Murder in Pastel (7 page)

Jack Cobb’s sky-blue antique pickup pulled into the yard and Jack got out wearing tight jeans and no shirt.

“Boy howdy,” murmured Brett. “Enter the handyman. What’s his name? Seth? Jude?”

“Jack Cobb,” I answered. “He’s the mayor’s nephew, and he’s straight—as a yardstick.”

Brett laughed. “Why that metaphor?”

I played dumb. “You mean analogy?”

“Whatever.” He stood up, waved to Jack who was tussling with the ladder in the truck bed. “Yeah, I’d say things are looking up.”

“Brett—” I wasn’t sure what I wanted to tell him. Vaguely, I remembered Jack from high school; very macho and not too bright. I knew he was well able to take care of himself, so maybe it was Brett I was thinking of—or maybe Adam.

As I spoke, Brett paused, his expression tightening. “Back off, Kyle,” he said. “You blew your chance. Get in my way and you won’t know what hit you.”

* * * * *

One evening, not long after, Adam caught me up on my walk.

I always took the same route, the path through the woods past the old cemetery. The same path my father had walked the night he left Steeple Hill forever. What had been in his mind that night? I used to imagine him stopping at the graveyard, perhaps seeing himself buried alive, trapped by responsibilities and obligations he had never asked for. I pictured him turning on heel, heading down the trail away from the colony, walking faster and faster until he was running, running through the woods as though running for his life until he came out on the highway.

In my mind’s eye I could see him hiking along the deserted stretch of road until he flagged down a truck, hitched a ride, watching the lights of Steeple Hill grow smaller and smaller in the truck’s side mirror before he vanished into the night.

A writer’s imagination?

But I wasn’t thinking about Cosmo that evening; my thoughts were preoccupied by an unforeseen problem in my manuscript. When Adam called my name I stopped dead, as startled as though one of the graveyard’s tenants had addressed me.

Adam stepped out of the shadows of the old church, sketch pad under his arm. For a moment I wondered if he was a ghost. The ghost of himself ten years earlier.

“Hi,” I said.

Maybe he heard the wariness in my voice. He wasn’t smiling.

“I wanted to ask a favor, Kyle,” he said. “I wanted to ask if you would try to be a friend to Brett.”

Has Adam ever showed you his tattoo?
Brett had inquired a day or so earlier. Brett had a knack for suggesting things that got under your skin like fire-ant bites. Now I couldn’t help studying Adam and wondering what his tall, thinly muscled body looked like under the paint-daubed Levi’s and old T-shirt that bore the Chinese character
hé
for harmony.

I said neutrally, “What does being a friend to Brett entail?”

It seemed Adam didn’t know exactly because he didn’t answer right away. Then he said, “He doesn’t have a lot of friends. He doesn’t have any here.”

“Go figure.”

I watched Adam’s lean cheek crease in a wry smile. “You’re going by what other people have said, Kyle. You haven’t made any effort to get to know Brett yourself.”

“Give me a break. I’ve seen him in action.”

Adam didn’t question what I meant by that. Maybe by now he had learned not to ask the questions he didn’t want to hear answered.

“He likes you,” Adam said. “He thinks you’re funny.”

At the face I made, Adam added shortly, “He thinks you’re honest, and that counts with Brett. He hasn’t had a very happy life. He didn’t grow up sheltered and loved.”

I opened my mouth for rebuttal, but then I had to shut it again. The truth was, I did have a happy life, as lives go. And my childhood had certainly been happy. Maybe my father hadn’t been an active participant, but I had been loved and sheltered by the other adults around me—and Adam had been one of them. So I guess it was payback time.

Not that I was gracious in defeat.

“What are you hoping for, Adam?” I inquired. “The traditional exchange of Hot Wheels? Or do we slice our fingertips and pledge eternal sisterhood by the sea?”

Adam snorted. “How about not avoiding us like the plague? In the old days you used to be over at the cottage all the time.”

I watched the harmony character rise and fall with his chest.
That was Zen, this is Tao
. “Yeah, well…” I shoved my hands in my pockets and gazed at the graveyard, at the trees standing in black silhouette like barbed wire against the sky. Sunset flushed the headstones and statuary red; the angel poised over Drake Trent’s grave looked apoplectic. “I’ll try, okay?”

It seemed neither one of us had anything more to add, but we continued to stand there, side by side.

I thought,
If the Fates were kind you would have a paunch by now. You would be losing your hair. At the very least you’d have bad breath.

I thought that Brett was right. If Adam had laid hands on me on the beach, I would have given him whatever he asked—and probably more than he wanted.

Adam sighed and said regretfully, “You used to be easy to read.”

I had to laugh.

But I wasn’t laughing as I lay awake in the warm night, listening to the crickets and the distant sound of “Moonglow” drifting on the breeze. I pictured Adam and Brett dancing on the terrace in the light of the stone lanterns, or lying in each other’s arms in Drake Trent’s huge sleigh bed, whispering to each other the words lovers do.

Chapter Five

“W
hat was Cosmo like?” Brett asked idly one afternoon in July.

We were sprawled on the sofa watching
Mystery Science Theatre 3000
on the new television set Brett had finally talked Adam into buying. Brett was drinking Miller Lite and eating microwave popcorn.

I pondered his question and shrugged. “He was a genius.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I don’t know. Geniuses are hard to get along with.”

“He was hard to get along with?”

I scratched my chest, preferring the movie to Brett’s favorite game of Twenty Questions. “Yes and no. He was an artist. You know what it’s like living with someone who has a—a vocation.”

“A
what
?” Brett was laughing at me now. “If you mean he was a bore on the subject, I got you. What was he like as a father?”

This was something I hadn’t thought about in years. It was something I had never thoroughly explored.

“He was okay,” I said slowly. “He made sure I had a home and security. Those things weren’t important to him. It couldn’t have been easy for him to remain here, especially when he and my grandfather didn’t get on.”

“What if he walked through that door today?”

“Why Adam’s door and not his own?”

“You know what I mean.”

Grabbing a handful of popcorn, I munched reflectively. “I guess I’d wonder where the hell he’d been all these years.”

“No,” said Brett. “No, you’d be thrilled to pieces.”

“If you say so.”

“I do. Yeah, it would be a shock, but you’d be happy. Mostly.”

He had my attention.

“Now Joel…think about it. Here’s old Joel making a living on the legend of Cosmo. What happens if the legend pops up with a different version? What happens to the Cosmo franchise?”

I shrugged. “If Cosmo was alive, he’d be painting. No new paintings have ever shown up.
Ipso facto
: he’s dead.”

“Everyone seems to think so. What really happened that last day?”

“I don’t remember,” I said. “I didn’t realize he was leaving, so I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Adam remembers. He says he spent the day with you. Or you spent the day with him. He painted and you napped. You shared a picnic lunch and then you napped and he painted. You sound every bit as stimulating company then as you are now.”

I signed him in his native tongue and turned back to the TV.

One thing Brett could not stand was to be ignored. “So you and Adam provide each other with alibis. Sort of.”

“Alibis for what?” Now I was irritated. “You know, Brett, has it ever dawned on you that maybe one reason somebody might want you dead is your habit of sticking your nose into other people’s business?”

Brett scraped at the label of his beer bottle, scowling. “If Cosmo was still alive, do you think the market value of his paintings would fall?”

“I doubt it.”

“Suppose he has been painting all these years and has a truckload of canvases ready to flood the market?”

“I’m no expert on the art market.”

“Come on, Poindexter, an educated guess?”

“Would it ruin the market value of Rembrandt if a cache of Rembrandts were discovered?”

“Rembrandt’s a special case though. One, he really is dead. Two, lots of the Rembrandts we have are doubtfuls, things finished by students or apprentices.”

I was surprised he knew that.

“I think it’s a moot point,” I said. “Cosmo is dead.”

“There is that,” agreed Brett.

At the time I believed that Brett’s fascination with Cosmo’s disappearance was due to the fact that he was an inveterate mystery buff. I’d never known anyone who read as many mysteries as Brett, especially “gay” mysteries. He’d read everything from
The Butterscotch Prince
through
Fatal Shadows
. He’d read Jack Ricardo, Stephen Lewis and Steve Johnson. He’d read everyone who’d ever written a gay mystery, and naturally, being Brett, he had an opinion on everything he’d read, and everyone who’d written.

“I read your second book,” he informed me another evening over pepperoni, sausage and black-olive pizza. “I didn’t like it.”

“For Christ’s sake, Brett,” Adam snapped with unaccustomed annoyance. This was one of the rare times Adam joined us. When he had asked me to be a friend to Brett, Adam had apparently meant exactly that. I don’t think he was avoiding me exactly—why should he after all? He had a show coming up in the fall, his first in several years. I think he was anxious. He was sharper with Brett, edgier in general.

“No, it’s okay,” I said. “What didn’t you like about it, Brett?”

“It was silly. I hate silly.”

“It’s supposed to be a comic caper.”

“Yeah. I hate that.”

We were drinking beer out of tall pilsner glasses. When Adam was around we bothered with things like glasses and utensils. We bothered with “please” and “thank you.” Adam was a civilized kind of guy. Now he pushed back in his chair and drained the pilsner to its foamy dregs. He was drinking a lot for Adam.

“Who do you like?” I asked Brett.

“Michael Nava. He’s not afraid to be gay.”

“I’m not afraid to be gay.”

“Yes, you are.” Brett’s lip curled. “You’re very careful not to offend Grandpa Aaron or Miss Irene or the Honorable Mayor.”

“That’s not true—well, it’s true that I try not to offend people, but I still say what I need to say.”

“You don’t get it, Kyle,” Adam said. “Subtlety is lost on Brett. You have to shove his nose in it.”

“Have another beer, Adam,” Brett drawled.

“Thanks, I will. Kyle?”

“No. Thanks.”

Adam got up and walked steadily inside, apparently none the worse for a six pack.

“I’ll tell you what I didn’t like in Nava’s books,” I told Brett. “I didn’t like the way he handled the break-up between Josh and Henry.”

“Hey, I cried at the end of
The Hidden Law
.”

“I cried too. So what? If the point is that marriage for us is the same as marriage for straights, then I think their relationship should have illustrated commitment and responsibility and compromise.”

“It’s a story, Brain Guy.”

“It’s a story that confirms stereotypes about gays.”

He yawned hugely. Adam, who had paused in the doorway, came out and joined us once more.

“How would you know?” Brett asked me. “You’re not married. Hell, you haven’t had a real fuck in over a decade.”

I was careful not to look at Adam. “I know what I’d expect if I was. I know what I’d want. And I know what I’d be willing to give to make it work.”

Brett giggled. “Do you sometimes smell orange blossom when those around you do not? Are you always a bridesmaid and never a bride?”

Stupid to let him get to me, but I felt my face growing hot. I reached for my glass.

“You’re never going to meet Mr. Right holed up in this backwater, mooning over What Might Have Been with Adam.”

“You are an asshole, Brett,” Adam said in a low voice.

“But I’m your asshole,” Brett reminded him. He turned his gaze toward me, bright and challenging.

* * * * *

Joel came to see me the day after he returned from Andover.

“I don’t know how much longer I can put up with this.” He looked like hell. There were dark circles under his almond eyes. His skin looked sallow, his face drawn. He’d lost weight over the past weeks, I could see now.

“Put up with what?” I asked, bringing him a glass of lime-flavored mineral water and sitting down across from him.

Joel gulped the mineral water down. He was flushed and sweating as though he had a fever. “With this situation. It’s intolerable!”

“Which situation?” It wasn’t like Joel to be incoherent.

“This situation between Brett and myself.”

I said carefully, “I didn’t know there was one.”

“Of course there is!” Joel drank more water and pressed the cool glass to his forehead. “He was waiting for me last night when I got home from the airport. He—he deliberately let me think he would stay with me, that he wanted to spend the night. Then when I—when I had revealed myself to him, he left. He simply walked out. He was testing me. Making sure I still wanted him.”

There were tears in Joel’s eyes, I realized with a jolt. It was like watching a parent cry. I felt horrified and helpless.

I felt anger at Brett for doing this to Joel—and anger at Adam for letting Brett do it.

I couldn’t think of anything I could say that would comfort Joel. The clock on the mantle chimed softly. It was late.
It’s later than you think
. Finally I queried, “You know what he’s like. How can you still care for him?”