by Josh Lanyon
“It’s true though, sonny boy.” He tucked a wad of tobacco in his mouth, worked it and added, “You don’t seem too broken up over your pal Brett getting his head cracked open.”
It took me a second to recover. I said sarcastically, “We all handle grief in our own way, Sheriff.”
He eyed me beneath his bristling brows. “I don’t remember you being such a smart-ass kid.”
“I don’t remember you ever finding my bike for me.”
To my surprise he laughed. “No, I guess not. That was what you might call the perfect crime. This one ain’t.”
When I got back to my cottage I called Joel.
He was taking Brett’s death more calmly than I had expected. Or maybe he was still numb. We talked for a while and then I asked, “Do you have a key to my house?”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“Probably. Somewhere. Why?” Joel responded at last.
“The sheriff was asking.”
“We all have keys. Or did.”
“Who all?”
“Me. Micky. Adam.”
It was my turn to digest silently. “Why would you all have keys to my house?”
“To your father’s house.” Joel cleared his throat. “It wasn’t an official arrangement, but we used to take turns checking up on you. You were recuperating. You were still underage, and who knew when the hell Cos would be back. Hell, we’d been keeping an eye on you for the past sixteen years.”
I knew that. When my father was there the doors were generally unlocked anyway. I was used to Cosmo’s students and friends coming and going, but it gave me an eerie feeling to know anyone could have walked in on me at any time over the past four years. And it flat creeped me out to know someone could have come in and swiped those pills.
“Why?” Joel asked for the third time. “Why is that redneck so interested?”
I explained about Brett being poisoned with my heart pills. When I finished, Joel commented, “If you ask me, it’s the kind of thing Brett would do to himself for attention. He faked that drowning attempt, you know.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The night of the beach bonfire when someone allegedly dragged him under the water? It was a total hoax. He faked it. He told Vince. He wanted to see how everyone reacted.”
“But his foot was bruised.”
“My dear boy! And you call yourself a mystery writer?”
I couldn’t believe it. I sat there trying to put two and two together and kept coming up with sixty-nine.
Joel said, “I believe he swiped some of your meds and took them himself. You’ll notice he didn’t die.”
This seemed rather cool for someone who had been weeping over Brett a few weeks before. But maybe Joel had worked through his feelings for Brett.
“Eventually he did. Eventually someone smashed his head in.”
Joel considered this and returned to my original question. “To be honest, Kyle, I haven’t seen that key of yours in years. I guess someone could have taken it, but more likely it’s in the back of a drawer full of junk.”
That was probably true. Joel wasn’t the most organized guy in the world. He said, changing the subject, “Adam wants Brett buried in the old cemetery. Did he tell you?”
“No.”
“No one’s been buried there since Drake Trent. I don’t know what he’s thinking.”
I wasn’t sure why this idea seemed to agitate Joel.
“Probably that it’s a peaceful place. Peaceful and private. And beautiful, I think. Does he want me to ask my grandfather?”
“I think he plans on doing it himself. Asking, I mean.” Joel’s voice shook. “I think it’s disgraceful.”
“Why?”
“Shoving Brett off in a corner like—like a poor relation. Like a guilty secret.”
So much for thinking Joel had come to terms with his feelings for Brett.
“Joel,” I said, “Adam has been painting the cemetery all summer. Maybe he’s comforted by the thought of Brett being so near.”
Joel made a sound that could have been a sob or a snort, and hung up.
* * * * *
Adam had been in town seeing to the funeral arrangements. When he got home he called and asked if I could help him pack up Brett’s things. It didn’t seem tactful to point out the sheriff might plan on searching through them again. I said I’d be glad to help and headed across the field.
Adam sent me to clear out the bathroom. I opened the shower doors and figured out why. “Eternity for Men,” proclaimed the shampoo and shave gel. The shower smelled unnervingly like Brett. I tossed the bottles in the plastic trash bag.
Rice bran cleansing scrub, a “voluminizing” hair dryer, a pair of red Aussie rower shorts crumpled in the corner: it wasn’t hard to tell Brett’s stuff from Adam’s. Adam was using the same Caswell-Massey brand soaps and talc he had used when I was a kid in high school.
He came in while I was emptying a drawer which contained among other things Pearl White tooth gel, a tube of Astroglide lubricant and a bottle of Natural Sex for Men which, due to the magical ingredient of green oats, guaranteed a boost in sex drive and frequency of orgasms.
In the very back of the drawer was a scrap of paper. I smoothed out the crinkles. Meet me in the graveyard after, read the cramped but neat script. After what? I wondered. The handwriting was obscurely familiar.
“What have you got?” Adam queried from behind me.
“Nothing. Trash.” I balled it up, not knowing why I lied.
Adam didn’t question this. “Did you want a drink, Kyle? I could use one.”
“I’ll have a beer.”
He turned away and I scrunched the note in my pocket.
“Hey,” I said, following him out to the kitchen. “Do you have a key to my house?”
To my surprise Adam colored. “Yeah. I do.” He seemed so uncomfortable I didn’t know what to say. He handed me a beer. After a moment he elaborated, “Your father gave it to me the year before he left. He was going to Los Angeles, and he asked me to look in on you.”
“Oh.”
He said awkwardly, “After you were sick, after Cosmo took off, I used to come over sometimes and make sure you had food in the fridge and were taking your medication. You were seventeen, a kid. We used to take turns. Micky and Joel and me. Your grandfather didn’t give a shit.”
“No wonder I always felt taken care of. I was under surveillance. Do you still have the key?”
“Yeah.” He hesitated. “Do you want it back?”
“Er—no.”
We studied each other. Adam smiled faintly, then turned away.
When I’d packed Brett’s belongings into boxes, the bathroom looked bare, sterile. There was one toothbrush on the sink, Adam’s razor, Adam’s blue terry robe hanging on the back of the door. The signs of the newly widowed. In Adam’s place I wasn’t sure what would be more painful: reminders of Brett’s presence or this underlining of his absence?
In the front room Adam was tying a stack of Brett’s books with twine. “Did you want any of these?”
“Adam, you don’t have to do this now.”
“I want to do this now.” He gave the string a final tug. “I think Brett would have liked you to have these.”
“Then I’d like to have them.”
I went back in the bedroom and sat down on the sleigh bed. Snapshots were spread out over the comforter, like a grim hand of solitaire. I studied a shot of Brett from the party, young and handsome in his red silk shirt. Not a care in the world. There was a snap of myself and Brett. I didn’t remember it being taken, but Brett had his arm around my neck in a friendly headlock. I looked at the picture and sighed. I didn’t know what I felt. I had never wanted him dead.
It took less than two hours to clear away all trace of Brett’s existence; to pack away a lifetime in a few cardboard boxes.
“I’ll carry these over,” Adam said lifting the books when we agreed we were finished.
/> I guessed that Adam wanted out of the cottage. I didn’t blame him. It would not be easy living with a ghost, and I suspected Brett’s spirit would not go gently into that good night.
We walked across the field in silence. When we reached my cottage I opened the door and Adam exclaimed, “Christ, Kyle, you need to start locking the door.”
“What’s the point? Everybody in Steeple Hill has a key.”
Adam preceded me in, set his load of books down and said quietly, “Has it occurred to you yet that maybe you were the target?”
“Me?”
“You could have been pinned as easily under the dock as Brett. You sun on that dock. You’re down there swimming by yourself all the time. And Brett was drinking out of your glass the night of the party.”
“Brett was drinking off everyone’s glass.” It surprised me Adam had noticed that.
“But if your heart gave out, maybe following an accidental overdose of your own heart medication, who would question it?”
“My doctor, for one,” I said exasperatedly.
“Somebody jumped you in the churchyard.”
I thought of the note in my Levi’s pockets. “Nobody could have known I was going to the churchyard. It was spur of the moment.”
“Maybe someone followed you.”
At my expression he said, “I’m not trying to scare you—or, maybe I am. I want you to be careful, Kyle.”
Although I wasn’t crazy about his message, I liked the caring I read in Adam’s eyes.
“No one has any reason to kill me.” It passed through my mind that Adam could also have been pinned under the dock; he used it as much as I did, fishing and sketching.
“Maybe not. But if I were you I’d get these locks changed.”
I noticed he didn’t say that no one had reason to kill Brett either.
* * * * *
I offered to fix Adam dinner, to which he unwisely agreed. I was busily defrosting something that was either meatloaf or fruitcake from Christmases past when the phone rang.
The minute I picked up, Micky demanded, “Has Vince called you yet?”
“About what?”
“About the Virgin. He claims you stole it.”
I said on a disbelieving laugh, “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not kidding. He thinks Adam is covering for you.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. What does Adam have to do with it? I didn’t even know the painting was missing.” I covered the mouthpiece and said to Adam, “Did Vince tell you he thinks I stole Virgin in Pastel?”
“Vince is a goddamned idiot,” Adam said. “I meant to tell you earlier.”
That Vince was an idiot or that I was suspected of heisting a million dollar painting?
“Micky,” I said, “Adam was about to fill me in. Can I call you back?”
“Kyle, it’s not a joke. Vince called the sheriff and accused you of stealing the blasted thing.”
“Swell. I’ll call you back.”
I hung up and Adam said, “Honest to God, it slipped my mind.”
That was kind of a big slip, but I guess the murder of one’s lover was an equally big excuse.
“What happened? How come this is the first I’ve heard of the Virgin going missing again?”
“The night of the party,” Adam said, “Vince walked out and forgot the painting. The next morning he came over to get it and Brett apparently told him that I had put it away for safe keeping. Only Brett never mentioned it to me, so I never had a chance to tell Vince I have no idea where his painting went. It wasn’t there in the morning.”
“It wasn’t there when Joel and I cleared up,” I said.
“That’s what Joel says too. But Vince insists it was.”
“And he thinks I took it while Joel was fetching the doctor and you were busy with Brett?”
“Yes.”
I sat down at the kitchen table. “Terrific.”
“Don’t worry,” Adam said. “If push comes to shove, Micky, Joel and I will all swear the painting was gone before you were left alone with it.”
“Why doesn’t this reassure me?”
“I don’t know. I mean it to.”
Not that I didn’t appreciate my surrogate family’s willingness to commit perjury for me. I laughed uncertainly. “But Adam, is the Virgin gone again? Was it gone before the party ended?”
“No one remembers,” Adam said. “Everyone was distracted by the argument between Jenny and Vince, and then over Brett getting sick.”
I tried to read his face. “What else? There’s something else bugging you.”
“I’m not sure that Brett didn’t hide the thing for a—a joke.”
“That’s an expensive joke.”
“I know, but it’s the kind of thing that might amuse him. He liked yanking people’s chains. Vince is an easy mark.”
“But if Brett hid the painting, where would it be? He didn’t fake getting sick that night.”
“I know. I don’t really think he stole the Virgin. On the other hand, it’s hard to believe anyone else there that night did.”
I raked my fingers through my hair. “Vince thinks you’re shielding me?”
“He told me yesterday morning that if you didn’t turn the painting over by today, he’d call the sheriffs. I’m sorry, Kyle. After Brett, I never thought of it again.”
The microwave bell went off. I rose from the table, opened the door. Studying the shriveled brick, I comforted, “Don’t sweat it. The food can’t be any worse in jail than it is here.”
Chapter Ten
A man in a black-hooded rain-slicker was in the churchyard shoveling out a fresh grave. Brett’s grave. The cemetery was bathed in that eerie blue light that fills the wait between rainstorms. The blue shimmered on the marble statues and cast a somber hue on the woods and grass.
Beneath the spread wings and raised sword of Drake Trent’s angel, the man labored, humming to himself grimly. He stopped, straightening up at the sound of my feet on the leaves. The black slicker glistened wetly. He pushed the hood back. I was looking for the hook where a hand should be. Instead I saw snowy-white hair and an Ancient Mariner beard.
“Hello, Granddad.”
He jabbed the shovel in the clump of damp earth and leaned on it. “Kyle.”
Aaron Lipez was in his early eighties, but still going strong. Having outlasted his wife and only child, he would probably outlast his only grandchild as well. He not only looked like the Ancient Mariner, he apparently was the Ancient Mariner.
The usual silence followed our greetings because normal polite conversation was something Aaron Lipez didn’t indulge in, and I never quite knew what to say to him anyway. He had scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. I still found him intimidating.
“Heard you were feeling poorly. You look okay.”
“I’m okay.”
He nodded curtly. For the first time in my life I wondered whether he might have been there for me if I’d needed him. Had he really not given a shit or had there been no point in trying to break through the tight circle formed by Cosmo and his cronies?
“This one a friend of yours?” my grandfather questioned, nodding to the empty hole and fixing his pebble-bright eyes on me.
“I knew him. He was a friend of Adam MacKinnon’s.”
“Faggot.” My grandfather spat accurately at a beetle toddling up the mounds of earth ringing the grave.
I didn’t take this as a personal affront since I had no cause to believe the old man tracked me enough to notice my sexual orientation. My grandfather’s constant refrain for everything wrong on the planet was “the Jews, the fags and the liberals.” The only thing the JFL was not responsible for was my mother’s death. That was my father’s guilt. And possibly mine.
“If you feel that way, why are you letting him be buried here?”
“He can’t hurt the dead.”
Just an old softie my grandpappy. I was grateful he’d granted Adam’s request. He could have easily
declined. The old chapel and surrounding graveyard were all that remained of my grandfather’s property which had once included most of the colony and the woods beyond. The Lipezes and the Cobbs were the last of Steeple Hill’s original founding families. They had been thick as thieves from the first ground-breaking pick ax blow, according to Cosmo.
A lot of money had changed hands through the years, but my grandfather steadfastly refused to sell the land where the old church stood.
“He was twenty-one,” I said. “Someone murdered him.”
“That’s what I hear.”
I wondered what else he heard. I wondered what they were saying in the village. Did he know I was a suspect?
“Do you hear why he was killed?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“You’ve lived here a long time. You probably know more about these people—”
“I mind my own business.”
No hunting, no fishing, no trespassing, and keep off the grass. I looked up at the leaden sky.
“Granddad,” I began, “All these years—did my father ever contact you?”
He knocked dirt off his shovel. “Nope.” He didn’t bother to glance my way.
“Would you tell me if he had?” I asked a little bitterly.
His eyes met mine briefly. “I have any reason not to?”
“Do you think my father’s dead?”
He said harshly, “I hope he’s dead.”
I shivered as rain began to patter softly on the leaves above us. It ran down the hovering angel’s face like tears.
* * * * *
I was replacing the Jeep’s windshield wipers that evening when Sheriff Rankin showed up.
“I’ve been expecting you,” I said.
“That so?”
I wiped a smudge off the hood with my shirt sleeve. “Vince Berkowitz told you I stole my father’s painting. I didn’t.”
Rankin stroked his mustache.
“Stole might be too strong a word. The way I hear it is you might have a legal claim to that painting. Maybe you thought of holding onto it till ownership could be determined. What about that?”
