by Josh Lanyon
“You know Guy is always welcome here,” Lisa said, walking me to the front door.
“I know.”
She opened the door to the scent of smog and jasmine. Crickets chirped loudly.
“Good night,” I said.
But she said, as though she had been thinking it over all evening, “It’s a pity you can’t make up your mind to settle down with Guy. He’s very good for you. But you’re still not quite over Jake, are you?”
I stiffened. “Jake? Where the hell did you get that idea?”
“Watching you,” my mother said with unexpected dryness, and kissed my cheek.
Chapter Ten
Coward that I am, I was half hoping that Guy would have gone to bed by the time I reached home, but he was still up, drinking cognac and waiting for me when I unlocked the door to my living quarters.
“So Riordan is back in your life,” he said by way of greeting.
I dropped my keys and wallet on the hall table. “Jesus, Guy. He’s not ‘back in my life,’ whatever that’s supposed to mean. He’s overseeing this investigation. Which you already knew.”
“I sure as hell did. I knew this was going to happen.”
“I have no idea what you’re on about.”
He said wearily, “Oh, for God’s sake, Adrien. Do you think I don’t know about you and Riordan? You think I can’t put two and two together? You obviously had some kind of relationship. It was very obvious from the way you used to clam up every time his name was mentioned -- and you still do it, for your information. Same with him. Every time your name came up, he froze.”
I felt a great resentment that this long-held secret was being pried out of me; but then I realized how unreasonable I was being. Regardless of what Lisa thought, of course I wanted a real relationship with Guy. Of course I did. He was smart and funny and caring and sexy as hell. And I wanted the trust and intimacy of a committed relationship. I wanted the real thing.
And besides all that, this long-held secret really wasn’t much of a secret anymore.
“Yes, I had a thing with him,” I said. “It was sex. That’s all it was. And it was over a long time ago.”
“It was a hell of a lot more than sex,” Guy said. “For Christ’s sake. You couldn’t talk about it for two years. Not to mention the fact he used to park across the street and watch this place.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your Lieutenant Riordan used to park across the street from the bookstore and watch for you.”
I laughed. “There’s no way.” I mean, it was ridiculous, but ridiculing the idea didn’t do a lot to calm Guy down.
“You think I couldn’t recognize that asshole behind a pair of mirror sunglasses? He used to wait out there for you. And now he’s got an excuse to come back into our lives.”
I went to the sideboard and poured myself a cognac. One drink wouldn’t kill me, and I needed a drink or I was going to say a lot of stupid shit I would regret in the morning. Guy watched me slop cognac in the balloon glass, watched me swallow a mouthful.
I said, striving to modulate my tone, “Guy, where is this coming from? Jake didn’t arrange for Porter Jones to be murdered, and he didn’t arrange for me to get dragged into the investigation. It just happened.”
“Nothing just happens,” Guy said. “There are no accidents. There are no coincidences. Everything happens for a reason, for a purpose.”
The Metaphysical Mystical Tour was waiting to take me away!
I swallowed the rest of my cognac and said, “Believe me, this just happened. There is no higher -- or lower -- power at work here.”
“You’re at work here,” Guy said. “Riordan is at work here. Hell, Paul Kane is at work here. You all have and are choosing to exercise your freedom of will, of choice. You’re choosing to get involved in another murder case. And Riordan is choosing to let you. Why do you think that is?”
“I think he wants to keep Paul Kane happy. And I think he wants, needs, for this to be wrapped up quietly and quickly.”
“The only person you’re fooling is yourself,” Guy said with great -- and infuriating -- finality.
This was my fault. I was making Guy insecure. I was making him crazy. My inability to commit was going to bring about the very things I feared. I put my glass aside. “Guy, I’m tired. And this is crazy. Can we just…go to bed, please?”
He stared. “You mean, can we go to sleep, right?”
The surge of anger I felt took me by surprise. With something less than my usual finesse, I returned, “You want to fuck? Fine. Let’s go fuck.”
* * * * *
Easier said than done. And after about a half hour of what felt like manual labor with tongues, Guy dropped back in the sheets and stared up at the ceiling.
“Have you mentioned this to the doctor?” he asked shortly.
I was equally short. “No.”
“Maybe you should.”
After a moment, I got up and went into the living room. I poured another cognac and sat down on the sofa to watch the moonlight travel slowly across the room, limning each item on the bookshelf in pallid light.
* * * * *
Al January lived high on a hillside on the northwest side of Elysian Heights. The house was one of those modern designs: clean, geometric lines and angles.
January met me at the door wearing peacock blue trousers and a gold and blue Hawaiian shirt, two of those wrinkly, Chinese shar-pei dogs at his heels. He led the way into the front room, chatting about the problems he was having keeping the local raccoons out of the house.
“Don’t the dogs scare them off?” I asked.
“You’d think so,” January replied. “They’re good watchdogs, too.”
I didn’t catch the rest of what he said, distracted by the gorgeous view. Who needed artwork with windows that offered the incredible vista of the canyon, the mountains, and the city lights at night? Even so, January did have an impressive collection of South American art -- including two huge mural segments -- adorning the spacious, stark white room with its towering vaulted ceiling.
“We’ll have lunch in a bit. What will you have to drink?” he asked.
I requested fruit juice and got a bottle of noni juice. January poured himself Bushmills.
“So Paul tells me you don’t just write murder mysteries, you also solve them?”
We had settled on the long deck that looked out over about seven thousand square feet of wooded hillside. The air was sweet with the scent of sunwarmed earth and wild mustard. Bees hummed drowsily.
“Well…one way or the other I’ve probably been involved in more than my fair share of homicide investigations,” I admitted.
What I was thinking, though, was that I hadn’t solved those other crimes on my own. I had certainly played a part in helping solve them -- maybe I had even been instrumental -- but Jake had played every bit as vital a role in closing those cases. It had been teamwork all the way -- even if Jake hadn’t wanted me on his team.
If Jake didn’t want Porter Jones’s murder solved, it wouldn’t be solved.
I’m not sure where the thought came from, but once it occurred to me, it was hard to shake.
“Porter wasn’t the kind of person that gets murdered,” January said. I opened my mouth, and he waved me off. “Oh, I know what you’re going to say -- that there is no particular type of person who gets murdered, but Porter was…” He shook his head.
“I got the impression at the funeral that he was well liked,” I agreed. “But murder isn’t always about the victim. Sometimes it’s more about the perpetrator.”
“I see what you mean,” he said. He sipped his whiskey. “Porter was a big old teddy bear, but…if you crossed him…”
“Had anyone crossed him lately?”
January’s eyes were that very pale blue that looks gray in a certain light. He gazed out over the treetops. “I guess he had his share of conflicts,” he commented.
I realized that January, while not hostile, was not go
ing to be hugely helpful at the expense of his old friend’s good name. And I liked that about him. In fact, I liked January, period -- and not just because he was adapting my book for a screenplay and had said nice things about it. Though that didn’t hurt.
I said, “Well, I know he was having some marital problems.”
“Who isn’t?”
The bitterness of that caught my attention. I was pretty sure January was gay. There was no sign of a Mrs. January -- actually, there was no sign of any other person beyond a maid -- in January’s life.
He added, “Ally doesn’t have the brains to kill a fly.”
“Paul Kane seems to think otherwise. He’s pretty sure Ally wanted Porter out of the way.”
“She might have wanted him out of the way, but I don’t buy for one moment the idea that Ally killed Porter.”
We chatted for a bit -- mostly about Ally. While January didn’t seem to bear the hostility toward her that Kane did, I got the impression he thought Ally had the brains and morals of a ground squirrel. He mentioned that Porter met her on the set of some film Ally had a part in; he didn’t go so far as to say she was an actress, and whatever Ally’s career ambitions had been, she seemed content to abandon them in favor of becoming a full-time Hollywood wife. But maybe Hollywood widow was an easier gig. Especially with a studly personal trainer waiting in the wings.
The maid brought out a platter of tortilla wraps: grilled chicken and cheese and avocado wrapped in flour tortillas slathered with herb mayonnaise. January and I helped ourselves.
Swallowing a bite, I said, “Had any of Porter’s recent business deals gone wrong?”
He washed down a mouthful of wrap with whiskey. “As a matter of fact, Porter had withdrawn financing for a project Valarie Rose and I were involved in -- and neither of us was too happy about it.”
“Why did he withdraw financing?”
He smiled. “You’re being very diplomatic. Why don’t you just come out and ask me if I killed Porter?”
“I’m assuming your answer would be no.”
“It would, but in this case it happens to be true.”
“For the record, I don’t think you killed Jones,” I said, “but his wife suggested that there was bad blood between you.”
“Oh, Ally.” He waved another dismissing hand. “What can I say? From the start Ally was jealous of the friendship between Paul, Porter, and me.” He shook his head very definitely. “No. Porter and I bickered over scripts and finances and the usual things, but we’d been friends a long time. A very long time.”
“Did you argue at Paul Kane’s party?”
He wrinkled his forehead like he was trying to remember. “I don’t think so. Maybe there was some good-natured ribbing.”
“No shouting, no gunplay?” I was trying to keep it light. “No songs and switchblades at thirty paces?”
“No shouting,” January said. “Maybe we got a little…pointed with each other, but anyone who knew us knew it wasn’t anything.”
“Was Porter always the money man on Paul’s projects?”
“God, no. Porter financed Paul’s indie projects, but most of Paul’s work is through the studios. The Corsair -- his pirate movie -- that was through Paramount. Everyone wanted to do pirate movies after the success of that Johnny Depp thing. Although I think the last one probably killed swashbucklers for the next decade or so.”
I brooded for a moment on the likelihood of that. Even I had been relieved to see the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise shipwreck with At Wits’ End or whatever it had been called.
January said, “Now on these indie projects -- take your own Murder Will Out -- Paul picks the projects, Porter financed, and I write the screenplays. We’ve been very successful. I mean, given that most indie projects are lucky to break even.”
“Where did you first meet Paul Kane?” I asked. Porter and Al had been of the same age, but Paul Kane was quite a bit younger. I wondered about that.
“Hold that thought,” he said, rising. He pointed to my glass. “Did you want another?”
“Sure.”
He disappeared inside the house, and I wondered if he had deliberately called for a time-out. He didn’t seem unduly troubled by any of my questions. In fact, Al was about the most relaxed I’d ever seen someone in a murder investigation -- taking into account that I wasn’t the police and we both knew it.
He came back with a second bottle of noni juice for me and another whiskey for himself. He stretched his long legs out and tilted his face to the warm afternoon sun.
“I met Paul through Langley Hawthorne. You probably never heard of Langley.”
“Paul mentioned him during his eulogy.”
“That’s right,” he said vaguely. “Langley was the brains behind Associated Talent, which is now Paul’s production company. It started out as me, Langley, and Porter. Langley came from old money. A son of the South.” He winked at me. “He was raised on Stephen Foster and mint juleps.”
“Doesn’t sound like much of a background for going into the moving pictures business?”
“Everyone loves the flickers,” January said. “Anyway, Paul was a friend of Langley’s. That’s how we originally met.”
“What happened to Langley?”
“He drowned off Catalina.” A funny expression crossed his face.
He picked up his glass, and I said, “What? You just thought of something.”
“It’s a crazy idea, really, but you were wondering if anyone had a motive to get rid of Porter. Langley’s daughter Nina sort of had a motive. This is years ago, mind, but Nina and Porter had an affair. It didn’t end well. Porter was married at the time -- not to Ally. He was married to an actress by the name of Marla Vicenza.”
“She was at the funeral yesterday,” I said. “In fact, I heard her mention something about Porter not being in good health.”
“I don’t know about that. His doctors were after him for years to cut back on his drinking and to give up cigars. Anyway, Langley insisted that the affair end.”
“How young was Nina?”
“Very young. Just eighteen, I think.”
“I can see why Langley had a problem.”
He stroked his mustache, smiling. “You don’t have children, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“Nina was furious with Langley -- and Porter. She felt doubly betrayed.”
“This was back when? The eighties? Could she still be holding a grudge after all this time?”
“Nina is a world-class grudge holder,” Al said, “but in fairness to her, I don’t think she killed Porter. She’s not the…lie in wait type. If she killed anyone, it would probably be three and a half minutes after they pissed her off. Especially back then.”
“Why especially back then?”
“Nina was not always…in control in those days. Well, it was the eighties. I don’t know anyone who was in control.”
“Was she at the party last weekend?”
“No.” January got that evasive look again. “Not exactly. Her company catered the party.”
Chapter Eleven
Friday afternoon traffic was a bitch -- as usual -- and I got back to Pasadena in a less than jolly mood. Shelling out over fifty bucks on gasoline and the same again on a few staples like tilapia, Tab, and the magical elixir known as orange-pineapple juice did little to improve my mood.
When I reached Cloak and Dagger I saw that -- predictably -- the construction crew had knocked off work early again, and that the store was empty of customers barring one: a slim young man who looked like a sexy Harry Potter. He wore artfully ripped jeans and a fitted bronze mesh T-shirt, and he was contemplating Natalie over the top of his Windsor-style specs.
“Oh, here’s Adrien,” she said as I approached the counter. “He can probably tell you when the best time to drop by is.” To me, she said, “Hey, Adrien, this is…uh…one of Guy’s former students.”
I nodded hi, setting the bag of groceries down, and then I took another look.
There was something very familiar about Guy’s former student. Something familiar about the cool, slightly challenging way he stared back at me. But it took a minute to place the pale pointed face and cropped dark hair.
Peter Verlane.
Last time I’d seen him, he had been doing his level best to help kill me. Well, no. To be fair, the very last time I’d seen him, he’d been fleeing into the night trying to avoid arrest for kidnapping, extortion, and murder. And suddenly I had a clear memory of the envelope that had fallen from Guy’s pocket the night I’d tried to catch him before he left for Margo’s book signing -- the letter that had borne the return address of the men’s prison in Tehachapi.
“Peter Verlane,” I said. “Who left your cage open?”
He reddened, glanced at Natalie, and said stiffly, “I did my time. I’ve got as much right to be here as anyone.”
“Not exactly,” I said. “She works here, and I own the place. Remind me why you’re here again?”
Natalie looked from me to Verlane and said uncertainly, “He was asking for Guy.”
“Why?” I asked him.
“Not that it concerns you,” he said, “but he told me to contact him when I got out. We’re friends.”
“There’s no accounting for taste,” I admitted. “But why are you here?”
He said evenly, “I know he’s seeing you now.”
“I’m relieved he thought to mention it,” I said. “Didn’t he also mention that he still keeps an office at UCLA? Or that he still has his townhouse?”
The glasses gave Verlane an unfairly vulnerable look; scorpions have offspring too, after all.
He said, “I wanted to see you.”
“Uh-huh. Well, you came, you saw, you confounded. Now how about you skedaddle? I’ll let Guy know you called.”
“Guy wants to see me,” he said with complete and quiet conviction.
