by Dorien Grey
A deep rumble from my stomach broke my train of thought, and I got up and headed for the stairs.
*
A phone message waiting when I returned to the office put the whole Tunderew matter on a back burner. It was a call from a prospective client who needed my services and, I had every reason to hope, would even pay for them. I returned the call immediately, and set up an appointment for later the same afternoon.
Since we’re mainly concerned with the Tunderew case here, I won’t go into too much detail. Suffice it to say that the owner of a large furniture store in The Central believed he was being ripped off by one of his two-man delivery crews—a helper and a crew boss. The store had a policy of offering free delivery, which consisted of bringing the item into the customer’s house, putting it where the customer wanted, and leaving. But if, as often happened, the customer decided that they thought, after having the furniture put where the crew was told, that it really would look better over there…or maybe over there, which could result in a lot of rearranging and a lot of extra time…the store’s sales contract specified that an additional charge would apply. That was logical, since the delivery time schedules were tight; the more time wasted with each delivery, the fewer deliveries that could be made. If ten deliveries were scheduled, and only eight made, that would result in two unhappy customers.
The suspect crew was always behind schedule, and the owner believed it was because they were not reporting the “extra moves” and pocketing the money. Sounded pretty innocent, but as the owner pointed out, not only did the store lose money on the “extra moves” fee—as much, he estimated, as four hundred dollars a week—but lost money on the slower delivery schedule and unhappy customers.
He wanted to put the helper on a special in-warehouse project and hire me to work with the crew boss to see what was going on. He figured it shouldn’t take more than three or four days. If the suspect offered to let me in on the deal, we’d have him dead to rights. And if he didn’t and the delivery schedule picked up as a result, it would also be a good indication that the boss’s suspicions had been right and the crew boss was just being cautious with a new man around.
I wasn’t in a position to pass up the opportunity to actually be paid for a case, and I thought the exercise would do me good. Tunderew and Randy were already dead; there wasn’t anything I might do on that matter that couldn’t be put off a few days.
I took the job.
*
I showed up at the store Wednesday morning at seven thirty, met my “crew boss”—a guy named Fred, who had a body to die for and a face that could stop a clock. I really don’t like to make that kind of judgment of other people’s looks. We all have to live with what nature gave us, but let’s just say he was most definitely not my type—whatever that might be.
By Wednesday night, my ass was dragging. Hauling sleeper sofas up three flights of stairs ain’t a stroll in the park. The day had gone without a hitch. One elderly lesbian (I gathered her sexual orientation by the fact that she lived in a residential section of The Central, and by the number of photographs around the apartment—all of women) did ask if we could move a couple of pieces of heavy furniture to make her new love seats fit in, and wrote a check to the store for the extra time involved.
At the end of the day, as we were heading back to the store after our last delivery, I told Fred I thought moving furniture all day was a hell of a lot more work than we were getting paid for. He just grunted and nodded. (Fred was the strong, silent type. Not unfriendly, just quiet.)
*
I made a point of stopping by the office after I got off work at the store to check for messages. I definitely took the elevator up and back. There were a few calls, but nothing that needed immediate responses, so I headed home.
Jonathan had obviously guessed that I’d had a pretty rough day, physically, and when I walked into the apartment I saw his large book bag on the floor next to the sofa. He suggested that before we have dinner we might play a game of The Overworked Private Eye and the Very Professional Masseur. We hadn’t played that one before, but it sounded like exactly what I needed. As always, Jonathan was able to immerse himself totally and instantly into his “character,” who told me his name was Lance and asked which of three types of massage I would prefer: basic muscle relaxer, full body massage, or “the works.” I told him I thought I’d go for “the works.” A couple of weeks earlier, he had picked up a small gift box of Exotic Body Oils at the place we got our hair cut. I’d asked him at the time what he thought we were going to do with it, and he just shrugged.
“They smell nice,” he said.
“Lance” asked if I would prefer the sofa, the floor, or the bed for the massage, and I opted for the bed. I showed him where the bedroom was (I was getting pretty good at this games thing, too) and he picked up his book bag and followed me. Once inside the bedroom, he instructed me to strip down to my shorts while he opened his book bag and took out a clean white sheet, which he very carefully spread across the top of the comforter. While I was finishing undressing, pretty much into the mood of the game by now, he dug back into the book bag and took out three small bottles that I recognized as having come from the Exotic Body Oils kit. When I was stripped to my shorts, he instructed me to stretch out face down on the bed, which felt very good, and just relax a minute. I had my head turned away from him so I couldn’t tell what he was doing. When I turned to look I saw that he’d also gotten totally undressed except for a very skimpy bathing suit he’d insisted on buying despite my telling him I’d never let him wear it on any beach. I reached out to touch him, but he gently slapped my hand away.
“Behave,” he said. He then announced that I had my choice of Coconut, Musk, or Sandalwood oil.
“Surprise me.”
He smiled his Lance persona smile and said, “Oh, I intend to.”
He opened one of the bottles, poured a dab into one palm and rubbed his hands together briskly. I could smell the Sandalwood.
“Just close your eyes and relax.”
I did (well, most of me did), though one of my mind-voices, which I recognized immediately as my crotch, observed that Jonathan made a very attractive “Lance.” A moment later I felt him climb onto the bed and straddle me, then the drip of oil at the base of my neck. Next, he put his hands on either side of the base of my neck at the shoulders and began gently rubbing the oil in, kneading the muscles, moving his hands slowly outward and back. It felt fantastic. After a few minutes of that, and despite my growing enthusiasm for the game, I almost fell asleep. After working down to just below my armpits, he moved his hands to put the heels of his palms on either side of my spine, just below the shoulders, fingers splayed wide. He pushed down quickly three times in rapid succession, hard enough to make me grunt with each push, then with his full hand moved slowly outward from the spine to beneath my armpits, alternately pushing down to stretch the skin away from the spine, and kneading strongly. When his fingers had almost circled around my side to my chest, he released, then started the same motions again, a little lower on the spine. He repeated these movements, alternating with strong, cupped palms pushing upward, all the way to the small of my back. From time to time I could feel a few drops of oil being poured directly on my skin.
“Lance, you’re hired!” I muttered, eyes closed.
I felt him scoot down on the bed until he was at my feet, and he began massaging my ankles, thighs, and calves. When he reached my butt, he said, “Lift your ass.” I did and felt him sliding my shorts off.
“We don’t want to get oil on your shorts,” he said in a professional tone. Then the strong kneading continued.
“Roll over,” he said, and I did.
“Well, well, what have we here?”
Without waiting for an answer, he moved quickly back down to my feet, concentrating on massaging the inside of my ankles, then slowly up the front of my legs to my waist.
Ignoring the obstacle, he worked around it without touching it, up my stomach and che
st to my shoulders and the base of my neck. He rocked slowly forward to kiss me, and while he was raised up, pulled his bathing suit down. Pouring more oil onto his hand, he reached behind him, then settled himself backwards, slowly…
Have I mentioned that games can be really fun?
*
Thursday “at work” was pretty much a repeat of Wednesday, though most of the deliveries were either to the ground floor of houses or in buildings with freight elevators. Two customers asked for “extra” help—one to move a bed from one bedroom to another, another to take an old recliner out to the curb. Again both times the customer paid—one with a check, one with cash. Fred put both into his shirt pocket. I was wondering, as we went through the day, how the store owner figured he was losing so much money on pocketed “extras.” We’d only done three extras in two days, and only one of those was in cash.
Once again, toward the end of the day, I observed to Fred that we didn’t get paid nearly enough for the amount of work we had to do. Fred reached in his shirt pocket and took out a $10 bill. I assumed it came from the cash the customer had given him.
“Here. Consider it a bonus.”
“Great!” I said. “Thanks.”
I realized that was probably all the evidence I or the store owner needed, but figured I’d go another day to see if anything further developed.
*
Thursday was Jonathan’s class night, so I decided to just relax—no time before class for another episode with Lance, unfortunately. When Jonathan went off to school, I did the dishes, half-heartedly watched a little TV, and caught up on the newspapers I’d not had a chance to look at for the past couple of days. The Wednesday edition always carried a few pages of local religious news, which I usually managed to skip over without even slowing down. However, something caught my eye just as I was turning the page to more important stuff like the comics: the name “Dinsmore.” I turned back to it, and saw the heading: “Dinsmore to Receive C.M.L.A. Honors.” I hadn’t a clue what the C.M.L.A. might be, but decided to find out.
Reverend Jeffrey Dinsmore will be honored by the Christian Men’s Leadership Association on the 27th of this month at a ceremony following the annual week-long C.M.L.A. retreat in Holy Hill, Arkansas. Reverend Dinsmore, a leader of the Eternal Light Foundation and the founder of New Eden Farms, will receive the Good Works for Glory Humanitarian Award for his tireless devotion to…
Interesting. That meant that Jeffrey would probably be out of town the next week, and since it was a Christian Men’s retreat, it was unlikely that the Reverend Mrs. Dinsmore would be going with him. All I had to do now was figure out a way to get to see her in person. And after that, maybe her brother? Though definitely not at the same time. It was unlikely that either of them would know any more than Jeffrey knew, but it would help verify that his protestations of knowing nothing about the book were legitimate. And if they were…well, I’d think about that when the time came.
But, my mind said, ignoring my decision to let it rest, if Dinsmore didn’t know or suspect that he and New Eden were the subject of Tunderew’s new book, he wouldn’t have had any reason to kill him. In that case, I’d not only be back to square one, but facing two totally separate cases: the New Eden murders, and Tunderew’s—and again by extension, Randy’s—murder. Also in that case, the New Eden murders were totally and completely none of my business. That’s what the police are for. I sure as hell can’t afford—literally—to get involved in every murder, suspicious death, and disappearance in the world. I’m good, but I’m not that good! If Dinsmore wasn’t involved in Tunderew’s murder, I’d just have to let the whole New Eden thing drop and get on with my life.
Uh huh.
*
Our first delivery on Friday morning was a dining room set that King Arthur might have fancied—a huge solid oak table with four leaves and eight gigantic chairs, an eight-foot-high hutch and a nine-foot-long credenza. The house was in the Briarwood area, not far from the Birchwood Country Club. Fred asked the boss to give us another helper, but was told no one else was available and we’d have to manage ourselves.
The house was brand new, one of four side-by-side mansions in various stages of construction. Each one of them would have been beautiful if set in the middle of two or three acres of lawn, but all four of them were crammed nearly cheek-to-jowl on what appeared to be the equivalent of two city lots. Landscapers were busily working on the minuscule front lawn and, huge as the houses were, there couldn’t have been more than eight feet between them.
The customer turned out to be one of those piss-elegant snobs I always want to punch out just on general principles. Tall, thin, with a habit of sucking in his cheeks and pursing his lips when anything displeased him—which apparently nearly everything did. He did deign to open both the double entrance doors, and watched us like hawks, advising us pointedly to wipe our feet carefully before entering.
He also, I noticed, took a particular interest in Fred, who was wearing a form-fitting tee shirt.
The dining room was larger than most people’s living rooms, but by the time we’d brought all the pieces of the dining room set in, the challenge of where to put everything was obvious. We had set everything in its logical place as we brought it in, but of course that did not suit the customer. He began to direct us to move this piece here, to turn the table crossways, to try the hutch over there. Fred pointed out to the customer that the delivery of the furniture was free, but that we were on a very tight schedule and didn’t really have the time to…
“Well, I’ll pay you, of course,” the customer huffed. He exchanged a long look with Fred and then actually smiled, his eyes moving slowly and deliberately over Fred’s impressive torso.
“Cash,” he added.
We spent the next forty-five minutes courting a hernia moving things here, then there, then over there, then…
When we were finally through, the customer handed each of us a $50 bill, being sure he pressed Fred’s slowly into his hand. As we left and were headed down the walk, the customer called Fred over for a few words I could not overhear. But I didn’t think I really had to.
Back in the truck, I handed Fred my $50 and said, “Here, you can give this to the boss.”
He looked at me and laughed.
“Are you nuts? We worked our butts off for that money. It’s ours.”
“But we’re forty-five minutes behind schedule,” I said. “The boss…”
“We had a flat tire,” Fred said.
Good-bye, Fred.
*
Though I ached in muscles I didn’t know I had, and there was again no time when I got home to call on Lance’s expert services, we managed to make it to Napoleon by seven forty. Surprisingly, Jared was already there, sitting at the small bar in what had been the living room of a private home before it converted to a restaurant. We exchanged greetings and hugs, then ordered our drinks and moved over to a small circle of chairs in front of the fireplace.
“I thought you and Jake would be coming in together,” I said when we sat down.
Jared took a sip from his drink and shook his head. “He called just before I left Carrington to say he’d be running late. I told him I’d just meet him here.”
“So, uh, how’s it going with you two?” I asked, once again striding boldly into It’s-None-of-Your-Damned-Business-Hardesty territory.
“Really great. I’ve never had a…‘steady?’…before. I don’t usually see a guy more than a couple of times.” He suddenly glanced up at me. “I mean…” his eyes went to Jonathan, who just gave him a knowing smile “…well, you know.”
While we’d never directly talked about it, I knew that Jonathan was well aware that Jared and I had been…uh, sexually active…for quite a while before I met Jonathan, so we all knew what he meant. Jared and I were always friends first and sex partners on the side. No emotional involvement beyond that. That’s why I was curious about his relationship with Jake, which seemed to go quite a way beyond where I’d ever known him t
o go.
“I’m glad you’re with Jake,” Jonathan volunteered. “Everybody should have a lover.”
Jared smiled at him.
“Well, I’m not sure about the ‘lover’ part. Neither Jake nor I is exactly what you’d call the monogamous type. Besides, he’s got his business down here, and I’m up in Carrington, and, well, like I say, we both like playing the field a little too much. When we’re together, we’re together. And we make a great team when it comes to picking up three- and four-ways.”
He noticed Jonathan’s look of incomprehension and reached out and put one large hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. “But who knows? Maybe some day,” he said, grinning.
“But you do really like him, right?” Jonathan asked.
Jared looked at Jonathan and smiled again. “Yeah, I really like him.”
Apparently satisfied, Jonathan looked at me, then sat back in his chair.
“Good.”
*
Jake didn’t arrive until about ten after eight.
“Sorry, guys,” he said as we exchanged greetings. I noticed that as usual, while we all stood up and Jonathan and I exchanged hugs with Jake, Jared and he went into some sort of clinch that looked a little more like a strangle hold than a hug. The hug was there in the eyes, though.
“Do you want to order a drink first?” Jared suggested.
“Is our table ready?” Jake asked.
“Yeah, but we can wait a bit.”
Jake shook his head. “Nah, I’ll order at the table.”
We moved into the dining room, Jake and Jared leading the way, and I noticed again what a great pair they made, physically. Same Tom of Finland build, same height; Jared as dark as Jake was light. I felt Jonathan’s elbow poke me in the ribs. Startled, I glanced at him to see him grinning at me.
“Don’t drool,” he said.
Dinner was, as always, great. Napoleon’s was definitely at the top of our favorite restaurants.
