He texted me an address on Tranquility Lane where we would find the entrance to a cemetery in an area of Franklin called Gothwick. He said we couldn't miss it.
Police detectives seeking my involvement in their cases hadn't always been my life. I worked as an ordinary private investigator back east, but after a series of life changes, both me and my world had a drastic alteration.
My mother and I always had a good relationship, but my father's death struck me with several profound losses. In one blow, my father, my mentor, and my best friend, the one person in this world who understood me, had vanished from my life. No one could replace him. I knew he couldn't stick around forever, and on occasion, he would remind me of that fact, just in case his mortality somehow slipped my mind. No matter what, however, so long as he lived, I refused to take a few of those eggs out of that singular, all-important basket.
My parents died within twelve weeks of one another, and apart from a few friends that I had lost touch with years prior and a handful of acquaintances, I had no one of significance in my life. I felt like I was walking around in a daze for months. When I left Nashville and returned to New York, I began going through the motions of life, throwing myself into my work; it just seemed like the thing to do.
During that time, I had accepted a case from a woman who suspected her husband was cheating, and she wanted to know the truth of it. In the aftermath of that case, it became apparent that neither of us knew her husband, Lev Stepanov, was a member of the Bratva, the Russian mob. I saw him kill a guy in an alley and the dumpster into which he shoved his body. I captured one clear, incriminating photo of it. Afterward, there came the safe house, the trial, the witness protection, the rearranged face, the age reassignment (38 instead of 40), my new name (Howard Ellis Millstone), and a new apartment on the west coast in Franklin, a city renowned for its non-conformity and maligned by bigots the world over, most of whom were religious and political hypocrites.
When I became a private investigator, I hadn't sought to get mixed up in the heavy stuff. I wanted to find a few missing people, catch a few cheating spouses, and work a lot of insurance cases; I expected to see nothing else. Many investigators work their entire careers with no involvement in a single murder. Up to that point, professionally, I'd had cases that involved a total of six murders, three of which came from the Tommy Haines case.
Much had happened following the closure of that case, important things like our first client Winter, and the Franklin Metropolitan Police Department (with whom I signed a consultation contract) had paid us for our work on that case. We had set up the necessary electronics to run the agency from our home at the Minotaur; we acquired equipment for work; Max crafted our business logo with the help of a graphic artist, so we could do some advertising, and we purchased our vehicle.
When you're a private investigator, you learn that cases sometimes begin in subtle and strange ways. I couldn't convey the full picture of this case of blue murder from the point of Wade's phone call that morning, so let's back up a bit to the previous evening, and the reason for that will reveal itself.
CHAPTER ONE
Millstone's Sources
That Friday evening of July 12th--just before sunset--Max and I had had dinner for the second time that week at The Daily Catch near the bay. As we walked along the waterfront enjoying the salty air, I held my arm around my beautiful Golden Bear, and he held my hand at his shoulder to keep it there.
In retrospect, I began recognizing my level of unhappiness while living in Nashville and New York. I could easily find sexual partners, that wasn't the issue, but no one would stick around. I suppose one gets resigned to the loneliness and fills any spare time with other things like even more work or hobbies.
Of course, as fulfilling as my relationship with Max was, our location played an enormous part. Franklin was special, and it hadn't taken long to discover how lucky living there made me. In Franklin, Max and I could go anywhere with my arm around him--just as I had that evening--and no one would think anything of it. But more than that, we could live, not just hoping, but knowing that would be the case, and knowing that kind of inclusivity existed there in the collective understanding of what constituted "normal" made all the difference in the world. Most straight people in the outside world take that automatic acceptance for granted; they couldn't imagine living without it because most of them wouldn't recognize it as a privilege. Walking there that night, my arm around Max, however, I sensed a deeper reason that Franklin was created, to give people like us the luxury of taking for granted that we wouldn't experience anything from microaggressions to a baseball bat to the back of the head simply for openly existing as the gay couple we were. And upon realizing that, I hugged my beautiful man, silently thanking Ivy Ridgewood, the main founder of Franklin as it stood, for making that possible.
That evening, we had made an early night of it, lying in bed about nine. I thought we would just sleep but Max, using gentle strokes of his fingers on the underside of my cock, gave me an erection. Afterward, he broke out the silicone lube, propped me against the headboard, and my horny Honey Bear, his muscles like steel cables covered in pale skin and thick golden fur, proceeded to impale himself upon me. I hadn't minded, of course; he would forever have my permission to ride me whenever and wherever he liked.
Our new, supposedly unbreakable bed had a metal canopy intended for bondage or anything else one's imagination could think to use the loops and eyelets and beams it had. Earlier in the day, Max installed some thick cotton rope from the canopy to pull himself up, to assist in our amorous activities. With his strength and endurance, he could use it to help fuck himself on my dong for quite a while. With the fun he was having, I knew I could count on him employing that rope for some time to come. For an hour, he had treated himself to two long fucks--starting on a third--using my pelvis like a bouncy ball with a handle on it. At the end of that hour, I sat relatively upright in the shadows of the indirect light from the outside streetlamp with Max on my lap and his cum dripping down my face, adding to the rest that he had plastered across my beard and the hair of my torso.
I touched Max's shadowy form as he rode my cock trapped deep inside his buttery hole, and it hadn't mattered that I needed to pee, I wouldn't stop him. I recalled his face on other occasions reflecting the pleasure he felt, so I welcomed his every attempt to candy-coat me with cum for as long as he liked. I expected that once he had his fill, I could then clean it off, wash my cock in our newly installed Gentleman's Lave, pee, and we would return to our nightly scheduled slumber.
Max continued fucking himself on me, and I was on the verge of breeding him a second time when a knock came upon our door just as Max added several volleys of cum to my face and chest. However, hearing the knock distracted us, Max stopped, and my ability to cum disappeared. It wouldn't matter if the world were crumbling around one's feet, when that close to cumming, an interruption would give any man a surly disposition. We sat still in the darkness catching our breath as the knock sounded again.
I whispered in contempt, "Some interloping fucker has just ruined my orgasm."
"I'm sorry," said Max. "It could be important; what do you want to do?"
"It could also be nothing. I'm like stone; I don't want to get up."
When we heard the door being unlatched, we both said, "It's Tucker."
The instant it opened, I said aloud, "Tucker, what the hell do you want?"
Since he heard my voice, he flipped on the overhead main lighting and came around the partition, expecting to find us merely awakened from sleep. I barely had the chance to say, "No, don't turn on the-" before he stood there in t-shirt and jeans, travel mug in hand, gawping at us.
"Oh my god, I am so sorry."
Max, fully lanced on my lap, tried not to laugh, as the light revealed what he had done to my face that evening.
I could feel Max's cum running down my cheeks, dripping from my forehead and clinging to my beard. I licked it from my lips, so I could speak properly. "We gave you that key in case you needed to get any equipment when we're away from home. I'll have you know that you have robbed me of my orgasm! So, you better have a good explanation for tonight's coitus interruptus or you're fucking fired! What do you want?"
"I apologize, but I texted and called each of you. I see now why you ignored it."
"My phone's on Do Not Disturb," I said.
"Uh-oh," said Max, "so is mine. We probably should set a few exceptions for that."
"We have a client," said Tucker.
Max's brows lowered and drew together. "What time is it?" He searched for our bedside clock.
Tucker checked his phone. "It's 10:15."
I tapped Max on the chest. "I now spot the flaw in working from home. There's no glass door on which to hang our 'Sorry, we're closed and fucking' sign."
