If only we teamed up, we’d be that much stronger.
“Did you enjoy your private dance?” Dare’s eyes were full of mirth as he looked me over.
I shook my head. “Why is it that I seem to be the one making all the sacrifices for this investigation? First a makeover, then a lap dance. What’s next?”
Dare laughed. I’d almost forgotten what it sounded like, so much like Mason’s.
“I thought you might enjoy it,” he said, “but you looked the same way you did that time in eighth grade when Aaron Ramirez was passing around his girlfriend’s panties in the boys’ bathroom.”
I recoiled from the memory. I’d somehow managed to block that out. “If I didn’t already know I was gay, I’m pretty sure that experience just proved it.”
Dare stopped laughing and looked at me with a serious expression. “Wait a minute, you’re gay?”
I studied him to see if he was teasing me. “Are you messing with me?”
“I swear I’m not.” He crossed himself, loosely. “I seriously didn’t know that.”
“How could you not know that?” I asked with incredulity.
“I mean, I’ve heard rumors, but you never said anything to me about it.”
“I thought the rule of the drama department is you’re gay until proven otherwise.” For the record, that wasn’t a rule I made up. It was already in existence when I started hanging out backstage with the Phantom and his cast and crew.
“Yeah, but you’re not exactly a drama kid.” Dare studied me as though seeing me again for the first time. I felt like a frog being pinned down for dissection.
“Are you gay?” I asked to take the attention off me.
“Probably,” he said with a shrug, which kind of frustrated me that he couldn’t even commit to that. “Well, this changes everything,” Dare said. I was about to ask him what he meant by it when he turned on me again, advancing in my direction. “Have you ever had a boyfriend before?”
“No,” I admitted.
“Have you ever kissed someone?”
I swallowed tightly, feeling a little embarrassed by my answer. “No.”
“Well, that’s just ridiculous.” He sounded almost angry about it.
I didn’t want Dare’s pity. Surely there was at least one person out there who thought me desirable. Maybe not at Eastview High, but the world was far bigger than our high school or even the town of Gainesville. I could be patient.
I turned away, unable to stand the judgment in his stare, and surveyed the building, wondering how much longer we’d need to hide in the trees before we could collect Dare’s car and get the heck out of there.
Dare grabbed my hand and turned me around to face him. I still wore my funeral slacks and a white button-down shirt, though I’d left my coat and tie in Dare’s car. The smell of sex was upon me, even if it wasn’t my own. That and Crystal’s residual perfume. Dare seized my shirtfront and pulled me to him.
“Can I kiss you, Charlie?” he asked in a deep baritone that made my balls hum like a tuning fork.
Did I hear him correctly? Dare Chalmers just asked to kiss me? Me, of all people? Dare looked at me with a curious tilt to his head, a small smile curving his lips. Almost like… anticipation.
“Ummm, yesss,” I slurred in a stupor.
In my mind the opening notes of “All I Ask of You” started playing, and as our lips met, all those feelings of elation and joy I’d experienced in listening to Dare sing as the Phantom rushed back at me, lifting me a little onto the balls of my feet. I expected Dare to pull away after the initial sweep of our lips, but he gripped my shirtfront and pulled me in closer, breaching my mouth with his tongue. I welcomed him inside. I’d never had someone else’s tongue touching mine before, but Dare’s mouth was so soft, his lips as sweet and pliable as saltwater taffy. His stubble tickled my cheek, and the contrast of his soft mouth and rough beard made my head spin. I was glad for Dare’s grip because I felt a little light-headed, like I was falling backward in some kind of trust fall, perhaps because my blood was rushing elsewhere. My fists wrinkled the silky material at Dare’s waist and without thinking, I pressed my groin against his to discover both of us aroused, and me immediately and intensely hard. I ground my hips to cause a little friction, and he gasped into my mouth. His sweet cherry-cola breath put me in a trancelike state of arousal as my thigh nudged between his legs. I didn’t know what I was initiating, only that I wanted his long, lithe body pressed up against mine. Like two live wires coiled together, that’s how close I wanted him to me.
“Char-lie,” he whispered provocatively. My mind flashed back to Boots showering Dare with affection, and I told my body to show some restraint. Before I could summon the self-control to break away, the sound of someone clearing their throat interrupted us.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
Crystal was back, wearing a fleece robe and flip-flops this time. She handed Dare a business card.
“What’s this?” he asked, looking disheveled and disoriented. His lips were puffy and his green-gray eyes were blown out with desire, his irises like twin eclipses. Could I possibly have had that effect on Dare Chalmers?
“That’s your man.” She held out her hand for payment. Dare studied the card as if memorizing it, then tucked it carefully into his wallet. He pulled out a crisp hundred-dollar bill and laid it on Crystal’s open palm.
“Pleasure doing business with you.” Her fist closed around the money, and she took another critical look at the two of us. “Why are the nice ones always gay?” She handed me a DVD wrapped in a black plastic bag and sauntered back toward the building. Over her shoulder she said, “Oh yeah, and the cops are gone.”
I’d forgotten why we’d even come out here in the first place. Dare’s kiss scrambled my brain, but in the best possible way.
“You’re a good kisser, Charlie,” Dare said with a shy smile. His voice had a husky, dreamlike quality to it.
“Back at ya, Dare.”
We stared at each other for a long moment and then Dare broke the silence with, “So, what titillating DVD did Crystal pick for us?”
I’d forgotten I was even holding anything. “It looks like, dum, dum, dum….” I pulled it out of the bag. “Jocks on Cocks?”
Dare laughed and took the DVD to inspect it closer. It was definitely gay porn, and the men appeared to be well versed in athletic pursuits as well. “Sounds like a Dr. Seuss title,” he remarked.
I smirked. “Maybe it rhymes.”
Dare handed me the DVD. “Promise me this, Charlie, when you’re ready to experience Jocks on Cocks, please call me, and we’ll watch it together.”
It could either be really good or really bad. “I would, Dare, but I don’t even have a DVD player.”
“I got you covered. I have one hooked up with surround sound.” He threw his arm around my shoulders as we walked back to his car under the neon lights of Café Risqué.
I’d always assumed that, like my door-holding duties, once my sleuthing services concluded, Dare and I would retreat back into our separate circles on opposite poles of the social strata, but Dare made it seem like there might be a friendship for us at the end of all this.
I hoped so.
Chapter 12
ON OUR way back to Gainesville, Dare wanted to pull over at a rest stop and make a call to the tip line from one of the pay phones so they couldn’t identify his cell phone number. I was on board with his idea. It meant my mom never had to know I’d visited Café Risqué.
On the phone, Dare disguised his voice by making it slow and southern with an exaggerated drawl. He really was a better actor than I gave him credit for. The dispatcher asked for his name, but he wouldn’t give it.
“Ain’t this supposed to be anonymous?” he said like a cantankerous old man. “I’m not trying to give my name and number to the law, ma’am.” She said something conciliatory in response, and Dare continued. “Yeah, well, I was over at the Café Risqué, and I saw a man selling pills to this youn
g man you got listed here. Uh, Mason Chalmers?”
The dispatcher asked some questions, and Dare described the muscle-bound man. “I got his name too.” Dare read it from the card. “Clayton Benson. Works out of Dunnellon. Mainstream Freight is the name of his outfit—that’s his day job, I guess. Selling drugs to kids must be his side business.”
Dare answered a few more of the dispatcher’s questions without once breaking character and then hung up. “I hope that guy gets busted.” Dare glared at the phone, his long fingers still splayed along the spine of the receiver.
“Me too.” But while Dare had been making his anonymous tip, I’d been thinking about Mason’s steroid use. “I don’t think Clayton Benson is the murderer, Dare.”
“Why not?”
I laid out my theory for him. “Mason made trips to Café Risqué this summer, but once school started, he stopped going, and you found the remaining pills in his bedroom, which meant he’d also stopped using.”
“Because he didn’t want them to show up on a drug test,” Dare concluded for me.
“Which means Mason wasn’t going to meet his drug dealer on Friday night.”
“So who the hell was he meeting?” Dare asked, his brow wrinkled in frustration.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. There was nothing at the end of that road but a ghost town. “I’m going to search the property appraisers’ website and see who lives in the town of Rochelle.”
“That’s a good idea. You want me to come over?”
My mother wouldn’t want me having Dare over after midnight. Or at all.
“No, it’s all right. I’ll do some research tonight, and I’ll call you in the morning with what I find.”
For the rest of the drive home, I wondered if Dare was going to bring up the kiss we shared, but he seemed lost in thought, no doubt about Mason. His parting words when he dropped me off at my house were “Today sucked, but having you by my side made it a little more bearable. I appreciate everything you’re doing for me, Charlie. And Mason too.”
We said goodbye, and I spent the next few hours online. Boots snuggled up to me in bed and snuffled a complaint whenever I switched positions. I was a night owl and he was a morning person, but somehow we made it work. I came up with a long list of names—none of which I recognized—and fell asleep with my computer in my lap, my homework far from finished. Dare called me in the morning to see if I’d made any progress.
“Not really,” I told him, “but I have an idea.”
“I’m listening.”
“Stakeout.”
“I’m so there,” Dare said with a hint of excitement.
Dare had told me he wouldn’t be coming back to school until Monday, and I couldn’t afford to skip school this close to our end-of-semester exams. If I let my grades slip, my mom really would ground me.
“I’ll pick you up after school,” I told Dare. “We’ll take my car. It’s a little less conspicuous.”
“I’ll bring snacks,” Dare said. I smiled on my end, thinking he’d probably picked that up from watching television. Though snacks were never a bad idea.
I struggled through the school day, barely able to focus on classwork or what my teachers were saying. Luckily it was a Friday, and since most of the student body and teaching staff had attended Mason’s funeral the day before, no one was really intent on learning anything. We were all looking forward to the weekend.
I did manage to catch up with Tameka during lunch. “Do you remember a fight between Peter Orr and Joey Pikramenos last year?” I asked. We were sitting on the brick wall outside the cafeteria, away from her curious clutch of eavesdropping cheerleaders.
“Yeah, I was there when it happened. In the hallway of the Kelso building. The two of them just exploded. It was over so fast, I don’t think teachers even knew.”
“Do you know what it was about?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t even realize it was a fight at first. I thought they were just messing around.”
“Was Mason or Dare there?”
She tilted her head. “Don’t think so.”
Even still, something told me one or both of the twins was involved. “You think you can ask around? See what might have started it?”
She glanced sideways at me. “You get that Amazon wish list I sent you?”
“Real subtle.” I nodded. “Your items have shipped.”
She smiled smugly and squeezed my shoulder. “Then yes, I would be happy to ask around.”
I thanked her, then hopped up and crossed the courtyard to where Peter stood with a mishmash of football, wrestling, and baseball players. My mind flashed back to the cover of Jocks on Cocks, and I had to shake myself to clear my mental palate.
“Hey, Peter, got a minute?”
He gave me a wary look. “Make it quick,” he said and motioned for me to follow him away from his friends. I didn’t want to spread rumors about Mason, especially now, but some reveal was essential to the investigation.
“Did you know Mason was using steroids?” I asked Peter with a note of incredulity.
“No, but it makes sense,” Peter said without much reaction. The kid was really hard to read, and I didn’t know if it was because he had a thick skin or if he was just really good at hiding his emotions.
“How does it make sense?”
“You don’t get stacked like that so quickly just from working out.” He glanced around to make sure no one was nearby to overhear us. “Coach probably suggested it.”
“Coach Gundry?” I asked with astonishment. Peter looked bored. “Isn’t that… illegal?”
“Whatever it takes to win, right?” he said flatly.
This was certainly a surprising discovery. I’d never played sports competitively, so I didn’t know if this was an isolated incident or a systemic problem. “Is that normal?” I asked Peter. He only shrugged, so I pursued it further. “Did Coach ever encourage you to take steroids?”
Peter glared at me. “This isn’t about me.”
If what Peter said was true, then Mason had leverage; if Mason told the school about Coach’s methods, he could get fired, possibly even face charges, especially considering how sue-happy the Chalmerses were.
“Is that why you were the one who had to cut weight? Because Mason threatened to tell on Coach?”
Peter grunted and spat on the ground. “I don’t ask questions. I just follow orders.”
He said it so dispassionately, but I found it hard to believe that Peter would go along with that plan so willingly.
“Doesn’t that make you mad? Having to drop down an entire weight class? I mean, Mason was basically cheating, and Coach was helping him.”
Peter stared at me like I was being dramatic. “It might make me mad if we were still competing, but we’re not, so….” He glanced around as though he had someplace better to be.
I wanted to needle him more, if only to see what he might reveal. “You must have been using too, then, huh?”
Peter’s eyes cut back to mine. They had a reptilian coldness about them, especially with his shovel-like face. I wasn’t sure if this was just his standard response to a challenge or if it was something special for me.
“Are you accusing me of something, Dick?”
He was using the nickname, which told me I was finally getting under his skin. Good. That was when I got my best information. “Mason was buying the drugs from a guy at Café Risqué, and you were there, Peter. Seems like steroid use is grounds for suspension from the team. You could miss out on your entire senior year.”
Peter crossed his arms, perhaps to better contain his fists, which I’d noticed were tense. “Mason paid for me to get a private dance. He probably made the deal then. I don’t do drugs, because I’m not a cheater. And if you’re planning on putting your nose in my business, then you and I are going to have problems.”
He jammed one meaty finger against my chest, then stalked back toward his friends with his head ducked low and his broad shoulders swinging. One th
ing was for certain, I wouldn’t want to be alone in a dark alley with him.
Still, talking with Peter hadn’t been a waste of time, because I now knew that Coach Gundry had a motive after all. If Mason had threatened Coach with going public, he might have taken drastic measures to silence him.
After school, I picked up Dare from his house and we drove out of town along Hawthorne Road, then turned off where Mason was most likely headed Friday night before his tire went flat. County Road 2082 was rough and full of potholes, a further deterrent, especially for someone like Mason who, according to Dare, didn’t especially like long car rides. I pulled in at the parking area for cyclists who wished to travel the paved trail that ran alongside the road. My car was angled so we’d face the sparse afternoon traffic.
The murderer could have been on a bicycle, I reasoned. That would explain why there was no second set of tire tracks between the road and the lake. It struck me as weird, though. How many serial killers have stalked their victims by bicycle, and how many cyclists have spontaneously decided to murder?
Once I parked, Dare opened up his backpack to show me his stash of granola bars, fresh fruit, and potato chips. “See anything you like?” he asked suggestively.
My face flushed with embarrassment as lustful memories of last night’s kiss flooded my senses. Dare’s mouth on mine, our bodies pressed together, the flare of desire he ignited in me that throbbed in my nether regions like a dull, persistent ache. I cleared my throat.
“I’ll take one of these.” I grabbed an apple. I needed something to sink my teeth into.
We made a plan. Every time a car approached from either direction, Dare would grab the binoculars, and I’d get my phone ready to punch in the license plate numbers as he recited them. My mom had access to a program where she could look them up later. Maybe she’d even let me do it, since the work was so tedious. It wasn’t “rush hour,” so there wasn’t a lot of traffic on the road, which meant long stretches of time where we sat in companionable silence.
“Are we going to talk about last night?” Dare said during one of those occasions.
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