Born Under a Blond Sign

  Contents

  Synopsis

  Copyright

  Title Page

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  More from V. J. Chambers

  Born Under a Blond Sign

  Blond Noir Mysteries, Book Three

  by V. J. Chambers

  Blond detective Ivy Stern has always had a complicated relationship with Miles Pike. When Miles hears that his younger brother Gilbert has shot five other college students and himself, Miles is obviously devastated. He can’t understand how his brother could have done it, and he hires Ivy to find out what drove his brother to commit the heinous act.

  But as Ivy digs deeper into the case, she realizes there’s more here than a typical school shooting. There’s a drug dealer who entered the room and possibly never left. There are connections to the Irish mob. And there is the Pike family itself. They are wealthy and powerful, a dynasty that owns an influential corporation.

  The more she knows, the further she is pulled into a morass of secrets, half-truths, and betrayal.

  She thinks Gilbert was murdered.

  And she’s going to find who did it.

  BORN UNDER A BLOND SIGN

  © copyright 2015 by V. J. Chambers

  http://vjchambers.com

  Punk Rawk Books

  Please do not copy or post this book in its entirety or in parts anywhere. You may, however, share the entire book with a friend by forwarding the entire file to them. (And I won’t get mad.)

  Born Under a Blond Sign

  Blond Noir Mysteries, Book Three

  by V. J. Chambers

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Oh my God, Ivy, you’re not going to believe this,” said my assistant Brigit Johansen. She was standing in the doorway to my office, her eyes wide.

  “Is it a client?” I said. I was a private detective, and Brigit’s job was to talk to the clients before I talked to them. Well, technically, anyway. These days, I was letting her help out with investigations occasionally as well.

  “No,” she said, making a face. “Sorry.”

  We hadn’t had a client in weeks.

  The last client had been the Clayton Society. I’d solved a murder and proved that their leader, Gunner Bray, was innocent. Since then, crickets.

  I sat up in my desk. “Well, what is it?” I had to admit that I was grateful for the distraction. I was pretty bored, honestly. There were only so many times that I could reorganize my files.

  She motioned with one hand. “Come look.”

  My office was comprised of two rooms. One was my inner office, and the other was the outer office where Brigit’s desk was. There was also a small waiting area out there for clients. When we had clients, that is. I got up out of my desk and followed Brigit into the outer office.

  She sat down behind her desk and pointed at her computer screen.

  I eased in behind her, looking over her shoulder. On the screen was a big headline. Breaking News. Shooting at Keene College.

  “Oh my God,” I said.

  Brigit and I had both graduated from Keene College, albeit over a decade apart. It was a nice little college, located in the small town of Keene, where nothing bad happened at all. Ever. This wasn’t possible.

  I wanted to sink into a chair, but there wasn’t a chair to sink into. Brigit was sitting in the only available one.

  She twisted back to look up at me. “I can’t believe it. I mean, I know they have these things all the time all over the country. But I never thought it would happen at Keene.”

  “Yeah, me either,” I said. It wasn’t as if there wasn’t crime in the area. After all, I’d never make it as a private detective if nothing happened around here. But I worked in Renmawr, which was a twenty-minute drive from Keene, and home to Irish mobsters the O’Shaunessys. It was a much bigger city. There was crime here. A shooting here would have made sense, because there were shootings here all the time. Just not in Keene.

  Ivy turned back to the screen, scanning the story. “Oh my God,” she said again.

  “What?” I said.

  “I know that guy.”

  “What guy?”

  “The shooter. Gilbert Pike. We were in the same general studies class last year.” Brigit had just graduated from Keene a year ago.

  “Really?” I said. “What was he like?”

  She swallowed. “Normal. Really, really normal.” She clicked back and entered a new search query, and suddenly, the screen filled with a new set of results. There were now dozens of links about this story, and there were pictures too.

  “That guy?” I said. “I know him too.”

  “What do you mean, you know him?” said Brigit. “How could you know him?”

  “I know him from the bar,” I said.

  “Oh, of course you know him from the bar,” said Brigit. “Because it’s like your second home.”

  “Brigit,” I sighed. “Not this again.”

  “I only say stuff because I worry about you. Alcoholism is a disease, you know.”

  “Which I do not have. I don’t have a problem with drinking.”

  “You drink all the time.”

  “Not all the time,” I said. “Only after work.”

  “Every day.”

  “Brigit.” I glared at her. “Stop it. And while we’re on the subject, I would appreciate it if you’d stop leaving those little Alcoholics Anonymous flyers on my desk. I’m not going to a meeting, because I don’t have a problem.”

  “Look, there’s some reason that you got fired from the police department,” said Brigit. “It’s probably because you drank too much. I mean, it’s not as if you can drag your ass into your own office before noon. I have a hard time picturing you eating donuts and drinking coffee.”

  “Brigit, I was a homicide detective when I got fired. I wasn’t a uniform on the street eating donuts.” But she was kind of right. About the getting up early stuff. That had been difficult when I was working for the force. Thing was, it wasn’t the drinking that was the problem. The problem was—

  No, you know what? Fuck that. I didn’t have a problem. The police department of Renmawr was sexist and stuck in the dark ages. That was why I didn’t have a job anymore, why I was slumming it here in this private detective gig. Not that I was bitter. Well. Maybe a little bit.

  I shut my eyes. I didn’t want to think about this anymore. And when I opened them up, I was staring at the picture of Gilbert Pike again. I hadn’t known his name, of course. “I didn’t know him well,” I said. “I knew him well enough to say hi. We stood next to each other at the bar one night and talked about the weather once. He seemed like a nice guy.”

  I wasn’t going to add the fact that I’d flirted fairly shamelessly with the guy. So, he was over ten years my junior. So what? That was kind of my problem. Hooking up with college co-eds. Hooking up with anyone really. Sometimes, I just needed sexual healing. And in a college town like Keene, there was usually someone willing if you waited long enough, waited until the bar was emptying out and there weren’t a lot of prospects left. Not that it was really a problem pr
oblem. I did it because I enjoyed it, at least that’s what I told myself. Sometimes, I had to admit, it felt more like a compulsion and less like a desire, but I only admitted that to myself in my very dark moments.

  I’d never slept with the fresh-faced boy who’d shot his classmates. But I could have.

  I swallowed again. “So, what happened? Are there casualties?”

  “Yeah,” said Brigit. “Five people are dead, not counting Gilbert. He shot himself too.”

  I winced. “That’s awful. Anyone wounded?”

  She shook her head.

  “So, he was good at it, then. He tried to kill people, and he succeeded.”

  Brigit scrolled through the search results, shaking her head. “It doesn’t make sense. He’s not the type.”

  “Did you know him well?”

  “Well enough,” she said. “I wasn’t close with him or anything, but we did a project together for class. Usually, the guys who shoot up their schools are anti-social and psychopathic. He wasn’t either.”

  I chuckled grimly. “Oh, come on, Brigit. School shootings have come a long way. It’s not just for pimply-faced trench coats anymore.”

  She looked up at me. “I just can’t believe it, you know? Gilbert was a nice guy. Sweet and normal and happy.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess I would have said so too. But whenever I saw him, he was always drinking, and that tends to put someone in a good mood. For all I know, he was drinking his troubles away. And—to be fair—you haven’t really talked to him since you were in class with him, and that was over a year ago, right?”

  She nodded.

  “So, maybe things changed for him. You know what it’s like in your early twenties. You don’t have any perspective. You think that bad stuff is going to last forever. You don’t realize that things will get better.” Even as I said this, however, I wondered if it were true. In my case, my life had started going downhill when I was kicked off the police force, and it hadn’t really ever gotten better. I grimaced.

  “Hey,” said Brigit. “I’m in my early twenties.”

  “So, then you understand,” I said.

  She narrowed her eyes.

  “I’m only saying that he might be completely different now than when you knew him.”

  “I guess.” She sighed. “I feel so awful. Everyone will be mourning the other victims, and no one will be sad about Gilbert. They’ll just say he was a murderer, and they won’t remember any of the good things about him.”

  “Well, killing five people is a pretty big deal.”

  “Yeah.” She clicked down the internet browser and stared at her desktop glumly. Then she brightened and turned to me. “Hey, Ivy, I’ve been meaning to ask you if you’ll come to my art show.”

  I was taken aback. “Geez, I’m going to get whiplash from that subject change.”

  She laughed. “Sorry. I just keep forgetting to ask you and I suddenly remembered. Will you come? I know art really isn’t your thing or whatever, but I don’t really have anyone coming, and I would feel stupid if no one showed up, and you usually don’t have plans in the evening, so—”

  “I’ll come to your art show, Brigit,” I said.

  She grinned. “Thanks.”

  “The thing is, even though we work together, I feel as if we’ve gotten closer and closer over the past few weeks, especially since we almost died together, and I like to think of us as friends just as much as colleagues.”

  “Uh huh,” said Brigit, who was pulling back up the search results and not even listening to me.

  I glared at the back of her head. Trust me to get all mushy on her just when she wasn’t even appreciating it. I backed away, heading for my office.

  “Where are you going?” said Brigit.

  I shrugged at her. “I’m going back to work.”

  “How can you work at a time like this?” she said. “All I can do is think about the families of those kids, especially Gilbert’s family. I can’t imagine how they must be feeling right now. Did they have any clue that he was capable of what he did?”

  * * *

  I furrowed my brow at Miles Pike, who was crumpled in the corner of The Remington at six o’clock in the evening, a full beer and two empty shot glasses sitting in front of him.

  He noticed me and raised a hand in a half-hearted attempt at a wave.

  I went to him. “What the hell are you doing here?” I had been avoiding him for weeks, ever since I’d embarrassed myself by thinking there was something going on between us when there wasn’t. Things between Pike and me were really complicated and confusing. We used to have a relationship, but we’d broken up around the same time that I’d been fired from the police force. It had a lot to do with the fact that I had what Pike called a “sex addiction.” The department agreed that I did and that it was interfering with my ability to do my job. I was let go due to “conduct unbecoming an officer.” Anyway, previous to the big public blowout spotlighting my extracurricular activities, Pike and I had an understanding when it came to sex in our relationship.

  See, Pike didn’t like sex. He called himself asexual and said he’d never had any interest in doing the deed.

  Of course, that didn’t work for me. I had to get laid now and then. Just to blow off some steam.

  Anyway, while we were dating, I slept with other guys. I didn’t form any actual attachments to them or anything. They were just there for physical pleasure. I was emotionally attached to Miles Pike and him only.

  It wasn’t an ideal setup for a relationship, but I was okay with it.

  Thing was, Pike really wasn’t. He had resented the fact that I was sleeping with other men the entire time, and he just hadn’t said anything.

  So, we’d broken up.

  And since then, things had been pretty tumultuous between the two of us. I still had feelings for him, but we couldn’t really be together, no matter how we tried. Pike had even tried taking testosterone supplements to see if that made him want to have sex more. We ended up actually doing it for the first time a few weeks ago.

  It was the best sex of my life—more real and earnest than anything I’d ever felt before. But Miles had hated it, and he told me he never wanted to do it ever again.

  That was the last time I’d spoken to him.

  “Have you been living under a rock all day?” he said. “Didn’t you see it on the news?”

  “What? The shooting at Keene?” I said. Now that he mentioned it, I would have expected the bar to be a little more crowded considering. Nothing like a tragedy to bring out the drinkers in town. Still, it was pretty early, so maybe they’d be fading out of the woodwork in a few hours.

  He raised his eyebrows at me.

  I cocked my head. “He had your last name, didn’t he?” I sat down in front of Miles at the table. “He wasn’t…?”

  “My brother,” Pike said into his beer bottle. “My little brother.”

  I felt cold all over. “Miles…” I reached across the table to touch him.

  He allowed me to grip his hand for a second, and then he pulled it away.

  I retracted my hand, feeling like an idiot. Why couldn’t I ever remember how much Miles hated being touched? Even at times when it seemed like he might want to be comforted, he didn’t like it. And I always wanted to touch him.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  “No,” I said. “I should know better. I should—”

  “I’m a freak,” he said, taking a long drink of his beer. “Any other person in the universe would want someone’s hand on his during a time like this. But when you touch me, all I can think about is everything else you’ve been touching.”

  I drew myself up, feeling offended. “Hey, I haven’t been sleeping with anyone else today. It’s only six o’clock. I’ve been working. Give me some credit.”

  He gave me a wide-eyed look of confusion. “I meant germs, Ivy. Did you wash your hands after you ate? Have you rubbed your eyes lately? Touched your mouth? Do you have any idea how many germs are in
a person’s mouth?”

  “Oh,” I said. “Right. Germs.” Miles was a neat freak, but I’d never heard him go off on this topic before. He was starting to sound a little crazy.

  He let out a harsh laugh. “Listen to me. Usually, I can keep this under control. I force myself to face it when I have to, force myself not to wear gloves or carry around little wipes to clean everything. I want to do that, but I don’t let myself, and I’m as close to normal as I can be. But right now, I’m just… I’m upset, and I can’t stop thinking about—”

  “I’ll get you another shot,” I said. “Bourbon okay?”

  “Please,” he said, rubbing his forehead.

  I went up to the bar and ordered Miles’s shot. I also got one for myself and a beer chaser. I didn’t usually drink liquor, but this situation called for it. I went back to the table and handed him the shot. I sat down. “I can’t believe that you never told me you had a brother.”

  He downed the shot. “Two brothers, actually. Both younger.” He eyed my drinks. “You still drinking that piss beer, huh?”

  My favorite beer was Miller High Life. It was the champagne of beers. I liked it, and I didn’t care what anyone said. I took a swig of it. “It’s not piss beer. It’s good.”

  He made a face and took a drink of his own beer, which was a Goose Island India Pale Ale.

  I downed my shot and made my own face. “Do you want to talk about your brother?”

  “Yes,” he said. He looked at the ceiling. “No. I don’t know. When I found out, I tried to stay at work, but I couldn’t focus and the captain eventually told me to clear out. Said I wasn’t doing anyone any good there. I know she was right, but I still didn’t want to leave, because the minute I did, I’d be faced with the fact that I don’t have anything else in my life besides work. I don’t have a wife or a family or friends or anything. Except, you know, you.” He looked at me.

  I licked my lips. “I thought we weren’t—”

  “Damn it, I shouldn’t have come here. I didn’t know where else to go. I knew you’d show up here eventually. I was just hoping you wouldn’t already be here with that professor boyfriend of yours—”