.” Skye struggled to explain, finally quoting the definition of narcissistic personality disorder from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: “‘Someone with grandiose fantasies, a total lack of empathy, and a hypersensitivity to the evaluation of others.’ ”

“In other words”—Homer snorted—“she can’t take criticism, takes advantage of the people around her, and thinks her shit doesn’t stink.”

“In a nutshell, yes,” Skye agreed. Trust Homer to cut to the chase. Then she muttered under her breath, “And since you usually believe only what you want to believe, you ate it right up.”

“But why?” Justin drew his brows together. “What caused her to be that way?”

Skye felt a twinge of concern. Maybe she shouldn’t have allowed the teenager to stay and hear all this. But since she had, she needed to try to help him understand.

“The closest I can figure is that all her life, Jackie felt like a nonentity—a blank slate—which is why she was so good at assuming other people’s identities. Then when the county clerk made the error with our birth certificates, she saw it as a sign. There had been a mistake. She wasn’t a nobody. She was Skye Denison. Which meant I had to disappear, so she could become the person she was meant to be.”

After what seemed like a thousand questions later, everyone left, and Skye breathed a sigh of relief. She was returning to her desk, hoping to get some work done, when Kurt slipped back into her office.

She turned toward him with a questioning look. “Forget something?”

He closed the door. “I need to tell you something before you hear it from Chief Boyd.”

“What?” Skye mentally raced through the possibilities.

“I’m not who you think I am.”

“You don’t say.” She was taken aback for a second, but recovered quickly and added, “You didn’t fool me for a minute with that small-town-reporter bit.” Okay, he had fooled her for way more than a minute, but he didn’t need to know that.

Kurt raised an eyebrow. “What gave me away?”

“For someone who supposedly wrote for a weekly newspaper, you were much too interested in hard news. Small-town reporters are more interested in the high school football team or who was drunk Saturday night than real crime.” Skye summed up her suspicions: “And then, there’s that honking big gun you were aiming at Jackie at the motor court yesterday afternoon.”

“Guess I’m not as good at being undercover as I thought I was.” Kurt’s smile was tentative.

Skye wasn’t distracted by his charisma. “So you were using me.”

“I’m sorry about that, but I had no choice.” All humor was gone from his handsome face, lines etching themselves around his mouth and eyes.

“I knew all that flirting was only an act.” Skye told herself she had no right to be upset about that. She was in love with Wally and didn’t want Kurt’s attentions. Still, she couldn’t help but add, “It’s not a big surprise that you weren’t really attracted to me.”

“That isn’t true.” Kurt cupped her chin in his palm. “I think you’re smart and fun and incredibly sexy.”

“Right. Playboy is always calling me up to model for them.”

“Just because most men like stick women who wouldn’t jiggle if you tied them to a paint mixer”—Kurt caressed her cheek with his thumb—“doesn’t mean that I do. I’m not most men.”

His blue eyes were mesmerizing, sending a ripple of awareness through her, but Skye forced herself to step away from him. “Yeah, well, we know who you aren’t. The question is, who are you?”

“I’m a private detective.” His fingers threaded through hers and stopped her from backing any farther away from him. “I was hired six months ago by the family of Veronica Vail to look into her death.”

“The woman Jackie impersonated last fall.” Skye jerked her hand from his. “You knew Jackie was a fake all along, and you didn’t warn me.”

“I didn’t know. That was the problem.” He scratched his chin. “I found a story about the spa murder that mentioned State Special Agent Veronica Vail. And considering that the real Veronica was already dead by that time, I came to Scumble River to investigate. It wasn’t much of a lead, but it was all I had.”

“Oh?”