Page 40 of Mr. Match

Chapter Seventeen - OLIVER

It’s still dark out when I leave the garage and start heading south towards the airport to pick up Nolan and Ivy. Apparently Mac was right earlier at dinner. The media put two and two together and came up with five guilty Misters.

I find this whole thing suspicious for many reasons. One, why now? The news of Claudette’s death two weeks ago was never secret. Nolan’s name was already on the news. Hell, I think they even got a soundbite of Ivy snapping at some cop for asking about devil worship.

Devil worship? Do people still call it that?

Second, where did they get the evidence that Allen/Brutus was even connected to Claudette? We didn’t know that. So how did the media find out? In an era where people see everything and no one looks too close, you’re telling me some journalist got a bug up her ass to go sifting through info—non-existent data as far as I’m concerned—and then felt this was a good story right now? Really? Us? Does this country still hate us so much?

There are only a few cars on the road right now. It’s four forty-eight AM, so the other cars around me are probably people who commute to Denver and are trying to miss the traffic. I enter the freeway and join them, heading towards Denver International Airport.

Apparently Nolan and Ivy got to Colorado about an hour ago. The local Fort Collins airport has a noise abatement rule from dusk to dawn, so the jet had to land at DIA.

An hour later I pull into the parking garage on the arrivals level where Ivy and Nolan are sitting on a bench, both wearing sunglasses, looking like a couple of movie stars trying to be inconspicuous. They don’t scream California. Not at all.

As soon as Nolan sees my nineteen sixty-nine black and blue Camaro he jumps up and heads in my direction, dragging two suitcases behind him.

I put the car in park, then pop the trunk and get out.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Shrike. You can’t drive a real car to come pick us up? What is this? Two spare tires in the trunk?”

I scratch my chin. “Yeah,” I say. “I could’ve planned that better. We’ll just throw one suitcase in there and the rest in the back seat. Ivy can sit up front with me.” I wink at her.

She gives me a tired smile as she manages their two carry-on bags. She’s only a few months pregnant. Not even showing yet. But Belle and Jasmine have five kids between them. I know if she looks that tired, she feels a thousand times worse. All she wants is a bed right now.

Nolan helps her into the car while I deal with the luggage and then I hold the driver’s seat forward for him so he can squeeze into the tiny back seat.

I get in and check his mood in my rear-view mirror. Nope. He’s pissed. “If you had waited a couple more hours you could’ve landed the jet in Fort Collins,” I say.

“If we had waited a couple more hours,” Ivy says, her head leaning against the window and her eyes closed, “we might be under arrest right now.”

“Yeah? What the fuck happened?”

“You didn’t catch the news?” Nolan asks, grabbing on to the seats so he can lean his head into the front with us.

“Not really. I turned it on for a second before I left. But I was busy last night.”

“Well, let me fill you in,” Nolan says. “The media somehow figured out that Claudette was the long-time girlfriend of Allen.”

“The rock star,” Ivy clarifies, like I need help keeping up.

“When did that happen?” I ask Nolan. “I mean, did you know she was dating that asshole?”

“What do you think?” Nolan snaps. He’s not the most pleasant guy when he’s irritable. But then again, neither am I. Actually, now that I think about it, none of us are. Mac is pretty even-tempered. But the rest of us? All assholes.

“Anyway.” Ivy picks up the story with a long sigh. “We came out of the cabanas for a nice dinner at the restaurant yesterday evening, expecting to have a quiet date night after all that bullshit that came with cleaning up the fire, and there were hundreds of people in the lobby. I swear, Oliver, they were like cockroaches. They swarmed us.”

“They knocked her down,” Nolan says through a clenched jaw.

“Fuck,” I say.

“Naturally Nolan dealt with that the way most men would,” Ivy adds.

“I punched that cameraman in the face,” Nolan says, smiling.

Ivy throws up her hands. “And voilà, we have cops at the resort. They almost arrested him right then and there.”

“Just so happens,” Nolan continues, “I was meeting with my lawyers earlier in the day about my dad’s assets. It turns out Claudette had filed some motion contesting the will. But now that she’s dead—”