Fatal Shadows

The phone started ringing before I could relock the front door. For a moment I thought it was Robert calling in sick again.

“Adrien, mon chou,” fluted the high, clear voice of Claude La Pierra. Claude owns Café Noir on Hillhurst Ave. He’s big and black and beautiful. I’ve known him about three years. I’m convinced he’s a Southland native, but he affects a kind of gender-confused French like a Left Bank expatriate with severe memory loss. “I just heard. It’s too ghastly. I still can’t believe it. Tell me I’m dreaming.”

“The police just left.”

“The police? Mon Dieu! What did they say? Do they know who did it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What did they tell you? What did you tell them? Did you tell them about me?”

“No, of course not.”

A noisy sigh of relief quivered along the phone line. “Certainement pas! What is there to tell? But what about you? Are you all right?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t had time to think.”

in shock. Come by

can’t, Claude.” The thought of food made me want to vomit. “I — there’s no

eat, Adrien. Close the shop for

it,” I

I hung up on Claude than the phone rang again. I ignored it, padding

upstairs I sank on the couch, head in my hands. Outside the kitchen window I could hear a dove cooing, the soft sound distinct over the mid-morning rush

sixteen, in his West Valley Academy tennis whites.

I told myself to get up and get dressed. Told myself I had a business to run. I continued to sit there, my mind racing ahead, looking for trouble. I could see it everywhere, looming up, pointing me out of the lineup. Maybe that sounds selfish, but half a lifetime of getting myself out of shit Robert landed me in had

and gothic whodunits in Los Angeles. We held a workshop for mystery writers on Tuesday nights. My partners in crime

Life was good. But especially business was good. So good that I could barely keep up with it, let alone work on my

Getting out of the marriage had cost what Rob laughingly called a “queen’s ransom.” After nine

and shave, which had been interrupted by the heavy hand of the law on my door

a homosexual?” As in, “But you are a lower life form?” So what had Detective Riordan seen? What was the first clue? Blue eyes, longish dark hair,

device. Maybe there really was a straight guy checklist. Like those “How to Recognize a Homosexual” articles circa the Swinging ’60s. Way back