Murder in Pastel (4 page)

“I don’t want to cancel.”

“Don’t you want to meet Adam MacKinnon and his boyfriend?”

“I’ve met them.”

“Seriously? When? What happened?”

“Jen—” I put my hands on her shoulders, guiding her out through the kitchen and toward the front door. “I’m working.”

“You’re always working. I want to hear details!”

“Later.”

“Kyle!”

I closed the door and went back to my research.

It was a couple of hours before I looked up again, this time starting at the sight of Brett standing in the study doorway.

“Jeez-us!”

He chuckled. “I did knock.”

“Most people wait till they get an answer.”

“Sorry. I wanted to apologize while I still had the nerve.”

Nerve didn’t seem like something he lacked. “Apologize for what?”

“For last night. Adam says I was drunk and disorderly,
SIR!
” He clicked his heels and mock saluted on the “sir.”

Against my better judgment I found myself smiling at him. “S’all right,” I said like Bubba Louie. Seeing this, Brett slinked in and looked about the room as though he were thinking of renting it. Today he wore a mint-green muscle-T and denim cut-offs that proved his time at
Blackie’s Gym
had not been wasted.

“So this is the home of the famous Cosmo.” He wandered into the dining room. For a moment he considered the portrait Joel had done of my father back when they were sowing their wild oats in Greenwich. “That’s him, right? He sort of looks like Stewart Granger. Ever hear of him?”

I sighed and readjusted my specs. “
King Solomon’s Mines, Beau Brummell…Sodom and Gomorrah.
”

“One of
my
favorites.” He padded back into the study, leaning over my shoulder. I felt the hair at the nape of my neck prickle at his nearness. “What are you reading?”

“I’m researching explosives.”

“Ah, I have that effect on people.” He smiled, treating me to a close-up of his perfect set of choppers. “Horn rims. Very sexy. You should wear them all the time.”

“Only for reading and driving at night.”

“Speaking of night driving, where’s the nearest club?”

“Clubs? Gay clubs? In Steeple Hill?” He looked at me like I was an idiot. I guess I did sound a little “Here
on Plymouth Rock!
” “There isn’t one.”

“Where do you go?”

“I don’t.”

His expression was priceless. “You’re telling Auntie Brett you never get horny?”

“Sure. But I haven’t found the answer to that in a bar.”

“You must be going to the wrong bars. Where do you think I met Adam?”

“I thought you met Adam at an exhibition. I thought Joel introduced you.”

“That’s Adam’s version.” He eyed me speculatively. He was probably right. Like a lot of writers, I lived too much in my head. I was lonely. And horny. “So what is there to do around here?”

I shrugged. “You could drive up the coast toward Frisco. Or down the coast toward Monterey. There are plenty of stops in between. But why, when—” I bit the rest of it off too late.

“When I’ve got Adam?” He laughed. “Don’t tell me you’re still in love with Adam?”

I felt myself flush. “Look, it was a teenage crush, okay? I was in love with Richard Gere too.”

“Yeah?” Brett snickered. “Are you sure you don’t write Harlequin Romances?”

I took my glasses off, wiped them on my T-shirt and put them back on. “Now you know my secret. And I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve got a deadline.” Okay, so it was six months away.

“Oh. I’ve offended you.” He continued to laugh at me with his eyes. “If your thing for Adam isn’t a problem for me, why would it be a problem for you?”

“Don’t you have to be someplace?” I couldn’t help the edge that crept into my voice.

Brett tilted his head. “Have it your way. I guess I’ll check with Joel. When it comes to gay nightlife, dial 1-900-OUR-JOEL.”

I reached for my book. When I checked over the top again, he was gone.

* * * * *

The next days passed without incident. I didn’t see Adam except to wave to him across the sea of grass and wild flowers. Once I spotted him fishing down on the dock. By himself. Most mornings I could look up from my computer to see Brett pounding down the dirt road in a variety of skimpy “onionskin” shorts, plugged into a Walkman, his muscled body glistening bronze in the sun. If he caught me spying he would wave jauntily, not losing stride.

From Micky I learned that the evening at the Berkowitzes’ had been a huge success. Everybody played
Pictionary
and ate
Chow Mein
cooked in my wok. Micky said she had to admit that Brett was charming and amusing, and she had never seen two people more in love than Adam and his child bride. Brett made a hit with the Berkowitzes too. I noticed that usually he stopped by there as a part of his a.m. routine.

My work was going well, the stack of typed pages beside my computer mounted daily. And no wonder. I sought the immersion of writing the way an ostrich looks for soft sand.

The summer grew hotter and the hills dried to gold.

At night I gazed across the meadow to the lights twinkling cozily from Adam’s cottage, and I was both comforted by Adam’s nearness and depressed by the knowledge that he could as easily live on the moon. He was that far out of my reach.

A couple of evenings I saw Brett zip off in the Acura by himself, and one morning I caught him stumbling home as I was heading out for my swim. He was a sight to behold in black leather jeans and a cobalt silk shirt in a brown baroque print right out of
GQ
.

Spotting me, he waved and blew a kiss before disappearing inside the sleeping cottage.

For Adam’s sake I hoped Brett was taking the normal precautions. He didn’t seem like a cautious kind of guy.

Two weeks after Brett’s visit my garden suffered the yearly infestation of aphids. I seized the opportunity to mend bridges with the Cobbs, and drove into Steeple Hill.

After some initial awkwardness, Irene invited me into the “parlor” where she served lemonade so cold and sweet I could feel my teeth shivering.

“Norman’s bird-watching this afternoon,” Irene excused the mayor’s absence. “Poor dear, these days he has so little time for his hobby, what with all his civic duties.”

I made commiserating noises. I knew full well that, lifetime member of the National Audubon Society or not, the only birds that Norman was likely to be watching on a day this hot were the ones who hung out at the Class Room pool hall. I thought Irene probably knew too, though she never let on.

“That’s a peculiar young man staying with Adam MacKinnon,” Miss Irene said a little stiffly after I’d drunk two glasses of lemonade and described my battles with black spot fungus to the last skirmish.

“Brett? Well, he’s from New York.”

Actually she did consider this a sort of explanation. “He seems familiar to me. Is he an actor by any chance?”

“He’s done some modeling.”

“I expect that’s it.” She held up the pitcher. “More lemonade?”

“No, thank you, Miss Irene. I should be going.”

Miss Irene led me out back to her own splendid rose garden which looked like a commercial for Miracle-Gro, and handed over an obscene-looking contraption with a thin rubber hose which her nephew Jack had made for her own war on garden pests. Along with the insecticide I got numerous strictures on standing upwind and avoiding breezes.

“It contains a good jigger of cyanide,” she informed me, making it sound like a refreshing cocktail.

“I’ll be careful,” I promised.

As I started the jeep I considered stopping by my grandfather’s house. I hadn’t seen him in weeks. But then sometimes months passed between our meetings. I don’t think my grandfather’s bitterness toward my father extended toward me, but I was a product of my unorthodox upbringing, and that didn’t leave us much in common. Micky said once that she thought I looked enough like my mother to stir painful memories. If I’d been a girl, it might have been different—and no use dwelling on the irony of the situation.

In the end I decided to give the family reunion a miss, and drove straight on toward the colony. Twenty miles from Steeple Hill, the “colony” consisted of six cottages straggling down the shoreline. This was the original town site, which is why there is an abandoned chapel, complete with graveyard, in the woods. No one remembers why this site was discarded in favor of the inland location of modern day Steeple Hill, but its loss was our gain.

Passing Vince and Jen’s, I decided to stop in and grab my wok. Anything left longer than a week at the Berkowitzes’ tended to be considered a donation.

Before Vince gave up a lucrative career as a commercial artist in favor of the challenge and frustration of Real Art, he used to bring down a tidy six-figure income. It was no secret he had trouble adjusting to a restricted budget, and he and Jen mostly managed on her salary from the Cobb House Historical Society.

Vince was tall, bearded, with hazel eyes and an irritating laugh. Maybe I found it so because he was frequently laughing at me, usually when I wasn’t trying to be funny. As for Vince’s artistic standing, the colony’s ruthless verdict was that Jen had all the talent in the family, and Vince should have stuck to designing smiling dogs and dancing blueberries to encourage mass market consumption of dog biscuits and cereal.

Jen’s stuff is startling: bold primary colors and aggressive brush strokes. She won’t exhibit. She says she paints for her own pleasure. I think she’s afraid of showing Vince up.

I turned in at the wooden gate of the Berkowitzes’ cottage. Wind chimes hung motionless in the hot air. The lawn was overgrown with sea grasses; wild flowers overran the garden. The cottage’s paint was gone and the wood had worn to satiny gray. Still, the place had a rustic appeal.

Not so appealing were the sounds issuing forth from an open window.

“What do you want?” Vince was yelling. “Do you want me to lie? Do you want me to live a lie?”

I couldn’t hear Jen’s reply, only the emotion throbbing in her low tones.

“That’s right,” Vince overrode her. “It’s my fault. Every goddamn thing that happens is my fault. You can’t have kids and that’s my fault too—or no, I’m just supposed to make it up to you by spending the rest of my life—”

His voice grew louder still as he headed toward the door. By now I was backing up, hoping to sneak off before I was spotted through the window.

No such luck. The front door flew open and Vince stomped out. He checked a moment at the sight of my discomfited retreat and said, still loud and mostly for Jen’s benefit, “Don’t run away, Kyle. You can take my place in the guilt pageant. I figure she’s good for another thirty minutes.”

“This is a bad time,” I began.

“We don’t have any
good
times,” Vince informed me. “Not anymore.” He walked around me and banged out the garden gate, leaving it swinging gently on its off-kilter hinges.

I turned back to the cottage. Jen stood crying in the doorway. “Come in, Kyle,” she sobbed.

“Jeez, Jen, I’m sorry.” I was still trying to escape down the path myself. She grabbed my arm with surprising strength and drew me into the house.

She looked like hell, her face blotchy and swollen from crying, her eyes red. “I can’t go on like this,” she told me.

“Do you have to?”

She stared at me as though I were speaking a foreign language, and blinked her spiky lashes. “Do you want some ice tea?” she inquired on an apparent tangent.

“No, thanks.”

She turned away, walking into the kitchen. Unwillingly I followed, watching her pour two glasses of tea from the jug in the fridge. I try to steer clear of caffeine. Today it seemed easier to shut up and drink it.

We went out on the porch and I set my paraphernalia on the railing. Jen eyed it gloomily. “What is that, a hookah?”

“Some kind of bug-killing apparatus Jack Cobb manufactured for Miss Irene. For my peonies.” I was afraid that if I left it heating in the sun it might blow up the jeep.

“Oh.”

The silence stretched. I gulped my tea as fast as politely possible. Jen stared off at the ocean, pushing the old-fashioned glide swing we sat on in desultory fashion.

“Vince thinks he’s gay,” she said at last.

I choked on my tea. When I finished spluttering, Jen continued in that too calm voice, “It’s all because of that little—little
cocksucker
Adam brought home.”

“Brett?” Like there was any other little cocksucker in question. “This is kind of sudden, isn’t it?”

“Vince says no. He says he’s always been curious. That he’s always had certain feelings. He said he ignored them.”

“Uh…” I stopped, not knowing what I could say that wouldn’t make it worse.

“It’s bullshit,” Jen said wildly, rocking the swing harder so that I had to steady my glass. “I’d know if he was gay. I’d be the first one. He’s not. It’s that little—”

I interjected, “Are you sure this is about Brett?”

“Isn’t it obvious? He’s a hustler. A male whore. Adam must be insane bringing him here. He’s come on to everyone. Everyone! Joel, Vince. He came on to me.
Me
.”

“You?” I was shocked. Why, I’m not sure; Brett appeared to be a liberal kind of guy.

“Maybe we can get a group rate,” Jen said wildly. “He can screw the entire colony, physically and figuratively, for one low, low price.”

I set my glass on the wooden floor.

“Vince thinks he has feelings for Brett. Feelings! My God, I could
spew
.”

I hoped she wouldn’t. She did look ill.

“What you and Vince have is real,” I said at last, not knowing if it was true or not. What does anybody ever know really about someone else’s private life? “This thing with Brett, whatever it is, it’s just…infatuation. Or something. Besides, Brett has Adam.”

“So?”

“So? He’s not going to jeopardize that.”

“Oh, Kyle.” Jen looked at me with pity.

I felt myself changing color. Was it so fucking obvious to everyone how I felt about Adam? Was it obvious to Adam?

“I’m only saying that Brett’s onto a good thing with Adam. He’s not going to jeopardize that.”