This question actually makes him look sad and now it’s convincing.
“Until today, all you were was a name,” he says. “Spoken from her lips.”
Now my heart sinks. The poor guy. There’s real pain there. “Call me whatever you like,” I say.
“I’ll call you Ella,” he says, almost whispering, as he steps closer to me.
I cough and turn away. His eyes are too intense. “Okay, yeah. That works.” Holy shit, did that work. My heart is one skip away from a traumatic event.
“Cool,” he says.
So cool. “As for that Thurman guy. My expression was conveying the fact that I think he is a total dumpster fire.”
Jaxson laughs again, his eyes locked on mine. “That’s good, Ella Wade. You really are a writer.”
“You did it again.”
He bends his grin like a sexy dagger. “What did I do?”
“You know, that thing with my name.”
“Right, I did. Last time. Scout’s honor.”
Now I smile. “You’re no scout.” I swear, if he takes one step closer, I’ll throw my arms around his neck and kiss him. I might be the worst stepsister in world history. Luckily for my soul’s salvation, he stays put.
“No, probably not,” he says and then exhales.
This just became awkward. “I thought Ed and you had something to do,” I say, trying to sound totally casual.
“Yeah, I should probably go. Give me your phone.”
“Excuse me?” My voice sounds shriller than I intended.
“Give me your phone,” he repeats, pointing at my purse. “I’ll punch my number in.”
I hand him the phone, almost in a trance. I watch his long, strong fingers punch the keys on my phone fast as lightning. My cheeks get flustered as I imagine all the things those fingers could do.
He returns the phone with a smile on his face. “If you need anything at all, call me,” he says. “Madison would want me to help you out, Ella.”
I nod silently, feeling a warm buzz in my belly and thighs. He raises his broad shoulders for a moment as he walks away and all I can think of is that I must look like crap. I had no idea I’d be sent out of the office when I left for work this morning and to a model agency of all places, so didn’t bother to put any makeup on or even do my hair.
Strangely, none of my insecurities matter. Not even the fact that Jaxson doesn’t seem to be as heartbroken as he should be over Madison’s death.
For all I care, Jaxson Cole can call me the whole fucking Ella Rose Samantha Wade spelled out on my birth certificate every single time he speaks. Right now I don’t even care if he’s a heartless, narcissistic bastard who looks out only for himself.
The guy electrifies every part of my lonely soul and body. His intense eyes are hot to the wettest power. Talking to him and looking at him are like floating in a dream within a dream within a drugged-out dazed confusion.
Right. Time to snap out of these delusions about the sexiest man in the universe ever crossing my path again. Cause one thing’s for sure—that number he just punched in on my phone? It’s never being called.
—five—
June 24
Mark literally saved my sanity when he suggested I work from home today. The media has swarmed over the story of Madison’s brutal murder, annihilating everything in their wake like locusts, each assumption darker than the last. Two unscrupulous competitors even had the audacity to show up at the office of The Daily Scandal offering sympathy with the clear intention of tricking me into talking.
“You’ll be better off working from home,” Mark suggested. And then after a pause, “Take care, Ella.” His tone was so sincere it caused tears to well. I left quickly before the waterworks could begin.
So here I am now, in the crammed, tiny living-room of my second-floor apartment in Studio City with a TV dinner. I compare my notes against the spreadsheet that Rick Esposito emailed me this morning. I have no idea why he’s being so helpful, but I’m not going to ask any questions.
I would not put it past Mark to have something on Detective Esposito and to have hinted he could keep his secrets just that. It has long been rumored that The Daily Scandal has a secret file on various law enforcement officials as such information proves quite useful in greasing the wheels.
Esposito has mapped out Madison’s trajectory from the time she left home at eight in the morning of the 22nd till she was found dead on the morning of the 23rd. Nothing seems to be out of the ordinary. Madison drove to her usual coffee shop and then met with Rita North on Rodeo Drive for some shopping before they both arrived at the building of The Next Big Thing for a scheduled rehearsal.
According to Esposito’s notes, Jaxson Cole arrived at the agency a little after three in the afternoon but didn’t speak with Madison until the evening.
I close my eyes, trying to piece all the information together step by step, before I decide I need to drink something cool to help my sketchy lunch go down. I’m about to get up from the couch when a note on the side of Esposito’s spreadsheet catches my attention.
Rick Esposito has typed down that Jaxson and Madison had ended their dating relationship only days before she was murdered in her own bed. Two asterisks next to the note suggest that Esposito finds this fact extremely significant. Does this make Jaxson Cole a suspect? On what basis? Jealousy? Anger? Was it even Madison who ended things?
Surely, he must have an alibi?
I don’t know why it bugs me so much, but being suspicious of Jaxson doesn’t sit well with me. I need him to be one of the good guys which makes no sense unless I already have feelings for him—making me the most selfish human on planet Earth.
I linger between two options—start writing my first draft of the events as I know them so far, or call Rick Esposito and ask for clarifications—when my phone rings.
As a principle, I don’t pick up when the caller ID is anonymous, but given the extraordinary circumstances, I go ahead and answer. “Hello?”
“Ella Wade.”
His voice sounds annoyingly cheerful and even enthusiastic. It takes me a few seconds to get my bearings. “Jaxson Cole,” I say, trying to imitate him.
“You and I should talk.”
I want to ask when and where but I somehow manage to get my shit together. “Something about Madison?”
He waits maybe ten seconds before he answers. I know because I’m staring at my watch. I need some form of distraction to keep myself from blurting out anything embarrassing.
“Yes, something like that. Something you’d want to know.”
Now it’s my turn to sound busy, so I silently count to five before I speak. “Okay, when do you want to meet?”
“How about now?”
“Now?” My jaw drops and my heart tries to escape my throat.
“Do you have anything better to do, Ella?”
“I have to work, you know. I somehow have to feed and dress myself.”
“You’re at home.”
What the fuck? “How do you know that?”
He laughs which doesn’t exactly put my mind at ease. Instead, my thoughts get busy in the most annoying kind of way. What if he is a murderer after all and wants to do away with me like he did Madison?
“Well?” I say, nervously biting on my nails. “Let’s hear it. How do you know where I am?”
“Relax, I’m not a stalker. I called your workplace first. They actually gave me your number.”
Oh—my—God, can I be any more stupid? The first thing I should have asked him was how he got my number. I never gave it to him, duh! “All right,” I say, “I will need an hour or two to finish up what I’m doing. Where do you want to meet?”
*
A fucking private strip club, that’s where. Of all the places in the vast Pacific city of Los Angeles, Jaxson Cole wants me to meet him at a place where girls take off their clothes in front of random strangers for money.
To my defense, I didn’t know what I was walking into until this very moment when I find m
yself outside the small club with the misleading name of Peach Corner on a bright neon sign.
Jaxson shows up a minute later in faded jeans and a navy blue t-shirt, his dirty blond hair pulled back, green-blue eyes bright as the sun in the late afternoon. The tan, muscled skin of his arms and neck emit the fragrance of the sea, salty and windswept. He leans in to give me a quick hug, briefly tapping my back as if I were a small pet.
I have to clear my throat a little when he lets go of my delicate, electric bones which shimmered under his embrace.
“You came,” he says as if surprised that I kept my promise. In what world has this man ever been stood up by a girl?
“Wasn’t that the whole point?”
“To be honest, I have no idea if there is a point, Ella.”
“How can you say that? We’re about to see naked women,” I say. “Surely the meaning of life can’t be far behind.”
“Funny,” he says, a bit unsure of my sarcastic sense of humor.
Teasing a world-famous sex symbol outside a strip club isn’t exactly my forte, but it’s growing on me. We walk to the door where a beefy bouncer steps aside and holds the door.
Jaxson bangs fists with him. “What’s up, Clyde?”
“Drinks are on the house tonight, Jax.” Clyde says with a sorrowful look. “I’ll let the bartenders know.”
“Thanks, bro,” Jax says with more sincerity than he’s shown all day.
We walk into the dimly lit club slowly as I take in a deep breath, absorbing what I witness for the first time in my life with curiosity and a certain degree of trepidation. Okay, a little excitement, too.
Swing music pulses through the walls and furniture making my hips sway a little to the jazzy beat. The pungent air is rich with cheap booze and the scented candles on the round tables.
There are only two male customers sitting at the bar with drinks in front of them, both past forty and dressed in expensive suits. The empty main stage is on my left with the lights above stuck on a dim green.
As I sit on a stool covered with red velvet, I realize one of the customers’ eyes are on me. I instinctively scoot a bit to the right, getting closer to Jaxson.
“What’s your poison?” Jaxson asks as he sits on the stool next to me.
“Poison?” I say dumbly. “You mean drink? It’s not even six.”
“Well, it’s past six somewhere.”
“Clever, but I’m still on duty.” I don’t even want to stop and think about how lame I must seem every time I open my mouth.
His eyes focus on me with their usual intensity. I let myself linger on his blue-green irises and their almost feline expressiveness.
“How’s your work?” he says finally. “Are you getting somewhere?”
I can’t help but wonder if he’s worried about his place in the story. Lover, betrayer, slayer. I shrug in lieu of an answer. “I don’t know if I will ever get anywhere conclusive. Some mysteries are never solved.”
“You will,” he says. “Madison told me you are brilliant. She was very proud of you.”
Lightning splits my heart until my breathing increases. Pangs of guilt and melancholy overcome me. There were times Maddy reached out and I assumed it was just her guilt at having a great life. I never took her up on her occasional invitations in those first years. I didn’t think she truly wanted me to go hang out with her in Ibiza or Paris or any of those wondrous places.
My guilt hardens into a question. “Why are we here, Jaxson?”
His eyes turn cold. He retreats within himself. My heart gets cold, too. I like Jaxson Cole better when he acts all cheerful and superficial. His sudden somberness alarms me.
“You have to promise you’re not going to share any of this with Esposito.”
“Promise,” I say, studying his new fidgety demeanor. I said the word, but I am not sure yet I mean it. All I know is I need to hear what he has to say.
“No bullshit,” he says. “This is off the record. One hundred million miles off the record.”
I put my hand softly on his big hand. “On my mother’s life,” I say. I mean it a little more this time.
Jaxson stares at me and then waves at the bartender, a dark haired, heavily tanned man in his thirties. “Marco, a gin and tonic,” Jaxson says. “And a fruit punch with ice.”
I’m not sure I’ve ever been more impatient or suspicious.
“You seem quite at home here,” I say as if talking to myself. “And that fruit punch had better be for you.”
Marco returns with the drinks before Jaxson gives me an answer. His cheerful mood has returned for the moment. “You’re working,” he says and slides the fruit punch to me.
“I don’t need anyone ordering my drink for me,” I say but the truth is I loved every second of it. Every move he makes is sudden and decisive. A girl can get used to that in a man.
He takes my fruit punch and drinks it down in one gulp. “Fine, you’re on your own. Just the way you like it.”
“You’re a curious fellow,” I say.
“Not as much as you think,” he says. “This place was one of the places Madison dragged me to whenever she wanted to play in the darkness and shadows. She felt safer with me around.”
Some sentences have so much innuendo, they could be interpreted in a number of ways. All good writers know that. Sentences are not only made up of words but also spaces and pauses that can alter their meaning completely. That’s what Jaxson is doing right now. He uses words in ways that pose more questions than answers for me.
“Are you telling me Madison fancied strip joints?”
“Just this one,” he says, turning on his seat while he puts his hands on my hips, turning me around so we face each other. “This is a strict membership-only club. Madison had one and she made good use of it.”
“Madison liked girls?” I say, throwing a doubting glance at Jaxson.
He leans in, bringing his lips close to my ear. “She liked girls and she liked boys. She liked feeling alive and often only new things could do that for her. There is a lot more going on here than the stripping and the dancing.”
“New things or dangerous things?” The words come off my lips but I don’t know where they come from. Esposito would be proud. “Can you show me?” I ask. My heart pounds in my chest but I’m starting to find comfort here within the looming shadows and darkness of this new world, Madison’s world.
“Ella,” he says uncertainly.
“Show me what’s going on here,” I say, grabbing his hips now to spin him in his stool so we remain fully face to face.
He did not expect me to embrace the danger so eagerly. It’s not eagerness. It’s necessity. This is why Mark chose me for this story. I actually care and won’t rest until Madison can rest in peace.
Jaxson accepts the change in this game and gets off the stool, taking my hand in his without a word. We have achieved some desperate synchronicity, a unified need to know the truth.
We make our way across the length of the main stage, through an open door and down a few steps to some sort of semi-basement, my hand in his the whole time.
“The private rooms are down here,” Jaxson says as if reading my mind when we spot two bouncers pacing up and down the long hallway with the lush planted flowerpots. It’s a wonder they can survive in so little light. “Some like to call them dream chambers,” he adds.
Jaxson stops outside a door. “Are you ready?” he says without looking at me, only squeezing my hand tighter.
Exhilaration and fear course through my veins. “Not at all,” I say. “But let’s go in anyway.”
There are moments in our lives where we know the next step we take is one that can never be taken back, that once traveled there is no return. This is one of those steps. My chest and shoulders and neck all ache from the pounding of my heart.
The door opens and my jaw drops. Six young men and women, all of them good-looking enough to be models, all of them half-naked and joyful, roll around on a white, thick carpet in a heap of lim
bs and flesh under some reddish-pink light, groping and kissing each other. All eyes turn to Jaxson and me as these almost alien sex gods freeze on the spot like statues.
Is this a fucking orgy? An orgy of sex gods no less? They’re all models. I begin to recognize a few of them.
I turn to Jaxson, confounded and shy as hell.
“You asked,” he says with a shrug.
—six—
When Things Get out of Hand
No matter what moral judgment I might make of the intertwined human bodies in front of my eyes, I cannot deny they are spectacular. Frankly, I don’t know if I can handle so much eye candy in such a short time. First, the model agency, now this.
How much can a girl take before she develops an inferiority complex?
“In or out?” one of the guys says, a young blond stud with piercings on his ears, lips and nipples. I can’t help but wonder where else he might be pierced, but I neatly tuck that thought away. Lord knows there are more important things to consider.
Jaxson smiles as he shrugs. “In,” he says and I don’t know if I should be offended that he doesn’t bother to ask me what I want before he shuts the door behind us. Oh well, you know what they say, when in Rome…
Rome is actually a very apt analogy if we take into consideration how upper-class Romans used to entertain themselves at their banquets. Except this is twenty-first century Los Angeles and I’m not exactly an emperor’s wife.
My heart starts pumping faster and my hands get sweaty as the implications of what I’ve just gotten myself into begin to become clear.
“Take off your shoes,” Jaxson says in a commanding voice, as he kneels down on the wooden floor to get rid of his sneakers.
This is my chance to say fuck it and walk out of this weird dream chamber with red walls and a burning fireplace in late June. It is my chance to drag Jaxson Cole out into the light and ask him the endless questions that now flood my head. Like, was Madison really into group sex and if so, does he think she might have met her murderer here? Was this the reason he asked me to meet him at the club? I should have asked those questions right away.
That’s what I should do, there’s no question about it, except my curiosity gets the better of me. Besides—and I have only a gut feeling to support my theory—I don’t think Jaxson would let anything bad happen to me. If for no other reason, he knows I’m working with the police.
Scandal: The Complete Series Page 3
