He didn’t answer for a while. I waited. He couldn’t stand the silence.
“Yes.”
“You went to school with her?”
Again the pause. Again the wait. Again he capitulated.
“Grammar school, middle school, high school. Then I went on to college and she stayed in Franklin.”
“Friends?”
“Oh yes. Tight. Buddies, really. Franklin wasn’t the easiest place to grow up.”
“There may not be any easy places,” I said.
Larson carefully dabbed a little horseradish into his cocktail sauce. It bothered me that I hadn’t come across his name.
“You know her other friends?” I said.
He smiled. Apparently he’d decided that frank disclosure might relieve tension.
“Sure,” he said. “Roy, Pike, Tammy? Sure.”
“How about Joey Bucci?”
Larson had ordered a glass of Chablis with his appetizer. He sipped a small sip of it, savored it self-consciously, and smiled at me.
“Why do you ask about Joey Bucci,” he said.
“He was described as part of her group,” I said. “Nobody mentioned you.”
Larson had another shrimp. He looked thoughtful, but it might have been just his savoring look. He took in some air and let it out slowly.
Then he said, “I used to be Joey Bucci.”
“You changed it,” I said.
“I just didn’t feel like a Joey Bucci,” he said.
“You felt like a Larson Graff?”
He smiled. “In my business more Larson Graff and less Joey Bucci is a good thing,” he said.
“Mary says you came to her through her husband.”
“Only indirectly,” Larson said. “He called and said Mary was looking for a public relations advisor and had asked him to call me. That’s how I met him.”
His shrimp cocktail was gone, leaving him more time to fully examine the remaining Chablis. It was his third.
“Through Mary?” I said.
My head was beginning to hurt.
“Yes.”
“And you became friends independent of her?”
Larson smiled and tilted his head.
“We shared a common interest,” he said.
“Young men?” I said.
“S. You know about Nathan?”
“I do.”
“Poor old queen,” Larson said. “Still deep in the closet in this day and age.”
I nodded. He sipped his wine.
“Pathetic, really,” Larson said.
“Mary says she met her husband through you.”
He laughed. “That’s Mary. She can’t string five words together and make sense. She probably said it backwards from what she meant. I met Nathan through her.”
I nodded. Old Mary. Dumb as a flounder. As opposed to me, the brainy crimebuster, who seemed to be losing brain cells every day he was on this case.
“If Nathan was gay, what do you suppose Mary did for a sex life?”
Larson laughed again. Having committed to the conversation, he seemed to have jumped in feet first.
“Some of us can go both ways,” he said.
“Was Nathan one who could?”
“I don’t think so,” Graff said, a little singsong in his voice.
“So did Mary have any other possibilities for a sex life?”
