Calendar Mystery 1: SANDY POINT LIGHTHOUSE
"Calendar Mystery" is simultaneously a detective story and a gay romance. The characters are purely fictional. The settings are fictionalized. The usual caution applies to minor and snowflakes: the stories include explicit love-making scenes, but if you're on nifty, you already know that. Access nifty's donation page to help keep the stories free.
In this first chapter, it might be too early to ask my Reader for feedback, but I'll give my contact info anyway: goranbixo@aol.com
Characters
Chris Josephson, age 29, creative writer and professor, owner of Sandy Point lighthouse, a caretaker's house, a Victorian farmhouse, and on the harbor side of the point, four boathouses converted to condos.
Frank Zanetti, age 24, detective sergeant in the police force; former student of Chris.
`Calendar Mystery' was the name that the cops in Duluth gave to a series of missing persons cases that they investigated late in 2020. Frank Zanetti's section chief called them the Calendar Boy Murders, until one of his staffers called him out for political incorrectness, so he watered the name down to Calendar Mystery, even though Calendar Boy Murders was an exact description.
The cases came to light because Chris Josephson kept an 18-by-30-inch gay calendar hanging above his desk, on the wall of his study in the caretaker's house adjacent to a historical lighthouse. Both buildings are part of his property on Sandy Point. The calendar was a 2019 Christmas gift, a gag gift from one of his friends. Chris paid little attention to it, and often neglected to turn over the leaf when the days passed from one month to the next. The calendar was still showing a photo of Mr. July' on September 5, when Chris turned over two pages to Mr. September', so `Mr. August' was by-passed.
The calendar photo for September depicted a body-builder in his twenties, a handsome blond guy seated nude behind an antique anchor with his right leg extended in sand. His left leg was bent, such that the knee rested against one of the anchor blades. His left arm extended forward, with his hand cupped over the chain-link attached to the anchor. He supported his weight with his right arm, the hand dug deep in the sand. He looked straight at the camera. His smile dimpled his cheeks. He could have passed as a Beach Boy of the North Country. Blue eyes completed the picture. Not the icy blue stare of an ancient Cimmerian, but sky blue like a September dawn.
On the right side of the photo display, the top photo showed a panoramic view of a lighthouse scene. Chris recognized the lighthouse as his, built by his second great grandfather in 1908 to warn ships away from submerged boulders near the shore of Lake Superior. The youth stood next to the anchor, nude. The middle photo showed the youth inside the lighthouse, climbing the spiral staircase that led to the loft. The photographer knew his business, as he captured the curvature of the subject's derriere in a way that complimented his figure. The right-bottom photo was taken in the lighthouse loft. It depicted `Mr. September' locked in an embrace with a brown- skinned man whose facial features were hidden behind Mr. September's shoulders. The photographer's artistry captured a dramatic contrast of interracial colors.
"This man is no longer alive"—Six words uttered to himself. The stroke of intuition came to Chris in a burst of psychic energy, followed by an attack of fatigue that sent him to bed for a hour's nap in the middle of the day.
When he awoke, he called the only man he knew on the Duluth police force, patrolman Frank Zanetti.
"No, it's not an emergency, just a vibe," Chris assured Frank. "But I'd be grateful if you could come to my place after your shift. I've got something to show you."
Chris spent the rest of the day bicycling down London Road and out on the old Lake Shore highway almost to Silver Bay. When he returned home, he found Frank waiting for him in his patrol car.
"What's up, Doc?" Frank said. He followed Chris into the caretaker's house.
"It's a gay calendar with pin-ups, a gag gift from Steve Blazer. I keep it hanging in the kitchen, but I don't pay much attention to it because I usually stay in the main house," Chris said, pointing in the direction of the white Victorian farmhouse on a hill overlooking the sand dunes.
"It looks expensive," Frank said. "A different model each month, and a different location. The settings aren't identified. Good photography, though."
"Turn the pages over to September," Chris said. "Do you recognize the anchor? Shiny black. I painted it last year in July. The red and white barber-pole stripes look fresh. I had them repainted that summer, too."
"When was the paint job finished?" Frank asked.
Chris ran his fingers through a collection of invoices and receipts in a desk drawer. "Here it is, Lambert Lumber Supplies, paint purchased July 22. The boys from Lambert completed the work on July 30."
"You don't recognize the kid in the photo?" Frank asked.
"Never seen him before. But how did they get inside the lighthouse? These are my spiral steps, and this is the loft," Chris said, pointing to the photos. "Look here, the robin's egg blue of the window sill."
"You should hire a locksmith to change the locks," Frank said.
"I will," Chris replied, "but that's not the problem."
After a few moments of silence, Frank said, "Go on."
"I called you because no one else in the police department would consider this as a police matter," Chris said. "I think the guy in the September photo is dead."
"If this were detective fiction, `Mr. September' would be the body on page one," Frank chuckled.
Frank turned to the cover-page of the calendar. He found an advertisement and an order-form for porn DVDs, one for each of the calendar models. The cover page also advertised "photo portfolios" for each pin-up star.
"Here's what we need to do, Doc," he said. "Order the DVDs and the photo portfolios, and get to work identifying the locations and the models."
"All twelve?" Chris asked. "At $49.94 each, that comes to..."
"If we get lucky with one, he might lead us to others," Frank said. "In the meantime, we need to visit the gay bars, to see if anyone recognizes this kid."
Every month has the same routine," Chris remarked: "a large pin-up on the left, a panoramic scene in the right upper corner, an action scene in the middle, and an intimate sex scene in the lower right. It looks more like artistry than porn, but I imagine the DVDs are triple-X."
"Porn can be artistic, too," Frank said.
"I agree," Chris replied. "But I've seen a lot of porn where the performers can't string more than two sentences together."
Frank turned the calendar pages month by month. When he got to May, he recognized the setting. "It's on the North Shore," he said.
"I can see that, but where?" Chris replied.
Frank pointed to a spot in the panoramic scene. "This smooth boulder with an overhanging cedar. It might be on the shoreline near a resort called Vera's Cabins. That's a lodge with a cluster of log cabins on the old highway about three-quarters of the way to Silver Bay."
"I know the place," Chris said. "That's where I turned around during my afternoon bike ride."
Frank continued turning the calendar pages. "This guy's Native American," he said when he got to August. "Probably Ojibwe."
Chris looked at the calendar for August for the first time. "I recognize the setting. It's a resort on Burntside Lake, near Ely."
Frank looked puzzled: "How can you know that, Doc? Are you getting another vibe? Like when you used Vera's Cabins as a turn-around?"
"No vibe. Just observation. It's a high-end resort called Burntside Lodge," Chris replied. "Remember the old Hamm's beer commercial with the bear rolling on a log in a channel between the shore and a small island?" He broke into song: "From the land of sky-blue waters, from the land of pines, lofty balsams, comes the beer refreshing, Hamm's, the beer refreshing, Hamm's."
"Can't say as I remember the tune, Doc," Frank said. "But I'm not an old man like you." (Frank was 24, five years younger than Chris.)
"Burntside Lodge. This is the place," Chris said. "There's a historical exhibit in the lodge. They make a big deal of it. The island is a short swim across the water from the fishing dock. So far, we've got three clues. The lighthouse for September, Vera's Cabins on the North Shore for May, Burntside Lodge near Ely for August," Chris said.
Frank jotted them down in his notebook. "Two more clues," he said. "The May pin-up is the only redhead, and the August pin-up is the only Ojibwe. That narrows the field, and it means the designer of the calendar was looking for variety. Also, there's a sixth clue."
"What's that?"
"Mr. September is dead. It follows that he was murdered. That's a clue," Frank said. He scribbled in his notebook, and continued: "I'm writing `Mr. September murdered' because I believe in your vibes. I know you don't like it when someone calls you a psychic, and maybe you're not, but I do believe that you have moments of ESP. Have you checked out the loft in the lighthouse?"
"Haven't been up there for a week or more," Chris replied.
"Maybe we should."
Frank led the way up the spiral staircase. Chris kept behind him, always ready to take in the eye-candy of Frank's uniform in motion. In the loft, they found two sleeping bags zipped together to make a bed-roll. And furniture made of varnished white pine: a chest of drawers, a desk, two chairs, and a table.
"How did you get this stuff up here?" Frank asked.
"Simple. I brought it up in pieces and put it together up here," Chris said. "It's all Ojibwe furniture from Red Hawk's shop in Ely. The paintings, too. All six of them painted by Red Hawk."
"One of these days, you'll have to introduce me to the mysterious Red Hawk," Frank said.
"We'll have to go to Ely to check out Burntside Lodge, and maybe learn something about Mr. August," Chris replied. "Then you can meet Red Hawk."
"See anything different up here?" Frank asked.
"The bed-roll," Chris replied. "I always keep the sleeping bags rolled up tight. But the photos were taken sometime last year."
"Someone has been up here recently," Frank said. "Maybe the same guys—Mr. September, the photographer, and the mysterious black guy."
"Or someone else," Chris countered. He knelt by the bed-roll, preparing to unzip it and roll it up properly.
"Don't do that, Chris!" Frank exclaimed. "There's bound to be DNA in that bed-roll. We'll need it if we find someone to compare it to."
"Right you are, officer," Chris replied.
"Let's take a walk on the beach now," Frank said. They descended the spiral staircase. As it was getting dark, Chris fetched two flashlights from a kitchen drawer in the caretaker's house.
"This is just like a CSI episode, looking for clues in the dark with two flashlights," Chris mused. "It's a wonder they solved any crimes that way."
"It's not about finding new clues," Frank said. "It's about cognitive processing. Trying to make sense of the clues we already have. So far, we have three months out of twelve, each in a different location. Vera's Cabins for May. Burntside Lodge in Ely for August. Your lighthouse for September. The elusive African-American guy used as some sort of prop in each sex-scene."
They walked on the beach, following the shoreline away from town in the dim light of a quarter-moon. Beams from their flashlights danced in the tide-hardened sand near the surf. Occasionally their beams merged to form one bright circle of light and then parted.
"Did you know that a beach is a river of sand?" Chris asked. "The tide picks up the sand and mixes it around in the surf, so you never see the same beach twice. It's just like what Heraclitus said about rivers, `You never see the same river twice'."
"Which is why our crime scenes are always contaminated by time," Frank said. "Even so, we know that Mr. September and his party were here sometime between August and the first snowfall in November, but I think we can narrow the window to mid-August and September, 2019."
"The beginning of Fall semester, 2019," Chris said.
"I was in your night class on Chaucer," Frank said. "Mondays and Wednesdays. Do you remember your other class?"
"An advanced course in fiction for creative writers," Chris replied. "I remember that, because I always tell my students that if you're serious about writing fiction, you have to apply yourself to the study of Chaucer. I plan it that way for one semester every two years. Most of my creative writers took both classes."
"Tell you what, Chris, let's start with the hypothesis that the September photo was taken by someone who knew your schedule in Fall semester," Frank said. "What can you remember about it?"
"It was fairly routine," Chris replied. "On Mondays, I bicycled to UMD starting around 9 AM. Left the bike in the office and jogged home starting at 8 PM. On Tuesdays, jogged to campus around 9 AM, bicycled home by noon. Wednesdays, same as Mondays. Thursdays, same as Tuesdays. Fridays, bicycled both ways, starting at 9 AM. Returned home around noon unless I had meetings. Almost always got home by 6 PM. That's about it."
"And Saturdays?"
"Either a road race or a bicycle race almost every Saturday. Most were out of town. Sometimes I drove to the racing site on Friday evening and stayed in a motel," Chris said. "Sunday mornings I was usually in church, unless there was a bike race. Sometimes a two-day bike race, Saturday and Sunday."
"And the reason you never asked me for a date was because..." Frank said, pretending to write down the question and answer.
"You were my student, Frank. I never mess around with students, not even when they're older," Chris replied.
"I'm not your student anymore, Doc, and you're not my professor," Frank said.
"I know. You finished you BA last spring. I was at your graduation ceremony, remember?"
"I remember," Frank replied. "We were dressed in black robes. You wore a hood with a silk field of green, decorated with blue and yellow stripes and a purple border, like a peacock. By the way, I passed my sergeant's exam last week, and on the 15th I'm getting promoted to detective sergeant."
"Congratulations, Frank! I should have kept up with you after graduation," Chris said. "That was wrong of me. Sorry `bout that. Tell you what. Come to church with me tomorrow. You know the church. St. John's the Beloved, down by the harbor. Afterward we can drive up the North Shore to Vera's Cabins. Maybe we can get a fresh start."
It was true. Frank was ambitious to become a detective. For that, he needed a bachelor's degree. The field didn't matter, so he double-majored in English and Italian. The Italian part was easy, since he already spoke the language and spent three summers with relatives in Firenza. His full name was Gianfresco Zianetti' and Chris once called him Little Frankie John-John'. Italian Francesco' is Frank'. Gian' is John'. Zanetti' is a diminutive form for John', in other words, Little John'. Standing at five-feet-five, and wiry, the nickname suited him, and it stuck, but Chris, who was seven inches taller, usually called him Frank' so as not to emphasize his short stature.
"Summa cum laude," Chris said, out of the blue.
"What's that?"
"You graduated summa cum laude. Very few part-time night students ever accomplish that," Chris said.