Garnetville: A Gay Mystery E-Book

E.M. Mispiel

• Herausgeber: E.M. Mispiel
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

The whole town of Garnetville may be willing to let the murder of a gay man go unsolved, but Dave isn't. Dave is determined to find the truth. Quinn is just as determined not to let him die trying. As dark secrets are uncovered, more than one man will be pushed over the edge.

Leseprobe

Garnetville: A Gay Mystery

Copyright © 2012 E.M. Mispiel

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, locales or actual events is entirely coincidental.

Garnetville

A Gay Mystery

E.M. Mispiel

Chapter 1

The extreme pain was making it difficult to think, to focus on what he desperately wanted to remember. The recent past crowded out what he needed. New memories interposed themselves, thick bodied and unwelcome, blocking his view. He was a child trying to see over a crowd, desperate for a sight that would soon be gone and never repeat. Maybe it was revenge from the ones he had wronged, a taste of Hell, or just a final, vulgar joke. The wrong body was thrusting at him. The wrong taste was in his mouth. Blood sputtered from his throat and the wrong name came out with it. Then a right body came like sugar melting over a fire. The body browned, thinned. Its sweet taste was burned to the edge of bitterness. His angry angel—hard dicked and hard eyed, uncompromised by death, welcoming. He was something to reach for, somewhere to go to get away from the pain.

The curtain was stained brown where it blew out through the French doors. He didn’t like to close them even when it rained. Both doors stood open. Leaves had tumbled in and scattered over the rug all the way to the coffee table. They were leading his eye to where he lay. He could only see his bare feet and the edge of the sage green robe. It was the leaves that told him more than anything. Nature was reclaiming an empty house.

***

Dave could hear the throb of music from downstairs with an occasional voice rising up in a shout or a laugh. Sometimes it was hard to tell he wasn’t back at the dorm. He knew the difference when it mattered, though. The dorm had been like being back home—eyes everywhere and big mouths to go with them. Here he had a bedroom to himself to bring to bed whoever he liked—college boys still in the closet, older guys, married men. This was the freedom he wanted almost as much as the rest that college made possible.

At the moment, the freedom lay unused. He was typing up a paper. While at work, he had composed the whole thing in his head when he wasn’t reading phone numbers to people who had turned off their pagers. The paper was coming together nicely. While he typed, he put in some time with his mother. Sitting sideways on the bed so he could see the monitor, he had the keyboard on his lap and a pillow up against the wall to keep the phone to his ear.

“Mmhm,” Dave said whenever there was a pause.

His mother didn’t demand much from a listener, not participation or attention. If she could hear his typing, she didn’t seem to mind. He only listened for pauses in her sometimes slurred monotone of gossip and play-by-play of her life back home. The reassuring stream of her words didn’t interrupt his thinking too often. It made writing while talking to her a breeze.

“Are you listening, Davy?”

“OK. What?”

She had startled him. He had to catch the phone and put it back to his ear. Her voice had changed. It resonated like she was in the room with him and made his head tingle.

“Well, I don’t know how to tell you. But anyways... Someone has died. Someone you know. I’m sorry, honey.”

“Could you save the condolences for after you tell me who died?” Dave wasn’t sure whose name he was so afraid to hear. He had a creeping feeling in his head as the answer came.

“That teacher. You know the one who...”

“Mr. Shumaker?”

“I’m so sorry to have to tell you, hon. You aren’t too upset, are you? I wish I could have, I mean, I sure am...”

“Mom. How did he die?”

He noticed a pause. Sometimes she would drift off or take a sip of something. He guessed it was a sip this time. It seemed longer than usual though.

“Killed. Awful. Just awful. To think...”

“Killed, as in someone killed him?!” He might have been shouting.

“Honey. Yes, I mean someone killed him.” Her words were slow, a calming reprimand for his tone mixed with the usual lag in her reactions.

But he wasn’t done.

“Who?!”

***

The firing, and the outing that led to it, had isolated him here. For all that, the proud, old place was hardly a jailhouse. Sharing the house with the old things he remembered from childhood was a balm. The garden, allowed to grow wild without his father’s constant attention, was still beautiful. It had never been well ordered or trimmed but more English and natural. Now overgrown, it gave greater shelter, an almost enchanted privacy. It was as if the house wasn’t on the edge of the best part of town but somewhere inaccessible. More than anything, the garden was proof that his father was gone—the progress of its rebellion marking time. He’s been gone long enough for the white bougainvillea to shoot out over the fence. Its flowers pulled down the overlong branches. It was beautiful like that. Mycroft preferred it even. But it was only a matter of time before the lawn man cut it back.

The back garden was a little oppressive at the moment. It was dense with fragments of memories too insignificant to notice until they started to swarm and sting. To escape them, Mycroft lounged on his front porch. The hedge was dense, formless and too tall now. Only the gate was free of it.

His approach was the drumming of a hand drawn over the fence spikes almost musically. Then there was the squeak of the gate. Was there a gate anywhere in the world that didn’t squeak? Mycroft sat back in a more relaxed pose suited to a man of leisure he had recently become. He did not make sure his robe was closed. After all, unannounced visitors deserved no such consideration.

He almost wished he had at least done that much when he saw it was a former student of a male variety. But he did nothing to put himself in order. The visitor was a short, sandy haired boy of unremarkable looks and intelligence. He remembered but couldn’t yet see his very dark eyes, like coffee beans.

Heading for the front door, Davy Novak found what he was looking for sooner than expected. He put down the hand he had raised to ring the bell. His former teacher was sprawled in a wicker chair on his front porch, with a drink in his hand and not exactly dressed.

“Mr. Shumaker?” The boy spoke as if he didn’t fully recognize him.

“Mr. Novak?” When this reverse introduction led to nothing, Mycroft continued, hoping to jolt him. “Would you like a drink?”

“Of what?” Davy asked in that surly way of every boy his age.

“What can I do for you?”

Instead of answering, Davy looked around. Mycroft was ready to refuse and point him back to the gate but had to wait until there was something to refuse. He took a sip and waited.

“Is that what you do now?” Davy indicated the drink.

Mycroft took another sip.

“I find work where I can get it. This fine scotch is not going to drink itself.” He saluted him with the glass and drank again. He would need a refill soon.

“You could have fought. They had no right to fire you over nothing.” The boy was talking while looking away, but there was some feeling in what he said. Maybe he wasn’t just mouthing words.

“Fight for the privilege of teaching... well, you know who your cohorts are. Would you fight to keep my job?”

“I wouldn’t take your job.”

The boy’s eyes were staying mostly over Mycroft’s head and only occasionally straying to where the belt kept a small portion of his robe together. Noting this, Mycroft sat up and pulled the robe in.

“Aspiring to something better?”

“Maybe.” Davy opened his mouth now, ready to tell him why he was there.

“The answer is no, and it wouldn’t do you any good anyway,” Mycroft said before the boy could speak.

“Who are you talking to? I didn’t ask for anything.”

“You want a glowing letter of recommendation. Right?”

“For what?”

“College.”

“Don’t you even know what grade I’m in?” Davy seemed irritated at his ignorance.

“Too soon,” Mycroft guessed. He wouldn’t be applying yet. That left the question of what he wanted.

“But you’re half right. I want to go, and I need a scholarship, and my grades are crap.”

“You want me to falsify your transcript,” Mycroft ventured.

“How drunk are you?”

“Not at all.”

“I’ll be back when you’re not half in the bag.”

“Don’t come back then,” Mycroft called after him.

“Yeah, right,” he said over his shoulder not daunted at all.

Chapter 2

At the beginning of the evening, the voices of the other people at the party, other students mostly, infuriated Dave. The worst of them laughed. Dave glared all around him like he was looking for someone to hit. Quinn fed Dave drinks and sympathy hoping to mellow him out. Some girl took pity on him trying to get by on booze alone. She gave him two pills. Quinn wondered if Dave knew what they were before he popped them. Quinn sure as hell didn’t.

Maybe it was those pills, but Dave’s grief quickly devolved into expletives, threats, crying, and more shots than Quinn could count. He kept taking drinks out of Dave’s hand, pushing him back into his seat, telling him things that didn’t make sense like “shh” and “it’ll be OK”. Dave screamed at anyone who looked at him. He tried picking a few fights and had to be pulled away from guys who could have knocked some sense into him. Or he might have been hitting on them. In his state, it was hard to tell the difference. The outcome was likely to be the same. Quinn dragged him upstairs where Dave tried to kick down their apartment door, then fell through when Quinn opened it.

Left with Quinn as the only target for his rage and libido, Dave started some rough grabbing and groping. He was barking out combinations of insults and orders, “fuck me you worthless piece of shit” and things of that kind. Maybe a pity fuck would calm him down, but he passed out before Quinn had to either do him or smack him into submission.

By that time, it was already light out. The kind of light you want to murder because you haven’t had a minute of sleep. Quinn tucked himself into the smelly armchair and tried to pass out too. If he could trust Dave not to wake up and not to do any of the things he said he would do, Quinn could just go to his own bed. But Dave said some crazy shit. With that much booze and those pills mixed in, he wasn’t a sane human being. Dave’s eyes were slitted as he slept, not closed all the way. Quinn watched him, uneasy. Wishing there was someone else there, maybe one of the other roommates, Quinn drifted off.

It seemed like Quinn woke up a minute later. His stiff neck told him it was longer. Dave wasn’t on the couch. Getting up and finding that his leg had gone to sleep, he limped to Dave’s room. He wasn’t there, but a duffel bag was on his bed. Quinn punched his leg to wake it and looked into the bathroom. Dave was curled up next to the toilet full of unflushed vomit. Quinn reached over to flush but pulled his hand back. If he woke him, he would just have to deal with him again. Quinn left him to sleep and took his wallet for safekeeping. Exhausted from wrestling an insane person all night long, he went to bed.

Months later, Quinn didn’t expect to hear Dave unload the same story. But there it was, Dave at the end of a drinking binge ranting that his gay, high school teacher was killed, the murder unsolved and going to stay that way.

The binge started when Dave’s friends wanted to cheer him up after he got fired. Dave didn’t seem all that broken up over losing a job he called “talking to morons on the phone all day”. That didn’t stop his idiot friends from pouring booze down his throat. Or that’s how Quinn pictured it, as he wasn’t invited. Those same idiot friends deposited Dave back at the apartment, just outside the door. He was waiting there, crazy drunk and raving about his teacher, for Quinn to subdue when he got home.

Next morning, with his backpack in his hand, Quinn waited for the bus that would take him and Dave to his homophobic, shithole, little hometown. Letting Dave go alone was out of the question, and Quinn had no one else to volunteer but himself. He wished that Dave was a better friend, better looking, or at least a nicer guy, maybe taller. As it was, Quinn felt like a total chump for going with him. Not that he had been asked.

It was going to be a stupid waste of time. The murder might already be solved by now. What did Dave know about what went on or how things worked? Murder investigations could take years.

“They’ll bury it, they don’t care who killed him. Or they know, and they don’t care.”

What the hell was Dave going to do about it? Looking over at him like it might answer the question, Quinn saw him sway a little. Dave blinked and breathed slowly, licked his lips, probably dehydrated, still insane. It was in his eyes, bleary and not open enough. These were the eyes of someone who was going to step in front of the bus, not get on one.

The bus shuddered and started up. Dave groaned at the motion. Quinn considered sitting away from him since he was being ignored anyway. It was like he wasn’t there for Dave’s benefit. More like he wasn’t there at all. If the hoarse ravings of a maniac can be considered conversation, then their longest conversations were when Dave was wasted. Staying seated next to him, Quinn looked past his profile. He saw civilization receding, his missed classes, unwritten papers. He wished they had a cell phone between them or a car. He would have settled for a beeper. If they had taken any time to plan this trip, maybe they could have borrowed some of those things.

Dave’s eyes were closing by degrees like an old man’s or a child’s. The view out the window was emptying of people. Buildings went from faceless industrial to none at all. Fields stretched out between distant houses. In a few hours Quinn would see this place called a small town—a quaint little nightmare for people like them. Or so he had heard.

***

The black iron fence was getting swallowed up by branches. They were coming right through, spilling out like they had discovered that the fence was just a scare tactic and couldn’t keep them in. The house wasn’t visible at all from the street. No wonder Mr. Shumaker could prance around in practically nothing.

This time Davy knew to look out for Mr. Shumaker before ringing the bell. He wasn’t on the porch, but he wasn’t far. Past the dense bushes there was a raggedly marked off little clearing. In it was a set of small chairs and a table, metal, painted white over and over again. Unmowed grass and weeds rose up around the chipped legs. The table and chairs were all placed under the shade of a massive tree. Mr. Shumaker sat there with his hairy legs next to a bottle and a glass on the little table. He was in another robe that wasn’t hardly closed. He did have white underwear on underneath—boxers, thank God.

“You do own clothes, right? Like pants, things like that?” Davy asked.

As Mr. Shumaker turned, Davy noticed again how different he looked. It wasn’t just in the way he dressed, or didn’t. His hair was longer than any teacher's except the female ones. Not really long, just unteacherly. His stubble was nearly a beard. Davy could swear that his eyes were just not the same ones he had before. Maybe booze had gone into them. It seemed like Davy’s mom had the same kinds of eyes. The irises were melting into the rest, making them look a little bigger than before but more liquid and unfocused.

“Scandalized, are you?” Mr. Shumaker accused him.

“Yeah, a bunch of old man leg hair. Oooh.”

“Bastard!” He startled Davy by yelling and standing up. “Old! I’m not even forty.”

“Not even,” Davy mocked.

Shumaker was busy steadying the bottle he had teetering from his tantrum. He sat down again. Now that the tantrum was over, nothing he said had much heat in it.

“Does your mother know you’re here, you runt?” he asked Davy.

“You said runt, right?”

“Get out.”

“We are out. And you’re drunker than last time.” Davy wasn’t really sure about that. Mr. Shumaker seemed more surly. That might mean he was less drunk.

“Shame on me for that and for skipping church as well,” Mr. Shumaker said, taking a drink and tipping his head back to swallow.

“Like they’d let you into any churches `round here.”

“Remind me of your holy mission.” Mr. Shumaker did not look at him but spoke to the tree mostly.

“Grades. I need them up,” Davy said to the side of his face.

Mr. Shumaker seemed to think a while.

“No. Don’t see what it’s got to do with me.”

“I am going to help you be less of a loser by letting you keep me from becoming a loser.” Having delivered this succinct explanation, Davy sat down.

“A smarter boy wouldn’t need my help.”

“A smart boy wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere near you. And idiots need more help than anybody, anyways,” Davy told him.

“How refreshing. But I still find myself unmotivated.” Mr. Shumaker looked around him vaguely like everything was of more interest to him than Davy. Davy sighed.

“I tried without help, and if there’s no one telling me to do it, I just don’t do the work. I just pft.” Davy motioned with his hand like something flying off.

“I still find myself more interested in this glass.” Mr. Shumaker brought up the glass and held it out. He had an undeniable interest in it. Davy wouldn’t dream of trying to part him from it.

“No one’s telling you to put it down. But I know it will work out if I get helped a bit. When my dad was with us, he used to ride my ass and...”

“Ugh, don’t put it like that.”

“What?”

“Phrase that some other way.”

“He used to make sure I did stuff and read what I was supposed to and everything,” Davy said slowly so as not to be misunderstood by a dirty old man. “That was a while ago.”

“You still have a mother.”

“Yeah. She is not the drill sergeant type.”

“Am I?” Mr. Shumaker held out his glass again as if to illustrate his military unfitness.

“You are a teacher.”

“No. Was a teacher. Briefly. It was in the paper. Don’t you read?”

“Read this. What’s wrong with it?” Davy stuck out a paper in front of him. It was an essay with a grade of D on it. Davy set it on the table. Mr. Shumaker looked at it but would not take it. After examining it for a few seconds, he took his eyes from it.

“First, there is the big letter D. And see all these little red markings? They might give you a clue.” He pointed to the paper without looking at it himself.

“No, they don’t. I can’t be getting D’s. I need a scholarship.”

“Rewrite it.”

Davy took a moment to absorb what Mr. Shumaker said.

“And?”

“Bring it back. I will grade it for you. Bring the original too.”

Davy stood up. He eyed Mr. Shumaker to try and judge if he was serious. Mr. Shumaker stared at him for a moment then went back to drinking. Still not sure if this was a real victory, Davy at least had homework.

Not knowing what time it was as he woke up, Davy slowly put together the available information. The clock said almost ten. It was dark. He turned on the lamp and got up letting papers fall from his chest to the floor. He would need to hunt down the pen at some point. He looked down at the rewritten essay to see how much he got done before falling asleep.

Hungry, Davy went through the dark house. His mother was sitting with the TV as her only light. He guessed that it had been daytime when she sat down, and she never got up to turn the lights on.

As he went close, she smiled up at him, said, “Hi, honey” with a delay of a few seconds while she formed the words properly. He checked the glass—nearly empty. Davy poured her one then put the bottle away. She never objected to that. She always said, “Thank you, hon” when he finished pouring. Really, she was a nice drunk. Maybe Shumaker was a nice drunk too. Only he didn’t need another one of those.

Chapter 3

Quinn felt like his legs had rusted in place from sitting so long. Dave looked a little unsteady but better than when they started. He carried his bag like it was full of bricks not just a few books and clothes. His walk was slow and dragging as they moved away from the loudly belching bus.

It was weird to look to Dave for leadership, but he was the only one who knew where they were going. Quinn stared around as he followed. He didn’t expect Garnetville to be so ordinary. The town was as menacing as a sleeping, old dog. Still, there was an unmistakable sense that the now wasn’t happening here. There were some boxy, uninviting stores. Occasionally there would be an older building freshly painted to its disadvantage. There weren’t a lot of people around.

“Where are the toothless old guys sitting on some bench to watch us newly arrived troublemakers with squinty eyed suspicion?” Quinn asked.