by K. J. Emrick
Now I did.
I would have preferred to talk to him about all this at the Thirsty Roo, where I could be sure there would be other people around if Alfonse took offense to my questions, but the bar was still closed, and I didn’t want to let this sit. I’m impatient that way.
Beaker Street is in what I like to jokingly refer to as the high-rent district of Lakeshore. The houses are just a bit nicer up here, even if they still get painted white like everything else. The homes are a bit bigger. The front yards always have flower gardens planted in them. There’s even a couple places that have two stall garages.
Figures a falling star like Alfonse Calico would buy a house up here.
Second on the left, his was by far the biggest house on the street. Two stories tall, with high rectangular windows and—of course—carefully trimmed flower gardens to either side of the front door. A brick walkway led from the sidewalk to the half-circle of the steps. Very fancy.
It was a nice looking house, and I had to wonder if it was the kind of house a murderer would live in. I guess everyone has to live somewhere.
Not that I was completely convinced that Alfonse was the killer. Not one hundred percent, anyway. Let’s say, ninety percent. And climbing.
The knocker on the front door was polished brass. It made a metallic sound when I used it. Not really a banging. More of a click-click-click. Could Alfonse even hear that sound in a house this big?
Which was when I noticed the little plastic doorbell button on the wall next to the door. The knocker was just for show. Figures.
I pushed the doorbell and listened to electric tones inside the house ring out the chorus from In The Clouds. Hard to believe I ever liked that song.
“Coming!” Alfonse crowed from inside. In just a few seconds he was throwing the door open and, unless I was mistaken, his expression was disappointed when he saw it was me.
He was in a clingy silk purple bathrobe, cinched at his tight waist, open at his dark, hairy chest. In one hand was a bottle of champagne.
Well. That certainly wasn’t for me.
“Expecting someone?” I asked him, nodding at the bottle.
“Eh? Oh, this.” He actually hid the bottle behind his back with a weak smile. “Sort of. Yes. Um, not the best time, Dell. If ya need something for the Inn I can maybe give ya a ring up tonight? Yes. That sounds wonderful. Well. Bye now.”
He went to quickly close the door.
I was quicker.
Stepping into the stoop I leaned my shoulder up against the door. The shocked look in his eyes was priceless. “We need to talk, Alfonse.”
“Told ya, Dell. Now’s really not a good time.” He looked past me, up and down the street, still trying to get the door closed. “Don’t know what ya need to tell me so badly, but I really—”
“I need to talk to you,” I interrupted, “about Officer Bostwick.”
Alfonse blinked, and stopped trying to push the door closed. “What about him?”
“I know what happened,” I told him.
“You... know?”
I nodded, and met his eyes, and didn’t blink.
A muscle twitched in his cheek. He seemed to deflate in front of my eyes. “Does anyone else... know?”
“That depends on you,” I told him, cementing my lie. “I’ve left a detailed letter back at the Inn with instructions for Rosie to send it to the papers up in Sydney if I’m not back in two hours. If you don’t want to talk to me, I can just post the letter now. So. Feel like letting me in?”
The hand holding his bottle of champagne tapped against his thigh. “Yup,” he said, after a moment. “Think I do. Not sure what game you’re onto, Dell, but I can’t afford to have this hit the papers. Come in, and tell me what ya want.”
When he turned away and left me to find my own way in, I fought the urge to smile in triumph. It was all a huge bluff, of course. I was fishing in the dark here. I didn’t have anything concrete on Alfonse. There was no letter to send to the papers. I just know that people are a lot more likely to tell you their secrets if they think you already know what they are. Even more so, when you threaten to tell everyone else. Something else I learned from watching my son. Not to mention you learn a lot about how rumors work, living here in Lakeshore.
The inside of the house looked like something out of Home Beautiful magazine. The walls were a rich deep yellow with white crown molding and what looked like hand painted gold scrollwork from floor to ceiling along every corner. The red rugs were a deep plush. Tables were placed in the spacious entry hall for no other reason than to hold wide vases of fake—but colorful—flowers. I was willing to bet that if I ran a gloved hand along any surface there wouldn’t be a speck of dust anywhere.
I caught up to Alfonse in the living room. The bottle of champagne was sitting in a metal ice bucket, on a tall stand next to the couch where he had draped himself. My cheeks heated when I realized he wasn’t exactly being careful about what his robe was covering, and I was pretty sure he wasn’t wearing anything underneath. At least he had his legs crossed.
“Dell. I’m sure I don’t know... whatever ya think ya know, but I swear—”
“Everything.” I sat down in a comfy white easy chair opposite his couch. I sank in a couple of inches as the cushions poofed. “I know everything, Alfonse. Would I come here, like this, if I didn’t know?”
Another bluff, and I hoped I wasn’t pushing my luck too far.
Just say it already, I growled in my mind. Tell me why you killed him!
He tapped a finger on the back of the couch, regarding me, and I could see the wheels turning in his mind. Finally, he pursed his lips and ran a big hand over his shaved scalp. “Fine. What’s this gonna cost me?”
“Cost—?” Ah. Blackmail. Alfonse thought I was here to blackmail him. Hold the fact he was a murderer over his head so I could extort money from him. Interesting. Obviously he didn’t know me that well.
Only a man with a guilty conscience would offer to pay money to keep his secrets... well, secret.
That put me at about ninety-five percent sure he was the killer.
For a quick moment I reconsidered my decision to come here. By myself. All alone. With a murderer.
Nothing to do about it now. In for a penny, in for a pound.
“We’ll have to discuss the cost,” I told him, knowing he wanted some kind of answer from me. “This is serious business, Alfonse.”
He looked over at the champagne in the chilling bucket. It was obvious that I’d interrupted something important. Whoever he was planning to entertain would be here soon. I could only guess, but whoever it was, he was willing to put them off to talk about paying me to keep his secret.
Guilty as sin, this one.
I just had to prove it.
“Excuse me a moment,” he said, looking down and apparently only just realizing how little he was wearing. “I should get dressed if we’re going to have this conversation. Need to call a friend, too. Seems my date’s off.”
When he shuffled out of the room, holding his robe closed and grumbling, I counted to twenty. Then I pushed my way out of the smothering cushions and searched the room.
There was a sideboard with drawers next to the couch. I slid each one open silently, very aware that Alfonse might stomp back into the room at any moment. There were bills, and a few greeting cards from someone named Dan, but nothing else except a few pens.
Over on the shelves next to the television I found some paperback books and some photographs. All of the pics had Alfonse in them. Two had an older woman with frizzy gray hair. That had to be his mother. Five had a good looking pale-skinned guy, maybe in his thirties, always smiling next to Alfonse. He liked to keep pictures of himself, that much was for sure. There was even one of Alfonse on stage performing at a Commonwealth concert.
My woman’s intuition kicked in as I looked at the shelves and the pictures in their frames. I picked up on something that I was willing to bet most people didn’t know about Alfonse Calico.
Lik
e I said, there were lots of photos. All of them had Alfonse in them.
Five of them were Alfonse with the pale-skinned guy. More than with his mom. More than anyone else.
You keep photos of people who are important to you. The most important person to Alfonse was obviously... Alfonse. But this other guy came in a very close second.
I picked up one, where Alfonse and the other guy were raising stubby beer bottles to the camera together. The other guy had long red hair, and the tattoo of some black bird on the back of his left hand. Both of them were in three-piece suits, standing together.
Together.
Oh, snap.
This was the secret Alfonse thought I knew. This was—
“That’s Dan,” Alfonse said from the living room entryway. I turned to find him leaning against the wall, changed into a fancy blue shirt and a pair of casual slacks. His arms were crossed. His expression was hard, and I was beginning to understand why. “Gotta tell ya, Dell. Didn’t see ya using this against me. Specially after getting arrested for killing Bostwick.”
Because as far as Alfonse knew, I killed Bostwick. Because he might not know who killed the Federal officer for sure but there was one thing he did know.
He wasn’t the killer.
His secret was something else.
Someone else.
“I met him at one of my shows,” Alfonse told me, pointing to the picture. “He was a fan. We had lunch and just... clicked. Ever done that?”
“Yes.” Twice now, I might add. Richard, and now James. If James wasn’t too fed up with me to ever speak to me again. “Tell me about him.”
His lips sneered. “Why should I do that?”
“Indulge me.”
“Whatever.” He tried to glare at me, but some of his heat cooled as he told me their story. “He’s wonderful. An amazing man. That first lunch turned into a few dinners, and some other things. That was twelve years back. Just before Commonwealth broke up. We’ve been together ever since. Seen me through some hard times, Dan has.”
I handed him the framed photo. He held it cupped in his hands as he looked down at his friend Dan’s face. There was a light that seeped into his eyes. A light I recognized.
That’s how I used to look at my husband. My ex-husband.
My dead ex-husband.
Alfonse was in love. His lover’s name was Dan.
That must be who he called just now, too. I’d interrupted their date. Had to admire his stealth. Keeping a secret of any kind here in Lakeshore was hard enough but keeping a secret love affair from making the rumor mill? Nearly impossible.
“So,” he said with a deep breath. “How much?”
I blinked, lost for a moment in my thoughts. “How much for what?”
“C’mon, Dell. Don’t be coy.” Stepping past me he put the photo back up on its shelf. He took a moment to put it just so, and I could see again how much he cared about Dan. “How much money to keep my secret from getting out.”
I wasn’t even sure what to say to that. “Alfonse, nobody cares who you love. That’s between you and your heart. Why would you let me take your money to keep that a secret?”
“Heh. Chance would be a fine thing, wouldn’t it? When we were performing as Commonwealth, and we had our big song, we had to keep our image, ya see. Had to be ladykillers, our manager told us. Had to be what the fans wanted. Couldn’t be who we were. Who I was... wasn’t something they could sell. Dan wouldn’t be good for me image.”
He shook his head and then focused on me again. “I could come out now, ‘course. Other bands have done it. New Kids on the Block. ‘Nsync. Even Union J has... well. Anyway. We both know that’s not the problem. The problem is the baby...”
The blank expression on my face must have given me away. Alfonse stopped short and his eyes got wide. “You... didn’t know.”
I came here expecting to find something to prove Alfonse Calico was a killer. Instead I’d stumbled onto a different secret. One he’d been keeping for decades.
Still, this wasn’t a secret that was going to hurt him or even his reputation. Not when the world had moved past caring which stars were straight and which ones weren’t. Gay or not, people were people. At least, here in Australia they were. Other parts of the world might still have their troubles with people expressing their feelings, but here in the Land of Oz we were better than that.
Being homosexual wasn’t what worried him. Alfonse had been about to pay me blackmail money to keep his deepest, darkest secret. And it wasn’t that he’d killed someone.
Two plus two equals four, except in the world of celebrities. If you were a famous boy band member like Alfonse used to be, and you had to pretend to be a lady’s man, then you had to be with ladies. And sometimes, when a man spent time with a woman trying to prove he was a player...
“You had a baby,” I said, stating the obvious. “Nobody knew.”
The look that crossed Alfonse’s face was wistful and strained, both at once. “Her name was Ashley. She was... young. Younger than’s legal. I was trying to show how manly I was, ya understand. I fooled around with a lot of women back then. Don’t remember half of them. Didn’t remember her, either. Figured it was part of my job. Be with women. Lots of women. Turns out, free love has a cost. Even when yer faking it.”
“So someone found out about your fling. And the baby.”
“Too right. Bostwick comes right up to me, right in the Thirsty Roo. Says he’s working for Ashley, and now she has the proof I fathered her kid. Word of that got out, it’d ruin me, in more ways than one. ‘Course, Ashley doesn’t really want to ruin me. She just wants money.” His eyes were like hot steel boring into me. “Guess she’s not the only one.”
Bostwick? “Federal agent Jason Bostwick told you about this secret love child?”
“Sure he did! The blighter’s been moonlighting as a private dick. Guess being a Feddie doesn’t pay as much as it should. Whatever. Did ya notice how he came into town after all the other Feddies had left? Investigation into the ‘Ndrangheta was done. He wasn’t here for that. He was staying at the Thirsty Roo to get my DNA. Man was slime. Got ahold of a beer schooner I was drinking from and, there ya go. Had me dead to rights. My DNA matches her kid’s, and if it gets out the media will tear me apart. I’ll be through.”
I let him ramble on as I put it together. Bostwick was double dipping. Federal agent hiring himself out for private detective work. Well. I guess stranger things had happened.
No, I could see it. When Bostwick had been talking to me, he’d asked me more than once about Alfonse. I’d thought it was strange at the time but I couldn’t have dreamed why. He wanted to know if I could tell him anything else about the once great Alfonse Calico. Anything that he could hang Alfonse with. I’m betting I wasn’t the only one in town he’d talked to, either. Didn’t Rosie say that Bostwick had talked to her, too?
He never wanted me to be a witness against the ‘Ndrangheta. Oh, if I’d said yes he probably would’ve brought that back to his people as a bonus, but he wasn’t looking for it. That’s why he gave up trying so easily.
I wasn’t his target. Alfonse was.
“So,” I said. “Bostwick was about to ruin your life, but you didn’t kill him?”
He looked at me like I’d just grown a second head.
“Why would I kill him? Serious, Dell, ya got some nutter ideas in that head of yours. I’m a singer. Not usually the violent type. Besides, he’d already sent the proof to Ashley. She’s the one’s going to make my life a living Hell. Bostwick was just the messenger. Killing him woulda brought more trouble down on me.”
“True,” I pointed out, “but you didn’t like the message.”
Twirling like he was back on stage, Alfonse threw himself down on the couch, landing with his arm over the back and his feet kicked up over one end. “But, see, Ashley just wants money. Like you. I can fix that. I put all my earnings from being a star into a diversified portfolio of stocks and savings bonds. Not exactly rich, but I’ll h
ave more than me fair share till the day I die. Don’t need to go killing anyone to make trouble go away. Not saying I’m sorry the man’s dead. Just had no reason to do it meself. Besides, we both know who really killed him. So. Why’d you do it?”
Right. I was the one charged with murder, not him. “Alfonse, I didn’t do this either. Cutter’s got a grudge and a bad sense of how to do his job, is all. I didn’t kill Bostwick.”
“So ya didn’t kill him, but you’re more than happy to make some coin off his corpse by blackmailing me?” He snorted. Forgive me for not dancing with joy.”
He flashed his hands when he said it, giving a dramatic edge to his sarcasm.
I sat back down in the chair, careful not to let myself sink in too far this time, and tried for a smile. “You’ve got nothing to worry about, Alfonse. Your secret is safe with me. I wasn’t ever going to take your money, anyhow. Came here looking for something, is all. I think I found it.”
I didn’t have any way of confirming his story, but it all fit. This time, I could see he wasn’t holding anything back. He didn’t kill Bostwick. He didn’t have any reason to. Plus there was that whole cover up to figure out. That didn’t come from Alfonse Calico.
Tilting my head to one side, I asked, “You and Senior Sergeant Cutter don’t have any secret deals going, do you?”
“He’s not blackmailing me, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“You’re sure?”
“Dell, I hardly know the man. Always tried to avoid cops when I could.” He chuckled and then sighed. “Guess I shoulda listened to that bit of wisdom when it came to Jason Bostwick.”
I looked up at Alfonse. Something had changed in him. A moment later I saw what it was. He’d dropped his stage persona. The man I was seeing now was the real Alfonse Calico. He was just a man in love, trying to live his life and forget the burdens of his past.
“Want to hear the crazy part?” he asked me.
“Other than having a Federal officer die in your bar, you mean?”
“Heh. Yeah. Other than that.” He rubbed a finger at his temple. “The crazy part is, me and Dan were going to come out. Going to tell the world about our relationship and start living our life together. Free from the lies. We was going to do it Christmas day. Had the whole thing planned out. Media coverage. Interviews on the talk shows. All of it. We were gonna come clean. No more lies. Everything was finally going to be behind us. Now... this happens. What am I supposed to tell Dan?”