For a while now, bank teller Emil Legrand had been plucking at my nerves. Five years ago, he’d rented the top floor of my home, the McCord ancestral farmhouse. Arriving in Stone Acres from Cupertino, he’d been a quiet, shy twenty-five-year-old bank teller whose flamboyance was limited to an odd-colored pocket square now and again.
At the time, when the men’s dress code was a lot more rigid, he’d been chastised by his boss for his outlandish accessorizing. His conservative three-piece suits were considered boringly quaint despite his wide range of colorful shirts, ties, and pocket squares.
As the years passed, Emil had flowered and flourished. Today some of his outfits would make even RuPaul blush from embarrassment. He made matryoshka dolls seem fussily subdued. I’d watched every excruci
