Skin and Blond

by V. J. Chambers

  * * *

  Curtis Michaels lived out in one of those townhouses in a planned community that I’d mentioned earlier. It was just outside of the city limits of Renmawr, deep inside a housing development. I had to wind around various tree-named streets to find it. The townhouse was forest green, and it was sandwiched between two identical houses—except that they were brown and blue respectively. None of them had front yards to speak of, but someone was across the street, pushing a lawn mower over his tiny square of grass.

  Curtis apparently worked an early shift at a restaurant that only sold breakfast and lunch, so I knew he was home. According to Mr. Webb, that was how Curtis and Madison had met. She used to work as a waitress at the same restaurant, but she’d since moved on to a different place.

  Sure enough, he answered the door right when I rang the doorbell.

  “Curtis Michaels?” I said.

  He looked confused. “Can I help you?” Curtis had longish hair. It was down to his chin, and he was wearing a t-shirt and jeans. He was barefoot.

  “I wanted to ask you a few questions about Madison Webb. She’s missing.” I found a direct approach to be better than introducing myself right off the bat. Once people found out that I was a private investigator instead of a cop, they weren’t as likely to open up. But opening with the fact someone was missing gave the whole conversation an air of gravity. It stacked the deck in my favor. He’d be more likely to talk to me.

  “Missing?” said Curtis. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, she’s gone,” I said. “Didn’t take anything with her. Left her cell phone behind even. You knew Madison, didn’t you? At one point, you were close?”

  He was stunned. “Gone? I can’t believe that.”

  “Can I come in?” I said.

  He moved away from the door, letting me walk past him.

  That was good. I’d gained access to the house. I peered around at my surroundings. The townhouse opened onto a small foyer area. There was a set of steps heading up to the upper level. To my right, a doorway opened onto a living room, which was a little cluttered. Beer bottles on the coffee table, a mussed blanket on the couch. In front of me, a small hallway led into the house. I could see the edge of a counter top, indicating the kitchen was through there.

  “You, uh, want some water or something? Coke?” Curtis asked.

  “Water would be great,” I said.

  He traipsed back into the kitchen, and I followed him. He took a bottle of water out of the refrigerator and handed it to me.

  I noticed that there were sonogram pictures on the fridge. “Someone’s expecting?”

  “Yeah, my girlfriend,” said Curtis. “She’s about twenty weeks along.”

  I did some quick math in my head. “And you and Madison broke it off… when?”

  He studied his shoes. “Look, I’m not saying that I’m proud of…” He sighed. “Madison is kind of clingy, you know? It was hard for me to end things with her, because she just seemed so pitiful, and I couldn’t do it, even though I was already with Debbie. I’m not that kind of guy, though. I don’t date two girls at the same time. And as soon as I found out that Debbie was pregnant, I totally cut Madison out of my life.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  He thought about it. “Uh… months ago. Back in May. I haven’t even talked to her in ages. It’s over between us.”

  I nodded. This was probably a dead end, but I needed to make sure I followed through. “I understand that Madison didn’t take the breakup well?”

  He laughed. “Oh man, that is the understatement of the year. She was way crazy over it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She, uh, wouldn’t leave me alone. She’d call me all the time, like sobbing and begging me to come back to her. She was just a basket case.”

  “But you haven’t spoken to her recently?”

  “Oh, well, she got over it,” he said. “It took a while, but she got it out of her system, and then the calls stopped. I might have had to get a little tough with her. I said she was being crazy, that I might have to call the police or something. She shaped up.”

  “So, then, you don’t have any issues with her right now?”

  He drew back, eyes narrowing. “Hey, why would you ask me that?”

  I shrugged, drinking some water and trying to look innocent.

  “Hey, you don’t think that like… something happened to her, do you? I thought she was just missing, like she ran off?”

  “So far, there’s no evidence to say anything different. But I’m still sniffing around, covering my bases.”

  He eyed me. “Yeah, who are you exactly?”

  Well, this was the downside of not introducing myself up front. I smiled. “My name’s Ivy Stern.” I offered him my hand.

  He didn’t shake it. “Why are you in my house? Are you a cop or something?”

  “I’m a private investigator.”

  He nodded slowly. “So, uh, who hired you?”

  “Does that matter?”

  “Was it that brother of hers? Did he say that I hurt her? Because that guy is insane, let me tell you. He’s just way too attached to her. He was always over at her house, like all the time, and he never liked me, but I never did shit.”

  Interesting.

  “You tell him that I would never, ever do anything to hurt Madison, okay? Can you tell him that?” Curtis folded his arms over his chest.

  “Like I said, Mr. Michaels, I’m just covering my bases.”

  “Yeah, well…” Curtis shoved his hands in his pockets. “If you’re not a cop, then I don’t have to let you stay.”

  “Not necessarily,” I said, “but I’m not trying to make an enemy here. I’d like it if I could come back and ask you more questions if I needed too. What I’d really like to do is find Madison.”

  “I don’t know where she is. I got nothing to do with her anymore. Okay?”

  I smiled. “Okay.”

  “I think you should go.”

  * * *

  “So, is it the ex-boyfriend?” said Brigit when I got back to the office.

  “We don’t even know if she’s dead,” I said. “She could be alive and well and on a cruise ship for all we know.” Maybe Madison had decided to become a high-paid call girl and had been swept off by a pimp, who was teaching her the trade.

  Man, listen to me. I was getting just as bad as Crane, coming up with ridiculous scenarios. He could maybe make that a book, though. I’d suggest it to him. Of course, maybe there wasn’t much point, considering that he never finished anything he started.

  “True,” said Brigit, “but something weird happened. I think so, anyway. If she ran off, she would have taken her stuff. Especially her phone.” She held it up.

  “You went through the stuff I took from her house?” I said. I had brought her purse, her phone, and her laptop back to the office to check out. “I haven’t even had a chance to look at that. Listen, we need to have a talk about not touching things unless I say it’s okay.”

  “Sorry,” said Brigit. “The laptop is password protected, and I can’t get in. But the phone just had a swipe thing on it, and I tried a couple of the patterns that come standard on them—I googled it—and voila! I got in.”

  I had to admire the girl’s initiative. I chuckled. “I thought you aspired to be an artist.”

  “I am an artist,” she said. “But I’m not making much money at that. You’re going to pay me to work here, however, so I thought I should help out as best I can. But if you don’t want that, then I guess I won’t.”

  “I’m paying you to answer the phones and schedule appointments and talk to clients about my rates.”

  She looked down at the desk.

  “But you did good with the phone,” I admitted.

  She beamed up at me. “Yeah?”

  Man, I gave this chick one compliment...

  “Because I’ve been scrolling through her texts, and I think there’s something suspicious about the ex,” she sa
id.

  I furrowed my brow. “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, for one thing, they text a lot, and they don’t text the kinds of things that people text when they’re broken up.”

  “They text a lot?” I held out my hand for the phone. “But I just got done talking to Curtis, and he claimed that they never talk anymore.”

  She handed the phone over. “Oh, they talk.”

  I scrolled through Madison’s text messages. The first few were just a couple words from various people. Things like, See ya, and Kay.

  But then I saw the first text from Curtis. Hey there, thinking of ur sexy bod. I raised my eyebrows. “Sexy bod?”

  “It gets worse,” said Brigit. “Keep going.”

  I found more texts from him. Two or three seemed to be about arranging time to meet up, saying that Wednesday wasn’t good or that Tuesday was. And then there was one that said, Can’t wait to see u tomorrow. Want to kiss every square inch of ur body.

  I set the phone down on the desk. “So, Curtis was lying to me. He was still involved with her.”

  “Yeah, those texts are recent,” said Brigit.

  She was right. The one I’d just looked at was from a week ago.

  “That guy isn’t her ex. He’s her current.”

  “But Curtis has another girlfriend,” I said. “A pregnant girlfriend.”

  Brigit’s eyes got huge. “Oh my God, you’re kidding.”

  “Nope. I saw the sonogram pictures on the refrigerator. He said she’s about five months along.”

  “Augh.” Brigit’s jaw dropped. “That asshole.”

  I started to pace in front of the desk. “Why would he lie to me? If he would have come clean, this wouldn’t raise my hackles.”

  “He must have done it.” Brigit got up from behind her desk and started to pace too. “Think about it. He’s got two girls—one’s his baby mama and the other one’s just in the way. So, he has to get rid of one.”

  I stopped pacing. “What are you doing?”

  She stopped pacing. “I was just… talking.”

  I gestured to the path she’d paced and raised my eyebrows.

  She tucked her head down. “Sorry.” She went back to the desk and sat down.

  “What you’re saying could be right,” I said. “But he doesn’t sound annoyed with her in the texts. I mean, Madison obviously knew about the other girlfriend, and she was still having sex with him. Maybe it’s not a problem for Curtis. Maybe it’s a wet dream come true.”

  “No way,” said Brigit. “Too complicated. He must have hated it. Besides, we know he could get into her house. So he has opportunity and motive. We just need to see if he has an alibi or not.”

  “That’s going to be a problem,” I said. “We don’t know exactly when Madison disappeared. We know that her brother hadn’t seen her for three days. If she was killed, it could have been at any time.”

  “We can see when she sent her last text message,” said Brigit, reaching for the phone.

  I handed it back to her.

  Her fingers flew over the screen. “Let’s see…” She scrunched up her nose. “Okay, looks like the last text she sent was on Sunday, to Curtis.”

  “Sunday?” I said. “But she’s supposed to have been gone by then. Andrew said he went by her place on Friday, and the bed was stripped.”

  She made a face. “Well, that’s weird.”

  “Yeah.” Did it mean that Andrew was lying? But why would he lie to me? He’d hired me to help.

  Brigit set the phone back down. “What happens if it really was him?”

  “Who?” I said.

  “Curtis. What if he killed her?”

  Right. Curtis. That was who I was currently looking at. “Well, if I could find some evidence of that, I’d turn it over to the police, of course. I can’t arrest anyone.”

  “What kind of evidence are we talking here?”

  I shrugged. “Oh God, I don’t know. It could be anything. But let’s not jump to conclusions. Good detectives don’t get so seduced by their first hunches that they ignore everything else. Curtis lied, but that doesn’t mean he killed her. So, the first thing I’m going to do is go confront him about that lie.”

  “Right now?”

  I checked the time. “Tomorrow. I’ll go see him again tomorrow.”

  Brigit grinned. “And then you’ll put the squeeze on him, right?”

  I laughed. “Then I’ll confront him. Best I can do.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Colin Pugliano came by the office later that evening, around six o’clock or so. Brigit was just getting ready to leave, and she asked me if I wanted her to hang out, but I told her that it was fine. I could handle this on my own. She looked a little disappointed but left anyway. I couldn’t get a fix on that girl. She was eager and helpful, and she seemed really interested in what I did for a living. I supposed perhaps it was only youthful enthusiasm, but it had been a long time since I’d had that kind of enthusiasm for much of anything. I couldn’t really relate.

  I plugged my camera into the printer and printed out the photos to show Colin.

  While he waited, he tapped his fingernails against the arm of the chair he was sitting on. I couldn’t tell if he was feeling nervous or impatient.

  I sat down across from him, holding the photos in one hand. “I wish I had good news, Mr. Pugliano.”

  “Call me Colin,” he said.

  “Colin,” I said, sliding the photos across the desk to him. “It looks like your suspicions about your wife are true, however.”

  He flipped through the photos, one after the other. His expression was unreadable.

  I watched him, feeling crappy about it. I really didn’t like this part. It was bad when I found evidence of cheating. Of course, it was bad when I didn’t find evidence. Then the spouse would always insist that I keep digging, and it would drag on forever. But it was bad when I caught the spouse red-handed. I didn’t like watching people have to go through this. I wasn’t exactly, well, good at being reassuring or emotional or…

  It wasn’t that I didn’t like people. I mean, in theory, I thought people were swell. I liked the human race as a whole. But when it came down to individual people…

  I don’t know. I often sort of felt as if I wasn’t exactly the same species as everyone else. Not that I was special and different—a unique snowflake or something. Because sometimes I did find people who seemed the same as me. Pike, for instance. We were the same. And I had a lot in common with Crane too.

  But regular, normal people. The kind that I’d meet on the street or who would come into my office. Those people often seemed really alien to me. I didn’t know how to relate to them. When I tried, it seemed to blow up in my face.

  I really hoped Colin wasn’t going to start crying. I hated it when they cried, especially the men. That was really hard for me to take.

  He slammed the photos down on my desk. “I knew it.”

  “You were right,” I said.

  “And I know the guy.” He shook his head. “He’s my fucking cousin.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” I cringed. Was that the right thing to say?

  He let out a big sigh. “Fuck.”

  “I really am sorry, Mr. Pugliano—Colin.”

  “Not your fault. You helped me out. I was in the dark about it,” he said. “If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have even known.”

  It was quiet. I didn’t know what to say. I never knew what to say.

  “It’s almost a relief,” he said finally, his voice quiet. “Because before I just didn’t know one way or the other, and it was driving me crazy. But now, now I think I can get some peace.”

  “Well, that’s good.” I said. He was taking this better than a lot of my other clients did.

  He sighed again. “It’s a shock, though. Even though I expected it, it’s a shock.”

  “I’m sure,” I said. I really was out of my depth here. At least when they cried, I could offer tissues. What was I supposed to do in th
is situation?

  “What I wouldn’t do for a drink,” he muttered.

  Oh. That I could do. “I’ve got bourbon,” I said. Usually, when I drank, I drank beer. Drinking liquor tended to get me drunk way too fast, and I wasn’t a big fan of that. But occasionally, I really did need a taste of something stronger.

  “Really?” he said. “That would be great.”

  I got up and got the bottle out of the cabinet, along with the two glasses that I kept there. I set them all down on the desk and poured us each a shot.

  He snatched it up and guzzled it down.

  I shot mine down as well.

  He closed his eyes. “Yeah. That’s better. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  It was quiet again. I didn’t know what to say or do. I just watched him, sitting there, holding the glass, his eyes squeezed closed as if he was in agony.

  His eyes snapped open. “You think I could have another drink?”

  * * *

  Colin Pugliano wasn’t circumcised, and I liked that. Uncut dicks were always so silky soft, and it was so much easier to rub them. I always said that no man should be circumcised, just for the ease of hand jobs alone. Of course once he had a condom on, I couldn’t tell anymore, and that was a little tragic, but it was a necessary evil. Condoms were a requirement in my book.

  I didn’t mean to have sex with him, especially not in my office. There were a lot of reasons why that was a bad idea, chief among them the fact that he was a client. As I lay under him, feeling his cock push deep inside me, pressing against the spot inside me that felt so, so good, I reasoned that he wasn’t a client anymore. Our business was concluded, now that I’d found the evidence about his wife, so maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

  But I knew better, even two seconds away from an orgasm, I couldn’t make that stick.

  This was bad, bad, bad.

  I hadn’t intended for it to happen, but Colin and I had taken quite a few more shots together after that first one. As I mentioned, drinking liquor tended to make me get really drunk, really fast. When I was really drunk, I had no inhibitions and no boundaries. It was also a lot easier for me to talk. Colin’s lips were similarly loosened, and we found ourselves conversing about relationships and why they never worked out. Apparently, Colin also felt as if he couldn’t find anyone who was right for him. He said that he’d been sure Rhonda was the one when they got married, but that she’d changed after their wedding, that she wasn’t the girl he’d fallen in love with.