Everyone's Dead But Us: A Tom & Scott Mystery

I gazed from the headland toward the moon rising over the swelling waves, then shut my eyes and listened to the sea crashing on the rocks far below. I smelled the salt water and felt the coolness of the night through my polyester-padded leather jacket. The gusting east wind ruffled my hair. I stuck my hands into my jacket pockets, and reopened my eyes to gaze at the sky. It was possible to see the stars blaze as I never could over the city of Chicago. I’d rarely seen the moon so enormous and orange and close, near enough in the darkness to dare to touch. Only a few clouds from the predicted storm lay on the horizon, and I thought I caught glimpses of far distant lightning.

I turned away from the sea toward the rest of the island. The gently rising land in front of me hid the few lights that might have escaped from the buildings. Scott was only about two hundred feet away. I had been told to give him an hour so I had taken my time strolling the east way around the island. I loved the cool wind and the lack of human noise. Waves and wind, spray and smell, everything draped in moonlight and surrounded by stars. That’s why we come here every year. Total quiet and relaxation.

I took the path down to the secluded cavern where Scott waited. Neither the anticipation nor the pleasure was lessened by the familiarity with which I approached the scene. Love, and warmth, and a hot man. Nothing wrong with that picture even after numerous viewings.

It was the day before New Year’s Eve. As a present for our wedding, I’d given him annual trips to Korkasi, an island in the Aegean Sea. Korkasi was the most exclusive and expensive gay resort in the world. We’d already been coming to this idyllic spot off and on for years before our marriage. It was one place where Scott would not be pestered by fans.

The guest list on Korkasi included some of the wealthiest gay men on the planet. Many of them were the kind who’d listened to too much opera as children, attended too many operas as adults, and felt a need to tell you about those experiences. They funded more opera productions than you could shake a tenor at. Another common type is the rich sugar daddy trying to show off his latest boy-toy At times these people overlapped each other, making us even more inclined to keep to ourselves.

Scott would have candlelight and blankets and pillows, and cheeses and exotic fruits and confections and some form of chocolate that I’d never had before. Scott would have taken the time to make it romantic and intimate and perfect. As I entered the cavern, I saw the glow of light around the bend. The wind abated considerably after the first few steps into the cave, and was but a puff of freshness after I turned the first corner.

Scott had lit a fire, a necessity. It was winter and the island was cool. The red, blue, and yellow of the quiet flames provided welcome warmth. Smoke curled out through a small hole high up in the far wall. The shield of loose rocks built around the fire had been heated by the flames. He had votive candles on rock-hewn shelves stretching above our heads. He sat cross-legged on a blanket in front of a mound of pillows. A simple feast was laid out between him and the fire. Since I was a kid, I’ve been afflicted with a sappy, romantic streak. Yeah, it was cheap sentiment, but I love cheap sentiment. And as a wise, old mentor once said to me, Cheap sentiment? So what? Dickens made a career out of it.

I snuggled up close to Scott. He draped an arm around me. This is perfect, I said. Then both his arms encircled me, and he nuzzled my ear. I love you, he murmured. I love you, too, I said. We kissed. Then we kissed a lot more. And for quite a while the fire was not necessary to keep us warm.

Some time later, wrapped in blankets, having stirred the fire and added scented wood to its fading embers, Scott reached behind the mound of pillows. I have something for you. For some reason we nearly always whispered when we were in the cavern. Neither of us wished to break the magic of the spell created by these moments of perfection.

Scott handed me a flat, burgundy box with gold lettering. It was tied with a silk, red ribbon, which fell away easily. The box said Kinder with other words in German that I could not translate. I opened it and took a bite of the chocolate inside. It was heavenly.

Eventually reality does intrude. The fire did die down. The damp and cold did seep in. I was pleasantly drowsy, but it would be good to get indoors.

We held hands and huddled together as we walked back to our rooms. It was after one in the morning. The wind had risen to a gale, the moon was a third of the way up the sky, half the stars were obscured by roiling thunderheads, and lightning was clear in the far distance. Still the storm wasn’t close enough yet for us to hear the thunder.

The island is about ten square miles. It is a fairly regular oval except for the northern tip, which has a small bay. From above it would look like an oval with a small bite out of the top. The island was rimmed with cliffs and rocky beaches unsuitable for landings, except for the harbor, the small bay around a castle, and a few places where there might be enough room for a child’s rowboat to dock. The cavern was about a third of the way around the island west from the port. If you took the path east, eventually you would walk nearly two-thirds of the way around the island. In this direction, the path mostly hugged the shore. The path went along lava pebble beaches, between rocky outcroppings, or along headlands and was rarely more than several feet from the water’s edge.

This east way was generally the most pleasant with natural rock barriers often breaking the worst of the winter gales, although in stormy weather, you could get soaked from sea spray if the waves were up. And we were getting wet, and we kind of giggled and were silly, and bumped against each other. And put our hands in each other’s pants pockets. But it’s fun being playful with him.

You couldn’t actually follow the shore and walk completely around the island. The west way from the harbor to the cavern followed the edge of the sea for only about a hundred feet. Then the viciously rocky coastline, with its sharp rocks and startlingly high cliffs, inhibited any further progress in that direction. You were forced to head inland. The path meandered for miles to avoid this impassable stretch of coastline. These darkened paths followed the crest of these wannabe English moorlands. Because of the detours, you walked a much greater distance than if you’d taken the eastern path that skirted the island’s perimeter.

Often in the morning we ran together around the entire pathway, maybe five miles or so. We would speed through the part with the ocean spray, often drenching ourselves with a shower of sea water as we trotted by. The cool spray felt good during five miles of running, but now a storm was coming and the sea was up. Our romantic stroll was getting us both drenched.

Tonight the wind whipped the waves and flapped the clothes against our bodies. About halfway back we passed Virl Morgan. He ran every night after his charge had gone to sleep. Virl was about five foot eight with massive forearms. We’d seen him during our visits several years in a row. I thought he was short for a security guard. Scott explained that if you wished to make a statement, you had a large, burly security guard, but that a strong, competent one on the smaller side was good enough for normal wear and tear. Virl guarded the son of the pretender to the Bourbon throne of France. If the monarchy was ever restored in France and if their line could prove their claim against all other claims, it would be an important job. I didn’t hold out much hope for his charge ascending any throne anytime soon. As we passed each other, we all nodded an acknowledgment.

We skirted the harbor and took the path around the last hill. As we neared the castle, Scott said, It’s going to be a hell of a storm. I rested my head against his shoulder. I looked forward to cuddling under our quilts in the tower room, reading by candlelight, and falling asleep with my head on his chest. As we turned the last sharp curve to the castle, a fine mist began to blow in my face. I couldn’t tell if it was sea spray or precursor to the promised storm. The lightning was nearer, and I could finally hear faint rumbles of thunder. I’d never seen a storm coming at night across the sea so we stopped and watched. It was beautiful, half the sky boiling with darkness, half still lit by the full moon and the mantle of stars. Out beyond the harbor breakwater, the sea foamed and frothed.

We climbed the steep rise up the center of the last expanse of land before the castle. The edifice was surrounded on three sides by a hundred yards of open ground. The fourth side, which ended with a tower, was contiguous with the sea. The wind buffeted us mightily. As we climbed, we bent our backs into the rising gale and marched forward. In the lee of the castle, the wind was calmer. The grand entrance to the castle was actually directly under our room. Beyond the entryway the foyer had three branches. One led into the Great Hall, another to a vast library and the third up the grand staircase that led to our room. The library could be visited under supervision of one of the island’s staff. The rare literature there was probably more valuable than half the castle. None but the super-rich were allowed in the Great Hall. The doors between the tower, where our rooms and the rest of the castle were, were made of six-inch planks of oak bolted to foot-wide and inch-thick steel plates. They were always locked.

The castle had been built and rebuilt countless times going back to the time of the Minoan civilization. The massive stone tower was its most prominent feature and our suite took up the top two-thirds of the tower. Our room actually had three levels, a sheltered lookout at the top level and a sitting room with a spiral staircase connecting it to a comfortable bedroom below.

We’d toured the different villas the island offered. Each was vastly oversized and tastefully appointed. You could have as many servants, always male, as you wished assigned to your villa while you were there. Generally there were at least three: a maid, a butler, and your own personal concierge. A fourth option was an in-house cook, although the only restaurant on the island was used by many. Three days here was pretty much my travel budget for the year so we only kept the personal concierge. Scott’s a wealthy baseball player, but I have my pride and my own budget. The villas rent for five to fifteen thousand a night. The rooms in the castle, the low-rent district, were less than a thousand.

Half of the tables in the restaurant were walled off by Plexiglas. This way the rich who wished to parade their latest boy-toy could be easily seen but nobody could hear you negotiating your price or being bored to tears by someone half your age’s innocuous conversation. Other restaurant seating arrangements had large plants strategically placed to wall off the view of others. These were for the discreet few, the tired, and the mature enough not to need a show.

Quite a few of the wealthy who used the island also brought an entourage with them, but large herds of followers were discouraged. A rock star had been turned away when he insisted he needed twenty-seven people to meet his needs. When he was refused, he attempted unsuccessfully to buy the island. Most of the staff took the high-speed catamaran from Santorini to work their shifts, the overnight shift being the least well staffed.

As we neared the grand entrance, one of the massive doors flapped in the wind and banged against the castle wall. This was odd. We were in the only rooms available for overnight guests. There would be no reason for anyone else to be here. I was sure it had been latched and locked earlier. I’d checked. Inside, the electric night lights along the floor illumined the hall full of musty darkness. We secured the door. It was good to be out of the wind. While I do prefer my nights dark and stormy, I also prefer to enjoy the dark and storminess curled up with a good book, in a fire-lit room, with a thermopane picture window between me and the night and the raging of nature.

From the ample foyer we now stood in, the grand staircase led up, then branched out at the top. To the left was a small elevator, installed in the 1930s for a German count who refused to move his bulk under his own power up the stairs to his room. We climbed to the top and took the right branching.

Portraits of attractive young men in period costumes from ancient Greece to modern times covered the walls. The paintings were done in the 1950s by a reasonably talented lover of the owner at the time and they tended to romantic fuzziness rather than the blatantly lewd. We passed several exquisite stained glass windows. An artist last century had spent years creating scenes with characters acting out stories in intricate detail. On our first visit, we had followed them from beginning to end. From what I could understand it was a medieval soap opera about a knight who wanted to live with his male lover.

From the top of the stairs we took a short hall and then turned the two corners to our bedroom. The door here was also open. This was highly unusual.

Things did not go wrong on Korkasi. You came to Korkasi to be pampered. Plush amenities were the minimum expected. The lack of shoving crowds of camera-wielding tourists made the place nigh unto perfection. The wealthy paid a premium for the rest of us not to be here. I’m sure Scott and I were a minor intrusion on their world. The staff prided itself on making sure the needs of every guest were met instantly if not sooner. A guest on his second trip to the island seldom had to ask twice for an idiosyncratic comfort. The first-timer soon learned that every guest on every visit was made to feel as if his comfort was the personal concern of any of the help he came in contact with. We had asked for no special services this night, and even if we had, doors left open would not be part of the service.

I put a hand on the sleeve of Scott’s jacket and murmured, We’d better take this slowly. He nodded. The night lights plugged into the outlets along the wall were the same as those on the stairs and in the foyer. The overhead light was off.

I eased into the room. I heard the wind howl against the windows as it whipped around the tower. I discerned no sound from the room itself. I reached to my right and found the switch. I flipped it on, illuminating the familiar wainscoting, the shelves of books.

I took two cautious steps forward. In the center of the room was the owner of the resort, Henry Tudor. He was on the floor, and he had a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead.

Henry Tudor had been a suave man with fishlike hands that tapered to a well-manicured set of points. He lived on the island year round. He spoke in soft mellifluous tones. The help jumped at his orders, but he was never officious, not that I saw anyway. But if he asked for something to be done, it was done, and done quickly.

The island of Korkasi was not designed for the disco set or the circuit party crowd. No mobs of drug-ingesting dancing men crammed onto dance floors marred the stark beauty. It was known for its absence of rotating disco balls, lack of drag queens, and other ephemeral artifacts of the clichéd gay party scene. This resort catered to an old world elegance and class. You didn’t find the island listed in any brochure, and there was no Web site with flashing pop-ups advertising its delights. Friends might mention its existence to friends. A retired baseball player had revealed its secrets to Scott. The retired player had a sad life. Fearful of losing advertising endorsements, he had died never revealing his sexual orientation. His lover was never mentioned in the tidal wave of sentiment at the player’s death.

A century ago when the closet was the rule, not the exception, a member of the British aristocracy had wished to have a safe, secret spot to take his working-class male lover. The Earl of Trent had purchased most of the island, which was twenty miles south and west of Santorini, the closest to Africa of the Chaldean Islands. The Earl had not evicted the inhabitants of the island. However, as each had died, he’d purchased their homes and land. He’d kept the pristine white-washed walls, but each interior had been redone. Most of the old homes were refurbished and were beautiful in their own right, but many now had rooms burrowed far back into the hills behind the port. The burrowing had revealed numerous ancient artifacts, all carefully preserved on the island in various rooms. After checkout, a discreet visit was made to each room to make sure some idle rich boob hadn’t made off with a Minoan vase.

The man who owned it in the thirties had added a small airport on the far side of the island. It was more of a flat spot on a small plain than a useful landing field. An occasional helicopter did disgorge a pampered guest. The ancient castle had been transformed into a structure with real warmth and modern conveniences. In the fifties the island had been purchased by a gay American entrepreneur who completed turning the island into what it was today.

The lover of the original owner was supposed to have committed suicide out of boredom on this island retreat. One rumor said he flung himself off the castle parapet into the sea. A traveler who’d been coming to the island for years, Wayne Craveté, told us this was not true. That the young man had indeed gotten bored, but simply fled on a passing fishing boat and gone back to England. There were a number of these old legends, all with wild variations, but the endings were monotonously similar. All of them had someone pitching themselves off the castle battlements. Depending on one’s luck, the state of the weather, or the movement of the tide, you either landed on jagged rocks, in swirling water, or both. I suppose one way to look at it is that with a battlement so convenient, why not begin pitching people, yourself included, off the tower?

Before the current unpleasantness, in one of our more macabre moments, Scott and I had conjured up a scenario of herds of wealthy gay tourists paying young men to fling themselves over the parapet for sport or for money, to see if anyone survived the dive, with a crowd below sipping tea or gin slings while cheering the jumpers on. One hesitates to admit to the macabre things you can imagine. One hesitates even more when real macabre things begin to happen that you wish you couldn’t