“Inappropriate how?”
“She claimed I was always, oh, I don’t know, saying suggestive things to her? Commenting on her figure and so forth, and it was making her uncomfortable and nervous to be around me, the lying bitch. She was the one sexually harassing ME.” He sighed. “I mean, I should be used to it by now-being sexually harassed, I mean. Just because I have this body doesn’t mean its okay to hit on me, you know.”
I bit my tongue. “Did you confront her about it?”
“No.” He wrinkled his forehead. “Glynis told me about it that morning. Man, I was pissed.”
“What did Glynis say about it?”
“Well, Glynis thought the whole thing was ridiculous. She said she hired me specifically because I was gay-she’d had a bad experience with a straight trainer once, and said she would only hire gay ones from then on. She said she was telling me about it, not because she was mad, or anything, but she thought I should know. She said she would have a talk with Rosemary about it. She told me she would make sure from there on out that Rosemary wouldn’t be there when I came by.”
“How did Rosemary act toward you that morning?”
“She ignored me-the way she had ever since I asked her to stop.” He rubbed his eyes. “She would open the front door and just walk away, not even acknowledge me, which you know, was fine with me, the crazy bitch. Chanse, it was fucking freaky the way that woman acted. It may not seem weird to you, but she gave me the creeps. It’s nothing I can put my hand on-but…”
I steered the conversation back where I wanted it to go. “Glynis never said anything about Freddy Bliss to you?”
“No. I told you, we never talked about her private life. I tried once to get her to open up about stuff-personal trainers are kind of like therapists. You get to know your clients and their business really well, if you know what I mean. So, I thought it was kind of odd that Glynis never really talked, you know? But she shut me down completely. In a way, it was kind of insulting-you know, made it very clear to me that I was staff, not a friend.” He laughed. “In a way it was cool, though. I do get tired of listening to all that boring shit from clients. But you know, she was a star. She knew famous people. I wouldn’t have minding getting gossip from her.” He snapped his fingers. “I remember what it was. I asked her if Jared Heath”-one of her co-stars from Sportsdesk-“ was as big of a tool as he seemed. She just gave me a look and said, ‘I pay you to train me, not to gossip with.’ I was like, ‘Okay then, let’s do crunches.’”
I took a business card out of my wallet and handed it over. “If you can think of anything else, give me a call.”
“You sure you don’t want a trainer?” He asked, smiling at me. Brett looked me up and down again. “We can turn you into a god in no time.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, adding to myself, you cocky, arrogant asshole. I shrugged. “If I do, I’ll give you a call.”
I walked out of the gym, my mind racing ahead. Davina had been right-I couldn’t remember the last time I’d met such an arrogant peacock. It was entirely possible Rosemary was just being friendly. He, of course, expected everyone he met to want to sleep with him, and would always misinterpret friendliness.
But why had she lied about him sleeping with Glynis? Revenge, because he’d asked her to stop buying him things?
That didn’t make a lot of sense. Maybe she had thought he was sleeping with Glynis.
I was in the neighborhood, so I headed over to Jephtha’s. It was early for him-since Abby worked late nights he kept the same hours. I parked in front of his house and knocked on the door. The dogs started barking. I was just starting to think I should have called first when I heard the deadbolt turn. The door swung open, and Jephtha grinned at me. “Dude, I’d hate to see the other guy.” He yawned. His hair was standing up in every direction. He was wearing Saints sweats.
“He looks fine now, but that’s because I didn’t have a fair shot at him The next time, he’s losing his teeth.” I walked past him into the house. “Did I wake you?”
“Shhh, keep it down, Abby’s still asleep.” He yawned again. “You want some coffee?”
“No thanks.” I shook my head. “Sorry to get you up.”
“I haven’t been to bed yet.” He led me back into the computer room. He handed me a folder full of paper. “You know me, once I got started digging, I couldn’t sleep until I got everything you wanted.” He yawned and stretched again. “The bed’s going to feel pretty good. Oh, yeah!” He rolled his eyes at me. “You know, it would have saved me a lot of time if you’d told me Freddy’s real name.”
“Huh?” I kicked myself. Some investigator you are.
“Freddy Bliss is his professional name. So, when I first, um, gained access to the Emporia State records, I couldn’t find any record of him-because Freddy Bliss didn’t exist back then.” He grinned at me. “So, I had to do some more hunting. I found an interview he did where he talked about going to Emporia State, so then I had to find his birth name.” He winked. “Frederick Bliss Osborne, of Newton, Kansas, enrolled at Emporia State thirteen years ago.”
“Good work.” I replied, still pissed at myself. Why hadn’t it occurred to me that Freddy Bliss was a stage name?
But it hadn’t been mentioned in any of the Internet research I’d done, which was kind of unusual. I opened the file and looked at his transcripts. “He wasn’t much of a student, was he?” He’d barely scraped by-mostly C’s. The few B’s he’d earned were offset by an equal number of D’s. Even in acting classes his grades had been average.
“Skip that shit-that’s not the good stuff, trust me.”
I turned a few pages. “What’s this?” I scanned the page. I couldn’t help myself, I smiled. And here it is, Mr. Bliss. The big secret you don’t want anyone to know about.
“It’s a disciplinary hearing.” Jephtha grinned. “They erased it-afterwards. But nothing ever is truly erased from a computer hard drive unless you scrub it completely-and whoever deleted the file thought it was gone. It was still there, on the hard drive. It took me a few hours, but I was able to reconstruct it.” He preened a little bit. “I kick ass, don’t I?”
I started reading. Karen Zorn, a sophomore, had gone to the dean and accused Freddy Bliss of raping her at a party at Sigma Alpha Epsilon, where Freddy was a brother. She claimed that Freddy had gotten her drunk-feeding her tequila shots-and when she was so drunk she could barely stand, she’d asked if she could go lie down for a while. Freddy had taken her up to his room, and once they were inside, he locked the door and attacked her. She’d tried to scream but he’d put a sock in her mouth and raped her.