by S. E. Harmon
“What can you tell me about Joseph’s ex-boyfriend?” I asked. “Was he the violent sort?”
“Alex?” She shook her head. “God, no. I know they suspected him, but I never believed that.”
“So you liked him?”
“I never said that, either. He was polite and well-spoken and quiet, the kind of man you’d want your son to bring home. But he was also married. That made me very uncomfortable, especially considering how close he and Joey were.”
She raised her eyebrows unnecessarily to make sure I got what very close entailed. I nodded to show I understood before she pulled out a couple of sex puppets and acted it out. “Did you think they were having an affair?”
“I won’t go that far. My Joey had standards, after all. But I do know I wouldn’t want my husband that close with an ex.”
“How did Alex’s wife feel about that?”
“I guess you’d have to ask Alex’s wife.” She shrugged. “I was hoping Joey’s new love interest would pan out, though. Milo was such a nice young man.”
“Does this Milo have a last name?”
“Something that begins with a W, I think. It’s been so long.” She snapped her fingers. “He gave me his business card once, though. He’s a dog groomer. I think I still have it around here somewhere.”
“When was the last time you saw or spoke to Joey?”
“We spoke on the phone about a month before… before.” She seemed to have trouble speaking about the murder itself, which was understandable. It probably took her back to a time she wished she could forget. “I hadn’t seen him in two months, though.”
“Two months?” I furrowed my brow. I’d been under the impression that Joseph had been very close to his mother. “Was that about usual for the two of you?”
“He had a very demanding job and sometimes he would get busy.” She smiled. “I understood. I told him he was doing very important work.”
I held in a wistful sigh. If only my mother would be so understanding about me shirking communications. Please excuse Rain from early morning yoga. He is doing very important work.
Valerie glanced up at the sky and made a tsking noise. “We should get inside. It’s getting a little too hot out here. And I’ve got to get you that bread to go with your honey.”
“That’s quite all right.”
“I insist. Especially since you’re helping me lug around this crate.”
After a moment of staring at her blankly, I caught on. I chuckled and hefted the crate of honey, which was even heavier than it looked. Must be all the mason jars. I followed her through a garage with a blue MINI Cooper, a lawnmower, a grill, and a couple of humming deep freezers. She held the door open for me, and I entered the cool, dim interior of the house.
When my eyes adjusted, I saw that we were in a cozy living room, as warm and inviting as the exterior. I sat the crate of honey on the coffee table as I took a gander around. The walls were seafoam green with white trim, and large, taupe couches took up most of the space. The only thing cluttered about the room was the collection of knickknacks and photos on the mantle, including an ugly cat figurine with bulging eyes. The pictures were clearly from a time long gone, a time when you had to pull out an actual camera and hope you’d remembered to buy film.
Most of the pictures seemed to depict the various stages of Joey’s life. There were the obligatory school photos, a couple of him laughing at a birthday party, and one of him in the backyard, holding a scowling white cat. Valerie followed my gaze. smiled, and then meandered over to the mantle.
Walter, clearly sensing a disturbance in the atmosphere, ambled in through his doggy door. He blinked at us for a few moments and made a beeline for his water bowl. After drinking his fill and slopping water on the floor, he collapsed on the multicolored rug, displaying his belly for optimal scratching pleasure. I knelt and obliged, wondering if my dog curse was broken or if Walter was just too lazy to care about my bad juju.
“This is for you.”
I glanced up to see Valerie holding out the strange-looking cat figurine. I rose, and she pushed it into my hands. But I didn’t get you anything super weird in return. “Err. Thank you?”
“His name is Mr. Scribbles. I named him after Joey’s treasured cat.”
“Oh.” I was fairly certain my mouth made a little o shape to match the sound. Mr. Scribbles’ bulging yellow eyes told me exactly what he thought of my judgment. “You really, really shouldn’t have.”
“If you’re going to be the man to solve this case, you’re going to need Joey close. Now let me find Milo’s card for you.” She bustled over to the overstuffed credenza and looked at it for a moment with her hands on her hips. “I’m not quite sure where I could’ve put it, but I know I kept it.”
I was still stuck on Mr. Scribbles. “Need Joey close….” I looked at the cat statue again, resisting the urge to hold it at arm’s length. “Wait, what’s in this thing, exactly?”
“His ashes.” She beamed. “Of course, I’m going to want that back when the case is over.”
“Of course,” I said faintly.
In the end, I left with an armful of things I hadn’t asked for—the weird cat statue containing Joseph’s ashes, a loaf of bread that smelled divine, and a tempting jar of honey. The label read Apis with a cute bee on the top. She’d also found the thing I needed, which was Milo’s business card. Thanks to her hoarding tendencies, I now knew that his last name was Wakefield. He also worked at a pet shop nearby, which was my next destination.
I was halfway there when my phone dinged with a text from Chevy. I waited until a red light to check, and the message read, Have you seen Alexander Gilroy yet?
I frowned even as I texted back a quick no. A picture came through a few seconds later. The young man was leaning on a Firebird, arms folded, a big grin on his face. He looked to be in his teens or early twenties, with fine-boned features and honey-blond hair. His hazel eyes gleamed with amusement.
He looked a whole hell of a lot like me.
Despite Joseph confusing me with Alex, I’d been hopeful that the resemblance wasn’t quite so strong. Hopefully delusional. Valerie’s startled expression and her statement, ‘You just look like somebody that I used to know’, filtered through my mind again.
Doppelganger? Chevy texted with an emoji rubbing his yellow face, deep in thought.
I responded with a question mark and a heartfelt, Thanks. You’re the best.
Don’t state the obvious, doll, it’s beneath you.
Despite my unease, her response made me chuckle as I put my phone back in the cupholder. I could only hope that a little thing like having a doppelganger wasn’t about to become a very big problem.
Chapter 9
It took me twenty minutes to get to Doggone Good Stylings. I walked in to find Milo mid appointment, busy grooming a small Yorkie. He was surprised to see me—Milo, not the Yorkie—but he was cooperative, which was my favorite kind of witness. He continued to work as we talked, going to town on the dog with a tiny pair of scissors.
Milo was on the smaller, shorter side, but he knew how to work with what he had. He showed off his lithe body in ripped jeans that looked like they’d fly off him if he breathed too heavily, paired up with a gray T-shirt thin enough to display nipple barbells to anyone who cared to look. He had a mop of dirty blond curls, doe brown eyes, and rounded cheeks that were perpetually pink. He’d already blushed four times, and we’d only been talking for five minutes.
The dog, who was named Noodle, could learn a thing or two from his groomer’s sunny disposition. Frankly, I was tired of him giving me side-eye. He also wouldn’t let me get behind him. It was like we were playing a strange game of copycat—when I shifted, so did he. He caught me looking at him and gave me a Cujo worthy bark, just to make sure I got the picture.
Nothing like being on the shit list of a Yorkie.
“I’m nice,” I said indignantly, right to his suspicious little face. He bristled, wrinkling his button nose. “There�
�s a dog named Walter who can vouch for me.”
Milo chuckled. “So, what can I tell you about Joey?”
“Where did you two meet?”
“He brought Walter in for grooming. He later admitted that he just wanted to meet me, so he borrowed Walter for the day. It took another three appointments before I decided to ask him out instead.” He blushed again. “He was so nervous. I thought it was cute.”
“How long did you guys date?”
“Two months. We got along great. He was a sweet guy and very thoughtful.” He smiled a little. “He loved to bake, too. He would make banana bread for me all the time, even though I hate bananas.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He brought me a loaf once around lunchtime. This was when he was still screwing up his courage to talk to me. He came back a few days later and asked me how I liked it. I thought he was cute, so I said it was my favorite.” He blushed, laughing a little. “Then he started making it all the time. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth. Luckily, my mother loves the stuff.”
I smothered a laugh. I’d certainly claimed to like a few things I didn’t actually like when Danny and I were getting serious—the first time around. Now he knew me so well it was downright scary.
I didn’t think of it as lying, exactly. It was more like sitting down with all my personalities and sending the best representative to our dates. I could still picture his flabbergasted expression when I confessed that I didn’t enjoy Star Wars. And his confused response: “Well, why the hell would you sit through ten hours of sequels with me?”
Ten? Was that all? Felt like a Googleplex. “I just like sitting next to you,” I had said honestly. “Didn’t matter what we were watching.”
That quickly ended our trip to the store. He rewarded me for my honesty with a hand job in the car, which is the best kind of hand job, if you’re wondering.
Milo sighed wistfully. “I was hoping our relationship would turn into something serious.”
He turned the Yorkie’s face away from me so he could clip carefully around his ears. Noodle strained to see just what the hell I was doing behind his back, and Milo gently turned his face forward again. “But I wasn’t sure Joey felt the same way.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, his ex was certainly a problem. Alex.” He frowned as he clipped away. “He was always coming over for dinner or calling Joey on the phone. I understood they’d been friends for some time, but it made me uncomfortable.”
“And jealous,” I filled in.
“Yeah, that too.” He shrugged. “When I talked to him about it, Joey promised to dial things back with Alex.”
“And did he?”
“Not nearly enough. I thought about breaking it off a few times, but I felt like there was real potential there. I decided to stick around and see what happened.”
“That must’ve been frustrating for you.”
“Of course,” he said simply.
“It probably made you angry as well.”
He looked at me for a second, clippers frozen in his hand as he processed everything I wasn’t saying. “Oh. Oh. I see.” His frown deepened. “I didn’t kill Joey.”
“I never said you did.”
“Yeah, but that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” Noodle barked sharply, startling Milo out of his shock. He dug in his pocket and came out with a tiny bone-shaped treat, which Noodle delicately plucked out of his palm.
“Can you think of anyone else who would’ve wanted to hurt Joey?”
“No. Maybe you should talk to his mother. She might have a better idea.”
“I already have. Would you say Joey and his mother were close?”
He gave me a narrow-eyed look. “Please don’t. She’s been through enough. They weren’t exactly on… the best of terms when he died.”
That would certainly explain the fact that they hadn’t spoken in a month. “What were they fighting about?”
“Joey found out he was adopted. He and his mother had been so close because it was just the two of them, so it was quite a blow.” He started his routine of trimming and combing again, his brow still furrowed. “She couldn’t tell him much about his birth mother, so he hired a private investigator.”
“Do you remember the PI’s name?”
“Rex, maybe? I only saw him a few times.” He deftly fastened a bow in Noodle’s hair. “I know he drove a black Silverado. I woke up from a nap on Joey’s couch one day, and they were talking in the kitchen. Joey gave him an envelope with money in it, and that Rex guy gave him a thumb drive.”
“Do you know what was on it?”
“No idea,” he said with a shrug. “I figured it had to be something about his birth mother. They both clammed up when I came into the kitchen. When Rex left, Joey didn’t want to talk about it, so I let it go.”
“What did Rex look like?”
“He was tall, around my height. And he had dark hair, I think. He was pretty built, too.”
Well, that covers half of Miami, including my own damned boyfriend.
Not only did we have another name to investigate that hadn’t come up before, but now we had a mysterious thumb drive. I sighed inwardly. If only solving a murder investigation could be like a board game, and we only had to use the pieces in the box.
Milo gave Noodle one final pat and stood back. “So, what do you think?”
I think if the owner asked you to make her dog look like a living pom-pom, then you’re golden. Noodle stared at me, daring me to tell the truth. I gave Milo a thumbs-up. “Looks great.”
Milo beamed. “Thanks.”
*
I sat in my car in front of the grooming shop, computer half on my lap and half on the steering wheel as I researched Alexander Gilroy. He worked as a divorce attorney at a large firm in Miami, and I wasted no time calling his office. His chirpy secretary put me on hold for a while and soft rock filled the car. The music was occasionally punctuated by a canned voice, assuring me that, “Your call is important to Cobb, Wesley, and Dunn.”
Around the ten-minute mark, I realized Gilroy was trying to wait me out. I chuckled as I continued my research. Little did he know, the more I waited, the deeper I dug into his business.
He was in his fifties, divorced, and had two grown children. He lived alone in a condo downtown. Scratch that—he lived with two Labradoodles named Chit and Chat, who had their own Instagram page. So did his girlfriend, a model who looked half his age. Cindy Cale had long dark hair, golden skin, and full lips that she felt the need to purse in every photo. Unfortunately, being played for a fool by a woman who went by the handle badbitchCC was not a crime.
I kept digging, scrolling through his Facebook posts. They were fairly benign, mostly vague quotes about living life well. Most of the photos were of his Labradoodles; the only one of Cindy was the profile picture. She and Alex were at some sort of dinner, dressed to the nines, the perfect image of a successful couple. The photo seemed as carefully constructed as the rest of his life.
A comment under the photo from a user named Sara Jamison caught my eye. Really, Alex? Still? I navigated over to her profile page. Dark, sultry eyes gazed at me from under a fringe of dark, silky hair—she was attractive in an I’m gonna wreck your life kind of way.
I frowned, thinking. The implications of the message were clear. The only thing I was confused about was who Sara was to Alex. An old girlfriend, perhaps? An exasperated relative, tired of Alex denying who he really is?
I navigated to a picture in Sara’s album of her hugging two women. They had the same dark hair and heart-shaped face. Alex had commented, “love our kids,” with a heart. So Sara was the ex-wife. Interesting. I filed the info away as a potential clue.
In any investigation, sifting through information was a delicate balance of discerning the important from the random. I’d always preferred the method of collecting absolutely everything, whether I was sure if it was critical or not. Then when I shook all the clues out on the table
, I could only hope they formed the picture of a murderer.
The Muzak ended abruptly, and Gilroy’s secretary came back on the phone. “I’m so sorry,” she said nervously. “Mr. Gilroy’s meeting is running a little long. Maybe you could leave a message?”
I barely held in a snort. What kind of message would that be? At your earliest convenience, call me back so I can grill you to a crisp. “Just give him my name and number,” I said.
She couldn’t hide a tiny sound of relief. “That would be great.”
I rattled off my information, and she assured me that Gilroy would call me back. “Make sure he does,” I said simply.
The “or else” was implied.
Chapter 10
“What’s so interesting about the number twelve?” I asked Kane. Since I’d stopped the haunting of his resident ghost, Bee, he’d been magnanimously chatty. I knew it wouldn’t last but while it did, I was determined to pin him down to that number.
“Certain mystery to that number, innit?” He lazily blew out a cloud of smoke. “Twelve months in a year. Twelve inches in a foot. Zodiac signs. Even Jesus had twelve disciples.”
My gaze sharpened. “So your victims were your disciples?”
“No, they were roses. My perfect roses.”
I picked up a picture of a pair of earrings we’d taken from the valet box. They were gold and heart-shaped with the name Jenna in the center. “Jennifer Bryant. Where did you find her?”
He made an irritated noise. “I told you before, they don’t have names anymore. They’re just my roses. She was my Austrian briar.”
I gritted my teeth. “Where did you find her?”
“She was waiting for a taxi at the grocery store. She’d gotten into an argument with her boyfriend, and he took off in their car.”
“What made you pick her?”
“She stood out among the rest like real gold in a bowl of chocolate coins. She had this long, beautiful hair, yellow as freshly churned butter. She didn’t paint herself up, like the rest of those whores. And when I got close to her, she smelled fresh and clean, like soap. None of that nauseating perfume.” He smiled fondly. “I just knew she was meant to be number five.”
