by John Inman
“Nothing new there,” Mrs. Jupp snapped back. “And before you say it, no, I don’t think that poor dead couple downstairs are the ones who hired us.”
“Oh,” Mr. Jupp managed to say, making it clear that was exactly what he’d been thinking. Too cowed to argue about it, he redirected his attention to fussing around with the ice bag on his wife’s head.
Pitying them both, although in truth pitying Mr. Jupp a little more than his wife, Derek turned his attention back to Jamie. The drink seemed to be helping. Half of it was gone, and Jamie’s eyes didn’t appear quite so shell-shocked. He had some color in his cheeks again.
Standing close, Derek sipped at his own drink and stared down into the fire. The heat felt good on his legs. Thinking on it, Derek decided Mrs. Jupp was right. The dead couple in the basement probably weren’t their hosts at all. Which begged the question—why were they killed? And by whom?
And more importantly, what did it have to do with him and Jamie and the other people invited here? How was it all connected?
A shudder coursed through him. He raised his drink to his lips and took a deep swallow to calm himself down. While the wheels in Derek’s head began to grind into action, working to figure it all out, it was Jamie who managed it first.
“You don’t suppose those two old people were killed just so the house could be used to lure us all together into one place, do you? This is their house, don’t you think? They were the ones who lived here, right? The dead couple?”
Derek stared into the fire. “I would imagine so, yes.” He turned to Mr. Jupp, still sitting with his wife across the room. “When did the two of you arrive?”
“Yesterday afternoon,” Mr. Jupp answered. “We drove down from Oceanside.”
“And the storm hit this morning,” Derek mused.
“Yes.”
“And without the storm, you would probably have never checked out the basement at all. Right?”
Mr. Jupp considered that. “Well, yes. There would have been no point. Like I told you earlier, I went down there to see if there was a gas generator around in case the power went out.”
“And did you find one?” Derek asked.
“No.”
Jamie shuffled his feet beside him. “Great. Now if the lights go out we’ll be stuck in the dark with a killer.”
Derek studied his face. “You think the killer is still here?”
Jamie let his eyelids droop to half-mast. Sarcasm was one of Jamie’s talents. “Good grief, Derek. I think the killer is in this very room. Don’t you?”
That snagged everyone’s attention. Every soul in the room within earshot swiveled their head around to stare at Jamie. More than one of them gave the impression they thought Jamie was being a drama queen. On the other hand, more than one of them also seemed to think Jamie was probably right.
“No need to gawp,” Jamie said, straightening his posture and squaring his shoulders as if prepping for an argument, focusing his attention on the doubting faces first. “Where else do you think the killer is? If he’s roaming around the house on the sly, I think we would have heard him by now. I haven’t walked across a floorboard yet that didn’t squeak.”
“You’re not as dumb as you look,” Derek said, eyeing him proudly.
Jamie gave a nod, accepting the praise as if he knew he deserved it. “Thanks.”
“Now wait a minute!” Banyon barked, but then his outrage seemed to peter out as quickly as it had come. A look of confusion crossed his face, like maybe he couldn’t think of an argument against Jamie’s theory after all.
Derek eyeballed everyone in the room, his gaze sliding from one face to another. He wondered if one of them really was the murderer. His gaze fell for the umpteenth time on the squares of unfaded wallpaper where several pictures had been removed from the house. He had already seen the same clues in the hallway and on the staircase. He didn’t doubt for a minute that if he searched the house he would discover others.
There had to be a reason for it. It had to be a clue.
For lack of a better plan, he decided to ask. He pointed to the closest spot on the wall where the wallpaper had been protected until recently. “Why were certain pictures removed from the walls? Anybody know?” Every face turned to the place where he was pointing. He could tell no one had really noticed the anomaly before and were slightly taken aback by the implications of it. Well, that didn’t take long. If anyone was being insincere in their surprise, it didn’t show. But then, he supposed he hadn’t expected it to be that easy to weed out the killer.
Jamie stared at the unfaded squares on the walls as well. It didn’t take him long to figure it out. “The killer must be in those pictures. He must be hiding his own identity.” Jamie’s eyes narrowed, and he scrolled warily from one face to the next. “Or her identity,” he added.
Derek took Jamie’s theory a step further. “And if the killer is in those pictures, it means he was close to the old couple in the basement. A family member, more than likely. Why else would he—or she—have to remove so many pictures from the house in a bid to protect his identity?”
Cleeta-Gayle took belated umbrage at Jamie’s, and now Derek’s, suggestion. “That’s ridiculous! If you think a woman killed that poor old couple, then you must think either myself or Mrs. Jupp are the prime suspects, since we’re the only two women here. How can you even imagine such a thing?”
Jamie took umbrage in return, bristling like a bantam rooster. “Well, somebody had to do it! And anybody can swing a shovel!”
From over by the sideboard, Tommy Stevens poked a cookie in his mouth and laughed. “So the lions are eating each other now. I suppose it had to happen sooner or later.” He appeared vastly amused. Derek suspected a quick poll would have shown Tommy was the only one who found humor in the situation.
Mrs. Jupp at long last yanked the towel-wrapped ice cubes from her husband’s hand, rose to her feet, and tossed it into the fire. She stared at the fresh square of wallpaper directly over the mantle. With her back still to the room, she said, “We have to get out of here. I read once where you can call 911 on a cell phone that isn’t even hooked up. Someone try their phone again. My husband and I can’t seem to find ours.”
“Mine’s upstairs,” Derek said.
“Mine too,” Jamie said. “I’ll go get them both.” He immediately left the room. Banyon slapped his jacket pocket, looked vaguely startled, and announced, “I was sure I had it with me. Maybe mine’s in our room as well. Tommy, you want to go check?”
Tommy gave a reluctant grunt, then walked toward the stairs. Behind him, Banyon explained, “Tommy doesn’t have a phone. By the way, even if the phone isn’t hooked up, you’ll still need a signal to reach 911, and a signal is the one thing we don’t have. Still, we might as well try.”
All eyes turned to Cleeta-Gayle. She met their looks with an almost guilty expression. Acting like she was doing them all a massive favor, she dipped into her sweater pocket and removed a cell phone. Even from across the room, Derek could see that the face of the phone was shattered.
“It’s broken,” she said. “I left it on my dresser after arriving. When I went back for it later after I decided to leave, I found it on the floor. The fall cracked the screen, and now it won’t turn on. I’ll have to buy a new one when I get home.”
At that moment Jamie and Tommy Stevens both rushed through the parlor door. They stood side by side with startled expressions on their faces. “Our phones have both been stolen. They’re gone.”
Derek took a single step toward Jamie. “Even mine?” he asked.
Jamie stared back through troubled eyes. “Yes, baby. Even yours.”
A flash of lightning strobed the room. Thunder cracked like a bullwhip over their heads and everybody jumped.
Cleeta-Gayle stared through her chemically fried bangs at the shattered cell phone in her hand. She didn’t look happy.
Chapter Five
JAMIE WOKE up in one of those moments of total disorientation and panic,
not knowing where he was or what he was doing there. The accidental brush of his hand across the familiar velvet skin of Derek’s forearm brought everything back.
It was the middle of the night. Dawn was nowhere near. The house stood silent. It hovered over him like a crusty old vulture waiting for Jamie to take his last breath so it could swoop down and start pecking him to pieces.
Cheery thought.
Jamie stretched and quietly yawned. He and Derek had gone to bed early, exhausted from everything that had happened since they’d arrived. They had undressed and showered together, then tucked themselves into bed. Derek had fallen instantly asleep in Jamie’s arms, and Jamie had followed soon after.
It was the first time since their affair began that they had lain down together and not made love.
Now that he was awake, and with a host of unfamiliar shadows looming up around him, not to mention his macabre imagination going a mile a minute, Jamie’s mind began to roam. Derek’s presence beside him brought to mind a night long ago. He and Derek were in their freshman year of high school. Derek was sleeping over. Jamie had found a straight porno magazine in his brother’s room, hidden deep in a closet. Brothers being what they are, he pilfered it without a twinge of guilt. He and Derek were naked and flat on their backs side by side in Jamie’s bed, beating off while Derek slowly turned the pages for them both with his free hand.
But for the brush of a furry leg down below and the occasional bump of an elbow, the two did not touch each other. Still, Jamie remembered every erotic moment of that night. He remembered them lazily stroking their young cocks and giggling, and he remembered when the giggling stopped and the touch of their hands on their own bodies had turned more heated, more unstoppable. He remembered their breaths quickening, their hearts pounding. He also remembered it was the sight of Derek arching his back as his juices exploded from his body that made Jamie erupt as well. Derek in orgasm, he remembered thinking later, and still thought to this very day, was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life.
The memory of it now made Jamie’s cock lengthen under the covers. He eased closer to Derek and laid his lips to that velvet-soft arm. Not to disturb, but to carefully touch and breathe in a little of Derek’s heavenly heat, while at the same time letting him sleep.
But Derek was already awake. At the first touch of Jamie’s lips on his skin, he rolled over and gathered Jamie in those strong, sexy arms. With a hand at the back of Jamie’s head, Derek pulled Jamie against his chest. The hair there tickled Jamie’s nose and made his cock grow even harder.
“You’re as squeezable as a roll of toilet paper,” Derek crooned, his voice grumbly from sleep.
Jamie stared up into his face in the darkness. “Is that supposed to be romantic?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it needs a little work.”
Derek snuggled closer, pulling Jamie’s face back to his chest. He didn’t sound apologetic at all when he said, “Sorry.”
Jamie relished everything about being in Derek’s sleep-warm embrace. Derek’s leg hair bristling against his own. Their toes twining around each other down at the foot of the bed. The way Derek’s broad hand rested on the rise of Jamie’s ass, his index finger burrowing comfortably and unobtrusively into the warm valley of flesh he discovered there.
“Listen,” Derek breathed.
Jamie’s lips brushed Derek’s nipple as he whispered back. “Listen to what?”
“The rain.”
“I don’t hear it.”
“Exactly.”
Jamie lifted his head and truly listened. Derek was right. The storm had stopped. It was the first time nature had been silent since they entered this old house, and the quiet seemed somehow unnatural. Wrong. This house was built for thunder and lightning and lashing rain—sound effects, gliding ghosts, the wail of banshees somewhere off in the shadows. Peace and quiet didn’t suit the place at all.
“What are we doing here with all these old people,” Jamie asked, lowering his mouth back to the welcoming forest of hair on Derek’s chest. He burrowed deep so he could breathe in Derek’s delicious scent. In Derek’s arms was his favorite place to be, for only there could he hear the gentle rumble of Derek’s waking heart drumming softly against his cheek.
Derek’s lips brushed through his hair. “Oliver ‘the Hunk’ Banyon and his leather sidekick, little Tommy Stevens, aren’t so old. In fact, Tommy’s younger than we are.”
Jamie didn’t have an answer for that, so he let it slide. He had other questions rampaging through his head at the moment anyway. Questions of a little more importance.
“There is no host, is there? No one is coming, even if they could get here.”
“No,” Derek said. “I don’t believe there is. I think whoever was meant to be here has already arrived.”
“So whoever killed the old couple in the basement is here too. It’s one of our fellow guests.”
“I think so. Yes.”
“And the invitations were just a ruse to get us all here together so he can kill us too.”
Derek’s lungs went silent as his breath stopped. He lay motionless, still clutching Jamie close. Jamie could imagine Derek trying to decide whether to make a joke or not. In the end, Derek said, “We don’t know that for sure.”
For Jamie, it was like picking at a scab. He couldn’t let it go. “But we don’t not know it either.”
“No, I suppose we don’t.”
Jamie wormed deeper into Derek’s arms. “So any way you look at it, we’re in a spot of trouble here.”
While Jamie’s words clearly did not comfort either one of them, the nearness of their bodies did. Derek breathed a heavy sigh as he dragged a lingering kiss over Jamie’s forehead. The nestling finger down below came, as if by accident, to rest on Jamie’s heated opening, sending a tremor of lust coursing through him.
Derek’s long cock lay pressed against Jamie’s thigh, even while Jamie’s own erection pulsed atop the thatch of crisp dark hair covering Derek’s belly. Derek’s voice was huskier now, and probably not from sleep. He offered Jamie his best Jack Webb impersonation, even while his mouth worked its way downward to slurp at Jamie’s throat, which always appeared to be one of his favorite places to be.
“Those would appear to be the facts, ma’am, yes. A spot of trouble indeed.”
A growl erupted deep in Jamie’s throat, below Derek’s kisses, as another shudder of desire rattled through him from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. It took him a minute to find his voice. “There are corpses in the basement and a murderer running loose. How weird is it for me to want you inside me right now?”
“Well, it probably isn’t normal.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Not for me,” Derek growled sexily as he eased Jamie onto his stomach and burrowed down beneath the covers. When his warm searching mouth found Jamie’s On button and triggered it with a flick of his tongue, the conversation abruptly ended.
Other pursuits began.
DAWN HAD barely chased the shadows from the house when Jamie and Derek stepped through their bedroom door. Treading softly, they headed toward the staircase leading down to the first floor. Derek’s head was thumping from too much scotch and too much excitement, but he didn’t let that slow him down. Besides, the time he had spent in Jamie’s arms in the middle of the night had calmed him. Making love to Jamie always did. Remembering, he reached out and clutched Jamie’s hand as they descended the stairs.
They passed the dining room, which was situated across the hall from the parlor where they had met everyone the night before. A large dining table had been set for breakfast.
Derek raised his hand in silent greeting to Mrs. Jupp, who was fussing with a coffee urn and a tray of cups and saucers. Mrs. Jupp glanced his way but made no response. Without speaking she went back to what she was doing, her back as stiff as always. She was obviously not in a social mood. Derek wondered if the dead people in the basement had something to do with that,
or if Mrs. Jupp was always a pain in the ass in the morning.
Hearing a clatter, Derek peeked deeper around the doorway and spotted Mr. Jupp arranging logs in the fireplace. Mr. Jupp looked inquisitive for a moment, as if he thought Derek and Jamie were about to ask for something. When they didn’t, he simply said, “Good morning, sirs. Breakfast will be ready soon.”
“Thank you,” Derek said and immediately pulled Jamie toward the front door.
They stepped outside and stood on the broad wraparound porch, staring out on a dripping gray morning. The air was cool, the grounds beyond the porch’s sodden planks a vast field of mud. Tree branches were scattered all over from last night’s wind, and the mottled sky was still packed tight with rain clouds. Derek’s original conclusion that the storm must be over took a major hit. Eyeing those black-and-gray thunderheads roiling overhead, he suspected they were experiencing more of a lull in the storm than an end to it. A far-off bark of thunder reaffirmed his suspicions.
“It’s not over, is it?” Jamie asked, craning his neck back to scan the sky and looking none too happy about what he was seeing.
“Afraid not, kemo sabe.”
“Well, poop.”
Side by side, they stared out at the dripping trees. Over by the tree line where the cars were parked, the gleam of rain-washed chrome sparkled amid the gloom. Derek could hear the plunk, plunk, plunk of raindrops slipping from the branches and hitting the roofs of the cars. Somewhere among the trees, an owl hooted softly. Or was it a dove? He was never sure.
He glanced at Jamie, and Jamie glanced back.
Derek smiled. The lower half of Jamie’s face had been rubbed red from Derek’s five-o’clock shadow when they made love. Jamie’s lips were still puffy and tender from other endeavors, but he gamely offered a smile in return.
“I know,” Jamie grinned, rubbing his shiny pink chin. “Rug burn.” His eyes softened as he reached out and stroked Derek’s cheek, which was now smoothly shaven.
“Thank you for last night,” Derek softly growled.