by Greg Herren
“But Amanda was so jealous, she took one of the bats and killed Chloe.”
“At first, I was concerned, but it really wasn’t that big a deal. It actually helped.” He smirked. “It confused everyone. And I realized if the police thought the show was being targeted, that would muddle everything up even more. So, we went on with our plan.” He pointed the gun at me. “But you had to go get smart and figure out who Sloan was.”
“You were there.”
I turned. Taylor was standing there in the hallway, staring at Brandon, pointing at him. He was wearing his Tulane sweat outfit and his face was white, drained of color. “You were there,” he said again, stepping into the big room, his voice shaking but his finger steady. “The night Eric was killed. I was in the bedroom, feeling woozy, and I heard voices. I got up and walked to the door and saw you. You hit him. With a baseball bat. You killed him.”
“Aw, now, Taylor, why’d you have to go and say that?” Brandon turned the gun toward him. “Now I’m going to have to kill both of you.”
“Taylor, get out of here,” I said, wincing as I stood up. The gun turned back toward me.
“You move so much as a muscle,” Brandon said, “and I’ll shoot your uncle.”
I’ve never hated anyone so much in my entire life.
I could feel it building inside me.
And before I knew what I was doing, I launched myself at Brandon while screaming at the top of my lungs. I felt the stitches in my side tear again and the pain, oh God, the pain, but Brandon didn’t know what to do, how to react—maybe the Goddess was looking out for me, I don’t know, but I hit him with my full body weight, driving him backward into the wingback chair, which flipped over. The gun went off and my ears, oh my ears hurt and my eyes watered and I could smell powder and he was hitting me, but I kept my head down and wrapped my arms around him and scissored his legs with mine.
I might not have wrestled in over twenty years, but I still had my instincts.
I shoved a hand into his Adam’s apple and he wheezed, gasping for breath.
“Don’t move,” a voice said from behind us.
Wincing in agony, I rolled off Brandon to see Frank, looking hot as ever in just a pair of black underwear, pointing his gun at Brandon. “The cops are on their way,” he said grimly. “Taylor, get an extension cord to tie him up with.”
I stood up, wincing, feeling the hot blood running down my side. “You might,” I said as I sank down onto the sofa, “want to call an ambulance, too.”
Epilogue
My grandparents’ house was ablaze with light as the Lyft driver pulled up to the front gate.
One of my favorite Christmas traditions was our annual reveillon feast after midnight mass on Christmas Eve. Reveillon meals were an old New Orleans tradition; you were supposed to fast all day before the midnight Christmas mass, and then afterward a late night feast.
Granted, you probably shouldn’t eat so late at night before going to bed, but tradition is tradition.
Every year after attending a midnight mass the family headed over to Papa Diderot’s in the Garden District for reveillon. Most of the family went to a different service uptown—Mom and Dad skip it entirely and just go straight to Papa and Maman’s—but I always liked going to St. Louis Cathedral. Sure, it was always crowded and hot, but there was something about the ritual performed in the majesty of the beautiful old cathedral that touched my heart in ways Catholicism usually didn’t.
And really, you can’t beat the Catholics when it comes to mystic rituals.
The weather had warmed up some but was still colder than I prefer.
We hadn’t heard anything more from Colin. The Ninjas were still out there, listening and trying to find out what they could about both Colin and Blackledge, but there was never anything other than radio silence to report back to us. And the more time passed without any word from Colin, the more worrying it was.
All we could do was go on with our lives, hope for the best, and wait.
The Ninjas had also designed and overseen the installation of a top-of-the-line security system for the house. Whether it made us safer, I don’t know, but I certainly felt safer and had started sleeping better.
The bullet wound was almost completely healed, and I was barely aware of it anymore. I was going to have a lovely scar, though. When I was younger I would have been upset about it, but now…
Frank’s scar certainly made him look sexier. Granted, mine was a round hole in the front and back of my left love handle…and I’d already vowed to make the love handles go away in the new year if it killed me.
Venus and Blaine were still sorting out the mess from all the murders. There still was no word from Diva whether they were going to air the season or not, and the hubbub was finally starting to die down on the gossip sites and in the tabloids. Amanda was locked up in a mental hospital and had already been declared unfit to stand trial; I’m sure Lautenschlaeger cash had gone a long way to greasing that particular wheel.
Neither Brandon nor Sloane were talking, but the way Venus and Blaine had explained it to us went something like this:
Sloane had always wanted to avenge her sister’s murder and punish everyone who had any hand in either her death or the resulting cover-up: Amanda, her mother, Billy, Fidelis, and Megan. She knew Amanda was unstable and Margery’s money would always bail her out of trouble. For many years her revenge fantasies were just that—fantasies. Her big break came when she got the job with Diva, and shortly after she started, the casting for the New Orleans franchise started.
Brandon’s relationship with Eric had been deteriorating for years, and he also knew Sloane’s back story; knowing she was originally from New Orleans and had changed her name was why he had originally moved her from the Manhattan franchise to the New Orleans one. When she started recommending cast members, he dug a little deeper into her past…and he was smart enough to figure out that Sloane was up to something; why else would she be casting people involved in her sister’s homicide?
We may never know if Brandon and Sloane were actually working together or if he had just seen an opportunity to get rid of Eric once and for all, and took it. He was a good improviser, and there’d been enough filming at the Barron place on the North Shore for him to have access to one of Billy’s old bats. We can also assume he knew that the security system at the Aquitaine was down…we may never know if Brandon planned to kill Eric that night or if Eric’s interest in Taylor that night was what pushed him over the edge. But the cops found Rohypnol in his hotel room when they searched it; it’s entirely possible that Brandon was the one who drugged Taylor rather than Eric. Why? Again, we may never know.
My theory is that he’d taken the bat he used from the Barron house just in case. Eric’s interest in Taylor the night of the premiere pushed him over the edge. I think he drugged Taylor, not just to ruin Eric’s chances with his twink du jour but to possibly even frame him for an assault or rape charge. Something happened to make him snap, and Brandon retrieved the bat and killed him with Taylor there in the suite.
And when both Chloe and Fidelis turned up dead the same night—with a similar murder weapon—well, the three murders were so entangled that the cops might not ever sort out the mess.
I also think Amanda killed Chloe; the bat in the trunk of her car was bloodstained and Chloe’s DNA was on it.
Sloane killed Fidelis that same night. No one even suspected her, and the other two murders that night must have also made her feel pretty safe. What were the odds the cops would do a deep dive on her and find out she was Deborah Holt’s sister? She must have felt pretty confident when she’d gone over to Megan’s that day to kill her. She wasn’t even being looked at as a suspect.
We were the last to arrive at Maman and Papa’s. Everyone was already gathered in the massive living room, eating.
The enormous tree was lit up, and the entire room was decorated to within an inch of its life. Taylor made a beeline for the food table as I took our coats and h
ung them in the vestibule. Ice was tinkling in glasses, knives and forks were scraping on fine china as I joined Frank at the food table. We loaded up our plates and found seats at the dining room table.
I looked across the table at Taylor. The dark circles under his eyes were fading, and his color had come back. He’d blown through his finals easily, or so he claimed, and he was seeing a therapist twice a week. He was still sleeping in the spare room on our floor, but he was also sleeping through the night again.
He’s going to be fine. It’s just going to take some time.
His mother had filed for divorce and was looking for her own place. As we’d figured, neither his father nor the ex-gay minister reported anything to the police. We’d not heard from either since. Taylor and his mother were taking things slow, but she wanted to live in New Orleans to be close to him. I didn’t like it but was biting my tongue and keeping a close eye on her.
She needs to earn my trust—and it’s going to take a good long while.
Frank placed his hand on my leg as Papa Diderot launched into a story about Mom when she was a little girl. We’d all heard the story a million times, but it was one he loved to tell, so we always pretended to listen. I smiled at Frank and looked at the head of the table where my grandfather was gesticulating madly while he imitated my mother at age eleven. Maman was sitting next to him, her eyes adoringly on him. I looked around the table.
I was blessed, always had been.
I put my hand on Frank’s and leaned in to whisper, “I wish Colin was here.”
“Me, too.”
We had never talked about the Colin situation. Maybe it was avoidance, I don’t know. But I loved him still, and knew Frank did, too. Whenever one of us brought up the subject, the other dismissed it. We couldn’t keep putting it off forever, but as more time passed it didn’t quite seem so pressing.
Venus and Blaine never found the driver of the car that hit me. It made me nervous he was still out there...but it had something to do with Colin. I know it did.
I also knew more than I was letting Frank know…which was cowardly. I had already made up my mind to talk to him after the holidays. We seem to have tacitly agreed to table the Colin situation until the new year.
I closed my eyes.
It was the security cameras, you see, at the corner bar. We now had our own security cameras, thanks to the Ninjas, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how Bestuzhev had gotten into our apartment and waited for Colin. I couldn’t stop thinking about how Frank had bribed someone at the bar to get the recording of the afternoon Taylor’s dad had kidnapped him right off the street.
So, one day while Taylor was taking finals and Frank was out Christmas shopping, I walked down there and talked to the manager.
Their system recorded digital files and uploaded them to the cloud, with dates and times.
Getting the computer file for the night Bestuzhev was murdered in our apartment cost me a couple of hundred bucks.
A couple of hundred dollars to find out Colin had lied to me, to us.
Again.
At a few minutes past eleven, Colin had come around the corner from Barracks Street, arm in arm, laughing, with Bestuzhev. He used his key and let them both into the front gate.
He’d lied to me. He hadn’t come home and been surprised by Bestuzhev in our apartment.
He brought him there. Probably to kill him.
There was no way I was showing Frank that recording before Christmas.
My phone vibrated in my shirt pocket and I could hear Frank’s doing the same. I pulled my phone out and there was a text message across the screen:
Merry Xmas, love you, hope to be home soon.—C
Frank and I looked at each other and smiled. Both of us had tears in our eyes.
“He’s alive,” Frank whispered to me.
I wiped at my eyes, hoping no one had noticed.
I had so many questions for Colin…and maybe I wouldn’t like some of the answers.
Life doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle, after all—it’s how you handle it that matters.
I looked around at my family again, from my parents to my grandparents to my siblings to their spouses to my uncles.
So incredibly blessed, I thought again.
He’s coming home.
About the Author
Greg Herren is a New Orleans–based author and editor. He is a co-founder of the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival, which takes place in New Orleans every spring. He is the author of thirty-three novels, including the Lambda Literary Award–winning Murder in the Rue Chartres, called by the New Orleans Times-Picayune “the most honest depiction of life in post-Katrina New Orleans published thus far.” He co-edited Love, Bourbon Street: Reflections on New Orleans, which also won the Lambda Literary Award. His young adult novel Sleeping Angel won the Moonbeam Gold Medal for Excellence in Young Adult Mystery/Horror, and Lake Thirteen won the silver. He co-edited Night Shadows: Queer Horror, which was shortlisted for the Shirley Jackson Award. He also won the Anthony Award for his anthology Blood on the Bayou.
He has published over fifty short stories in markets as varied as Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine to the critically acclaimed anthology New Orleans Noir to various websites, literary magazines, and anthologies. His erotica anthology FRATSEX is the all-time best selling title for Insightout Books. He has worked as an editor for Bella Books, Harrington Park Press, and now Bold Strokes Books. His short stories have been nominated for both Anthony and Macavity Awards.
A longtime resident of New Orleans, Greg was a fitness columnist and book reviewer for Window Media for over four years, publishing in the LGBT newspapers IMPACT News, Southern Voice, and Houston Voice. He served a term on the Board of Directors for the National Stonewall Democrats and served on the founding committee of the Louisiana Stonewall Democrats. He is currently employed as a public health researcher for the NO/AIDS Task Force and served four years on the board of directors for the Mystery Writers of America.
Books Available From Bold Strokes Books
Royal Street Reveillon by Greg Herren. In this Scotty Bradley mystery, someone is killing the stars of a reality show, and it’s up to Scotty Bradley and the boys to find out who. (978-1-63555-545-5)
Death Takes a Bow by David S. Pederson. Alan Keys takes part in a local stage production, but when the leading man is murdered, his partner Detective Heath Barrington is thrust into the limelight to find the killer. (978-1-63555-472-4)
Accidental Prophet by Bud Gundy. Days after his grandmother dies, Drew Morten learns his true identity and finds himself racing against time to save civilization from the apocalypse. (978-1-63555-452-6)
In Case You Forgot by Fredrick Smith and Chaz Lamar. Zaire and Kenny, two newly single, Black, queer, and socially aware men, start again—in love, career, and life—in the West Hollywood neighborhood of LA. (978-1-63555-493-9)
Counting for Thunder by Phillip Irwin Cooper. A struggling actor returns to the Deep South to manage a family crisis but finds love and ultimately his own voice as his mother is regaining hers for possibly the last time. (978-1-63555-450-2)
Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories by Greg Herren. Award-winning author Greg Herren’s short stories are finally pulled together into a single collection, including the Macavity Award–nominated title story and the first-ever Chanse MacLeod short story. (978-1-63555-413-7)
Saints + Sinners Anthology 2019, edited by Tracy Cunningham and Paul Willis. An anthology of short fiction featuring the finalist selections from the 2019 Saints + Sinners Literary Festival. (978-1-63555-447-2)
The Shape of the Earth by Gary Garth McCann. After appearing in Best Gay Love Stories, HarringtonGMFQ, Q Review, and Off the Rocks, Lenny and his partner Dave return in a hotbed of manhood and jealousy. (978-1-63555-391-8)
Exit Plans for Teenage Freaks by ’Nathan Burgoine. Cole always has a plan—especially for escaping his small-town reputation as “that kid who was kidnapped when he was four”—but when he teleports to
a museum, it’s time to face facts: it’s possible he’s a total freak after all. (978-1-163555-098-6)
Death Checks In by David S. Pederson. Despite Heath’s promises to Alan to not get involved, Heath can’t resist investigating a shopkeeper’s murder in Chicago, which dashes their plans for a romantic weekend getaway. (978-1-163555-329-1)
Of Echoes Born by ’Nathan Burgoine. A collection of queer fantasy short stories set in Canada from Lambda Literary Award finalist ’Nathan Burgoine. (978-1-63555-096-2)
The Lurid Sea by Tom Cardamone. Cursed to spend eternity on his knees, Nerites is having the time of his life. (978-1-62639-911-2)
Sinister Justice by Steve Pickens. When a vigilante targets citizens of Jake Finnigan’s hometown, Jake and his partner Sam fall under suspicion themselves as they investigate the murders. (978-1-63555-094-8)
Club Arcana: Operation Janus by Jon Wilson. Wizards, demons, Elder Gods: Who knew the universe was so crowded, and that they’d all be out to get Angus McAslan? (978-1-62639-969-3)
Triad Soul by ’Nathan Burgoine. Luc, Anders, and Curtis—vampire, demon, and wizard—must use their powers of blood, soul, and magic to defeat a murderer determined to turn their city into a battlefield. (978-1-62639-863-4)
Gatecrasher by Stephen Graham King. Aided by a high-tech thief, the Maverick Heart crew race against time to prevent a cadre of savage corporate mercenaries from seizing control of a revolutionary wormhole technology. (978-1-62639-936-5)
Wicked Frat Boy Ways by Todd Gregory. Beta Kappa brothers Brandon Benson and Phil Connor play an increasingly dangerous game of love, seduction, and emotional manipulation. (978-1-62639-671-5)