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Authors: David James

BOOK: A Not So Model Home
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C
HAPTER 14
What Does A Scotsman Have Hidden Under His Kilt?
“W
ell, Toviah broke the code of ethics for models—he smiled on the runway. Everyone knows you're supposed to be devoid of emotion, thought, and feeling during a show. I mean, no wonder he can't find work. He did it to himself,” David warned.
We were all seated around Ian's cavernous living room, cameras rolling while we waited for Aleksei to arrive. In the beginning, Jeremy insisted that everyone be present when we began shooting, but two things changed his mind. Having people show up naturally was, well, more real. Plus, these were gay men. Correction, these were gay men who were models—they rarely showed up on time. When Aleksei finally did enter the room, something was out of place about him: He was wearing a hat instead of sporting a new hair color or style.
“What's with the hat?” Ian asked.
Without saying a word, Aleksei removed his cap to reveal a bald scalp that looked like it had been scrubbed with a steel wool pad. His scalp was an angry red.
“Someone put depilatory in my shampoo. I felt it when I was shampooing—the burning—but by the time I figured out what was happening, it was too late.”
“That's too bad, Aleksei. Maybe it was just cheap shampoo,” David replied with just a hint of a smile on his face.
“And maybe it was just someone cheap who put that hair remover into my shampoo?” Aleksei fired back.
“I don't know what you're talking about, Aleksei. I have no reason to sabotage you or anyone on this show. I will win this thing fair and square. I don't need to resort to childish tricks. Why don't you wear your wigs, then?”
“Someone cut those up as well.”
Just then, Gilles joined us in the living room. Naked. Yes, he was huge. I mean, huge. And second, he was definitely European. Now I understood Ian's attraction to Gilles.
“Well, someone act like a child,” Gilles joined in. He held up a pair of pants to reveal a large, ragged hole in the seat area. All my pants, ze swim suits, zhorts . . . all zeese holes!” He sat down dejectedly on a white cotton duck sofa. “I need to look good for the camera.”
I made a mental note not to sit on that sofa again.
“Gilles,” I started, “in case you hadn't noticed, we're filming here. I know you might live in the Marais in Paris, but here in Palm Springs, we wear clothes . . . sometimes. Or at least underwear. Some of us . . . especially when we're in front of cameras.”
I knew perfectly clear why Gilles had come into the filming naked. Partly, he was French. But mainly, he was showing off his assets—something that Ian didn't fail to notice. Nor I. I had to hand it to him, he had a huge cock. Low-hanging balls. Pubic hair that needed a trim, but other than that . . . I understood that women weren't supposed to think about such things, let alone talk about them, but there was something about dicks being so primal. The undeniable masculinity of a man. And yes, I was horny. Ken was still caring for his mother and I hadn't gotten laid in weeks. Believe me, nothing else about Gilles turned me on, but his dick was reminding me that I needed to get laid. And soon.
“I think someone is trying to send a message,” I added.
“I agree,” David chipped in. “You could drive a Cadillac Escalade through that hole.”
Gilles agreed. “Zhoost look at zeese hole,” he said, holding up the violated pair of pants again.
“I wasn't talking about that hole, Gilles.”
Gilles threw the pair of pants on the floor in disgust. “I don't know why you must attack Gilles so much.”
“Because you throw the blood in the water yourself. A shark can't say no.”
“I just don't know why they don't finish this contest seeze day and declare me zee winner. If I don't win soon, I will have to zell my body on the street.”
“Gilles, you can't sell from an empty pushcart,” I said, lobbing in a zinger that was thankfully caught on film. I don't know why I said that. It was like some comic persona inside of me had taken control of my tongue and made me say it. Normally, I would just stay out of conflicts of any sort. An argument between a store manger and a customer: I'd leave the store. Between two drivers over a parking space? I'd hit the gas and peel out of there. I guess my growing fame was making me fearless. Or, it was making me crave attention. I wasn't sure if this was a good thing. Maybe I was just getting in touch with my inner asshole.
No matter how you looked at it, the gloves were off early today.
“I have something to say,” Keith announced with great importance, like he was going to drop a bomb, but considering all the manufactured drama on this show, I was skeptical. “I am Ian's son.”
Okay, it was a bomb. A big one.
No one knew what to say for the longest time, but I could guess the two main thoughts that were going through everyone's head:
I just lost out on $350 million,
and
Ian screwed his own son. Ewwwww!
Ian sat silently, looking like a deer caught in the headlights of a Winnebago. No one immediately challenged Keith as to the truth to his story, so he launched an explanation of his own. Me, I was just interested. The guys, however, wanted to know if it was true. After all, it might give Keith a claim to Ian's fortune in some twisted way or, even worse, Ian might get all touchy-feely over the prospect of a son and give him a big piece of the action out of deference to a bloodline.
Keith took a big breath, then commenced with his story. “My mother, Ena, was married to Ian a long time ago in Scotland. They both started a small hair salon in Glasgow that became somewhat successful. Ena and Ian had no children for a long time. As time went on, my mother was unable to control her drinking, and Ian eventually forced her out of the business, which Ian eventually sold before he divorced Ena and moved to America. What my father”—he pointed to Ian as if it was an accepted fact—“didn't know was that my mother was pregnant with me at about the time Ian left her. Ena, fearing the stigma of being a single mother, kept the truth about me quiet as long as she could. By the time I was born, Ian had left the country for Los Angeles. For years, my mother struggled with her addiction and tried to earn a living in a hair salon, but eventually she succumbed to liver cancer and died when I was eight years old. I then went to live with relatives of my mother until I was eighteen. All the time, my mother had drilled into my head her various plans for revenge on my father for abandoning the two of us. I grew up being taught how to use people, manipulate them, and how to find Ian and get close to him. Well, I made my way to the U.S. and wormed my way into Ian's life by working on my body and buffing up, showing up at clubs Ian was likely to visit, and the plan worked. But there, I changed direction from the plans that my mother laid. Instead of killing him or trying to ruin him, I fell in love with him. So here I am. I confess.”
“I must disagree wiss that story,” Gilles chimed in.
“How so?” Keith countered.
“You said you work on the body. Buffing up. That is where I disagree. To me, you are a sack of rocks.”
“Salope.”
I was impressed. Keith knew French.
Aurora, feeling the need to referee a bit, stepped in.
“Ian, is Keith telling the truth?”
“It could be. Oh, what's the big deal? I barely touched him.”
Aurora again, “You were married?”
“Yes, to Ena. What Keith is saying is true. That was a long time ago.”
“About how long ago?”
“Twenty . . . um,” Ian said, stopping himself once the numbers added up. Yes, Keith is probably my son.”
“But wait a minute,” I said, jumping in, not wanting to be out of the limelight too much. After all, I wanted to stay on the show . . . I had bills to pay. “You don't have the same surnames.”
“My last name was Forbes. I had it changed before I left for America so that Ian wouldn't suspect anything as I courted him. And I have the paperwork to prove it.”
“Well, that blows a hole in my objection,” I conceded.
 
I recapped what happened on the show that day to Alex over dinner at my house.
“So Ian doesn't really care that he slept with his son?”
“Not really. He said he's done worse.”
“How can you do worse than that?”
“Ian had twins as lovers once.”
“Ugh!”
“Fraternal. That's why Ian said it didn't bother him.”
“That was his answer?” Alex answered, flabbergasted.
“Well, he also pointed out that he's dying. He doesn't really care.”
“Amanda, this development is really going to throw a monkey wrench into the whole works. This might make the show unnecessary. Ian might have his heartstrings pulled by Keith because of the family connection and leave everything to him. What is Jeremy thinking about all of this?”
“Jeremy? He's loving it. Now, in addition to bitching, treachery, greed, and hatred, he has incest and a huge target for the rest of the guys to aim at. Keith might as well just wear a T-shirt with a huge bull's-eye on it.”
“From what you've told me, Amanda, when it comes to snide comments, their aim is pretty good.”
“It's not the comments I'm worried about. They don't leave a hole like a bullet can.”
C
HAPTER 15
A Twisted Game of Twister
T
he next morning, we assembled in Ian's living room to get ready for another day of shooting. As usual, we started at 6
A.M.
since there was so much to set up, everyone had to be made up, and it was all done so that we could start shooting around 10:30 when the deep shadows of morning and evening weren't around. Scenes had to be matched for lighting too. I never knew that even in small productions like
Things Are a Bit Iffy,
it took so much time to prepare what was supposed to end up looking so real and spontaneous. The entire cast was present, except for Keith, who, as usual, was the last to show up.
Apparently, no one got a lot of sleep last night. At around 2:30
A.M
., one of Ian's penis sculptures slipped off its base at the top of the stairs and went tumbling down the stairwell, taking several other penises with it in its tumble. The noise could've waked the dead, Aurora reported. Ian, David, Drake, and Marcus eventually came running downstairs over the commotion, but, of course, it was Ian who made the loudest noise over the incident. Ian actually wailed over the loss of his work of art since he claimed that it was a scale model of Jack Wrangler's cock. Jack Wrangler was one of the most famous gay porn stars in the 1970s. Anyway, by the time the guys got Ian calmed down, got him to swallow an Ambien, and escorted him back to his bedroom, a good half-hour had passed and everyone eventually went back to sleep.
But now that it was morning, Jeremy was getting visibly upset that Keith hadn't showed yet.
“David, could you be a dear and go fetch Keith? We need to start shooting ASAP!” he said. As soon as David padded upstairs, Jeremy continued, “Okay, to bring you all up to speed, the last time we had Keith reveal he was Ian's son and Ian had incestuous sex with him at one time or another. We also had the sabotaging of Gilles's clothing and David's hair, the uncovering of Aleksei's penile implants, blah, blah blah. Let's keep those events in mind as we start today. We'll want some reactions about the incest thing.”
A minute later, David came back down the stairs, flung himself back in the chair he had just vacated, and picked up the copy of
Numéro
magazine that he had been reading earlier without saying a word.
“Well . . . ?” Ian spoke up. “Is Keith coming down or are we going to have to start without him?”
“If I were you, I'd start without him. He's dead,” David pronounced, flipping another page in his magazine.
“What do you mean dead?” Ian asked, scratching for an answer. “You mean, like dead to the world, like in a deep sleep?”
“No, like dead-dead. Like not living. Not breathing.”
“Are you sure?” Ian continued, not believing what his ears were hearing. The rest of the cast sat with their mouths stuck open, showing hundreds of blindingly white teeth. “How can you be so sure?”
“Well, Ian”—David put his magazine down with an annoying slam onto the coffee table—“he's lying there on the floor like he'd been playing a game of Twister by himself. I think he probably overdosed.”
“Why would you think that, David?” Ian asked with more than a little irritation showing.
“Because he's a dealer.”
“He is not!” Ian struck back. “My son is not a dealer.”
“Yes, he is, Ian—or
was
! I'm sorry to break the news to you, but Keith is a dealer . . . and not a very good one either. Bad drugs. The shitty stuff. Ian, his clubs haven't been doing so well, so he's been supplementing his income by selling drugs in his clubs. He's been supplying a lot of models too. Female and MALE!”
Several sets of eyes hit the floor or wandered off into space, trying to look as innocent as possible.
“Uh, guys,” I said, butting in. “We seem to be forgetting that someone is dead upstairs. Maybe. Probably.”
I got up and was followed by everyone else in the room—except David. I guess he had made up his mind, had seen enough, and seemed more interested in a spread in a French women's fashion magazine than confirming whether Keith was taking a long nap or ready to push up a whole lot of daisies. When we got to Keith's room, I was shocked by what I saw. I expected to see Keith sitting as if he had fallen asleep in a comfy chair on a snowy afternoon. This was not the case. Keith's body was lying on the floor, bent back in a painful arch like some kind of sadistic Pilates exercise. We're talking painful. Even worse was the expression on his face. He looked like he had died crying, no, bawling his eyes out, his mouth in a downturned scowl. This was not a quiet death.
Ian rushed around me and tried to pick Keith up and cradle him, but Keith was stiffer than an Episcopalian singing a black spiritual.
“My son, my son!” Ian wailed, holding Keith for the appropriate amount of time, then letting him drop to the floor. “I just can't take it. Why is it that I always have to bear so much sorrow? I am retiring to my room now and taking another sleeping pill. No one is to disturb me until lunch.”
Ian left and the rest of us huddled around the doorway, not sure of what to do. Jeremy's assistant, Tony, called out from downstairs: “I've called 911 and they're on their way.”
Having experience with several bodies in my listings or at my own house, I stepped in and decided to take charge.
“Okay, we've disturbed the crime scene enough. We need to leave the area and go downstairs.”
No one moved an inch.
“What's the matter, guys?” I pleaded.
“We're scared,” Aleksei reported, taking a quick consensus from the crowd.
“Why?”
“Because Keith was murdered. The killer may be still in the house.”
“How do you know he was murdered?” I asked, lying to myself when I knew full well that Keith was put out of action for his ties to Ian.
Gilles, oddly—and thankfully—silent for the longest time, spoke up, “Someone want to get Keith out of the contest. So, pop!” he said, pointing his finger like a gun, then shooting it.
“Let's all go down together; then we'll all be safe.”
Gilles, not known for having tremendous insights into life—or anything, for that matter—had made an astute observation. “The killer, he ees one of us, perhaps?”
I hated to agree with anything that Gilles said, but in this case, I had to admit to myself that he was probably right.
 
Several police cars arrived within minutes, probably owing to the fact that the dispatcher recognized Ian's address from the 911 call. Ian was a constant irritant in Palm Springs due to his caustic nature, but he was also a big contributor to police charities. Mostly as a payoff to keep his partiers from being arrested for drugs or explicit public sexual acts.
Several uniformed policemen entered, followed by a plainclothes detective. Dating a homicide detective gives you a little insight into how the police operate. Plus, this one recognized me.
“Amanda! Fancy meeting you here!”
I fished around in my memory and hoped I got the name right. “Jerry? Jerry Hallander?”
I got a great big hug from the detective.
“I haven't seen you since you were brought into the police station for breaking and entering.”
“The charges were dropped, Jerry.”
“That's right. You and your gay ex. You were trying to find out if that Realtor, Mary Dodge, killed Doc Winters. Wow! It seems like ages. So, what's going on here?”
I took him into the kitchen, sat him down, and proceeded to tell him the whole story. He was taking it all down on his iPad. He then started upstairs, beckoning to me with his finger to follow him. I did, leaving the rest of the cast downstairs and bewildered as to why I was getting special treatment.
“So, Jerry, why are you bringing me up here with you? To what do I owe this honor?
“I need someone who's on the inside. I need you to fill me in on the personalities here.”
“Jerry, they're male models. Personality isn't the first word that comes to mind.”
“You know what I mean. Who's who, etcetera.”
“You mean who's doing who? The answer: everyone.”
“Well, nothing's changed here. We're always getting calls about guys screwing on the lawn of Ian's estate.”
“Jerry, the walls here must be eight feet tall and the vegetation is higher than that. You can't see anything from the street.”
“You can when you're on the celebrity tour bus. It's a double-decker.”
“Oh,” I said. “I guess the tourists got some photos that the folks back in Kansas won't believe.”
“That's not the half of it, Amanda. Sometimes there are guys screwing, sometimes there's someone dressed in a rubber catsuit tied between palm trees. Whipping, flogging, piss parties. You name it, we've gotten complaints about it.”
“I had no idea,” I replied as we walked down the hall to Keith's room. “You see, Jerry, that's the problem with being a straight woman in a gay town. Great parties and fun bars, but you always feel like an outsider.”
“You're upset because you don't get invited to a piss party?”
“No, not that. It's just that life is going on around here and I'm not on the inside track.”
“I'm a straight cop in a very gay city. How do you think I feel? But I get on with my life. I don't get invited to a lot of parties since there are either drugs there or people are drinking and driving. People treat me like they've invited someone's mother to a party. Not fun.”
Normally, Jerry wouldn't even leave a blip on my sexual radar screen, but he had changed since I had last seen him. He lost some weight, put on some muscles, and stopped having his gray hair dyed, leaving it to go my second favorite color after jet black: salt and pepper. He wore a really nicely tailored suit. In short, he had climbed quite a few numbers on the hot meter.
We reached Keith's room. Jerry peered in, then whistled.
“Boy, I haven't seen this in a long time,” he said.
“Seen what? A murder? You're a homicide detective.”
“No, strychnine. Nasty stuff.”
“You can tell just by looking at him?”
“Amanda, this isn't conclusive, but it has all the signs of strychnine. The jackknifed back, the eyes wide open, and the grimace on the face. Looks like he's been dead since late last night. So you think one of the guys downstairs killed this . . .” he said, looking at his iPad again, “. . . Keith because he was the son of Ian Forbes?”
“
Possible
heir, Jerry.”
Jerry stood at the doorway, avoiding going in just yet until the crime scene unit arrived. He scanned the room slowly, over and over, looking at the carpet, the windows, drawers, bed. I scanned the room, too, but didn't see anything that looked suspicious. Well, except for the glass on the nightstand, which probably delivered the poison.
“Look at the glass,” Jerry commented.
“What's so unusual about it?”
“It has the faintest tinge of red. Very, very faint.”
“And that means what? Keith often drank cranberry juice because he was susceptible to kidney stones.”
“Orange juice is a better antidote to stones.”
“Oh, so you're a doctor too?” I joked, realizing that I was starting to flirt a bit.
“Just a detective. Amanda, is there someone here who manages the property?”
“Drake Whittemore. He manages the estate, inside and out.”
“Excellent. I have a question to ask him.”
“He's sitting downstairs.”
“Before we go down, has he had relations with Ian Forbes?”
“You're not a very good detective, Jerry. All of the men downstairs have pillowed Ian at one time or another. With the exception of the show's staff . . . you know, the director, cameramen, etcetera. Actually, I can't say that's completely true. There's a lot of sex that goes on around here.”
“Gotcha. Let's go find Drake.”
We descended the stairs, and as I followed Jerry, I eyed the entire cast to see if there was guilt visible on anyone's face.
“Which one of you is Drake?” Jerry asked.
“I am,” Drake responded.
“Could I ask you a few questions in the . . . er, kitchen, wherever that is?”
“Sure.”
As Drake got up to lead the way, Gilles piped up. “Oh, oh. Zee trouble begins.”
Drake, as usual, didn't respond to the daily comments and quips that sailed around Ian's home like an erratic parrot.
We entered the kitchen and I offered a seat to Drake. Drake declined, preferring to stand. I was curious. What was Jerry looking for? I tried to figure out where his path of logic was taking him, but I couldn't yet discern anything.

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