Out for Blond Read online

  But then, when they did arrive, they managed to park directly out of my line of sight. There was a pole in the middle of the parking lot, and Jack and Dexter arrived in one car, and then parked right behind it.

  I waited, thinking that possibly they’d move and I could still get the photographs from this vantage point. It wasn’t a particularly thick pole, and they were on the opposite side of the parking lot. It just so happened that they’d positioned themselves in the one place where the pole blocked everything. If they moved just a little bit to the right or left, I’d have them.

  But they didn’t.

  Another car pulled up and parked, this one a sleek, black Mercedes. Derek O’Shaunessy got out of it.

  At the sight of him, my teeth clenched, and my stomach turned over. Derek was the one who’d stormed into my office, told me to stay out of the family’s business, and then beaten me up. Kicked me when I was lying down. Over and over again.

  I’m not the kind of woman who likes to hide behind my gender and ask for special treatment or anything, so I don’t want to shame him for beating up a woman. No, it would have been just as bad if it had been any person who was smaller and weaker than him, and who didn’t fight back or offer any resistance. That was the kind of man Derek was. He was vicious, and he had no scruples. Whatever he had to do to keep him and his family on top, he would do.

  I didn’t like him. But now it was even more important to me to make sure that I got this on film. And they were still behind the pole.

  So, I got out of my car.

  I was quiet about it. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself or anything. My car was parked on the opposite side of the parking lot than they were on, and it was in the shadows, so I didn’t think that they would see me.

  I didn’t bother to close my car door. I didn’t want to make unnecessary noise that would draw their attention.

  I just got out of the car and took a few steps to the right so that I could see around the pole, and then…

  No. Damn it.

  I still couldn’t see around the pole. Seriously?

  Okay, fine.

  Looking through the lens of the camera, I began to stealthily move further and further to the right, watching to see the minute that the pole wasn’t in frame anymore.

  There.

  Perfect.

  I could see all three of them, and they were talking. Derek had a bag slung over his shoulder, and the cops had a bag too. They each held them out and switched at the same moment.

  I snapped photo after photo, capturing each movement almost as if I was trying to make an animated film.

  But because I was looking through the lens, I had no idea about what was directly around me. So, when I took a little step to steady myself, I didn’t realize there was a big bin full of recycling right next to me. Not until glass beer bottles and cans were tumbling all over the pavement—clanking and rattling and making quite the commotion.

  “Shit,” I muttered.

  Derek O’Shaunessy turned and saw me. He started sprinting across the pavement.

  I sprinted for my car. I threw the camera inside and I threw my keys inside, and I locked the doors. I wanted to protect those photographs, and he was right on top of me, and I didn’t have time to get inside. I didn’t have time to drive away.

  He grabbed me by the shoulder and whipped me around to face him. “Give me the camera, bitch.”

  “No way,” I said. Oh God. He was going to hit me again, wasn’t he? Jesus Christ, why did I get myself into these messes?

  “Didn’t I tell you to stay out of our business?”

  I shrugged, putting on a casual front that I didn’t really feel. “Oops. Sorry. What are you going to do? Show how big of a man you are by knocking down a little blond lady and kicking her while she’s curled into a little ball?”

  His lip curled into a sneer, and he slammed me back into my car. “How about this, blondie? I won’t lay a hand on you if you give me that camera.”

  It was really too late for that, considering he’d already laid a hand on me. In fact, the hand was still on me. But I figured pointing that out was a bad idea.

  “It’s locked in the car,” I said. Thinking fast, I put my hand in my pocket and found my phone.

  His nostrils flared. “Well, then unlock the car.”

  “No way.” I switched the phone on by feel, but I had to look askew to dial 911.

  He leaned close. “You know, I thought that last time I taught you a lesson. I thought you understood to stay out of our business.”

  I couldn’t help it. I flinched. I still remembered the pain from the beating that he’d given me before. I was full of adrenaline right now, focusing on how to get out of this situation, but fear was starting to streak through my bravado. I shuddered involuntarily.

  “Where are the keys?” growled Derek.

  From my pocket, I heard the murmur of an answer on the phone. I raised my voice and fairly yelled, “It’s locked in the car here in the parking lot behind Shamrock’s in Renmawr, and I’m afraid that you’re going to kill me.”

  “What?” Derek furrowed his brow. He couldn’t figure out why I was talking like that.

  I repeated myself, hoping the 911 people would hear me.

  Derek ripped my hand out of my pocket. He saw the phone. “Who did you call, bitch? Who did you call?”

  “The police, of course,” I said.

  And then Derek punched me right between the eyes.

  Pain burst through my whole face, radiating into my bones.

  I cried out.

  And then I lost consciousness.

  * * *

  I sat on the back of the ambulance. I’d been bandaged and looked after, and—due to my begging—they’d deemed me okay to go home. I didn’t have to go into the hospital.

  Pike wandered over, holding my camera. “We got into the car finally. Can’t believe you locked your keys inside.”

  “It was the only way to make sure that Derek didn’t get the camera,” I said, wincing. My whole head hurt.

  “No,” said Pike, “it was a good way to make sure that he broke your window.”

  “He didn’t break the window.”

  “He would have if he hadn’t been worried about the police coming and scrammed. You’re lucky, Stern.”

  Maybe he was right.

  “And,” he continued, “you’re an idiot. I told you not to get involved in this, didn’t I?”

  “The pictures will help, though, right? You can stop these guys from tampering with more evidence?”

  He sighed. “Yeah, you did good. But don’t do anything like this again, okay? This is not your job.”

  I grinned at him. Then I cringed. That hurt like fuck. I would not be smiling again any time soon. “You’re welcome.”

  “Don’t get cocky.”

  I started to stand up.

  “Hey,” he said, “where do you think you’re going?”

  “Home,” I said. “They said I didn’t have to go to the hospital, so I’m going to drive home.”

  “Drive?” piped up a voice behind us. We turned to see one of the paramedics shaking her head firmly. “You’re not driving,” she said.

  “I figured not,” said Pike. “That’s why I called your assistant to come drive you home.”

  “Brigit?” I said. “You didn’t.” She was going to be so pissed at me for lying to her.

  “I did.” He folded his arms over his chest, looking smug.

  “I’m going to kill you.”

  “If you tried to drive you’d kill yourself,” he said. “So, under the circumstances, I think I’ll take my chances.”

  I just glared at him.

  And that was when I spied Brigit hurrying across the parking lot. “Ivy! Ivy, Jesus, you have a lot of explaining to do.”

  I groaned. I was going to have to tell her everything.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Kellen McFarland looked just as creepy this time as the last time that I’d talked to him. He
gazed at me with dead, sallow eyes from behind the glass at the jail. I hadn’t necessarily wanted to talk to Kellen again. I thought maybe Odette or Farrah would be easier to get talking. But Kellen was the only one of the prisoners who was available to talk at that time, so I had to take what I could get.

  “I need you to go over what happened when you killed Tess Carver,” I said.

  He barely blinked. “Again? I already told you what we did.”

  “Yeah, the free-her-soul bit. I remember. Gave me nightmares.”

  “That what happened to your face? Nightmares?”

  Instinctively, my hand went to my bruises. I guessed I probably looked pretty bad, but it wasn’t going to stop me from working. I wouldn’t let the O’Shaunessys have the satisfaction of slowing me down. No way.

  Last night, on the way home, I’d spilled the whole story to Brigit, who’d been annoyed with me for keeping everything to myself, but grudgingly impressed with the outcome. She’d tried to get me to promise never to do anything like that again, but I wouldn’t do that.

  I shrugged. “You should see the other guy.”

  He laughed, and it wasn’t pleasant. When he laughed, his big horse teeth gaped out over his bottom lip. He looked positively demented. “Right. I guess you fell, then. Unless you’re in an abusive relationship.”

  “Tess Carver. How you killed her?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything. Every little detail. How’d you get her out there? You lie to her to convince her to come along?”

  “No,” he said, “we knocked her out.”

  Hmm. Really? “Before or after you got her out to the tree circle?”

  “Before,” he said. “She was unconscious the whole time. The Great Spirit wouldn’t take pleasure in her suffering, only her sacrifice.”

  Wow, that was pretty much down to the letter of Gunner’s little “sermons.” Too bad it was completely wrong in terms of what had actually happened to Tess. I smiled. “She was unconscious the whole time, you say?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “So, she was unconscious when you carved the symbols into her skin?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Who did that, by the way? You personally?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.”

  “Both of the symbols? You did both of them yourself?”

  “Yes.” He cocked his head at me, giving me the barest amount of expression to let me know he was puzzled. “Why are you asking me this? Is it important?”

  “Depends on your perspective,” I said. “I now know that you didn’t kill Tess Carver.”

  His brows drew together. “What are you talking about?”

  “That isn’t the way she died, Kellen. She wasn’t unconscious, and at least two different people carved her.”

  “How could you possibly know that?”

  “It’s obvious from her wounds. They were inflicted while she was awake and struggling.”

  “Oh.” Kellen looked down at his hands.

  And then I winced, because I realized that I’d just given him the correct answers to give the police when he was questioned. He could use this in trial now, and he’d be able to properly corroborate the evidence. Damn it. “Kellen?”

  He looked up at me.

  “Have you told this same story to the police yet?”

  He looked annoyed. “Yes.”

  I smiled. Good. They must know, then.

  “That’s why they still suspect Gunner, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Could be.” I shrugged.

  He leaned forward. “Look, Gunner can’t go to jail. He’s too important to the Clayton Society, to the farm. He’s the glue that holds that place together. We had to try to save him.”

  “Did he order you to confess?”

  “No, no. Of course not.” Kellen was disturbed at the thought. “Maybe some of the youngsters out there might take orders from him, but not us. Gunner’s our friend, and we were just trying to help him out.”

  “Because he killed Tess Carver.”

  Kellen looked down at his hands again.

  “What if he didn’t?” I said.

  He looked back up. “Are you recording this?”

  I held up my notepad. “I’m taking notes, but that’s all.”

  “Well, put down your pen and don’t write this down,” he said.

  I set my pen where he could see it. But he was being foolish. I was going to remember what he said. And besides, whatever he told me didn’t have much weight. I was only a private detective, not an actual police officer. What he said to me wasn’t admissible in court or anything as an accusation.

  “There’s no way that Gunner didn’t do it,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s the one who told us about that ritual.”

  “I know that,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean he did the ritual. He said that he didn’t mean for it to be performed in any actual way.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t think he did either,” said Kellen. “And then Tess turned up dead like that. We found her body, see? She was all mangled and ruined out there, and it was obvious what had been done to her. Obvious that Gunner had just gone too far with that Ocapotactu shit. I wanted to hide her, bury her so that no one would ever know what had happened to her. But the girls said we had to report it.”

  “The girls being Odette and Farrah?”

  “That’s right,” he said. “And once we’d decided that we were going to do that, then that’s when we knew that we’d have to confess to the crime. It’s a sacrifice that we’ve made for the good of the Clayton Society. Because Gunner is important, and we can’t lose him.”

  “If it was Gunner,” I said, “he didn’t act alone. Can you think of anyone that he might have been close enough with to commit this murder?”

  Kellen shook his head. “No, no. I’m not helping you take down another member of our community. Anyone who helped Gunner did it out of respect for him. They shouldn’t be held responsible.”

  “This is murder we’re talking about here. How can you think that it’s excusable?”

  He looked at his hands again. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  * * *

  Brigit and I spent the next day on the farm, questioning the people who lived there about who was the closest to Gunner. I could tell that Laura wasn’t pleased about it, because I was still shining the focus on her people, not outside the group. But she’d promised not to interfere or make comments. And she was paying me a lot of money to use my own judgment. So, I didn’t much care what Laura thought, not really.

  I wasn’t sold on the idea of Gunner having done this, but all the evidence thus far pointed to him, and I’d be an idiot if I didn’t follow the evidence all the way to its conclusion. Trying to make the evidence work another way would never lead us to the truth. Tess was owed the truth. I was going to find her murderers and make them pay. It was very important to me.

  Brigit had begged me to let her do some interviewing on her own, without me present, and I guessed that asking questions about who was close to Gunner was good practice for more important sort of interviews. Besides, she’d gotten that notebook from Natalie, proving to me that she wasn’t worthless on her own. So, I gave in and let her do what she pleased.

  We’d split up and been asking around for the entire morning. Now, I came upon her talking to Stella, the teenager we’d talked to before. They were engaged in an animated conversation, and I watched as Brigit wound up the conversation, telling Stella to contact us if she thought of anything else. Then Brigit sent the girl on her way, and came over to me, eyes shining. “Hey, Ivy.”

  “Hey,” I said. “You sure do have a way with that kid. She sings like a canary for you.”

  “Well, I got her talking about herself,” said Brigit, “and she opened right up. People like talking about themselves, you know.”

  I supposed that was true.

  “Anyway, she’s kind of an idiot,” said Brigit, “becau
se I asked her if she knew who was close to Gunner—really close—and she said that she was. Kind of incriminating herself.”

  “The last time we spoke, I thought she admitted she had a hopeless crush on him.”

  “Yeah.” Brigit nodded. “But apparently, in the interim, Stella has decided that she and her best friend Adeline are Gunner’s bosom buddies. He would tell them his deepest, darkest secrets and all of that.”

  I rolled my eyes. “She’s delusional about this, then.”

  “Well, she is a teenage runaway. She’s not got the best personal principles, I don’t suppose. She’s probably been through a lot. I figure that she sees Gunner as a kind of surrogate family member, and he’s all she’s got besides this friend of hers. So, she’d probably want to believe that he’s close.”

  “So, did you talk to this Adeline person too?”

  “Nah,” said Brigit. “I doubt either of them were Gunner’s accomplice. Besides, she’s not even on the farm anymore. Apparently, she didn’t like it here and went back to the shelter in town instead.”

  “Oh, okay,” I said. “Good work, Brigit.”

  She beamed. “You mean that?”

  “I do,” I said. “You’ve really got it together here. I’m impressed. I especially think you did a good job with Stella.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “Now,” I said, “wow me even more and tell me you’ve figured out who Gunner’s best friend is.”

  She sighed. “Sorry, wish I could.”

  “Damn it,” I said. “I’ve struck out too, I’ve got to admit. No one knows.”

  “Yeah, it’s weird,” she said. “Guy like that should have had a right-hand man or something, right? Even rulers have close confidantes. But Gunner doesn’t seem to have been closer to any one person than he was to another.”

  “That’s what I’m hearing,” I said. “People have thrown out some names, but they aren’t throwing out the same names. The only thing that does seem to be coming up again and again is Archer Whitney.”