Notes: The Otto Preminger film upon which this homage is based is set in the glamorous, long-gone world of post-war New York society, circa late '40s. The only principal names in the original cast of characters I have changed are Detective Mark McPherson, who has become Detective Jim Ellison, and Laura Hunt who has become Lauren Sandburg, known by his intimate friends as "Blair." I have also redubbed minor characters with familiar names from THE SENTINEL.

Finally, I did do some gender "reassignment," if you will, within the context of the story, to conform with the more conservative times.

~~~~~~~

Cast of Lauren

Waldo Lydecker, Writer, Critic - Anthony Hopkins
James J. Ellison, Lieutenant of Detectives, NYPD - Richard Burgi
Brian Rafe, Sergeant, NYPD - Ryf Van Rjk
Henry Brown, Sergeant, NYPD - Henry Brown
Bessie Cleary, Cleaning Lady - Tyne Daly
Lancaster Corey, Art Dealer - David Odgen Stiers
Shelby Carpenter, Lauren's Financee - Lisa Akey
Alan Treadwell, Lauren's Uncle - Dean Stockwell
Lauren "Blair" Sandburg - Garett Maggart

***

References:

Lauren/Laura (Original Lyrics by Johnny Mercer)

Lauren is the face in the misty night,
Footsteps that you hear down the hall,
The laugh that floats on a summer night
That you can never quite recall.
And you see Lauren On a train that is passing through
Those eyes how familiar they seem.
He gave your very first kiss to you.
That was Lauren, but he's only a dream.

Dick Tracy - Newspaper Comic Strip Character created by Chester Gould.

Fearless Fosdick - Newspaper Comic Character in "Li'l Abner", created by Al Capp. A parody of Dick Tracy.

***

Sunday Morning ...

He would never forget the weekend Lauren died. A silver sun burned through the sky like a huge magnifying glass. It was the hottest Sunday in Waldo Lydecker's recollection. He felt as if he were the last human being left in New York. For Lauren's horrible death, he was alone.

Waldo Lydecker was the only one who really knew the brilliant young advertising executive - at least in his own considerable estimation.

Cloistered in his elegant apartment, Waldo Lydecker had just begun to write Lauren's story when yet another of those detectives came to see him.

Lydecker had him wait. Through the half-opened door, he could watch the tall police officer wander around the fire-placed living room. This particular officer was of an undefined age, 6' tall, perhaps, 180 lbs. And all of it was glorious, in a crude, yet surprisingly effective way. The fedora the detective wore cast a hard shadow across a face that was undeniably handsome. The cut of the decidedly inexpensive suit did nothing to hide the lines of a warrior's body, powerful, athletic, seemingly built for combat or protection.

In another reality, this man would have been a model for Adonis. No, not Adonis. While the features were magnificent, the overall impression they imparted was one of world weariness, of a secret so deep, so disturbing, that to know it would be a fatal mistake. This was a Prometheus, someone who had somehow displeased the gods, and was now sentenced to a terrible, perpetual retribution.

Cooling his heels in the intimidating salon, for that's what the room was, Detective Jim Ellison could almost feel the pair of eyes examining him. He certainly could hear the slightly nasal inhalations, almost an asthmatic wheeze, from the man he had come to question.

Aware of being observed by Lydecker, but not letting on that he knew, Detective Jim Ellison looked around some of the most expensive digs he'd ever seen. Ellison took in all the objects d'art scattered tastefully about, and found himself smiling at the collections of masks on the far wall. He'd come up against some of the very same faces when lost in South America before the war -- an improbable story best left for others to tell. And what had happened to the Army Captain's mind and body during those 18 months among the jungle tribes down there, after his men had been killed, well, it didn't bear thinking about.

Back in the reality of the posh Park Avenue surroundings, Jim Ellison drew on his cigarette deeply. He made a face. Even the taste of Chesterfields made him feel queasy, like drawing on an old combat boot that's been worn once too often. Everything was "off" these days: the taste of beer, big, juicy hamburgers smothered in fried onions, and the Jewish pickles he used to love. His sense of taste was just one more thing going haywire. What would be next?

The Army officer and cop of the year in him (three years in a row) made Ellison suck it up and come back to the problem at hand. He stopped in front of what looked to be a genuine Biedermeier tucked away in the corner of the room. Waldo observed Ellison's fixation on the pedestal clock. Well, at least the man wasn't a total barbarian. The painted clock was the gem of Lydecker's collection. There was only one other in existence and that was in Lauren Sandburg's apartment, in the very room where he was murdered.

New York Detective Jim Ellison turned toward the wall on the far side of the room and was immediately drawn to the closed credenza full of porcelain and crystal. Taking two large strides, he stood in front of it, carefully opened the glass door and removed a particularly beautiful example of Waterford. The facets dazzled him, drew him in, all light and angles and precision. It was as if he could see into the heart of the piece. Somehow, Ellison just knew its intricacies. It was yet another one of those strange feelings that had been happening more and more, ever since Peru ...

"Careful there. That stuff is priceless." Lydecker needed to stop the police officer from touching the 19th century crystal decanter. No one touched anything in this display case, save himself and Roberto, his manservant, who cleaned the most valuable pieces in the apartment. "Detective? Do you hear me? Come in here, please."

Ellison snapped out of the strange reverie, replaced the bottle carefully, closed the door, then walked into the adjoining room, Lydecker's sumptuous -- some might call it decadent -- bathroom. In the enormous bathtub complete with Grigio Rosato marble façade, sat Waldo Lydecker, an elegant-looking man, further away from 50 than he'd probably ever care to admit. He was soaking chest deep in strongly-scented water as he held audience with one of New York's finest. Lydecker's face looked as though it had been taken from an ancient Roman tomb. A neatly trimmed Van Dyke gave the seemingly past-prime man a haughty, aristocratic appearance, and an attitude to match. Who else could sit blithely nude and unmindful of the fact in the presence of a stranger, particularly a detective?

"Mr. Lydecker?"

"Ah, you recognize me. How splendid. Sit down, please."

The officer moved past a divan upholstered in leopard skin, in favor of a straight-backed parson's chair, which he straddled with long, muscular legs in typical male fashion.

"A nice little place you have here, Mr. Lydecker."

"It's lavish, but I call it home. I suppose you're here about the murder."

"Yes. I've been assigned to the Lauren Sandburg case. Unusual name, that."

"As unusual as the man who owned it. It's Latin, you know. It means honor, fame, and spirit. Blair had all of those. And more."

"Blair? You lost me. Who's 'Blair'?"

"'Blair' was Lauren's middle name. The one he preferred, actually. A favored few individuals used it."

"Like you?"

"Yes. I considered myself most fortunate to have known that marvelous man and called him 'friend'." Momentarily, Ellison was silenced by the outpouring of genuine, unguarded emotion. He guessed a man like Lydecker would never, under any circumstances, reveal so much of himself to intimates. Maybe it was easier talk about his feelings with a stranger. Like pouring out your troubles to a bartender.

Jim Ellison was treated to the highly incongruous sight of the other man carrying on business as usual, despite the watery "desk." A wide tray stretched across the breadth of the impressive tub from one edge to the other. An expensive Remington typewriter sat perched on it, in front of Lydecker, who was apparently in the midst of composing his latest newspaper column. He took a moment, opened a portfolio next to it and began to read from the topmost sheet. "Yesterday morning - Saturday - the day after Lauren's body was found, I was interviewed by Sergeants Rafe and Brown. As I stated," Lydecker began to read aloud as though giving testimony in court, "'On Friday evening, Lauren had a dinner engagement with me, after which he was ostensibly going out of town. He phoned and cancelled at exactly 7 o'clock. After that --"

With years of practice, Jim Ellison automatically whipped out his case notebook, flipped it open and finished Lydecker's own words, "- you ate a lonely dinner, then got into the tub to read." The cigarette in the handsome police officer's mouth danced in tandem with the movement of his lips, as he closed the small, thumb-worn book. "Why did you write it down? Afraid you'd forget it?"

"I am the most misquoted man in America." Lydecker removed his reading glasses and placed them neatly on the "desk" in front of him. "When my friends do it, I resent it. From Sergeants Rafe and Brown, I would find it intolerable. Hand me that wash cloth, please, Mr. ... Mr. ...?"

Ellison's smile turned sardonic. "Ellison." He picked up the dove gray cloth and threw it underhanded toward the tub.

"Ellison ... Ellison ... Jim Ellison! The Siege of Babylon, Long Island! The gangster with the machine-gun. He killed three policemen. I told the story over the air and wrote a column about it. Are you the one with the leg full of lead? The man who walked right in and got him?"

"Yeah, I'm him."

"Well, well, well ... how delightfully coincidental."

"You've got a pretty good memory, Mr. Lydecker."

"I always liked that detective with the silver shin bone. Hand me my robe, please. There's a good fellow."

"Thanks. I hope you won't have any reason to change your mind." Ellison tossed the plush, velour garment to Lydecker, who draped it around his body.

"Have you any more questions?"

Jim Ellison pulled a tattered piece of paper out of his jacket pocket, something that looked akin to a cocktail napkin. "Yeah, just one. Two years ago, in your October 17th column, you started out writing a book review, but at the bottom of the page switched over to the Harrington murder case. You said Harrington got rubbed out with a shotgun loaded with buckshot. The way Lauren Sandburg was murdered night before last."

"Did I?"

"Yeah. But the gangster was really killed with a Colt."

"How ordinary. My version was obviously superior." Waldo Lydecker continued his ablutions as they as they talked. "I never bother with details, you know."

"I do. It comes with the territory. I know this isn't necessary for me to say to a man as sophisticated as yourself, but I'll say it anyway. Don't leave town. I may need to talk to you again after I've questioned Sandburg's fiancée -"

"Shelby Carpenter."

"That's right. And the uncle -"

"Alan Treadwell."

"Right again. Well, so long."

"Mind if I go with you?"

"Why?"

"Because murder is my favorite crime. I write about it regularly. Since you're going to have to visit everyone on your list of suspects, starting with those two, I'd like to be there to study their reactions."

"You're on the list yourself, you know."

Lydecker's smile was saturnine. "Good. To have overlooked me would have been a pointed insult."

"I figure you're not the sort of man somebody would insult too often, Mr. Lydecker."

"But do you really suspect me? Ellison, if you knew anything about faces ... look at mine." Waldo Lydecker studied his own well-coifed, flawlessly turned-out appearance in the huge wall mirror. "How singularly innocent I look this morning."

Ellison was unimpressed.

On the other hand, in Waldo Lydecker's considered opinion, New York Detective Jim Ellison was singularly impressive. And he was a definite type of person, but not a simple one. He was seemingly contemptuous of luxury, but also charmed by it. Ellison outwardly resented Lydecker's porcelain collection, his 10th century clock, and library of first editions, but envied the culture which had developed appreciation for all of them.

The hard coin metal of Jim Ellison's character failed to arouse the other man's interest. But the silver shinbone, the legacy of a dying desperado ... now, there was romance in the anatomy of the tall, muscular man. This, Waldo Lydecker, as a well-practiced observer of life and keeper of secrets about countless people, stored away for future reference.

Having connected suspenders to the waistband of impeccably tailored Italian suit trousers, Waldo next addressed his cravat of the day. Almost nonchalantly, Ellison asked, "Were you in love with Lauren Sandburg, Mr. Lydecker?" as the other man was in the middle of tying the Prince Albert around his neck.

Waldo Lydecker paused for a moment. "What a decidedly vulgar question." He donned the matching jacket, then artistically arranged a freshly-pressed linen handkerchief in his breast pocket. "I'm somewhat surprised at you, detective." Finishing with what appeared to be a daily ritual, Lydecker snapped a fresh, white carnation from the nearby vase and positioned the boutonniere in his buttonhole, completing the man-about-town ensemble.

"I'm not paid for my manners. And it's no skin off my nose, one way or the other, who you have on your dance card. I just need to know where you stood with Sandburg. So, were you?"

"I wouldn't expect you to understand this, Ellison. But Lauren - Blair -- and I shared something that few did. And I prefer to keep the details of our relationship to myself for the time being. Suffice it to say, we were not lovers of any sort. Blair was old-fashioned in that way."

"A one-woman guy, was he?"

"That I couldn't attest to. But it was Blair's wont to be faithful to whomever he was involved with at the moment, no matter how unworthy that person was."

Ellison waited for the older man to expand on the statement, but no other words were forthcoming, except, "Shall we go?"

Jim Ellison sighed. It was going to be a long day, and a longer investigation, filled with people like this character. He should have gone to Sunday mass this morning, like his mother always told him.

***

Sunday, Late Morning

The maid who greeted them at the door showed Detective Jim Ellison and Waldo Lydecker into the parlour and asked them to wait.

In its own way, Alan Treadwell's apartment was every bit as expensive as Lydecker's, although, Ellison thought, without the flair or beauty. This place seemed to say the owner of this 1,800 square feet of prime Eastside real estate had thrown enough money at the best decorator in New York to turn it into the epitome of New York chic.

A stocky, curly-haired, medium-complexioned man strode confidently into the room where Ellison and Lydecker waited. Like the latter, Alan Treadwell was well past middle age and impressively turned out, in what the detective could only assume was an "Intimidate the civil servant and outshine Waldo Lydecker in one-fell-swoop" outfit.

"Good morning, Mr. Treadwell."

"Good morning, Lieutenant. I've been expecting you. But I must say I'm surprised to see you here, Waldo." Alan Treadwell nodded perfunctorily at both men. His voice almost succeeded in filtering out the annoyance at seeing the uninvited guest who accompanied the detective.

Almost, but not quite. Discomfiture in others was mother's milk to Lydecker, a fact not lost on Jim Ellison. Like Sherlock Holmes, who constantly chided his associate, "You look, but you do not see, Watson." Ellison's eyes saw what was going on between the two. It's what literary people called "subtext." There was a history here. And it wasn't good.

To bring them back to the business at hand, Alan Treadwell invited the men to sit down. Ellison accepted, while Waldo Lydecker stood off to the side, leafing through a current copy of The New Yorker magazine. He was within earshot, ready to volley the bon mot, if needed.

"I've just taken over the Lauren Sandburg case." Opening his ever-present notebook, Jim Ellison began the informal questioning. "I have all the reports but there are a few more questions I'd like to ask."

Alan Treadwell sat down on an uncomfortable-looking Louis Quatorze chair. "Certainly. I'll do anything I can to help."

"You were on good terms with Lauren Sandburg, Mr. Treadwell?"

"I thought my nephew was wonderful. Most people did. Cigarette, Detective?"

Ellison declined. "No thanks." Ellison referred back to his notes. "You almost collapsed when you identified the body down at the morgue."

"I just wasn't expecting ..."

"I can understand. Amazing what a load of buckshot can do to a human face at close range. Not very nice to look at."

"It was one of the worst things I've ever seen. I'll remember it for the rest of my life."

"I suppose his maid ..." Ellison again referenced the page in front of him, "... Bessie Cleary, was devoted to him?"

"Yes. Bessie had been with Lauren for years. She was the one who actually -"

"Found the body. I know." Inexplicably, Ellison switched gears. "Did you approve of his upcoming marriage to Shelby Carpenter?"

Lauren's uncle became decidedly ill at ease. "Why? Shouldn't I approve?"

"I don't know. What's your relationship with Miss Carpenter?"

Disturbed by the question, Treadwell moved to the edge of his chair. "What do you mean by that?"

Detective Jim Ellison sounded almost mild. "What I mean is that she's been a frequent guest in your home. Is she an acquaintance? Friend? Something more?"

From behind the two, Waldo Lydecker chortled malevolently. "This is beginning to assume fabulous aspects."

Treadwell threw an exasperated look over his shoulder. "Could you shut your mouth just once, Waldo? This doesn't concern you." He swiveled back to face the police officer again. "Just what are you driving at?"

"The truth, Mr. Treadwell. Are you in love with Shelby Carpenter? It's a simple enough question."

"No. Why?" The now visibly nervous man stuttered over the words. "Of course not. I'm ... very fond of her. Everyone is."

Clearly enjoying Treadwell's predicament, Waldo Lydecker chimed in. "Well, I'm not. I'll be hanged if I am."

"You're probably the most annoying man in New York, Waldo!"

"I'm vicious." Lydecker purred. "It's the secret of my charm."

Ellison stopped the verbal sniping between the two by again changing directions in his cross-examination. "Did you give her money?"

"What do you mean?"

"A couple of checks went through your account which had been endorsed by her." Scanning the top few lines of the next page in his book, Ellison read: "One check on May 15th, for $250; another on May 22nd, for $400."

Alan Treadwell's eyes flickered. After a moment, he recovered and began an altogether unconvincing explanation. "Oh, that. I asked her to do some shopping for me. That's all."

Waldo interrupted the badly-concocted story. "She's a very obliging young woman. And $650 constitutes a 'little' shopping? I suppose so - if you're a Vanderbilt."

Jim Ellison pulled out a cigarette he was tempted to light, but didn't. He merely rolled it between his fingers. "For some time now, you've also been withdrawing large amounts of cash. Sometimes $1,500, sometimes $1,700 at a clip."

"Yes, I needed that money."

"The day you withdrew $1,500, Miss Carpenter deposited $1,350 in her account. When you withdrew $1,700, she deposited $1,350."

"Maybe young Shelby was saving up for a raining day," Lydecker offered, clearly enjoying himself. "At that rate, she must have been preparing for the Great Flood." Almost begrudgingly, Ellison had to grin at the humor - and truth -in the comment.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Treadwell. I have to ask all kinds of questions during homicide investigations. You don't have to answer them. Of course, it might make you look ... "

Alan Treadwell didn't allow the word 'suspicious' or 'guilty' to escape from the detective's lips. He fell back on the truth for the first time since he'd said "Good morning." "Shelby needed some money, and I gave it to her. It's as simple as that."

"Of course. Now, on Friday night, Mr. Treadwell, you stated you stayed home alone all night."

"Yes."

"Why didn't you go to the concert with Shelby?" Waldo Lydecker quizzed.

Enough was enough. Treadwell exploded. "Because she didn't ask me, damn it!"

As if on cue, a door at the rear of the sunny room opened. A beautiful, redheaded woman entered and walked toward the three men. Shelby Carpenter was a bona fide knockout, even to someone as jaded by life as Jim Ellison. Her long, lustrous curls brushed across perfect alabaster shoulders, which were clearly visible through a thin, georgette blouse. The cut of the pricey, man-styled trousers declared Miss Shelby Carpenter, late of Louisville, Kentucky, to be every inch a female. Understated gold jewelry and ankle-strapped high heels most probably from Bendel's, completed the visually stunning picture.

"We were just talking about you, Shelby, dear. And here you are."

"Really? I hope it was all good."

"This is Lieutenant Ellison."

"Oh, how do you do? Alan told me you were coming." Shelby Carpenter shook the detective's hand, firmly, confidently. In some splintered corner of his mind, Ellison registered that the color of the woman's slacks matched her dark blue eyes perfectly. He wondered if they had been chosen for that reason, or if it was just happenstance.

Knowing dames, it was no accident.

"I hadn't realized you were here, Miss Carpenter. I was going to your hotel next to see you."

"I was lying down in the other room. I needed to escape everything. The heat ... the mobs of people ... the reporters ... the telephone calls to the Framingham ... " She threw a look up at him that begged for understanding. "You know how it is, Lieutenant I've hardly slept a wink since it happened."

"Is that a sign guilt or innocence, Ellison?" Lydecker asked.

Shelby Carpenter elected to ignore Waldo Lydecker, a feat few accomplished. But ignore him she did, with a surprising degree of panache in someone so young. "I'm totally at your disposal, Lieutenant. I'm eager to find Lauren's murderer as much as you are, and will help you in any way that I can. But what possible motive could I have for killing him? I loved Lauren deeply."

"'Lauren?' You didn't call him 'Blair'?"

"Actually, I never liked the nickname. I always thought it was rather ... commonplace."

'Blair' commonplace? Where did that leave a 'Jim'? //Out in the cold with a looker like this.//

"I heard that it was his preference."

"Things change."

"Yeah?" Jim Ellison would bet the ranch on the seemingly demure Miss Carpenter getting what she wanted, when she wanted it. The detective almost shuddered at the thought of a woman like this being in his personal space. Jim Ellison was loathed to agree with Waldo Lydecker, but in this case, he'd make an exception. He didn't like Shelby Carpenter, even though her honey-laden voice could certainly get a man's attention. And the legs that went up to there didn't hurt, either.

But it must have been different for Sandburg. In Blair's world, smart, pretty women were the rule, rather than the exception. So, what did this steel magnolia have that the others didn't?

"And he and I were to be married this week, you know."

Suddenly, Lydecker tensed, his fists clenched as he spoke. "No, he doesn't know that. And neither do I. Or you. Or anyone else alive, for that matter."

"What do you mean by that?" Detective Ellison asked Lydecker for some clarification.

"'Blair' hadn't definitely made up his mind. He told me so himself last Friday when he called to cancel dinner. As a matter of fact, he was going to the country to think it over. The Blair Sandburg I knew wasn't going to throw his life away on a Southern belle in distress."

"You don't know everything, Waldo. Particularly about my relationship with Lauren. He was going to start a new phase of his life with me. One that didn't happen to include you."

The atmosphere between the two competitors for the memory of the murder victim had grown combative. In an attempt to lighten the tension swirling about them, Shelby Carpenter offered, "Would you like a bite of some lunch, Lieutenant? What about you, Waldo?"

"What a perfect hostess. You'd almost think she was in her own home."

Alan Treadwell tried to squash the innuendo. "Shelby knows how distracted I am. Would you, Lieutenant?"

"Sorry, Mr. Treadwell, but I've got to be going."

"I also have to leave, Alan. I, however, am 'not' sorry about it in the least."

Shelby Carpenter tried to stay Ellison's departure, grabbing his sinewy forearm. Steadying herself on her stiletto heels, the young woman tilted that pretty head of hers to one side, in a much-practiced, surprisingly effective gesture. Jim Ellison could smell crushed roses and lilies of the valley wafting from her long, sculpted neck. The smell was overwhelming to someone with an ultra-sensitive nose, like Ellison's. He was in danger of losing himself in the complexity of the fragrances that seemed to layer on another. Only Shelby Carpenter's purring voice brought him back. "But, Lieutenant. I rather thought you were going to ask me some questions."

Dames. Girlfriend. Fiancee. Suspect. They were all the same. They tried to get you to forget who you were and what you were by throwing around the kind of look a guy could feel deep in his pants' pockets.

"When was the last time you saw Lauren Sandburg?"

"On Friday. We met for cocktails. He told me he was going to skip the concert that evening, and go to the country instead. I went to Carnegie Hall alone."

"What did they play?"

"What?"

"I asked you what the Philharmonic performed Friday night."

Shelby answered with no hesitation. "Brahms First and Beethoven's Ninth."

"Uh-huh."

"Have you got a key to Lauren Sandburg's house up in the country?"

"No, but I think there's one up in his apartment."

Ellison put his hat on, then not too gently pried her talon-like fingernails from the sleeve of his jacket. "I'll have a look when I get over there."

"Perhaps I can help you." The young woman offered, a little too earnestly for Ellison's taste.

"All right. Come along. You, too, Lydecker. I'll be seeing you, Mr. Treadwell."

With that, the three headed out. As Shelby Carpenter moved pasted Alan Treadwell, she patted his hand surreptitiously, and threw him a meaningful glance. Detective Jim Ellison's keen eyes caught both.

***

Sunday, Early Afternoon

Lauren Sandburg had become a Manhattan legend in less than a week. Scarlet-minded headline artists had dubbed his tragedy, "THE BACHELOR MURDER" and one example of the more lurid Sunday editions was entitled, "POLICE SEEK LOVE-NEST KILLER."

East Sixty-second Street was a carnival. Ice cream trucks and hotdog vendors, sensing the profit in disaster, offered their wares to the people milling around. Sweethearts had deserted the green hills of Central Park to stroll arm-in-arm past the slain man's house. Fathers pushed baby buggies; mothers scolded their children who harassed the police officers standing guard.

The trio made its way into the converted brownstone.

"This is like Coney Island." Waldo Lydecker observed.

Ellison shook his head. "More like hell. Murder is the city's best free entertainment. Does it bother you?"

"On the contrary. No one would have enjoyed the spectacle more than Blair." He sighed. "If he were here now, the dear boy would open the windows, pull out some of those flowers he was so proud of, and throw them to passersby. Then he'd send me downstairs for ice cream, or, God forbid, a foot-long frankfurter. He loved the excess and garishness that is New York City."

In startling contrast to the noise and tumult outside, the silence surrounding Lauren Sandburg's third-floor apartment was palpable.

Jim Ellison unlocked the front door with a key and was the first one in, while the other two waited in the hallway. Ellison looked around for a moment, gathering his thoughts. The closed drapes gave the room an unused, somber air.

"The doorbell rang." Ellison laid out the scenario. "Lauren Sandburg opened the door. A shot was fired."

"What?" Shelby asked.

"That's how it must have happened. The doorbell rang. He was in the bedroom without any clothes on. By the time he'd put on that silk thing -"

"Kimono."

"-- the murderer had probably rung a second time. Sandburg went to the door and as he opened it, the shot was fired. A double blast straight into the face."

"How did you deduce that, if I may be so bold to ask?"

"He fell backwards, Lydecker. The body was there."

"I thought you hadn't been here before."

"I saw the police photos." Jim Ellison had seen the body, the pale garment blood-stained and the blood running in rivulets to the edge of the oriental carpet.

Waldo Lydecker's face looked pinched and ashen. Shelby Carpenter, looking small and fragile, let a sotto voce sob escape from her lips. All three stared at the bare, polished floor, as the detective continued. "The door downstairs had evidently been left unlocked. It was unlocked when Bessie Cleary, the cleaning woman, arrived at work yesterday in the morning. Before she came upstairs, Bessie looked for the superintendent to yell at him for his carelessness, but he'd taken his family down to the beach for the weekend. The tenants of the first and second floors are away and there was no one else in the house. The ones on either side are empty, too, at this time of year."

The three walked in quietly, almost reverently. Ellison opened the swag drapes while Waldo Lydecker removed his Homburg, laying it on a nearby chair, along with his signature walking stick. Shelby Carpenter was the first to speak. "I guess I better try to find that key." She moved as quickly as she could from the scene of the Friday night debacle. The two men remained and went into the den.

Lydecker stared at the large stain on the floor. " Ellison, tell me. Why did they have to photograph him in that horrible condition?"

"Most palookas don't care how they look after they're rubbed out."

"Palooka? What an unpleasant word. Just look at him, detective, then tell me if Blair Sandburg was a 'palooka.'" Waldo Lydecker's head involuntarily nodded toward the portrait of Lauren Blair Sandburg, a short distance from the door - and from the spot where the body had fallen. The picture was arresting. There stood Blair Sandburg, glorious hair flowing, midnight blue shirt bleeding into the chiaroscuro background. And then, there were the blue eyes, alive, blazing out of the canvas, branding the soul of the observer. Their intense look, emphasized by the sharp tilt of dark brows, gave Blair's face a mesmerizing quality which captivated anyone lucky enough stand before it.

Within a few seconds, the line blurred. Subject and viewer began to merge. Something undefined, yet primal, drew Jim Ellison deeper and deeper into the portrait. As the boundaries of the room fell away, Blair Sandburg was becoming more alive to Jim Ellison than many of the people walking the streets in front of the dead man's apartment. The artist had caught the fluid sense of restlessness in the pose. What was Blair thinking? Was it to be a secret that died along with the beautiful young man?

But, as magnificent as the portrait was, there seemed to be something missing, to Ellison's way of thinking. Perhaps there was too much of the "Lauren" who had made New York his oyster and not enough of the pearl Ellison was coming to know as "Blair."

There certainly was no resemblance between the faceless body Ellison had witnessed at the coroner's autopsy and the man in that picture.

Any words he could come up with would be too flowery for a regular guy like Ellison. But deep inside, he had to agree with Waldo Lydecker, no matter how pretentious a prig the critic was. The man in the portrait was breath-taking. Or maybe the fact that he took Jim Ellison's breath away was closer to the mark. Mulling all of this over in his mind, the detective stood by the fireplace, where Blair Sandburg had stacked seasoned logs, ready for the first cool evening. An evening the murder victim would never be able to enjoy. Because he needed something to do with his restless hands, Ellison pulled out a cigarette. His eyes traveled from the black marble fireplace to the softly faded chintz drapes whose deep folds shut out the glare of the hot twilight.

Lydecker's voice interrupted the reverie. "Look at this room. Does it reveal nothing of the person who planned and decorated it?"

"You know the old chestnut about books and covers."

"Hackneyed, Ellison, even for you."

Jim Ellison ignored the jibe. "Speaking of books, Sandburg had a lot. He read them?"

"What do you think?"

Ellison shrugged. "You never know. Especially what a man will do when he's trying to impress a dame."

And what about a strapping specimen like you, Ellison? Fresh from the War. Undoubtedly, handsome in your Marine uniform -"

"Army. Captain."

"My mistake. Those shoulders misdirected me. In any event, surely there must have been someone ..."

"There've been plenty. I'm no angel."

"Ever been in love?"

"A doll in Washington Heights once got a fox fur out of me. Make what you want out of it." The detective walked over to the bookshelves. There were books on a variety of scientific subjects: anthropology, archeology, psychology, with one or two on comparative anatomy thrown in for good measure. What were they doing in Blair Sandburg's library, he wondered? While he talked, his callused hands and ice blue eyes settled on a particular volume, bound in red morocco, with a funny kind of title, THE SENTINELS OF PARAGUAY, by Sir Richard Burton. He picked it up and started to flip through it. The pictures were arresting, particularly the one of an ancient scout, by the look of him. Ellison continued his story "They all wanted the same thing: to go steady and get married. One of them almost hooked me."

"What saved you, if don't mind my asking?"

"My little encounter with that machine gun. Funny thing. I went through war in Europe, then a special assignment in South America, without being seriously wounded. I had to come home and get shot in my own back yard."

"Didn't the young woman in question wait?"

"Yeah. The day they released me, there was Carolyn at the hospital door. Full of plans she'd been making all along. Her old man had some dough, owned a store, and was ready to put down the first month's rent on a furnished apartment as a wedding present. After the months I'd spent recovering in the hospital -"

"Thinking?"

"-- and reading, I couldn't go through with it. I was still on crutches so I told the whole Plummer family I couldn't let their daughter sacrifice herself on a cripple. She's married now, living in Jersey, with a husband and a couple of kids."

"Never read any books, eh?"

"Oh, she probably bought a couple of sets for the bookcase. Keeps them dusted and ready for company."

Ellison snapped the cover closed on the volume in his hand. His fingers felt the beveled surface of the expensive, bound book. The smell of vellum paper distracted him, but didn't succeed in camouflaging the other scent, the stronger, more complex swirl of contradictions. Blair Sandburg. Jim Ellison was experiencing Blair Sandburg in the only way he ever would. //I swear, I'll find out who did this to you, Blair. If it takes me the rest of my life.// Ellison's face took on the watchfulness, the proud, yet guarded look that comes with being a nemesis in the classic tradition: the righter of wrongs. Or, perhaps, even a blessed protector, as the Chinese would say. It wasn't lost on Waldo Lydecker, that keen observer of mankind in all its infinite diversity.

"So, what do you think of the portrait, Lieutenant?"

"Not bad. I'll give you that."

"It's rather a sentimental interpretation, although Blair appreciated it. Antonia ..."

"Antonia?"

"Antonia Jacoby, the artist --"

"Don't tell me. She was in love with Blair Sandburg, too?"

"'Blair'? It's 'Blair' now, is it?"

"You like 'murder victim' better?"

"I fail to understand your using a name reserved only for close personal friends of Lauren. But yes, Antonia was in love with him at the time."

"Like an artist 'loves' a subject?"

"Don't be obtuse, Ellison."

"Sandburg seemed to have a lot of people in love with him, and it didn't much matter which sex."

"He was a very unique man. Kind and generous."

"That's not what most people fall for."

He had a decency that was remarkable. If Blair was aware of an individual's shortcomings, he never showed it."

"Sure."

"Believe what you will - I'd expect that kind of reaction from someone like you, detective. But, I tell you Blair was extremely honest. His flattery was never shallow. He tried to find real qualities in a person. Surface faults and affectations fell away like false friends when trouble comes knocking."

Ellison studied the portrait. "If he was such a prince, why wasn't he already hooked up with someone, then? Married, I mean."

"Blair had been ... how shall I say it ... disappointed when very young."

"Most people are. That's part of being young. It doesn't keep them from finding someone to keep them warm at night. Any port in the storm. Particularly men like Sandburg."

"I object to your phraseology."

"Too bad."

"Exactly who are you to judge him?"

"Just a cop who's going to find out how he became 'the late Blair Sandburg.'" With that, Ellison edged away from Lydecker, and caught sight of a record player with a .78 sitting on it. He switched it on, and was greeted with a lushly orchestrated song, one of the more popular tunes of the day.

"Would you mind turning that off, Lieutenant?" Lydecker asked.

"Why? Don't you like it?"

"It was one of Lauren's favorites." Shelby commented, wandering back into the living room. Not exactly classical but sweet."

"You know a lot about music, do you?" Ellison asked.

Shelby laughed ruefully. "I don't know a lot about anything, Lieutenant, but I know a little about practically everything." Her Southern lilt was as easy on the ears as her appearance was on the eyes.

"Yeah? Then why did you say they played Brahms First and Beethoven's Ninth at the concert Friday night? They changed the program at the last minute and played nothing but Sibelius."

"I suppose I should have told you in the first place. You see, I was dreadfully tired, and couldn't keep my eyes open. I fell asleep. I didn't hear a note of the concert."

"Next she'll produce photos in evidence." Waldo Lydecker snapped.

"I know it sounds suspicious, but I'm resigned to that now. I'm a natural born suspect just because I'm not the conventional type you Northerners usually meet."

"I wouldn't worry about it, Miss Carpenter." Ellison countered. "Sounds reasonable. I fall asleep at concerts myself."

"Thank you."

Waldo Lydecker joined Detective Ellison as he wandered into Blair Sandburg's bedroom. Shelby followed a few moments later.

"You found that key yet?"

"No, I just looked for it in Lauren's desk. It may be in here." She headed over to the nightstand next to the bed, where Ellison had just sat down and made himself comfortable, and opened the top drawer. "Yes, here it is, Lieutenant. I knew there must be one around somewhere."

Ellison's voice was a peculiar mixture of amusement and irritation. "The police are very fussy about their inventories. That key isn't on the list of things that were in that drawer yesterday. They didn't find it. You put it there. Care to explain?"

"Then it made a recent appearance." Waldo Lydecker was visibly amused at the turn of events.

"You put it there, didn't you?" Ellison stated the obvious.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I just didn't want to give it to you while Waldo was present."

"Oh?"

"I have private reasons that don't concern him."

"You have private reasons, no doubt, for 'lying' about the key." Lydecker sniped.

"Waldo, I'm warning you, for your own good, to stop implying that I had anything to do with Lauren's death."

"Very well. I'll stop implying it. I'll say it directly."

Shelby Carpenter's temper burst like a magnesium flare. Her hand was just about to connect with Waldo Lydecker's face, when Jim Ellison intervened.

"Cool down, Miss Carpenter. You're on tenderhooks, like your friend, Alan Treadwell. It's just as well he didn't join us here. I don't need a melee to handle, on top of everything else."

"Alan and were both terribly upset about Lauren's death."

"We 'all' are, dear." Waldo countered.

"But Treadwell seems particularly unsettled. He practically took my head off earlier."

"Don't take Alan too seriously. His bark is worse than his bite. It's only that he'd disapproved of ... "

"Of what, Miss Carpenter?"

" ... of his nephew marrying."

"What he disapproved of was Lauren Sandburg marrying 'you.'"

Shelby ruefully acknowledged the subtle distinction. "You know that I was beneficiary of Lauren's insurance, don't you, Mr. Ellison? I wanted to tell you myself before anyone else did. You might think ... well ... it's only natural in your line of work to examine everything."

"How much are we talking about here?"

The young woman chose her words carefully. "Lauren had carried a rather large annuity with a death benefit. His mother Naomi's name had been on it, until we decided to get married. He insisted on making it out to me. "

"Like a dowry? Well, I appreciate your honesty, Miss Carpenter. I'll remember that you told me. Let's go. I haven't eaten since this morning. Either of you interested in grabbing something?"

***

Sunday, Early Evening

That evening, Jim Ellison and Waldo Lydecker dined at Montagnino's, the place that had been one of his and Blair Sandburg's favorites. Did the detective know that when choosing the little out-of-the-way Italian café?

A bottle of Lacrymae Christi, the pale, still wine with the magic name, chosen by Lydecker, made an instant convert of the detective. As they sipped their way through it, Waldo observed that Ellison seemed to change. He wasn't drunk, precisely. But, as the meal wore on, he became less hard-edged, and more boyish; less the professional detective and more the youth in need of a confidante. The 'Tears of Christ' seemed to have opened the taciturn man's heart. As they shared yet another glass, Ellison began to share everything from the scene with Bessie Cleary; his annoyance at the clumsy flattery of the girl reporter, and, most uncharacteristically, the sudden interest in painting which had caused him to discover Lancaster Corey and ask the price of the Jacoby portrait.

Lydecker brought the conversation back to Blair Sandburg, as he waxed poetic about his friend, including Blair's hearty, "lowbrow" tastes. "He was a veritable encyclopedia of Broadway show tunes, and popular music. He owned a huge collection"

"Yes, I know."

"Just how do you know so much, if you don't mind my asking, Lieutenant Ellison? You act as though you'd been Blair's friend for years."

"I looked at his records. I even played some of them. Make what you want of that. So, how long had you known him, Mr. Lydecker?"

"Seven, no, eight ... it was eight years. Shall I tell you about how we met?"

"I asked, didn't I?" Ellison voiced turned surly, the wine going to his head faster than it ought. Christ, he couldn't smoke anymore. Food tasted awful. And two, small glasses of piss-ant wine, no less, was putting a man under the table who used to be able to down a pint of scotch without so much as by-your-leave.

"He rang my doorbell, Ellison, much as you did yesterday. I was working at my desk, writing, as I remember, a mandatory birthday piece about a certain eminent American, who shall remain nameless. Unfortunately, it was ripe with cliché because the man is fairly odious. So, I decided to terminate my efforts. Just as I was about to throw it away as a lost cause, this breath of fresh air entered my life."

He was quite the 'skinny young kid,' I suppose you'd call him, all elbows and eyes. Ah, those remarkable blue eyes, Detective, they shone with the promise of life as yet untapped. Blair was surprised I answered my own door. When I asked why he'd come, his voice betrayed him. Fear had taken over. I was certain that Sandburg had walked around my building several times to work up the courage before daring to enter, and that he had stood in the corridor hearing his own heart pound before he touched the bell. 'Well, out with it!" I spoke more harshly than I should have, unwilling to acknowledge how I'd been unaccountably touched by his charming shyness. Blair spoke very rapidly. I remember it all as one sentence, beginning with a request that I forgive him for disturbing me and then promising that I would receive huge publicity if I chose to endorse the Byron, a fountain pen his employers were advertising. I exploded. 'Who gave you the right to come and bother me? I have a good mind to write your supervisor a stiff letter.' Blair's eyes became bright, Ellison. He persisted in telling me about the advertising campaign which couldn't help but glorify my name. I felt it my duty to be a curmudgeon. 'Do you know just how many have come to my door with checks in their pockets to have me praise their products in my syndicated column and are turned away?' His embarrassment was painfully obvious. I asked if he would stay and have a glass of sherry. Then, I asked him to tell me about himself. Blair had come to New York City from a small town in Washington State, called Cascade. The job at the advertising agency had been his first, and it represented the apex of his ambitions at the time. He had visited 58 other companies before he got the job. You see, even though he was impossibly young and naïve, Blair possessed a magnificent will, and the determination to match it. Oh, he knew he was clever, and was willing to suffer endless rebuffs in order to prove his talents. When he finished, I said, 'I suppose you think I'm moved by your story and that I'm going to break down and give you that endorsement."

"And did you?"

"Ellison, I am the most mercenary man in America. I never take any action without computing the profit."

"You gave him the endorsement."

Waldo Lydecker bowed his head, almost in shame. "For seven years now, I've been enthusiastically acclaiming the Byron Pen. Without it, I am sure that my collected essays would never sell one-tenth of what they had without the publicity."

"He must have been ... terrific."

"Only mildly so at that period. I recognized his possibilities, however. We had dinner the following week to discuss the advertising campaign. That was the beginning. Under my tutelage, Blair developed from gauche child to true New Yorker. After a year, no one would have suspected he came from the hinterlands. And he remained loyal and appreciative, Lieutenant. Of all my friends, he was the only one with whom I was willing to share my prestige. He became as well known at opening nights as my graying Van Dyke or gold-banded walking stick."

Ellison offered no comment. The war years had developed his resistance to chic young women and artistic young men. He took them, and how they conducted their lives and affairs, all with a grain of salt. But, somehow, Blair Sandburg had crawled under his skin and now the dearly departed would be there forever.

Suddenly, Jim Ellison couldn't stand the thought that Blair Sandburg and Waldo Lydecker were anything more than friends. He needed to know, much as heroin addicts craved their next fix.

"He was your protege."

"Yes."

"Anything more? Come on, Lydecker. We both of us know 'what's what.' It's not unheard of - the older, wiser, father figure taking a pretty boy under his wing."

Lydecker recoiled at the suggestion. "Blair was always fond of me, as a mentor first, then as a confidante and friend. But that was all. He stayed unattached, more or less, until Shelby Carpenter arrived on the scene."

"So that covers him. What about you?"

"My feelings for Blair? There was a deeper basis of affection than mere sex. He made me a more generous man than I am. Blair considered me the kindest man in the universe, and so I had to grow to that stature."

"Interesting."

"We dined at least twice a week - usually Tuesday and Fridays - together. Often, after dinner, I would read my columns and scripts aloud. The way Blair Sandburg listened was more eloquent than speech. It was like that for a long time, until one Friday Blair canceled. I thought nothing of it. But, when it happened again, I knew something was amiss. On one particular Friday evening, I decided to take a long walk, until, not surprisingly, I found myself in front of Blair's apartment. The silhouettes on the window shade confirmed what I had known deep in my heart: Blair was with someone else.

Lydecker paused and took a sip of wine before continuing. "I stood outside until I saw Antonia Jacoby, the artist, leave. I went back to my apartment and proceeded to write a scathing review of her current show and singular lack of talent. It was witty, withering, and, more or less true. He and Antonia Jacoby parted company some time after that."

"So, where does Shelby Carpenter come into the picture?"

"I thought that things would go back the way they were. But I was wrong. If Jacoby was a pleasant diversion for Blair, Shelby Carpenter was much, much more. She was the type of challenge that Blair Sandburg couldn't resist - his penchant for playing Pygmalion. You know who -"

"I'm not as ignorant as you might think, Lydecker. I know the story. The sculptor, Pygmalion, falls in love with his creation, right?"

"Correct."

The sound Jim Ellison made was somewhere between a laugh and a snort, as he thought If the shoe fits, Lydecker, wear it. He was brought back to narrative at the "Boy Meets Girl" scene.

"It started innocently. It was at a party at Alan Treadwell's -- one of his usual round-up of bizarre and nondescript characters corralled from every stratum of society. From across the room, Shelby Carpenter immediately noticed Blair. As the party wore on, she cornered him on the terrace. When I finally found the two of them, Blair had just offered her a job at his ad agency on the spot. It annoyed me to no end."

"And then what happened?"

"Blair and Shelby worked closely together, too closely for my taste. Blair had told me that Shelby possessed a kind of raw, instinctive talent, which was 'blossoming' under his watchful eye. She was the one, actually, who hired Dane Redfern, the model. First, for the Madison's Soap ads, then for men's couture fashions. Yes, over the next few months, she and Dane became thick as thieves."

"That so?"

"In any event, I tried to tell Blair that Shelby was trouble. The private investigator I hired found out that our Miss Carpenter almost went to jail for passing bad checks. Blair's love interest was also suspected of stealing her hostess's jewels when she was a houseguest in Virginia during hunting season. But Blair wouldn't listen. 'I know her faults,' he told me. Even when I informed him about the cigarette case -- "

"What cigarette case?"

"The expensive, silver one Blair had given Shelby on her birthday. Shelby had passed it along to Dane Redfern. But dear Blair wouldn't believe it. Even when I put the damned thing in his hand."

"And just how did you get it?"

"Why, I retrieved it from the pawnshop where Redfern took it. And even then, Blair made excuse after excuse for that ... that ..."

"Dame?"

"Detective Ellison, perhaps you might try broadening your scope just a bit. Might I suggest a few moments a day with a thesaurus?"

"Might I suggest you get back to your story?"

Lydecker composed himself. "Blair was about to call Shelby to ask her flat-out about the cigarette case. But I told him that Shelby was dining with Alan Treadwell that evening. Poor Alan. The Carpenter woman treats him rather badly these days. He takes whatever crumbs she throws his way. She'd have cancelled Alan in a minute if Blair had offered to take her out. Sometimes, we need to be eyewitnesses to our own worst moments. So, Blair and I took a cab to Treadwell's apartment and found the two having dinner together, just as I had predicted. I could see how hurt Blair was. I hated to be the cause of it. But, sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind."

"Weird sort of logic there, Lydecker. Can we finish this up, before I get too old to hear it - or care."

"You are not so amusing a fellow as I first thought, Ellison. In any case, Blair was going to ... what is the vernacular? ... 'have it out' with Dane Redfern at lunch on Friday -- the Friday he was ..."

"Murdered?"

"Yes. He called after their meeting, canceled our dinner, and told me he was going to the country to think."

"Where does this Dane Redfern character live?"

"In Brooklyn somewhere. He's in the phonebook."

"It's getting late. Thanks for the dinner. And the talk. I'll probably call on you again."

They shook hands.

"Might I leave you with this? To solve the puzzle of Blair Sandburg's death, you must first resolve the mystery of the man himself."

Ellison's head was throbbing, and needed to get away from Waldo Lydecker, someone who had known and loved Blair Sandburg before him. Something he would never, ever be able to do. Jim Ellison was the jealous lover of a dead man.

"Any other tidbits of wisdom, 'Confucius'?"

"More in the nature of another famous detective, 'Charley Chan.' //Dead is dead until living bring them back.// I am at your disposal, Detective Ellison. //Au revoir.//"

***

Monday Morning, 9:00 AM

Reporters found Detective Jim Ellison surprisingly dignified, formal, and somewhat aloof that Monday morning as he made a statement on the steps of the Police Department building. "We've discovered certain clues, but we are not ready to make them public." One of the women reporters remarked to another, "I wouldn't mind being murdered myself, if he were the one investigating my private life." Ellison's mouth twisted. He'd heard what the woman had whispered a good 30 yards from where he spoke to the sizable crowd. Or maybe he was just imagining it. Either way, Jim Ellison found his head throbbing as he made his way back to his office. He slid his aching body into the uncomfortable, creaking chair that matched his scarred, pre-war desk. The door to the Captain's office was closed. Just as well. Sighing, Jim Ellison took a sip of some of the worst "joe" he'd ever had (and that included the coffee he'd drunk from his helmet while bivouacked near Anzio) before turning back to the task at hand. Going through the victim's personal effects was a part of the job he never much liked.

This time, he was going to hate it.

Lauren "Blair" Sandburg's address and engagement books, bank statements, bills, check stubs, and correspondence filled Jim Ellison's desk and his mind. In the many pages, he had discovered the richness of Blair Sandburg's life, but also the profligacy. Too many guests, too many dinners, too many weekends out of town, and too many letters promising undying devotion. Too much of Sandburg spent on the casual, the transitory, the undeserving.

From the looks of it all, Blair hadn't found whatever - or whoever -- the hell it was who might have made his life complete.

Ellison had been forced to discover the best part of himself, after the Babylon gun battle, in a gray-walled hospital room. After many surgeries to repair the damage to his leg, and during the months of therapy afterwards, former Army Captain Jim Ellison did a lot of reflection on life and its meaning. His estrangement from a father who was ashamed of him, a brother who was too competitive to anything other than related by blood, and the strange things that had happened to him his whole life: the problems with his senses that he never told another living soul about. Yes, nobody could help you find the answers to the big questions, really. At least, nobody Jim Ellison had ever met. Maybe being alone the only way a man could see "truth," and that he, New York Detective Jim Ellison was destined to always be alone and apart. On the outside looking in.

Was Ellison feeling so uncomfortable, so restless, because he was seeing too many parallels in the short, brilliant life of Blair Sandburg? He shook himself out of the malaise brought on by bad coffee and little sleep. As Jim Ellison continued in the thankless task, balancing Sandburg's unbalanced accounts, adding the sums of unpaid bills that supported the richness of such a fast-paced life, and reading Lauren's - no, 'Blair's' -- letters, the detective learned that, in the last few months, the victim had worked extraordinarily long hours, until he was near exhaustion, seemingly too tired to approach anything in his life with joy or freedom.

The photo album with the monogrammed suede cover set Ellison's teeth on edge. It was filled with candid snapshots, including several of Shelby Carpenter. Apparently, Blair Sandburg had fallen under her spell in a single season. Ellison had felt the force of the woman's formidable charm at only a fraction of its power. What was Shelby like when her personality was open full-throttle?

The pictures told Shelby Carpenter's story: full face, profile, close-up, at a distance, on the tennis court, at the wheel of her convertible, in a two-piece bathing suit on the shore of Lake George, astride the chestnut hunter she favored riding. Jim Ellison paused at the picture of the Carpenter woman holding a double-barrel shot gun in her gloved hands, surrounded by a brace of dead pheasants, and looking as though it were the most natural pose in the world.

While it was Jim Ellison's business to observe rather than judge the people he encountered professionally, for Miss Carpenter, he was tempted to throw out the police manual. The detective didn't fancy her in the least. Shelby Carpenter had been blessed with someone special in her life, yet treated the gift cavalierly. Blair Sandburg deserved so much more. Ellison's hackles went up as he thought about the two of them together. Shelby kissing Blair ... Shelby touching Blair ... Shelby making love to Blair ... Ellison tore himself from a train of thought that would only succeed in making him feel even worse than he already did. This case - this victim - was getting to him like no other ever had.

Jim Ellison was beginning to hate Blair Sandburg. Better to hate someone you'd never meet, than to ... the hard-as-nails detective couldn't say the word.

***

Monday, Late Morning

A visit to the offices of Rose, Rowe, and Fairmont Advertising made Jim Ellison feel like an alien in a foreign land. There was a fine, juicy prejudice toward these three partners pretending to be dismayed by the notoriety of a front-page murder. While they mourned Lauren Sandburg's death, they were not unaware of the publicity value of a crime that cast no shadow on their own respectability. Ellison bet that they had held a conference and decided that the high-class murder wouldn't lose them any business.

To discover, however, sincere praise and a sense of loss among those who worked along side Blair Sandburg, pleased him more than all the lamentations of Messrs. Rose, Rowe and Fairmont. In a cut-throat business like advertising, it took the "real stuff" for Blair Sandburg to be held in such high esteem by his fellow-employees.

More and more, with every interview, that's what Jim Ellison was discovering. Lauren Blair Sandburg had the real stuff.

He was the real deal.

He was also very dead.

***

Monday, Late Morning

At the very same time, across town, Lancaster Corey, art dealer and professional gadfly, paid a visit to Waldo Lydecker, to talk about a great many things. Not the least of things on the agenda was Lauren Sandburg's portrait. He inquired, not too subtly, if Lydecker cared to place a bid for the picture.

Waldo's reaction was immediate. "How dare you? How dare you come to my house, and offer me that worthless canvas. I deplore it, do you hear me?"

"Yes. You've made yourself quite clear, Waldo." The other man sniffed and dabbed an Irish linen handkerchief to his bulbous noise. "Then, I shall simply sell it to the other buyer."

"Wait a moment. How can you offer what you don't own? That picture is hanging on the wall of Lauren's apartment now. He died without a will, the lawyers will have to fight it out."

"Au contraire. I believe that Mr. Treadwell, Lauren's uncle, is assuming responsibility for the family. If you don't believe me, you can contact Salsbury, Robbins & and Dunne, the lawyers."

Waldo Lydecker was infuriated at the art dealer's knowledge of things that he, the Great Waldo Lydecker, knew nothing about. "What arrangements have been made for his other things? Is there to be a sale?"

"This bid came through a private channel. Someone who had seen the portrait in Lauren's apartment, no doubt, made inquiries of several dealers. He hadn't known we were Jacoby's agents."

"Whoever 'he' is, his tastes make it clear the he knows very little about painting."

Corey pursed his lips unattractively. "Not everyone is so unbending about art as you, my friend."

"Is the prospective buyer some blue-color connoisseur who saw the picture in the Sunday papers and wants to own the portrait of a murder victim?"

"I don't believe that it would be strictly ethical to tell you who my customer is."

"Well, unfortunately, then, I'll have to write the story without using names."

Lancaster Corey responded like a hunting dog to the smell of rabbit. "What story?"

"You have just given me material for a magnificent piece! An ironic small story about the struggling young woman painter whose genius goes unrecognized until one of her subjects is violently murdered. Because of it, Antonia Jacoby has become the painter of the year. But without an intriguing ending ..."

"Ellison. Detective James Ellison is the one who wants to buy the portrait."

***

Monday, Noon

Around noon, Jim Ellison found himself back at the crime scene. He stood inside the front door of the apartment, and inhaled, unable to filter out entirely the traces of blood still hanging in the air. It was disturbing to him, and surprisingly distracting. Blair Sandburg was everywhere.

Jesus. Ellison was calling the murder victim by his first name. And not Lauren, but Blair. The name used only by intimates of the deceased. Jim Ellison was now an "intimate" of the dead man. People had gone to jail for a lot less.

Maybe Jim Ellison wasn't the right person to be conducting this investigation. This Sandburg guy was hitting the detective below the belt, in a lot of different ways. Years in the military and the ranks of the New York Police Department had made Jim Ellison cautious about sharing details of his own life, and his particular predilections.

What side had Sandburg's bread been buttered on? The face in the portrait looked down at him, unwilling to share that bit of information. The face was beautiful, no question about it. He could easily see how Shelby Carpenter, the damned bitch, would have been on cloud nine getting her hooks into him. He also understood how Waldo Lydecker, a man from a different era, could honestly love the young man, not physically, but with all the emotion of the grand passion they used to write about in Victorian novels.

For want of something better to do, the detective opened the liquor cabinet and checked out its contents. Virtually all of the bottles were name brands, expensive vintages, top of the line, except the one bottle sitting at the forefront. That was a cheap, rough scotch called Black Pony. The collar around it read "Mosconi's Liquors" and gave a phone number. Ellison dialed it. "Hello, Mosconi's? This is Lieutenant Ellison, Homicide Bureau. Lauren Sandburg has been buying his liquor from you for several years, hasn't he? Yeah. Had he ever bought a brand of scotch called Black Pony? I see. That's all I wanted to know. Thanks. Goodbye."

So, the fifth of Black Pony wasn't anything that the murder victim had bought for himself.

At that moment, Sergeant Rafe brought in Bessie Clary, Lauren's maid, the poor unfortunate who had discovered Sandburg's inert body wrapped in the blue kimono, dark blood matted in the long, auburn hair.

"Come in, Miss Cleary."

"Never mind the 'Miss Cleary.' I'm a domestic, and I got nothin' to be ashamed of."

"Sit down, 'Bessie.'"

Jim Ellison steeled himself for a difficult discussion with this feisty Irish woman. "I'm Lieutenant Jim Ellison. I'm investigating the murder that took place here on Friday night. So, what do you have to tell me, Bessie."

"His letters! And his private diary!" The large woman in her Sunday finest huffed at Ellison as she pulled the stationary and book away. "You're reading his papers." The detective heard the small lock on the suede diary click into the closed position. "It's a shame, that's what it is. A shame."

"I said, sit down, Bessie."

"I'll stand on my own two feet. I'm not afraid of cops. I was taught to spit whenever one walked by."

For some reason, Ellison didn't take offense at the bristly old bird.

"Go ahead and spit, if it will make you feel better." The detective pulled out yet another cigarette, but didn't light it. She watched the tall man who had by this time stood up and walked over to the mantel, under the gaze of the portrait.

She finally relented. "What do ya' wanna know?"

"What we all want to know. Who killed Lauren Sandburg."

"How would I know?" Her face took on a horrified expression. "You don't think I done it, do you? I know you cops get crazy notions. But if you got those notions, ask anyone. Anyone who ever come here. That Mr. Sandburg was a real, fine gentleman. I would have worked for him for nothing. And it wasn't because of the hundreds of kindnesses he done for me. It was because he was a kind, caring man."

"Help me, then. Mr. Sandburg never bought cheap stuff like this," Ellison waved the Black Pony bottle. "Not a fine gentleman like Lauren Sandburg. How'd this get in the liquor closet?"

Bessie Cleary grabbed the bottle, looking at it as though it were poisonous. "I found it in there." She pointed through the open door to the bedroom. "On the table by the bed. With two glasses. So, I moved it." She chuckled defiantly. "And that ain't all I done. Maybe there were a lot of fingerprints around here. But the cops never seen them. I wiped them off. And I cleaned off the bed and table and the bathroom before the 'flat feet' come on Saturday. Lucky I come to my senses in time. The bottle I put in the cabinet's so's no one would notice." Bessie sniffed. "But I can tell you this much, Lieutenant Ellison, this here scotch was brought in after I left on Friday."

"Are you sure, Bessie? You keep close watch on the liquor that's used in this place?"

Bessie's iron jaw shot forward. Cords stiffened in her thick neck. "Mr. Blair always left me the list and I ordered on the phone. And I put all the empties in the basement."

Inwardly, Jim Ellison sagged. Such unexpected evidence threw unmistakable light on the last moments of the murdered Blair Sandburg. It should have gladdened the heart of a police officer, making his job that much easier. Instead, the heart-weary detective found himself loath to accept the facts -- not because he had any reason to disbelieve Bessie's story, but because her sordid revelations had disarranged the pattern of his thinking.

In his coldest, most official voice, Jim Ellison said, "If there was someone in the bedroom with him, we have a completely new picture of the crime."

"You mean it wasn't like you said in the papers, that the doorbell rang and he went to open it?"

"I accepted that as the most probably explanation, considering the body's position." Ellison's eyes moved slowly from the bedroom, then to the arrangement of carpets on the polished floor. "If someone had been in there with him, the visitor might have been on the point of leaving. Maybe Sandburg went to the door with that person." Ellison stood rigid at the spot where the river of dark blood had been dammed up by the thick pile of the carpet. "Maybe they were quarreling and, just as the person reached the door, she - or he - turned and shot Sandburg."

"It gives you the creeps, don't' it?" Bessie blew her nose weakly. Suddenly, she stopped, horrified. "Wait a minute. Just what do you mean 'he'? Mr. Blair wasn't like that, I tell you! But you'll make up terrible lies to tell them newspaper reporters, won't you?" Bessie was close to tears. "Poor Mr. Blair."

"He's dead, Bessie, and past caring."

"His reputation ain't. I don't want the whole world thinking he was the sort that got drunk, and whored around with ... people in his bedroom, God rest his soul. You're like the rest of them, aren't you? A dirty mind ..."

"Calm down, Bessie. Nobody's talking to anybody. I swear to you." Ellison gave the woman a soft smile, one that made her smile back, in spite of her dislike of "men in blue." "Could you get me a set-up, some ice and a couple of glasses?"

Ellison's request was interrupted by the arrival of Waldo Lydecker, Alan Treadwell, and Shelby Carpenter. Henry Brown, Detective Rafe's partner, brought all three into the apartment. Jim Ellison snubbed out his un-smoked cigarette.

"Quite a delegation. I only sent for you, Miss Carpenter. Did you need reinforcements to face me?"

"I was going out to an appointment and thought Shelby could use the company." Alan Treadwell said, as he sat down.

"My excuse as equally as feeble, so I won't bore you with it." Lydecker flashed his most feline smile.

"This has been a frightful time for me, Lieutenant. I needed the support of my friends. It's so difficult for me to be here."

"For all of us, Shelby." Alan Treadwell soothed. Ever the gentleman, he took a moment to nod his head at the cleaning lady. "Bessie, dear. How are you? What are you doing here?"

"I'm paid 'til the end of the month, so I'll work 'til the end of the month."

"Bessie, we're going to need two more glasses. Can you get them for us?"

"Yes, Mr. Jim." She smiled up at him, this time with an almost girlish innocence about the tired, world-weary face and left the room

"I can hardly bear to be here," Sandburg's uncle looked around the beautiful apartment, "surrounded by Lauren's things. I suppose I'll eventually call Lancaster Corey in to dispose of them."

"Not everything," Waldo Lydecker corrected. Two or three things in here belong to me. The clock, the one that's the mate for my own, that fireplace screen, and, of course, that vase."

"Excuse me?" Shelby asked, almost petulantly.

"It wasn't his."

"I distinctly remember your bringing that vase to him Christmas all tied up in ribbons."

"Not only ribbons, my dear. There was a string attached to that package -- an old Waldo-Blair custom. A mutual loan on Christmas Day of a possession the other admired. That vase is part of my collection and I intend to have it back."

"Nothing's leaving except you, Lydecker." Ellison put an end to the petty-squabbling, as if it were being done over the dearly departed's body. "We're all leaving. I have to be back at headquarters by noon."

The friends of Lauren Blair Sandburg and suspects in his murder all left together.

***

Monday, Early Evening

The Lauren Sandburg case was Jim Ellison's first experience with citizens who get their pictures into the part of the papers called the Society Section. Even professionally, Ellison had never been inside a nightclub with animal-skin covers on the chairs. When those people wanted to insult each other, they said "darling," and when they got affectionate, they threw around words that a bailiff wouldn't use to a pimp. Poor people brought up to hear their neighbors screaming filth every Saturday night were more careful of their language than well-bred smart-alecks. Jim knew as many four-letter words as the next man and used them when he felt like it. But not around women. Or in writing. It seemed to take a college education to teach a man that he could put on paper what he ordinarily would write on a bathroom wall.

Frustrated, Ellison left the police department at the end of his shift, got into his sedan and began to drive slowly, almost aimlessly. Passing the corner where he should have turned for the Athletic Club, the detective knew he didn't want to go home. He didn't feel like pool, his mind wasn't sharp enough for poker, and he'd never sat in the lounge in the two years he'd lived there. His steel bedroom furniture reminded Ellison of a dentist's office. There wasn't a comfortable chair in the room, and the couch was a good two inches too short for him to stretch out on. These were the excuses he found for going to Blair Sandburg's apartment that night. Or maybe he was just ... lonely.

Before Jim Ellison went upstairs, he stopped to raise the top of his car and shut the windows. Later, when the thing happened that would again cause him to question his sanity, he remembered performing the acts of a sane and sober man. Ellison had the key in his pocket and let himself in as coolly as if he'd been entering his own place. As the detective opened the door, he saw the first streaks of lightning through the blinds. Thunder crashed. It was followed by the stillness that precedes heavy rain.

His head ached. Reaching for the nearest lamp, Ellison turned it on, only to have the light hurt his sensitive eyes. He turned it off quickly. Ellison got himself a drink of water from the kitchen, took off his trench coat, jacket, opened his collar and sat, stretching out in the long chair. He inhaled slowly, filtering out the traces of blood still hanging in the air. His senses open wide, the detective was flooded with honeysuckle and vanilla. And something else. Another hothouse flower he couldn't quite place, yet was so familiar that it seemed to be something of his own.

That's what this Sandburg had been. A damned hothouse flower. One Jim Ellison would never be able afford.

Blair Sandburg's bedroom was as exotic as the portrait hanging on the wall. Fierce-looking African masks stared from their vantage points alongside a magnificent Navajo rug. The bed was Moorish in look and weight. Yet the duvet looked like a quilt Jim Ellison had seen on one of his day trips to the Amish country of neighboring Pennsylvania. The tans and browns of the color scheme were subdued, yet sudden splashes of red and maroon drew attention to the austere, white vase filled with very expensive calla lilies, anthuriums, and, incongruously, field-picked yarrow and thistle.

The overall impression of the room was distinctly male, yet undeniably artistic and uncommon -- a true reflection of an individual who was unafraid to show who he was. It was a person who Jim Ellison desperately wanted to know.

Jim Ellison began making an unscientific investigation of Blair Sandburg's bedroom, slowly examining the contents of the chest of drawers, dressing table, and closet. His ears had heard the whispers of cashmere and corduroy and gabardine. With those sensitive fingers, Jim Ellison continued touching the shirts hanging in the walk-in, imagining how they had glided over the young man's compact torso. As he continued rubbing the fabric of the midnight blue one between his thumb and forefinger, the detective tried to imagine how the tailored garment caressed that burnished skin he'd seen in the portrait. He hesitated for a split second, then drew it close to his face, and inhaled. Heady colognes mixed with strange, earthy oils. And the unique essence of Blair Sandburg clung everywhere like a half-forgotten memory. The unmistakably male odor made Jim Ellison react instinctively, viscerally. His face reddened as an unwanted erection grew long and hard like granite.

Christ. What was wrong with him? Ellison was no better than some pimply adolescent looking at girly magazines and sporting his first woody. The worst part of this perverted little tableau was that Ellison wanted to relieve the pressure here and now, amid Blair's Sandburg's strongest presence, and almost began fingering himself through his slacks. He stopped. This was a disgrace, not only to himself, but to the dead man whose murder investigation he was heading. Then Jim Ellison realized what was happening here. He was mapping Blair Sandburg with those damned heightened senses of his -- senses so sharp, that every little nuance of what and who Blair Sandburg had been was indelibly etched in his brain.

Thank God, none of the other police officers were around. Jim Ellison was alone, save for a roiling grief, an overwhelming need, a longing. It was like the huge wave off Diamond Head in Hawaii that had crashed over and brutalized him a dozen or so years ago. The unforgiving ocean knocked him off a surfboard he'd been given as a gift, it flooded his lungs with seawater, and almost robbed his soul of hope.

This was even worse. Bereft of Blair Sandburg - a man he'd never met, and never would - hope found no purchase.

Dead was dead.

Never had Jim Ellison known any other human being, man or woman, in this fashion. Just as Blair Sandburg's library had revealed the quality of his mind, the bedroom had yielded deeper secrets of his personality. He didn't like to think about Blair being no better than any other man he'd ever known: cheating on the fiancée, having cheap flings whenever the whim moved him, even keeping the likes of a Waldo Lydecker and the damned loved sick sap of an artist on strings that only a master puppeteer of human nature could pull over and over again.

This was getting him nowhere, except closer to a policeman's pension for the rest of his professional life -- or a hospital with rubber walls. Jim Ellison left the bedroom and walked over to the desk, picked up and began to leaf through more of Waldo Lydecker's letters to the dead man when the doorbell rang. As if psychically summoned, the author materialized. Wet from the torrential, summer downpour, umbrella in hand, Waldo Lydecker greeted the detective with the implausible, "I was just walking by, and saw the lights on. Have you sublet this apartment?" He added, edged amusement in his voice. "You're here often enough to pay rent."

"Any objections?"

Lydecker's eyes fell onto his own distinctive stationery, which he recognized immediately. "Yes. I object to your prying into Blair's correspondence - especially the ones from me."

"Why? Yours are the best of the bunch."

"Thanks, but I didn't write them to you. Have you no sense of privacy?"

"Murder victims have no claim to privacy."

"And detectives who buy portraits of murder victims? Do they lay claim to privacy? Yes. Lancaster Corey already told me you put in a bid."

"That's none of your business."

"Did it every strike you that you're acting very strangely. It's a wonder you don't come here like a suitor with roses and a box of candy. Drug story candy, of course."

"Why don't you make like 'Casper the Ghost' and vanish, Lydecker?"

"Very droll. But now, to the matter at hand. Perhaps we can come to terms. You want the portrait. Perfectly understandable. I want my possessions -- my clock, my screen and my vase. Also, perfectly understandable. Now, if you ..."

"Get out." Ellison whispered through gritted teeth.

"You'd better be careful, Ellison." Lydecker warned, "Or you'll end up in a psychiatric ward. I don't think they've ever had a patient who fell in love with a corpse." With that, Waldo Lydecker left the detective alone with his thoughts, the stinging words still ringing in his ears.

Ellison poured himself a stiff drink to help deaden the unrelenting pain that was eating him alive.

But scotch - even the 12-year-old variety - was no antidote for obsession.

***

Tuesday Evening

The next day was a blur, populated with real people who might have been ghosts, for all Jim Ellison knew. That night again saw a weary Jim Ellison drawn inexorably back to Blair Sandburg's apartment.

He almost called out to say "Hello" to the portrait before he caught himself. //Not good, Ellison. This is getting just too crazy, even for you.// The big man shook himself from the odd feeling of sadness, as though mourning the loss of a loved one.

As Ellison continued, like a sleepwalker in a waking dream, he touched the undershirts, soft linen handkerchiefs, the stacks of clothing which waited patiently for a wearer who would never return. Uncorking the Limoge bottle to inhale the cologne, he was treated anew to the fragrance he found on practically every surface in Sandburg's apartment. A small smile played wistfully on his lips, as he closed his eyes to recapture that illusive mental picture, the one he had been constructing since the moment he'd been assigned to the case. Jim Ellison did not see a chalk outline on the floor. Instead, he saw a laughing, blue-eyed specter, with warmth pouring from a soul too big to fit into the small body. It spilled out into Ellison's chest, making it beat in a sympathetic tattoo.

The smile faded from the detective's hard-edged face as he caught sight of a man in the full-length mirror, a disturbed, pathetic excuse for a human being obsessed with a ghost.

Ellison didn't like what he saw - and what this case was doing to him. He didn't like it one bit. Running his hand through his short, brown hair, Jim Ellison tried to pull himself together. He hadn't been there to save Blair Sandburg in life. The detective could only find the miserable son of a bitch who had taken away the other half of his soul using a double-barreled shotgun. Exhausted, he got himself a highball glass filled with scotch and a splash of water, sat by the fireplace in what was becoming "his" chair, and thumbed through more of Blair Sandburg's letters. These he'd been carrying with him, violating yet another damned police rule. (That made at least 20 he'd broken since this case started.) People had loved this damned man. They loved everything about him. They loved him as a friend, advisor and colleague. They saw him as an object of desire, a prize to be snared.

What Sandburg's reaction was to these letters, Jim Ellison had no clue.

The face in the portrait looked down at him. Ellison could easily see how Shelby Carpenter, the damned little bitch, would be on cloud nine getting her hooks into Blair Sandburg. He could also understand how Waldo Lydecker, a man from a different era, could honestly love the young man, not physically, perhaps, but with all the emotion of a grand passion.

The detective felt numb. The letters slipped from his fingers. Slowly, he drifted off into a troubled sleep as the strains of a familiar song - Blair's favorite - played on the phonograph which he hadn't remember turning on.

Sometime later - it might have been seconds, minutes, or hours, he couldn't swear -- a sudden flash of lighting illuminated the room. It ripped the detective from his uneasy slumber. On the heels of nature's pyrotechnics, standing there framed in the doorway was a young man. Looking first at the intruder, then the portrait, and back again, Lieutenant Jim Ellison saw ... "him."

In the flesh.

A wet Lauren Blair Sandburg turned on a light and asked the stranger in his apartment, "Who are you? How'd you get in? You'd better leave right now, or I'll call the police." He crossed to the table behind the sofa and reached for the phone.

Jim Ellison's senses were disoriented, yet strangely on fire. Looking at the portrait again, clearly bewildered, he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and face. "You're ... you're alive."

"If you don't get out of here, I'm going to call the police."

"You 'are' Lauren Sandburg, aren't you? Aren't you?"

"I'm calling the police."

Staggering slightly, Ellison answered, "But, I 'am' the police," as he reached into his back pocket, and pulled out the gold detective shield as identification.

"What's this about?"

Shaking himself back into the role of no-nonsense investigator, Jim Ellison scooped up the daily newspaper he'd brought with him, which was folded on the table alongside the fireplace chair.

"Don't you know?"

"Know what? I've been in the country." Blair Sandburg now sounded as bewildered as Jim Ellison felt.

"Try to stay calm. Here. You'd better read this." Ellison handed the crumpled paper over. Their fingertips touched briefly, and it was as though the energy of the universe passed through them. The detective fought the urge to actually grab onto the young man and crush him in an embrace of relief, comfort, and barely-controlled lust.

Blair skimmed the front-page story. As the enormity of the circumstances hit him, the young man staggered back, collapsing against the arm of the couch. "My God."

In an instant, Jim Ellison was at his elbow, guiding him down to the sofa. He quickly poured a shot of scotch and nudged the distracted Sandburg's shoulder with the Waterford tumbler. "Here. Drink this."

Blair obeyed. His large, frightened eyes turned upward toward the tall man. "Thank you, officer ..."

"Ellison. Detective Jim Ellison." Somebody was murdered in this room. Have any idea who it was?"

"... I can't think ..."

"Who had a key to your apartment?"

"Nobody."

"You sure?"

"When did this happen?"

"Friday night."

"My God. Friday night ... but, I wasn't ... how did it ... who was ..." Blair Sandburg strung words together, but they made precious little sense until he gathered himself. "What are you going to do now, detective?"

"Find out who was murdered and then find the murderer." Jim Ellison's voice gentled perceptibly. "Better take off those wet clothes. You might catch cold."

"All right." Blair Sandburg, still dazed, went into his bedroom. A few seconds later, he hurried out, clutching a suit in one hand, a magazine in the other. "I found this in my closet. Look at the label. It was Dane Redfern's. He's one of my agency's models." Sandburg offered the magazine to Ellison. Redfern's face grinned from the page.

"He was good looking, if you like the type."

"Do you suppose - " Blair left the sentence incomplete.

"Sit down, please." The detective ordered, taking the magazine away from a visibly shaken Sandburg, and putting it down on the desk. Ellison slipped his suit jacket on.

If only he could have donned his lost dispassion as easily.

"This is Tuesday night. You left on Friday. Rather a long weekend, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"What train did you take?"`

"The 7:26."

"See anybody you knew?"

"No."

"Then what?"

I got off the train at Norwalk."

"Saw nobody you knew at the station, either?"

"No."

"Go on."

"Then, I went to the garage where I keep my car. It's a private building. Nobody saw me there, either. Then I drove to my house."

"You were there four days. What did you do?"

"I read. Worked in my garden. Did some thinking."

"You were going to marry Shelby Carpenter this week. Thursday, if I'm not mistaken."

"Yes."

"Yet you went away just before your wedding."

"Yes."

"You know Shelby Carpenter has a key to your apartment. Yet, you didn't tell me."

"I don't know any such thing."

"How else did Dane Redfern get into the apartment? You knew he was in love with Miss Carpenter, didn't you?"

"Yes. He told me as much at lunch on Friday. But he meant nothing to Shelby."

"That sounds pretty convenient."

"I understand Shelby better than you do."

"Redfern was found in a robe. Your robe. Nothing else. Hardly the outfit for an impersonal chat between a man and woman who mean nothing to one another."

The look on Lauren Sandburg was one of confusion and indecision.

"And you didn't hear about it?"

"How could I? I didn't get any papers delivered and my radio was broken." He suddenly realized what happened. "Why did they think it was me?"

"His face was shot away."

Blair Sandburg's hand automatically went up to his own face.

"Your cleaning woman found the body."

"Jesus! Poor Bessie! It must have been awful for her!"

"He looked like you?"

"Not really, but we were about the same height and weight. He did wear his hair long, the way I do."

"I was meaning to ask you about that? Why?"

"Why what?"

"The 'artsy' look. Guess you were never asked to cut it. You obviously weren't in the military."

"No. But not for the reason you seem to be implying, detective. My eyesight made me 4-F, or I would have joined up."

"Really?"

"Really."

"If they're so bad, why aren't you wearing glasses?"

"I am. It's a fairly new type of contraption you wear 'in' your eye. They're called 'contact lenses.'"

"Never heard of them."

"Actually, Leonardo Da Vinci was the first to record the concept of contact lenses, in the early 1500's. But it wasn't until 1823, when an English astronomer discovered that vision could be corrected by placing a lens directly on the cornea of the eye. The plastic ones I'm wearing were created and introduced in 1939 by Dr. William Fienbloom, an American optometrist." For a moment, the horror of the moment was forgotten, as Blair Sandburg placed himself in a 'teacher' mode. "It's interesting how you're fitted for them. A soft, wax-like substance is placed over the eyeball, which hardens so that the impression can be made. Then ..."

"That's more than I ever wanted to know, Mr. Sandburg. Take a breath."

"I'm sorry. When I'm upset, I tend to rattle on."

"It's OK. Tell me more about this Redfern guy."

"He was young. But his 'look' was what every New York agency was beating down the doors for. We were lucky to have signed him exclusively." Blair tilted his head up a second time, and caught Jim Ellison studying him intently. "Who could have done it?"

"We don't know."

"Why would anybody want to ..." Sandburg paused, then sprang to his feet. "You don't think they were after ME, do you? Well, do you?"

"Look, you're upset. This has been a shock, I know. Why don't you try to grab some sleep. There are a lot of questions I want to ask you, but they can wait until morning." With that, Ellison grabbed his hat and overcoat, and walked toward the door.

"You're leaving me alone here?"

"Don't worry. I'll ... we'll take care of you. Get some sleep."

"I don't think I can."

"Got any sleeping pills?"

"No. I never use them. I meditate to calm myself down."

"You what?"

"I meditate. It's a relaxation technique I learned when I traveled with my mother in the Orient."

"Sleeping pills will be faster. I'll pick some up."

"I really don't need them. But thanks for being so ... well, thanks. You're not like all detectives, are you?"

"We're pretty much the same."

"No, Detective Ellison. I don't think so."

"You're weren't planning to call anyone, were you?"

"Why?"

Ellison took a step toward Blair Sandburg, and ended up surprisingly close to the smaller, well-formed body. He inhaled deeply as if to reassure himself that this was no dream. Blair didn't move. The two men found themselves in one another's space no more than a hair's breadth away. The air they shared seemed heavy with great uncertainty and even greater promise.

"I don't want anyone to know you're back. If someone 'were' after you, they might try again."

"My God."

"So just keep away from that." Ellison nodded his head toward the phone. "OK?"

"OK." Blair smiled gratefully.

As Detective Jim Ellison put on his overcoat, and prepared to leave, he turned on his heel, and dug in. "I know you went out of town to decide whether or not to marry Shelby Carpenter. I want the truth." He braced himself for the answer.

"I decided not to."

A look of relief washed over Jim Ellison's face. "I'll be back tomorrow. Don't call anybody tonight. Understand?" The gruffness in the detective's voice almost covered the happiness in it. Almost, but not quite.

"Yes. You're very clear."

"I'll see you in the morning. Early." The detective looked at him for a moment longer than was strictly called for, then left.

Blair Sandburg watched the tall, muscular figure walk out. After some thought, he crossed to his desk, and picked up the phone. Blair looked at the door again, sighed quietly, then quickly began to dial a number.

***

Tuesday, 9:00 pm

From their vantage point in a parked vehicle across the street, Sergeants Rafe and Brown witnessed the "murder victim" emerge from his apartment, run out and slide into the front seat of Shelby Carpenter's car. A few minutes later, Lauren Blair Sandburg returned to his apartment, while the woman drove away, followed at a respectable distance by Lieutenant Jim Ellison.

***

Tuesday, 10:00 pm

Shelby Carpenter made the trip to Blair Sandburg's country place in little over an hour later. Turning off the car's engine, she walked into the small living room, and removed the shotgun from over the rustic fireplace. Shelby almost dropped it as a voice behind her asked: "Are you taking it down or putting it back, Miss Carpenter?"

Detective Jim Ellison stood, rain-soaked, by the door. He walked over, and grabbed the shotgun away from the startled woman. Holding it up to his nose, Ellison was fairly assaulted by the smell of spent gun powder. "It's been fired lately."

"I killed some rabbits awhile back. I don't remember exactly when."

"Why didn't you clean it?"

"I forgot, I suppose."

"Your initials are carved in the stock."

"Yes, I gave it to Lauren for protection. He didn't want it - he hates guns - but I insisted. This place is rather isolated, as you can see."

"Did you teach Sandburg how to use it?"

"No." Shelby Carpenter answered, warily.

"Does he know how to use it?"

"It didn't occur to me to ask."

"You're a vague sort of girl, aren't you?"

"I've spent very little time in observing my own character, Lieutenant Ellison."

"You didn't borrow this gun lately, and just bring it back tonight?"

"You followed me here. You saw me come in. You ought to know."

"You realize the spot you're in, Miss Carpenter? You met that poor sap, Dane Redfern, at Lauren Sandburg's apartment. You knew all along that he was the one who'd been murdered."

Shelby Carpenter trembled, as she slid down into the rocking chair, located just behind her shapely legs.

"Didn't you know Lauren Sandburg would come back any day and spill the beans? Or did you plan to kill him, too? Hide the body someplace and cover up your first crime?"

Shelby pulled her mouth into a tight smile. "You're out of your mind, Mr. Ellison."

"You took a bottle of Black Pony to Sandburg's apartment on Friday night."

"I took it there over a week ago."

Bessie says it wasn't there Friday night. It was there Saturday. "

"I can't help what Bessie said."

"Where's the key to his apartment?"

"I haven't got it."

"Did you give it back to Sandburg tonight?"

"I never had one."

"OK. You didn't take the bottle of scotch there on Friday night. And you didn't have a key to his apartment. How did you get in? Come on, Miss Carpenter, spill it."

Seeing that telling Ellison the truth was inevitable, she began. "Lauren had a duplicate key at the office. I went and picked it up. I'd asked Dane to dine with me. You know, he thought ..." she groped for the right words, "... that he was in love with me. We talked a long time. Dane was upset. Then the door bell rang."

"Go on."

"I thought it was another one of Lauren's lost causes."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well, friends and acquaintances would come to him day and night with their troubles. I didn't want to answer it, in case ... well, it wouldn't look right, would it, if someone happened to drop by and found me here without Lauren ..." Shelby let the implication hang significantly in the air. "So, I asked Dane to go to the door. Nobody would think twice of his being here. I heard Dane's bare feet pad across the hardwood floor. There was a moment of silence, then I heard an awful explosion."

"It was an awful sound." She shuddered, remembering the explosion.

"Did you get to see who it was at the door."

"No. By the time I reached Dane, it was closed. I saw a heap on the floor. I think I called his name, but I'm not sure. I remember kneeling on the floor and feeling for his heartbeat. My first instinct was to call the police."

"Why didn't you?"

"I don't know. I was afraid for myself and for Lauren. In a weird sort of way, I had to protect someone whose life and safety are more important to me than my own. Can't you understand that?"

Ellison didn't respond to the loaded question. Instead, he asked pointedly, "Did you think Sandburg had done it?"

"I don't remember what I thought."

The detective pressed into Shelby, and almost whispered in her right ear. "Do you think so now/"

"No."

"But you 'did'?"

"No."

Ellison leaned back for a moment, regrouping himself. "On Saturday, when my men went to your hotel to tell you Lauren was dead, you seemed sincerely shocked."

"I hadn't expected your people to make that mistake."

Ellison stood, hiked up the shotgun and wedged it under his arm. "But you had your alibi ready, no matter who was dead."

Shelby Carpenter's voice and body pleaded for understanding. "Don't you see, Lieutenant? I was incapable of thinking that far ahead and trying desperately to find some way to keep Lauren out of it. I was heartbroken about Dane, and panic-stricken about my fiancee. I haven't slept a full two hours since this thing happened."

"Let's get back to the present." Ellison ordered, curtly. "What did you and Lauren Sandburg talk about tonight?"

"I told him the whole story, just as I told it to you."

Ellison's tone became harder, edgier. "He phoned you after he promised me he wouldn't call anybody. What did he want?"

Shelby defended the action. "It's perfectly natural he'd want to see me, especially after what's happened."

"Stop lying, Miss Carpenter. He sent you here to get rid of this gun."

"No! It was my own idea. Lauren doesn't even know I'm here."

Detective Jim Ellison found himself in front of a large tabletop radio. He turned it on. An impossibly upbeat tune rang out. "Works fine, doesn't it?" He sighed, in defeat. People were all the same. They lied. About little things. About big things.

"Didn't you think it would?"

Ellison felt gut-kicked. "I was hoping it wouldn't. Let's go."

"Am I under arrest?"

"No. But don't leave town. It would be foolish to try."

The steadily falling rain pelted the two as they ran to their separate cars. It was only marginally more depressing to Jim Ellison than finding that damned Emerson unbroken.

***

Wednesday, Early Morning

The following morning, the rain had stopped, as Detective Jim Ellison made his way to Blair Sandburg's apartment. He was armed with bacon, eggs, and a notebook full of new questions. The resurrected Blair came to the door in a loose-fitting shirt and a pair of well-worn, comfortable-looking slacks. The silky hair on his chest was evident every time Blair Sandburg moved. He wore slip-on shoes without socks. The long hair, usually pulled back and pomaded, was loose and flowing. Jim Ellison had the impression of someone from an earlier era. Perhaps the younger son of a duke or a baron captured at the height of his male beauty.

"I brought breakfast, Mr. -"

"Blair. Call me Blair."

"OK. I brought breakfast, 'Blair.' Now, go, make coffee."

"You always sound like this in the morning?"

Their conversation was interrupted by a hysterical shriek from Bessie Cleary who had walked into a room and saw a dead man standing in front of her. Blair Sandburg ran over and cradled the older woman in his arms.

"It's all right, Bessie. I'm not a ghost. Really."

"But I 'found' you!"

"It was Mr. Redfern's body that you found. Honestly. Now, could you do Lieutenant Ellison and me a favor? Make us one of your wonderful breakfasts? Please? Here. The detective brought everything we need."

"All right. And I'll put on the coffee for you."

"You're a treasure, Bessie, my love. What would I do with out you?"

"Oh, Mr. Blair ..." Color flushing her ample cheeks. the still-shaken Bessie retreated into the small kitchen off the parlor.

It was the first time that Jim Ellison had seen the Sandburg Magic at work. Now, he understood why Lauren Sandburg had been at the top of everyone's wish list. Jim Ellison was a virgin here. This was the first time he'd experienced Lauren Sandburg's magnetic, 'grab you by the heart' personality. It was practically overwhelming.

He needed to be in charge again, even if it were only an illusion.

"While we're waiting, let's you and I have a little talk."

"Why do I think that's the understatement of the week, Lieutenant?"

***

Wednesday, Late Morning

The room looked pleasantly untidy, as though it had seen a lot of living in the preceding four hours. The ashtrays were used, cushions crushed, chairs moved around. The curtains were left down, so the light of late-morning was barred from entering. The table lamps were burning bright, as if the room's occupants had forgotten that the day might have progressed without them. In various parts of the room, there were used dishes, coffee cups, glasses - always in sets of two.

Blair was stretched out on the couch, listening while Jim Ellison, leaning against the mantelpiece, told a "cop" story.

"After I got back from Peru, I shipped out to Europe. I started having some ... anyway, when I was discharged at the end of '45, I decided to join the police force. I've been pretty lucky to make detective in a relatively short time."

"With all due respect, I don't think 'luck' had anything to do with it. You're good at what you do."

The two looked at each another, and for one absurd moment, Jim Ellison thought he was going to actually blush, a thing that hadn't happened since ... well, never. So he turned his eyes toward the bookcase. "I'm talking too much. I must be boring the pants off you."

Blair Sandburg laughed, and Jim Ellison felt the warmth of the sound wash over him. "No, of course not! I haven't been this excited since I quit reading 'Dick Tracy.'"

"Ouch! Now, you've really got me embarrassed." Jim smiled, moved toward the sofa and sat himself down on its arm.

"I wonder why people - men, especially - always get self-conscious when they're most interesting? No. You're not boring me. If you were, I'd have been snoring by now. Go on."

"Better not encourage me. You might regret it."

"I don't think I could regret anything where you're concerned." Despite the compliment still clinging to his full, ripe lips, Blair Sandburg stifled a big yawn. "And no, I'm not tired. Honest." Despite protestations, he yawned again. "It's just that I haven't quite gotten over being a dead man yet." Suddenly, he jumped up, practically knocking Jim Ellison off his perch. "God, the coffee! Bessie told me to watch it! She'll skin me alive if the new pot boils over!" With that, Blair ran, barefoot, into the kitchen.

Looking at his wristwatch, Ellison stood and crossed over to the drapes. He called to Blair, "Hey, do you know what time it is?"

"Don't tell me."

"It's almost noon." Jim opened the drapes. The light blinded him, and he staggered backward, hands up to his face to block out the pain.

Oblivious to Jim's predicament, Sandburg answered. "It can't be."

Bringing himself back under control, more or less, Ellison called back. "That was some bright idea of mine, swinging over here for an early breakfast. Do you know while I've been bending your ear we've been gabbing for close to four hours?"

"Hey, don't knock it. And it's been swell." Blair shouted from the kitchen.

Jim crossed over to the liquor cabinet, and turned the small lamp off. "Fine thing. I'm supposed to be pumping you for information and I end up sharing 'The Life and Times of Jim Ellison.' You ought to be the detective."

Carrying a tray loaded with a carafe of coffee, fresh cups, spoons, cream and sugar, Blair Sandburg re-entered the room.

"It wouldn't be my first choice. Nor my second, come to think of it."

"That's not nice, Chief."

"Chief?"

Ellison realized the slip, from stranger to acquaintance to, what? He apologized. "Uh, sorry, Sandburg."

"I told you to call me by my given name."

"Sorry, Lauren."

"I meant 'Blair.' And I actually think I like 'Chief' better. Do you call anybody else that?"

"No."

"Then, I definitely like 'Chief' better." The smile that accompanied the pronouncement lit every corner of the room, and parts of Jim Ellison the detective thought had long been dead.

"So why wouldn't you want to be a detective?"

"Because most are ... well, you're different. I knew it the minute I saw you. I said so, didn't I?"

"Yes, you did." Ellison took two long strides forward toward Blair.

"Of course, I've never really known a detective. I thought you were all sadists who crept up on defenseless, innocent people and beat confessions out of them with a rubber hose."

"And how do you I'm not?" Jim sat down on the sofa, closer to Blair Sandburg than anyone, particularly a by-the-book New York cop in his right mind, would dare. He accepted a cup of steaming hot coffee from the man next to him.

"I just know. How do you take it?"

Jim Ellison almost dropped the Royal Doulton from his hand.

"What?"

"Coffee? How do you take it? Cream? Sugar?"

Unable to keep up any pretense of be unflappable around this exotic, beautiful, and intelligent young man one minute longer, Ellison growled his response. "Black." Then, almost immediately, he softened, and added, "Please."

"Anyway, I know you're not a sadist. You have a sense of humor. Besides what you're doing is important work. You know, you're something right out of a book, Jim. You're like the watchman of your tribe. It's just that your tribe - New York -- happens to have a few million people in it."

The flattery made Jim Ellison feel even taller than his considerable six-foot height.

"Yeah, so important that I got jerked out of the D.A.'s office and back to homicide for taking care of the tribe, as you put it. Some of the toes I stepped on along the way were too close to higher-ups in city hall. I was lucky to keep my shield. And then what with ..." Jim stopped short, before he felt compelled to pour out the whole, weird story of James Joseph Ellison and his out-of-control senses to this young man -- a virtual stranger. Yet, it didn't feel that way. In the space of 24 hours, Jim Ellison had become closer to Blair Sandburg than he'd ever been to another human being before. Closer than a brother. Or a comrade in arms. Or a best friend. Or a lover.

Closer than a lover? Christ. What was happening to Jim Ellison?

Sandburg's rich, soothing voice brought the detective back to the reality of the room and the conversation. "Do you realize we've drunk our way through practically every cup and saucer I own? If we drink any more, we're going to have to use my planting pots."

"Here's a novel thought. We could wash them."

"Not going to happen." That blinding grin that could stop the detective in his tracks flashed again. "As I was saying, the kind of detectives I hate are the ones who snoop around and poke into other people's private business."

"What the hell do you think I'm doing here?"

"Why, trying to find out who killed me. After all the important things you've done during the war and working with the District Attorney's office, you probably resented this case. Come on. You can tell me."

"I did," Jim admitted, "until I got interested in the victim."

"Do you say that to all the corpses, Detective Ellison?"

"You're not exactly that, are you? Which reminds me, to go back to 'snooping,' we never did get straight your activities last Friday night."

Blair rose, and walked over to the table. Not seeing what he was looking for, he asked, "Are there any cigarettes left?"

Jim Ellison put his cup down, and reached into his pocket.

"Yeah. But you shouldn't smoke. It's not good for you."

"Thank you for the health bulletin, 'Fearless Fosdick.'"

Blair accepted the Chesterfield, and Jim Ellison was about to light it with a match from the El Morocco matchbook in his pocket, when he stopped. He pulled out a pack of Wriggly's Juicy Fruit Gum and offered it to Sandburg.

"Here. Try this instead."

"Is this your favorite flavor."

Jim Ellison was afraid he would actually say, "No, you are," out loud. Instead, he answered, "Yeah. I got used to it during the war. It was the only thing that tasted ... well, edible."

"That bad?"

"Worse. The chipped beef, especially. They didn't call it SOS for nothing."

"SOS?"

"Shit on a shingle."

Both men laughed. Blair folded the stick of gum down neatly into a small square, then popped it into his mouth. "Being a vegetarian, I'll have to take your word for it."

"A vegetarian?"

"Yes. I don't eat meat, or anything with a face on it."

"I didn't know a guy could live like that. Where'd you learn about it?"

"From my mom, Naomi. She's what some people call a ..."

"Free spirit?" Jim Ellison ventured, hoping he'd chosen the right words.

"That's really nice of you. Most people throw around the word 'crackpot.'"

"I don't think a 'crackpot' would have raised such a swell kid." It had slipped out before the tough part of Jim Ellison could stop it.

Blair Sandburg, looked away, suddenly shy, embarrassed at the off-handed, unexpectedly wonderful compliment. Before he could get himself into a world of trouble with the well-built, impressive detective sitting so close - too close - to him, he switched subjects.

"You like El Morocco?"

"Wasn't there long enough to tell. Only long enough to arrest someone."

"Jesus."

"Now, back to business."

"Business?"

"Yes." Ellison hoped he sounded gruff, but kept his face as kind as he could. "But it won't take long. And then it'll be out of the way." Jim casually tossed the pack of gum down next to the serving tray. "I understand you and Shelby Carpenter quarreled that afternoon."

"How did you know?"

"It's my business to know. What was it about?"

"Didn't she tell you?"

"I want you to tell me."

"It was nothing much. Really. A tempest in a teapot."

"It was enough to put her into such a state she didn't know the difference between Beethoven and Sibelius. Actually, Miss Carpenter told me she slept through the whole thing. Well?"

Blair Sandburg sat back onto the sofa. "It was ... about ... us ... our future together. Like always."

"What did she want?"

"For me to be there for her. To put her first."

"It's a 'dame' thing, I guess."

"To want to be 'the' most important thing in someone's life? No, I don't think it's a 'dame' thing, Jim. Do you, really?" At that moment, the detective could swear that Blair's searching eyes pierced his heart. Ellison was afraid to answer the rhetorical question. If he said 'yes,' then he wouldn't be able to stop. //And if it were you, Blair Sandburg, you'd be the most important thing in my life, because you own me. You're the other half of my soul.// "Of course, Shelby wanted to keep living the good life as part of the New York scene. And that's not a cheap existence."

"The job you gave her ... well, both of you are pulling in the dough, aren't you?"

"It's really only something to keep her ... occupied."

"I don't get it, Chief."

"Didn't you know? Shelby's an heiress."

"What did you say? But I thought ..." Ellison was angry with himself for not having done his homework, for not investigating the background of the butter-would-melt-in-her-mouth woman. He covered his ignorance of the fact as quickly as he could. "I know she comes from a 'good' Southern family, but on that's down-on-its-luck."

"The Kentucky Carpenters made a fortune in everything from horses to pecans. It's true that's all gone now. But she's got a sizable trust fund coming to her from the maternal side of the family."

"And when will that be?"

"In a few years."

"So, what's the problem, then?"

Blair looked at him incredulously. "The 'problem' is that she wants me to give up my work - something I'm damned good at - to be a ... gentleman of leisure. Shelby sees our future together as room service at five-star hotels and 'slumming it' in a Benz instead of Daimler."

"That's a 'bad' thing? You're losing me here, Chief."

"But, I'm not a ... I could never be a ..."

"Gigolo?"

The temperature dropped about 30 degrees. "For two cents, I'd try knock you down for saying that, Ellison." Blair Sandburg's sudden fury was a third person in the room.

"Do yourself a favor, Sandburg. Don't. You'd lose the two cents, I promise."

Blair Sandburg's intelligence overrode his impulsive anger. He calmed himself. "I know. I ... I just didn't want you to get the ... you know ... wrong idea about me."

"And why would I do that?"

"Well, the earring ... the long hair ... the unconventional aspects of my life. Truth is, I'm a sensible, orthodox kind of man. I just couldn't take my 'life' off and spend day after day being Shelby Carpenter's playmate."

"It's not like she was offering you money for services rendered, Sandburg. She seems to have it bad for you. What could be so wrong about getting hitched to someone with a few bucks - "

"Quite a few bucks --"

"-- Quite a few bucks in the bank, who's flat-out beautiful - if you like the type -- and would pretty much let you do whatever you wanted? There are things a lot worse than 'not' starving for a living."

"Would you give up who you are to get married?"

"Nobody ever asked me."

"Supposing someone did."

"Not gonna happen."

"How do you know?"

"I don't meet that class of people. Unless they're under a tarp, two days' dead." As soon as he said it, Jim Ellison regretted the awful slip of the tongue. "Jesus Christ, Chief, I'm 'so' sorry. I didn't mean it."

"It's all right, Jim. I know." Blair Sandburg's face softened, as though the emotions he was tapping into threatened to spill out of his mouth, and from those bright eyes. "Maybe it's true. There's really no way you and I would have ever met one another if I hadn't been 'murdered.' But I'd like to think that fate would have found a way to bring us together." He reached out tentatively, and touched the back of Jim Ellison's hand. The lightning bolt that had passed between them the first time they'd met was a pale imposter compared to this. The detective felt it coursing through every inch of his body. He was on fire with a passion and need he never could have imagined before, much less experience. It didn't matter that Blair Sandburg was a man. Jim wanted him. He wanted him more than he'd ever wanted anyone or anything in his life.

But Ellison couldn't do it. Not now. The waters ahead were too murky. They needed to be cleared up before anything else could happen between them.

"Why did you cancel your dinner plans with Waldo Lydecker?"

"Shelby and I had been at it for over two hours. Why take it out on Waldo? One of his sarcastic remarks about Shelby and I'd have been tempted to wrap that cane of his around his neck." Blair paused, and took a sip of his now-lukewarm coffee.

"So, let me get this straight. You went to the country?"

"Yes."

"No one on the train knew you."

Blair shook his head. "No."

"You saw nobody at the station."

"No."

"You walked to your place. Nobody saw you along the way."

"No."

"You didn't get any groceries."

"No."

"Not very helpful."

"Be terrible if I were trying to establish an alibi, wouldn't it?"

"You didn't get a newspaper. And your radio was broken."

"Can I help it?"

"You certainly were bent on being alone."

"That's my way of processing what's bothering me. I've got to walk through the woods, read my books, think." Blair waited from some comment from Jim Ellison. There was only silence. "Or don't you believe me?"

"I don't know." Jim took a step closer to Blair. "I don't get you at all."

"There's nothing really to get. I'm a pretty simple person."

"Or a damned good liar." Ellison scrutinized the opening, trusting face in front of him. "What is there about you, Sandburg, that makes people go nuts over you?"

"Are you asking me that as a detective?" Blair was tantalizingly close to Jim, almost daring him to come closer. Much, much closer.

Ellison breathed in the scent of the expensive coffee they'd shared, the even more expensive cologne, and the most potent of all. Arousal. Pure, unadulterated arousal. It was intoxicating. And dangerous. And out of bounds to Detective Jim Ellison, until this case was over.

***

Wednesday, 1:00 pm

Blair Sandburg returned to the parlor, after dressing, in a feather-light, cotton navy-blue shirt Jim Ellison remembered from the closet, along with neatly-pressed tan slacks, socks, and sporty, dark blue saddle shoes, Blair Sandburg looked like he'd just stepped out of a country club brochure. The men drained the last two cups of coffee from the pot.

"By the way, I've asked Waldo Lydecker over."

The usually animated Blair Sandburg stood motionless. "Did you tell him I'm alive?"

"No."

"Why, Jim? Why be so brutal?"

"I'm not doing it for fun. I -" Ellison was interrupted by the front door opening, and an uninvited Shelby Carpenter walking in, resplendent in an ashes of rose summer frock. It served to accentuate her remarkable figure, and even more remarkable red hair. She kissed Blair high on his cheekbone, slowly, almost languidly, and deliberately enough for the detective to get the full picture of what was happening. Sliding down next to Blair on the couch, she greeted him. "Good morning, dear."

Ellison's scowl was off-putting. "What's wrong, Detective? Do I have to have a permit from the Police Department to kiss my fiancée 'good morning'?"

Ellison's jaw tensed. "So, it's 'on' again. She made you change your mind."" He tried to keep the disgust from creeping into his voice.

Blair Sandburg looked almost apologetic.

"Speaking of changing one's mind, Mr. Ellison, I've just come from my lawyer."

"Yeah? Did he tell you how much time you'd get off for good behavior?"

"No, but he told me that anything I may have said last night was said under duress and can't be used against me. Besides, none of it was true."

Jim Ellison leaned over the back of the soft. "Smart lawyer you've got there, Miss Carpenter. Maybe he told you how that scotch got up here Friday night after you'd bought it at Mosconi's. Maybe he was the one who arranged to meet Dane Redfern up here."

The doorbell interrupted them, as if it were drawing to a close a prizefight round between two heavyweights. Lieutenant Jim Ellison opened the door, and Waldo Lydecker strolled in, hat and cane in hand.

"Well, Ellison, have you thought over the deal I suggested?" As the detective shut the door, the other man swung his gaze into the sunny room, and suddenly locked eyes with Blair Sandburg. He stood motionless, stunned. A moment later, Waldo Lydecker collapsed, clutching at his chest.

Ellison and Sandburg rushed to either side of the stricken man and helped him up.

"Do you want a doctor?"

"Pills ... my right-hand pocket."

Jim Ellison reached into the jacket, grabbed the bottle of nitroglycerine tablets, opened it quickly, and put one under the prostrate man's tongue.

"Let's get him into my bedroom." Blair ordered. Together, he and Jim lifted Waldo, moved him carefully into the other room, and lowered him onto the comforter. Jim Ellison loosened the Windsor-knotted tie, while Blair Sandburg poured Lydecker glass of water, and pressed it against his reedy, pale lips.

After a few minutes, Jim Ellison was satisfied that an ambulance wouldn't have to be called. "Come on, Sandburg." he said softly. "Let's let him rest."

Back in the living room, Shelby Carpenter greeted Jim Ellison with a contemptuous "I think this is carrying things too far. There ought to be a law against it. Your methods are vicious."

"Yeah?"

"How's he feeling now?"

"It was a terrible shock for him." Blair Sandburg said, obviously affected by the plight of his incapacitated friend.

"I don't believe it." Ellison was incredulous. "Don't tell me that poor sap's another one of your conquests."

"Stop it, Detective! Don't you dare talk to Lauren like that!"

God, how he was beginning to hate that name -- especially, the way Shelby Carpenter said it.

The detective's eyes continued to burn into Blair Sandburg. "And why do you cover up for her? What story did she tell you ..."

"Don't answer him. Let the big, bad "cop" talk to our lawyer."

"'Our' lawyer? So now you're covering up for each other."

"Stop it. Both of you." Blair ground out through clenched teeth, torn between the two people fighting over him.

Ellison ignored Sandburg, and hammered home his message. "I've got enough on you, Miss Carpenter, to arrest you right now."

"Quick, Lieutenant, the cuffs!" Waldo Lydecker urged from the bedroom doorway. "Toddle her off to the 'hoosegow.'"

"Stay out of this, Lydecker."

"But she looks so good in bracelets."

"And you looked so good on your hands and knees. With that mouth of yours shut!" Shelby Carpenter's mask of gentility had fallen off and crashed to the ground.

Regaining his former aplomb, Waldo walked into the room and up to Blair. He reached out, and touched the younger man's arm. In that brief instant, no one else existed in the apartment. "Forgive me for the theatrics." He apologized. Then, coming back to himself, he continued, with a nasty little innuendo in his voice. "Well, Ellison, what does Blair's resurrection do to you?"

"Too bad Dane Redfern can't be resurrected."

"I'm afraid I interrupted what you people call a 'pinch.' Do your duty, officer. Take her away, preferably in chains."

"You know, Lydecker, you've made me change my mind."

"Well, in that case, we'll have time for a little get-together. Better order some liquor and food, Blair."

"What for?"

"People are coming to celebrate your return. My man is calling all your friends. Everyone is coming."

'Why did you do that?"

"A sense of the fitness of things. Perhaps Detective Ellison can bundle up all the loose ends of this case and weave them together into a noose."

***

Wednesday, Late Afternoon

The apartment was crowded with dozens of people, eating, drinking, and gossiping, mostly about one another. And of course, their host, Lauren Sandburg. Off to one side, in the library that was serving as the impromptu bar, Shelby Carpenter and a clearly-unhappy Alan Treadwell stood talking.

"Shelby, why don't you come to your senses? This thing between you and Lauren is over - or, soon, will be."

"You don't understand, Alan." Shelby explained, as she stirred a colorful concoction together, then poured it into a martini glass. "He needs me now, more than ever. And we'll work things out, once all this unpleasantness is done with. Excuse me. I have to get him his cocktail." Drink in hand, Shelby moved gracefully among the many partygoers, and arrived at her destination. She was clearly unhappy with the intimate tete-a-tete between the handsome police lieutenant and her fiance. Shelby wove her left arm through Sandburg's in as proprietary a gesture as one could ever imagine, and presented him with a near-perfect Rob Roy. "Here you are, darling. Detective Ellison, do you mind if I speak with Lauren for a moment?" Then, she added the qualifier. "Alone?"

"Talk to him as much as you like." Jim Ellison backed away from the two of them.

Blair took a sip, then quietly asked, "Why did you go to my country place last night, Shelby?"

"Why, to hide the gun, of course."

Sandburg was taken aback by the comment. "Gun? What gun?"

Shelby ignored the question. "I'm sorry, darling. I couldn't hide it. I was followed. That damned Detective Ellison came out of nowhere."

'What made you go up there, Shelby?"

"Didn't you want me to?" Shelby settled herself into the couch. Her face was a combination of feral cunning and confusion washing over it. "Let's not kid each other, lover. Why else would you have called me last night?"

Blair's voice mirrored his disbelief. "Oh, I don't know ... maybe to tell you I was alive. For some reason, I thought you might be interested."

"I already knew that."

" ..."

"I thought you were being cautious because you knew they'd be watching my calls."

Blair moved over to the sofa, slammed the drink down on the coffee table and grabbed his fiancee's arm. "How did you know I was alive, Shelby?"

Shelby Carpenter liked a great many things about the opposite sex. Being manhandled wasn't one of them. She ripped herself away from his tightening grasp. "Because I knew it was Dane."

The answer and its implication staggered Sandburg for a moment. His mouth was like cotton. He could feel the bile crawling up his throat. "Then you 'were' here." Blind with fury, Blair continued in a forced whisper, so that no one could but Shelby Carpenter could hear the outrage in his voice. "Damned decent of you to bring your own scotch. You can use my apartment to sleep with someone else, but you're such a lady that you draw the line at taking my liquor."

"I lied for you, Lauren. I put myself in a spot because I tried to protect you."

"Funny. And I thought I was protecting 'you.'"

"I don't want to quarrel, baby." Shelby cooed. "We've got to understand each other. Let's not waste time."

Blair Sandburg looked at the beautiful woman, chatting so nonchalantly about murder and alibis and things that go bump in the night, as though she were discussing a new restaurant or a new masseuse. "You know, I've spent the last five days trying to decide how I felt about you ... and it wasn't until I saw that bottle that I knew."

"You're not being fair."

"I think I've been more than fair. I've made every possible excuse for you. I rationalized so hard that I became the heavy and you turned into the victim. I told myself I knew your faults and they didn't matter. Only, they do."

Shelby softened in front of Blair's eyes, in a well-practiced, ugly parody of concern. "Lauren, sweetheart, this is ridiculous. And I honestly tried to call it off with Dane. I never loved him. I love only you."

"Then, why? Why?" The anguish was discernable only to Shelby - and to Jim Ellison who had heard the entire conversation from a vantage point several feet away. "Whatever else I thought of you, I never thought you'd be so ... that you'd spend a night in my apartment, in my bed, with someone else." The hurt was visible on his face.

"I swear to God, Lauren, I never meant to see Dane again. But he kept calling me. He sounded so desperate. Threatened suicide unless I met him again!"

"But here! You had to come here?"

Shelby sewed together a patchwork of a story. "I couldn't have him come to my hotel. Or your uncle's home. I knew we'd have privacy here. I only came to talk."

"Bessie told Detective Ellison there were two glasses beside the bed."

"But, sweetheart, you have to understand. Dane was irrational. He just wouldn't accept the fact that it was over. I got us both drinks as we tried to talk it through. And then we heard the buzzer. You know what happened ..."

"I what?"

"Don't worry, Lauren. No one will ever know. Oh, there's Lancaster. I want to say hello to him." Acting as hostess-in-residence, and Lady Beneficent of the Manor, Shelby Carpenter wandered toward the balding, florid, overweight man gorging himself on canapes.

The full force of what Shelby had said hit Blair Sandburg like the proverbial ton of bricks. Dried-mouthed and disbelieving that someone who actually loved him would think him capable of murder, Blair walked into his library, to get away from everyone, and looked out the bay window to the street below.

From over his left shoulder, Alan Treadwell asked, point-blank, "What's the matter, Lauren? You look unwell. Need your drink freshened up?"

"I guess I'm just nervous."

"No one could blame you."

"Lieutenant Ellison suspects Shelby." Alan remarked, as he swirled the pearl onion in his Gibson.

Blair Sandburg couldn't keep the trace of despair out of his rich voice. "I think he suspects me, too. So do some of my friends."

"You? Don't be ridiculous. You could never do a thing like that."

"And Shelby?"

"Oh, I don't think she did it. But she's certainly capable of murder." Alan Treadwell arched his eyebrow speculatively as he switched topics. "Are you as interested in Ellison as he is in you?"

Blair Sandburg twisted around to look at his uncle. "Alan, what the hell are you talking about?"

"You know very well what I'm talking about, Blair. We have no secrets from each other. We're 'family.'"

Sandburg looked around for a moment, to make sure that nobody could eavesdrop on their conversation. "I just met him last night, for God's sake."

"That's more than enough, sometimes. Anyway, he's better for you than Shelby."

"Jesus, Alan, stop it."

"'Anybody' is better for you than Shelby. Shelby's better for me."

"Why?"

"Because I can afford her and her many excesses. She's no good, Lauren."

"Don't -"

"She's no good, but she's what I want. I'm not a nice person, Lauren. Neither is she. Shelby knows I know just what she is. She also knows I don't care. We belong together because we're both weak and can't seem to do anything about it. That's why I know she could be a cold-blooded killer. She's like me."

Blair Sandburg was stunned into silence at the revelation. His uncle had just admitted that both he and his fiancée could have killed "him." Dane Redfern just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Reading Blair's face, Treadwell tried to clarify what he had said. "No, I 'didn't.' But I thought about it. Excuse me. Shelby needs her drink refilled." With that, the natty Alan Treadwell left his nephew alone with his thoughts.

The phone rang over the din of 20 different conversations. Bessie Cleary, who was serving hors d'oeuvres to the hungry crowd, answered it. "For you, Lieutenant."

"Thank you, Bessie." The detective spoke quietly into the receiver, but all action stopped around him as he took the call. "Ellison. Yeah, I know. Don't worry. I told you I was going to bring in the killer today. Yeah. I was just about to make the arrest.". The party stopped, as if suddenly frozen in ice. Everyone, planted in his or her respective space, was horrified. "No, I can't tell you now. I'm not alone. You'll see when I come in. Right. Later." He hung up. Then, without fanfare or preliminaries, Jim Ellison walked passed suspects Shelby Carpenter, Alan Treadwell standing next to her, and Waldo Lydecker, before stopping in front of Blair Sandburg.

"Let's go."

"You mean -" Blair swallowed the rest of his sentence.

"No!" Bessie screamed. "No. No. Not Mr. Sandburg!"

"Thank you, Bessie. It'll be alright." Blair soothed the distraught woman, patting her shoulder. "Now, could you get me my things?"

Waldo Lydecker was dumbfounded at the surprising turn of events. He regained his composure, and began speaking rapidly. "Don't worry, dear boy. I won't desert you. We'll fight them. I have every weapon in my arsenal: money, connections, prestige, my column. Every day, millions will read about you and rally to your defense."

Jim Ellison grabbed Lauren Blair Sandburg's arm roughly and navigated him out the door and down to the waiting black and white police car, leaving dozens of guests without a host.

Overwhelmed by the turn of events, Shelby Carpenter fell into the waiting, wealthy arms of Alan Treadwell. Not surprisingly, the flower of Southern womanhood looked as though she was where she belonged.

***

Wednesday, Early Evening

The interrogation at the precinct commenced like all others. Detective Jim Ellison hustled Lauren Sandburg into a dank-looking, windowless room, with two chairs on one side of a rusty-legged table, and little else. An overhead fan looked as though it hadn't been used since the 14th had opened. Holding tightly onto his prisoner's arm, Jim Ellison turned to the good-looking officer who stood like a sentinel at the door. "That'll be all, Rafe. I'll call you if I need you." The younger man nodded, then left the two - homicide detective and murder suspect -- alone. Jim Ellison gestured toward the empty, straight-backed chair. "Sit down." Ellison sat on the edge of the desk, turned on the harsh lights, shone them into Sandburg's face and eyes. He began speaking. "All right. Look at me. Let's have it."

"What are you trying to do - force a confession out of me?"

"You've been holding out, and I want to know. It'll be easier, if you tell the truth."

"What difference does it make what I say? You've made up your mind. I'm guilty."

"Are you?"

"Don't tell me you have any doubts. Since you - " Blair lifted his chin, and squinted his eyes. "Please. Do we really need the lights?"

Ellison deferred to the other man, and switched them all off. Sandburg looked up at him gratefully. The detective sat down in the chair next to him. "Now tell me."

"I told you why I called and talked to Shelby. It had nothing to do with the gun."

"You told me a lot of things over the last 24 hours. "

"And you always come back to the same question, Ji - Lieutenant. I gave you an answer. Why don't you believe me?"

"Two reasons. Logic and the lies you've already told me."

"You have to trust me."

"Coming from you, those may just be the two scariest words in the English language."

"All right. I did obfuscate."

"What the hell is that?"

"I lied. But it was to protect Shelby. Waldo seemed to be doing everything in his power to make her look guilty."

"And you still want me to believe that you knew nothing about the murder until you got back here last night?"

"Yes."

"You were isolated in the country, no newspapers."

The detective scraped his chair along the floor, moving in as close to the other man as he dared. "Why did you tell me the radio at your country place was broken?"

"Because it was broken."

"Not when I tried it."

"Just as I left the village, I asked the handyman to fix it."

"How did he get in?"

"I always leave a key under the chair on the porch."

"You're too intelligent to make up an alibi that I could check so easily. But you're also intelligent enough to have broken the Emerson yourself to strengthen your story." The scent of Blair Sandburg was making it difficult for Jim Ellison to concentrate and stay focused on the questioning. "The main thing I want to know is why did you pull that switch on me about Shelby Carpenter. You told me last night you decided not to marry her."

"Yes, I guess I did."

Ellison's voice was angry, and gaining momentum. "But today it was 'on' again. Why?"

'Well, I ... I changed my mind."

The detective ripped his hat off and threw it onto the bare, steel table. "What are you trying to hide? Don't you realize you're involved in a murder?" The detective was shouting now. "You've got yourself in a real jam. And it's not going to be easy to get out of it, unless you level with me. This is no time for secrets between us." Ellison couldn't help himself. He pressed further into Sandburg's space, barely a whisper away from the other man's right ear. "Now, did you really call it off or did you just tell me that," Jim Ellison hesitated, and dropped his voice practically to a whisper, "because you knew I wanted to hear it?"

There was no answer.

"Did you agree to 'pretend' to stay engaged?" The detective clenched Blair's forearm with a grip so strong he was sure it would leave marks. "If you didn't, people would think she was guilty? Is that it?"

"Yes."

Hope crept back into the small, ugly room.

"Are you in love with Shelby Carpenter?"

"Luminous, blue eyes widened, then were hidden away under half-closed lids.

"I don't see how the hell I ever could have been."

"Come on. You're going home." Jim Ellison's protective streak came back on line with a vengeance. It felt a mile wide.

"What? You mean this was some sort of a game?" Blair Sandburg asked, somewhere between incredulity and relief.

"I didn't even book you. I was 99 percent sure you were innocent, but I had to get rid of the one percent doubt."

"And wasn't there an easier way?"

Ellison stumbled over his explanation, not wanting to reveal any more than he had to, to this robber of his reason, this pirate of his feelings. "I'd ... I'd reached a point where I needed official surroundings."

The smile that appeared on Blair Sandburg's face was like a beacon light guiding Jim Ellison home. "Then it was worth it."

"Come on. Let's grab a cab. I'll take you back to your place."

As Detective Jim Ellison escorted Blair Sandburg out of the depressing room, he put his hand on the other man's shoulder. Instinctively. Protectively. Proprietarily. The touch scorched both of them. Silently, the two men -- just strangers 24 hours earlier -- stared into one another's faces.

Staring into one another's souls was just too ridiculous to imagine.

***

Wednesday, Later That Night

Twenty minutes later, Jim Ellison dropped a grateful, tired Blair Sandburg off, promising, "I'll see you in the morning. Try to get some sleep."

"Good night, Jim."

Ellison watched the slim, young man climb wearily up the steps to his apartment. The detective turned to Sergeant Brown who was stationed in front of the building. "I'm heading over to Lydecker's. Make sure nothing happens to Bla - Mr. Sandburg."

No one answered the front door bell at Waldo Lydecker's place - neither master, nor manservant. Ellison pulled a skeleton key out of his pocket, and used it the way career burglar Tommy "The Wedge" Fierucci had taught him. Jim Ellison walked over to the clock ticking away in the corner. With the edge of the key, he tapped up and down its entire surface area. To his sensitive ears, the base sounded different. He kicked it in, and found ... nothing.

Then, suddenly, everything "clicked" into place. This clock might be empty. But its mate ...

***

Church bells rang their melancholy song in the distance. Only Blair Sandburg's body was present in the twilight of the apartment. His thoughts were somewhere else. With someone else.

Waldo Lydecker, who had come over to offer advice and consolation, was out of patience. "Blair! You haven't heard a word I've said. You're thinking about that detective. You want him to come, don't you?" Waldo's hands caught Blair by the shoulders, his eyes searching the handsome, distraught face for an answer. "You're in love with Ellison, aren't you? I saw it yesterday at the party, but I couldn't bring myself to believe it. You looked away from us. You distanced yourself from your old friends. Shelby and I, we had ceased to matter. Your eyes were on Detective Ellison all the time, drawn like the moth you are. Not the butterfly I'd hoped you'd become." Lydecker's damp hands increased their cold pressure. Blair's voice sounded almost defeated as he denied the charges.

"You're wrong,"

Waldo only laughed in response. "Don't lie to me. I know you too well, Blair."

"What the hell are you talking about? He's investigating my ... Dane Redfern's murder. Besides which, we've only known one another since the night before last."

"Our Mr. Ellison is a fast worker."

"Stop it. Be serious."

"My dear boy, this is the most serious and important help that I can give you -- to put you on your guard against the most dangerous man you've ever known."

"That's ridiculous. Jim ... Detective Ellison hasn't done anything."

"Except seduce you. And win you over. He's doing it to solve a case. Or are you so blinded by emotion, that you fail to see that?"

"That's what Shelby said. She said that Jim was trying to make me confess."

"For once, Miss Carpenter and I agree."

"He's not like that." Blair moved to the couch and sat on the edge, hugging a pillow to his chest. Its rough linen scratched his cheek. Lydecker moved toward him cautiously, almost gently, and offered his handkerchief. It was a standing joke between them. In the midst of stress, or emotion, or hubris, Blair Sandburg could never find a handkerchief.

"When he thought you were dead, when you were truly unattainable, that's when Ellison wanted you most."

"But he's glad I'm back. As if he were waiting for me."

"The lieutenant's coarse. Too coarse for someone with your refinement, your spirit."

"You're dead wrong. He isn't like that."

"Your fatal flaw, Blair, is that a strong, lean body is the measure of a person, and weighs more heavily with you than other considerations. It's always been the Shelby Carpenters of the world, pretty little idiots with nothing to offer you. Or, " Lydecker spat out, "chiseled features on some brawny Neanderthal. You never change your pattern. If Ellison weren't muscular and handsome in a cheap sort of way, you'd see through him in a second."

"No."

"What?"

"No, that's you, Waldo. You're the one that never changes. Leave."

"What did you say?"

"You heard me. I want you to leave NOW while we can still salvage some part of our friendship."

"Am I interrupting anything?" Jim Ellison asked, as he strode through Blair Sandburg's front door, unannounced, after having used his key to the front door.

"Haven't you heard of science's latest triumph, the doorbell?" Waldo asked.

"I don't like reminding Blair. That was the murderer's signal." Waldo Lydecker heard Jim Ellison's use of the nickname, looked closely at the two of them, and knew they shared a secret. NYPD Lieutenant Jim Ellison and Blair Sandburg - "his" Blair -- were in love. Waldo Lydecker was enraged at the notion.

"I thought you'd like to know, Sandburg, your shotgun proved to be 'clean.' It's not the murder weapon. "

"Isn't that charming, Blair? A real key to the man's character. First, he tells you you're innocent, the he tries to prove you're not."

Ellison's jaw tensed. "If I say Sandburg's innocent, that's my own personal opinion. When I submit scientific facts, it becomes the opinion of the department. And nobody can dispute it."

"Waldo, I think we've said everything there is to say to one another. You know your way out."

"Very well, 'Lauren.' I hope you never regret what promises to be a disgustingly earthy relationship. Goodbye."

With that, Waldo Lydecker stalked out of Blair Sandburg's apartment, and, took with him an enormous part of Blair's life. Sandburg's shoulders drooped perceptibly from the stress of destroying his friend and mentor. Jim Ellison patted the other man's cheek tenderly. As Blair turned his face up to meet Jim Ellison's, the taller man bent down and placed a chaste kiss on the waiting lips. He then spoke quietly. "Now that he's gone, I have to check something. Then we'll know for certain who the killer is. All I need is the gun." Jim Ellison walked over to ornate clock, the duplicate of the one in Waldo Lydecker's apartment. "He gave you this, right?"

"Yes."

Jim Ellison stooped down and tapped the base, as he had done to the other clock. Blair was confused.

"What are you doing?"

"You know the combination of this thing?"

"I didn't know it had one."

"It must be here somewhere."

Jim Ellison continued tapping the lower portion of the clock, until a secret door popped open, revealing a sawed-off shotgun. "Have you ever seen this before?"

Blair Sandburg's mouth was as dry as dust. He was scared. "No."

"Waldo Lydecker gave you that clock, didn't he?" Jim Ellison's nose told him immediately that the gun had been fired within the past few days. "I'll bet a month's pay this is the murder weapon. Dane Redfern came to the door that night in your robe. The light was behind him. Lydecker mistook him for you. He let Redfern have it - two barrels in the face - then hid in the hallway until Shelby Carpenter ran out of the apartment. Lydecker came back in, hid the gun down here, and slipped out, got himself back to his own apartment to wait for the three-ring circus of your body being discovered."

"I didn't want to believe he was a murderer."

"He is. And he's dangerous. You know, for a smart guy, you've certainly surrounded yourself with some real doozies." Jim Ellison needed to do this by the book. He had to get a warrant for Waldo Lydecker's arrest. "Don't touch anything. Got it, Chief? The fingerprint boys will be in here tomorrow morning. I'll have the clock picked up."

"And Waldo?"

"I'm going to have him picked up." Ellison rose to his feet, grabbed Blair Sandburg's hand and they both walked to the door. As he was leaving, the detective sprang the lock. "Don't open this door for anybody but me. If the doorbell rings, don't answer it. Understood?" The smaller man nodded. "Get some sleep. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Don't you want ... to ... can't you stay?" Blair Sandburg leaned toward the warmth and safety of his protector. Their lips found themselves little more than a whisper apart.

Jim Ellison leaned in and tasted Blair Sandburg for the second time. It was something the tall man could definitely get used to. "You know it, Chief. But I have a job to do. Now, keep the damned door shut." Patting Sandburg's stubbled jaw fondly once last time, he left the apartment. Even as he did, the detective had the oddest sensation of being watched. Like being the hunted, rather than the hunter.

Lieutenant Jim Ellison didn't know just how right he was.

***

What the lovers couldn't know was that Waldo Lydecker was again pressed in the shadows of the same alcove where he'd hidden the night he'd dispatched Dane Redfern to his maker. He watched Jim Ellison leave.

As soon as Waldo Lydecker heard Blair move out of the living room and into the bedroom, he opened the front door with the secret, spare key he kept on his key chain.

The murderer made a stop at the Biedermeier, and followed Ellison's lead by reopening the hidden door and pulling out the shotgun.

Retrieving two shells from his breast pocket, Lydecker loaded them into the gun chamber, snapped the weapon closed and prepared to write the final act of the play he had started so many years ago with that naive youth from the backwaters of Cascade, Washington.

If he couldn't have the Blair Sandburg he had created, then, by God, no one would.

Especially not that brute of a detective.

***

As Jim Ellison walked down the stoop of Sandburg's apartment building, he was surprised to see Rafe still standing in his assigned stakeout post. Earlier, he'd ordered the Sergeant to follow Waldo Lydecker as soon as the murder suspect left.

"Why are you still here?"

"What do you mean?

"I told you to 'tail' Lydecker when he came out."

"But, Jim, he hasn't."

"Jesus Christ! He's still in there!" Realization hit the detective with the force of an atom bomb. "Sandburg! God, no! Come on! " Jim Ellison flew up the stoop, and prayed he wasn't too late.

***

Oblivious to the drama outside, a showered and shampooed Blair stood with only a towel wrapped around his slim waist. Looking at himself in the bedroom mirror, he started to dry his luxuriant auburn hair, a process that would take his mind off everything that had happened for at least an hour. The wall light sconces on either side flickered highlights over the mass of wet curls. Sandburg stroked the unmanageable mane back away from his face, using his well-worn Kent brush. With a start, he realized it had been one of the many gifts he'd received over the years from Waldo Lydecker. For a moment, Blair stared at it in his hand as though it might spring to life. He was lost in the despair of a world suddenly turned on its ear, of a man's dying in his stead, and of forbidden feelings for another man. Detective Ellison was hard to read. But, as sure as this long night would eventually end, Blair Sandburg knew that Jim Ellison was his destiny. Images of the big man crowded his mind, and Blair Sandburg felt his cock begin swell and throb.

"You're dreaming about that damned detective again, aren't you?" Waldo Lydecker's controlled voice crackled with menace. Blair Sandburg twisted around to see the enraged man looming at the door - holding the gun that had ended poor Dane Redfern's life. "He won't be able to rescue you."

"Waldo. Please. Don't. Do. This."

"You think I'd let Ellison have you? Be with you? Love you? Grow old with you? I'd rather see you dead."

At the precise moment Lydecker cocked the trigger, Blair Sandburg launched himself at the man who had once been his closest friend. He didn't succeed in wrestling the gun away, but Sandburg knocked it to one side before he tumbled to the ground. The shots rang out, missing him completely, hitting the face of the Grandmother clock instead.

Then, several things happened at once. Sergeants Rafe and Brown broke down the front door of the apartment, while Jim Ellison kicked in the back door, and swung into view. Ellison threw himself protectively across Sandburg's prostrate, nearly nude body, as several well-placed shots from Rafe's .38 felled the wild-eyed Lydecker in his tracks.

Waldo Lydecker, writer, critic, and Renaissance man, left the earth with a paucity of words as his epitaph: "Goodbye, Blair. Goodbye, my love."

***

Thursday, Midnight

"Feel better?" Jim asked, tenderly, holding Blair firmly to his chest. Waldo Lydecker's body had been removed by the coroner, the police technicians had finished their work in record time, and now Lieutenant Jim Ellison, Homicide Bureau, and Blair Sandburg, former murder victim, sat on the floor, in front of a roaring fire, which they'd decided to light despite the warm weather.

"Jesus. I can't believe it. Poor Waldo."

"Don't waste your sympathy, Chief. He'd rather you dead than have a life with someone else."

"Still ..."

The tall detective felt the smaller body shake uncontrollably, from grief, from the release of adrenalin, from any number of things that happen to a person when a close friend tries to hurry him off this mortal coil. They kissed tenderly. At first. But it wasn't enough. The gruff detective could no more stop milking the mouth of this wonderful man lying pliant, eager, and willing in his arms than he could stop drawing breath.

One taste demanded a second, then a third. And when their mouths were almost numb from use, when they could form no words, only grunting, passionate mewls of pleasure, Jim Ellison kissed his way down the quivering body, sucking for a moment on the dusky nipples, continuing downward, rifling through the soft, sienna-color chest hairs, until he reached the prize awaiting him there, springing up from his lover's darker, pubic thatch. The cock was firm, gleaming, and all his.

For a brief moment, Jim froze. This was so wrong on so many different levels. But it wasn't. This is who Jim Ellison was. Being here, this way, with this man. He'd never allowed himself to admit it when he had returned to the "normalcy" of post-war life in New York, never quenched the overwhelming passion, the unbridled ecstasy.

During the war, it had been different. Then, when the need for a man could no longer be denied, the Army captain would allow himself clandestine moments of quick, uncomplicated physical satisfaction. All of the encounters occurred with strangers, in the military like himself. The men were nameless, convenient, and with a little free time on their hands until they had to move on to the next assignment.

War did, indeed, make strange -- and expeditious -- bedfellows.

So sex for Jim Ellison was a function of mere animal release. It was never with anyone who mattered. Except once, in Peru, with the virile, native shaman of the village where the soul-sick Army captain was nursed back to health. During those 18 months of Ellison's being "lost" in the jungle the Chopec healer had taught him a great many things. Incacha made him see that his heightened senses were a gift to be treasured. He also taught the guilt-ridden man to be proud of who - and what -- he was. Yes, for those precious months, "Enqueri" as Jim Ellison had been called, learned how to honor his adopted tribe's philosophy.

By honoring himself, he honored them.

Somehow, Jim Ellison had forgotten both these invaluable lessons when he came back to "civilization." After that, he couldn't bear to touch or be touched by another man, because it would only have been, for the lack of a better word, only rutting to slake an urgent lust.

Ellison needed one person to fill the empty spaces in his uncaptured heart. Incacha had temporarily filled them until the true owner arrived on the scene. Neither Carolyn Plummer, nor any of the women after her, had been the answer.

The answer was here, nestled in Jim's strong arms. At he looked down at Blair Sandburg, he silently thanked his Chopec friend for making him realize that true love was worth waiting for.

Here, in a pricey loft on the Eastside of New York, the face of true love was looking back at him.

***

Even after so many years, Jim Ellison was happy to discover that, while his technique might not be so polished or sophisticated as some, it didn't really matter. His lovemaking compensated for it with sheer enthusiasm and staying power. At least three times that night, a thoroughly debauched, erotically messy, and supremely happy Blair Sandburg commented on it.

As the two lovers lay back, exhausted, in a heap of flesh, where the limbs of one were indistinguishable from those of the other, Jim Ellison couldn't quite understand what his supersensitive ears heard. Blair was mumbling something as he drifted off to the sleep of spent innocence: "We'll try for 'four' this morning."

Sinking back into eider-down pillows, the big detective couldn't decide whether it was a challenge Sandburg had thrown out, or the time the new carnal action would recommence.

***

Thursday, 8:00 am

Jim Ellison needed to get back to headquarters, if nothing else, because he needed the rest. He would never survive his young lover. No, not lover. This man was more. Shelby Carpenter had said it before. Now Jim understood. With every fiber of his being, Ellison loved Blair Sandburg. More than life itself.

But neither had made any declarations during the night. Maybe this was just the one-time fulfillment of an obsessed delusion on Jim's part. Maybe Blair Sandburg was just saying "Thank you" for the detective's saving his life. Maybe, what happened between them would become just a wonderful memory when Sandburg became "Lauren" again, and told Jim Ellison to go back to his own world. Maybe ...

No. Blair wasn't like that. The man who had spent the last several hours loving Jim Ellison into a state of oblivion wasn't that good an actor. He could no sooner have faked the passion and the feelings than Jim Ellison could pass through a metal detector with that silver shinbone of his.

"I'm going to have to head down to the precinct to fill in some reports."

Blair turned a radiant, unguarded face upward. "Do you have to go?"

Jim Ellison's blue eyes took in the beautiful visage in front of him. "Do you want me to stay?"

Blair Sandburg seemed to hesitate, as if, once said, the words would send him into uncharted waters.

"Do you?" The detective prompted, gruffly, hopefully.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because ..."

"Why, Chief?"

"I ... I ..."

"Sandburg ... Blair ... we have to talk. Your life is too high-brow, too complicated, and just plain too damned crowded, to have any room in it for someone like me." In the ultimate sacrifice, the unflinchingly honorable and decent Jim Ellison, was giving his handsome, young lover an "out."

"You are 'so' wrong, Jim. About me. About 'us.' You're wrong as you can be."

"Am I? Do you honestly think there could be an 'us'?"

"Look, Ellison, I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, or next week, or next year, or 10 years from now. I'm not a fortune-teller. All I know is that my life is empty. I didn't realize just how empty until the last few days. Until you."

"Then, you have to make the tough choice. What you had before. Or something different ... and everything that goes with it. Me. Warts and all. You. Out of the rat race you're in. And we'd be together."

Blair Sandburg's face lit up like Christmas morning at Rockefeller Center.

"Besides which ..." the tall man continued, all the while feathering his thumbs across both of the other man's cheekbones, "when you're around, everything seems ... manageable. And good with my senses. Better than good, even."

"Really?"

"Stop fishing for compliments." Jim smiled, in spite of himself. "You could ... help me with them."

"And maybe I could do something with the police department."

"Yeah. I'm sure Captain Banks would be thrilled with an unofficial observer tagging along with one of his detectives."

"You never know. Stranger things have happened. You know, I've always wanted to teach. See I've had a passion for anthropology since my college days."

"You're a man of many talents, Blair Sandburg. But you know that already."

Blair Sandburg blushed, outrageously pleased with the flattery coming from this tough, wonderful man. "His" man. "And it would mean we could ... spend more time together. You know, work on controlling your senses."

"You could 'guide' me, is that it?"

"Guide?"

"It's as good a word as any."

"I know a better word."

"What's that, Chief?"

At that moment, Blair left advertising wunderkind Lauren Sandburg, and the New York social scene in the dust with the simplest, most profound answer: "Yes."

THE END

Acknowledgements: Thanks to all of the wonderful people at Mongoose for the velvet whip used to get Lauren done, and to Elegy, the artist extraordinaire who, along with PattRose1, made the story's illustrations come to life.

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