I again thought of the inscription I was planning to ask Jonathan to put on my tombstone: “Life ain’t easy, kid.”
So, back to Gregory Fowler. He was found guilty in both trials, which immediately set the appeals process in motion. Mel and his mom had, as I knew they would, hired the best trial lawyers money could buy, which had to have put a large dent even in the Bement family fortune. Neither Richard nor anyone from his side of the family ever appeared in court or, apparently, ever showed the slightest interest in its outcome. They were probably all too busy blowing every penny of their inheritance. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch.
I only saw Mel a couple of times after his return. He claimed he wasn’t angry with me, but how could he not be? I felt truly bad about it, but I understood. He was cordial, but I could sense the distance, and I respected it. From my standpoint, he’d hired me to find his grandfather’s killer, and I’d done my job. But I was reminded of the old saying, “Be careful what you wish for.”
I submitted my bill and was promptly paid. He took a leave of absence from the airline for his dad’s trial and tactfully terminated the need for my assistance with the executor duties.
Totally unexpectedly, I received a sizable check from Talmadge, Booker, and Prescott, and another from Marjory Prescott for my help in finding Eli Prescott’s killer. Both checks immediately went into a new bank account established as Joshua’s college fund.
*
And at home? The case was just another ripple on the pond. Our routine went on unchanged. Dinners and brunches with friends, an occasional “just us” night for Jonathan and me, Saturday chores, and Sunday Jonathan-and-Joshua to church while I stayed home with the paper. Story Time and Cap’n Rooney’s and Tuesday chorus practice.
And when it comes right down to it, as they say, “It don’t get much better than that.”
About the Author
Dorien Grey started out as a pen name, nothing more, for a lifelong book and magazine editor who wanted to write his own novels as a bridge between the gay and straight communities. However, because he was living in a remote and time-warped area of the upper Midwest where gays still feel it necessary to keep a very low profile, he did not feel comfortable using his own name—a sad commentary on our society, he admits.
But as his first book, a detective novel, led to the second and then the third, he found Dorien slowly became much more than a pseudonym, evolving into an alter ego.
“It’s reached the point,” he said, “where all I have to do is sit down at the computer and let Dorien tell the story.”
Dorien’s “real person” had a not-uninteresting life. Two years into college, he left to join the Naval Aviation Cadet program. He washed out and spent the rest of his brief military career on an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean. The journal he kept of his time in the military, in the form of letters home, honed his writing skills and provided him with a wealth of experiences to draw from in his future writing.
Returning to college after service, he graduated with a BA in English and embarked on a series of jobs that led him into the editing field. While working for a Los Angeles publishing house, he was instrumental in establishing a division exclusively for the publication of gay paperbacks and magazines, of which he became editor. He moved on to edit a leading L.A.-based international gay men’s magazine.
Tiring of earthquakes, brush fires, mudslides, and riots, he returned to the Midwest, where Dorien emerged, full-blown, like Athena from the head of Zeus.
He—and Dorien, of course—moved to Chicago, and devoted their energies to writing. He completed ten books in the popular Dick Hardesty Mystery series, and numerous stand-alone works of fiction and nonfiction.