Love, Lies, and Murder: From the Files of Obi Kendrick, Private Eye

by Lady Salieri (ladysalieri@aol.com)

Pairing: Q/O
Series: There will probably be at least one sequel to this.... unless a mass of readers rise up to say "PLEASE don't try writing detective fic again!" <eep!>
Warnings: None
Summary: A street smart young man takes a job with an eccentric, crime-solving genius in 1940s Washington, D.C.
Feedback: Yes, please! To: ladysalieri@aol.com

Notes: This fic was originally published in the zine "Force of a Different Color II." (Thanks again, Sian!) All recognizable characters belong to George Lucas. The style, setting, etc., are inspired by the Nero Wolfe series -- both the books by Rex Stout and the short-lived (and greatly missed) A&E TV series.

It was a cool day in September, 1949, as I stepped down to the corner to pick up the morning paper, not knowing that this was the day that would change my life for good. I flipped the paper boy a coin and walked off with my paper, skipping past the news about Korea and the President's radio talk and the Senators' latest loss. It was the want ads I was looking for, and had been looking for every morning of every day for the past month.

My last boss and I had parted for religious differences, as the old saw goes--he thought he was God and I wouldn't bend down and kiss his feet. But, while pride is all well and good when you've got bread in your pocket, I had nothing but crumbs left in mine, and I was about ready to take a job anywhere.

At first the day's ads looked like the same trash I'd seen each day of my unemployment--all secretaries and stock boys and day laborers. But then, just below the crease in the middle column, a simple four-line ad caught my eye, and I could feel my luck start to change.

It read:

WANTED: Man to assist in the business of criminal detection. Must have sharp wits and familiarity with all areas of city. Investigators' license not required. Salary includes room and board. Apply at William Quinn, 1620 31st St., NW.

I'd heard of William Quinn before, of course--who hadn't? Famous war hero and rumored genius, he was well on his way to making a name for himself with the Feds when a car accident and a bum leg put an end to his roving days. Now it seemed he was getting into the private eye business, and I thought, if I played my cards right, I just might hook myself to his rising star... and make a few bucks of my own in the process. Sure, I'd never done a day of investigating in my life, but street smarts I had aplenty, and there wasn't anyone who knew this town better than me. It was a sure thing, I thought... so long as some other fellow didn't get there first and beat me to the punch.

Suddenly, the face of every man on the busy street around me bore the look of someone trying to race me to Quinn's. I folded my paper under one arm and chased down the nearest cab.

Quinn's residence was in the rich part of town, the kind of place where even the stray dogs have a better pedigree than me. As I stepped out of the cab in front of Quinn's three-story townhouse, the mix of ambition, desperation, and sheer brass that had brought me there up and lit out for greener pastures--and the new suit that had looked so smooth back at my own place suddenly felt like the dime-store special it really was. I must have stood on the sidewalk a full ten minutes before I remembered it took more than a big house and a nice address to scare off Obi Kendrick, and with that in mind--after checking the fall of my coat one last time in the bumper of a parked car--I marched up to the brownstone and rang the bell.

The door was answered by a tall black man in a sharp uniform with a head shaped like an eight ball, and just about as hairy. He had narrow eyes and a scowl that made me think he'd just as soon clobber me as let me in the door, but he asked, "May I help you?" nice enough.

"Name's Obi Kendrick," I answered cheerily. "I'm here to see William Quinn."

"Is Mr. Quinn expecting you?" The guy spoke with a strange sort of accent--European of some sort, I thought, maybe Swiss, though if there was anyone on this Earth who looked less like kind of Swiss you usually saw in the movies, I for one couldn't imagine it.

"Well," said I, deciding to fake confidence, since I couldn't seem to rustle up any of the real goods, "I'm sure he's expecting somebody, though I guess he doesn't know yet it's me. I'm here in response to his ad."

The man stood back and waved me in, so I stepped across the threshold and tossed my hat onto the stand by the door. I was just shrugging out of my overcoat when a voice from the depths of the house bellowed "Out!" A door opened off to my right and a small, swarthy man with a nervous expression stumbled through; he reached past me to grab his coat and hat from the stand and then tore through the front door, without even a 'how-do-you-do.'

"Confound it!" The voice was coming from the room the other man had left, and it was much louder now that the door was open. "I'd never have run that damned notice in the first place, if I'd known every half-witted swindler in the city would take me as their golden goose!"

I caught a faint scraping sound, like a chair being pushed back from a desk, and soon the owner of the voice stomped into the hall. This was my first look at the famous William Quinn, and all I could think was 'Zowie!' He was tall, almost a foot taller than me, and big, too--not big like some fat-cat politician, but big like a prize-fighter, lean and taut and bulging in places too numerous for me to mention. His long brown hair was pulled back in a tail that had to be at least a hundred years out of style, but somehow seemed to fit his broad face and sharp features. I put him at somewhere between forty and forty-five, but his face glowed with the health of a man much younger than that, and the faint traces of gray in his trim beard made him seem more distinguished than middle-aged. He wore dark gray trousers and a matching jacket, unbuttoned to show a crisp white shirt with no tie and left open at the collar.

The sum effect was of a man as quick and wild and powerful as a lion--and from the look on his face, twice as ferocious. If it hadn't been for the cane in his hand and his slight limp as he stalked over to join us, I'd never have guessed this guy once had his left leg chewed up and spit out by the front end of a Hudson.

"Another applicant, Meisz?" Quinn said to the dark-skinned man, who was still standing there with the door held open, as he gave me a swift once-over with his deep blue eyes.

Long-lashed, vivid, amazing blue eyes... and the strange tension I'd been carrying around in my gut since I got here gave way to a whole other tension--this one a few inches further south and a lot more familiar to me.

"Well, you certainly look more presentable than the majority of candidates I've seen this morning," I dimly heard the man saying to me. "What is your name, sir?"

Brought back to my wits by the question, I pulled myself free of his eyes and made a stab at a courteous bow. "Oberon Bartholomew Kendrick, Mr. Quinn--at your service."

Quinn's lips twitched with something that might almost have been a smile. "I see your parents had a... whimsical turn of mind," he said. "Do you prefer Oberon or Bartholomew?"

"I prefer neither, sir, as you might have guessed. My friends call me Obi, and I suppose my boss might call me that, too, though you might say I'm between those at the moment."

This time, it was definitely a smile, and I found myself thinking stupidly that, even if I didn't get the job, the twinkle in William Quinn's eyes had been worth my time and the buck-twenty cab fare. "Please join me in my office, Mr. Kendrick," he said, with a graceful gesture at the doorway he'd just passed through, "and perhaps we might discuss a change in your circumstances."

You can tell a lot about a man from his office, and Quinn's office started talking to me the moment I first saw it. It was a masculine room, all dark woods and richly colored furniture, decorated with small paintings and thick rugs and the busts of two fellows I thought were probably dead writers or composers on stands at either side of the door. A large desk took up one side of the room and mahogany bookshelves stuffed from top to bottom with books filled almost every inch of the walls. I wondered if one man could possibly have read all those books in one lifetime, but with another glance at Quinn I thought probably he had.

Money, education, and breeding, the room said--all the things I didn't have in my corner--and all of it tied up in a package so nice it almost hurt me to look at it. If I didn't get this job, I thought, I was going to kick myself till I turned purple.

"Please have a seat," the package said, waving at the leather chair in front of his desk as he slid into its twin on the other side. I hesitated a moment, thinking a chair like that was entirely too precious for my backside, but finally took him up on the invitation.

At one side of his desk sat another, smaller desk, with a typewriter at dead center and a phone on the corner. "Do you type?" Quinn asked, noting the direction of my gaze.

"Ehhh," I hedged brilliantly, cursing myself for writing off my old high school typing class as 'girl stuff.' "I can use more than two fingers at once, but I can't say much for my speed."

Quinn waved off my explanation with a shrug of the shoulder. "Unimportant, really," he replied. "If I'd wanted a secretary, I'd have advertised for one." He leaned forward suddenly to rest his elbows on the desk and pinned me with a look from those deep blue eyes. "In point of fact, the sole criterion I expect from my new employee is honesty. Are you an honest man, Mr. Kendrick?"

I thought about that for a moment, wondering what he expected to hear... wondering if anyone could sell a simple 'yes' to that kind of question. "I am when honesty's called for," I said finally. "I won't say I never told a lie to save someone's feelings or to get myself out of a fix. But if I give you my word to be straight with you, then that's what I'll be... and you won't find anyone who'll say Obi Kendrick's not a man of his word."

I tried not to fidget in my fancy leather seat as those amazing blue eyes studied me narrowly. A long moment of silence passed, then suddenly he pushed himself up from his chair and reached for his cane. I stood too, my stomach sinking to my toes, sure I'd just fluffed my chance at the best job I'd seen in forever.

It took me a moment to realize Quinn was holding his hand out for me to shake it. "Congratulations, Mr. Kendrick," he proclaimed solemnly. "It seems you're precisely the man I've been looking for."

The switch from misery to elation was so fast, it left my tongue trailing somewhere in the lurch. "You... you mean, that's it?" I stammered, goggling down at his outstretched hand like some star-struck little girl. "I got the job?"

A corner of Quinn mouth twitched slightly. "Unless you'd like me to reconsider."

"Uh, no! Of course not!" I took a deep breath to collect myself, then reached out and took his hand in a firm grip. "It's a pleasure to be working for you, Mr. Quinn."

"Just Quinn will do, thank you," he replied. "And the pleasure is mine. Now, would you care for a tour of your new living quarters?"

Things moved pretty quickly from that point on. Three days later, my bags were packed and I was settling into life with the oddest housemate-slash-employer this side of the Potomac.

Quinn was the biggest stickler for routine I ever met. Breakfast was at eight, lunch at one, dinner at seven, and he wouldn't stand for anything that messed with that schedule. Any would-be client who arrived at mealtime was left to cool his heels in the office while Quinn blissfully digested his food.

The meals in question were provided by the brownstone's other live-in employee, Wendell Meisz, who--for all he looked like a street tough--was not only Quinn's butler but a gourmet chef. I'm no expert on the art of cooking--couldn't tell a sprig of parsley from a blade of chewed up crabgrass--but I know good food when I eat it, and Meisz was the real deal. Quinn was something of a gourmet himself, and when he wasn't wrestling with a case or losing himself in one of his hobbies, he could usually be found in the kitchen, arguing with Meisz over the right way to season duck a l'orange.

Quinn was also unavailable for work between two and four in the afternoon; he spent those hours upstairs in his exercise room. Quinn was bound and determined to win back the mobility he'd lost in his automobile accident. He worked himself to the bone each day to strengthen his leg and keep the rest of his body in top form, and heaven help the unwary soul who interrupted his sessions for anything short of communist invasion.

Quinn had a hothouse on the top floor of the brownstone, filled from front to back with exotic flowers. He spent an hour each morning and each night with his plants, and kept a gardener on staff for the hours in between. The plants kept him centered, he said--whatever that meant--and he seemed to do his best thinking up there, surrounded by Mother Nature.

But Mother Nature seemed to be the only gal Quinn had a thing for... at least, I never saw him with another one, outside of business. I guessed he was being discreet, like he'd warned me to be when I moved in. "My one request is that you treat this house as a place of business, not a cheap hotel," he'd said. "I fully understand a man's need for entertainment, but when that entertainment involves the opposite sex, please pay me the courtesy of taking it elsewhere."

I wondered then--and was still wondering--what Quinn would have said if I'd told him how very unlikely it was I'd be bringing a woman home. I knew lots of women, sure, even took one out every so often, just for appearances. But the sort of entertainment Quinn had in mind didn't tempt me at all... and the kind I preferred was best performed far away from where anyone might recognize me in the harsh light of day.

All in all, between the meals and the flowers, the private gym and the spats with Meisz, it often seemed the only thing Quinn couldn't make time for was detective work. Quinn couldn't be bothered with the usual stuff a private eye's bank account is made of; unfaithful spouses and missing relatives and troublemaking children just weren't his style. Quinn wanted crimes--unusual ones at that, and even then Quinn was director of the show, never an actor. He'd offer a theory or suggest a suspect, then sit back and let me follow it through. And when I had stumbled down all the blind alleys and followed all the bum leads I could take, Quinn would step in and invite all our suspects to join him for dinner.

Not an obvious formula for success by any stretch of the imagination--still, when Quinn set his mind to a case, he was truly a sight to see. It seemed there wasn't any subject Quinn didn't know something about--he knew how things worked, and he knew how they all fit together in some universal big picture. And, for all he spent the average day with nothing but me, his chef, and his plants for company, he knew a lot about people too. With subtle questions, clever insights, and sometimes dazzling leaps of intuition, Quinn could drag the truth from the most unwilling source--and more than a few of his dinner parties ended with the guest of honor being dragged off in handcuffs.

Quinn was stubborn, grouchy, argumentative; he used his mind like a sword and didn't really much care who he stuck it to. Sometimes I got so mad at him, I could cheerfully have socked him in the jaw. Other times, my impulses were a bit friendlier. Like the times he kept me company when I was up with paperwork late at night. He'd stoke the fire in the office and stretch out on the couch with a book, and the image of sleepy contentment he made lying there would tear me away from my typing again and again and again.

You're precisely the man I've been looking for, he'd said the day we met, those blue eyes looking straight through me.

The hell of it was, I was starting to think the same about him.

It was early November, just shy of two months since I'd started working for Quinn, when a frenzied ringing of the doorbell shook me out of the crime novel I'd bought from the drugstore early that day. It was almost nine in the evening, far too late for the usual business call, and I briefly thought about grabbing Quinn's piece from his drawer before shrugging off the thought and heading for the door.

The man on Quinn's stoop was a thin, black-haired fellow with a deep gold complexion and cold gray eyes. He looked to be in his mid twenties, well muscled but thin, and he might even have been attractive were it not for the sullen curl of his lips and the lines of distemper around his mouth and eyes.

"I'm here to see Quinn," he announced curtly, and tried to push his way past me.

Well, I wasn't having any of that. "Just a minute here, pal," I said, throwing a hand up to block his way. "First, you're going to give me your name and your business with Mr. Quinn, and then I'll see if he's available to talk to you."

"What are you, Quinn's bodyguard?" the man snarled. He gave me a quick scan from head to toe, then let out a rasp of mocking laughter. "I think I can guess what your qualifications might be."

I didn't know what he was getting at, but whatever it was, I didn't like it. I was just about to call the guy on it when Quinn's voice from behind me cut in. "Obi? Who is it?"

Quinn came around to peer over my shoulder, and he drew a sharp breath when he saw the man at the door. "Xander," he said. The greeting wasn't a friendly one.

"Hello, Quinn," the man replied silkily. "Long time, no see."

"Not nearly long enough," Quinn snapped. "What do you want?"

The man gave an insolent laugh. "Is your trained dog here going to let me in, or do you want me to shout my business to the whole world?"

I glanced over at Quinn to see his jaw clench with anger, but after a moment, he gave me a nod. "Let him in, Obi. I'll see him."

I held the fellow back a few seconds longer, just to let him know I wasn't as obliging as Quinn, then lowered my arm and locked the door behind the man before trailing him into Quinn's office.

Quinn seated himself at his desk and fixed the newcomer with a steely glare. "Alright, Xander; you're in. Now, would you care to explain why you're here?"

The guys eyes widened innocently. "That's mighty unfriendly of you, Quinn. Aren't you going to introduce me to your pet first?"

It took every ounce of restraint I had not to reach out and throttle the punk where he stood, but I wasn't about to let him die knowing he'd managed to push my buttons. I held my clenched fists behind my back and tried to focus on keeping my cool.

"Obi Kendrick," Quinn said, "meet Alexander Telosi. Don't worry, you won't be getting to know him any better."

I gave Alexander Telosi my most menacing smile, then lowered myself into my chair, watching narrowly as the man threw himself into the seat opposite Quinn's desk.

"All right, Quinn," he said abruptly, "I'll cut to the chase. Mundy's dead."

From the sharp gasp that met this statement, I could tell the news shocked someone in the room, and it sure as hell wasn't me. Who was this Mundy fellow, I wondered with an unreasoning stab of anger, and why was news of his death so upsetting to William Quinn?

Telosi was still speaking. "It happened last night in his office, the word is. He was working late, like always, when someone came in and stuck a shiv in his gut. Left him there to bleed to death, like a pig."

It was a nasty way to go, and Quinn's face had gone gray at the thought of it. "I'm... sorry to hear that, Xander," he said reluctantly. "I know..."

"I'm not here for your sympathy, Quinn," the other fellow cut in. "The thing of it is, the cops have me figured for the job. I had a fight with Mundy that morning, there in his office, and there were witnesses that heard me say I'd kill him. If the cops find me, they're gonna want to know what that fight was about, only I can't tell them, see? And even if I did tell them, it would only make things worse for me."

Telosi leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, his eyes narrowing with an almost gleeful sort of spite. "But see, I figure if they do find me, there's plenty of other things I could tell them instead, and some of those things'd hurt people with a lot more to lose than me, right? People with money, people with reputations, people..." He waved a finger aimlessly in the air, then suddenly fixed it on the man across the desk. "People like you, Quinn. So I thought maybe I'd come here and get your thoughts on the matter. Do I go in and spill my guts to the cops, or does someone help me lay low till this all blows over?"

Quinn stared at Telosi for a long, tense moment, his blue eyes as cold and hard as ice. The silence in the room stretched on and on as the two men stared each other down, till finally Quinn's gaze flickered over to me. "Obi?" he said, almost pleasantly.

"Yeah?" I answered, already shrugging out of my jacket as I rose to my feet. It was a new jacket, custom tailored and snug as a glove, and I didn't want to rip a seam in the shoulder when I tossed this joker out on his ear.

"Leave us."

If Quinn had hopped up and stuck a shiv in my gut, it wouldn't have surprised me more. I must have gaped at him like a dead mackerel for at least a full minute, sure I'd heard wrong and any moment the words in my ears would rearrange themselves into something that made sense. But the words stayed put the way they were, and the look on Quinn's face left no room for debate.

I folded my jacket over my shoulder and made a quick adjustment of my tie, then tossed a glib smile at my employer. "Sure, I've got plenty of other things to take care of. You can fill me in on the details of this conversation later."

And with that, I scraped up what was left of my dignity and swept from the room.

Meisz was putting the last of the night's dinner in the icebox when I stomped into the kitchen.

"That boss of yours is a real pip," I snapped, as I threw myself onto a nearby stool. "A real pip."

'Pip' wasn't exactly the word I was looking for, but my mother had beat most of the more appropriate words out of me by the time I was twelve years old. I supposed it would have to do.

"Is there some problem, Obi?" Meisz asked.

"Yeah, I'll say there's a problem. Some slick-haired punk comes in here and threatens Quinn, and I'm the one who gets the boot! Call me a trained dog, will you.... and what do I do but scurry off at Quinn's bidding and prove his point?" I was practically spitting at the thought of it. "I tell you, if I were any kind of man, I'd go back there right now and knock both of them on their cans! Trained dog...."

I went on like that for some time, and might well have continued a while longer, but Meisz had unwrapped some of the leftovers and was cutting up a loaf of French bread. "Would you like a sandwich, Obi?" he asked calmly.

I considered telling him I wasn't some ten-year-old schoolboy whose life's problems could be soothed away by a dose of his mom's home cooking... but then, that roast chicken was looking pretty good, and I guessed I was kind of hungry, after all. "Well, all right," I grumbled, folding my arms across my chest, just to show I wasn't really appeased. "You got any beer in this place?"

Around ten minutes later, the inner telephone line rang, and I left off my sandwich long enough to pick up the phone. "Yeah?" I barked into the receiver.

"Ah, Obi... good," Quinn's voice answered. "I need you to get Mullen on the phone for me. Tell him to come over right away; I've got a job for him to do."

Garrick Mullen was an old school chum of mind and a bit of a jack-of-all-trades. Quinn hired him once in a while to run errands or drive him around, usually when I was busy elsewhere or we needed an extra hand. If Quinn had something for him to do now, that must mean he had other plans for me. "I got it, boss," I said brightly. "Anything else you'd like me to do?"

"Wait for him in the front hall, if you would, Obi, and send him into my office as soon as he arrives. Tell him the sooner he gets here, the better."

A huff of outrage slipped through my lips at this latest blow to my pride. So Mullen was good enough to take part in whatever Quinn and this Telosi fellow were up to, but I was still being left out?

"Is that all?" I asked snidely, an acid burn rising up from my stomach. "You want me polish the mirrors, scrub the floors in the hall while I'm waiting? You are signing my paychecks, after all; you ought to get some use out of me."

"Don't be sour, Obi." Quinn replied tersely. "It doesn't suit you."

And before I could summon a suitable response, a faint click in the line signaled the end of the conversation.

Whether it suited me more or not, by the next morning, sour had given way to downright ugly. I'd got Mullen on the horn last night, as Quinn requested, and I'd sent him into Quinn's office the moment he arrived. I wasn't about to ask Quinn if he'd let me listen in on what followed; still, it kicked the boil in my veins up an extra notch or two when he didn't make the offer himself. Ten minutes later, Mullen left the brownstone with Telosi in tow and Quinn ambled up to his room, leaving me none the wiser about Telosi's threat, Quinn's response, or what Mullen had been sent off to do.

I tossed and turned half the night in a fury, slept past breakfast, and barely made it downstairs to the office by nine. Quinn was already at his desk when I stepped in, his head buried in the morning paper; I skipped my usual hellos and slid wordlessly into my chair, feeling fouler than a turkey. It seemed like just the thing I needed when the doorbell rang a few moments later and Police Inspector Evan Peel stormed into Quinn's office.

Peel was a short, stocky man of around fifty years old, balding, with a red, wrinkled face and a thick scar under his left eye. He had a rough, gravelly voice that I'd never heard him use at less than a bellow, and he smoked fat, foul-smelling cigars that somehow clung to his lips even in his worst of tantrums. Peel had held a grudge against Quinn when the latter was still a Fed--one too many cases stolen away and solved by the genius G-man, I guessed--and now that Quinn was back in the crime-solving business, that grudge was fast growing into outright hate.

"All right, Quinn, where is he?" The man hollered, by way of a greeting.

Quinn glanced up from his newspaper with an expression of mild surprise, looking for all the world like he hadn't heard Peel push past Meisz at the door and stomp into his office. "Where is who, Inspector Peel?" he asked coolly.

"You know damn well who!" Peel snapped, pulling the cigar from his mouth long enough to point it at Quinn. "Alexander Telosi. And don't tell me you haven't seen him, 'cause I've got a taxi driver who says he dropped him off at your place around 9 o'clock last night."

"I had no intention of telling you I hadn't seen him," Quinn said loftily. "He came by last night to speak to me about a case. It seems he heard Addison Mundy had been murdered, and he wanted to hire me to investigate the case."

"Yeah, I'll bet he heard," Peel said with a snort. "And did he hear that the murder weapon had his own initials carved in the hilt?"

Not a hair on Quinn's head moved at this, but I could tell the information surprised him. So there was more to the police wanting Telosi than just the fight he'd had with Mundy. "You know I won't reveal what a client has told me, Inspector," Quinn evaded.

"Well, I'd be happy to get the information straight from Telosi himself, if I could find him. I don't suppose you two know where he might be right now, do you?"

Quinn's eyes narrowed. "I haven't the faintest idea," he replied tersely. "I don't generally have my clients tailed when they leave my office."

Peel's eyes slid over in my direction.

"Hey, don't look at me, Inspector," I said, holding my hands up in surrender. "No one tells me anything around this place."

The man's face grew redder and redder as he looked back and forth between Quinn and me, till finally the tea kettle blew. "Nuts!" he yelled. "I know damn well you've got him stashed away someplace where you think I won't be able to find him! Well, I'm telling you, you're not going to get away with it this time! I've got every man in this city on Telosi's trail... and when I do find him and prove you've been lying to me, he won't be the only one spending time in the slammer!"

Peel had spun on his heel and slammed out the front door before the last echo of his threat had died down.

"Well," I sniffed when the coast was clear, not by a long shot ready to let the events of the past night go. "Never thought I'd see the day when William Quinn, former golden boy of the FBI, would lie to one of our city's finest."

"And you haven't yet," Quinn replied easily. "I asked your friend to take Xander somewhere I would never think to look for him and keep him there till I posted an all-clear message in the Times. I haven't the faintest idea where Mullen chose to go--and before you dismiss that as sophistry, let me remind you that knowing the right questions to ask is the hallmark of every good law enforcement officer."

I sniffed again, and started straightening the typing paper on my desk, making a point of not meeting Quinn in the eyes. "I probably would call it sophistry, if I knew what that meant. As it is, you'll have to decide for yourself if the shoe fits."

Quinn gave a frustrated sigh, then made a move to change the subject. "Obi, if Peel has every man in town looking for Xander, it means he's not even considering other suspects. I'll be depending on you to help me uncover the truth."

I considered that for a moment, then nodded my acceptance. A slight movement in the corner of my eye grabbed my attention and I looked up to see Quinn perch himself on the corner of my desk.

"I apologize for last night," he said quietly. "Believe me when I say I won't make a habit of shutting you out of my concerns."

I shrugged at this, wanting to look like it didn't matter, regardless of how much it did. "I just thought I'd earned your trust by now, that's all."

Quinn sighed again, then lay a warm hand on my shoulder. "Obi," he said sadly, "you've earned my trust and so much more."

I looked up reluctantly to gauge Quinn's expression... and found myself snared in his eyes.

The room around me slid into a senseless blur; the only clear thing for me in the world was the sight of thick lashes framing two spheres of a breathtaking hue. Had I ever really seen the color blue before? I thought I had, but there wasn't a sky, a lake, an ocean on Earth that could be so rich, so clear, so impossibly big. I never wanted to look away. I could see Quinn's heart in those eyes, and I thought if I could just get close enough, maybe I'd find room for myself in there....

The feel of a warm breath against my face brought me back to my senses, and I suddenly realized my lips were hovering just inches away from Quinn's. I dropped back into my seat and pushed the chair away from the desk, gasping in shock at the monumental gaffe I'd just made. I reached for the stack of typing paper once again--desperately trying to cover up my mistake--and moved it clumsily into the drawer at my side. My heart was pounding in my ears, my mind screaming silently for Quinn to forget this, to let it go, to take my actions as anything but the truth... that I had almost lost my head so far as to kiss William Quinn.

"Uhmm... " I ventured nervously, when the silence between us was too much to stand. "So, you said you want my help with the Mundy case?"

Quinn cleared his throat, and I dared another quick look at him; he looked almost as thunderstruck as I felt. "Right," he said finally, pushing himself up to his feet. "Let me give you a quick rundown of the facts."

K. Addison Mundy was an old colleague of Quinn's and an ace federal prosecutor. He'd had a hand in nearly all the organized crime convictions of the past few years, which meant he had plenty of enemies on the street, and he'd risen at his job above many of his older coworkers, so he probably had even more enemies at the office. It seemed like we wouldn't be hurting for lack of suspects.

Quinn still hadn't told me what the fight between Mundy and Telosi had been about, but I thought I could probably guess. Telosi had 'small-time hood' written all over him; the prosecutor probably had Telosi on some minor offense and was trying to squeeze him for information on higher-ups in his organization. It might have given Telosi reason to want Mundy dead, but not half as good reason as plenty of other fellows must have had. If Peel had focused all his attention on Alexander Telosi--and it seemed certain that he had--then it was just all the more proof that Inspector Peel was a moron.

Telosi had told Quinn that three others--Mundy's secretary and two fellows he didn't know--heard him threaten to kill Mundy on the morning of the man's death. If someone really had killed Mundy and framed Telosi for the job, it was a safe bet it had something to do with one of those three. Quinn wanted me to talk with Mundy's secretary, both to size her up and to see if I could get names for the two other witnesses.

As my taxi wound its way through the city's usual mid-morning traffic, I found myself thinking about that moment in Quinn's office, where I'd come so close to kissing my inscrutable boss.

There'd been times, in the past two months, where I imagined Quinn might have similar interests--when a warm look or a touch that lasted much longer than it should made me think he might welcome a move from me--but I had always put those imaginings aside. Men like me were few and far between in this world, and secrecy was the key to our survival. Fantasizing about someone whose interests weren't crystal clear and who could ruin my life without breaking a sweat if I did something he didn't like was just setting myself up for trouble. This latest wrinkle had only added to my confusion. Had Quinn not realized what I was about to do? Had he not cared?

Could he possibly have ached for that kiss as much as I was still aching?

"Dammit!" I cursed under my breath, ripping myself out of that thought.

I knew one thing for sure: Quinn was the mental giant in the household, not me. If Quinn really did want me, let him sort through all the half-starts and hints I'd been tossing his way and figure out I wanted him too. As much as I hated to let anyone else take the lead, I would have to let Quinn make the next move. It was the only smart thing to do.

Mundy's secretary was a thin little number with curly brown hair and the smallest dress I'd seen this side of a nickel peep show. Her dark eyes gleamed with excitement when I told her I was a private eye, and she leaped up from her desk to offer me her manicured hand.

"My name's Ami Barry," she said brightly, as I obliged her with a peck on the knuckles. "Not 'Amy' with a 'y' but 'ah-me' with an 'i.' It's French, you know... for love."

The fog of cheap perfume wafting up from this lady's skin would have knocked a lesser mortal out for the count, but I was a man on a serious mission. I fought the dizziness back and poured on my deadliest grin. "The French have a way with words," I said archly. "And their kisses aren't so bad, either."

She turned an overly wide smile up at me. "You sound like an expert on the subject, Mr. Detective," she bantered.

"I don't know about that, miss," I said, straightening my tie modestly, "but I do like to keep in practice."

She gave a titter of laughter and batted playfully at my arm, then mercifully backed off a step and shimmied up onto the top of her desk, her skirt hiking up to flash even more of her taut skin. "So, are you here about Mr. Mundy," she asked, "or is there some other reason you wanted to see me?"

"Oh, I could think of all kinds of reasons I'd want to see you, miss," I said, with a shameful disregard for the truth, "but my boss wants to hear what you know about Alexander Telosi."

"Your boss sounds like a very boring man," she replied mournfully. "But I'm always willing to help a cute guy in a nice suit. Where would you like me to start?"

Grateful the required bit of flirting seemed to be done with, I pulled a notepad and pencil from my pocket and got down to business. "Tell me about the threat he made to your boss, if you would. How did the whole thing come about?"

"Well," the woman said slowly, tapping her fingers against her desk, "Mr. Mundy was in his office with an appointment that morning and I was fixing them both some coffee, when in walks Mr. Telosi, looking as mad as a hornet."

"Had you ever seen Telosi before then?"

"Oh, sure, lots of times. He and Mr. Mundy used to go to lunch together, around once a week." Her lips drew together in a red-lipsticked pout as she sat for a moment in contemplation. "I think they must have lifted weights together or something, too, because they were always gone for more than the usual hour or so, and sometimes Mr. Mundy's hair would be wet when he came back, like he'd just taken a shower."

So Mundy and Telosi were friends, then, I thought with a scowl. There went my theory of the case.

"Anyway," the secretary went on, "this day was different from all those other times. It was way too early for lunch when Mr. Telosi came in, and he didn't listen when I said Mr. Mundy was with someone, just shoved his way in to see him. Mr. Mundy sent his other appointment out and shut the door, and I could hear Mr. Telosi shouting."

"This appointment," I asked. "Did he have a name?"

"Sure. It was Ethan Kott. He's a private eye that Mr. Mundy uses sometimes, to help out with his cases. Not a very friendly man, that one. I asked him once to show me his detective's license, and he said I wasn't the kind of lady he showed anything to."

A huff of laughter escaped me; I raised a fist to my mouth, turning it into a cough. "And he was still here when Telosi made his threats?"

"Oh, yes... he was sitting right over there on the sofa."

Ethan Kott. I scratched the name down on my notepad. One possible suspect--though, if he really was just an investigator Mundy hired from time to time, perhaps not an especially good one. "Okay, so what happened after Telosi entered Mundy's office?"

"Well, I guess it was another five minutes or so, before Mr. Telosi came storming out again, with Mr. Mundy hot on his tail. Mr. Mundy said, 'Xan, be reasonable' and grabbed Mr. Telosi by the arm. Mr. Telosi said... um...." The secretary faltered slightly, then leaned closer to me, her voice dropping to a whisper. "He said, 'Fuck reasonable. No one's ever played me for the fool, Addison, and I'll kill you before I let you be the first.' Then he shook off Mr. Mundy's arm and was out the door."

"And Mundy? What was his reaction to the threat? Did he look scared?"

The secretary looked startled at the question. "Ohhh," she breathed, reaching out to run her hand along my arm, "you are a good detective! No one's ever asked me that before. No, he didn't look scared. Worried, maybe. And kind of sad. He stared after Mr. Telosi for at least a minute or two before he called Mr. Kott back into his office."

"So this Kott fellow was the only one, besides you, who heard Telosi make this threat?" Telosi had said there were two men, but of course I couldn't let on that I knew that.

"Oh... no," she said, obligingly confirming the facts, "there was one other person there. Some guy by the name of Watteau. I didn't get who he was with, though. Mr. Mundy told me earlier that morning he'd be coming in and to schedule him after Mr. Kott." She frowned, thoughtfully. "Funny thing is, after Mr. Kott left, Mr. Mundy came out to speak to the other guy--said he was sorry he'd called him all the way out there for nothing, but it turned out he wouldn't be needing him after all. I don't know what that was about."

I didn't know what that was about either, but I wrote it down anyway. "This Watteau fellow, can you describe him?"

"Short, balding, kind of a big nose... not at all a looker like you. A real fussy dresser, with a gray three-piece suit and a red bow tie. Oh... and he had a big briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. I thought that was a bit odd."

I jotted down the man's name and description, then flipped my notebook shut and slid it back into my pocket.

"That's it?" the woman asked, looking somewhat disappointed at the shortness of the interview. "Did any of that help you? The policemen who came by earlier wouldn't say anything about how close they were to solving the case."

"You've been a big help, Miss Barry," I said. "We'll find the guy who did this to your boss, don't you worry."

"I hope so." Her face clouded over with sorrow. "Poor Mr. Mundy. And poor me, too. He was the only boss I ever had who wasn't always trying to put his hands where they weren't wanted."

I wanted to ask how, with a dress like that, she thought anyone could tell where his hands weren't wanted--but I figured I might need to come back for more information later, and it wouldn't pay to burn my bridges before it was safe. Instead I thanked her again for her help and made my escape from the room, before she could catch me in a goodbye clinch.

I was a little on edge about seeing Quinn again after the incident this morning--thought maybe the past few hours had given him time to get worked up about things he hadn't seemed worked up about before--but when I came back into the office, Quinn looked up at me as blandly as if nothing beyond the usual had ever happened.

"Did you get the names of the witnesses?" he asked.

I covered my relief at the normalcy of his question and gave Quinn an offended look. "Is it my dedication to the job or my memory of the particulars you're questioning here, boss--because I'm sure I never gave you cause to doubt my powers of persuasion."

"I've certainly never had cause to doubt your talent for flummery," Quinn said, with a roll of his eyes. "All right, then, let's hear what you have."

I grinned at the long-suffering look on Quinn's face, then clicked my heels together like a good little soldier and began my report.

"Mundy's secretary was more than obliging," I observed, "...and when I say more, I mean more. She seemed harmless enough on the whole, though, had nothing against Mundy--even liked the guy in a distant kind of way. If the killer got the scoop on Telosi from her, it wasn't malicious on her part, but I hope for our sake that's not the case, because she's... friendly enough to have told anyone."

I pulled my notepad from my pocket and scanned over it quickly, wanting to make sure I mentioned every bit of information I'd jotted down. "Our next candidate is a man named Ethan Kott. Miss Barry--that's Mundy's secretary, by the way--says Kott's a private eye Mundy hired on occasion to do work for him."

Quinn frowned thoughtfully. "I met Kott once, I believe. A cheerless sort of man, somewhat plodding in his methods, but scrupulously honest. He may be able to tell us more of what Mundy was working on before his death, but I very much doubt we'll find our link to the killer in him."

"That leaves us with our third suspect, then--and the best one, for my money--a man by the name of Watteau. A mysterious fellow, this one. Mundy told his secretary that morning to pencil him in, but didn't give her a full name or say who the man was with. Then to top it all off, he never even met with the guy anyway.... said he was sorry he'd brought him out here but wouldn't be needing him after all. One last detail: this Watteau was carrying a large briefcase cuffed to his wrist."

"Hmm." Quinn leaned back in his chair and rested his elbows on the arms, tapping his fingers together over his chest as his brow crinkled with thought. "Given Mundy's work and the relative secrecy of his arrival, the obvious assumption is that Watteau is some sort of informant, though why Mundy would choose not to see him, I can't imagine."

I'd thought as much myself, but the explanation didn't go halfway to clearing up all the puzzles about this fellow. "What do you make of his briefcase, then? Do you think there were valuables in it? Secret papers? Guns? Maybe this Watteau was a hatchet man, instead."

Quinn scoffed at that. "I seriously doubt Addison Mundy would have had need of a paid killer."

Quinn had a way of saying things sometimes that would've made even a saint want to choke him. This was a perfect example.

"Look, just because you're on the up-and-up," I shot back, "doesn't mean everyone you ever worked with is, too. Maybe Mundy backed out on a job he'd hired him for, and this Watteau took exception to being turned away. It's as good an explanation as any."

Quinn looked like he wanted to argue the point, but after a minute he brushed it aside. "In any event, this idle speculation will get us nowhere. Do what you can to find out more about this guy Watteau. Maybe someone can tell you who he is and what his briefcase was carrying."

I put my notepad away and was about to head out again, but a nagging question held me back from leaving the office.

"Listen, Quinn," I said reluctantly, not sure I really wanted to bring this up after being so thoroughly shoved aside the night before, "how sure are you this Telosi guy didn't have anything to do with this business?"

"I'm quite sure," Quinn answered. "Xander is a charlatan and a thief, but I very much doubt he's a murderer--and he particularly would not have killed Addison Mundy."

"Well, fine, but what was his fight with Mundy about, then?" I asked, reasonably enough. "If something got him mad enough to threaten Mundy, maybe it got someone else mad enough to carry out the threat. That doesn't mean Telosi himself had to be involved with it."

"Their argument had nothing to do with Mundy's death," Quinn replied stiffly.

"But how do you know that?"

"That's none of your concern."

"Quinn--"

"Enough!" Quinn cut in, slamming his hands down on his desk and pushing himself to his feet. "Damnit, Obi, I told y-...!" He broke off then, probably seeing the shock on my face at his sudden flash of anger, and closed his eyes for a moment. When he spoke again, his face and voice had regained their typical calm.

"Obi, I understand you're trying to view this case from all angles, and I applaud your perseverance, but I must and shall keep elements of Xander's story to myself. Trust me when I say that those elements have no bearing whatsoever on Mundy's death. Obi," he said again, when I failed to give an answer, "have I ever given you cause to doubt my judgment?"

Not till just now, I thought sadly--but there was no point in saying that to Quinn. I gave in with a solemn nod and headed off to follow his orders.

Some thirty-odd hours later, I was ready to beat my head against a wall. I must have talked to every snitch, gossip, and rag reporter in town, and I'd come up empty-handed. Forget finding the goods on this fellow, I hadn't even found someone who'd heard the name Watteau before.

I stepped into a phone booth outside the District Courthouse--where I'd spoke with a court reporter who said he'd call me if he saw any mention of a Watteau on any upcoming suits--and dialed the office.

"Obi," Quinn greeted, when I made my hellos. "Any news to report?"

"Nah," I said, "I've got nothing. Either this Watteau's the cleanest character in the city, or he gave Mundy a fake name."

A disappointed sigh came through from the other end of the line. "It's a distinct possibility," Quinn said regretfully. "Well, it's nearly dinner time anyway. Come home and we'll plan a new strategy for tomorrow."

"Actually," said I, "I thought I'd pass on dinner this evening. I got a home address for Ethan Kott from a gal down at the licensing bureau. I want to stop by there on the way home, see if he has anything interesting to say."

"Good idea. I'll have Meisz make you up a cold platter for when you return."

I had to hike all the way to the train station before I could manage to flag down a cab--one final frustration in a day filled with more of the same. I was footsore and dog tired when I at last sat myself down in a cab, and wanted nothing so much as to give the driver directions to Quinn's brownstone, but I was determined to have something to show for my day's work. I gave the fellow Kott's address and kicked my shoes off onto the floor, hoping the not-so-fresh air of the cab would breathe some sort of life back into my soles.

It was almost dark when the cab dropped me off at Kott's apartment building, and an ice-cold drizzle had begun to fall. I dashed across the frozen walk as quickly as I dared and through the main entrance of the building.

Kott's apartment was at the end of a long hall on the second floor of the building. I heard the faint sound of a radio from inside the room, but there was no answer when I rapped on the door. I waited a moment, shifting from side to side in hopes of stomping the chill out of my bones, then knocked louder. Still nothing. I leaned forward and put my ear up against the door, thinking I'd been wrong and the radio really wasn't coming from Kott's apartment. As I did so, my hand went unconsciously to the door knob. The knob turned, and the door slid open a crack.

Suddenly, I had a bad feeling about this.

I reached out and slowly pushed the door open the rest of the way, standing as far back as I could from whoever might be waiting to jump out at me.

Kott's place had been thoroughly tossed. A large bureau on one wall of the living room stood empty, its drawers torn out and upended on the floor. The small bookshelves at either side were similarly bare, a mess of books and knickknacks and broken records thrown carelessly about the place. A small radio, still playing merrily, lay on its side atop the bureau. A phonograph had not fared so well--and lay in a broken heap at one corner of the room. The couch cushions were in a haphazard pile beside the couch, large knife slashes down the center of each one and handfuls of foam coating the rest of the litter.

It was a terrible sight to see... and no part of it was quite so terrible as the dark lump in the shape of a man's body lying on the far side of the coffee table.

I took a deep breath to calm my nerves and moved cautiously in for a better look. It was a body all right, and if the man's slack face and wide, fixed stare hadn't convinced me he was dead, the big knife in the center of his chest would certainly have done the trick. I crouched down and gingerly lifted the lapel of the man's suit jacket. The ID I found there confirmed what I already suspected... this was the late Ethan Kott.

A floorboard creaked behind me. I spun on my heel... just in time to meet the large metal object aimed squarely at my head.

Firecrackers exploded in my head; I went down like a ton of bricks, sprawling disgustingly across Kott's corpse. I pushed myself off again, stomach curdling as my hand slid in a pool of blood, and turned to scramble after the fuzzy image of the person who'd wielded the thing that had hit me. My shoulder connected with a pair of legs, and we both went down in a tangle. I clung tight to the man's trousers, trying to hold on long enough for my vision to clear so I could get a good look at him, but the man kicked himself free and I tumbled back to the floor.

As the sound of retreating footsteps announced my complete failure to stop the intruder, I closed my eyes and decided a brief spell of unconsciousness wasn't so bad an idea.

Quinn was treading a path in the front hall when I made it back to the brownstone, a look of angry impatience on his face. "What kept you?" he snapped at me, before the full effect of my appearance sank through to him.

"Obi!" he cried, dropping his cane and rushing forward to clasp strong hands around my arms. "What happened? My God, you're covered in blood!"

"It's alright," I answered wearily, looking down at his broad chest and wondering what would happen if I took a step forward and nestled myself up against it. "It's not mine. Not most of it, anyway. Kott's dead, and I think I may just have had a scuffle with the guy who killed him."

Quinn's gaze had wandered up to my blood-caked hair, and I flinched as he raised a hand as if to touch it.

"Careful!" I warned, wincing at the pain the sudden movement had caused me.

"You look positively wretched," Quinn said, with his typical care for a man's ego. "Let's get these clothes off and get you warmed up by the fire, then we'll see what we can do about your head."

He was unbuttoning my outer garments as he spoke, and if I'd been in the right frame of mind, I might have enjoyed it a lot more than was healthy--but it seemed my libido was just as ice-cold as the rest of me.

Quinn tossed my overcoat and hat on a chair in the hall, then guided me into the office, where he stripped me down to my undershirt and boxers. I'd washed as much of the blood as I could off my hands and face before I left Kott's apartment; still, it surprised me when I looked down at myself in my underclothes and could find no trace of blood on my skin. I'd read a play once in school about a dame who kept seeing blood on her hands, no matter how many times she washed them. This was my first run-in with a dead body, and already I knew how she felt.

The fire in the office was casting a tantalizing warmth; Quinn plopped me down on the couch nearest the fireplace and pulled the blanket down from its back to tuck it around me. Then he scooped up the pile of bloody clothes from the floor and disappeared, coming back a minute or so later with a bowl of water and a first-aid kit. He sat next to me on the couch, setting his haul on the stand beside him, then pulled a small cloth from the bowl and wrung out the excess water.

"Did you call the police?" he asked as he turned back to me and began dabbing the cloth at my head.

"Didn't have to. Some gal came by Kott's door, screamed her head off, and brought the whole building running. The cops were there almost by the time I came to." I hissed as the cloth touched a particularly sensitive spot on my head, then waved off Quinn's murmured apology. "I think Peel would've charged me with murder just for spite, but he couldn't think of a good reason why I'd have hit my own self in the head and then lay there till the police came."

Quinn snorted. "I'm surprised he didn't arrest you anyway. A good reason's never mattered much to him before. I don't suppose you got a good look at the person who did this to you."

"Don't I wish. Whoever it was came up on me from behind and took off while I was still seeing stars. Not that Peel believed me when I told him that. He almost chewed my ear off before he gave up and let me come home."

Quinn tossed the now blood-stained cloth back into the bowl of water, then sprayed my head with something that smelled like rubbing alcohol and smarted like absolute hell. "You're in better shape than I expected," he pronounced. "You've got quite a lump forming back here, but the cuts don't seem to be very deep. Any idea what he hit you with?"

"A camera, I think. At least, there was a broken one lying next to me on the floor."

Quinn gave my eyes a clinical look, then nodded approvingly and rose to his feet. "Is there anything else I can get you, Obi? A drink, perhaps? Some whiskey?"

I smiled faintly, the pleasant warmth in my bones owing less to the soft blanket around me than to the concern in Quinn's bright eyes. "Tempting as that sounds, I think I've done my head enough damage this evening," I said. "I guess I should call it a night."

Quinn watched me as I got up from the couch, then followed me carefully up the stairs. "I want you to sleep as late as you wish tomorrow," he said. "You've earned the time off. Meisz can keep watch of things while I'm tending the orchids."

I smiled my thanks at him as we pulled up outside my room. I pushed open the door to my room and was just about to tell Quinn goodnight, when he suddenly stepped closer and slid his arms around me.

"Please be more careful from now on, Obi," he said, squeezing me tightly and burying his face in my hair. "For my sake as well as your own."

And then he was off, limping his way down the hall to his own room... and leaving me to stare after him in shock.

My head was as tender as Meisz's veal marsala the next morning, but it didn't stop my mind from working like crazy. I'd been worried enough about this case from the very start--what with Quinn's strange secrecy and the unknown threat Telosi held over his head--but the attack on me had just made it all the more personal. It was past time someone cracked this case open, and if Quinn wasn't going to do it, maybe I could.

I spent most of the morning upstairs in my room, plotting my plan of attack. There were things I needed to know... about Mundy, about Telosi, even about Quinn... and since the latter two weren't cooperating, that left me with Mundy. They say dead men don't talk, and it doesn't take a genius to see that's true--but they also don't complain when you sift through their things. I would have to pay Mundy's apartment a visit.

Quinn, of course, would have pitched a fit if he knew what I was planning. Fortunately, I had any number of believable lies to choose from. I picked one and sprang it on him just after lunch.

"I've got a few new ideas on how I can find this Watteau character," I said. "If you don't need me for anything, I thought I'd see if any of them pan out."

Quinn went for it without a question, and my plan was off and running. Less than a half hour later, the city cab service had dropped me off at the address I'd wangled from a friend in the police. I pushed through the outer door and took the steps up to the fifth floor. Mundy's door was at far end of the hall, and I stopped there to examine the lock on the lone piece of wood standing between me and success.

I had a bit of a gift for the kind of locks you usually saw in apartment buildings... a slip of the penknife between the door and the frame, a jiggle of the knob, and I was in business. But the lock on Mundy's door looked pretty secure, and the gap between door and frame was so small I wasn't sure even a beam of light could slip through. My stomach bottomed out as I looked at the stubborn lock, and I wondered if my independent detective work had ended before it began.

"I thought the cops were through with this place," a voice called out.

I looked over my shoulder--after I jumped back into my skin--and saw a small woman with curly white hair and a face lined with distemper peering out the door of the apartment just to my left.

"They may well be, ma'am," I said politely, "but I'm not a cop. I'm a private investigator."

The woman gave a contemptuous snort. "Well, I hope you do a better job of things than the cops have so far. Imagine it... police wouldn't even listen when I came over to give my evidence. Said the crime didn't even take place here, so what could I say that would help them in the investigation? Bunch of nincompoops."

"Oh?" I asked disinterestedly, wanting to speed the woman on her way so I could figure out how to jimmy Mundy's lock. "And what would you have said?"

"I would have said he got what was coming to him, that one. Sins always come home to roost, don't you know."

"Sins?" I asked, suddenly a bit more interested in what the woman had to say. With all the folks I'd talked to the past two days who knew, or at least knew of, Addison Mundy, I hadn't heard anything about him that might be considered a sin. "What kind of sins are you talking about?"

"That man was a sick, evil creature," she muttered, drawing her thick bathrobe around her as if trying to shield herself from contamination. "Not fit to live near decent human beings. I called the cops on him at least a few dozen times, but they never did anything about it--any more than they did anything about the mobsters upstairs or that dirty communist across the hall."

"I see," I said blandly, thinking I saw all too well. The old gal probably spent most of her days peeking out doors and dreaming up stories about her neighbors, each one more fantastical than the next. I wondered how many times she'd brought the police here on some wild-goose chase before they'd written her off as a loon.

"Well, I knew it would end like this," she went on, apparently heedless of her less than captive audience. "It was the Greek who done him in, I'll lay odds, or that tall fellow who always used to come around before him."

This time, the old lady really had caught my attention. "Tall fellow?" I asked, feeling a sudden suspicion I would not--could not--allow myself to name.

"Oh, yeah," she answered readily, "a real tall fellow, big-shouldered... with his hair pulled back in a ponytail, like a little girl. He used to come home with that one almost every night." She snorted. "'Working late again, Mrs. Costa,' they'd say when I looked out into the hall, like I didn't already know what was going on. These walls here are paper thin, don't you know. I could hear every minute of their... perversions... like they were doing it in my own bedroom."

My heart was speeding like a freight train. The case, my plans--all were forgotten. If the old lady meant who I thought she meant--and how many other tall, long-haired men could Mundy have worked with?--then this was the news I'd been waiting my whole life and two very long months to hear.

Joy was dancing across my skin and making the whole world seem flooded with light. It was all I could do not to run over and give the old bat the biggest kiss of her life. "Thank you, Mrs. Costa!" I said, giving her a tip of my hat before turning to dash back to the stairs. "You don't know how much you've helped me!"

"Just make sure you catch those dirty perverts!" she called after me. "And come back and get some of these other criminals too!"

It was just after two o'clock when I made it back to the brownstone, which meant Quinn was upstairs in his exercise room. I tossed my hat and coat in a chair and took the steps up to the third floor in a run, almost tripping myself several times in my haste.

Quinn was stretched out on a thin rubber mat on the far side of the room, tossing off sit-ups at an easy pace. I paused for a moment to admire the outline of his chest beneath his tight undershirt, but I hadn't run all the way up here just for the view. I closed the door quietly behind me and turned the latch, then called out to Quinn.

"What is it?" he snapped, pushing himself up on his elbows and tossing me his fiercest scowl.

I had a pretty good idea how I was going to wipe that look off his face. Without a word, I moved over to Quinn's side and threw one leg across him, dropping to my knees and seating myself cozily around his lean hips. Quinn's elbows slid out from under him, and he dropped heavily back to the mat, looking as near to utterly baffled as I'd ever seen the man before.

"Obi!" he cried. "What--?"

"I heard a very interesting story today from Mundy's next door neighbor," I said huskily. "I just came here to follow up on the lead."

Quinn's eyes widened as I leaned forward and laid a finger on the hollow of his throat, then slowly let it trail down his chest.

"What do you think you're doing?" he protested, his voice several notes higher than its usual tone.

"You taught me to detect, Quinn, so I'm detecting." I glanced down to where my hand was just passing the waistband of Quinn's trousers, then grinned up into Quinn's befuddled eyes. "I think I'm onto something big here."

A faint squawk of embarrassment slipped from Quinn's lips; he shifted suddenly, trying to toss me off him--but I was having none of that. The news that Quinn and Mundy were once lovers had erased all my doubts about him and me. I hadn't been misreading all the signs I got from him. Quinn wanted me too.

Eager to make my own thoughts on the matter clear, I clenched my hands around Quinn's upper arms and pushed his shoulders back to the mat, then leaned even further forward and captured his lips with mine.

Quinn had never been slow to read a situation, and this was certainly no exception. A quick intake of breath, an instant of stunned disbelief, and then a large, strong hand was clenched in my hair, holding me close, and his tongue was battling mine.

"I didn't know you..." Quinn managed, when we finally broke apart, "didn't know you were a..."

"A nancy boy? A powder puff? A hopeless sap for my boss's charms?" I chuckled huskily. "And they call you a genius."

I bent my head to nuzzle his jaw, the strange tickle of his beard against my face sending chills of delight through me. Quinn shifted restlessly beneath me; then, with a murmur of dissatisfaction he raised his hands to hold my head still and his lips caught mine again. The kiss deepened, lengthened--and suddenly the heat between us was intense. I arched my back to brush my chest against his, cursing the layers of clothing that kept his skin from touching mine.

Quinn seemed to be reading my mind. His hands moved to my shoulders, pushing my open suit jacket down my arms. I shrugged myself free then tore at my tie, half-choking myself in the rush to tear the thing from my neck. Quinn had pulled my shirt from my waistband and was working on the buttons, but I was too impatient for delicacy. I sat back and lifted my shirt over my head, disregarding the sound of ripping seams as I stretched the material past its limit. My undershirt was next to go; then I tugged Quinn up into a seated position and stripped him of his shirt as well.

Quinn's hands splayed across my back and he crushed me against his body, his mouth moving to my neck. I threw my head back, a moan escaping me at the feel of sharp teeth, then let out a surprised yelp as he shifted weight and tossed me onto my back.

Quinn was quick to follow me down, his long body pressing me into the mat. We kissed again, a hot, wet, wonderful kiss, and it was his turn to moan as my hands slid down his back to squeeze his luscious rear end.

I was panting for breath when he broke from his kiss, shaking from the experience of taste and touch and smell I'd been craving for months. I pushed his shorts down over his hips, then fought with his hands in a race to get my trousers off, and we both groaned in delicious agony when we had kicked free of our clothing and our erect organs met each other unhindered.

Quinn bent his head again to the curve of my neck, one large hand turning my head to give him access to the skin behind my ear. My own hands were tracing inscrutable patterns across Quinn's flesh, loving the feel of powerful muscles beneath warm skin, glistening with sweat.

Quinn's mouth left my ear and began a slow path down my chest, pausing to lick and nip at my collarbone, my nipples, the hollows between my ribs. His hair had come free from its tie, and the gentle tickle of its softness as it brushed along my body added a whole new layer to the sensation sweeping over me in one breathtaking wave. I gasped with pleasure as Quinn lapped at my navel, then almost screamed when he abruptly slid down and licked the tip of my erection, his amazing tongue spreading tremors of heat through my veins and lighting a fire in the center of my body.

I clenched my hands around Quinn's hair as he took my organ into his mouth, wanting to shout, to laugh, to beg him never to move from right there. My body bucked mindlessly beneath his, as the incredible torture went on, and I felt the heat of his length rub against the muscle of my calf. Quinn roared at the sensation, then--inexplicably--lifted himself off me and crawled over to one side of the mat. A small whimper escaped me at the loss of contact and I lifted my head from the mat, forcing my eyes to focus and see what had torn Quinn's body from me.

I propped myself up on my elbows and watched as Quinn picked up a small container from the floor. Oh yes, I thought, practically wiggling on the mat with eagerness. Long, slow sessions of kisses and petting could wait for some other time; I wanted Quinn inside of me, and I wanted it now.

Quinn crawled back to me--his long hair working itself from its tie and spilling across his shoulders, his face bearing the single-minded purpose of a lion in ambush--then lay a hand on my upper leg in a mute request for me to spread my thighs.

"Were you expecting someone?" I asked, nodding at the bottle--half amazed I could still joke with every inch of my body throbbing with anticipation for what was to come.

"It's... for the scars on my leg," Quinn replied, his thoughts clearly elsewhere as he moved to kneel between my legs.

Quinn took the lid from the container and poured a thick, oily liquid onto his hand. He looked up at me, and our eyes met for an endless moment, then my vision blurred and I let out a sound between a grunt and a gasp when he stroked the length of my organ at the same time as he slowly pushed a thick finger into me.

Even impatient as he had to have been, Quinn was a gentle lover, teasing me with soft kisses and strokes as he prepared me to take him in. I was flying on a cloud of sensation, begging him shamelessly to get on with it, almost sobbing with joy when he raised my legs to his shoulders and settled himself in position.

He paused then, on the verge of entering me, and raised a hand to stroke his thumb across my lower lip, before smiling sweetly at me. It was the most loving gesture I'd ever received, and my heart burst as I kissed his thumb and gave him a smile in return.

Then he slid his length into me, and I could feel something else ready to burst.

A band of trumpets struck up a reveille in my loins, ecstasy pulsing and throbbing through my body with every stroke he made. I cried out his name, then lost even that word as he pushed me closer and closer to the edge. Finally, with one last slide of his organ against my most sensitive spot, my body clenched and exploded into release, and I faintly caught the sound and feel of his own climax as I dropped into a fog of bliss.

"Obi."

I was sleepy, and something warm and solid and comfortable was snuggled up halfway beneath me. It didn't seem worth the trouble to answer.

"Obi." The voice came again, and this time my scattered brain placed the voice as Quinn's.

"Mmm?" I murmured, breathing in the heady smell of the skin beneath my cheek.

"There's something I'd like to say to you... about us." Quinn's voice was hesitant.

I felt too wonderful to let that statement cause more than a faint stab of worry, but even that was enough to shake me from my daze. I pushed myself up to lie more squarely atop Quinn's chest and looked down into his eyes. "All right, shoot."

Quinn looked at me for a long moment, his eyes dark and thoughtful. "Obi, I... I realize, of course," he said, plainly struggling for words, "that we... that our respective sexes preclude us from making any... formal commitments; nevertheless, I hope you... that is, I would be willing to... if you..."

I smiled at him, wanting to laugh giddily as I got what he was fumbling to say. "I love you, Quinn," I answered, my heart singing in my chest. "And I will gladly spend the rest of my days chasing leads and getting knocked on the head for you, if that's what you want."

Quinn looked completely overcome. "Obi," he said, struggling to push a response out over what must have been one hell of a lump in his throat. "Obi, my love."

I leaned down to kiss him again, a warm glow filling me from head to toe, but a sudden thought made me draw back with a frown. "Just so long as you don't think these extra perks mean you can stop giving me my weekly paycheck."

Quinn reached a firm hand up and brought my smiling lips down to his.

Sometime later, still curled up with Quinn on the floor of his exercise room, I finally heard the full story of Quinn's acquaintance with Mundy and Telosi.

"Addison Mundy and I met in Cornwall in 1943; we were both stationed there with the 29th Infantry. I had no idea at the time, of course, that he was a lover of men, nor did he suspect it of me. You can imagine our surprise when I ran into him after the War in one of those out-of-the-way clubs men like us go to meet companions. We went from friends to lovers in almost an instant."

Quinn's eyes grew distant with memory. "Being with him was like nothing I'd ever experienced before. I'd never had a companion with so many shared interests, with so much to talk about. We were together almost all the time... he'd make excuses to see me at work, I'd spend late nights in his office, we'd meet at his place or in hotels outside the city for the weekend. I suppose I thought we were in love, or at least, as near to it as I'd ever been."

"But?" I asked, hearing the word loud and clear in his voice.

He sighed. "But then Alexander Telosi entered the picture. Xander was a fresh-faced young pup when I met him, not more than seventeen years old. His parents had left Greece when he was a child, and he was eager to live the American dream. I hired him as a runner for me, delivering messages, speaking with sources--simple work, but a good stepping stone for a boy who claimed to want to work for the Feds himself. Unfortunately, after a year or so under my wing, he apparently decided that working on my side of the law wasn't lucrative enough. He began selling the little he did know about my investigations to other interested parties. It wasn't terribly difficult, when my leads began drying up and my suspects kept skipping town under the wire, to determine who the leak was--though, to my shame, my reluctance to believe it of Xander allowed him to continue far longer than he should have."

I'm not a violent man by nature, but the look in Quinn's eyes--dim with remembered pain and betrayal--was doing all sorts of interesting things to my temper. I promised myself I'd pound Telosi into the dirt the moment I found out where he was hiding.

Meanwhile, there was still a story to be heard. "Did you have him arrested?" I asked.

"I tried to. But you see," Quinn smiled painfully, "that wasn't the only angle Xander was working at the time. He knew Addison through me, of course, and they'd struck up what I'd... naively supposed to be a good friendship. When I brought charges against Xander, Addison arranged immunity for him in exchange for testifying against some of the men he'd sold information to. He got Xander set up in an apartment near his own place--for his protection, Addison said. Soon afterwards, he told me they were in love, and he was breaking it off with me."

I buried my face in the curve of his shoulder, tightened the arm I had lying across his chest. "I'm sorry, Quinn."

I felt rather than saw him smile, then grinned myself as he dropped a light kiss on the top of my head. "Don't be sorry," Quinn said. "Could any pain have been too great if it brought me to this moment?"

To my surprise, I actually felt tears start to my eyes.

Quinn spoke again, not noticing he'd nearly unmanned me with his words. "In any case, I never expected my affair with Addison to last forever. Addison was the most ambitious man I'd ever met; he planned to run for office, and to do that he needed a wife--preferably one with connections. In fact, that's what his fight with Xander had been about, on the day of his death. Addison had proposed to Tahlia Pallantyne, the senator's daughter. He was breaking it off with Xander so that he had no entanglements when he gave her the ring and made it off..."

As close as I was to Quinn, the shiver of excitement that swept through him almost felt like it came from me. I looked up into clear blue eyes gleaming with triumph. It was a look I'd seen many a time in the past two months, and I knew what it stood for.

The mad genius had solved the case.

"Obi," Quinn said softly, flashing a brilliant smile up at me. "I have a job for you."

The job Quinn had in mind wasn't exactly a walk in the park; still--with a little wheedling, a few threats, and a whole lot of legwork--I managed to gather a select group of people together for dinner with Quinn the next evening.

Quinn had gone upstairs around six to change for the party, leaving me to herd in the guests. By the time he returned--looking like warm brandy, soft velvet, and a whole heap of other things I'd lost the wits to compare him with in his crisp black suit and tails--the stage was set and everything was ready for Quinn to start the show.

Seated around the desk in Quinn's office were Inspector Peel, Ami Barry, and a new face for me: the richly dressed and unnaturally jovial Senator Pallantyne. Peel had stationed one of his sergeants in the front hall--to stop anyone who tried to hare off, I guessed--and there were two other guests that Quinn had asked me to keep in an adjacent room till he was ready to introduce them.

I followed Quinn into his office and made the necessary introductions.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Barry," Quinn said, bowing over the secretary's hand, to her obvious delight. "And Senator Pallantyne, thank you for making the time to meet with us."

"No trouble at all, dear boy," the senator replied, giving a hearty shake to Quinn's hand. "When your man there said you'd be revealing the name of the man who killed Addison Mundy, I had to attend. Addison was engaged to my daughter, you know. His death was a terrible tragedy... for her and for so many others."

"I couldn't agree more, Senator," Quinn replied. He took his usual seat behind his desk, but Peel had commandeered mine, so I leaned myself against the bookshelf behind Quinn and folded my arms across my chest.

"I know I brought you three here with the promise of telling you who killed Addison Mundy," Quinn began, "but to be honest, I don't know who actually murdered him. What I can tell you, however, is the name of the man who directed not only Addison Mundy's death, but the murder of Ethan Kott as well."

Ami Barry's hand went to her mouth and she gave a gasp of dismay at the news of Kott's death. She was looking surprisingly tame this evening, in a plain white dress with a high collar and a low hem. Maybe the thought of a small dinner party at a nice address had brought out the best in her, or maybe her mother had picked out the outfit. In any case, she was an absolute stunner in that getup, and I wondered if she'd get the message if I told her Quinn and I weren't the only fellows in the world who liked a little mystery.

"You're saying these two deaths are related?" Peel asked, his eyes narrowing ominously. "Funny how Kendrick failed to mention that when I questioned him at Kott's apartment."

I shrugged my shoulders helplessly. "I'd taken a pretty good knock to the head, Inspector. You can't blame me for leaving out a few details."

Peel snarled at me around his thick cigar, then fixed his glare on my boss. "This little conference of yours is pointless, Quinn. If Kott's death had anything to do with Mundy's, then your pal Telosi must have done that job, too!"

"I'm afraid that's impossible, Inspector Peel. Alexander Telosi has been staying these past four days with an associate of mine and his cousins in Richmond. There is no way he could have traveled back to the city without their knowledge."

Peel's face instantaneously went purple. "I knew you had him hiding somewhere, Quinn!" he bellowed, hopping to his feet. "That's it! I'm bringing you in! I've had it with you interfering with my investigations! Tyne? Tyne, get in here! We're taking Quinn and his assistant downtown!"

I leaned over in the midst of Peel's tirade and spoke into Quinn's ear. "Isn't this the part where you explain to him how asking the right questions is the hallmark of a good detective?"

Quinn shot me a sideways look that, had it not been for the others in the room, might well have made my legs melt into the ground. I straightened again, feeling an odd warmth in my chest, and tried to hold back the loopy grin my mouth was threatening.

Peel was still hollering for his sergeant.

"Will you be silent, you incompetent buffoon!" Quinn interrupted. "Or is puffing your ego more important to you than learning who really committed these crimes?"

"Oh, and I suppose you're going to tell me who that is?" Peel snarled.

"Of course I am! You don't think I called you here for my personal entertainment, do you?"

The door to Quinn's office opened and the hopelessly lunk-headed Sergeant Tyne popped his head in. "You call me, boss?"

"Aaah, poops," Peel growled, taking his seat again and waving the cigar in his hand at his sergeant. "Just stay right there for a minute, Tyne. Let's hear what the 'great detective' has to say."

Quinn bowed his head as if Peel's angry muttering had been the nicest of invitations. "Naturally, in investigating this case," Quinn said, "my associate and I began with the assumption that our client had not been the one to kill Addison Mundy. If this was true, it was likely the individual who framed him either saw or knew of Telosi's argument with Mundy that morning. The three witnesses to that argument were Miss Barry, who--from all we could discover--had no apparent motive to wish her employer dead; Ethan Kott, who, whatever his opinion of Addison Mundy, took his secrets with him to the grave; and a third man, known only as Watteau. Obi, if you would?"

I opened the door to the adjacent room and motioned for the first of our surprise guests to come in. "Miss Barry, gentlemen," I said, as the man stepped into Quinn's office, "I'd like you to meet Mr. Claude Watteau, of C.W. Jewelers in Alexandria."

Ami Barry gasped again. "It's him!" she cried, unnecessarily enough. "He's the guy who was there when Mr. Telosi made his threat!"

"Mr. Watteau," Quinn asked pleasantly, while I pulled a chair over from the window to give the jeweler a seat, "could you explain to us all why you were in Addison Mundy's office that morning?"

"Of course, of course," Watteau replied, a thick French accent making his gruff voice almost indecipherable. "Mr. Mundy called me a few days earlier about purchasing an engagement ring. He said his work schedule did not allow him to visit my shop in person, and could I bring some of my finer engagement rings to his office so he could make a selection. But," he threw his hands up in a helpless gesture, "when I came, he apologized and said he would not be needing me after all. I thought he had perhaps been given the brush-off by the woman of his choice."

"In fact," Quinn remarked, "as you confirmed for us yourself, Senator, your daughter did not reject Addison Mundy's proposal of marriage. Which brings us to the obvious question: What could possibly have occurred between the time Mundy arranged to meet with Mr. Watteau and the time he arrived to change Mundy's mind about his engagement to Miss Pallantyne? More than that, as Mundy apparently still planned to meet with Mr. Watteau when he told his secretary of the appointment that morning, what could have occurred in the few hours between that conversation and Mr. Watteau's arrival to have changed Addison Mundy's mind?"

Pallantyne let out a hearty laugh. "You have an amazing mind for intrigue, Mr. Quinn; I'll grant you that. But I imagine hundreds of men every day run scared at the prospect of buying an engagement ring. How can you honestly find anything sinister in Addison Mundy's being one of them?

Quinn took the senator's protest with an accepting nod. "You're right, of course," he admitted, "that any number of innocent events could have led Mundy to send Mr. Watteau away. He could have been recommended another jeweler, or... had any of the usual thoughts that trouble a man's mind when considering a lifelong commitment. But if we follow my original premise, we find only two incidents that morning that could have brought on Mundy's change of heart. The first was his argument with Alexander Telosi, which--without betraying any of my client's confidences--I can say I'm satisfied would not have dissuaded Mundy from his engagement. The second was his meeting with Ethan Kott, a man Mundy often called on for his skills as a private investigator."

Quinn sat forward in his chair, resting his loosely clasped hands on the large envelope that sat at the center of his desk. "As both of the men who attended that meeting are now dead, it's impossible to know for certain what that meeting concerned. But, when I factored in what I myself knew of Addison Mundy, it led me to an interesting conclusion. You see, Addison Mundy had rather lofty goals for a career in politics; he wanted a wife who would help him attain those goals. Addison Mundy was also a very careful man. He would not have wanted to marry a woman, only to find out too late that she held some secret in her past that could destroy his political career before it began."

Quinn smiled silkily, the kind of grin I imagine a vampire might give before it went straight for the jugular. "I believe Mundy hired Ethan Kott to make sure his future wife had no such secrets. I further believe Kott found something to make Mundy decide Miss Pallantyne was not a wise choice for his bride, after all."

The senator's chest puffed out with indignity. "Don't be absurd!" he snapped. "My daughter is absolutely beyond reproach."

"Your daughter may be, Senator," Quinn replied coolly, "but can you say the same of yourself?

Peel's voice cut through the Senator's indignant huffing. "All right, now hold on a minute here, Quinn," he snapped. "These are pretty big words for someone who hasn't shown so much as a whiff of evidence. Have you got anything besides theory, or are you just making noise in hopes it'll throw me off the hunt for your client?"

"Obi?" Quinn asked, aiming a meaningful glance at the door to the adjacent room. I opened the door to that room once more and signaled our final guest to come forward.

"Ethan Kott was killed before he could tell anyone else what he'd found in his investigation," Quinn went on. "But fortunately for us, Mr. Kott, unlike many of his ilk, was not a professional photographer. He hired this gentleman, Sal Biddle, to develop the film that he took."

That particular piece of information had come courtesy of a gal in the accounting department of Mundy's office. I'd gone there to see if Mundy was paying for Kott's last investigation with office funds or from his own pocket--and turned up a stack of detailed expense reports from all of Kott's previous jobs.

Quinn opened the envelope on his desk and pulled out about twenty-odd photos. "Mr. Biddle was kind enough to bring me copies of the last pictures he developed for Ethan Kott. That's you, Senator," he remarked, taking the top picture off the pile and holding it up for the man to see. "And, if I'm not mistaken, the man you're having drinks with is Darius Moll, the number two man of the Sitti crime family. The Organized Crime Task Force has been trying to identify the head of that family for years. I imagine they'll be as interested in these photographs as Addison Mundy undoubtedly was."

"This is preposterous!" Pallantyne announced, leaping to his feet. "In the first place, that picture shows nothing more than me having drinks with a casual acquaintance at my gentlemen's club. In the second, you said yourself that whoever framed your client must have known something about his argument with Addison Mundy. I, on the other hand, neither witnessed this fight, nor knew anything about it."

"Oh!" Miss Barry cut in, turning a horror-struck gaze upon the senator. "But that's not true, sir! I told you myself."

"Silence, you little tramp!" Pallantyne snarled.

I was ready to tear a strip into the man for that, but for once Peel had the drop on me. "Hey!" he yelled. "I don't care if you're a senator or the King of Siam, pal, that's no way to speak to a lady! Go ahead, miss," he added kindly, once the senator had grudgingly lowered himself back into his seat.

Miss Barry looked uncertain, but a nod from me settled the matter. "I hadn't really thought about it till just now, but Senator Pallantyne called that day, when Mr. Mundy was out to lunch. He asked how my day was, and I said Mr. Mundy'd been in a beast of a mood ever since his fight with Mr. Telosi."

"This discussion is over," the senator said darkly, hopping up from his chair again. "You've concocted this ridiculous tale on nothing more than a photograph and a trivial remark, and I won't stand here and be insulted by it. If, at any point, you think you have anything more to support this work of fiction, you may contact me through my attorney."

"I do have one last piece of evidence, Senator," Quinn said, halting the fleeing man in his tracks. "Do you know a woman by the name of Adelaide Gallo?"

The last of the jovial Senator Pallantyne persona fell away, and what was left was a man with cold, bloody murder in his eyes. There was no response.

"You should, at least," Quinn continued calmly. "She's a member of your congressional staff. On a hunch of mine, my able assistant, Mr. Kendrick, visited a number of engravers near Capitol Hill... and he found one that sold Miss Gallo a silver knife with the initials AKT carved in the hilt. The store keeps fairly extensive records, which is how I can tell the knife was purchased the very evening Addison Mundy was killed. I spoke with Miss Gallo, and she tells me she purchased the knife at your request, Senator--a small gift, you told her, for an old friend."

All the air seemed to have left the senator's lungs. He made no resistance as Sergeant Tyne, who'd left his position at the door on Peel's signal, stepped forward to place handcuffs on his wrists.

Quinn gave the beaten man an almost sympathetic look. "I imagine you didn't get where you are today, Senator, without knowing how to keep your hands clean of criminal activity. But it seems your impatience to remove the threat Addison Mundy posed made you careless. There've been many great men brought down by just such a careless mistake. Perhaps the thought may be of comfort to you in the years to come."

Peel had risen from his chair again and stood hovering over Quinn's desk. "I'll take those pictures," he said, reaching out a plump hand to snatch the photographs from Quinn's grasp. "That'll be enough for now, but I'll be back tomorrow afternoon, and I expect to see a sworn statement from the both of you, with names, addresses, and blood types from every person you've been in touch with."

"Anything we can do to help, Inspector," I agreed sweetly.

"The Feds'll be itching to get their hands on this one," Peel crowed, as he placed himself at the senator's side, "but the way I see it, they don't even have to know about him until I've had the chance to question him. Tell your friend Telosi I'd better not hear his name again, though. I don't like bums who hide from the cops, I don't care how innocent they turn out to be."

Peel and his sergeant had just stepped out the door, with Pallantyne in tow, when Meisz came out from the kitchen.

"Dinner is served," he announced brightly.

The remaining guests followed Meisz into the dining room, but I hung back for a moment alone with Quinn. "The usual thoughts on a man's mind when he's considering a lifelong commitment?" I asked archly. "And what kind of thoughts would those be?"

"Oh, you know... " Quinn said softly. "Do I deserve this much happiness? Am I really loved as much as I love in return?" He paused a moment, then went on, a naughty gleam lighting his eyes. "What will Meisz say if I ask my lover to move into my bedroom with me?"

I chuckled huskily and slid my arms around Quinn's waist. "What will Meisz say if you ask your lover that?"

Quinn snorted. "Probably that he'd like to find his own fellow to share a bed with."

"His own f-... " I choked, sputtering like a beat-up old jalopy in my surprise. "You're kidding me!"

"Where do you think I met our resident chef?" Quinn answered, with a wide grin. "It certainly wasn't in Switzerland."

"I... I'd never have guessed it... " Oddly enough, the news of Meisz's preferences was even harder for me to swallow than Quinn's own. I struggled for a while to consider my new insight into the chef--then a sudden suspicion made my thoughts turn dark with jealousy. "You haven't... ever... um...." I began stupidly.

I wasn't sure I'd ever manage to spit the question out, but Quinn saved me the trouble. "Never fear, Obi, love," he answered softly, leaning forward to nuzzle against my hair. "You're the only employee I've ever wanted to sleep with."

"Mmm," I said, more a murmur of pleasure than an actual response. "Sleeping with you?" I questioned, after a moment. "I don't think I've tried that yet."

"No, and you won't tonight, either... so let's get this dinner party started, so we can get on with the things we'll do while you're not sleeping with me."

I gave Quinn a swift peck on the lips and headed off to join the guests, feeling like the sun had risen and was shining just for me. It had been one hell of a crazy two months, and the craziness probably wouldn't ease much in the times to come... but I felt a wonderful sense of certainty that, so long as I had William Quinn in my life, things were going to turn out just dandy.

--The End