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.”

shock. Come by

food made me want to vomit. “I — there’s no one to

eat, Adrien. Close the shop for an hour. Non! Close

think about it,” I promised

had I hung up on Claude than the phone rang again. I

my hands. Outside the kitchen window I

It seemed both unbelievable and inevitable. A dozen images flashed through my brain in a macabre mental slide show: Robert at sixteen, in his West Valley Academy tennis whites. Robert and me, drunk and fumbling, in the Ambassador Hotel the night of the senior prom. Robert on his wedding day. Robert last night, his face unfamiliar and

No chance to say goodbye. I wiped my eyes on my shirt sleeve, listened to the muffled ring of the phone downstairs. I told myself to get up and get dressed. Told myself I had a business to run. I continued to sit there,

workshop for mystery writers on Tuesday nights. My partners in crime had finally convinced me to put out a monthly newsletter. And I had just sold my own first novel, Murder

could barely keep up with it, let alone work on my next book. That’s when Robert had turned up

marriage had cost what Rob laughingly called a “queen’s ransom.” After nine years and two-point-five children he was back from the Heartland of America, hard up and hard on.

the bathroom to finish my shower and shave, which had been interrupted by the heavy hand of the law on my

at my reflection, hearing again that condescending, “But you are 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,

Maybe there really was a straight guy checklist. Like those “How to Recognize a Homosexual” articles circa the Swinging