Although I meant it when I said it, in less than an hour I’d turn that into a pie-crust promise: easily made, easily broken.
“Angel boy,” Mrs. Cherry’s honeyed voice cooed over my phone. “Is this a good time?”
“Absolutely,” I told her, encouraged by her call so soon. It was just yesterday I’d asked her to use her contacts to discover if Brent had escaped into full-time hustling. If she was calling back so soon, she must have found something.
“I found nothing,” Mrs. Cherry declared. “I’ve checked with every contact in the escorting business, as well as those brokers who arrange for… more permanent engagements. I even dipped my dainty and perfectly pedicured toes into the tainted waters of the gossip mill to see if he was working off the grid. Nothing’s turned up. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s been less than twenty-four hours,” I pointed out. “Maybe someone hasn’t gotten back to you yet.”
Mrs. Cherry was quiet for a moment. I could swear I felt a chill of cold air coming though the receiver. “Darling” — I could tell Mrs. Cherry was trying to contain her inner bitch-“no one ‘doesn’t get back’ to me in this town. If they’re smart, they answer my questions before I even finish them. I am, as they say, quite ‘connected.’ Not to mention”-she dropped her voice to a husky whisper-“I’ve got a killer rack that no man can resist.”
“So, that’s it?” I asked dejectedly.
Mrs. Cherry softened her tone. “Not necessarily, darling. He could still turn up. He’s just not working in the sex industry. Perhaps he’s selling cologne at Bloomingdales, or, I don’t know, what do regular boys do, darling? Attend trade school? Install cable boxes?”
Yeah, maybe. But it didn’t help me find him.
“The frustrating thing,” Mrs. Cherry said, “was for a moment I thought I’d found him.”
“What do you mean?” I perked up.
“False alarm, darling. Wrong boy.”
“How so?”
“Oh, angel, it was so silly. It happened on my very first call. There I was, at my desk-my work desk, darling, not my makeup table-eating a jelly doughnut, with the notes I jotted down after you left. Just as my first contact picked up the phone, I took a bite of my little snack and-wouldn’t you know it-just as my friend picked up, half of the doughnut’s filling squirted out the back and landed- splat! — right on the paper. Covered up everything. Tres embarrassing.
“Now, I could have wiped it up, but it was half the jelly, darling. I couldn’t let it go to waste. Not when there are starving dieters right here in my building. That would be wrong.
“But I couldn’t very well lick it up while on the phone, either. I have a reputation, darling. God knows what my friend would have thought I was up to!
“I couldn’t remember the name you’d given me, but I did the best I could working from memory. I told him I was looking for a young guy who used to work for SwordFight. Early twenties, blond, boyish. I said he might be hustling, working for another studio, or hooked up with a sugar daddy. Did he have any ideas?
“Wouldn’t you know, right away he said he knew exactly who I was looking for. I was so excited, darling. He gave me the boy’s name and told me where he was. Sure enough, the smart kid got himself set up in style. Living with a rich patron in a building known not just for its grandeur but for its security and discretion. I wrote everything down and thanked my friend profusely. I couldn’t wait to call you with the good news! I felt like a proper lady detective, I did.
“Then, the moment I hung up, I scooped up the errant doughnut filling to discover-much to my chagrin-that a terrible mistake had been made.”
I held my breath, anxious to hear what she’d gotten wrong. Maybe there was something she’d discovered I could use-even if the connection wasn’t clear to her.
“The bakery had given me a blueberry jelly doughnut. Blueberry? I’d requested grape! I get a grape doughnut there every day-how could such a thing happen?”
She sounded near tears.
“And…” I prompted.
“And?” she asked. “And what? I mean, whatever happened to customer service? To loyalty? To… oh, you mean about your friend?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Not that I don’t sympathize with the whole doughnut debacle, but-”
“Quite right,” Mrs. Cherry interrupted. “I’m afraid I did lose track for a moment. Yes, well, after I forced myself to choke down that blueberry filling-which, by the way, really wasn’t that bad-I looked at my notes from the other day and realized I had the wrong boy! I’d been so sure. A former SwordFight model, the right age and coloring, how many of those could there be? But the names were different, darling. What a disappointment. And none of my subsequent calls turned up a ‘Brent Havens,’ either.”
I wasn’t so sure Mrs. Cherry hadn’t gotten it right, though. I knew Brent had changed his name at least once for professional reasons. Maybe he’d taken another alias. Or, more likely, now that his work was no longer in the public eye, maybe he was using his real name. My heart beat faster with the sudden conviction I was right.
“The boy you found,” I asked, “he wouldn’t be ‘Richie’ something, would he?”
“No,” Mrs. Cherry said. “I have a ‘Richie’ working for me, so I’d remember that.”
“You do?” I asked. Could Brent have a second job? “Maybe-”
Mrs. Cherry read my mind. “He’s been with me for two years, dearheart. He’s a black gentleman in his forties. I don’t think he’s your boy.”
Well, so much for that theory.
I guess I hadn’t found Brent. Or made any other progress.
“No,” Mrs. Cherry lamented. “I’m afraid I’ve been no help to you. The boy my friend was talking about was… oh, where did I put those notes…?”
She paused and I heard the rustle of paper. I hoped she hadn’t eaten them.
“His name was something like Larry. Lucky. No… wait. Here it is! Lucas Fisher!” Mrs. Cherry was thrilled to have found her notes, then remembered that wasn’t the name I’d given her. “I’m so sorry, my love.”
Lucas Fisher. The first boy who’d gone missing from SwordFight. I was afraid he’d suffered whatever fate I feared had befallen Brent. That he was another victim of whatever was going on.
I was glad to hear he was okay. In a way, it gave me hope for Brent.
On the other hand, knowing his obsession with Brent had me initially suspicious of him. Now that his whereabouts were accounted for, he’d gone full circle from suspect to victim to suspect again.
“Actually,” I told Mrs. Cherry, “I’ve been looking for Lucas, too. He was a friend of Brent. He might know where he is. This is great. Can you give me the info you got on him?”
“Absolutely,” Mrs. Cherry gushed. “So, I was helpful after all?”
“You were amazing,” I assured her. “No one else had any idea where to find him. I was just about to give up.”
Mrs. Cherry gave me Lucas’s address and phone number, sounding quite pleased with herself.
“Now, you will remember to be discreet, won’t you, darling? Mr. Fisher’s patron pays quite handsomely to keep his dalliance with this young man out of the public eye. I don’t know how far he’d go to protect his privacy.”
I’ve seen firsthand how far famous people went to hide their clandestine affairs. No secrets that they were willing to die for, but a few they’d kill someone else to keep. I didn’t take Mrs. Cherry’s warning lightly.
“I owe you flowers,” I told Mrs. Cherry. “Thank you so much.”
“No bouquets, please,” Mrs. Cherry said. “They just die and depress me. But I’d be happy to give you the number of my local bakery. Just tell them to get the order right, okay?”
29
