Male/Male Mystery and Suspense Box Set: 6 Novellas

by Lanyon, Josh

  Con was standing at the bookshelves by the bay windows that looked out over the ocean. He was looking through Treasure Island—the edition featuring Holloway Barret’s illustrations. He looked up at the tap of Finn’s cane.

  “Martha said you wanted to see me,” Finn said with determined aggressiveness.

  Con closed the book with a snap, slid it back into place on the bookshelf. “I think I owe you an apology. When I thought it over later, I realized how…”

  He didn’t quite realize it, since he couldn’t seem to think of the word.

  “Unwelcome?” Finn suggested, and Con’s face tightened. “Inappropriate?” Finn offered. “Overbearing?”

  “Look,” Con said shortly. “Whether you want to hear it or not, the fact is I owe you an apology. Not for yesterday, for what happened three years ago.”

  The light flooding through the window behind Con was very bright. Finn had to narrow his eyes against it; in fact, it was easier to turn away. Con said, “I treated you badly. Maybe I need to say it more than you need to hear it. Either way, it needs to be said.”

  “All right, you’ve said it,” Finn said.

  “No, I haven’t.” Con was walking toward him, calm, measured steps, and Finn felt ridiculously at bay—mostly because he couldn’t easily walk away. “I hurt you…badly. I know that. There’s no excuse for it. I’ve regretted it every single day since. I’m very sorry. Sorry for what it’s cost me, but mostly sorry for hurting you. That was the last thing I ever wanted to do.”

  Finn made an impatient sound. Con had hurt him all kinds of ways that summer. Betraying him with Fitch was merely the coup de grâce. He kept his face turned, but he couldn’t shut off his awareness of the other man. He was very much afraid he was going to start shaking—from tiredness and not feeling well, but Con was liable to read that all wrong.

  He came right up to Finn, and his breath was warm against Finn’s cheek and hair. He ran a light finger down Finn’s forearm as though he didn’t dare touch him but couldn’t quite stop himself either.

  Softly, he said, “I realize after yesterday that you don’t feel the same anymore—I guess I didn’t really expect that although I’d hoped, obviously, that we might have another chance. That probably wasn’t realistic on my part. Both of us have changed.”

  Finn risked a look, but it was a mistake, because Con was right there, gazing into his eyes, watching him far too closely. He should say something, of course, agree with Con or at least have the grace to accept his apology since there was no reason not to on these terms.

  “Maybe…I don’t know. Maybe we can one day be friends,” Con said. “I’ll leave that decision up to you.”

  Finn managed a grudging nod. Con seemed to be waiting for something more. When nothing was forthcoming, he turned away, moving toward the door.

  Finn struggled with himself, cleared his throat, and said, “Con…thanks.”

  Con paused. He said, “If it had been anyone but Fitch, would there have been a chance of you forgiving me?”

  Finn said, “If it had been anyone but Fitch, it would never have happened.”

  “So that’s the famous Con-man,” Paul said when Finn sat down at the dining room table. Paul was staring out the window, watching Con, tall, lean, and long-legged, striding down the gravel drive toward the woods.

  “That’s him,” Finn said unemotionally, reaching for his water glass.

  “What does he say happened to Fitch?”

  Finn knocked back a couple of pain pills. Swallowed. “He hasn’t said anything.”

  “That’s a little suspicious, don’t you think?”

  Finn stared. Paul was joking, but not entirely. For reasons more unfathomable than any murder mystery, he was a big fan of the Margaret Rutherford Miss Marple movies. When they had roomed together, he had coaxed and cajoled Finn into watching all four films several times.

  Finn admitted, “Well, in fairness, I haven’t asked him.”

  “You haven’t asked him? Kind of an oversight, don’t you think? I mean, he’s probably the last person to see Fitch alive.”

  “What are you inferring?”

  “Isn’t that what you were getting at, at ye olde tavern?”

  Finn opened his mouth to deny it, but the fact was, once the idea of foul play had infiltrated its way into the back of his brain, he couldn’t quite shake it.

  “It’s your theory,” Paul pointed out graciously. “You’re the one saying Fitch vanished off the face of the planet, that no one’s mentioned seeing him in three years.”

  “Well, yeah. But that doesn’t mean…”

  “What does it mean?”

  Good question. If no one had seen Fitch since he left Seal Island…

  Finn sat very still, taking it in. Fitch…dead? He realized he was shaking his head, denying it. “I’d…know,” he said. “I’d feel it.”

  “Uh…” Paul’s pale brows were meeting his hairline. “You’d feel it? When did you develop the psychic powers?”

  “We’re tw…twins.” He actually swallowed on the word, a caught breath as the implications sank home. He’d been so angry for so long, it hadn’t ever occurred to him how he’d feel if there was no chance of ever making it up, no chance of ever seeing or talking to Fitch again.

  Paul must have seen something in his face, because he said hastily, “True. True enough. I’ve read plenty of articles on the twin thing. Maybe you would know. And maybe he did split for Australia.”

  That pretty much killed the lunch table conversation.

  * * * * *

  The light station at Seal Island had been established in 1870, but it hadn’t been operational since the 1920s. The eighty-one-foot tower was built of rubble stone and originally painted pristine white. There were two levels to the cast-iron lantern at the top of the tower: a watch room and the actual lantern room above, where once upon a time the whale oil lamp had hung. The small attached keeper’s dwelling was built of creamy white brick. Tattered berry bushes grew along the side of it, and the casement windows had been boarded up. The door wasn’t quite fastened, though, and he’d pushed it open wide…

  It had taken Finn’s eyes a few seconds to adjust to the darkness, to make out the two figures tangled in desperate humping need on the tarp on the floor. Recognizing too late what he was looking at, he stood frozen, and they had looked up, shocked at that blaze of sunlight, both their faces briefly lit as though by a flashbulb.

  Not one of them had said a word.

  Finn had turned and walked out, letting the door swing back on its rusted hinges, letting that broken shriek speak for him. He had not looked back, not faltered or flinched even when Con called out to him. Con had shouted twice…and then…nothing.

  That vast nothingness filled only by the waves and the shrill cries of the sandpipers.

  He had walked until he had run out of beach, and then he had climbed up to the highest point on the island—Ballard’s Rock—and he had sat there motionless and numb while the sun climbed up the sky and then slipped down again. What he most remembered of that time was his amazement that anything could hurt that much and not kill him.

  It never occurred to him that Con might have mistaken Fitch for him—and for that he was grateful. Grateful that he didn’t try to tell himself any comfortable lies, because that’s all it would have been. Con knew them apart, always had. He knew them in bright sunshine and he knew them in the darkness. Funny that it had never occurred to Finn just why that was.

  As for Fitch…Finn didn’t waste his energy trying to understand. He knew he would never in a million years understand. If he thought about Fitch at all, it was to acknowledge that this really shouldn’t come as a surprise. Fitch firmly believed in the old saw about asking forgiveness being easier than asking permission.

  Con had found him as he was making his way down the trail that night. Finn had been moving very carefully down the hillside. Moonlight was not enough to guide him, and he was damned if he was going to break his neck and have every
one think it was over Fitch and Con.

  He was halfway down the rocky slope when Con materialized out of the shadows ahead of him.

  “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” He sounded both angry and weary—and there was another note in his voice that Finn couldn’t quite place. Worry? Fear?

  Finn didn’t know and didn’t care. He had stepped around Con, and Con had tried to put his arm around him. Finn had shoved him off.

  Con had stopped walking. “We have to talk.”

  “There’s nothing to say.” It was the first and only thing he said to Con that night.

  He kept walking, and when Con realized he wasn’t going to stay and chat, he came striding after him.

  “I know you’re hurt. I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry. I wouldn’t hurt you for the world. You know that.”

  Finn had stared straight ahead, calculating how far to the beach, and then how far from there to the road that cut through Bell Woods.

  “It was a mistake. I don’t even know why… It was…stupid. I’m very sorry. Sorry you saw it, sorry it ever happened. I haven’t been with him since you and I— It’s only the one time, and it will never happen again. I swear to you.”

  And Finn had thought about how weird it was that the stars never changed. Even when something like this happened—you would think it would be raining stars—but the world never missed a beat. Ink blue waves washed gently, rhythmically, against the pale sand, and the stars were still and bright and cold.

  “You’re being childish, Finn. It didn’t mean a damn thing. You know it didn’t. You know I… Can’t you stop for one minute and listen to me? This is crazy.” He reached a hand out, but Finn moved his arm away without ever breaking stride, so that it was a ghost touch.

  “Finn. Finneas.”

  Any second now Con was going to call him Huckleberry, and Finn was going to turn around and punch him in the mouth.

  But Con didn’t. He continued to stride beside Finn, watching him, talking to him all the way down the beach, climbing up to the main road, through the woods and all the long walk back to The Birches. It got a little stream of consciousness by the end with Con telling him how he’d looked for Finn all day, how afraid he had been that Finn might do something rash, how every minute he’d regretted what he’d done, what he’d risked—and for what? For nothing. Fitch meant nothing. Finn was all that mattered.

  On and on. Words Finn would have given anything to hear twenty-four hours before, but that now meant nothing. Nothing. Because something had died inside him that morning when he had opened that door.

  When they reached the drive leading to The Birches, Con’s voice was husky with talking so much—he wasn’t used to it. Finn was the one who always did all the talking, although Finn was not by any stretch a chatterbox.

  Con’s footsteps dragged a little as they got closer and closer to the house—reluctant to face Fitch perhaps? Or Thomas. He said huskily, “It’s no use talking to you now, I can see that. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I’m not going to let this destroy what we have together.”

  But he followed Finn right onto the porch. Finn reached the doorstep with a feeling of relief. Sanctuary. He grabbed the handle and slipped inside.

  Behind him, Con had said quietly, steadily, “I love you, Finn.”

  Finn had closed the door.

  Finn watched the shadows of the sea’s reflection moving on the ceiling of his room and let himself remember the things he had refused to consider for three years. He was mildly interested to find that he had been healing during that time, because he could remember without pain.

  Or maybe it had something to do with Con’s apology. Maybe he had needed to hear it as much as Con needed to say it. He believed Con now. He had not believed him at the time; not that Con lied—far from it—just that he thought Con didn’t know what he felt—or was confusing regret at hurting Finn for something more. He knew Con was fond of him, liked him, liked fucking together, but Con had warned him early on to lighten up, to not make too much of it, to not try and turn it into some big romance.

  Really, when he looked at it like that, his own shock and hurt seemed childish—exactly what Con had feared at the start.

  No, the only real surprise should have been that Fitch hadn’t come after him.

  Oh, not immediately. Fitch knew better than that. Fitch knew to give his twin time to cool down. But to not come at all? That was the one surprise of the day. Fitch couldn’t bear it when they quarreled, couldn’t bear to be cut off from Finn—even more than Finn couldn’t bear to be cut off from him. Even that day. Even that day, part of what Finn grieved for was the knowledge that Fitch too was lost to him. Lost forever.

  Because he wasn’t going to be able to forgive him.

  Maybe Fitch sensed that. Maybe that was why he never came.

  Safe to say, he wasn’t fleeing out of remorse or guilt, because Fitch had never experienced such emotions. Embarrassment at getting caught, maybe. At least that was what Finn had thought before, when he had allowed himself to think about it all. Now he had to wonder.

  Suppose something had happened to Fitch when he reached the mainland? Suppose he had been mugged or hit by a bus? But if either of those things had happened, Uncle Tom would have been notified by the authorities. It was barely possible that Fitch had been ashamed of what he’d done and split for parts unknown, but even if Finn could convince himself of such a scenario, he couldn’t believe that Fitch would stay away for three years. It wasn’t in his nature.

  And it was perfectly obvious Fitch had not returned to their old stomping grounds. Even if he’d taken new lodgings, made new friends, hung out at new places…at some point their paths would have crossed.

  So what were the remaining possibilities? Foul play? That was Paul’s theory—an appropriately melodramatic one. And yet…what else was there? Amnesia? Kidnapping? Murder?

  Murder.

  But if someone was going to murder Fitch…wouldn’t it be the people he had spent the summer with? His nearest and dearest? It was too hard to believe he’d caught the eye of a roving homicidal maniac. And if someone on Seal Island had wanted Fitch dead, would they have waited to strike until he left the island?

  Yes. If they wanted to make it look like an accident. But in order to make it look like an accident, Fitch needed to turn up looking accidentally dead—not vanish into thin air.

  Finn studied the row of model ships on his bookcase—collected one by one with loving care through his childhood. It had been rather a long childhood, now that he thought about it. But he wasn’t a child anymore, and it was time to face things.

  Suppose…Fitch hadn’t left the island?

  Chapter Five

  “Screw Frank and Joe,” Paul growled. “I want to be Nancy!”

  Finn gave him a long look, and Paul giggled delightedly.

  “No pun intended.”

  “Would you tone it down?”

  Paul raised his eyebrows. “Maybe it’s something in the water. You seem to be turning straight.”

  “I’m not turning straight. I…this is a small town. It’s not even a town. It’s a…a conservative little backwater.”

  They were sitting in the station wagon in the marina eyeing the harbormaster’s office.

  “That’s their problem,” Paul pointed out. “What does it have to do with us?”

  “Get real, Paul. We’re trying to get information out of people. We need their cooperation. We don’t want to put anyone’s back up.” Paul opened his mouth, and Finn said, “You know what I mean.”

  “Unfortunately, I think I do.” Paul shook his head, his blond hair swinging against his cheek. “Look, Frank, I can’t be anyone but who I am. Deal with it.” He got out of the car, and Finn slowly followed.

  Was he in the wrong here? He wasn’t sure.

  Despite everything, he had slept well again the night before, and he was starting to feel a little more like his old self. His leg wasn’t giving him constant hell, and eve
n his headache had been a no-show nearly twelve hours now.

  They went into the harbormaster’s office, empty on a Wednesday morning, and asked the girl working behind the old walnut desk if there was a way to verify what boats had left for the mainland on the afternoon of August 18, three years previous. They’d got the date from Martha, who had managed to piece together history based on her reminiscences of family disasters—her own and the Barrets’.

  The girl went into a back room. Finn moved to the window and stared out at the wharf and thought about what it would take to capture that dazzle of sunlight on water. If he used a glaze of Ultramarine Blue over both the shore and sea, it would reduce the values… He could paint the ripples into the water using a mix of blues, greens, and Titanium White…then mix the Titanium White with Flake White and a bit of Cadmium Yellow, work it with a bit of Liquin into an impasto paint to catch the glitter of the sun on water. It calmed him to focus on something besides whatever information that girl was going to dig up in her dusty files.

  Paul poked around, making uncomplimentary comments on the décor. Finn glanced around. Paul had a point. Gray walls, nautical charts, and a girly calendar from the year before.

  The girl returned from the back room. “The Sea Auk,” she verified. Her expression was commiserating.

  “Is that a problem?”

  “The Sea Auk sank last year. I don’t think you’re going to have much luck tracking down her captain—he’s in Florida now—let alone her passengers.”

  Paul and Finn exchanged long looks and returned to the station wagon.

  “That’s awfully convenient!” Paul said when they had closed the doors against the stiff, salty wind.

  Finn laughed. “What, you think someone sank The Sea Auk to cover up the fact that Fitch wasn’t onboard three years ago?”

  “If the flipper fits…”