A pause from Grady. He reached into his fat suit, from somewhere in the direction of his armpit, and pulled out a flask. “You’d better take a nip of this.”

“What is it?”

“Cinnamon schnapps. It’s a seasonal drink.”

I took a sip, winced at the spicy burn trailing my insides. But it felt good to feel anything. On second thought, I drank some more.

Five minutes later, we pulled up to Q’s place. The house he shared with Max on Cleveland Avenue was all lit up-candles burned inside pumpkins, orange string lights were twisted around black railings and every light in the house was on.

Grady and I walked up the front steps, and I opened the door. But as I pushed, it hit someone on the inside.

“Hey, watch it!” It was Max’s mother, Simone, dressed in her Vegas-showgirl costume, complete with a purple feathered headpiece that towered a foot above her and plumed out in all directions. “Sorry,” she said, patting the feathers. “It gets in the way sometimes.”

“Hi, Simone, it’s Izzy.” No matter how many times I’d met Simone, she never remembered me. I had long stopped taking it personally. She never remembered anyone.

“Oh, Izzy! How nice to meet you!” Simone hugged me. I could feel her tiny waist and her ribs. The woman was in amazing shape. Well over sixty and still able to rock a showgirl outfit.

Simone grabbed a passing waiter, who was dressed in tight black pants, no shirt and a Venetian catlike mask. “Two, please,” she said, relieving him of a couple martinis, which she shoved at Grady and me before she disappeared into the crowd.

“Simone, this is Grady,” I said to her retreating back.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not staying at this party long.” He glanced around. “Man, I thought gay men were supposed to have tons of straight girlfriends.”

“Hey,” I said, taking a sip of the martini, which tasted of apple and cinnamon, “you’re not looking anyway, right? You said it was going great with Ellen.”

He eyed a guy dressed as Little Orphan Annie, wearing a sign that read, You’re Only a GAY Away. He shook his head and returned his eyes to me. “Things are great with Ellen. But I’m always looking.”

We made our way into the thick of the crowd. I began to wish I was a single, homosexual man. It seemed every hot, gay guy in the city was in Q’s living room, most of them shirtless and greased up. One guy was dressed as a Chippendales dancer, another as an Indian (replete with feathered loincloth), yet another as a trapeze artist. And the flirting that was going on-Jiminy Christmas. Everyone seemed to be batting their eyes at one another and squeezing biceps. I started to feel ignored in my sexy blue dress.

We found Q in the kitchen, talking with a black guy cross-dressing as Marilyn Monroe. Q wore white footie pajamas and sheep ears.

“Iz!” he yelled when he saw me. Q got loud when he drank. And he had clearly been drinking. “Izzy, baby, how are you?”

He lurched over to me and hugged me big. “How are you?” he hollered again.

“Fine. What’s with your costume?”

“Max is Little Bo Peep. I’m the sheep.” He turned me to face Marilyn Monroe. “Iz, have you met Timothy?”

Timothy/Marilyn licked his lips and swished the skirt of his white dress back and forth. “Lovely to meet you,” he purred. “So tell me something…” He pointed to my red hair then down toward my waist. “Does the carpet match the drapes?”

“Dude, shut up!” Grady said.

I laughed. “It’s okay.” I’d been hearing that question, in one form or another, since I was thirteen, usually from drunk assholes at a late-night bar. Coming from Timothy/Marilyn, it didn’t bother me.

I turned and pulled Grady forward. “This is Grady Fisher.”

“Yum.” Timothy/Marilyn looked him up and down.

“Yeah, hi.” Grady put his martini on the counter, grabbed a beer from a drinks tub and disappeared.

“So,” Timothy/Marilyn said, dragging his eyes up and down my body now. “You’re sexy.”

“Thank you,” I said. I was struck by how truly flattered I was. And then immediately struck by how truly low my self-esteem must have dipped for me to be eating up attention from a man dressed as Marilyn Monroe.

Q threw his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. “So, Timothy, Izzy is my boss.”

“Shut up,” I said. “We work together.” Or we did. Before Shane took the Pickett work from me.

“Yes, but you make the big money.”

“Wait a minute, I direct a portion of my salary to you, so you make more than enough.”

“But I’m still just a lowly assistant,” Q said. “Hey, I’m okay with it. It’s like being in AA.” He pulled away and threw his arms out. “I am Quentin David Briscoe. And I…am an assistant.”

“Oh, have another drink.”

He grabbed a bottle of Corona off the counter. “You and I need to have a talk about that fiancé of yours.” Q tugged me though the living room, up the steps to the second floor and into his and Max’s bedroom. The space was cool and calm, done in charcoal gray and decorated with contemporary artwork, many painted by Q.

“Sit,” he said, half gesturing toward the bed, half shoving me in that direction.

“Watch the devil ears!” I tumbled back onto the bed.

“Spill it. I’ve called you four times since the funeral yesterday, and I got nothing. What’s been happening?”

“Everything.” I threw a hand over my eyes, Gone With the Wind style.

He didn’t laugh. I didn’t either.

I couldn’t tell him about working with Mayburn, so I told him about getting followed, probably by two people. I told him about the break-in, and how I’d met with Shane Pickett today. I stopped short of telling him everything about the meeting.

Q listened intently. “How was Shane doing?”

“Seems to be great. He’s moved into his dad’s office already.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, that was fast, huh?”

He shrugged. “I guess he’s just doing what he has to do.”

I knew I should tell him that Shane was giving my work back to Tanner, but I was hoping to come up with a plan, some way to meet with Shane and maybe the entire board and convince them that I should remain as one of the company’s attorneys. It had slipped from me too fast. Last week the work was too much. In some ways, I had wanted out. And now I was out. If I told Q, it would make it reality.

“I don’t know what to think about Shane,” I said. “I’ve always really liked him, but it was weird to see him in his dad’s office. Has he always wanted to take over Pickett? Is it possible that he did something to make that happen?”

“Forester had a heart attack.”

“There are ways to cause a heart attack,” I said, mimicking Mayburn’s words.

“The guy was almost seventy, Iz. He’d had a heart attack before. Don’t insult his family members by implying they might have done something to get him there.”

“I’m not trying to insult anyone. I’m just trying to make sure there was no foul play. Forester had been receiving death threats before he died.”

Q narrowed his eyes. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“Yeah. He was getting threatening letters, telling him to step down from the company.” I told him what they’d said. I told him about the homeless guy outside Pickett Enterprises. “I want to make sure that his heart attack was natural and not caused by something else. Or anybody else. I have to look at everyone. I know Shane is a nice guy.” A nice guy who just gave me the ax. “But I’m just trying to keep my eyes and ears open. I thought Sam was the nicest guy, too, right? I mean, I still think that. But sometimes it gets hard to ignore what I’m seeing.”

Q was silent for a minute. “How can I help?”

“I might ask you to stay at my apartment with me, although I did get new locks put in.”

“That wouldn’t be a problem. Anything to get away from Simone. Max is tense as hell with her around.”

“How are things with you guys?”

He looked away. He seemed to be staring at a painting of his that was deep-yellow and tinged with orange. I knew he had painted it when he first met Max, and he said that being in love made him feel at the center of the sun.