Free An Equal Opportunity Death by Susan Dunlap Page B

is a surprise. Are you panicking and do you want to sell your house?”
    “No. I saw your light on.” I walked back and sat in the seat next to his desk as he settled back in his chair. I could tell he wondered why I was here—a natural reaction, since I hadn’t been in this office after I’d bought my house from him—but he was too polite to ask.
    Putting the papers in front of him in a folder, he said, “Your visit is a welcome excuse to interrupt work.” In spite of the hour and his being alone, he was still wearing a herringbone jacket. It fit well and looked comfortable. The gray of the fabric picked up the gray of his hair and accented his slate blue eyes. His skin was hardly wrinkled, his features chiseled. But his nose was what one first noticed. It was a cartoonlike bulb, too big for his face. Knowing Skip, this was not the nose he would have chosen for himself. But it was this appealing imperfection that made him seem immediately likable. Without it, he would have looked too precise, finicky, bordering on the homosexual stereotype. The nose, more than anything, may have been responsible for his success.
    I didn’t know where to begin. All I could think of was Skip sitting with Madge Oombs at the restaurant on Route 101 yesterday morning, and I knew I didn’t want to start with that. I asked, “Has the sheriff talked to you about Frank’s death?”
    “No. Should he have?”
    “I suppose that does seem an odd question. Since he’s talked to me twice I just assume that he’s made the rounds of everyone in town. It’s not a good thing to be the last one to see a man alive.”
    “Have they been bothering you?” He seemed truly concerned. It was the same feeling I’d had about him when he went through seven or eight houses with me before I decided on mine.
    “Wescott isn’t hassling me. But he hasn’t ruled me out either. I’m just continually startled that he could suspect me at all.”
    Skip smiled sadly. “It’s always disappointing when someone prejudges you.”
    I hesitated to acknowledge his statement. While there had been anti-gay feeling lately, Skip had been here for years. Still, he was different; “homosexual, but quite nice,” was how he had been described to me early on. “I guess you’ve been prejudged here?” I said.
    “It was always subtle until the last couple years.” He stared past me out the picture window that formed the front of the office. The rain was coming down hard, enveloping us in the warm dry office. There were none of the usual night sounds—no auto horns beeping, no tires skidding, no doors slamming, no voices calling back and forth. It was as if we were totally alone.
    He said, “I came to Henderson ten years ago. No one around here thought about homosexuals then. Gays were people who lived in San Francisco and dressed oddly. They weren’t men who opened the real estate offices in Henderson. It was quite a while before anyone questioned my preferences. I try to be courteous—I don’t try to hide my life, but I don’t want to rub it in anyone’s face either. It was nice, those years and the ones after. It was nice just being a realtor. Seven, eight years. You’re not a minority until there are enough of you to be noticed. And that started happening only recently.”
    “But,” I said, “you’re still not totally accepted. Not ‘normal.’”
    He sat forward, seeming to shake off his introspective mood. “No, not normal. But that was fine. Had I desired normality, I would have married, had children, and lived in Pleasant Hill.”
    “Tell me,” I said, searching for the right entree. “How did you see Frank?” That certainly wasn’t it. “I mean, you knew Frank as well as the rest of us, but there was apparently some facet of Frank which none of us suspected, something that led to his being killed.…”
    “Possibly. It’s also conceivable that some lunatic wandered in, demanded a drink in the afternoon, and when Frank refused, shot