Nice Weekend for a Murder (A Mallory Mystery)

by Max Allan Collins

  Millie said, “But Carl’s right—Rath was around.”

  “What?” Jill and I said.

  Carl said, “Rath only pretended to leave.”

  “Why do you say that?” I said, just me, though Jill no doubt was thinking it.

  Millie lectured Carl, waggling a forefinger. “You don’t know for a fact he pretended to leave.... He could’ve left and come back.”

  “Same difference,” Carl shrugged.

  “But who was he helping, by playing along?” Millie asked her husband. “Somebody on one of the teams?”

  “What the hell are you two talking about?”

  They looked at me, shocked to have heard such force coming from me, who after all was still wearing the Lester Denton facade. A little dab’ll do ya.

  “It’s just that we saw him Thursday night,” Millie said, shrugging elaborately, eyes wide, palms up.

  “After he got mad and supposedly left,” Carl added.

  Jill asked, “When was this?”

  “We were out walking in the snow,” Millie said. “We were on that little gazebo bridge by the lake.”

  “What did you see?” I said, grasping Millie’s arm.

  She pulled back, wincing, not understanding my urgency. “Hey, take it easy! We didn’t see anything, much—just Kirk Rath.”

  “Yeah,” Carl said, thumbing through his notebook, “I jotted some notes. Wasn’t sure it might not have something to do with the Mystery Weekend. We saw him out walking, along by the bushes near the lake, all by himself. It was about eleven fifteen....”

  But that was after I’d seen Rath killed!

  I was mentally reeling, so it was Jill who asked, “Are you sure of this?”

  “Sure,” Carl deadpanned. “It seemed odd to me, that’s all.”

  Now I had presence of mind to speak again: “What did?”

  “The front of his jacket was all slashed, ripped up. But he was fine.”

  16

  That evening, at seven o’clock, the high-ceilinged pine dining hall transformed itself into a dimly lit night spot, where Frank Sinatra and big band music held sway. The snowstorm had prevented the arrival of the New York City–based dance band who’d been booked, but Mary Wright had put together a sound system and found a nice stack of smooth forties and fifties pop sides to create a nicely nostalgic aura; whether you were into Christie or Chandler, it didn’t matter—all mystery fans like to slide into the past.

  Mary Wright herself was playing DJ, in a pretty pink satin gown rather than a Mohonk blazer for a change, and I—looking pretty natty myself in my cream sports jacket and skinny blue tie and navy slacks—went up to her and asked if she had any Bobby Darin.

  “I think I can round up ‘Beyond the Sea,’ ” she said.

  “Thanks. It’s not a ‘Queen of the Hop’ crowd, anyway.”

  She smiled at that and it was a pretty, pretty nice smile; I wished things hadn’t gotten tense between us. But what the hell, it kept Jill from pinching me.

  I went back to our regular table, where a few of us—myself and Jill included—were finishing up dinner (as this was a dinner dance, after all). Sardini and I were having a Vienna nut torte (not the same one) and Jill was putting away some pumpkin pie. Jack Flint and his wife sat across from us, and Jack was having a drink. Quaker roots or not, the Mohonk dining room did serve drinks with the evening meal, if you insisted on it.

  I hadn’t. I wanted my brain nice and clear. While the day had been uneventful since my talks with Mary Wright and the Arnolds, I was still trying to make sense of what I’d learned. After the noon buffet, and before the afternoon panel on which Flint and Sardini and I discussed the recent comeback of the private-eye story, Jill and I had tried to put some of the pieces together—and hadn’t gotten anywhere much.

  Fact Number One: Kirk Rath had been seen by the Arnolds after I supposedly saw him killed.

  How was that even possible? Were the Arnolds confused about the time, or maybe just confused in general? Or did they see somebody else who merely resembled Rath—but if so, how do you explain the shredded jacket?

  Fact Number Two: Kirk Rath and Mary Wright and Curt’s son Gary were college chums.

  What did that mean? Nothing much that we could see, other than that Mary entered the circle of suspects by virtue of having previously known Rath.

  Fact Number Three: Gary Culver (Culver being Curt Clark’s real last name, as you may recall) had been homosexual.

  Did that mean anything? If Kirk Rath was Gary’s college roommate, did that make Rath homosexual as well? And if so, so what?

  The latter subject Jill and I had disagreed on hotly, in an afternoon brainstorming session in our room. I insisted that the notion that Rath might have been gay was nonsense. In college, as a rule, you’re assigned roommates in dorms, particularly in the first year. So, the odds were (poor choice of words, admittedly) Gary and Kirk had become roommates by chance. Just because Gary had been gay, that hardly meant it figured Kirk was, too.

  “Besides,” I told her, “Rath was too conservative. Politically, he was a reactionary—he’s taken stands on issues that make the Moral Majority look like the American Civil Liberties Union.”

  “A perfect reason to stay in the closet,” Jill had said.

  “He just wasn’t the type.”

  “You mean, he wasn’t particularly effeminate? Grow up, Mal. Don’t expect every gay male to be a drag queen.”

  “Give me a break, will you? I’ve seen him at various mystery conventions and such, and he’s always in the presence of a stunning girl.”

  “Girl or woman?”

  “I’d call them ‘girls’—late teens, early twenties.”

  “Have you ever seen him with the same girl twice?”

  I thought about that.

  “No,” I said. “It’s always been a different one, but then I’ve only seen him at three or four conventions.”

  “Real babes?” she asked, archly.

  “Yeah—real babes.”

  “Prostitutes, perhaps?”

  “Oh, Jill, don’t be ridiculous—”

  “A call girl makes a nice escort for a gay man who’s pretending to be straight.”

  I gave her a take-my-word-for-it look. “Look, I’ve heard rumors that he was a real stud, okay?”

  “Rumors fueled by his being seen with knockout women. I think Rath was trying a little too hard to seem heterosexual.”

  “Ah, I just don’t buy it.”

  “Mal, he was a guy in his late twenties living in a houseful of men, right?”

  “That’s his place of business—they all work with him.”

  “I got a news flash for you, kiddo—at most businesses, you don’t sleep in.”

  “I just don’t buy it.”

  “Notice that you no longer can find any reasonable counterarguments. Notice that you begin to sound like a broken record.”

  “Notice that you are getting obnoxious.”

  “Okay, okay,” she said, patting the air. “Just think about it.... Rath was a guy who liked to smear people. He was politically conservative, a regular self-styled William F. Buckley of the mystery world. If—and I say only if—he were gay, wouldn’t he be likely to hide it?”

  “Jill—”

  “If. Hypothetical time.”

  “If he were gay, yeah, I guess he might try to hide it.”

  “Somebody as hated as Rath, somebody as into smearing people as Rath, somebody who was very likely just as insecure as he was egotistical, sure as hell might have tried to keep his off-center sexual preference under wraps.”

  “I just can’t buy it.”

  “Change the needle. When you called his business, which is to say his home, where he and all the boys bunked, where did they say he was going on vacation?”

  “Well... after Mohonk, he was going into the city. New York.”

  “And didn’t they say he couldn’t be reached—that even his staff couldn’t reach him?”

  “Yes. But I don’t s
ee...”

  With elaborate theatricality, she said, “Why would the editor and publisher of the Chronicler, a magazine so intrinsically tied to the personal vision of selfsame editor and publisher, not tell even his own staff where he could be reached? Does that sound like reasonable business behavior to you?”

  “Sometimes executives do like to get away, Jill. Sometimes they need to be able to get away from the pressure, and the phones. That’s not so uncommon.”

  “Yeah, and maybe he went into New York from time to time, for a little taste of forbidden fruit.”

  “Bad, Jill. Very bad.”

  “A tacky remark, yes, but to the point, wouldn’t you agree? A closeted homosexual—even if he is sharing that closet with a few other boys—might from time to time take a trip into the big city.”

  “I suppose.”

  “I rest my case.”

  I gave the movie buff a slice of the world’s worst W.C. Fields impression: “And a pretty case it is on which you’re resting, my dear,” adding, natural voice, “although your argument is considerably less attractive. And even if you were right—even if Rath were a homosexual—what would that have to do with his murder?”

  “I don’t know. But it does open up a range of motives that have nothing to do with literary criticism, doesn’t it?”

  Yes it did. And it had been eating at me, a hungry mouse nibbling at the cheese between my ears.

  Tim Culver had come over to the table to stand and talk to the seated Jack Flint; Pete Christian, who’d been sitting next to Tom, had gotten up, due to his usual restlessness, and wandered over into the conversation. Pete was congratulating Culver on the movie sale. Then one of the Mystery Weekenders approached Pete with a copy of his Films of Charlie Chan in one hand, and Jack’s Black Mask doubled with Culver’s McClain’s Score in the other. There had been an autograph session this afternoon at tea time in the Lake Lounge, with all the authors present; it had been just after the panel Jack and Tom and I’d been on. But a few of the Weekenders had not made it to the session, possibly because they were sequestered with their respective teams, working on the latest batch of clues and info pertaining to The Case of the Curious Critic, as gathered during the final interrogation session late this morning.

  While Jack, Tim, and Pete stood signing books, Cynthia Crystal, a martini in hand, silver skin of a gown covering her, glided over and asked us when we were going to stop eating and start dancing. I had put the torte well away, by this point, but Jill was taking her time with the pumpkin pie.

  So, with Jill’s blessing, I escorted Cynthia out onto the dance floor, where Bobby Darin was singing “The Good Life,” and I held her as close as I could and not get us killed by Culver and/or Jill.

  “I shouldn’t have been so cruel,” she said, “that time you threw that pass.”

  She was referring to that Bouchercon where, several years ago, we’d met; she and I’d hung around a good deal together there, and I mistook it for romance when it was apparently just friendship.

  “I shouldn’t have thrown it,” I said, still embarrassed. “I was out of line.”

  “Maybe,” she said, a smile crinkling one corner of her thin, pretty mouth. “And maybe it was a missed opportunity on my part.”

  “You’re going to be a happily married woman soon.”

  “I’ll be married,” she said, seeking a wistful tone. “But how happy I’ll be with a dour lug like Tim is debatable.”

  “Why marry him, then?”

  “I love him.”

  “Yeah,” I said, shaking my head. “That’s usually how I get in jams, too.”

  She laughed a little, and it seemed less brittle than usual.

  “Does anybody ever call you Cindy?” I asked her.

  “Just my Aunt Cynthia.”

  “You just aren’t the Cindy type, are you?”

  “Sometimes I wish I were.”

  I laughed, and held her a little closer. “No you don’t. You’re exactly who you want to be.”

  She pulled away, appraising me, her smile cunning. “And who is that?”

  “The smartest, prettiest, bitchiest gal around; the queen of the mystery writers.”

  She sighed, pleasantly. “That sounds vaguely sexist.”

  “What, ‘bitchiest’ or ‘gal’?”

  “No—‘queen.’”

  “Ellery didn’t mind,” I reminded her.

  She pretended to be irritated. “Did you bring me out here to flirt with me or tease me or what?”

  “I brought you out here to dance.”

  “I doubt that. You always have an ulterior motive. And we were at a dance together, at that Bouchercon, once upon a time. You sat out the whole bloody thing.”

  “I only dance when they play Bobby Darin records.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Spare me the Darin rap—I know all about your eccentric tastes.”

  “Such as you being my favorite female mystery writer?”

  She pursed her lips in a nasty smile. “You’re being sexist again.”

  “Did I say ‘female’?”

  “You most certainly did.”

  “I meant to say ‘lady.’”

  “Oh, that’s so much better.”

  Darin was replaced on the turntable by that upstart Sinatra—“Strangers In The Night,” of all things. You wouldn’t catch Bobby singing scoobie doobie doo.

  We kept dancing anyway. I sprung my ulterior-motive question: “What’s the deal with Tim and Pete Christian?”

  “Pardon?”

  “He and Pete seem to be getting along great.”

  And they did: they were both sitting at our table now, chatting, although Pete was doing most of the talking.

  “Why shouldn’t they be?” she asked.

  “Well, Pete’s very bitter about what Rath did to his friend C.J. Beaufort; blames him for his death. And it was Tim’s interview in the Chronicler that supposedly put Beaufort over the edge....”

  “Oh that,” she said, dismissively. “Tim smoothed that over with Pete right after Beaufort’s suicide.”

  “How?”

  She shrugged; it made her blonde hair shimmer in the dim lighting. “Tim’s known Pete for years,” she said. “He was well aware that Beaufort was Pete’s mentor. So he immediately called Pete and expressed his sympathy and said he’d never forgive himself for that interview. That ‘goddamn interview,’ to be exact.”

  “And Pete understood?”

  “Sure. Pete was burned by an interview in the Chronicler, too.”

  “How so?”

  “Same sort of thing as Tim—he was encouraged to be freewheeling in front of a tape recorder, and at the same time was promised that he’d get to edit the transcript before publication. Dear little Kirk didn’t send Pete the transcript, of course, and the published version embarrassed Pete royally—or so he says. I read the interview and didn’t see anything Pete needed to be sorry for having said.”

  “Still,” I said, “that’s infuriating, being betrayed like that.”

  “I hear the Chronicler’s cleaned up its act,” she said, “in that regard at least. It got to the point where nobody in the business would grant them an interview till they started offering their various interviewees certain assurances in writing.”

  After Sinatra scoobied his last doobie, we walked over to the table, and Cynthia moved on, and I sat next to Jill. She was a vision in a black-and-white sequined square-shouldered gown. A smirking vision.

  “You two were pretty cozy,” she said.

  “Old friends.”

  “As opposed to strangers in the night.”

  “Let’s dance,” I said.

  “It isn’t a Bobby Darin song.”

  It was Sinatra again, from a better period: “Summer Wind.”

  “I’ll make an exception,” I said.

  We danced, and I asked her why she seemed so jealous this weekend; it really wasn’t like her.

  “I told you why,” she said.

  “You mean because we�
�re going to be going our separate ways before long.”

  She bit her lip and nodded.

  “We don’t have to,” I said.

  “I know. But it would mean we’d have to compromise—or at least one of us would.”

  “You mean, you’d have to agree to stay in Port City, or I’d have to agree to pull up stakes and head out on the prairie with you, rounding up cable rustlers or whatever it is you do.”

  “You know exactly what it is I do.”

  “Yeah, and you’re good at it.”

  “I’m—I’m not so good at compromise, though.”

  “Compromise isn’t something either of us does too well,” I said.

  “I know.”

  Sinatra sang.

  “It’s a few months away,” I said. “Let’s not talk about it.”

  “I love you, Nick.”

  “I love you, Nora.”

  We held each other and danced and Sinatra sang. He wasn’t Bobby Darin, but we made do.

  17

  We mingled the rest of the evening with our fellow suspects in the Curious Critic case, and with the various Mystery Weekenders, most of whom seemed a little keyed up, what with the big presentations coming the very next morning. But Jill and I refrained from doing any detecting, which is to say carrying on any conversations with hidden purposes.

  With one exception.

  Curt had been keeping his wife Kim out on the dance floor most of the evening; he seemed almost to be wooing her. But there was something wrong—Curt was trying awfully hard, doing all the talking; Kim seemed distracted, even a little morose.

  But she looked wonderful—superficially anyway. She was poured into another gown, not unlike the black one she’d worn in her role as Roark Sloth’s ex-wife in the weekend mystery, only this one was white. She looked as pretty as ever, in that exaggerated cartoony way of hers, and sexy as ever, too, her breasts doing a first-rate Jayne Mansfield impression.

  Only her eyes gave her away, her big brown eyes. They were dull and red and baggy.

  Curt finally left her alone, at their table, some Mystery Weekenders dragging him away for autographs. I noted this from the dance floor, and Jill and I made a beeline for her. We sat on her either side.

  “You look terrific tonight,” Jill said. “You’re going to be a big movie star someday and I’m going to brag about knowing you.”