Skin and Blond (Blond Noir Mysteries Book 1)

by V. J. Chambers

  I did my share of commiserating and moaning about relationships.

  And then we started talking about sex, because that seemed to be the next logical step in the conversation. Which was a bad idea. When two drunk people of the opposite sex (assuming that they’re both straight, that is) start talking about sex, well… a lot of times, they end up doing it. Not all the time, of course. There are people who have a lot of self-control, but I’m not one of those people.

  Apparently, Colin wasn’t either. It was a very mutual sort of progression, neither of us leading the way. Before I knew it, there we were, having sex on my office chair. Colin wanted it on the desk, but I wasn’t about to do that. The desk was organized, and I couldn’t handle having it get gross and messy from sex. Even I had standards.

  The sex was good. It felt good. Hell, it felt great. And I lost myself in it. It took me away from everything, catapulted me into an oasis of pleasure. I basked in it. I gloried in it.

  And then it was over.

  Colin stopped moving in me, grunting as he finished, and we were entwined.

  It was in that moment that I realized how close we were. Our naked bodies were touching everywhere, and I had his body secretions all over me. Unless I took a shower, I’d smell like his cologne all night. Actually, there was a good chance I’d smell like bourbon, considering I was still drunk. That was going to be seeping out of my pores.

  Whatever the case, the situation now seemed the opposite of sexy. It just seemed… sordid.

  Colin extricated himself from me and stumbled to his feet. He yanked off the condom and deposited it in my trash can.

  I made a mental note to take that trash bag out and put it in the dumpster.

  He reached for the bottle of bourbon and upended it into his mouth. Then he grinned at me. “Let’s get out of here.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Out of here?”

  He bent down over me. He kissed me.

  I let him, but I didn’t kiss back. I was done with this now. I felt ashamed.

  That was the way it went a lot of the time. I craved sex, because I craved having my moments where everything was quiet and peaceful, where I was totally in the moment, oblivious to the past and the future. But then after the moment was over, the past and the future came crashing back. And that meant guilt. And that meant consequences. And that meant…

  God, what the hell had I just done?

  With a client?

  In my office?

  I pushed him away. “Listen, this shouldn’t have happened. It’s utterly inappropriate, and—”

  “But it did happen.” He was still grinning. “And I thought it was fucking awesome.”

  “I’m not saying it wasn’t good sex.” I got up and began putting my clothes back on. “But it’s got to stop here. I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  “Why not?”

  I tugged on my pants. “Because you’re a client. It’s not right for me to get into… entanglements with people I work for.”

  “How come?” He looked genuinely confused. Despite his very nice penis and his obvious sexual prowess, he wasn’t especially smart, was he?

  I felt another dollop of shame and guilt. “It just isn’t. I’m sorry, but you need to go.”

  “Hey,” he said. “Hold on a second. You can’t just kick me out. You and me—” He gestured back and forth between us. “We have a connection. I felt it.”

  “No.” I snapped my bra back on. “We don’t have a connection.”

  “Oh, come on. You’re not like other women.”

  He was exactly like other men. I pulled my shirt over my head. “Colin, it’s nothing personal, it’s just that I can’t get involved with clients.”

  “So give me back my money. Then I’m not a client.”

  I glared at him. Seriously? “Please go.”

  I was completely dressed, but Colin was still stark naked. He stole a glance down at his discarded pants, but he didn’t make a move for them.

  “This was a mistake,” I said. “I’m really sorry that I let it go so far.”

  He shook his head. “This wasn’t a mistake. You’re wrong about that. There’s something going on here. I know you feel it.”

  I folded my arms over my chest. “I don’t.”

  His jaw twitched. “How the fuck can you do that?”

  I picked up his pants and thrust them at him. “Get dressed.”

  “We were talking, like really talking. And you said that you felt alone, and I said that I did too—”

  “Be serious. Everyone on earth feels alone, no matter how many people are close to them. Now put on your fucking pants.”

  He gave me a look, broken-hearted and betrayed.

  That upped my guilt quotient even further. I didn’t like hurting people. But really, Colin was a grown man. He’d had plenty of time to realize that having sex with someone didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t as if he was some wet-behind-the-ears high school sophomore.

  He put on his clothes.

  I sunk my hands into my hair. “Listen, I really am sorry.”

  “You’re lying to me,” he said. “Or you’re lying to yourself. I don’t know which. But I know there’s something here.” And with that, he stalked out of my office.

  I sank down into my office chair, relieved to be rid of him.

  Then I popped right back up off the chair. Damn it. I’d just had sex on this chair. I was going to have to scrub it clean if I ever wanted to use it again.

  * * *

  “I thought you hadn’t talked to Madison in months,” I said, standing on the front stoop of Curtis Michael’s house the following afternoon.

  Last night, I’d stayed late at the office, cleaning every square inch of it. When I arrived the next afternoon, it didn’t smell anything like sex. Instead, it smelled like bleach. Brigit noticed and asked me if I’d killed someone and was getting rid of the evidence.

  She was joking.

  I didn’t tell her anything. I was really starting to like Brigit, and I didn’t want her to know what a colossal fuck-up I was. The cleaning had helped, at least a little bit. It had made me feel like I was wiping away my sins, cleansing the area of any wrongdoing, washing it all away. But when I’d gotten home and lain down in bed, the whole evening had started replaying in my head. On repeat. Over and over again, I watched myself pour the bourbon for Colin and me. Over and over again, I watched myself part my lips, lean in to the kiss he was offering. Over and over, I watched myself unzip his pants and reach inside to stroke his erection.

  Each time I saw it, I felt worse. It seemed like it was a more dire crime with every subsequent viewing of the act.

  The worst of it, of course, was that I couldn’t shut the peep show the fuck off. It just kept playing and playing in my head, torturing me.

  I didn’t sleep much.

  And despite the fact that I’d stopped drinking early, I still woke up with a killer hangover. Much worse than my typical beer hangover. But that, I reasoned, was possibly because I hadn’t bothered to eat anything the night before.

  I was happy to get to work and to have something else to focus on besides my personal shame.

  Curtis tried to shut the door. “I don’t have to talk to you.”

  I whipped out Madison’s phone. “You recognize this? It’s Madison’s phone. You’ve been texting her.”

  “No, I haven’t.” He continued to push the door closed.

  I put my foot in the door to wedge it open. “You didn’t tell her that you wanted to kiss every square inch of her body two weeks ago?”

  “Just because she’s getting texts from someone that her phone says is Curtis doesn’t mean it’s me, you know,” he said.

  Well, I supposed that was true, as far as it went. I selected his name on Madison’s phone and told it to call Curtis.

  Immediately, Curtis’s pocket began making noise.

  I glared at him.

  He snatched out his phone and stopped the ring tone. “Look, I can’t talk about
this right now.” His voice dropped several octaves. “Debbie’s home, and she doesn’t know about what I was doing with Madison.”

  “So, you were still seeing her?”

  He looked over his shoulder, and then he stepped outside, shutting the door firmly behind him. “I didn’t want to. But Madison wouldn’t let up. She just… kept calling me and crying, and I felt bad about breaking up with her…” He dragged a hand over his face.

  I looked him up and down.

  “Listen, when Debbie goes to work, you can come back, but I can’t stand out here and have a long conversation with you about this.”

  “Well, then, answer me one question,” I said. “Why’d you lie to me?”

  “Are you kidding? Admit that I was still sleeping with Madison? Hell, I’m ashamed of that. I keep thinking that I’m going to stop. It keeps me up at night, thinking about how much I’m screwing up, what I’m doing to Debbie and the baby. I don’t want to be that guy. And I keep thinking, that if it makes me feel this bad, I’ve got to stop it. I’m going to, you know. I think I’ll say no the next time she calls. But then she does, and…”

  “And you don’t say no,” I said dully. This was sounding fairly familiar. I knew exactly the feeling he was talking about. I had that feeling about my sexual conquests sometimes. I kept thinking I’d stop. I kept thinking I’d wake up and put my life back together. But then it all seemed hopeless, and…

  “I really can’t talk right now.” He opened the door.

  “Where does Debbie work?” I said.

  “At the Lane Bryant. Why?”

  “Just curious,” I said.

  * * *

  “I don’t know, that’s kind of a stretch,” I said.

  Brigit was sitting behind her desk, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “It’s possible, though. Maybe he wanted to stop having sex with her, and the only way he could figure out to do that was to kill her.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “but as motives go, it’s a little convoluted. No, I’m liking the girlfriend more.”

  “The pregnant one?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Debbie.”

  Brigit considered. “She finds out that Curtis is cheating. And in a jealous rage, she breaks into Madison’s apartment and puts a pillow over her face and smothers her.”

  “Could have gone down that way. Then, afterward, she was worried about the body, and she couldn’t carry it, so she wrapped it up in bedsheets so that she could slide it through the house.” I pointed at Brigit. “Make a note that I need to go back and look at the house to see if I see any signs of something big and heavy being dragged through the hallways.”

  “Okay,” said Brigit, scribbling on a post-it note.

  “But what did she do with the body after that? Did she transport it somewhere?”

  “If she’s five months pregnant, she’s not going to be able to move a body by herself,” said Brigit.

  “You sure?” I said.

  “Well, no, but it just seems unlikely.”

  I mused for a few seconds. “Yeah, maybe. I still think I’ll go and talk to her, though. Can’t hurt. And while I’m at it, I need to hit up the restaurant where Madison worked. Maybe if we know when the last time she was at work, we can pinpoint when she was allegedly killed. Plus, I can talk to her co-workers.”

  Brigit gave me a bright smile. “You want me to come along? I could help.”

  “No,” I said. “You have to stay here and cover the phones.”

  “Oh, come on, the phone barely ever rings. Besides, I could forward all the calls to my cell phone.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “That’s not your job.”

  “But I want to watch you interrogate people.”

  “I work alone.”

  “Except for the fact that you needed to hire me.”

  “What happens if a potential client comes by the office while we’re both gone? That’s lost revenue. Revenue that pays your salary, I might add.”

  She sighed. “Fine. I’ll stay here.”

  * * *

  Debbie worked retail in one of the new shopping centers that had gone up in Renmawr. It was on the outskirts of town, of course. There was nothing much respectable left downtown except the post office and the library, and there was talk of moving both of those at town council meetings.

  The shopping center was one of those horse-shoe shaped strip malls, with the parking lot in the middle and all the stores facing the center. Debbie worked in a plus-sized women’s clothing store, even though she wasn’t at all plus-sized. When I found her, she was tidying up a display in the back of the store, folding one shirt after the other and putting them back onto shelves. She was a very tiny woman, even five months pregnant. Petite in the truest sense of the word.

  “Can I help you?” she said.

  “I actually wondered if I could ask you some questions about Madison Webb.”

  She stiffened and went back to her task. “Are you that detective lady? Curtis told me you came by yesterday.”

  Well, there wasn’t much use lying about it, was there? “That’s me. I’m Ivy Stern, and I’ve been hired to try to find out what happened to Madison. She disappeared and no one’s seen or heard from her in seven days.”

  Debbie folded briskly. “I wish I could help you, but I didn’t really know her.”

  “Your boyfriend was dating her when the two of you got together, wasn’t he?”

  She set down the shirt and turned to me with a look of disgust on her face. “What are you talking about? That’s not true at all.”

  I winced. Well, Curtis hadn’t shared much of anything with Debbie, had he?

  “Look,” she said, “Curtis and I had a little bit of a rocky beginning, but it was all that girl’s fault. She was crazy. She acted like she and Curtis were still together, even though he’d broken it off with her ages ago. She wouldn’t leave us alone. Now, I don’t want anything bad to have happened to her, I really don’t. But I can’t say I’m all that upset that she’s gone. I hope she stays gone, for that matter.”

  Well, that was interesting. Debbie didn’t have any problem being open about the fact that she wasn’t very fond of Madison. But did that make her more likely to have killed her or less likely? If she was the killer, she probably wouldn’t admit that openly, would she? Or would she think that I’d eliminate her as a suspect because I would assume she’d never be so stupid as to admit her dislike?

  “I don’t see why you’re talking to Curtis and me, anyway,” Debbie went on, going back to her folding. “We really haven’t had any contact with her in months and months. So, whatever’s going on with her, it’s not even our business.”

  I nodded slowly. “Well, her brother seems convinced that some kind of harm may have come to Madison.”

  “Really?” Debbie stopped folding again. She turned back to me, and there was a nervous look in her eyes. “Well, just because she drove us crazy doesn’t mean that we would have hurt her, you know? We’re not those kinds of people.”

  “And yet,” I said, “by both your admissions, Madison was harassing you, and neither of you did anything about that. You could have brought in the authorities, possibly gotten a restraining order—”

  “I wanted to,” said Debbie. “But Curtis wouldn’t do it.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  She sighed. “It’s not because he still has feelings for her. Curtis is just too nice for his own good. He feels sorry for her.” She picked up a shirt and began to fold it. “And that’s why he would never hurt her. It’s just not in him.”

  “So, you haven’t had any contact with Madison at all.”

  “No,” said Debbie. “I stayed clear of her.”

  * * *

  “Oh God, did something happen to Madison?” said Rose Senna. She worked at a restaurant called Happy’s near the mall, the same restaurant where Madison had worked. The mall, like most malls in America, seemed to be a shell of its former self. Most commerce had moved out to the shopping centers like where Debbie worked.
But the mall was surrounded by restaurants, a real planned-out commercial area, designed for a complete day out. It had probably worked well twenty years ago. People had gone to the mall, and then shopped until they dropped down at one of the nearby restaurants.

  Still, this restaurant didn’t look like it was in bad shape, exactly. It was located pretty close to the movie theater, so maybe that accounted for its prosperity. Of course, movie theaters weren’t exactly raking in the cash these days either. I predicted that by the end of my lifetime, people wouldn’t leave the house much to spend money. Bars would still be open, of course. People liked to go out and drink and socialize. But no one truly enjoyed fighting crowds to go shopping. At least not as much as they enjoyed having new stuff. They’d buy it all online, and all these stores would go out of business.

  I didn’t share these musings with Rose, who was taking her cigarette break next to the dumpster in the back of the restaurant. She had red hair, pulled into a tight ponytail on top of her head, and she was wearing a lot of makeup.

  “No one knows what happened to Madison,” I said. “That’s why I’m looking into it.”

  “Jesus.” Rose took a drag on her cigarette, eyes wide.

  “You said that you knew her.”

  “Sure. We worked a lot of the same shifts, so I saw her most every day.”

  “Did she give any indication that she’d be leaving?”

  “No,” said Rose. “In fact, she was on the schedule for this week, but she hasn’t shown up, of course, so…”

  “That’s not cause for alarm?”

  “People do shit like that all the time. They don’t show up for work, and they don’t answer their phones. After a few days of that, they’re just fired. I’ve seen it happen more than once.”

  “So, no one suspected that Madison was in trouble?”