by John Inman
“You’d better,” Jamie threatened.
“Our mothers will be thrilled. They’ll pick out our curtains.”
“They probably think we’re lovers already.”
Derek felt his smile welling up. “We sort of already are.”
In tandem they each inhaled a deep, shuddering breath. Derek’s tongue came out to lick the residual taste of Jamie’s kiss from his lips. It was his favorite flavor—after butterscotch. He circled Jamie’s back with his arms and pulled him close. With his mouth on Jamie’s neck, he mumbled something that sounded like an aardvark slurping up ants.
“I missed that,” Jamie said.
Before Derek could respond, a loud crash shook the house. The stunned silence that followed lasted no more than a second. Suddenly there were running footsteps everywhere. They pounded on the floor above. Doors slammed. Floorboards creaked and popped. A fine rain of gray dust sifted down on their heads through the cobwebs on the basement ceiling.
A woman’s voice cried, “No!”
“Oh shit!” Derek spat. Stripping Jamie from his arms, Derek hurled them both toward the basement stairs. Before they reached the first step, a wailing scream erupted. It pierced the basement walls, slicing the air like a knife. Goose bumps rose on the back of Derek’s neck.
“This can’t be good,” he said.
“Dammit!” Jamie groused. “I was just getting a boner too.”
At that precise moment, a crack of thunder split the sky outside, and both men gasped. Derek pulled himself together. With his heart in his mouth, he flew up the rickety basement steps, dragging Jamie behind him. They threw themselves through the little Harry Potter door under the foyer stairs. And almost tripped over the body on the floor.
Chapter Seven
WITH ARMS and legs flung wide and the swell of his massive torso rising off the foyer floor like a foothill, Mr. Jupp looked far larger than he did ordinarily. Far larger, and far quieter.
For he was clearly dead.
He lay chest down, his head turned to the side at an impossible angle. The only sign of movement on the body was a rivulet of blood, still traveling, still seeping from Mr. Jupp’s ear and oozing down the side of his cheek. Already a small puddle of shimmering crimson had gathered on the hardwood floor beside his open, sightless eye. Even that pool was still traveling, still spreading, as tiny streams branched off from it to follow the cracks between the floorboards, elongating slowly in perfectly straight lines like the careful strokes of a pen filled with deep red ink.
Jamie, with Derek clutching his sleeve, stared down at the body in shock.
There was a rawness to Mr. Jupp’s death that Jamie had not encountered before. It was, after all, the first time he had seen death as fresh as this and still working its magic. His prior experience with the end of existence consisted of vaguely familiar people who never looked quite the way they did in life. Most often they were spiffily dressed, packed into expensive coffins, and engulfed in silk. Sometimes they even wore eyeglasses, which Jamie never understood.
He knew violent death existed, of course. Hell, look at the two bodies in the basement. Yet even they had been long-enough dead by the time Jamie came on the scene to cause a bit of a disconnect between the act of violence that smote them lifeless and the way they presented themselves now. Cold to the touch, stiff, no trace of humanity remaining. They didn’t even smell like people anymore. They smelled like… waste.
Poor Mr. Jupp was different. He was still warm. He still reeked of Old Spice. And he was still spilling blood.
Derek dropped to his knees at Jamie’s feet and laid his cheek to Mr. Jupp’s back, listening for a heartbeat. Everyone else stared on. Mrs. Jupp had pressed a handkerchief to her mouth, her eyes wild and frightened. She was gasping for air as if her breath had been literally snatched from her body. Her tear-filled gaze never once left her husband’s face.
At long last, Derek sat back on his haunches. He gazed up at Jamie and shook his head.
“There’s no heartbeat,” he said softly, keeping his eyes trained on Jamie’s face. Avoiding Mrs. Jupp’s gaze at all cost, clearly not wanting to be the one to legitimize her grief, he added, “Look at the way his head is positioned. I think maybe his neck is broken.”
Oliver Banyon stood in the dining room doorway. He still cradled a cup of coffee in his hand. Tommy Stevens peered around him from behind, one hand resting on Banyon’s shoulder.
Cleeta-Gayle stood with her back to the front door. She was wearing a raincoat, as if she had just ventured outside to watch the storm, which was still raging over their heads. At that moment, a searing flash of lightning strobed the foyer walls and lit the body on the floor, making poor Mr. Jupp almost appear to move. It startled everyone so that Mrs. Jupp cried out and Cleeta-Gayle began to cry. She covered her face with her hands as if she couldn’t bear to look anymore. At the storm, at the body, at her fellow houseguests, at any of it.
“The killing has started, hasn’t it?” she mumbled into her hands.
Clearly referring to the bodies in the basement, Derek answered, “The killing started before we ever got here.”
“It might have been an accident,” Jamie said, staring blandly at Mr. Jupp lying silent at his feet. “He could have stumbled coming down the stairs.”
Derek stood and took his hand. Together, they carefully stepped over the body and turned to gaze up the staircase.
Derek sighed, still averting his eyes from Mrs. Jupp, who was watching him like a hawk. Listening closely to every word he uttered. “Look where the body is positioned, Jamie. It’s not at the foot of the stairs. It’s off to the side of the staircase.” Derek sucked in a deep breath, as if what he was about to say made him uneasy, but there was really no getting around it. “Mr. Jupp didn’t trip coming down the stairs. He tumbled over the railing at the top of the landing. He came crashing down at the side of the staircase, not at the foot of it.”
“So it couldn’t have been an accident,” Jamie said quietly.
Derek answered reluctantly, but his words captured the attention of everyone present. “No,” he said. “It couldn’t have been an accident.”
Jamie, and everyone else in the foyer except the unfortunate Mr. Jupp, stared upward. No doubt they were all imagining the fall, picturing what it must have been like. The last rush of wind on a gasping face. The horrifying sight of the floor hurling upward. Startled eyes. A voiceless scream. And the moment of impact, when all sensation ended. Leaving nothing behind but… what they were seeing now.
It was Cleeta-Gayle who asked the question. Her drawl slowed the words to a crawl, and her face still sparkled with tears. “But how could he do that?” she asked. “Unless….”
Tommy Stevens filled in the blanks. “Unless he was pushed.” Tommy seemed to have finally realized the peril they were all in, for even as he spoke, his eyes never left Mr. Jupp’s body. His cockiness had fallen by the wayside. Maybe it fell to its death at the same time Mr. Jupp did. Suddenly Tommy Stevens looked as young as his years. Banyon’s eyes darted from face to face. “Where was everyone when it happened? I was in the dining room.” He glanced down at the coffee cup in his hand, then back to all the faces watching him. “There was no one with me, so I’m afraid my alibi isn’t worth much. Where was everyone else?”
“Jamie and I were in the basement covering the bodies of the old couple. You know that’s where we were. You saw us coming through the door under the stairs. After Mrs. Jupp screamed.”
“I was exploring the house,” Tommy said. “I came back through the dining room when I heard the commotion in the hall. Oliver was at the door looking out.”
Cleeta-Gayle wiped the tears from her face with the sleeve of her coat. She still stood before the front door, her shoulders peppered with raindrops, her god-awful chemically fried hair a damp and lifeless mess.
“I was outside on the porch watching the storm,” she managed to utter, before another sob rattled through her. She once again buried her face in her hands.
All eyes turned to Mrs. Jupp, who stood motionless, gazing down on the body of her husband. She appeared to have no desire to reach out and comfort him, or to say goodbye, perhaps, with a touch, a caress, or even a gentle word. The tears still fell from her eyes, but there was an emptiness in them too. A vacancy of emotion that gave Jamie the creeps. Instead of mourning, he thought, she looked… analytical. As if she were trying to figure out the cold logistics of how her husband managed to do a swan dive off the second floor landing.
She seemed to suddenly realize everyone was waiting for her to speak. She did so, but not graciously. “I was in the kitchen, if you must know. Cleaning up after the lot of you, washing the breakfast dishes.” Her eyes narrowed. A flush of anger tinged her cheeks. “Do you really think I’m strong enough to push my husband over that railing on the stairs?”
It was Jamie, then, who reached out and patted her arm. “Of course not,” he said kindly. “I’m sorry. I think we’re all in shock.”
He turned back to the group and, finding no comfort there, focused his attention on the body. “Well, we can’t leave him here.”
“No,” Derek agreed. “We can’t.”
“Jesus,” Tommy groaned. “The guy isn’t even cold yet. Plus he must weigh 300 pounds. What are we supposed to do with him?”
Jamie shot him a nasty glance. “He’s not that heavy. We can move him if we work together. But move him where?”
“Not the basement, please,” Mrs. Jupp pleaded. At long last she cast sympathetic eyes on her husband’s lifeless body. “I couldn’t bear to think of him down there with… those others.”
This time Derek tried to comfort the woman. “We’ll find a different place,” he said. “I promise.” He turned to Jamie and pointed down the hall, deeper into the house past the door under the stairs. “There’s what looks like a sewing room down that way. There’s a daybed in there too. We can put him on that.”
“What about clues?” Banyon asked. “What about disturbing the evidence for the police later?”
“There’s nothing to be done about that,” Jamie said. “Don’t forget the road is out and our cars have been trashed. We could be here for days. We can’t be continually tripping over the guy.” He suddenly realized what he’d said and shot an apologetic moue in Mrs. Jupp’s direction. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound so cold.”
Mrs. Jupp resurrected the steely countenance she had used often enough before where Jamie was concerned. Without saying a word, she turned away. From her husband, from the group, from everyone. Giving her husband’s body a wide berth, she stepped around it and slowly began to climb the stairs, step by agonizing step, as if the weight of the world now rested squarely on her shoulders.
“I’ll be in my room,” she said without looking back. “Please leave me in peace. I’ll spend time with my husband’s… body… after you place him in the sewing room.”
Tommy Stevens whispered just loud enough for everyone, including Mrs. Jupp, to hear. “Does that mean she’s not cooking for us anymore?”
Cleeta-Gayle threw a disgusted look his way. Also skirting the body carefully, she hurried to the foot of the stairs and then pulled herself up the steps to join Mrs. Jupp. She tried to give the older woman a hand, but Mrs. Jupp shook her off. Flushing, she left the old woman to her own devices and hurried on up the stairs without looking back, presumably heading for her own room.
Neither woman took any more notice of the men below. Seconds later, Jamie heard two separate doors open and close upstairs. But for the roar of the storm and the intermittent crash of thunder, a renewed silence settled over the house.
Jamie and Derek turned to the corpse on the floor. As if seeing no gracious way out of what was expected of them, Banyon and young Tommy stepped forward like the two most reluctant volunteers in the world.
Footsteps above drew Jamie’s attention to the top of the stairs once more. He found Cleeta-Gayle standing there, looking down. Her eyes were as big as fried eggs, and she waved a newspaper clipping in her hand.
“I suppose,” she said, “you should all come look at this. I found it on my bed.”
“What is it?” Jamie called up. “We’re a little busy here.”
Cleeta-Gayle’s brows furrowed. Then she seemed to have second thoughts. The concern on her face morphed into a nasty little smirk that tweaked at her cheeks. She dangled the newspaper clipping over the side of the banister between thumb and forefinger—at the exact spot where Mr. Jupp must have sailed off into oblivion not ten minutes earlier.
“In that case I’ll save you a trip up the stairs,” she said.
Releasing the clipping, Cleeta-Gayle and everyone else in the foyer watched the slip of newsprint waft soundlessly downward, sliding on air currents from one side to the other, slipping through the air until it came to rest, as light as a feather, on Mr. Jupp’s lifeless shoulder.
It was Derek who reached down and delicately plucked it off.
“HOLY SHIT!” Tommy Stevens cried, scaring the bejesus out of Jamie, who almost leaped out of his shoes.
He and Tommy and Oliver Banyon were staring over Derek’s shoulder as the four of them read the newspaper clipping in Derek’s hand. Once it was read, they looked down en masse at the body on the floor.
“Well, golly!” Jamie declared. “I didn’t see that coming.”
Tommy snorted back a laugh. “If he wasn’t already dead, I’d swear the butler did it. Killed the old couple downstairs, I mean.” He turned to Banyon, a gleam of mockery in his eyes. “What do you make of this, Mr. PhD Banyon? Presumably you’re the brains of the outfit. Who’s the killer now?” Banyon opened his mouth, then closed it without making a sound, clearly at a loss for words.
Still looking pleased with himself, Tommy turned to Jamie and Derek. “Ollie was telling me earlier he thought Mr. Jupp was the murderer. Had it all worked out, you see. Fancies himself a proper sleuth, I guess.”
“Well, Jupp is clearly not the killer,” Derek said, still staring down at the clipping in his hand.
“No,” Tommy grinned. “Unless he murdered himself, I’d say he’s pretty much off the hook.”
“But what does it mean?” Cleeta-Gayle called down from the landing above.
No one answered. Once again, all four sets of eyes were drawn to the clipping in Derek’s hands.
It was a news item dated four years earlier. Published in the San Diego Union-Tribune on April 12 of that year. It bore a photograph of Mr. Alphonse Jupp, the very same man who now lay dead as a mackerel on the floor at their feet. He was standing downcast at a long table in a San Diego courtroom, surrounded by a small ragtag team of attorneys who were clearly public defenders since there wasn’t a suit among them that cost more than two hundred dollars. In truth, the defense team looked just as depressed as their client.
Behind them, seated in the first row of spectators, sat a prim, small woman clutching a wrinkled handkerchief in her lap. Her face was stoic, her head held high. It was Mrs. Jupp. The only word to describe the look on her face was… unrepentant. Easy to stay on your high horse, Jamie thought, when you’re not the one facing the jury.
The snapshot captured the exact moment when a female judge, unnamed in the article, threw the proverbial book at Mr. Jupp. His crime—the practicing of gay conversion therapy on a sixteen-year-old boy who, in the midst of a savage weeks-long treatment at the hands of Mr. Jupp, committed suicide by swallowing Drano. The article alluded to one other suicide as well, but that victim was not named, nor were charges filed on his behalf.
Proven culpable for the one boy’s actions in ending his own life, Mr. Jupp had been charged with involuntary manslaughter. He received a sentence of two years behind bars.
His wife was not charged.
“What the hell!” Derek stammered, reading the clipping again.
It was Jamie who took it upon himself to state the obvious. In fact, he was rather amazed that no one thought of it but him. “I hope you all realize that today is the twelfth
of April. It’s the fourth anniversary of his conviction. Looks like somebody wanted to commemorate the occasion by teaching the bastard how to fly.”
Three gawking faces traveled from Jamie to the landing above, then back to the body on the floor.
The body Jamie had suddenly lost all sympathy for.
MRS. JUPP snatched the clipping from Derek’s hand. She glanced at it only briefly before crumbling it in her fist and demanding, “Where did you get this?”
Cleeta-Gayle was the only one who hadn’t entered Mrs. Jupp’s room with the others. She answered Mrs. Jupp from out in the hall, raising her voice enough to be heard. “Someone left it on my bed.”
Mrs. Jupp stared at her, hatred seething in her eyes.
Derek took that moment to glance around. The Jupps did not have a single bedroom like he and Jamie had, and like the others probably had as well. They had a suite containing a sitting room, a bedroom, and a large private bath. The furniture was old, as it was throughout the house, but it was clean and bright… or would have been had there been sunlight pounding the windows instead of rain. A cheery fire burned on the grate in the sitting room. The woodsmoke smelled faintly of pine on the air.
Clearly, since they had arrived at the house before the other guests, the Jupps had commandeered the best accommodations for themselves.
Derek turned his attention back to the woman. Mrs. Jupp strode across the room and tossed the balled-up newspaper clipping into the fire. Turning back, she faced them all with that same expression of defiance she had shown in the photograph. Clasping her hands in front of her, she stared from face to face, waiting for whatever would happen next.
“I think you’d better tell us about that news article,” Derek said. “It might be a clue as to why your husband was murdered. A clue you purposely destroyed, I might also mention.”
“That’s ridiculous!” she spat. “My husband served his sentence honorably. He paid his debt, if there was actually a debt to be paid. It wasn’t his fault those two boys killed themselves. My husband was only trying to give them a happy life.”
