Born Under a Blond Sign

by V. J. Chambers

  Brigit was at the controls, and I was just staring at the footage. I told her to fast forward to about an hour before the shooting. She did.

  We watched the footage for a bit, and nothing much seemed to be happening.

  I pointed. “Is that the dorm where Mason lives?”

  “Yeah, that’s it,” said Brigit.

  Someone moved across the screen, heading for the dorm.

  “There’s someone,” said Brigit.

  “Yeah, do you recognize who?” I said, leaning forward.

  She squinted. “That’s Karen. I recognize the hair.”

  “Oh, you’re right,” I said. “She’s just getting there. What time is it?”

  Brigit told me.

  “So, it’s basically still fifty minutes until the shooting,” I said. “You think everyone involved is already inside? Should we run it back so that we can see who came in?”

  “We can,” said Brigit. “You want to run it back now, or do you want to watch it through once, and then run it back?”

  “Maybe watch it through once.”

  “Okay.”

  We settled back to watch.

  “Of course,” I said. “We can’t sit here and watch an hour of real time footage of people coming and going into a dorm. Maybe spin it up a little bit. Just until you see someone going in.”

  Brigit fast forwarded, and then paused. “There’s someone. No one I recognize, though. You?”

  I shook my head. “Nope.”

  “Keep going?”

  I nodded.

  She fast forwarded again. “There’s someone.” The footage slowed down to normal speed again.

  “No, I don’t know who that is either,” I said.

  Brigit fast forwarded again.

  Then paused.

  “Someone else,” she said.

  I was starting to think that we probably didn’t need to see every single person that entered.

  “Wait, I think this person is coming out,” she said.

  “Well, who cares about people leaving the party?” I said. “Besides, this is just the main entrance for the dorm. Not all of these people were even there when the shooting happened.”

  “Hold on,” she said, rewinding.

  “Brigit, it doesn’t matter,” I said.

  “That’s Bix Coltrane,” she said.

  “What?” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said, “that’s Bix Coltrane leaving the party forty minutes before the shooting.”

  “No way,” I said. “Does he go back in?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Look, he’s getting in a car.”

  “You’re fucking kidding me,” I said. “But if he wasn’t in the room, then…”

  “Yeah, that was our shooter.”

  “There was no one else in the room besides the victims,” I said. “If Bix didn’t do it, then—”

  The door to the room where we were watching footage opened.

  We turned.

  The head of Audio-Visual was standing there, his arms crossed over his chest. “I thought I recognized you,” he said, “but it took me a little bit to put it together. I just thought that maybe I had run into you in your capacity as a lawyer. But then it came to me. I remembered seeing those interviews on the TV after you caught that interstate serial killer guy. You’re not an attorney at all. You’re a private detective.”

  Damn those stupid interviews. I was way too recognizable these days. There was no point in denying it, I supposed. “Yeah, that’s me,” I said. “But it really is important that we look at these videos.”

  “Not a chance,” said the head. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “If Bix didn’t do it,” I said, “then every assumption we’ve been working under completely falls apart.”

  We were back in the office. I was pacing, as usual, and Brigit was sitting at her desk with her feet up. She hung her head back down over her chair, so that she was looking at everything upside down.

  “We’re going to have to give up on the case, aren’t we?” she said, sounding dejected.

  “Well, what made us think that Gilbert was murdered in the first place?” I said.

  “Well… the tickets, I guess,” she said.

  “Seriously?” I said. “That’s it?” I quickened my pace, wracking my brain. Certainly there was more to it than that.

  I paced. I thought.

  Shit.

  “Have I seriously been working on this case for this long on only that?” I muttered.

  “Yup.” Her face was turning bright red as all the blood rushed into it. “Don’t worry. You’ll figure it out. I mean, last time, with Gunner and the crazies at Clayton, everyone was convinced he did it, including me.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “I guess that worked out okay. Except for when you nearly got killed. That was bad.” I pointed at her. “Don’t nearly get killed again, okay?”

  She flopped forward. “I’ll do my best not to get kidnapped by a psycho again.”

  I rubbed my face and resumed pacing. “Seriously, what the hell are we doing now? Do we have anything left?”

  “Well, we know it wasn’t Bix,” she said. “And we’ve crossed off the O’Shaunessy angle—”

  “Which doesn’t work without Bix anyway,” I said.

  “And we put Louis on the back burner—”

  “He had to be in touch with Bix,” I said, “or else it doesn’t work.”

  “What about Cal?”

  “Man, I don’t even know what Cal’s motive is.” I dragged a hand over my face.

  “He and Gilbert were having sex with the same girl,” said Brigit. “So… maybe jealousy?”

  “Yeah, but how did it happen? We know that Gilbert had the gun. We know that he fired it. So, if Cal had something to do with it… No, it doesn’t work. Because Cal wasn’t there. He even had that stupid alibi that he was flailing around at me. Some girl he was banging.”

  Brigit scrunched up her face. “So, Cal’s not a suspect?”

  I stuck my hands into my hair. “I don’t know. I don’t even know if I think we’ve got anything at all here. Maybe Gilbert really did do it. Maybe we’re wasting everyone’s time and money.”

  We were quiet.

  I stopped pacing.

  “It just doesn’t seem like something that Gilbert would do,” said Brigit.

  “Well, that doesn’t make a case,” I said. “Man, if it turns out I can’t prove anything, I’m going to feel like hell for charging Miles. But I need money to pay rent on my new house.”

  Brigit started to chew on her thumbnail.

  “But I can’t do that to Miles,” I said. “Oh crap, Miles!”

  “What?” she said.

  “We’re supposed to go on a date tonight,” I said. “I said I would cook, and I completely forgot to go grocery shopping. Hell. I’m going to have to leave the office early.”

  * * *

  Miles raised his eyebrows, surveying my new place. “You got a new house and a new dog just in the span of time since we last talked?”

  “Well, I got the dog, and then I had to get the house for the dog,” I said. “I’m still not completely moved in. I need to get someone to help me with the big furniture. I need to rent a U-Haul or pay movers or something.”

  “I could help you move,” he said, scratching the back of his neck.

  “Really?” The thought of that made me really happy. “I’m paid up until the end of the month on that place, so it’s not a big deal if I take my time, but the sooner I’m moved in here, the better.”

  “I just didn’t know you were a dog person,” said Miles.

  “You don’t like dogs?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Well, are you going to just stand there, or are you going to come in?” I beckoned.

  He crossed the threshold.

  I had convinced him to have our date here, instead of going out to some impersonal, fancy restaurant. I re
membered that I used to cook a lot, but that I hadn’t in a while, and I thought it might be nice to try it again. Cooking, that is.

  I wasn’t sure exactly why I’d stopped cooking when I lost my job at the force. At first, I think it was because I was depressed. I didn’t feel like doing anything, least of all cooking. I spent almost an entire month moping around before I got my shit together, got my private detective license, and opened up shop. But even though I kept myself afloat, I didn’t start cooking again. After a while, cooking seemed to almost symbolize hope, something I’d lost.

  The fact that I was cooking for Miles now, well, that was my hope that everything might start looking up.

  Of course, I’d made those plans before I knew all about the fact that Bix Coltrane wasn’t in the dorm at the time of the shooting. Completely ruining my case.

  It had been tough to concentrate on preparing the food, but I’d done my best.

  “Smells good in here,” Pike said cautiously.

  “I’m a good cook. You are going to love this.” I dashed back to the stove to check on my food. I was frying up onions and peppers for fajitas, and it was a fine line between browned and burned. “I used to cook all the time.”

  “Yeah, you told me that.” He settled down at the breakfast bar in my kitchen. The kitchen was pretty nicely laid out, but it had an unfortunate color scheme—bright orange and navy blue. It was horrendous, and it wasn’t something easily fixed with paint either, as there were tiles everywhere in the offending colors. He put his hands on the blue counter. “So, um, how come you didn’t ever cook for me when we were together before?”

  “When we worked together?” I said. “I was always going to. But whenever we hung out, you’d ask me what I wanted to order. And I was fine with takeout. Cooking takes time, anyway.”

  “Uh huh,” he said.

  “It does,” I assured him. “Why don’t you open the wine?”

  “Wine? We’re having wine? No piss beer?”

  I glared at him. “The corkscrew is sitting next to the bottle.”

  He started to open the bottle of wine.

  I stirred the beef and vegetables. I didn’t want to ruin the evening, but I was going to have to let him know that we’d run into a brick wall with the case sooner or later. He deserved to know. If I didn’t tell him until later, he might resent me for keeping it to myself now.

  “So,” I said, “about the case. The good news is that I no longer suspect any members of your family.”

  Miles turned from the wine. “I don’t want to talk about Gil tonight.”

  “Are you sure? Because I think we’re in a place where—”

  “I’m sure,” he said. “Anything you need to tell me about the case, you can tell me tomorrow. Tonight should be about us.”

  I smiled at him. “Okay.” I hoped he wasn’t going to be annoyed with me later. I really did. But I kept my mouth shut.

  And we were occupied with various minutia as we got the meal ready to eat. I had Miles heat the tortillas in the microwave with a wet paper towel. I set the table. And then we sat down with our wine and our meal.

  And we ate.

  The fajitas were pretty damned good if I said so myself.

  In fact, I did. Say so.

  “These are delicious,” I moaned, helping myself to a second one.

  “Way to compliment yourself,” Miles chuckled.

  “I don’t see the reason not to enjoy your own cooking,” I said. “Why? Don’t you agree?”

  He kept laughing. “Way to trap me. Now I have to say yes, and you’ll never know if I really and truly liked them or not.”

  “Of course you like them,” I said. “There’s no way you couldn’t. They are fantastic.”

  “I do like them,” he said, still grinning at me.

  I grinned back.

  And for a minute, it felt so utterly normal and sweet. Domestic, even. I was the woman. I had cooked for my man. We were enjoying a meal together, and everything was just fine.

  But then Miles said, “I think we should make lists.”22

  “Lists?” I said. That wasn’t normal or domestic. It was just weird.

  “Lists of things that we can’t handle. Lists of things that we can compromise on. Those kinds of lists.”

  I took a big bite of my fajita and chewed, so as not to have to answer.

  “I think we need to figure out a way to work this out between us,” he said. “And lists will help us see what it is we have to work on.”

  Lists? So, it was going to be the super practical way of working out our problems. There wasn’t going to be anything romantic about it. “I don’t think we need lists. I think we both know what the problems are.”

  He was assembling himself another fajita. “What are they?”

  “Well, you don’t like sex, and I do,” I said.

  “You said you were compelled to have sex,” he said. “But, you know, honestly, Ivy, every time we talk about this, you have some different explanation. It’s like you’re just making up whatever defense you can come up with on the fly.”

  I drew back. “That’s not what I’m doing at all.”

  He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want defenses. I don’t want excuses or explanations. We just need to make a plan for how we’re going to deal with the behaviors that—”

  “Wait a second,” I said. “Maybe I want explanations. You know, I’ve tried as best as I could to explain to you why I feel like I need to have sex with people that aren’t you, and maybe I’ve got more than one theory about it, or maybe it’s a theory in progress or something, but you’ve never given me a real explanation for why you don’t like sex.”

  “I have,” he said. He set down his half-eaten fajita.

  “Not really. You said something about how it was sweaty.”

  He looked down at his fingers. There was fajita juice on them. He wiped them on his napkin.

  “Is it about germs and stuff?” I said. “Is it not really about sex, it’s about being clean?”

  “It’s not about being clean,” he said. “It’s about being afraid of being dirty.”

  “I don’t see the difference,” I said.

  “And… it’s more than that.” He kept wiping his fingers. “I don’t find that I’m really all that interested in it. It’s not a phobia for me. I mean, there are aspects of it that must be tied up in this phobia thing, but I just… I don’t think about sex.”

  I furrowed my brow. I didn’t understand that. Not at all. I thought about sex frequently. Lots of the time.

  He threw his napkin on the breakfast bar, which was where we were eating. “This is like asking someone why they don’t like broccoli. No one knows why.”

  “Sure they do,” I said. “People don’t like it because they think it looks weird or because the texture bugs them or—”

  “Maybe they just don’t like the taste,” he said.

  I pressed my lips together in a firm line.

  “But it doesn’t matter,” he said. “Because I’ve already decided that if you need to have sex, that I could do it for you. Because I care about you. And you said that when we did it before that I was okay at it, so I think I could please you.”

  “No,” I said.

  “I couldn’t?”

  “No, I mean, I don’t want you to have sex with me just because I want it.”

  “Well, we talked about this before,” he said. “And you said that it wouldn’t work, because neither of us would be happy. I’d be forcing myself to do something I didn’t want to do, and you’d be restraining yourself from doing something you wanted to do. And maybe you’re right about that. But the thing is, Ivy, if we’re apart, I’m unhappy. And so are you.”

  He had a point.

  “So, you’re saying that either way we’d be unhappy.”

  “Yes, a little bit,” he said. “But this way, we can be together.”

  I nodded slowly. “Okay. So…” He didn’t want me to sleep with other men, then. The thought ma
de me terrified.

  “So, we should make the lists,” he said. “How often are you going to want to have sex?”

  “Uh…” I looked at my plate. “You can’t just… It’s not like that. It depends on whether or not I’m in the mood, and I might not know that until—”

  “On average,” he said.

  I bit my lip. “Five times a week?”

  He swallowed. “That often?” He didn’t sound excited about it.

  “Well—”

  “No, I want you to be honest,” he said. “After all, if you’re going to be faithful to me, I have to step up and replace these urges that you have.”

  “Right,” I said. So, maybe this could work. Because if I got the desire to go home with some guy from the bar, I could just call Miles, and he’d be there. I remembered the way it had felt to be with him before, how lovely and good and safe and wonderful. I smiled at him. “Right,” I said again.

  He reached across the table and offered me his hand.

  I slid my fingers against his.

  He took a deep breath, closing his eyes. And then he tightened his fingers around mine.

  * * *

  I came into the office the next day whistling. I was early, and I’d beaten Brigit there.

  Having Regan was proving to be a change to my habits, because I had to get up with her in the morning to let her out to do her business. She was so energetic and happy when she woke me up, that I couldn’t help but think she wanted to go on a walk and get in some good exercise. I was usually too hungover in the mornings to do that, but the thought of walking Regan was making me temper my drinking.

  Since I didn’t want to leave her alone unless necessary, I’d been making breakfast at home instead of going to The Sunshine Skillet. I sipped my coffee on my new back porch, watching my dog frolic in the back yard, and I felt happy.

  This morning, I thought about Miles, and how there was hope, actual hope.

  The hope seemed to spread to everything, and I began thinking about the case. I started going through my notes, checking to see if I remembered things correctly.

  Aha!

  We weren’t sunk yet.

  “Why are you here so early?” said Brigit, standing in the middle of the office.