Homicide in Hardcover

Taking off on a jog, I caught up with Ian as he pressed his security key to unlock his car.

“Ian, wait.”

“I don’t have time right now,” he said. I’d never seen him look so angry, but then again, maybe I didn’t know him as well as I’d thought I did.

“You’ll want to make time for this,” I said as I rummaged through my bag. I found the folded slip of paper and handed it to him.

He opened it, stared, then looked at me. “How’d you get this?”

“I found it at Enrico’s yesterday, right before you got there. That’s what you were looking for, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he protested, his tone a combination of anger and denial. “Why would you-”

“Ian, please.” I gave his arm a sympathetic squeeze. “I know you were there.”

All his bluster slipped and he sagged against the car. “How?”

I gritted my teeth and confessed, “I was hiding in the kitchen pantry while you were searching the house.”

I watched him as realization dawned. “That door was locked.”

I shook my head but said nothing. I wasn’t about to mention I’d been sharing that space with Derek.

Ian stared up at the sky. “This is all such a damn mess. Enrico was a bastard, Brooklyn. He knew I’d pay for his silence.”

“How much did you pay him?”

“Five thousand.” He rubbed his face. “A month.”

“What?”

“For the last three months.”

It was my turn to sag against the car. “You’re joking.”

He laughed without humor. “Hardly.”

“But why, Ian? What secret is worth so much you’d pay someone to be quiet about it?”

He stared at the ground for a moment, then pushed himself away from the car and paced a few steps before turning to meet my gaze. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Brooklyn. I was paying Enrico five thousand dollars a month to keep quiet. Do you really think I’m going to blurt out my big secret to you?”

“Blurt out what? That you’re gay?”

His jaw dropped and he staggered back a step. “I’m not-how can you-oh, Jesus.” He collapsed against the car.

“Ian, who cares?”

He covered his face with his hands. “Does everyone in the world know? Am I that big a moron?”

“Not everyone in the world,” I said lamely.

“Feel my confidence soar,” he said peevishly.

“You’re hardly a flaming soprano,” I said, then quickly added, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

He snorted a laugh, then let out a strangled cry.

I touched his shoulder. “To answer your question, no, not everyone in the world knows. Maybe nobody knows.”

“But you knew.” His head hung down in shame and my heart broke for him.

“Give me credit for something,” I said. “You and I were engaged to be married. Don’t you think I could tell something was off? It was just, I don’t know.” I sucked in a deep breath and blurted, “It was clear to me that I wasn’t the Wainwright you wanted.”

Ian had been best friends with my brother Austin. I’d always thought it was odd that he preferred to hang out as a threesome-Ian, Austin and me-rather than just the two of us.

“Oh God, Austin,” he wailed. “Does he know, too? Does your whole family know?” He slid down the car and came to rest in a stooped, almost fetal position. His shoulders shook and I realized he was crying.

“Ian!” I stooped down to wrap my arms around him. “It’s not that bad, honestly! It’ll be okay. This is San Francisco! Everyone’s gay! It’s like a requirement or something. Really, you have to sign a gay affidavit just to move into some neighborhoods. The best neighborhoods, to be honest, which doesn’t seem fair but there you are. This is a good thing, really. Please stop crying.”

He shuddered in my arms and I held him tightly for a few more moments, then scuttled out of his way when he raised his head to gasp for air.

“Oh, Brooklyn,” he cried as he wiped his eyes. “You’re priceless.”

“You’ll survive this, Ian, I swear. You need to be strong. I can help. We’ll go shopping.”

He let out another cry, grabbed his stomach and fell to his side on the blacktop.

“Ian! What’s wrong with you?” I jumped up and scrambled for my phone. “I’m calling an ambulance.”

“Stop it, you’re killing me,” he said, as he rolled on the ground, laughing.

Laughing?

I nudged his shoulder with my foot. “Ian?”

He shook his head, waved me away. “I need a minute.”

“You’ll need a doctor if I find out you’re laughing at me.”

“I’m not, I swear.” He lay flat on his back with his arms spread out, inhaling and exhaling raggedly. “Got to catch my breath.” He gulped in more air, then looked up. “Why do you smell like Chinese food?”

I glared down at him, my arms folded tightly across my chest. “You are so dead.”

He tried to steady his breathing, bit his cheeks to stop from smiling, then choked out another laugh. “Sorry, I’ll stop. Any minute now.”

I sniffed. “Frankly, I’m not even sure how gay you are if you’re willing to roll around on a dirty blacktop parking lot.”

“Good point,” he said.

I tapped my foot in a

He pouted. “You really are a killjoy.”

“I’m just asking.”

He rolled himself up to his knees, then pushed off the ground. Steadying himself against the car with one hand, he smoothed his hair back into place with the other.

“When the Covington hired me three years ago,” he began, “they thought I was engaged to be married. Mrs. Covington likes her upper management to be steady and family oriented.”

I frowned. “In twenty-first-century San Francisco, she discriminates against gay people?”

He sighed. “She’s a conservative old biddy who doesn’t approve of anything outside the norm.”

“But gay is the norm here.”

He chuckled. “You’re preaching to the choir, babe.”

“Okay, so get another job.”

“But I love the Covington,” he insisted. “I was born to run this place. And Mrs. Covington loves me. She’s promoted me every six months for the last three years.”

“Then talk to her. Maybe she’ll understand.”

“I was going to, I swear.” He paced back and forth. “But then Enrico found out somehow and threatened to tell her before I could. I was just placating him until I could find the right moment to tell her.”

“Placating to the tune of five thousand dollars a month?”

“I just needed time,” he said, and continued pacing. “I needed to get her in the right mood. Serve up some martinis, then give her the news. As soon as I told her, I was going to call the police on Enrico and get my money back.”

“I don’t suppose you killed him.”

He stopped midstep. “What? No!”

I frowned. “I didn’t think so.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“It would make this whole thing easier to figure out.”

“Can’t help you.”

I pulled my bag onto my shoulder and straightened my jacket. “I’d better get back to work.”

“All right.” He reached over, pulled something off my jacket and looked at it. A twisted, dried noodle. Then he looked at me. “You lead a strange and interesting life.”

“You have no idea.”

I took a shortcut through the camellia garden to get back to the Covington entrance. The huge camellia bushes were thick with flowers filling every branch. Their lush perfume hung on the air and gave me a break from my soy sauce stench.

I jogged silently down the mulch-covered lane, darting back and forth to dodge errant branches and overgrown bushes. The garden was world-renowned for showcasing more than a thousand different varieties of the flower, thanks to the present Mrs. Covington’s great-grandmother-in-law who started the garden in the begi

But my favorite aspect of the camellia garden was what it hid in its center, a charming Shakespearean herb garden complete with the Shakespearean references of rosemary, tansy, lavender, chamomile and others, all carved in stone.