Published: 3 Aug 2020

By 4PM that Sunday afternoon the boys were back home from their sleepover and all six of us were at the pool, enjoying the stories told by the young boys about the movie they had watched and the games they had played while all the way over there, next door. It certainly didn’t diminish their fun at all and they couldn’t wait for the next time, next month, when they would host B&B at their house, they were already planning what the four of them would get up to. Brian, it looked like, was going to be a frequent guest of Cal’s, at least during the Summer, and we were truly happy for the two of them, and pleased they were taking things by steps and not rushing into the heavy duty stuff right away.

By the middle of the next week we were sure we had covered all our bases for the wedding, we had sent out invitations (No gifts please) to the ceremony at the church and a catered brunch reception in the church hall after, about 60 people total. We had had our good suits cleaned and we had bought the twins suits as they were going to accompany us to the altar and hold our hands through the ceremony. We wanted them to be as much a part of this last step to our becoming a family as possible so they were each carrying a ring for Sam and me to exchange during the ceremony. Wednesday during lunch break we met at the town clerk’s office and applied for and received our wedding license, along with congratulations from all the staff in the office.

Everything was in place and we were as ready as we could be for the big day. The night before, our respective work colleagues threw us a joint party instead of two separate bachelor parties and we all danced and sang and had a few drinks at one of the college bars that had a “mixed” night, so the mostly straight group had plenty of willing dance partners from among the ladies in attendance that night and surprisingly some of the guys danced either together or with guys they had met in the bar that night. Sam and I enjoyed ourselves, but kind of sipped our drinks and stayed sober, because we kept thinking about the next day and how we didn’t want to look the fools in front of our invited guests, although many were with us at the bar that night.

Sam and I teased about our spending the night before apart, but we knew we drew strength from each other and the very few times we had spent the night apart, due to one of us being sick and not wanting to infect the other with our cold or flu, neither one of us slept very well at all, so we slept together the night before, just to keep in practice so we wouldn’t be rusty in bed on our wedding night.

Our day went just as planned and everything went beautifully for the ceremony and for the brunch afterwards. We took the boys home after the crowd had thinned out to just a few of our neighbors who were staying for another wedding in the afternoon. We got the boys home and we all changed into more comfortable clothes, saw that Brian and Cal had done the same and then the six of us grabbed our packed suitcases and left for the airport, we all had a flight to catch.

When Cal accepted our job offer for the summer we had given him the option of staying here with the boys for five days (with Brian’s help if he wanted) or to come on our honeymoon with the boys and Brian. He asked where we were going and we told him we had always wanted to see Key West, and we would be there for the end of Pride Week, and just in time for the big parade the night we arrived. We told him the house we had rented was big enough for all of us as there were two big bedrooms and one smaller one and the house was just two blocks off Duval Street where we were told we would be able to watch the parade. The guy who took care of the house was going to be away that weekend and the next week visiting his cousin in Granby, but as he had left there this morning the house would be ready and the kitchen stocked at least for a few days.

So it was arranged with Brian’s summer boss and he was given the next week off and we were set for our big family adventure. Neither of us had flown much before, and the twins never at all so we all found the flight to Miami exciting and then when we arrived we were escorted to the tarmac and to a much smaller plane for the hour flight to Key West. The airport there was small and when we landed we had to walk into the terminal to pick up our luggage and after it was secured we went outside and took a cab to the little city’s library. There I asked at the front desk if an envelope had been left for me by Joe and the librarian on duty congratulated me and invited us to call or stop in here if we needed anything while Joe was out of town. He pointed out across the street and there was a small gray ranch with a recessed doorway with a big wedding bow on the front door. The envelope had the keys to the house and a car in it, so I thanked the librarian and gathered up my family from out front and we all trooped across the street to our honeymoon suite.

We placed our luggage in our respective bedrooms, and as it was so hot out we changed into shorts and Ts with sandals and we first explored the house and then the big wraparound patio and deck outside. There was a small plunge pool in the corner of the deck and potted tropical plants everywhere. There seemed to be two different colonies of lizards out there too. There were the brown bumpy kind and on the plants there seemed to be some sleek chameleons that I knew we’d enjoy watching as they changed color. It was very quiet out there until the boys spotted the lizards and wanted to know all about them. I told them we’d find a book about them at the library when it opened on Monday, but we thought we had better orient ourselves to where Duval Street was so we wouldn’t get lost on the way to the parade. We strolled in a group down two blocks and came to the infamous Duval Street.

The place would be mobbed in a few hours and we decided to stop at the grocery store on the way back and see if we could find something to eat before we went to the parade, but first we’d all take naps so we all wouldn’t be falling asleep on our feet before the parade even started. We stopped at Fausto’s Food Palace, the local grocery store about a block and a half from the house. We saw a well stocked grocery with a lot of unusual items interspersed here and there, and the neatest deli I’d seen in a long time, everything from ala carte dinners to a whole two cases of different cold items and salads. The staff was very accommodating and Sharon proved to be a gem as she passes over the cases samples for us to try. I think we bought enough for an army from her and when we told her we were on our honeymoon with our sons and friends she asked what we were going to do tonight. We told her we were hoping to see the parade, as none of us had ever seen a Pride Parade before and she told us to wait just a second and she left and came back with the owner and his wife.

The Weeklies were a very nice couple who had planned to watch the parade from the second floor porch of a friend’s business right in the middle of Duval Street and had to back out at the last minute as a relative had shown up unexpectedly and expected them to entertain her, and a Pride Parade was not what she expected, so they had turned the key to the second floor of the shop over to Sharon who had no one else to go with and after we had visited for some minutes, and they found out I was a detective on our police force and Sam was a fire department captain, and we were honeymooning right around the corner from their own house, we were offered to accompany Sharon to the parade and to use the shop’s second floor and the porch. We profusely thanked them and we agreed with Sharon to meet her here at the grocery about 8PM. We asked Sharon if iced tea was alright and she told us she didn’t use liquor, so we picked up some six packs of a good iced tea on our way out, and at checkout a bag of ice.

We made it home in time for us all to take a 2 hour nap and feeling refreshed we we all cleaned up and had a virtual smorgasbord for dinner and Cal packed a cooler with ice , the teas, and some munchies. On top he placed a roll of paper towels in a plastic bag and with the top closed and the handle pulled out and the wheels lowered we were ready to roll the cooler down to meet up with Sharon. She greeted us enthusiastically and we walked through back lanes and courtyards, avoiding the crowds building up on Duval Street. She led us to a staircase and went ahead of us to unlock the door and put on the lights and Sam and I lugged the cooler upstairs since the younger two had pulled the thing here.

It was a loft efficiency apartment that was being used as a storage area for the boxed stock of the store below. There was a bathroom, a small kitchenette, a desk area, and big stacks of merchandise in boxes along one wall. The upper front porch was accessed through a French door and six lawn chairs were lined in front of the railing for our seating. The boys would share laps, as, if seated, they wouldn’t be able to see over the solid wood railing, so there was actually an extra chair.

The parade was like nothing we had ever seen, and we enjoyed every minute of it. We saw gay groups from all over the country, we saw floats that local businesses had put together, we saw marching groups from all sorts of organizations who supported the gay community, there were performers on the street and on the floats, there were gay couples all over the place, both men couples and women couples. We were extremely moved and filled with the mood of acceptance that overwhelmed the entire street, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean. It was a wonderful atmosphere, and although Sharon had never declared herself one way or the other, you could see how moved she was by the whole experience.

Our snacks were well received and there was much less to lug back to our rental about a half hour after the parade wound down. We escorted Sharon back to the grocery where she had left her car, trying to express to her how much we appreciated her thoughtfulness in inviting us to accompany her tonight, and we strolled up the street to the house and we were all soon in our beds.

The next day we took the boys to the library and we found a book that told us all about the little lizards on the patio. It was a little book with cute illustrations and it kept the boys interested for the time it took us to go through it with them. Cal and Brian had used this time to use some of the public computers to check in with Glenn and Eddie and some of their friends back home. It was a very productive visit to the library and after that we decided to find a beach with real sand and salt water. We loaded into the car and using a free map from the library we found the beach by the airport where we had seen para-sailing on our taxi ride to the house yesterday.

Cal and Brian were the first to try it and they said it was a blast so they watched the twins as Sam and I tried it. We were instructed on shore and then the tow boat took off from the shore and we were hoisted up into the air by the hang gliding para-sails strapped to us, the boat providing the momentum to lift us up into the air. Our lines were released by the boat and we were suspended in the air, gliding in the air currents about 60 feet up over the water, guiding ourselves by the left and right hand ropes that held us suspended below the canopy of the sail. Sam hit dead air first and pulled his release, freeing him from the canopy and plunging into the ocean, to be picked up by the boat below and the I felt a bump and realized I too had hit dead air space and I released myself and I too was dropped into the ocean and awaited the boat as the parasail landed behind me.

It was a great feeling to be soaring above the water and the views were astounding from up there. It was a better feeling being on the beach with our kids, both the two big ones and the two little ones, who were not only too young to soar, but too short, but we played beach volleyball with them and of course we let them win. Ice cream cones and juice drinks filled out our non swimming and sunbathing time there and by 4PM we were in the car and headed back to our rental. As we rounded the corner to access our street we saw a woman pounding a for sale sign into the ground at the corner of the lane behind the rental house.

We knew from looking out from the rental patio that there was only one house actually on the lane, right at the end of it as a matter of fact. It had a huge yard with a bricked parking pad under a well constructed car port that looked like a garage without walls. The house itself was a craftsman style with a totally enclosed front porch, and we were anxious to see what the property was going for. Sam stopped the car before turning the corner and backed up into a parking space. As I walked over to the lady all the others got out of the car and walked across the street to me. I greeted her and told her that my family was wondering what the asking price was on the property at the end of the lane. She told me it was on the market at one and a half million, and if we were interested, she had about a half hour before she had to be somewhere else and she’d be glad to show us around the property.

It was an estate sale, she explained, as she indicated that everything in the house was included in the price. It was a ten room house with five bedrooms and five baths. The master bedroom and another large bedroom were on the first floor on opposite sides of the big living/dining room which accessed the big kitchen and a utility room and a housekeeper’s room on the back. Off the master bedroom was a large shower bathroom and off that was a large room perfect for a gym. Off that room was another laundry area and another smaller shower bathroom that had access to the big deck around the pool.

The other big bedroom on the other side of the living room shared a bathroom with the big family room off a short hall and that would work well for the boys, if we chose to buy this house. The second floor held three bedrooms and a big segmented bathroom (the toilet was in a separate little room within). As Sam collected fact sheets on the property from the realtor, I stepped out on the front porch and called Becca. She took my call right away, knowing we were out of town, and I asked her if we could afford to purchase a vacation home in Florida, Key West actually and she laughed and told us we didn’t need to ask her permission, we had our own funds and plus, if we used it for the boy’s vacations we could use some of their money also. I told her we’d have to think about it, but we’d let her know what we eventually decided.

We thanked the realtor for her time and promised to get back to her soon and as we all walked down the lane we talked about the house and realized that no one had any negative feedback, so with a look to Sam, (he nodded), I turned around and went up to the realtor as she was getting into her car and made an offer of one and a quarter million, cash, no mortgage, contingent on the property being inspected and tented, that cost to be absorbed by the seller. I took a spare check out of my wallet and wrote a check for one hundred thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars to act as earnest money and a down payment, if the offer was accepted that would prevent the property from being shown to other buyers.

She called her office and asked them to reschedule her next appointment, and she followed us to our rental. Sam and I filled out some forms and signed the offer she had written out for us, and then she went out on the patio and made a call to the representative of the seller.

Sam seemed a lot more nervous about this than I did, and man was I nervous. She came in from the patio and we were told our offer was accepted, were we prepared to close on the property next week? Sam and I were in a clinch as were Cal and Brian with the younger boys, who soon were clinging to us, excited, but not sure why. We told the realtor that first we needed a local lawyer and if we could sign on Tuesday or Wednesday we were good to close next week. She signed our offer as accepted for the seller and we signed again in the accepted section. I called Becca and she told us to give her a few minutes to get back to us, as she had a lawyer in mind to help us and she’d call him and get it all set up. We told the agent we’d call her later with an update, but everything looked good right now for a closing next week.

After a few phone calls we were set up with a local lawyer who assured us we could close next week, even if we had to leave early, as we could do our portion separately if need be before we left and Becca would make the transfer into our account on Monday morning so all we had to do was write a check for the balance, or go to the nearest branch of the national chain bank our money was in and show the signed copy of our offer and a bank check would be made out for us. In either case, once the inspections were completed and the required tenting for termites was done, we had a Key West vacation home to come to whenever we had the time to spend a few days away from home.

We saw some activity at the new property on Monday, first there was a survey crew measuring out the boundary lines and then a guy with a ladder was checking out the whole exterior including the sheds out back and the in ground pool. We then saw him go indoors and about an hour later come out and drive away. About three hours later another crew appeared and huge panels of canvas were attached to each other with big clips, totally encasing the home in canvas, creating a tent over it, that enabled the exterminators to release some sort of gas that would kill everything from roaches to termites, both of which are quite prevalent in Florida, thus making “tenting” a common occurrence in the sale of a home in the state. Also on Monday Becca called and told us that the money for the sale was now in our account and that the lawyer from Key West had kept her informed all through the weekend and everything was set for a closing on Tuesday afternoon.

That Monday afternoon we received a call from Angel Maroni, the owner of the house we were currently renting. He asked how everything was going for us down here and we told him we thought his house was wonderful, in fact we liked the neighborhood so much we had just bought the house right behind his. He was surprised but congratulated us, but he asked if we were planning on living there. We told him we thought that maybe after the boys were out on their own we would, but other than that we would use it as a vacation home. He asked if we were going to hire a maintenance company or hire a house sitter to keep the property up while we weren’t there. He explained how a property in the tropics could deteriorate if not maintained on a regular basis,

He asked me to hold on for a moment and he’d get his cousin, Joe Dubuque to talk to me, as Joe was his resident caretaker and also a librarian at the library across the street from his house. As he was explaining what was going on here, I was telling Sam about Angel’s call, and what it implied about the condition of our new house if it wasn’t maintained regularly. Joe came on the phone and congratulated us on our purchase and asked if we were open to having a couple live in the house, paying us rent, and maintaining the yard, pool and house, only charging us expenses for these repairs and pool supplies. I told him would appreciate it if he knew such a couple and Joe told us about a gay couple who worked in the library and were looking for a place to live together. He said he had been to both their current apartments and from what he saw they were pretty handy guys and would be great renters. He said he was away until the end of the week, but he’d call and ask the guys to come over and talk to us at 6PM when the library closed. Sam indicated this was good so I told Joe to please set it up for today, but actually tomorrow would be better as then we could actually show the property to them as the house was tented now and the closing was tomorrow morning so we’d have the keys by the time his co-workers got out of work. He agreed and he said to please call if we had any questions, we thanked him for his help and then ended our call. We spent the rest of the afternoon at Fort Zachary Taylor, on the southern end of the island. It was a historic state park and beach and we were able to rent beach lounges and big beach umbrellas for our afternoon in the sun. Cal and Brian rented snorkel gear and reported on their adventure as we lazed the afternoon away. On the way back home Sam pulled into the parking lot of Fausto’s and returned with a big smile on his face. He had run in to leave a one thousand dollar tip with Sharon for her kindness and to tell her we were buying a house in the neighborhood. She was thrilled with the tip and happy were were buying a house here and she’d get to see us and the boys a few times a year when we vacationed.

The next morning Cal and Brian watched the boys as Sam and I went to the closing on the house. We got to meet our local lawyer, Sam Browning, and everything went really well, until I pulled out my personal check to write out the balance due. Apparently in this very expensive community everyone found this a bit too casual, until Sam spoke up and told the seller’s lawyer to verify the funds available in our account. He came back to the table and apologized to Sam and me, but he said that he never had someone write out a personal check for well over a million before. We told him that we had forgotten to get a cashiers bank check, but our lawyer said that one of our own would suffice. He was right and we walked out with keys, the new owners of the property on the lane.

By the time we were home the tenting was all removed from the house and our four boys were over at the library, the younger ones taking a class in mask making, and the two older ones catching up with home on the internet. By 6 that evening we were making sure the boys all had clean clothes to wear home on the plane when the doorbell went off, indicating our prospective house sitters were here for their interview.

I was not prepared for the couple Sam introduced to me after he had answered the door and brought them into the living room. One was a mountain of a man, a relative of Grizzly Adams I immediately thought, but with the kindest face as he looked down on his companion, a five foot tall young man who was obviously of Spanish descent, skinny was my first impression, but then realized that his small stature was one of contained muscle, wiry, but absolutely adorable, I could easily see how the big six and a half foot tall mountain of a man could fall for the smaller guy.

Stuart was the big guy and he held Enericio (Rico)’s hand as they sat on the love seat opposite Sam and me. They had been employed at the library for five years now and a couple for the last two. Rico told us that Stu was a hard one to pin down, but once he had and shown him what he could do, they had remained inseparable ever since. Stu blushed and said he had to get drunk to ask Rico out and regretted that it took them three years to get together. We discussed what would be a reasonable rent, considering all that was going to be expected from them maintenance wise, and then took another hundred off that figure. Sam suggested they might want to see the place before giving us their answer, so we walked around the corner to the lane and walked up it to the gate across the end which we unlocked for them to enter. There the boys ran to meet us so we introduced them to Stu and Rico and then we all trooped into the house to be met by Brian and Cal who were airing out the place after the tenting had been removed.

We gave them their choice of the upstairs bedrooms, or the one off the kitchen with it’s own bath and they explored both before selecting one on the second floor for their own bedroom, although they said that occasionally they’d like to use the front sleeping porch. I didn’t know what that meant, so Stu told me that the glass enclosed front porch was originally meant for sleeping in good weather, so the windows could be cranked open and you’d get breezes from three sides. He told us that sleeping porches were quite common before air conditioning became available here in the Keys.

We told them that as long as they were comfortable they could sleep wherever they wanted, as it would be the two of them that had to clean up before anyone else used whatever space they had used, beyond their own space upstairs, of course. We explained the basics of the pool upkeep as we knew it from our own pool at home, but told them about the testing of the water and if need be they could call a pool service company to come in and make sure it was safe to be using. The guys would be getting a credit card sent to them as soon as Becca had set up a household account and the guys would use that to pay any utilities and upkeep needed out of that.

Stu and Rico were happy to have been recommended to us and we told them they had Joe to thank for that, but we were pleased to have the two of them taking care of our new house. Sam told them that any tools they might need they could find in one of the two sheds in back and Stu said that would make Rico happy, as Stu was the apprentice and Rico was the one who had done most of the work around their apartments, Stu was the extra pair of hands, and he had told us this with a great deal of pride in Rico and his abilities.

Our trip home was a reverse of our trip down. Small plane to Miami and a much larger one to our closest airport which was in Connecticut. It was late when we landed, about 10PM so we took the shuttle to long term parking, collected our car, and drove for an hour to our home in Amherst. We accepted Cal and Brian’s help in getting the sleeping twins in their bed and with the luggage all stowed in the correct bedroom they were off to their cottage in back, after thanking us for a wonderful trip.

The next day we did laundry, connected with Carla and Jason and Glenn and Eddie, letting them know we had purchased a vacation home in Key West and that we expected them to use it at least once a year and we checked in at our jobs to make sure that in an emergency they knew we were back in town. We filled in Becca about the house too and offered it’s use to her as well. She told us that she had Fed Exed the household credit card to Stu and Rico and that a ledger program she had suggested to them had already been downloaded into their computer and they would be all moved in as of Friday after they got out of work. She told us she had given them our permission to remove whatever they wanted from their room at the house and to just double up what they could in the other bedrooms upstairs. That way they would have room for what they were keeping from their own apartments in their space in our house.

Friday of that week we decided that Cal and Brian needed a some time by themselves as we seemed to be monopolizing their time for the last two weeks, so Sam and I took the boys to the big amusement park in Agawam, along with their best friends from next door, B&B (Billy and Bobby, Carla and Jason’s boys). It was a lot of fun for all of us and Sam and I agreed that it was something we’d never try again by ourselves. It wasn’t that the four boys misbehaved, it was just that each boy had constant questions, and there were only two of us. We found the solution to this was keeping them occupied so it was three or four rides and then something to eat, and then repeat. We left there about 4 PM and made it home just before 5:30 and in time for dinner with Carla and Jason where we filled them in some more about our new property in Key West and showed them pictures of it we had snapped on our cell phones while there.

There was a quiet day on Saturday, with all of us enjoying the summer sun at our pool, with B&B coming by after lunch to join us. About 3:30 Sam got a call from his Chief at the fire station and he was gone as soon as he had a chance to dress in work clothes. He was gone for over an hour when he called and asked if I would meet him at the site of the fire he had been called into.

The fire site was a single family home on a quiet block of homes, many much larger than the burned out one and converted into two or three apartments catering to the college crowd. The house was supposed to be empty as the owner was on a teaching sabbatical in England and had not wanted to rent out his house for the semester or for whatever time he spent, after his teaching stint was over, touring the English countryside with his son, a twelve year old who has been raised by his dad since his mother’s death in childbirth. The reason Sam had asked for my presence was what had been found in the master bedroom, a burned corpse in the remains of the bed.

The odd thing for me was that there didn’t appear to be any signs the man, as evidenced by the intact nipples on a well formed masculine chest and an almost preserved but scorched penis evident on the body. There was nothing to indicate that this man belonged, or didn’t belong, in the house. Sam explained that the investigators from the state fire lab’s arson unit were on their way as he had found evidence of arson downstairs in the back hallway off the kitchen. There in the water heater closet Sam showed me where the gas valve, which was brass, showed signs of being tampered with. The increased gas pressure had allowed the buildup of gas to explode when it hit the pilot light and create the inferno that had engulfed the whole house in flames and deadly gas and smoke. We all felt the cause of death for the man upstairs would be smoke inhalation. The coroner had arrived and was attending to the body that had been fully dressed when found. He told us that there of course were scorch marks in various places but his initial findings were as we expected, that whoever this was he didn’t wake up and inhaled so much smoke he had succumbed to it as it congested his lungs and it suffocated him.

We were writing up our initial reports on our Ipads for transfer onto our laptops, but here with the coroner on site we had him to confirm our initial findings and when we showed him our findings in the water heater closet he confirmed our suspicions and deemed the death a homicide by arson. Just as Sam and I were finishing our initial reports, we could hear a young voice outside, yelling for his dad, telling his dad he had come home. We went to the front porch and there were two uniformed officers restraining a youngster from entering the house.

He looked at us with tears in his eyes, asking what had happened?, where was his dad?, why was the coroner’s van outside? Sam and I went to him, putting our arms around his slim frame and guided him to the steps of the porch, away from the sooty water still dripping from the house, and we sat him down, with one of us on each side and we asked him if he was Julian Blitz junior and he nodded his head, tears streaming down his cheeks as he must have realized what was coming next and I told him that we had discovered a dead body upstairs in the master bedroom that we had assumed belonged to the owner of the house since there did not appear to be any signs of a break in. Our concerns were that he wasn’t expected to be home for a week or two more.

Julian told us through his sobs that they had returned early as his dad had had a bad case of food poisoning and just didn’t feel up to a trek into the English countryside, but had promised to take his son back next summer to make up for cutting their vacation short.

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