Adrien English Mysteries: A Dangerous Thing & Fatal Shadows (15 page)

“Like?”

“He thought he knew who killed Robert.”

“And that would be --?”

“You.”

He was expecting this it seemed. His lips quirked in a half-smile. “You do have balls, English.” He took another swallow of coffee.

When nothing else seemed forthcoming I said, “Claude said you were gay.”

This did get a reaction, although not what I expected.

“Gay.” Riordan made a sound of disgust. “What a stupid term.”

“What do you prefer?”

“Homosexual. Having sexual desire for those of the same sex.”

“Yeah, such a mouthful though.”

He slanted me a tawny look. “You don’t seem surprised.”

“I’ve had time to adjust to the idea.”

“Me too, but it still comes as a shock.”

When he moved, the outline of the powerful muscles in his arms and shoulders was plainly visible beneath the soft material of the sweatshirt. Same with the taut outline of his thigh muscles in those comfortably faded jeans. He would have made quick work of Rob or even Claude. He’d make quick work of me, no doubt, but somehow the fact that he smelled like deodorant soap and April-fresh fabric softener disarmed me. He smelled -- and looked --

like he grabbed his clothes straight out of the hot dryer. The sad thing was the overall Fatal Shadows

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impression was as groomed and confident as Bruce who spent three times the effort and money in getting that I-was-an-International-Male-model effect.

Life ain’t fair.

I asked, genuinely curious, “How do you function? Does anyone know?”

“No. I kill everyone I fuck,” he said derisively. “What do you think?”

“I mean anyone close to you. Family or friends?”

He met my gaze levelly. “No. And no one’s going to.” That was certainly straight enough for anyone.

“Is that a threat?”

“Do you really think I killed La Pierra?” He seemed amused.

“He said you threatened him.”

“Oh, I did. And I meant it. It’s as much as my life is worth out there.” He jerked his head indicating the mean streets of Old Pasadena I suppose.

“What do you do? You date women?”

“I like women.” After a moment he added wryly, “I just like men better.”

I stared, trying to make sense of him. Now I knew why that old Sarah McLachlan song had seemed so appropriate. Especially the line, “You’re so beautiful. A beautiful fucked up man.” That about summed it up.

“So, do you have relationships with men?”

“Relationships?” He was sneering openly now. “Yeah. I have relationships with men. My father, my brothers, my partner. I have sex with queers. Don’t confuse the two.”

“Queers and men?”

“Sex and relationships.”

“You’ve never had a healthy, satisfying homosexual relationship.” It wasn’t a question, but he answered anyway.

“That’s a contradiction in terms.”

Probably for him it was. If Claude was right, Riordan’s playground was the dark world of S/M. Masters and slaves. Pain and bondage and humiliation and punishment -- everything he felt he deserved, no doubt.

“Claude said you’re into the whole leather scene. That he used to see you at a club called Ball and Chain.”

His eyes were very green as they held my own. If this was the secret he had killed to protect, I had just put the finishing touches on my death warrant.

“Is it true?”

“Why? Looking for sponsor?”

“I’m strictly a safe sex kind of guy.”

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“Yeah?”

I didn’t understand that odd smile. Maybe he thought finding a guy leaving my apartment in the a.m. was a normal occurrence for me.

I was afraid to ask. I asked anyway. “What about Robert?”

“What about him?”

“Did you know him?” What I meant was, did you kill him?

“No.”

I don’t know if I believed him or not. I wasn’t sure why he had revealed as much as he had to me. International Coffee Moment? Or because there was simply no one else in his life he could confide in? I couldn’t imagine what it would be like trying to live under so much pressure, the strain of a double life. Small wonder if he wasn’t schizoid.

He said casually, “By the way, we ran that card for fingerprints. Clean -- other than yours.”

“Mine?” Where would he get a comparison set of my fingerprints? I opened my mouth to ask, then caught his expression.

“Rob’s apartment,” I said. I remembered that before we left he had picked up my glass and carried it to the kitchen. At least that's what I'd thought; apparently the glass and my gloves had been removed for evidence.

As though I hadn’t spoken, he added, “The flowers were a dead end.”

“I hate for you to keep wasting your time. Maybe you should just plant evidence against me.”

He let that go too. “It’s interesting about the cat, though. It had been asphyxiated. It was too old and well-fed to be a stray. Any of your neighbors missing a cat?”

“I don’t know.” I dragged my thoughts back from the realization that the bastard had taken advantage of my moment of weakness. Why not? He was a cop and I was his numero uno suspect. This was a good reminder that I could not let my guard down with him.

“Asphyxiated, huh?”

“Right.” He watched me speculatively.

I said, “There’s a Thai restaurant next door. If someone’s missing a cat, you should probably talk to them.”

His laugh sounded like it caught him off guard.

“I didn’t kill someone’s cat and stow it in the stockroom to lend weight to my story of being stalked.”

“It does seem unlikely,” he admitted.

I said, “Thanks for that much. So why didn’t this freak chop the cat up too?”

“Maybe he liked the cat,” Riordan commented. “Maybe he’s kind to small animals and little old ladies.”

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“Then he wouldn’t be the normal serial killer.”

“Normal serial killer ...” he repeated thoughtfully.

Was I totally off the mark? Shortly before his death Robert had been romantically involved with someone none of his friends knew -- someone who might or might not be his killer. The same person who had killed Robert had broken into my shop. Whoever had broken into my shop was almost certainly the same person sending threatening cards, flowers, etc. My anonymous phone caller was someone I knew or someone who had access to the phone directory of someone I knew, namely Robert.

That all added up, right? Logically, Robert’s killer and my stalker had to be one and the same.

And while I was the one who had originally suggested the possibility of a serial killer --

and as popular as barking mad, opera-playing, Chianti-swilling serial killers are in fiction -- I was more and more inclined to believe that whoever had killed Robert had some discernable motive.

I was thinking aloud, “He lets himself in with Robert’s key. He trashes my place, leaves the cat in the trunk to rot and lets himself out again. Why didn’t he just wait and kill me?”

Riordan traced the painted leaf on the cup with his thumb. “Harassment? Dirty tricks?

Maybe someone who knows you’ve got a bum ticker.”

“You think someone’s trying to scare me to death?”

Riordan shrugged.

“Why not just kill me?” I repeated.

“I’ll play. Why not?”

As they used to say in those B sci-fi movies from the Fifties: Reverse polarization! What was the motive for not killing me?

I rose, refilled my cup. “Was the same weapon used to kill Claude and Robert?”

“Won’t know for sure till we see the ME’s report. I’d guess yes. I’m not big on coincidence. I’ll tell you something, though. The wounds were not the same. The level of rage was not there.”

I remembered how the newspapers had described the viciousness with which Robert had been attacked. His face slashed, stab wounds in his throat, his eyes --

“Claude was killed more ... conventionally?”

He smiled faintly. “You could put it that way. Hersey’s killer was acting out some fantasy. An orgy of violence. La Pierra’s was in a hurry.”

“He couldn’t have known I was coming back.”

“Right.”

“Unless you think I killed Claude?”

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Josh Lanyon

He glanced at the slightly puffy knuckles of my hand resting on the table. “Not nearly enough blood on your clothes. And no murder weapon.”

“Not even in the Bronco?” I inquired blandly. “I wondered why you were so considerate as to have me driven home.”

“You’re so cynical.” Riordan was grinning.

He drained his cup. Rose to leave. I rose too and went to get his jacket. Brown leather and no epaulettes. So maybe the S/M thing was more of a hobby than a vocation.

At the door I asked, “Have you had any luck tracing Felice or any of the others from the Chess Club?”

He shrugged into his jacket, not meeting my eyes. “No.”

“No. You haven’t even tried.”

I must have sounded bitter enough that he said after a moment, “Look, I did run some inquiries. Okay? Nothing yet.”

* * * * *

Friday afternoon brought galleys from my publisher. This proof that my first novel was fast approaching the reality stage took my mind off my other problems. I went upstairs, made myself a cup of Special Roast, got out a box of Belgian chocolate almond cookies, and began pouring over the galleys. Soon I was lost again in the world of my own imagination, wincing at certain phrases, pleasantly surprised at others. Absorbed in the pages before me, I was amazed when I came up for air and it was nearly five o’clock.

I went downstairs. Angus was eating a subway sandwich and pondering the obituary section of the Times. Bits of lettuce and salami dotted the newsprint like confetti.

“Dead you wail the western male,” he enunciated through layers of sandwich.

“Come again?” Not that anything surprised me at this point. If he’d started spouting Chaucer I’d have taken it as par for the course.

Angus masticated ferociously, swallowed, and repeated as though for the deaf, “Did you want the rest of the mail?”

“Thank you. I did.” I picked up the bundle of mail and felt around under the counter.

“Do you know what happened to the letter opener?”

“No.”

“It was right here.” I squatted down, running my hands along the shelves. “It looks like a miniature dagger. Mother of Pearl handle?”

Actually it was a witch’s bolline, a long ago Halloween gag gift from Mel.

“I never saw it,” said Angus.

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I stared at him. He blinked nervously behind his specs, bit his lip. I had no idea if he was lying or not. He was the kind of kid who acts guilty even when he isn’t.

I tried to think of the last time I’d seen the letter opener. I’d been using the one in my office for the past few days. I didn’t remember seeing the bolline since Robert had opened the mail Friday last.

It wasn’t like I still had any special attachment to the thing. I couldn’t rid myself of the suspicion it had been taken during last Monday’s break-in, but that didn’t make sense. Still, the feeling of unease persisted.

I went back to the office and began shuffling through the post. Along with the usual books and magazines and catalogs (how did I get on the Things You Never Knew Existed mailing list?) was a flat, square package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. The writing was crooked, a child’s scrawl in red crayon.

I used my pen knife on the string. Slid the blade beneath the brown flaps. A CD lay on my desk. Verdi’s Requiem.

“God damn it!” I picked the plastic case up and threw it across the room. The case pinwheeled through the air, hit the metal shelf and broke open. Two parts landed on the floor. The CD rolled in a neat circle, flipped over and lay face up.

I jumped up, crossed the room in two strides and picked up the CD. Across the front in black Sharpie were printed the words, “Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.”

Fatal shadows. Fatal shit. I reached for the phone.

But then, slowly, I replaced the receiver. What was the point in calling the police?

Messrs. Serve and Protect had me pegged as a hysterical faggot who had only himself to blame if a disgruntled suitor was stalking him. Riordan was obviously undecided as to whether I was capable of sending myself gruesome presents for attention. Not amazing if he still suspected me of offing Robert.

I went upstairs, put the CD on the player. Immediately the music spilled out, silken and somber, gliding around the sunlit rooms, trailing after me into my study. I pulled out my Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations and scanned the index. I found what I was looking for under

“Fatal.” English Dramatist John Fletcher (1579-1625) -- of whom I’d never heard -- had written something called “Honest Man’s Fortune.”

Man is his own star; and the soul that can

r

Rende an honest and perfect man,

Commands all light, all influence, all fate,

Nothing to him falls early or too late.

Our acts, ou

r

r angels a e, for good or ill

Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.

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Josh Lanyon

Chapter Twelve

What would Grace Latham have done in my position? Well, in close to twenty mystery novels she would have run straight to the murderer with the only piece of proof, and placed herself in mortal jeopardy. That was the difference between me and Grace -- she usually managed to stumble onto a piece of evidence, a useful clue, something. Grace also had dapper Colonel Primrose to feed her inside info and to save her well-bred ass at the last minute. I had no such ally.

So despite the blue skies smiling at me that early Saturday morning, my mood was gloomy. I stood at the kitchen window watching white clouds gambol playfully across blue fields of sky, the sun shining with relentless cheer, drying out the rain puddles, the wet roofs, the glistening streets -- and my soggy brain.

Over a can of Tab I jotted down what I thought I knew so far -- what I believed to be the facts of the case.

Tara had motive: according to the police she stood to inherit a sizeable chunk of change.

That was usually sufficient grounds for murder in most Leslie Ford novels, but how did it apply to knocking me off? I didn’t benefit from Robert’s will, and when I died whatever I left went to various gay men’s organizations.