Out for Blond Page 24

  I took a deep breath. Focus, Stern, I told myself. “Did you know Tess Carver?”

  “The lady that got killed?” he said. “Well, sure, I knew her. A little, I mean. I wasn’t close friends with her or anything.”

  “But you argued with her.”

  He furrowed his brow. “Who have you been talking to?”

  “Is it true? Did you have a disagreement with Tess Carver?”

  “I guess I just thought she was being kind of stupid and cruel, taking little Joey away from his dad like that. I mean, she knew the score when she hooked up with Gunner—”

  “Well, Gunner’s intimate with a lot of women, now, isn’t he?”

  Jagger sighed. “I guess so. But it’s not like he’s forcing them against their will or whatever. They’re happy to be with him. And he takes care of his kids. I mean, I know that first hand.”

  I cocked my head to one side. “You do?”

  “Well, yeah,” he said. “I mean, Gunner’s my dad.”

  I tried not to show it, but as he said that shock waves went through my body. Here it was, the piece that made everything fit. This was Gunner’s kid. Someone that he could be close to, someone that he might trust to keep secrets for him. And it was too perfect that they were each other’s alibis, now wasn’t it?

  “The night Tess was murdered, it was just you and Gunner together?” I said.

  “Yeah. You don’t still suspect him, do you?” Then a shadow crossed over his face. “Wait. You don’t suspect me, do you?”

  I only crossed my arms over my chest.

  Alarm flashed through his eyes. “Hey, that argument I had with her, it wasn’t anything serious. I wasn’t that mad at her, you know? I only was trying to get her to let my little half-brother spend some time here. I wanted to get to know him, and I wanted Joey to know his dad. That’s all.”

  “You call Gunner by his first name. Why’s that?” Maybe they weren’t as close as I had imagined.

  Jagger shrugged. “I guess because I didn’t always know he was my dad. My mother kept it from me. Didn’t want me lording it over the other kids on the farm. Some kids that were older than me—my half-brothers and sisters—they all traveled together in a little pack, and they acted like they were better than everyone else because Gunner was their dad. Then when they got older, they started getting in trouble. Sneaking off the farm to go get drunk, getting into drugs, things like that. My mom didn’t want that for me, so she waited until I was older to tell me. I was always just in the habit of calling him Gunner.”

  “So, Gunner didn’t claim you as a child.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” he said. “He came by a lot to see me, and we did stuff together, but I just figured it was because he was being nice. My mom was the one who wanted it kept secret.”

  I was getting off track here. “Okay, so you and Gunner are close. That’s what you’re saying?”

  He shrugged. “I guess.”

  “Why don’t you just go over what happened that night with you two again.”

  “What happened? Nothing happened. We were just hanging out together.”

  “Playing guitar.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “All night?”

  “Well, not really all night. I mean, we went to sleep eventually, but we were out pretty late. Past midnight, I guess.”

  “Where?” I said.

  “Where? Here on the farm.”

  “The farm’s a big place. Were you in the main house? Were you in the fields?”

  “No,” he said. “We were, uh, you know out by my place. I have a little house—just two rooms. I built it myself. We were in the woods behind it.”

  “You were out in the woods behind your house playing guitar until after midnight? Just playing guitar the whole time.”

  “Well, we stopped and talked sometimes,” he said.

  “You did.”

  “Yeah, and we looked up at the night sky, at the stars and the moon. It’s beautiful out there.”

  The moon! “What phase was the moon in that night?” I said.

  Panic crossed his face. “Phase?”

  “You were staring at the moon, weren’t you? Surely you remember if it was a full moon or a crescent moon or a sliver?”

  He swallowed.

  “Jagger?” I said. “You do remember, don’t you? You noticed that, didn’t you?”

  His face was turning red. “Uh…”

  “What did the moon look like? Was it full?”

  “It wasn’t full,” he said. “I don’t think. I think it was like a crescent. I don’t really remember.”

  “But you said you were staring up at the night sky, at the moon. Were you staring at the moon or not?”

  He squared his shoulders. “A crescent moon. Not full, not a sliver. Somewhere in the middle.”

  I smiled at him. That should be easy to check out.

  * * *

  “So,” said Brigit, hovering behind me as I glared at my phone, which was refusing to load search results on the browser. “Was he right about the moon?”

  “Hold on,” I said.

  She cast her gaze heavenward. “What is taking you so long? Jesus, I should just google it myself.”

  “You can sure try,” I said. “I think the problem is that I’m not getting any service. I must be in one of those little spots where the phones don’t work.”

  Brigit had whipped out her phone. “Oh, I think you’re right.”

  I began walking to my left, holding my phone out to see if any bars appeared.

  Brigit went the other way.

  After a few seconds, she called, “Any luck?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think…” Then my phone sprang to life, loading the results. I clicked on the first website and read.

  “Ivy, I’m still not getting a sign—”

  “Aha!” I said. “He’s wrong. Completely wrong. There was no moon that night. It was a new moon, completely and totally dark. He shouldn’t have said anything about looking at the moon. He’s lying.”

  Brigit hurried over to me. “We found it, then. We found out the answer.”

  I grinned. “We did indeed.”

  She gave me a hug. “I knew it. I knew that if we came back here and dug some more, we’d get it all sorted out. I knew that all wasn’t lost.”

  I hugged back for a minute, feeling proud of both of us for getting this all together. Finally. Then the reality of what we’d discovered sort of crashed onto me, and I released her.

  “What?” she said.

  My shoulders slumped. “We’ve got to quit the case.”

  “What do you mean? We’ve solved the case.”

  “Well, yeah, but we’ve basically proved that Gunner did it. Which is completely not what we were hired to do. When I tell Laura this, she’s not going to be happy.” I really wasn’t looking forward to that conversation.

  “How did we prove that Gunner did it? I thought this was about Jagger.”

  “Jagger and Gunner are each other’s alibis,” I said. “He’s lying about that, so that means we don’t know where either Gunner or Jagger were that night. But odds are, they were together, and they were killing Tess Carver. Maybe it wasn’t Gunner’s idea. Maybe Jagger had an argument with Tess that went too far, and he roughed her up a little. Maybe he went to his dad for help, and they had to kill her to get her to keep quiet about it, so they decided to do the ritual with her—kill two birds with one stone. I don’t know. Or maybe it was all Gunner’s thing. He wanted to do the ritual, thought Tess was the perfect victim, and recruited Jagger to help. Whatever the case, this all points right to him.”

  Brigit nodded. “Yeah, I see what you’re saying.”

  We were quiet.

  “Well,” said Brigit, “are you going to go and quit now?”

  “Now?”

  “We’re here on the farm,” she said. “Otherwise, you’ll have to make a separate trip out here later.”

  I turned and looked over to the main house,
which was a few hundred feet away. I thought about giving Laura the news. She’d be so upset. I thought about trying to confront Gunner, who I now knew was actually a murderer. Geez, I sure knew how to pick ‘em.

  I shook my head. “Yeah, I’m not ready to face anyone quite yet. Let’s just go. I’ll figure it out tomorrow.”

  “You sure?”

  I nodded. “Definitely.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  When we got back to the office, I sent Brigit home and closed early. I wasn’t in the mood to do any more work today. I didn’t know which upset me worse—that Gunner had tricked me into sleeping with him or that he’d tricked me into believing he wasn’t guilty. I should never have taken this case in the first place.

  I’d already been paid some of what the Clayton Society owed me, so I at least hadn’t wasted all my time for nothing. I didn’t know if they’d pay me for the rest of my services, since I hadn’t really delivered on what they wanted. They wanted Gunner cleared. But there was no way to clear him. He was a killer.

  I shuddered, thinking of his hands on my skin, his mouth on my mouth.

  Ugh.

  By all rights, the crappiness of the situation should have meant that I went to The Remington, stat, and got myself waist deep in some serious drinking. But I just wasn’t in the mood. For one thing, I’d hit the sauce pretty hard the night before. Of course, that typically wouldn’t matter much to me. I drank practically every night anyway. But I was still a little hungover, and I wasn’t really in the mood to be around other people. The bar wasn’t a place to be alone.

  And I didn’t need to start drinking alone, that was for sure. I had enough problems as it was.

  So, I went back to my apartment and settled in to watch TV. I ordered pizza from a place in town, and devoured half of the pie myself. It was delicious.

  Then, feeling sated and sleepy, I was happy to get into my pajamas early and watch more TV in bed. But before I quite got there, my phone rang.

  It was Pike. “Are you drunk already?”

  “I’m actually not drinking tonight,” I said. Man, what were the odds that he’d call me tonight? The last time I tried to not drink, he’d showed up and everything had gotten confusing, and I’d ended up having to go out and get wasted. So help me, if he upset me again that bad, I was going to be royally pissed off. I really didn’t feel like going anywhere tonight, and I wasn’t sure that the other half of the pizza was going to be enough to make me feel better after Pike got through with me.

  “You’re not drinking? You?”

  “I don’t drink every night,” I said.

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Well, sometimes I don’t.” I glared at the phone. “Did you seriously just call me to ask if I was drunk? Have you taken up shaming as a new hobby?”

  “No.” He was quiet. “I…” A big sigh. Then, when he spoke again, his voice was an urgent whisper. “Come over.”

  I was lying on my couch, but now I sat up straight. “What? What did you say?”

  “You heard me.” Still that same whisper. “I need… I want to see you. Please.” There was something in his voice, something that I wasn’t used to hearing from him. Pike was always together and appropriate. It was rare for him to seem so out of control.

  “Give me twenty minutes,” I said and hung up.

  I looked like shit. I’d been pigging out on pizza and lounging around. Now, I needed to get to Pike’s place and I didn’t want to look slouchy.

  I wasn’t exactly high maintenance when it came to my appearance. I generally didn’t bother much with makeup or with doing much with my hair. That didn’t mean that I had no concern for how I looked, though. Just that I had more concern for sleep than for looking good. So, if it was a choice between getting up earlier to put on makeup or sleeping for ten more minutes, I always chose sleeping. Anyway, I surveyed myself in the mirror, and decided I looked sloppy.

  I quickly changed into different clothes—a pair of fitted jeans and a blouse. Then I ran a wet comb through my hair and searched my bathroom for some kind of hair product that would make me look good.

  I ended up sweeping a tiny bit of gel over my hair to tame my flyaway frizzes, and calling it good enough.

  I thought about putting on makeup, but that would be too weird. Pike was used to seeing me without makeup. He’d wonder why I’d bothered. Or worse, he’d think it was for him—which it was. But that would put us on uneven ground. He’d know that he had the advantage, that I was trying to please him…

  Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing?

  Whatever. I didn’t have time to think about this.

  I ran to my car and sped off for Renmawr and Pike’s place.

  When I got there, his house was dark. There were no lights on in the windows to indicate that someone was home. Worried that I must have misunderstood him before, I called him.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “I’m at your house,” I said. “But there aren’t any lights on—”

  “I’m in the bedroom,” he said, his voice ragged. “The front door’s open. Just come in. Come find me. Please.”

  A little thrill went through me at the tone of his voice, at how insistent he was. Pike was different than usual. Pike was… well, he was sexy.

  I did as he said, opening the door and going back through his darkened house to the bedroom. I knew my way around his place, because I’d spent a lot of time there when we were dating. Pike generally kept his house clean and neat—impeccable, really, like a museum. But I couldn’t see the house in the darkness. Not his polished floors or scrubbed counters or vacuumed rugs.

  The bedroom door was open a few inches. I paused outside of it, my heart beating fast inside my chest. “Miles?”

  “Ivy.” The door swung open the rest of the way, to reveal Miles there in a bathrobe, a tumbler glass in his hand. I could smell the liquor wafting out of it. “I’ve been trying to work up my courage. I’ve been trying to…” He swallowed.

  I bit down on my bottom lip. I suddenly felt shy and nervous. I’d been in all kinds of compromising situations with all kinds of men, but something about this felt very different. I felt vulnerable, and that wasn’t typical for me.

  He stepped back from the doorway to let me come in.

  I stepped inside.

  We looked at each other. He looked incredibly gorgeous to me. He was classically handsome, like something from an old black-and-white movie. The bathrobe and the drink only served to enhance the effect.

  He set down his drink on the bedside table.

  I dragged my teeth over my bottom lip.

  He reached for me, one hand snaking around my waist, and he tugged me against him.

  I let out a shaking breath. My whole body was alive with tingles. I was filled with anticipation, and I was unsteady.

  He held me firmly against him, but when he touched me, his fingers were trembling, and he was clumsy as he pushed aside my shirt.

  The ineptitude speared my heart somewhere. Tenderness for him shot through me, and I put my hand against his cheek, suddenly overwhelmed with what was happening.

  “Ivy,” he choked. “I want—”

  “I know,” I soothed, and I kissed him.

  * * *

  So, I said before that I never felt like sex was much of a bigger deal than dancing. Two bodies close together, making each other feel good. That was the extent of it.

  But this…

  Miles was a virgin. He was nervous, and he was blundering. He didn’t know what he was doing, and that should have taken away from the experience. I mean, if you’d asked me if being with a man who was inexperienced was something I thought I’d enjoy, I would have said no.

  But his lack of finesse didn’t make it bad.

  It wasn’t… it wasn’t bad at all.

  I’d never felt anything like it. I know I said that having sex always left me feeling intact afterward, that it wasn’t like my high school friend Mary Anne had said, and I wasn’t giving pieces of myself awa
y when I did it.

  But what happened between Miles and me affected me deeply. It wasn’t like anything that had ever happened to me. Miles was inept, bumbling. His hands were shaking, and he seemed terrified of my body, terrified of taking the next step. But he kept taking it, kept pushing us forward. There was an eagerness underneath his terror, something almost boyish. It was endearing. It tugged at my emotions, and I found myself swept away by it—by him.

  He kept apologizing.

  I told him to stop saying he was sorry.

  When it was happening, when we were… making love… we were both quiet. There were no exclamations of ecstasy, no “yeah, right there”s or pointed moans. Just our breath, a little labored. We were breathing at the same time.

  It made me feel like I’d lost myself. Not a piece of myself. All of myself. I’d been sucked into this alternate universe in which my body was bonded to Miles’s body and we were together. More together than I’d ever been. Even though there was nothing different about the way that we were having sex than the way that I’d had sex with countless other men. Even though the way we were having sex should have been worse than all my other experiences, because Miles didn’t know where to touch me, didn’t know how to touch me, didn’t even seem comfortable touching me.

  But yet, it was powerful.

  And when it was over, and we were lying next to each other in Miles’s bed, it was as if I had lost something. I mean, I must have, because I felt incomplete now that he wasn’t inside me. So, he must have, somehow, taken something imperceptible away from me.

  I felt as if someone had wrapped iron bands around my heart. I felt as if they were tightening.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  But I didn’t move. I wanted to be close to him. I didn’t want him to go away. I thought that if I were any farther away from him, I might just die.

  I turned on my side, burrowing my naked body into his, wanting our skin touching everywhere. Wanting never to let him go.

  His arms came around me.

  I pressed my face into his chest.

  “Sorry,” he said, and his voice rumbled in his chest, making my bones vibrate.