by Josh Lanyon
When we finally had a lull, I took a quick break, eating an apple and half a chicken salad sandwich in my office while I thumbed once more through Robert’s yearbook. I studied the immature, unformed faces of the Chess Club as though it would be possible to read their thoughts. That’s when the light bulb went on.
Tara.
No, she hadn’t belonged to the Chess Club. No, she hadn’t even attended West Valley Academy till the following year, but she had spent that long hot summer with Robert, and she had been eager to know everything about him. And Robert had liked to talk.
I dialed Tara.
She wasn’t thrilled to hear from me. I could hear a TV blasting and kids yelling in the background. Sioux City Serenade.
“Adrien, it was a long time ago,” Tara protested finally when I’d explained what I was after.
“I know, but try to remember. The Chess Club broke up after one semester. Why?”
“It’s a boring game.”
“Come on, Tara.”
A heavy sigh all along the miles of corn fields and rolling prairie.
“I don’t really know. That’s the truth.”
“What did Robert say?”
I could hear her hesitation, her doubt. “If he’d wanted you to know, Adrien, he’d have told you.”
“Oh for -- !”
Irritably, she said, “Somebody cheated, I think. There was this big match. Tournament, I guess you’d call it, between all these schools. Someone from West Valley cheated. West Valley was disqualified.”
I absorbed this doubtfully. “That can’t be it.” I don’t know what I was expecting. Yes, I do. Reason for murder.
“Well, that’s the only thing I know of. Think about it, Adrien. It was very embarrassing. Kids don’t like to be embarrassed. Especially teenagers. Robert was still fuming months later.”
Robert did not like to be embarrassed, that had never changed. He did not like to seem foolish. He did not like to appear in the wrong. But Robert had not cheated. He would never cheat in a million years -- and Robert was the one who was dead.
I tried to remember, but my perceptions of that year were colored by the two main events of my life up to that point: nearly dying, and realizing I was gay. The two had seemed inextricably linked.
“Who cheated?”
“Bob never said.”
“Come off it, Tara. Rob told you everything.”
“Not everything,” she said bitterly and covered the mouthpiece to snap at one of the kids.
This reminded me of something that had been nagging at me. “Tara, why were you in LA before Robert was killed?”
Her breath caught sharply. “How do you know that?”
“Robert told me.”
“Bob didn’t --” she broke off and said, “I’ve got to go.”
Huh? “Wait! One more question, please, Tara. Why did the Chess Club fall apart?”
“Mr. Atkins, the sponsor, pulled the plug.”
“Why?”
“I guess because of the cheating incident. I don’t know. Look, Adrien, you’d better not be sticking your nose in my personal life.”
“I’m not. Why did Atkins pull the plug?”
“Well, Nancy Drew, why don’t you ask him?” she said and hung up.
Chapter Thirteen
Mr. Atkins had retired from the thankless task of trying to force-feed knowledge to children who now packed guns. The “Head Master’s” secretary took my name and number and promised to pass them along.
I went downstairs and freed Angus from the shackles of slavery -- you would have thought so anyway from the way he hightailed it. I locked up.
As I started up the staircase I thought I heard a soft rustling from the rear of the shop.
I went back downstairs, walked down the narrow aisles, through the towering paperback canyons. Allingham to Zubro, there was nothing out of order. I poked my head in the office.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
Feeling silly I snapped the light off again and went upstairs to dress for meeting Bruce.
I had a drink while I shaved. I spent a long time trying to decide what to wear, settling on a dress shirt in a shade the sales associate at Saks called “curry,” and a pair of black trousers. I felt ridiculously nervous. When the phone rang I snatched it off the receiver.
It was Detective Riordan and he sounded grim. “Two things: we just got the paperwork from Buffalo PD. Richard Corday died from injuries sustained falling twelve stories onto a cement poolyard.”
I swallowed hard. “Was it suicide?”
“It was a suspicious death. Corday checked in alone, and only his personal effects were found in the room; but one of the maids said she had accidentally walked in on Corday and a guest a few hours earlier.”
“A man?”
“A woman, she thought. She saw women’s clothes tossed around the room.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I’m just giving you the facts.”
“Wait a minute.” I was thinking out loud. “Suppose the women’s clothes were Rusty’s? He died in drag.”
Silence. “It’s a possibility,” he said grudgingly.
“Could he have fallen accidentally?”
“No way. They faxed over photos of the room, including the windows. He could have jumped or he could have been stuffed out, but he couldn’t have lost his balance. He was drunk however, and he was wearing women’s clothing, which sounded enough like reason for suicide to the boys in Buffalo.”
“Was there a chess piece anywhere?”
“I was getting to that. In Corday’s color-coordinated handbag were his American Express card --”
“Don’t leave home without it,” I murmured.
“His keys -- including his room key, a clean white hanky, a MAC lipstick -- Pink Glaze, if you’re interested, and one chess piece. A queen.”
Never had I felt so little pleasure in being right.
Could Rusty’s death be unconnected? After all, he didn’t even live in the same state.
But then what about the coincidence of his belonging to the Chess Club? The Chess Club had to play into it -- how else could one explain a game piece clutched in a dying man’s hand? There was no chess set in Robert’s apartment that I’d noticed. His killer had to have left it as a calling card.
I said, “You told me Tara was in LA when Robert died. Do you know why?”
“To get back with him.”
“She told me Robert didn’t know she was here.”
“She was here to ask his family to pull an intervention.”
“An intervention? What were they going to intervene with? His being gay?”
“That’s the story.”
“And you believe it?”
“Hersey’s sisters corroborated her story.”
I started as I heard the downstairs buzzer. Bruce was early.
“You still there?” Riordan asked.
“Hmm? Yes, I’m here. You said two things.”
“Second thing. Remind your mother,” his voice crackled with hostility, “and her mouthpiece that you have been handled with kid gloves up until now. We could have hauled your bony ass in for interrogation anytime we chose. We haven’t done that, have we?”
“No.” I was barely able to form the word.
“No. In fact, I went out of my way to keep you off ice. And that was before I knew Mommy Dearest and the police chief’s wife are on the same Save-the-Spaniels committee. I don’t appreciate getting called on the carpet. Got that?”
I could feel myself turning into an ice sculpture: the chilling effect of humiliation. Before I could explain, Riordan’s voice altered, grew brisk, impersonal. I knew someone was standing near him. “I’ve got to go.”
He rang off and I went downstairs to meet Bruce.
* * * * *
We dined at Celestino on the patio. It was crowded and chilly. People talked and smoked at other tables, but even after a couple of drinks I felt removed from my surroundings, de
tached. I blamed it on Riordan’s phone call and tried to shake off my preoccupation.
Over swordfish carpaccio with orange and fennel salad, I got Bruce to tell me about himself. Used to doing the interviewing, he was clearly not comfortable on this side of the questions, but I’d had enough of my own problems for a while. I kept turning the conversation back to Bruce, and gradually, soup through dessert, I got his life story. Like me he’d grown up in the Valley. Unlike me he’d attended public schools, graduating from Chatsworth High and going on to CSUN. Like me, he’d realized he was gay his last year of high school. Unlike me, his family had disowned him the minute he came out of the closet.
“In retrospect it would have been wiser to wait, like you did, to break it to them.”
“It wasn’t wisdom,” I told him. “My motto growing up was always, ‘Discretion is the better part of valor.’ ”
He said reflectively, “I think they would have come to terms with it, but both my parents died right after I graduated from college.”
“I’m sorry.”
He smiled awkwardly. “Your family was more enlightened, I take it?”
I shrugged. “In a weird way I think my mother is relieved there will never be a young Mrs. English to contend with. She’s not keen on competition.” I grinned wryly meeting Bruce’s sympathetic gaze.
He didn’t talk much about his work, seeming reticent, as though he suspected I might not approve. I tried to make all the appropriate noises and faces. I realized though that I was trying too hard.
Bruce realized it too. “I’m boring you, aren’t I?”
“Hell no!”
His lopsided smile was rueful and appealing in his homely face. “It’s okay. I bore myself.”
“No, Bruce. I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”
“Were you lovers?”
“Who?”
“You and Hersey.”
“No. A long time ago.” I didn’t want to talk about it. I had to work through those memories on my own.
“What about you and -- what was his name? Pierre?”
“La Pierra. No. He was ... .” I took a breath. “A good friend. I should have --”
“What?” His solemn dark eyes were curious.
I shook my head. I didn’t want to share those thoughts either -- maybe not the most promising indicator of a change in my emotional litmus. I put my hand over my glass when he raised the wine bottle. He frowned. “What’s the problem?”
“Two of my closest friends have been killed.”
“Do you think there’s a connection?”
“Of course there’s a connection.”
“I mean to you.”
“Me?”
He nodded gravely. “Was there anything else they had in common?”
I looked at him, but I was seeing Robert. What did Robert and I have in common?
We were both gay. We were the same age and race. We went to the same high school. We belonged to the Chess Club in high school -- as well as the tennis team and sharing many of the same classes. We both knew Claude. We both knew Tara. We both knew a lot of the same people. So what?
The truth was, Robert and I had very little in common besides being gay and going to high school together.
Into my silence, Bruce said softly, “There is something isn’t there?”
I barely heard him. Had Claude hedged about knowing who Robert was seeing before his death? Maybe he really hadn’t known. Whoever Robert had been seeing it hadn’t been for long or openly, because none of Robert’s crowd knew anything about the guy. Claude had claimed Riordan had killed Robert. Claude had claimed Riordan was going to kill him.
Something didn’t make sense. Should I assume that Robert’s killer and Claude’s killer were the same? Did that only hold true if Robert’s killer and my stalker were the same? Why kill Claude? Why not kill me?
Were the flowers and CD a prelude to murder? Had Robert also received these tokens of esteem? If so, he hadn’t considered himself “stalked.” Maybe I was more insecure.
Robert had not been stalked. Claude had not been stalked. But Claude and Robert were both dead. I was being stalked but I was not dead. Not yet.
I became aware that Bruce was waiting for an answer. I said, “You probably know more about that than me.”
“I’m off the story, remember? Conflict of interest.”
I wondered if he resented that conflict? How much did his career mean to him? How far could he be trusted?”
“Do you play chess?” I asked suddenly.
He smiled. “Sure. You?”
“Not for years. I was thinking -- if there’s some special significance to chess.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know.” I sighed. Ran a hand through my hair. I was tired. And once again I’d had too much to drink.
“There’s something you’re not telling me,” Bruce’s gaze held mine.
“It’s just a theory.”
“Tell me.”
Belatedly, I remembered Riordan had warned me to keep my mouth shut. “No. It’s nothing.” I looked at my watch. Tried not to yawn.
“Did you want to get out of here, Adrien?” he asked abruptly.
* * * * *
It was just a couple of minutes drive back to the bookstore.
“I had this planned so differently,” Bruce said in the quiet of the car.
“I had a good time.”
In the silence that stretched, he asked diffidently, “Will you come back to my place?”
We drove back to Bruce’s. He lived in one of those quiet Chatsworth neighborhoods in one of those sprawling brown and yellow ranch-style houses. The grass was getting long, there were dandelions in the flower beds, and the asphalt driveway needed resurfacing.
Bruce let us into the dark house. My nostrils twitched at the faint scent of air freshener and cat.
“Sorry it’s such a mess.” He switched on the lights as we went through the rooms.
It wasn’t a mess. It was spotless. It also wasn’t like anything I’d imagined. Plastic fruit in bowls, the Leaning Tree gallery of Indian paintings, a bookshelf full of stuff like Dr. Spock on raising kids, Barbara Cartland romances, an out of date set of Encyclopedia Britannica. The china cabinet was full of pink stemware. The kind of stuff you get at markets for buying so many dollars worth of produce. It didn’t strike me as Bruce’s taste.
“Did you want a glass of wine?”
May as well be drunk as the way I am, I thought. “Sure.”
There were plenty of those multi-picture frames featuring a nice middle-class American family, mom and dad and a cute little girl who went from pigtails to wedding gown. There were even photos of assorted dogs and cats, but no photos of Bruce. Pale squares and ovals on the wall indicated where his pictures once hung.
“This was your Mom and Dad’s house?” I lifted up a figurine. A dog tugging on a girl’s dress.
“Yeah. I’m not here enough to bother clearing this junk out,” Bruce explained, again reading my thoughts. He brought me a glass of wine.
We touched glasses and Bruce kissed me.
* * * * *
Moonlight flooded the room but Bruce slept peacefully on. I eased gingerly out from under his arm, padded over to the window, put one hand on the cool glass.
The backyard was vaguely familiar like so many yards out of my Southern California childhood. There was a cactus garden in the center of the patio, which featured a built-in barbecue. In the jungle of weeds stood a rusted swing set, gilded in moonlight. I could make out the roof of an empty dog house behind tufts of dead ornamental grass. And, unless I missed my guess, around the corner of the house would be a narrow walkway with steps leading up to a side door. Potted palms on either side.
“What are you thinking about?” Bruce’s whisper behind me had me starting. He put a hand on my shoulder, warm, possessive.
“Nothing.”
“More bad dreams?” His voice was as low as though he feared his parents could still hear.<
br />
I shook my head.
He kissed my shoulder. “You’re so beautiful.”
There was a sudden blockage in my throat. “Bruce --”
“You don’t know how long I’ve dreamed of you here. With me. Like this.” He guided me back to bed.
We lay down, put our arms around each other. Already this was becoming familiar.
I wanted it to be familiar. I wanted it to be right. I rejected the disloyal thought that Bruce was clutching me too tightly, that his urgent gasps didn’t leave me room to breathe, that he was rough when I needed tenderness, and tentative when I needed sureness.
“Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I’m not thinking.”
“I love you,” Bruce murmured against my ear. I turned my head quickly, stopping his words with my kiss.
* * * * *
The answering machine was signaling disaster when I finally got in. Some impulse made me hit Play despite my exhaustion.
“Where the hell are you?” Riordan sounded ... angry wasn’t quite the word. “Call me when you get in. I don’t care what time it is.” He recited a couple of new numbers to phone.
I didn’t think he meant five-thirty in the morning, and I didn’t have the energy to deal with him right now anyway. I stripped, dived into bed, loving the cool kiss of my own sheets on my nakedness. The bed did a spin. I closed my eyes. Passed out.
* * * * *
I was surprised when Mr. Atkins called. He said he always enjoyed meeting with former students, and we arranged to meet for lunch at the Denny’s on Topanga Canyon.
I recognized him immediately in blue-tinted spectacles that matched a baggy sleeveless sweater. I recalled that he had a sleeveless sweater in every shade of blue. His hair was thinning but still longish. It occurred to me that while he had seemed ancient and venerable to my 11th grader eyes, he couldn’t have been that old. He was only about sixty now.
“I come here for the early bird specials,” he informed me with a wink, and poured a second packet of C&H into his tea. “That’s the beauty of early retirement, son. You’re still young enough to enjoy life.”
