by Dorien Grey
“We’ve still got another half to go,” I reminded him. “And speaking of going, come on, Joshua, let’s go to the bathroom.”
“I don’t have to go,” he said.
“Well, better safe than sorry,” I insisted, taking his hand and leading him through the crowd toward the bathrooms.
There was barely enough time before the end of the intermission to exchange a few words with the gang, all of whom expressed surprise at how good the chorus was. The quick flickering of the lights told us it was time to return to our seats.
The chorus filed back in, and the houselights dimmed to begin the second half of the program, which included “I Hear Singing,” from Call Me Madam, “Somewhere,” from West Side Story, “Oklahoma,” and “What I Did for Love,” from A Chorus Line. The selections varied from serious to light, but each had its own strengths, and the most common theme was love and empowerment.
The last number on the program was an incredibly powerful rendition of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” that left me with a huge lump in my throat.
When the last note faded, there was a full ten seconds of silence, and then the audience rose for the strongest ovation of the evening, which was silenced only when Rothenberger turned back to the chorus for an encore: “Consider Yourself,” from Oliver. Splitting in the middle, the two rows of singers moved off the risers to either side, marched in time to the music to the front of the stage where they stopped only long enough to take a perfectly synchronized bow. Then, each line crossed the other and marched off into the wings, still singing, leaving only Roger Rothenberger standing in the middle of the now-empty stage. With the last note of the song, he bowed and walked off stage left.
When the applause continued unabated for a full two minutes, Roger came back on stage and motioned for the chorus to join him. They quickly formed a single line across the entire width of the stage, took another bow then, joining hands, went into their final encore, the patriotic “This Is My Country,” which had special significance for an audience largely made up of people who too often had been made to feel they did not belong.
When they had finished, they once more moved offstage to thunderous applause. Then the houselights came up, and the concert was officially over.
*
I’d told Jonathan we’d meet him in front of the building. I expected the rest of the gang would go on their way as soon as we got outside, but they said they wanted to wait. Everyone agreed it had been a smashing success and a great moment for the city’s gay community. Craig kept a close watch on Joshua while I was distracted, though I noticed he shot frequent glances at Jared and Jake. I have no doubt but that they would be providing him with fantasy fodder for quite some time.
At last Jonathan came up from the side of the theater, accompanied by Eric. Joshua and I gave him a big hug and, after only a moment’s hesitation, so did Craig. Jonathan introduced Eric. and we spent the next several minutes talking about the performance and everyone’s total delight with it.
Eventually, everyone exchanged good-byes and headed off in their own directions, as did we. I noticed Jonathan was still carrying his rose.
“You have a secret admirer?” I asked. “Should I be jealous?”
He grinned, but before he could speak, Eric said, “It’s a tradition. At every concert, the director gives a rose to guys who have joined since the last concert. We had four this time. But I’d still keep a close watch on Jonathan if I were you—several guys have their eye on him.”
Jonathan blushed. “Right.” Then, as if to change the subject, he said, “I told Eric we’d give him a ride home—his car broke down and he lives not far from Craig.”
“Sure,” I said as we headed for the car.
*
Pulling up in front of Craig’s house, I got out of the car to get his bag out of the trunk, and as he came around to get it I handed him the money for his babysitting services.
He raised his hand in protest.
“No, no! You took me to the concert, and I know the tickets weren’t cheap. I can’t tell you how much I appreciated it. I’ll never forget it. So, this one’s on me.”
I was really touched, but as he reached for his bag I tucked the money into his shirt pocket.
“Put it in your college fund,” I said.
Eric lived only about six blocks from the Richmans, and the drive there was spent in talk of the concert, with minimal distractions from Joshua. I was oddly relieved that we’d gotten through the entire day with not one mention of Grant Jefferson.
I pulled up to the curb in front of Eric’s building and he got out, turning back to lean in toward the back seat to say good-bye to Jonathan and Joshua, then to me.
“Thanks for the lift, Dick. I’ll have to do something nice for you someday.” Giving me a devilish and very obvious come-on grin. I glanced into the rearview mirror to see Jonathan roll his eyes toward the roof.
“You want to come up front?” I asked as Eric closed the door and moved down the sidewalk toward his building.
“That’s okay,” Jonathan said. “Joshua and I will stay back here. I don’t think there’d be room enough up there for me and your swelled head.”
“Hey,” I protested, staring at him in the mirror and tapping my forehead, “as long as it’s only this head that’s swollen, I don’t think you have to worry.”
Fortunately, the exchange went completely past Joshua, and he said nothing as he watched Eric walk into his building.
*
We stopped at a fast-food place for chicken so we wouldn’t have to cook, then spent a quiet evening at home. Actually, Jonathan spent most of it winding down from the high of the performance.
“It was really great, babe,” I told him for what must have been the dozenth time as we sat on the couch after dinner, watching TV while Joshua played in his room. Jonathan’s rose was in a tall, thin vase on the coffee table in front of us.
He turned his head, which he was resting on the back of the couch, to look at me.
“It really was, wasn’t it? I’ve never had an experience quite like it. The feeling I get at the Gay Pride Parade comes close, but this is so…well, it’s too hard to explain. I can’t imagine a drug that could create such a high.”
“Well,” I said, “now you’ll have a couple of weeks to come down before you start up again.”
“Oh, no,” he said. “Only one. We start rehearsals a week from Tuesday.”
“You’ve got to be kidding! Only one week off?”
“We’ve got so much to do—we’ve only got sixteen rehearsals between each performance, when you think about it, and we have to learn all the music and…well, it’s like putting a huge jigsaw puzzle together.”
I really didn’t want to say anything, but I couldn’t help but be a little unhappy. Selfish of me, I know, but when he’d first joined the chorus I really didn’t realize how much time it would take up. Luckily, he’d be getting his associate’s degree in horticulture at the end of the current semester, which would free up one more night and all the time he currently devoted to studying, but…
*
Even though I was waiting to see what would develop when Farnsworth returned to town and whether or not he could be directly linked to Grant Jefferson’s death, I didn’t feel that gave me a pass to sit back and do nothing. If Farnsworth proved not to be the culprit, I’d be right back on square one; and since I had nothing more pressing at the moment, I thought I’d better go over everything one more time to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.
*
First thing Monday morning, I sat down to review every note I’d made on the case, and to think back on every conversation I’d had with everyone I’d talked to regarding it, looking for something…anything…I might have overlooked. I’d planned to write a detailed report to the chorus’ board anyway, and I figured I might as well start at least a draft.
It turned out that little project took up most of the day, and I had to take frequent breaks from trying to reread my old n
otes and making new ones to type them up while I could still decipher exactly what it was I’d written. Having done so, I came to the conclusion that if I had overlooked someone or something, I had no idea who or what it might be.
God, I hate that.
Well, at least I had the skeleton for my report to the board, and that was something. But I didn’t feel any the less frustrated. It came down to a coin-toss—it was either Farnsworth or it wasn’t. And if it wasn’t, well, I really didn’t want to think about that.
Rather surprisingly, Porter Meade’s name popped into my head. I was at a loss as to why I should be thinking about a psychiatrist I’d met only once, and then I recognized that, on the level below that, the person I was really thinking about was Eric.
I suppose there might have been something of the “small world” factor in the coincidence that Meade had treated Eric after the death of Eric’s family. There is an element of morbid fascination in each of us, and my wanting to know more about how Eric had responded to the tragedy was obviously an example of it. But why should I be thinking of it now?
Might it be, I wondered, because somewhere in the back of my mind I was guiltily tempted to respond to what I was pretty sure were his come-ons? I wasn’t totally unfamiliar with being cruised or, frankly, of being tempted by other guys. As long as Jonathan was in my life I would never yield to the temptation—he knew that. He also knew Eric better than I did, and his eye-rolling when Eric got out of the car when we dropped him off after the concert said he knew it was all a tease.
Why didn’t I?
*
I was getting ready to close up shop—we’d not been able to make it to the grocery store over the weekend and Jonathan had given me a long list before we left for work—when I got a call from Donna, Glen O’Banyon’s secretary.
She asked if I might be able to do a quick bit of library research the next morning for a case Glen was taking to trial at that coming Thursday. I knew he had a couple of assistants at the office who normally did this kind of work for him, but occasionally, when they were unavailable, he would call on me.
I readily agreed and jotted down the information Donna told me they needed. I actually liked jobs like this—they were generally a piece of cake, took only a couple of hours at most, and paid disproportionately well. Besides, it would help take my mind off my spinning my wheels on Grant’s murder for a few hours.
*
We’d barely finished dinner when the phone rang. It was nearly a photo finish in the race to the phone between Jonathan and Joshua, but Jonathan won by a nose. I heard him say “Oh, hi, Eric. What’s up?” before I called Joshua into the kitchen to help me clear the table and do dishes.
I’m not sure how long it was before Jonathan entered the kitchen, looking worried.
“Mr. Booth is withdrawing his financial support from the chorus,” he said. “There probably won’t be any Chicago trip.”
Where in the hell did that come from? I wondered.
“How did Eric find that out?” I asked.
“He was over at Mr. Rothenberger’s for dinner and Mr. Booth called while he was there. He said he was going to formally notify the chorus’ board but wanted Mr. Rothenberger to know first. Eric’s really, really unhappy.”
“I can imagine,” I said. “Did Booth give a reason?”
“If he did, Mr. Rothenberger didn’t tell Eric, but Eric said he was really angry, though he tried not to let it show.”
“Well, that sucks,” I said, “but I’m sure the whole chorus won’t fall apart because of it.”
“I sure hope not,” Jonathan replied, but it was clear he wasn’t sure that it wouldn’t.
*
I was at the library shortly after it opened and found what I was looking for with a minimum of effort. I had the information photocopied directly from the books, spent a few minutes at a table highlighting the pertinent passages, put the pages in a large envelope I’d brought from home, and was through. If only all my jobs were that simple.
I was heading for the door when, passing the newspaper section of the main reading room, one of my mind-voices said, The Fourth of July. Because I had long ago given up trying to figure out where or why they came up with these things, it actually took me a second to wonder what it was talking about.
And then I remembered—Eric again. What in the hell was it with Eric? It was really starting to worry me that maybe my fantasies were getting the better of me, and I might actually want to get him in bed.
The Fourth of July was the date Eric’s parents and brother had died. Eric was, I think Jonathan said, twenty-four now. He was…fifteen? No,…fourteen at the time. So, ten years. On a whim, I went to the desk to ask for copies of the local paper for July 5, 1974. I had absolutely no idea what I hoped to find, but once my mind sets itself on something, I have very little control over it.
The story made the front page of both local papers: “Family Dies in Early-Morning Blast” and “Three Die in Natural Gas Explosion.”
Blast? Explosion? My mind immediately leapt to Grant Jefferson. But a natural gas leak is hardly the same as a bomb under the front seat of a car. I really had to stop trying to find connections between things that had none.
I continued reading. Basically, the same information was in both articles: dead were 42-year-old Marjorie Speers, her 45-year-old husband George, and their 17-year-old son, Walter. One son, 14-year-old Eric, survived only because he had left the house moments before the blast to quiet the family dog, chained in the back yard, from barking. A preliminary investigation pointed to a broken natural gas line as the apparent cause. Funeral arrangements were pending.
I went forward a couple of days and found the obituaries and the burial information. That was it. Not a word on what happened to Eric or who might have taken him in. Nothing is less important than yesterday’s news.
I tried once again to imagine how horrific it must have been for Eric, not only to have lost his entire family in an instant, but to have come so close to death himself. If he’d not gone out to quiet the dog, he surely would have died. I would be surprised if his grief and survivor’s guilt hadn’t left far deeper emotional scars than were visible.
So, I felt truly sorry for the guy. And I could understand how, having no one of his own, he might be really envious of Jonathan’s and my relationship. His teasing might be his way of coping with it.
Then I asked myself why I’d really gone to the trouble to look it up. Could it be because both Eric’s family and Grant had died in explosions? And that would suggest—what? That Eric had killed them all? Hardly logical. I knew a guy who had been on the Andrea Doria when she sank, and when I was a kid I accidentally dropped an anchor through the bottom of my dad’s rowboat. Did that mean I sank the Andrea Doria?
*
Well, if nothing else I was able to pretty well polish off the morning. I took the papers directly over to Glen’s office then returned to my own. I probably could have stayed home, since there was nothing I really felt I could do other than go over, one more time, everything I’d gone over the day before. Still, I believed that, since I had a business with an office, I really should be there should anyone try to reach me.
I’d thought several times of getting a small TV but always resisted the impulse, knowing damned well what a distraction it might tend to be when I was actually working on a case.
I stopped at the diner in the lobby for a BLT, cottage cheese, and a large milk, which I took with me. I was a bit surprised to find a message on my machine from Roger Rothenberger, asking me to call, and I was reaching for the phone when it rang. When it rains, it pours.
“Hardesty Investigations.”
“Dick, it’s Jonathan!” I could tell from his voice he was excited about something.
“What’s up, babe?”
“Remember Mrs. Conrad, the lady we met at the Glicks’ dinner party? The one who was talking to me about plants?”
“Certainly.”
“Well, she called me—I had
given her one of Evergreen’s cards—and she called and asked to talk to me and asked me if I could come over to their house tonight after work to talk about helping her plan her landscaping, and I said I’d be glad to because she’d probably buy everything from Evergreen, and I’m sure my boss wouldn’t mind, so could you pick Joshua up after school and maybe start dinner?”
When he gets excited, Jonathan is not much on inserting identifiable punctuation marks in his speech, and I knew he was thrilled at the prospect of putting everything he’d been studying to practical use outside the confines of our apartment or his job.
“Sure,” I said.
“Great! Thanks! I shouldn’t be late, but if I am you can go ahead and eat without me and I’ll have something when I get home.”
I hung up long enough to double-check Roger Rothenberger’s number, then called.
“Rothenberger here.”
“Roger, this is Dick Hardesty returning your call. What can I do for you?”
“Well,” he began, “I hope I’m not crossing any lines of confidentiality here, but I was wondering how your investigation into Grant’s death was progressing. I ask only because we’re beginning rehearsals for our next concert this coming Tuesday, and I would really like to start off with a clean slate as far as this whole Grant thing is concerned. I hope we can lay these continuing rumors to rest.”
“I understand completely.” I did. I’d imagine it was hard enough to concentrate on learning and rehearsing difficult musical numbers without the distractions of thinking there might be a murderer standing next to you. “There is one very promising lead right now who isn’t a member of the chorus, and I should know if it’s a valid one by the weekend.”
He heaved a great sigh. “Thank you! That’s excellent news. Would you let me know as soon as you find out? I’d love to be able to say something to the chorus.”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I know anything,” I said. “And I wanted to congratulate you on behalf of me and my friends who were there on an amazing concert. We were all tremendously impressed by it, and I’d say that even if Jonathan weren’t in the chorus.”
