Born Under a Blond Sign Read online

  There was no talk about Gilbert. He wasn’t even mentioned.

  And I was confused, because the way that Miles had talked about this dinner, I had thought that the purpose of it was for the family to deal with what had happened to the youngest Pike. But it didn’t seem to be the case. Or maybe this was the way Miles’s family did deal with tragedy.

  It wasn’t much like my family. My parents had been killed when I was a teenager, so I had grown up with my aunt, who was still living. Sometimes I went to her house for holidays, and there I’d be surrounded by my cousins and their children. My cousins were all about five to ten years older than me, so they were always condescending, trying to give me advice. And they were horrified that I hadn’t gotten married or had any children. In my family, dinners were noisy and boisterous, everyone talking and laughing. Still, I always felt pretty alone.

  Maybe, in the end, it was exactly the same for Miles and me.

  After dinner, Miles and I went for a walk on the grounds. There was a path amongst a beautiful flower garden, complete with little benches for sitting and everything. In the darkness, it was lit by tiny, elegant ground lights, making the flowers glow.

  “It’s gorgeous out here,” I said.

  “Yes, Mother pays someone very talented to keep this up,” Miles muttered.

  I guessed he wasn’t very impressed by the spectacle. I tried to imagine what it must have been like growing up in a place like this. I couldn’t.

  “I’m sorry about the dinner,” he said. “Thanks for coming, but I’m sorry you had to endure that.”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” I said. “I mean, it was awkward and cold and stilted, but the food was delicious. And aside from that one comment at the beginning of the evening, your father didn’t say anything insulting to me.”

  “Yeah, he was preoccupied,” said Miles. “I guess that’s the up side of his grieving. He’s not a total asshole.”

  “Oh,” I murmured. “Is that why they were so quiet?” Perhaps there was some sign of Gilbert at the dinner after all.

  “No, that was a fairly typical dinner,” said Miles. “It only lacked a good dollop of criticism from my father.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I just said, “I’m sorry.”

  Miles sighed. He gestured to one of the benches. “Do you want to sit down?”

  I did.

  He sat next to me.

  We spent a few moments just looking out at the flowers. They looked otherworldly, all lit up and on display.

  “I don’t know why I’m surprised honestly,” said Miles. “With a family like mine, I don’t know why it took so long for one of us to snap and start shooting people.”

  “Oh, Miles, that’s not true,” I said. I wanted to tell him that I didn’t think that Gilbert had shot anyone, but I knew it wasn’t time to let that out yet.

  “I thought Gil was going to be okay.” He shook his head. “I got away from this place. I was okay. I thought he’d be okay too. Why wasn’t he okay?”

  I didn’t know what to say to that either.

  “If only I’d known, maybe I could have done something.” There were tears glittering in his eyes.

  Tentatively, I reached over to touch him. I lay careful fingers on his shoulder.

  He shut his eyes.

  “Miles,” I whispered. “It wasn’t your fault. What happened, you couldn’t have stopped it.”

  His face twitched. And then he reached up and moved my fingers off his shoulder.

  I pulled away.

  “I’m sorry, Ivy,” he said. “I know you meant that to comfort me.”

  But I felt rejected somehow. If he’d moved right away, it would have been business as usual. Letting my fingers sit there and then moving them off his body…

  I didn’t speak. I only stared at the flowers.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “So, you’re really not going to tell me why you’re that dressed up?” said Crane, blowing vanilla-scented vapor out of his mouth. His electronic cigarette didn’t look a thing like a cigarette. It was the size of a cigar, chrome-colored and sleek.

  I sighed. I’d been at The Remington for over an hour, long enough to have most of my drink. I was feeling a little buzzed now, and my tongue was looser. “I went to dinner at Pike’s parents’ house.”

  “Whoa.” Crane raised his eyebrows. “I thought you two were splitsville.”

  “We are,” I said. “But I’m working for him on his brother’s case—”

  “Wait,” said Crane. “Oh, wow, I didn’t realize. But I guess his name was Gilbert Pike.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Anyway, so that’s all a little confusing.”

  “What is?”

  “Well, working for him.” I took a sip of my drink. “We don’t have to talk about this.” Crane and I didn’t often get into the nitty gritty of our various relationships. Both of us spent most of our time single, but occasionally, we’d end up seeing someone, really trying to make things work. Thus far, though, neither of us had managed to make anything stick. We’d come back to The Remington once our little fling was over, our tails between our legs. And one of us would be waiting for the other.

  We didn’t have a problem talking to each other about the people we randomly fucked. (Because Crane took girls home too with some regularity. He probably didn’t get as much action as me, but that might have only been because it was often tougher for men to find willing women than it was for women to find willing men. Late bar ratios tended to be in my favor.) But when it came to relationships, that seemed sort of private. Also, though Crane and I were definitely not romantically entangled, we had enough of a connection that it seemed too much like talking about an ex with your current squeeze. So, usually, I didn’t talk to Crane much about Pike. Didn’t seem right.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “What’s confusing about working for him? You mean the case? Like whether or not the brother did it?”

  “No, I mean personal stuff between me and Pike,” I said.

  “Oh,” he nodded.

  “Like I said, we don’t have to talk about it.”

  He sucked thoughtfully on his e-cigarette. “So, there’s still personal stuff between the two of you? I mean, you guys have been broken up for quite some time now.”

  “Well, yeah…”

  “Even though you aren’t together, things aren’t over,” said Crane. “I see.”

  I sighed. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Okay,” he said. He downed his drink, and then stroked his chin. “Any ideas for a topic?”

  I downed my drink too. “If I get this round, will you get the next one?”

  “Are you kidding?” he said. “I’m getting this round. You show up all down and out in a fancy dress and you definitely deserve a few free drinks, even if you don’t want to talk about it.” He got up and gathered our empty glasses. Then he headed for the bar.

  I waited for him to come back.

  When he did, with two vodka greyhounds, I said, “Look, it’s not that I don’t want to talk about it. It’s only that you and I don’t usually talk about this stuff.”

  “What stuff?”

  “You know, our relationships. I don’t ask about your ex-wives. You don’t ask about Pike.”

  “Maybe,” he said, considering. “Maybe you’re right. But if that’s true, Ivy, it’s silly, because it makes it seem like we’ve got, I don’t know, feelings for each other that we’re hiding.”

  “Well, I care about you,” I said. “Hell, I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  “But not in any like romantic way.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “We’re friends. I’m not jealous of Pike. I don’t want you like that. I’m happy with what we have.”

  I grinned at him gratefully. “You know what, Crane? You’re pretty much amazing.”

  He shrugged. “I do my best. So, what happened?”

  “He just…” I shut my eyes and then opened them. “I think that I keep del
uding myself into thinking that something could happen between us. But he’s never going to change, you know? And sometimes, when I see that, it just hurts.”

  Crane nodded. “To be fair, though, you’re not likely to change either.”

  “True,” I muttered. I took a drink. “He hates it when I touch him, even to comfort him. He hates being close to me. It makes me feel soiled and unworthy, and it’s not fair.”

  “That sucks,” said Crane.

  “There’s no future for us,” I said. “We can’t be together. I don’t know why I can’t just understand that and let him go.”

  “Hey,” he said, covering my hand with his own. “You’ll get there. Go easy on yourself.”

  “Maybe it’s because I’m afraid of being alone,” I said. “I’m not normal, and I’ve always known that. Pike is all fucked up too, just in different ways, so I guess it makes me think we’re made for each other. And sometimes, I think about the future, and all I see is me sitting in this damned bar when I’m in my sixties, surrounded by college students. Because there are always new college students. Every year, a new batch, always the same damned age, always so young. It’s like I’m the only one getting older, and someday I’ll be too old. They won’t fuck me anymore. And then—”

  “Hey, calm down,” said Crane.

  I looked at him. “I’ll be alone.”

  “You won’t,” he said. “I’ll be here too.”

  I gave him a tiny smile. “You promise?”

  “Definitely.”

  We sat like that for a minute, just smiling at each other.

  “And hey,” said Crane, “you never know. Maybe we’ll both meet the perfect partner next year. Maybe we’ll get hitched and make babies and be having Christmases together watching our kids run around.”

  “Yeah, right,” I said.

  “All right, so probably not,” he said. “The point is, you’ll always be in my life, Ivy. No matter what.”

  I smiled at him. He was right. Crane and I might not have a romantic connection, but we were bound together nonetheless. I raised my glass. “To us, then. To always being together.”

  He clinked his glass against mine. “To us.”

  We drank.

  “Okay,” he said. “You feel better now, right? So, I’m completely willing to accept your offer of buying another round now.”

  I laughed. “More vodka?”

  “You know it.”

  * * *

  “So, she’s dead,” said Brigit, tossing her purse strap over the back of her desk chair.

  “Who is?” I called from my inner office. I thought maybe she was talking about Kitty, but that was old news. Then I had a horrible thought. Maybe she meant the dog. I jumped up out of my chair. “Is the dog dead? How do you know that? Did the shelter already put her to sleep? Shouldn’t they give her more time to find an owner or something? Geez.”

  “Not the dog,” said Brigit. “Cori Donovan.”

  “Oh, right,” I said. “The drug dealer. Dead, huh?”

  “Yeah, since January,” said Brigit.

  “And you didn’t know this?”

  “No, I had no idea. Like I said, I’m out of the loop. Plus, after the Ralph the Hatchet case, we were swamped here for months. There were people calling us left and right trying to get the famous Ivy Stern to take their case. I was busy, and I lost touch with a lot of my old contacts from college.”

  She was right about the follow-up cases after Ralph the Hatchet. We’d gotten a lot of work from that case. It had eventually tapered off, but for a while there, we were going gangbusters.

  “Well, so how did she die?” I said. “Overdose?”

  “Murder,” said Brigit, sitting down behind her desk.

  “Whoa,” I said. “Who killed her?”

  “That’s not important,” said Brigit. “The important thing is that she’s out of the picture, and I didn’t have a lot of luck trying to find out who else might be taking her place.”

  “No?” I said. “That sucks.”

  “Most people are pretty sure that she and Bix have to be getting their stuff from the same place. It’s identical product, apparently.”

  “Well, there you go, then. Bix replaced Cori.”

  “No, it’s not like that. Bix and Cori apparently co-existed. Bix is higher up the chain than she is. He’s the dealer you go to if you’re in the know. Cori was the kind of dealer who’d show up at parties in town and have some pills. She was hit or miss. He was a sure thing. Apparently, being in with Bix is being one step closer to the source of it all, meaning that his stuff is purer and cheaper.”

  “Huh,” I said. “Well, then what the hell was he doing in that dorm room?”

  “He did admit that it was out of the ordinary for him,” said Brigit. “But it’s completely suspicious. I mean, he never goes out and sells stuff at parties, so it makes it all the more likely that something bad went down.”

  “Like maybe he went out specifically to shoot Charlene Jarrett.”

  “Maybe.”

  “He could have used Gilbert’s gun because it was better than using his own. It gave him the perfect cover-up,” I said. “Maybe he was ordered to kill her, to send a message to the O’Shaunessys, tell them to back off and cede the territory.”

  “Who would order that?”

  “Whoever he works for, this person that is the source of it all, like you’re saying. Do you know anything about that?”

  “People just call him Professor X.”

  I shook my head. “I always thought that was an urban legend. You think there’s really someone behind all that?”

  “Well, the drugs definitely come from some place other than the O’Shaunessys, and there’s definitely another network of dealers working the college. They only seem to sell ecstasy, and they seem to be everywhere.”

  “Man, that’s so shady,” I said.

  “It’s weird all right.”

  “Well, we’ll keep looking,” I said. “If there’s something here to be discovered, we’ll figure out what it is.”

  “Okay,” said Brigit. “I mean, I can try, but the thing is, I don’t even really know where else to look at this point. I’ve kind of exhausted my resources, if you know what I mean.”

  “Well, we’ll just—”

  I was interrupted when the door opened and Eden walked in.

  “Hello, my lovelies!” said Eden. She was sporting a blue-tinged spiky mohawk. She was the kind of person who liked to do weird things with her hair.

  “Eden!” Brigit ran over to give Eden a hug. “It’s so good to see you. How are you doing?”

  “Oh, good,” said Eden, “I’m actually here to give you some good news about Kent Mercer.”

  “Oh right,” I said. “Man, I’ve been meaning to follow up on that with you.”

  “I was out of the house for a bit,” said Eden. “Thought I’d stop by. It’s good to see you guys.” She came over to give me a hug too.

  “So,” I said, “good news, meaning?”

  “Yeah,” said Brigit. “Is he married or not?”

  “Oh, no, he’s not married,” I said. “Didn’t I tell you that?”

  “No,” said Brigit. “You haven’t told me a damned thing.”

  “Well, I had Eden find that out ages ago,” I said. “And I went and checked out his place. He totally lives alone. But he’s, uh, not well off. His apartment was pretty shabby.”

  “He’s an artist,” said Brigit. “Artists are poor. It’s a cliche for a reason.”

  “Well, I thought maybe he’d been married, got divorced, got kicked out, and was living alone because of that.”

  “No,” said Eden. “Doesn’t look like he was ever married.”

  “Great,” said Brigit, grinning.

  “But what’s up with that ring?” I said. “He was very obviously missing a ring.”

  “That’s why I dropped by,” said Eden. “I found something out about that.” She handed me a file folder, and I opened it up.

  Br
igit crowded beside me, looking over my shoulder so that she could see it too. “This is an eBay listing,” she said.

  “Yup,” said Eden.

  “What’s Cross and Flame?” I said.

  “Oh, come on, I can’t believe you’ve never heard of that,” said Brigit. “It’s this secret society in several of the Ivy League schools.”

  “Right,” said Eden. “Half of the presidents of the United States belonged.”

  “Sounds like something you’d be interested in, Eden,” I muttered. “So what’s this all about?”

  “The guy sold a ring,” said Eden. “A Cross and Flame ring.”

  “They’re in a secret society, but they all wear rings to proclaim the fact that they’re in it?”

  “No, no,” said Eden. “Not while they’re active members. But after they’ve graduated from college, they wear the rings so that they can recognize each other. They’re worth a lot of money. I’m guessing this guy sold his to pay the rent if he’s really as bad off as you say.”

  “So, there’s nothing wrong with him at all!” said Brigit, grinning. “Good, then I can call him back.”

  “Yeah, he seems okay,” said Eden.

  “We give you permission to date him,” I said.

  Brigit rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

  But she was glad, and I felt good.

  * * *

  As I was leaving the office that evening, Miles called. I’d read this study about how it was incredibly dangerous to talk on the phone when driving, whether you had a hands-free device or not. So, I sat in the parking lot to talk to him.

  “What’s up?” I said. “If this is about the case, I’m sorry I don’t have anything concrete for you, but I’m working on it.”

  “No, that’s not why I called.”

  “By the way,” I said, “you said you’d help us get Gilbert’s phone and computer.”