Chapter 3
When I got back home, there was a message on my home phone from Jay, Brad's partner. He said he was really worried by a message he had received from Brad and would I come right over.
So I got back in my little green Toyota with Pepe and raced right over to Jay's house. And it is Jay's house. He's the one who pays the mortgage. Brad has never made a profit in his interior decorating business. Brad is good at getting clientsâbetter than I wasâand his clients are pretty wealthy, though eccentric. But he buys extravagantly too. He's always snapping up deals at estate sales or prowling around second-hand stores. He'll plunk down one thousand dollars for a Victorian sofa, then let it sit in the back of his shop for years.
Brad's partner, Jay, on the other hand, runs a successful, high-end catering business, with more than forty employees on his payroll, and he's the one paying off the mortgage on the house they share on Queen Anne Hill. It's an old Victorian mansion decorated in Brad's favorite style: I'd call it baroque Victoriana: red damask walls, gold tassels on the curtain tie-backs, gilded chairs, and lots of porcelain figures of birds. Jay, has a thing for birds. One room is a dedicated aviary where his petsâmostly parrots and cockatoosâfly around freely.
Jay came to the door with his favorite bird on his shoulder, a bad-tempered Quaker gray parrot. I flinched. My skin had been punctured by this creature's sharp beak more than once. I looked down at Pepe, who should have promised to protect me, but he had already trotted into the hallway and was sniffing around the edges of a wrought-iron umbrella stand that was shaped like an umbrella. An umbrella would have helped me defend myself against that parrot, but no one in Seattle ever uses an umbrella. We view it as a sign of weakness. But it helps us identify the out-of-towners.
“Geri! I'm so glad to see you! Come in! Come in!” said Jay, waving me off the front porch and into the crowded living room. I could see Brad's influence everywhere: the green Morris wallpaper, the gilt chairs striped in gold and green, the glittering gold lamé curtains, and the green velvet pelmet above them. Brad's style is way over the top, but it's recognizable and I suddenly missed my friend more than ever.
“What's going on, Jay?” I asked.
“I don't know,” Jay said. “That's why I called you.” He waved me to a seat on the mustard yellow velvet sofa and settled down opposite me in an armchair covered in green leather. Whereas Brad is blond and willowy, Jay has the bulk of someone who loves food and the reddish complexion of someone who loves wine. They couldn't look more unalike, but they've been together for over ten years. They fight all the time, but they love each other fiercely.
Pepe jumped up on the sofa beside me and stared at the bird on Jay's shoulder as if warning it that he would bite it if it came anywhere near me.
“Thanks, Pepe!” I said, patting him on the head.
“Your dog still talking to you?” asked Jay with a bit of a sarcastic twist in his voice.
“Ironically, no,” I said. I was surprised and a little hurt that Brad had discussed my talking dog with his partner, but hey, that's what partners are for. I had discussed Brad's disappearance with my boyfriend, Felix. Felix told me to give him some time. Sometimes good friends, old friends, need a break, he said. I wondered if that was code and Felix needed a break.
“Brad thought it was cute,” said Jay. His voice got sad. “It made him want a dog more than ever. I told him he couldn't have one. Do you think that's why he left?” His voice was now wistful.
“What do you mean left?”
Jay looked embarrassed. “Well, I hadn't seen him for a couple of days. I thought he was off on one of his little shopping sprees.” It was true. Brad could take off to go check out an antique store in Arlington, a small town north of Seattle, and end up two days later two states away in Montana, buying the entire inventory of a taxidermist who was going out of business.
“Was he acting weird before he left?” I asked.
“Yes, he was jumpy and irritable. And when I asked him why, he just snapped at me.” Jay flapped his hands in the air near his head to indicate how frazzled he was. That disturbed the parrot who flew up, circled around my head (I ducked) and then settled on a nearby lamp. “I thought he was getting cold feet.”
“Cold feet about what?”
Jay's big brown eyes got sad. Almost as sad as Pepe's eyes when he wants something. “He didn't tell you, did he?”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“The wedding. Our wedding.”
I was shocked. “You and Brad are getting married?”
Jay nodded. “On Halloween. But if he didn't tell you, his best friend . . .” His voice trailed off.
Pepe was sitting at my feet, looking at me. He seemed to be trying to get a message through to me. Oh, a message.
“You said he left some sort of message,” I said. “What did it say?” I swear Pepe nodded his head. I could almost hear him saying, “Good work, partner.”
“I'll show you.” Jay got up and went out into the hall. He came back with an invoice, a bill for an armoire, on which was scribbled in Brad's loopy handwriting:
Crisis in the kingdom. Off to slay the dragon. Home soon.
I looked at it. I read it out loud for Pepe's sake.
“When did you get this?” I asked.
“I don't know,” said Jay. “I just found it this afternoon. It was on top of the bureau in Brad's room. You know I never go in there.”
I knew that Jay was horrified by Brad's messiness so they had separate bedrooms. Jay was a neatnik whereas Brad scattered chaos in his wake.
“Do you know there's a three-day Pay or Vacate notice at the store?” I asked.
Jay ran his hands through his tousled hair. “Yes, the landlord has been calling. He says Brad is six months behind on the rent. I told him I would send him a check, but he said he's tired of having to chase after Brad for the rent.”
“Maybe Brad was referring to the landlord when he said he was going to slay the dragon?” I asked.
Jay brightened. “Could be. Never thought of that.”
“Can you give me the landlord's name?” I asked.
“Sure,” Jay got up and went out into the hall. We followed and watched him root around in a pile of business cards that lay in a silver tray on a curving sideboard with a marble top. A vase full of dried stalks of angelica stood beside it, each dried flower head like an explosion of fireworks “Here it is. His name is Samuel Morris. It says his office is in Bellevue. I believe he owns several small properties on Eastlake. My hunch is that he's getting ready to sell to a big developer and he'd be happy to see Brad out of there.” Jay handed me a card. He looked at me with his bright eyes. The parrot looked at me with his bright eyes.
“Well, thanks,” I said. “I'll let you know what I find out.”
“Please do,” said Jay. “I'm so worried about him.”
“Why not call the police? How long has it been?” The note was undated.
“That's just it,” said Jay. “I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that I don't really know when he disappeared. I mean sometimes he sleeps at the shop, so I just assumed he was there. You know how he gets when he's working on a project.”
It's true. Brad once completely refinished a dining room table and reupholstered fourteen matching chairs in one all-night binge. When he was working on a project, he was obsessed.
“Well, when's the last time you saw him?”
Jay looked up into the air to the left of his head. I tried to remember from my research if that meant he was making something up or looking back at his memories. “Well, I know I saw him on Tuesday. No make that, Monday, because he came home really late and really drunk and I told him to go sleep in his bedroom.”
“So he's possibly been missing for three days?”
“Well,” Jay looked embarrassed. “Maybe. I mean, it's possible.” He held out his hands. “You can see why it would be awkward to go to the police.”
“I think you need to,” I said. “They'll listen to you, since he's been gone for so long. They might even have a way to help you figure out when he was last seen. Do you know what bar he was drinking at?”
Jay frowned. “Probably the Cuff or the Manhole. Maybe Neighbors.” He named several gay bars on Capitol Hill. “Those are the ones he frequents.”
“Have you gone to any of them? Asked around?” I asked.
“It would be too humiliating. I don't know anyone any more,” said Jay. “That's where we metâin a barâbut once I found Brad, I was done with all that. But Brad still goes out once or twice a month. He loves to dance and flirt and gossip. I thought that's all he was doing.” He looked pensive for a moment. “But maybe he was looking for a way out. Maybe he ran off with some guy he met.”
“Brad wouldn't do that to you,” I said. “He loves you. And you guys have been together for, what, ten years?”
Jay sighed.
“Oh, there is one other possibility,” said Jay as Pepe and I went out the front door. “Brad always called one of his clients the dragon lady. Maybe he was talking about her.”
“Ah yes! I know the one,” I said. That would be Mrs. Fairchild. I had helped Brad deliver a hand-painted medieval-themed armoire to her house one day. After we had staggered upstairs with it, she decided the colors clashed with the curtains and had us carry it back down to the van Brad had rented.
We went out to the car. I looked over at Pepe who was watching me. “That didn't sound right, did it?” I said to him. He shook his head. “Something's fishy,” I said. Pepe nodded. “Well, the good news is that I know where Mrs. Fairchild lives. And I know Brad was working for her. Let's go talk to her first.”
Pepe nodded his consent.
But it wasn't good news that I knew where Mrs. Fairchild lived: in a luxurious fake Southern Colonial plantation house in the tony streets down below Volunteer Park. It wasn't good news that the front door, hidden from the street by an overgrown yew hedge, was open because that meant Pepe would go dashing into the house before I could stop him. And it wasn't good news at all, that when I followed him into the lemon-yellow kitchen, I found the dead body of Mrs. Fairchild lying on her kitchen floor in a pool of dried blood. The smell of fresh paint still lingered in the air. But it was faint under the stronger scent of what Pepe would say, if he could speak, was the smell of
muerte
.