Nice Weekend for a Murder (A Mallory Mystery)

by Max Allan Collins

  “We’ll just both keep our hands to ourselves,” Jill said agreeably.

  Kim’s eyes locked on mine and she grinned and, snugging her tight dress in place on the way, she came over to us. I hadn’t seen her since my last New York trip the year before.

  “I hate tight clothes,” she said, not at all coy, as if she were unaware the clinging dress made the most of her voluptuous figure. She had a high, slightly breathy, Judy Holliday sort of voice, and exaggerated Madeline Kahn features, which landed her a lot of second female leads in Neil Simon comedies on the bus-and-truck circuit. Kim had only been in one Broadway production, and then late in its run, though she’d appeared in several off-Broadway shows.

  I introduced Jill to her, and Jill immediately started asking her what films she’d been in. Kim had some impressive credits—everything from King of Comedy to The Muppets Take Manhattan—but she’d only done extra work in them. Jill was wowed anyway. Then Pete Christian, dressed to the nines in a rented tux, stole Jill away to talk film buff talk.

  Kim smiled like an ornery kid and said, “I hear somebody auditioned for you last night.”

  “Out my window, you mean.”

  She nodded, batted her big brown eyes. “I’ve heard of off-off-Broadway, but this is ridiculous.”

  “Ridiculous is right.”

  “You make a fabulous nerd, Mal.”

  “Gee, thanks. Have you been working, Kim?”

  “Here and there. I’m curtailing the roadshows for a while.”

  “Why’s that?”

  She smiled a little, not showing her teeth. “Curt and I are buying a little house in Connecticut. After five years of marriage, we’re finally going the whole domestic route.”

  “I thought you’d stay in Greenwich Village forever. Surely you’re not giving up the stage?”

  “No! Just the traveling. And the Village is getting a little lavender for Curt’s taste. Anyway, I can commute to Manhattan for any theatrical or TV work that comes along.”

  “Does ‘going the whole domestic route’ mean to imply that you and Curt are expecting an addition to the family...?”

  “Not yet,” she said. Smiling a little. Then, in a whisper: “But we are trying.”

  “Well, that’s great, Kim.”

  She got serious all of a sudden. “It would mean a lot to Curt. He... he lost Gary six months ago, you know.”

  Gary was his son, his only child, by his first marriage; his wife Joan had died in an automobile crash seven years ago. The novel he wrote thereafter—It Feels So Good When You Stop—was his first brush with critical acceptance; it had dealt, in a tragicomic manner, with the loss of Joan.

  As for Gary, I’d never met him; knew nothing about him, except that he was an artist and Curt was proud of him.

  “When you say ‘lost’...”

  “I mean dead,” she said, with a sad shrug. “Pneumonia.”

  “Damn. Aw, shit.”

  “Curt took it pretty hard; but he’s getting over it. He’s working on a book, after a dry spell of a few months, and he took on this Mohonk weekend, at Mary Wright’s urging.”

  “I wish I’d known,” I said. “I feel awful, not giving him any support....”

  “You know Curt. He’s very open in some senses, but private in others.”

  “Aw, damn. I’m so removed, living in Iowa. Something like this happens to a friend and I don’t even hear about it till six months later.”

  She touched my arm. “Don’t give it another thought.”

  “Is it too late for me to express my sympathy?”

  “No. Not if you find the right time. It’s still very much on Curt’s mind. You saw the painting over the fireplace?”

  “Yes, I did. Is that one of Gary’s?”

  She looked over at it, smiling in a bittersweet way, nodding. “Curt won’t go anywhere without one of Gary’s paintings along.”

  “That’s really sad.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said cheerily. “He doesn’t stare broodingly at it,” she went on, nodding toward the swirling, fiery painting above the unlit fireplace, “but it comforts him having a part of his son in the room with him.”

  “I wish I’d known Gary.”

  “You’d have liked him, Mal. He was a lot of fun. Only twenty-six when he died... and if that isn’t a goddamn shame I don’t know what is.”

  “Nor do I.”

  Curt came over and said, “I see you’re putting the make on my young bride.”

  I gave him a lopsided smile. “How else can I get back at you for spreading tales about me?”

  “Think twice about dallying, my dear,” he said to Kim. “Would you really want our firstborn to look like that?” And he pointed to my nerdy countenance.

  I had no snappy comeback for that, and, even if I had, it would have done no good: Curt was now moving toward the center of the room, and began waving his hands, impresario-like.

  “Showtime!” he shouted, and the room quieted down. “If you don’t know where you’re supposed to be positioned for your interrogation session, stop and ask me on the way out. Any other questions? No? Do you want to save the malt shop? Then let’s put on a show! And like we say in show business—not to mention the mystery biz—knock ’em dead!”

  9

  I ignored the plush, plump loveseats and the velvet cushioned armchairs and went directly for a straightback chair in one corner of the little open parlor, one of several on the second floor, off a wide, open hall. Morning light filtered in through the sheer-curtained windows, bounced lazily off the mirror over the fireplace. Glasses perched midway down my nose, bow tie straight, hair slick, I sat with my legs together, hunched a bit, striving to be inconspicuous. But the SUSPECT badge on my plaid suit gave me away.

  “Are you Lester?” asked a young woman with short hair, glasses, and a red sweater. A short, plump woman in a blue sweater was with her.

  “Yes,” I said timidly.

  “Lester,” the young woman said, smiling warmly but with eagerness in her eyes, “could I ask you a few questions?”

  “Yes,” I said woefully.

  And the interrogators began to file in, some taking chairs, others standing, others plopping down on couches, but none of them leaning back—all angled forward, backs straight as boards, notebooks at the ready, expressions as alert as hunting dogs. Like reporters in a press conference, they began hurling questions at me, sometimes stepping on each other’s toes, verbally. They were members of competing teams, after all.

  “When did you last see Roark K. Sloth alive?” an intense man in glasses and gray sweater asked.

  “Last night,” I said.

  “What were the circumstances?”

  I swallowed. “Unpleasant.”

  Some of them laughed at that; others seemed impatient with me. Time was precious, after all. But I made them dig for each truffle and, piece by piece, they were able to draw forth from me the story in Curt’s script. I held back only on the bribe, which I figured to reveal in the second of the sessions, tomorrow morning.

  “Did you see anyone else entering or leaving Sloth’s room?” a guy who looked almost as nerdy as me asked.

  “No,” I said. “But... well, it’s not really my place to gossip.”

  A woman in a red and white ski sweater was amused by that, but followed up. “No, Lester. Go on. We’re interested in anything you saw that might be helpful.”

  “Well...” I leaned forward conspiratorially. “I did see that private detective—that Darsini person—walking in the hall as I departed. He might have been going to Mr. Sloth’s room.”

  “Were you aware that Darsini was in Sloth’s employ?”

  “No,” I said.

  “When did you find out about Sloth’s death?”

  “This morning. The police came to my room to question me.”

  The intense guy in gray pointed a pencil at me and made an accusation. “Isn’t it true that you saw Sloth murdered outside your window last night?”

  Tha
t threw me. I’d done a pretty good job, I thought, of settling into the nerdy persona of Lester Denton; I’d even done a pretty fair job of putting Kirk Rath, and what may or may not have happened to him, outside my mind for a time.

  But the story of the so-called prank last night had obviously found its way beyond the inner circle of authors and out into the mainstream of Mystery Weekenders, who (at least some of them) were dealing with what I’d seen as if it were a part of Curt’s staged mystery. And I didn’t quite know how to handle that.

  Meanwhile, the intense guy in gray was doing his Hamilton Burger impression. “Answer the question, Mr. Denton!”

  “I did,” I said. Or Lester said. “I did see it. But I must have been dreaming. I reported what I saw to the hotel staff, but when we went outside, there was no corpse in the snow. I must have imagined it.”

  “Did you tell the police about this?” another interrogator asked.

  Now I was floundering. I had done pretty well, as long as I had Curt’s script to lean on; but now that I had allowed myself to wander from it, I was no longer swimming; I was treading water, and not terribly well.

  “The hotel manager told them about it,” I said. “And they questioned me, yes. But, as I told them, if I were involved somehow, why would I go to the front desk to report what I’d seen?”

  The guy in gray was pointing his pencil at me again. “Yet you saw him killed with a knife—and that is precisely the way he was killed.”

  He was just obnoxious enough to make me glad he was wasting his time down this blind alley.

  “Excuse me for my boldness,” I said, “but wasn’t Mr. Sloth’s body found in his room, sitting at his... its... typewriter?”

  “Yes,” said the guy in gray. “But the coroner has established time of death as late last night—corresponding with what you saw!”

  I didn’t know what to say. I’d been trying to explain away the prank (or whatever it was) within the context of the fictional mystery they sought to solve, because otherwise it would only serve to throw them unfairly off their game. But we weren’t supposed to break character during the Interrogation Sessions, so stopping to explain (as Mallory) seemed out of the question.

  And speaking of questions...

  An attractive brunette in black said, “Are you Jewish, Mr. Denton?”

  Was I? Curt hadn’t said. I winged it: “No, ma’am. But some of my best friends are.”

  I—or Lester—got a little laugh out of that one.

  “But do you speak or read Yiddish, Mr. Denton?” she continued. “Or are conversant with any dialect related to Yiddish?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “So you couldn’t translate the phrase, tovl fof oy?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  And we seemed to be off the subject of what I—or Lester or anybody—had seen out my (his/her/their) window last night.

  As the questioning continued, various interrogators left, while fresh blood filled in. Each team had assigned one or two members to be at each of the suspect’s grillings, and when their team representatives deemed a suspect sufficiently grilled, they were free to move on and help grill another one.

  But my grilling was over; the hour was up.

  I smiled and took off my bow tie and said, “Lester isn’t here anymore.”

  There were some expressions of frustration, but mostly laughs and even a little applause. People were smiling; they’d all had a good time, except for the anal-retentives like the guy in gray, who were taking this charade a bit too seriously. This was supposed to be a vacation, after all. What the hell was relaxing about trading the pressure of your work for the pressure of some goddamn game?

  The attractive brunette who’d asked the question about Yiddish stopped to shake my hand. She had sharp but pretty features, and jade-green eyes.

  “You were terrific,” she said. “You make Ed Grimley look like a macho man.”

  Her reference was to a Second City character created by Martin Short, which led me to compliment her on her taste.

  “I’m a big Second City fan myself,” I said.

  “TV or stage?”

  “Both. I’ve seen various Chicago companies, oh, I bet a dozen times; and a couple of the Toronto companies, including the one that seeded the original Saturday Night Live.”

  “Are you an actor yourself?”

  “No, no. I’m strictly a writer.”

  She seemed a little embarrassed. “Well, I know you’re a writer; it’s just that your performance as Lester made me wonder if you’d had professional training.”

  “The last play I was in was My Fair Lady in high school.”

  She laughed a little. “You know, I have to admit I’ve never read anything of yours, but I plan to remedy that.”

  “That’s nice to hear. And, I must say, you’re a very attractive young woman. I make that observation well realizing that the sturdy young man lurking behind you is very likely your boyfriend.”

  “Husband,” she said, smiling; she motioned for him to step forward, and he did. Like her, he was in his late twenties, blond, handsome in a preppy way, sweater and Calvins; they were as perfect as a couple in a toothpaste ad.

  “I’m Jenny Logan,” she said, offering a hand to shake, which I took. “And this is my husband, Frank.”

  I shook Frank’s hand too; he had a firm grip and a white, if shy, smile.

  “You wouldn’t happen to be in showbiz, would you?” I asked them.

  “Frank’s a lawyer,” she said, patting his shoulder fondly. “But he doesn’t do trial work, so I guess you’d have to say he’s not in showbiz. I, however, am.”

  “In New York?”

  “Yes. Mostly commercials.”

  Maybe I had seen her in a toothpaste ad.

  “Could I talk to you two, for a moment?” I said, even though I already was. I gestured toward a comfortable-looking velvet couch near a baby grand piano.

  We sat, Jenny in the middle.

  “Have you ever been to Mystery Weekend at Mohonk before?” I asked them.

  Frank nodded, but Jenny lit up, all smiles and enthusiasm.

  “Oh yes, and it’s great!” Jenny said, like the captain of the Mohonk cheerleaders. Then she forced herself to calm down: “At least I think it’s great. Frank isn’t a puzzle freak like I am—though he figured last year’s out, darn him.”

  “Your team was one of the winners?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Funny thing is, we were going all out to win ‘most creative,’ and thanks to Frank, here, we won for accuracy!”

  “Attaboy, Frank,” I said. “What are you going after this year?”

  “Whatever we can get, Mr. Mallory,” Frank said, smiling, proving he could speak.

  “Make it Mal,” I said. “And I was just wondering if you’d brought any theatrical gear along.”

  She shrugged. “A little. Some makeup and such. It’d be nice to bring more—all sorts of props and stuff. It’d really help score points in the ‘most creative’ category. But it’s hard to know what to bring, since we don’t know what the mystery’s going to be till we get here.”

  “I want to ask you something,” I said. “And I promise if you’ll be truthful, you won’t get into any trouble.”

  Jenny narrowed her eyes, leaned her head forward. “Trouble?”

  “I would greatly appreciate it if you’d put my mind to rest and admit to what you did last night.”

  Frank grinned. “Is that really necessary? We are married, you know.”

  “I’m not kidding around,” I said. “Was it you?”

  Jenny was shaking her head. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about, Mal.”

  “You heard me being questioned about ‘Sloth’ being killed outside my window, last night.”

  “Yes...”

  “Well, something did happen outside my window last night.”

  “We know,” Jenny said, shrugging again.

  “You know?”

  “Everybody’s talking about it,�
�� she said. “It’s part of the weekend, right? Something Curt Clark staged to get things off with a bang?”

  I sighed. “If Curt staged it,” I said, “he’s keeping me in the dark. He says it’s a prank pulled by one of the teams.”

  “Oh!” Jenny said. “I get it. You thought we might have been the ones behind it... but we weren’t. I swear.”

  “Don’t kid around with me, please.”

  Frank said, “We’re not. Are you sure this isn’t Clark’s doing? Part of his weekend?”

  “I was very upset last night,” I said, “and we’re good friends, Curt and I. He has a nasty sense of humor, granted. But he would’ve told me.”

  Ever suspicious, like any true Mystery Weekender, Jenny said, “Where was he when the prank was pulled?”

  “He was in his room,” I said. “I’d spoken to him on the phone, moments before. He just didn’t have time to get outside, even if he climbed out a window. Besides, the ‘killer’ was a short, stocky person; and of course Curt’s lanky and tall.”

  “You’re telling us,” she said, surprised, “that this isn’t part of the mystery.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “When somebody brought it up during the interrogation, I tried to deflect it, but I only helped things to get more out of hand.”

  “So we know something the other teams don’t,” she said, with a smug, squeezed smile.

  “Yes,” I said. “Though I wouldn’t mind it spreading to the other teams.”

  “No way,” she said, with a wave of finality. “Let ’em do their own investigating.”

  Brother.

  “I’d like to ask a favor of you,” I said.

  She shrugged. “Sure. As long as it doesn’t help out some other team.”

  “Well, it does involve the other teams: do you know if any of them have theatrical pros on them?”

  “A few that I know of do,” Jenny nodded. “I could ask around a bit. See if anybody wants to pool props and makeup. You’d like to know if any of the other teams staged that ‘murder,’ I take it?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “What’s in it for us?” she said, with an evil little smile. “Will you tell us whether or not you’re the killer?”