Something Wicked

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Susan Johnson-Kropp. Something Wicked

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Chapter 1

Jillian Van Doren—that’s me. I was born in 1978 to an adoring mother who doted on her only child and an indifferent father who found parenting tedious. As to our famous last name, my father liked to claim that he was some kind of cousin to Charles Van Doren. He was the famous, nay, infamous, writer and professor who was at the heart of a TV quiz show cheating scandal in the late 1950s. I’m pretty sure the name was borrowed by my grandfather, since as far as I know, no one else in our family held that name prior to him. My mother all but admitted it to me once, saying that my grandfather obviously couldn’t have foreseen at the time how dubious the association would turn out to be. Evidently, my father’s father, Cornelius Van Doren, had been quite the swindler. Not penny-ante stuff, either, but big-time art thievery, high-stakes rigged poker games, and even gun smuggling to both sides of the Korean War. Very unbiased, albeit treacherous of him, I often thought, and I took a certain pride in his having been so adventurous.

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“Nope, Agatha Christie. She wrote with style.”

“I haven’t read anything of hers for so long, I really don’t remember it well. I saw Murder on the Orient Express when I was little. I don’t really remember it well either.”

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