Adrien English Mysteries: A Dangerous Thing & Fatal Shadows (11 page)

Tara was right. Robert had belonged to just about everything going. There he was, left from bottom with the Tennis Team. I was scrunched in right next to him, smiling at some long forgotten joke. I recalled that photo had been taken a few weeks before I’d gotten sick.

Another photo of Rob with the Journalism Club -- and I knew by that familiar grin he had just made some crack. Everyone around him was laughing. I turned the page and there was old Robert squiring Homecoming Queen Brittany Greenwahl. Man, they looked young.

She smelled like cheese macaroni, he’d said. I’d been in the hospital for the junior prom, but that started me remembering. Hadn’t there had been some scandal right before summer vacation? Something to do with....

I flipped back to the index, ran my finger down the Clubs & Activities. Something for everyone: Choral, Creative Writing ... . Hey, how come I hadn’t joined the Creative Writing club? Rob must have had another plan for us.

Wait, I had missed it. I started with the “C”s again. There it was: Chess Club. I found the page, and there in nostalgic black and white, just like a chess set themselves, were the five 62

Josh Lanyon

would-be Bobby Fischers: Robert Hersey, Andrew Chin, Grant Landis, Richard Corday, Felice Burns, and Not Pictured -- Adrien English.

For the longest time I sat there staring at the photo, a funny flutter in the pulse point at the base of my throat.

The Chess Club? How could I have forgotten?

But how the hell could Robert’s death have anything to do with what had happened back in high school?

Then again, both Robert and Rusty were dead. Murder and suicide. Two violent deaths.

Surely that couldn’t be a coincidence, not with Robert found holding a chess piece.

I tried to imagine one member of the Chess Club stalking the others. Talk about bad losers. Talk about delayed reaction. It was nearly fifteen years since we’d graduated. I rubbed my forehead as though that could stimulate my memory. It all seemed so long ago. I probably remembered the games more clearly than the players.

Yeah, now that I thought about it, there had been some kind of dust up. Something that happened while I’d been ill. Something that even Robert had been close-mouthed about ... .

I bolted upright at the clatter of trash cans in the alley below. Slapping shut the book, I walked back to the bedroom.

Pushing back the lace drapery, I stared down at the moonlit alley. Light lanced off the lids of the trash dumpsters against the back wall. Everything else was in shadow. I could just make out the edge of some trash cans stacked by the back entrance of the Thai restaurant next door. The trash cans were a point of contention. I didn’t get why my neighbors had to have smelly trash cans by their back entrance (and mine) when the dumpsters were just a few feet away. The food scraps in the cans attracted cats and stray dogs and bums.

As I watched, starting to feel silly, there was another clang of metal on metal and then the reverberation of a lid hitting the pavement. Something round and shiny rolled into view and fell over, like a miniature moon.

A shadow detached itself from the others. I had to wipe the glass where my breath was fogging. The figure in the alley stepped back and looked up. It wore a mask. A grinning skull.

I gripped the window sill as my heart lurched and began that frantic ticking like a turn signal about to short out. I must be clearly outlined by the hall light behind me. I ducked back, like 14 point lace would be useful concealment. I risked another look.

Not sharing my fear, the figure in the skull mask waved to me. It was bizarre. A cheery little salute from the image of death. As I stood there gaping, the dark-clad apparition turned and sprang away down the alley with un-apparition-like vigor.

Belatedly my brain kicked in. I scrambled across the bed, found the phone and called the police. Then I lay flat on the mattress and gave myself a chance to catch my breath while I waited for the squad car to come.

Damn.

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Just calm down.

Relax.

When I felt better, I pulled out a notepad from the side table and jotted the names of the remaining members of the Chess Club.

Andrew Chin

Grant Landis

Felice Burns

Me

I remembered Felice pretty clearly. She had been exceptionally poised and unreasonably focused for a girl her age. I seemed to recollect that she had been headed for med school. She could have married, but she might use her maiden name professionally. Perhaps I could track her through the AMA.

I barely remembered Andy Chin or Grant Landis. Chin, I thought, had been one of stronger players, Landis one of our weaker. My own membership in the Chess Club had been brief and unremarkable. The life span of the Chess Club itself had been brief and unremarkable, now that I thought about it. Still there was no other connection I could think of linking me and Robert to “The Royal Game.”

The fact Rusty was also connected to the Chess Club seemed conclusive to me.

At last the squad car arrived. The uniformed officers took my report and poked around the alley and side streets, their flashlights picking out empty corners and cardboard boxes. A stray cat rocketed out of its hiding place like a cartoon character. Lights went on in the building across the cinderblock wall.

Though inclined to think “the disturbance” was kids playing a prank, the cops promised to swing around the block once on their way back to patrolling.

After they drove off, it seemed very quiet. Up and down the boulevard, the neighboring businesses stood dark and silent. Inside my building, aged joints popped and creaked, settling for the night -- that would be the architectural joints, though mine weren’t in much better shape.

I paced around, tried calling Claude. There was still no answer. I considered driving over there -- I’d have liked the company -- but I was too skittish to face the alley on my own.

Finally I fixed another cup of Ovaltine and curled on the sofa, rewinding The Black Swan.

* * * * *

“It smells like something died in here,” Angus complained.

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I don’t know why it didn’t click until then. I slammed down my coffee cup and hauled ass back to the office where I started shifting boxes, pulling stuff off the metal shelves.

“What’s wrong?” Angus inquired from the doorway.

“Help me lift this.”

Gingerly he picked his way through the rubble, helping me lower an old trunk with a broken lock to the floor.

The stench of decay was practically overpowering.

“Shit, man,” Angus breathed. “There are ants everywhere.” He wiped his hands on his 501s and stared at me. His eyes looked huge behind the specs.

I opened the trunk. There was a dead cat and many, many ants.

I closed the trunk.

Angus brushed by me. I could hear him vomiting in the bathroom off the office. After a moment I realized I was just standing there rubbing my hand across my mouth, listening to Angus. I phoned the police. By now I had the number memorized. The squad car showed up followed shortly by Chan and Riordan.

“Somebody doesn’t like you, Mr. English,” one of the uniforms remarked, closing his notepad on my second complaint in twenty-four hours.

They nodded in passing to Chan and Riordan.

“What’s up?” Riordan asked.

“Someone put a dead cat in the trunk in my office.”

Riordan and Chan exchanged The Look.

“Who?” Chan asked.

“Who? Is that a routine question? How do I know who? The same person who sent me black flowers and a sympathy card, and broke into my shop, and was skulking around the alley last night!”

“Am I missing something here?” Riordan asked his partner. Chan reached for a cigarette then recalled himself. He started patting his pockets for gum.

“If people would be candid to start with, it would help,” Chan returned.

I gave an incredulous laugh. “I’m not being candid? I am a victim here. I am being stalked.”

“Run that by me again,” Riordan requested.

Actually until I put it into words the notion was nebulous, half-formed, but now I found myself stubbornly clinging to it. “I am being stalked.”

“Who do you think is stalking you, Mr. English?” Chan asked politely, unwrapping a stick of gum.

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“Whoever killed Robert.” I caught sight of Angus loitering palely behind them. “Come upstairs. I have to show you something.”

They followed me upstairs in silence. I could imagine the long-suffering looks exchanged behind my back.

In my living quarters I showed them Rob’s yearbook. I told them what Tara had said about Robert asking her to mail it to him right before his death. I turned to the page with the Chess Club and pointed out Rusty. I explained about his taking a walk out a hotel window.

“I think his death might be related. Maybe he didn’t kill himself.”

“You’re suggesting that someone killed Corday?” Chan was still neutral.

“I’m not sure what I’m suggesting. It’s not impossible, is it?”

“Hard to say without seeing the police report,” Riordan said.

Chan did a kind of double take in his partner’s direction. “Mr. English,” he said carefully, one eye on his partner, “What possible motive do you believe someone would have for killing members of your high school Chess Club?”

“I’ve no idea. I didn’t participate in the Chess Club that long. But maybe one of the surviving members would know.”

“Surviving members? Do you have some reason to believe something has happened to the other members?”

“Well, no, but isn’t this too much of a coincidence?” I glanced at Riordan. He was looking around my living room curiously. I wasn’t sure what he found so interesting -- it would have been nice if he’d paid attention to what I was saying.

“No, not really, Mr. English,” Chan answered. “In any high school graduation class there’s going to be a number of deaths, suicides, even homicides by the time your tenth reunion rolls around. It’s the law of averages.”

“Whatever. What about this?” I thrust the “In Sympathy” card at Riordan, who seemed to recall himself.

He glanced at me under his brows, took the card, read it. He turned it over. Handed it to Chan. Said gravely, “It’s not a Hallmark.”

I grabbed the card from Chan, bending it in the process. “This is just one big fucking joke to you, isn’t it? Well, it’s my life being threatened. Robert is dead, remember, Detectives?”

“Calm down, for Chrissake,” Riordan muttered. He took the card back from me. “No one has threatened your life, have they?”

“It’s implied by this card, by funeral flowers. Are you telling me it’s not against the law to leave a dead animal on someone’s property? That it’s not illegal to break into someone’s business? Obviously whoever burglarized my shop left this dead cat --”

“It’s harassment, certainly,” Chan agreed.

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“Harassment!” I heard my voice shoot up like the Vienna Boys choir, and Riordan’s eyebrows rose with it.

“Look, Mr. English,” Chan began plaintively, “try to see it from our point.”

“Oh, I get it.” I stopped cold. “You still think I could be doing this to myself. That I’m trying to throw you off my trail. Red herrings, right?”

Chan interjected smoothly, “That’s a good point, Mr. English. This book of yours that’s going to be published; it’s about a man who stabs to death an old friend, isn’t it?”

I blinked once or twice. These two really did their homework. They must have learned about my book when they questioned the rest of the writing group -- and really, the fact that they had questioned the writing group when Rob had spent so little time in it, had to be significant. They had to believe that either Claude or I was guilty.

“Actually, it’s about a man who finds out who stabbed to death an old friend. He’s an amateur sleuth.”

“He’s a homosexual.” Thus spake Riordan. The kind of guy who probably slept in flannel sheets patterned with bears and pine trees and tiny lassos. A scratch-and-sniff-hygiene Real Man kind of guy. The kind of guy who circled the Chuck Norris marathon in the TV guide.

“You seem obsessed with my sexuality, Detective.”

Something dark and shadowy slid across his eyes. I decided I didn’t want to piss him off too much.

“Who identified Robert’s body?” I asked suddenly.

“His wife.”

“Tara? When?”

“She was here in LA when it happened,” Riordan replied. “They were working on getting back together.”

My jaw must have dropped. Chan stated the obvious. “You didn’t know?”

“No.”

Riordan, still holding the sympathy card, was running the edge underneath his thumbnail. He queried amiably, “Are you aware that Mrs. Hersey is the sole beneficiary of the million-dollar insurance policy left by Robert Hersey?”

“T-Tara?” I stammered. “Tara is Robert’s beneficiary?”

Riordan looked at me and smiled oddly. “You didn’t know.”

“This is strictly confidential, Mr. English,” Chan warned.

No it’s not, I thought. This is another trap of some kind.

“Your life is not in danger, English,” Riordan drawled.

I could feel myself turning red with anger.

“Did you actually bother to check out the florist?”

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Riordan sighed. “Yes. The flowers came from the Conroy’s on Balboa. It’s a busy place.

They were paid for in cash and no one remembers anything about the purchaser.”

“So that’s it? Did you bother showing pictures of anyone in case it jogged --”

“Pictures of who?” Riordan snapped. His anger was unexpected. “Yeah, as a matter of fact we showed your picture. Nobody remembered you.”

Chan blew a gum bubble. Popped it. “Hersey’s flowers came from the same place. One dozen red roses paid in cash. You got the deluxe arrangement, English.”

“Lucky me. A stalker with good taste.”

“Did Robert receive a card?” Riordan questioned.

“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

“What did he say? Did he seem nervous, preoccupied?”