by Cindy Brown
Chapter 11
We were just pulling onto the highway to go home when my cell buzzed.
“Can you look at it?” I asked Uncle Bob. I didn’t want to stop, and I wasn’t dumb enough to text and drive.
He picked up the phone from its place in my cup holder. “It’s from Matt. He wants to know if you can come over tonight.”
“Really?” It was nine forty-five.
“Yeah...” He peered at my phone. “It looks like you missed couple of texts from him earlier. All asking you to come over tonight after work.”
Not good. “Okay. Can you text him back saying I just saw his messages and I’ll be there around, um, eleven?”
Uncle Bob did so. “He says, ‘See you then.’ He must really want to see you tonight.”
“Yeah.” He must. And I was afraid to know why.
Since we’d come straight from the office, I dropped Uncle Bob off near his car, then swung by a Circle K for a six-pack and bag of Cheetos. I didn’t want to arrive at Matt’s empty-handed. Nothing to do with procrastinating, because I wasn’t worried about why he wanted to see me. Not a bit.
“Hey.” Matt kissed me hello and the knot in my stomach loosened a bit. He wouldn’t kiss me right before breaking up with me, would he?
“Sorry I didn’t get your texts, but...” I blamed my distractedness on the noisy bar rather than the good chicken. Gluttony wasn’t usually a selling point in relationships.
“No worries.” He took the beer and Cheetos from me. “Thanks for the hor d’oeuvres. You want a beer?”
“Yes, please.” I took the one he handed me and walked over to the couch. “So...Angus died.” I found myself tearing up. Guess I was finally processing what had happened. I wiped my eyes surreptitiously. Didn’t want Matt to see me crying over another man, even if it was about the other man’s death. “And they found the horse.” I told him about John Robert, hoping I sounded like a PI instead of like someone trying to not have a conversation about her relationship with her boyfriend. Matt sat beside me, his arm stretched along the back of the couch, his hand absently playing with my hair. I took that for another good sign, until...
“So I know it’s a little weird to ask you over so late,” Matt said. “But—”
His phone rang. He looked at it. “I have to take this. It’s my mom.”
My first thought was “Oh, great.” I swear Matt’s mom psychically knew when we were together and decided to call then. She lived in Grand Island, Nebraska, and was...difficult. At least when it came to me. Maybe it was because she thought I was a stoner (it was skunk she smelled on me, I swear). Maybe it was the fact that she really wanted Matt to marry his high school sweetheart. Or maybe it was her insistence her son should really be back in Grand Island, helping his dad out with the farm. Or...
Then my second thought hit: It was after midnight in Nebraska. Not a time when she’d call just to talk.
Matt sat up straight on the couch, listening. He didn’t say anything for minutes, then just, “Of course.” He got up off the couch. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Thanks for calling.”
He hung up, then walked to the window and looked out at the darkness. “That wasn’t Mom.”
I had the feeling it wasn’t. “Thanks for calling” wasn’t something he’d say to his mom.
“It was Katie.” The high school sweetheart. “They’d all been at some church supper. My mom was helping to clean up afterward and...” Matt swallowed and looked at me. “She had a massive stroke.”
Matt packed while I went online and found the next flight to Omaha. “Five thirty a.m.,” I said. “Do you want that one? The next one’s at nine thirty. You could maybe get a little sleep if—”
“Book me on the five thirty flight. I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway. And just one-way for now. I don’t know how long I’ll be there. Crap. I need to call work and ask for family medical leave.”
Once the ticket was booked, the bags packed, and the messages left, we had just a few minutes before we needed to leave (Matt always liked to be at the airport two hours before a flight). He sunk down on the couch. I sat close beside him, and we stayed like that, in silence, until it was time to go.
I drove him to the airport. “Katie said my dad’s sort of shell-shocked.” It was the first thing Matt had said for twenty minutes. “He may run the farm but my mom runs everything else. I don’t think he’s cooked a meal or paid a bill or made a doctor’s appointment on his own since he got married.” His voice cracked. “He’d be lost without my mom.”
I put a hand on his thigh. He stared out the windshield as if there was something big and bad on the horizon. “You okay?” I asked, to give him a chance to talk.
“I don’t know. I don’t think I can go there right now. I don’t really want to think about this until I have to.”
I ached for him, but I also understood. Uncle Bob sometimes called me Cleopatra because I’m “the queen of de Nile.” It’s true: I’ve survived on a steady diet of denial ever since I was eleven, when Cody got hurt. You could even say it was denial that caused his accident. I was annoyed at being forced to take my little brother ice skating and so ignored him in favor of my girlfriends. If I hadn’t denied his existence that day, maybe I would’ve seen him skating toward the open water. Maybe I would’ve shouted to him about the thin ice. Maybe he would’ve turned back before the ice cracked and the dark water swallowed him whole.
Denial became my friend after that. It seemed like hope. If I didn’t acknowledge that Cody’s brain injury was permanent, maybe he’d get better. If I didn’t think about my parents blaming me for the accident, maybe they wouldn’t. If I pretended nothing had changed, maybe everything would go back to the way it was before.
I now knew that living in denial was no good, but I also knew that it was a valuable tool, a way of putting off the tough emotional work until you were strong enough to tackle it. So I didn’t try to make Matt talk. Instead, I let him borrow my tool—but not before I used it once more myself. “I think everything will turn out okay.”
See? Hope.
Chapter 12
Even night owls are tired when they get home at three thirty in the morning. And I slept badly. Not only was I worried about Matt and his family, but Angus’s death sat heavy on my heart, partly because I’d met him right beforehand, partly because we’d actually seen the killing blow, and partly because any death weighed on me. It was one of the toughest things about my PI job. I didn’t know how cops and firemen ever slept.
Still, I dragged my exhausted ass out of bed at nine o’clock the next morning. I had work to do. It actually wasn’t that hard to get up, because as soon as consciousness crept up on me, my mind began to ask questions. Not about the important things like love and life and death (loved that denial tool), but about the new case: How did Riley’s horse get to John Robert Turner’s house? When did it get there? If the horse was fine, had it been there since the day it disappeared? If so, why didn’t John Robert report it earlier? And what was a Broadway playwright doing on a ranch in the middle of the desert anyway?
I made a pot of coffee while I booted up my laptop, keeping my phone in sight on the kitchen table. I didn’t want to miss Matt. He’d promised to call when he could. I was itching to contact him but didn’t want to do so at a bad time. And anytime could be a bad time.
So instead I Googled “John Robert Turner and Arizona.” Nothing. “Broadway and ranch.” Still nothing. I tried real estate news. Nope. I thought again. Why would a playwright from New York move to the desert? Hmm. I tried “playwright and desert.” A hit. In a year-old article on Broadwayworld.com, John Robert had said, “I have always done my best work in the desert, under that huge cloudless sky. Its barrenness clears my mind, like a Santa Ana wind.” Huh. Seemed to me that he’d never experienced an Arizona wind, which was sort of like being in a giant blow dryer. A photo of the playwright accompani
ed the article: Ah, he was the pleasantly round Caucasian half of the team. He was also somehow familiar. Well, duh. Even though I didn’t visit theater websites very often, he was a famous playwright.
That said, it was odd there was no mention of him buying a ranch in Arizona. Still, I trusted Uncle Bob’s information. John Robert must have been able to keep his move a secret. I suppose you could do anything if you had enough money. Still, I suspected someone in town would probably know what was up. I decided to go to my best source. “Buy you brunch at Gay Denny’s?”
“Err,” said Timothy, which I translated as “it’s too early to call.” Then my friend/fellow actor/drag queen said, “How many cups of coffee have you had?”
“Four. And a half. Why?”
“Err,” Timothy said again. “You know better than to call me before noon.”
“But I’ll pay.” I could write off brunch, too. “A Grand Slam on me. See you at eleven?”
“Urrmm,” Timothy said, then hung up. It was a slightly different sound, an affirmative-sounding groan, so I got ready to go. I planned to go straight to the Ren faire after brunch, so I sorted through my closet for anything that could help with the disguise I’d decided upon. I found dangly earrings, flat sandals that laced up my calves, and a long chestnut wig I’d worn during a recent production of Twelfth Night where I played the twin of a brown-eyed brown-haired actor. Hey...
I walked the few feet to my bathroom (my apartment was small) and pawed through the medicine cabinet. Yes. I still had a pair of dark brown costume contacts left over from the show. I grabbed them along with some makeup that suited a brunette look, stuffed everything into my duffle bag, hoofed it down the stairs to my apartment’s parking lot, and got into my truck. I swung by Bert Easley’s, a costume shop that’d been around since the 1940s, tried on a couple of outfits, rented two of them, and got to the restaurant by eleven.
Gay Denny’s (aka Genny’s) was pretty much what it sounded like. For whatever reason, Phoenix’s LGBTQ community had been hanging out at the 24-hour restaurant since sometime in the eighties. If you came in late on a Friday or Saturday night, you’d often see a group of drag queens holding court at one of the corner tables. Mostly families and oldsters were there when I arrived. I slid into a booth and checked my phone.
Still no word from Matt.
I broke down and texted him while I waited for Timothy. All during the time I’d been working, the maelstrom of emotions that had kept me from sleeping continued to buffet my soul like one of those hot Arizona winds. Another feeling had been swept into the mix, no—two feelings: relief, and guilt over being relieved. Maybe Matt’s weirdness over the past couple weeks had nothing to do with me—maybe he knew his mom wasn’t well and all of the tension came from that. That was the relief part. And since I was relieved about something that was bad news for everyone involved, well, that was the guilt.
Ping. A response from Matt. “Sorry I didn’t call. It’s been crazy. Mom’s holding her own. Talk tonight?”
Phew. “That’d be great. XXOO to all.”
The waitress stopped by. I ordered two Grand Slam breakfasts and two cups of coffee (sure, I’d already had a pot, but it was a small one). The coffee was already on the table waiting when Timothy arrived a few minutes later. He wore dramatically dark sunglasses and pouted at me. “This better be good.” He sat down.
I explained about the horse and John Robert. “But I can’t find anything about him being in Arizona. And everyone knows that you know everything.” A little smile broke through Timothy’s pout. “So,” I continued, “I thought I’d see if I could get the info straight from the horse’s mouth. Wait that’s not right...straight from the horse’s mouth would be from John Robert, right?”
“I think you meant to call me a stud,” said Timothy. “Because you’d better be calling me something nice, or I won’t tell you what, oh, everyone who’s anyone knows. I mean, have you been living under a rock somewhere?”
“Did I say horse’s mouth? Maybe I should have said horse’s a—”
“Uh, uh, uh, Miss Ivy. Be nice to the hand that feeds you tasty tidbits of gossip, or I won’t—”
The waitress dropped off our Grand Slams. The smell of bacon and sausage must have soothed Timothy (I know it did me), because he gave a contented sigh. He pushed his sunglasses up on top of his head, poured syrup on his pancakes, and said, “All right. So here’s the scoop on John Robert...”
Chapter 13
“Turner and Toe split?” I put down my coffee. “Haven’t they been together forever?”
“I know.” Timothy poured more syrup on the last of his pancakes. “They were a golden couple. It’s the saddest news in the world.” That seemed a bit dramatic, even for Timothy, until he continued. “Together they gave us Singin’ on the Train, The Look of Mormon, Best Little Storehouse in Texas, and of course, Hello Dolly Madison. But singly? Nothing.”
“Well they haven’t been split that long, right? It’s got to take time to create—”
“The word on the street is that this has happened before. They get into some lovers’ tiff or creative disagreement and they each go off on their own. Do you remember Dribbler on the Roof?”
“How could I forget that one? Didn’t it close after opening night?”
“Written by John Robert using a pseudonym. And it closed on opening night. At intermission.”
“Really?” I was pretty sure Timothy was exaggerating. Pretty sure. “Anyway, now that I’ve kept my end of the brunch bargain...”
“Wait. Bargaining involves two parties. You just told me to be here.”
“You’re not going to tell me what John Robert is doing here?”
“Of course I am. I just want you to feel bad for waking me up.”
“And I do. Now tell.”
Timothy leaned close. “The way I hear it, John Robert was dying to do a solo project, but couldn’t come up with an idea. He decided to retreat to the desert—”
“So he bought a ranch? Couldn’t he have just gone to a spa?”
“—Where he bought Slim Littlewood’s old place, Harmony Ranch.”
“Slim Littlewood, the cowboy?” Slim was one of Arizona’s famous sons, a character actor in 1950’s Westerns and singer with the cowboy quartet Sons of the Tumbleweeds.
“Mm hmm. Which reminds me, you are coming to the gay rodeo on Friday, right? To see me do the Wild Drag Race?”
“Sure. Of course. You know I love your drag shows.”
“This is no simple drag show—this is dangerous drag. People have been killed doing the Wild Drag event, you know.”
“They have?”
“Well, there have at least been a few broken heels. So we’re in teams of three—me and two hunky cowboys who—”
“Two hunky gay cowboys.”
“Of course. And these cowboys somehow get me, in full feather as it were—”
“Which outfit?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“How about Patsy Cline? They could play “Crazy” right after they announce you.”
“Anyway, they get me onto the back of a pissed-off steer. You ever seen a steer up close?”
“I will, when I come see you at the rodeo. And sorry to interrupt—”
“Like this?”
“But can we go back to Slim Littlewood just for a minute? Why did John Robert want his ranch? Does he have a thing for cowboys?”
“Honey, everyone has a thing for cowboys. But supposedly, Harmony Ranch was perfect because it has a theater room.”
“With a screen and surround sound?”
“With a real—albeit small—theater stage.”
“Ah, like Andrew Lloyd Webber.” The creative genius who penned famous musicals like The Phantom of the Opera and Evita had a theater at his Hampshire country house where he could work on shows and stage them for backers in
the privacy of his own home.
“Exactly. And...” Timothy leaned so close I could smell his hair gel. “The desert air seems to have done the trick. Word is John Robert is starting work on a new version of Camelot, set in the Kennedy era. Can’t you just see it? The love triangle will revolve around John and Jackie and Marilyn, and...”
Timothy went on, but “Camelot” kept ringing in my ears. Camelot. Camelot. What was it about Camelot? Let’s see, there was King Arthur, and the Knights of the Round Table, and jousting...
Jousting. My mind flashed on a face under a hooded cape, a familiar profile watching Riley and the little boy. Yes, it was him. John Robert had been at the Ren faire, right before the joust that killed Angus. And he’d been there in disguise.
“Hang on,” I said to Timothy. The horse at John Robert’s ranch, his appearance at the Ren faire...there had to be a connection. I pulled out my phone and dialed my agent, who actually picked up on a Sunday. “You have to get me an audition for Camelot.”
“I haven’t heard anything about this,” said Vicki. “They’re filming Camelot in Arizona? With all the cactus and shit?” She barked a laugh. “Oh, you mean Spamalot.”
“No, no cactus in that either,” I said. “And I mean Camelot. John Robert Turner just announced he’s putting it together. He’s workshopping it at his ranch here.”
“Is he the Turner from Turner and Toe? You know I don’t do theater.” I didn’t know how it worked in other cities, but in Phoenix, agents got actors film, commercial, and print work. Actors didn’t need an agent for theater work—we just auditioned.
“I know, but I need to meet this director.” And once I met him, I could figure out how to ask the questions I needed to ask. It’d be even better if I got cast.
“Didn’t you say ‘just announced’? Don’t plays take awhile before they’re produced?”
Exactly. There was no way I’d be able to audition for a Broadway, or even off-, or off-off-Broadway play. I wasn’t even union yet—but... “It’s well-known that Turner and Toe use actors at the beginning stages of their playwriting.” At least that’s what I thought Timothy had said when my brain was singing “Camelot.” I met his eyes and he nodded.