Skin and Blond (Blond Noir Mysteries Book 1)

by V. J. Chambers

  That was interesting, because when he’d hired me, he’d made out that she spent all her time with her girlfriends.

  “It got to the point where I wasn’t going anywhere,” Rhonda continued. “I stayed home all the time and tried not to upset him. But nothing worked. He got upset about the most random, stupid things. And then eventually, he started accusing me of cheating on him. I would argue with him and tell him that I didn’t even leave the house. How could I possibly be cheating? But he wouldn’t let up on it. Finally, I just couldn’t handle it anymore. I decided to try to leave him. But he wouldn’t let me. He would find me wherever he went. He had all those O’Shaunessy cousins, and they’d hunt me down and bring me back to him. So, I was trapped. And I was miserable. And I figured it didn’t matter anymore. I started cheating for real. And then you found out, and gave him those pictures, and he let me go.” She grinned at me, tears filling her eyes.

  I propped myself up on the bed. “So, you’re glad I broke up your marriage?”

  She brushed away her tears. “I’m free now. I never thought I would be, but he got fixated on you right away, and he didn’t care about me anymore.” She cocked her head at me. “He slapped me around a few times too.”

  I pointed at my face. “Oh, Colin didn’t—”

  “You don’t have to make excuses for him,” she said. “I know him. Listen, there was another reason I came here besides thanking you, and that was to tell you to get away from him. Because he’s bad news.”

  “Look, Rhonda, I’m not having a thing with Colin. I was working a case, and I was trying to get in with the O’Shaunessys. I tried to use Colin to infiltrate the family.”

  She gave me a sad smile. “If you don’t feel you can admit it, it’s okay. But know that I understand. Being taken in by an abusive man doesn’t make you any less of a strong woman. He preyed on your weaknesses. He didn’t play fair.”

  All right, so now that she mentioned it, Colin did display some typical abusive behavior, considering the way he’d followed me around and stuff. Maybe I should have seen that before. But to think that I would be in a relationship with a man like that? I had my pride. “Seriously, Rhonda. I only wanted to interview Derek. He sold drugs to a girl who went missing named Madison.”

  “Madison Webb?”

  “You know Madison?”

  “Well, not well, but Colin and Derek are friends, and we were around Derek’s house when people would come by to pick up things.”

  “Things like drugs.”

  “I guess. I tried not to ask too many questions,” she said. “Madison was there a few times, though.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Um… I think Sunday the fifteenth.”

  Sunday… the same day as Madison’s last text on her phone. Two days after Andrew had said she was gone. That was strange. I couldn’t make that line up. But it was another piece of evidence that Andrew hadn’t been honest with me.

  “You’re sure?” I said.

  “Yeah. I remember, because it was the last Sunday I spent with Colin.”

  “Hmm…” I really couldn’t understand this. I supposed it could make sense that Andrew had just missed her on Friday, but for the house to be in the same condition as it had been on Sunday… well, that didn’t make sense.

  “Did I say something wrong?” Rhonda asked.

  “No, actually, you helped me,” I said. “I just don’t know how yet. But thank you.”

  She smiled. “Well, you’re welcome. I just hope you stay away from Colin from now on.”

  “Don’t worry, I will,” I said.

  “I hope you mean it,” she said. “So many times, I made excuses for him in my head and stuck around. I think if I’d gotten away from him in the beginning, it would have been a lot easier.”

  “Really, Rhonda, I’m not with him like that. I promise you.”

  She sighed. “Whatever you say.”

  * * *

  “Well,” Brigit was saying, “some of the chairs just weren’t salvageable. So, I didn’t know if you wanted me to buy new ones or not. In some ways, maybe it’s not a big deal, because we never have very many people waiting to come see you, so we didn’t really need that many chairs. But if you think we should replace them, then—”

  “No, you’re right.” I surveyed the outer office, which was incredibly clean and ordered. There were definitely less chairs in the waiting area, but it still looked neat and tidy. “Did you do this all by yourself?”

  Brigit nodded.

  “That’s great. Thanks so much.” I half-wanted to hug her. “I…” I licked my lips. “After what happened here, you’d be well within your rights to quit, you know? There’s nothing in your job description that says you have to deal with that kind of situation. I know it must have been terrifying.”

  “Yes.” She made a show of smoothing down her clothes, picking lint off of them. “It was awful. But I don’t want to quit. I just wish you were pressing charges against those guys. I wish they were going to jail.”

  “Trust me, it would be a waste of time. I don’t have a stellar character, not after being fired from the police department, and they’ve got lots more money to throw at lawyers. It wouldn’t end up with them in jail. It just wouldn’t.”

  “But they’re getting away with it.”

  “Yeah, it doesn’t make me happy either.” I looked around. “Really, it looks great in here.”

  “Thanks.”

  I turned to her. “Someday, the O’Shaunessys will pay. They have a lot to answer for. I’m going to make it happen. But I have to wait for the right moment. This all happened because I jumped the gun. I tried to tie the O’Shaunessys in someplace they didn’t fit. I was hasty. Overconfident. I paid the price. It won’t happen again.”

  She made a face. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying to press charges, not to go on some crazy revenge scheme.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “It won’t be a crazy scheme if I try it.”

  She didn’t look relieved.

  “And it won’t be revenge either. It’ll be justice.”

  “Do you still think that the O’Shaunessys had something to do with Madison’s disappearance?”

  I shook my head. “No, I’m not barking up that particular tree anymore. Pike pointed out to me that it doesn’t make sense. It’s not the kind of work they’d do.”

  “So, we’re back to square one?”

  I scratched the back of my neck.

  Brigit winced. “You know what? I’m sorry. You just got out of the hospital. It’s your first day back at work. We don’t have to talk about the case yet.”

  “No, it’s fine,” I said. “I’m back at work, and so I want to get back to work.”

  As if on cue, the door to the office opened and a woman walked in. She was in her late twenties or early thirties, a little pudgy but put-together. She looked back and forth between Brigit and me. “Which one of you is Ivy Stern?”

  “That would be me,” I said.

  She pointed at me. “You. You’re the person who’s leaching money out of my husband.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The woman’s name was Lissa Webb, and she was Andrew’s wife. She came back into my office, but she refused to sit down. She paced back and forth in front of my desk, words spewing out of her mouth. She wouldn’t look at me.

  “I don’t know what kind of scam it is that you’re pulling here, but I don’t appreciate it at all. You’re preying on my husband. He’s so wrapped up in Madison that he’d spend any amount of money to try to find out what happened to her, but I don’t see what it is you’ve even been doing for all this time. It seems to me that he’s paying you to twiddle your thumbs. By now, you should have found her, and I don’t understand why you haven’t.”

  “Ma’am, is there some financial difficulty?” I interjected. I didn’t want to, but I might be able to make a special arrangement for my pay in this case. I was committed to finding out what had happened to
Madison now, and I wasn’t going to let anything stop me. I needed to get paid, but if I had to take less, well, I’d deal with it.

  “No, and that’s what Andrew keeps going about. I tell him that we’re bleeding money to this private detective—to you—and he just says that we can afford it, and it’s worth it if we find out who hurt Madison. But I’m telling you, I don’t even see why he thinks she’s dead. That girl had problems. He didn’t want to see it. He always viewed Madison as pure and sweet, but she had a mess of issues. She ran off. That’s what I’ve been telling him.”

  “Actually,” I said, “the evidence really points to—”

  “What evidence? It’s not as if her body washed up out of the river somewhere. She’s off living it up somewhere, you mark my words.”

  “She didn’t take anything with her if she ran off, Mrs. Webb, not even her car. There’s no activity on her credit cards. She hasn’t been heard from or seen in thirteen days. She—”

  “That’s not evidence.” Finally, Lissa looked up at me, and she didn’t look happy.

  “Listen, I’ve been in the hospital, so I’m a little behind on things, but I promise you that I’ve been working hard on this case. It’s the only case I’ve been focusing on, in fact, and I swear to you, I’m going to find out what happened to Madison, whether she’s living it up or not.”

  Lissa looked a little abashed. “You were in the hospital?”

  “It was nothing.”

  “You do look a little… bruised.”

  I had two black eyes, actually. They were starting to heal, but that only meant that they’d taken on a yellowish-purple color which was very unsightly. I’d actually put on makeup to try to conceal them, and I never put on makeup. I cleared my throat. “Well, I’m out now, and I’m back on the case.”

  Lissa hesitated, looking from the door to me to the chair in front of my desk. Suddenly, she toppled down in the seat. “Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come in here like this. It’s only that Andrew is…” She let out a noisy breath. “He’s always been close to Madison. Closer than close. They’re attached at the hip. When we first got together, I was even a little bit jealous of her, but over time, I’ve come to accept that Andrew simply has a close relationship with her, and he always will. No matter what that girl does.”

  “You really don’t think anything happened to her?”

  “Well…” She tapped her fingers on the arm of the chair. “I don’t want anything bad to have happened to her. I can’t imagine what that would do to Andrew. And Madison doesn’t deserve something like that, no matter what kind of messes she got herself in. No, I suppose it’s possible, but I really hope it isn’t true. I want you to find her somewhere.”

  This was the kind of reaction I’d expect from a family member at this point in the investigation. A dogged hope that the lost person was still alive, but a sad, tired acceptance that the worst might have happened. Honestly, Andrew’s insistence that Madison was dead was strange. Everything about Andrew was strange.

  “Of course you do,” I said. “Honestly, I want that too.” Well, bullshit. I wanted her murdered. Otherwise, I was doing a whole lot of investigating for nothing.

  “You know, it didn’t seem as if anything was out of the ordinary. Andrew went to see her the night before, like he almost always did. He was usually over at her house four or five nights a week. Sometimes, he’d just check up on her, sometimes he’d be there for hours. That night, he was gone for a long time, but when he got home, he said she was doing okay. And then the next morning, he went by and found the house the way it was, and he was convinced that she was dead. Just convinced of it. Went to the police and everything. I told him that we should wait to see if she turned up. I told him she was probably fine. But he won’t believe me. And the longer she’s gone, the more I’m starting to wonder if he’s right.” Her shoulders slumped.

  “Hold on a second,” I said. “Andrew went to Madison’s house and then discovered her missing the next morning?” He had lied.

  “Oh.” She put a hand over her mouth. “I wasn’t supposed to say that. He didn’t think anyone would take him seriously if he said that he’d seen her the day before. On TV shows, you always have to wait forty-eight hours before a person’s considered missing.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” I said. “You hired me, so I take whatever you say seriously. The thing is, Andrew didn’t tell me that. I didn’t know he saw her the night before.”

  “Well, he did.”

  “What day would that have been?”

  “The fifteenth. Sunday.”

  I got up from my desk and started pacing myself. “So, if Rhonda saw Madison in the afternoon that day and Andrew saw her in the evening, if something did happen to her, it would have had to have been that night, because I know she was gone on Monday. I went to her house on Monday. Whatever happened to her happened Sunday night.”

  “Is that a good thing to know?”

  “It’s very good,” I said. “Now, I can find out if people have alibis. I can narrow things down.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Can you have Andrew call me or come by? I need to ask him about the last time he saw Madison.” And I needed to ask him why he left that piece of information out.

  * * *

  Debbie McCauley looked surprised to see me. “What do you want now? If you want to see Curtis, I kicked him out, and I haven’t talked to him in days.”

  “I just have a quick question for you,” I said. “The night of the fifteenth, can you tell me where you were?”

  She shook her head, deep in thought. “I really have no idea, actually. What were you doing that day?”

  “Well, I admit that I don’t know off the top of my head,” I said. “You want to look at a calendar? See if something jogs your memory?”

  She nodded and let me in the house. We went to the kitchen, where she consulted a hanging wall calendar. She furrowed her brow, touching the dates with her finger, as if she was counting them. “A Sunday.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “A couple weeks ago.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said. “I remember that day. Curtis and I went to the movies.”

  “Movies?”

  “Yeah, we saw that new movie about the guy who’s suspected of killing his wife?”

  “I don’t really keep up with the cinema. Did you pay with cash?”

  “No, we split it. I bought the popcorn, and he bought the tickets. We both used check cards.”

  “So, I could verify that?”

  “I guess so. Is that a good thing?”

  “It is for you and Curtis,” I said. “You have an alibi.” I smiled at her. “Take care of that baby now.”

  * * *

  “Look,” said the hostess at Happy’s. “I don’t think Brian wants to see you again. He said that if you showed up, we should tell you he wasn’t around.”

  “So, he’s around then?” I said, pushing past her.

  “Hey.” She came after me.

  “Is he in the back?”

  “I told you, he doesn’t want to see—”

  Brian came out of the back room. His face was swollen, his cheekbone bruised and red.

  I hurried over to him. “What happened to you?”

  He eyed my face. “I could ask you the same question.”

  I pointed at my injuries. “Derek O’Shaunessy.”

  He grimaced. “Oh, shit, is that my fault?”

  “I didn’t know you cared,” I said. “According to your hostess, you’re doing your best to ignore me.”

  “That’s right, I am,” he said and started walking the other direction.

  “What happened to your face?” I said, walking behind him.

  “Andrew Webb,” he said. “He’s got some crazy idea that I was corrupting his sister or that I hurt her or something. I don’t know what. He thinks that Madison and I had something going that she was hiding from him. He just went nuts on me. I’ve never seen
someone so angry.”

  “Andrew Webb did this?” I caught Brian by the shoulder and forced him to turn and look at me. Did Andrew do anything that wasn’t completely batshit insane?

  “Well, I tried to hit back, but I’m not especially good at that kind of thing,” said Brian. “Jackass.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m working for him, but I don’t condone that kind of behavior. And for what it’s worth, I told him that I didn’t think you were the one who hurt Madison.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Really? I’m not your main suspect?”

  “What were you doing on Sunday the fifteenth?”

  “Working.”

  “Just like that? You know?”

  “I do the schedule. I have to look at dates a lot. I know which days each week I’m working. That was one of them.”

  “People saw you working?”

  “What’s up with that date?”

  “If something happened to Madison, it happened that night.”

  “Well, I was here until about two hours after close, around midnight. And then I went to Dog Town—that’s a club—with Jack who works here. You can ask him if you want. He can confirm it.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “That’s very helpful.”

  * * *

  On the way out of the office that night, I told Brigit she could meet up with me at The Remington if she wanted. I told her that I’d buy her a drink, because she’d been so helpful. I didn’t expect her to take me up on it, figuring she’d be above it all, too good for the bar. But I guess I was somehow confusing Brigit with my last assistant, because Brigit’s eyes lit up and she acted like I’d invited her to tea with the queen or something.

  At the bar, I asked her what she wanted to drink.

  “What are you going to have?” she asked, looking nervous, like this was a test, and she could get the wrong answer.

  “I always drink Miller High Life,” I said.

  She made a dismayed face.

  “But you don’t have to drink that,” I said. “I’ll buy you whatever you want. You want a glass of wine or mixed drink or something on tap, just say the word.”