Love You to Death Read online

  LOVE YOU TO DEATH

  by Grant Michaels

  A Stan Kraychik Mystery

  Book 2

  Nominated as Best Gay Mystery

  5th Annual Lambda Literary Awards - 1993

  ReQueered Tales • Los Angeles

  2019

  Love You To Death

  by Grant Michaels

  Copyright © 1992 by Grant Michaels.

  Preface to 2019 edition: copyright © 2019 by Frank Butterfield

  Cover design: Dawné Dominique, DusktilDawn Designs

  First American edition: 1992

  This ebook edition: ReQueered Tales, September 2019

  ReQueered Tales ebook version 1.50

  Kindle edition ASIN: B07WYMNGK2

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  ALSO BY GRANT MICHAELS

  THE STAN KRAYCHIK NOVELS

  A Body to Dye For (1990)

  Love You to Death (1992)

  Dead on Your Feet (1993)

  Mask for a Diva (1994)

  Time to Check Out (1996)

  Dead as a Doornail (1998)

  GRANT MICHAELS

  Praise for LOVE YOU TO DEATH

  “Refreshing…a pleasant story of murder, mixups, and mayhem…. The story’s perky pace is due to Michael’s penchant for campy conversation and humorous insights from the snappy snipper from Snips.”

  —Lambda Rising Book Report

  “The one-liners fly as fast as the bullets and there is a surprise in nearly every chapter. Love You to Death is an engaging murder mystery that epitomizes the best of the genre.”

  —The Advocate

  “Grant Michael’s sleuthing hairdresser has both the sensitivities of his craft and the balls to impel him into atypical daring. A Body to Dye For has the tart, racy smell of success.”

  —Bay Area Reporter

  “Surprisingly light-hearted, A Body to Dye For is full to overflowing with threatening phone calls, possible suspects, and most of all… titillation. So kick back and escape from your all-too-real world with some kooky characters, feats of bravery, and a happy ending.”

  —San Francisco Bay Times

  LOVE YOU TO DEATH

  by Grant Michaels

  Foreword by Frank W. Butterfield

  Coming back to this book is like visiting an old friend.

  I can't remember where I got my first copy. It could have been at A Different Light in San Francisco or Oscar Wilde in the West Village of Manhattan. Or maybe it was at Now Voyager in Provincetown or Lambda Rising in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

  In those days, I would haunt the gay bookstores (or any bookstore, really) looking for a gay novel I wanted to read.

  I wanted any such novel to entertain me, of course, and I wanted a look into the lives of other gay men.

  I'm nosy that way.

  In particular, I was drawn to stories set in Boston, even though I'd only ever been there to catch a plane or a train to somewhere else. I'd lived in Provincetown, a 150-mile drive from Boston at the end of Cape Cod, during both the season (summer) and the off-season (winter) in the year before this book was initially published.

  Boston, to me, was an intriguing blend of high-brow culture and low-brow blue collar realness. Beacon Hill, on the one hand, and South Boston, on the other.

  When I came across Grant Michaels's first novel, A Body to Dye For, at Now Voyager in Provincetown, I plunked down my nine bucks and snatched it right up. I took it back to my little room above the guest house on Commercial Street where I worked for $75 a week, plus room and board, and, with a bag full of salt-water taffy, devoured it and the candy in one long, lazy October afternoon.

  * * * *

  I start this brief introduction with a reference to four of my favorite bookstores which are all relics of another time and which have passed into history. Although I write about the past, I'm rarely nostalgic about the past. It's been my experience that things generally get better with time, even if there are specific things we wish were still around.

  So, I'm not going to wax on about the death of old bookstores (and all that implies), even as much as I miss each one of those establishments and the communities that surrounded them for a myriad of reasons.

  What I am going to do is to remind those of you who were there and inform those of you who were not there of a small sliver of what was happening in the early 90s when this book, Love You to Death, was written and published.

  The AIDS epidemic was still ravaging the gay community and beyond...

  The grunge kids were just beginning to inform the rest of us of their presence in Seattle...

  Oprah was already a major force in American culture...

  And hairdressers were cutting, coloring, and styling hair.

  Hairdressing, our hero's occupation, is one of those things that, unlike AIDS as a death sentence, grunge as a lifestyle, and Oprah as a fixture on TV, is perennial and evergreen.

  * * * *

  When I opened this book to revisit it, I was delighted to find a world that once existed but, like even the best color jobs and our favorite bookstores, has faded away.

  However, I was sucked in from the beginning. Just like I had been when I bought it the first time. And just like I was with the book before this one.

  That's how a Grant Michaels story works.

  You're pulled in from the first paragraph and don't want to stop until it's over.

  Let me show you what I mean...

  The very first line you're about to read in this novel is simple:

  Have you ever tried to diet?

  I may have already mentioned this, but this was the early 90s. You think it's a thing now but, back then, everyone was dieting. Well... maybe not the grunge kids up in Seattle. But everyone else was. Or thought they should have been. Even Oprah. And especially gay men. We bears were around, but we hadn't yet realized the power of our bellies.

  What follows that first sentence is a brief essay on the perils and pitfalls of dieting.

  This is an excellent way to start a book where chocolate plays a delicious role.

  Wait!

  What?

  Did you mention chocolate?

  Do tell me more...

  See? Sucks you right in!

  So, go ahead...

  Jump in...

  Get to reading and discovering the adventures (and mayhem) surrounding the slightly extraordinary gay life of Stan Kraychik (Vannos is his nom de scissors) that wait for you in these pages...

  And, before you know it, you'll be eating bags of salt-water taffy (or delectable chocolate) and staying up well past midnight just so you can get to the end because you know it's going to be that good.

  This is a Grant Michaels book, after all.

  Amazon best-selling author Frank W. Butterfield (not an assumed name) loves old movies, wise-cracking smart guys with hearts of gold, and writing for fun. His Nick Williams Mystery series, stories about Nick & Carter, a private dick and a fireman who live and love in San Francisco, has reached 32 volumes ... with no end in sight.

  for Wayne and for Crystal

  Again and always,

  thanks to my friends.

  1

  THE PARTY’S OVER

  HAVE YOU EVER TRIED TO DIET?

  I don’t mean the prefab kind, with the cans of Trim-U-Lax and the frozen entrees. I mean The Regime, with the yum-yum veggie sticks and
the high-fiber crackers and the water. Water, water, water—the inexorable ten eight-ounce glasses (or is it eight ten-ounce glasses?) of agua every day. Drink and chew. Chew and drink. When you’re not doing that, you’re peeing. And through it all, you still want real food. You even dream about it—recurrent visions of Reuben sandwiches, French fries (with a side of bleu cheese dressing, just for dipping), or something lighter, like a slab of chocolate amaretto cheesecake with a Brandy Alexander chaser. Awake or asleep, you can almost taste the fat-filled, flavorful fantasies, only to be dashed by the reality of carrot sticks, bran wafers, and the goddam water.

  And then what? The ultimate challenge: You’re invited out. That’s right. After resigning yourself to dietary deprivation, after nights of noshing alone in front of the television, after your thumbs are callused from pressing the channel-scan button, and your gums are raw from all the air-popped, unbuttered popcorn—after all that, people now want you at their posh dinners or their fabulously catered parties. Suddenly you’re the Most Popular Boy in the City.

  So, what do you do?

  I’ll tell you. First you find the darkest togs in your wardrobe that you can still get over your hips without rending the fabric, or else you go out and buy a new outfit—all pleats and overblouse to conceal the lard. Then you get your hair cut in a style that brings out the angles and planes of your face, wherever they’re hiding. And then you Step Out.

  You promise yourself you’re going to be good at the party. You mutter those absurd affirmations—I am a slender person, I am lithe, I will be satisfied with blanched broccoli and sodium-free seltzer. But temptation wins, as it usually does, and you end up eating yourself into a coma, diving repeatedly into that roving platter of hot puff-pastry appetizers, nabbing two or three with one graceful swoop of the wrist, while nary a butter-soaked crumb falls into the plush-pile carpet cushioning the kidskin pumps on your feet.

  Got the picture?

  The gala reception was for Le Jardin Chocolatier, an exclusive candy store about to open its portals in Boston’s Copley Place. Their timing was perfect, since Valentine’s Day was less than two weeks away. There’d be just enough time for a frenzy of sweet holiday purchases in the new shop, and another boutique enterprise would be launched. The big party was Sunday night, not the best time for the working class to be out carousing, but then, these weren’t exactly working-class folk. Besides, I could pretend to be just like them, since tomorrow morning I wouldn’t have a care in the world either. As a hair stylist, Monday is my day off.

  Three hundred highbrow guests milled tastefully about in a large ballroom at the Copley Plaza Hotel, entertained by a salon orchestra, superb food, and one another’s dull wit. I was feeling like a proud yenta at a wedding reception, since I had introduced the two young professionals who were launching the new business. They were both clients at Snips Salon, where I create my grand designs, on Newbury Street, just around the corner from Boston’s Ritz Carlton Hotel.

  Liz Carlini, whose wild raven hair I cut so expertly, was the business savvy behind the venture, and Dan Doherty, whose dark, springy curls I simply like to get my hands into, was the imaginative designer who’d set their products and image far beyond anything in existence. The theme of Le Jardin was flowers, and Danny had taken it to the dimensions of grand opera. One specialty item: liquor-drenched, chocolate-covered rose petals, arranged in a glorious blossom atop a slender candy stem complete with sugar crystal thorns and marzipan leaves. They are divine, and they cost a king’s ransom. But the bread-and-butter of the business is the truffe au chocolat, known to us plebes as a chocolate truffle—a gob of dark chocolate, sweet butter, heavy cream, and pure flavoring all mixed together, then dusted with cocoa or dipped in more chocolate. It’s the kind of stuff that keeps cardiologists booked.

  For me, though, the party was a perfect way to relax after a hectic week at the shop. There were no late appointments, no whining customers, no chemical surprises. All I had to do was stand around with a tumbler of good bourbon and a napkin full of fattening snacks and watch the fashionable crowd—study the women’s hair work and size up the good-looking men. Alas, the pleasant moments were interrupted by a familiar voice accusing me of some heinous crime.

  “Stanley, that is not on your allowed list.”

  The voice was Nicole Albright’s. Nikki owns Snips Salon, but she plays the resident manicurist. That way she can easily indulge her passion for gossip.

  I quickly popped the last of three crab-stuffed bouchées into my mouth, chewed the luscious morsel, and swallowed. A gulp of hundred-proof bourbon helped it home.

  “Nikki,” I replied, “I left my allowed list at the door, along with yours. We can both pick them up on our way out.”

  Nicole gave me a cool stare. Tonight her bottled-auburn hair was swept tightly back into a classic chignon. “Don’t include me in your idle weight-loss experiments,” she muttered. ‘“I eat what I want.”

  I glanced at her thickened waistline, luxuriously draped with a ruby-red silk cocktail dress. “It shows, doll.”

  An arched eyebrow—more pencil than hair—was her response to that, though in fact Nicole’s svelte figure was long gone, left in Paris years ago with her modeling career, way before I knew her.

  Just then a handsome young waiter paused before us with a tray of drinks. Nicole exchanged her empty champagne glass for a full one, and I requested another double bourbon. The waiter rendered a fawning smile, then sauntered off.

  Nicole sipped her champagne while she scanned the crowd for appealing men. Her eyes stopped on a distinguished gentleman in his fifties, impeccably groomed and endowed with a full head of thick salt-and-pepper hair. The silvery crown was a perfect complement to his suit, a double-breasted jacket and pleated trousers of gorgeous Prussian blue wool. He was talking pleasantly with Liz Carlini and Dan Doherty, and I could sense Nikki’s pleasure over the man’s appearance.

  “I wonder who he is,” she said, her machinations noisily at work already.

  “Don’t you recognize him? He’s been to the shop once or twice.”

  “I wouldn’t have missed him.”

  “I wouldn’t think so. That’s Prentiss Kingsley.”

  “The Prentiss Kingsley? Of Gladys Gardner chocolates?”

  I nodded. “Serious wealth, doll.”

  “Island home?”

  “Many. He’s also Liz Carlini’s husband.”

  “They’re married?” she asked with disappointment and disbelief.

  I nodded.

  Nicole continued, “But she’s half his age.”

  “Not quite. But look who’s calling the kettle black, with you and that man-child from Harvard Business School. What’s his name? Rod Love?”

  “He’s finished law school, Stanley, and his name is not Rod Love.”

  “It might as well be, for all the use you get out of him.”

  Nicole glowered. “You never know when you’re going to need a smart young lawyer, which Chaz certainly is. Besides, I’m not married to him.”

  “You couldn’t be, with any discretion, doll. You’re old enough to be his mother.”

  “That’s not why I’m not married. But I wonder why Liz Carlini didn’t take her husband’s name. Isn’t the Kingsley tag an asset in Boston society?”

  “Maybe if you spend a lot of time in the Athenaeum. My guess is that Liz just doesn’t like having to sign all those dividend checks Elizabeth Anne Carlini-Kingsley.”

  “It is quite a mouthful,” said Nicole.

  Which is exactly what I had in mind when a salver of smoked seafood drifted by, carried in the long dark arms of a beautiful Jamaican woman. It was Laurett Cole, the former receptionist at Snips, now about to manage Le Jardin’s new store. Though we already missed her at the shop, Laurett’s new job was a kind of step ahead for her, with more responsibilities and more money. For tonight’s celebration, I’d styled her long black tresses into a shimmering cascade of perfectly sculpted finger waves. Nicole took credit for the lacquered n
ails, with crescent moons just peeking out near the cuticle line. And finally, Laurett’s makeup glow was courtesy of Ramon, Snips’s sexy shampoo boy, who’d given up his waning career in faux-finishing to pursue esthetics.

  Through a broad smile Laurett exclaimed happily, “I am hoping to find you two!” Laurett had two speech patterns. One was an appealing combination of perfect British diction combined with faulty and inconsistent grammar, which she used when she was relaxed and with people she trusted. The other version was what she called her “good speech,” which she used in business or with strangers. Laurett also had amber-colored catlike eyes, which could disarm you with their direct and intent gaze. She shifted the large tray onto one arm, then she ran her free hand over my newly shorn red hair. “This is being short like a brush.”

  “It’s the new definition of butch,” I said. “A crew cut in the middle of winter in Boston.”

  Nicole asked, “Why are you serving food, Laurett?”

  Laurett smiled politely—too politely, as though mocking her subservient role—then explained, “Miss Lisa want me to wait on them tonight, so they know me in the store, where I will wait on them again tomorrow.”

  I said, “Laurett, her name is Liz, not Lisa.”

  “I know, Vannos” she replied, addressing me by my salon name with a broad grin. “But didn’t I explain once who Miss Lisa is? I mean, for me?”

  She had. Miss Lisa was Laurett’s pet name for her … well, for her feminine parts. Don’t your nether regions have a nickname?