Born Under a Blond Sign

by V. J. Chambers

  “What?” said a voice above me. “You’re cooking now? That sounds scary.”

  I looked up to see Crane behind us, sucking on his e-cigarette and blowing chocolate-scented vapor everywhere.

  “Hi Crane,” said Brigit.

  “Hey Brigit,” he said, pulling up a chair. “Is Ivy really cooking?”

  “It was a figure of speech,” I said. “We’re putting a suspect on the back burner. Besides, I’m not a bad cook. Just because I never cook doesn’t mean I can’t. It just means I don’t feel like it.”

  “I don’t see how you can be good at anything if you don’t practice,” said Crane.

  “I used to cook all the time,” I said. “When I was on the force, I made myself super healthy dinners whenever I was home at the dinner hour.”

  “Why’d you stop?” said Brigit.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.” I didn’t want to talk about this either. “Back to the case, okay?”

  “Right,” said Crane, “what’s going on with that? Are you making any headway? Because, let me tell you, it’s a circus on campus still. Everyone’s still completely fucked up about it. I can’t get any proper teaching done, which would generally be an excuse to cancel class, but because I’m being watched so heavily these days, I can’t do that. So, I’m stuck trying to teach poetry that’s all about death and be sensitive to the kids who are grieving. Not easy. Have you ever read ‘To An Athlete Dying Young’? They really don’t appreciate the irony right now, trust me.”

  “Define ‘headway,’” said Brigit. “We’ve eliminated a bunch of suspects, if that counts.”

  “You even have an definite proof that Gilbert was killed?” said Crane.

  “Define ‘definite,’” I said.

  Crane sucked on his e-cigarette, nonplussed.

  “Look, we were just talking about how we don’t think it was his dad,” I said. “At least, we’re pretty sure the dad’s not a suspect anymore. We haven’t completely cleared him, but neither of us likes him for it right now.”

  “Okay,” said Crane, “Where’s that leave you?”

  “With the brother,” said Brigit.

  “Wait, Miles?” said Crane.

  “No, the other one,” I said. “Calloway.”

  “Who she also slept with,” said Brigit.

  “She never slept with Miles,” said Crane. “Miles doesn’t do that.”

  “I did sleep with Miles,” I said, “not that it’s any of your business. Didn’t I tell you about that?”

  He shrugged. “You might have. I don’t know. I block out information about him.”

  I sighed.

  “Miles doesn’t do…” Brigit was confused. “Miles doesn’t do what?”

  “Sex,” said Crane.

  “Don’t tell her that,” I said.

  Brigit sat back in her chair. “So, wait a second. You’re a sex addict. And he’s…”

  “Asexual,” I said.

  “Shit,” she muttered, shaking her head.

  “Can we get back to the case, please?” I said.

  “Sure, but I don’t know what else there is to say,” said Brigit. “I thought we’d be hashing out every little thing that Louis said, but it looks like it’ll be easier than that, since we agree. So, honestly, we might as well talk about you and your problem.”

  “I don’t have a problem,” I said. “I’m fine. So, just stop discussing my sex life with Crane, all right?”

  Crane shrugged. “I don’t mind.”

  I shoved him.

  “But, um, speaking of the other brother,” said Crane. “I think I saw him once.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said. “Did you even know he existed?”

  “Not exactly, I guess. But I saw someone that looked like Miles on campus once. But it wasn’t Miles. And he was too old to be a college student. Wasn’t Gilbert.”

  “Wait,” I said. “On campus? That can’t be right. Cal wouldn’t have any reason to be on Keene College campus.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure I’m right.” Crane dug out his phone and began swiping the screen. “Yep. That guy.” He passed the phone over to me.

  He’d looked up the Quikslim website. There was a picture of Cal on the employees page.

  “What was he doing?” I said.

  “He was walking with that girl that got killed,” said Crane.

  “What girl?” I was completely confused.

  “Charlene Jarrett,” said Crane. “We talked about her before, right? She was coming to class, and he was walking with her, and he had his arm around her.” He shrugged. “Charlene had different guys every day of the week, though. So, that hardly means anything. She liked to be wild, I think.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Cal and Charlene? How could that…?”

  “You think he’s the rich guy that her roommate said that she was seeing?” said Brigit.

  “Could have been either of them,” I said.

  “Either of them?” said Crane.

  “Charlene was also messing around with Gilbert,” I said.

  “Huh,” he said. “The plot thickens.”

  * * *

  The next day was Saturday. Now, I’m not adverse to working on the weekend. I do it a lot, in fact, if the case calls for it. But I wasn’t about to go into the office that day, because I was too busy getting ready for Regan to come home.

  Problem was, there was no real room in my apartment for a dog. I lived in town in Keene, and I didn’t have a yard or anything. I could have walked her on the sidewalk every day, of course, but then she’d spend the rest of the time locked up in my apartment. It was bigger than Kitty’s bathroom, of course, but it wasn’t a good place for a dog.

  I had purchased a bunch of stuff for her—dog food, a little dog bed, and a bunch of annoying squeaky toys. Truth be told, I had probably lost my damned mind over this dog. But I was really excited about getting her, the kind of giddy excitement that you feel on Christmas morning when you’re five. There was no way that I was backing out of this.

  So, I went to get Regan from the shelter that morning. All my paperwork had been cleared the night before, so it was a relatively simple process to pick her up. I left the shelter with Regan sitting in my back seat, the window open, her head out to feel the breeze. And it felt great. I hadn’t been quite so excited in a really long time. I was going to be happy with this dog, and I knew it.

  It seemed like it was meant to be. I had never really considered myself a dog person, not really. I hadn’t grown up with a dog or anything. Both my parents were highly allergic to animal fur, both dogs and cats, and there had never been any discussion of getting a pet of any kind. Maybe they’d tried to convince me that I’d like a nice fish or something at one point, I don’t remember. I just know that I knew not to ask, because it was never going to happen.

  After my parents died, I moved in my aunt, and she had an old dog named Chip. He was a hound dog, or some variation thereof, but he didn’t do much sniffing. Instead, he lay around most of the time. He only lived for two years while I was there, and then one day, he started getting seizures, and my aunt took him to the vet. He never came back.

  As dogs go, Chip wasn’t the kind of childhood dog that most people wax nostalgic about. He barely seemed to recognize or remember me, and—more often than not—he wasn’t even interested in my scratching him behind his ears. But the thing about Chip was, I learned about respecting dogs because of him. He was the kind of dog who got his own way, basically because he was old. My aunt really babied him. He had his own room, and his own twin bed. She fed him lunch meat for dinner every night. In the last few months, his legs got too weak for him to really stand much on his own, and he didn’t do much walking. My aunt would carry him out into the lawn so that he could do his business. Chip was a member of the family for my aunt, and I remember seeing that.

  So, taking Regan, I wanted a family member. I fully intended to take care of her in her old age, and to respect her, and to be her companion and her friend.
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  I just felt bad about the apartment, though. I really did.

  My aunt’s house had a big yard. Chip didn’t run around in it when I knew him, but he had run around in it when he was younger.

  Regan deserved somewhere to run around.

  Which is why, I guess, when I saw the For Rent sign on the house outside Keene, that I pulled into the driveway.

  The house was just on the outskirts of Keene, which meant that it would be a bit of a hike to walk in to The Remington, but it wouldn’t be impossible. It was a one-story house with a cheery red door and a chimney. It had a yard. Not a huge yard, but a yard nonetheless. And the yard was fenced in, too.

  I pulled into the driveway, got out of the car, and went to look over the fence at the yard. Oh, wow. There was definitely some space there for a dog to run around.

  Of course, I was going to have to get a lawn mower and mow the grass, and I thought that was going to be hell on earth.

  I looked back at the car. “The things I do for you, Regan,” I muttered.

  Regan barked. It sounded just like the way she used to bark above my office.

  I got out my phone and dialed the number on the sign.

  “Hello,” a voice answered.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m calling about the house for rent.”

  “Which one? The one outside Keene or the one in Jinn Springs?”

  “The Keene house.”

  “Oh, yes,” said the voice. “That’s a very nice little place. It’s got three bedrooms, although I have to admit one of the bedrooms is a little on the small side. It would be nice for a child or maybe as a small office or something.”

  “How much?” I said.

  “Pardon me?”

  “How much do you want for it a month?”

  “Oh, well, don’t you want to look inside and check it out before we start talking money?”

  “Not particularly, no,” I said. “Tell me how much.”

  “Okay.” She told me.

  Man. That was more than I was currently paying for my apartment. Which made sense, of course. This place was a lot bigger, and it had more bedrooms. Still, that was going to hurt. But I thought I could manage it. And it would be worth it to see Regan running around in that yard.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll take it.”

  “What? You haven’t even seen inside.”

  “Right,” I said. “Well, if there are any issues, then we’ll negotiate taking the repair money out of the security deposit. I’d like to move in as soon as possible. When can I bring you a check?”

  * * *

  “So, you moved over the weekend?” said Brigit. She was getting out of her car, which was parked in the driveway of my new house. We were going to drive together to Keene College, and I’d told her just to meet me here.

  “Well, I haven’t really moved in yet,” I said. “I’m sleeping on blankets until I can get my bed here. Regan loves it, though, and I couldn’t confine her to my nasty little place where there’s no room.”

  “You really like that dog.”

  “Dogs need space,” I said. “I’m gone for long hours every day, and if I’m going to leave her, I’m not going to leave her cooped up somewhere. This yard is perfect.”

  Brigit peered past me at the fenced-in back yard. Regan was chasing her tail behind the chain-link fence. “Yeah, she looks happy.” Brigit shrugged.

  “Come on, let’s get going,” I said.

  We both got into my car, and I backed out of my driveway. Back when I lived in downtown Keene, I might have just walked to campus, but it was too far to do that unless I was going to be drinking. So, we were driving to the college. Crane had mentioned that there was some video surveillance of the campus that we might want to take a look at.

  Back when I went to school there, there weren’t any cameras up, but things had changed. Even Brigit confirmed that they’d put up cameras around campus. She seemed to think they were mostly there as part of an initiative to make the campus safer for women. They had put up cameras to discourage rape. “Which, you know, happens out in the middle of the road, not in frat boys’ bedrooms,” she said.

  The cameras were all positioned outside, none inside. They looked down over the main parts of campus.

  At any rate, we thought we might like to see what was going on the day of the shooting. We were also looking for evidence of either of the brothers with Charlene Jarrett. Crane had said that Cal had walked her to class, and he’d given us a rough timeline for that. We wanted to try and see if we could find video evidence.

  The only thing was that the people on campus didn’t know we were coming. We were pretty sure that they wouldn’t release the tapes to us just because we were private investigators. So Brigit had come up with a plan, and I thought it was a good one. Hopefully, it wasn’t going to blow up in our faces.

  We got out of the car outside the building on campus that housed the guys in charge of the surveillance video. It seemed to fall under the Audio-Visual Department, which was like the Information Technology Department, only they dealt with more TVs. Anyway, we were dealing with geeky guys here, with people who were the male equivalent of Eden. They were smart, sure, but they weren’t the best with interpersonal interaction, and they tended to want to do the right thing. We were banking on all that.

  Brigit was dressed like a college student. I was dressed in a pants suit. I even had a briefcase to help sell the look.

  We went into the building, Brigit leading the way. She knew where she was going. We might both have graduated from this school, but things had changed a lot since I’d graced the halls, and I didn’t know where much was anymore. When I went to school here, there was no Audio-Visual Department, and there was barely any computer support. Most of us students were just as good with the computers as anyone was. But that was a long time ago, and everything was so much different now.

  When we got to the door to the Audio-Visual Department, Brigit stood out of the way so that I could go in first.

  I burst through the door, stalked over to the desk, and slammed my briefcase down. Brigit trailed in my wake.

  The guy working the desk was obviously a college student. Probably someone doing work study or something.

  “I need to see the video surveillance tapes for the following dates.” I opened my briefcase and rummaged around until I found a piece of paper with the dates all written down on it. I rattled them off.

  The guy’s mouth dropped open. “Uh, I had no idea you were coming. You are?”

  “You wouldn’t have known I was coming, because I didn’t tell anyone I was coming,” I said. “I’m Miss Thrush’s attorney.” I motioned Brigit forward. “Now, we’re here to look at those tapes or we’ll be filing suit against the college.”

  “Uh… I can’t just let you look at the tapes,” said the guy.

  “You most certainly can, and you will,” I said. “If you don’t let us see them, we’re going to be suing this institution for millions of dollars. Not only that, our next stop is the media. Miss Thrush is going to go wide, telling everyone exactly what kind of school this is.”

  The guy looked panicked. He stood up. “I’ll be right back.”

  Once he was gone, Brigit shot me a worried look.

  “It’ll be fine,” I told her. I started to say more, but the guy came back in with another man, who looked to be about my age. He was wearing a collared shirt and a pair of jeans. His long hair was tied into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. That must be the head of the Audio-Visual Department. Yeah, he looked like the type.

  “What can I do for you?” he said.

  “You can let me see the video surveillance tapes for the following dates.” I rattled them off again.

  “Jeremy tells me you’re an attorney?” he said. “You’re threatening some kind of legal action?”

  “My client was victim to an assault on this campus, and those are the dates when it occurred. We’re building a case against the perpetrator, and those tapes may have
some vital evidence on them. If you let us see them, we’ll conclude that the college is cooperating, and we won’t pursue a suit against the school. If you don’t, however, we’ll be pressing charges against Keene College for not keeping a girl safe.”

  “You were assaulted?” said the head to Brigit. “I’m so sorry.”

  She hung her head, looking pathetic. For once, she kept her mouth shut, which was good.

  “You can help us right a great wrong that’s been done to her,” I said to the head. These guys were suckers for being the great heroes who triumphed by doing the right thing. They played too many video games. The real world didn’t work that way.

  “Well, I can let you look at the video, I guess,” he said. Then his tone got apologetic. “But I’m afraid you can’t take the tapes away or make any copies. I don’t know what kind of case you’ll be able to put together without any copies, but that’s the best I can do.”

  Haha! Excellent. Inwardly, I cheered.

  Outwardly, I did my best to look chagrined. “That will have to do, I suppose. We’ll do the best we can with just being able to watch the video.”

  * * *

  We scoured the video of the dates that Crane had given us, looking for Charlene and Cal together, and we couldn’t find them anywhere. We did see Charlene and Gilbert together after Crane’s class one day. They looked pretty cozy, which meant that she must have been seeing both brothers at the same time. Crazy girl, that Charlene.

  We saved the video of the day of the shooting for last. If the Audio-Visual guys had noticed we’d asked for the date of the shooting, they hadn’t said anything. They were too busy helping us out.

  There were two cameras that we could check out. Each showed us a wide-angle of an area of campus. The first camera showed the main part of campus, where the academic buildings were. The second camera was positioned to take in the cluster of dormitories where the shooting had taken place. Apparently, there were supposed to be more cameras, but the funding to put them up had fallen through.

  We watched the video of the dorms first, figuring that the academic part of campus wasn’t as important. We needed to see the events as they happened.