You Don't Know Jack (24 page)

"Was Apollo conscious when you reached him?"

"No, I—" A memory stopped me. "He–he said something..."

"What?" the three men said in unison, leaning in.

I frowned trying to recall. It was important. I had to remember. I felt again the puff of my BFF's dying breath near my face, smelled again the tinny acrid stink of spilled blood burning my nasal passages, heard again the rasping word. My eyes rounded. "Bruce. He said Bruce."

"You're sure?" Stone looked as shocked as I felt.

"Yes. Why would Bruce do this? Did he really think Apollo killed Lars?"

Stone ran his hand through his hair. "Bruce had more reason to kill Lars than Apollo. Bruce wasn't cheating on Lars, Lars was cheating on him."

Lars was cheating on Bruce? Somehow that made a lot more sense than the other way round. But why would Bruce go after Apollo? What was I missing? "Why did Bruce attack Apollo?"

Stone looked as though he'd rather I added two and two instead of telling me. I might be blonde and I might have sex on the brain too much lately, but I excelled at math. My mouth dropped open and I gaped at Stone. "Lars and Apollo?"

Stone nodded.

"No..." My mind rejected the idea.

Sharkey went to the counter. I heard the click of a phone being dialed. I heard him speaking softly, but couldn't discern the words. My focus was on what I'd just been told. How like Lars to go after a younger, newer model given Bruce was getting too independent. He liked his lovers naive, malleable. Which I had once been. Which Bruce had once been. Which Apollo was.

More than that, Lars also would have felt a thrill pulling this affair off right under my nose. Damn him. But that didn't explain my BFF. "Why didn't Apollo tell me?"

"How could he after what Lars put you through?" Stone said.

It was true. Apollo knew I wouldn't approve and if he had fallen for Lars, he had to have felt torn in two. "Are those incriminating letters something about their... relationship?"

"About their break-up, actually," Duke said, looking none too pleased. Incriminating letters indeed.

Several things I hadn't understood for a while now began clicking into place. Apollo lied to me about the contents of his letters to keep me from knowing about his affair with Lars. Of course, given the letters, Stone couldn't ignore the motive, means, and opportunity stacked against Apollo.

I guessed Lars had broken off with Apollo and decided to work things out with Bruce, thus branding Apollo the scorned lover out for vengeance. But it was wrong. I recalled the night Lars was killed. Apollo had only gone to the nightclub to help me out. He was excited, bouncing with energy, determined to have fun.

Had he seen Lars and gone after him in fit of jealous rage? I didn't believe it. "Lars' murder might have been one of opportunity, but that doesn't mean Apollo was the opportunist. What about the black carnation? He didn't put that in his own blood."

"Stone will be checking out all those things," Duke said, pinning his brother with a you'd-better-do-it look. "Right?"

Stone nodded. He started to rise, but I caught his arm. "Are you going to arrest Bruce?"

"I'm going to question him."

"If he did this, promise me you'll nail his balls to a wall."

Stone nodded again, and strode out the door.

Duke studied my face. "Your color is returning. Are you feeling any better?"

All I felt was less numb, more sensitive to every pain and heartache, as fragile as a piece of ancient porcelain.

Sharkey returned wearing a bleak expression that unnerved me. My voice quaked. "Apollo?"

"Still in surgery." He shook his head. "It don't look good, Jack B."

In my next life I'm coming back as a hospital waiting room decorator. Waiting rooms should offer worried friends and families comfort and distraction and a calming atmosphere, but don't. I'm convinced a secret society is currently in charge of decorating hospital waiting rooms across this country and that they own a warehouse at an undisclosed location somewhere in the Midwest full of rock hard couches and chairs, spindly legged tables and years-old magazines.

The waiting room at the ICU of Valley General was no exception. But when I arrived those uncomfortable seats were occupied by my mom and aunts and the Golden Oldies, all the comfort, distraction and atmosphere a rattled-to-the-core-woman could ask. Hillary Rodham Clinton once said, "It takes a village." This was my village.

Without them, I doubt I could have made it through that first day, or the next, or the next as Apollo hovered at death's door. Surgery repaired the damage the knife had done to his lung, but he was still in a coma and he'd lost so much blood his recovery remained in question.

Apollo's usual state: perpetual motion.

It was all I could do to watch him silent and immobile, tubes running to and from, machines beeping, computing his vital statistics. He would hate being pinned down like a bug on a board.

"Is he gonna make it, darlin'?"

I jerked toward the bed, thinking Apollo had awakened and I'd see his dark eyes open. But he hadn't moved. Was I hearing things?

"Is he gonna make it, darlin'?" Lars said again.

He chose now to finally show up? Anger tripped through me but it held no fire. I was too exhausted to ream Lars a new one. "Did you get some perverse pleasure out of going after my best friend?"

"Don't let's fight, Jack B. Not in front of Apollo."

"Well, since he's in a coma and I'm the only one who can hear you—" God, what was I doing? Taking my frustrated helplessness and rage out on a ghost? I didn't need this. Neither did Apollo. "Crawl back under your rock and stay there."

"He can't die, darlin'."

"What do you care? You broke his heart."

"He deserved better than me."

"No argument here."

"As you've discovered, I'd lost my talent. I had nothin' to offer him."

What about love? I almost screamed, but love wasn't a bankable commodity in Lars' view. Fame had given him a caveman ego: "Me breadwinner, you bread eater." He was the Alpha male in his relationships, always right, never wrong. Yet, here he was admitting to being a failure. I wasn't sure I believed him. "Apollo didn't want a sugar daddy. He has his own ambitions and career plans."

"I know, darlin', he wants to open his own salon one day."

The realization that Apollo might never do that now silenced us both... for a moment.

"Look, I admit I did some despicable things durin' my life, but breakin' off with Apollo wasn't among them. It was my one honorable deed."

His sincerity stilled my quick retort. Though I would have bet everything to the contrary, Lars had actually loved someone more than himself. The realization staggered me. Did this prove Bruce murdered Lars?

"Bruce wanted me back," Lars said. "He's found a certain success. He was willin' to continue on as the primary wage earner until I overcame my writer's block."

My BS meter was as flat lined as a failed-heart's monitor. As far as Lars knew this was the honest truth. While he was in a truthful mood, would he also admit to his other sin? Theft? I had to scratch his exposed underbelly before he covered it again if I had any hope of finding out the whole truth. "You did steal Ruth Lester's story for your last book, didn't you?"

He sighed. "I'm not proud of it, darlin'."

If I weren't already sitting down, I would have toppled into a chair. Lars had admitted to writer's block and to plagiarism. I knew what a bastard he could be, but never thought he'd own up to it. Hell had frozen over. Flying pigs dotted the skies. Ire filled my gullet. "You ruined her career."

Excuse the pun, but plagiarism is unforgivable in my book.

"Nothin' I can do about that now."

More like he couldn't be prosecuted for that now. "You owe that woman royalties, if nothing else."

"Get serious, darlin'. Even if she'd written that story, she wouldn't have had my sales. Most she coulda made is a couple thousand."

"Did it ever occur to you that ruining someone's career might make them want to kill you?"

That shut him up. For a second.
"I had my own problems."

In other words, he hadn't thought beyond his big white Stetson about the consequences of his actions. As usual. One moment of clarity, compassion, and confession, then back to the old numero uno mindset.

"Jack B," my mother said, walking into the room. I hadn't heard her open the door or heard her footsteps. I spun around and into her open arms. She was half my size, a mini-Barbie doll on the outside, a fierce mama bear on the inside. She release me, touching my hair, studying my face. "You've had those same clothes on for three days, sweetheart. You need to go home, take a bath. Rest. Eat."

Why does your mother have the ability to make you feel like a child with just a look or a touch? Her loving concern brought tears to my eyes. "I can't leave him, Mom."

The words seemed to rob the air from the room. The walls and the machines receded, fading away, transporting me back to that long ago hospital, to that long ago moment that scarred me forever. The day my father was murdered. I rubbed my fragmentary tattoo. The doctor emerged from the operating room, his grim face telling me all I needed to know. My daddy was dead. Gone. He'd never make me laugh again. Or hold me while I cried.

But I hadn't cried.

Instead, my heart turned into a sheet of ice, as thin and brittle as ice crystals on a winter pond, and then, a large chunk chipped off and floated away. As gone as my daddy. This was the same heart Stone wanted one hundred percent of — a futile request given the condition of that vital organ. And now, with Apollo fighting for his life, also the victim of a vicious killer, my heart felt icy and brittle again. Fragile. Breakable.

More irreparable damage loomed.

My mother hugged me, chasing ghosts from my minds' eye. She said, "Stone is waiting outside to take you to our house. You'll find some clean clothes and a hot meal. Take a long bath. A longer nap. I'll phone if there is any change. I promise."

I started to protest, but she shushed me. "It won't do Apollo any good to wake up and find you sick."

I knew she was right. I glanced at my BFF, then back at my mom, and nodded. I found Stone hovering in the hall, and I went straight into his arms.

The age old question: how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? My age old question: if a celibate man-o-holic could fall into bed with the man who caused her to swear off sex, could she, should she, would she?

Hell yes.

On second thought, hell no.

Have you smelled someone three days sans shower? Enough said. Besides, as much as I longed to lose myself and all the misery of the past few days in a sea of sexual bliss, I stifled that primal urge to reaffirm life. I had to. My aunts and a police guard were in the next room.

The Crain sisters inherited this house from their mother's sister, Aunt Mary-Todd Crain. Aunt Mary-Todd was widowed in her twenties, left with nothing but this massive old house built in the early 1900s. Ever resourceful, she converted the upper level into four on-suite bedrooms and opened a boarding house which she ran until she died.

My mother, two aunts, and I moved in the year after my father's murder. For a nine year old a house with a staircase in the foyer and another with access to the kitchen and back porch was a godsend. If I was in trouble, as I often was, I could sneak out the back and avoid punishment... until I returned.

The farm house kitchen had undergone a couple of transformations since my childhood, but in every incarnation the walls remained a sunny yellow. The last remodel resulted in granite counters and high end, stainless steel appliances. This was Aunt Abby's domain. She delighted in cooking and baking, nothing gourmet, but her creations guaranteed happy tummies.

The homemade veggie soup I was devouring now was no exception. Stone sat across the table, watching me eat. He'd been anything but forthcoming, and, happy tummy aside, I'd had enough. "What about Bruce? Have you arrested him yet?"

Stone's green eyes went dark, his expression intolerant. I was nosing into his case again. I expected a roar that would blast me against the back wall. Instead we shared a full minute stare down, and then he sighed. "We're checking his alibi."

"Alibi? He has an alibi?" Manufactured, I was certain.

"Claims he was at rehearsal, and there are eyewitnesses, including Dinah Edger."

Damn. "What about Frankie Steele and his sister Eve?"

"What about them?"

"I overheard them plotting my demise, remember?"

Stone grimaced. "What I don't remember is you hearing them mention your name during this... conversation."

I huffed out a frustrated breath. "No, but they talked about the car accident that failed. My failed accident."

"You don't know it was your car accident they were discussing."

But I did. Why wouldn't he believe me? "Why else would someone discuss killing off another person?"