Chapter Three
The first time I spoke to Isaac after high school was when he told me he was taking criminology classes at Round Valley College, and that I should too.
I was sitting in the Idaville Memorial Library late on a Thursday evening when a deep voice suddenly spoke to me from across the table. I looked up, and there was Isaac. I opened my mouth to answer him, but my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and I couldn’t get anything out. It seemed like his shoulders had gotten even broader since the last time I’d looked. I had forgotten how blue his eyes were.
He stared back at me with those blue, blue eyes. “If you’re still planning to become a PI, that is.”
“Police science courses are for cops. Or lawyers,” I informed him. I know I sounded kind of huffy. I was flustered that he had suddenly deigned to speak to me and my lightweight loafers.
“I’m going into law enforcement,” he told me.
“You?”
“Yes, me. I always said I wanted to be a cop.”
“That was before you became a big football star,” I said sourly. “I thought the Ivy League scouts were all begging you to move east.”
Isaac grinned. That easy, boyish grin on his grown-up face made my heart feel all fluttery and weird. Like a bird was flying around inside my chest.
“That was high school. No way do I risk sidelining my career in law enforcement because of a football injury.”
In addition to being as stubborn as Gorilla Glue, Isaac was always very practical. Which is partly why we made a good team. I was the idea man—and always reasonable and open-minded.
I raised my eyebrows in polite skepticism, mostly because I had no idea what to say to him. I mean, he had barely spoken to me in almost three years. No more than a curt nod if we happened to meet while hauling trash out to the curb on Sunday nights.
“What classes are you taking, then?” he persisted when I pretended to go back to reading The Art of the Con.
“Art history, international finance, business law, music theory.”
His dark brows knotted. “What major is that?”
“It’s not about fulfilling the requirements for a major,” I informed him. “A master detective has to know a little bit about everything.”
“Huh,” he said. “Want to go get a beer?”
We had a couple of beers at the Sleepyside Tavern. Then we had a couple more. Then we went for dinner at Rocky Beach’s Diner.
“Thanks for sending flowers,” Isaac said over the Top Bun burgers. He had to steady his voice. “To the funeral. Daisies were always Mom’s favorite.”
I couldn’t look at his face. I stared at my french fries. “I liked your mom a lot.” In fact, I’d liked Isaac’s mom more than my own mom, but even if it’s true, you can’t say it.
His voice relaxed, warmed. “She liked you a lot. She was always saying…”
I looked up, but I couldn’t read his expression. “What?”
He shrugged. “Just that we’d been friends a long time and it was stupid to…”
“It was stupid,” I said. The beers had made me mellow.
He nodded. His mouth was downturned and pensive. His eyelashes threw dark crescents on his cheekbones. I got that crazy beating-wings feeling in my chest again.
“I was stupid,” Isaac said quietly. When he raised his lashes and stared directly into my eyes, I felt like my heart was going to take flight.
“So, I guess you’re not straight?” I asked quite a bit later that night.
Isaac smiled faintly, dipped his head, and kissed me again, slowly, sweetly. I never knew kissing could be like that. Gentle and hungry, soft and hard, all at the same time. Isaac tasted of beers and burgers and every happy moment of my entire life.
“I missed you so much,” he mumbled.
At least, I think that’s what he said. He was sucking my lower lip, so maybe I felt the words more than heard them.
Later, much later, when we were holding each other and watching the moonlight slide slowly across the room, illuminating one corner after the other, he asked, “Did you always know you were gay?”
“I didn’t think about it one way or the other. A master d—”
“Shut up, Merle.”
I shut up.
He combed my hair back from my forehead, and I thought how even that light, casual touch felt like something I’d been waiting for my whole life.
“Yes,” I said reluctantly, finally. “I knew. Did you really not?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. It seemed like maybe it would be better…”
When I knew he wasn’t going to finish the thought, I said, “Sure.”
But he surprised me. “About us,” he said suddenly. “I was in the wrong, and I knew I was in the wrong, but I didn’t see a way out of it.”
I nodded, not looking at him. He wasn’t the only one with a stubborn streak.
He sighed. “High school.”
“When we were young,” I agreed.
After college, Isaac and I moved in together.
That was the happiest time of my life. I would never admit it to Isaac, of course, but it was. It was the closest I ever came to feeling like I had everything I wanted. Everything I ever could—or would—want.
Like, I knew I liked sex, but before Isaac and I lived together, I never knew how much I liked waking up beside someone every morning—or cuddling with someone at night.
I never knew being asked to pick up someone’s dry cleaning or bring a carton of half-and-half home could be a pleasure. I never knew arguing over the remote control could be a peacetime occupation. I never knew answering the phone and being able to say, “He’s right here,” could feel so right.
Just the sight of Isaac’s red toothbrush sitting in the juice glass on the sink used to make me smile.
If it wasn’t for Police Chief Harvey Haas, I’d be happy still.
Haas took over as chief of police after Tommy Patterson retired. Tommy was chief when Isaac and I were kids, and I think he was a big reason why Isaac wanted to be a police officer when he grew up.
Haas was a totally different kind of cop. For one thing, he was pals with Old Man Beamer. Even after Beamer was released from prison, they stayed friends. Loyalty is an admirable quality, and Haas was a loyal friend.
But he was also an asshole. Blaming an eleven-year-old kid for the downfall of your crooked pal is kind of a dick move. And by dick, I don’t mean private detective. I didn’t trick George Beamer into committing arson and insurance fraud; I just caught him at it.
But somehow in the mind of the Beamers and in the mind of Harvey Haas too, I was the bad guy.
In the interest of fairness, Haas hired Isaac even knowing I was Isaac’s boyfriend. So that’s something in his favor, I suppose. Except then he turned around and did his best to destroy what we had.
Isaac never saw it that way.
According to Chief Haas, despite my on-the-job work experience as a celebrated boy detective, I needed to be properly licensed as a private investigator in order to continue accepting clients and working cases. Which, though unnecessary, was okay by me—except Haas would never approve my application. Never as in I applied nine separate times. Nine.
According to Haas, there was always an issue.
First it was using a PO box as my business address. Okay. Fair enough. Then it was failure to provide the protection services insurance requirement—which didn’t actually apply because I wasn’t going to carry a firearm. Then it was failure to pass the firearms test—which didn’t apply because I wasn’t going to carry a firearm. Then it was failure to form a Limited Liability Company, which actually wasn’t required by law. Then it was failure to procure LLC license insurance requirements. Then twice it was a problem with the photo supplied with personal identification form 31B-9. (He said my eyes looked “shifty.”) Then my written examination was lost. Then—and only then—did Haas point out that I lacked three years (or a total of 6,000 working hours) of compensated experience as a criminal investigator.
Experience gained as an independent contractor, i.e. celebrated boy detective, did not qualify.
Or at least no longer qualified once Haas persuaded the City Council to change the twenty-year-old regulations for issuing a private-investigator license.
Almost two years of runaround. At first, knowing Isaac thought a lot of Chief Haas, I tried not to take it personally. By which I mean I tried to hide the fact that I knew damn well it was personal. But that got harder and harder, and once Isaac let slip that he agreed with Haas…it got impossible.
I knew none of it was Isaac’s fault, but the fact that he sided with Haas against me—insisting it was all for my own protection—put a real strain on our previously happy relationship.
I tried. I really did. I had already been working for Ed Goodell of the Goodell Agency for almost two years when Haas turned me down the final time, so in theory, it was only another year and a half to go before he had to start coming up with new reasons for keeping me from getting my license.
Which I had no doubt he’d do.
The breaking point came over the Sunday pot roast.
I was, as usual, complaining bitterly about Chief Haas, and Isaac passed me the gravy with this little nugget of Monday Morning Quarterbacking:
“If you would’ve just gone ahead and got your associate of arts degree in police science, you’d have enough experience now to qualify for your license.”
“Did you— Are you— Is that supposed to be helpful?” I spluttered.
“It’s the truth, Merle. You’re always looking for shortcuts. If you’d put the time in—”
I gasped. “Always. Looking. For shortcuts?”
He made a face. “Okay, maybe that’s not fair.”
“Maybe not fair?”
“Are you just going to keep repeating everything I say?”
I folded my lips tight and glared at him. When the person you count on to always be on your side turns out to be on the other side…
It hurts.
And despite my best effort to look steely and indifferent, some of it must have showed on my face, because Isaac’s own face twisted and he got that soft, quiet tone we usually saved for late at night and lights off.
“I didn’t mean shortcuts. Exactly. I mean, you think you’re so much smarter and faster than everyone else that the rules don’t apply to you.”
“Think. I’m. So. Much. Smarter—”
“Not just think. I mean, you are smarter and faster than a lot of folks. It’s made you kind of think you can…”
“Take shortcuts?”
He was smart enough not to say a word.
I pushed my plate away and rose from the table. “I see. Well, thank you very much!”
Except I didn’t say thank you.
It’s not like we broke up that night, but a big old crack suddenly appeared in the foundation of what we’d built together. I didn’t want it to end—and I don’t think Isaac wanted it to end—but it kind of felt like I’d taken a bullet that night, and through the days and weeks that followed, that bullet just kept inching its way to my heart.
I couldn’t forgive him—and he didn’t think he’d done anything that required forgiveness.
Eventually he took his house off the market and began moving his things back next door. Little things at first. A couple of coffee cups. A few plates and glasses for when his pals dropped by to watch football. His TV. Why they suddenly couldn’t watch football at our house, I wasn’t sure.
Except, yeah, I knew why. Isaac didn’t consider my house our house anymore. He had moved out long before he made it official, and smuggled Mr. Whiskers out.
The funny thing—well, depending on your definition of funny—is, we didn’t even really ever discuss it. There was no big dramatic scene of me dumping Mr. Whiskers’ litter box and Isaac’s golf clubs on the front lawn.
Granted, Isaac didn’t have golf clubs. He had plenty of other worldly belongings, though. We didn’t argue about any of them. He took what he wanted, and I kept what I wanted. And where we were liable to disagree, we couldn’t get our credit cards out fast enough. It was just as important not to owe each other any favors as it was not to show…anything.
We weren’t enemies. But we sure as hell weren’t friends.
Even so, when Mr. Whiskers got run over, I took care of everything so Isaac wouldn’t have to see that. And when my basement flooded while I was out of town, Isaac managed to salvage most of my junk, including the shoebox stuffed with my early press clippings.
We were…good neighbors, I guess. That’s right. It was Dick Chekhov on the left and Officer Isaac Ramsay on the right. The boy next door.
Nine months after Isaac moved out, Chief Haas had a heart attack and was forced to retire from the police force. Isaac was named temporary Chief of Police while the City Council decided whether to bring someone in from outside. They were able to stall that decision—and give Isaac a pay raise—indefinitely, and while they stalled Isaac, Isaac stalled me.
“You’re making me start the entire process over again?” I demanded when he kicked back the paperwork I had resubmitted.
“That’s the law.”
“The law is bullshit and you know it!”
Isaac jumped up from behind his desk and jabbed his finger right at the tip of my nose. “And that attitude is why I’m making you start over, Merle. You don’t have any respect for the law. You never did.”
I’ve got to say, his vehemence surprised me. It was like he had been waiting years to wave that finger in front of my nose and say no way.
“I don’t have respect for lousy laws, you’re right.”
“You don’t have respect for any law. Has it never occurred to you that we ‘solved’ all our cases by breaking the law in worse ways than the people you claimed were criminals? Trespassing, breaking and entering, tampering with mail—that one’s a federal crime, by the way—illegal wiretapping, another felony right there, which you’d know if you’d bothered to take criminology c—”
“We were little kids!” I shouted. “You’re seriously going to bust my balls over stuff we did in junior high?”
“You’re still doing that stuff!”
“What?”
“Come off it. We both know Ed Goodell operates like he thinks he’s James Rockford. That’s why you admire him so much. That’s why he jumped at hiring you. You share a…a lack of moral compass!”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. There was plenty to say, but I couldn’t risk saying it when I wasn’t sure of my face or my voice. Of all the things Isaac could have said to hurt me…
Well, that was one of them.
Because, hell, who are we kidding? Isaac had all kinds of power to hurt me; always had.
“It’s not like you weren’t a willing accomplice,” I managed to say at last. If I kept my tone low and growly, my voice didn’t wobble. “You were right there every lawless step of the way.”
“Don’t I know it. I was too dumb to know better back then. I thought everything you did had to be right because you were doing it.” He glared at me.
“Really? Because you sure bitched and complained a lot for thinking I could do no wrong, Doctor Watson.”
His face got redder. Either one of us could probably have guided Santa’s sleigh by that stage of the proceedings. “That’s right. Somebody had to try and check your megalomaniac tendencies. Then and now.”
“So what you’re really saying is you’re never going to approve my application for a PI license? Is that right?”
“Not until you demonstrate some respect for the law.”
“Thank you very much,” I said.
Except I didn’t say thank you.
Officer Downey brought me a couple of blankets, a hot cup of coffee, and a plate of Christmas cookies. The cops on duty were making the best of a lousy shift, and she left the door to the front of the building open so I could hear the cheery holiday music wafting from the reception area.
I could also hear Isaac stomping around and giving orders. Police Chief Krampus himself. Eventually he left for the night. You could kind of feel all the life go out of the station when the door closed behind him.
I drank my coffee, ate my cookies—I recognized Isaac’s mom’s snowball recipe from way back—and finally rolled myself in my blankets and tried to think.
Was I really going to have to post bail to get out of jail? How the hell would I come up with the cash? How long would Isaac hold me here if I couldn’t make bail? How was I going to protect myself if I did make bail? Why did Isaac still refuse to believe me? Three attempts on my life in one week was kind of high, even for a former celebrated boy detective.
The Christmas lights from beyond the open door flashed red and green and white in a steady, monotonous heartbeat, and despite my worries, my eyelids grew heavy, heavier…