Early Saturday morning we were at a special gate at O’Hare Airport. They wheeled Donny’s coffin into the belly of a plane as we watched. It was cool and cloudy. Everyone wore soon-to-be-winter jackets. My parents were there along with all the Carpenters. My mom and dad came because the deceased was a close relative of Scott’s. They had never known Donny, but they knew us and it was important to them to show that they cared. Scott’s mom and dad thanked them profusely. Hiram and Cynthia were pretty much in shock and said little to anyone.
While we were back in the terminal waiting for the plane’s departure, Scott and I spoke with Connie, Scott’s favorite niece. Everyone else went to pick up some breakfast. I asked her, “Did Donny ever say anything to you about hiding a CD with pictures on it?”
“No. Sometimes he acted like he had big deals brewing. Back in Georgia, he always talked like he knew friends who could make deals for him. He always had another scheme going. Each one was sillier or more outlandish than the next. I don’t know of any that ever amounted to anything.” “Like what?” Scott asked.
“He claimed he could get any drugs he wanted anytime. I’m not sure he even took any drugs. Most of the time he got cigarettes from Darrell. He did talk about how much he didn’t like either of you.”
I said, “He came to visit Scott when we were in Georgia.”
“Yeah, but Scott was his uncle.”
Connie retrieved cousin Brent. Brent was big and sheepish and dumb. Before I even asked a question, he said, “I didn’t know. How was I supposed to know anything? I told the police everything I know. I didn’t get him killed. He never said anything about murder. I didn’t know what he was up to.”
“Why didn’t he go to you guys in the first place?” I asked. “Why did he come to us?”
“He talked about you guys a lot. He sneered a lot, but he seemed obsessed with you. Anybody who sneers that much has got to have a problem.”
“How come you told a reporter that Donny was there?”
“Donny was talking about making money. The reporter offered lots of cash. I figured this was a way I could help Donny make money. He laughed about how you caught him in the electronics room. He claimed you’d never figure out what he’d been doing.”
“We found the CD.”
“He didn’t tell me about the CD. He said he’d used your computer, and he’d thought about erasing all kinds of stuff from your hard drive. He probably would have if you hadn’t interrupted him.”
I said, “I bet he turned it on to see what was on the CD. I wonder how he figured out it would be useful.”
Connie said, “Maybe he didn’t know it would be useful until all that information started coming out about what your friend Ethan had been doing. Donny would keep something like that. I think he liked to feel sneaky and secretive. He may not have known its value, but he would have known there was something not right about it. I mean, it had pornographic pictures. He’d want to keep it quiet. He had all of the poor dead guy’s money.”
Scott asked, “Why did he hide the CD and not the money?”
I said, “The porn would obviously be from someplace else. The money could have been from anywhere. He’d want to keep the CD safe. He knew he couldn’t keep it with him. The police would be questioning him. Who knows what runs through a teenager’s mind? He wouldn’t know if the cops had a witness who saw him. Even if he could have gotten into the electronics room, he couldn’t take the CD with him when he left the penthouse. He and his parents were going directly to the police. He couldn’t know what would happen there. The possibility might be remote that he would be searched, but he couldn’t know for sure that he wouldn’t be.”
The cousins rejoined their parents. We talked with the Carpenters until they all boarded the plane. The police had met with Hiram and Cynthia and told them all the particulars of the boy’s involvement. Mostly we murmured soft platitudes. Little could be said to ease the burden of the tragedy they were going through.
After they left, we hurried in from the airport. Ethan’s funeral was Saturday morning at eleven. It was very private and very quiet. Certainly, the intrusion of public scrutiny into the lives of his family had been Ethan’s fault. Funerals are always for the living. Obviously, the dead can’t possibly care. Reporters had tried to inundate the wake the night before. Police and a squad of security people from the firm Scott and I often used had kept away the unwanted. Now, fewer than twenty people were in the church. The casket was flower-draped. Mrs. Gahain wept openly. As Watson observed, evil is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.
As Scott and I walked in, my sister beckoned me over. She pointed to the last row of the church. A man about my age sat there. His skin looked deeply tanned, more starkly so because his hair was almost white-blond. He wore a dark gray suit.
Caroline whispered and pointed, “It’s a closed ceremony. He’s not supposed to be here.”
“Get one of the people from the church to get rid of him,” I said.
“They’re being horrible. The priest wouldn’t come talk to my mother-in-law. We had to meet with some functionary. He wouldn’t let them do the things in the liturgy they wanted. We wanted to do some eulogies, and the priest wouldn’t let us.”
“He can do that?” Scott asked.
“Mrs. Gahain said we had to do what the priest wanted. If she didn’t want to fight, none of us was going to intervene. Mr. Gahain doesn’t go to this church. He had no say-so. They’re both too in shock. Tom, you’ve got to get him out of here. What if he’s a reporter?”
I definitely didn’t want that. He wasn’t acting like a reporter. I wanted to say, Why me?—but there were enough overwrought, over-the-top possibilities for emotion today. I didn’t need to indulge.
I walked over to the man. He sat on the edge of the pew with his head down, elbows on his knees, hands hanging loosely down. I leaned down and tapped him on the shoulder.
He looked up. Tears ran down his cheeks.
“This is a private funeral,” I whispered.
“I’m sorry. I found out from a friend where it was to be held. I got here very early. I didn’t know the public wasn’t invited. I’ll leave.”
His quick compliance made me feel even more like a heel for asking him to leave. I put a hand on his shoulder. “Did you know Ethan?”
“From grade school. He and I were lovers in eighth grade.”
My mind reeled. Even at his funeral Ethan was capable of reaching out and delivering one last sting. He’d always told me, always insisted, always, always, always said that I had been his first. That little virginal memory had taken on great importance for a number of years. Sure, I’d been hurt by his rejection, but I’d gotten on with my life. Our shared virginity was always one of the sacred little nubbins of memory in the back of my head that had kept what had happened between us in high school from being completely and horribly negative. My first true love had ended, and I’d gotten over it, but one of the few positive memories left was now tarnished.
Doubts surfaced. “I went to grade school with him. I don’t remember you.”
“I didn’t go to your school. Ethan and I were in Boy Scouts together. We went to meetings and on camp-outs. The first time we had sex was the fall jamboree during our eighth-grade year. We went up to Kettle Moraine in Wisconsin. We made love for the first time on the bottom bunk of a deserted cabin on a cold October night. For six months I lived for my weekly meetings with him in the church basement. We would make out in a distant cloakroom. At first the sex was beautiful and gentle and clumsy, the way it probably is for gay or straight virgins. Certainly so for those as young as he and I were. Then my parents moved away. I haven’t seen or heard from him in years. I saw on the news that he was dead. I had to come to say good-bye. I’m sorry. If this is just for family, I’ll leave.”
He began to stand up.
“It’s okay,” I muttered.
He held out his hand. “My name’s Michael.”
It had been a very long day. After the service we’d gone to the cemetery and then to a restaurant where the Gahains had rented out a room. No one had the remotest desire to do all the cooking and cleaning it would have required to have a meal at home. Not only that, reporters were still camped out on the Gahains’ doorstep. I thought this was exceptionally ghoulish on the part of the press. At the restaurant people started talking about Ethan, all the funny things he’d done, the special things, the warm and fuzzy moments. Sure it was cheap sentiment, but what better time for sentimentality than at a postfuneral meal.
We spent the night at my home out in the country. I would be back to school on Monday morning. I’d spent a little time early in the evening talking to the woman who had subbed for me and finding out how my classes had been. Things seemed to have gone fine at school.
Scott and I worked out together for an hour. Then I’d read a little of the latest Barb D’Amato mystery. Scott had puttered in his workshop on his latest carpentry project. We sat over half-gallons of chocolate chocolate-chip ice cream at midnight, just before going to bed.
I said, “Let’s have a quiet dinner out tomorrow. Kind of get back into a relaxed mode.” I knew we’d be flying to Atlanta in midweek. I would stay just a day, he for as long as he felt he was needed.
Scott scraped the bottom of his ice cream carton and licked the spoon clean. He said, “We can’t. Your wedding present arrives tomorrow.”
“Doesn’t that cost extra for delivery on a Sunday? Who delivers on a Sunday?”
“I do. Or at least I can have deliveries made. It was originally scheduled for tomorrow because we’d have been back. We’ll have to stay home.”
“All day? What is it?”
“I’m having the chef from the most famous chocolate shop in Geneva, Switzerland, come to make six of his favorite desserts for you, all sinfully chocolate, all the best in the world.”
An all-dessert dinner—now there is something to truly look forward to.
“I have your present.” I hurried to the bedroom and rushed back. I handed him a little box, slightly larger than the kind you put a ring in. He opened it. Inside was an ornately carved key. I knew of only one place on earth that used keys of this intricately carved, medieval design.
Scott said, “This is for Landursa.”
“Room one.”
He got misty-eyed. Landursa was a resort encompassing an entire tiny island in the middle of the Aegean Sea fifty miles from Athens. It was the most exclusive gay resort in the world. The service was beyond deferential, the food beyond exquisite, the rooms beyond sumptuous. We tried to go there once a year. We’d spent a passionate weekend there one New Year’s. With schedules permitting we’d tried to make it back every year since.
“I have reserved room one for us for New Year’s Eve for the next twenty-five years.” He had the grace not to say, Is that possible? “We don’t have to go if you don’t want.”
“I loved the time I spent there. I think it’s a perfect idea. It’s idyllic. It’s gay. It’ll have the two of us until we’re old and gray.”
“Don’t start to rhyme on me.”
Scott leaned over and kissed me. We rinsed off the spoons we’d used and deposited our cartons in the trash. We held hands as we strolled to the bedroom. We didn’t turn on any lights. We stood for several moments gazing out the windows to the moonlight streaming down onto the vast fields surrounding the house. We turned to each other. Our arms entwined. Our lips met.
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
The Paul Turner Mysteries
Sorry Now?
Political Poison
Another Dead Teenager
The Truth Can Get You Killed
Drop Dead
Sex and Murder.com
Mark Richard Zubro is the author of more than a dozen mysteries, including the Lambda Literary Award-winning
A Simple Suburban Murder
and, most recently,
Sex and
Murder.com
.
He is a high school teacher and lives in Mokena, Illinois.