CHAPTER TWELVE

 

After going back to the office to talk to Brigit, I tried calling Miles again. No answer.

Since Miles wasn’t answering my calls, I decided to go looking for him. I figured he didn’t want to talk to me, and that was all fine and good. We didn’t have to work out all our personal issues right then and there. But I did want to know if I was still on this case or not. I was moving forward with interviewing the journalist, but I couldn’t devote all my time to working on his case if he wasn’t going to pay me. I’d have to try to shuffle in some paying gigs, which I could sometimes scare up with a few well-placed advertisements. Sometimes. If I was desperate.

Before this case, everything had been dead, so I was getting close to desperate.

Brigit wasn’t wrong to be concerned about the money. I wasn’t destitute or anything like that, but the thing about being self-employed is that money comes in very sporadically, so I might get a mountain of cash one month and then nothing the next. The trick was not to spend the mountain of cash, to stretch that as far as it would go. Sometimes, that was maddening, though, having so much money in the bank and still living like I was poor. Sometimes, I couldn’t help it, and I gave in, spending more than I should have.

Anyway, we were okay for the time being, but I could definitely use this payday.

So, I needed to know from Miles.

Well, that was my excuse, anyway.

Maybe I hunted him down because I wanted to see him, plain and simple.

Hard to say, really.

He wasn’t at home. I went by two or three times. Car was never in the driveway, and the place was locked up tight.

He wasn’t at work. I went to the police department and risked the wrath of Linda to find out that she hadn’t seen him since the night he pulled all the O’Shaunessy files for me.

I didn’t know where else to look, so I went back to the Pike mansion. I didn’t bother to go in the front door this time. I knew that guests parked out front of the house, but the family’s cars were never there, leading me to believe that there was somewhere else that Miles’s car might be. I wandered around the house until I found the garage.

And sure enough, there was Miles’s car.

He was here.

So, I needed to get in there and find him. But I didn’t think having the maid take my coat and announce me was going to go over very well. He’d probably just have the maid lie and say he wasn’t there anyway.

“Excuse me, ma’am?” said a voice.

I turned to see an elderly man coming out of the garage. He was wearing coveralls and holding a wrench.

“Can I help you?” he said.

“I’m just looking for Miles Pike,” I said. “I was checking to make sure his car was here.”

“Ah,” said the man. “Well, he’s here, all right. But why didn’t you just go to the front door and ask for him?”

“Well, he’s a little angry with me at the moment.”

The man furrowed his brow. “You’re Ivy, aren’t you?”

“You know me?”

“I know things about the family,” he said, chuckling. “I’m Craig Downs, and I’ve been working for the Pikes since I was twenty-five years old. I do a bit of landscaping, bit of fixing up, bit of car work. Just an all around handyman, basically. Still, you’re around this place that long, you start to become like scenery to the family. They’re so used to seeing you around they don’t always see you and they talk in front of you like you’re not there. So, I know things.”

I nodded slowly. “You do, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Could I maybe ask you a few questions, then?” I said. I was here to talk to Miles, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t intrigued by this case.

“I don’t see why not,” he said.

“About Cal,” I said. “What would you say his relationship was with Gilbert?”

Craig shook his head, “Oh, that Cal. That boy’s a mess, and he’s just been getting worse lately. He was always the wild one in the bunch, you know. Always getting in trouble, getting kicked out of private schools, wrecking cars, getting arrested for public intoxication. You name it, Cal did it. And poor Louis worked overtime keeping all of that out of the papers. Then last year, Cal went through some kind of break down. He wasn’t at work for nearly a month, and Louis was talking about firing him. Then he came back. To work, that is. But even though he’s doubled down at the company, gotten real serious there, he’s still quite the troublemaker. As for him and Gilbert, I think he was always a little jealous of the boy. Gilbert was the baby, after all.”

Hmm. Jealous? Fiercely protective of the business? It wasn’t looking good for Cal, I had to admit.

But I hadn’t quite closed the door on Louis, either.

“Let me ask you something else,” I said. “About Louis Pike. Would you say he values his reputation more than he values his family?”

“Oh, absolutely not,” said Craig. “And I don’t say that lightly. Louis is the only family member who always notices me, and he sometimes even speaks to me about his personal life. He’s a good man, and I’m not just saying that because he pays my salary. He’s got a good heart. He loves his boys. After what happened with Gilbert… well, he’s heartbroken.”

Interesting. Looking worse and worse for Cal, then.

“Can I ask you something?” Craig said.

“Oh, I guess so.”

“Why are you so curious?” he said. “I know you’re some hotshot private detective that hunts down serial killers or something. What’s your interest in what happened to Gilbert?”

“I’m looking into it for Miles.”

“He thinks there’s something fishy about it?”

“Well, I do, I guess,” I said. “Seems the more I look into it, the more nasty secrets I find.”

“Oh, you’ll find a lot of that if you keep poking down the Pike hole,” he said. “Secrets galore. There’s a lot of things hidden behind the windows of that house.” He gestured.

I turned to look at the mansion.

But as I did, I caught sight of Miles himself, coming out of the main house and heading for the garage. I waved at him. “Miles!” I yelled.

He saw me and stopped, stricken. He looked back at the house, almost as if he wanted to run from me. But then, resolute, he put down his head and trudged over to me.

Craig put a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll let you talk to Miles, shall I?”

I nodded at him, and then turned my attention back to Miles. I held up my hands as he approached, an I-surrender pose. “I know I’m the last person you want to see, but I’m only here to find out if you still want me investigating Gilbert’s case.”

He stopped in front of me and raised his gaze to meet mine. One look at his face, and I could see he was enraged. But it was the kind of anger that smoldered, not the kind that exploded. He was completely under control. “Oh, that’s all?” He was bitingly sarcastic.

“Yes,” I said. “I’d understand if you didn’t want me working for you anymore. I’d understand if you never wanted to see me again. Say the word, and I’ll go, and I won’t come back. We’ll be done.”

He sucked in breath through his nose, and then he chuckled bitterly. “Don’t lie to me, Ivy, and don’t lie to yourself. Now that you’re waist deep in this case, we both know you won’t let it go.”

Well, he was probably right about that.

“And now, you’re investigating my family,” he said. “First my father, then my brother. Who’s next? Me?”

“No,” I said, taking two steps back. “I wouldn’t ever… I’m just trying to get to the truth.”

He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me away from the garage.

I tried to struggle, to get free. “I can walk on my own!”

He held tight, yanking me along until we got back to my car. Then he let go of me.

“Look, your brother is the one who was in charge of the energy shake,” I said. “It was his product, and he was apparently jealous of Gilbert his whole life—”

“Stop,” thundered Miles, his voice a roar, as if his sleeping anger had awakened like a dragon.

I cowered from him. I couldn’t help it. His tone frightened me.

But then, it was as if everything drained out of him, and he stood slump shouldered next to me, beaten and sad. “I feel like I’m falling apart. Do you get that at all?”

“Well… sure. I mean—”

“No, stop.” He looked deep into my eyes, pleading with me. “My brother is dead. I’m back in touch with my family, who make me insane. I can’t go to work. And you… You’re accusing everyone in my family of murder and alternating sleeping with them.”

I looked at the ground.

“Look at me, Ivy.”

I looked back up at him.

“Can you see how that might make me feel a little… unhinged?”

I nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“I know you are.”

“I’m really, really sorry.”

He nodded. “I believe you. But that doesn’t really make me feel any better. Maybe if I forgive you, then you’ll feel better, but I’ll still feel like crap.”

He had a point. I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say.

Miles sighed. “Walk with me.”

“What?”

“Just come on a walk with me.”

“Okay.”

At first, we walked in silence. Miles took the lead, and I followed him as we threaded through the gardens.

Then, he started talking. He kept walking, and he was still a step ahead of me, and he didn’t turn to look back, so I couldn’t see his face.

“I don’t want to fight with you, Ivy. I really don’t want to fight. I wish we could have an honest conversation without it blowing up.”

“I want that too.”

“Okay, then,” he said. “Try not to act like I’m accusing you of something when I’m just telling the truth.”

“Um.”

“What?”

“You were kind of just accusing me there.”

A heavy sigh.

“Okay,” I said, giving in. “I’m sorry. Say what you need to. I won’t get offended.”

“You hurt me,” he said.

I bit my lip. “Miles—”

“You hurt me.” There was a crack in his voice now. “You know that I don’t want you to be with other men, and yet you do it anyway. And you do it no matter how many times I ask you not to do it.”

I was quiet for a minute. I thought of seventy zillion things to say. Defensive things. Excuses to make for myself. Things I could accuse him of.

There were bushes of roses on either side of us now. The roses were in bloom, and they were pink and yellow and white.

I just said, “I know.”

“It feels like betrayal to me,” he said, still moving ahead of me. “I know you say that it’s not about anything emotional, that it’s just this physical release—”

“I think it’s different than that,” I said. “I think it’s like when you can’t stand it when your house is dirty.”

He stopped. He turned to look at me. “What? How do you figure that?”

“Well… you keep your house clean, but it’s not really about your house, right? It’s about everything else, all the other things you can’t control, all the uncertainty in the world, from your job to me to the news. It’s overwhelming, so you clean, and it’s better. At least temporarily, right?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Exactly right.”

I nodded. “Well, I fuck people.”

He rolled his eyes and turned away again.

I caught him by the shoulder. “Wait. I know it sounds stupid and unrelated and ridiculous, but when you’re stressed out about your brother dying, keeping your house clean isn’t really related to that either, is it?”

He shrugged away from my touch.

I winced. “You know that hurts me,” I whispered.

“I do know,” he said softly.

“Because it feels like you’re rejecting me.”

“I’m not,” he said.

“I know,” I said.

He sighed. “You’re saying that resisting having sex with men is as hard for you as it is hard for me to not scrub my toilet?”

“Pretty much.”

“Well, that’s shit, then.”

I hung my head.

He started walking again.

I went after him. “Wait, Miles, what you said before about how you were trying to change and I wasn’t? You were right. I never even tried to stop. I’m terrified of stopping.”

He kept going. “Every time we have this conversation we just end up in the same place, don’t we? It’s pointless. It’s boring.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But maybe if I did try. Maybe if instead of having sex with someone, I called you or I…” I didn’t know. Honestly, I couldn’t figure out how exactly I was going to make this happen. Resisting that temptation was something I’d never been able to do. It wasn’t as if I didn’t know that it was bad. I always did it anyway. So, it was a problem, but it was insurmountable.

He didn’t seem to be listening to me. “We keep saying it’s impossible for us to be together, but we can’t let each other go either. So, maybe it is impossible, but maybe we need to figure out how to do the impossible. Because, hell, Ivy, if I have one more conversation with you about how we can’t make things work, I might just die from the monotony of it all.”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “Do you mean that?”

“Yes.” He looked at me. “I mean it.”

“But I just slept with your brother. Shouldn’t you be… enraged?”

“Sure,” he said. “And I am. But I’ve been angry with you so many times for doing this same thing—”

“Not with your brother.”

“No,” he admitted. “Not with my brother. But honestly, that makes it a little better, because he’s a dick, and I can kind of blame him for most of it. He did it to get under my skin. He manipulated you. So, yes, I’m angry. Yes, I’m hurt. But the tedium, Ivy. I’m bored with being angry and hurt. Let’s do something else.”

I nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

“You don’t care about Cal, do you?”

“I care about you, Miles.” I studied my fingernails. “Besides, I think he might have killed Gilbert.”

Miles made a face, like he’d tasted something bad.

“Okay, let’s not go there right now,” I said. “Back to us. To you and me. We’re doing something else. Something new.”

“Well, something interesting, anyway,” he said. “So, you want to go to dinner with me?”

I grinned. “That’s interesting?”

He shrugged. “We never really did that before. I mean, unless you count sharing takeout while hashing out homicide cases.”

“True,” I said. “Of course I want to.”

“Good,” he said. He took a deep breath, and then he reached out and took my hand, wrapping his fingers deliberately around my own.

I looked down at our entwined fingers. It was strange how something so small was such a huge thing for us. I raised my gaze to his eyes.

He smiled.

“So,” I said. “I guess this means I’m still on the case?”

* * *

“Good news,” I told Brigit the next morning. “We’re back on the case. And Miles and I are going on a date.”

“Seriously?” she said. “He forgave you for sleeping with his brother?”

“Yes, I’m astonished as well,” I said. “So, I need you to think about some ideas of how we can find communication between Bix and Cal. I’m thinking that Bix is the weak link here, not Cal. Maybe we can pressure him into giving us his phone or something. He seems stupid enough not to have deleted any evidence of their communication.”

“Yeah, but he’s not talking to us,” said Brigit. “And, um, actually, speaking of dates…”

“What?” I set my purse down on my desk.

“Well, you remember that guy Kent Mercer. The one who wasn’t married?”

“Oh, yeah, the starving artist. Did you go out with him?”

“I did.” She grinned.

“Well, looks like you had a nice time. Good for you.”

“I, um, talked to him about the Cross and Flame ring.”

“Okay,” I said. I didn’t see why she was nervous about that.

“See, I really didn’t think we were going to be on the Gilbert Pike case for much longer,” she said. “I figured that when you talked to Miles, he’d be pretty angry. So, I thought we might have some extra time on our hands.”

“Brigit, what are you talking about?”

She twisted her fingers together. “Well, the thing is, he’s kind of in a little bit of a jam. He’s in trouble with Cross and Flame for selling the ring. Apparently, that’s against everything the organization stands for or something. And now they’re going to ruin him completely.”

I sat down at my desk. “Well, that sounds awful for him. But I don’t see what that has to do with us having time on our hands or not.”

“It’s only that I might have sort of promised him that we’d help.”

“I see.”

“You’re mad.”

“I’m not mad,” I said. “But this guy is pretty broke, right? And when I was explaining to you why we couldn’t work forever on the Gilbert Pike case without cash flow, I thought I made it pretty clear why taking on a case where a person couldn’t pay would be a bad idea. I mean, I didn’t address that eventuality specifically, but I think it would be pretty easy to extrapolate that.”

“You’re mad,” she said again. “You’re using lots of big words.”

“I’m not mad,” I insisted.

“And I know we shouldn’t be doing stuff for people when they can’t pay. But I can take point on this, and I can do most of the work. And I promise it won’t interfere with the rest of my duties. He’s a really nice guy, and I really like him, and I don’t want him to be completely ruined.”

I sighed. “How would we even help with this?”

“We could help him get the ring back.”

I nodded. “Okay, I guess that makes sense. I guess it’s a simple enough sort of job. Just getting back a ring.”

Brigit bobbed her head, looking eager. “Yeah. Very simple.”

“You know what doesn’t make sense, though? The idea of some secret organization completely ruining someone.”

“Oh, well, he explained all of it to me. See, apparently, all of these very powerful people are in the Cross and Flame, or they used to be. And back when Kent was in college, he joined the Cross and Flame because he wanted to have their prestige and power behind him, and he wanted to have a leg up in the art world. But then after he graduated, he started to realize that if he let the Cross and Flame help him make it in the art world, then he’d never know if he was actually good or not. He’d only know that he was connected to the right people. And he couldn’t handle that. So, he decided that he wouldn’t ask for help from any of his contacts. He still wore his ring, though. He was proud of his past with the society. Anyway, when times got really bad, he had to sell the ring for money, and he thought it wouldn’t be so bad of a thing, because he didn’t want to use Cross and Flame connections anyway. But then, after they found out that he sold the ring, they were really angry, and he said that he’s gotten contact that if he doesn’t get that ring back, then they’re going to use their influence and position to block him from ever making it in the art world. So, it’s like his idea to be noble and true really backfired on him. And that doesn’t seem fair. So, we have to help him.”

I thought I’d followed all of that.

Brigit clasped her hands together. “Please, Ivy. He’s a good person. He doesn’t deserve this.”

“Well, if we all got what we deserved, Brigit, the world would be a completely different place. Bad things happen to good people all the time. That’s life.”

“I know, but I really like him.”

“All right, all right,” I said. “I’ll do my best to help him get that ring back.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, but not because he’s a nice guy or because I want to make the world fair or anything like that. Because you like him, and I like you, and I want you to be happy.”

Brigit hugged me.

I hugged her back.

* * *

“Oh wow,” said Kent Mercer, looking all over the office. “This is a real private investigator’s office. You’ve even got that door with your name stenciled on the glass, like in all the movies.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, “I guess that was a little bit silly on my part, but I liked the way it looked. Sometimes I like to pretend I’m Philip Marlow or something.”

Kent furrowed his brow. “I think you might mean Sam Spade.”

“Whatever,” I said. “I tried to watch The Maltese Falcon once, but I fell asleep halfway through.”

“Oh, Ms. Stern, you need to try again,” said Kent. He turned to Brigit. “You’ve seen The Maltese Falcon, right?”

“Um… what’s it about?” said Brigit. “Is it about… birds?”

“We’re watching it,” said Kent, shaking his head. “That’s that. If you want, Ms. Stern, you could watch it with us.”

“You can call me Ivy,” I said. “And no thanks. I haven’t got time to watch movies.”

“Too busy drinking,” muttered Brigit.

“Brigit,” I said in a warning voice, “don’t make me change my mind about all of this.”

“You don’t have time to watch movies,” she said.

“I don’t really watch movies,” I said. “Honestly.”

“But that’s because you spend all of your free time at the bar,” she said. “I’m not wrong about that.”

Okay, maybe she was right. So what? “Kent, why don’t you come back into my office?”

“Sure,” he said. “Thanks for doing this. It really means a lot to me.”

I waved that away, gesturing for him to sit down.

He sat in a chair opposite my desk and Brigit sat down next to him.

I settled down behind my desk and got out my notepad. “So, the way I see it, Kent, your best option is to simply buy back this ring.”

Brigit leaned forward. “Ivy, he doesn’t have the money to buy it back.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll figure that out,” I said. “We’ll find the money to get it back somehow. So, don’t worry about that.”

“Seriously?” said Brigit. “But you said we didn’t have money. You said we need paying cases, and—”

“Brigit, not in front of a client.” I gave her a stern face. Thing was, I was serious about trying to make sure that she was happy. This was the easiest way to get the ring back. Besides, we were getting paid for the Gilbert Pike case now, and Miles seemed to have access to some money, so I wasn’t worried about that. We were probably going to be okay for a bit.

“Thank you so much,” said Brigit.

“Yes, thank you,” said Kent.

“Fine,” I said. I was getting a little uncomfortable with this outpouring of emotion. “Let’s just get down to business, okay?”

Brigit turned to Kent. “She acts like this sometimes, but she’s really a big softy. Once you get to know her—”

“Brigit.”

“Sorry,” she said.

“Okay, so we just need to know who it was that you sold the ring to,” I said.

“Well, that’s kind of the problem,” said Kent.

“What do you mean?” I said. “You sold it on eBay, right? That means that you had to ship the thing. So, you should know the person’s address and everything.”

“Right,” he said. “Well, after I found out that Cross and Flame wanted me to get the ring back, I tried to get in touch with the guy, but he wouldn’t email me back. So I tried to call him, because there was a phone number there. Disconnected.”

“Hmm,” I said. This might be a little bit more work than I had anticipated. That was okay. Anything for Brigit. Besides, I had to admit that I was starting to get a little bit intrigued by the whole thing. “All right, well, we’ll have to look into this a little. I’ll need all of the information you have on the buyer.”

“Absolutely,” said Kent.

“Good,” I said. “I’ll do my best to resolve this as quickly as possible.”

“Okay,” said Kent. “So, what does that mean? Like a day? A month?”

“Somewhere in between those two things, I hope,” I said. I turned to Brigit. “Don’t we have to go meet that journalist?”

“Yeah, in an hour,” she said.

“That my cue to leave?” said Kent, smiling.

* * *

We met with the journalist at a coffee shop in Renmawr. I liked it because there were booths in the back, so I could meet with someone in relative privacy. However, we were in public, so that wasn’t threatening to anyone. There’s something really nice about a booth, especially if it’s got the high partitions in between, which these did. The bench seats, being tucked away. It feels very private.

A booth is my very favorite place to talk in public, but to feel private. The thing is, most booths are in restaurants. So, to get to sit in one, I usually had to buy a meal—sometimes buy a meal for whoever I was meeting as well. Not a problem. Buying those meals is tax deductible and all. But it’s not very casual. It’s pressure.

Of course, I could always meet someone at a restaurant and not buy an entire meal, which would make things more casual. But that would also draw attention to us, because who goes to a restaurant and doesn’t eat? But going to a coffee shop and getting to sit in a booth, well, that sort of solved all of the problems. It was perfect.

The journalist was late, so Brigit and I ordered some fancy coffee drinks smothered in whipped cream, powdered sugar, and chocolate syrup. We sat in the booth and waited, scooping up whipped cream with our fingers and licking it off.

So, that was what the journalist walked in on. Two women in a booth licking their fingers.

Great first impression. Super professional.

“Maybe I’m at the wrong booth,” said the journalist.

I stood up. “Stanley Walter?”

“That’s me.”

“You’re in the right booth,” I said. “Sorry, we were just…” I looked at Brigit.

She shrugged.

Stanley sat down.

Brigit tried smiling brightly at him. “I’m Brigit Johansen. We spoke on the phone.”

“Right,” he said. He looked around the coffee shop nervously. “Look, I accepted a lot of money to keep quiet about this. If you two aren’t really private detectives, if you’re some kind of terrible tabloid journalists who are just trying to get the scoop out from under me—”

“We’re detectives.” I slid my card across the table. “That’s me. Ivy Stern. I’m the detective who found Ralph the Hatchet.”

The journalist nodded slowly. “Oh right. I remember that. The trucker serial killer. Wow. Hey, I do this for you, and when that guy goes to trial, you give me the exclusive.”

“That means that when Ralph goes to trial, I only have to talk to you? No other reporters? I’m sold,” I said.

He grinned. “All right, so what do you want to know?”

“Well, you were in contact with Gilbert Pike, right?” I said. “What was that about?”

He took a deep breath. “Okay, you know that Gilbert Pike’s family owns Quikslim, right?”

“Of course,” I said.

“Well, there was an energy shake that they were rolling out, something called Turboslim or something. Anyway, they had a secret ingredient—”

“Okay, we know this stuff,” I said. “Gilbert was going to blow the whistle on his father. He came to you to help him do that, I guess.”

“You know?” he said, raising his eyebrows.

Brigit spoke up. “We found the memo on his computer.”

“You saw the memo?” Stanley said. “He kept telling me he was going to show it to me, but I never did get my hands on it. I think Gilbert was afraid that if he gave me the evidence, I’d go to press right away, and he was trying to control when the story broke. Man, there was a time when I would have given anything to see that memo, but now—”

“Let’s go back to the part where you said that you accepted money to keep quiet,” I said. “That’s what we’re unclear on. Who gave you that money? Quikslim?”

“Well, yes,” said Stanley.

“Did you approach them and negotiate silence?” I asked.

“Are you kidding?” Stanley said. “I’m a journalist, not a blackmailer. I wouldn’t even have considered such a thing. I was going to bust a huge story wide open. All I was thinking was that maybe I’d get a guest spot on TV interviews. I wasn’t thinking about making money at all.”

“So, then Quikslim came to you?” said Brigit.

“Calloway Pike came to you,” I said.

“What?” said Stanley. “No, I never dealt with Cal Pike.”

“But it was his product,” I said. “According to Louis’s assistant, the CEOs were in the dark about the ingredient. When they found out from Gilbert, they made sure that the shake was reformulated, and they—”

“That’s bullshit,” said Stanley. “That’s complete and utter bullshit. I mean, maybe that’s what Louis told his assistant. I met her once. Nice girl, but she’s a little feisty. Louis probably realized that she’d be less than helpful if he told her that she was working for one of the most corrupt corporations in America. So, maybe she swallowed that story, but I sure as hell don’t. No, when I spoke to Louis, it was pretty clear that he’d been in on this little secret from the beginning of the formulation. And maybe he let little Cal think that it was his product, but he was always coddling that kid. This Turboslim stuff was conceived as an energy shake so that they could hide the fact that it was stuffed full of ephedra. People would think that the effects they were feeling were coming from the caffeine and herbs listed on the bottle. And they’d be dropping weight like crazy. Other companies might try to copy it, but they wouldn’t be nearly as successful. This was a business strategy. I’m sure of that.”

Hmm. Well, this whole thing kept getting more and more confusing.

“What do you mean that Louis coddled Cal?” I said.

“Oh, just take a look at that company,” said Stanley. “Louis is always trying to do stuff for his little boy, especially within the last year. Before last year, I’d say that Cal’s position in the company was just a joke. He was a wild child playboy who rarely came in to the office but liked to pop by once in a while just to pretend he had a job. Then he had some kind of psychotic break or something, disappeared for a week or two, and when he came back, he was ready to ‘really’ work. Thing is, though, everything he’s achieved has been put in place by Daddy.”

That was the second time that someone had mentioned Cal having a breakdown about a year ago. What was that all about, and what did it have to do with the case?

“You studied this company a good bit,” said Brigit.

“I wanted to make sure I knew my stuff,” said Stanley. “I wasn’t going to take them on unless I was completely sure I knew what was going on.”

“But you decided not to take them on,” I said. “You took money instead.”

“I told Gilbert not to go to his father,” said Stanley. “See, at first, he came to me, and we were just going to go public with the story. But then, the longer that we talked, the more he began to understand the scope of the story and the damage we might do to his father’s brand—you know that two people had died from this shake in the limited promotional release—the more he started to feel hesitant about it. I think he was a rebellious kid who wanted to give his dad the finger, not dismantle his father’s empire. But, of course, I wanted the story, so I kept trying to talk him out of talking to Louis. But eventually, Gilbert went to him anyway.”

“And then Louis got in touch with you?”

“Yeah,” said Stanley. “Then Louis came to my office and offered me an exclusive on the family and a whole bunch of cash and I wanted so badly to stay strong and follow my journalistic ethics, but…”

“You took the money.”

“Well, I didn’t have the memo. I didn’t have any proof,” said Stanley. “So, even if I ran that story, I’d only be running it with a source as proof. And if Gilbert denied it afterward, I could get sued for libel. So, anyway, there wasn’t any point in sticking it to Quikslim at that time. I didn’t have a play to make.”

I understood his position. “Yeah, I can see your perspective.”

“Of course, then I heard about Gilbert shooting those kids,” said Stanley. “And that just…” He shook his head. “Well, that seemed weird to me, which is the whole reason I agreed to talk to you.”

“Do you think Gilbert was the kind of person who’d do something like that?”

“Well, not at all,” he said. “But then people like mass murderers, you know, maybe you can’t tell, really? Lots of people thought Ted Bundy was a nice guy.”

“Well, that’s a lot different,” I said. “He was killing serially, and this was mass shooting.”

“Yeah,” he said. “And anyway, I tried to, um, wrap my head around it. I tried to convince myself that maybe he was so depressed that his father had taken the wind out of his sails, killing the story like that, that he got depressed and wanted to kill himself. And maybe he thought he’d just take a bunch of people with him. But I couldn’t really make it stick. Couldn’t make myself believe it. Because that wasn’t Gilbert Pike. Deep down, he wanted to do the right thing. When he found out that his father’s product had killed two people, he was devastated. This kid valued human life, and he had a conscience. I just can’t see my way clear to thinking he did it.”

“We’re with you,” said Brigit. “There’s something else going on here.”

“But who do you think it is?” said Stanley. “Louis?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“But that doesn’t make sense,” he said. “Louis killed the story. He’d already solved the problem. There wouldn’t be any reason to kill his son, now would there?”

“Cal,” I said. “Cal didn’t want his product—”

“I’m telling you,” said Stanley, “Cal didn’t know about the ephedra. He was going through the motions, trying to please Daddy, but he had no freaking clue there was an illegal ingredient in there. He doesn’t have the smarts to even try something that devious.”

I wasn’t sure. Cal seemed pretty devious when he convinced me to have dinner with him, telling me that Miles had given us his blessing. But that was a reactionary sort of manipulation. It was hot and emotionally charged. Putting an illegal ingredient in a product to make it sell better because it increased weight loss, well, that was a different kind of deviousness. And Stanley was right. Cal didn’t seem to exhibit the tendency to plot out those kinds of machinations.

* * *

After Stanley left, Brigit and I stared into empty coffee cups and tried to figure out where to go from here.

“So it was the dad after all,” said Brigit.

“Stanley didn’t seem to think so,” I said.

“Well, maybe Gilbert didn’t roll over so quickly,” said Brigit. “Maybe after the story got killed, Gilbert was going to go to someone else, another journalist. Maybe Louis realized he couldn’t pay off every writer in the world. Maybe he realized the only way to stop Gilbert was to kill him.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But we don’t have any evidence of Gilbert talking to another journalist. There’s no number on his phone, is there?”

“I don’t think so, but we didn’t call every number on his phone.”

“We need to talk to Louis,” I said. “That’s for sure. We need to understand what happened.”

“Right,” said Brigit. “Well, I’ll get my friend to get us on his schedule.”

“Do that,” I said.

“What about Cal?” said Brigit. “What do you think now?”

“If Cal didn’t know about the product, then I’m not sure what his motive is,” I said. “But I do have to admit that he’s kind of been a jackass to Miles. He stole Miles’s phone to get my phone number, and then seduced me—”

“Is that fair?” said Brigit. “To say he seduced you? Do you even need seduction?”

“Brigit, don’t be a jerk.”

“I’m not. I’m serious. I don’t really understand how this works. Do you need to be seduced or not? I mean, wouldn’t you just jump on anything that moved?”

“It’s not like that,” I said. “Sure, sometimes, I don’t need a lot of encouragement, but—” I glared at her. “Look, the point is that Cal did what he did not because he was into me, but because he wanted to hurt Miles. So, we know he’d go out of his way to hurt his own brother. Maybe he’s got it in him to kill the other brother.”

“Yeah,” said Brigit. “But like you said, what’s his motive?”

“What was his motive for being an ass to Miles?”

“Sibling rivalry?”

“Maybe,” I said, “and you don’t kill over sibling rivalry. Do you?”

We both peered morosely into our cups.

“Should we get more coffee?” said Brigit.

“No, I’m pretty wired,” I said. “But the whipped cream was pretty fantastic. It’s tempting.”

“If you don’t kill over sibling rivalry, and Cal isn’t our killer, then where are we with this case?” said Brigit. “We don’t have any evidence if this stuff with the energy shake turns out to be unrelated.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

We were quiet again.

I was thinking about whipped cream.

“Maybe one more little coffee.” I held up my fingers to show just how little. “With lots of whipped cream?”

* * *

“You aren’t saying what I think you’re saying,” said Louis Pike, staring at the two of us.

We were standing just inside the door to his office, which was even more lavish and huge than Cal’s had been. This place looked like a hotel resort or something. You could practically fit my entire apartment inside. There was that much room. Like Cal’s office, the back wall was composed entirely of glass, and it gave the place an airy, bright feeling.

“We just want to know how Gilbert reacted when you killed the story about the ephedra,” I said. “Was he angry? Did he threaten to go to another journalist?”

“I didn’t kill my son,” said Louis. “That’s what you’re implying, isn’t it?”

Well, he was just as defensive as Cal, wasn’t he? I crossed my arms over my chest.

Louis got out of his chair. “Gilbert and I came to an understanding. I was going to clean up the mess he’d made by going to that reporter. I told him that the shake would never go to market with the illegal ingredient in it. I told him that I wouldn’t dare profit from something that hurt people. Once he knew all those things, he was satisfied.”

“Well, so you say,” said Brigit.

“I’m not lying,” said Louis. “I had no motive to murder my son.”

I just stared him down.

He walked around behind his desk chair and looked out the wall of glass. “I would never have done something like that. When I heard he was dead, I was devastated.”

Well, staring him down didn’t work if he wasn’t looking at me. I cleared my throat. “Was there anyone else in the company that knew that Gilbert had gone to the journalist about the ephedra?”

“No one even knew about the ephedra,” he said, not looking back at us.

“What about Cal?”

“What about him?” Louis turned back to us.

“Did he know about the ephedra? This was his product, wasn’t it?”

Louis gripped the back of his chair. “Cal didn’t know a thing about this. I did this without Cal’s knowledge. This was all my screw-up, you understand that?”

Boy, he was really insistent about that, wasn’t he?

“So, Cal didn’t know about the ingredients in his own product?” said Brigit, sounding skeptical.

“He knew what was in the ingredient list we sent him,” said Louis. “It’s not as if Cal was in the manufacturing plant, watching them blend the stuff. I wanted him to have something that did well. That’s why I put him on the energy shake. I thought that if he could bring that to fruition, he’d have a higher standing in the company. More respect. People might stop treating him like he only got the job because he was my son.”

“Well, that is the reason he got the job, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is, but he’s just so damned insecure.” He cocked his head to one side. “Why are we talking about Cal? You don’t think that Cal… Oh, no, you can’t accuse my son of murdering his brother. He would never do such a thing.”

“You said yourself that he’s insecure. Maybe he heard about what Gilbert was planning to do to the company, and he decided to eliminate the threat. Make himself more secure.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Louis. “Cal didn’t know about what was going on with Gilbert. I promise you that. He had nothing to do with any of that. Not with putting the ephedra in the drink, not with removing it, not with covering up that story.”

“Why don’t you walk me through this, then?” I said. “You expect me to believe that you got an idea for a drink with an illegal ingredient. Then you decided it would be better for your son if he was the one to introduce the idea. So, you gave the idea to him. Then he presented it to the company, and it was adopted. Then, when your other son found out that there was an illegal ingredient in the drink, you removed the ingredient, killed the story, and Cal was ignorant of all of this. Really?”

“If you knew Cal, you’d understand,” he said. “He can be quite oblivious, let me tell you. He’s never had the kind of work ethic that I have, or that my son Miles has. Cal has always just been a bit… unconcerned.”

“I do know Cal,” I said. “Or at least, I’ve spent time with him. And he’s fairly insistent that he works hard and that he’s completely responsible for that product.”

“Well, of course he would be. The poor boy is just struggling to hold onto anything that he can call his own.”

“Does this have something to do with this breakdown I keep hearing about? Last year, Cal lost it for some reason?”

He glared at me. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Was it a violent breakdown? A psychotic one? Is it possible that Cal went after Gilbert for no reason other than he’s mentally ill?”

“It wasn’t like that at all,” said Louis. “You need to stop meddling in this. You’re causing more damage to my family than you could possibly know.”

“Well, I would think that whoever had your son Gilbert killed would be the person who caused the damage. And if that person was you or Cal, then—”

“I did not kill my son!” Louis’s voice broke. He bowed his head for a minute, collecting himself. When he looked up, there were tears spilling out of his eyes. He let them slide down his cheeks without wiping them away. “I would never have hurt my little boy. Never. And Cal didn’t do it either. Cal has problems, but they’ve got nothing to do with Gilbert, and everything to do with me.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“If I tell you this, will you back off?” said Louis. “Will you let it go?”

“I’m following the evidence, Mr. Pike. If you have evidence that leads me elsewhere—”

“He’s not my wife’s son,” said Louis. “There. Now you know all my dirty laundry. Little Cal was the son of my mistress, and she died in a car accident when she was pregnant with Cal. They saved the baby but couldn’t save her. He was all alone in the world, and he was my son, and I convinced my wife that we had to take him in and raise him as our own. We tried. God knows, we tried. But she could never love him the way that she loved her other boys. And he was always treated just a little bit differently. And when he found out last year, I think everything began to fall into place for him.”

Louis took a deep breath. More tears were running down his cheeks. There was a hitch in his voice. But he plowed on. “He’d just always been treated like a second-class citizen. And he couldn’t understand it. He’d followed in my footsteps. He’d joined the company. But he felt like my wife and I favored the other boys. And he was right. I never meant to, but he always seemed like my… my other son, if you know what I mean. I love him. I’ve always loved him. But I didn’t show him that. So, yes, I gave him that product, and I told him to claim it as his own. Because that’s what fathers do for their sons. And I am trying to be his father.” Louis bowed his head again. His shoulders started to shake. He was sobbing.

Brigit and I exchanged alarmed glances. This hadn’t been what either of us had expected. From what I knew of Louis Pike, he was cold and exacting. I didn’t expect him to cry. And in the face of such naked emotion, I couldn’t believe it was an act either. If it were, then we had a really twisted person on our hands.

“I’m sorry, sir,” I said softly. “We’ve obviously upset you. Perhaps it’s time we go.”

* * *

The other animal shelter was on the other side of Renmawr, out near the interstate. When I got there, I was in a little bit of a better state than I had been at the previous shelter, and I was able to concisely explain to the man working there that I was looking for a dog that had been brought in recently. I gave a description of Regan, and I even revealed that she’d been called Fluffy.

Ugh.

The man nodded, listening to my description, and when I was done, he said, “Actually, I do think that a dog came in matching your description. Come with me?”

I followed him back to a similar room to the other shelter, and we walked among the cages where all the sad little dogs stood, slept, or barked. But when he stopped walking, and he pointed to the cage directly in front of us, there she was.

I fell down to my knees and reached through the grates. “Hey there,” I said.

Regan recognized me. I’m sure of it. Anyway, she was always a friendly dog, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that she started licking my fingers like crazy and wagging her tail like it was going out of style.

But it still brought me to tears for some reason. Maybe it was the overt show of emotion that I’d witnessed from Louis Pike that somehow unhinged me. Or maybe I’d just really missed that damned dog. I don’t know. But I knelt there, my fingers getting licked off, and I crooned to Regan about what a pretty girl she was, and I cried.

When I looked up at the guy who’d brought me there, he was smiling. “That’s her, huh?”

“Yeah, that’s her.” I stood up, wiping at my face and feeling like a total idiot. Here I was crying over a dog. What the hell was wrong with me? I squared my shoulders, looked down at her, and then back at the guy. “I want to take her home.”

His smile widened. “Of course you do.” Then he made a face. “Thing is, you’re probably going to have to wait until tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yeah, see, there’s an adoption form that you’ll need to fill out and some other stuff that has to be processed, and right now, there’s just not enough time before we close to get it all done.”

“Oh,” I said, my heart sinking.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“No,” I said, “it’s okay. It’s a good thing, because it’ll give me time to get my place ready for her. I kind of came here on a whim. I need to get food and treats and toys and… actually, I’m not even really sure what I need.”

“Well, I’ll be happy to talk to you about that,” he said. “Just to be sure, though, we’ll need to verify that you live somewhere that pets are allowed, and we’ll want to know about your other pets and your children—”

“No, no other pets,” I said. “No children.”

“Okay,” he said, still smiling. “Well, do you want to go fill out the application now, or do you want to stay here for a minute with the dog?”

I looked down at Regan. “Stay here, I think. Just for a minute.”

“Sure,” he said, patting me on the back.

Generally, I would have bristled at the contact from a stranger, but I didn’t so much mind right then.

“I’ll be out at the desk,” he said. “Come out when you’re ready.”

“Thanks,” I said.

He started out. “Of course, keep in mind, you’ve got about fifteen minutes before we close.”

“Right.” I watched him go. Then I knelt down to talk to Regan again. “Hey,” I said. “I’m here. I should have been here earlier. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I should have been here earlier.”

Regan started licking my fingers again. She forgave me already.

Dogs were so forgiving.

I scratched her under her chin. “Things are going to be great. You’ll see. We’re going to be very happy together. And I promise I will never lock you in a bathroom. Never.”