Murder Times Four Box Set

Chapter 5-2

After Steve left, I washed our cups, grabbed a beer, and went out to the back porch. I needed to think. It should have been about how I’d manage to talk to everyone at the party on Sunday and push buttons to get someone—to be specific, the killer—to reveal more than they wanted to. Of course if Steve was way off base, the killer wouldn’t be there. Unfortunately, I was beginning to suspect he was right. It was someone on the Lane. An idea I did not like at all.

Should have and doing, however, are two different things. My thoughts almost immediately went to Steve and whether he was the least bit interested in me as more than a person of interest in the criminal sense. Was he trying to do to me what I was supposed to do to the others at the party? Get me to reveal something that said I was the killer? I didn’t think so. Sure, I’m an obvious suspect, but he seems to get that I’m being framed, for lack of a better word.

That being the case, was he interested in me on a personal level? In return, was I interested in him? That would be a definite maybe. I wouldn’t have said so before today. Until now he’d only been a detective—albeit one who was easy on the eyes—who was trying to catch a murderer, and in the process had spent a fair amount of time interrogating me. I realized things had changed at the restaurant. For me, at least. Now I was seeing him as a man. That didn’t mean we’d connect as more than possible friends when this is over. After all, to paraphrase Freud, sometimes a movie is just a movie. It could be the first and last thing Steve and I do together one-on-one. Especially if he does think I’m the killer and he’s trying to lull me into a false sense of security.

I shook my head to clear my thoughts when I heard Brent say, “You got one of those for me?”

“You know where they are. Go grab one.”

He did, came back and settled in the other chair. “You were off in the stratosphere,” he commented with a laugh. “You didn’t even know I was here until I spoke.”

“I guess I was. I’m worried.”

“About whoever it was who decided to turn your house into a dump?”

“Yeah. I feel like things are closing in and pretty soon Detective Jarrett’s going to arrest me.”

“Is that why he came back this afternoon? I mean, not to arrest you, since you’re sitting here, but to try to find a reason to?”

“I don’t know,” I said, trying to put fear and anger into the words. From the look of concern on Brent’s face, I must have succeeded. That bode well for what I’d have to pull off at the party. Which reminded me…“Let’s not talk about it. You have a birthday coming up.” I grinned. “You’ll be forty. Right?”

“Bite your tongue. Twenty-nine, and I think I’ll keep on being twenty-nine from now on.”

I laughed. “Pulling a Jack Benny?”

“Nope. He waited until he was thirty-nine. That’s way too old.”

“Ah. So I’m over the hill, too, or getting there?”

“Well, you know what they say. Don’t trust anyone over thirty.”

Tyler appeared around the corner of the house just then, for once carrying a beer of his own. “Not going to sponge off me?” I said with a grin when he sat on the steps.

“Nope. It’s Sunday. I never sponge on Sundays.”

I snorted. “As if.”

“I do,” Chase said, joining us.

“Fine. But you have to get it yourself,” I replied. “I’m not moving if I can help it.”

“After what you’ve been through, I’m not surprised,” Chase said, clapping a hand on my shoulder before going inside.

“How are you holding up?” Tyler asked.

“Thanks to you guys cleaning up the mess, not as bad I might be. It’s just…What the hell is going on around here?”

“Someone’s gone off the deep end,” Brent said soberly. “And it’s not you, Adam.”

Tyler frowned. “The cops think it is?”

“I don’t think the good detective has a clue who the killer is,” Chase said, settling across from Tyler on the steps. “We all know it’s not one of us. No one on the Lane would do something like that. We’re all friends and have been for ages.”

Tyler smirked. “Not to be telling tales out of school, but I think Reed and Neil might be moving toward being more than friends.”

Chase looked at him in surprise. “You’re kidding. They hardly know each other.”

“They seem to be making up for that. If I was to guess, the reason Neil is sticking around here, rather than disappearing the way he usually does over summer break, is because of Reed.”

Brent chuckled. “I guess that answers the age old question. Is he, or isn’t he? Do you think they’ve…?”

“Guys…” Chase shook his head. “That is none of our business.”

“Yes, papa,” Tyler said, getting laughs from all of us, and a raised finger from Chase.

As I watched my friends, I just knew none of them was the killer. Not even Tyler, despite what Steve had said. They were just that. Friends. We had been since the day each of them had moved to the Lane. But that held true for everyone, married or single, gay or straight. We were friends. And yet…

“Adam? You’re doing it again,” Brent said. “Relax. I’m sure the good detective, as Chase called him, knows you didn’t kill Jake and Owen. None of us did.”

“True,” Chase said. “And hell, you wouldn’t have trashed your house. You couldn’t have. We were with you when it happened.”

“Most of us,” Tyler muttered. “But he knows where I was, so I have an alibi.”

“We’re all in the clear,” I stated firmly. I knew Steve wouldn’t have agreed, but honestly, I don’t think Tyler has anything to do with what’s been happening. I didn’t like the idea anyone on the Lane was. But as Steve pointed out, the killer seems to know a lot about me, including where I keep my spare keys. That’s not something a stranger could have found out. I don’t think.

“Now, about my birthday party,” Brent said, breaking the negative mood we’d all fallen into. “I want…”