I couldn’t deny that he was good looking. At just over six feet, his body was trim and elegantly muscled. His eyes were dark, his hair was professionally highlighted, he had an eagle tattooed onto one shoulder. He was famous in the neighborhood for his yearly Pride Party. On Pride weekend, he borrowed a thirty foot long RV and parked it out in the alley. He filled his backyard with as many delectable young things as possible, passed out gallons of liquor, presumably a similar amount of sex enhancing drugs (though in the three times I went to the party, I never actually saw any) and then waited until it was very late to lure as many stragglers as he could into the RV for a sort of impromptu sex club.
When he opened the door, he wore a pair of cargo shorts and nothing else. The yellow dog, whose name was something like Esmeralda, barked behind him. “Well, hello. Aren’t we the social butterfly?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I happened to notice you coming out of Mrs. Enders house last night. Drinking away our troubles?”
“I’m checking with the neighbors to see what they saw the other night, when my friend died,” I explained.
“Really. And what did the old drunk see? Not much I imagine. At least not much she could remember, right?” Simon and Mrs. Enders had a long-standing feud. Jeremy told me what it was about one time, but I’d forgotten.
“I’m afraid she wasn’t much help.”
He laughed as though I’d told a joke, then stood back from the door. “Come on in, sweetheart.” He led the yellow dog out to sliding glass doors and eased her onto the patio. After he came back into his living room, he perched on a dramatic but uncomfortable looking leather chair. I hovered behind the sofa.
“So, did you happen to notice when I came home?” I asked, still fishing for some kind of alibi.
“No. I actually went out around seven. Happy Hour at Wrath.”
“Good. At seven, did you see my car in the driveway, or any indication that I was at home?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t remember,” he said. “Is that important?”
“Can you tell me anything you did see, between about five thirty and the time you left… even if seems completely normal.”
“How’s that horrible ex of yours?” Simon asked sociably.
“He’s fine.”
“I can’t stand guys like that. All charm and no substance.” He paused dramatically. “Not that I have either, but at least I know it. I don’t try to pass myself off as more than I am.”
“Did you see anything, Simon?”
“I might have seen something,” he said, in a teasing voice.
“But you’re not going to tell me?”
“I might tell you, if you were a little friendlier. Why don’t you come sit down?”
I came around the sofa and sat down. He moved over and sat next to me. “Now, that’s better. Isn’t it? Cozier.” Actually, the sofa was nearly as uncomfortable as the leather chair looked.
Simon slipped a hand high onto my thigh. “When you and Jeremiah broke up, I thought for sure you’d come by to visit me. At least once.”
“It’s Jeremy, not Jeremiah.”
“Was he good in bed? To me, he always seemed the type to get what he wanted through sex. Is he one of those voracious bottoms who gets everything by throwing their legs in the air?”
“Mrs. Enders saw Jeremy and his friend Skye sitting in a car.”
“Really? Do tell…”
“So you didn’t see them?”
“No. I saw something else.”
“What else?” Simon left a long, dramatic pause. I finally said, “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“Of course I’m going to tell you. But let’s just be a little social first.” Just in case his meaning wasn’t completely clear, he tapped my crotch with one finger.
“You’re blackmailing me?”
“That’s not a very nice word,” he said, as though I were a four-year-old who’d just repeated the word “fuck.”
“The police think I killed this guy, and they want to put me in prison.” I hoped the gravity of the situation might sway him to be more cooperative.
The look on his face told me he’d seen too many prison-themed pornos to take the threat to my safety seriously. I was going to have to fuck him to get the information I wanted. It was an unpleasant thought. Too bad my cock didn’t agree; it was well on its way to being hard.
Simon leaned over to kiss me. I pulled my head back. “No kissing,” I told him. He laughed a little. Then he reached down and unbuttoned my jeans. Slipping his hand in, he pulled my now hard cock through the opening of my boxers and out into the air.
“Now that’s what I call friendly.”
He bent over into my lap and kissed the end of my penis. As though to taunt me for not letting him kiss my lips, he kissed my cock over and over again. Finally, his tongue slipped out and he began to run it round my cock head. His skills were impressive. Meanly, I assumed he had a lot of practice. When he was done teasing me with his tongue, he took my cock all the way into his mouth. He dove down onto my shaft until I was deep in his throat. Then he withdrew, letting me fall out of his mouth.
With two fingers, he carefully worked my balls out of my shorts. He slipped one testicle into his mouth, rolled it around and then went for the other. My hips began to lift off the sofa. I wanted him back on my dick.
Taking the cue, he wrapped a hand around my cock and went to work sucking me. He swallowed my cock with a spin of his head, flattening his tongue out across the head so that it was always fully covered. Down he’d go, then up with a little spin. I shivered each time he got to the top.
Abruptly, he stopped to take a couple of deep breaths before he went down on my dick again, this time taking it all the way down his throat. It felt amazing, but I couldn’t help but think that Simon was like a snake who’d unhinged his jaw. Not a pleasant thought given the situation.
Keeping my prick in his mouth, Simon slipped his cargo shorts down around his ankles. His cock was thick with a fat mushroom top, and very hard. He pulled off me just long enough to spit in his hand. Then he went back to sucking me while he jerked himself off.
I needed to get this over with so I could get my information. Not that it was a terrible experience, I’d just rather be getting a blowjob from, well, a lot of other people, but most specifically a certain Detective Tripp. I closed my eyes and began to imagine what it might be like if Tripp was actually here, on his knees, my cock in his mouth. I imagined what he’d looked like without his elegant business suit, his body muscular, a bit lanky, his skin deliciously dark. With Tripp, I’d want to reciprocate. I’d push him off my cock and pull him into a standing position, then I’d take him into--
That did it. I came in Simon’s mouth. He moaned deeply as he swallowed. Then he licked me clean. He kept my dick in his mouth as it softened slightly, and continued to jack himself off. In a few moments, he was coming in great spurts all over his thigh.
After a teasing bite to the end of my dick, he sat back and smiled at me. “Well, who’d have thought you’d be so much fun.”
Buttoning my jeans, I ignored the half-assed compliment and told him, “Tell me what you saw.”
“I always walk Calliope the minute I get home.” Calliope, that was the dog’s name, not Esmerelda. “Poor dear, she has the tiniest bladder. She barely gets to the curb before she has to squat and wee-wee. Anyway, I looked up and saw the most interesting thing.” He paused dramatically. “A woman sitting in a Mercedes SUV, sitting right in front of your house. I’d guess she was dark, Hispanic probably. She was crying.”
It might have been Eddie’s mother, or maybe even his fiancée. “Could you tell how old she was?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t know there’d be a test later.”
“What time was that?” I asked.
“Almost seven.”
“Did you tell th
is to the police?”
“The police? No. They never came by.”
After getting that tiny bit of information from Simon Willow, I went home and took a long, hot shower. I did my best not to think about my recent sexual behavior and the fact that I’d never be able to look at Simon Willow without thinking about his skillful, though coerced, blowjob. I suppose I shouldn’t put Simon Willow in the same category as Eddie or Stripes or even Jeremy. If Eddie hadn’t been killed in my house I never would have let Simon Willow suck me off, so it wasn’t really part of my whole let’s-not-be-vanilla thing. Or at least that’s what I told myself.
When I finished scrubbing myself one too many times, it was around noon. Wrapping a towel around myself, I looked around for my phone to call Detective Tripp. I wasn’t sure if the number he gave me was his cell or the office phone. If it was the office, I figured I’d be leaving a message, but that was okay. I needed to talk to him. Hopefully, he’d call me back.
Tripp picked up the phone after just two rings.
“Detective Tripp, this is Matt Latowski. I have some information for you.”
“Information? What kind of information?”
“I spoke to one of my neighbors, Simon Willow, and he saw a woman parked in front of my house in a Mercedes about seven the night Eddie was killed. The woman was crying.” I paused. “He also went out a few minutes later and didn’t see my car. If I was inside murdering Eddie, where was my car?”
“In the alley. Who is Simon Willow?” he asked.
“My neighbor, two doors down.”
“I’ll look at the report in the morning. Good--”
“There is no report.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Because he said the police haven’t talked to him.”
“But I sent out two off--” He stopped abruptly and was silent, then he said, “You shouldn’t be talking to your neighbors. That could be construed as witness tampering.”
“I didn’t ask him to lie.” Though in a way, I guess, I bribed him.
“Did you record the conversations?”
“No.”
“Then no one knows what you did.”
“The woman in the car was either Eddie’s mother or his fiancée. Are you going to look into that?” I asked.
“Goodbye, Mr. Latowski.” He hung up on me.
I was pretty sure Detective Hanson was the one who wanted to railroad me, but now I began to wonder. Maybe it was both of them. I’d let my attraction to Tripp cloud my judgment. Had I told Tripp too much? Would he go back to Mrs. Enders and Simon Willow and encourage them to say I’d tried to influence their stories? Was there anything I’d said that could be viewed that way? Oh shit, I thought. If Simon Willow mentioned that we had sex, that could be construed as my trying to influence him. He’s certainly not going to tell a policeman that he blackmailed me into it. Shit.
I had the rest of Sunday and no idea what to do next. It was nearly lunchtime and I was pretty hungry. Mentally, I calculated which of my credit cards might have enough available credit for a decent lunch.
Beyond being hungry, I could really use a nap. I tried to add up the amount of sleep I’d had since I found Eddie in the garage and I figured all told I’d gotten one decent night’s sleep in three nights. Maybe after lunch I could lie down for a little while. No, I thought, I didn’t want to nap myself all the way into a maximum-security penitentiary.
I was in my bedroom, pulling on a pair of boxers when my phone rang. “Have you been arrested yet?” Peter asked when I picked up.
“Sorry to disappoint, but no.”
“The minute I get back, I’m going to throw a fundraiser for your legal defense fund.”
“I don’t have a legal defense fund.”
“We’ll establish one. Where do think it should be?”
“In a bank?”
“The fundraiser. Should it be at Crush or Wrath?”
“Um… I don’t really care right now. Peter, when are you coming home?”
“Oh God, I don’t know. This whole thing is going so well it’s scaring me. Benjamin is just, well, he’s perfect.”
“Benjamin? I thought you said his name was Alfonso?”
“Did I? Hmmm, imagine that.”
“Peter? Is everything all right?”
“Everything’s wonderful. But I can’t explain it all. We’re about to go to the restaurant at the Eiffel Tower.”
“You’re in Vegas? I thought you were in New York?”
“No, darling, we’re in Paris. We’re eating at the real Eiffel Tower. Gotta run. Whatever you do, do not get arrested!” And with that, he hung up.
It annoyed me a little that Peter had to choose this particular moment in time to have a whirlwind romance with Alfonso and/or Benjamin. It would have been nice to have him around, although I had no idea what I expected him to do. I mean, if he was in Los Angeles the most he’d be able to do would be bitching out Tripp and Hanson. Which, while fun to think about, would likely only make things worse.
I finished getting dressed. Eddie’s keys were still in the pockets of my jeans. They were bulky and uncomfortable. I had no reason to take them to lunch with me, so I pulled them out and was about to put them back in the bowl by the front door, when I noticed something I hadn’t seen before.
The Pez dispenser had a seam across the tube that held the candy. I tugged on the rubber duck, and the dispenser came apart in two pieces. Candy did not fall all over my floor. In fact, there was no candy inside the dispenser at all. What was inside changed everything -- a USB flash drive.
Chapter Fourteen
Surprised, I held the flash drive in my hand for a few minutes after I found it. Clearly, something important was on it. It wasn’t hard to figure out this is what the killer was looking for when he got into my house; when he broke into Eddie’s car. The killer’s identity had to be on it. The most logical thing to find on the drive would be a client list. Whenever madams got busted, their little black books became very important. Eddie must have kept something like that. So, maybe it was a client; a client afraid of exposure.
All I had to do was open the flash drive and the document would be there. I just had to print it out, get it to the police and insist that they talk to everyone on the list. They’d find the killer. Suddenly, everything seemed simple. Of course, with my computer gone, I couldn’t just plug in the flash drive and read what was on it. I thought about going to a copy store and using a computer to open the drive. It would only cost a few bucks. But why waste money? I could drive to the studio and open the drive on my computer there. That made more sense. I could do it that evening. Or I could do it first thing in the morning. I really did need to get some sleep. I’d forgotten about lunch and was suddenly exhausted. More than exhausted, unable to move one step farther. I lay on the couch and closed my eyes for just a few minutes. Sixteen hours later, I woke up.
I lay there thinking about the night of Eddie’s death. Detective Tripp theorized that someone (in his mind, me) was having sex with Eddie, strangling him to orgasm, and made a fatal error. He pressed too hard, and Eddie passed out, assumed Eddie was dead, dragged him to the garage and staged a suicide.
Was that how it happened? It seemed possible, even likely. But what happened before that? Before Eddie passed out? There were no signs of forced entry or a struggle; Eddie had let the killer in willingly. They might have talked in the living room briefly. Briefly because there were no glasses or other signs of socialization. Eddie hadn’t offered his killer even a glass of water.
Then they’d gone into my bedroom, presumably to have sex. Had they gotten their clothes off? Probably not. Why did I think that? Because it would have been difficult to dress Eddie after he’d passed out. Difficult, but not impossible. I thought they’d remained dressed because of the keys. Eddie’s keys ended up under the bed. Given where I’d found them
, it was unlikely they fell out of his pocket and ended up there. At some point, he’d taken his keys out of his pocket and slipped them between the mattress and the wall. If they’d just gone in the bedroom and stripped, Eddie would have left his keys in his shorts.
He’d dropped his keys behind the bed to keep the killer from getting them. Which meant the killer wanted whatever was on the USB drive. Was the killer a client? Yes. When we’d had our appointment, Eddie had asked me to take my clothes off right away. Assuming the killer was a client, why hadn’t Eddie seen him in Jeremy’s old office like he had me? Why hadn’t he set up his table? It was there. In fact, it was still in the spare room. The police hadn’t taken it. He would have used the table if the killer was a client.
Of course, the killer might have paid Eddie to skip the massage and go right to having sex. A lot of masseurs were available to escort. I hadn’t asked Eddie about that, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t willing. For the right price.
Feeling wooden, I went through my normal morning routine. Shave. Shower. Microwave oatmeal. Watch morning show while choking it down. Floss. Brush. Dab on cologne. Dress. Slacks, a light blue shirt, pick out a tie. Struggle to tie tie. Aside from the occasionally theorizing about Eddie’s murder, it was a pleasure to have a normal morning. The last few days had been so topsy-turvy. It was a relief to know that things would be over soon. Very soon.
Grabbing my phone, I ran out of the house and got into the car. As I did, I noticed a black and white parked down the street. Two uniformed officers stood on Simon Willow’s doorstep. Through his screen door, I could see him talking to the officers. Briefly, I wondered if he’d try getting on his knees with them in an exchange for information. He was probably too smart to try it, but I’d bet he’d spend the rest of the morning jacking off over the idea.
Between the conversation I’d had with Tripp and the officers at Simon Willow’s door, I guessed he’d been unaware that one of my neighbors had gotten skipped. I assumed the officers would be canvassing the neighborhood a second time to make sure only one got skipped. That idea made me feel even better about my situation.
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