Everyone's Dead But Us

by Zubro, Mark Richard

  Everyone’s

  Dead

  But Us

  By Mark Richard Zubro

  The Tom and Scott Mysteries

  A Simple Suburban Murder

  Why Isn’t Becky Twitchell Dead?

  The Only Good Priest

  The Principal Cause of Death

  An Echo of Death

  Rust on the Razor

  Are You Nuts?

  One Dead Drag Queen

  Here Comes the Corpse

  File Under Dead

  The Paul Turner Mysteries

  Sorry Now?

  Political Poison

  Another Dead Teenager

  The Truth Can Get You Killed

  Drop Dead

  Sex and murder.com

  Dead Egotistical Morons

  Nerds Who Kill

  Everyone’s

  Dead

  But Us

  Mark Richard Zubro

  St. Martin’s Minotaur

  New York

  EVERYONE’S DEAD BUT US. Copyright © 2006 by Mark Richard Zubro. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Zubro, Mark Richard.

  Everyone’s dead but us / Mark Richard Zubro.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-312-34345-3

  ISBN-10: 0-312-34345-0

  1. Carpenter, Scott (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Mason, Tom (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Gay men—Fiction. 4. Baseball players—Fiction. 5. High school teachers—Fiction. 6. Resorts—Fiction. 7. Storms—Fiction. 8 Aegean Islands (Greece and Turkey)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3576.U225E94 2006

  813’.54—dc22

  2006041717

  First Edition: July 2006

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Thanks for your help and support

  Pam Kohlbacher

  Paula Miller

  Kathy Pakieser-Reed

  Jeanne Dams

  Barbara D’Amato

  Bob Beran

  Adam Zubro

  Tony Mulvaney

  Everyone’s

  Dead

  But Us

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  I gazed from the headland toward the moon rising over the swelling waves, then shut my eyes and listened to the sea crashing on the rocks far below. I smelled the salt water and felt the coolness of the night through my polyester-padded leather jacket. The gusting east wind ruffled my hair. I stuck my hands into my jacket pockets, and reopened my eyes to gaze at the sky. It was possible to see the stars blaze as I never could over the city of Chicago. I’d rarely seen the moon so enormous and orange and close, near enough in the darkness to dare to touch. Only a few clouds from the predicted storm lay on the horizon, and I thought I caught glimpses of far distant lightning.

  I turned away from the sea toward the rest of the island. The gently rising land in front of me hid the few lights that might have escaped from the buildings. Scott was only about two hundred feet away. I had been told to give him an hour so I had taken my time strolling the east way around the island. I loved the cool wind and the lack of human noise. Waves and wind, spray and smell, everything draped in moonlight and surrounded by stars. That’s why we come here every year. Total quiet and relaxation.

  I took the path down to the secluded cavern where Scott waited. Neither the anticipation nor the pleasure was lessened by the familiarity with which I approached the scene. Love, and warmth, and a hot man. Nothing wrong with that picture even after numerous viewings.

  It was the day before New Year’s Eve. As a present for our wedding, I’d given him annual trips to Korkasi, an island in the Aegean Sea. Korkasi was the most exclusive and expensive gay resort in the world. We’d already been coming to this idyllic spot off and on for years before our marriage. It was one place where Scott would not be pestered by fans.

  The guest list on Korkasi included some of the wealthiest gay men on the planet. Many of them were the kind who’d listened to too much opera as children, attended too many operas as adults, and felt a need to tell you about those experiences. They funded more opera productions than you could shake a tenor at. Another common type is the rich sugar daddy trying to show off his latest boy-toy At times these people overlapped each other, making us even more inclined to keep to ourselves.

  Scott would have candlelight and blankets and pillows, and cheeses and exotic fruits and confections and some form of chocolate that I’d never had before. Scott would have taken the time to make it romantic and intimate and perfect. As I entered the cavern, I saw the glow of light around the bend. The wind abated considerably after the first few steps into the cave, and was but a puff of freshness after I turned the first corner.

  Scott had lit a fire, a necessity. It was winter and the island was cool. The red, blue, and yellow of the quiet flames provided welcome warmth. Smoke curled out through a small hole high up in the far wall. The shield of loose rocks built around the fire had been heated by the flames. He had votive candles on rock-hewn shelves stretching above our heads. He sat cross-legged on a blanket in front of a mound of pillows. A simple feast was laid out between him and the fire. Since I was a kid, I’ve been afflicted with a sappy, romantic streak. Yeah, it was cheap sentiment, but I love cheap sentiment. And as a wise, old mentor once said to me, “Cheap sentiment? So what? Dickens made a career out of it.”

  I snuggled up close to Scott. He draped an arm around me. “This is perfect,” I said. Then both his arms encircled me, and he nuzzled my ear. “I love you,” he murmured. “I love you, too,” I said. We kissed. Then we kissed a lot more. And for quite a while the fire was not necessary to keep us warm.

  Some time later, wrapped in blankets, having stirred the fire and added scented wood to its fading embers, Scott reached behind the mound of pillows. “I have something for you.” For some reason we nearly always whispered when we were in the cavern. Neither of us wished to break the magic of the spell created by these moments of perfection.

  Scott handed me a flat, burgundy box with gold lettering. It was tied with a silk, red ribbon, which fell away easily. The box said Kinder with other words in German that I could not translate. I opened it and took a bite of the chocolate inside. It was heavenly.

  Eventually reality does intrude. The fire did die down. The damp and cold did seep in. I was pleasantly drowsy, but it would be good to get indoors.

  We held hands and huddled together as we walked back to our rooms. It was after one in the morning. The wind had risen to a gale, the moon was
a third of the way up the sky, half the stars were obscured by roiling thunderheads, and lightning was clear in the far distance. Still the storm wasn’t close enough yet for us to hear the thunder.

  The island is about ten square miles. It is a fairly regular oval except for the northern tip, which has a small bay. From above it would look like an oval with a small bite out of the top. The island was rimmed with cliffs and rocky beaches unsuitable for landings, except for the harbor, the small bay around a castle, and a few places where there might be enough room for a child’s rowboat to dock. The cavern was about a third of the way around the island west from the port. If you took the path east, eventually you would walk nearly two-thirds of the way around the island. In this direction, the path mostly hugged the shore. The path went along lava pebble beaches, between rocky outcroppings, or along headlands and was rarely more than several feet from the water’s edge.

  This east way was generally the most pleasant with natural rock barriers often breaking the worst of the winter gales, although in stormy weather, you could get soaked from sea spray if the waves were up. And we were getting wet, and we kind of giggled and were silly, and bumped against each other. And put our hands in each other’s pants pockets. But it’s fun being playful with him.

  You couldn’t actually follow the shore and walk completely around the island. The west way from the harbor to the cavern followed the edge of the sea for only about a hundred feet. Then the viciously rocky coastline, with its sharp rocks and startlingly high cliffs, inhibited any further progress in that direction. You were forced to head inland. The path meandered for miles to avoid this impassable stretch of coastline. These darkened paths followed the crest of these wannabe English moorlands. Because of the detours, you walked a much greater distance than if you’d taken the eastern path that skirted the island’s perimeter.

  Often in the morning we ran together around the entire pathway, maybe five miles or so. We would speed through the part with the ocean spray, often drenching ourselves with a shower of sea water as we trotted by. The cool spray felt good during five miles of running, but now a storm was coming and the sea was up. Our romantic stroll was getting us both drenched.

  Tonight the wind whipped the waves and flapped the clothes against our bodies. About halfway back we passed Virl Morgan. He ran every night after his charge had gone to sleep. Virl was about five foot eight with massive forearms. We’d seen him during our visits several years in a row. I thought he was short for a security guard. Scott explained that if you wished to make a statement, you had a large, burly security guard, but that a strong, competent one on the smaller side was good enough for normal wear and tear. Virl guarded the son of the pretender to the Bourbon throne of France. If the monarchy was ever restored in France and if their line could prove their claim against all other claims, it would be an important job. I didn’t hold out much hope for his charge ascending any throne anytime soon. As we passed each other, we all nodded an acknowledgment.

  We skirted the harbor and took the path around the last hill. As we neared the castle, Scott said, “It’s going to be a hell of a storm.” I rested my head against his shoulder. I looked forward to cuddling under our quilts in the tower room, reading by candlelight, and falling asleep with my head on his chest. As we turned the last sharp curve to the castle, a fine mist began to blow in my face. I couldn’t tell if it was sea spray or precursor to the promised storm. The lightning was nearer, and I could finally hear faint rumbles of thunder. I’d never seen a storm coming at night across the sea so we stopped and watched. It was beautiful, half the sky boiling with darkness, half still lit by the full moon and the mantle of stars. Out beyond the harbor breakwater, the sea foamed and frothed.

  We climbed the steep rise up the center of the last expanse of land before the castle. The edifice was surrounded on three sides by a hundred yards of open ground. The fourth side, which ended with a tower, was contiguous with the sea. The wind buffeted us mightily. As we climbed, we bent our backs into the rising gale and marched forward. In the lee of the castle, the wind was calmer. The grand entrance to the castle was actually directly under our room. Beyond the entryway the foyer had three branches. One led into the Great Hall, another to a vast library and the third up the grand staircase that led to our room. The library could be visited under supervision of one of the island’s staff. The rare literature there was probably more valuable than half the castle. None but the super-rich were allowed in the Great Hall. The doors between the tower, where our rooms and the rest of the castle were, were made of six-inch planks of oak bolted to foot-wide and inch-thick steel plates. They were always locked.

  The castle had been built and rebuilt countless times going back to the time of the Minoan civilization. The massive stone tower was its most prominent feature and our suite took up the top two-thirds of the tower. Our room actually had three levels, a sheltered lookout at the top level and a sitting room with a spiral staircase connecting it to a comfortable bedroom below.

  We’d toured the different villas the island offered. Each was vastly oversized and tastefully appointed. You could have as many servants, always male, as you wished assigned to your villa while you were there. Generally there were at least three: a maid, a butler, and your own personal concierge. A fourth option was an in-house cook, although the only restaurant on the island was used by many. Three days here was pretty much my travel budget for the year so we only kept the personal concierge. Scott’s a wealthy baseball player, but I have my pride and my own budget. The villas rent for five to fifteen thousand a night. The rooms in the castle, the low-rent district, were less than a thousand.

  Half of the tables in the restaurant were walled off by Plexiglas. This way the rich who wished to parade their latest boy-toy could be easily seen but nobody could hear you negotiating your price or being bored to tears by someone half your age’s innocuous conversation. Other restaurant seating arrangements had large plants strategically placed to wall off the view of others. These were for the discreet few, the tired, and the mature enough not to need a show.

  Quite a few of the wealthy who used the island also brought an entourage with them, but large herds of followers were discouraged. A rock star had been turned away when he insisted he needed twenty-seven people to meet his needs. When he was refused, he attempted unsuccessfully to buy the island. Most of the staff took the high-speed catamaran from Santorini to work their shifts, the overnight shift being the least well staffed.

  As we neared the grand entrance, one of the massive doors flapped in the wind and banged against the castle wall. This was odd. We were in the only rooms available for overnight guests. There would be no reason for anyone else to be here. I was sure it had been latched and locked earlier. I’d checked. Inside, the electric night lights along the floor illumined the hall full of musty darkness. We secured the door. It was good to be out of the wind. While I do prefer my nights dark and stormy, I also prefer to enjoy the dark and storminess curled up with a good book, in a fire-lit room, with a thermopane picture window between me and the night and the raging of nature.

  From the ample foyer we now stood in, the grand staircase led up, then branched out at the top. To the left was a small elevator, installed in the 1930s for a German count who refused to move his bulk under his own power up the stairs to his room. We climbed to the top and took the right branching.

  Portraits of attractive young men in period costumes from ancient Greece to modern times covered the walls. The paintings were done in the 1950s by a reasonably talented lover of the owner at the time and they tended to romantic fuzziness rather than the blatantly lewd. We passed several exquisite stained glass windows. An artist last century had spent years creating scenes with characters acting out stories in intricate detail. On our first visit, we had followed them from beginning to end. From what I could understand it was a medieval soap opera about a knight who wanted to live with his male lover.

  From the top of the stairs we took a short hall and th
en turned the two corners to our bedroom. The door here was also open. This was highly unusual.

  Things did not go wrong on Korkasi. You came to Korkasi to be pampered. Plush amenities were the minimum expected. The lack of shoving crowds of camera-wielding tourists made the place nigh unto perfection. The wealthy paid a premium for the rest of us not to be here. I’m sure Scott and I were a minor intrusion on their world. The staff prided itself on making sure the needs of every guest were met instantly if not sooner. A guest on his second trip to the island seldom had to ask twice for an idiosyncratic comfort. The first-timer soon learned that every guest on every visit was made to feel as if his comfort was the personal concern of any of the help he came in contact with. We had asked for no special services this night, and even if we had, doors left open would not be part of the service.