Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons

changed the subject, to get him off the spot. “We hear you’re an oncologist.”
    She nodded. “Use lots of sunscreen, and maybe we’ll never meet professionally.”
    “I was just wondering how you met Jason.”
    “At a friend’s house— Toby Hunter. I mean at Toby and her husband’s house. They had us both to dinner one night.” She smiled, a little embarrassed, I thought. “I guess it was a fix-up.”
    “Just the four of you?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “I guess it was. How did Jason know the Hunters?”
    “They have a PR agency— I think with a lot of theatrical clients. I guess it was frustrating because Toby couldn’t fix them up with Jason, whom she adored. She was always telling me how funny and urbane he was— all of which was true. I just don’t know.…”
    “What?”
    “If there was anything there.” She lifted an eyebrow. “But there had to be. A man who takes you out for two months and doesn’t make a pass must have some kind of explanation for it.”
    “Maybe a war wound.”
    “Insane wife in the attic.”
    “Respects you too much.”
    We burst out laughing— somehow, we’d managed to bond. Rob stared, amazed. I said, “What does Toby think?”
    “She thinks a disgruntled actor killed him and just hopes it wasn’t one of her clients.”
    “I mean about the other thing.”
    “Oh. Well, she thinks he’s in the closet. What else is there to think? Unless he just doesn’t like redheads.” But of course that couldn’t be it because then he wouldn’t have asked her out in the first place.
    “Do the Hunters know him well?”
    “Actually, I don’t think so. I think that’s the only time they ever had him to dinner. I guess it was dicey, considering their career and his.”
    “And how did you know them?”
    “I guess … that’s the sort of thing I’m not supposed to talk about.”
    Which told the whole story, of course— that one of them was a patient; Toby, probably. That Toby felt Felicity had saved her life and wanted to pay her back. And so she decided to introduce her to the man of her dreams— and Felicity was a good sport who’d gone along with it.
    I liked her. Why, I wondered, wasn’t she McKendrick’s cup of tea? Why weren’t Rob and I each other’s? What was this thing called love?

Chapter Six
    “So he was gay. I’ll be damned— Jason McKendrick.”
    “Well, it could have been a war wound,” I said.
    “No way. You heard what Felicity said about ‘guy behavior.’”
    “But Jason must have been complicated— I’ve been thinking about something.”
    Rob was driving on the way back to the city to try to catch couple friends and men friends. We’d decided to go for the men first— the better to check out the gay idea.
    He looked at me curiously.
    “If you work at the Chron , you have to make guild scale, right?”
    “At least.”
    “And Jason was a pretty big star and an aggressive guy, so it’s reasonable to assume he was paid over scale, right?”
    “I got a look at one of his checks once. He was way over scale.”
    “And are you?”
    “Not much— just a little.”
    “But you live in a pretty nice place. How come Jason lived in a hovel with no furniture?”
    “I was wondering about that. And his car was an old wreck.”
    “Why don’t we ask Adrienne what he spent his money on?”
    “Good idea. I already did.”
    “Speedy Gonzalez.”
    “I phoned to make sure she was okay at her dad’s, and just happened to inquire. She doesn’t know.”
    We had three men on our list— Barry Dettman, Cal Perotti, and Bobby Auerbach. Barry was our first stop— we’d been told he was one of Jason’s oldest friends, maybe his closest. He lived on Potrero Hill, apparently with another friend. A woman answered the door. Television sounds came from somewhere.
    As it turned out, Barry was watching a baseball game he just couldn’t miss and agreed to see us only if he could take time out when something important happened. We went for it.
    Rob gave him the spiel about who we were, and he nodded, not even looking our way. “Oh, man, oh, man, I could just kill Jason for this— he had a hell of a nerve dying on me.” It sounded weird coming from a man I could see only in profile. “Know how we met? Playing softball about a million years ago, in Golden Gate Park. We were both on some bar’s team. We had a league, bars that played other bars. I’d just gone to Sanborn-Permenter then. ” That meant he was an architect. “Oh, man, I loved Jase like