A Fatal Stain by Elise Hyatt

something or knows something about them.”
    “Peter?” I said. Peter Milano, a violinist in the Goldport Philharmonic, was one of Ben’s best friends—the person who usually called to organize Ben’s birthday party and the like. Except I suspected this year it would be Nick doing that. At least I hoped so. But though I’d seen Peter half a dozen times, usually at Ben-related occasions, I’d no idea where he lived.
    Ben gestured vaguely toward the painted lady, then frowned. “I don’t know how late the concert ran last night, though.” Which made sense, because the philharmonic usually had concerts on Friday night. “And Collin is probably in finals.” Collin was Peter’s partner, and I understood that he was a lecturer at the college. “So I have no idea if they’ll be up.” Which made no sense whatsoever, since it was close to three in the afternoon.
    Ben nodded as if to himself. At least I hoped it was to himself, because I had failed to say anything. “Right,” he said. “You wait here.”
    I waited. I knew for a fact that he was only leaving me in the car so he didn’t have to take E and the invisiblellama. He was probably scared of explaining the invisible llama to his friends. Coward.
    He left the car and ran full tilt up the ten or so steps to the front door, where he stopped and, presumably—hard to see from where I was—rang the doorbell.
    He’d turned back, as though giving up, when the door opened. Peter—whom I’d never before seen in T-shirt and jeans—came out on the porch. There was some conversation and Ben’s shoulders shook with laughter and then Peter was coming down the steps—barefoot.
    Peter Milano always reminded me of those ultra-precious shepherd statues from Spain. The LladrÓ ones, where people were freakishly elongated and often vampire pale, with dark hair. He was like that, only not taken to the point of looking unnatural. Instead, he was one of those men who seemed to have been designed to wear a tux and who always seemed slightly awkward in anything else. Also, there was white in the perfect black hair, the sort of white men get at the temples and that makes them look suave and sophisticated.
    He loped along the—must be cold as all heck—sidewalk toward me, and opened the car door. “Come inside,” he said. “We’ll have tea or something. Ben said you want to ask us some questions.”
    Ben, who had followed more sedately, was opening the back car door and getting E out of his car seat. But E refused to go. “Ccelly,” he said, commandingly. “You have to let Ccelly in, too.”
    Peter raised an eyebrow, and I shook my head. Maybe I, too, was a coward. At least I didn’t feel equal to explaining imaginary llamas. Instead, I went in the back, and made vague motions, until E said, “You’re not unbuckling his seat belt right. Here, let me help.”
    He leaned over and mimed opening a seat belt. I tried not to imagine the seat-belted and sitting-like-a-person llama there. It would have to be a very small llama; otherwise, it would be poking its head through the ceiling of the car.
    E looked approving and picked something invisible out of midair. “Now, take him out,” he said, handing me what had to be presumed were imaginary reins.
    How do you lead an invisible llama?
Seemed like the opening to one of those drinking songs in which you end up counting objects—possibly invisible hooves—before you get all confused and throw up on your own shoes.
    However, I did the best I could, until we got to the steps, when E said, “No, no, you’re going to pull his head off,” and ran back to push the invisible llama behind up the stairs.
    Peter raised his eyebrows to Ben this time, and Ben said, “Don’t ask me. As best I can tell, it’s an imaginary transsexual pet llama named Cecily.”
    “But it’s invisible,” I said.
    “Because that makes everything much better,” Ben said.
    I half-expected Peter to run madly up the stairs, but instead he grinned and