by Misty Simon
I went back to twiddling my thumbs, studiously avoiding looking around, when my cell phone shrieked through the interior of the car. My bladder wasn’t going to be able to handle much more of this, to be honest. Clenching my hands together, I forced myself to ignore the ringing phone—no small feat, let me tell you. I knew without a doubt it would be my dad, and if I answered, he wouldn’t let me off the phone until I detailed everything we were doing. And I didn’t have time for that at the moment, since Bella might need me. In that critical moment, I probably wouldn’t be able to dislodge the busybody no matter what I said, which would be unacceptable. I had a job to do, and I was going to do it, even if it only involved being lookout while dealing with idiots who smashed their faces up against the window. That thought close in my mind, I clutched my arms closer to my body. Well, as close as my puffy jacket would allow. The phone stopped ringing, but immediately started again. Maybe I should answer it, I thought, as I started getting the jitters from listening to the ringing phone going unanswered.
I glanced at the caller ID display. I had thought it was going to show my dad’s name and I’d have to field another set of questions. But I was wrong: it was Bella, and she was screaming bloody murder. Literally.
Chapter Eighteen
I hung up on Bella’s screams, rushing out of the car while speed dialing the emergency number for the police. I gave the address, told them to hurry the hell up, then flipped the phone shut.
Bella met me at the door and fell, sobbing, into my arms. Sirens rang from down the street. Someone must have been sitting nearby if they were already coming our way. Holding her close, I tucked her head into my shoulder so she didn’t have to see anyone, or let anyone see her.
Looky-loos crawled out of their holes, peering around front doors, then scuttling back when a police car came roaring around the corner. The door to the cruiser flew open and out popped Jared. He was racing down the street fast enough to cause a blur. Within seconds, Bella was unceremoniously ripped out of my arms. I nearly stumbled, but someone steadied me at the last second. Looking around for my rescuer, I came face to chest with the delicious and delectable Ben.
“Thank God you’re here,” I said breathlessly, holding onto Ben with all my might. Any detrimental thoughts of having him practically living with me, and the smothering I sometimes felt as his things crept into my house, disappeared as I held on. I didn’t know how I would get through this without him. And I thanked God, again, for the fact that Bella and Jared were back on good terms. She would need him with this latest death.
“Can you tell me what’s going on?” Ben asked, running a gentle hand over my back.
I shook my head. I hadn’t stepped foot in the row home after Bella came tearing out. I didn’t plan on going in there now.
“Do you want to sit down?” He tried to pry me off him but found he was having absolutely no luck ungluing me.
“And then I walked in because the door was unlocked. It swung open when I touched it.” Bella seemed to be having trouble breathing regularly, too, but she was having no trouble finding her voice. It kept rising, and I feared she was about to show all the signs of hysteria.
But then Jared silenced her for a second with a kiss that nearly singed my hair. When he let her go for air, she gave him a brief smile, continuing in a more normal voice.
“I walked in, calling for him, surprised he hadn’t come to the door when I knocked. He knew I was coming because I called to make sure he was home before I dragged Ivy along. He should have been waiting for me as he always used to, wanting to swoop down on me and crush me to him to show his overpowering masculinity. He tried to do that when he came to my house his first day back.” She blew out a breath that ruffled her bangs. “But he wasn’t there. He didn’t answer me when I called from the door.”
Jared stroked a hand down her arm, then ended up holding her hand.
Bella’s eyes teared up again, but she appeared to get control of herself with some mighty effort. “I went through the bottom rooms of the house calling for him, but still no answer. I thought hard before going up the stairs, because I didn’t know what I would find.” She hesitated and seemed to plead with Jared with her eyes before she uttered her next words. “I was afraid he might be upstairs in bed with little to nothing on, thinking we’d jump right into it.”
The only visible sign from Jared was a violent ticking in his cheek where his jaw clenched tightly. But he used the same hand to stroke down her arm again, and she relaxed.
“Anyway, I didn’t end up finding him in bed. All I found was a ton of blood and a bloody, chunky baseball bat. It was about that time I started screaming and calling Ivy.” She turned to me. “Didn’t you hear me screaming? The walls aren’t so thick you could have missed the caterwauling.”
Sometimes Bella’s voice could be very nasty when she was accusing, but there was none of that now. Instead, the strange pleading quality made me want to go comfort her. But she had Jared, and I had just thought of something.
“You screamed just before you called me?”
“Yes.”
“I was probably screaming right along with you in the car right then.”
“Huh?” She, Ben, and Jared all said it at the same time.
“I was screaming about then, too, because some weird person stuck his or her face up against my window and cackled at me. It was bizarre.”
“Did you recognize the face?” Jared asked, flipping open a little notebook, then licking the tip of his pen. I didn’t think I had ever actually seen anyone do that outside of the movies, but it was oddly sexy.
And so not a thought I should have been having at this time. Especially with Bella and Ben standing on either side of me, and Jared staring intently at me.
“Uh, no, I didn’t recognize the person. I couldn’t even tell you if it was male or female, to be honest. And it was over in a flash, though it seemed to take forever for the person to run off cackling to himself, or herself.” I felt oddly deflated that I couldn’t give them more. What kind of amateur detective was I when I couldn’t even identify a person’s gender?
But Ben made soothing noises as he rubbed my back. “It’s okay, babe. It probably has nothing to do with what happened inside. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Yeah, Ivy, it’s not a big deal,” Jared said, putting away his tools. But despite his words, a look of disappointment flashed across his face.
“Is someone going to get him?” Bella asked, shivering a little.
Right on the tail end of her question, a car squealed to the curb and out jumped Detective Bartley. She barely nodded to me on her way into the house, followed immediately by Detective Jameson and two men with a stretcher between them. I didn’t know why they needed the stretcher when no one had found a body, but there you go.
Jared moved us all off to one side. Another set of people, with black briefcases, strutted past us as if they were about to miss a big sale at Nordstrom’s Rack.
“What are all those people doing?” I asked.
“Investigating.” Jared kept his arm around Bella, idly playing with the ends of her hair. Bella leaned into him. I couldn’t even imagine her trying to get through this with only me for support. I was good, but not Jared good.
“Well, what do we do from here?” I seemed to be the only one speaking at this point, other than Jared. Why had Ben and Bella gone absolutely quiet?
I saw another tear gathering in Bella’s eye, then glanced down to see her twist the flesh on her left ring finger. I intuited (good word, bad time) that even though Jackson might have been a bastard, and treated her like shit, there still had been a time when Bella had loved the man whose blood was currently soaking into the ivory silk sheets on the bed upstairs above our heads.
I couldn’t imagine. I knew Ben and Bella had both grown up with him, and though Ben hadn’t liked Jackson, he and Bella had been great friends in high school before it had all fallen apart. But now Ben and Bella were friends again and that, at least, was g
ood.
It didn’t hit me for about a half hour that I no longer had a suspect, or at least not a live one. But why would Jackson have killed Trev but then managed to get killed himself? It seemed like too much of a coincidence, I thought as I munched on a piece of lemon meringue pie at Mad Martha’s Milk and Munchies. (I just loved saying that! Tripped right off the tongue.) It wasn’t as good as Martha’s normal pie, but it was still okay. And I’d rather have slightly different pie than have Martha back, because that meant my dad would be back, too. I could guarantee he’d be hawking over my shoulder, with two murders. I’d never been involved in anything like this before. I’ll admit I was getting a little scared. Ben’s ferocious scowl across the table wasn’t helping, either. He hadn’t said anything after we’d arrived. I let him think in silence, since I was doing the same thing.
Had Jackson already been dead for a while, or had it been done right before we got there? Who was the weird guy, or girl, who had smashed themselves against my window? Or was that only some loon who got their jollies by frightening strangers?
And how soon after Jackson left the police station had he arrived back home?
Thoughts and questions whirled as I sat at the table, dipping my fork into the fluffy whipped-egg topping of my pie. I shoved some into my mouth at the same moment Ben’s phone rang. Bella had gone home with Jared to recuperate but promised to talk to me tomorrow at her shop. She was going to be there at eight, so I said I’d come in before I opened my own store. I planned on picking up some doughnuts and really good coffee before I hit her place. My plan was to ply her with sugar to take the edge off.
I wasn’t paying attention to what Ben was saying into his phone until he got furtive. I could barely pick up his end of the conversation, but I moved in a little closer to give myself a better chance of eavesdropping.
“Are you sure?” he said, nearly whispering, turning away from me at the same time. “I don’t know if I can get out of here, but I’ll try.” And he flipped the phone shut.
Now, if I were a jealous girlfriend, like I had been a few months ago—and I had very good reason, though not to punish him for some stupid floozies—I would have immediately wondered who he was meeting and what her name was. But I wasn’t a jealous girlfriend. I was a rational, mature adult who would quietly weasel the information from him.
Of course, I got thwarted before I ever got a chance to try out my sneaky qualities. That, as I’m sure you already know, is the way things work for Ivy Morris.
“Gotta go, babe,” he said quickly, giving me a fleeting kiss on the cheek and hustling away before I could squeak out a single word.
I thought about calling him on his phone but knew he probably wouldn’t answer the damn thing, or pretend he was out of signal range. There were a few places in the area where you couldn’t get cell phone reception, but this wasn’t one of them.
I didn’t have an opportunity, anyway, because Bella was shoved back into my arms in much the same manner as she’d been tugged from them earlier. Jared came hustling into the diner, plopped Bella down next to me with a quick “I’ve got to go,” and then whisked out.
“I thought you were recuperating at home,” I said, forking up some more pie.
Bella turned swollen eyes to me. “I was.”
“So why are you out now?” It was hard looking at her tear-ravaged face. For one thing, she was always so put together, and now she’d fallen apart. For another, it was painful to think about her still having feelings for Jackson even after everything that had happened. Didn’t she remember he used to beat her? That he had made a pariah of her with Martha’s Pointers for the rest of her life here? Left her shunned, with almost no one who believed her, while he walked away, virtually untouched, with the bulk of their savings?
But here she was feeling sad at the death of a monster. It was hard for me to feel pity for her. I admit it was petty and ugly of me, but there you had it. The man who had ruined her life was dead. I had a difficult time feeling sorry that he would no longer be lurking around trying to bang me in the head with a baseball bat, or calling me a bitch.
I hoped I didn’t let any of this show as I pulled her into a hug. I sure was hugging a lot for not being much of a toucher.
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked.
She sniffed into a napkin and nodded. She picked up another napkin to wipe at her eyes, thank goodness, or I might have gagged.
Anyway, we sat in silence for a couple of minutes, me continuing to inhale my pie, she alternately blowing her nose and wiping her eyes. Fortunately, she remembered which napkin was which.
Lucille, a new waitress, came over to top off my coffee cup and offered to get Bella a mug. After taking a moment to finish wiping away all her leaking, Bella turned to me with a fierce glint in her gaze. “We need to find out who did this and why. I want this chapter closed in my life, Ivy. I don’t want to defend myself or think about this anymore. I want to be able to move on with Jared the way I should, without this shadow over my head. I want a lot, and I want you to give it to me.”
Oooo-kayyyy.
Chapter Nineteen
After dropping Bella back at her place, in Jared’s care, I hightailed it to my own house. Bella had explained to me that Jared had not wanted her to be alone while he tried to run down a lead, so she’d been stuck with me.
I’d also been very wrong about those tears. They were because Jared had asked her to spend her life with him (granted, not exactly at the optimum moment) and she had hesitated, then told him she needed to think about it.
Well, I could totally understand that instead of mourning the loss of a man who was a piece of crap. Then again, he must have had some redeeming qualities at some point for Bella to have stayed with him. I thought briefly of the one man I had slept with before the delicious Ben. I realized that, to be human, I would definitely have cried if I found out he had died. How much worse if it had been someone I loved, no matter how long ago or how much had gone on in the interim. (Man, I was popping out those good words. Yay!)
I checked my mail, then jumped out of the way, screaming, as a garden snake came shooting out of the big black mailbox. Since Jackson was dead, I couldn’t imagine who would have done it.
“This better not be the next step after the dead fish on my car,” I muttered while waving to my next-door neighbor, who could barely see her own dog at her feet. She did not wave back. Nice. Though I hadn’t really expected her to.
I warily walked up to my door, on the lookout for that snake. When I got there, I did a double take. A picture of me bending over in a very unflattering pair of peach pants was stuck to the door. My butt took up most of the picture, so it was not pretty. Even more disturbing was the fact that there was a crudely drawn knife stuck in my forehead, which was barely visible in the photograph. I remembered the day well. I had been planting flowers with Ben when he’d gotten playful. I had looked back over my shoulder at Ben and seen a flash but hadn’t given it much thought since Ben had distracted me by smearing dirt on my nose. But the flash must have been a camera. Somehow, this jerk had gotten a picture of me—and an unflattering one at that. A fluorescent thumbtack held the picture to the door. I swear I about blew my lid. I was way pissed as I ripped the picture off the door, crumpling it into a ball. There must have been steam rising out of my ears to wreath my head. I’d had enough.
But yelling wasn’t going to do much for me at this point, so I willed my heartbeat to slow. I took some deep breaths in and out of my nose. I would throw those peach pants away immediately. Burn the picture when I had a chance. Stomp on the next person who dared to put a snake or fish anywhere near me. And live happily ever after, once I found the jackass who killed Jackson and made my life that much harder. Phew! I had a lot to do.
Easy as pie in the sky. Right?
Flipping through the bills and various advertisements, I closed the door behind me, then nostalgically looked at the Sears catalog. It used to make my dad’s heart go pitty-pat. He’d changed style
s since moving in with Martha and, while I liked the new Stan, sometimes I missed the flannel-and-jeans look.
Plopping down on the couch, I threw the bills into a basket and laid one envelope aside. It was addressed to Ben but had been delivered here. Huh. I was expecting him to walk in the door any minute. I looked forward to the time because I had many, many questions for the love of my life. Not the least of which was when he thought he’d be taking his dirty laundry home, as it was currently strewn all over my bedroom floor. I was sure as hell not doing it for him. And second, since when did he get mail here? More importantly, would I be getting more?
I was watching Gross Pointe Blank with my fave, John Cusack, for about the millionth time when I heard a key turn in the lock. It was a homey sound, but I ignored that as I could see straight into my bedroom from my perch on the couch. A multitude of socks crept along the floor.
“Hey,” I said with my arms crossed, my best scowl on as he sailed through the door.
“Babe, I have some fabulous news.” He practically danced across the foyer to the living room. If you haven’t seen him dance, it is hard to describe. Let’s just say he looks like he might be having a seizure. Since he was damn near perfect, and extremely sexy, in every other way, I forgave him these lapses.
After he stopped jiggling all over the room, he threw himself onto the couch, smothering me with kisses. “I love you, Ivy. I love the way your mind works, I love the way you do everything, and I love your voluptuous body.” He nuzzled behind my ear, a particularly sensitive spot, and started with the roaming hands. I was almost lost in the moment when he pulled back, making me fall forward on the couch.
My shock must have shown on my face, because he kissed my nose and said, “Later. Not too much later, though. I have to get my hands on you, but first I have to tell you my wonderful, fabulous, marvelous news.”