As far as my eyes can tell, Chris is all woman, and a hellacious-looking one at that, so much so that I sink down a little lower in my chair. There’s nothing quite as humbling as realizing that a man in drag makes a better-looking woman than you do.
George walks up to the dance floor and whispers in Chris’s ear, pointing toward our table. Chris nods, gives his dance partner a quick buss on the cheek, and sashays his way toward us.
“Hi there,” he says, and I notice that though his voice is deep, it is not distinctly masculine. He settles into an empty chair, crosses his shapely legs, leans back, and lights a cigarette. He gives Dom a thorough once-over that should be intimidating, maybe even insulting. Yet instead it seems strongly sensual, enough so that Dom begins to squirm. Smiling at Dom’s obvious discomfort, Chris then turns that sensuous gaze toward me, giving me the same deep perusal.
“Love that lipstick you’re wearing,” he says, his gaze settling on my lips. “Sort of a cross between mocha and coral.”
“It’s called Sandy Sunset,” I tell him. “Part of a new color scheme my stylist turned me on to.”
He eyes my face and hair for a moment, then gives a nod of approval. “The colors are interesting. Darker than I might have guessed for your complexion, yet it works. And your hair! It’s to dye for. Get it? To d-y-e for?” He laughs and tosses his own blond locks before taking another drag on his cigarette.
“Your stylist is obviously talented,” he says through a haze of exhaled smoke. “Who is it? Will you share? Or is it a big secret?” He sighs and takes another drag. “It’s so hard to find anyone good these days.”
“I’ll share. But you might not like her. She’s a bit…different.”
“Oh, I don’t care about that,” he says with a wave of his hand. “I mean, come on. Look at me.”
He has a point.
“Her name is Barbara Moyer. She works at the Keller Funeral Home in Sorenson. I don’t know the number but you can reach her if you call the funeral home. That’s where her, um, salon is.”
“A funeral home? How twisted,” Chris says with a wicked grin. “I like it. I’ll definitely have to check it out. Thanks, girlfriend.”
“Sure. Tell Barbara I sent you.”
“I will. Now, let me return the favor. I understand from Georgie Porgie that you want to know something about Mike Halverson.”
I nod and wait as Chris takes another drag off his cigarette and surveys the room. I sense he is someone who won’t be rushed, who will dish on his own time and on his own terms. So I wait. In the interim, I watch him closely, enthralled with the way he oozes sensuality without being blatantly sexual. I study his mannerisms, his gestures, the subtle shifts of his legs, and his overall body language. I try to memorize it all, figuring if I can learn to be half as seductive as he is, my social life will improve by leaps and bounds.
“Well, Mikey was a character, I’ll tell ya that,” Chris says finally, exhaling a long, curling plume of smoke that spirals lazily toward the ceiling. “He was a real sucker for the GQs.”
“GQs?”
“Yeah, you know the type. Three-piece suit, Yuppie airs, money to burn. Problem is, a lot of those guys spend their lives in the closet.”
“George said he thought Mike had hooked up with someone a few months back. And that’s why he stopped coming in here.”
“He did meet someone,” Chris says, looking off across the room again and taking another drag on his cigarette. “I don’t think they ever came in here together, though. Mike generally came in alone. But he sure did talk about the guy. Let me think….” His eyes squint with the effort. “I can’t remember Mikey ever mentioning a name, but he said the guy was a big shot of some sort. Lots of money, very handsome.”
“Any idea how long they were seeing one another?” I ask.
Chris shrugs. “Last time I saw Mikey was probably two months ago or more. And I think he’d been seeing this GQ for a while at that point.”
“Did you know that Mike had AIDS?”
Chris makes a cute little pout. “Ooh, no, I didn’t. Not sure anyone else did either.” He shakes his pretty head and I again find myself amazed that there is a man somewhere inside that body. “Usually word of something like that gets out rather quickly. So I suspect Mikey wasn’t telling. That’s bad. Very bad.” He pauses a second, cocking his head to one side and staring off into space. Then he looks at me and says, “Do you think that’s why he was killed?”
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “Right now I’m just trying to get a handle on who he was and who he knew.”
“Well, I’ll tell you this,” Chris says, stabbing out his cigarette and leaning across the table to speak in a conspiratorial whisper. “I’ve never seen Mikey like he was the last few times he was in here. He was all goggle-eyed and couldn’t stop blabbering on about this new boyfriend and their future together. He had that look—you know the one—the look that says this one is different. I think Mikey was genuinely in love. And if what he said was true, the two of them were meeting several times a week at the Grizzly.”
“The Grizzly?”
“That’s a little motel over near Fond du Lac. It’s a popular stopping-off point, if you know what I mean,” he says, wiggling his perfectly tweezed eyebrows suggestively. “It’s owned by a brother and sister who have set up one whole section to cater to the”—he pauses and makes little quote marks in the air—“fast-food crowd. It might be worth asking them if they know who Mikey was seeing. They’re generally pretty tight-lipped about who their customers are, but Calvin’s here tonight and I do believe he has a bit of an in with the owners. They might tell you something if you were to take Cal along.”
He pauses and fans his face with one hand. “Calvin,” he says with a tone of reverence. “Don’t you think that sounds terribly masculine?” He says the name again, more breathily this time, as he glances around the room. Finally his gaze settles on the dance floor.
“That’s him out there,” he says. “The bald guy in the leather jacket.” I look and see a well-built man of medium height dressed from head to toe in leather. He is dancing—quite well, I notice—with a thin, freckle-faced guy who has an unruly mop of curly red hair.
“Would you like me to see if Calvin’s willing to help you out?”
“Yes, please,” I say. “Thanks, Chris.”
He removes a compact from the small purse he has slung over his shoulder. Flipping it open, he checks his face in the mirror, primping his hair a bit before he snaps it closed. “How do I look?”
“Stunning,” I say with all honesty.
His smile broadens as he hoists himself up and straightens out the wrinkles in his skintight skirt. He sashays his way to the dance floor and I watch in amusement as he expertly corrals Calvin and steers him away.
“Damn,” Dom says, his tone respectful. “He’s good.”
Chris brings Calvin to our table and introduces him. Up close I see that Calvin has huge, soulful brown eyes that seem to twinkle with some hidden source of humor. His voice is deep but softly sensual and whenever he speaks or smiles, the ends of his moustache tease dimples in both cheeks. And speaking of cheeks, the physique is quite nice too—muscular, tight, and tanned.
And gay. Damn it.
As soon as the introductions are out of the way, I explain the story all over again to Calvin, including the fact that Halverson had AIDS and was brutally murdered by someone. “I understand the need for discretion at the Grizzly,” I tell him. “But we need to know why Mike Halverson was murdered. It could be we have some sort of homophobic vigilante on our hands.”