St. Louis What Now?
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AfterThe Mystery of the Bones
POV: Sebastian Snow
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Cab Calloway was singing over the shop speakers, keeping me company as I stood at the counter, sifting through old Christie’s catalogues, hunting for toy trains. Let me rephrase. I wasn’t looking for a specific tinplate toy to bid on, considering these booklets were years out-of-date. I was looking for the actual photographs of collections that’d once upon a time been for sale. My client collected professionally takenpicturesoftoytrains, which was an extremely…specific hobby. But considering I was the man who’d lost his goddamn mind last month after coming into possession of a nineteenth century surgeon’s bloodletting set, I was not one to judge the passions of others.
Anyway. He wanted to pay for old catalogues and I wanted to finally get rid of them, so it seemed an easy way to pass the time while Max was on his lunchbreak.
The bell over the door chimed as it was opened. Two distinct treads entered the Emporium. I flipped the page.
“You’re the guy.”
I raised my head, pushed my glasses up, and studied a curious pair. A middle-aged man and woman—each wearing enough of what I assumed to be rainbow paraphernalia that they could be mistaken as grand marshals for the city’s Pride parade. My brows knitted together, and I said, “I’m one of four million guys. You might need to be more specific.”
They looked at each other and immediately broke into a fit of giggles.
I straightened from my hunch over the catalogues, set my hands on the counter, and asked, “Can I help you with… something?”
“You’retheguy,” the man said, emphasizingthelike it cleared up our miscommunication entirely. “The gay one.”
“Wow. We’ve narrowed your search down to a population of about seven hundred thousand.”
The woman, still giggling, said, “He means you’re the gay detective. The one who moonlights as an antique dealer.”
“Oh.” I felt a blush rising to my cheeks. “Yes. I mean—no. It’s the other way around. And I’m retired from that. Detecting. I wasn’t even a detective.”
They both smiled and in unison, exclaimed, “Amateur sleuth!”
“Er—busybody is probably more—”
“We read about you,” the woman continued without missing a beat.
“Do I have a Wikipedia page?”
“The news called you New York City’s gay Miss Marple.”
“Wait, hang on, the media compared me—”
“After you saved your detective boyfriend and stopped a serial killer last Christmas,” the man interjected.
I looked at him and slowly corrected, “Husband. And it was two Christmases ago.” My gaydar was nonfunctional most of the time, but the way his face lit up at my response—dude was hella gay.
“Detective Snow,” he said.
“Winter,” I corrected again. “I’m Snow.”
“Hyphenated?” the woman asked.
I glanced back at her. “Ampersand. Sorry,whoare you?”
“Marilyn Goldman,” she said, reaching a hand out for mine and shaking enthusiastically.
“I’m Zachary Coletti,” her partner said next, snatching my hand and sandwiching it between both of his in a way that made my skin crawl. New Yorkers had an average of three inches of personal space, and the double handshakealwaysburst that hard, fought-for bubble.
