The Hotspur Affair: A Richard & Morgana MacKenzie Mystery Read online

  The Hotspur Affair

  Jack Flanagan

  THE HOTSPUR AFFAIR

  By Jack Flanagan

  Copyright © 2021 by Jack Flanagan

  This book is a work of fiction. Characters, incidents, names, and places are all products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or deceased, is coincidental.

  I dedicate this story to my uncle, the real Uncle Raymond. His life experiences and generosity were the inspirations for this tale. I would also like to dedicate this work to my loving wife—the Morgana of my life. Her ready assistance and unlimited patience were essential for me in composing The Hotspur Affair.

  #

  CHAPTER 1

  “Richard, have you locked up and turned off the lights downstairs?” my wife, Morgana, asked from behind the bathroom door.

  “Aye, aye, the house is secured and shipshape, Captain,” I said while I sat in bed and quickly straightened the green quilt that lay over me. To set the proper mood, I clicked off the television, confident that any additional knowledge about the Pope’s efforts to clean house at the Vatican bank could wait.

  “I won’t be much longer,” said Morgana, sounding particularly frisky.

  “No worries. I’m not going anywhere. We have the whole night to ourselves.” As I spoke, I suddenly feared that I might have answered too nonchalantly, or even sounded a bit gauche, or even worse—both. But my angst didn’t last.

  “That we do, Richard,” echoed the voice in the other room. “And, Love, we’re going to make the best of it.”

  It had been at least two months since Morgana and I had anything that resembled a prolonged romantic encounter. Her being a professor at Stark Monument College and recently made English Department chairperson had left Morgana with little time for any activities of a personal nature. And as for me, though retired from teaching for some years, my free time currently was spent in countless visits to my ninety-two-year-old Uncle Raymond—a recent stroke victim—and to his doctors. The clash between work and family obligations resulted in making us romantically abstinent way too long for our liking. To our heartache, Cupid’s spontaneous amatory arrows could not pierce the impregnability of our schedules. Neither could Pothos’ prurient yearnings help resolve our dilemma; instead, sadly, they made our situation worse.

  So, several weeks ago, my wife and I decided to be masters of our time and become our own love gods. Morgana cleared her appointments at work, and I arranged for Claire, uncle’s visiting nurse, to take on some extra hours. Together, Morgana and I planned a full day of romantic activities that included a gourmet breakfast, a swim in the pool, and a couple’s massage at the local country club. These activities were to be followed by a French chick-flick playing over in Bennington and a candlelight dinner at The Village Green Restaurant, the most upscale dining spot in our town.

  But the ‘piece de resistance’ of our day was to be a very intimate ‘meet and greet’ in our bedroom. As some of my old students would say, Morgana and I were ‘going to get it on tonight,’ and we were resolved that nothing, nothing was going to get in our way.

  With a low click, the harsh light that spilled out from beneath the bathroom door disappeared. In its absence, the October moonlight flowed through the half-shaded window and into our bedroom, splashing its seductive ambiance onto our bed.

  “I hope you like what I picked out,” Morgana teased.

  “I’m sure that I will.”

  My wife’s slow, soft footsteps announced her approach through the dusky room. “I thought that I would wear something new for the occasion.”

  Within several heartbeats, I gazed upon Morgana, stepping out from the shadows and into the moonlight.

  She was a vision to behold.

  Her thick, lush, dark hair invitingly meandered down from her head to her shoulders, just touching the top of the sheerest negligee that I have ever seen. Her garment assumed the quality of a shimmering aura that engulfed Morgana’s curvaceous form. The mystical illusion seemed to flow down over her voluptuous breasts, only to be corralled by a slightly less translucent sash of the same material that hung loosely around her soft curved midriff. The nightie’s diaphanous fabric continued its cascading descent over her hips and thighs to end its course just above her knees.

  In short, she was a goddess. She was as beautiful and desirable as any time that I can remember.

  As to the color of my wife’s chosen ensemble, I could not say. I do not have the ability to decipher the true colors of vapors, cobwebs, or of the quivering air that hovers above the pavement on a hot August day. But what I could say, I did. It was summed up in a single breathy word, “Wow!”

  Admittedly, wow was a less than perfect response, but it didn’t stop my wife’s slow advance towards our bed.

  “It’s silk,” she coyly replied.

  “Is it, really?”

  Who could tell? I couldn’t. A thin trail of cigarette smoke had more substance than what Morgana was wearing.

  “How does it feel? Is it soft against the skin?” I awkwardly asked.

  “It feels, well, exciting. It gently tingles the skin, and at the same time, it feels as if I’m wearing nothing at all. But feel it for yourself, and you tell me.”

  Then in one smooth, almost dance-like motion, Morgana tossed the quilt aside, jumped onto me, and straddled my hips. With a flirtatious glimmer in her eye, she drew my willing hands to her breasts.

  “Well,” she asked, staring down at me, “what do you think?”

  “Yes, the material is . . . ah, quite nice.”

  “And do you think that it looks good on me?”

  I nodded my approval as I indulged in the softness of the material and, of course, the pleasant weightiness it covered.

  “You don’t think that I might be too old to wear something like this, do you?”

  Too old? What an absurd idea, I thought. Morgana is seven years younger than I, but she barely looks a day over forty-five—even on one of her bad days. I shook my head in earnest to dispel any silly notion about age-appropriate attire.

  “You don’t think it makes me look a little . . . fat, do you?” Morgana continued, looking directly into my eyes. “Be honest; tell the truth.”

  Now, my history in answering questions of this type with the prescribed parameters of being honest and telling the truth has been, admittedly, not very good. My straightforward responses to such inquiries have, for the most part, not been well received. On a few occasions, they have even put me in the proverbial dog house. But on this particular night, with the moonlight casting its magic on both of us, and Morgana looking as beautiful and wondrous as she ever did, I answered genuinely and without fear of reprisals.

  “Fat? Not in the slightest, no, not at all,” I proclaimed as my hands took advantage of the privileged granted to them.

  “I picked this nightie out with you in mind, you know.” An impish twinkle grew in Morgana’s eyes.

  “I hope so. I would hate to think that you had someone else in mind.”

  Morgana smiled. And I read in that smile a sense of self-satisfaction with her selection of attire. No doubt, she had hoped that her outfit would be seductive and, at the same time, be capable of hiding those little imperfections of age as well as the few over-indulgences since her last health-kick diet.

  “So, you really like me in this, then?”

  I nodded emphatically—yes.

  “You are so difficult to please sometimes.”

  “Am I?” I raised an eyebrow to show my disagreement with her assessment of my good nature. />
  “You know that you are. You would rather that I go braless than wear a bra that you didn’t like.”

  Well, who in their right mind would argue with that, but I thought it best not to debate the point. “You look great.”

  “You really think so?”

  I nodded again.

  “Good.” My wife then started to speak in a low, resonant, and seductive voice. “Because I love making you happy, Richard.” Looking down at me, with a mischievous smile, she leaned forward, grabbed the headboard, and, ever-so-slightly, began to slide herself up and down my body in a slow, purposeful rhythm. “ I mean that I really want to make you happy. Do I?”

  She didn’t have long to wait for my answer. Without any conscious effort on my part, a robust non-verbal response quickly emerged.

  “Ooh . . . It seems that I do.”

  “I am happy with the selected attire, and I love the woman wearing it.”

  “That’s just you talking. You’re my husband. What else would you say?”

  “Trust me, I am not only one in the world that thinks that you are attractive,” I said with my eyes fixed on the bounty in my hands.

  “Really?” Morgana disbelievingly replied.

  “Do you have any idea of the effect that you have on the opposite sex? I fear to think about how many young men’s hearts must have skipped a beat or two when they saw you standing at the front of their classroom? I bet if all those unrequited admirers of yours from the beginning of your career to now . . . if they were to queue up, they would form a line from our bedroom door to the Bennington Monument.”

  “The Bennington Monument!” Morgana giggled, repeating my reference.

  “And I would even say if you could eavesdrop around campus at this very moment, you would hear young men say, ‘That Dr. Morgana MacKenzie is the sexiest English Lit . . . no, the sexiest professor at the college.’”

  Morgana straightened up, sending my hands in hot pursuit of the prizes that fled from their grasps. “Do you really think I grab the attention of my students?”

  “I really do. You have a way about you that attracts attention.”

  Then, from out of nowhere, a distant look appeared on Morgana’s face. Without explanation, she slid off me and laid herself down on her side of the bed, pulling the quilt over the two of us in the process.

  I was confused. I had a voluptuous, passionate, and aroused woman riding me as if I were her mighty steed. And then, without notice, she suddenly dismounts and leaves me with an old quilt from the Cheap Kate’s & Charlie’s department store across my lap.

  Morgana was silent for several seconds before she began to chuckle. Taking her change of mood as my cue, I snuggled a little closer to her. As I put my arm over her shoulder, I caught a whiff of her favorite fragrance—the same citrusy scent which lingered about her on our first date. The familiar scent gave me the courage to ask, “So, why the sudden curiosity about your students’ opinion of you?”

  “Well . . .” she paused a second. “What I meant was . . .” She paused again. “How should I say this?” She paused still again.

  I waited.

  She continued to think.

  I continued to wait. But I was getting nervous. I felt that our romantic evening was slipping away.

  “Well, Love?” I asked seductively as I could.

  “Let me start over. I had an interesting call yesterday.”

  “Yes.”

  Pause.

  “Who called?” I gently asked in the hope of bringing the conversation to an end.

  “It was from Heike Fuerst.”

  “Who?” I never heard the name mentioned before.

  “Heike Fuerst. A girl, eh, an ex-student from an Old English course that I taught some years back. Girl? . . . What am I saying? She’s not a girl anymore. Heike must be in her late thirties now or maybe even in her early forties. I don’t know. It has been a long time since I spoke with her.”

  Morgana sat up with her hands in her lap and stared at the ceiling. “I’ve learned that she had become quite the scholar in the field of early Germanic and Anglo-Saxon literature. She published a book last year, and I fibbed when I spoke to her today. I said that I had read it, but I didn’t. I have a copy. I wanted to read it, but I never got around to it. I read the back flap of the dust cover. It looked interesting. I just didn’t have the time.”

  “No great matter,” I said to comfort her.

  “I always thought she had the makings to be a fine scholar. Her semester paper for me was one of the best that I ever received to this day. Heike’s insight was astonishing for a sophomore . . . ”

  It became quite clear to me that our planned romantic evening was in trouble. Morgana was rapidly losing the spirit of the moment and starting to meander down memory lane.

  “Really. Well, what did this ex-student of yours want?”

  “She’s has a grant from some Austrian-Hungarian corporation to conduct research on some seafaring literature written before 1100 AD—”

  Morgana took a quick deep breath before she continued. “And at the college’s invitation, she is coming here to look at our Adamus Bremensis map in our antiquities collection. She’ll be at the college tomorrow.”

  “Really, that’s nice.” I sat up, and I put my arm around her.

  Silence.

  Then a spark of frustration touched my tongue. “That’s it?”

  “Pretty much, I suppose.”

  “And you wanted to talk about her visit now because . . . ?”

  “I don’t know, really.”

  She might not have known, but I knew Morgana well enough that she had her suspicions. Her voice had lost its playful quality and took on a more fretful tone. Something was bothering her.

  “Was this Heike a bad egg? A lazy student?”

  “No,” said Morgana flatly. “I remember her being very bright and very conscientious about her studies.”

  “Did she irk you in some way?”

  “Hmm”

  Then I took a shot at some levity. “Was she ugly?”

  “What!”

  “Ah, so, she was ugly, and that annoyed you somehow.”

  “You’re absolutely terrible,” Morgana roared and gave me a hard poke in the ribs. “I haven’t seen Heike Fuerst in years; I don’t know what she looks like now, but I do remember that she was quite attractive. Why would you even suggest that she was ugly?” Then she gave me another poke.

  “Just teasing.”

  “I know, but can’t you talk about women without bringing up their looks?”

  “I do all the time. By the way, did you call your mother today?”

  That quip earned me another jab.

  “That is not what I meant.”

  “Don’t get angry with me. It was you who said that your student was, and I quote, ‘. . . quite attractive.’” My extended right arm eased Morgana closer to me. She didn’t resist and nuzzled up against me. In turn, I ran my fingers gently through her hair, feeling Morgana’s warm face against my skin.

  “So, what’s bothering you about this Heike Fuerst character?”

  “Let’s just say, back in the day, I found out that she had a particular fondness . . . an affection for me when she was a student.”

  “And you kept a distance in your student/teacher relationship. But she needed a mother or a best friend.”

  “Not quite. I sensed that Heike had an affection for me that I could never, ever, reciprocate. Our ‘parting’ was awkward, if not a little embarrassing. I never thought that I would hear from her again after her graduation. And I didn’t, until yesterday morning.” Morgana looked up at me; her eyes were like those a troubled kitten.

  “Are you saying that your student thought that you were—”

  “Yes.”

  “What gave her the idea that you were interested—”

  “In women?”

  “Ah, yeah.”

  “I don’t know, and I’m not sure that I want to know. On second thought, I don’t think tha
t I want to talk about this right now.”

  “Did the two of you end your relationship in a fight?”

  “There was no relationship as you put it; there wasn’t a fight. Just never mind. I am sorry that I brought the subject up. I don’t want to talk about it,” said Morgana, adding, “not now, anyway.”

  “Okay, that is fine with me.” I leaned toward her and kissed her cheek.

  That little peck seemed to have revived Morgana spirits; her playfulness returned. Impishly, she slid her hand under the covers and down my body. “Now you know what has been bothering me. Is there anything that is bothering you?”

  “No, I can’t think of anything.” But even if I could have, I was in no frame of mind to bring it up then.

  With a coquettish grin, Morgana propped her self up and gazed down at the green quilt to where her unseen hand slowly continued its journey; all the while, her soft, warm fingers gently explored and searched about.

  “It’s nice that we have finally gotten a little time to ourselves,” I said. “I have almost forgotten what it was like having you so close to me.”

  “We’re a good match, don’t you think?”

  I hadn’t the time to answer.

  The phone rang.

  And it rang again, and again.

  Morgana and I lay still as if we were frozen in position. Neither of us wanted to let the world into the bedroom and crash our party.

  “Don’t answer it,” I warned, “if we let it ring for a while, the caller will get the message and hang up.”

  It was after the sixth ring that Morgana broke down and picked up the phone.

  “Hello? . . . Oh, Kyle . . . No, not really . . . Sure, he’s right here.” Morgana’s eyes narrowed as she handed me the receiver.

  Of all the things that I wanted to do at that very moment, chitchatting with my brother Kyle, the Sheriff of Starkshire County, wasn’t one of them.

  “Hi, Kyle, what’s up?”

  “Bad news, Rich. I’m at Uncle Raymond’s house. He’s dead. The visiting nurse, the home-care worker—”

  “Claire?”

  “Yeah, Claire, well she said that he . . . eh, died in the kitchen about an hour or so ago.”