Even the old man, Jeff’s former father-in-law, welcomed her into the fold.
It felt right. It felt wonderful.
Stacy visited for a weekend. One night, when Jeff was barbecuing for them in the yard, both women holding wineglasses and watching the sun set, Stacy smiled and said, “I was right.”
“About?”
“The fairy tale.”
Kat nodded, remembering what her friend had said so long ago. “But even better.”
• • •
A month later, Kat was lying on his bed, her body still humming from the pleasure, when the fairy tale came to an end.
She hugged the pillow postcoital and smiled. She could hear Jeff singing in the shower. The song had become the ultimate delight and the ultimate dreaded earworm, never leaving them:
“I ain’t missing you at all.”
Jeff couldn’t carry a tune if you tattooed it on him. God, Kat thought with a shake of her head. Such a beautiful man with such a horrible voice.
She was still feeling deliciously lazy when she heard her cell phone ring. She reached over and hit the green answer button and said, “Hello?”
“Kat, it’s Bobby Suggs.”
Suggs. The old family friend. The detective who had worked her father’s homicide.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey. You got a minute?”
“Sure.”
“You remember you asked me to look into those old fingerprints? The ones we found at the murder scene.”
Kat sat up. “Yes.”
“I gotta tell you. It was a pain in the ass. That’s why it took so long. The warehouse couldn’t find them. No one had the results anymore. I guess Stagger must have thrown them away. I had to run them again.”
“Did you find the fingerprints?” she asked.
“I got a name, yeah. I don’t know what it means, though.”
The shower had stopped running.
“What’s the name?” she asked.
And then he said it.
The phone slipped from Kat’s hand. It dropped onto the bed. She stared at it. Suggs kept talking. Kat could still hear him, but the words no longer reached her.
Still lost, she slowly turned toward the bathroom door. Jeff stood in the doorway. A towel was wrapped around his waist. Even now, even after this ultimate betrayal, she still couldn’t help but think he was beautiful.
Kat hung up the phone. “You heard?” she asked.
“Enough, yeah.”
She waited. Then she said, “Jeff?”
“I didn’t mean to kill him.”
Her eyes closed. The words landed like the most crushing blow. He just stood there and let her take the eight count.
“The club,” Kat said. “The night he died, he went to a club.”
“Right.”
“You were there?”
“No.”
She nodded, seeing it now. A club for cross-dressers. “Aqua?”
“Right.”
“Aqua saw him.”
“Yes.”
“So what happened, Jeff?”
“Your father went into that club with Sugar, I guess. They were, I don’t know. Aqua never told me any details. That’s the thing. He would have never said a word. But Aqua saw him.”
“And Dad saw Aqua too?”
Jeff nodded.
Dad knew Aqua from O’Malley’s. She could hear the disapproval in her father’s voice whenever he saw her with him.
“What happened, Jeff?”
“Your father lost it. He called Stagger. Told him that they had to find this guy.”
“Aqua?”
“Yes. Your father didn’t know we were roommates, did he?”
Kat had seen no reason to tell him.
“It was late. I don’t know. Two, three in the morning. I was downstairs in the laundry room. Your father broke in. I came back up. . . .”
“And what happened, Jeff?”
“Your father was just beating on him. Aqua’s face . . . he was a mess. His eyes were closed. Your dad was straddling his chest, just whaling on him. I shouted for him to stop. But he wouldn’t listen. He just kept . . .” Jeff shook his head. “I thought maybe Aqua was already dead.”
Kat remembered now that Aqua had been hospitalized after her father’s death. She’d figured he had been admitted for psychiatric help, but now she realized that he had been dealing with other problems as well. He would eventually recover from the physical injuries, but the truth was, Aqua’s mental health had never recovered. There had been psychotic episodes before. But after that night, after her father had beaten him . . .
It was why Aqua kept saying it was his fault. It was why he blamed himself for the breakup, why he wanted to return the debt and protect Jeff, even going so far as to attack Brandon.
“I jumped on top of him,” Jeff said. “We fought. He knocked me over. I was on the floor. He stood up and kicked me in the stomach. I grabbed his boot. He started to reach into his holster. Aqua regained consciousness and tackled him. I still him had by the boot.” Jeff looked off now, his eyes twisted in pain. “And then I remembered you telling me that he always kept a weapon there, a throw-down gun.”
Kat started shaking her head no.
“He was reaching into his holster again. I told him to stop. But he just wouldn’t listen. So I reached into his boot and grabbed his spare gun. . . .”
Kat just sat there.
“Stagger heard the shot. Your dad told him to be a lookout or something. He rushed in. He was panicked. His career, at the very least, was on the line. We would all go to jail, he said. No one would believe us.”
She found her voice. “So you covered it up.”
“Yes.”
“And then you just pretended that nothing happened.”
“I tried to.”
Despite it all, a smile came to her lips. “You’re not like my dad, are you, Jeff?”
“What do you mean?”
“He could live with the lies.” One tear slid down her face. “You couldn’t.”
Jeff said nothing.
“That was why you left me. You couldn’t tell me the truth. And you couldn’t face me with that lie for the rest of your life.”
He didn’t respond. She knew the rest now. Jeff had run away and started what he had called his self-destructive stage. He got into the fight at that bar. Once he was booked, once his fingerprints had finally gotten a hit, they showed up in the homicide file. Stagger had covered it up, but that might not last forever. Stagger had probably gone to Cincinnati then, explained to Jeff that he had to hide, that if anyone ever looked for him, he couldn’t be around.