Born Under a Blond Sign Read online

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “He’s not married,” she said. “At least, he files his taxes as single, and you’d have to be an idiot not to claim that tax break, right?”

  “Not married,” I mused. “Then why did he have a tan line where a wedding ring would go?”

  “Don’t know that,” said Eden.

  “Do you have an address for him?”

  “Sure do.” She rattled it off.

  “Thanks.” I scribbled it down. “Listen, Eden, you’ve known me for a long time.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “What’s up? That sounded like the opening to a particularly penetrating discussion.”

  “No, it’s nothing important. It’s just, would you say I had a, you know, problem with, uh, men?”

  “You mean do I think you’re a sex addict?”

  Eden knew me so well.

  “Yeah, I guess that about covers it.”

  “Well, sweetie, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with sleeping with lots of men. If you like it, and you’re happy, no big deal. At one point in time, when we were in college, I thought you were happy about your choices.”

  “I am happy.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes,” I said, but I could hear the waver in my voice.

  “I think that you… I don’t know… feel like you have to sleep with men. I used to think you had something to prove, that you were doing it to level the gender playing field or something, but the longer I’ve known you, the more that I realize you don’t know why you have to do it. But you do have to, don’t you?”

  I let that sit for a second, trying to figure out how to answer her. Then I muttered, “On second thought, let’s not talk about this.”

  “Oh come on, Ivy, you never talk about this stuff. You keep it all inside—”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I don’t have to do anything. I sleep with guys because I like it. End of discussion.”

  She sighed. “Okay, fine. But if you decide you want to talk—”

  “I’ve got to go check out Mr. Mercer for Brigit right now.”

  “Sure you do.”

  We got off the phone pleasantly enough, but I could sense that I’d disappointed her, and that made me feel like crap. That was the worst thing about having so much sex. The way everyone seemed to look at me like I was soiled and damaged. Eden usually didn’t do that, and she wasn’t doing that now. But I now knew that she thought something was wrong with me.

  Great.

  Did everyone think something was wrong with me?

  No. Crane didn’t. Crane Drakely, my drinking buddy, fuck buddy, and confidante. He thought I was just fine the way I was. Of course, that could easily be because Crane was just as screwed up as I was.

  I didn’t want to keep thinking about this, but, of course, I knew the thoughts would linger as long as I wasn’t actively driving them out. I needed to get busy, to occupy my brain with something besides my own stupid life and problems.

  So, I left the office, got in my car, and went to the address that Eden gave me for Kent Mercer.

  Kent lived in a house that had been carved up into apartments. His was on the first floor. There was a car in the driveway, but I didn’t know if that belonged to him or not, since there were two apartments upstairs. So, I watched the place for about ten minutes. There were no obvious signs of activity, so I moved in closer.

  I checked the windows, looking inside.

  Didn’t seem like anyone was home.

  I picked the lock on the front door and let myself inside.

  The apartment was only two rooms. Well, three, counting the bathroom, which was barely big enough to be counted as a room. It held a stand-up shower, a tiny sink, and a toilet. The shower was stained in what looked like twenty years of soap scum and lime scale. That stuff wouldn’t be coming off easily.

  The kitchen was pretty large, but not in any usable way. All of the appliances were along the far wall, the refrigerator and stove flanking the sink. On either side, there was a tiny bit of counter space. Then the rest of the room was an empty expanse of space. The walls were bare and so was the floor, except for a rickety table smack dab in the middle. The table only had one chair, and it didn’t match. It was one of those fold-up-able camping chairs. The kind that has mesh drink holders in the arms.

  One chair. Didn’t seem like this guy was coming home to anyone.

  I opened up the refrigerator.

  Didn’t seem like anyone was cooking in this utterly terribly designed kitchen anyway. It was glutted with takeout containers. Pizza. Chinese. Indian.

  The other room was both the living room and the bedroom. It had a couch and chair across from a television set and then a bed in the far corner.

  A single bed.

  In between was a mass of canvases. One was even set up on an easel, half finished. The paintings were of nuts and bolts and machinery. One was a very close up of a rusty screwdriver. Weird.

  Yup. If Kent Mercer had ever been married, he wasn’t now. I couldn’t see a woman living in this place with him. It was a total bachelor pad, and not the fun kind.

  I wasn’t sure about the ring on Kent’s finger. Maybe he’d been married, and now, in the throes of divorce, he had settled in this sad little apartment until he got himself on his feet. Maybe the ring hadn’t been a wedding ring but something else. Whatever the case, he was clearly the starving artist type, and I wasn’t sure if he was good enough for Brigit.

  Well, he obviously wasn’t starving, not with all that takeout in the fridge.

  Anyway, he wasn’t rolling in dough.

  But he didn’t seem to be married.

  I’d keep digging, but maybe he wasn’t the jerk that I’d originally thought.

  * * *

  When I got back to the office, Kitty Richards was waiting by the door.

  “You!” she said. “You’re the only one who could possibly be responsible for this.”

  I gave her wide innocent eyes. “Hi there, Kitty. What seems to be the problem? I haven’t broken into your apartment recently, no matter what it is you say. There’s no way I could have found a way around that alarm.”

  That wasn’t strictly true. I had actually contemplated if it was worth the trouble to try to figure out a way to disarm the alarm. I decided it wasn’t.

  She folded her arms over her chest. Kitty was not exactly a small woman. She was older and, well, fat, so her arms were like enormous sausages bulging out of her sleeves.

  Generally, I don’t like to look disparagingly on people who are overweight or obese. I watched this documentary about how our bodies fight tooth and nail to regain weight once we’ve lost it. It’s like a survival thing, something coded into our DNA from the days when we were hunters and gatherers. Basically, it’s much harder to become a thin person after you’ve been a fat person than it is to simply remain a thin person. I wasn’t a super thin person, but I wasn’t overweight or anything either. I figured that it wasn’t fair to make fun of people, considering I had no idea what it might be like to be an obese person.

  But Kitty Richards was horrible in every way, and so I would pick apart anything about her that I could. So, she was fat. She was disgustingly fat. She was a blimp, an ogre, a whale.

  “You know what the problem is,” said Kitty. “You called the ASPCA to investigate my little Fluffy.”

  “The ASPCA?” I tried to look surprised.

  “Don’t give me that,” she growled. “You’re horrible. A completely terrible person. Why you want to make my life so difficult—”

  “Why do you want to make your dog’s life so difficult?” I said.

  “I’m good to Fluffy.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I guess you won’t be anymore, though, will you? Since they took her away.”

  “Oh, don’t be ridiculous. They saw that the living environment for Fluffy was just fine, and they left. They apologized for the trouble they’d caused me.”

  “They didn’t take the dog?” Regan, I though
t in my head.

  “No, they didn’t,” said Kitty. “And you knew they wouldn’t. You couldn’t possibly think that I was actually being cruel to little Fluffy. You did it to get at me, because you’re vindictive and awful.”

  “I did it because there’s no reason to keep a dog in a tiny bathroom like that! It is abuse, even if the ASPCA doesn’t agree, and you should be ashamed of yourself for doing something so cruel to a little, helpless animal.”

  “I don’t abuse her. I love Fluffy.”

  “You have a funny way of showing it.”

  “You don’t care about my dog. You just want her to shut up. It’s about noise for you.”

  “Maybe it started out that way,” I said, “but it’s more than that now. That little dog deserves better than you.”

  Kitty sneered at me, taking a breath to say something else. But before she could, she was overcome by a fit of coughing.

  I waited for it to pass.

  It didn’t.

  She kept coughing for an agonizingly long time. Long enough that I actually started patting her on the back, because I was beginning to think she was never going to stop, and it seemed like the thing to do.

  Eventually, the coughs began to subside. She backed away, gasping for breath.

  “Kitty, are you okay?” I said.

  But she didn’t say anything. She just toddled down the hallway, still emitting the occasional cough. Then she disappeared into the stairwell.

  I furrowed my brow. Huh. Weird.

  * * *

  The candlelight vigil for the victims of the shooting was being held on campus at twilight. There were separate little areas for each of the five victims. Noticeably missing, of course, was any area for Gilbert. As the killer, he didn’t warrant any remembrance.

  If Gilbert was really innocent, I’d set that all right. If he’d been just as much a victim as everyone else, then he would get the respect he deserved in death. It was important to find out what we could, to do our best to clear his name.

  That was one of the reasons we’d come to the candlelight vigil. We wanted to talk to the friends of these kids and try to figure out what they were like. We wanted to gather evidence of their possible drug habits, how likely it was that the dealer would have been twitchy around them, things like that.

  But neither Brigit nor I had started talking to anyone yet, because we weren’t entirely sure how to talk to people about those sorts of things at a memorial.

  “Maybe,” I was saying, “we can just sort of take note of who we want to talk to now and run them all down later.”

  “Yeah,” said Brigit. “That sounds good.”

  “Of course,” I said, “that’s a lot of running around, and they’re all right here now, so if we could just figure out a way to approach them…”

  Brigit shrugged at me helplessly. “I got nothing.”

  “Come on, there’s got to be a way. I wouldn’t have suggested we come here if there wasn’t a way.”

  “I assumed you had a plan. You are the detective, you know.”

  “Right,” I muttered.

  We stood toward the back and watched. At each little area, the close friends and family members stood in front of heaps of flowers and candles and pictures. Other people milled about, holding candles, depositing keepsakes in the heaps.

  “So,” I said, “we’ll watch for someone who visits all five and then talk to that person,” I said. “Because they’ll know if all of them were druggies.”

  “Every single person here is going to all five,” said Brigit.

  “That can’t be true,” I said. “Is that true?” The more I watched, the more I realized that she was right. Well, I didn’t think talking to family members made much sense. College students often hid their proclivities from their parents. Best friends might know, sure. But how to separate the friends from the parents? “Maybe,” I said, “we can pose as counselors, employed by the college, and then ask the friends to come with us while we ask them a few questions. You think that would work?”

  Brigit brightened. “Actually, that’s great. But do you think I look too young to be a counselor? Don’t psychiatrists have to go to four more years of school?”

  “You could be a psychologist,” I said. “Stop overthinking this. If you say you’re official, and you act official, people believe you. Easy as that.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Good, we’ll start with Charlene Jarrett, over there.” I pointed. And then I squinted. Holy shit, was that who I thought it was? Was that Derek O’Shaunessy standing behind the heap of flowers along with Charlene’s family?

  “Ivy,” said Brigit. “Is that…?”

  Derek wasn’t the only O’Shaunessy over there, now that I was looking. The area was practically an O’Shaunessy family reunion.

  The O’Shaunessys were the Irish mob family in Renmawr. Derek and I had a bit of a history, considering he’d beaten me up. Twice. He was always trying to send a message to me, tell me not to get involved in the workings of his family. And no matter what he did to me, I was determined to take the O’Shaunessys down. I’d had a grudge against them ever since they ruined one of our best murder cases by infiltrating the department and killing the witness we had in custody. The O’Shaunessys were the biggest reason that Renmawr wasn’t a nice place to live. I wanted to stop them, and I would.

  “That’s Derek O’Shaunessy,” said Brigit. “And he’s crying.”

  “I can’t believe I didn’t realize this before,” I said. “Jarrett. Charlene Jarrett.”

  “Realize what?”

  “Seamus O’Shaunessy, head of the family? His sister Catherine married a guy named Michael Jarrett, a lawyer. Jarrett went to work for the family right away, and all his sons and grandsons did as well.”

  “So, Charlene is probably like his granddaughter or something? The granddaughter of the big boss?”

  “Oh, she definitely is,” I said. I furrowed my brow. Maybe we’d been going about this case all wrong.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Brigit was peeling the label off her hard cider. “So, anyway, then we left the candlelight vigil, because Ivy is afraid of Derek O’Shaunessy.”

  “That is not why we left,” I said. We were sitting at a table in the back of The Remington with my friend Crane Drakely. He was an English professor at the college. I usually told him all about whatever case I was working on. He was my sounding board. Of course, Brigit had come to fill that role for me, but I didn’t want Crane to feel left out. So, together, Brigit and I were telling him everything we knew about the case.

  “Well, you’re afraid of him aren’t you?” said Brigit. “I’m afraid of him. He keeps hitting you.”

  “I’m not afraid of Derek O’Shaunessy,” I said. “We left because I think there might be more to this thing than we’d originally thought, and I wanted to think that through.” I turned to Crane. “With you. I wanted a fresh perspective. What do you think?”

  “Well, you should have come to me right away,” he said. “Most of these kids that died were juniors, and I was teaching English 101 when they were freshman. It was before I got tenure. Anyway, I know four of the kids that died.”

  “Including Gilbert?” I said.

  “Nah, I never met that kid,” said Crane. “But Charlene Jarrett? I taught her.”

  “You did?” I said. “And what was she like?”

  “Typical spoiled little rich girl,” he said. “Thought she was entitled to get a good grade even if she didn’t put in the work. Missed a lot of class. Once I think she might have come to class wasted, but it might just have been the flu. She ran out in the middle of the lecture, and I think she was going to throw up.”

  “Wasted, like drunk?” I asked.

  “If you’re asking if I think she did drugs, the answer is yes,” said Crane. “But then almost all of the kids at the college are doing ecstasy. There is so much of that stuff.”

  “From the O’Shaunessys, right?” I said.

  “Yeah, I do
n’t think so,” said Crane. “I think there’s a different source for most of it.”

  “Hmm.” I tapped my chin. Could Professor X actually be real? I could hardly wrap my mind around that. Was the sassafras farm real too?

  Brigit spoke up. “Why do you think there might be more to this case?”

  “Well, because Charlene is an O’Shaunessy,” I said. “Maybe this whole thing is about her, not Gilbert at all.”

  “Her?” said Brigit. “I don’t understand.”

  “She’s an O’Shaunessy. Maybe that dealer killed all those kids to cover up the fact that he’d killed her.”

  “With Gilbert’s gun?” said Brigit.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Good point.” I took a drink of my beer.

  Crane leaned forward. “Well, maybe he didn’t know what he was getting into, but when he saw the O’Shaunessy girl, he snapped.”

  “Or maybe he thought he was being set up,” I said. “Maybe her presence made him panic.”

  “So, then he grabbed the gun from Gilbert?” said Brigit, looking confused.

  “Yeah,” I said. “He saw the gun, and he had to get it away from him.”

  “Because,” said Crane, “he feared for his life. There’s an O’Shaunessy, there’s a gun, and that spells trouble, I figure.”

  “Unless he worked for the O’Shaunessys,” I said. “Most dealers do, don’t they?”

  “I don’t know, he doesn’t seem like the type,” said Brigit.

  “How would you know?” I said.

  “You forget that until about a year ago, I was attending Keene College,” she said. “I helped you find that Cori Donovan person, remember? So, it’s not like I don’t know about drugs on campus. And O’Shaunessy dealers are sort of distinctive. This guy doesn’t seem like the type.”

  “Well,” I said, “we need to talk to him again.”

  * * *

  “Look, you guys have to stop harassing me,” said Bix. He was standing in one of the outdoor quads at Keene College, and he was wearing a backpack. He looked just like a normal student. “I’m heading to class right now. Got to get an education.”

  Oh. Well, apparently, he was a student.

  “We’re not harassing you,” I said. “We just need to ask you a few questions.”