“That’s a dumb question! What did Grams leave us?”
“She put a lot of stuff into the freezer, probably casseroles for later. I’m not sure what all’s in the fridge. I think she left something on the counter too.”
“Let’s go see and then we can wash up.”
“You gonna’ shower before we eat?” Toby asked as they made their way down the hall.
“No, I’ll just wash my hands and face real good for now. I’ll shower after we eat.”
“Why don’t you go do that and I’ll see what we have for dinner? If nothing else I could make tuna casserole or spaghetti.”
“Oh no! Anything but that!”
“Stop being a smart ass and go clean-up – and turn on some music when you come back.” Toby opened the refrigerator and dug around among the things Grams had left. ‘Geri!” he called, “She left chicken! And a cobbler on the counter!”
“Great!’ Geri hollered from the back.
Toby pulled out the plate of chicken and a container of green beans and hunted around for a pan to warm them. He found the plates and glasses right where they should be, and grabbed some silverware. He carried it all into the living room and placed the plates and silverware on the middle of the coffee table, and went back for the glasses of water. He made another trip for the food. He’d almost finished when Geri came into the room and turned on the stereo, crouching down to fiddle with the dials. When he had it adjusted just the way he wanted, he stood and turned around. “We’re eating in here?”
“Since we don’t have any chairs for the table yet, this will have to do,” Toby shrugged and then settled himself on the floor. Geri did the same.
“Pick up your glass, Geri. I think I’ll make a toast.”
“With water?”
“Sure. Why not? Grams says it isn’t what’s in the glass that matters, but what’s in the heart.”
“Grams has a saying for about every occasion,” Geri commented as he raised his glass.
“Yes, she surely does.” Toby raised his own glass solemnly. “I’d like to toast our first night in this apartment, the good food, and my good friend.”
“I’ll drink to that!” Geri clinked his glass to Toby’s and then took a swallow.
The boys started on their dinner, listening to the music and talking about the things they had to do the next day. After they finished with the food, they carried the dishes into the kitchen and Geri said “Go on and take your shower, Toby. I’ll clean up. Just don’t use all the hot water!”
“You sure?”
“Yes I’m sure – you’re smelly.”
Toby laughed and went down the hall. A few minutes later he came out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. “It’s kind of steamy in there,” he said as he rubbed his wet head with another towel. “You might want to leave the door open when you shower.
“Good idea. I’ll keep it open a little.” He went into his room and as Toby went into his own room, he saw Geri walk in the bathroom wearing only his briefs. Toby pulled out a pair of draw-stringed sleeping shorts and hung both of his towels on the knob of the bedroom door. He combed his hair and went into the kitchen for some more water.
“You want to watch TV?” he asked as Geri came out of the bathroom, towel tied around his waist.
“No, I don’t think so,” Geri replied as he rolled his neck. “It’s getting kind of late and I think I’ll go on to bed.”
“I guess it is late,” Toby agreed as he carried the glass of water back with him to his room. “Good night,” he said.
“Good night, Toby.”
After a while Toby put down the magazine he’d been reading and got out of bed, headed for the bathroom. When he finished, he started back to his bedroom but heard a groan from Geri’s room. “Geri?” he asked knocking on the door gently, "are you alright?”
“I don’t know. My neck and shoulder are really hurting. I must have pulled something.”
Toby pushed upon the door and went into the room. There was a faint light coming in through the window and he could see Geri sitting up in bed rubbing the space between neck and shoulder. He went back out of the room and grabbed a bottle of lotion from the bathroom and then returned. “Here, let me rub it out. It might help.”
Geri lay back down on the bed. “Okay,” he said, rolling over onto his stomach.
Toby climbed onto the bed and poured lotion into his hands. “This may be a little cold,” he said as he placed his hands onto Geri’s skin.
Geri jumped a little when Toby’s hands made contact. “Jeeze! That is cold.”
Toby continued to rub the area between the shoulder and neck. “Does that help?”
“Yeah, I think so. You know, you’re pretty good at this and you haven’t even been to school yet.”
“I’ve been reading a lot.” Toby poured a little more lotion into his hands. This time he rubbed them together a moment to warm the lotion. This time, when he placed his hands back on skin, Geri didn’t jump, but did give a sigh of appreciation. Toby worked the lotion in and then changed sides. “The books say you are supposed to do the same thing to both sides,” he said. As his hands massaged the muscles, he could tell Geri was beginning to relax. He worked between the shoulder blades and down the middle of the back. When Geri stretched up to meet his hands, he continued downward.
“Ummmm…that feels great, Toby.”
“Good. It’s supposed to.” Soon, he reached the place where the sheet met the swell of Geri’s ass. He kept his hands in motion while he tried to decide what to do. He knew what he wanted to do. He moved the sheet down a little further and touched the soft firm skin right where the ass met the lower back. When Geri didn’t protest, he moved the sheet down a little more, discovering Geri was naked beneath the cover. His throat went dry, but he kept his hands moving. He needed more lotion, but he’d finished off the small bottle. He didn’t want to stop and get more from the bathroom in case Geri pulled the sheet back up, but he didn’t have much choice. “I need to go get some more lotion.”
For a minute there was no response and Toby was sure Geri would simply tell him not to worry about it since his shoulder and neck were done. To his surprise, Geri softly said, “Okay, Toby.”
He climbed off the bed and had to stop himself from running to the bathroom. Once there, he looked through the cabinet until he found another bottle. He turned off the light and opened the door, letting his eyes adjust to the dark. Then he entered Geri’s room, hoping he hadn’t changed position or decided the massage was over. Toby stopped cold in the middle of the doorway when he looked at the bed.
Geri was now on top of the sheets, his skin glowing in the light. His strong thighs were slightly spread and one knee was bent, making a muscular curving line of skin and muscle between ass and calf. “ Toby?”
He swallowed deeply as he took in the sight of the beautiful nude body stretched on the sheets. The muscles of Geri’s ass flexed as he shifted slightly, and Toby hoped desperately that nothing would disturb the magic spread out before him. “I brought more lotion.”
“Good,” Geri whispered, “because, I want you to finish what you’ve started here. I… I think we’ve both waited long enough.”
Toby felt his heart quicken with something he couldn’t describe. He stood trembling in the doorway while he made his decision. “I’ll be right back.” He turned and went across the hall to his own room and rummaged around in a drawer until he found the box Grams had given him early that summer. He took out a few and went back into the other room. He laid the condoms on the nightstand and then untied and dropped his shorts, standing naked under the whirling fan. ‘Click, click, click,’ the silver chain chanted on the glass globe of the light.
He placed his knee on the bed and as he moved, Geri rolled over.
Toby’s blue eyes met those of the man he had fallen in love with months before, and traveled slowly down the defined chest and smooth planes of the stomach. He drank in the sight of Geri’s hard arching cock, with i
ts foreskin pulled back slightly from the reddened head glistening with a single drop of moisture. He felt himself swell and lengthen, and as he leaned inward toward the body on the bed, Geri’s strong arms pulled him down into a kiss. Their mouths met and explored and learned each other, and then pulled away to take mingled breaths.
Geri pulled him close to his body again. “Took you long enough, Toby Bailey.”
“Click, click, click…”
Toby set up on the bare, stripped bed. He looked at the happy picture once more, and then, with all the anger he’d been holding in, he threw it against the far wall. When the glass shattered in the frame, he stood on unsteady feet.
“Damn you, Geri! Damn you!”
He walked out of the room without turning off the fan. He grabbed his keys and locked the door before taking the stairs two at a time until he reached the car. He slid into the seat and buckled the belt across his naked chest, and then pulled away from what had been their home.
In the empty bedroom, the shirt hanging on the door knob swayed in the air, moved by the whirling fan.
“Click, click, click,” cried the chain, shedding tears of reflected sunlight across the broken glass which had once sheltered the two faces smiling up from the floor.
♦♦♦
After her meeting with the Chief, Melba went back down to her desk and told Sam about the ‘lead’ Nancy had provided.
“Might as well have Jones and Mitchell check it out. It’s better than anything else they’ve managed to scrounge up,” he said with disgust as he pulled out his phone and dialed.
As she listened to his conversation, she noticed the sick plant had been removed and replaced with a very sturdy looking ficus.
“Dr. Bridges called from downstairs,” Sam said, holding the phone slightly away from his mouth. “She said to head on down as soon as you got back. I think she has the toxicology panel back from the lab.” He went back to his conversation with Jones.
She quickly checked through her phone messages and listened to a couple until she came to one from Toby. “I was just wondering if you have any update about the release of Geri’s body. I’ll check back later. I’ll…be out for a while.”
She motioned to Sam that she was leaving and made her way down to the morgue, taking the stairs instead of the elevator. She’d notice her pants were a little snug in the hip area this morning and decided the exercise couldn’t hurt.
Dr. Bridges was seated at the small desk in the front area of the morgue. “Hello, Detective,” she said cheerily as she rose from her seat.
“Jackson said that you might have some news?”
“Yes, we got the results back from the lab. Come on back with me and I’ll tell you what they found floating around in the samples we sent.”
Reightman followed the doctor back through the door that lead to the depths of the morgue until they reached a smallish office, next to the one occupied by Dr Evans. Reightman peaked through the glass office window and Bridges said, “She’s out for a couple of hours trying to hunt down an apartment. We’ve been staying at one of those extended stay places the last day or so, but Dr. Evans said it was already driving her crazy.”
“You think you’ll be here long enough to go to the trouble of an apartment?”
“Yes, I think so. Evans said we would probably get a least a six month contract – probably longer.”
Bridges went behind the desk and picked up a file, and then came around and took a seat in one of the chairs placed in front of the desk. “Take a load off, Detective, while I share the grisly details.” Melba found herself puzzled as to why Bridges didn’t seat herself behind the desk.
The doctor followed her train of thought. “I never sit behind the desk, unless there are too few chairs or if I don’t like whomever I’m talking to.” She smirked and added, “I just think this is cozier.” She opened the file and read over the notes for a minute. “Okay, here it is in layman’s terms. There were significant amounts of sedatives in Guzman at the time of death, along with a nasty, but relative small dose of some sort of date rape drug.”
Reightman raised her brows in surprise and whistled under her breath. “Could the drugs have killed him if he hadn’t been attacked with the knife?”
Bridges shook her head, causing her ponytail to bounce. “No, they’d have worn off eventually if they’d been able to run their course, although the victim would’ve had the mother of all hangovers and needed a couple of days to get back to normal. What this does mean is he would’ve been very groggy and his response time would have been severely compromised.”
“Therefore making it harder to fight back effectively?”
“Exactly, although why someone added the date rape drug to the mix beats me. The sedatives would’ve done that on their own.”
“Any idea of what specific drug mix they used in the date rape drug cocktail?”
Bridges consulted the file again before answering “No. The results show a group of markers consistent with that type of drug, rather than a specific named drug. The sedatives were also somewhat of a mixed bag. Looks to me like someone simply cleaned out a typical yuppie’s medicine cabinet. That would’ve done the trick.”
“So what we need to look for is a method and an opportunity to introduce the drugs into him before the actual attack.”
“That’s right. Based on the levels found, I’d guess he was given the date rape drug a little earlier than he was given the other stuff , or it was a substantially weaker dose, or both,” Bridges postulated as she twirled a strand of hair from her ponytail. “There’s one thing more.”
“This isn’t enough?’ Reightman asked wryly.
“Oh, this is the real icing on the cake! Guzman had an erectile enhancer in his blood.”
“You mean he –”
“Took a little blue pill a few hours before he was killed,” Bridges quipped, completing Reightman’s sentence.
Reightman leaned back in her chair, confused as she tried to understand the implications. “But, why would a young man, in excellent physical condition, need to do that? Most twenty-eight year old men are always…”
“They always rarin’ to go, you mean?” Bridges suggested with a cynical smile and then shrugged. “Given what I know about the nature of his activities, I’d hazard a guess he felt he needed some help to perform as expected. Maybe he didn’t feel any desire for whomever he was meeting.”
Reightman nodded slowly. “That makes sense, although it’s the only thing about this case that does.”
“Glad I could help,” Bridges said as she stood. “I need to get back out front in case we get a customer.”
Reightman rose from her own chair. “When will you be prepared to release the body?”
“We’ve done all we can. I tidied him up as much as possible earlier today. Dr. Evans said we can release him any time tomorrow, after she finishes with the forms.”
“Thank you, and extend my thanks to Dr. Evans as well. Mr. Bailey will be relieved.”
“Is he aware of the little impromptu bris performed by Lieberman?”
Reightman decided not to characterize it that way to Toby. “No, not yet. I’ll tell him at the same time I give him the news the body is ready for release. It might help soften the message. I’d better try to tracking him down now. Thanks again, Bridges.”
“Sure, Reightman. I’ll see ya’ around. That’s almost a certainty.”
Bridges escorted her to the front of the morgue and Reightman made her way to the stairwell, thinking over all she’d learned. She stopped by her desk to pick up her things and found a note informing her Sam had gone to help Jones and Mitchell. She felt a pang of disappointment – she’d hoped he’d go with her to meet Toby and help deliver the news. She scrawled a note for him, and left it taped to a leaf of the ficus tree.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
TRAFFIC WAS LIGHT so Reightman made it to Capital Street shortly after noon. After knocking on the door of the spa and getting no answer, she called Toby and left
a voicemail. Her stomach growled and she wandered over to Earth Fruits to grab a bite to eat. She was warmly greeted by Bernice, and Lindsi was her normal doleful self as she took Melba’s order. Melba read the paper, catching up on the news while going out of her way to avoid reading an editorial written by Councilman Sutton Dameron. She felt guilty as she recalled her earlier meeting with Kelly and entertained the idea that she should at least see what the jerk had to say. Ultimately, she decided enjoying her lunch out-classed her need to know what crap the good councilman was spewing today.
After lunch, she paid the bill and following Zhou Li’s example, left Lindsi a generous tip, although not the princely sum Madam Zhou felt appropriate for the grudging service. She checked her phone, hoping to find a message from Toby. Finding none, she stood on the blazing hot sidewalk and looked around.
On a whim, she strolled over to Passed Around. She stopped and looked in the window, and was surprised to see most of the fluffy prom dresses were gone, along with several slutty cowgirl ensembles. She smiled, thinking of the collegiate young women who’d be wearing the silly outfits, and then went into the shop.
Moon was behind the counter and brightened when she saw Melba. “Good afternoon, Detective! It’s extremely pleasant and nice to see you again. Did your friend like the present you so astutely selected?”
“Yes she did, Moon, and it looked beautiful on her. Although you know as well as I do that you did the lion’s share of selecting.”
“What’s most important is your gift brought unencumbered joy and delight to the recipient. Are you in search for another?”
No, not today. I have a few minutes and thought I might hunt for something for myself.”
“Oh! That makes me so overwhelmingly pleased, Detective. Allow me to point you to the appropriate area with your size.” Moon glided around the counter and led Melba to one of the circular racks in the center of the store. Once there, she carefully studied Melba’s figure and indicated the appropriate section.
Done Rubbed Out: Reightman & Bailey Book One Page 30