Love Is Heartless, page 24
“Come on. I’m probably the least likely person on the planet to run away from home.”
“Still. When you leave—”
Colin reached across the table and grabbed his hand. “I’m not leaving.”
Nevin thought about Colin’s history with the douche bag. “But what about if you want to leave? Will you just stick around, sick to death of me but too nice to hurt my precious fucking feelings?”
“I’m not a doormat. But unless you do something monumentally stupid, I won’t want to leave. Luckily you’re a pretty smart guy.”
“Huh.” Maybe Nevin would eventually stop being a fuckwad who needed constant reassurance, but he wasn’t there yet. Colin seemed cheerful, though, as if he were willing to stroke Nevin’s ego until the fucking apocalypse. But then, maybe he got something out of being the strong one in the relationship. He certainly enjoyed taking charge when they had sex. Hell, Nevin enjoyed that too.
Colin smiled sunnily at him. “So. Christmas is almost here.”
“Yeah.” Shit. That meant Nevin had to get him a present, and he didn’t have much experience at that sort of thing. He and Ford bought each other dinner to celebrate things, and nobody else had ever been close enough for Nevin to worry about. What the fuck were you supposed to get your boyfriend when he was richer than you—and didn’t seem to want much in the way of material shit?
“My parents are having a gala.”
“What?”
“A gala.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Nevin had heard the term before, but he didn’t understand how it related to Colin’s parents.
“They rent a space—this year it’s a gallery a couple of blocks from here—and hire caterers and musicians. They invite everyone—all their friends and everyone they know from work. Everyone dresses up. It’s fun. And the best part? They collect donations for a charity.” He smiled widely. “This year it’s going to be Bright Hope.”
“Manny could always use extra cash.”
“Last year they collected for an animal shelter. They got over a hundred thousand dollars.”
“Holy crap!” Nevin narrowed his eyes. “But what does this have to do with me?”
“I can’t wait to see how amazing you look in a tuxedo.”
A FEW days later, Jeremy flew to Kansas and was reunited with Qay and, apparently, the two of them saw the goddamn light. They returned to Portland, shacked up at Jeremy’s place, and emerged over the following days only for groceries.
“I’m so happy for them,” Colin announced as he and Nevin lay in bed on Sunday morning.
“You don’t even know them. And it’s not one of your stupid movies with the happily ever afters. Qay’s still got a monkey on his back and enough baggage to make me look well-adjusted. Germy’s still got a hero complex.”
“But they’ve survived a crisis and they’re working together. That’s sweet. Some people do get happy endings, you know.”
“I’ll give you a happy ending,” said Nevin, giving Colin’s cock a few strokes. He’d been thinking more and more lately about how he wanted that thing inside him without a latex barrier, and how he’d love to do the same to Colin. He’d never barebacked, not even once. Maybe he’d talk to Colin after the holidays about getting tested. Hey—that could be his Christmas present to Colin. Ho ho ho.
Colin whimpered, pressing his groin into Nevin’s hand. But then he retreated slightly. “What happened to pancakes for breakfast?”
“Pancakes? You’re thinking about pancakes when you can have this?” Nevin grabbed Colin’s hand and placed it on his own cock. Maybe it wasn’t as big as Colin’s, but it did the job.
“Hmm, but I had that last night. I haven’t had pancakes for—” Colin squawked as Nevin quickly flipped on top of him. An enthusiastic kiss stopped the squawk, and Colin parried with a double-handed squeeze of Nevin’s ass. Just as Colin started to arch his hips upward, Nevin fluttered his fingers under Colin’s arm. Colin was wonderfully ticklish.
They wrestled and groped, and their laughter was just starting to turn to moans when Nevin’s phone rang.
“If that’s Germy or Qay, they can fuck themselves upside down,” he muttered.
But it was Frankl. “Double homicide,” he said without preamble.
“Mother Mary’s tits. Why are you calling to tell me this?”
“Because you know the vics.”
Horrible images flashed through Nevin’s brain—Jeremy and Qay, Ford and Katie, Rhoda and Parker. Broken and bloody. “Who?” he rasped.
“Bob and Ivan Thomas.”
AT LEAST Frankl didn’t insist they go to the station. He met them at a Starbucks instead, without Blake. He sat across the round wooden table, his hound-dog eyes grave. Colin was as pale as marble except for his eyes, which were swollen and red.
“Tell me what happened,” demanded Nevin.
But Frankl shook his head. “I need a statement from Mr. Westwood first.”
“Fuck that. Since Friday night, the only time Colin’s been out of my sight was when one of us was using the john.”
Frankl shifted in his seat. “I’m not asking for an alibi, Ng. At this point Mr. Westwood isn’t a suspect.”
“But—”
“It’s fine,” Colin interrupted. “Go ahead and ask whatever you need to, Detective.”
After a curt nod, Frankl pulled out his notebook and a pen. “You were acquainted with Bob and Ivan Thomas?”
The questioning lasted for nearly half an hour, even though Colin clearly had little valuable information. Frankl was fishing, goddammit, which meant he didn’t have a fucking clue who’d killed them or why.
Nevin had finished his second coffee by the time Frankl put the notebook away. “Your turn. What happened?” Nevin demanded.
“A friend dropped by their house this morning with breakfast and got concerned when nobody answered the bell. She called 911. Responding officers found the front door closed but unlocked and the decedents in the kitchen. Judging by rigor, I’d estimate time of death was yesterday afternoon.”
Although Colin had managed to go even paler, he asked a question in a quiet voice. “How did they die?”
“Somebody tried to make this look like a murder-suicide. The larger man was strangled and the other one was asphyxiated with a plastic bag over his head.”
“They wouldn’t do that! They were enjoying life, and Ivan would never—”
“I said somebody tried. That somebody did a piss-poor job of it.”
“How so?” Nevin asked.
“Half-eaten food on the table, for one thing. Nobody decides to do this in the middle of a meal. And it looks as if the one man’s hands were severely arthritic. I doubt he had the grip strength to strangle anyone.”
When Colin dropped his head, Nevin reached over to give his shoulder a squeeze. “What else you got?” Nevin asked.
“Not much. No forced entry. Techs are still sweeping the scene, and Blake’s with them. We should have preliminary autopsy results in the morning.”
“And that’s it?”
“Mostly. That friend of the Thomases mentioned they had a housecleaner, and the name rang a bell, so I looked him up. He’s the same guy who cleaned Mrs. Ruskin’s house.” He retrieved his notebook and took a quick glance at something he’d written. “A Jerry Griffin. Do you know him, Mr. Westwood?”
Colin slowly shook his head. “Mrs. Ruskin mentioned a cleaning service a few times, but only in passing.” He frowned. “But usually she had me over shortly after the service came. My visits were… social occasions for her.”
“It’s probably just a coincidence,” Frankl said thoughtfully. “But Griffin’s got a couple old priors—some drug charges from the nineties—so we’ll look into him.”
“Keep me in the loop?” Nevin asked.
After a brief hesitation, Frankl nodded. “You too,” he said with a significant glance at Colin.
After Frankl was gone, Colin remained at the table, his cup of cooled decaf cradled in his palms. “They were really nice people,” he whispered.
“I know.” Nevin had met them only once, when Colin had brought him along on one of his visits. Bob and Ivan had cooed over them like teenagers at a fan con. They’d shared some of their photos too—drag queens, people in sixties hairdos, venues long since closed and turned into something else. They were a bit over-the-top, maybe, but Nevin had liked them. He’d been happy at how clearly taken they were with his boy.
“They didn’t even get the chance to celebrate the sale of their house. Why would someone do this?”
“We’ll find out.”
Colin didn’t say anything, but his stare spoke volumes. The way you found out who killed Mrs. Ruskin and Roger Grey?
“You should go home,” Nevin said, thinking of the calming virtues of petting Legolas.
“I knew them. Just like I knew…. God, what if this is my fault?”
“How could it be your fault? You were kind to these people, Collie. You went out of your way to bring some happiness into their lives. That has nothing to do with them being murdered.”
Colin shook his head miserably. “But it’s a pretty big coincidence, isn’t it? I mean, if they’d all dropped dead of natural causes, okay. None of them were young and they all had health issues. But none were natural causes.”
Nevin wanted to reassure him but didn’t have the words and wasn’t willing to lie. Sure, murders happened. But elderly white people weren’t the usual victims, and the deaths typically weren’t so mysterious. Killers generally knew their victims, yet no one among these people’s acquaintances seemed likely suspects.
Unless, of course, there were acquaintances the bureau didn’t know about. In fact, that seemed likely. In all three cases, there was no sign of anyone breaking into the victims’ homes. And in Grey’s case, there was that mysterious arm in the ATM surveillance video. Then there was the housecleaner, but Nevin had seen Grey’s apartment and doubted very much that Grey had anyone tidying up his place.
It was possible the same perp was responsible for all the murders—a chilling idea. But fuck! Nothing tied them together except Colin.
“Collie?”
“Hmm.”
An idea was floating somewhere in Nevin’s head, but he couldn’t quite grasp it. “How’d you get started with Bright Hope?”
To his surprise, Colin laughed softly. “Mrs. Ruskin.”
“What?”
“A couple months before she died, she told me she’d always been attracted to women but never did anything about it. I was the only person she ever told. That’s sad—staying in the closet for eighty-something years.”
It was, but that wasn’t important at the moment. “And?” Nevin prompted.
“Since she was lonely, I thought maybe she might enjoy meeting some other people like her.”
“Octogenarian lesbians.”
Another small chuckle. “Right. Um, not an easy demographic to track down. But I’d heard of Bright Hope—our company gave them some donations. I told Mrs. Ruskin about them, but I don’t know if she ever contacted Manuel. It wasn’t a very comfortable subject for her. After she died, I started volunteering there.”
Then it wasn’t just Colin who tied these cases together. That was a relief. Nevin needed to have a little chat with Manuel, it seemed.
But not now. The dead were already at rest, but Colin needed comforting.
“Come home,” Nevin coaxed, wrapping his hand around Colin’s and pulling him gently to his feet.
BACK AT Colin’s loft, they checked on Legolas, who was curled up near a heating vent. He gave them the evil eye for disturbing his sleep, then ignored them.
“Get into bed,” Nevin ordered Colin.
“It’s two in the afternoon. I have to—”
“Bed.”
For once, Colin let Nevin boss him around. He threw his clothes carelessly onto the floor, leaving on only his boxer briefs, and crawled under the blankets. He lay curled on his side, eyes wide open and blank. Nevin briefly considered calling Colin’s parents. Surely his mother would be eager to comfort him. But no, goddammit! Right now, Colin was his. His lover, his friend, his responsibility.
“I’ll be right back.”
Colin didn’t respond.
Nevin walked into the kitchen and spent a minute or two standing helplessly. His chaotic upbringing meant he’d never learned to cook properly. When he was poor and living on his own, he’d survived mostly on ramen and sandwiches, and nowadays he did takeout and frozen dinners. But Colin hadn’t eaten anything all day, and going to a restaurant was out of the question. Nevin didn’t even want to leave him long enough to run out for something.
Fine, goddammit. He could handle this. Hadn’t he promised pancakes?
He found pancake mix in a cupboard, a bowl and frying pan in another, and milk, butter, and eggs in the fridge. Muttering to himself, he read the instructions on the box.
He dropped most of the eggshells into the first batch, then made a goopy mess trying to fish them out. He dumped that disaster into the garbage disposal, wiped the counter, and tried again. The second time, he poured mix too carelessly, resulting in a choking cloud of powder and another mess all over the counter and floor. By then Legolas had awakened and wandered over, watching from a safe distance and looking amused.
“Yeah? So why don’t you make pancakes, mousebreath?”
Legolas licked his paw.
On the third try, Nevin managed to get the batter mixed to what he hoped was the right consistency. But his triumph was short-lived, because he soon discovered he was incapable of pancake flipping. They twisted and splattered and glorped, and the results were half-burned and half-raw.
And now he was out of eggs.
“Fuck it,” he told the cat. Colin could eat toast instead.
When Nevin entered the bedroom, Colin glanced at him, froze, and began to giggle.
“What?” Nevin demanded, secretly pleased to see Colin momentarily happy. He sat on the mattress beside him.
Colin reached up and plucked something from Nevin’s hair, then held it in a palm for inspection. It was a little ball of dried pancake batter. A quick run of fingers across his scalp revealed several similar bits of debris.
“And you have flour here.” Colin gently poked the tip of Nevin’s nose. “And here.” That time, he brushed a finger over Nevin’s cheekbone. “You look like you had a fight with the Swedish chef.”
“Who?”
“Eersh kabish gabork kabish kadoo?”
“What?”
“Never mind,” Colin said. “You made me food?”
Nevin looked doubtfully at the toast, which was slightly burned. “Of a sort.”
Colin pulled himself to a seated position and grabbed a piece from the plate on Nevin’s lap. He crunched through it quickly, then started on another. “How about you?”
“I already ate.”
Colin’s expression showed his awareness of Nevin’s lie, but he didn’t push the point. He just chewed, his gaze fixed solidly on Nevin’s. God, Nevin would do anything to erase the sadness from those eyes. He waited for Colin to finish eating, then set the plate aside and leaned in for a butter-flavored kiss.
It was a truth Nevin learned long ago—the closer death comes, the more precious life seems. Over and over again, human beings celebrate survival and refute mortality with the most life-affirming act of all. Sex.
He’d done it himself over the years. A day spent tearing through traffic with sirens wailing, or hoping some drug-crazed fuckwit wasn’t too quick on the trigger. A night spent naked, sweaty, plunging into someone else’s body—for pleasure rather than pain. Once he’d even fucked another cop, a situation he normally avoided. Both new to the bureau, they’d spent an evening doing triage for victims of a flophouse fire. Still reeking of smoke, they’d gone off shift, driven to the other officer’s apartment, got sloppy drunk, and screwed until their bodies gave out.
Nevin knew the need for human contact after the grim reaper paid a visit.
He pulled back from the kiss to find Colin flushed and breathing heavily, his pupils dark against the pale blue of his irises.
“Nev,” Colin started.
“Shh.”
Nevin stood and slowly undressed. He wasn’t teasing but was instead gradually drawing in Colin’s focus the way an angler might pull in a struggling fish. He was successful too, because by the time all Nevin’s clothes were off, Colin was reaching for him. Nevin reached back.
It wasn’t fucking. It was trailing hands and questing tongues, quivering bodies and rising moans. It was the scent of Colin strong in Nevin’s nose—toast and sleep-sweat and sex and shampoo—and the taste of him filling Nevin’s mouth. It was Colin lost to everything but what they were doing together, his head thrown back and Nevin’s name tumbling from his mouth. And after their climaxes washed over them like warm waves, it was lying huddled in each other’s arms, feeling the glory of bare skin against skin. “It’s making love,” Nevin said.
“Huh?” Colin had been dozing already.
Shit. “I love you. There. Happy now?”
Colin’s eyes flew open. The smile spread slowly until it was so wide Nevin thought it might just wrap around Colin’s head, and then where the hell would they be?
“Happy now,” Colin whispered. He squeezed Nevin more tightly. “You know that abandonment issue you have?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you were afraid of everyone leaving you. I was wrong.”
Nevin’s heart raced, but it was strong and could withstand the strain. “Yeah, Sigmund?”
“What you’re really afraid of is you leaving everyone else.”
Nevin flinched. He started to pull away, but Colin held him fast.
“You don’t have to go anywhere, Nev. You’re not your mother or any of those people who let you down when you were a kid. You’re better than any of them. Steady and tough and good to the bone.”
Colin believed what he was saying. He was a man who saw rainbows where everyone else saw nothing but spilled oil. But he was smart too. Maybe he was right.
