Body Language

by Michael Craft

  I fingered past the first bundle of files, labeled suspicious, fingered past the large middle bundle, inconclusive, then grabbed the last bundle, above suspicion, the group of Vietnam veterans’ dossiers that I had not yet bothered to study. Something told me I had ignored these too long.

  There weren’t many, less than a dozen, so I fanned them out upon my desk so that I could scan the names of the men profiled in them. At once, I recognized a name. Flipping to the last page of the folder, I read why the investigator had concluded that the subject was “above suspicion.” Glancing over the remainder of the files, I recognized another name, then checked inside to see why that subject was also “above suspicion.”

  I paused as a sense of serenity and closure washed over me. Yes, the mystery of Suzanne’s murder had indeed been solved. The case was indeed closed. I needed to make one quick phone call; then I could at last put the tragedies of the last three weeks behind me.

  Gathering the files, I returned them to the box, returned the box to the credenza, and locked the cabinet door. Then I placed that one quick call.

  Half an hour later, around ten in the morning, I sat in the third-floor great room on the leather sofa under the roof’s central peak, mulling the room’s history and the bizarre role it had played in my life. My thoughts were clear and I felt no anxiety, content that a deadly mystery had been solved.

  The house was quiet. Both Neil and Roxanne had returned to Dumont for the weekend, but they were each busy with other matters away from the house. Parker planned to put in a couple of hours’ work at the Register before the funeral. And Hazel was resting up for the afternoon’s ordeal, tucked away in her quarters downstairs behind the kitchen.

  Checking my watch—it was three hours till Joey’s funeral—I rose from the sofa and glanced about the loft. Crossing from the center of the room toward the front wall, I stopped at the banister and peered out through the expansive half-circle of glass. The landscape of the town stretched frozen and white to the horizon, motionless as an old oil painting, save for the trekking of a few cars in the distance, the wisping of smoke from chimneys.

  There near the banister stood the large worktable that had once served as my father’s desk. I had brought some things up from the den with me that morning, and I organized them on the table, making tidy piles—what Neil would call “an artful arrangement.” Squatting to check under the desk, I confirmed that the little wicker wastebasket was empty, newly lined with a fresh plastic bag. Satisfied, I stood again, scrutinizing the desktop. I moved a large magazine, an issue of Wine Spectator, placing it atop a small stack of books.

  Then I heard the sound of a door, followed by footfalls, downstairs in the bedroom hall. “Hazel?” I called down the stairwell. “Is that you?”

  “No, Mark,” answered Parker’s voice, “it’s me.”

  “I thought you went downtown to the office.”

  He came to the landing and looked up the stairs at me. “Just on my way.”

  “As long as you’re still here, can you stay a few minutes? You’ll want to hear this. Come on up.”

  “You’re the boss,” he said, climbing the stairs by twos. Arriving in the great room, he asked, “What’s happening?”

  I crossed to the center of the room, motioning for him to follow. Sitting at the end of the sofa, I gestured for him to take the adjacent armchair. Leaning close—my knee touched his—I looked him in the eye to tell him, “Joey didn’t kill Suzanne.”

  “What?” He flumped back in the chair, spreading his legs. “Mark, Sheriff Pierce said it was open-and-shut. The murder is solved; the killer has taken his own life; it’s over.”

  “No, listen,” I told him, leaning closer, placing my hand on his knee. “This morning I finally got around to checking the last of Suzanne’s dossiers. I hadn’t bothered to study them earlier because they were judged ‘above suspicion.’ I wish to God I’d taken you up on your offer to read them a few days ago.”

  “Wednesday morning,” recalled Parker, “but then Sheriff Pierce arrived.”

  “Right. This morning Hazel mentioned something that made me suddenly curious, so I got back into the files.” I grinned. “Parker, I hit pay dirt. Guess who is not only a Vietnam veteran, but also a survivor of the same ambush that supposedly killed Mark Quatrain.”

  Parker seemed stunned by my words. He didn’t offer a guess.

  I told him, “Allan Addams, the credit guy at Quatro. Joey mentioned him.”

  Parker shook his head, confused. “Addams sounded promising to me, too, but Joey said he couldn’t possibly be his brother.”

  I shrugged. “You know Joey—sometimes his judgment left something to be desired. In any event, Parker, your hunch paid off. Your ‘brother from the grave’ theory was dead-on.” Laughing, I added, “In the future, your views will have considerably more weight with me.”

  Parker leaned forward, smiling. Resting his hand on mine, he told me softly, “My view all along, Mark, has been that you and I belong together. I’m content to play second fiddle, though—this is all I’ve ever wanted, just to be here for you.”

  “And I’m here for you.” With that, I closed the few inches that still separated our faces. Touching my lips to his, I kissed him.

  “Wow.” His reaction was more surprised than impassioned. “Where’d that come from?”

  I patted his face, then sat back on the sofa. Exhaling a sigh, I explained, “My ‘arrangement’ with Neil hasn’t been working very well—not only the back-and-forth weekends (that failure has been mine alone), but also the commitment, the will to make it stick. Our lives are different now. Since moving up here, I’ve felt a million miles from him, even when he’s here.”

  Parker asked me, “Just what are you saying?”

  I rose from the sofa and walked toward the window. From behind his chair, without looking at him, I told him, “I’m saying that this career move has done serious damage to my relationship with Neil. It’s the last thing I wanted to happen, but it happened. I’m also saying that I’m both lucky and grateful that you’ve entered my life, Parker. On Christmas night, when you told me you loved me, I was shocked. I had never thought of you in any context other than that of my managing editor. But I have to be honest with you: From the moment I met you, that Saturday afternoon at the loft in Chicago, I found you incredibly attractive.”

  Turning, I saw that he had risen from his chair and stood listening to me, arms crossed in astonishment. I continued. “The past few weeks have been hell for all of us, but you were there for me the whole time, making good on your word to see me through it. What you didn’t suspect was that, with the passing weeks, I’d grown increasingly frustrated by the feelings I had for you. There were countless times when I just wanted to reach over and touch you, Parker. I’ve had dreams about you. And now that the mess and uncertainty of Suzanne’s murder is finally behind us, I can breathe, I can think straight. And what I think is this: If you’re still interested, I think we could build a future together.”

  “Mark,” he stammered, smiling, crossing a few steps toward me, “this is so… well, unexpected. Of course I want to plan a future with you, but we have to give careful consideration to the logistics.”

  “Logistics?” I took a step toward him. “There’s nothing complicated about it. You have drives, I have drives. As to the where and the when—what’s wrong with right here, right now?”

  “Now?”

  I stepped to him and held both his shoulders. “Why not? Hazel is resting. Otherwise the house is empty. It’s hours till the funeral”—I smirked—“and we only need a few minutes.” I took his hand and led him the few steps to the patch of open floor between the central seating area and the desk near the banister. Then I held him close, resting my head next to his, my crotch next to his. I was highly aroused by the feel of him.

  Sensing this, he laughed. “I guess you have had ideas.”

  I held his head in my hands and kissed him, feeling the scratch of his trim beard on my face. Then
, lowering my hands behind his back, I cupped his ass, feeling its taut muscles through the smooth layer of khaki. Yanking him toward me, I huffed when I heard the clank of our belt buckles. I said into his ear, “Kneel in front of me.”

  Not sure where I was heading with this, he hesitated, but complied.

  Running my fingers through his wavy hair, I pressed his head to my groin. His breath warmed my crotch as I tugged at his curls. Reliving the scene from my dream, I asked, “Do you want me to put my cock in your hair?”

  He looked up at me for a moment. “Not particularly.”

  Winding his hair around my fingers, I pulled harder. There and then, I thought I might come, still zipped.

  “Hey,” he yelped, not at all the reaction he’d had in my dream. But just as in my dream, I found that my fingers were now covered with hair I’d pulled loose.

  “Sorry,” I muttered. “Got carried away.” And I moved to the desk for a moment, whisking my hands clean over the wastebasket. Then I returned to him, kneeling with him, facing him. Pressing my mouth to his again, I tongued him deeply, but found his participation disappointingly passive. So I slid my mouth to his ear, telling him, “Feel my cock.” His hands groped at my pants, confirming that I was fully erect. Panting into his ear, I waited for him to unzip me, but he just kept rubbing. Lowering my own hands to his waist, I fingered his belt buckle, felt his ass once more, then groped his crotch. He was flaccid.

  I pulled back from him, sitting on my heels. With a quizzical look and a tentative smile, I asked, “What’s the matter, Parker? I thought this was all you’ve ever wanted.”

  He also sat back, mirroring my position. With our knees pressed to each other’s, he shook his head, laughing lamely. “Sorry, Mark,” he told me, “but it’s just not in me—I mean, not right now.” Sheepishly, he added, “You see, the house was quiet this morning, and we have been under lots of pressure lately, so I… just jacked off, not thirty minutes ago.” With a self-deprecating smirk, he reminded me, “I’m fifty-one, pal. I’m not as quick as I used to be.”

  Extending my hand, I rested a fingertip on his lips, shushing his apology. “No, Parker,” I told him tenderly, “you’re not hard because you’re not gay.”

  “Mark!” he countered, astounded. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to get it up, but that doesn’t mean…”

  “No, Parker,” I again shushed him, fingers to his lips, “you’re not gay—Glee Savage was right. And you’re not Parker Trent. You’re Mark Quatrain, the brother from the grave.”

  His mouth drooped open. Lowering my hand, I dragged the tip of my middle finger over the edge of his teeth and pulled a strand of spit from his lip.

  Slapping both hands on his legs, he rose to his feet, telling me, “For Christ’s sake, Mark, don’t be nuts. You’re jumping to ridiculous conclusions, libelous conclusions—”

  I stood, interrupting him. “I’m nine years younger than you, Parker. I was nine years younger than Mark Quatrain.”

  He shot back, “There were lots of us born that year, Mark. The baby boom was revving up, in case you forgot.”

  “Mark Quatrain was an honors English major, and you’re a top-notch editor. Mark was a varsity swimmer and track star, and you’re one hell of a runner. Do you still keep up with the swimming, Parker?” Though convinced of his identity, I could not bring myself to address him as Mark—I could not allow the memories of my older cousin to be tainted by what he had become.

  He stepped toward the center of the room and perched on the back of one of the big leather chairs, facing me. In a composed, rational tone, he told me, “Those are mere coincidences. You’re far too good a journalist to draw such weighty conclusions from such slim circumstances.” Mustering a laugh, he added, “As your managing editor, Mark, I have to tell you, I’m disappointed.”

  “Good”—I nodded—“you should be skeptical. You should demand hard evidence.” I strolled toward the front of the room and perched on the banister, facing him. Separated by some twenty feet, I told him, “There’s far more to this than coincidence.”

  “Such as?”

  I shrugged. “Just for starters, I felt that I already knew you from the moment you arrived for your interview at the loft in Chicago. Why? Because you reminded me of my cousin Mark—the way you move, your body language.” I didn’t want to get more specific on this point. Why give him the satisfaction of praising his butt? Why tell him that we were wearing identical pants that morning because he had inspired a lifelong fixation within me thirty-three years earlier? Why tell him about the erotic charge I felt when he mussed my hair the day we ran together, resting at the park pavilion?

  “Body language”—Parker harrumphed—“that’s evidence? You undoubtedly made the association because you were preparing to return to Dumont and your boyhood visit was heavily on your mind. But you raise a good point. If I were really Mark Quatrain, wouldn’t someone here recognize me?”

  “Well,” I acknowledged, “let’s think about that. You’d been gone more than thirty years. Obviously, you’re older now, your hair has thinned, you’ve grown a beard. So the way I figure it, there were only four of us left who stood a chance of recognizing you: myself, Hazel, Suzanne, and Joey.

  “As for myself, I’ve already said that I did recognize you, sort of, at least subconsciously. I even had a dream in which you and Mark Quatrain switched places. It just took a while for the true recognition to bubble to the surface.

  “Hazel wouldn’t be likely to recognize you—she’s half blind. She didn’t recognize me when I arrived in Dumont before Christmas.

  “As for Suzanne, when you ‘met’ her for the first time on Christmas Day, it struck me that you were uncharacteristically reticent about being introduced. You were all bundled up in a muffler, knit cap, and steamy sunglasses, which you took your time removing downstairs in the front hall. When there was no sign of recognition from Suzanne, you breathed easier, but an hour later, she was dead.

  “Then there’s Joey. He often complained that none of us took him seriously, but we should have. He’s the key to all this, isn’t he, Parker? He recognized you, and he said so plainly, but I wasn’t smart enough to take him at his word.”

  Parker threw his hands in the air. “Whoa, Mark. You weren’t making sense before, but now you’re really sounding nuts. Joey? What are you talking about?”

  I stepped a few feet closer, moving from the banister to sit on the edge of the worktable. I began, “From the moment Joey’s body was discovered, his ‘suicide’ troubled me for several reasons:

  “First, I don’t think it’s possible, even for a determined adult, to make good on a child’s threat to die from holding his breath.

  “Second, Joey was staunchly—I daresay childishly—Catholic, believing that suicide is a sin. He mentioned it at lunch one day, and you weren’t there.

  “Third, his generic-sounding suicide note just didn’t make sense. The day before he died, he wanted to make a huge donation to charity—he wasn’t greedy. But he did harbor a lifelong resentment toward Suzanne, and if he had killed her, that would have been his motive, not money, as suggested by the note.

  “Fourth—and this gets to the heart of it—I was troubled by something you said, Parker. In fact, you said it twice. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was wrong, but Joey sure did. A couple of weeks ago, I took Joey and Thad to lunch at the First Avenue Grill. Joey made a scene there, and Thad had to snap him out of it. After lunch, I met you at the Register, mentioned Joey’s snit, and you made a joking reference to ‘his threats about turning blue.’ Then, this last Wednesday night in the dining room, Joey threatened, ‘I’ll do something, and this time I’ll die.’ We all tried to calm him down, and you told him, ‘No more threats about turning blue.’ The point is: Parker Trent never heard Joey talk about turning blue, but Mark Quatrain did, many times, as a child. Realizing this, Joey recoiled from the dining-room table, pointing toward the fireplace, shouting, ‘It was you all along, Mark. You killed Suzie.’ I was stan
ding at the fireplace with a king-thing, and you were right there next to me on the hearth. Joey wasn’t talking to me, Parker; he was unmasking you. You knew it. You knew you had to act. And you acted fast.”

  Listening to all this, Parker was no longer taking my accusations so glibly. Pacing behind the sofa, he asked, “And then what did I supposedly do?” His tone now had a distinctly testy edge.

  I remained seated on the edge of the desk, idly swinging one foot as I explained, “You took Joey upstairs to his bedroom on the pretext of calming him down. You’d already made up your mind to stage his ‘suicide’ at some point, bringing the investigation to an end and taking the focus off the ‘brother from the grave’ theory that you yourself had promoted—very clever, by the way, very bold of you. So you had prepared a generic suicide note on Joey’s old typewriter, making the wrong guess as to his most logical motive. You knew where the machine was, and you had access to it anytime since Christmas. What you didn’t know was that Hazel threw the typewriter out with a load of junk on Wednesday afternoon, hours before Joey could have used it to write his note. So you took him upstairs that night, and you could’ve gotten him to sign the note on some pretext, and then you could’ve suffocated him, and then you could’ve placed the note in his hands.”

  “‘Could’ve, could’ve’.” He stepped to within six feet of me. “That’s still a hell of a lot of speculation, Mark. Besides”—he smiled with a sense of relief as something dawned on him—“what about Allan Addams? Only minutes ago, you told me Suzanne had a dossier on him.”

  Nodding, I reminded him, “Yes, Allan Addams was a survivor of the ambush that supposedly killed Mark Quatrain, but Suzanne’s investigator deemed Addams to be ‘above suspicion’ as an alias for Mark Quatrain.”

  “It all fits, though,” Parker insisted. “He came to Quatro shortly after Edwin’s death. He asked Joey about the family all the time…”

  “Allan Addams is black,” I told him. “The investigator, like Joey, easily concluded that Addams never had a former life as Mark Quatrain.”