Excerpt

I opened the door and he was there, all six feet of him. My senses switched to slow motion to take it all in. He stood with his weight shifted onto one of his long, muscular legs. His blue-gray eyes glittered.  Though recently shaven, his beard cast a bluish shadow against his satin olive complexion. He didn’t smile, but I knew when he did, it would be luminous. His curly dark hair was tousled. An aroma of balsam surrounded him. One second had passed. 

“You got trouble here?” he asked, restraining the natural power in his resonant voice. A clean white cotton shirt was slightly wrinkled; a striped necktie lay loosened at the collar; sleeves were rolled to expose powerful, hirsute forearms; gray pleated slacks tried in vain to conceal the assertive strength in his loins; shiny black loafers enveloped broad feet with high insteps. When my gaze returned to his face, I saw his eyes looking straight into my own, and felt a Mediterranean zephyr caress my face. Two seconds. 

“Who are you?” he asked curtly. 

“Stan Kraychik,” I answered. 

He pushed his way by me, and three other cops followed him. I heard him say, “Lieutenant Branco,” as he went by. Of the other three cops, one was a plainclothes officer in his late twenties. I sized up his compact body and styled blond hair. A fitting assistant, I thought, but maybe a little too cute and cool. The wedding band on his left hand relieved some of the mystique. 

Another of the three cops was a uniformed officer, a hefty woman almost as tall as Branco. Her arms and shoulders dwarfed mine. Her features were dark and rough, but I sensed a warmth in her. 

The last cop was the lab expert, a reedy black man slightly taller than me. His big bright teeth took up one-fourth of his face when he smiled, which he seemed to do easily. He seemed too gentle to be a cop. 

Branco looked around the room quickly, but I could see him register every detail in a computer-like mind. He scribbled words into a small black notebook while he surveyed the room— and me. “There’ll be more personnel arriving shortly. Now, what happened here?” 

I tried to answer coolly. “Someone’s not breathing in the bedroom. No pulse either.” My stomach lurched again and a tremor ran up and down my spine. Branco nodded to his assistant and the lab man to go check out the body. Suddenly we heard the frenzy of banging drawers and slamming closet doors, even the flushing of a toilet. Branco whirled at me. “Someone else here?” 

I rolled my eyes and nodded, as though letting him in on a secret. “You bet.” I began to explain, but was interrupted by Calvin’s arrival from the hallway. He’d put on a puffy salmon-colored cotton shirt and baggy white linen pants. The stuff was expensive, just the perfect togs for a Palm Beach reception, but it was out of season in Boston. I was surprised that Calvin could commit such a fashion blunder. He was under more stress than I thought. 

Calvin looked Branco up and down. “Well!” he exclaimed, “I thought that blond you sent to the bedroom was a nice piece, but the prize bull is definitely out here.” 

Branco ignored the comment. (Was he used to it?) Instead he spoke brusquely to Calvin. “Who are you?” 

“I live here. So the real question is, who are you?” His voice quivered with an artificially induced energy. 

Branco said evenly, “Lieutenant Branco, homicide.” 

“No uniform? How do I know you’re a cop?” Branco flashed his badge. Calvin looked at the badge, then at Branco. He said. “You seem quite real, Mr. Bronco.” I was certain Calvin had mispronounced the name intentionally. He continued, “I’m Calvin Redding and I own this flat. And some rather unpleasant events seem to have occurred this evening. I hope your men will able to set everything straight.” The female officer glared at Calvin and cleared her throat.

I said, “Something’s weird, Lieutenant. He wasn’t like this before.” I sounded defensive. 

Branco looked at me coldly. “Quiet, you!” Then to Calvin he said, “We’d appreciate your cooperation, Mr. Redding.” 

“You want me to cooperate? I’d be only too happy to help you, but I think Vannos here may be the one you want to talk to.” Branco turned on me. 

“Just what is your name?” 

His sudden vehemence startled me. “I, uh … it’s … Stan,” I said. “I mean, Stanley. Well, actually, Stanislav is the most correct. But in the shop it’s Vannos. But my grandmother used to call me Stani.” 

Branco shook his head and muttered, “Jesus!” 

Meanwhile, the blond assistant returned from the bedroom. He looked at Branco seriously and said, “You’d better have a look, Lieutenant.” 

Branco said, “Okay,” then left Calvin and me in the living room with the female officer while he and the blond cop went back to the bedroom.

Calvin whispered to me, “Some cop! No uniform, and he has hairy forearms.” He frowned in distaste. 

The female officer moved between us and grumbled to Calvin, “Anything you got to say mister, speak up!” 

When Branco and his assistant came back out, he sent me to the kitchen with the blond one while he interrogated Calvin in the living room. I told the assistant everything that had happened since I first arrived. Talking to him was easier than with Branco, and my fumbling defensive tone went away for a while. Branco took longer with Calvin, so I watched them both from the kitchen doorway. Calvin sank lower into the leather sofa as Branco pressed him for answers. He began to resemble a dog left outside a restaurant while his master went in for a steak dinner. He was quite a different Calvin from a few minutes ago, or even earlier that day. Branco finished and came into the kitchen. He sent the blond cop back out to question Calvin again. Then he sat down, opened his black leather note pad, and took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s hear your side of it.” 

“Again?” 

“Just talk.”

I tried to tell him everything I’d told the other cop, but his physical presence unnerved me, and I lost track of exactly what had happened. To make things worse, Branco would jot things in his little black book, but it always seemed at the wrong time.When I’d say something I thought was important, he’d do nothing. Then, when I’d pause to remember a detail, he’d write like a demon, which made me wonder what kind of game he was playing. When I finally finished, he asked me without looking up, “You haven’t touched anything, have you?” 

“No, sir.” I lied calmly…

Blurb

Stan Kraychik is a hairdresser in Boston, leading a successful hairdresser’s life. Successful hairdressers’ lives vary widely but they usually have one thing in common – no dead bodies.

Not only does Stan find a dead body but the police suspect that he’s the killer. Stan, on the other hand, suspects his arrogant client, Calvin, who dragged him into his mess. Proving Calvin did it will clear Stan’s name. Proving it without landing into a different pool of trouble … well, that’s a problem Stan will have to solve.

Grant Michaels’ zany series of adventures starring Stan Kraychik garnered multiple Lambda Literary Awards including a 1991 nomination for Best Gay Mystery for A Body to Dye For. For this new edition, Carl Mesrobian reminisces about his brother Grant in an exclusive foreword, and Neil Placky provides an appreciation in a 2019 introduction.

Published by ReQueered Tales

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Excerpt

Freemont Tate lived in an exceptionally grand co-op on Lake Shore Drive a few blocks north of my apartment. While I lived in one of the cheapest apartments on the Drive, Tate lived in one of the most expensive. So expensive it had its own private elevator.

After calling up to announce me, the doorman got out a special key and then walked me over to the elevator. Next to the metal doors was a lock into which he put the key. A moment later the doors opened and he nodded his head toward them. I stepped in. There was an up button and a down button but nothing more. I pressed up.

At the top floor, sixteen floors later and the only possible stop, I stepped out into a foyer with a white marble floor, ghastly wallpaper and a real live butler. The butler was a dapper, middle-aged man dressed in a tuxedo—a bit much for mid-morning, I thought. 

He told me, “You’re Mr. Nowak.”

“I am.”

“Mr. Tate recognized your name and asks that you join him in the downstairs library.” 

Downstairs library? Did that mean there was an upstairs library? Not surprisingly, the first thing I noticed when I followed the butler out of the foyer into a long hallway was a flight of stairs leading upstairs. It was the kind of hallway filled with comfortable chairs and small tables, as though the apartment was so large a guest might need to suddenly sit down and rest. 

We passed several open rooms, all to my right: a dining room set for ten, a sitting room, a living room three times as big as my entire apartment. Each room was finished with neatly painted floor boards, molding and cornices. The paintings on the walls looked collectible. There was a Michael France in the sitting room taking up most of a wall. Lilies, I think.

I felt grossly out of place in my faded jeans, Reeboks and dark blue alligator shirt—though, at least that had a collar. 

The downstairs library—which was directly across from the living room—was a deep forest green, including all the molding. The green was carefully chosen to set off an enormous gold-framed mirror that reflected the stunning view of the lake. There was a large mahogany desk and two comfy looking, leather chairs. Presumably Tate only did business here with people he liked. A lot.

A man in his early seventies sat behind the desk. He had a full head of white hair and skin the color of a brick. I suspected a vacation home in Arizona or somewhere else equally scorching. As it happened, I’d never seen him before in my life, which made it unlikely I’d be collecting the money I was owed.

Standing up to shake my hand, he said, “Mr. Nowak, I presume?”

“Mr. Tate.” I was tempted to ask if his friends called him Free, but then I’d thought the same thing when I met the phony Mr. Tate.

“So, we agree that we’ve never met?” His voice was loud.

“Yes. We do.”

“Pardon me?”

“I said, ‘Yes, we do.’” I raised my voice a bit. The old man didn’t seem to hear very well.

“Wonderful. So, who wrote the check that you attempted to cash?”

“A man came to my office. He introduced himself as Freemont Tate. He was around sixty, salt-and-pepper hair, thick in the middle, pasty complexion, shorter than you are.”

“What kind of work do you do at your office?”

“I’m a private detective.”

“What did you say?”

“A private detective.”

“Oh, I see,” he said, a doubtful tone in his voice. “And what did your Mr. Tate ask you to do?”

“I’m afraid that’s confidential.” It wasn’t exactly. Not after the check bounced—nonpayment tends to void most legal agreements. 

He—phony Mr. Tate—hired me to follow his much younger wife and discover whether she was having an affair. She was. The story he fed me was that they had a legal agreement guaranteeing her money if they divorced, but that agreement was void if she cheated. She had and so it was. In retrospect, it was possible none of that was true. 

Since I’d sat outside that very building waiting for the young woman—I assumed I’d followed the right woman. Glancing around, I found a photo of her on the bookshelf, so yeah, I’d followed the right woman. The question now was did Mr. Tate want to know about his wife’s dalliance. If he didn’t want to know, I certainly didn’t want to tell him. 

“Do you have a brother or cousin around your age?” I asked.

“Why would you want to know that?”

“The man I met was near your age. Roughly.” Though he had no issues with his hearing.

“How do you know my age? Why do people always think they know—”

I ignored him and asked again, “Relatives?” 

“Other than my children I have very few relatives. A maiden aunt in her nineties. A few second and third cousins out West.”

“How would someone have gotten ahold of one of your checks?”

“Checks? I keep my personal check register here on the desk most of the time and the extra checks in that cabinet right there.” He pointed at the cabinet that was the base of a built-in bookcase. “The check was taken from the cabinet. It was out of sequence.”

“So you wouldn’t notice right away it was missing. And they only took one check?”

“Yes.”

I stopped for a moment. That meant the entire point of stealing a check was to pay me. This wasn’t part of some bigger theft.

“Who has access to this room?”

“The staff. Teddy, whom you’ve met. Our cook, Midge. Three maids. They come and go so often I don’t learn their names.”

“You and your wife live here alone?”

“No. There are six bedrooms. My wife and I have adjoining rooms; each of my children has a bedroom. The last is a guest room. We often have guests.”

“How old are your children?”

“Forty, thirty-eight and sixteen—if I’m remembering correctly.” 

That told me that Mrs. Tate was a second or third wife. She was a woman in her thirties. Two of the children were older than she was. The sixteen-year-old might be hers. Hard to say. 

It also told me his two older children weren’t particularly ambitious. They were far too old to be living at home.

“So, the list of who had access to your checks includes any of your five servants, possibly more since you say there’s a lot of turnover among the maids, any of your three children, and any of the guests you had in say March, April or early May.”

“Also delivery men. We receive a lot of packages. The plumber, I think, has been here recently. Teddy would know for sure. I believe we had the filters on the air conditioners cleaned, which required letting someone in.”

“This is getting to be quite a list,” I pointed out. Going through it wasn’t going to be the best way to approach this. Of course, I shouldn’t bother. Even if I found the first Mr. Tate, it was unlikely he was going to pay me.

“And you, of course,” he said.

“Me? I’ve never been here before.”

“That is what you’d say, isn’t it, if you were involved.” He stared at me for a moment. “Though I must say, if you are involved it’s brazen of you to show up here asking to be paid. That is what you’re doing, isn’t it? Asking to be paid?”

“You don’t have to pay me. I didn’t work for you.”

“I assume if I pay your bill you’ll tell me why you were hired?”

“That’s not a good idea. This is a con job, don’t you think? The whole point of it is to get you the information I discovered. Someone wants you to know what I’ve learned. And I don’t think they’re doing you any favors.”

The logic in what I’d just said was probably leaping all over the place. But with or without leaps, I couldn’t think of any other reason for a fake Mr. Tate to hire me to uncover Mrs. Tate’s affair other than that he, or whoever hired him, wanted the real Mr. Tate to find out about it.

“Someone’s gone to a lot of effort to put me in this room with you,” I continued. “The best way to thwart them would be for me to remain silent.”

“Yes, but then I think knowing is better than not knowing. The things we don’t know end up hurting us much more than the things we do.” He took his check register out of the top drawer of his desk and began to write me a check. “I’m adding an extra five hundred. For the inconvenience.”

He held out the check and I had to decide whether to take it or not. He seemed like a pretty smart guy. Eventually, he’d realize I’d left his wife off the list of people who might have stolen the check used to pay me. That would tell him she was the subject of my investigation. Once he knew that, it wouldn’t take long for the rest of it to fall into place. I took the check.

“Your wife is much younger than you are.”

“What was that?”

I raised my voice and repeated, “Your wife is much younger than you are.”

“That’s nothing I didn’t already know.”

“She seems to be having an affair with someone name Edward Hurley.”

Tate’s face got tight. “Edward Hurley is my attorney. I think you’ve misunderstood.”

“Yes, that’s entirely possible.” I didn’t think it was.

He waited a moment. “What makes you think they might be having an affair?”

“I followed your wife to the Starlight Motel. She entered a room that had been registered to an Edward Smith. Mrs. Tate was there a little bit more than half an hour. She left the room with a man I later identified as Edward Hurley.”

The Starlight Motel was a seedy place way up on Lincoln Avenue along a stretch where there were a number of other seedy motels. At first, it seemed odd that Mrs. Tate and Hurley would go to such a place when the Drake was available. However, I suspect the Drake doesn’t allow fake names or rent by the hour.

After a moment, Tate cleared his throat and asked, “Did you take photos?”

“I did.”

“I’m surprised they haven’t been sent to me,” Tate said.

“I think they were for my benefit.”

“Your benefit? How so?”

“The, um, imposter told me you have some kind of agreement with your wife. If you divorce her because of infidelity she gets nothing. But he didn’t ask for pictures. I had to suggest them.”

“My wife and I don’t have any such agreement.”

I wondered if he was suddenly wishing they did.

He cleared his throat. “As you’ve pointed out, my wife is much younger than I am. In a marriage like ours certain accommodations need to be made. And that’s all I want to say about it.”

“You’re saying your wife did nothing wrong.”

“Yes, that is exactly what I’m saying. I’d appreciate a little discretion.”

“So whoever wanted you to know—”

“Is a fool.

Blurb

In the latest installment of the Lambda Award-winning Boystown Mysteries, it’s summer 1985.
As Nick’s personal life begins to unravel, Nick throws himself headlong into investigating the murder of a woman married to a much older, wealthy man. It appears that only her husband could have killed her, but Nick is sure that’s not what happened. Meanwhile, Rita Lundquist makes her presence known, posing a continuing threat to Nick and those around him. 

More about award-winning author, Marshall Thornton:

Marshall Thornton writes two popular mystery series, the Boystown Mysteries and the Pinx Video Mysteries. He has won the Lambda Award for Gay Mystery twice, once for each series. His romantic comedy, Femme was also a 2016 Lambda finalist for Best Gay Romance. Other books include My Favorite Uncle, The Ghost Slept Over and Masc, the sequel to Femme. He is a member of Mystery Writers of America.

Sign-up for his newsletter at marshallthorntonauthor.com

Excerpt

There was no mistaking what truly ended my night’s sleep. The clock radio got us up with local news at eight o’clock on the public radio station. The unctuous voice said, “An SUM professor was found dead on campus early this morning. He has been identified as Professor Perry Cross of the English, American Studies, and Rhetoric Department. Campus Police have released no other details.” 

As the announcer went on to some item about the state legislature, I rolled over to find Stefan staring at me.

I stared back.  “How can he be dead?” 

Stefan frowned, shook his head as if he hadn’t really heard me and wasn’t even sure he was awake.

“He was just here at dinner last night!” I shook my head. “And now he’s dead?” I sat up, leaned back against the headboard. “It was Perry, wasn’t it? You heard it too? I’m not dreaming this, am I?” 

“We’re awake,” Stefan said, and reached back to shut off the radio. 

I didn’t know what to say. Just before falling asleep, I’d joked about killing Perry; I felt disgusted to have said it. 

My mind was full of flickering images of people in movies and on TV finding out about a death: they were usually shocked, they screamed, cried, rushed around, stuffed fists into their mouths, stumbled backwards into a chair, quivering— did things that seemed extreme, no matter how limited the compass. But I was just dumbfounded. 

I guess Stefan was too. 

Suddenly, last night’s dinner felt retrospectively eerie, a portent of even worse things to come. 

We had been eating dinner with a corpse. That’s what it seemed like here in bed this morning. I felt deeply ashamed of how upset I’d been to have Perry over— that seemed trivial now when weighed against his death. 

“I guess I don’t have to share my office anymore,” I brought out. “Or not for a while.” 

Stefan grinned a little strangely, and I realized that joking was definitely not the right tack. 

We got up. We showered and ate breakfast without saying much at all. I felt as if I’d taken too many antihistamines: my vision, my hearing, my thinking were all clouded and dull. 

Stefan had an early class and left before me. Luckily I didn’t have to teach that morning. I only had a long stretch of office hours, and it was somewhat too early in the semester for students to have questions, problems, or even feel like coming in to chat. 

Usually, I went to the department office first to check my mail, say hi to the secretaries and whoever was there, plugging in to the prevailing current. But today I headed right up to the third floor of Parker. I didn’t want people reminding me that I’d seen Perry the night he died, had made dinner for him. It seemed embarrassing and grotesque to talk about him at all, especially since he wasn’t a friend. How could I mention his name withoutsome of my antagonism leaking through? I could imagine Serena Fisch’s smile when she met me. It wasn’t that long ago that we had acknowledged how much we despised Perry. 

I felt guilty somehow, as if saying good night to Perry Cross had sent him off to death. It was weird that I was so affected, but perhaps I was responding to Stefan’s heavy silence. 

If you’ve lived with an introvert, then you know that they can have many different levels and kinds of silence. You become expert at tuning in, listening, interpreting. Or sometimes ignoring. But I didn’t know what to make of Stefan’s silence at breakfast, and felt sucked into my own. 

Unlocking my scarred office door, I shuddered at the two cheap black and white plastic nameplates, mine and Perry’s. Someone would have to remove his, I thought. And I pictured his mailbox right above mine in the department office. 

Inside, at my desk, with the office door open just a crack, I was glad that Perry’s desk and file cabinets were not in my immediate sight line but behind my back, where I could ignore them. I would have to make an effort to either inspect what was on his desk or to take in the still life his death had left behind. 

I knew the student newspaper was downstairs and wondered if there was an article in there yet— or was it too soon? “Found dead on campus”— what did that mean? Where did it happen? Who found him, and when? How did he die? Was he wounded? Were there witnesses? 

I sat at my desk, unable to take out any papers to grade, unable to push my thoughts in some productive direction. 

I hadn’t liked him even before I knew what he had done to Stefan, so I wasn’t sorry Perry Cross was dead, but I wasn’t relieved. His dying so soon after dinner even made me feel cheated, a little. Lying in bed with Stefan last night, I’d imagined many scenes of quiet but vindictive triumph in our office. Like heading off up north to our cabin on Lake Michigan for a weekend. Or coming back from an opera in Chicago. I’d be casual as I shared information about our good times with Perry, a nasty kid holding a scrap out of his hungry dog’s reach, waving it back and forth hypnotically. 

I was also ashamed of myself for being so vindictive. Perry was dead; nothing that I felt, nothing that had happened really made a difference now.

Perry’s death was bound to create confusion in our department, and not just because of the need for someone to cover his classes. Broadshaw would probably take Perry’s death personally, and storm around kicking desks and shouting. I dreaded the chaos our chair would make. I’d seen him enraged last year by a snowstorm that kept some faculty members at home in their rural towns. I felt sorry for everyone who’d have to put up with Broadshaw, which of course included me.

There was a knock and Stefan came in. I checked my desk clock; he had another hour before his next class. He was pale and more out of it than he had been at home. Today his clothes looked incongruously good on him— they fit so well that the dark green and black checked shirt and black slacks only heightened how miserable he looked. 

He sunk into the comfy chair I had bought for my students (since I couldn’t requisition anything from university stores that was acceptable). Students are usually nervous enough talking to a professor, and watching them twitch and stretch in a stiff-backed unsteady chair would have been distracting for me. 

“They found him in the river,” Stefan said. 

“The river? How? What the hell was he doing?”

Blurb

Nick Hoffman has everything he’s ever wanted: a good teaching job, a beautiful house, and a solid relationship with his lover, Stefan Borowski, a brilliant novelist and writer-in-residence at the State University of Michigan. But when Perry Cross shows up, Nick’s peace of mind is shattered. Not only does he have to share his office with the nefarious Perry, who managed to weasel his way into a tenured position without the right qualifications, he also discovers that Perry played a destructive role in Stefan’s past. When Perry turns up dead, Nick wonders if Stefan might be involved, while the campus police force is wondering the same about Nick. Originally published in 1996, this first book in the Nick Hoffman Academic Mystery series is now back in print, with a 2019 foreword by the author.

About Lev Raphael

Lev Raphael has wanted to be an author since he was in second grade, and he’s not only achieved his dream, he’s published twenty-six books in genres from memoir to mystery to erotic vampire tale; had his work translated into fifteen languages; seen one sell close to 300,000 copies; appeared in two documentaries; won various prizes; done hundreds of invited talks and readings on three different continents; sold his literary papers (92 boxes!) to the Michigan State University Libraries (MSUL); been the subject of scholarly articles, papers, and book chapters; and seen his work taught at colleges and universities around the country. Which means he’s become homework. Who knew?

After close to twenty years of university teaching, he now offers creative writing workshops as well as editing at http://writewithoutborders.com.

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Winner – Gay Mystery, Lambda Literary Awards

Excerpt:

“I’m sorry to be such a bother,” Joanne said, as we drove down Sunset toward Silver Lake. “You should have just left me there.”

“No,” I said. “I wouldn’t do that.” 

It was broad daylight and it wasn’t a bad neighborhood, but still, I wasn’t going to leave a seventy-year-old woman to fend for herself outside an apartment building in Hollywood. 

“It’ll be fine, Joanne. When we get to Noah’s you can call Rod and leave a message, tell him where you are and he’ll call when he wakes up.”

“I wish I could say this wasn’t like him. He’s never been the most reliable boy. But then he never had to be, he’s always been one of those people—charm, I guess it is. He’ll do something irresponsible and then the minute he shows up and smiles at you, well, it’s hard to remember why you were mad.”

“I’m sure he’s a wonderful boy, and I’m sure he was just having fun and it got out of hand. Noah, why did you ask if he was at that party? She didn’t seem to like Rod.”

“I don’t know, it just seemed logical. She said he was sleeping it off, so he got drunk somewhere and she knew it. Why she wouldn’t want to admit he was at the party, that I don’t know.”

“I’ll bet you’re right. He was there,” Joanne said. “Rod is so fun at parties. That girl probably didn’t like that he got all the attention. Is that the Capitol Records building?” 

It wasn’t. Not even close.

“No. It’s the Cinerama Dome,” I said about the large, white, dome-shaped movie theater.

“Oh, I’ve never heard of that,” Joanne said, sounding disappointed. 

“It’s an interesting building,” my mother said. And a moment later she asked, “Is this where the riots were?”

“Some things happened up here, but most of it was a couple miles south.”

“I was so worried about you.”

“I was fine.”

“Yes, but I didn’t know that. How was Rod during the riots?” my mother asked, turning around in her seat.

“He saved a woman’s life. She was just walking down Hollywood Boulevard and some black men attacked her. He scared them off.”

“Was that on the news?” my mother asked. 

“Oh no. Rod hates publicity.”

I didn’t say anything because the story sounded like a lie. Beating off ‘some’ black men in the middle of the L.A. riots seemed very unlikely. I knew that some buildings were looted on Hollywood Boulevard, but I hadn’t heard of anyone being physically assaulted up that far.  

“I don’t know why everyone always says traffic is so bad in L.A. This is really not bad at all.”

“Mom, it’s a holiday. Everyone is at home or out of town.”

“Oh, yes, I suppose that’s true. I’m starting to get a headache.”

“Hangover,” I corrected.

“Noah, dear, there’s no reason to be quite so accurate.”

A few minutes and a couple of turns later, we arrived in front of my apartment. A small, boxy L-shaped building of two floors sitting on a hill about thirty feet above the street. A steep, red-painted concrete staircase led up one side of the property to the courtyard. I parked, got out of the car, and opened the metal mesh gate to my carport. Then got back in and drove my car into its space. 

I was out before my mom and Joanne, opening the trunk. I lifted my mother’s two bags out and set them on the ground.

“Joanne, do you need anything from your bags?”

“I’ll just take the makeup case, I think.”

As I took Joanne’s smaller case out of the trunk, my mother grabbed both of hers.

“Mom, I’ll take those.”

“Noah, how do you think they got from the house to the car and from the car to the terminal in Grand Rapids?”

“Skycap?”

“No, I carried them. I can do it again.”

I scowled at her. “Just one.”

She picked up the bigger one and her bulky winter coat. It had warmed up and was now almost seventy, so she’d finally taken it off. I shut the trunk. Joanne didn’t move to take any bags. We stepped out of the carport, and I shut the gate behind my car and locked it. Then I picked up my mom’s smaller bag and Joanne’s makeup case.

On the stairs, Joanne said, “You mother tells me you own a video store.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Do you think my Rod rents movies from you?”

“Um, he’s a little out of the area. He might come by for something he couldn’t find anywhere else, but other—” 

“I’ll have him take me by and show me.”

“Well, we’ll be open tomorrow.”

“Does Rod have a lot planned for you?” My mother was right. She wasn’t having any problems carrying her bag. I, however, was already winded. 

“Oh yes. He has quite a lot planned. We’re going to the Observatory, and the Hollywood sign, and Universal Studios for the tour, and the Chinese Theater for a movie—oh, and we have reservations at Spago for Thanksgiving dinner late this afternoon.”

“That’s a lot,” I said. I’d barely planned anything for my mother. “How long are you staying?”

“Until Saturday morning.”

Forty-eight hours? They were doing all of that in forty-eight hours? And he was starting off by oversleeping? Wow.

Joanne started to ask what we had planned for Mom’s visit, but luckily we’d reached the top of the stairs, and as soon as we did I smelled bacon. I turned and saw my downstairs neighbors, Marc and Louis, sitting at the metal table outside their apartment right in front of a giant bird of paradise. There was a tablecloth over the table and it was set for four.

Louis was near forty, while Marc was about ten years younger. Louis looked a tiny bit like a frog and Marc was round everywhere. Both wore big welcoming smiles and their pajamas. Louis’ PJs were a traditional red plaid while Marc’s were baby blue with a floating pattern of black-and-white cows.

“Hello stranger,” Louis called out. “We expected you more than an hour ago. Where have you been?”

“Louis, shush,” Marc said. “You know how air travel can be. On a holiday no less.”

“Guys, you shouldn’t have done this.”

“Don’t worry, Louis was up doing prep for dinner anyway.” We were having Thanksgiving dinner with them later. I wouldn’t have been able to get reservations at Spago if my life depended on it.

“Well, this is my mom.”

Marc and Louis stood up and came over. “Hello Mrs. Valentine.”

“Angie, please.”

“Angie,” they both said.

“And this is Joanne,” I said. “Mom and Joanne met at O’Hare while they were waiting for their flight.”

“We figured out we were both coming to L.A. for Thanksgiving with our gay sons. What are the chances?” Joanne said, her voice loud and coarse. “My son was supposed to pick me up, but apparently he’s fast asleep in his apartment. That boy. He’s the life of the party and sometimes I wonder it doesn’t kill him.”

“We stopped at his apartment on the way,” I explained.

“He’s dead to the world,” Joanne said. “We couldn’t wake him up even though we made a real ruckus.”

“Well, sit down,” Louis said. “We’ll get another chair and some coffee.”

“And plates. I’ll get plates.”

“We do need to make a phone call,” Joanne said.

“Yes, we need to go upstairs and make a call,” I said.

“All right. Fine. Put on your PJs if you want and come back down.” Louis disappeared into their apartment while Marc went to find a chair.

We climbed the wooden stairs to my apartment, which was directly above theirs. My apartment was small, not even six hundred square feet. Walking in, the tiny living room was in front of us, boasting a fabric wrapped loveseat, a black leather chair from IKEA, an antique armoire holding my 13-inch TV/VCR combo, my video collection (or at least part of it), a compact stereo and a stack of CDs I’d gotten from a record club. Usually, a Hockney poster hung on one wall, but I’d taken it down and put up a photo from my parents’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.

To our left was a Danish modern dinette set in front of the window. Beyond that, in what was meant to be the dining area, was an old metal desk under the corner windows. 

“It’s just darling,” Joanne said. “Absolutely darling.”

“Where am I going to sleep?” my mom asked.

“I thought I’d give you the bed and I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“Noah, that couch is too short even for you.” She was right even though I’m not exactly tall. I was planning to put the cushions on the floor and sleep on them there.

“You raised a gentleman, Angie. Giving his mom the better bed. Such a sweet boy.”

“We’ll talk about it later,” I said. “Joanne, the phone’s right here. You can call Rod.” I pointed out the cordless phone sitting on the black Parsons-style table I’d bought at IKEA. I think it was called LACK. 

“Oh thank you,” she said, making herself comfortable on the loveseat and picking up the phone. 

I glanced at my mother. She was eyeing her anniversary picture. “Noah, can we get you something else for this spot? I mean, it’s sweet of you, but you can’t want to look at this all the time? I don’t even have this picture up.”

“Um, sure,” I said, planning to completely forget she’d said anything since I didn’t need a picture to hang there. “Why don’t we take your bags into the bedroom?”

Joanne left her message for Rod while we walked past her into the bedroom. There wasn’t much in there except for my queen-sized bed with a set of shelves behind it, creating a sort of headboard out of planks and concrete blocks. There was a window, a wall of closets and a built-in set of drawers next to the bathroom. There wasn’t anywhere to put my mother’s luggage but on the bed.

“It really is a sweet apartment, Noah. Very economical.” She leaned in close and added, “You didn’t need all that space anyway,” referring to the three-bedroom house I’d shared with Jeffer.

“Thanks, Mom. Oh, I cleared out a drawer for you and there are some hangers in the closet so you can hang things up.”

“Should I put my pajamas on?”

“You don’t need to—”

“What’s the number here?”’ Joanne asked.

I gave it to her. She repeated it into the phone.

“Isn’t that funny?” my mother said. “It used to be everyone had their phone number right on their phone. Now no one does. It’s funny how much changes. Anyway, I don’t mind wearing my pajamas, they’re very modest.”

“You know, we don’t even have to go back down. You’ve been up all night—”

“Oh no, your friends seem so nice. And I am a little hungry.”

“Oh, this room is adorable. I love the built-ins,” Joanne said, standing next to us and peeking in. “Noah, my pajamas are in my bag downstairs in your car.”

“That’s all right. I have an extra pair.”

“We really don’t need to—” I started.

“Go away, we need to change,” my mother said, pushing me out of the room and closing the door. I stood there a moment wondering why my mother brought two pairs of pajamas for a four-night stay and then yelled through the door, “I’m going downstairs.”

“All right, dear.”

When I got down to the courtyard, Louis handed me a mug of coffee. “Well, well, you went to get one mother and came back with two.”

I just rolled my eyes at that. “You didn’t have to do this, Louis. How long have you been up?”

“A couple of hours. But don’t worry, I wanted to check the turkey anyway.”

The turkey sat just outside his front door in a giant pot soaking in brine. And, just to make things more complicated, the giant pot was in the center of a galvanized washtub filled with ice. They would have kept it inside, but there wasn’t any room in their apartment, which had the exact floor plan as mine. 

“So does your mother always pick up strange women?” he asked, unable to not tease me.

“No, she does not. They had a good time on the plane and then Joanne’s son didn’t show up, so we couldn’t just leave her.”

“Because there’s no such thing as a taxi at the airport?”

Actually, it was the one place in Los Angeles where you could reliably find a cab. 

“Louis, be nice,” Marc said, coming out of the apartment with an extra place setting.

“It is strange that you couldn’t wake the guy up.”

“Maybe not. We met his neighbor. She had some kind of party last night. She wouldn’t say, but I think he was there.”

“Drugs or booze? What do you think?””

“One or the other.”

“I drank a lot in my twenties,” Louis admitted. “And I do mean a lot. I always woke up.”

“Well, maybe it’s both?” Marc suggested.

“They’re welcome to dinner. When he wakes up.”

“Thank you, Louis, but she’s been promised Spago.”

“Are you implying my dinner isn’t going to be world class?” Louis said with mock-offense.

“No, but you’ve never been on Tonight’s Entertainment News.”

“Well, there is that.”

And then my mother and Joanne were coming down the stairs. My mother had changed into lavender silk pajamas with cream-colored slippers while Joanne wore a very similar pink pair with her sensible walking shoes. Each of them carried a purse in the crook of an arm. Clearly, I was odd man out in my black jeans, red-and-white Rugby shirt and jean jacket. 

Marc poured coffee for my mom and Joanne. “There’s cream and sugar if you want.”

“Thank you,” Joanne said, diving into her purse and coming out with a tiny bottle of Jack Daniel’s. She poured it into her coffee. “Angie?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“It will help you sleep.”

“Well, maybe half.”

As my mother poured Jack Daniel’s into her coffee, Louis came out of his apartment with a large platter. Setting it down in the center of the table, he said, “Fresh biscuits with gravy, scrambled eggs, uncured bacon.”

“Oh, it all looks lovely,” Joanne said. “My doctor would kill me, but he’s not here, so who cares.” She grabbed the serving spoon and scooped out a pile of biscuits.

“I see we’re being festive.” Louis nodded at the Jack Daniel’s bottles. “Marc—”

“On my way.” And he scurried back into their apartment.

“So, Spago?” Louis said to Joanne.

She set down the serving spoon, her plate already stacked, and said, “Yes. I’m so excited. Rod said it’s impossible to get reservations.”

“Almost impossible; you got in.”

I handed the serving spoon to my mother and she took some eggs, a single biscuit with gravy and a strip of bacon. 

“What does your son do?” Louis asked.

“Script coordinator. Monumental Studios,” I explained, knowing Joanne would be vague. Then I put some eggs and a strip of bacon onto my plate.

“Monumental, huh?” Louis said, raising an eyebrow. Monumental Studios was one of the Gower Gulch studios that had a few sound stages, an office building or two and a handful of bungalows. Never one of the original big five, they now made the occasional low-budget, direct-to-video feature, but mainly rented out their soundstages to TV shows. And, yes, it was very unlikely that one of their script coordinators would be able to get a reservation at Spago on Thanksgiving.

“You can’t only have that,” my mother said, as she scooped a giant biscuit onto my plate. 

I decided to be gracious and say thank you.

Marc popped out of the apartment saying, “Who wants a mimosa?” He had a bottle of champagne in one hand, with champagne glasses tucked between his fingers, and a pitcher of orange juice in his other hand.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Irish coffee is enough for me,” said my mom.

“Well, I’ll have one,” said Joanne.

I took a bite of a biscuit slathered in gravy. It was really much better than I’d expected. I was eating more than I had been for the last few months, though I still didn’t have what you’d call a healthy appetite.

“So, Louis,” my mother said. “Noah says you’re the cook today. What are your turkey tricks?”

“This year I’m soaking the turkey in brine.”

“Oh, I’ve read about that.”

“Last year he deep-fried it and nearly burned down the building,” Marc explained. “It’s a relief that this year we’re only facing possible flooding.”

“I didn’t nearly burn down the building. I scorched a banana tree. A little.”

“Is there a grocery store open? Noah and I still have time to make something, you know.”

“Oh my God,” Marc said. “Don’t even say that. We have so much food in our place it’s ridiculous. Plus, Louis has everything timed to the second. Adding or subtracting another dish will just throw everything off.”

Sensing he needed to change the subject, Louis asked, “Do you plan to do a lot of sightseeing while you’re here, Angie?”

“Oh no, I just want to spend time with Noah. And, of course, I want to get over to see the video store.”

“You haven’t seen it before?”

“I’ve seen it once, but that was years ago. I know he’s done a lot to it since then.”

“Not that much, really,” I said. Renovation was one of the excuses I’d used to keep her away once it was clear that Jeffer was sick and that he’d lied to me about, well, so much. 

“What do you boys do for work?” Joanne asked.

Marc lit a cigarette, allowing Louis to answer first. “I’m in charge of accounts receivable for Eagle Rock Surgical Center.”

“Is that a hospital?”

“Sort of. Not really. We don’t have a trauma center and you need to schedule your procedure. We do a lot of plastic surgery and other electives. Fertility procedures that can’t be accommodated in an office. Things like that.”

“And what do you—” Joanne stopped cold and said, “Oh my God, you were on Kapowie!”

Marc’s mouth fell open. “I was. How on earth did you know that?”

“I used to babysit my grandson, Bucky. My daughter’s boy. He loved that show. You look just the same.”

That was a strange comment since Marc looked like a guy in his mid-thirties even though he was still in his twenties. Did he look like a guy in his mid-thirties when he was on the show? As a teenager?

“Of course, Bucky’s twenty-four now. He’ll be out of prison in about nine months.” No one asked why her grandson was in prison. It seemed impolite; and possibly something we didn’t want to know.

Joanne turned to my mother and asked, “Are you sorry you won’t be having grandchildren?”

“That’s not necessarily true,” Louis said. “There’s a guy at work, he and his boyfriend are having twins with a surrogate.”

“Really?” I said, a little surprised. I hadn’t known guys were doing that.

“Oh yeah, they’re very excited.”

Of course, I had not even thought about children. I was really much more focused on surviving until my thirtieth birthday. Which reminded me, it was time for my AZT. I’d have to run upstairs after breakfast and take it.

The conversation turned back to Marc’s career as a child actor. Joanne rattled off a list of famous actors asking if he’d met them. As though there were a clubhouse somewhere for everyone who appeared on TV where they got together and mingled. Talk then turned to politics. Joanne missed Reagan, which was awkward as the rest of us did not. 

Upstairs, my phone began ringing.

“Oh thank God!” Joanne said. “That’s Rod. I’m sure of it.”

“I’ll get it,” I said, getting up.

“But he’ll want to talk to me.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll give him the address. He’ll be here in half an hour.” I left the table and hurried up the stairs. 

I got into my apartment and picked up the phone on its eighth ring. I continued into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet.

“Hello?”

“Yes, I’m trying to reach Mrs. Brusco.”

“Uh-huh. Is this Rod?” I took my prescriptions out of the medicine cabinet and shook the pills into my palm one by one. 

“No, it’s not Rod. This is Detective Amberson, Hollywood Division.”

“Uh-huh?” A chill tickled the back of my neck. This might not be good.

“Who am I speaking to?”

“This is Noah Valentine.”

“Are you related to Mrs. Brusco?”

“No, I’m just a family friend.” And barely even that.

There was glass on the sink for brushing my teeth. I rinsed it out and filled it with some water while cradling the phone—

“Is Mrs. Brusco there?”

I swallowed my pills.

“Um, yes, she’s downstairs. Did something happen?”

“I’m afraid I can only talk to Mrs. Brusco.”

“All right. Hold on.”

I walked out onto the balcony that ran along my apartment. 

“Joanne, could you come up here?” I called down to the courtyard. I watched as she got up from the table and hurried up the stairs. This was bad. We’d left Rod’s apartment building a little more than an hour ago. Best case scenario, he woke up, stumbled out into his courtyard and got arrested for drunk and disorderly. Worst case scenario—

“Rod wants to talk to me?”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her it wasn’t Rod. Wordlessly, I handed her the cordless phone.

“Rod, I hope you know I’m just livid—what? No, this isn’t Mrs. Brusco. I don’t use that name. Who is this?” She listened. “Yes, yes I am Rod’s mother.”

She listened again. 

“No, no, he’s sleeping. He had a little too much fun last night and he’s sleeping it off.”

Her mouth worked as she tried to say something more, then she took a ragged breath and let go of the phone. It bounced against her body and landed on the red tile of my balcony. She crumpled into a ball. I could hear my mother rushing up the stairs.

I snatched up the phone and said, “Hello? Are you still there?”

“Yes, I’m here,” said the detective.

“Joanne just dropped the phone. She’s very upset. Is he dead?”

“I can’t tell you that. She’ll have to tell you.”

And that told me he was.

“I understand she was at her son’s apartment earlier this morning?”

“Yes, she was. I was with her. And so was my mother.”

“We’re going to need to talk to her.”

Blurb:

It’s Thanksgiving, 1992 and Noah Valentine is late picking his mother up from the airport. When he arrives he discovers that she’s made a friend on the flight whose also waiting for her son. When the woman’s son doesn’t show up, they eventually take her home for breakfast with neighbor’s Marc and Louis. Soon after, they learn that her son has overdosed—or has he? Noah and his motley crew investigate over the holiday weekend; which includes a fabulous dinner, a chat with a male stripper, a tiny little burglary and some help from Detective Tall, Dark, and Delicious.

More about award-winning author, Marshall Thornton:

Marshall Thornton writes two popular mystery series, the Boystown Mysteries and the Pinx Video Mysteries. He has won the Lambda Award for Gay Mystery twice, once for each series. His romantic comedy, Femme was also a 2016 Lambda finalist for Best Gay Romance. Other books include My Favorite Uncle, The Ghost Slept Over and Masc, the sequel to Femme. He is a member of Mystery Writers of America.

Sign-up for his newsletter at marshallthorntonauthor.com

Excerpt:

DODGING AND BURNING is a mystery set in 1945 about Jay Greenwood, a gay WWII photographer, and the photo he takes of a murdered woman’s body. When the body goes missing, the photo is the only proof of her murder. When he shows the photo to Bunny Prescott, the debutant who’s in love with him, and Ceola, the kid sister of his lover who is missing in the Pacific, the story becomes as much about the photographer as the subject of the photo.

Prior to this excerpt, Jay has asked twelve-year-old Ceola to look for her dead brother’s journal. She doesn’t fully understand why, but to please Jay, she’s willing to look. This is from Ceola’s perspective:

Mama’s grief ruled the house with an iron fist after your death, Robbie. Her first almighty decree was: All who live in this house must live in silence.

Papa ordered me not to play records or listen to the radio or make too much noise of any kind. I was even told to take off my shoes before entering the house. The quiet was hell. I curled up on my bed for hours at a time, yearning to hear the Andrews Sisters or Anita O’Day or The Shadow or anything for relief. Despite his dutiful enforcement of the rules, Papa was as much a prisoner of them as I was.

One night, he was taking in the news on the radio in the living room, like he did, and I was sitting at the top of the staircase, straining to hear, real happy for the distraction. Mama stormed into the room, and the radio clicked off. I heard her say, “I have a headache, Bob. I’ve already asked you to turn it down once.”

I heard Papa’s heavy footsteps, and then the radio came back on but louder—“World News Today. Brought to you by the Admiral Corporation makers of Admiral Radio, America’s Smart Set—”

She snapped, “Turn it off! I’ve had enough bad news for one lifetime.”

The radio went dead. Seconds later, I heard Papa trudge out of the house. He didn’t come back that night. Soon after that, he began spending evenings and weekends digging holes, planting trees, surrounding the house with a forest of saplings. Although it was intended as a memorial, it surely felt more like he was trying to wall us in.

Mama’s second decree was: When Robbie is spoken of, he must be spoken of in if-then statements.

Mama would carry your photo with her around the house, setting it in the kitchen while she cooked or propping it against a book in the living room while she knitted. If I entered the room, she would begin her usual litany of conditionals. “If Robbie had survived the war,” she’d say, “he would’ve lived in Royal Oak, to be close to his family. If he had survived, he would’ve married a nice girl—that Donna Smith or Rachel Richfield or the King girl—or no, not the King girl, she’s too easy with the boys.” She was certain whoever you would’ve married, the two of you would’ve had beautiful children. She even chose names for the ghost grandchildren—Robert Jr. and Mary Jane. Little Mary Jane had blond curls just like she did as a young girl.

“If he had returned from the Pacific,” the chant went, “he would’ve studied law, or maybe medicine. He certainly would have gone to UVA or Virginia Tech. He would’ve loved his community and, particularly, his church, where he would have become a lay reader. He would’ve joined the Kiwanis Club like his father. He would’ve set a good example. He would’ve taken care of us, as we got older. He would’ve held my hand when God calls to me in my last hour.”

Her third and final decree was: No one, under any circumstances, could enter Robbie’s bedroom or touch his belongings.

Mama made it into her own personal shrine to you. Her grief was greedy, claiming your stamp collection, your saved Dixie Dew bottles, your favorite red sweater with the hole in the sleeve, your Roy Rogers cowboy hat with gold trim, the bone-handled pocket knife Papa gave you when you were twelve, your baseball mitt, the pocket watch you inherited from Grandpa that was inscribed with Great Grandpa’s name (Terrence Henbone Bliss, 1854), and the broken-in deck of cards you used to teach me pinochle. All of them became holy relics.

For months, I thought that if I went into your bedroom, sirens would blast and police would rush in, seize me, and haul me off to jail, hands cuffed and hunched over in disgrace. Papa made me promise I would never, ever disturb your room. “If Mama finds out,” he said, “we’ll both be in terrible trouble.”

But the limbo of mourning became too much for me, and, in the worst sort of way, I wanted to claim something of my own from Mama’s police state.

About midsummer, I said to hell with the rules and started poking around. That’s when I found the stack of magazines under your nightstand and started sneaking off to read them. But of course, I hadn’t come across your journal.

Right after Jay had shown Bunny and me the hiding place in the tree, and Bunny had marched off in a tizzy, he said, “Cee, I have to know Robbie’s journal is safe. Please. Before anyone else finds it. It’s killing me.”

His blue eyes were on fire. It was the first time I’d seen him frightened.

I still wasn’t sure if I wanted to give him your journal, but I sure wanted to find it. I wanted to keep it safe. I suppose what I really wanted was to keep it for myself, because deep down, I wanted to know you better. So when I got home, I crept upstairs and down the hall to your room. Mama was running errands and Papa wasn’t home from work yet.

The door to your room was cracked—you remember, it was warped and never came to—so I nudged it open. The afternoon sun was peeking through the limbs of that old locust tree outside your window and throwing flecks of light across the floor. I hesitated, worried Mama might come home and catch me, but also worried I was doing something sacrilegious, like spitting in a baptismal font or walking across a grave. I moved forward on tiptoes. With each step, the floor groaned like demons calling out to me—What are you doin’, Ceola? You’ll get in big trouble. Mama and Papa will never forgive you. You’re desecrating the memory of your brother.

The slanted ceilings and dormer windows and sideways light gave your room a sadness I still feel when I’m by myself in the church sanctuary, fixing flowers or replacing candles for Sunday services. But those red cowboys galloping across the walls, lassos whipping through the air, herding and roping cattle, reminded me that it was your space, your sanctuary, not Mama’s. Between the windows, I saw your small, beat-up dresser with both of our initials carved into the side of it, displaying bits and pieces of your life, from school awards to postcards from Virginia Beach. Along the bottom of the mirror, you had wedged several school photos of friends, maybe there was even a picture of Jay—no, surely Mama would’ve seen it and thrown it in the wood stove.

I rummaged under your bed and riffled through your closet—nothing but sports equipment, schoolbooks, and dusty clothes. Underneath the neatly folded T-shirts and boxer shorts in your dresser, I found even more magazines—Dime Detective, Astonishing Tales, Weird Stories, and a stack of comics. I’d struck gold. Right there, on the floor, I fanned out this new treasure trove so I could see all of it, forgetting about how angry Mama and Papa would be if they caught me.

I picked up the comics and let the pages fall through my fingers, reading bits of dialogue and glancing at the pictures. The handsome fedora-ed detectives, holding their pistols close to their hips, spat phrases like, “It’s time to meet your Maker. I hope you’re wearing your best dress.” Or, “Baby-doll, you’ll make a beautiful corpse.” And the femme fatales, wrapped like maypoles in red and black satin gowns, every curl on their head as tight as a spring and eyes aimed like twin Colt .38s.

I can still hear you, clear as a bell, reading in a low voice so you wouldn’t draw Mama and Papa’s attention—It was a hot, damp, mean August day, and the city streets were crying black tears. Detective Rod Magnum leaned back in his chair, unbuttoned his collar, and drifted into an uneasy slumber. When he heard the click-clack of her heels and smelled her perfume through the open door, he sat up and straightened his tie. Sweet trouble was coming his way . . .

When you read to me, you always held out at the cliffhanger—a dame with a knife dangling over her head or the hero slipping from a crumbling ledge, some melodramatic climax or other—and made me beg for the ending. You loved to make me beg. I remembered you reading “A Date with Death” to me, but stopping just before the final page. Oh, I really wanted you to finish it! But it was just as well you didn’t. When you were finally done reading, we’d talk the stories over, going on about the parts we liked and picking at the parts we didn’t, our talks all out of joint if we thought the story was a cheat.

As I flipped, I caught a glimpse of something wedged between the fluttering pages of an issue of Dime Detective. I thought it was a paper doll, but then it was something I hadn’t expected—a male underwear model. You must’ve cut him out of a Sears catalog, trimming his outline, not sacrificing a finger or a flip of hair or a fold of fabric to the scissors. In other magazines, I found more cutouts of men, from smiling boys with their hands on their hips to cool customers trailing ribbons of cigarette smoke to muscle men, Charles Atlas sorts, flexing their greased biceps and sporting sculpted pompadours. I didn’t understand what they meant. How could I at that age? I just imagined you bent over magazines and catalog pages, tongue caught between your teeth, concentrating as you traced the outlines of these men with Mama’s sewing scissors. I knew they were secret, and I knew I wanted to keep them safe—and far from Mama’s and Papa’s eyes.

Blurb:

In a small Virginia town still reeling from World War II, a photograph of a beautiful murdered woman propels three young people into the middle of a far-reaching mystery.

*Nominated for a 2019 Barry Award and Lambda Literary Award*

A lurid crime scene photo of a beautiful woman arrives on mystery writer Bunny Prescott’s doorstep with no return address—and it’s not the first time she’s seen it. The reemergence of the photo, taken fifty-five years earlier, sets her on a journey to reconstruct the vicious summer that changed her life.

In the summer of 1945, Ceola Bliss is a lonely twelve-year-old tomboy, mourning the loss of her brother, Robbie, who was declared missing in the Pacific. She tries to piece together his life by rereading his favorite pulp detective story “A Date with Death” and spending time with his best friend, Jay Greenwood, in Royal Oak, VA. One unforgettable August day, Jay leads Ceola and Bunny to a stretch of woods where he found a dead woman, but when they arrive, the body is gone. They soon discover a local woman named Lily Vellum is missing and begin to piece together the threads of her murder, starting with the photograph Jay took of her abandoned body.

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More About Author John Copenhaver

As Ceola gets swept up playing girl detective, Bunny becomes increasingly skeptical of Jay, and begins her own investigation into the connection between Jay and Lily. She discovers a series of clues that place doubt on Jay’s story about the photograph. She journeys to Washington, D.C., where she is forced to confront the brutal truth about her dear friend—a discovery that triggers a series of events that will bring tragedy to Jay and decades of estrangement between her and Ceola.

Copenhaver is the Barry Award- and Lammy Award-nominated author of the historical mystery Dodging and Burning (Pegasus, 2018). He writes a crime fiction column for Lambda Literary called “Blacklight.” He’s been awarded five DCCAH Artist Fellowships. He’s published in CrimeReads, Electric Lit, Glitterwolf, PANK, Washington Independent Review of Books, New York Journal of Books, and others. He chairs the 7-12 grade English at Flint Hill School and lives in DC with his husband. 

www.jcopenhaver.com
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A note from Jon Michaelsen: STEAM, a classic gay horror novel by the late Jay B. Laws is now available for the first time in e-book and brought to you by ReQueered Tales. First published in 1991 by Alyson Publications, Laws’ incredible horror novel has been compared to works by Stephen King and Peter Straub over the years. I strongly urge you to read STEAM, if you dare. You will not be disappointed!

Excerpt:

In the stillness of his room, David lay awake.

He couldn’t sleep. The pressure above his eyes was agony. It pulsed in synchronistic rhythm to his heartbeat. It was like enduring a terrible sinus headache and being forced to stand head bowed, with all the blood rushing between his eyes. A migraine’s vehemence without the sharp stabs of pain. This was like giving birth to death.

“What is happening to me?” David moaned.

He was afraid. That was the bottom line. He knew what would happen. One look at his misshapen forehead and off he’d be whisked into a hospital room. And like Eddie, he would never again breathe crisp October air. He’d be examined, poked. Doctors with heads bowed, tsk-tsking.

 I’m sorry, Mr. Walker, but you have a tumor the size of a baseball in your head. Guess you aren’t the Miracle Kid after all. Guess your ticket’s been punched, and nothing we can do but sit back and watch it eat you up, one bite at a time. But don’t worry: We’ll keep you here as long as it takes, I say as looong as it takes.

These thoughts were boulders in his head, gathering momentum as they knocked and bounced and tumbled on top of each other, hurrying toward a pit that housed his total despair.

Not only that, crazy images flickered across the screen of his mind. Bright flares of disjointed images, like an acid trip out of his youth. Staring into a campfire. A net raining out of the sky. Standing on a vast, high cliff, an ocean wind upon his face, with something hidden in his hand.

How much time passed in this state he did not know. He could not bring himself to call 911 and request an ambulance, even though he knew he was very sick. He lay perfectly still in his agony, sheets thrown back to cool the sweat dripping off of him. He flushed hot and cold, hot and cold. Night sweats.

Dear god. In desperation David tried to rein in his thoughts, but the boulders crashed and tumbled over the calm landscape he attempted to conjure for himself. He thought of Eddie’s vibrant health and for some reason the boulders crashed through that, too: Something about it rang false.

Something about everything rang false, lately. It was all around him.

Images swooped and capered in the dark of his bedroom. He knew he was delirious, and that whatever had gotten hold of him might very well kill him, if he didn’t get some immediate help. But he could not have climbed out of bed to dial 911 even if his life depended upon it—as he suspected it did. No. He gave in to the seasick nausea and prayed for a respite from its stormy waters.

Soon enough, it came, announcing itself with a smell.

Chlorine.

The odor cut through David’s haze of pain. He sniffed the air and winced as the chlorine burned the tender cavities of his nostrils. Instinctively, his whole body tensed.

He gasped. That’s all he had time for.

A blast of wet air cascaded over him.

And the creature pounced.

Quite suddenly he was pinned to the bed. Hot breath snorted across his neck and face—the breath of a mad bull. He was smashed against the mattress by a weight that was more a pressure than a physical form, like the repelling ends of two magnets. But the voice that barked over him, the menacing growls and gnashing of teeth: That much of it was real.

No time to think. No time to even conceive what was happening. He was suddenly fighting for his life.

Rabid dog snarls issued out of the opaque darkness just above his face. His head whipped side to side, but he couldn’t get away from the terrible gnashing. It flooded over him with startling, suffocating ferociousness. His fingers raked the air, his legs bucked and kicked. There was no moving the force on top of him.

One thought lit a blazing trail:

Oh, god, it’s killing me—!

In the winking starlight before his eyes, as consciousness ebbed, a voice insinuated itself into his ear: Release me.

The snarling presence growled at this exchange. It gobbled the air above David’s lips, suffocating him. In desperation he summoned himself, all of his strength and fight. The tendons in his neck stood out like bridge posts. His brow furrowed. Above his eyes, that stabbing pain pushed and pushed, like something demanding to be born.

Release me—

He shrieked with pain. Something warm sprang free with a zippering wet explosion above his eyes. Sparks blew across his vision.

He heard a frustrated howl of rage—and the presence, the creature, the whatever it was—leapt off him. No longer crushed against his mattress, David greedily gulped air into his lungs, happy to be breathing again.

A lamp overturned in the darkness. Books crashed onto the carpet amid the flapping of loose papers. The room shook as if it housed a whirlwind.

Stunned to find himself free of the suffocating weight, David sprang into a sitting position, hiccupping for air. Hands flew to his forehead before remembering he ought not touch—and snapped back in reflex, but not before they were painted with his blood.

Where is it? he thought wildly. Where has it gone?

He sensed the presence in the room. Sensed it hating him, yet keeping its distance. What caused it to retreat? His cry—or his blood?

“Go away!” David shouted into the darkness.

A snarling wind spun papers about the room—and then it was gone. The sharp odor of chlorine hung in the air like an afterthought.

Trembling with shock, he hoisted himself to his feet and veered toward the bathroom. He was halfway down the hall when he realized the intense pain above his eyes had vanished. A cautious hope took hold of him. He switched on the bathroom light. Hissed through clenched teeth at the sight of his blood-soaked hands. And careened toward the mirror, anxious for a glimpse of himself.

Twin rivers of blood trickled down each side of his nose. In the center of what had been his strange puffy bruise was a clean slit. His forehead was settling flat again. The wound was already fading to a rosy pink, healing even as he stood ogling it.

He ran hot water, grabbed a washcloth, and cleaned his face and hands.

Gingerly (and not without holding his breath) he dabbed the skin of his forehead clean. He was vastly relieved when no hallucinations swallowed him.

It was healing. By god, it was healing! But how? Why?

His joy was so all-consuming it held these questions at bay, at least for the moment.

He felt tingly, as though a small electric current hummed through him. Different in a way he had no name for. Better. Stronger. The excruciating pain of the past few days had given birth to this blessed relief, and he was thankful for it.

A sudden weariness seized him, and it was all he could do to drag himself back to bed and flop upon the mattress.

Later, he told himself as he closed his eyes. I’ll figure this all out tomorrow, when I have time.

But time, David was about to learn, had joined sides with the enemy.

About Author Jay B. Laws

Author Jay B. Laws died tragically early, having only two or three published works to his credit. Steam ranks among the most brilliant horror novels of all time and, certainly wins the blue ribbon as the finest gay horror novel ever written. Eerie and disturbing, Laws’ haunted bath house serves as a personification of the early AIDS epidemic and, even today, is practically guaranteed to send chills up and down your spine. —Hal Bodner

About ReQueered Tales

Perhaps forty years of gay fiction—and notably gay and lesbian mystery, detective and suspense fiction—has been teetering on the brink of obscurity. Orphaned works, orphaned authors, many living and some having passed away—with no one to make the case for their creations to be returned to print (and e-print!).

This is the mission of ReQueered Tales: to bring back to circulation this treasure trove of fantastic fiction which, for one reason or another, has fallen by the wayside. For a new generation of readers, these tales are full of insights into the gay world of the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. And for those of us who lived through the period, they are a delightful reminder of our youth and reflect some of our own struggles in growing up gay in those heady times.

We are honoured, here at ReQueered Tales, to be custodians shepherding back into circulation some of the best gay and lesbian fiction writing and hope to bring many volumes to the public, in modestly priced, accessible editions, worldwide, over the coming months and years.