No Strings

By David Connor and E.F. Mulder

When Ezra and Titus come across an old sign indicating the Dupree estate was once an inn, they consider reopening it as The Heart-Shaped Gate Bed and Breakfast. Not long afterwards, they discover someone has already been lodging there, down in the dark, spooky basement.

Ezra wants to turn the trespasser in to authorities, but Titus, still struggling with the past, has a soft spot for the guy who seems lost. Even he has to admit, however, that something about the man’s story and odd behavior just doesn’t add up. Tales of a past love have a familiar ring, a fictional one, and the man’s timeline of events simply doesn’t add up barring some sort of paranormal explanation.

Can Titus and Ezra get over the bumps in their relationship? Will the new guy steal Titus away? And if he succeeds, what nefarious fate might he have in mind?

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Oct 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685503017

Book preview

Chapter 1

Resents…Line…Dupree. The cavernous dank and disorderly basement beneath the oft-renovated three-story southern farmhouse gave Ezra’s deep, masculine voice a slight echo.

Huh? Four lightbulbs hung bare amid a plethora of cobwebs stretched across exposed beams, the illumination not quite bright enough for Titus to see what he’d pulled from a century’s old mishmash.

On this paper. Ezra, apparently, had enough light on his side of the cellar to read. Resents…Line…Dupree.

Books, cloth goods, and antique bric-a-brac overflowed on both sides from trunks with rusty hinges or damp, misshapen boxes. Other items lay piled on the floor, once stacked or set about, perhaps, on buckling shelves barely still attached to concrete walls.

And what does any of that mean? Titus asked.

Well, if I had to hazard a guess, Ezra did, "a playbill, maybe. It’s torn almost in half. Someone or something presents Line Dupree. Have we come across a Line Dupree? Emmaline? Madeline? Vasa…line?"

Titus faked a chuckle. Del’s Caroline.

At close to one hundred years old, Del was the oldest known living Dupree. A former resident at the estate now owned by Ezra, he was a main source of the family’s twisted history.

The paper looks and feels like it dates back even further than them, Ezra said.

Is there a picture?

Not much of one. Just hands holding…I don’t know what. He brought the artifact closer to his face, but only for a second, its aroma apparently not pleasing. Looks like spaghetti.

Why would someone be holding spaghetti?

Those old-timey Duprees got up to some weird shit.

That they did.

They’d been sorting through the place every second or third weekend since June, every nook and cranny in twenty-three rooms in the main house, down in the cellar, and Ezra often on his own up in the attic. Now late October, he’d yet to throw anything away. Obviously valuable antiques, obviously worthless junk, it didn’t matter. Though not a Dupree, this was Ezra’s heritage, his legacy, an unexpected inheritance received in the early part of the year 2000.

What’d you find?

Titus turned toward one of the lights. I think it’s a tea pot.

Oh. I have its mate. Burly Ezra holding the tiny teacup by its delicate handle was adorable. His loud, pretend slurp made him even cuter as he tried so hard to make Titus smile.

I’ve never seen dust so thick and so dark. More grab bag inspired, Titus gave whatever he found a half-hearted once over, and then went fishing again.

Coal dust. It never goes away completely.

According to Del, town lore, property records, and personal diaries discovered earlier, Ewan Parish, the grandfather Ezra had never met, moved into the home in the late 1920s to live with his lover, Pennsylvania Dupree. Much of the cellar’s clutter likely predated his arrival.

Check this out. Something suddenly piqued Titus’s interest for real. "Dupree Inn." It was engraved and then painted on a thin wooden placard. "Established…" Even directly beneath a one-hundred watt bulb right over Ezra’s head, he couldn’t make out a year.

There’s a one. Ezra wrapped himself around Titus from behind. Nineteen-something.

They’d met where they stood just before spring. Technically, they’d met by a gate at the property’s entrance. Half a gate that formed half a heart. Titus had the other half back at his home in New York some eleven hundred miles away at the time. Then irate Ezra, to Titus’s horror, just a few minutes into their first conversation, bulldozed the second half of the heart still hanging on its gate post. The basement they now rummaged through definitely ignited a spark of fear once they fled a summer storm for shelter moments later. In truth, another sort of spark was lit as well.

Del never mentioned this house once being an inn.

Though there were many who would say romantic feelings came through the magic of the wrought iron heart-shaped gate once rehung.

No. Titus felt at home now in Ezra’s arms. It could be eighteen-something. Long before Pennsylvania rescued Del from Auntie Georgia’s twisted family reunion.

The home’s checkered past was also quite morbid.

Before Penn or your grandfather were even born.

Completely plausible, Ezra said. Murderous Georgia as an innkeeper? He shuddered. The way she treated poor Pennsylvania, it’d be like the Hotel California.

Check in whenever you want, but you’re not allowed to leave. Titus knew the song.

Ezra traced with his finger the words on the wooden sign. I’ve been wondering what I should do with this house. An inn’s not a bad idea. There are plenty of rooms. The kitchen’s huge. We hire someone to cook…

You’d look sexy in a chef’s hat.

As sexy as I look in dress pants, suspenders, and a tie? This according to you.

Titus did find beefy Ezra sexy as fuck dressed for the office at his engineering firm back in New Jersey. All that and a chef’s hat. He gestured the sort of kiss that would go with it.

Would it matter I can’t cook?

Not to me.

But what about our guests?

Hmm. Titus sat back on a concrete ledge halfway up the cinderblock wall. Maybe we’d put you at the front desk, instead.

Not if we want return business. I’m not so good with first impressions, remember?

So, you tried to run me over with a bulldozer. I think we’ve gotten past that. Maybe because you look so sexy in this neon orange T-shirt. Titus gave its hem a tug. "Same