Murder in Pastel (3 page)

I don’t agree, Cos. I think—

Kyle, are you still awake? Bring us a couple more beers.

Adam met me at the door and slipped a cordial arm around my shoulders.

“I’m glad you came, Kyle,” he said, as though he knew how much I hadn’t wanted to.

“Thanks for inviting me.”

He looked good enough to eat, in charcoal drawstring pants and an indigo blue collarless shirt; soft flowing clothes that somehow emphasized rather than detracted from his masculinity.

“Brett’s cooking,” Adam added, and by his wry smile I understood that Brett’s cooking indicated An Occasion.

Right on cue Brett stepped out of the kitchen. He looked too gorgeous to cook or do anything more practical than lie on a beach in Cannes or swat a tennis ball around a Malibu court. His hair was slicked back and shining in the light from the candles; he wore no shirt, and his burnished skin gleamed like pirate’s gold. He wore white denims with a multicolored serpent and dagger design on one leg. Even his bare feet were beautiful.

“Kyle.” He smiled. “At last we meet. Officially.”

He smelled of cigarettes and musky aftershave, sexily gliding up and taking the flowers from me. “From your own garden?”

“Yes.”

“Lovely.”

The peonies looked especially lovely against his taut abdomen; their white silky petals flushed pink and coral against his brown skin. I thought it was no wonder Adam loved him. He was the embodiment of masculine beauty. It was hard to take my eyes off him. When I did, Adam was smiling quizzically in my direction.

“We need a bowl for these, Adam,” Brett said, handing the flowers over. Adam took the wine and the flowers and vanished into the kitchen from whence savory scents issued.

“I hope you like curry,” he called over his shoulder.

Brett drew me over to a chintz-covered sofa that I remembered from my sickly adolescence. I had a flashback of what it used to feel like drowsing in this room, with the drone of bees floating through the open window and the soft brushing of Adam painting at his easel.

“Is it like you remember?” Brett inquired, sitting next to me. He exuded a kind of animal energy and warmth. I eased over a few inches. He offered me a cigarette which I declined. “Is Adam like you remember?”

“It’s been ten years. Nothing’s the same.”

“You can’t go home again,” mused Brett. “Though Adam keeps trying.”

Actually Adam’s cottage did seem unchanged—almost identical to the way it had been in Drake Trent’s day: bronze-nymph lamps, glass doorknobs, and numerous prints of fox hunting and dead game birds.

Brett’s steady green stare made me uncomfortable. “Do you paint?” I asked at random.

He bit off a laugh, blew a stream of blue smoke through his nostrils and called, “Adam, we need wine in here.”

“Yo.” Adam’s voice floated back.

The turntable dropped the next record. Instant mood change: Sonny Stitt’s fast, flirty alto-sax pursued by quietly smiling keyboards.

“So you’re a writer?”

“Yeah.” At least I’d got past the “uh—yeah” stage.

“Do you have any copies of your books I could read?”

“Sure. If you like.”

“I want to know what makes you tick.”

Why do people assume you are what you write? That every character is you or someone you know? That if you’ve written it, you’ve either done it or want to? Whatever happened to imagination and research?

I gave him an uncomfortable smile, but was saved from answering by Adam’s return with wine glasses and the open bottle of Merlot. He settled in the chair across from us and poured the wine.

“What’s Kyle’s best book?” Brett asked, reaching for a glass.

“They’re both good.”

“What one would I like?”

Adam rose and turned down the stereo. “Records,” he said, glancing up and catching my eye. “Remember LPs?”

I remembered all Adam’s LPs. Mostly jazz. Jazz was forever equated in my mind with the smell of oil paint, the scratch of old records, the warmth of a man’s hand against my own sensitized bare skin.

I felt Brett’s stare. “That’s a good color on you,” he remarked. “What is it? Burnt orange?” He plucked at my T-shirt.

“Bittersweet,” Adam supplied. “That’s what Crayola used to call it anyway.”

“Kyle hasn’t played with crayons in years, Adam,” Brett chided.

There was a strange pause. Brett drained half his glass in one swallow. “So…what was Kyle like in the good old days of records and Clearasil?”

Adam shrugged. His smile made my stomach do an unexpected flip flop. “I remember you used to read Louis L’Amour Westerns. In fact, I found one tucked between the sofa cushions today.
Mustang Man
.”

“I always wondered how that turned out.”

“Did you know you were gay?” interrupted Brett.

“When?”

“When you had a boner for Adam.”

I managed not to spill my wine. “Yeah, I knew.” I took a sip and avoided looking at Adam. I’d known this evening was a mistake.

Brett looked from me to Adam. “Come on, Kyle, open up. Did you have a dog and a bike and a baseball mitt?”

What the hell was his fascination? “Yeah, sure.” And an eccentric genius for a father who didn’t care if I was alive or dead. “It was pretty average. How about you?”

“Let’s see…” He leaned back, stretching out his long legs. “Foster homes till I was fourteen. A year on the street. A year modeling. A year in rehab. A year—”

“Brett,” Adam murmured.

“Shit,” Brett exclaimed, leaping to his feet. “The curry!” He disappeared into the kitchen.

Adam’s eyes followed him. I wondered if all the tension in this room was mine or if they had been quarreling before I arrived. Adam looked back at me.

“How are you Kyle? Really.”

“Good. Really.” I set my glass on the table, my attention caught by the music. Something teasing and sexy and familiar; something I hadn’t heard in ten years. “Bebop in Pastel?” I guessed.

Adam didn’t reply; his expression was odd.

“What is it?” I asked, puzzled.

He said slowly, “You know, until this second I never realized just how much Brett reminds me of you.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” That came out wrong. I was sure he meant it as a compliment. I tried, “It must be the light.”

“Not so much your looks.” He reached out and turned my chin toward the lamp. It was automatic on his part, merely positioning a model, but I stiffened. He let me go at once. I still felt the warm imprint of his fingers on my face.

After a moment he said, “You do have similar bone structure. Similar coloring. You both have that trick of tilting your head when you’re listening. I’m not exactly sure what it is.”

“Coincidence,” Brett said lightly, dropping practically into my lap. I scooted over. “You like your boys slender and fair and—are you tanned
everywhere
, Kyle?” He ran his hand down my arm. My skin prickled as though from heat rash.

“Give him a break, Brett.”

Brett laughed and emptied his glass. “Shall we eat on the verandah, gents?”

We ate on the verandah in white wrought-iron chairs that were less comfortable than I remembered. There were citronella candles in stone lanterns to keep off the bugs, and their smell combined with the garden scents and the curry. The curry was good if you like curry, which I don’t. This one was made of tiger prawns simmered in ginger, cilantro, coconut milk, and served over rice. We polished off the Merlot I’d brought, and Adam decanted a couple of bottles of Napa Valley white, which we also drank.

Adam grew quieter as Brett grew more confidential, tossing out phrases like, “Since I feel like I already know, Kyle…” By the time we got to the espresso, the feeling was mutual. I believed I already knew more about Brett than I’d ever need to know—which shows how wrong you can be.

It was after nine o’clock when a slow moving pair of headlights turned off the main highway and wound down through the trees toward us. The music had gone quiet, moody, slow. Astrud Gilberto was singing “Once Upon a Summertime” in that slurred, slightly-off way, like she was tipsy too. I was listening to her rather than Brett’s theories on outing closeted politicians, but I did notice when he trailed into silence.

We watched as the headlights turned into a 1967 Chevy convertible.

“What’s that supposed to be?”

“The welcome wagon,” I answered.

“Not the Cobbs?” Adam said, sounding ready to laugh.

“That’s Mayor Cobb and the Honorable Miss Irene to you,” I said.

“
Mayor
Cobb?”

“Mayor of what?” Brett wanted to know.

“Of Steeple Hill. By formal election. We’re a township now.”

We watched as Mayor Cobb unfolded himself from the navy blue Chevy. He turned to help his sister, precariously balancing a pie, disembark. Irene’s foot caught in the hem of her long cotton skirt, and for a second it looked like all three of them would end up on the gravel.

“Spinster” is no longer politically correct, but if ever a woman fit the bill, it was Irene Cobb. Micky told me Irene had been attractive in an
au naturel
way back in the days of frosted lipstick, but by the time she was teaching my ninth grade biology class she wasn’t fueling any adolescent fantasies. She fixed her mouse-colored hair in place with plastic barrettes, and wore granny glasses that perpetually slid down her small, bony nose. A rumor circulated the freshman class that she was actually the mother of her nephew Jack, whom she and her brother Norman had raised from infancy. But then there were also rumors that Mitzie Stevens had made it with the entire Varsity Squad—and it turned out Mitzie was studying to be a nun.

Brett laughed and poured himself more wine. Adam pushed his chair back and went to greet the Cobbs. A warm, callused foot rubbed over mine insinuatingly. I moved my foot away. Brett laughed again.

“Glad to have you back, Adam,” Norman Cobb said, pumping Adam’s arm in best politician style.

Norman is round and soft like the Pillsbury Doughboy, with the same inane giggle. Still, a man who drinks Guinness can’t be all bad.

“Good to be back,” said Adam.

“You’ll hardly recognize the place, I imagine. You’ve been by the McDonald’s of course?”

“The—?” Even in the dark I could see Adam racking his brains for yet another faceless name from his past.

“Fast food franchise,” I supplied.

“Oh.”

“And the new Albertsons.” The mayor stood aside while Irene offered her pie with the air of one sacrificing to the gods. Adam received it automatically.

“We read about you in
Newsweek
, Adam,” she said, referring to an article published six years earlier chronicling the Who’s Who of the art world.

“Is that you there, Kyle?” the mayor asked, peering through the gloom at the table. “I thought I recognized your voice. And who’s that with you?”

Brett rose and sauntered over to the mayor and his sister. He offered a hand. “I’m Brett. Adam’s lover.”

“Adam’s brother?” Irene repeated, pleased and shaking hands.

The last record ended and in the silence Brett pronounced loudly, “Lover. L-o-v-e-r.”

Following the shocked pause, Irene began fluttering and clucking. “Oh that’s—that’s—well, this is to welcome you home, Adam. It’s pecan. Chocolate pecan.”

Norman was stiff all the way to his lips which barely managed to form the words, “Nice to meet you,” as Brett wound himself around Adam like a cat in heat.

Seven minutes later they departed in a cloud of dust turning red in the Chevy’s tail lights. Brett guffawed. “You forgot to mention Steeple Hill was one gigantic closet.”

Adam freed himself rather pointedly. “That was unnecessary.”

“Was it?”

“Yes. You don’t have to shove it in their faces.”

“Shove
it?
Now you’re ashamed of being queer? Or just ashamed of me?”

“Neither. I don’t see the point of embarrassing and offending a pair of sixty-year-old—”

“Homophobes?”

“They’re not homophobes. For Christ’s sake, they know what I am. They’re a different generation. They don’t talk about sex, period. Let alone something considered perverse in their day.”

“Don’t ask, don’t tell? Is that it? You are such a goddamn hypocrite!”

“How about don’t tell until you’re asked?” Adam retorted.

This was clearly well-trod ground. I got up from the table. “Thanks for dinner. I’m going to head off.”

“Stay, Kyle,” Brett said quickly. “It’s early. Have some more wine. Have some of this goddamned pie.”

“No, I’ve got to get back.”

He grabbed at my arm as I walked past. I eluded him and he nearly toppled over. Adam caught his shoulders, steadying him, and said grimly over Brett’s head, “Good night, Kyle.”

Brett yanked away, shoving clumsily at Adam. “Keep your fucking paws to yourself!”

I walked back across the meadow, spears of lamplight and the angry echo of voices falling behind me.

Chapter Three

T
he next morning I woke determined to steer clear of Adam’s happy household. To that end I waited until I’d seen Brett return to his cottage before I ventured down to the beach.

I had a leisurely peaceful swim and was back at my computer by ten, but not long after, a knock on the door jolted me out of my beta rhythm. Jen Berkowitz fidgeted on the front porch.

Jenny is cute. She’s small and slight with silky red-brown hair and freckles: the quintessential kid sister. She can be just as big a pain.

“Can we borrow your wok?” she asked. “We’re having a dinner party tonight. Joel, Micky, Adam MacKinnon and his lover—and you too, Kyle.”

Shoot me.

“I can’t make it, but you can borrow the wok.”

“Why can’t you make it?” One thing about Jen: she’s direct.

“I’ve got plans.”

She trailed me into the kitchen and helped herself to the cookie jar. “Since when?”

I retrieved the wok and handed it over. “Since last week. I’m having dinner with friends.”

“Well, what are we?” She wrinkled her nose. “These cookies are stale.” She set the jar aside and took the wok from me. “Anyway, cancel. This is more important.”