The Pride Trilogy: Kyle Callahan 1-3 (13 page)

“I have to tell her,” Kyle said, meaning Detective Sikorsky. “I’m not in a position to do anything else with this information.”

Dylan nodded, having accepted as much.

Kyle felt terribly for this man whom he could at best call an acquaintance. They’d never had a long conversation, never shared a meal, but he thought of what it would mean to him if Danny faced a crisis that could separate them. Danny, of course, would never commit a crime, let alone murder, but life had a way of dropping boulders on the unsuspecting.

“I don’t know why I told you this,” Dylan said, regretting his decision to speak to Kyle.

“Because you have a conscience,” Kyle said, and he started to leave.

Dylan grabbed his arm. “He’s not a killer. I don’t know how Teddy ended up in the pool, but Sid didn’t put him there. I refuse to believe that.”

Kyle believed him—not that Sid was incapable of killing someone (a million-five was a serious motive), but that Dylan loved him enough to deny it. He patted Dylan’s hand, gently removed it from his arm and headed back to the bar.

Pete was singing Billy Joel’s “The Piano Man,” joined in the chorus by a half dozen guests ringing the piano. Kyle walked back in and looked to the sofa, only to see it was empty. He wandered to the bar instead.

“She left with someone,” Cowboy Dave said, knowing who Kyle was looking for.

So she wasn’t such a novice after all, and while she may not have come there looking for a date, she’d had no trouble accepting one.

“That Bo chick,” Dave said, as if Kyle must know who she was. His use of the word “chick” seemed dated and quaint, given that few women at Pride Lodge would consider themselves chicks.

It struck Kyle as odd; Bo had told Sid and the others at the table she would not be going to the bar later that night. He wondered if she’d simply had a change of heart, or if perhaps she hoped to get lucky. Rural Pennsylvania can be a lonely place at night, even at Pride Lodge.

Good for her, he thought, reflecting on the detective meeting up with the loner from St. Paul. Maybe fate would treat them well, at least for a weekend.

He waved goodnight at Dave and Pete, smiled at the enjoyment everyone was having at another Halloween weekend at Pride Lodge, and headed upstairs. As he came into the great room he saw old Jeremy in his chair, alone now, watching his Dracula movie in the dark.

“Good night, Jeremy,” he said, crossing in front of the television.

“Good night, Kyle,” Jeremy replied, never taking his eyes off Christopher Lee. The vampire was just about to feed.

Chapter 19

Natural Causes

K
yle was surprised
to find Danny awake first on Saturday morning. He discovered it when he reached across the bed, half asleep, and found an empty mattress next to him. He looked up, focused, and saw Danny sitting at the small table with his restaurant notes and a reading flashlight.

“Why don’t you turn the light on?” Kyle said, his voice thick with sleep.

“I didn’t want to wake you,” Danny said. He was wearing just his boxer shorts and t-shirt.

Kyle rolled back, facing the ceiling. “I thought you weren’t going to work this weekend.”

“I’m not working.”

“So what’s on your mind? You’re never up at—” and he glanced at the clock on the nightstand—“six-thirty! On a weekend?”

Kyle remembered getting back to the cabin after midnight. “What’s troubling you?” he said, knowing from his years with Danny that the only thing that would have him out of bed this early was worry.

“She’s going to be eighty next week. That’s old, you know.”

Margaret Bowman was a second mother to Danny. She’d taken him under her wing and nurtured him along, and had hinted more than once to him that he was her heir apparent. With no children of her own, and no nieces or nephews who were interested in the business, even if she had been inclined to leave it to them, she worried Margaret’s Passion would die with her. Then along came Danny and it seemed fated that they would form the sort of mentor/parent bond they had. The thought of Margaret coming to the end of her years weighed on him.

“She’s sharp as a tack,” Kyle said. “And she still gets around very nicely. She comes down and talks to people in the restaurant. Why are you thinking about this?”

“I don’t know. I just feel time passing, that’s all.” And then, suddenly, “We should get married next year.”

They’d talked about marriage ever since New York passed a bill making it legal. At first Kyle had wanted to make the trip to City Hall quickly, seeing the rush of excitement and the sight of history unfolding on television. He thought their fifth anniversary, which was only a month away at the time, would be an ideal date to get married. But the thrill quickly died down and both men decided to take an informed approach: what does marriage mean, what are the legal ramifications, what is the hurry? They knew they would do it, but they would do it in their own time. And now, unexpectedly, Danny was pushing to make it official: to be husbands in more than name only.

“Well,” Kyle said, “a wedding takes time. It’s October now—November, really—so maybe next summer . . .”

“Next year, for sure,” Danny said. Then, glancing at the seating chart for Margaret’s birthday luncheon, “I’m sure she’ll make it another year. Hell, another ten. She’s a tough old bird.”

Kyle wasn’t comfortable when Danny became melancholic. He picked up the television remote from the nightstand and turned on the TV, wanting to watch the news and change the subject.

There on the local channel was a young woman reporter, dressed warmly for the weather but still television-pretty with strawberry blonde hair and a face perfectly made up at six o’clock on a Saturday morning. Her breath was coming out in clouds, which told Kyle it was colder than it had been yesterday. Wetter, too, as it appeared to have been raining where the woman was. Identified on the screen as Ellie Cameron from Philly6, she stood in a wooded area while several policemen moved around behind her.

“The body found in Chester Creek has been identified as Happy Corcoran.”

“What?!” Kyle shouted, sitting up in bed.

“A neighbor of Mr. Corcoran’s from Stockton, New Jersey, responded to our earlier report on a body found in the woods and called authorities. Apparently Mr. Corcoran has been missing for several days and the neighbor thought the description was familiar. The coroner is declining comment on a cause of death until an autopsy’s been performed. As you can see, police continue to search the area for evidence of just what happened here, and when. If you have any information about Happy Corcoran and his movements, please contact the Sheriff’s Department immediately. All calls are kept confidential. This is Ellie Cameron from Philly6, back to you, Carlton.”

Kyle hit the mute button. He and Danny both stared at the television, stunned.

“That reporter’s a long way from Philly,” Danny said. “I think. I mean, where the hell is Chester Creek?”

“Far enough from civilization that a body could lie there for days without anyone seeing it. And a body in a creek is news for a local Philadelphia station. It’s only an hour from here.”

“This isn’t going to go well,” Danny said, and Kyle knew he meant at the Lodge. “We can’t be the only people who saw this. Poor Cowboy Dave. They had a thing, you know. Before Happy and Teddy. Or maybe at the same time, kids are like that.”

“I didn’t know, but I guessed. The way Dave talked about him. So sad. And so mysterious. I mean, think about it. Happy goes missing three days ago. Teddy dies at the bottom of the pool yesterday.”

“Do you want to check out?” Danny said. “Go back to the City?”

Kyle looked at him, surprised. “God no, not now. I want to know what’s going on here. I want to talk to Detective Sikorsky.” He swung his legs around and sat up on the edge of the bed. He was wearing the red plaid pajama bottoms he always slept up. He slid his feet into the slippers Danny had given him. “And I want to do some research. Something about the exchange at dinner between Sid and that Bo woman, it was odd. And she said she wasn’t going to the bar last night but did, and left with the detective! I don’t know, I’m just curious. Please tell me you brought the laptop, I haven’t seen it out.”

“It’s in the suitcase,” Danny said. “Have I ever forgotten it?”

“Yes, in Key West.”

“And you’ll never let me forget it. All those amazing photographs that had to wait for you to post on your blog until we got home. Consider it a lesson in patience.”

Kyle got out of bed and walked over to the suitcase. He wanted his morning coffee and some time with a search engine.

“You want the sound back on?” he asked.

“Leave it off,” Danny said, sliding his papers to the side. “We’ve had enough excitement for now, and a lot more waiting up the hill.”

Chapter 20

Room 202

T
he moon was
so large the sight of it took Bo’s breath away as she glanced across the bed, out past the window into the night sky. The blackness of the heavens in the Pennsylvania countryside had struck her the first night here; before that, even, as she’d driven from St. Paul along back roads, far away from city lights that stole the majesty of the stars. They were bare and innumerable here. She likened them to the beauty of the woman lying next to her, breathing gently in her sleep. She chose to ignore the irony of sleeping next to the very woman whose choices in life were her polar opposite: Linda Sikorsky, detective, seeker of facts, if not truth, justice personified as she followed and tracked and peered into puzzles, with her one goal of solving them and stopping even some small evil in the world. Bo Sweetzer, Emily Lapinsky as a child, a good person from all appearances, a woman set on revenge behind the goodness. She didn’t fool herself; while many people would say the men she’d killed had only got what they deserved, she knew she was a murderer. There were no degrees of murder and those who commit it: killing was killing, and here she was, watching someone she could so easily love, asleep and dreaming beside her, who would not hesitate to see her sentenced to a life behind bars.

What was an assassin to do? Should she slip away now, so soon after first light? Should she abandon her mission, let the old man live, and try to build a life with this policewoman? A life of secrets and lies? Or should
she
—
and
this she knew to be the
answer
—
complete
the one true objective of her life: to silence the voices that had haunted her for thirty years, to put an end to the screams of a child watching her parents be coldly, brutally murdered. For a handful of cash. A watch. She sighed, knowing what she had to do, that she would be taking one life while setting free another, and that after the coming day she would never see this woman again, this woman whose shoulders she now leaned over gently and caressed.

Bo rolled over in her empty bed and stared out the window, seeing it would be a sunny day. The clouds had moved on and left in their place a startling blue sky. She let the fantasy of love with Linda Sikorsky go, evaporate like morning dew. She was both amused and troubled by her willingness to think the unthinkable. Nothing had happened between them except in her imagination. It was just as well, since her imagination had always been a dark and lonely place. Only the men she exacted revenge upon belonged there.

They’d had coffee and pie at the Eagle Diner in New Hope. Bo admitted to herself she wanted more—expected more, in the way we sometimes allow ourselves to think we are entitled to something simply because we wish it—but Sikorsky had not promised anything at all, spoken or unspoken, and she had not led Bo to believe their trip away from the Lodge was anything other than a friendly ride to a nearby diner for a private chat. That was something almost charming about people unsure of their own sexuality: they often didn’t realize there might be something suggestive in simply asking someone out for coffee. By the time they’d finished, however, Bo wasn’t so sure the detective was just curious, or that she hadn’t meant to send signals.

It had started simply enough: Bo had been unable to sleep. After two hours of lying in bed in a dark room, staring at the ceiling, she decided to head to the piano bar and have something to drink. Non-alcoholic, since she seldom drank and had committed to abstinence while she carried out her mission. But anything would help, and she’d hoped that being in the bar would distract her mind enough that after a while she could return to her room and sleep.

She had never been a bar-goer. Bars unsettled her. They upended her sense of the world as essentially a lonely place. Bo had loved only once, and that, she’d come to know, was a mistake. As for companionship, it was dangerous. Even someone as tightly controlled as she was could let something slip; it was much better never to court error. But there she was, sitting on a stool at the Lodge’s bar, watching as some guests chatted and mingled in costumes, others in their street clothes. She recognized the lesbian couple Eileen and Maggie. Eileen didn’t notice her, and Maggie was busy once again reading something on her cell phone. The man Danny had so disliked—Lionel? Linus?—continued to hold court, this time around a small table with the two disciples who’d been at each arm since he arrived. The young boy-toy was nowhere in sight.

She was halfway through her Ginger Ale when she felt someone come up behind her. She didn’t believe in a sixth-sense, but that we feel shifts in the air, or we manage to connect very distant dots and determine their destination point before they get there. Mysterious, yes, but not inexplicable. She just knew someone was behind her, and she swiveled around on her barstool. Much to her surprise she found Detective Linda Sikorsky not more than two feet away, as startled to have Bo turn around just then as Bo was to see her there. She was wearing jeans and a blouse, Bo noticed, looking much less like a cop and much more like the kind of women she imagined sought one another out in the bars she did not go to.

“Hello, Ms. Sweetzer,” the detective said. She didn’t extend her hand, and already Bo could tell she was nervous, unsure if a handshake was called for or if withholding it would be rude.

“I prefer ‘Miss,’ actually,” Bo said. “I’ve never been a missus and the whole ‘Ms’ thing is too much of an artifice for me. Call me old-school.”

Linda smiled, and Bo couldn’t tell if she was amused or pleased; possibly both.

“Well, then, Miss Sweetzer, how are you enjoying your evening? Have you been here before?”

Bo was suddenly suspicious. She’d told the detective in their morning interview that she had never been to Pride Lodge. She wondered if the approach was just part of the job, or if Linda Sikorsky was trying to trip her up for some reason.

“Oh, wait, you told me that,” Linda said, shaking her head at her own forgetfulness. “Even cops forget things.”

And she’s a mind-reader, too, Bo thought. I like this woman.

“I tried to go to sleep,” Bo said. “I’m not really a party person, or a bar person, but I am an insomniac on occasion. I figured a drink might settle my mind down.”

Linda looked at the half-empty glass on the counter in front of Bo. “May I get you another?” she asked.

“It’s only soda. Not the sort of thing that makes you want more.”

There was a moment of silence that quickly grew awkward, and Bo realized that Linda wasn’t very skilled in these situations. Chasing down criminals she could do very well, but striking up and maintaining a conversation with another woman in a gay bar? Not so used to that.

“How about some coffee?” Linda said.

Bo burst out laughing.

“What? What did I say?”

“You just asked an insomniac if she’d like a cup of coffee.”

“And I forgot you’d never been here,” Linda said, embarrassed. “Strike two. But maybe I meant decaf. Yes! I meant decaf! And a piece of pie . . . unless sugar keeps you up, too.”

Bo thought about it a moment.

“Not here,” Linda said. “The kitchen’s closed down anyway. But there’s a restaurant not far from here, the Eagle Diner. Twenty-four hour place. It’d give you a chance to see a little more of the area.”

“In the dark.”

“Well, yeah. But that’s not a bad way to see it. We could come across some deer in the headlights.”

Bo wondered who was the deer, and who was the headlights. Sikorsky was clearly a very intelligent woman, and she might yet have questions in mind to ask Bo that Bo would not answer truthfully. But she couldn’t sleep, and she found the detective attractive, and she was very skilled at only revealing what she wanted people to see. So why not?

“Let’s go,” Bo said, sliding off the stool. “I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather end the night than at the Eagle Diner. Unless that’s not where it ends.”

She saw the sudden flush in Linda’s face: Bo had her number, and the detective knew it. “Relax,” she said. “I was just having some fun. Now let’s go get that pie! They have ice cream there?”

“It’s a diner,” Linda said. “Of course they do.”

The two women headed out of the bar. Cowboy Dave watched them go and smiled: another romance blossoming at Pride Lodge. He’d seen more than a few.

The Eagle Diner was on Highway 202, a stone’s throw from the Giant grocery store and just up the road from the Raven, a gay hotel, restaurant and gathering place that had been there for decades, with the occasional interruption. They knew each other, of course, the Raven and Pride Lodge, and had remained friendly as long they’d both been in business. Pride Lodge was more out of the way, and people who stayed there tended not to be the same customers who would stay at the Raven. There had never been any real rivalry between the two: there were enough gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender patrons to keep them both operating this long. Throw in the Q’s, I’s, and any letters not yet added to the acronym, and business should stay brisk for years to come.

Bo’s suspicions that Linda Sikorsky was somehow on to her vanished quickly enough once they were seated in a booth. The diner had quite a few customers even this close to midnight, and the two women did not stand out in any way. They’d each ordered apple pie and coffee (Bo had started to suggest one pie, two forks, but thought better of it) and were several bites in when Sikorsky made her motives known.

“I’ve lived in this area all my life,” she said, glancing around nervously to make sure no one was eavesdropping. She was known well enough in New Hope that she had to always be aware someone might recognize her. “I’m thirty-six years old. Everybody knows me.”

“And everybody thinks you’re a lesbian,” Bo said.

Linda stared at her, taken aback. While she wasn’t going to state it that way—unsure exactly how she would state it—that’s what she was thinking and trying to articulate.

“But you’re not,” Bo continued. “Or you’re not sure, and what better way to crystallize it for yourself than ask a real one out for coffee and advice.”

“You’re either a cop,” said Linda, laughing nervously, “or a psychic.” She paused a moment. “I don’t suppose you’re wondering, why you?”

“I know why me. Because I’m cute! Shorter than you, about the right age, Minnesota nice, and, from your own notes, I’m sure, single.”

“I’ve never dated a woman,” Linda said. “I’ve thought about it. My father’s dead and my mother lives alone in Philly. It’s not like I have to worry what they’ll think of me. Who the hell cares if I’m a lesbian? Which I’m not saying I am, since it’s hard to say when you’ve never done anything but imagine it.”

“Well,” said Bo gently, “you’re free to imagine it all you want to with me. I won’t ask you to act on it.” She winked. “Not tonight.”

Linda visibly relaxed. She had fantasized for years having this conversation with someone, but she had honestly never thought the right time—or the right woman—would come. If she were simply blunt with herself she would say yes, Linda, you’re attracted to women, and that pretty much makes you a lesbian, but she had not been honest. She had clung to uncertainty as a way of avoiding having to come clean: to her friends, who probably already knew, to her neighbors, and to her colleagues—the people she dreaded telling most. It was a small force, and she knew they would think just as highly of her after she came out as they had the moment before, and that they would probably start trying to line her up with dates.

“You’re here until when?” Linda asked. “Just in case I have a few more questions about the investigation, of course.”

“Of course,” Bo said. “I’m set to check out Sunday, but who knows, I kind of like the place, I might want to stay a few days and see more. If it’s got an Eagle Diner, I can only imagine what else is going on here.”

The two women laughed. Bo felt her heart sink, suddenly, painfully conscious of the lie she’d told and what it meant. She would never see Linda Sikorsky again after tonight. She intended to see her mission through to its deadly conclusion and be gone well before Sunday’s first light flooded the sky. Unless . . .

“Are you coming to the party tomorrow?” Bo asked. “The Halloween party?”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Linda replied, and she waved at the waitress for the check. “But now I’m thinking maybe. I don’t have a costume.”

“Come as Cupid,” Bo said, smiling. “It’s a natural fit.”

Bo wondered why she was doing this to herself, asking a woman she clearly desired to come back the next night, the night she planned to claim her final revenge and go. You’re slipping, Bo, she told herself, all the while smiling as Dottie, the waitress, left the check on the table between them. Maybe you don’t have the heart for it, maybe you want a happy ending after all. She felt a sting in her eyes—an unfamiliar fall for a woman who had not cried in thirty years, and she quickly looked away. It wouldn’t matter if the cop came, it wouldn’t matter how she felt about Bo or how she made Bo feel. The die had been cast in that bedroom three decades ago, and there was only one roll left. So let her come, let her think Bo had made a fool of her as she vanished in the night, let her never know the truth and how high its price.

Linda slid out of the booth and started to reach for Bo’s hand. She happened to look over and see and old straight couple she had known for years, used her hand to wave to them instead, and led the way out.