Green Eyes Cry, You Die, page 6
part #2 of Layton Shayne Mystery Series
“Thank you,” I said. “Wasn’t there something you wanted to ask Alex, Frankie?”
“Yes, I almost forgot. Alex, I saw that incredibly artistic picture you took of Layton lying naked in bed. You are a real artist, and I was wondering if you would do me the favor of taking some pictures of Jimmy and me. I would be willing to pay of course.”
“I’d love to, but there’s no way I’d let you pay.”
“He can be bossy sometimes,” I said, then smiled.
“It’s something you do as a living, so I insist on compensating you, Alex,” Frankie said.
“OK then, how about letting me take some pictures I can use in a gallery exhibit, and maybe including Layton in some of the pics.”
“Agreed,” Frankie said.
“Nice of them to ask you or me what we think,” Jimmy said, looking my way.
“I told you he could be bossy, but I like the idea,” I said.
“Besides, there needs to be a picture of the two of you at the front of the restaurant when you walk in the door,” Alex said. “And you need to be in your chef’s uniform, Jimmy, with that handsome partner of yours standing with you.”
“That sounds good,” Jimmy said.
I didn’t keep up with the rest of the conversation—I was too busy savoring every bite of my Torta di Zabaglione. The rest of the time I was looking at Alex, who was wet and still wearing just a towel that hung low around his waist. The rest of us had towels wrapped around our waists as well, but he was the prettiest of our group. Pretty was a strange word to use in describing a man, but it fit him. I held the spoon from my dessert in my mouth as my eyes followed a small water droplet sliding down the curve of his back to just the top of his—
“Hello, Layton, wake up for a second, please,” Jimmy said.
“Oh, he’s awake,” Frankie said. “His eyes are just mesmerized by the sight of his man in front of him.”
Alex laughed, then spoke. “He’d better stop being ‘mesmerized,’ and start paying attention.”
“Sorry, guys, what’s going on?” I said.
“I was just telling Frankie and Jimmy that I could take some pictures early in the morning before they start setting up the restaurant for the day’s business.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said.
* * * *
“Geez, Layton, I can’t believe you brought a plate of dessert back to our room,” Alex said.
“Shhh,” I said, putting my finger on his lips before gently turning him around.
After setting my plate on top of our bed, I put my arms around him, found the front of his towel, untied it, and let it drop. Reaching over to my plate, I scooped up some of the sweet cream with my finger and traced along the curve of Alex’s back with it before slowly licking it off until I got to his small, smooth ass. I grabbed another finger full of cream and painted it on his ass cheek.
“See, I can be an artist of sorts too,” I said, licking up the cream and biting Alex’s ass to get the last lick of the sweet confection.
“You are one crazy artist,” Alex said.
“Should I stop?”
“I didn’t say that.”
* * * *
The next morning, Alex set up some lights, and once that was done, he busied himself taking some surprisingly intimate pictures of Jimmy and Frankie. Intimate, but not pornographic. They were nude out on the sunny, yet very private terrace, but the poses Alex set up were classic and refined. The scene made me think of the nude photographs I’d seen in his workroom back in Shelby. Even I could appreciate the way he played with light, shadows, and shapes. He was taking pictures of nudes, and they did have an erotic quality, but it was much more about shapes and composition. When he worked with his subjects, he also had a way of making them feel comfortable too. I knew this firsthand from our photo session on the dock in Shelby.
“Babe, I’m ready for you to step in,” Alex said.
I slipped off my towel and walked up to the other two naked men. Behind the camera, Alex was a complete professional; albeit someone wearing only a towel, since I’d asked him to do some shots of the four of us together.
“This is nice,” Alex said. “In compositions, three is a very good number. Layton, stand to the left of Frankie, please. And, Jimmy, can you sit on your knees in front of them? That’s it—I like that triangular shape. Let me step back, so I can try and get that long shadow in front of you.”
“A female decorator I knew in school told me three is an important number in decorating too,” Jimmy said. “She said something about it bringing balance to a grouping.”
“That’s true, and in some cultures and religions, it’s a powerful number,” Alex said, walking up to us. “Jimmy, you’re fine sitting for now. Frankie, can you and Layton face each other and hug? No—closer, I want your foreheads touching with you looking downward toward Layton, Frankie.”
Alex walked up to us, gently pushed us closer together, and adjusted our heads, so we were forehead to forehead. Our bodies were close enough that our cocks were up against each other, which made me slightly nervous. He then positioned Jimmy leaning back against us.
“That’s fantastic—I love that,” Alex said. “Jimmy, can you position yourself, so you’re sitting between Frankie and Layton. Yeah, like that, with their legs in front of you keeping you safe—now wrap your arms around their legs.”
Jimmy’s head was directly below our cocks and balls. I wondered what he was thinking.
“I get what you were saying, Alex, even in the Christian religion, there’s the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” Jimmy said. “It’s all very interesting.”
“I agree,” Alex said. “Are you guys holding up alright? You’re not too tired, I hope.”
“Tired would be the wrong word,” Frankie said.
“It’s OK if you feel uncomfortable. Physical intimacy or closeness will do that to you. You’re all kind of in each other’s personal spaces. But these are gonna make incredible pictures.”
Alex finally joined us, and took some pictures of the four of us in a tight row one behind the other, then another with Frankie and me facing each other and he and Jimmy reclining in front of us, wrapping their arms around our legs. Finally, Frankie and Jimmy got dressed, and Alex took some pictures of them for the restaurant.
Alex and I packed, then dressed lightly in T-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops, and walked to the living room where Jimmy and Frankie were waiting. Frankie walked up to us and put an arm warmly around our shoulders.
“You two have it way too easy—look at you both in shorts and flip-flops. You don’t even have to wear suits.”
“Sometimes I do,” I said. “It depends on the job. When I met Alex, I was wearing a suit.”
“And I couldn’t wait to see him out of it,” Alex said. “Remember, Frankie, we’re on our way to a nudist camp. Why dress up?”
“You have the directions, right—and the information from Miss Lucy?” Jimmy said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I never did ask when you two met up with Miss Lucy again after we fought the bad guys in New Orleans.”
“Not too far out of town, on a back road, we got in a high-speed car chase with one of those crazy cult members. Ahead of us, blocking the road, was a car with two cult members standing beside it. They had their hands out toward us, and they were holding those blue spheres they used to burn people up. They were looking right at us, and it really freaked me out, but Frankie stayed calm and drove your truck zig-zagging, so they couldn’t get a good aim. That’s when—”
“When that wild Miss Lucy showed up in her huge truck and blew them up with a rocket launcher,” Frankie said. “A rocket launcher… unbelievable.”
“Not so unbelievable,” I said. “She got the rocket launcher as a birthday present and was having fun using it. She saved my ass with it too. We’d better get on the road. Thanks, you guys, it’s been fun.”
We all hugged and kissed, then Alex and I headed out to the truck. Alex was walking to the passenger door when I grabbed his arm and stopped him. Walking ahead, I stopped in front of the passenger door, bent down and looked at the ground.
“What is it, Layton?”
“Proof that my hunch was right.”
-8-
Organized Thoughts
I opened the door of the truck and checked everything to see if someone had broken into it, but no one had.
“One thing’s for sure; it’s no kid playing around and dropping his lollipop sticks… or maybe it is—this could all be coincidental.” Alex said, as we put our gear in the back of the truck. “Wow, they even cleaned the inside of the topper.”
“This is the cleanest the back of the truck has been in years; even the fabric on the back seats in the extended cab looks great. Going back to what you said about the lollipop sticks; it could be just one big coincidence, but I doubt it.” I sat in the driver’s seat and cranked up the air. “What a difference it makes having a working air conditioner in the truck. Driving to Shelby without it was pure hell.”
“I bet it was; Louisiana isn’t exactly known for its cool weather. Layton, are you worried that someone really is spying on us?”
“Worried would be the wrong word. I’m getting into detective mode; we both need to be cautious now—but never worried. Worry just dulls the senses, and right now, we need all our senses to find out what we can about this statue… and the sooner the better before things escalate.”
“Why would things escalate?”
“Because they always do, and we wouldn’t be working this case if Leticia’s organization didn’t think the danger was serious. They must think the potential is there for things to start happening on a much larger scale than just zombie sightings in a couple of small towns.
“Speaking of the organization,” Alex said. “Don’t they have a name?”
“I’m sure they do, but they don’t divulge it to their operatives. That way, if one of them—or rather one of us gets caught, we can’t reveal it to the bad guys. All we know is we’re working for a watch group comprised of most of the world’s legitimate organized religions. They keep an eye on the growing supernatural powers of small offshoot cults, or the products of such cults… like our green-eyed statues. When that supernatural power grows too strong, agents are called in to handle things.”
“Hmm,” Alex said. “There’s more than one troubling thing about what you just said; like who decides what exactly a legitimate religion is, and don’t most of those religions have qualms about homosexuality.”
“I don’t know… and probably… but they’re changing.” I laughed, then answered him more seriously. “I don’t know the criteria for what helps them determine whether a religion is legitimate or not. I think we can agree that your sisters’ religion in Shelby was a dangerous cult. Regarding gays and religion is a harder question for me to answer. We’re certainly deserving of being allowed to have religion in our lives. Some religions are even accepting of that, and others may never accept it, but that’s just the way it is. We can’t change the world all at one time—hell, I wouldn’t even try.”
“I understand. Leticia is very supportive of our relationship, and even Noelle, who’s a Catholic nun, is supportive of us.”
“Well, hey, that’s a lot right there, I’d say.” I put my arm around him, gave him a squeeze, then changed the subject. “That was nice of Jimmy to pack us some lunch and provisions in a cooler.” Taking a watermelon stick from Cracker Barrel out of my pocket, I unwrapped it and put it in my mouth. I took out a second stick and handed it to Alex, who did the same with his stick.
“Yeah—you know what… I really like Jimmy and Frankie,” Alex said. “I can’t believe they lived in the same town as me.”
“Jimmy was only there part-time when on breaks from school, and you were usually off exploring the world. I guess you were a good boy, and never got stopped by Frankie when he was a cop.”
“I was a good boy, and Frankie’s a handsome guy, but even if he had stopped me—he wouldn’t have gotten me. Well, not in a physically intimate way.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” I said.
“I thought you might be.”
“Seeing all of us naked when we were posing didn’t do a thing for you, did it, Alex? We were just sexless forms for you to manipulate into an artistic vision, huh.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Alex said, “but I’m a professional, and I work with the nude body all the time. Hmm… I guess I must find something attractive, or at least interesting in the people I’m photographing, but part of it really is about shapes and how they relate to one another. How did you feel posing like that with Frankie and Jimmy? Would it have been easier with strangers?”
“It probably would’ve been the same. No—to tell you the truth, I’ve felt slightly inferior to Frankie since the day I met him. He’s handsome, classy, built—and you saw the guy’s equipment. All of us being nude together sort of got rid of my feelings of inferiority, which is great.”
“And you, Layton, are never just a sexless form to me. You looked pretty hot when I was taking those pictures.”
“Hell, I was starting to think I needed a condom, I was standing so damn close to Frankie at times.”
“I didn’t want your cocks in that picture, so I needed you close to one another, and I liked the triangular shape your bodies made with Jimmy in front. But I’ll tell you a secret… your ass is much nicer than Frankie’s. I like your thick cock better too.”
“You do have a naughty side, don’t you, babe?”
“So says the guy, who licked dessert off my ass last night. Have you ever been to a nudist camp, Layton?”
“Nope, but it won’t be a big deal… we’ll just wing it. I’d worry more about the zombie sightings there.”
“I’m trying not to think about the zombies.”
-9-
Bare-Assed to the Wind
A short amount of time had passed; we’d just entered Ramard and I was driving down the Main Street, which had shops and restaurants on both sides.
“Look,” Alex said. “There’s a sign in front of that store to the right featuring a drawing of a woman with green eyes. It’s named Green Eyes Hair Salon. There’s a bar with a barmaid with green eyes on its sign, and a bakery named the Green-Eyed Lady Bakery.”
I made a quick turn into an empty space in front of the bakery and parked. “Time to grab a snack and ask some questions.”
* * * *
“Everything looks good to me,” I said, checking out the displays of cupcakes, cookies, and other delicacies. “What would you suggest?”
I gave the robust, middle-aged redhead behind the counter a flirty smile. Alex was still looking at the displays.
“The eclairs are really good,” she said. “I’m Angie… are you boys new here or just passing through?”
“Hi, Angie,” I said. “We’re in the area on business for at least a few days. Why don’t you pack up two of those eclairs for us?”
“These cinnamon rolls would heat up nicely for breakfast tomorrow,” Alex said, peering down into the refrigerated display case. “Add three of those to the order.”
“Sure thing,” Angie said.
“Tell me something, Angie,” I said, casually. “What’s with this green-eyed lady on signs around here?”
“Oh, you two really are new to the area. The green-eyed lady goes back a ways to when a visiting missionary sold a statue with green emerald eyes to a local store and hotel down the road that was later renamed The Green-Eyed Lady Hotel and Treasure Trove. The hotel is a large complex which houses a gift shop and eatery which have their own names, but the general name of the place as a whole is The Green-Eyed Lady Hotel and Treasure Trove. Going back to what I was saying, the missionary was raising money for a school or something. There are all kinds of rumors about the ole green-eyed gal. The old-timers here have a saying that goes back to the days she first made her appearance.”
“And what would that be?” I said.
“It isn’t pretty,” Angie said. “The saying is: ‘green eyes cry, you die.’”
“Spooky,” Alex said. “What does it mean?”
“It means that whenever the green-eyed lady cries, death is close by,” Angie said. “A lot of people have come here looking for that crying statue, because she cries real emeralds.”
“That would get people’s attention,” I said. “But wouldn’t the locals here want a piece of that too.”
“Hell, no,” Angie said. “Most people around here know better than to have anything to do with the green-eyed lady. It’s misery for anyone that looks for her.”
“You said most people would know better, but not everyone,” I said.
The front door of the bakery swung open, and a slender, middle-aged black woman with dark brown hair worn in a twist under a large hat entered. She was the picture of elegance in a white jacket, skirt, matching heels, handbag, and the aforementioned hat.
“Good afternoon, everyone,” the woman said.
“I have your order for the church women’s group meeting all boxed up in back,” Angie said. “Let me just finish with these gentlemen first.”
“Oh, no—please,” I said. “Don’t worry about us, we’re in no rush. Go ahead and take care of her order.”
“Thank you,” the woman said, smiling my way.
“I’ll be just a couple minutes,” Angie said, before disappearing into the back room.
“So, what brings you two to our fair town?” the woman said.
I noticed she’d caught Alex’s attention too. For some unknown reason, I felt the need to test this woman I’d only just met.
“My partner and I are on our honeymoon,” I said, making direct eye contact with the woman. She didn’t even flinch—impressive. Her eyes moved downward to my hand, then Alex’s.
“No rings yet,” she said. “I hope you didn’t skip the ceremony.”
She smiled at both of us, and it seemed genuine.
“We sort of skipped ahead,” Alex said. “But we’ll eventually get matching rings.”
