Richard Stevenson: Death Vows

The ninth book in the Donald Strachey Mistery series, 2008

“Mr. Strachey, may I ask, are you licensed to conduct investigations in the state of Massachusetts?”

“I am. New York and Massachusetts have reciprocal agreements on the licensing of private investigators.”

“I’m delighted to hear it. I have every reason to believe that you are just the man to help me and Steven out. A dear friend of ours, Bill Moore, is planning to make a horrible blunder. He intends to marry a young man who is plainly not who he says he is, and who we are convinced is up to no good. I take it you are familiar with the rather socially advanced practice of same-sex marriage that the commonwealth of Massachusetts has pioneered?”

The man on my office phone had a voice that sounded as if it was wearing an ascot. Jim Sturdivant had apparently retained the plummy tones long associated with the American WASP upper classes but which now existed mainly in re-runs of eighties nighttime TV soaps.

I said, “My partner, Timothy Callahan, and I would do it ourselves if we lived over there in the Berkshires. Here in New York State we continue to be deprived of the well-known enduring features of legal marriage – adultery, divorce, excess kitchenware, perpetuating the patriarchy, and so on.”

There was a pause – Timmy’s voice was in the back of my head making little mewing noises over my driving away a potential client – and then Sturdivant said, “Steven and I have not taken the plunge either, much as we would love to. Our nuptials would entail certain family difficulties, which we would much prefer to avoid.”

“Like losing a major inheritance, for instance? One of you is waiting for Grams to bite the dust?”

Another pause. Why was I doing this? Maybe because I had worked nonstop through the hot, wet summer on four cases that had been both grueling and decently remunerative. One was the discreet involuntary relocation to Rochester of a blackmailer whose sexual peccadilloes turned out to be even stranger than those of my client, a used-car dealer who liked to hire hustlers in Washington Park, take them home to his garage, and spray them with new-car aroma from an aerosol can. It had been a rigorous July and August, and now, the Tuesday after Labor Day, it would have been lovely to take it easy for a week or so. But why the passive-aggressive needling of this inoffensive man who had called me at the recommendation of a mutual acquaintance?

A patient Jim Sturdivant said, “You are a keen observer of human nature, Mr. Strachey. And – I was warned by Preston Morley – something of a wiseacre.”

“Thank you.”

“It is not, however, ‘Grams’ who is the family obstacle. All four of my grandparents have long since passed on. In any event, that’s another story. I am most concerned just now about our friend Bill, who is about to marry foolishly. More than foolishly – recklessly, stupidly, self-destructively. None of those terms is putting it too strongly. Barry Fields is a dangerous young man, and Bill is so smitten with him that he is utterly blind to everything but Barry’s pleasant personality and physical charms. Which I have to recognize are both appealing, but that is neither here nor there. The man is plainly a cunning fraud.”

I had the window propped open with an upended 1985 Albany phone book, and an invigorating cocktail of fresh late-summer air and diesel fumes wafted up from Central Avenue. The mid-morning traffic was heavy but moving in an orderly fashion, and the winos and crack dealers weren’t hassling the nice people coming and going at the public radio station across the street.

I said, “What makes you think the guy is a fraud?”

“He tells this story of being from Colorado,” Sturdivant said. “But what Barry doesn’t know is, Steven has a brother in Denver and knows the state rather well. Barry said he was from Lamar and his father was a corn farmer. But Steven has a nephew in Lamar, which is wheat country. Steven let it go when Barry told the story, but it was the first obvious lie that roused our suspicions.”

“Couldn’t somebody in that town grow corn too?” I asked. “Timmy’s Aunt Moira in Poughkeepsie is well known for her peonies, but she keeps a few petunias.”

“There are just too many gaping holes in Barry’s story,” Sturdivant said. “Such as who his parents are and why they aren’t coming to the wedding. First he said they had had a bad year on the farm with the drought out west and they couldn’t afford to come. When I offered to fly them here as a wedding gift – a gesture that I must confess was more of a trap than a sincere offer – suddenly Barry’s story changed. He said they were too ill to travel. When I asked what their illnesses were, Barry became confused and said he wasn’t sure; it was something ‘internal.’ That’s all he could remember, that it was ‘internal.’ Steven said he was relieved to hear that the senior Fields family members didn’t have an external disease.”

“He said that to Barry?”

“No, just to me. We’ve tried not to challenge Barry directly, out of deference to Bill.”

“And what does Bill say about these inconsistencies in Barry’s bio? I take it you’ve discussed this with him.”

“Well, we’ve tried,” Sturdivant said. “He shrugs it all off. Bill says Barry had a very difficult time with his unsympathetic family when he came out, and it pains him to have to talk about his earlier life. Steven and I both told Bill that reticence is one thing and fabrications are quite another. But Bill is so bedazzled by those red lips and those baby-blue eyes that he is unwilling to see the obvious.”

“So Barry is a hot number?”

“He’s attractive, and he is also smart and able. He’s the assistant manager of the movie theater in Great Barrington, and he’s expected to take over when the manager retires next year.”

“Barry Fields sounds like a fairly solid citizen to me,” I told Sturdivant. “You said he’s dangerous. In what way?”

I could hear Sturdivant take a sip of something, maybe his mid-morning latte. My own espresso machine had been out of order for some decades, but I had picked up a cardboard cup of the exceptional brew from the Subway franchise up the block, and I watched two flies carioca around the rim.

“Well,” Sturdivant said, “’dangerous’ may or may not be going too far. But Steven and I have our well-grounded suspicions. Barry’s last boyfriend, Tom Weed, also an older man, died under mysterious circumstances. And I know it’s outrageous to think that… The thing is, Tom was wealthy. And his strange death, combined with all of Barry’s lies… I guess you can see what I’m getting at.”

“Yeah, I see it. How did Weed die?”

“Carbon monoxide poisoning. In his BMW. Three years ago last March, Tom arrived home in Sheffield after a dinner put on by the Supper Club, an agreeable men’s potluck group we all belong to. He passed out in his garage with the engine running, supposedly. Barry had worked until nine o’clock that night at the Triplex and was home when Tom arrived around ten-thirty. The question is, why didn’t Barry hear Tom drive in, and why did he not check to see what had become of him?”

“A fair question. What’s Barry’s explanation?”

“He says he dozed off in bed watching My Favorite Wife and woke up in the middle of the night with all the lights on. He went downstairs to see what had become of Tom and discovered him dead in the garage. That’s Barry’s story, at any rate. And the state police bought it.”