Adrien English Mysteries: A Dangerous Thing & Fatal Shadows (16 page)

I could think of other reasons someone might decide to get rid of Robert: jealousy, for one. Claude had been sick with jealousy after Robert dumped him, but Claude had been killed too. Of course Claude was just one of many, so maybe another of Robert’s discarded lovers was out there evening the score. But again, why come after me? Robert and I had not been romantically involved.

Maybe Robert had been the victim of a hate crime. Max certainly loathed Robert, but I couldn’t quite picture Max killing Robert except in the heat of the moment. Robert’s murder had been premeditated. No one randomly carries chess pieces around, except maybe disgruntled Russian ex-champs. Besides, while Max might not care for my lifestyle -- or me, Fatal Shadows

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for that matter -- I couldn’t believe my existence troubled him enough for him to bother killing me.

I scratched my nose with the end of my pen. Yeah, lots of possible reasons, and each more improbable than the last. Maybe the blackmail theory wasn’t so far-fetched. Rob desperately needed money and he would get a kick out of watching someone squirm. He’d never had any sense about taking a joke too far. And Detective Riordan, for example, didn’t seem to enjoy much sense of humor. But while I could see it might be to Riordan’s advantage to frame me for Robert’s murder, I couldn’t see him risking a third homicide.

So while I could think of a number of reasons -- bad and good -- for killing Robert, I couldn’t arrive at a common motive for eliminating both Robert and me. And I was convinced that Robert’s murder was not a unique and separate event. It was connected to ...

my murder.

Though apparently the cops didn’t share my vision, I believed this indicated a larger pattern. But that’s where my tidy logical equation fell apart. Why hadn’t I been killed? Why instead had Claude been killed? What did Claude have to do with anything?

I sighed and tossed my pen down. Went to put on Verdi’s Requiem once more. Though it had probably been intended to strike terror in my heart, ironically, as I listened absently to the haunting beauty of “Libera Me” I felt calm, certain that if I just kept at it, the answer would come to me. So what if the police wouldn’t help me? The police didn’t have a vested interest. I did.

The problem was, I kind of had to agree with Riordan and the inscrutable Chan. A motive for murder stretching back to adolescence seemed farfetched.

What the hell did it mean? That I could add the facts of the case all day, and not get any closer to the truth?

I glanced at the clock, got out the phone book and tried calling all the numbers under

“Landis.” As it was Saturday I hit fewer answering machines and more real people, but eight phone calls later I still had no leads. I didn’t get it. It always worked in mystery novels.

Right before eleven o’clock I went downstairs to spell Angus. He was reading about Claude’s murder in the paper which he folded guiltily and shoved beneath the counter when I appeared. I’d already caught the headline, “Slasher Targets Gay Community.”

We had a writer’s signing scheduled for the next weekend -- provided we were all still alive for it. A lot of preparation goes into a successful signing: having enough of the author’s books on hand, advertising ahead of time, planning the refreshments. I put as much time into it as I hoped someone would do for me one day.

Since this author was gay, I knew we’d have to prep harder than usual. Claude had been lined up to handle the refreshments; now it was back to me and Trader Joe’s.

Angus returned from lunch and we worked out the menu; which is to say I threw ideas out and Angus made faces and simulated gagging motions.

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“Cheese puffs,” he advised.

“Powdered cheese gets all over the books.”

“Everybody loves cheesy puffs. Even f --”

“Even fags?”

He started coughing as though he’d inhaled one of his own cheesy puffs.

I eyed him. “From your vast culinary expertise what do you think about water chestnuts wrapped in bacon?”

“Uh ... yeah, whatever. I mean. ...”

I waited.

Angus fiddled with a paper clip. “Do you need me that day?”

“Some reason you don’t want to be here?”

Angus turned red everywhere his skin showed and I felt a little sorry for him.

“No,” he squeaked.

“Good. Because I need you here.”

“It’s just -- it’s a full moon.”

I bit back my first comment and said, “There will be other full moons, Angus.”

* * * * *

Bruce called a couple of hours later. I was doing the bills. Not my favorite thing.

“What are you doing?” His voice was low, intimate.

“Working.”

Quiet laugh. “Doing what?”

“The usual. What are you doing? What are you working on these days?” Two phone calls in less than twelve hours. Wow. At long last I was winning friends and influencing people.

“I’m freelance. I pick and choose.” He talked about what he was picking and choosing. I listened absently, totting figures. “I don’t like to travel though,” Bruce was saying. “I must be getting old. I try to find stuff that interests me close to home.”

“Must be nice.” I squinted at my calculations.

A pause and then, “Is something wrong?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Yeah. Something is. Look, Adrien, I told you the truth. I’m not working on this Gay Slasher story. Boytimes put a staffer on it. I just want to see you again.”

“I believe you.”

“So when can I see you?”

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I don’t know what the problem was. I’d been celibate -- which is a more dignified word for lonely -- for years. Now I had someone in my life saying all the right things, doing all the right things, and suddenly I felt pressured. So much for preaching to Riordan about healthy, satisfying homosexual relationships.

“I don’t know,” I said finally.

“Tonight?”

I tried to think of a good reason not to. There wasn’t one.

“Tonight is fine.”

“I’ll pick you up.”

* * * * *

Late afternoon trade picked up and I had to put aside the amateur sleuthing for the day.

After an initially slow start, business was improving steadily. That was one reason I had been able to offer Robert a job when he needed one -- the store was really more than I could handle on my own -- although I had tried. I had been reluctant to end my period of suspended animation by letting a living breathing person invade my space. Now I couldn’t help feeling like maybe that instinct had been a good one.

When we finally had a lull, I took a quick break, eating an apple and half a chicken salad sandwich in my office while I thumbed once more through Robert’s yearbook. I studied the immature, unformed faces of the Chess Club as though it would be possible to read their thoughts. That’s when the light bulb went on.

Tara.

No, she hadn’t belonged to the Chess Club. No, she hadn’t even attended West Valley Academy till the following year, but she had spent that long hot summer with Robert, and she had been eager to know everything about him. And Robert had liked to talk.

I dialed Tara.

She wasn’t thrilled to hear from me. I could hear a TV blasting and kids yelling in the background. Sioux City Serenade.

“Adrien, it was a long time ago,” Tara protested finally when I’d explained what I was after.

“I know, but try to remember. The Chess Club broke up after one semester. Why?”

“It’s a boring game.”

“Come on, Tara.”

A heavy sigh all along the miles of corn fields and rolling prairie.

“I don’t really know. That’s the truth.”

“What did Robert say?”

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I could hear her hesitation, her doubt. “If he’d wanted you to know, Adrien, he’d have told you.”

“Oh for -- !”

Irritably, she said, “Somebody cheated, I think. There was this big match. Tournament, I guess you’d call it, between all these schools. Someone from West Valley cheated. West Valley was disqualified.”

I absorbed this doubtfully. “That can’t be it.” I don’t know what I was expecting. Yes, I do. Reason for murder.

“Well, that’s the only thing I know of. Think about it, Adrien. It was very embarrassing.

Kids don’t like to be embarrassed. Especially teenagers. Robert was still fuming months later.”

Robert did not like to be embarrassed, that had never changed. He did not like to seem foolish. He did not like to appear in the wrong. But Robert had not cheated. He would never cheat in a million years -- and Robert was the one who was dead.

I tried to remember, but my perceptions of that year were colored by the two main events of my life up to that point: nearly dying, and realizing I was gay. The two had seemed inextricably linked.

“Who cheated?”

“Bob never said.”

“Come off it, Tara. Rob told you everything.”

“Not everything,” she said bitterly and covered the mouthpiece to snap at one of the kids.

This reminded me of something that had been nagging at me. “Tara, why were you in LA before Robert was killed?”

Her breath caught sharply. “How do you know that?”

“Robert told me.”

“Bob didn’t --” she broke off and said, “I’ve got to go.”

Huh? “Wait! One more question, please, Tara. Why did the Chess Club fall apart?”

“Mr. Atkins, the sponsor, pulled the plug.”

“Why?”

“I guess because of the cheating incident. I don’t know. Look, Adrien, you’d better not be sticking your nose in my personal life.”

“I’m not. Why did Atkins pull the plug?”

“Well, Nancy Drew, why don’t you ask him?” she said and hung up.

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Chapter Thirteen

Mr. Atkins had retired from the thankless task of trying to force-feed knowledge to children who now packed guns. The “Head Master’s” secretary took my name and number and promised to pass them along.

I went downstairs and freed Angus from the shackles of slavery -- you would have thought so anyway from the way he hightailed it. I locked up.

As I started up the staircase I thought I heard a soft rustling from the rear of the shop.

I went back downstairs, walked down the narrow aisles, through the towering paperback canyons. Allingham to Zubro, there was nothing out of order. I poked my head in the office.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

Feeling silly I snapped the light off again and went upstairs to dress for meeting Bruce.

I had a drink while I shaved. I spent a long time trying to decide what to wear, settling on a dress shirt in a shade the sales associate at Saks called “curry,” and a pair of black trousers. I felt ridiculously nervous. When the phone rang I snatched it off the receiver.

It was Detective Riordan and he sounded grim. “Two things: we just got the paperwork from Buffalo PD. Richard Corday died from injuries sustained falling twelve stories onto a cement poolyard.”

I swallowed hard. “Was it suicide?”

“It was a suspicious death. Corday checked in alone, and only his personal effects were found in the room; but one of the maids said she had accidentally walked in on Corday and a guest a few hours earlier.”

“A man?”

“A woman, she thought. She saw women’s clothes tossed around the room.”

“That’s impossible.”

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“I’m just giving you the facts.”

“Wait a minute.” I was thinking out loud. “Suppose the women’s clothes were Rusty’s?

He died in drag.”

Silence. “It’s a possibility,” he said grudgingly.

“Could he have fallen accidentally?”

“No way. They faxed over photos of the room, including the windows. He could have jumped or he could have been stuffed out, but he couldn’t have lost his balance. He was drunk however, and he was wearing women’s clothing, which sounded enough like reason for suicide to the boys in Buffalo.”

“Was there a chess piece anywhere?”

“I was getting to that. In Corday’s color-coordinated handbag were his American Express card --”

“Don’t leave home without it,” I murmured.

“His keys -- including his room key, a clean white hanky, a MAC lipstick -- Pink Glaze, if you’re interested, and one chess piece. A queen.”

Never had I felt so little pleasure in being right.

Could Rusty’s death be unconnected? After all, he didn’t even live in the same state.

But then what about the coincidence of his belonging to the Chess Club? The Chess Club had to play into it -- how else could one explain a game piece clutched in a dying man’s hand? There was no chess set in Robert’s apartment that I’d noticed. His killer had to have left it as a calling card.

I said, “You told me Tara was in LA when Robert died. Do you know why?”

“To get back with him.”

“She told me Robert didn’t know she was here.”

“She was here to ask his family to pull an intervention.”

“An intervention? What were they going to intervene with? His being gay?”

“That’s the story.”

“And you believe it?”

“Hersey’s sisters corroborated her story.”

I started as I heard the downstairs buzzer. Bruce was early.

“You still there?” Riordan asked.

“Hmm? Yes, I’m here. You said two things.”

“Second thing. Remind your mother,” his voice crackled with hostility, “and her mouthpiece that you have been handled with kid gloves up until now. We could have hauled your bony ass in for interrogation anytime we chose. We haven’t done that, have we?”

“No.” I was barely able to form the word.

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“No. In fact, I went out of my way to keep you off ice. And that was before I knew Mommy Dearest and the police chief’s wife are on the same Save-the-Spaniels committee. I don’t appreciate getting called on the carpet. Got that?”

I could feel myself turning into an ice sculpture: the chilling effect of humiliation.

Before I could explain, Riordan’s voice altered, grew brisk, impersonal. I knew someone was standing near him. “I’ve got to go.”

He rang off and I went downstairs to meet Bruce.

* * * * *

We dined at Celestino on the patio. It was crowded and chilly. People talked and smoked at other tables, but even after a couple of drinks I felt removed from my surroundings, detached. I blamed it on Riordan’s phone call and tried to shake off my preoccupation.