A Body to Dye For Read online

  A BODY TO DYE FOR

  by Grant Michaels

  A Stan Kraychik Mystery

  Book 1

  Nominated as Best Gay Mystery

  3rd Annual Lambda Literary Awards - 1991

  ReQueered Tales • Los Angeles

  2019

  A Body To Dye For

  by Grant Michaels

  A Stan Kraychik Mystery, Book 1

  Copyright © 1990 by Grant Michaels.

  Foreword to 2019 edition: copyright © 2019 by Carl Mesrobian

  Introduction to 2019 edition: copyright © 2019 by Neil Plakcy

  Cover design: Dawné Dominique, DusktilDawn Designs

  First American edition: July 1990

  This ebook edition: ReQueered Tales, June 2019

  ReQueered Tales ebook version 1.5

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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 A BODY TO DYE FOR

  “A delightful debut with a gay hairdresser-investigator who gets his fingers into a lot more things than hair. It’s a promising start to what looks to be a successful series.”

  —George Baxt, author of

  The Dorothy Parker Murder Case

  “What a pleasure to come across a new kind of amateur sleuth to tickle the jaded reader! Here is a genuinely original book—a breathless read with no side trips or rest stops, filled with intriguing complexities and an excellently satisfying conclusion. I like Stan Kraychik a lot better than Dave Brandstetter, and would willingly be arrested by Lieutenant Branco …”

  —Samuel M. Steward/Phil Andros, author of

  Murder Is Murder Is Murder

  “Surprisingly light-hearted, A Body to Dye For is full to overflowing with threatening phone calls, possible suspects and most of all … titillation. Michaels cleverly escorts his readers on a merry spin through straight and gay Boston, an overnight stay in San Francisco, and several days journey through Yosemite National Park. 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

  A BODY TO DYE FOR

  by Grant Michaels

  Foreword by Carl Mesrobian

  About Grant Michaels

  Grant Michaels (Michael Mesrobian) was my older brother and was younger than our sister. While he was studying piano or other fine arts, I was playing electric guitar, or with my friends playing ball, riding our bikes, stealing apples from neighbors' trees, or going fishing, or getting into trouble. The list goes on. Michael played tennis in his early years, had a bicycle that had no scratches, paid for apples, and rarely went fishing. We got into trouble once together when a “hood” showed a switchblade, and told us we couldn’t go on “his hill”; we quickly turned around and ran to the bottom of the hill where our father was having the car fixed in a shop. I don’t think we told him what happened, as it would have delayed our getting home to have some fun.

  As we got older, we would get involved in troubleshooting all sorts of stuff together—tape recorders, phonograph turntables, stereo systems. The household often had music playing, whether it was 50’s hits, classical music, Armenian and Greek music, rock, or jazz. One could say that this environment was conducive to an enriching lifestyle.

  After he received his bachelor's degree in music, he pursued various hobbies and professions, which included music, acting, ballet, photography, analyzing mystery films, and of course writing. He had at one time been a technical writer for various businesses. As well as being an accomplished writer, he was an amazing listener. If one came to him about an “issue”, he would have a viable solution and would not minimalize the situation.

  He was an excellent home chef and baker, using recipes from Julia Child, Jacques Pépin, and many others. With his circle of friends, he was often dining at fine restaurants and well-hosted parties, and at times would be asked to be the head chef and baker. With Michael in the kitchen one could often learn many techniques that one would not experience in a typical kitchen.

  It was tough in his last Spring and close to his death, especially the morning I picked him up to go to our routine Sunday morning visit to our mother's place. On the way there, he commented on how he hated humanity. I didn’t ask him why but interpreted the remark as meaning he was getting ready for the end of life. Being busy with a family and two teenage boys, I didn't see him all of June and then saw him in the hospital in July the Sunday before he died—I had a strong feeling he wasn't walking out again, but I remained optimistic. No one is ever ready for this type of event.

  During his illness, Mike never had “invalid days”, as he put it. We were expecting them, sort of as a chance to see him without nurses and doctors scurrying around his hospital bed. In a way it's good there were no invalid days—I'm not saying he's in a better place. Death isn't better than life. Dying without long suffering has to be the best alternative when one has no choice. He suffered long enough.

  Mike, I’ll always miss you!

  —Carl

  May 2019

  Introduction by Neil Plakcy

  A Body to Dye For by Grant Michaels is both an intriguing murder mystery and a snapshot of its time. Gay men are presented as the larger society saw us—as hairdressers with sassy wit, for example.

  Michaels has gone deeper, though, in giving us Stan Kraychik. Stan goes by Vannos at the salon, because Stan isn’t a very elegant name, and he puts on a flighty front because that’s what was expected of someone in his situation back then.

  An interesting moment occurs early in the book, when Stan meets Roger, a park ranger from Yosemite. Roger says, “I have a good sense of what’s real and what’s an act. Nature does that. And your flighty stuff is just an act. I can tell what’s real underneath it.”

  Truly, the book reveals the steel beneath Stan’s flighty exterior, as he doggedly pursues the investigation. He may say at first that it’s to convict Calvin, who’s a lousy client and a bad tipper, but really it’s because he has a strong sense of right and wrong, and wants whoever killed Roger to be brought to justice. Just because Roger was gay doesn’t mean his death should be swept under the carpet.

  In the manner of many cozy mysteries, the amateur sleuth needs a connection with a police official. In this case, it’s the handsome Lieutenant Vito Branco, who shares Stan’s sense of justice.

  Before gay men began to come out in large numbers, and when homosexual acts were illegal, relationships with the police were often fraught with danger. Today, gay men are present as police and private investigators, but in 1990, when this book first came out, that was far from the norm.

  The bad feeling between law enforcement and the LGBT community provides an opportunity for Stan to get involved in the police investigation, when Lieutenant Branco admits that his boss isn’t willing to push the investigation because the victim was gay. He assumes that the solution to the crime is somewhere in the gay community, and that some members of it will be more willing to speak to a fellow traveler than a police detective. Stan crows with triumph when he realizes this.

  “Aha! So you’re wondering about asking a
plebian from Boston’s gay world—say me—for help. Am I right?”

  Branco admits this, and sets the stage for a relationship between the two of them that will continue to grow throughout the series. And in addition to providing a realistic portrait of a certain kind of gay man of the time, his profession lends itself to investigation.

  After all, as his boss, Nicole, says, “Dear boy, you have the advantage of being his hairdresser. You know things about him even his mother hadn’t guessed.”

  —Neil Plakcy, May 2019

  for Sharkie

  Thanks to good friends

  for help and encouragement.

  And thanks to Michael Denneny

  for opening the door

  when Stani knocked.

  1

  A BOY FROM THE GOLDEN WEST

  SOGGY NOODLES.

  That’s what I thought as I gazed down at the head I was rinsing in the shampoo sink. Here was a male Medusa with overcooked pasta instead of serpents.

  Suddenly he spoke sharply. “Hurry up, Vannos! He’ll be here any minute, and I can’t be seen like this, in the middle of a dye job!” His voice resonated harshly in the porcelain basin.

  I placidly continued rinsing the muddy-colored fluid from the strands of hair dangling through a perforated rubber cap. “Take a Stresstab, baby,” I murmured. “Art cannot be hurried.”

  It was a gorgeous Indian summer afternoon in Boston, rare for late October, the perfect Wednesday for some smart shopping, followed by high tea at the Copley Plaza or an ultra-dry martini at the Ritz bar. But instead I was at work—at Snips Salon—enduring verbal abuse from one of my regular clients, Calvin Redding. Calvin’s snit today was about the time, though he’d arrived late for his appointment. He was expecting a friend, a new friend, last night’s trick, to meet him at the salon, and I secretly hoped the guy might show up early and witness him in the ugly rubber cap, looking as bedraggled as Gertrude Ederle after swimming the English Channel. That would fluster Calvin, who was always perfectly groomed.

  I studied his face under the spray of warm water. Through the mist his skin shone coppery and smooth, revealing the American Indian genes from his mother’s side, something Calvin often bragged about, as though he’d worked hard and earned his natural good looks. The cheekbones were high, eyebrows and eyelashes black. He opened his eyes suddenly. They were amber and intense. It was no wonder that people desired Calvin as soon as they met him. Except people like me, who got to know him first.

  Calvin raised his wrist, and the silky kimono sleeve of his protective robe slid down to reveal a wafer-thin gold watch on a gold mesh band. He glanced at it nervously. “Can’t you hurry!”

  “Cool out, Calvin. You’ll be in the chair in a minute.”

  Though I can remove a skull-tight frosting cap so that my clients won’t lose a single hair shaft, for Calvin I yanked brusquely at the taut stretchy rubber. He winced but didn’t complain. That was Calvin’s impersonation of a man.

  “Vannos, are you sure it won’t show?”

  The solemn words “Trust me” slipped from my lips. I applied shampoo and worked up a creamy mousse. “Calvin, the honey-blond highlights will look completely natural in your straight black hair.”

  Because some of my clients are theater celebs and top models, people imagine my job is all glamour. Frankly, I’d love the kind of life they imagine I have, but in the real world, many of my customers, whether stars or mere mortals, regularly exercise their inalienable human right to behave like asses. Maybe they think they’re getting their money’s worth, or maybe their “nice” defenses are down. Whatever the reason, Calvin Redding was the champ ass in my book.

  I rinsed the shampoo out and wrapped a towel around his head. Then I clapped my hands once loudly and jerked my thumb toward my styling station. “Okay,” I barked like a football coach. “Hit the chair!” (That was my impersonation of a man.) On the way Calvin picked up the latest issue of QT, a men’s fashion magazine that would occupy him while I faced the challenge of creating yet another masterpiece.

  I seated him, and with a flourish worthy of a toreador, swirled a nylon drop over him. I glanced in the mirror and saw Calvin’s reflection, all angular and dark and handsome. Behind him was me, red-haired, pink-skinned, and hazel-eyed. I’d inherited my Czechoslovakian mother’s tendency toward roundness, and keeping weight off was a constant battle, especially after thirty, after expulsion from the “boy” club.

  “Shake your head,” I commanded, and Calvin obeyed. I combed and sectioned his wet hair, and I was pleased to see that the random strands of gold color had taken perfectly. While I worked, Calvin flicked magazine pages, which relieved me of talking with him. At one point he stayed on the same page for a long while, and I peeked over his shoulder to see what was so interesting. In a two-page panorama of sullen attitude and divine musculature, a blond male lay across the open magazine. He wore a swatch of gleaming Mylar to satisfy the censors, yet his smooth thighs were spread wide, and his eyes said, Wanna taste? The ad was for diamond cufflinks, but the only jewels on that guy lurked under the Mylar hankie covering his crotch. I knew that Calvin Redding got dates with men who looked like that, while I just wondered about it. Not that I have a thing for blond models. Give me a good old-fashioned Homo sapiens who prefers a man to a mirror.

  Calvin caught me glancing, so he flipped the page over. “He’s late!” he snapped.

  “Who?”

  “Roger! The one who’s supposed to meet me here!”

  “Calvin, you were worried he’d be early.”

  He clicked his tongue. “Probably got lost.”

  Or maybe he got smart and changed his mind, I thought. I worked on a particularly stubborn cowlick over Calvin’s right ear and asked him casually, “Where’d you meet this one, Calvin? The Crankshaft?”

  Calvin huffed. “I don’t go to places like that! I met him at Caffè Gianni.”

  How silly of me! Where else would Calvin meet a man worthy of himself but in a temple of designer cologne and fashion awareness?

  Calvin continued, “We went to his hotel.”

  “Hotel?”

  “Yes, he’s here on vacation or something.”

  “Insertion with discretion?” I asked.

  “Of course! I know who I penetrate.”

  Whom, I thought. The abused, neglected objective case. Yes, even a hairdresser can appreciate the rules of grammar.

  Calvin boasted, “He loved it. Real hot, but safe.”

  If such a thing were possible. To me, safe sex was like decaffeinated espresso. But given the times, one had the choices of foolhardiness, caution, or abstinence. I sighed as I recalled the last time I’d had hot sex. It seemed long ago.

  I switched to the left side of Calvin’s head, cutting and blending the shorter hair there with the longer, newly frosted stuff on top. My fingers and my eyes could already tell he was going to look great when I finished. Calvin spoke from within the pages of his magazine. “I showed him around my office before we had lunch today.”

  Calvin worked across the Charles River in Cambridge with a bunch of hoity-toity architects. They’ve won a lot of awards, so I guess they’re good. Maybe I’m a little jealous, too, since Calvin and I are about the same age, but he has a respectable career—a Profession—and all the outward signs of success. And me? I just make people beautiful, but I also happen to love it.

  “Was he impressed?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Calvin said vacantly.

  I finger-fussed his hair to see how it would lie. That’s when Nicole Albright, the shop’s manicurist, sauntered by my station. Today she wore a loose-fitting dress of mushroom-colored silk, set off with bright red pumps and matching red bead necklace and earrings. I noticed a drastic change in her makeup. Except for the obligatory false eyelashes, it was much subdued from its usual uproar. Then it clicked: We’d been to a cabaret last night, a pre-Hallowe’en drag show where men did lip-synch imitations of female celebrities past and present, portraying them fa
r beyond any woman’s imagination. After the first act, two of the cast had joined us at our table. (I’d styled their wigs and they looked—in a word—fabulous.) One of the drag queens had admired Nicole’s makeup as “total glamour.” The compliment must have vexed her, because on the way home she mentioned that perhaps it was time to try another look. My silence only encouraged her.

  Nicole eyed my client and said to me in her smoky voice, “I see you’ve got another of your cover boys here today.” She placed her hand on his shoulder in approval. “And such cheekbones!” She pinched the firm skin that covered his perfectly formed face.

  Calvin said, “Its me, Nicole.”

  His familiar voice confused her. “Who’s that?” she asked.

  “Calvin,” he said flatly, as though bored with himself.

  Nicole faltered. “Calvin? Calvin Redding?”

  “The same.”

  “I didn’t recognize you. What’s changed?”

  “His hair color,” I interjected.

  “No, dear. I see your hallmark. It’s something else.”

  Calvin said, “I shaved my beard and mustache.”

  “That’s it!” Nicole giggled boisterously as though she’d just won a round on a television game show. “But why? It was so handsome on you.”

  Calvin shrugged under the nylon cape. “I was through with it. Facial hair is useful if you have to compensate for something, like thin lips or a weak chin or a big nose. Otherwise, it intrudes on the features.”