Too Damn Hot

"Yes."

"It was some sort of a threesome then, was it?"

"Jack Turner is kin to Gordon," Julio said, aghast.

"Is that a no, then?"

"Jack was sleeping in another room when I was with Mr. Gordon in his bedroom."

"Where were you later, say 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning?" Those times bracketed the period the medical examiner had told Burkhardt the murder probably had occurred.

"I drove Jack Turner home around 2:00," Julio answered. "And I stayed there for the night," he reluctantly answered.

"So, the two of you, Jack Turner and you, where shacking up between those hours last night."

"Yes."

"You certainly have no trouble putting out for men, do you?" Burkhardt was bold enough to reach out and touch Julio cheek, leaving little doubt that he wouldn't mind being one of those men.

"I like men," Julio said, not shirking away from Burkhardt's touch. "I like you."

"Noted," Burkhardt said, taking his hand away. The young man was extraordinarily casual in his promiscuity. He hardly kept it a secret from any of his men that there were other men. Burkhardt thought that it would be extremely hard not to be jealous of the others, and in a small community like this, that could be volatile.

"I'll have Turner confirm you were with him," he said, "but it's interesting that you'll so quickly tell me what man you were sleeping with when Chance Gordon was murdered, but you won't tell me who you were with when the winemaker died."

Julio didn't answer.

"It's because you were being fucked by Gill Conner while Fouchet was falling off the scaffolding in that building over there, weren't you?"

Again, Julio didn't answer directly, but then he said, "Mr. Conner is an important man here. Mr. Gordon was old and didn't care what people would think. This will blow away soon, won't it?"

"Gordon was murdered. In his bed. Stabbed. He was an important man here too, Julio. And not just locally. His family landed here in Virginia with the bunch founding Jamestown. One of his daughters just married a movie star. All four of his daughters were famous models, brought to fame by a fashion photographer who married one of them. One of the others married a viscount in England and is in the British Parliament in her own right. The other one married some sort of European prince. No, Julio, this is going to be in the national headlines. And you'll be right there if we don't get you separated out from it. But we can make this go away. We can discuss this more informally somewhere. Let's go to my apartment and talk about this over a beer."

They both knew they just as easily could talk it over right here. But Julio was aware of the electricity that had gone between them the two times they had met. He knew why Burkhardt wanted to move this to his apartment in Gordonton above a café.

"I'll get the beers and then we can talk," Burkhardt said when they entered the apartment. When he came back from refrigerator, a beer in each hand, though, Julio was already standing in the doorway into the bedroom, unbuckling his belt, unzipping, and letting his pants cascade to the floor.

"I know what you want, Mr. Burkhardt," he said. "I want it too."

"I'll do what I can to keep you out of this," Burkhardt said. They both knew those two thoughts were not separate.

Julio cast his gaze down toward his feet, a classic signaling of submission. "Thank you," he whispered. His hands went to the waistband of his briefs and they too fell to the floor.

They fucked on the bed, with Burkhardt lying on his back, and Julio doing most of the work. They both were naked and they both were making good use of their hands. They both had great bodies—entirely different styles but good with each other more so for this reason. The slim, willowy, berry-brown Julio straddled the hips of the solid, muscular cop and rode the detective's very nice cock into the early afternoon.

No more was said about Julio needing an alibi for anything. That had already been decided in Gill Conner's office, but there was no reason for Julio to know that his efforts in Burkhardt's bedroom hadn't been required.

Burkhardt didn't think for a moment that Julio was involved in either of these murders or, he told himself, he would not be taking advantage of the young Cuban like this. To the detective, this had all the markings of an insider's job in this tight-knit community. As much as Julio was being handed around, he was an outsider here—more of a pawn than a player.

That evening Burkhardt went to the Stanfield Inn for dinner. He didn't usually eat that fancy, but he had a question to ask the inn's owner and wanted to do it on neutral ground when Stanfield wouldn't see it coming. He knew that the inn's owner and his chef had a habit of coming out into the dining room and doing a little schmoozing with the patrons during dinner. It happened this night as well.

Franklin Stanfield stopped by his table, more curious in how the investigations of the deaths of the Queen Crown Winery's winemaker and of Chance Gordon were going. He, of course, knew both of them well. He had been sleeping with Fouchet, and if they hadn't broken up so publicly recently he might have been more broken up by the man's death.

"You didn't see him that night?" Burkhardt asked, getting at what he'd come here to find out, but hoping Stanfield didn't hone in on that.

"No. I've been in Roanoke at a B&B convention since the afternoon Fouchet died and until just before dinner tonight," he said. "Many people can verify that," he added, showing that he knew exactly why Burkhardt was asking and that he was ready with the alibi for both deaths.

And that was that, Burkhardt contemplated, as Stanfield wafted off and the detective watched the chef, Don Fields, roaming the tables and flirting with the dinner patrons. The detective's eyes narrowed, a lightbulb went on over his head, and he rose and left the inn.

When he got to his car, he called Julio Cortez at home and more demanded than requested that the young Cuban dress and meet him at the Stanfield Inn bar for a drink. As he waited for Julio to appear, he made a couple of more phone calls.

One of the calls was for a cop to go out to Jack Turner's farm and to stake it out. That cop came back on a bit later to report that the farmhouse was dark. Turner wasn't there.

"Stay there," Burkhardt said. "If he returns, make sure you're on his every move, but don't panic him."

Julio showed up at the inn, they had a couple of drinks, and then they went back to Burkhardt's apartment, to his bedroom, and to his bed, where the detective fucked the shit out of the sweet piece who was just too damn hot to resist. Julio gave it up easily for the detective and not just because the man had him over the barrel on involvement in the two deaths—two deaths so far as well as Burkhardt could see—but also because the detective was hot as hell too.

* * * *

They woke sometime after 2:00 a.m., showered, and had a bit of breakfast before Burkhardt saw Julio to the door down the stairs from his apartment and opening up in the side lot beside the row of buildings with a café under his apartment. A line of trees and dense thicket ran behind the buildings and down to a stream.

Julio had parked his truck on the street. A police cruiser was parked in front of him and he was intercepted and pulled into the cruiser before he could get in his truck.

Burkhardt waited at the open door at the bottom of his stairway. At first the was afraid he was waiting in vein, but then he heard the commotion in the bushes at the back of the building, leading down to the stream. Two policemen emerged from the undergrowth. One of them was holding a gun out by the trigger hole. They held a wriggly man between them. He was handcuffed in back. He glared at Burkhardt.

"If you relied on being in Nags Head for an alibi, Don, you shouldn't have been working in the kitchen at the Stanfield Inn at the same time—and you certainly shouldn't have been coming out into the dining room and letting the whole world know you hadn't left the area."

Don Field lunged for Burkhardt, growling, "They shouldn't have messed with Julio. He's mine. You shouldn't be messing with him either." But the two cops had a good hold on him and pulled him back. At Burkhardt's command they took him to the police cruiser parked in front of Julio's truck and told a shocked Julio to come back to where the detective was standing.

Burkhardt's thought in the meantime was that it wasn't just Fouchet and Gordon who shouldn't have been fucking Fields's boyfriend if they wanted to remain alive, but also that it hadn't been joyriders shooting at stop signs who had nearly tagged Gill Conner at his mailbox. Fields had tried to off him for sleeping with Julio as well. If they were able now to find the bullet that had grazed Conner's head, chances were good they could match it to the gun that the chef had come to use on Burkhardt tonight. And now me too, the detective thought. The Cuban honey might be too damn hot, in fact. Men who fucked him had had too pay the ultimate price for doing so.

When Julio reached him, Burkhardt explained what had happened and why, including that it all fell in place when he saw that Fields hadn't gone to Nags Head at all. He'd remained in the area and started popping off the other men Julio was going under.

"And you had me come out to the bar at the inn—"

"So that Fields would see us there together, yes. And that's why I was so hands on with you there. I wanted him to know we were intimate—that we'd be leaving there to go off and fuck. I wanted him to see me as competition for your favors—just as Fouchet and Chance Gordon had been." And as Conner and Turner were too, but hopefully with less disastrous results, he thought. "I wanted to flush him out—make him come after me too. And it worked."

"So, it's all my fault," Julio said.

"Your fault for being too damn hot?" Burkhardt said. "I don't think so. So, what do you want to do now? You want to go on home, or—"

Julio was looking up the staircase. "I don't think I want to be alone tonight. Can I came back upstairs with you?"

Burkhardt grinned. "Why, of course you can. But one more thing to check first," he said. He took out his cellphone and made a call. "Thanks, Steve. You can come on in now," he said, breathing a sigh of relief as they climbed the stairs to his apartment—and his bedroom, and his bed. He was palming Julio's nice butt cheek as they mounted the stairs and he prepared to mount the Cuban honey again. The cop he'd sent out to Jack's farm had confirmed that Jack Turner had returned. That was one less victim of Fields that Burkhardt had to mourn just because, like he himself, they couldn't resist the magnetic heat of Julio Cortez.