The Colors of Hate - 22

When they got to Dean's office, he started pacing, Kirby doing the same in the opposite direction. Reid took a seat and watched. Any other time he might have found it amusing, but not now. Not with so much at stake. “What’s his name Mr Travers?”

“I’d like to say it’s something stupid and indicative of what he is, like Bubba Redneck, but its not. It’s Richard Jones.”

“Is he from around here?”

“No. He lives in the same city my father does. Colorado Springs to be exact.”

“Figures,” Kirby muttered.

“Why would he be here?” Reid asked.

Dean stopped pacing before answering. “Looking for me, to bring me back into the fold, as my father would put it.”

“Damn, you’re an adult, though I guess to people like them that probably doesn’t matter.” Kirby shook his head then frowned at Dean. “They don’t know where to find you?”

“Oh my father knows. But since I don’t answer his letters, or the phone when he calls, I suppose he decided to take the direct route. He getting old, well older, and wants me to start taking over the reins of his…his cult is what I call it.”

“That’s exactly what it is!” Kirby said forcefully.

“Mr Travers…” Reid started to say.

“Please, call me Dean.”

“Dean, then. Kirby told me what the two of you talked about last night, some of it anyway. Is there any way your father could have found out that you’re gay?”

“I don’t see how, but then…” Dean sighed. “I can’t state categorically that it would be impossible.”

“Okay, picture this scenario," Reid said. "He has reason to believe you might be. That would make him furious. But he doesn’t know for certain, so he sends Jones out here to spy on you. The man makes friends with Ms Westcott. Maybe only on the night she was killed, maybe earlier.”

“I’d guess earlier,” Kirby said. “That’s why she kept throwing herself at you, Dean. Testing to see if you’d respond.”

Reid nodded. “That makes sense. Did you tell her you wouldn’t be going to the club with the rest of the group, Dean?”

Dean thought back to the last time he’d seen her, trying to remember, then shook his head. “Honestly, I was so pissed I probably did, but it’s anyone’s guess.”

“Okay. Either way, she goes to the club, Jones shows up, and if we’re right, although of course we might not be, she tells him what went down between the two of you. To him that would be proof enough, as crazy as those people are.”

“But why kill her?”

“Now that’s a good question for which I haven’t figured out an answer,” Reid admitted.

The Colors of Hate - 21

“He’s everyone from the President’s half-brother to an alien from Planet Z,” Reid groaned as he hung up on yet another caller who swore they knew who the man was in the newspaper sketch.

“Tell me about it. But somewhere in all the calls and emails, there might just be a name which really belongs to him. So we have to keep weeding through them and hope.” Kirby clicked delete then moved on to the next email, muttering ‘possible’ as he read it then moved it to the right file. He deleted another one that claimed the man was the next door neighbor of the writer, who lived, they said, in an ashram in the Himalayas. Then his private phone chimed.

“Hi, I wondered if you’d call,” Kirby said to Dean, after he saw his name come up on the screen and answered. He listened for a moment then said, “Stay there, we’ll be right over. You’re positive?”

Reid listened, one eyebrow cocked in question. As soon as Kirby had hung up he asked, “What?”

“Mr Travers says he knows who the man is.”

“Well, what are we waiting for,” Reid responded as he grabbed his jacket and headed to the door.

Ten minutes later they pulled up in front of the theater. Kirby jumped out as soon as Reid pulled into the ‘No Parking’ zone, hurrying across the sidewalk to where Dean was stood in the shade of the awning over the wide front doors. He looked pale, but composed.

“Rehearsal over?” Kirby asked, knowing seconds later it was a stupid question as it was only mid-afternoon.

“No. I have one of my assistants taking notes.” Dean waved the newspaper he was holding in front of Kirby’s face. “I do know him.”

“Who is he,” Reid asked when he joined them.

Dean kept his eyes on Kirby as he said, “A member of the CVA. He works closely with my father.”

“You’re positive?” Kirby replied quietly.

“Oh yeah. Definitely.”

“Why would he…”

“Let’s take this somewhere less public,” Reid broke in.

Dean took a deep breath and nodded. “My office?”

“That works.”

The Colors of Hate - 20

 “Well, I probably gave Detective Lasiter a good reason why I would have wanted Ange dead,” Dean told Carrie during a break in rehearsal. They were in his office where they could have some privacy.

“How so?”

“I told him about dad.”

Carrie looked at him is shock. “Dean, you didn’t! Why?”

“We were talking about…well my alibi such as it is, and why I didn’t just tell Ange so she’d lay off. It…came up.”

“I see. I bet he jumped in with both feet to say dad was right on in his beliefs. He is a cop after all.”

“An out cop, and…”

“Hang on, he’s gay, too—and they know it?”

“According to him, yes.” Dean smiled wryly. “He suggested the Witness Protection program. Well, not as if he thought I should become part of it, just sort of joking, after he asked why I hadn’t changed my name so I could be ‘me’.”

“Like dad couldn’t find you, even if you did.”

Dean nodded. “That’s what I tried to tell him, I think.” He frowned. “Or maybe I didn’t, not that it matters.”

“So now you’ve jumped to the top of their suspect list. Damn, I’m sorry.” Carrie hugged him hard for a minute. “You didn’t do it.”

“I hope that was a statement, not a question,” he replied with a small smile.

“Of course it was, you nut.”

“I know. I was just teasing.” He took a quick look at the time and sighed. “Back to the grind.”

“You love it, and you know it.”

“Yeah, I do. Just like you do.”

“I love it more.”

“No, I do,” he bantered back, glad he could clown around, if only for a moment, and have a bit of fun.

“Uh-uh,” Carrie called back over her shoulder as she hurried down the hall toward the stage.

“Uh-huh,” he said, laughing while he headed to the auditorium.

The Colors of Hate - 19

“Mr Travers is not our killer,” Kirby told Reid early the next morning.

“He has a good alibi?”

“Only adequate, but I talked with him for over an hour last night.” Kirby filled Reid in on his conversation with Dean.

When Kirby finished, Reid leaned back to look at his partner. “It could play out either way. One, everything he told you was the truth. He did do his best to alienate Ms Westcott so she’s back off, short of letting her know he’s gay. Or, on the flipside, he played on her sympathies, telling her the truth and why he wasn’t out. If she was mad enough, she could have threatened to let his father know and he took things into his own hands to stop her.”

“Come on Reid, would you tell some pissed off female your deep, dark secrets?”

“I wouldn’t, but people do strange things when they’re feeling pressured.”

“Yeah, I guess. Given what we do I’m well aware of that, of course. But in this case I think I’m right. He didn’t kill her. So let’s sit down and take a look at the other possibilities, especially the man she left the club with.”

“About whom we know ace-deuce other than what he looks like.”

“We could have the newspaper do a ‘Have you seen this man?’ article. He is a suspect.”

“I’ll do that now,” Reid said, picking up the phone.

While he made the call, Kirby began writing down the list of possible suspects from the theater. When Reid finished the call, Kirby slid the list over to him.

“Okay, start at the top. Malcolm Leads. He was at the club, and according to Ms Travers and Mr Eckert he was upset about Ms Westcott dancing with the ‘stranger’ as we’ll dub him.”

“Yep. One of the other girls who was there said they were dancing like it was a sexual seduction in progress.”

“Isn’t most dancing, if you stop to think about it,” Reid said with a laugh. “But still if Mr Leads had a thing for her and she wasn’t interested in him, I can see it could be the last straw—even if Ms Travers and Eckert said they got him calmed down.” He tapped the list. “Which brings us to Eckert himself.”

Kirby nodded. “Maybe the breakup with Ms Westcott wasn’t as final as he led Ms Travers to believe. He could care a lot for Ms Travers, but still have been getting some behind her back with the victim. If Ms Westcott threatened to make their affair public he’d have reason enough to want her out of the picture.” Kirby dug through their notes from the interviews with the actors. “Ms Travers said that after supper with Mr Leads they all went their separate ways. I wonder whose idea it was that she not go home with Eckert, or vise versa.”

“Something to find out, and turning that scenario around, she could have thought he was still playing around with Ms Westcott and decided to get her out of the picture once and for all.”

“That gives us three who might have had motives. Then there are the men in the company she dated and dropped, although no one’s even implied that any of them were upset when it happened.”

Reid nodded. “I get the impression that was her usual modus operandi and everyone was used to it happening.”

“Mr Nester is definitely a no-go.” Again Kirby looked through the file they were amassing, taking out a sheet of paper. “He was home with his wife, he says. John talked to her. She confirms it.”

“There’s always young Ms Mars. She came out on top with Ms Westcott’s death since she took over her role in the show.”

“This is a local theater, not New York or Chicago. I don’t see an understudy killing the star so she could step in.”

Reid shrugged. “Again, we both know stranger things have happened. I wouldn’t write her off quite yet.” He pointed to the list. “I don’t care if you think he didn’t do it, add Mr Travers.”

Reluctantly, Kirby did.

The Colors of Hate - 18

“Let’s just say," Dean replied, "if my father had his way, we’d be sitting on either side of him and mom when he preaches his hatred. It was bad enough when I decided to go halfway across the country to school. He couldn’t understand why any upstanding young man would want to study art, which is what I did for starters before switching majors.”

“And yet, despite his misconceptions, he still believes you’re straight?”

“Thanks to Carrie. She is an actress. She knows how to play it to convince him I’m this macho stud who can’t get enough of the women.” Dean chuckled softly. “She told him, all on the hush-hush of course so mom wouldn’t find out, that I’m in theater because that’s where all the good-looking chicks are, and I get to ‘play’ with them while I’m making their costumes.”

“Good God, he bought that?”

“Apparently so, because after that little talk he pretty much stopped trying to get me to come home.”

“When was the last time you were home?”

“I haven’t been back since I left for college, so… eight years give or take a month.”

Kirby got a thoughtful look in his eyes. “You know, there are a lot of pro-gay groups that would love it if you joined them and then came out. It would be a big coup for them.”

“Sorry, but I value my life. If you know about the CVA you know radical isn’t only their middle name, it’s how they respond when they feel they’ve been betrayed. They wouldn’t out and out kill me. They know better than to do that. But there are other ways of destroying a person, physically and mentally.”

“Can I ask why you haven’t changed your name? It seems to me that would have been the logical first step.”

“It’s not as easy as it sounds to do that and keep it a secret, if someone’s really looking for you. Or at least so I’ve read.”

“Witness Protection does it for people all the time.”

Dean snorted. “First off, I’m not Witness Protection material. Secondly, from what I’ve heard, even their record for doing it successfully isn’t one-hundred percent.” He paused when the waitress came over to say they were closing. “Sorry, I didn’t realize it was that late,” he told her. “I guess we got involved in our discussion.” He stood, waiting for Kirby, and they headed out of the coffee shop into the thinning late-night pedestrian traffic.

“Are you parked close-by?” Kirby asked.

“Around the corner, yes.”

“Okay.” Kirby chuckled. “That was my not so subtle way of finding out if you needed a ride.”

“No. But thanks.”

“Welcome. Look, if you’d like to continue what we were talking about…”

“Not tonight. I have an early call. It’s the last full rehearsal tomorrow, before opening night on Friday.”

“Okay, I’ll let you go but I meant it, if you want to talk again…”

“I…might. Can I call you?”

“Sure.” Kirby took out one of his cards and scribbled his private cell and home phone numbers on the back before handing it to him.

After pocketing it, Dean thanked him then headed down the street.

Kirby watched him, and again realized he was seeing him as an interesting man, not the subject of an on-going murder investigation. Never happen, he chided himself and he turned in the opposite direction to go to his car. But it could be interesting if it did.