Framed for Murder

by Edward Kendrick

* * * *

  I moved into Trent’s apartment the next day. Not that the physical move was a chore. I had what was in my backpack and that was it.

  Emotionally, however…

  Trent stood in the guestroom doorway as I unpacked and put away my meager belongings. The pants and shirt I’d worn for my meeting with Wilson were hung neatly in the closet. They’d have to be my work clothes once I began hiring out to do plumbing repairs—if that happened. For damned sure I was going to try to make certain it did.

  “We should add clothes to your list,” Trent said. “And…”

  I held up my hand to stop him. “One thing at a time. I need tools and a toolbox.”

  “It’s Saturday. We’ll go shopping.”

  “There are cheaper places online.”

  “True, but the sooner you’ve got what you need, the sooner you can pick up clients.” Just like before, he was pushing. That got my back up. I guess he realized what he was doing because he said, “Sorry. It’s your decision. I’m trying to help.”

  I took a deep breath. “I know you are. Maybe you’re right. There’s a plumbing supply house here in town. We can check it out. It’ll be cheaper than the home restoration places or hardware stores.”

  It was, and at Trent’s urging I put together what I needed, including the toolbox to carry them in. A damned big one. I winced when he took out his credit card to pay. I’d be in debt to him for the next year or more unless I got lucky and my business took off quickly.

  Then there was the problem of a vehicle. It turned out not to be such a big problem after all.

  I took the toolbox, which felt like it weighed a ton, into my room when we got back to the apartment, setting it the corner next to the dresser. Then I changed into jeans and a T-shirt since I’d been wearing my ‘uniform’ when we when shopping. Trent was at his desk when I came out, checking his email from the look of it. I heard him say “Yes!” so I went to see what had him so excited.

  He looked up at me, giving me a thumbs-up. “I’ve got a client who owns a used car lot. I emailed him, telling him what you needed, and why. It only took him five minutes to get back to me. How do you feel about this one?” He opened the attached file. There were pictures of a twenty-year-old, black pickup truck. It looked like it was in good condition if you discounted the scratches along one side and the battered interior of the bed. “He says it’s had two owners, no accidents, and was serviced three months ago. It runs well, is fairly easy on gas, and he’s willing to drop the price because it’s me asking.”

  “To how much?” I hoped it would be enough to make it affordable since it was listed at thirty-three-nine. Yeah, that’s still cheap but closer to a thousand would be better on the budget I didn’t have.

  “Nine-ninety-nine,” Trent replied. He looked up at me, frowning. “Is you driver’s license current?”

  “Yep. It expires next year.”

  “Good. So what do you think?”

  “The price is great. Can I test drive it?”

  Trent emailed his man to ask, getting an immediate reply that I could. Today if I wanted to. I did. I wondered if there was a reason the man was willing to sell it so cheap.

  We took Trent’s car to get there, of course. Two hours later, after the test drive and my filling out the paperwork, we drove back to the apartment separately, me in my new-old truck. It ran like a top, and while the interior was far from pristine it didn’t have to be, considering why I needed the truck. I guess the dealer really was a Good Samaritan, or something.

  To celebrate, I cooked dinner.

  “This is getting to be a habit with you,” Trent commented. “Two nights in a row. Not that I’m complaining.”

  “Hadn’t better,” I replied. “I’m going to do it every night.”

  Trent grinned. “Because I’m a lousy cook?”

  “Because I have to carry my weight and right now it’s about the only way I can.”

  Trent put his hands on my shoulders. “I’m not asking anything from you other than you getting your business set up.”

  There was a long, pregnant pause as we looked at each other. I wondered if he was going to kiss me, or if I’d kiss him. It didn’t happen because he stepped back, saying, “While you cook, I’ll take a look at some of the service ads on Craigslist to see which ones work best. Then we can come up with one for you.”

  “Always practical,” I replied, smiling so he’d know I wasn’t upset.

  He shook his head. “We both are, you just have to get back in the habit again.”

  “I will. I am. Meaning I have to see if you have anything I can work with to make dinner.”

  We ended up with the bachelor’s special—spaghetti with meat sauce and a salad. Afterward, we put our heads together to come up with an ad for my nascent plumbing business, and then posted it, using my cell phone number as the way to contact me—if anyone wanted to.

  * * * *

  “Mr. English?” a woman asked when I answered my phone, two days after the ad went live.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m having problems with my sink. It keeps backing up and nothing seems to work. Can you come take a look at it?”

  “Sure. Are you at home now?” When she said she was, I told her I’d be there within thirty minutes. Since it was Monday, Trent was already at work. I was tempted to call him, to tell him I had my first job, but refrained. After all, with my luck the woman would take one look at me and change her mind. I had shaved, and my hair was tied back, but nothing could cover the fading bruise on my jaw or the lines on my face which said I’d had a hard life—especially since none of them came from smiling too much.

  The house was in a suburban area of the city, two stories with a well-kept lawn in front. The area looked familiar, but I put it down to my having been there when I used to work for the plumbing company. God only knows I’d gone all over town when I had. Hefting my gear out of the bed of the truck, I went to the front door and rang the bell. It opened moments later. I backed up, ready to run or maybe hit Seaver with the toolbox.

  He held up his hand to stop me. “I wanted to talk with you,” he said. “I knew if I called you, you’d probably tell me where to go and what to do when I got there. By the way, getting you out here wasn’t totally a ruse. My wife’s been complaining that the kitchen sink is draining slowly so we checked Craigslist and when I saw your name, I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone, so I had her call you.”

  I stayed where I was, barely smiling as I replied, “You could have used a better metaphor.”

  “Yeah. Sorry.” He stepped aside to let me come in. I debated the wisdom of that, decided what the hell, and did.

  “The kitchen’s this way,” he said. I followed him through a well-appointed living room and a short hallway, to the kitchen, which of course I instantly recognized, have been there a few days earlier.

  “We can talk while you work,” he suggested, then did. “I owe you an apology. What I did was ill-advised and caused more problems than it solved.”

  “Sure did for me,” I muttered as I checked the drain in the sink. “What I don’t get is why Wilson didn’t go to the cops. He could have pleaded self-defense or extenuating circumstances, or something.”

  Seaver shook his head. “In case you didn’t notice, the knife was in Pender’s back. That would have negated a self-defense story. On top of that, he wanted to protect Abby from what would have been very bad publicity. She didn’t need to be dragged into it, and you know she would have been.”

  “Yeah. She didn’t deserve that,” I agreed. I leaned against the edge of the sink, looking at him. “Would you really have killed me?”

  He shrugged. “Probably not. I would have tried to scare you into getting out of town. Or paid you your blackmail money and then some to get you to vanish. After all, you had nothing holding you here, from what I could see.”

  I nodded. “Why the apology, now? You know I’m not going to tell the cops what happened.”

  “I owe it to yo
u, like I said, but more importantly because you probably saved Abby’s life. If you hadn’t been there when she fell…” His expression ran the gamut from fear to dismay to something akin to love, I thought. “I’m her godfather,” he explained. “If anything happened to her it would devastate me as much as it would Norm and her mother.”

  “You could have saved her,” I replied, giving him a knowing look.

  He knew what I was implying and shook his head. “I was too far away and watching you, not her. I heard her scream the same time you and Norm did.”

  “Mind if I ask something? Where was your wife the last time I was here?”

  “Visiting her sister, who lives upstate, which meant she stayed overnight. I don’t like her driving home after ten or later. Too many drunks out there.”

  “I can understand that.”

  A pretty brunette came into the kitchen at that point. “I didn’t hear him arrive,” she said to Seaver. She held out her hand. “I’m Jane. You must be Mr. English.”

  “Call me Charlie,” I said. “Everyone does.”

  “Did you find out what’s wrong with the drain?”

  “Not yet.” Since she was there, meaning my conversation with Seaver was over, I went to work. It was nothing a good snaking wouldn’t take care of. By the time I finished it was draining perfectly.

  Seaver paid me, saying, “I’m going to recommend you to all my friends.”

  I chuckled. “On the basis of one drain cleaning?”

  Since Jane had left by that time, he replied, “No. I’ve got the feeling you might be trying to restart your life. After everything that happened, I figure I should help out the best I can. I just hope you’re as good as you claim in your ad.”

  “Better,” I told him with a wink as I packed up. “Tell them if they mention your name, I’ll give them a discount.”

  “Will do.” He walked me to the front door, apologized one more time for what he’d done, and then watched as I walked to my truck. By the time I got into the driver’s seat he’d disappeared, the door closing behind him.

  I still couldn’t believe what had happened, but for sure I wasn’t going to complain. While we’d never become friends, or anything close, at least I knew he wasn’t going to come looking for me, either. Whether I believed him when he’d said he hadn’t planned on killing me was still up for debate, but at least now I could stop looking over my shoulder for him.

  The first thing I did when Trent got home that evening was tell him about Seaver.

  “About time,” he said. “One less thing to worry about. Has anyone else called?”

  “I think he’s the only one who owed me an apology,” I wisecracked.

  “Smartass. You know what I meant.”

  I did, of course. I was about to say no one had when it occurred to me I’d turned my phone off when I’d gotten to Seaver’s place and hadn’t turned it on when I left. Taking it out, I checked my voicemail. “One call,” I told him and responded. I discussed the man’s problem with him, then set up an appointment to be at his home the next morning.

  “You need to keep it on all the time,” Trent pointed out. “What if it had been an emergency like a broken water pipe?”

  “I know.” I set it on vibrate, which I should have done to begin with. “I’m still getting the hang of owning my own business.” I smiled wryly. “I told you I only bought this phone because I was job hunting, and never got rid of it.”

  He grinned. “Pretty soon you’re going to need a secretary to keep track of all the jobs you get.”

  “I can only hope.”

  * * * *

  I didn’t need a real secretary, but as my business grew I added a decent calendar app to my phone to keep track of my jobs and remind me when one was coming up. I also opened a bank account, hoping to see it grow quickly. It didn’t. It took time, and there were days when I would stare at my phone, willing it to ring—and a couple of days when I was racing from job to job, which didn’t bother me at all.

  On the home front, things were progressing as well. We got into a routine where I cooked and Trent did the dishes, I vacuumed while he dusted, I did the laundry, he made the beds. The usual roommate type stuff although there was more to it, given our past history.

  When a friend of his called, inviting him to a party, I agreed to go with him—and be social. Not my thing and we both knew it, but I was willing to try.

  I think that was the first real step to our getting back to what we’d had before things went bad. We had yet to begin sleeping together, which, as Trent laughingly said at one point, was the reverse of our original relationship. Then, we’d fallen into bed at the drop of a hat before deciding we wanted more than just sex.

  I think we were holding off because we wanted to make certain what was happening now between us was more than two old friends and ex-lovers sharing an apartment. Plus, I had to find out if I could stand on my own two feet and pay my fair share of the expenses—and return what he’d spent to get my business started in the first place.

  Two months after my first job, the one for Seaver, I checked my bank balance and felt a sense of accomplishment. I didn’t have thousands in it, but I did have enough to write a check to Trent for half of what he’d spent for my tools.

  That evening, I had dinner on the table when he got home. As soon as he’d changed into something comfortable, we sat down to eat. That was when he noticed the envelope beside his plate. He cocked his head then opened it.

  “You didn’t have to give me this much,” he protested.

  “Yeah, I did,” I replied. “It’s like proof, I guess, that I’m finally making something of my life again. I couldn’t have done it without your help.”

  “You could have,” he said, taking my hand. “You just needed a reason to.”

  “And you’re it. Before you say I was able to at any time, if I’d put my mind to it…” I shrugged. “Maybe, but I didn’t. I had no ambition, no hope of changing my life. I’d still be out there, panhandling, if it wasn’t for you.”

  He smiled, squeezing my hand. “As much as I’d like to take the credit for that, I think it was Seaver’s doing. If he hadn’t decided you’d be the prefect patsy…”

  “What he did was the first step. You digging in to get me out from under was what counted. I’ll never forget that.” I got up, went around the table, and kissed him when he looked up at me. “Thank you.”

  His reply was to kiss me back. From there, any thoughts of eating went south. We ended up in his bed where we made slow love, the way we used to in the past.

  I haven’t left his bed since then. Okay, obviously I have. It would be hard to run our businesses from there. But we ended every day making love then falling asleep curled up together in what is now our bed.

  We’ve had our ups and downs. What couple doesn’t? But we’ve learned from them and from our past. Now we’re two older men who love each other—we’ve even said the word—and we plan on being together for the foreseeable future and beyond.

  THE END

  ABOUT EDWARD KENDRICK

  Born and bred in Cleveland, I earned a degree in technical theater, later switched to costuming, and headed to NYC. Finally seeing the futility of trying to become rich and famous in the Big Apple, I joined VISTA—Volunteers in Service to America—ending up in Chicago for three years. Then it was on to Denver where I put down roots and worked as a costume designer until I retired in 2007.

  I began writing a few years ago after joining an online fanfic group. Two friends and I then started a group for writers, where they could post any story they wished no matter the genre or content. Since then, for the last five years, I’ve been writing for publication—my first book came out in February of 2011. Most, but not all, of my work is M/M, either mildly erotic or purely ‘romantic.’ More often than not it involves a mystery or action/adventure, and is sometimes paranormal to boot.

  For more information, visit edwardkendrick.blogspot.com.

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