Markwildyr.com,
Post #207
Image Courtesy of freeimages.com:
Hope everyone had a great holiday season and is now ready to get back into the groove… or the rut, whichever applies.
Let’s try a two-part
story today.
* * * * *
CUTE AS A BUG’S EAR
Cute as a bug’s ear. He’d
heard that all his life. Not handsome, but cute as a bug’s ear. That
description bothered him as a teenager, but now he’d come to terms with it.
Possibly because “cute” got him about as many sexual partners as he could
handle. Of course, he didn’t have a very active libido, so perhaps he was
giving the “cute” thing too much credit. But when he did feel the urge, he
always went on the hunt. Athena, his boss’s secretary had been his last
conquest… until today. He closed the hotel door firmly behind him and headed
for the elevator, feeling himself almost purr. The experience had been
spectacular. His loins tickled at the recollection.
Once out on the street, he
caught a bus and headed straight for his office downtown, where he sat at his
desk in the bullpen and wrote up his orders. It had been a good day all round. In
fact, his life could be described that way.
He signed off on his last order and sat back to contemplate that
thought.
Charles Rigsby Lewison—Chuck
to his coworkers and friends, and Chucky to certain others—was twenty-five,
happily single, and a three-year employee of the Hardwig Wholesale Jewelry
Company, recently transferred from accounting to a sales desk. He grinned wryly.
Maybe that “cute thing” was a blessing in more ways than one. Overly handsome
salesmen often seemed a threat to customers, whereas cute ones were tolerated
and even sought out. Pleasant enough to be around without seeming to be a
threat. Or that was his assessment, anyway.
“Hey, Chuck,” have a good
day?”
He turned at the sound of his closest
neighbor, Ranson Billows. Ran had the desk in the corner nearest Chuck’s own.
“Decent.” He downplayed
things. Ran was one of those pretty boys Chuck figured sparked caution with
customers. “You?”
“Not bad. You wanna have a
bite to eat and hit the bar later?”
“Sorry. Have a date.”
“She have a sister?”
“Yeah, older and married. But
I could ask….”
“No, thanks,” Ran said.
“Another time.”
Actually, Chuck was wishing he
could find a way out of this evening’s engagement with Athena. She was a good
lay, but nothing compared to this afternoon’s experience. He’d already had his
ashes hauled today… spectacularly so. He didn’t need another session. But he
was caught.
****
The next morning, Chuck
arrived at the office a little worse for the wear. He’d been unable to get out
of last night’s date, and Athena had been her usual demanding self. A cup of
the office’s strong coffee perked him up enough to catch the gist of conversations
going on around him. They were all similar.
Ran came over to his desk.
“Did you hear?”
Yeah, he’d heard it ever since
he stepped in the room, but he played dumb to let Ran think he was telling it
to one of the uninformed.
“Murder last night at the
Bright Star.”
The Bright Star was one of the
city’s better hotels. The one where he’d had his assignation yesterday, as a
matter of fact. Chuck shrugged. “So? This town has its share of killings.”
“But this one hits close to
home. One of our customers. Tilletson from Philadelphia. In town yesterday to
do some buying.”
Chuck frowned. “I know him.”
“We all do. You remember three
months ago when that California buyer got himself killed downtown?”
“Yeah. Was that at the Star?”
Ran shook his head. “No, the
Riverview. But he was in the business and died the same way.”
“How was that?”
“Strangled. From behind.”
Chuck shook his head.
“Tilletson was a pretty muscular fellow. Be hard to strangle him, I’d guess.”
Ran frowned. “Yeah. That’s
true. He wouldn’t just lie there and let somebody choke him to death.
Something’s missing. But he was naked and apparently having sex. Weird kind of
sex, or so I hear.”
Before they could pursue the
matter further, their boss stepped out of his office and called for attention.
Athena stood beside him looking a great deal perkier than Chuck felt.
“Fellas,” Bill Bley started.
He called all of them “fellas,” even though there were a couple of women
salespersons among them. “We all heard the news about Mr. Tilletson’s murder
last night. I’ve just spoken with a friend of mine down at police headquarters,
and he reminded me that a jeweler from Fresno was similarly killed three months
back. We all knew this, but what we didn’t know was that their have been two
other killings of a similar manner, one in Chicago, and the other in Atlanta.”
Bill glanced around the room.
“That’s not enough for the police to reach any firm conclusions, but it is for
me. Someone’s preying on people in our trade. And that means every one of you
is at risk. When you go out on your calls, be super aware of what’s going on
around you. Report anything suspicious.”
“Other than them being in the
jewelry business, what ties the killings together?” someone asked from across
the room.
“Were all of them men,” one of
the saleswomen asked.
Bill managed to look
embarrassed. “Well, other than being in the jewelry business and being
murdered, they were all in indelicate situations.”
“Meaning?” Ran asked.
“Well… ah, meaning they were
all naked and had been engaged in sexual acts. Unnatural sexual acts. They’d
been acting as… well, as bottoms, I think the expression is in gay circles. And
to answer your question, Louann, yes. All the victims were male.”
Ran spoke up. “I knew
Tilletson, we all did. He wasn’t gay!”
Murmurs ran around the room.
The opinion on that wasn’t unanimous. Chuck figured there was some of that
prejudice going on. Tilletson had been one of those handsome guys. And these
days, who knew what about whom? Chuck remembered the time the butchest guy in
college had tried to corner him in the boy’s rest room.
****
Over the next week, an air of
tension settled over the salespeople at Hardwig. The anxiety heightened with
the report of a fifth victim dying under similar circumstances in Denver.
Ran put it best. “Damn, Chuck,
I feel like a killer’s dogging my footsteps. I’ve been to everyone of those
cities. So have you. So have most of us.”
“Yeah, but at least, none of
us were in Denver recently.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. I
understand that killing took place last May.”
A chill ran down Chuck’s back.
“You know what that means, don’t you?”
“What?”
“Someone in this room could be
the killer.”
“Jeez… don’t say that, man.”
“Why not? It’s true.”
Chuck wished he’d kept his
mouth shut. Ran retreated deeper into gloom and apparently told others, because
the atmosphere in the big room went south.
* * * *
Murder, so foul’s
afoot. Will it reach out and touch Chuck and Ran and the Hardwig crew? We’ll
see in next week’s conclusion.
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Now my
mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on writing.
You have something to say, so say it!
See you later.
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