The Mystery of Nevermore (7 page)

I leaned back against the wall, pressing the heels of my hands to my eyes. Was it okay to find someone else attractive when you were in a committed relationship? It’d been a while since anyone but Neil had made my cock ache as bad as it had at Bond Antiques, and it usually required a bit of effort on Neil’s part to get me there.

Just thinking of sex in the same breath as Calvin made me reach down to touch myself. That was not good. It was not healthy, right? Fantasizing about another guy, and definitely not one I could have, because I was dating Neil. More or less. And because Calvin was not into guys. I didn’t get the homophobe vibe Neil did, but I certainly wasn’t getting fellow gay man either.

But by then I was hard again, and it didn’t fucking matter if Calvin was gay or straight. I closed my eyes and imagined his hand instead of mine. Big and muscular, with callused palms able to give just the exact amount of pressure and speed I needed. I thought about what it must be like to be naked with him. His strong form surrounding me. His entire body nothing but solid muscle, chest dusted with light hair, and freckles all over.

All over.

Jesus, I’d never been so turned on by freckles in my life.

A little harder, a little faster. I was vaguely aware of my own heavy breathing. In my fantasy Calvin was pressed roughly against me, my cock between us as he stroked. He dipped his mouth close to my ear, then bit and sucked the lobe. He wanted to fuck me, and I wanted it bad.

I opened my eyes when I came suddenly.

Well, then.
So there was that little truth. Maybe Calvin had no interest in fucking me for real, but that didn’t change the fact that I would have bent over for him in a heartbeat. I cleared my throat in an
I’m embarrassed by myself
manner, washed once more, and turned off the water.

Dried and changed into a third set of clothes for the day, I walked into the front room and sat on the couch before turning on the television.

It was still snowing, I was being told. Stellar news reporting.

“There is another storm front on the tail of this, which is expected to hit New York City within forty-eight hours. There will be a small window when citizens can go out and unbury cars and get shopping done before they can expect to be blanketed by another ten to fifteen inches,” the weatherman said.

“Awesome.”

I stood back up, went into the kitchen, and searched the cupboards for food while convincing myself I hadn’t just jacked off to fantasies about a cop who had been almost ready to handcuff me this morning. Okay, that wasn’t entirely true. Calvin said I wasn’t a suspect, but that threat to stay in the city told me I was definitely at the top of their person of interests list. I shuddered. Not a place I wanted to be.

I popped the top off a soup can and poured the New England clam chowder into a pot. I watched the contents bubble. Something about that crime scene had been weird. What had Mike been attacked with? A butcher knife? It was such a massive slice in his head….

I swallowed the sour taste coming up my throat.

No, weirder than that. It had been—

“The cat,” I said suddenly. The poor animal that had been hanging from a rope around its neck. What had that been, a warning perhaps? Had Mike gotten mixed up with the wrong sort of people and walked in on someone leaving it?

What struck me as more bizarre than the cat itself was that that story was familiar.

I ran out of the kitchen and shoved aside a few boxes of the estate winnings I was hoarding to get to the bookshelf in the front room. The news anchors were discussing alternate side of the street parking rules being suspended for the next day while I knocked several stacked books off the cramped shelves. One too many mystery novels starring an English spinster and her cat; I had long ago run out of places to put them all. Near the bottom was a well-worn and battered copy of
The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
.

Growing up with a parent like my father, literature was important in our home. To my Pop’s horror, I had never been one for the likes of Faulkner or Hemingway as a kid, but I had at least loved Poe. A depressed man with a twisted, tortured soul and mind. He made more money after his death than he had his entire life as a writer.

I snatched the book, holding it close to my face while reading the table of contents. There it was, page 387, “The Black Cat.” I hurried to the table, sat, and grabbed the magnifying glass to help with the fine print. I now remembered reading this in junior high and how profoundly disturbed I had been by it. The details of the story had faded with the years that I refused to reread it. Everything but the death of the cat.

Pluto. That was his name.

“One morning,” I read, “in cold blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree.”

And there it was. A cat hanged to death.

What were the chances the cat left in Mike’s shop was black?

I looked back down at the pages, shaking my head. This was weird.

No. This was fucked up. Maybe I was reading too much into it, but why did short stories of Poe come to mind in both this situation and at my shop yesterday? I kept reading, refreshing myself with the disturbing story that involved a man lost to madness after becoming an alcoholic. He had killed his wife with an axe—

“To the head.”

Something was burning.

I looked away from the book before jumping up and running into the kitchen. So much for lunch. I wasn’t that hungry anyway. I turned off the burner and yanked open the blinds of the small kitchen window. I winced and squinted slightly, fumbling with the latch before thrusting the window up and using a potholder to guide the smoke out.

I took a long, deep breath. What were the facts? Mike’s shop had been broken into on Sunday night, and the old curmudgeon had pointed an accusing finger at me. Tuesday morning, I found a pig’s heart rotting under the floorboards, and by Wednesday morning, Mike was found dead in his shop. Then there was the curious addition of the cat.

I wondered what the circumstances of the break-in had been. The detectives hadn’t offered any details yesterday. Something undoubtedly strange had to have occurred, or someone as stiff-lipped as Mike Rodriguez wouldn’t have called for help. And not that I had exactly been paying close attention earlier at his store, but it didn’t appear to have been ransacked. Everything was in order, from what I could tell.

I stuck the pot of burned soup in the sink and turned the water on.

I was missing something.

What did Poe have to do with this? Anything? I couldn’t have been imagining the connection to his writing—could I?

What Mike and I had in common was pretty basic. We both owned antique shops and lived in Manhattan. That was it. I had worked for him, but that had been years ago. We weren’t friends, but hardly enemies. I was thirty-three. Mike had to be in his midfifties. I was a gay man in a committed, shitty relationship. Mike was straight and had been a long-time bachelor.

I started scrubbing the pot and thought about calling Calvin. Maybe this was an important revelation in—whatever exactly this case was. The same person could be behind the pig heart in my shop and the untimely demise of Mike. I briefly considered that the heart could have been a warning for me.

But about what?

Was I going to get smashed over the head next?

“You are not a cop,” I told myself sternly. “What happened to Mike is awful, but it’s not your job to find the guy. Stay out of it, or you’re going to get arrested.”

That would have been enough to stop a regular person from getting caught up in a murder case. Hell, maybe under different circumstances, I would have heeded my own warning too.

But I was angry.

Angry at Mike, angry at Neil, angry at a lot of people.

And my business had been tampered with.

I felt justified.

I wiped my hands dry on my jeans while searching for my cell. I held it close enough to read and went through previous contacts, picked out Calvin Winter’s cell, and pressed Call.

He didn’t answer, and instead his recorded voice told me to leave a message.

“Uh—hey. It’s Sebastian. Snow. Sebastian Snow….”

He knows your name. Shut up and get to the point.

“Look, I had an idea about who may have hurt Mike. It’s a bit farfetched, but if you don’t mind, give me a call back?” Halfway through the message, I began to feel like an idiot.

I was a civilian, not a detective. My ideas weren’t going to help. The people who cracked these cases were Neil and Calvin.

Maybe I should bounce the idea off Neil.
If
he planned on talking to me again.

I realized I had been silent for an exceptionally long period. “Sorry to waste your time.” I hung up quickly.

I CRASHED
hard afterward and slept through the rest of the afternoon. I think what initially woke me was the pair of cardinals that nested in the tree outside our bedroom window. Cardinals mated for life. I had learned that one afternoon many years back, when I first moved into this apartment.

Lucky them. I bet they got along great.

I rolled over onto my back in bed. My eyes hurt. I’d fallen asleep with my contacts in.

Great.

The room was pretty dark, and the fuzzy numbers on the alarm said something like 6:DS, so I assumed Neil would be home anytime. I sat up, grabbed my glasses off the nightstand, and put them on before standing.

I heard a kitchen cupboard open and cans being moved around. Speak of the devil.

Opening the bedroom door, I rubbed the back of my head absently. I wondered if Calvin had grilled Neil on his morning whereabouts to confirm my alibi. When I stopped in the doorframe between the kitchen and front room, Neil turned to glare at me.

Roger that, sir. And target appears hostile. Proceed with caution.

“Hi, Neil,” I said, leaning against the frame and crossing my arms.

He didn’t reply. He did slam the cupboard door shut hard enough to rattle plates inside another.

“So—”

“Your friend paid me a visit at work,” Neil interrupted.

“My friend?”

“Detective Winter,” he retorted, turning to look at me.

“Ah-ha.”

“Don’t
ah-ha
, Sebby. You told him. You fucking
told
him!”

“That I had an alibi that would keep me out of jail?” I argued back. “You’re damn right I told him, Neil! And where do you get off like this? I was at a murder scene today, and you didn’t even stay to make sure I was okay!”

“What did I say to you this morning?” Neil asked as he approached me. “I told you not to go to Mike’s. You promised, and what did you do? You got yourself involved!”

“Technically I never promised…. Besides, I could have been hurt—!”

“That would have been your own damn fault!”

I was stunned speechless for a beat. No matter how angry I could have been at Neil, if he had been in trouble, I know I’d have not given one single shit about arguments in the past. What would have mattered was his health and safety.

“You’re unbelievable,” I said.

“Fuck you, Sebastian,” he said through clenched teeth. “You told a cop that I was gay. That’s official now! That’s in the books! Do you know how quickly it will get around? You’ve endangered my entire livelihood!”

I threw my hands up. “Right, I forgot. This is all about you, Neil. This entire relationship from the start has been what’s best for you!”

“Sebby—”

“Stop calling me that! God! I hate it!”

Neil shook his head and made to move around me in the doorway.

I stopped him by taking a step forward. “No,” I demanded. “You’re not going to just leave the room without talking to me.” I reached out to put a hand on Neil’s chest, but he shoved me.

Hard.

I hit the doorframe as he barged past me. “How do you think I feel?” I called as he went toward the bedroom. “Being someone you’re ashamed of for
four
years. I can’t even walk too close to you in public without you getting weird.”

“Shut up, Sebastian.”

“I needed you today, Neil!” I followed him into the bedroom. “I was scared and could have been thrown in jail. I needed my partner, and you just
left
me!” I watched him shove clothes into a bag. “Where the fuck are you going?”

“I’d rather sleep in my car than look at you right now, Seb.”

“That’s nice. Really nice,” I snapped back. “We’re at a critical juncture in our relationship and you’re walking out.”

“That’s right,” Neil said while looking up. “I am. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to listen to you. You’ve made me so angry, Sebastian, that—I can’t even yell because I’m beyond it.”

“What does this say about us, Neil?”

What was happening? Did he honestly expect to have our relationship stay a secret forever? I couldn’t live like that. The reality—having to give Neil up if he didn’t get comfortable dating me—hurt a lot.

He wasn’t answering me, just finished filling his bag with a few more items.

“Neil,” I said again, my voice desperate.

He shouldered the bag and pushed me aside with it as he left the room.

I turned and followed, feeling like a pathetic puppy. “You’re really just going to walk out?”

Silent treatment.

“Neil, I can’t live like this,” I said, squaring my shoulders.

He put on his jacket and boots at the door.

“Neil! Goddamn it!” I couldn’t fight—couldn’t get my point across—if he wouldn’t even meet me halfway. “If you walk out, I’m changing the fucking locks.”

“Piss off, Seb.” He opened the door and left.

“YOU LOOK
like shit.”

“Thank you.”

The Emporium was able to open the next morning, the storm having ended sometime during the night. The mayor had lifted the ban on driving, and the MTA, however briefly before the next storm, was running. With delays.

Of course.

Max was over an hour late getting to the shop, but frankly I didn’t mind.