Gaffe Out Loud

by Christy Barritt

  “No, I was staring at the house.”

  “Why would you stare at the house?”

  “Because my friend was last seen there. And, until now, I didn’t understand why.”

  Chapter Six

  Before I could pull myself off the woman, a truck pulled up beside us, and I heard a confused, “Joey?”

  I glanced over and saw Jackson there staring at us with a look of flabbergastion—yes, I’d made up that word, but I loved it—on his face.

  He pulled to the side of the road and hopped out.

  “Hi, honey.” I kept one hand on the woman, afraid she might run.

  “What in the world . . . ?” He quickly reached us and leaned down to help me up—actually, it was more like to pull me off the woman.

  As soon as I put weight on my ankle, pain ricocheted through me.

  “Don’t lose her,” I said through gritted teeth, scowling at the intruder who was still on the grass beside the sidewalk. The woman was probably in her late twenties. She was painfully thin, with strawberry blonde hair that brushed her shoulders and pale skin.

  Jackson’s gaze went to the woman. He still looked confused, and rightfully so. A circle of people surrounded us, watching and probably recording the whole incident on their cell phones.

  Score another one for Joey, the queen of disaster and ill-gotten publicity.

  “Who is she? And are you okay?” Jackson’s gaze narrowed with either concern or confusion or quite possibly both.

  “I’ll be fine.” My ankle felt anything but fine right now. But I couldn’t pay attention to that. No, I had to make sure this woman didn’t get away. If she tried, I would spring into action, even if it meant enduring more pain. “This woman knows something about what happened at my house, and she was spying on me on my property.”

  Jackson stepped toward the bush-hiding, rainbow-umbrella-throwing secret keeper and helped her to her feet. “Maybe we should go somewhere to discuss this—and to get you off your ankle.”

  She stood, scowling and wiping sand from her jean shorts, legs, elbows, and everywhere else. Finally, with a huff, she straightened and gave me a death glare. “I’m not going anywhere with you two. Are you crazy?”

  Jackson sighed and pulled out his badge. “Detective Jackson Sullivan. I need a moment of your time.”

  “I don’t have anything to say.”

  She started to step away, clearly blowing Jackson off, when he grabbed her arm, lightly but firmly. “Ma’am, we’re investigating a murder.”

  Her eyes widened. “A . . . a murder?”

  “Do you have information that might help us?”

  She shook her head in quick, frantic motions. “I . . . I don’t know. I don’t think so. Should I?”

  Jackson glanced around. The crowd surrounding us was clearly using us as their afternoon entertainment. “There’s nothing to see here, people. Please enjoy your vacations. Enjoy the beach. But don’t enjoy this scene.”

  After some murmuring, the tourists dispersed.

  I leaned against Jackson’s truck, trying to get the weight off my ankle. I took off my heels and stepped right on—what else? A sand spur.

  I bit back a mutter of pain and yanked nature’s torture device from my foot.

  I couldn’t win today.

  “Listen, we can sit in my truck or we can go somewhere,” Jackson said. “Maybe even the police station. But we need to talk.”

  It was a good thing Jackson had shown up, because I was in no state to interrogate someone right now. My ankle hurt, as well as my elbow. Plus, I couldn’t catch my breath and my heart still raced out of control.

  Being a detective in real life was much harder than being a detective on TV.

  That was a lesson I should have learned already. And I had. But I’d forgotten. Or, at least I’d put the hard stuff out of my mind.

  “Fine.” The woman’s gaze flashed from Jackson to me. “But I’ll only talk at the house. I need some answers also.”

  Ten minutes later, we were seated on my couch. Wesley’s couch, actually. We just needed a thick desk, some homey plants, ink-blot artwork, and a man with a nonjudgmental gaze sitting across from us as we talked and this really would look like a therapist’s office.

  Against my better instincts, I’d pulled out some Izzes—my favorite drink—and offered one to the strange woman who’d been spying on me. I wished I knew if I was offering a friend or an enemy a drink.

  I hardly had time to worry about it—my ankle still hurt. I put some ice on it and propped it up on the couch beside me. I didn’t think it was sprained. I think I’d simply exacerbated an old injury.

  “Let’s start with your name.” Jackson sat in a chair across from the woman I’d tackled, his body posed with professional interest in the situation.

  “Jennifer Walton.”

  Her nose was red and her eyes were rimmed in pink. I wasn’t sure if this was her normal look or if she was upset and flushed. Maybe it was a mix of both.

  “Ms. Walton, why were you outside Joey’s house watching her?” Jackson asked.

  She absently rubbed the side of her drink and sighed, looking all-together annoyed. “I was looking for my friend, Desiree. This whole thing has nothing to do with murder.”

  Desiree? Was that the name of the woman who’d been found dead in the room upstairs? “Why would you think Desiree was here?”

  “It was the last location where her phone pinged. Now that I know you live here, it makes sense.”

  I shook my head, wondering what that meant exactly. Was Desiree the woman Adam had seen on my deck? Was she the person who’d carved the words there?

  “Please go on,” I said, anxious to hear more.

  Jennifer sighed again. “My friend Desiree wants to be an actress. She is an actress—just not a well-known one. She’s done some commercials. A small indie film. She’s worked as an extra.” Jennifer’s gaze connected with mine. “She was just down in Wilmington auditioning for a role in the renewed Relentless season.”

  My eyebrows shot up at the unexpected connection to me. Earlier, I’d assumed that this murder had nothing to do with me. Apparently, I was wrong. “Was she?”

  “She found out she didn’t make the cut, though.” Jennifer shrugged. “She was devastated. Desperate, I guess. I suppose you remember what that was like, Joey. How hard it is to get your big break.”

  I did know that, yet I didn’t. I’d stumbled into acting, catching my big break without much effort, a fact I didn’t take lightly. No, I’d seen too many people trying to sell their souls to achieve what they considered the ultimate life—fame and fortune.

  I’d learned that neither of those things were what they were cracked up to be. What really mattered was spending time with the people you cared about, doing work that brought satisfaction, and giving back to others—by doing things like helping find answers for them about crimes that haunted them, for example.

  “I’m still not sure how that led her here,” I said, trying to put the pieces together.

  Jennifer picked a piece of lint off a navy-blue pillow beside her before looking back at us. “She heard you were living here in the Outer Banks now. I mean, it’s all over the tabloids, right?”

  “It is?” I blurted.

  “Of course. The National Instigator ran a story on it last week. They even announced that you were buying a house.”

  I had no idea. How had I missed that? And how had the Instigator found out?

  Those people. . . I was their favorite fodder. And that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

  “Anyway, Desiree wanted to find you and convince you to give her a role,” Jennifer continued. “She said if she could just talk to you, you’d know that she was meant to be in your show.”

  “I don’t really have that power.”

  “I know that. But, like I said, she was desperate.”

  “So she came here to find Joey,” Jackson repeated. “And try and convince her to give her a role on Relentless. And now you’re
here?”

  Jennifer nodded, her eyes so wide they were almost comical and, with her nose still red, almost like she had a cold. “I haven’t heard from her in twenty-four hours. She texts me all the time. We’re like sisters. In fact, we put those apps on our phones that lets us track each other. So I tracked her to this address about sixteen hours ago. I live in Atlanta, so it took me a while to get here. And after I arrived, I had no idea whose home this was. I only knew it was the last place Desiree had been.”

  “Good to know,” Jackson said.

  Jennifer looked back and forth between the two of us. “So have you seen her? Did she come here to talk?”

  My gut squeezed as the truth hit me. Jackson and I exchanged a glance. Finally, Jackson spoke.

  “Do you have a picture of Desiree?” He sounded like he’d chosen his words carefully.

  “Of course.” Jennifer searched her phone before holding the device up. “Here she is.”

  I sucked in a quick breath at the image of a smiling, happy, very much alive woman.

  She was clearly the same person we’d found upstairs in my house.

  Jennifer had no idea her best friend was dead.

  And now we were going to have to tell her.

  I so never wanted to be a real-life detective, mostly for moments like this.

  Chapter Seven

  Once the dam had opened, Jennifer talked and talked. For an entire hour. Telling Jackson and me more than we needed to know, really. About Desiree’s favorite food—hot dogs, in case you were wondering. About her aspirations—to be famous, of course. About her larger-than-life personality—and only someone with that kind of personality would have the nerve to track me down and beg for a role in my TV show.

  I’d joked earlier that my couch looked like it belonged in a therapy office.

  Little did I know that it would be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  I had learned a few helpful details, however. Desiree Williams was twenty-three years old. She was originally from a small Mississippi town, but she’d moved to Atlanta—which did have a growing presence in the TV and film industry—right out of high school.

  That was where she’d met Jennifer, who also wanted to be an actress. However, Jennifer had gone to college and gotten a degree in teaching to pay her bills until she found her big break. She’d also discovered that she liked teaching, so getting her big break had become less important.

  Desiree, on the other hand, took odd jobs to pay her bills. Getting her big break was all she could think about. She was desperate to be someone, even though she already was someone. Fame didn’t—or shouldn’t, at least—define people.

  I sighed and leaned back on my couch, my mental wheels still spinning. Jackson had left an hour ago to take Jennifer to the police station so she could identify the body. She was a shaking, trembling mess.

  I’d offered to go also as moral support, but Jennifer had declined.

  Did she blame me for her friend’s death?

  It was a possibility.

  Maybe Jennifer thought if Desiree had never come here she’d still be alive.

  I didn’t really know.

  I pulled my legs underneath me, the house’s presence pressing on me. While Jennifer had been here, I’d been distracted from the horrible event that had occurred here, but now that I was alone, I was all too aware of how quiet it was.

  A pounding sound cut through the air, and I jumped off the couch, making a mental note to add “Ghostbusters” to my speed dial number. Okay, they weren’t real. But I could program their song as my ringtone. That always made everything better.

  “Joey, it’s me. Jackson.”

  I released my breath. Jackson. It was just Jackson. Knocking at the door.

  Not a ghost from the afterlife haunting me.

  I rushed toward the door and opened it, desperate to confirm it was really him.

  It was.

  He rubbed my arm as he stepped inside. “How are you doing, Joey?”

  “I’ve been better. Been worse.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  I closed the door but didn’t move from the spot. “How did it go down at the station?”

  “About as well as you can imagine. Jennifer is devastated. She confirmed that it was Desiree we found upstairs.”

  “So what’s next?”

  Jackson shrugged. “We contact Desiree’s family. See if they have any information. Now that we know her name, we can trace her financials. Check her social media.”

  “That’s a good start, at least.”

  Jackson studied my face a minute before asking, “I know a lot has happened. You still want to go grab dinner?”

  I glanced at the time. It was already 7:30. “Everywhere will be packed.”

  “I’m willing to wait if you are.”

  That was sweet of Jackson. I appreciated that he wanted to make me a priority. But . . . “I’m not feeling up to anything fancy. How about we go to the fish market and grab some super unhealthy fried seafood and go sit on the beach to eat it?”

  He squinted. “I thought you weren’t eating gluten?”

  “I changed my mind. Just for today at least.”

  He grinned. “Okay then. Something low-key sounds really good to me also.”

  Thirty minutes later, we were settled at the base of a sand dune with Styrofoam containers in our laps. Jackson still wore his button-up shirt and jeans. I still wore my flowy black sundress. Both of us were barefoot and probably a sight to behold.

  That wasn’t to mention my ankle. It was sore, but I could still walk on it. I just had to watch my step.

  “I love this about you, Joey,” Jackson said.

  “Love what? That I break my diet every week?”

  He chuckled. “That you could be stuck-up and snooty, but instead you’re down to earth and casual. You’re okay with a romantic dinner out of Styrofoam containers.”

  “Anything with you, I’m okay with.” I smiled. And I meant it.

  His eyes were warm on mine, as if he appreciated my words, before he turned back to enjoy the landscape around us.

  Colors of dusk still smeared this side of the island, even though the sun set behind us. Soothing pinks and pale blues stretched in wisps across the sky and added a lovely shading to the ocean.

  Most of the crowds had left by now, but there were still a few families and a couple fishermen.

  I picked up a salty fry, knowing I’d regret this meal later. “I know we shouldn’t talk about your cases when we’re out enjoying the evening. But can I have five minutes, at least?”

  “Five minutes seems fair, considering the circumstances.”

  My heart pulsed a beat with excitement. Jackson was throwing me a bone, and I would happily take it. “Okay, is there anything you can tell me that Jennifer told you?”

  Jackson took a bite of his fried flounder. The scent of the crispy batter subtly wafted toward me, mingling with the salty ocean air. It might not seem like the perfect scent combination, but it was. Especially when mixed with the gritty feel of the sand beneath my bare feet.

  “You heard most of it. At least we can now ID the victim. But there’s still a lot that doesn’t make sense.”

  “That’s what I think too. I mean, sure, Desiree came to my house to see me. What happened between the time she arrived and the time we found her?”

  “That’s a great question. We’re estimating she died last night.”

  I sucked in a breath, realizing I hadn’t told him important stuff that I needed to tell him. “My neighbor saw a woman sitting on my deck last night.”

  “When did you hear that?”

  “A little earlier.” But I wasn’t done yet. “And I found a message carved into one of the wood planks. It said, ‘I will be somebody.’”

  “You think Desiree left it there?”

  “It fits, doesn’t it? And the carved letters looked fresh, you know?” I popped another fried shrimp into my mouth.

  “I’ll need to take a look a
t that. But it fits. Desiree was at your house last night, hanging out and waiting for you to return. Something happened and she ended up dead and inside.”

  I wiped my greasy fingers on a paper napkin and turned to Jackson. “You gathered that from talking to Jennifer?”

  Jackson shrugged and picked up another french fry. “I gathered that from talking to various people, including the medical examiner.”

  “I see.”

  “Who knows what happened?” Jackson stared ahead. “Maybe Desiree ran into trouble—stumbled into a random crime—just outside your house. Maybe the killer knew the house was vacant and placed her inside, hoping to buy himself some time until she was discovered.”

  “Where was she even staying? I mean, I heard everything in town is booked at this time of year.”

  “We don’t know yet. Her car was found about an hour ago at a public beach access not far from your place. We wonder if she was sleeping there at night.”

  “Part of me feels guilty that we’re not investigating right now—”

  “We’re?”

  I shrugged, realizing I hadn’t watched my words. “You’re?”

  “You have enough on your plate, Joey. Let me handle this.”

  “But you don’t understand. I don’t think I can even sleep in that place tonight.”

  “Of course you can.”

  “Of course maybe I can’t. And if I can’t sleep, I’ll get bags under my eyes. Then I’ll start eating to stay awake. Then I’ll gain weight. Then I’ll get cranky. No one wants a cranky Joey. And this is terrible timing because the camera will capture all of those imperfections and amplify them by 100 percent. Then the tabloids will pick up on it, and they’ll start theorizing. They might ask if I’m pregnant or—”

  “Joey.” Jackson placed his hand on my knee. “You’re going to be fine.”

  I waited a moment for his words to wash over me, and then I released my breath. “You’re right. I will be.”

  And I believed that for all of two seconds. Until my phone buzzed.

  It was the moving company. Their truck had crashed, and all of my things were now on the side of the road somewhere in Texas.