Page 69 of Haunted

Chapter twenty-three

Lance

There’s a mountain of files on my desk when I come into the office on Thursday, and every one of them feels like a personal insult. I should be home. I should be in bed with Jonny, who is probably at this exact moment wandering around my apartment in my sweatpants and nothing else, making tea and being gorgeous. Instead, I’m in a fluorescent-lit office approving budget requests for departments I can’t remember the names of.

I’m halfway through a stack of travel reimbursements when there’s a knock on my open door. Rex Harlow leans against the frame. He’s in his shirtsleeves, no jacket, which I’ve learned is his version of casual.

“Lance! Settling in all right? How’s the workload treating you?”

“Can’t complain, sir. Keeping busy.”

“Good, good. Listen, I wanted to check in. You’ve been here—what, six weeks now? And I don’t think we’ve really had a chance to talk properly. Man to man. Outside of budget meetings and all that.” He straightens and adjusts his cuffs. “How would you feel about lunch at the country club next Monday? They do a wonderful spread, and I think it’s high time we got to know each other.”

I think of Jonny, barefoot in my kitchen. I could be going home to have lunch, or at least some midday sex, or both, with him. “That sounds great,” I make myself say.

“Excellent. I’ll pencil you in.” He taps the doorframe twice and disappears down the corridor.

I stare at the doorframe for a moment. Then I go for coffee.

Joe is in the break room, leaning against the counter with a mug that reads WORLD’S OKAYEST EMPLOYEE. He doesn’t smile when I come in. He rarely does.

“So, how have things been here while I was away?” I ask, setting up the machine. “How are you?”

“Good, thanks.” He takes a sip. “Listen, I want to give you some advice. Rex is an asshole, but he’s good at his job. And that lunch thing? It’s a bit of a test. He does it with everybody, and he’s overdue with you. If you want to move up, you need to speak his language: talk about golf, and your future here will look much brighter. Believe me. Janet in the third office? I didn’t like her and didn’t give her that little tidbit.”

“I’m in the third office,” I say.

Joe takes another sip of his coffee and waits for me to make the connection.

“Oh.” I glance at Harlow’s closed door and lean in, dropping my voice. “I’ve never played golf in my life,” I confess.

He goes out to his desk and I hear a drawer opening. He reappears just as I’m putting a pod of Colombian into the machine.

“Read this until you’re fluent,” he says, and hands me a worn book about golf. The cover shows a man mid-swing against an improbably green landscape.

“Thanks. But he’ll know I’m no pro the minute I open my mouth.”

“Tell him you’ve always wanted to learn but were busy being all butch.” He shrugs and sips his coffee.

“Why are you helping me?” I ask.

He cocks his head and looks at me, then beckons me with two fingers back to his desk. He leans over the monitor and pulls up a picture. It’s the one from the Fairhaven Excelsior. “I was fourteen when this picture was on the front page. I come from a conservative Japanese family in a small town in California. Third generation, and still not a thing anybody discussed. It was the first time I’d ever seen real boys in love. Not acting, not strangers. Real boys.” He sits on his desk and looks at me. “When you and Jonny came in here together, it hit me where I knew you from. And I thought that if there was any justice in this world, you two would still be together. So, call me a romantic.” He kills the picture from his screen and sits down. “But do it very quietly or I’ll stab you.”

I go back to my office with my coffee and the golf book. I flip through it, scanning the terminology. Birdie. Bogey. Eagle. The jargon is its own language, and I can see why Rex uses it as a litmus test—if you can’t talk golf, you can’t talk Rex. I skim the glossary, trying to absorb enough to bluff my way through a Monday lunch.

Albatross: Three under par on a single hole. One of the rarest achievements in golf. Also known as a double eagle.

I stop. I read it again. Albatross.

I set the book down and pull the bank statement photo up on my phone. The deposit: $20,000 from Albatross Press. I pull up a search on my computer. Albatross Press—a defunct company incorporated in Virginia about thirty years ago. No books ever published. No editor, no catalog, no submissions page. It’s not a real publishing house. It’s a name on a piece of paper.

A golfer’s name. An avid golfer’s name.

I feel almost sick. I stand up and go to my door, looking straight down the hallway, past Joe’s desk, to the closed door of the Comptroller General. A man whose office is crammed with golfing memorabilia.

Alice Cadwalader, who ran HR at this university and who told Jonny that his father was prominent, connected to the university, and owned something called the Albatross Press.

I search for the conflict-of-interest paperwork that would be my smoking gun. It isn’t there. At best, the Press was considered for a university publication about fifteen years ago, before the contract went to somebody else. I click on the name to find the filing records and they haven’t been digitized. The trail has run cold from this side. I make a frustrated noise and try another look. It’s also inconclusive.