The Secret Keeper
Also by Dorien Grey and Untreed Reads Publishing
The Secret Keeper
By Dorien Grey
Copyright 2016 by Gary Brown, Executor of Roger Margason/Dorien Grey Estate
Cover Copyright 2016 by Untreed Reads Publishing
Cover Design by Ginny Glass
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.
Previously published in print, 2009.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, dialogue and events in this book are wholly fictional, and any resemblance to companies and actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Also by Dorien Grey and Untreed Reads Publishing
A World Ago: A Navy Man’s Letters Home (1954–1956)
Short Circuits: A Life in Blogs (Volume 1)
The Butcher’s Son
The Ninth Man
The Bar Watcher
The Hired Man
The Good Cop
The Bottle Ghosts
The Dirt Peddlers
The Role Players
The Popsicle Tree
The Paper Mirror
The Dream Ender
The Angel Singers
The Secret Keeper
A Dick Hardesty Mystery
Dorien Grey
Dedication
To those who can trust
and those who can be trusted
With Sincere Thanks
I have yet to write a book without drawing upon the expertise and unstinting generosity of my friends and family. In this case, I must acknowledge the invaluable information provided, in equal parts, by:
Former USS
Ticonderoga
shipmate and retired lawyer Constantine (Con) Filardi
Police Chief (and cousin) Tom Fearn
and
friend extraordinaire, Gary Brown
It’s fascinating to think that in a world of several billion people, it’s still possible for each of us to know things that not another soul on earth knows. We all have secrets, and the reasons we choose or need to keep them vary with the keeper.
But because secrets can weigh heavily on the soul and spirit, we sometimes vent them by sharing them, perhaps disguised in the form of casual conversation with total or relative strangers who have no way of knowing the full weight of their significance.
There are people who, for one reason or another, often by their gentleness and good nature, invite confidences not readily shared with others. Thus, they unwittingly find themselves in the role of The Secret Keeper.
Unfortunately, not all secrets are harmless, and the passing of a secret from one person to another can, like the spreading of a virus, endanger both.
An example? Well, there’s Jonathan…
—Dick Hardesty
Chapter 1
“Ouch! What
the
hell are you doing?”
I had just decapitated the shaving-foam bird I’d spritzed into my hand for my morning ritual when Jonathan came up behind me and took an intense interest in the back of my head. He then reached up and yanked a hair out by the root.
Cheerfully ignoring my complaint, he replied, “Look what I found!” Pinching it between his thumb and forefinger, he held it up for my inspection. “A gray hair!” he said with the enthusiasm of a Forty-niner who has just come up with a fist-sized gold nugget.
“Why, thank you, Jonathan. What a wonderful discovery! Now I can go put my name on the waiting list at the old folks’ home.”
Still inspecting the hair carefully, he said, “Maybe we should name it.”
“Great idea. I vote for ‘Jonathan.’”
Actually, I had found two others on my own over the past month but had quietly dispatched them and didn’t see any point in making a big deal of it. Obviously, Jonathan and I viewed things differently.
Putting his arms around me from behind, he rested his head on my shoulder. “Don’t worry—I’ll still love you when you’re old and gray.”
“You can’t know how much that means to me,” I said, then hastened to change the subject. “I thought you were fixing breakfast.”
“I am. I came to tell you it’s ready.”
“Good. What are we having?”
“Geritol and prunes.” Quickly releasing me, he made a break for the door before I could get to him.
*
Things had been going very well lately. I’d been able to keep steadily busy, and though none of my cases would make a very interesting novel, they paid the bills and even allowed us to pull a bit ahead. Jonathan had gotten his associate’s degree in horticulture, which gave him a little more time at home during the week, though his belonging to the Gay Men’s Chorus still cut into it more than I would have liked. But he loved it and was really excited when the director, Roger Rothenberger, assigned him a solo for the next concert.
All our friends were doing well: Tim Jackson was an assistant medical examiner in the coroner’s office, and his other half, Phil Stark, was constantly busy with his modeling career. Bob Allen and Mario Lopez continued to spend what free time they had from their bar jobs working on the sprawling Grand Dame of a Victorian house they were lovingly restoring to its former glory. Jared Martinson was kept busy teaching Russian literature at Marymount College in nearby Carrington, and his partner, Jake Jacobson, was busier than he should have been with his construction business.
In deference to his HIV-Positive status, Jake
had
cut back on some of his work activities, and was diligent about doing everything his immunologist brother Steve told him to do. To all appearances, he was in excellent health, for which all of us were infinitely grateful. We got together with them whenever we could.
On the home front, Joshua was now attending half-day kindergarten and in day care the other half. One of the Bronson sisters, who ran the Happy Day day care center, took him and a few other of their charges about the same age to the school each day and brought them back. Though it was still several months off, we were making plans to enroll Joshua in first grade at the school nearest our apartment, which entailed a slew of logistical details and not a few problems. He, of course, couldn’t wait, since it meant he was one step closer to getting his own car and going off to college.
But entering first grade meant leaving day care altogether, and Jonathan believed in planning ahead. Considering all the details involved, it was probably a good idea. Getting him to school would be easy enough, but being able to pick him up on time every afternoon always required some serious time-juggling. We had some flexibility with the Bronsons, since their day care center was in their home, and they were very good about looking after him if we were going to be a few minutes late. But we couldn’t count on that once he started a regular school—the Bronsons only took preschoolers. We would look into other after-school day cares but hadn’t had the time yet. We agreed that it wouldn’t be an insurmountable problem, and we certainly couldn’t keep him in day care forever.
All of which got me to thinking once again of how vastly my world had changed in a relatively short time. I realized, with some degree of concern, that my life was teetering on the brink of becoming stodgy. Reflecting on my past—on the cases I’d worked on and the characters I’d run into, and on my promiscuity before I met Jonathan—I couldn’t help but feel an odd wave of nostalgia and, odder still, of loss. I wouldn’t trade my current life for the world, but let’s face it, it fell somewhat short of exciting.
Recognizing that this line of thinking wasn’t the most positive or productive, I turned my thoughts back to what was going on now, and the positives of my current state.
In retrospect, looking over my relationship with Jonathan, it has occurred to me that I may have presented him in a more saintly light than reality might warrant. I know no one is or can really be as good and sweet and kind as I have probably portrayed him. But the fact of the matter is that love is not unlike the Vaseline that portrait photographers often apply to the lens of their camera to soften the image and hide the subject’s minor flaws. Jonathan is not perfect, but because I love him, for me he comes as close to it as anyone I’ve ever met.
The same is probably true with our relationship. It was by far the best of my life, but it wasn’t all skittles and beer by a long shot. Like any two people, we had our share of conflicts, though they were blessedly rare. I could always tell when something was bothering Jonathan, and though he almost never volunteered the source of a problem, usually all I had to do was acknowledge I knew he had one and he’d tell me. As for me, I’m afraid I do have a bit of a short fuse at times, but I always try to find outlets for what’s bothering me rather than lash out at him or Joshua.
Not surprisingly, Joshua is often the focal point of our disagreements. I admit I tend to let him get away with a little more than Jonathan would, and Joshua is not above playing one of us against the other if he thinks it will get him something he wants. Luckily, he is usually pretty transparent about it. We’d made a rule, too, that we never argued in front of him, which was probably a good thing in that the delay gave us time to calm down, and our arguments almost never got beyond a six on a scale of one-to-ten.
As for what was going on in Jonathan’s apart-from-me life, he was doing very well. I never cease to be amazed at how the world is often like a set of upended dominos—knock one over, and it sets off a chain reaction that can go on indefinitely.
For example, in the course of one of my cases a while back, we had attended a dinner party at the home of wealthy clients Iris and Arnold Glick, who lived in the city’s exclusive Briarwood district. Jonathan had impressed one of the other guests, the wife of a couple who had just bought a new home in the area. She subsequently hired him to do some landscaping work on weekends.
They were so happy with his work they referred him to one of their friends, who referred him to someone else—and from there things, like Topsy, just grew. It hadn’t reached the point where he could afford to give up his regular job, but it was headed in that direction.
He was lucky to have a terrific boss at his regular job at Evergreen Nursery, who allowed him a lot of flexibility during the week whenever he got freelance work. Since he bought all his supplies from Evergreen, and the company didn’t have to pay him for the time he was using them, it was a win-win situation for everyone. And when his boss was looking for a car for his teenage daughter, he offered to trade one of Evergreen’s older but well-maintained pickup trucks for Jonathan’s beloved Toyota.
Though he was very reluctant to lose his baby, the practicality of being able to more easily carry supplies, small trees, shrubs, and his growing collection of landscaping tools than he could possibly get into the Toyota won out.
He didn’t do lawn-mowing or raking or other routine yard maintenance but rather consulted with homeowners on decorative landscaping—which trees, plants, flowers, and shrubs were right for the particular area, where to put in flower beds, etc.