Born Under a Blond Sign

by V. J. Chambers

  I giggled at him. “I’m eating pizza.”

  “I’m serious,” he said. And he was. He had an expression his face like he was concentrating really hard.

  “Miles, don’t be ridiculous. We can’t just have sex on demand.”

  “Why not?” He was eyeing my body, and his voice had dipped in pitch.

  “Because…” I suddenly felt a little warm under his gaze. I set down my uneaten piece of pizza. “Because, it doesn’t work that way,” I said, but my voice had gotten breathy.

  “So, how does it work?” He crawled over the carpet towards me.

  “Well, you shouldn’t be so… direct. You kind of work up to it by talking around it, not just saying it out loud.”

  “That seems stupid.” He was right next to me now. “Why make it more difficult than needs to be?”

  “Doesn’t have to be difficult.” I reached out a hand to touch him, but I stopped just short of his body, not wanting to push things. “It can be fun.”

  He seized my hand and pressed it against his skin. “Doesn’t sound fun,” he said, his voice gravelly.

  And then he kissed me, his fingers inching their way under my shirt.

  * * *

  After, he pulled away from me, gasping. We lay on our backs on the carpet, both breathing hard.

  It was the second time we’d ever had sex.

  And it had been… nice. So, so nice.

  I was basking in the afterglow of it, my limbs loose and relaxed, my body still thrumming from my release.

  But then I remembered that Miles had said that he hated this last time. I rolled over on my side. “Hey,” I whispered. “You okay?”

  He swallowed.

  “Was it horrible?” I said.

  He looked at me. “No. Not horrible. Good, actually.”

  “You’re saying that to make me happy.”

  He shook his head. “I guess I see why people like it. But it just seems… needlessly complicated for what it is.” He gazed up at the ceiling.

  “You want to take a shower?” I said.

  “Oh, God, yes,” he said.

  I laughed.

  He hesitated for a minute and then he laughed too.

  “I don’t know why you started this when we were already so sweaty and gross to begin with,” I said.

  “I thought maybe it would make it better if I didn’t feel myself getting sweaty. Like I was already messed up to begin with, so it wouldn’t bug me?”

  “And?”

  “Yeah, not so much.”

  “Miles, you can tell me the truth. If you really hated it—”

  “I said I didn’t,” he said, and he reached for me across the carpet.

  I let him pull me close.

  He kissed me, and our nude slippery bodies pressed into each other.

  I shut my eyes, and I was transported by the sensation, by his closeness.

  Eventually, he would let go of me, and I would go hunt him down towels, and he would get in the shower to wash this all away.

  But for now, we were close.

  We were together.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “Well, that was yesterday,” said Dylan Jones, who’d just arrived in our offices.

  “You already broke up with her?” said Brigit.

  “You don’t understand,” he said. “Bryn is completely fucking crazy. And whatever it was that you guys said to her yesterday, it completely unhinged her. I don’t even know what it was about, because I was too scared of her to try to figure out what it was she was upset about. I just got the hell out of there, and when she called me later, I told her it was over. That was twelve hours ago, and I had to turn my phone off, because she’s been texting and calling me constantly since, saying that she’s going to kill me or kill herself or possibly kill my mom if I don’t get back with her. The chick is nuts.”

  “Kill your mom?” I said.

  “Well, that’s why I’m here,” he said. “I wanted to know why it was that you guys came to see her yesterday, because I thought that if it was something really serious, maybe I should worry more about her threats. I called my mom and told her to keep the doors locked and not to talk to Bryn if she called, but… well, do you guys think she’s dangerous?”

  Brigit and I exchanged a look.

  “Where does your mom live?” I said.

  “Here in Renmawr,” he said. He gave me the address.

  I held up a finger. “One second. I have friends on the police force. I’ll see if I can call in a favor and have someone watch your mother’s house.”

  “Oh holy fuck.” Dylan’s eyes were wide. “She is dangerous, isn’t she?”

  “We don’t know,” said Brigit. “But there’s a possibility that she is.”

  I went into the inner office to call Miles and explain the situation to him. He said the best he could do would be to have a uniform check on the address during his beat. He didn’t think they could spare someone to sit and watch the place. I said that was fine. After all, we weren’t sure that this Bryn person was actually serious.

  I returned to the conversation with Dylan and Brigit.

  “She was always really clingy,” Dylan was saying. “Which, at the beginning, I thought was pretty cute. But after a couple of weeks, it started to wear on me.”

  “How long have you been dating Bryn?”

  “Oh, since right after that shooting,” he said. “She was really broken up about it, and we got drunk together after we heard. One thing led to another, and the next morning, she’s calling me her boyfriend. I just decided to go with it. She was hot, and she was really smoking in the sack, and I just figured, you know, why not.”

  “Uh huh,” I said. So, she was “broken up” after the shooting, was she?

  “But it just started getting weirder,” said Dylan. “She insisted that I call her whenever I left, because she said she was worried. Which, at first, yeah, okay. If I was driving home at night after being at her place, sure, it makes sense to call when I get home so that she knows I’m okay. But she took it to this whole other level. First of all, if I didn’t call within a reasonable time period—well, reasonable to her—she’d start blowing up my phone demanding to know why I hadn’t called and saying she was worried that I was dead and stuff. And then she was telling me to call her if I went out to the convenience store or something, because she would worry. I was gone for fifteen minutes total and she wanted me to fit a phone call in there somewhere. She was just… freaky.”

  She sounded controlling, all right.

  “So,” I said, “when you say that she came unhinged yesterday, what do you mean?”

  “She just got really angry that you guys had been there, and she threw this fit. At first she was yelling, and then she started crying, and then she started breaking stuff. That was the point when I left. She was acting nuts, and there was nothing I could do to console her.”

  “Did she say why she was angry?” said Brigit.

  “Kind of,” said Dylan. “She said that it was none of your business whether she had boyfriends in the past, and it was none of your business what she did when she was a kid. But she was pretty incoherent after a while.”

  “So, do you know anything about her relationship with Gilbert Pike?” I said.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t. And see, I think that’s kind of weird, don’t you? Because if she had actually been dating him, then she wouldn’t have hidden that fact from me. We talked about that damned shooting for four hours the first night we met. I feel like she should have mentioned the fact that she knew him.”

  “Probably,” I said.

  “Girl’s not normal,” he said.

  “Doesn’t seem like it,” I said. “So, you know nothing about Gilbert Pike.”

  “Not a damned thing,” he said.

  Well, that was annoying, because it meant that he probably wasn’t going to be much more help to us.

  “But,” he said, “she does have a best friend. And if you talk to her, I bet she would know wha
t was up with her and that Pike kid. She and her best friend Deborah are really close. They tell each other everything.”

  * * *

  “No, sorry,” said the girl at the door. “Deborah’s not in right now. I think she’ll be back in a few hours. Do you want me to tell her that you stopped by?”

  Dylan didn’t know much about Deborah, but he had been to her apartment a couple of times, so he was able to give Brigit and me directions there. We’d gone right over to check everything out.

  “Actually, if you have a number where we could reach her, that would be great,” I said.

  “Oh… I don’t know,” said the girl. “Who did you say you were again?”

  “I’m Ivy Stern,” I said.

  “The detective,” said the girl.

  “That’s right,” I said. “And what was your name?”

  “Chloe,” she said. “Chloe Avery.”

  Huh. Why was it that name sounded familiar?

  “Well,” I said, “will you give us Deborah’s number?”

  “Why are you here?” she said. “Why do you want to talk to Deborah?”

  I took a deep breath. “It’s a little convoluted.”

  “Well, what are you investigating?” said Chloe. “Are you investigating Deborah?”

  “She’s not in any trouble,” said Brigit.

  “No, we just want to talk to her about her best friend Bryn,” I said.

  “Bryn?” Chloe looked confused. “Why are you investigating Bryn?”

  “We aren’t exactly,” I said. “Bryn knew Gilbert Pike, and we’re looking into him and the shooting.” And suddenly, I remembered where I’d heard Chloe’s name before. “Wait a second. You’re Cal’s alibi.”

  He had given me the name of some girl he’d been with during the shooting. At the time, it hadn’t mattered, because I thought that Bix Coltrane was the one who had actually pulled the trigger. But now I knew he was out of the picture, and I no longer suspected Cal anyway.

  Chloe sucked in breath. “I’m Cal’s what?”

  “Alibi,” I said. “Well, I mean, he’s not officially a suspect or anything, but he was with you at the time of the shooting.”

  Chloe started fidgeting with the doorknob, and she looked away from me. “I’ll tell Deborah that you’re looking for her.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Aren’t you? You were with Cal at the time of the shooting, weren’t you?”

  “Totally,” said Chloe, giving me a too-wide smile. She started to close the door.

  I stuck my foot out, stopping the door. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. I didn’t want there to be holes in Cal’s alibi. Didn’t want that so badly that I’d never even checked into it, just taken him at his word. Had I really slept with another murderer? Really?

  “Hey,” said Chloe. “Move.”

  “No,” I said. “You know, I had cleared Cal as a suspect, but now I’m not so sure. So, why don’t you tell me exactly when you saw him on that Monday.”

  Chloe swallowed. Her voice wasn’t steady. “Suspect in what?”

  “Well, we’re working on a theory that Gilbert didn’t actually kill those kids,” Brigit said.

  Chloe put her fingers to her lips. “Oh my God.”

  I pushed the door open the rest of the way. “What aren’t you telling us, Chloe?”

  She backed away, shaking her head.

  I went inside after her, and Brigit followed me.

  “Was he with you on Monday or not?” I demanded.

  “Look, we all knew each other,” said Chloe. “Me, Deborah, Bryn, the Pike brothers. Cal and Gil weren’t close in age, but when you’re in the kind of families that we’re in, you end up at a lot of the same events no matter what your age. So, we all knew each other. And we’ve all always been friends. Sure, I’m a little older than Deborah and Bryn, and Cal is a little older than all of us, but that didn’t mean we weren’t all close. You do favors for friends. You don’t ask questions. So, when Cal asked me to say that we were together on that Monday, I told him I would do it.”

  “You weren’t with him, were you?” I said. Fuck, this was bad. My stomach was tying itself into knots. He was the killer. He was the killer, and I had slept with him.

  “No,” she said in a tiny voice. “No, Cal wasn’t with me on that Monday.”

  “So where was he?” I said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You have no idea?”

  She held out her hands, a gesture of helplessness.

  I wanted to wring her neck, even though I knew this wasn’t her fault.

  Brigit, thankfully, wasn’t quite as emotional. In a soft voice, she said, “Do you know anything that might help?”

  “I don’t…” Chloe’s lower lip trembled.

  “When did you see him last?” Brigit asked.

  “The Saturday before the shooting,” she said. “We were both at some charity function. And I did leave with him. He took me on this drive, and he went on and on about how he didn’t belong in his family and how his brother had stolen everything from him, even the girl that he was in love with… I don’t remember her name, something like Charlotte or Sherry or—”

  “Charlene?” I said sharply.

  “That’s it,” said Chloe. “Charlene. He was really upset about that. Really upset about how Charlene was actually in love with Gil instead of him. We ended up back at his parents’ place. He said he was going to steal booze from them, because he didn’t have any at home. And I was like why couldn’t he just buy some, you know? But it turned out when we got there that he didn’t really want booze. He wanted a gun. We went and looked at his dad’s guns. And Cal got them out and was showing them to me, asking me which one I thought he should take. I told him not to take any of them. I told him I was bored. I told him I was leaving. And I called a cab. I haven’t seen him since.”

  “So when did he ask you to lie for him?” said Brigit.

  “He called me,” she said. “I don’t remember when, but it was after the shooting. I didn’t even really put it together, until just now, when you said that it was that day.”

  “You didn’t wonder why he was asking you to lie for him?” My mouth was dry.

  “He’s my friend,” said Chloe.

  Brigit stared agape at the girl. “But you knew about a gun. You knew he was angry with Gilbert. And you still didn’t think—”

  “No.” Chloe’s voice was a strangled sob.

  Whatever. I didn’t have time to worry about her. I backed up, backed up toward the door. “Thanks for the information, Ms. Avery.”

  “Do you still want me to tell Deborah that you came by?” she asked.

  I just walked out of the apartment. The farther I walked down the hallway, the quicker I moved.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Don’t even think about it, you are not coming with me,” I said to Brigit.

  We were standing outside my office building. I was trying to drop her off, and she wasn’t having it.

  “You shouldn’t go there and be alone with him,” said Brigit. “What if you sleep with him again?”

  “I’m not going to sleep with him,” I said. “I’m going, and you’re not coming.” I headed back for my car.

  “Ivy, he could be dangerous!” Brigit called after me. “I’m calling Miles. You shouldn’t go alone.”

  I stopped. “Brigit, don’t call anyone.”

  “Well, the only way you’re going to be sure I don’t call anyone is to let me come with you.”

  “No,” I said. “You’re not coming.” I was just going to have to risk it. “Don’t call Miles. Don’t call anyone. Please.” I got into my car.

  Brigit folded her arms over her chest.

  * * *

  “Well, Ivy Stern,” said Cal Pike from behind his desk. His face was still swollen from the beating that Miles had given him. “I haven’t seen you in a while. Funny, because I thought we were pretty good together.”

  I was standing in the open doorway. “We need to talk, Cal. I
know what you did.”

  “Shut the door,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind it if we had some privacy. If you get sick of my big brother’s lack of passion, I’ve got enough for both of us.”

  I didn’t move. “I just came from talking to Chloe Avery.”

  “Seriously, Ivy? I thought we were past this. I told you that I would never do something like that.”

  “Actually, Cal, I’m pretty sure you did.” I shook my head. “What I don’t understand is why.”

  He got up from his desk. “What did Chloe say to you?”

  “Well, she said she was lying for you, that the two of you weren’t together on the day of the shooting.”

  He walked past me and shut the door behind us. Now we were close, his body practically touching mine.

  I wanted to move away from him, but I was trapped. The door at my back, his body in front of mine.

  “Well, I only told her to lie for me because you were so suspicious of me,” he said, smiling down at me.

  “That’s the thing,” I said. “I wasn’t. You were the one who leapt to the conclusion that I thought you murdered Gilbert. You did that because you actually killed him. And not by proxy, like I had originally thought. You didn’t hire some drug dealer to take out your brother. Instead, you did it yourself. You brought the gun there, not Gilbert.”

  “You’re crazy, Ivy.”

  “Did you always plan to make it look like a school shooting? Did you always plan to shoot all those other people?”

  “Stop it.” He reached for me. “Stop saying these insane things.”

  I slapped his hand away. “Do not touch me.”

  “That’s funny, because you seemed to like it before. I remember the way you moaned when I had my hands on you, the way you—”

  “Shut up.” I felt as if my throat was going to close up. Not again, not again. How was it that I had managed to sleep with a murderer again? “Please, Cal, give me some reason to believe that you’re telling me the truth. Give me some piece of evidence that I can hold onto. I don’t want to have slept with a murderer.” Not again.

  “I didn’t kill Gilbert,” he said.