Chapter 12

Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep Wednesday night. Booth’s death could conceivably have been totally coincidental to his having withdrawn his financial support of the chorus the day before—a botched robbery or mugging, say. Yet I was certain the klieg lights of suspicion had swung directly back to the chorus, though with a narrower beam—Rothenberger and…and who? The only member of the chorus itself who might have a sufficient grudge against Booth would be…Eric? But either Rothenberger or Eric a killer? Sorry, I couldn’t buy it.

The one thing I could buy was that if Farnsworth’s story panned out, he was all but eliminated as Grant’s killer.

Square one, anyone?

I finally got to sleep around 3 a.m. after convincing myself there was absolutely no point running off in all directions until I knew more of exactly what had happened and what the police knew—and would be willing to tell me.

Ah, but you’ve forgotten Charles Stapleton, a mind-voice pointed out as I felt myself relaxing. He had a good reason to see Booth dead.

Maybe, but if he wanted him dead, why wait until now? another replied.

With effort, I was able to get them to shut up, and I finally drifted off to sleep.

*

Despite my having had little sleep, I was up in time to catch the early morning news, which not surprisingly had Booth’s death as its lead local item. Basically a rerun of the footage from the night before, read by the morning news anchor, the only new bit of information—if it could be called that—was that it appeared to be a robbery gone bad. His body was found next to his car in the parking lot adjacent to the main building; his empty wallet was found a few feet away. A police spokesman surmised he had been struck from behind with a blunt instrument while getting into his car after working late. The police were investigating.

I left for work early in a dull drizzle that pretty much matched my mood, and was on my third cup of coffee when Marty called.

“You heard about Booth?” he asked.

“Yeah, which pretty much lets Farnsworth off the hook.”

“Why would you say that? We don’t know—yet—that there’s any connection between the two deaths, and as far as we know Booth and Farnsworth never even met. There’s no way, even if they had met, that he could have killed Booth, but I wouldn’t be so quick to rule him out on Jefferson.”

He was absolutely right.

“So, did you and Dan get Booth’s case?” I asked.

“No, Dan’s brother Earl and his partner got the honors.”

“Oh, great!” I think I mentioned earlier that Earl Carpenter’s partner, Ben Couch, hated my guts—the feeling was mutual—and wouldn’t give me the time of day let alone any information he might have on the investigation. “Do you know anything you can tell me about what’s going on with it?”

Marty sighed. “Earl plays it close to the vest, and Ben is wrapped pretty tight, but I’ll see if they can tell me anything. Right now, I really don’t know very much other than that the cause of death was one blow to the back of the head with a blunt instrument, which hasn’t been found. Motive apparently robbery; they found his billfold—empty—and keys on the ground near the body. A tan line on his wrist indicated he’d been wearing a watch.

“It appears as though he was getting in the car when he was attacked. If the killer knew who Booth was, he could easily have taken the keys and gone into the building to look for more money, or gone into the key box in the showroom and driven off with any car on the lot. Or he could have taken Booth’s car, for that matter. But he didn’t, which indicates to me—at least at first glance—that it was a screwed-up robbery by somebody who didn’t know the victim and wasn’t very bright.

“I might know something more later in the day, and I’ll call you if I do.”

“I’d really appreciate that, Marty,” I said. “So, what do we do in the meantime about Farnsworth?”

“I say we go where we were headed before Booth got himself killed for now. Did you get a chance to follow up on his alibi?”

I quickly filled him in on what I’d found out from Bud during my visit to Hughie’s.

“Did you get anything more from Farnsworth?”

“Not really. He’s sticking to his story. And we did verify that he’d rented a car from the nineteenth to the twenty-first. When we asked where they’d gone to transact business, he claims they drove all the way out to Prichert Park. Granted, that’s a pretty popular cruising area, but it’s a long way off the beaten path. If he’d taken the guy to a motel or somewhere where they’d been seen, it would have given his alibi a lot more solid basis.”

“Well, he had no way of knowing he’d need an alibi,” I pointed out.

“That’s what he said, too. But if that Joey character can verify his alibi, I’d really like to find him. I can tell Earl, and he and Ben can start looking for him.”

“Why don’t you hold off a bit and see if he calls me first. He might be a little more willing to talk to me than to the police.”

“Do you think he’ll call?”

“If he thinks there’s money in it, I think the odds are pretty good,” I said. “But we’ll have to wait and see. I’ll get back to you the minute I hear from him, though. I assume Farnsworth’s been arraigned on the stolen property charge?”

“Yeah, day before yesterday,” Marty affirmed. “He was denied bail because of being a flight risk, so he’s not going anywhere. No trial date set yet—the court docket is really backed up right now—so I think we’ve probably got several weeks yet. I hope by that time…”

“You and me both,” I said.

*

So maybe Booth’s death was one of those detective-novel coincidences, but deep down, I didn’t believe it. Marty apparently wasn’t giving much thought yet to the idea that if it was the same guy who killed Grant—and specifically, if it was someone from the chorus—they wouldn’t have had any particular interest in breaking into the showroom or stealing a car. His purpose would have been to kill Booth, and that he did, then emptied Booth’s wallet and took his watch to make it look like a robbery.

At three thirty, the phone rang.

“Hardesty Investigations,” I said after the third ring.

“This is Joey. I’m calling about the twenty bucks.”

Well, now, the day just got interesting.

“You’re at Hughie’s now?” I heard the click of what I assumed to be pool balls and muffled voices in the background. The pay phone is on the wall nearest the pool table. I figured he had probably decided to try his luck at Hughie’s rather than getting drenched standing on the curb trolling for johns.

“Yeah. So, you want to meet me here? Maybe we can go someplace to talk. Like your place?”

Uh, not the best of ideas. “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” I said.

*

Though the rain had started by the time I got to work, I’d left my umbrella in the car and opted to run across the street to my building, assuming it would clear up before I came out. It didn’t.

Luckily, I had a spare umbrella at the office, but when I got about halfway to the bar, the drizzle turned into a downpour; by the time I walked in the door at Hughie’s, the cuffs of my pants were soaked.

Joey, whom I spotted immediately at the end of the bar nursing a beer, was apparently not the only street hustler seeking shelter from the rain; there were three or four others in varying stages of wetness.

He spotted me, too, though I wasn’t sure if it was because he recognized me or, more likely, just the automatic response of any hustler when a potential john walked in. I took a bill out of my wallet as Bud and I vectored in on the seat next to Joey.

“How’s it goin’, Bud?” I asked as I sat down.

“Same as always,” he replied, taking a napkin off a stack and putting it and my beer in front of me. Taking my money, he walked off.

“You the guy I just called?” Joey asked. He gave no indication that he’d ever seen me before, which wasn’t surprising. I’m sure that when you’re a hustler a face is a face. I did not envy Joey doing what he did.

“Yeah,” I said. “The name’s Dick.”

“So I heard,” he said. Neither of us extended our hand. “So, you got someplace to go?”

I wondered if he thought I wanted to see him because I was interested in his services. Apparently, the words Private Investigations on my card hadn’t clued him in.

“I think we can handle everything right here,” I said.

He gave a cursory shrug. “So, what do you want for your twenty dollars?”

“Information.”

He stared at me, expressionless. “About what?”

“About a guy who picked you up on Genessee late last month—the twentieth, to be exact. A Tuesday. Guy about forty, forty-five. Not from here. Greying brown hair. Medium build. You took him out to Prichert Park.”

“You got the twenty?”

I pulled out a bill from my shirt pocket, handing it to him. He shoved it in his jeans pocket then shook his head.

“Man, are you serious? You know how many guys pick me up in one week? And you want me to remember one from last month? No way! And I take a lot of guys out to Prichert Park if there’s no place else to go.”

Well, this is going well, I thought. He was right, though. He could hardly be expected to remember one nondescript trick from another.

“He was from New York,” I said. “Staying at the Montero.”

The glimmer of a light came on behind his eyes, and he chewed his lower lip for a second or two.

“Oh, yeah. I remember him. The asshole told me he was staying at the Montero so ‘Of course’—that’s what he said, ‘Of course’—he couldn’t take me there. Like I was some piece of shit he wouldn’t be caught dead showing up there with. I been there before. Lots of times.”

I chose to let that pass without comment, saying instead, “But you have no idea of the date?”

He shook his head. “Not a clue.”

“You went to Prichert Park.”

“Yeah. It’s got a couple of places to park where you won’t be seen. But when we got there, I was pissed—they had blocked off the path to the one spot I always go.”

“Blocked off?” I asked.

“Yeah. It looked like somebody had knocked down a power pole, and an electric company truck was parked right in the middle of the turnoff.”

And we may have a date after all, I thought.

“Would you be willing to tell that to a friend of mine?” I didn’t want to scare him off by mentioning the police.

He looked suspicious anyway.

“A cop?”

“A friend,” I repeated. “Don’t worry, you’re not in any trouble.”

“What’s in it for me if I do?”

“Another twenty.”

He looked at me. “It’s worth more.”

“Forty,” I said. I knew the police couldn’t pay for information, but I could; and it would be worth it if it could either nail or clear Farnsworth.

“Fifty.”

“Don’t push it.”

“Fifty,” he repeated.

“Only if you show up at my office Monday morning at ten o’clock sharp.” I should have said “tomorrow,” but since it was already late Thursday afternoon, I wanted to talk to Marty first and be sure he could be there.

“You still have my card?” I asked.

He patted his pocket and nodded.

I chugged my remaining beer, picked up my umbrella and got off the stool.

“Ten o’clock,” I repeated.

“Yep,” he agreed, and with a wave to Bud, I left. It was still raining.

Hoping to catch Marty before he went home, I returned to the office rather than just getting my car and going home. A message from him was waiting on my machine, and I called him immediately. Luckily, he was still there.

“Had a chance to talk to Earl Carpenter for a second a few minutes ago,” he said. “They’d been interviewing people all day, including Booth’s latest ‘house guest,’ who seemed more upset by losing Booth’s promised sponsorship for his racing career than by Booth’s being dead. He had an alibi for Wednesday night, so I mentioned they might want to check with Charles Stapleton. I’m sure they would have gotten around to him eventually anyway, but I thought they could use a heads-up. Anything new from your end?”

I told him of my meeting with Joey, and he confirmed he could be at my office Monday morning. He said it was probably too late in the day to check with the power company to see if they could give him an exact date and time their truck repaired a broken power pole in Prichert Park, but that he would call tomorrow. If the power company records did not show a truck being there on the twentieth, Farnsworth was still a viable suspect. But if they had been there on anywhere between six and seven at night, he was pretty much off the hook, and I would be right back on familiar ground—square one.

We agreed it would probably be best for Marty to come alone Monday to avoid intimidating Joey by having too many people present.

“Oh, and one thing while I think of it,” I said. “I’d assume Carpenter and Couch are looking into Booth’s gambling problem as a possible key?”

“I’m sure they are,” Marty said. “But thanks.”

*

The weekend was hectic, as they increasingly seemed to be, though being busy kept my mind from spending every minute thinking about the case and how little I had actually accomplished on it.

I picked Joshua up from day care on Friday so Jonathan could load his car up with materials and several flats of plants to take over to start his landscaping job at the Conrads’ on Saturday. He left the apartment right after breakfast Saturday morning.

His absence meant that Joshua and I were left to our own devices as far as dealing with our usual Saturday routine of cleaning, laundry, and grocery shopping. The latter was enough of a chore with two adults riding herd on a five-year-old boy who never met a breakfast cereal, bakery item, or junk-food snack he didn’t like. I considered duct-taping him to the shopping cart but was afraid I’d get nasty looks from the other shoppers.

If I’ve ever given anyone the impression Joshua was a little too good to be true, I can assure you one trip to the grocery store on a bad day would dissuade anyone of that notion. While he was, overall, an exceptionally good kid, there were times when I could have cheerfully throttled him; and being the showman that he was, he always seemed to pick a time when there was a crowd around to throw out a field test of the limits of my patience. Grocery stores therefore tended to become the Coliseum, with Joshua and I as the featured gladiators.

Probably because Jonathan wasn’t there to back me up, Joshua decided it was a good time for an encounter, and put a jar of pickled eggs in the shopping cart. I took it out, told him we didn’t need pickled eggs, and to return it to the shelf.

Let the games begin! Apparently not intimidated by the fact that I had a hundred and some pounds and a couple of feet in height over him, he put the jar back in the cart. I took it out and handed it to him, telling him to put it back. Defiantly: back in the cart. I finally took it back to the shelf myself, which opened the floodgates.

At that serendipitous moment, a woman came by carrying a crying baby and followed by a boy about eight or nine. I knelt in front of Joshua and took him by the shoulders.

“You see that baby and that big boy?” I asked. “Which one do you want to be?”

Slowly, the storm abated and we got on with the shopping.

I know it might seem that I spend far too much time talking about Joshua, but he’s become a major factor in my life. There’s no way to separate him from what goes on.

My life had changed profoundly in the past five years. First came Jonathan to yank me out of what I call my “slut phase,” in which I spent a great deal of time hopping from bed to bed. I thought that was a sea-change, and it was. Then came Joshua.

I’ve always had a strong protective streak, often verging, as Jonathan can readily attest, on the overprotective. But being protective of a partner isn’t the same as being protective of a child. Although Joshua is not genetically related to me, I had come to consider that fact less and less; and for the first time in my life I felt I could fully appreciate how heterosexuals feel about their own children.

So, we made it through the day and had the table set and dinner preparations well under way when Jonathan arrived home around six, looking as though he had lost a mud-wrestling contest. He immediately went into the shower while Joshua helped me with dinner. With Joshua’s enthusiastic approval, I opted for an old family recipe from my single days—knockwurst (I know, we’d had it within a week or so before, but we all liked them) slit lengthwise and stuffed with sharp cheddar cheese, over which a teriyaki marinade was poured. I’d picked up some fresh potato salad at the store to add one more element of class to the meal.

Jonathan was very happy with how the day had gone.

“It’s really going to look great,” he enthused over dinner. “And Mrs. Conrad seems very happy with what I’m doing.”

“How could she not be?” I said. “You’re terrific!”

He grinned. “And you’re only slightly prejudiced.”

“I think you’re terrific, too,” Joshua said, his good-kid personality back in place and not wanting to be left out on the chance for a bit of mutual admiration action.

“Thank you, Joshua,” Jonathan said, soberly. “I appreciate that.”

Joshua grinned.

I could tell Jonathan was exhausted, and he nodded off while we were watching TV prior to Joshua’s bedtime. As a result, we went to bed not long after Joshua did.

*

I had to make a quick stop at the bank to pick up some cash on my way to work Monday morning, assuming Joey would show up—and I was pretty confident he would.

In fact, everything went like clockwork. Marty showed up at 9:52 saying he had put a call in to the electric company on Friday and hoped to hear back later in the day. Dan Carpenter was using the time to question Farnsworth once more about the details of his alibi to see if he might mention the fallen power pole or the electric company truck.

Joey arrived at 10:05 in what I thought of as his full work uniform, and I wondered if he ever wore—or had—anything else. He was aware Marty was a cop, even though he was in plain clothes. Obviously anxious for his fifty dollars and to get on with his day, he told Marty exactly what he had told me. Though he still couldn’t describe what Farnsworth looked like, remember the kind of car Farnsworth drove, or state with certainty the exact time they got to Prichert Park or Farnsworth dropped him off back on Genessee, he did remember that the guy who’d picked him up was staying at the Montero, and stuck to his recollection of the pole and the truck.

When he’d finished his story, I handed him an envelope with the fifty dollars in it and he opened it to check it before standing up to shove it in his back pocket.

“I gotta get going,” he said. He turned, went to the door without looking back, and left.

Marty sat looking after him and shaking his head. Then he turned to me and said, “One more soldier in the Army of the Lost.”

I don’t know why, but I was struck by the wistfulness and insight of his observation.

“I’ll bet you write poetry when no one’s looking, don’t you?”

He shrugged and grinned. “Gays don’t have a corner on the market on being sensitive, you know.”

He was right, but I was surprised, nonetheless. There are certain jobs I could never do simply because of the constant exposure to pain, sorrow, death, and the worst life has to offer. I ran into enough of that as it was. How health care workers and police manage to do their jobs without having all the sensitivity stomped out of them I couldn’t imagine.

Obviously, most of them are able to handle it, and I have the utmost respect for them. I’d liked Marty before, and now my admiration had been bumped up another notch.

It was clear the police investigation into Grant’s death was also teetering on whether Farnsworth/Johnson/Smith’s alibi held up. Marty told me they still had not completely ruled out either Charles Stapleton or the now-deceased Crandall Booth, but that they had not yet come up with anything concrete.

As he was getting up to leave, the phone rang.

“Hardesty Investigations,” I said in my best Professional Private Investigator voice, evoking a slight smile from Marty.

“Dick, it’s Dan Carpenter. Is Marty still there?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Hold a sec.” I handed the phone to him as he leaned across the desk to take it.

“Yeah?… I’m just leaving… Yeah… Yeah?… Okay. See you in a while.”

He handed the phone back to me with a shrug. “Well, Farnsworth remembers the truck, so if it was there around the time of Jefferson’s murder, I guess we’ve just lost our prime suspect. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear from the electric company.”

He left me with the firm conviction—however lacking in actual evidence it might be—that Grant Jefferson’s killer and Crandall Booth’s killer were one and the same. Now all I had to do was one: find out who that one person was, and two: prove it.

The police had only begun their investigation into Booth’s death, but it occurred to me having two different sets of detectives working independently of one another on one murder was counterproductive. It would have been far more logical for only one team—preferably Marty and Dan, considering my relationship with Detective Couch—to handle both cases, and I couldn’t imagine I was the only one to immediately see the two murders were related.

But then, I’m not the one who makes the determination of who gets assigned to which case and why. And granted, Booth’s murder appeared at first glance to be a robbery. When the call came in, I’m sure no one had the time to sit down and wonder if it might be related to another murder.

Perhaps they would see the error of their ways and consolidate their investigations, especially if the links between the two became more evident than they now were to everyone but me.

I sat down at my desk with yet another cup of coffee and opened the windows of my mind. In Grant’s murder, the potential-suspect list included practically every member of the chorus, Stapleton, Jerry Granville, Roger Rothenberger, Farnsworth/Johnson/Smith, and Crandall Booth.

But with Booth dead, the list shrank considerably. Several members of the chorus had a strong motive to kill Grant, but I couldn’t see any of them, or Jerry Granville, having that same level of animosity toward Booth, whom most of them barely knew.

So that left me with…

Charles Stapleton had good reason to want both Booth and Grant dead, though, if he were going to kill them both, he could have figured out a way to get them at the same time, or one right after the other. No, as I’d considered earlier, the fact that Booth was killed so soon after his withdrawal of support from the chorus linked his murder more closely to the chorus than to his business and Stapleton.

Roger Rothenberger had motive to see both Grant and Booth dead, though I honestly couldn’t bring myself to think of him as a murderer. Still, very few people walk around wearing a sign saying “Potential Murderer.” I’m sure Death Row is sprinkled with some really nice guys who, for whatever reason, murdered someone.

The pressures on Rothenberger as director of both the chorus and the M.C.C.’s choir had to be tremendous without the added headaches of people like Grant and Booth trying to undermine or destroy everything he’d worked for.

It was also conceivable that, despite what I believed, Booth’s death might, in fact, have been a random act of coincidental, albeit an on-the-brink-of-disbelief-coincidental, violence.

One avenue I had not explored and had no practical or immediate way of exploring was that of Booth’s possible gambling addiction. It was quite possible that his letter to the board about financial reversals and cash-flow problems might have had more validity than Rothenberger realized. For someone like Booth to admit to having financial problems might well indicate their seriousness. Could he have gotten in over his head with the wrong people and suffered the consequences?

I made a note to ask Marty to follow up on what detectives Carpenter and Couch might have found out about it. If, by some chance gambling was behind Booth’s murder, that meant it and Grant’s death were unrelated, which meant…

Why the hell does life have to be so complicated?

*

Not a word from Marty on Tuesday, and I didn’t want to make too big a nuisance of myself by calling him. I knew he’d get in touch when he had something to tell me. I concentrated instead on the eternal and losing battle to control my impatience.

Jonathan was off to rehearsal right after dinner, and I awaited his take on the current gossip, which I was sure would center almost totally around Crandall Booth’s death. Sure enough, it did.

Jonathan returned later than usual with an ample supply. Someone—he didn’t say who—had somehow heard about Booth’s gambling problems, which sparked a couple more, supposedly involving Grant’s having bragged several times about the amount of money he and Booth spent on their trips to Las Vegas. There was widespread, if totally unjustified, bitterness that the chorus had to suffer by losing the Chicago trip because of Booth’s gambling. Everything Booth had done for the chorus over the years immediately took a back seat to what he didn’t do for them.

Human beings are an odd species.

When I caught Jonathan nodding off during the late news, I realized that everything he’d been doing lately was taking its toll. I turned off the TV and got off the couch, leaning forward to take his hand and waking him up in the process.

“Too bad you’re not in the mood for a little game-playing,” I teased.

He grinned. “Wanna bet?”

I was happy to lose.

*

Marty called around ten Wednesday morning.

“I meant to get back to you yesterday,” he said, “but wanted to follow up on a couple other things first.”

“Hey, no problem. I appreciate your telling me what you can when you can. What did you find out?”

“Two things, actually. A patrol car on a late-night drunk sweep picked up a wino wearing a very expensive watch with the initials C.D.B. engraved on the back. The manager at Central Imports identified it as Booth’s. The wino claims he found it in a dumpster on Hawthorn, about five miles from Central Imports.

“And some kid tried to use one of Booth’s credit cards at a convenience store on School. He ran out when the clerk questioned it. So, it looks like the robbery motive won’t wash, and that the items were taken to make it look like one.

“Second, and more significant, Earl and Ben checked with a couple of the major bookies in town, and it appears Booth was a big-time player who’d been on a serious losing streak in the past few months. Rumor has it he got in pretty deep with Charlie Tours—you know him?”

“A loan shark, right?”

“Not merely a loan shark. Charlie’s the great white of our local loan sharks. He has a rap sheet three feet long and a history of playing rough. They’re going to have a talk with him as soon as they can find him. They’re also looking into the state of Booth’s finances.”

A bell went off in my head. There was something Charles Stapleton had said when I first talked to him. Something that had gone right by me until now. What the hell was it?

My father spent fifteen years trying to keep Booth afloat.

It hadn’t meant a thing at the time, but now that I knew of Booth’s gambling debts…

“You might have them talk to Charles Stapleton about that,” I suggested. “His dad was Booth’s chief accountant, and if there were problems, he surely had an idea of them. Maybe he mentioned them to Charles before he died.”

“Good idea,” Marty replied. “Thanks.”

We hung up shortly thereafter, and I sat pondering Marty’s information. Even though they had confirmed that Booth might well have been in serious debt to Charlie Tours and others, the fact was that for a loan shark, even a great white, to kill a client was somewhat counterproductive to getting money back from them. A broken leg, perhaps, might encourage the client to find a way to repay what is owed, but it’s difficult to get money from a dead man. And Booth had plenty of assets he could have cashed in on—unless his financial situation was a lot worse than anyone suspected.

The phone interrupted my thoughts.

“Hardesty Investigations.”

Silence, then a click and a dial tone.

I hate people who don’t at least have the decency, when they get a wrong number, to say “Sorry, wrong number” before hanging up.

At eleven thirty, as I was thinking about lunch, there was a knock on my door. I wasn’t expecting anyone, and prospective clients seldom dropped in without calling first.

“Come,” I said.

The door opened, and Eric stepped in. “I’d love to,” he said with a big grin.

“Well, this is a surprise,” I said truthfully.

“I should have called first,” he said, coming over to my desk, “but I wasn’t near a phone. I had to deliver a special order to our store down the street, and when I realized how close I was to your office, I thought I’d see if I could buy you lunch.”

“That’s nice of you, Eric, but…”

He looked mildly chagrined. “Oh, I’m sorry. You’ve probably got plans.”

“No, not at all,” I said, “but you certainly don’t have to buy me lunch.”

“Sure I do. You guys have been really nice to me, and this is the least I can do.”

“Well, okay,” I said. “I guess it is time for lunch. Where would you like to go? There aren’t all that many places right around here, other than the diner off the lobby.”

“That’s fine with me.”

“Okay,” I said, getting up from my chair. “You want to go now? I imagine you have to get back to work soon.”

“I’ve got time,” he said. “But now’s as good as ever.”

*

Neither of us said much as we rode down on the elevator, which I found mildly uncomfortable. I really didn’t know what to say, which made me even more uncomfortable, and Eric was uncharacteristically quiet.

Finally, seated at one of the diner’s red plastic-upholstered booths, I said, “So, what do you think of Crandall Booth’s death?”

He looked up from his menu and directly into my eyes. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”

“I’m sorry?” I said and, he grinned.

“Crandall was a prick, pulling the rug out from under the chorus like he did.”

“Aren’t you being a little unfair?” I was a little surprised by the intensity of his reaction. “He did a lot for the chorus.”

Eric shrugged. “That he did. But I think we’d have been better off if he’d never gotten involved with it in the first place. Teasing us along, promising us things, getting us to depend on him—not because he gave a damn for the chorus, but so he could throw his weight around. Roger would have kicked Grant out of the chorus the very first time he started pulling his shit if it wasn’t for Crandall. Roger knew exactly what Crandall was doing, but he wasn’t able to do anything about it for fear Crandall would do exactly what he ended up doing anyway.”

The waitress came to take our orders.

“What do you recommend?” Eric asked.

“I usually get the B.L.T., it’s pretty good.”

“Sold.” He smiled at the waitress and said, “I’ll have a B.L.T. and a Coke.”

“Same for me,” I said, “but make it milk.” When she’d gone, I said, “So, any ideas on who might have killed Crandall?”

He looked at me carefully before saying, “Yeah, I do. Word is he was killed because he owed more in gambling debts than he could pay. And I’ll bet Grant was killed as a warning to Crandall to pay up. When it didn’t work, they killed him, too.”

Well, that was an interesting theory, and one that had never occurred to me but should have. I was mildly ticked at myself that it hadn’t. It made some sense, except for the basic fact that while killing Grant might have been meant as a warning to Booth it still didn’t make sense to kill Booth.

“Interesting idea,” I said. “And at least it would take all the pressure off the chorus.”

“Right!” Eric said. “And I never believed for one minute that anyone from the chorus could have done it.”

I decided not to pursue the subject any further, but I didn’t have to. Out of thin air, Eric asked, “So, how are you and Jonathan getting along?”

That one caught me totally by surprise. “Fine,” I said. “What made you ask?”

The waitress appeared with our food. Nothing was said until she left, but I certainly was curious.

“Oh, nothing,” he said. “Jonathan mentioned that you’d had a fight last week.”

A fight? What the hell was he talking about? I searched my memory for a clue.

“We had an argument,” I said, remembering what he must be referring to—Joshua’s still being up when Jonathan got home from chorus practice. “I certainly wouldn’t call it a fight. We argue all the time. It never means anything.”

Eric raised an eyebrow. “Sorry,” he said. “Guess I misunderstood. So, no problems?”

I had no idea why he was asking all this and was definitely uncomfortable with it.

“No problems.”

“Good,” he said, and took a large bite out of his B.L.T.

However, since he’d opened the door to personal lives, I thought I’d put my foot in the door of his.

“You’ve never had a relationship?” I asked.

He wiped the corner of his mouth with his napkin and smiled. “Nobody wants me.”

“Bullshit!” I recognized a bid for sympathy when I heard one. “Not anybody?”

“I’ve had a string of disasters,” he said, “but only one I’d really qualify as a relationship. He died.”

Died? Was that what Rothenberger had meant by Eric’s “tragedies”? I wanted to know more, but didn’t think it was proper of me to ask.

Oh, what the hell.

“I’m really sorry to hear that,” I said. “Can I ask what happened?”

“He killed himself. Is Jonathan your first?”

Non sequitur, anyone? Still, I knew a keep-out sign when I saw one.

“One other,” I said, heeding the sign and taking a sip of milk. “Chris. Seven years. He lives in New York now. We’re still friends.”

“Is Jonathan jealous?”

I laughed. “Jonathan is not the jealous type, thank God. He and Chris are great friends.”

“Well, I’d be jealous.”

Hey, I’m the last person on earth who should criticize anyone for being the jealous type, but dense though I may occasionally be, it was pretty clear by this point that Eric was coming on to me. While my crotch was flattered, the rest of me was definitely uncomfortable.

We’d been playing this little game of badminton for quite a while now. He had never come out and directly expressed his interest, and I had tried as subtly as I could to field his every serve as gently as possible. The whole thing was compounded by his friendship with Jonathan. I couldn’t imagine Eric would want to jeopardize it, and while Jonathan had teased me about Eric’s interest, I found it equally hard to imagine he thought Eric was serious.

Eric was one of the first friends of his own that Jonathan had made outside of his work. I knew it meant a great deal to him, and I hated the thought that I might be the cause of a rift between them. But there was no way in hell I was going to jeopardize my relationship with Jonathan for anyone or anything. How could I get that point across to Eric without hurting his feelings?

Nobody likes rejection—I’ve been on the wrong end of that stick more than once myself, and it ain’t pretty. But sometimes there simply is no alternative.

I hadn’t quite reached that point with Eric, and hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but it was drawing uncomfortably close.

We finished our lunch, and Eric insisted on getting both the bill and the tip.

As we walked out into the lobby, I said, “Thanks, Eric, I really appreciate it.”

I extended my hand. He stared at it intently for a second, then grinned and took it.

“My pleasure,” he said. “See ya around.” And with that he turned and strolled through the revolving doors and out into the street.