Pieces of Ivy (21 page)

The entire flower shop storefront was pulled open to the late morning sunshine, sharing displays of exotic plants and beautiful arrangements among hand-bundled bouquets.

With the warming sun at her back, Vicki was enveloped with the fragrant wafts and the soothing scents of fresh flora. An attractive brunette in her late thirties, sporting a sassy pixie-cut, stood behind the counter stripping thorns from long-stem red roses, absently stroking the blushing petals across her lips, drawing in their lush scent as she hummed.

“Bonjour,” the woman sang with a soft, uplifting accent. “Please come in. I will be with you in a moment.”

Vicki took the opportunity to draw in the perfume from the lavish bouquet of a few exotic-looking blossoms.
Heavenly
. The appeal was apparently lost on Hank.

The woman finished drying her hands, rounding the counter with a smile. “How can I help you today?”

“I’m Agent Starr. This is Agent Dashel. We’d like to talk to you about Ivy Turner if you have a few moments.”

“Of course,” she said, the brightness falling away from her face as she called to the back. “Baby, can you come out here please?” The woman’s eyes began to glisten. “I’m Anita. We both knew Ivy.”

“What is it, babe?” A tall, fit man in his late forties stepped through the back curtain wearing leather gloves and holding a pair of pruning shears.

“These are the FBI agents we were talking about earlier.”

“Right, we were hoping you’d come by.” The husband degloved and offered his hand. “Matt Garrett.”

He pulled his wife in close. There was a tangible affection between them—so infectious that, to Vicki, Hank’s hand actually looked inviting. Not only misery loves company.

“Where are you from, Mrs. Garrett?”

Her flawless English was laced with a soothing French accent. “Please, call me Anita. I am from a small village in the South of France, near Béziers.”

Matt Garrett smiled at his wife. “I found this jewel working in her uncle’s bakery twenty years ago, while I was confronting an
early
midlife crisis at twenty-eight. I sold it all, lost myself in France and found this fresh seventeen-year-old innocent with the friendliest early morning smile. We were married a week later. We started a new life in New Brighton, far from both our homes, and we haven’t looked back.”

“Sounds like a fairy tale,” Vicki said.

“He is my prince,” Anita agreed.

Seeming too in love to be swingers, Hank hoped they would be as forthcoming about Ivy and this town’s penchant for perversion.

Matt Garrett pulled the large glass storefront closed and turned out the sign. The agents were invited to sit in a plush lounge waiting in the back. Vicki recognized “
Moi … Lolita
” by the popular French pop star Alizée playing in the background.

She looked at Matt Garrett’s petite wife and thought of the picturesque young virgin plucked as a budding blossom from the warmth of Languedoc, corrupting her into a lifestyle not of her choosing. She looked far happier and more in love than she ought to be.

Anita turned to Vicki. “What shall we discuss first? Ivy?” She looked at Hank. “Or the lifestyle? I assume you’ve gotten that far or you wouldn’t be here already.”

“So you admit to being swingers?” Hank asked.

“Why not? It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Matt said.

“Not surprised you’re fine with it.”

Matt grinned. “Because, of course, the lifestyle was
my
idea.”

“Wasn’t it?” Vicki interjected.

“You should know better than that, Agent Starr.” His eyes sparkled. “All the best ideas come from the woman.”

Vicki had assumed that the older man had manipulated his young consort for his own indulgences. Vicki wasn’t against adults playing their own games. The age they were when married had shaped Vicki’s assumption.

“Okay,” Vicki said. “Let’s go with lifestyle first. Give us the lay of the land.” Her smirk received the anticipated chuckle from the Garretts.

The couple’s candor was revealing. They belonged to one of two groups, theirs casual while the second was formal, wearing tuxedoes, evening gowns—and masks. The Garretts suspected the town royalty as being a secret third, but, regardless of their desirable appearance, the Garretts were happy to exclude the four conceited couples.

“You don’t like them,” Vicki said.

“I think they probably hold hands when they piss together, those bitches.”

Vicki liked this woman.

Her outrage wasn’t finished. “Can you believe they secretly call themselves the
new
Pieces of Eight—the women and their daughters? Because they, too, feel they are New Brighton’s greatest treasures. It’s disgusting, insensitive and immoral.”

The fact that these women believed themselves so coveted in this town that they would choose to secretly delight in aligning themselves with New Brighton’s eight former victims should have shocked Vicki more than it did. But it did sicken her.

“Was Miss Turner involved in the lifestyle?”

“Folks in this town would love that, wouldn’t they?” Matt growled. “They make her sound as if she was a slut, throwing it around everywhere—she wasn’t.”

Anita agreed. “Considering Ivy’s energy, vitality and stunning looks, she could have sex with anyone, anywhere, anytime.”

“The sex she did have, in the grand scheme, was nothing,” Matt added.

“I’ll tell you, if I had a body like hers, I’d be fucking nine times a week,” Anita said.

“You already do.”

“Yeah, but not just with you.”

They grinned at each other.

“So she wasn’t involved with either group?”

“From a club perspective, Ivy would have been an extraordinary unicorn—both clubs wanted her,” Anita said. “For her entertaining skills alone, if she didn’t want to actually engage in sex.”

“But she’d have no part of it,” Matt added.

“
Entertaining skills
?” Vicki asked.

“Dancing—she was a former stripper.”

Vicki’s eyes widened as much as Hank’s.
A blemish on the schoolteacher’s shiny reputation?

“Who knew about this?”

“Anita and I have known for over a year, but it came out a couple of weeks ago. One of our members met her at parent-teacher night and recognized her right away.”

“Awkward.”

“No kidding,” Matt said. “Unfortunately they remembered her from one of our posters. We had all of them for our favorite dancers framed—Ivy’s we got from her show in Atlanta.” He smiled. “Anita got it right from Ivy’s loving hands for being her most enthusiastic patron that night—she was the most amazing dancer of our four-city tour.” He answered Vicki’s stare. “A little trip we treat ourselves to each year—better than any date night.

“That was before we knew her, of course. Ivy was not her stage name. We put it away as soon as we realized we had our new schoolteacher naked on our club wall. It’s actually surprising it took this long for any of the membership to recognize her.”

“Do you still have the poster?” Hank asked.

Anita nodded and disappeared into their tiny office.

“We kept it our secret for as long as we could, but envy and pride, you know? Someone—not sure who—bragged to the Masks.”

“So the entire town knows?” Hank asked.

“I hope not. I don’t know that it’s left either club, but it’s a juicy bit of gossip—it’d add fuel to the fire. So, if this is the first you’ve heard about it…”

Anita handed the rolled poster to Vicki. The unfurled image revealed a flawless nude goddess flashing her playful smile, leaning provocatively along the sparkling cursive name,
Crystal Dream.

“So you didn’t try to get her to dance for your club?”

“Of course we did,” Anita said. “When we first figured out it was her, we promised Ivy complete discretion. She could wear a mask, even though that is not our thing.” She paused with a mixed gaze of longing and sadness. “If you ever saw her dance … Her face didn’t matter—as long as you could see her eyes.”

“That girl was gifted,” Matt agreed. “She owned it. When she was on stage, it was as if her sole purpose on the planet was seduction.”

“What else do you know about that time in her life?” Hank asked.

“Only that she had had a rough start,” Anita said. “She left home early and started dancing part-time when she was refused student loans. I think she said she was twenty when she started. She was dancing full-time, across the country, by the time she was twenty-four.”

Matt nodded. “She spoke about it with pride, but she was smart to hide it—given her career choice. Not many schoolteachers get hired with
exotic dancer
on their résumé. Crazy, I know!

“It turned out that Ivy managed to walk away from dancing with a heluva lot more in her jeans than her degree and that the time she spent dancing full-time gave her a far better start than she had ever imagined.

“Anita asked Ivy why she bothered walking away from it. She agreed it was better than she thought—when she finally made it to the top level, at least. Apparently starting out and surviving through the lower echelons was difficult and corrupt, and she only had her well-honed street smarts to thank for getting through it unscathed. Regardless she insisted her passion was teaching kids, and the two didn’t mix.”

Vicki thought about Ivy having to dance her way through school. Vicki had got a free ride at the best school in the country from her mother, who had insisted on supporting Vicki whether her father approved of her choice of vocation or not.

“I get it,” Vicki announced. “I had a different life from her, but I get it. There are worse ways to make money. The problem is the creeps on the floor, not the girls on the stage.”

Hank’s expression asked who she was trying to convince. She wasn’t sure.

Hank stared down at his notes bringing him back to the circled word. “You called Ivy a
unicorn
.”

“Yeah,” Matt said. “It’s a term we use to describe the near-mythical being that is a stunning unattached bisexual woman who is deemed unattainable yet available, sexually vivacious and experimental—willing to throw herself fully into the swinger mix for her pleasure and theirs. It’s every red-blooded swinger’s greatest fantasy—the most coveted prize in our respective
swingdoms
.”

“Sounds like a lot of swapping,” Hank said. “Risky, if you ask me. You probably need to get pretty cozy with the doc.”

“We don’t like Doc Collins—he’s one of
them
,” Matt said.

“
Them
?”

“The Masks.”

Vicki couldn’t help let “Gross” slip beneath her breath. She shuddered, thinking of the ashen white hairs sprouting from the top of his cratered, bulbous nose, protruding above his sour breath.

“I know, right?” Anita agreed, mirroring her revulsion.

Matt continued, “My understanding is he’s only allowed to observe.” Watching Vicki for impact, he added, “And take
matters
into his own hands.” He snickered at her wince. “He’s rumored to provide them with the discrete service of ensuring the participants remain
clean
and nothing catching is brought into the mix.”

“Smart,” Hank agreed.

“For that, he’s allowed his own voyeuristic pleasures.”

“You must be a couple”—Anita overtly appraised Vicki—“or a woman, to be invited to either group, ours or theirs.”

“No men?” Vicki asked.

“They’d have to go to one of the bigger city clubs for that.”

“Doc Collins gets a pass with them because of his discrete services,” Matt added.

“But not with you guys.”

“No way. We trust our membership to take care of themselves.” Then Matt considered for a moment. “Come to think of it, I heard Collins endlessly lobbied the Masks to continue their pursuit of the
Ivory Unicorn
, as they playfully called Ivy.”

Vicki deduced the wordplay: Stripping down
Ivory
to
Ivy
. Suddenly the mythical sketch in the doctor’s office made sense. The bizarre additions to the carefully drawn rearing unicorn had been breasts. Vicki shuddered.

“Did your
Ivory Unicorn
join—either group?”

Matt shook his head. “No. Ivy was open but didn’t want to play that way.”

Anita nodded. “We discovered it had nothing to do with desire or shame. She loved her students and her job, and wouldn’t do anything to tarnish it.”

Matt draped his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “This is adult play, and she didn’t want to role model it to a group of kids who were already struggling with hormones and promiscuity—and drooling all over her.”

“Besides swingers are parents, too,” Anita added.

“Yeah, would make for awkward parent-teacher nights,” Hank agreed.