Adrien English Mysteries Omnibus by Josh Lanyon

Author:Josh Lanyon [Lanyon, Josh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, detective, holiday, omnibus, gay
Published: 2011-06-11T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

I made sure to get downstairs early next morning. Even so, Angus was already gone. He had made himself coffee in the office, and taken the check from the desk. The blankets he had used were folded on the chair.

I tidied away all traces of his visit before Velvet arrived.

As disloyal as it seems, I hoped he did not come back. I was sorry for him. I didn't want him punished for something he hadn't done, but I couldn't understand or reconcile myself to his moral apathy. Oh, I understood that he was afraid, and I believed what he had told me about not actively participating in murder. I could cut him slack for being young and being (as Guy had pointed out) a follower rather than a leader. I knew it wasn't fair to judge when I didn't know what in Angus's past might have knocked his moral compass so far off-kilter. I knew — but the simple truth was, I was appalled.

I pulled out the pictures from Gabriel Savant's signing that I had started to sort through days ago. One by one, I flipped through them, scrutinizing each glossy candid. The place had been wall-to-wall Goth princesses and Stevie Nicks clones. So much for celebrating the individual.

I paused at a picture of Savant giving his talk. In the background was a girl with blonde hair, feathery tips tinted black. She had turned her face at the moment the shutter clicked. I examined the next photo. A slice of her two-toned hair had made the frame, but next to her was a now-familiar mohawk and pugnacious face behind heart-shaped glasses.

Betty Sansone.

I laid the photo aside. Studied the next one. Well, well. A Kodak Moment.

Kinsey Perone alive and in the flesh. A lot of flesh, as a matter of fact. It's a wonder she hadn't died of pneumonia.

So, even if Betty and Kinsey had not been part of the Savant entourage, they had been at the bookstore that evening — the evening the disk disappeared. The evening that had apparently sealed Gabe's fate.

I reached for the phone, then stopped.

Did this prove a connection between the two cases? If the police went to Bob Friedlander, he would show them a postcard from Gabriel Savant, claim that Savant was fine and that I was the wacko. Hundreds of people had been at the bookstore that evening. Betty and Kinsey's presence might have been a coincidence. Not that I believed that, but the police would if Bob chose to play it that way. After our last conversation, I couldn't imagine Bob playing it any other way.

The desire to talk it over with Jake was nearly irresistible. But I couldn't do that. Even if Jake and I had still been on those terms, it wasn't his job to fix my mistakes, to absolve me of responsibility. Especially when he had been warning me from day one to stay out of it.

I shuffled through the photos once more. Did Kinsey and Betty's involvement automatically intimate Guy's guilt? Jake believed that Guy was involved.

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