Murder in Pastel

by Josh Lanyon

  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?”

  “I don’t know!” Joel cried. “I simply do.” He wiped his eyes. Took out an immaculate hanky, unfolded it, and blew his nose. “I simply do,” he repeated muffledly.

  I said at last, “I don’t think he has any intention of leaving Adam.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then why do you—”

  “Adam might leave him.”

  That went through my system like a jump-start on a dead battery. Even my fingers tingled. “Why do you say that?”

  Joel shook his head. “Because I hope it’s true.”

  I hoped it was true too. Not because I believed Adam would turn to me; Adam kept a friendly but cautious distance between us. I knew he would never be able to stop thinking of me as that sickly adolescent “mooning” over him. And I knew it wasn’t anything to do with our ages because at twenty-one, Brett was six years younger than me.

  I told myself it was for Adam’s sake that I hoped he unloaded Brett. Brett was not good for Adam. He was not good for anyone, as evidenced by the effect on our colony in little more than a month. Like a cat among the pigeons, he had set a snowstorm of feathers flying.

  Which isn’t to say that I didn’t like Brett, because strangely enough I sort of did. I appreciated his malicious sense of humor (when it wasn’t aimed at me), and he had certainly livened things up. But he was dangerous. Dangerous in the way of beautiful wild things. You could admire his beauty, but you couldn’t trust him.

  Unless you were Adam.

  I assumed Adam trusted Brett, but maybe he just loved him unconditionally.

  My other problem with Brett was the periodic assault on my chastity—such as it was.

  “Haven’t you ever been with anyone?”

  “Of course!” I closed my mind to the memory of awkward and fumbling collegiate encounters, more painful than pleasurable, and just plain embarrassing after the fact.

  Brett was disconcertingly serious. “I mean—”

  “I know what you mean.”

  His smile was unkind. “Are you saving yourself for Adam?”

  “Bite me.”

  “I’m trying to!” He chuckled. “Hey, you get a boner at the mere mention of his name. I could ask him to do you once as a favor. He’d do it for me. He’ll do anything for me.”

  “Well, that is sweet of you. I’ll think about it,” I drawled, which seemed to amuse the hell out of Brett. He actually dropped the subject.

  The best thing was not to give him a reaction. Easier said than done.

  “What is it with Adam and the graveyard?” I inquired, politely batting off Brett’s groping hands one day when I was paying one of my obligatory visits.

  “He’s painting the chapel. Maybe he’s getting religion. Or hoping I will. Shit, you are so shy—”

  “I’m not shy. I’m not interested.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “No, I’m not—hey!” As his hand shot out to twist my nipple.

  “You’re hard again.”

  “I am not!”

  “Made you look.”

  “You are such a juvenile, Brett.”

  These impromptu wrestling matches usually ended with Brett collapsing in laughter. The funny thing is, I often ended up laughing too. I’m not sure why.

  Once, though, I came up for air to find Jack Cobb standing at the screen door, silently watching us.

  Brett was unfazed. He hopped up and went out on the verandah, paid Jack for mowing the lawns and cutting the hedges, and came back inside whistling.

  As we sat there listening to the eight-cylinder roar of Jack’s pickup fading away, Brett slid his eyes my way, slapped his forehead and said slyly, “Hey, I could have had a V8!”

  * * * * *

  Then, on a hot July night when the full moon hung ripe and golden above the ocean, and the fireflies darted about the woods like fairy lights, something truly extraordinary happened.

  The way the story was retold to me, Jen was stripping the varnish off a dresser Vince had purchased at a local yard sale. It was an ordinary dresser, not an antique, but real cherry wood beneath the white enamel. Each drawer had a lion head handle with a brass ring through its mouth. Jen removed all the drawers and was waxing the runners when she noticed that the back wall of the dresser appeared to be canvas not wood.

  She pulled at it gently. The canvas was nailed to the wooden backing. She tugged harder, working it free. One by one she pried the nails out.

  When the last nail was out she slid the canvas up, easing it out through the slats, inch by inch. At last she pulled it free. Immediately it rolled up into a tight scroll.

  Jenny carried the rolled canvas into the kitchen and spread it out on the wooden table, using jam jars on the ragged corners to hold it flat.

  What she saw there in the lamplight had her gasping for breath. She ran outside, shrieking for Vince.

  Vince spilled out of his hammock. He grabbed a hoe and raced in ready to do battle with snakes, mice or spiders.

  Jenny dragged him into the kitchen and pointed to what lay on the table. Vince gaped and goggled, and then they phoned Joel.

  I heard the tale many times after that, in particular, I heard it from Vince who eventually claimed the find as his own, but it was Joel who called first to tell me that Virgin in Pastel had been found.

  Chapter Six

  Brett and Adam threw a party for Vince and Jenny to celebrate their good fortune. Later I heard from Micky that Vince had tactfully suggested that it might be awkward having me there. Apparently he was afraid I might lay claim to the painting. Adam had told Vince that if I wasn’t on the guest list, there was no party, so Vince had to put up with my awkward presence.

  Though the night of the party turned out to be of the dark and stormy variety, everyone came, even several folks from Steeple Hill, including the mayor, Miss Irene and Jack Cobb. I suspected Brett must have invited them to get Jack there.

  The wind kicked up off the ocean and set the leaves whispering like a thousand gossiping tongues. Now and then the lights flickered, and a boom of thunder rolled across the music. Joel acted as bartender, mixing up alcoholic concoctions he called Gypsy Queens which were four parts vodka, one part Benedictine and a dash of orange bitters blended into a foamy freeze. They made your forehead numb, but we swilled them like water from opalescent green cocktail glasses that had belonged to Drake Trent.

  Everyone contributed. There was enough food for a funeral. Joel brought marinated green olives and prosciutto-wrapped melon. Micky fixed her specialty: endive with herb cheese. The Cobbs donated a variety of tarts and cookies. Irene could cook like an angel with an eating disorder. It hadn’t affected Jack’s waistline yet, but the mayor wasn’t likely to squeeze into his old army uniform anytime soon. I made the bachelor special: nachos—and ended up eating half the plate before I left the house.

  Adam’s cottage was already crowded by the time I arrived.

  Greeting me at the door with a sympathetic grin, Adam steered me over to the bar where Joel was working his magic. Adam was immediately called away.

  “Well, what do you think?” Joel said, and he nodded over his shoulder. I stared at the canvas tacked up on the wall behind the bar. Vince, apparently afraid to let it out of his sight, had brought Virgin in Pastel to the party. “Is it the real thing?”

  For a moment I felt light-headed. The painting was shockingly familiar, though the last time I’d seen it had been the night Cosmo left. Now it was like I couldn’t quite focus. I had a hazy impression of cream and ochre and pink, like the heart of a rose or the lining of a cloud or summer moonlight…

  “Kyle? Are you all right?” Joel’s voice was sharp. “You’re sheet white.”

  “I’m fine.” I gave him a quick shaky grin and avoided looking at the canvas.

  “Here, have a drink.”

  He watched narrow-eyed as I drank.

  “Really, I’m okay,” I said,
embarrassed at my reaction. Joel looked unconvinced, but his bartending skills were being loudly sought, and he had to let it go.

  I was fine by then, a little puzzled by my freakish response. I hoped no one else had noticed, and no one seemed to have. I downed two Gypsy Queens in quick succession, and chatted with a few people, but it was an effort. I’ve never been much of a party animal. Crowds make me want to bite my fingernails.

  “I so admire people who can write fiction,” said a woman from the local paper. “It must be so rewarding.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “You’re Cosmo Bari’s son, aren’t you? I wonder if you would consider giving an interview…”

  I spotted Irene Cobb; she looked more miserable than me. I remembered that I hadn’t been able to find the bug killer apparatus she had loaned me. My garden now purged of the dreaded aphids, I’d meant to return it that night.

  I excused myself from the lady journalist and got myself another drink, but Brett swooped down upon me and snatched it away as I raised it to my lips. When I opened my mouth to object, he kissed me; a wet smooch that effectively shut me up.

  He flitted away.

  I talked to more people and checked the grandfather clock in the corner, trying to decide if it would be rude to leave before midnight. I was conscious every moment of where Adam was in the room. It was like I could see him even when I wasn’t looking at him. I glanced across and, yep, there he was, handsome and at ease as he chatted with his guests. His skin was very brown against the white of his shirt; his black hair gleamed in the mellow light. It was getting longer again, starting to curl.

  “Stranger on the Shore” came on the stereo, and I realized how badly I wanted to dance with Adam, to be held tight in his arms, to be held close against his hard, spare body. Brett was right. I had it bad.

  Instead, Jen asked me to dance. We swayed dreamily to the music, each of us pretending we were with somebody else. We moved past the bar and I glimpsed the painting—and felt that unnerving shift in my head.

  “Stranger on the Shore” ended. Joel asked Jenny to dance. I sat down on the settee, rubbed my forehead. The room seemed hot and noisy.