So This is Christmas: The Adrien English Mysteries Read online

  “He’ll be working for them. He’ll be in their pay.”

  “Yes. True. B—”

  “And besides, they already know where Ivor is.”

  “See, I’m not sure that’s the case, because as Jake points out, they wouldn’t have hired him.”

  “That’s an alibi.”

  “It’s not really an alibi. An alibi would be when someone is—”

  “It’s a smoke screen. They’re building a cover story. They’re covering their tracks.”

  “They don’t really have to do that, though, because no one but you is looking for Ivor. Hiring Jake means bringing unwanted attention to something no one has previously noticed.”

  “When Ivor doesn’t show up for work next Monday, people will notice. That’s why they have to cover their trail. They’re trying to create the very impression you’re falling for!”

  I’d pretty much suggested the same thing to Jake, so it was kind of trying to have to argue the other side.

  I said, “I hear what you’re saying, and in fact that thought occurred to me too, but Jake was saying it’s pretty unlikely.”

  “But what does Jake know?” Jake inquired from right behind me, and I gave a guilty jump and nearly overset my stool.

  Jake’s big hands landed lightly on my shoulders, steadying me—how was it that you could tell someone was amused by the feel of their hands?—as he dropped a quick kiss on the back of my neck. He shook hands with Kevin.

  “Long time,” Jake said by way of greeting. “Sorry I’m late,” he added to me.

  “Jake.” Kevin sounded even less enthused about this reunion than Jake.

  “Iz cool,” I said to Jake.

  “Sorry to hear about your boyfriend,” Jake said to Kevin. Which was a perfectly normal and reasonable thing to say, and yet somehow it sounded sarcastic to me. Maybe because I could hear only too clearly the ghostly echo of Jake from a couple of years ago.

  The Jake who used to despise the idea of a normal man having a boyfriend.

  Kevin nodded curtly.

  By that point there were no seats at the bar, so Jake stood beside us, which only added to the general awkwardness of the situation.

  I signaled again to the waiter. More urgently. Could he not see that we needed drinks? A LOT of drinks. Posthaste.

  Addressing the cosmos in my role as neutral observer, I said, “Kevin has some concerns about how impartial you can be in your investigation when you’re being paid by possible suspects in Ivor’s disappearance.”

  “I guess the Arbuckles could make the same argument,” Jake said pleasantly.

  Not the answer I was hoping for.

  Kevin flushed. “According to them, Ivor’s not missing. He just didn’t want to see me.”

  Jake shrugged. “That’s one possibility.”

  Unsurprisingly, Kevin had an answer for that, but I tried to forestall it with a quick, “Okay. Time-out.”

  Kevin closed his mouth and glared at Jake. Jake gazed at me with interest.

  I said, “Jake, I was thinking maybe you could reassure Kevin on that score by pointing out that you’re not interested in taking sides, you’re interested in getting to the truth. Because you still think like a cop.”

  “You think cops don’t take sides?” Kevin asked. “Don’t you watch TV?”

  “You’re damn right cops take sides,” Jake growled. “They take the side of the victim.”

  I dropped my head in my hands. Rescue came from an unexpected source.

  “What’ll you boys have?” the bartender asked. She was a curvy little thing with masses of dark curls and false eyelashes that seemed to have tiny jewels on the very tips. She wore a droopy Santa hat and in fact looked like something teenaged boys asked Santa for. She did not look old enough to drink, let alone serve drinks.

  Kevin ordered a White Horse Light. Jake ordered Laphroaig, which he and Bill Dauten had drunk regularly in London.

  “Black Orchid,” I said, and Jake patted my back like that was sort of cute.

  Santa’s Sexy Helper departed.

  “Look,” I said, before firing could recommence. “Everybody wants the same thing.” Jake raised his brows cynically. “Yeah, but you do, Jake.” To Kevin, I said, “And cut the snide comments about cops. You’re asking a former cop for a favor.”

  “What favor am I asking for?” Kevin sounded aggrieved. “He’s already working for the enemy.”

  “They’re not the enemy. They’re the parents,” Jake said.

  I didn’t even try to intervene that time.

  After a couple of minutes, the bartender reappeared. Jake and Kevin paused as the drinks were delivered.

  I paid for the round. The bartender moved away, and I said to Kevin, “You’re asking to be kept in the loop regarding any progress Jake makes. Correct?”

  They both looked at me.

  “Well?”

  Kevin nodded reluctantly. Jake said nothing, but he did it loudly. I knew I’d be getting an earful once we were alone.

  “The most helpful thing you could do right now—”

  “Helpful to who?” Kevin interrupted.

  I stopped, exasperated, and caught the gleam in Jake’s eyes. He was enjoying watching Kevin test my patience, the bastard.

  I said, “To Ivor,” which sobered them both up. “The most helpful thing to Ivor at this point is you let Jake interview you and rule you out as a suspect so he doesn’t waste any more time on a dead end.”

  “All right,” Kevin muttered. “Ask away.”

  Jake said, “Let’s hear your story. From the top.”

  As stories go, it was pretty basic. Kevin and Ivor had met eighteen months earlier while working for a cultural resource management company called the Archeological Research Institute. Kevin was involved in excavations, and Ivor was a paleontologist. They’d moved in together, and for eleven months everything had been great. At least as far as Kevin knew.

  The only fly in the ointment was that Ivor continued to be unhappy and hurt about his family’s unwillingness to accept that he was gay.

  “Uh-huh,” said Jake, like he’d never heard of such a thing.

  Kevin’s own family was accepting of both his sexuality and his relationship with Ivor, so Kevin—by his own admission—had failed to understand how much Ivor’s family’s attitude bothered him until this holiday season when Ivor had decided to spend Christmas with his family in Los Angeles.

  “You argued?” Jake asked. “You disagreed over his coming down south for the holiday?”

  Kevin looked pained. “I wasn’t happy. I wanted to spend Christmas together. We weren’t going to break up over it. It wasn’t a big argument. I know why he felt he needed to try to make peace with them. His mom’s going through chemo. His sister just had a kid. I understood.”

  “You didn’t want to come with him?”

  “No, I sure as hell didn’t.” Kevin’s expression grew defensive, and I wondered if maybe it had been a bigger argument than he wanted to admit. “They’re all a bunch of pretentious, stuck-up snobs. If he’d asked me, I’d have come with him, but I sure wasn’t going to volunteer.” He was silent for a moment. “Anyway, he didn’t ask.”

  “When did Ivor arrive in L.A.?”

  “The twenty-third. He was staying at the Warner Center Marriott in Woodland Hills.”

  “And when was the last time you heard from him?” Jake asked. He had a notepad out and was jotting down names and dates.

  “Around noon on Christmas Eve. He was going over to his brother’s. They were going to play golf.”

  “Terrill?” I said automatically.

  Jake glanced at me. “What was that relationship like?” he asked Kevin.

  Kevin shrugged.

  “I don’t know how to interpret that,” Jake informed him.

  “Obviously they were getting along well enough to play golf.”

  “So they usually did not get along?”

  “They didn’t have anything in common. He got along with his sister b
etter. His sister and his mom.”

  Jake nodded thoughtfully. “So the last time you spoke to Ivor was on the twenty-fourth before he met with his brother?”

  Kevin nodded.

  “Okay. That’s more than I had this afternoon.” Jake put his notepad away.

  “What did they say?” Kevin demanded.

  Jake hesitated, glanced at me, and answered, “That Ivor had dinner Christmas Eve with his parents, after which he left for his hotel, and Benjamin and Candace went to a big annual party held by Peter and Ariadne West. They go every year. Ivor was supposed to come over for Christmas dinner with the entire family the following day. He never showed and never phoned. They assumed he’d returned to Northern California.”

  “They’re lying!” Kevin said.

  “Why would they assume that?” I asked Jake.

  “Ivor and his father argued over dinner. It didn’t seem impossible that he might have decided to skip the festivities the following day.”

  “Wouldn’t he phone?” Speaking as a son who occasionally skipped out on family festivities.

  Jake turned to Kevin, who said, “Yes, he’d have called.”

  Jake nodded as though this confirmed his own thoughts. “It seems in character for Ivor to phone, which is why his parents are now, after the fact, alarmed. As someone with experience in investigating these scenarios, sometimes people don’t call. Sometimes people behave out of character. He may have intended to call, but something prevented it. That’s why we have to consider every possibility. Including that Ivor needs time on his own right now.”

  “No,” Kevin said. “We’ve never gone a single night without talking to each other since the evening we first went out. He would have called me Christmas Eve. He’d have called me yesterday.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Jake said. The words were neutral, but his too-polite tone sounded like, What you know means jack.

  That’s how Kevin heard it too. His face tightened.

  I said, partly to head him off, but partly because I was genuinely curious, “Kevin, you were quick to decide something had happened to Ivor. Technically he hasn’t been missing even forty-eight hours. Was there something about this trip that worried you?”

  “I just had a bad feeling about it.”

  Jake finished off his Laphroaig without comment.

  “Someone needs to check his hotel room,” I said. “We’d know right away whether he really checked out or not.”

  Jake looked at me and shook his head. It was kind of an Et tu, Brute? look. “I’ve been to his hotel. In fact, that’s why I was late getting over here.”

  “Oh. Right. Sorry.” Of course Jake would have the name of the hotel from Ivor’s parents and would have already thought of that angle.

  “Ivor—or someone pretending to be Ivor—checked out at ten o’clock on Christmas Eve.”

  I considered this new information. “What do you mean ‘or someone pretending to be Ivor’?”

  “No one saw him leave. The hotel has automated checkout. The bill was paid online, and his hotel key was left on a nightstand. The room was otherwise empty. His car is not in the parking lot.”

  “What does that tell you?” Kevin demanded.

  “It tells me people are busy and distracted on Christmas Eve. It tells me that there’s a strong possibility that Ivor checked out early, but it’s also possible someone wanted it to look like Ivor checked out early.”

  Kevin didn’t have an answer for that.

  Jake looked at his watch. Looked at me.

  I swallowed the last of my Black Orchid and said to Kevin, “Try not to worry. It’s still really early in the investigation.” I looked at Jake, “Right?”

  “Right,” he said.

  If Kevin hadn’t been worried before, that grim “right” probably would have done it. Maybe in the end Jake’s way was kinder. He didn’t make promises, didn’t offer false hope. It was a serious situation, and he was taking it seriously. We all needed to take it seriously.

  Kevin nodded.

  “I’ll give you a call tomorrow,” I told him, and Kevin’s expression lightened.

  “Thanks, Adrien,” he said with quiet sincerity.

  “No, really. We’re glad to help.” I glanced at Jake. He was frowning, but when our eyes met, his expression smoothed out to one of polite inquiry.

  We left Kevin sitting at the table, finishing his beer and staring into space.

  Chapter Five

  “You want to leave your car at the bookstore and I’ll drive home?” Jake asked once we were outside.

  The combination of headlights, streetlights, and Christmas lights twinkled in the evening gloom. The cold air smelled like fine dining, car exhaust, and the cologne and aftershave of a million Christmas mornings. It smelled…tiring.

  Or maybe that was the jetlag. “Yeah, sure.” The idea of sitting back and leaving the driving—and everything else—to Jake was kind of nice. Seductively nice.

  “I’ll meet you over there. Drive safe.”

  “See you there,” I said.

  Given the traffic, I could have walked faster than it took to drive, but eventually I pulled up behind Cloak and Dagger, turned off the engine, and got out. Lights shone cozily from the windows above. I wondered if Natalie and Angus were both up there at that very minute.

  That thought wasn’t what held me motionless, gazing up at the drawn curtains. I was feeling a strange rush of something like homesickness. The rooms over the bookstore had been my home for a lot of years. My home and my refuge.

  I heard the purr of Jake’s black Honda S2000 cruising down the alleyway. He pulled up beside my Forester and got out. “Are you going in?” he asked, sounding surprised.

  “No. I was just…”

  Lurking. Like a creepy relation. That’s what Natalie would think if she opened the drapes and saw me down here.

  After a moment—and to my surprise—he put his arm around me, pulling me against him and kissing my temple. “We made a lot of good memories here.”

  Yes. And some not so good memories, but hey, that’s part of what makes a house a home. History.

  I nodded, leaned my head against his for a moment.

  “We’ll make good memories at the new house too,” I said.

  He laughed quietly, a low, sexy sound. “We will. Starting tonight.”

  * * * * *

  He’s making a list and checking it twice, gonna find out who’s naughty and nice, sang Ella Fitzgerald as we merged onto the I-210.

  Jake had my copy of Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas in his CD player, and for some reason that made me smile. Jake was really not an Ella Fitzgerald kind of guy even if he did sometimes call me “baby,” like he was flashing back to his 1950s Rat Pack days.

  “So who’s Terry Arbuckle to you?” he asked, gaze on the rearview as we outdistanced a big rig truck, headlights flooding our back window.

  “Terrill.” I sighed. “He was my partner on the tennis team in high school.”

  He glanced from the road to me. “I didn’t know you were on the tennis team.”

  “Yeah. We weren’t too bad either.” We’d been unstoppable, as a matter of fact. Until I was stopped. Permanently. My heart had been damaged by a bout of rheumatic fever when I was sixteen. Now, however, thanks to the miracles of modern medicine, I had a newly repaired heart valve and was feeling stronger and healthier than I had in years.

  “Were you and Terrill—”

  “No. God no. I don’t think we particularly liked each other. But we were a winning combo, so we sort of hung out. He was definitely straight, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “No.” Jake said vaguely, “I know you have straight friends.”

  Time was I’d have made a joke about Jake being one of my straight friends. Weird. It wasn’t that I’d known him so long, but what a distance we’d traveled together.

  “Do you think it’s possible Terrill had some involvement in his brother’s disappearance?” he asked into my silence.<
br />
  “Is it possible? If there’s one thing I’ve learned hanging out with you, anything is possible. He was an arrogant prick, but I never sensed a homicidal streak anywhere but on the court. It’s kind of troubling that Kevin never heard from Ivor after that golf game, though.”

  “Maybe. I didn’t get the impression that Ivor was sending minute-by-minute updates.”

  “You think that’s why Kevin was so quick to panic when Ivor fell off the radar? They had more of a falling-out over this trip than he let on?”

  “I think so, yeah.”

  I considered that as the urban nightscape flashed by. Towering office buildings with brightly lit windows. Cars packed tight and shining in parking lots like sardines in a tin. Rivers of headlights flowing through side streets. The occasional square of a park, looking weirdly dark and mystical amid all the concrete and asphalt and metal.

  “If something did happen between Ivor and Terrill, that might explain why the family changed their story. It’s possible the parents are covering for Terrill now.”

  “It’s a theory.” He didn’t sound convinced.

  “Why would they lie about his still being there?”

  “Well, for one thing, they don’t like O’Reilly. They blame him for turning Ivor gay.”

  “Turning him? You mean like werewolves turn teenagers by biting them?” Emma was a big fan of Teen Wolf.

  “Simply reporting what I heard.”

  “Wow.”

  “They also blame O’Reilly for the strain between themselves and Ivor.”

  “Yeah, it couldn’t be anything they’ve done.”

  “Again. Merely the messenger.”

  “Right.”

  “So please don’t include me in those dark mutterings out the window.”

  I laughed, though it was probably a dark, muttery laugh.

  Jake said, “It’s possible that if O’Reilly turned up on the doorstep demanding to know where Ivor was, Benjamin or Candace—my money would be on Benjamin—might tell him to fuck off. Or tell him something designed to achieve the same result. If it’s true about Ivor not showing up for Christmas and not phoning, they’d be feeling pretty angry and pretty self-righteous.”

  He had an insider’s perspective on that one.