The Paper Mirror (18 page)

After Jonathan had gone off to school and while Joshua alternately played on the floor and watched TV, I pulled one of Evan Knight’s novels—
Chesspiece
—from the bookcase and began reading. Like
Fate’s Hand
and
A Game of Quoits
, I’d read it before, and enjoyed it. But that was before I knew Evan Knight, and now I was going over it from a slightly different perspective. Knowing what an asshole he was, I was fully prepared to hate the book on second reading. But I didn’t. It drew me in as it had the first time. Set in an unnamed city, as I realized were all of his books, in the early postwar years, it evoked a very real feeling of the time—or what I understood of the time. The protagonist, Stan Ledder, was discreetly but obviously gay, as befit the period in which the book was set. As in the other books, the relatively few sex scenes were so well set up that they could leave most of the details up to the reader’s fertile imagination without detracting from the impact.

I suddenly was aware that Joshua was being very—and very uncharacteristically— quiet, and I looked up sharply from the book to see him lying on his side on the floor, one arm around Bunny, sound asleep. Glancing at the clock, I saw it was 9:10! Jonathan would be home any minute, and would be less than happy to know I hadn’t put Joshua to bed yet. I hurriedly got up from the couch and went over to pick Joshua off the floor.

“Come on, tiger, it’s time for bed,” I said as I scooped him up.

“No it isn’t,” he said sleepily.

There was no way I could give him his bath, put him in his pajamas, and get him into bed before Jonathan walked in, so I decided to forego the bath and took him directly into his bedroom. Helping a groggy four-year-old undress and get into his pajamas was something of an adventure, but we managed. Lucky for me he was too sleepy to demand a bedtime story, and I’d just closed his door—as always leaving it open a crack—when Jonathan came in.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “I was talking to the instructor after class.”

We hugged, and I said, “Building brownie points for a better grade?”

He grinned. “Hey, it can’t hurt! Joshua behave himself while I was gone?”

We walked to the sofa and sat down. “I’m thinking of nominating him for sainthood,” I said. “I doubt he’ll make it, but it’s worth a shot.”

He noticed
Chesspiece
on the coffee table.

“Aha!” he said. “Another Evan Knight convert in the making?”

“Well, I have to admit, it is pretty absorbing.”

He leaned forward to pick up the book. “You know, I really admire writers,” he said. “They make up whole different worlds. And one of the things I find fascinating about Evan’s books is that he doesn’t talk at all like he writes.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, though it instantly struck me that, from what few words I’d exchanged with Evan Knight, Jonathan was right.

“Well,” he said, “I’ve talked to him quite a bit, and he doesn’t really talk at all like the characters in his books talk. The words he uses and the way he expresses things—they’re just so…different between what he writes and the way he is.”

“I’d imagine that’s the way it is with a lot of writers,” I said.

“Maybe.” He was thumbing through the pages and stopped at one point and grinned. “Did you get to this part, yet?” he asked.

I leaned toward him to see what part he was referring to.

“Where he gets seduced by the gardener in the greenhouse?” he asked. “I really liked that part. Subtle, but you can read between the lines pretty easily. I like sexy parts.”

I put my hand on his leg. “So do I,” I said with a grin. “I haven’t gotten there yet, but
you’re
a gardener, sort of, and with all these plants around here, this is almost a greenhouse. And I’m eminently seducible. Wanna show me what happens next?”

He put the book down, got up from the sofa, and held out his hand. I got up, turned out the lights, and followed him into the bedroom.

CHAPTER 8

I felt a little guilty, Thursday morning, that I hadn’t tried to reach Wayne Powers the night before, so I tried as soon as I got to the office, even before making coffee. No answer. The more I thought about the case, the more I wanted to talk with him, to see if he could shed any light on Scot McVickers’ relationship with Morgan Butler, and by extension, on the missing letters and what might be in them. I assumed, admittedly without reason, that Powers and Scot had gotten together sometime after Morgan’s death, so I couldn’t be sure that Powers would know anything at all about it. Some guys don’t like to bring up past loves to current partners.

Okay, I know that it seems I was going in two different directions at once here. I was supposed to be concentrating on whether Taylor Cates’ death was an accident or not. But if it wasn’t an accident, I’d have to find out who did it and why, and the “why” kept snapping me back to Morgan Butler.

The thoughts that had been flitting around the periphery of my mental vision were becoming much more clear, and certain pieces of the puzzle were showing themselves to me, as if saying, “Go
here
, stupid!” I sat at my desk drinking coffee—I hadn’t even thought about reading the newspaper yet, which was very unlike me—and going over the pieces of what I knew, comparing them with the pieces of what I suspected.

Morgan Butler was a writer, and from the looks of at least his unfinished manuscript, a darned good one. But I’d bet the farm that what was in the Burrows Collection was not everything he’d written.

Well of course there were more manuscripts
, one of my mind-voices observed casually.
You’ve just been reading one.

Of course! How stupifyingly dense could I have been? How could I not have seen it the first time I came across the two manuscripts left in the Collection? Why didn’t I catch on the minute I checked the spelling of “Scot” in
Fate’s Hand
? Of
course
there were more manuscripts! And they were being published with Evan Knight’s name on them!

Evan Knight had worked for Chester Burrows; he had ready access to everything in the collection. He had to have come across Morgan Butler’s papers and found the manuscripts and simply stolen them! Who was to know? Who could prove it even if they suspected it? How could
I
prove it? Morgan Butler was long dead and it’s probable that the only person he ever told about his writing was Scot, who was also now dead. He certainly wouldn’t have told his homophobic father, or admitted his homosexuality to his wife.

With all the principals involved either definitely or most likely dead, Knight had gambled—at excellent odds—on Morgan having been so uptight about anyone finding out he was gay that he not only would never have tried to have his books published, but probably would not even let anyone else see them. Except, perhaps, Scot McVickers…if I were right about what I suspected between him and Scot.

I knew next to nothing about Morgan Butler, but I sensed from his letters—and I was positive, now, that a lot of
them
were missing, too—that he was the kind of guy who, especially given the times in which he lived, was locked in the closet by circumstances. Writing would have been the only way he had to set himself free.

And no wonder the books bearing Evan Knight’s name portrayed the sense of time so clearly. It was Morgan’s time, not Knight’s!

I’d realized from the start that Morgan put his own papers in with his father’s as part of his bequest to the Burrows as a way to preserve as much of his inner self as he could—he made carbon copies of handwritten letters, for God’s sake! And knowing Chester Burrows’ collection centered on the subject of homosexuality, it was also Morgan’s way of finally coming out to the world. The fact that none of his papers currently in the Collection even mentioned the “G” word was another strong indication that they weren’t all there.

And following that nebulous string of conjectures, Taylor Cates’ death became more clearly the center of the whirlpool. Since Taylor had been working on the Butler papers at the time of his death, perhaps he somehow figured it out. Irving McGill had said Taylor was particularly animated just before his death.

Would/could Evan Knight possibly have found out or suspected that Taylor knew something and resorted to murder to keep his secret?

Talk about building air castles! Speculation isn’t fact.

But if there were a key to converting speculation
to
fact, the one living person who might have it would be Wayne Powers. A long shot, but….

*

Patience, I’ve often said, is not one of my greater virtues, and I was more than a little frustrated by the fact that it was, at the moment, my only option. There was nothing more I could do until I talked to Wayne Powers, and the coming Saturday, to T/T when I picked him up at the airport. If I got nothing from those two contacts, I was really going to be up a creek.

I left the office a little early and was sitting in the living room reading
Chesspiece
when Jonathan and Joshua got home. I could tell from the fumbling at the lock that Joshua had insisted on opening the door, and I had to admit he was getting better at it, though it still took several seconds. As usual, I’d been so caught up in reading that I’d lost all sense of time. Plus the fact that I had been reading with the perspective provided by my new certainty that
Chesspiece
had been written by Morgan Butler and not by Evan Knight. As I read, I couldn’t understand how I didn’t pick up on it sooner. It
fit
what little I knew of Morgan Butler. I felt, admittedly perhaps in hindsight, that I could recognize a definite similarity in writing style between the books Evan Knight had published as his own and the unfinished manuscript and more casual of Morgan’s letters at the Burrows.

I could be wrong, I suppose. But I knew I wasn’t.

The door opened and Joshua raced into the room, of course leaving the key in the lock for Jonathan to remove. I put the book on the coffee table and got up for our group hug.

“We’re going shopping!” Joshua announced happily as I was in the process of picking him up for the hug.

“We are?” I asked, having no idea what that was all about.

We completed our hug and I set Joshua back on the floor before Jonathan said, “I called June Schramm…she’s the mother from Happy Day I told you about who has the photo studio…and got us an appointment for eleven o’clock Saturday. I figured we could get Joshua something nice, and maybe I could pick up something to wear for the benefit Saturday night. And you and Joshua really should get a haircut, and…”

“…and I’ve got to pick T/T up at the airport Saturday at two,” I interrupted, following him into the kitchen. “When are we supposed to get all this done? It’s already Thursday.”

“Easy,” he said, reaching into the cupboard for my Manhattan glass and a jelly glass for Joshua’s newly favorite predinner libation, cherry Kool-Aid. “I’ll take Joshua to the barber on the way home tomorrow—he may not like it, but he’s going. You can meet us there or maybe go sometime during the day…that’d save us a little time—then I’ll treat us to dinner at Cap’n Rooney’s, and we can go to Marston’s to look for clothes…they’re having a sale.”

He’d kept talking as he took ice cubes, the pitcher of Kool-Aid, and a Coke for himself out of the refrigerator, and I listened while I got out the bourbon and sweet vermouth for my Manhattan.

“Got it all figured out, eh?” I said.

He looked back over his shoulder with a very serious expression and said, “Hey, I’m more than just a pretty face, you know.”

I reached out with my free hand and grabbed him by the back of the neck, giving him a quick squeeze. “Modesty being your only flaw,” I said, and we both grinned.

“Where’s my Kool-Aid?” Joshua demanded from the kitchen door.

*

Immediately after we finished dishes, I went to the phone and dialed Wayne Powers’ number, which I hoped I’d memorized since I left the piece of paper I’d written it on at the office.

“Hello?” a male voice said after the second ring.

“Wayne Powers?”

“Yes…?”

“Mr. Powers, my name is Dick Hardesty, and I understand you knew a Scot McVickers.”

There was only a slight pause before, “Yes, I knew Scot. He’s been dead several years, now.”

“I know,” I said, “and I’m really sorry for your loss. I’m a private investigator, and Glen O’Banyon told me you might possibly have some information on one of Mr. McVickers’ friends from a long time back…Morgan Butler.”

A definitely longer pause. “I’m afraid I can’t help you,” he said, but the tone of suspicion in his voice told me differently. “What, exactly, are you trying to find out?”

“Well, it’s all a bit complicated,” I said, realizing just how true that statement was. “But let’s say it’s something of a ‘family’ matter. I wonder if it might be possible for us to meet and talk for a few minutes person to person.”

“By ‘family’ you mean…” he began.

“Yes,” I assured him. “I’m gay; I know Scot was gay, and I’m pretty sure Morgan Butler was gay, too. As I say, it’s all too complicated to go into over the phone, and I really would like to meet with you at your convenience. I gather you work during the day?”