The Boy With The Painful Tattoo: Holmes & Moriarity 3 (15 page)

He came to meet me—the crowd parted before royalty—and I said, “Hey, sorry I’m la—”

His hand landed on my shoulder, he pulled me in and his mouth covered mine. He smelled like leather, tamarind leaves and auramber. He tasted like breath mints and himself. It was not one of those civil
Darling, you made it!
kisses appropriate for meeting at public events. This was more of a
Darling, they told me you were dead!
smooch. Okay, not quite that passionate, but definitely more fervent than I was used to at a book signing. Or anywhere else outside of my bedroom. I think we may have received a round of applause.

By the time I stopped seeing stars, J.X. had shuffled us over to a little alcove by a fake fireplace. A pair of Kabuki masks smiled benignly down on us.

Actually, being Kabuki masks, the smiles were more cryptic than benign.

“Hello to you too,” I said. To J.X.

“I was afraid you weren’t going to make it,” J.X. admitted.

That startled me. “I said I’d be here.”

He smiled. It was sort of rueful and sort of affectionate. I felt an uncomfortable jab, remembering other times I’d promised to be there, but had cancelled or “forgotten” or developed a migraine midway through.

I stumbled through my explanation of the reason for driving to my realtor’s first. J.X. was watching me with an oddly intent expression. I offered a lopsided smile and said, “I’ve accepted the offer on the house.”

“You
did
?”

There it was again. There was no mistaking that look for anything but happiness. Not just happiness. Relief. I felt another twinge. Had J.X. really been willing to embark on this relationship trusting me as little as he did?

I nodded. “In for a penny. In for a pound.”

“I can’t wait to pound you,” he said softly, meaningfully.

I swallowed the wrong way. Since I wasn’t chewing or drinking, the gasping and spluttering might have seemed excessive. J.X. took it in stride. When I had recovered, he said, “While I’m thinking of it, where’s your phone?”

I handed it over. He slid his thumb across the screen, clicked a couple of times, shook his head, clicked again, handed it back. “It’s off vibrate, so no more excuses for not taking my calls.”

“I do take your calls!”

He just shook his head, grinning at me.

A slight man with black hair and eyes the cool blue of a Siamese cat’s joined us. He offered a quick, attractive smile and said apologetically, “Sorry to interrupt. J.X., would you mind if we got started?”

“Of course!” J.X. said, “Kit, you remember—”

“Adrien English,” I said.

Everyone in publishing—and devoted fans of
Entertainment Tonight
—knew the story of how English actor Paul Kane had purchased the film rights to an obscure mystery by an indie bookseller because Kane was in love with Adrien English’s homicide detective ex-boyfriend. It had all ended in true Hollywood fashion. Minus the big budget sequels and merchandising deals.

At the same moment I spoke, Adrien smiled more warmly, offered a hand, and said, “Christopher Holmes. This is a nice surprise.”

I said, “Congratulations. You’ve got a full house tonight.”

We shook hands. Adrien said, “I wish I’d had a heads-up. I’d have pulled some stock for you to sign.”

“Strictly an interested observer this trip,” I said.

He looked puzzled—what sane author ever turned down the opportunity to sign stock?—but offered another of those practiced smiles before spiriting away J.X. I remembered that ruthless charm of old.

A very pretty blonde, who looked like she’d stepped out of an Abercrombie & Fitch advertisement—miracle of miracles, Adrien actually had
two
assistants on hand that evening—offered me a tray of wine in plastic glasses. I passed, and went to find a seat in the nearly filled back row.

The store lights were lowered and J.X. began to read from his new book.

It was a very long time since I’d attended a signing that wasn’t my own. It gave me an odd, uneasy feeling. It wasn’t that I wished I was in J.X.’s place. No, I felt he was where he belonged and I was where I was comfortable. I was delighted that his signing was so clearly a big success. He read well—it helped that the book was so good—and during the question and answer session, he was open and affable. You’d never look at him in that milieu and think
ex-cop
. He had an effortless charisma. Star quality. I did not—never had—that, but I wasn’t jealous. J.X. had worked hard to get to this point. And I felt an almost possessive pride in him that night.

But. But I also knew that a chapter had closed for me. I hadn’t written in months. I had no real plans to write anything. Worse, I felt no interest in writing anything.

And if I wasn’t a writer, what was I? I had spent my entire adult life earning a living through my words. If I no longer had the words, what did I have? Writing wasn’t just a job description. It was a way of looking at the world, of relating to the world. For as long as I could remember, everything I experienced had been filtered through the perspective of a writer making mental notes.

Halfway through the Q&A session, a tall blond man pushed through the doors of the shop. He scanned the room, spotted Adrien and nodded gravely. Adrien smiled. That unguarded, oddly sweet grin was the reason Adrien English had once been the most hit upon bookseller in gay publishing. Also the most oblivious.

Meeting my gaze, Adrien’s smile grew self-conscious.

The blond man moved quietly through the aisles of towering shelves to the other side of the bookstore. He unhooked the velvet rope and went straight upstairs, and I surmised that this was the infamous ex-LAPD officer.

It was nearly ten by the time J.X. finished signing the final book. The two shop assistants had sneaked upstairs about thirty minutes earlier. Adrien ushered the last pair of customers out the front, and closed the ornate metal gates across the entrance. He locked the glass doors and sighed. A profitable but long night.

He and J.X. briefly discussed where we could go for dinner at that time of evening, and then he said, “I’m just going to check whether Jake wants to join us.” He disappeared in the darkened half of the store.

“Come here and say hello properly,” J.X. murmured, tugging me over.

We said hello properly.

“You look tired,” J.X. said at last. “You’ve got shadows under your eyes.”

“Long day.” His look was inquiring, and there was a lot to tell him, but I didn’t want to launch into it then and there.

We fell silent listening to the voices drifting down from the other side of the shop—the tone, not the words. Even from where we waited I could hear them smiling at each other. Adrien said something and the other man, Jake, laughed. They sounded like a couple who had been together a long while, but still enjoyed each other’s company, still looked forward to their time together.

They sounded like I hoped J.X. and I would sound years from now.

Adrien returned downstairs. He said cheerfully, “Jake has some paperwork to finish up.”

“What does he do?” I asked.

“He’s a PI. Anyway, he’ll meet us over there.”

A likely story, I thought, but not long after we settled at Doc and Doris’s with its comfortable booths and blackened beams, and ordered our drinks, Jake strolled into the restaurant. Adrien raised his hand, Jake nodded, impassive as ever, and wandered over to our booth.

Adrien moved over and Jake slid in beside him. He stretched one arm along the top of the booth, not touching Adrien, but somehow the overall impression was of a single self-contained unit.

Adrien made the introductions, we all said hello and then we all got busy ordering our meals before the kitchen closed.

“The steak and mushroom pie is really good,” Adrien said, and Jake’s mouth twitched, although what was funny about steak and mushroom pie, I failed to see.

After our drinks arrived, the conversation livened up. Or I did. I related my adventures in finding Elijah Ladas’ body in the basement. J.X. had heard most of this before, of course, but he looked progressively stern throughout the recital. Adrien and Jake had seen the story on the news. For some reason I hadn’t been thinking it would receive more than local coverage.

“No wonder you look tired.” J.X. was frowning.

“And yet I still managed to make sure the soap matches the toilet paper in the master bath. You did say peach, right?”

Jake choked on his drink.

“Anyway, there’s more.” I filled J.X. in on the prowler two nights earlier and then the midnight visit from Sydney Nightingale, the visit from Ingrid Edwards, and the attempt to break into my motel room.

“Beck thinks you’ve got the coins,” Adrien said at the end of my tale.

“He can’t. He has to know what his brother did with them, surely?” I looked at J.X. J.X. said nothing. His expression was not reassuring.

“Beck doesn’t sound like the brightest candle on the cake,” Jake said. “If you were his brother, would you have told him more than you had to?”

“But I had nothing to do with any of it. His brother was dead before I ever made his acquaintance.”

“You should have told me what was happening,” J.X. said flatly.

“What could you have done about it?”

“Catch the first flight home!”

I glanced at our dinner companions, who were doing their best to pretend they had never seen anything as fascinating as the restaurant décor.

“It sort of escalated,” I admitted. “If I’d known at the beginning that Beck Ladas would be trying to break into my motel room, yes, I’d have asked you to come home first thing.”

J.X. looked slightly appeased, but only slightly.

The second round of drinks helped us all get past the moment. From there the conversation wandered to the topic of what a pain in the ass it was to dig a writer out of a place he’d lived forever—Adrien and Jake had only recently moved in together—publishing, the book market, self-publishing, Amazon, and Scandinavian fiction.

“No more Miss Butterwith?” Adrien was smiling. “I love those books. I’m going to have a lot of very disappointed customers.”

That reminded me of the one topic I’d skipped over when I was bringing J.X. up to date. Jerry Knight. But no way was I bringing that up in front of Adrien and Jake. I knew they’d be wondering what kind of idiot allowed a relationship to develop with an obvious stalker.

“Never say never,” I replied. “But for now, the old girl is enjoying her retirement. What about you?” I asked. “Any more Jason Leland mysteries in the works?”

Adrien’s lashes lowered, veiling his thoughts—but I knew he would be remembering Paul Kane. He reached for his glass, saying neutrally, “Maybe. We’ll see.”

Our meals came. Steak and mushroom pie for Adrien, burgers and fries for the rest of us.

Adrien said casually, “I have to say, I never pictured Anna Hitchcock as the type to kill herself. Was she in poor health? Nobody seems to know. You were there that weekend, right?”

That was the kind of curiosity that got cats killed, and behind Adrien’s shoulder, I saw Jake’s hand make a spasmodic movement. It was instant and instinctive, like he was about to grab someone teetering on the edge of a cliff. Except he didn’t grab. He didn’t move a muscle after that first protesting twitch, but his hazel gaze was alert and watchful as it met mine.

“We left that day. I was only there to teach a writing workshop.”

“There had already been a couple of deaths earlier that weekend, hadn’t there?”

“I’m a tough teacher.”

Polite smiles. It wasn’t funny.

J.X. said, “It was a weird place. Very hinky vibe.” That was said to Jake, ex-cop to ex-cop. Jake tipped his head in acknowledgement, but said nothing.

“Hitchcock left one heck of a literary legacy,” Adrien said. “That’s something.”

“It’ll have to do.”

His look was inquiring, but I wasn’t about to confide any further, and he was too polite to push harder.

“You don’t go to conferences do you?” I asked him suddenly. “Workshops? Conventions?”

Adrien shuddered. “No.”

I delivered a pointed Told-You-So to J.X. who only shook his head.

It was a surprisingly enjoyable meal, and we had a final drink at the bar before saying our goodnights. In the parking lot outside the restaurant, J.X. and I invited Adrien and Jake to visit any time they were in San Francisco.

“I’ll drive,” J.X. offered as we walked to my car. “How’s your back?”

I tossed the keys to him. “Horrible.”

He caught the keys. “Hell,” he said with genuine sympathy.

“How’s your hangover?” I inquired.

“It disappeared the minute I saw you walk in tonight.”

Now that was funny. “Looking harassed and aggravated?”

“A little,” J.X. agreed, but his smile invited me to share his amusement. That open affection had to be what made the difference between laughing with someone and laughing at them.

As our car’s headlights swept across the parking lot, I spotted Jake and Adrien standing beside a Subaru Forester. Adrien was still talking. Jake faced him, smiling, but somehow I could feel his gaze following our progress to the driveway.

* * * * *

J.X. had booked us into the Langham Huntington, which I thought was a bit extravagant, but whatever. He had that Japanese advance burning a hole in his pocket, and who was I to argue with a little pleasing and pampering?

“How was the convention?” I asked as we headed over to the hotel.

“You’ve been to one, you’ve been to them all.” J.X. added, “Except the one in DC.
That
was a great convention.”

I snorted, but yeah. That had been a good one.

“You should have let me know what was happening though, Kit.”

“Next time a deranged psychopath fixates on me, you’ll be the first to know. You have my word.”

He made a sound that wasn’t quite amused and wasn’t quite appeased, but to my relief he changed the subject. “That’s an interesting relationship.”

No question whom he meant. I nodded. “They seem happy though.” Maybe “happy” wasn’t the right word. Happy was too fragile. What those two had was more like quiet contentment. Like soldiers at peace after a long war.