Skin and Blond (Blond Noir Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  “Yes, that’s what people do.”

  “But it’s annoying,” I said. “I can’t think when that dog is barking. My job is all about thinking, so when that dog barks, it destroys my livelihood.”

  “You can’t break into people’s houses.”

  “And it’s not fair to the dog either,” I said. “She keeps that poor thing locked up in that apartment up there. She only takes the dog for one walk every day. Just one. I don’t know when the dog even gets a bathroom break. Most of the time, she’s just cooped up in that apartment.”

  “The dog is?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Miserable. And Kitty told me that if the dog messes up her furniture, she punishes the dog by putting her in that bathroom the next day. But I’m telling you that’s a stupid way to train a dog. Dogs don’t understand being punished the next day for something they did the day before. They don’t get it. So, she’s just torturing the poor animal, and it makes me sick.”

  Brigit knitted her eyebrows together. “I didn’t know you were such a dog person.”

  “I’m not,” I said.

  Suddenly, the door burst open.

  Startled, I turned toward the noise.

  Colin Pugliano and Derek O’Shaunessy were coming into the office, both of their faces sneering masks.

  Derek pointed at Brigit. “Grab her.”

  Colin seized Brigit, pulling her tight against his body, so that she was facing forward, and he was pinning her arms to her sides.

  Brigit’s eyes bulged.

  Derek advanced on me.

  “What’s going on?” I said. “Colin, what’s this about?”

  Derek caught me by the throat. “Come clean, bitch. What do you want with the family?”

  I couldn’t breathe. I scrabbled at his hand, trying to get him off of me. Derek wasn’t very smart, was he? If he wanted me to answer questions, he was going to have to let go of my neck and let me draw in air.

  As if reading my mind, Derek threw me backwards into the chairs in the waiting room area.

  I collided with them painfully, knocking them askew. I came to rest on the ground, chair legs surrounding me. I sucked in breath, and my lungs hurt. “What the hell?” I managed.

  “Hey,” said Colin. “I don’t want you putting your hands all over her, Derek. You said that I could—”

  “Hold the other one,” Derek threw over his shoulder. “This is business, and you haven’t made a commitment.”

  “Is that all it is?” said Colin. “Well, then, fine. I’m in. Just let me be the one to talk to her.”

  I pushed aside chairs and got to my feet. My entire body was trembling. “Talk,” I gasped. “That sounds like a good idea. Let’s talk.”

  Derek backhanded me.

  His knuckles stung against my cheek, and I staggered backwards, clutching myself.

  “The only time you speak is after you’ve been asked a question, got that?” said Derek. He turned to Colin. “Hold the other one.”

  I held up both of my hands in surrender. “Look, if you just let me know what’s going on—”

  Derek picked up a handful of my shirt and tossed me back into the chairs again.

  My back screamed in pain. This time, I didn’t get up right away. I let out a little moan and looked up at the ceiling. “At least let Brigit go. I don’t know what this is about, but I know it doesn’t have anything to do with her.”

  Derek knelt down in front of me. “You think we’re idiots, don’t you?”

  I was lying painfully on a half-collapsed chair. I shifted my weight and let myself topple onto the floor.

  “Answer the question.” Derek lifted his hand.

  I flinched.

  He didn’t hit me. “Speak when spoken to, and we won’t have any problems.”

  “You’re an idiot,” I managed, trying to sit up.

  This time Derek slapped me—open palm on the other cheek.

  I couldn’t help but cry out. I flinched away, and then I turned back to him, spitting out my words. “Look at the two of you, coming in here and slapping around two women who are half your size.”

  “Shut up,” said Derek. “See, we know it’s no coincidence that you started fucking Colin here.”

  I looked at Colin. “What?”

  “Yeah, we know who you are, bitch,” said Derek. “You’re a cop.”

  “No,” I said, and this time I managed to make it into a seated position. “I got fired from the force for sleeping around. I’m not a cop.”

  “Bullshit. That’s your cover story, sure, but you’re trying to infiltrate the family, and Colin is your way in.”

  I glared at him. “You really are an idiot.”

  Derek hit me again, harder this time.

  I cried out again. He’d gotten my nose, and the pain was radiating out through my sinuses. I clutched my face. Oh. Great. My nose was bleeding. Fuck.

  “You call him asking to talk to me about a case? You think we wouldn’t figure that out?” said Derek.

  I took my hand away from my face and looked at the blood on my fingers. It was so red. The sight of the blood made me panic. My heart started to race. What the hell were they going to do to me?

  One thing was apparent. Derek might be an idiot, but I was too, for thinking that I could manipulate my way inside the family and get information. That obviously was never going to happen.

  “I did want to talk about a case,” I managed. “It was all to try to find out what you know about Madison Webb.”

  Derek got to his feet. “Listen up, lady. You stay clear of Colin. You stay clear of Shamrock’s. You stay the hell out of our business. We’re not going to let you try to pin some bogus charges on us. We know who you are.” He kicked me—front of his shoe colliding with my chin.

  My head snapped back, agony splintering through my jaw and neck. I screamed.

  “You need to learn a lesson,” said Derek, and he kicked me again.

  I tried to curl up in a ball, to protect my body against the blows that were raining down on me, but I couldn’t escape him. His kicks came one after the other, tearing my sensitive flesh, bruising me, hurting me.

  I was sobbing. I couldn’t help it. It hurt, and I was terrified, and I didn’t care if it made me look weak. I was weak, and he wasn’t stopping. “Stop,” I cried out.

  Derek laughed. “You going to stay away from us?”

  “Yes,” I sobbed. “Stop, please.”

  Derek kicked me again anyway.

  I moaned.

  “Hey, man, she’s had enough,” said Colin.

  Derek ignored him.

  His foot came down on my head.

  Mercifully, as it turned out, because everything winked out, and I lost consciousness.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I awoke to someone shining a light in my eye. Instinctively, I shoved the light away.

  “Now, hold still,” said a gentle voice.

  I was still in my office, which was trashed, and the office was full of people. I was on a stretcher, and someone in a paramedic outfit was leaning over me.

  “Just testing your pupils,” he said. “Making sure you’re okay.”

  “Brigit,” I said.

  “I’m here.” She was behind the paramedic, watching. She didn’t look hurt.

  “She awake?” said another voice.

  Everything hurt. My whole body ached. I didn’t think I’d ever been in this much pain in my entire life.

  The voice belonged to a uniformed police officer. She crouched down next to me, holding a notepad. “Can you tell us who did this?”

  “I told you,” said Brigit. “It was Colin Pugliano and another guy. Colin called the guy Derek.”

  I couldn’t help but be impressed that Brigit had noticed Derek’s name in the middle of all of that commotion and confusion. She might actually have the makings of a good detective after all.

  “Derek?” said the uniform. “Derek O’Shaunessy?”

  I just groaned.

  “Well, what did t
hey want?” she asked me. “Why’d they do this to you? You have some business with them?” She gestured with her head back at Brigit. “This one says that one of them was one of your clients. You working for the O’Shaunessys now?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Wouldn’t put it past you is all,” muttered the uniform.

  Seriously? I didn’t even recognize this woman, but she knew me by reputation and was judging me while I was all banged up? In what universe was that fair?

  “Look, can’t this wait?” said the paramedic. “I haven’t finished examining her.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean to get in your way.” The uniform got to her feet and backed up, but she stayed close enough to hover over us, glaring down at me.

  The paramedic stuck the light back in my eye again.

  I winced away from it. “I did a job for Colin Pugliano, but I didn’t know he had connections to the family. Then, when I found out one of my cases had ties to the O’Shaunessys, I tried to use that connection to get information. But it didn’t go so well. I’m the victim here.”

  “Well, then,” said the uniform, “I suppose you’ll want to press charges.”

  “Of course she will,” said Brigit.

  I groaned again. Would pressing charges be worth it? What would happen to Derek for beating me up? Would he even do any jail time once the O’Shaunessy lawyers got through with the case?

  The uniform pressed her lips together. “That’s what I thought. You’re lying about this, Ivy Stern. You were always shifty.”

  The paramedic cleared his throat. “You’re upsetting my patient.”

  The uniform shrugged.

  The paramedic shone the light in my eye again.

  This time I didn’t stop him.

  * * *

  “Ivy?”

  I was in the hospital, and I hadn’t had any visitors besides Brigit, who’d seemed so white-faced and terrified, I’d convinced her to go home. She wanted to know if there was anyone she should call.

  I said there was no one.

  But now, someone was coming in to my room. I pushed myself up into a sitting position as the person came inside.

  It was Pike.

  He yanked a chair over to the bed and sat down. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  I shut my eyes. “I got cocky, that’s all.”

  “There’s all kinds of crazy talk at the station. People saying that you’re working with the O’Shaunessys. I been shutting them up as much as I can, telling people you’d never do that. I’m not wrong, am I?”

  “Of course I’m not working with the O’Shaunessys.” I glared at him. “Listen, Pike, the missing girl you sent over to me? She bought cocaine from Derek O’Shaunessy on a regular basis. I don’t think it’s a stretch to think that maybe he’s messed up in her disappearance.”

  Pike raised his eyebrows. “You think the O’Shaunessys are involved?”

  “Maybe they killed her. Maybe she saw something she wasn’t supposed to see. They sure as hell don’t have a problem using violence to get their message across.” I gestured to my body.

  “And what message were they trying to send you?”

  “Stay away from them.”

  “That’s probably wise.”

  I leaned my head back against the bed. “Yeah, well, there’s no way I’d be able to get in and investigate now. They wouldn’t let me come near them if I tried it. I fucked it all up. If I hadn’t been so damned cocky, then maybe—”

  “This isn’t your fault.”

  “I just kept thinking that if we could get the O’Shaunessys on a murder charge, really get one of them, it would set a precedent.”

  “Oh come on, you know how that goes. If Derek did do it, he wouldn’t go down for it. They’d have one of their flunkies cop to the murder—come in and confess, knowing all the right details, and we’d have no choice but to put the wrong guy away. Not that he’d be inside for too long, anyway. Overcrowding would push him out on early parole—”

  “This isn’t some dealer or some other mobster, though, Miles. This is a girl. A pretty young girl, and if we pinned that murder—”

  “Exactly why it’s probably not the O’Shaunessys,” he said. “They wouldn’t be so stupid.”

  “Maybe it was an accident.”

  “You don’t even know if it was a murder, Ivy. You don’t have a body.”

  “But that fits. They got rid of the body. Of course they did, because they didn’t mean to kill her.”

  “Well, they didn’t do a very good job trying to make it look good, did they? Don’t you think the O’Shaunessys would have enough knowhow to move her car, take her phone, maybe have someone use one of her credit cards before she dropped off the face of the planet?”

  Shit. Maybe he was right. It really didn’t sound like an O’Shaunessy job. After all, they had experience disappearing people. They wouldn’t have made this much of a mess of it. I twisted my hands together in my lap.

  Pike’s voice was quiet. “Hey, I want to nail the O’Shaunessys as much as you do. But you have to realize you’re not in a great position to take them on. You’re on your own. You don’t have the department behind you.”

  I chewed on my lip. Generally, I would have glared at him or made some kind of smart remark about being able to take care of myself, but it seemed fairly obvious that I couldn’t take care of myself, because here I was in the hospital, beaten all to hell. “I just thought that I could handle it.”

  “I know what you did,” he said. “You got an idea in your head, and you couldn’t let go of it. You had to try it out. You got focused on it, and there was no way to deter you from it. I know that about you. Hell, I love that about you.”

  My head snapped up at that word.

  He winced.

  I looked at the ceiling.

  “I don’t like seeing you like this,” he muttered.

  I didn’t say anything.

  He reached out and took my hand.

  Handholding was a big deal to Pike. He didn’t like touching people in general. Touch was overwhelming to him. A brush of a hand or a quick hug was full of dizzying sensation to Pike. It was so much—too much. The touch was unpleasant, and he didn’t like it. So I appreciated what it meant that he was holding my hand.

  We didn’t speak for several moments. We simply sat together, touching.

  “Try to be careful, please,” he finally said, his voice only a little louder than a whisper. “And if you’ve got something on the O’Shaunessys, come to me before doing anything like this.”

  “I can’t always do that,” I said. “We don’t work together anymore.”

  “But I’ve always got your back.” He gazed into my eyes.

  The stare was so intense that I had to look away.

  “Aw, hell, Stern, promise me you won’t get yourself into a mess like this again.”

  “I can’t make promises like that.” I stared at our intertwined hands.

  He sighed. “I shouldn’t have come by the other night like I did.”

  “We don’t have to talk about that.” I swung my gaze up to meet his again, trying to put into my expression that I didn’t blame him for anything.

  “Look, I was just in a mood,” he said. “If it was anyone else, I wouldn’t have come right out and said that stuff. But with you, I’ve always felt like I could say whatever it was I was thinking. You’re not like other women, where I have to watch every other word, because they’ll misinterpret it. You’re different.”

  I nodded. “I know. You’re different too.”

  “Anyway, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s really okay.”

  He took his hand away, studied his knuckles. “When I found out this all started because you were sleeping with that Colin guy, it made me—”

  “I know.” I was mortified. I always tried to keep that side of myself from him. I knew he didn’t like it. Even when we were dating, he’d given me permission to take care of my urges, but he’d asked me not to discuss it wit
h him. He understood why I had to do it, but it bothered him.

  For a long time, that made me angry, because it seemed to me that if he could get jealous, he should be able to figure out how to fuck me himself.

  But after he did try once for me, and I saw how painful and miserable even the attempt made him, all the anger melted away. I only felt sorry for him. I felt sorry for both of us.

  He took a deep breath, still not looking at me. “I still feel things, even if I shouldn’t, I guess. But I do understand that it wouldn’t work between us, Ivy. That it couldn’t work.”

  I swallowed. “I know.”

  He got up from his chair and put it back against the wall where he’d gotten it. “Take care of yourself, okay?”

  * * *

  “Are you sleeping?”

  I opened my eyes. Oh, geez, I was still in the hospital. There was a woman bending over me. She was probably the one who’d spoken. I squinted at her.

  “Did I wake you?” she said.

  Oh shit. I backed away from her, scrambling up the bed. “Rhonda, what are you doing here?”

  I couldn’t think of one good reason why Colin Pugliano’s cheating wife would come to see me in the hospital. She and I had never even officially met. All I’d done was take pictures of her kissing another man.

  “It’s okay.” Her eyes widened in what I guess she thought was a reassuring expression, but she was wearing so much makeup that she just looked painted and strange.

  I clutched the covers in front of my body like a shield. “Why are you here?”

  “I wanted to say thank you,” she said. She pointed. “I brought flowers.”

  Was she crazy? “Thank you for what?”

  “For helping me get away from Colin,” she said.

  “Okaaay,” I said, still keeping the covers up.

  She let out a huge sigh. “You wouldn’t believe what it was like being married to him. At first I thought he was sweet, you know. He seemed so into me, and he followed me all over the place, saying we had a connection and that he never felt like this about anyone ever before and a bunch of other stuff that seemed really romantic.”

  Actually, that sounded a little bit familiar.

  “But,” she continued, “after we were together, he got really different. It was only annoying stuff at first. If I was five minutes late getting home from work, he’d call me and want to know where I was. He didn’t like it if I went anywhere without him, and he’d kick up a big fuss about me going out with my girlfriends.”