Always Love a Villain on San Juan Island (6 page)

Margery nodded. “You've sounded so tense since you came back. Thanks for telling me.”

“It's hard. Trying to make it happen without losing what I have with Noel.”

“How hard can it be to give you a small vial of sperm?”

Kyra could feel her eyes tearing.

Peter slowed as they drove decorously through town to a restaurant named Coho and parked. “I try to spread my business around the eateries and this is mine of the month. Hope you're not a vegetarian. I forgot to ask.”

“No.” Noel, very hungry, got out of the car. The mussels had been excellent but not filling.

Roast lamb, with salad and new potatoes, was featured; Peter ordered that. Noel asked for the steak, rare. Peter requested a bottle of Washington State Pheasant Bluff Merlot. When it came, they sipped and nodded approvingly. They talked about Peter's courses, his students, his department. Till Peter shifted. “What sort of cases do you handle?”

“Almost anything that comes our way.”

“Murder?”

“We've had some of that.” Why does everyone want to know about murder?

“Just on islands?”

Noel shrugged. “It's a sexy schtick.”

“But why islands?”

Noel remembered only too well. “We had a case on Gabriola Island, off Nanaimo. Kyra and I had been thinking about teaming up, and someone suggested devoting ourselves to islands.” Noel remembered his purported friend Lyle, and deep inside he shuddered. “This was after my partner died and I was at loose ends. And Kyra wanted more than her insurance agency.” He didn't mention Kyra pushing him to take on the case just so he'd have something to do with his life. “Islands are by definition a limited amount of real estate, so we could keep our scope small.”

“Your partner died? I thought she was coming tomorrow?”

“That's my business partner. It was my life partner who died. Before we could marry and I could legally call him my husband.” Noel noted Peter's cheeks color and his eyes narrow. “But we felt married.”

“Oh.” Peter took a large drink of wine and set his glass down. When he looked at Noel again, he gave him a small smile. “What line of work was he in?”

A strange question. “He was a financial advisor. A bit more than a stockbroker.”

“My condolences.” Peter lifted his glass again, sipped, and stared into the nearly empty bowl. He set it down. “More wine?”

“Please. And don't worry about condolences. I'm getting used to living on by myself. But I sure miss him.”

A young woman with shining long brown hair arrived with their entrees, set them down and offered fresh pepper. Both agreed. She ground, and refilled their wine glasses.

“Yeah,” said Peter. “Living alone, you can do what you want. But someone at home whom you love is pretty good too.”

Noel nodded. “If I'm not prying, did you love the woman you were married to?”

“Well I'd say that question is a first-rate example of prying.” He grinned. “It was like this. Marianne and I both come from very conservative families. We lived half a block from each other, and we'd known each other since we were sophomores in high school. We became the best of friends and each other's lovers. Everybody expected we'd get married, so we did. But even before that, something inside me was whispering, ‘This isn't you, Peter.' And I didn't listen.”

Uh-oh, Noel thought, I think I see what's coming here.

Peter picked up his knife and fork, cut off a slice of lamb, put it in his mouth, chewed. “Mmm, tender and perfectly spiced. Mustard, rosemary. First-rate.”

A familiar pattern, Noel thought. Wander close to the edge, withdraw to safety. He cut his meat in half. Beautifully pink. He took a bite. “Very good.” He forked some salad. “So marriage wasn't you, you were saying.”

Peter stared at his plate. He set down his knife and fork. He drew his breath in and let out a sigh. He shrugged. He folded his arms and looked over at Noel. “It's strange how sometimes you speak to someone you barely know and say the most important things, but when you're with people who've been good colleagues and acquaintances for a long time, it's very difficult to say anything.”

“That's true.” Noel continued eating. They were having a normal conversation, right? He was hungry.

“One of the good things about being so close to and then marrying Marianne was that I never had to worry about dating other girls, or women. Which would have been expected, like it was for all the guys I knew. And I was more than okay with that because, you know, the girls and then the women I knew, well, I just wasn't attracted to them. Sexually, I mean. I got along with virtually every female person I ever met. Except for a couple of supposed sexies that kept trying to come on to me. Even after they knew I was with Marianne. I had to be rude to finally get rid of them. Marianne was like a protective barrier. Of course I wanted to stay with her.”

“Even when you realized she wasn't for you.”

“Yeah. For a very long time.” He shook his head and took another bite of lamb, chewed, swallowed. Sipped wine. “Thank you for telling me about your late partner. Makes it easier to talk.”

Noel nodded. “Yeah.”

“So you understand what I'm saying.” Peter chuckled. “Or rather, what I'm not saying.”

“I think so.” Noel sipped wine. Not a moment for taking a mouthful of dinner.

“I didn't want to admit it to myself even. All those years, lots of homosexual men and women around me, living completely openly. And I could not let myself say I'm a queer, a faggot, gay, whatever.”

“It's a complicated discovery.”

“Finally I had to mouth the words in front of someone else, to hear what they might sound like to somebody else's ears.”

“You told Marianne.”

Peter's head drooped. “My best friend.”

“Hard,” said Noel. He remembered telling his best friend Jason . . . 

“She cried. We both cried. Luckily, Jeremiah was off with my parents. She said she had no idea, she'd been wondering why I sometimes just didn't seem to be there. At the table, in bed, the whole thing.” He shook his head. “We talked about still living together. After all, we did like each other. I didn't resent having to be with her, nothing like that. We talked all night long. We were exhausted, but Marianne had to reconsider the last years through what I'd just told her. She's a wonderful person, Noel, the very best. We tried being together for the next few months, everything normal. But it wasn't. We each did a lot more crying. Not much talking, not much else to say. More and more I saw our marriage as a lie. A true marriage of convenience. To make this overlong story shorter, the end was that I moved out.” He shrugged again. “There. Your question answered.”

“Yes.” Noel took another sip of wine. “You're a brave man, Peter.”

“Just did what I had to do.”

“You lived very uncomfortably for a long time. You seem to have left that moment behind, and you sound healthy.”

“Thanks for saying that.”

“You know,” said Noel, “I think we should eat. This excellent food is getting cold.”

Peter nodded, and lifted the wine bottle. Empty. “We need another. On me.”

Noel raised his eyebrows. “I won't say no.”

It arrived. They talked about their lives, alone, with others. They ended with blackberry cheesecake. And finished the wine.

On the dark return to Morsely, Peter drove more decorously through the dusk. No cops wanted tonight, no breathalyzer. He stopped in front of Noel's temporary house. He said, “I'll set something up with Jordan and let you know.”

Raoul LeJeune checked into the Marriot under the name of Ralph Young; not much of a pseudonym, but who'd come looking for him anyway. He was tired—a long flight. He'd check in with the boss after he'd had supper. With luck he'd be home again in five days. If it all worked right. He unpacked his clothes, undressed, showered, shaved, put on slacks and a lightweight jacket, no tie. Seattle was a casual city. He looked at himself in the mirror—hair short so he never needed to comb it. Pushing thirty but still looking great.

He ate at a restaurant he knew a couple of blocks away. Tomorrow to San Juan.

Back in the room he took out his android, scrolled, and listened
to it ring. “Hello, it's me . . . Oh fine . . . Yeah, the usual place . . . 
Going over tomorrow . . . Haven't checked on times yet . . . Yes I know, not all ferries go all the way . . . I'll let you know when I get back here . . . Day after tomorrow . . . If you don't mind, I prefer to call from Seattle . . . Of course I'm not superstitious, I just prefer it . . . Yep, I know the drill . . . Okay, we'll talk then.” He broke the connection.

He'd known the boss all his life; he enjoyed their collaborations. And he knew how to get done what had to be done. Raoul had finished tougher jobs than this. He knew how to keep a guy in line.

NOEL LAY IN
bed. Sleep wasn't coming. Okay, try and figure tomorrow. First, meet the student Beck. Locate some of the guy's friends, get other people's sense of him. Peter said Beck had a girlfriend. Check out that restaurant where he works. Get some of this done before Kyra arrives. Find out his relationship to Trevor. Were they friends? Should have asked Peter.

Part of him was looking forward to working with Kyra again, spending time with her. But another part felt unsure: how would the upcoming days be spent? They hadn't seen each other since after the Quadra mugging. There'd been a spousal dispute on Mudge he had consulted her on, more a conciliation project than a mystery. Her input had been valuable, but she'd not come up to Nanaimo to participate. Then he'd listened to her working through a case in Everett, some forged documents he'd been able to help her on. And he had no part in her insurance company cases.

So their talks had been about business, with no space for the personal. All further exchanges about her plans or hopes or intentions had stayed out of the conversations. But soon, together, it was bound to come up. The thing itself was simple enough, not so much as skin off the back of his hand. Since she'd developed a morbid fear of growing too old too quickly, she'd decided the time had come. She wanted his sperm. Not given to her as a lover, but donated nonetheless. Was she still as determined to have a child? She'd promised she'd consider other options. But she said she deeply doubted anyone could match her first choice—him.

So many things wrong with it. First the pragmatic—if Kyra had a child, what would it do to Islands Investigations International? They had an excellent working relationship and a darn good success record. Why take a chance on ruining that with a baby always around? And even before a baby came, she'd be carrying it—a great extra burden on, for example, a stakeout, and a seven-month pregnant woman stalking any situation would be anything but invisible.

But that wasn't the worst. Supposing a baby did appear as the result of this crazy idea, then what? Kyra as a stay-at-home mom? Noel couldn't see it. A live-in nanny? Too expensive. Join some single-mothers cooperative? Drive her crazy, bunch of little kids around her ankles. And Noel would not be taking any part in raising a kid; that was crystalline in its clarity.

Which would make it even worse, knowing that somewhere he had a son or daughter carrying his genes. He couldn't handle this as a notion, let alone as a physical being. Leave the genetics to his brother and sister-in-law. Two good kids. Oh, Noel got along with kids. Other people's kids. The ones you could walk away from when the tears came, when the sleep didn't, when their innards rebelled. No, he was not about to become a father, not in any way. The very suggestion prickled his forehead with sweat. He swiped it away. Move on quickly. Fall asleep . . . but sleep was far away.

Think of something else. The plagiarism case, a good diversion. Tomorrow he'd get on the Internet and learn what he could about plagiarism. When working with the
Sun
, he'd been asked to track down pilfered sources a colleague was suspected of using: a nasty business. That was a lifetime ago. Well, ten years. Brendan was still alive. No, don't go there either.