Again I noticed the abundance of
stuff
in Jason’s room—sports stuff, stereo stuff, computer stuff, and framed photos. I opened a closet door and found more of the same. Stuff was piled on shelving and on the floor. His wardrobe was extensive for a high school student. Hooks on the inside of the door held a leather varsity jacket and a cardigan-style letter sweater.
Pierce was asking Mica about Jason’s athletic activity, taking copious notes, but I felt he was on the wrong track, and besides, the topic didn’t much interest me. So I studied the room at my leisure.
Closing the closet door, I moved to the dresser. Its top was cluttered with more stuff—trophies, brush and comb, a dish for change, a model car, more framed photos, as well as unframed snapshots that were wedged around the mirror. Some of the pictures were of Jason alone. In others he posed with groups of guys, perhaps teammates, all frolicsome and butch; the photos could have been clipped from the pages of an Abercrombie &Fitch catalog.
Leaning close to examine these photos (some of his friends were truly worth studying), I was distracted by a familiar scent. I thought of Neil. A wrinkle of curiosity pinched my brow, then my nose led my gaze to the bottle. There amidst the clutter on Jason’s dresser was a bottle of Vétiver, a pricey French men’s cologne long used by Neil. I not only recognized the bottle, but I’d know the smell anywhere—a distinctively crisp, woody, masculine scent.
This brought to mind another scent, the fruity, flowery fragrance I’d noted on Jason’s body Friday night. Kwynn Wyman had noticed it Wednesday as well, at dress rehearsal, when she accused Jason of wearing “cheap perfume.” It wasn’t Vétiver—no one could possibly confuse the two fragrances.
So what was it? I searched the top of Jason’s dresser, but I saw no cologne other than the Vétiver; there were no other bottles, flasks, or atomizers. What’s more, the Vétiver was two-thirds empty, so Jason clearly used it; the bottle was not merely some unwanted gift displayed on his dresser. I recalled thinking at Wednesday’s rehearsal that Denny Diggins, then Jason, had oversplashed the aftershave that night. Was the fruity scent perhaps exactly that—not cologne, but aftershave?
“Where’s Jason’s bathroom?” I asked Mica, interrupting Pierce’s questions.
She pointed to the door, which I had assumed was another closet.
Pierce followed as I crossed the bedroom, opened the door, and entered the bath. “What are you looking for?” he asked.
“Aftershave. Just a hunch.”
But my hunch didn’t pay off. Searching the countertop, drawers, and cabinets near the sink, it didn’t even seem that Jason, at seventeen, had been shaving daily; his only razor was a like-new electric, doubtless a coming-of-age birthday gift. Among all the usual toiletries, I found no second scent. In fact, I found a fresh bottle of Vétiver, still in its cellophane-wrapped, forest-green box. I also found a box of condoms, half-used, no cellophane.
Returning with Pierce to the bedroom, we found that Burton Thrush had joined his daughter there. Climbing the stairs must have been taxing—he looked worse than he had earlier. “Well,” he wheezed, “what’s the verdict?”
Pierce told him, “Nothing yet, I’m afraid.”
Thrush wheezed again, but this time it carried a note of derision.
Pulling out my pad and reviewing the notes I’d made, I glanced about the room again. “Mr. Thrush, can you help me with a few questions?”
“Get on with it,” he snapped. “My time is valuable.”
Valuable indeed, I mused. He seemed to be living from breath to breath.
I asked him, “Do you happen to know if your son used any fragrances other than Vétiver, perhaps an aftershave?”
He looked at me as if I were out of my mind. “How the
hell
would I—” His answer was interrupted by a coughing jag.
“Mica?” I asked.
She shrugged stupidly.
I returned my attention to her father. “Did Jason date much?”
With a touch of defensiveness, he answered, “Well,
yes
.”
“And whom did he date?” (There’s nothing quite so off-putting as the pedantic use of the objective case when one intends to seize control of a discussion.)
“There were…lots,” Thrush sputtered. “Jason was an athlete and a scholar. On top of which, he was blessed with rugged good looks. He dated many girls.” With haughty composure, Thrush added, “I daresay Jason had the pick of the crop.”
From behind me, I heard Mica’s tiny dog-pant of a laugh. I also heard Pierce click his pen for some notes.
“What has me stumped,” I told Thrush, scratching behind an ear, “is all these photos. Your son had many friends, obviously, but there are no girls in these pictures. Jason was still young; I thought maybe he hadn’t started dating yet. That’s the only reason I ask.” Actually, the reason I asked was that I’d found his stash of condoms. Clearly, the kid was sexually active. Either that, or he was uncommonly tidy when it came to masturbation.
Thrush wearily explained, “I told you: Jason was an athlete. He counted all his teammates among his friends. The pictures reflect that.”
“That makes sense,” I conceded, striking a question from my notes. Still…what about those condoms? “Can you recall the names of his girlfriends?”
Again that spooky little laugh slipped out of Mica.
Thrush started counting on his fingers, but couldn’t seem to come up with any names. Then something clicked; he tapped his noggin. “Nicole Winkler, that was her name. They were quite thick, you know—quite thick.” He attempted, without success, to twine two fingers as a demonstration of how close they were. “In fact, Nicole was homecoming royalty with Jason at last fall’s big dance. They made a splendid couple—splendid. I’m sure you’ll find the photo here somewhere.”
I’d studied all the photos and seen nothing of Nicole. If Jason ever had such a picture, it was stuck in a drawer, not framed in tribute to a magical evening.
“If you have any doubts,” continued Thrush, “just ask the pretty Miss Winkler. They were truly smitten.”
I made a note of it, but had already observed and concluded that Nicole was “smitten.” Unfortunately, I couldn’t ask Jason if the feeling was mutual.
“Mr. Thrush,” I said, closing my notebook, “I never knew Jason, and it seems that I still don’t. In the three days since his death, I’ve thought about him a lot, but he’s an enigma to me. How would you describe him to a total stranger? How would you describe your relationship?”
“He was my
son
,” Thrush reminded me, as if I were dim-witted. “What more need I tell you? He was my only son, the heir to my business. He was to carry on the family name. In recent years, I’ve had little else to live for. I’d hoped to see him through high school, then college, so I could hand over the reins.”
Thrush paused, resting his back against the wall, looking as if he might drop. “As a child,” he continued, letting his vacant eyes drift across the ceiling, “Jason was one of those
special
boys—everyone loved him, the mere sight of him. When his mother died, he was braver than I was, and he was only six or so. It was a joy, such a joy, to watch him grow out of childhood and approach maturity. There was nothing he couldn’t do or couldn’t conquer.”
Thrush paused again, turning his head against the wall, locking his eyes on mine. “I suppose you know that he viewed your nephew, the Quatrain boy, as his rival. Even though they went to different schools, Jason saw your boy as the only other one who measured up, at least in terms of theater, for whatever
that’s
worth. Ironic, isn’t it, that this asinine little play should bring them together and pit them against each other, head-to-head. And now, of course, my Jason is dead. He was to be the father of my grandchildren.”
Mica told him, “I can still give you grandchildren, Daddy.”
Thrush shot her a sidelong, wild-eyed glance. The notion of Mica procreating had seemingly never crossed his mind, and he was now aghast (as I was) to consider the grim possibility.
I had no other questions for Thrush, and neither did Pierce, so we thanked him for his cooperation (a diplomatic nicety, baldly insincere) and excused ourselves. Thrush remained in Jason’s room, looking at the empty bed as we stepped into the hall and descended the stairs.
Mica followed us. Pierce and I didn’t speak, feeling uncomfortably tailed.
At the front door, we turned to thank her, but she said nothing. Glancing over her shoulder, she slipped out the door with us and followed us to the street. Her behavior was downright weird—was she drugging? By the time we arrived at my car, I was sufficiently rattled by her presence that I was tempted to jump behind the wheel and floor it. Besides, it was hot. Time to go. But Pierce paused before opening his door and asked Mica, “Do you…need something?”
She looked Pierce in the eye, then me, then Pierce again. Through a slit of a smile, she told him, “Jason didn’t date.”
I was suddenly in no hurry to leave. I asked, “What do you mean, Mica? Your father said he dated
lots
of girls.”
“Daddy liked to
think
that, but Jason liked boys.”
I glanced at Pierce with blank surprise. Mica’s assertion was intriguing, to say the least, but I wasn’t sure if I believed it, considering the source.
Pierce asked her, “Jason was gay? What makes you think that?”
“I just know, that’s all. He’d say things; I’d hear things. And despite what Daddy says, Jason couldn’t
stand
that Nicole bitch—she drove him nuts.”
I asked, “Did Jason have boyfriends?”
“He had
sex
with boys—quite a few, if that’s what you mean.”
That was precisely what I’d meant. “Anyone in particular? Was there one boy he got together with most often?”
“Was there someone special?” added Pierce.
Mica nodded coyly. “Oh, yes. But he’s not a boy. He’s much older. And he and Jason were on the outs—I could tell. I heard Jason fighting with him on the phone.”
“
Who
?” Pierce and I asked together.
“Isn’t it obvious?” She panted her anemic little laugh, then turned away from us, walking up the sidewalk to the house. When she got to the door, she stopped and looked back.
With a fey flick of her wrist, she told us, “Have a
mah
-velous day, gentlemen.”
And she disappeared inside the house.
Shortly before noon, I left the
Register
to walk the block to Neil’s office. Emerging from the newspaper’s lobby onto First Avenue, I noticed at once that the weather had changed. It was still hot, but the humidity had dropped. The summer sky had turned from white to blue, with a cheery midday sun hanging high overhead. A mild breeze had picked up—a meteorological fillip. For the first time in weeks, it was actually a pleasant day. I didn’t even bother to loosen my tie.
Strolling through the noon rush along Dumont’s main street, I laughed aloud at the contrast between this “urban” scene and the one I had left in Chicago. The big city had ample allure, of course, and there was genuine glamour to the lakefront neighborhoods where I had lived and worked. Still, life in small-town Wisconsin offered its own rewards, and I enjoyed to the fullest Dumont’s quieter pace and simpler pleasures. Was I discovering some deeper meaning to long-held notions of success and growth and ambition? Or was I simply getting old? Even
that
dreaded question, I noticed wryly, didn’t seem to bother me.
What bothered me, in spite of these blithe musings, was the web of circumstances surrounding the death of Jason Thrush, a web that grew more tangled every day, a web that threatened another young man whose happiness and future now rested with my ability to protect him from the darker side of life in Dumont, where “reputation” was lifeblood, where gossip could kill.
NEIL M. WAITE, A.I.A.
The discreet sign on the storefront snapped my momentary funk and had me grinning like a kid on a date. One of the greatest rewards of my reinvented life on the moraines of Middle America was my ability to amble a few hundred yards at lunchtime, open the door (as I was now doing), and pop in on the only man who mattered.
“Hi,” said Neil, looking up from his worktable. Pocketing a pair of reading glasses, he asked, “How was your morning?”
“It had its moments.” Closing the door behind me, I crossed the small office and met him in a loose embrace. “You look great today, as usual.” I sniffed his neck. “Smell nice too.” Just checking—he had indeed worn his Vétiver, and it was indeed the same fragrance stored in two bottles in Jason’s suite. It was
not
the fruity scent I’d smelled in the theater or noticed on Jason’s corpse.
Leaning back on his draftsman’s stool, he asked, “Did you go to the Thrush house, as planned?”
“We did,” I assured him, parking my butt on a file cabinet. As I began recounting the visit, I observed Neil’s work space, taking comfort in its tidy permanence.
Neil had decided to move his practice to Dumont only nine months earlier, but he was clearly entrenched here now, and busy as well. Though he ran essentially a one-man shop, he had recently taken on a part-time apprentice, a college student, to help with some of the bigger projects. Today, though, he worked alone in his studio, which had proved to be the perfect use for a handsome old First Avenue storefront that had sat vacant for a few years. Everything was now painted white, with gray trim and nubby charcoal carpeting. New suspended light fixtures gave the space a trendy, postmodern feel. The big display windows on either side of the door were shuttered to eye height, with diagonal stripes of light pouring in between the vanes and from the bare glass above. The floor space was divided equally between its clerical and design functions, with the usual furnishings and equipment for each—desk, basic business computer, file cabinets, conference table, phone, and fax for the office; drafting table, taborets, engineering computer, plotter, flat files, and sample racks for the studio. It was Neil’s domain, and he ruled it well, looking every bit the prosperous local architect in his crisp plaid shirt, knit cotton necktie, and pleated worsted slacks.
He asked, “So Jason’s dad had a monster insurance policy, eh?”