Turning the Tables: An Alex Peres Mystery

by Jessica Thomas

  “Darling, crazy things happen to all of us all the time.” Mom smiled. “And sometimes they do seem to go in streaks. But witches only count in movies, and I don’t think anyone is filming you. Now, darling, go home and rest.” She struck a silly pose. “Abracadabra! Presto! Hoot, mon! Faith and begorrah! Holy cow! Ipso facto! Hey, nonny nonny . . . the curse is gone!”

  I loved that woman. And I smiled all the way home.

  I walked into the house, which seemed a little strange to me, even after so short an absence. Fargo seemed to feel the same. He ran from room to room . . . sniffing . . . whuffling . . . checking. I hiked the thermostat, started a pot of coffee and walked over to the telephone message machine, which was blinking as if it had undergone a nervous breakdown. I hit the replay and sat down to listen.

  Peter would appreciate a call. Click. Wolf would really like to hear from me. Click. Mitch had not heard from Sonny. Click. Mitch had to reach Sonny. Click. Wolf needed to talk to me right away. Click. Someone would like to speak to Arthur. Click. It was imperative that Mitch speak to Sonny or me. Click. Would I please call Sonny at the following number . . . Click.

  I picked up the card that Sonny had left with me, giving his hotel number in Gatlinburg and compared it with the one I had just jotted down from the tape. They were not the same. I dialed the new number and was told I had reached Gatlinburg Towers. It sounded expensive. Paula was obviously not a cheap date. No wonder Sonny was thinking of high-paying jobs. Finally I heard Sonny say hello.

  “Where are you?” I asked. “What happened to Riverside Crest?”

  His voice was hearty and jovial, as if he were addressing the Kiwanis Club. I knew that meant someone was with him, doubtless the lovely Paula. “Why, ah, we decided to stay here. It’s right downtown and it’s got an indoor pool, a spa, hairdresser, shops—”

  “Sounds like the Kansas City Sheraton.”

  “Could be for all I know. Paula felt the Riverside was a little, uh, rustic and thought she’d be happier here in more traditional surroundings.” There was just the slightest accent on thought that told me Paula wasn’t happy at the Towers, either.

  “I see. Look, why haven’t you called Mitch? He is about in hysterics by now.”

  He sounded surprised. “Why should I call Mitch?”

  “Didn’t you get my message at the Riverside? A young houseboy who worked for Peter and the Wolf got his head beaten in. He was found at the amphitheater, robbed of a bunch of money.”

  “No, I didn’t get any message.” Now he sounded bitter. “I wouldn’t have, we never checked in. Paula took one look at the lobby and ‘just knew it wasn’t our kind of place.’ I don’t see why Mitch can’t handle it, but I’ll call him. He probably just needs a boost. Everything else okay? Mom okay? Fargo?”

  He sounded lonesome. On vacation? With a pretty companion? “Everything’s fine. Mom’s good. Fargo’s glad to be home. Me, too. Anyway, I won’t keep you. Have fun at the Kansas City Sheraton. Or is it the Atlanta Marriott?”

  “Who can tell? Maybe the Hong Kong Hilton. Bye.”

  I decided to let Sonny call Mitch before I did. It would doubtless be a much happier conversation that way. There wasn’t much I could do for whoever was looking for Arthur, whoever he might be. So, reluctantly, I looked up the number for Peter and the Wolf.

  As I started to dial, I thought back to my conversation with Sonny. He and Paula had never checked in at the Riverside, so they never got my voice-mail message. I wondered who did, and suddenly a heartwarming, wicked scenario rolled before me. The bridegroom carries his bride across the threshold of Room 617 at the Riverside Crest. “Alone at last!” he cries.

  “Not quite,” says the lovely bride. “Our phone is blinking. It must be voice-mail.”

  “Odd. Who’d be calling us now? Well, dear, check it. I’ll I open the champagne.”

  The bride picks up the phone, listens, “ . . . sorry to bother you when you’ve just arrived, but . . . there’s been a bludgeoning murder . . .” Shriek. Thud.

  Once in a while I come down with acute schadenfreude, so I was smiling broadly as I dialed the phone. I hoped Wolf would answer. I really didn’t feel up to Peter’s high drama—luck was with me.

  “Thank God, Alex, we thought you’d disappeared.” Wolf sounded a bit dramatic himself.

  “I was away on business, as I mentioned. What’s up?”

  “I think we’re going to be arrested for that little bastard’s murder.”

  “Oh, Wolf! Just because the cops ask you a few questions does not mean imminent arrest! Mitch may be sounding tough because he’s a little unsure, working the case without Sonny as fallback. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about unless, of course, you did it.” I made it a question.

  “Of course not. But old lady Ethel Winger lives next door, and you know her. She saw the tiff between Peter and Lewis and told the cops. By now it sounds like something between a young Ali and a demented Tyson. And Peter’s watch—Mitch asked to borrow it, said we’d get it back and provided a receipt, but I don’t like it. I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t either, but I wouldn’t worry. As far as the fight . . . well, you didn’t lie. You just weren’t completely forthcoming. And there’s no real reason you should have been at that time. Just let this play itself out, Wolf.”

  “Well, we do worry. We want to hire you, Alex. With Sonny and the Chief away and that idiot Anders in charge, God knows what could happen. Obviously somebody had it in for Lewis. We were pissed at him for walking out, and what he did to Peter was unforgivable. But we didn’t kill him. However, if the police just keep looking at us, they’re never going to find anybody else. You have to find that somebody else, Alex. We did not do it!”

  I wished he would stop saying we. Did he mean neither of them did it, or did he mean that only one of them did it, without the assistance of the other? “Wolf, I’m really tired. I just got in. I’ll see you around ten tomorrow, okay? We’ll decide then if I can help you in some way, although I really don’t imagine you need me. We’ll talk.”

  After dragging a few more reassuring remarks out of me, he finally hung up.

  Bed. What I needed was my own familiar, beloved bed. I yawned and went to let Fargo out. I got halfway to the back door and the front doorbell rang. Fargo gave two or three ferocious barks and then quit. It must be someone he knew.

  “Listen, Fargo, if this isn’t somebody with a million in cash and two filets mignon, take ’em out! You hear me? I want company like you want your ears cleaned.” He wagged his tail and grinned and I opened the door.

  It was Mitch, looking cool, collected . . . and rested, dammit. Obviously, Sonny had calmed him down and made him feel like Hercule Poirot.

  “Sorry to bother you, Alex. I know you’re tired. But Sonny thought I should update you right away. He thought you might want casually to suggest to Peter and the Wolf that they retain a lawyer.”

  God, I hate nights like this.

  Chapter 12

  Mitch sat at the kitchen table while I put on fresh coffee. I sat across from him and lit a cigarette, and don’t ask me the number— I had stopped counting somewhere over Rhode Island.

  “Now what is this? Sonny thinks Peter and the Wolf should get a lawyer? What on earth did you tell him to warrant that suggestion?”

  “I’m going to start at the beginning, Alex, and you can decide for yourself. Okay?” He took a battered notebook from his shirt pocket and searched for the page he wanted. Was this murder so complicated? He’d written notes the length of War and Peace.

  “Here we go. Early Sunday morning Lewis Schley was found at the amphitheater, beaten to death and laid out, if you will, on the stage. Because of the chilly night and heavy rain, time of death was difficult to establish, but both Doc Marsten and the medical examiner estimate between nine p.m. Saturday and two a.m. Sunday. Both believe it was probably early rather than late within that time frame. They both also think he was probably killed elsewhere and moved, though again
the rain makes it uncertain.”

  “He was alive and well at eight p.m.,” I reminded him.

  “Yes. Several people at the Wharf Rat corroborate that. But nobody claims to have seen him—”

  “Mitch,” I interrupted. “I forgot to mention it, but I saw Jared Mather talking to him outside the Rat as I was leaving. Maybe Lewis said something to him that would help. Sorry I didn’t say something earlier. I’ve been rather . . . preoccupied.”

  “Uh-huh, I know. The Wicked Witch of the Wat.”

  “The what?”

  The Wat . . . you know, like wabbit.”

  “Very funny. Who told you about that?” My coffee was suddenly bitter.

  “Oh, Joe, Lainey, Cassie. Anyway, I ran into Mather at Roy’s Café having lunch. He mentioned seeing Lewis, but no help there.” Mitch laughed. “He said he caught up with Lewis at the end of the alley. It looked like it was about to pour and he felt it his ‘Christian duty to offer the boy a ride.’ Lewis told him riding with queer haters made him nervous, he’d rather get wet. End of conversation. So much for détente.”

  I smiled. “I bet Mather loved that.” Secretly I wondered if Mather and Lewis had had something going—or if Mather wished they did. Even so, Mather was a good investigator. If he knew anything he’d have made it known somehow. And I wasn’t going to out him just to take the focus off Wolf and Peter, even if Mitch would have believed me.

  “Well, he was laughing when he told me. But later he said he felt kind of bad . . . like maybe if he’d insisted, Lewis would still be alive.”

  Mitch yawned and I yearned for bed. But he started his speech again. “To continue, we still have not found his wallet. That, plus Mellon’s statement that he had over four hundred dollars, plus your statement that he had a full wallet at the Rat, lends credence to the robbery theory.” He started flipping through the notebook and making irritating little noises, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

  “Mitch, you sound as if you’re on the stand at somebody’s trial. We aren’t there yet. Here, have some coffee. And speak English, not detecto-babble.”

  He glared at me and looked embarrassed. “Yeah, sorry. We haven’t found the murder weapon yet, but forensics has been some help in telling us what to look for. It’s some kind of wooden stick. They found a few splinters in the wound, pine, common pine. And there was some sawdust on his jacket where the rain didn’t get to. It was not a baseball bat. The end of it was square, maybe three inches across. There were some funny—strange—bruises on his shoulders and neck, like he was hit with something knobby. Forensics finally decided it was probably a table leg or chair leg, probably square at the top, then round and tapered as it went down. One little knob toward the top and two or three toward the bottom.”

  Mitch looked up at me meaningfully. “We know where there’s at least one table leg missing, don’t we?”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “From a warped beat-up old table that could have lost that leg months ago. Surely you don’t think they took it off the table, zonked Lewis with it and then parked the table with three legs on the front porch for the edification of the Provincetown Police Department!” I set my mug down emphatically.

  He shrugged. “Whoever said murderers were always smart? Anyway, there’s more. Lewis had a recently healed wound on his left hand. The scar tissue was torn open, as if someone had ripped a watch off his wrist and opened up the cut doing it. We found out that so-called little Saturday morning confrontation Wolf told us about was really a first-class fistfight over a watch belonging to Peter Mellon. A woman who lives next door to them saw the whole thing. Now maybe Lewis didn’t give the watch back to Peter. Maybe Peter yanked it off his arm later. Maybe? We’ve got the watch, with a broken crystal, by the way, to test for any blood.” He moved on to another page, still clucking like a damned chicken.

  “The crystal got broken Saturday morning,” I sighed. “Before he knocked Peter down, Lewis teased him with the watch and then deliberately dropped it on the driveway. They told me about it Sunday before you and Pete Santos came by. And I noticed Lewis check a watch in the Rat. I don’t recall how it looked, but it wasn’t Peter’s.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Whose side are you on?” Now that query brought me up short. Did he already have them arrested and convicted? Did he know something that made him so certain?

  “Truth. Justice. Motherhood and apple pie. Don’t be an ass, Mitch. I’m not on anybody’s side, and neither should you be! Can you visualize Peter Mellon in a fight? He took a dainty swipe at Lewis and missed. Lewis hit him on the cheek and then pushed him, and he fell down and cried over the broken watch. You better have your witness think again. You know old lady Winger would say anything to look important.”

  “All right, Alex, I guess she could have exaggerated. But there’s one other thing. We know where Peter was from about seven-thirty till midnight Saturday . . . the Crown and Anchor. But we can’t seem to trace Wolf.” He began flipping and clicking again. I wondered idly if he would stop if I threw my coffee in his face.

  Finally, he found the page he was looking for. “Wolf says he drove Peter to the Crown and dropped him off with his costume and makeup. He knew there would be no parking spaces, so he took the car home. He walked back down to the A-House for a drink and then went to see Peter sing. He says afterward he walked home again and brought the car down to get Peter and his stuff, since it had begun to rain. That is a complicated lot of walking and driving. More to the point, we haven’t found anyone who saw him, and he says he can’t remember who might recall seeing him at either place.”

  I sipped my coffee and knew I could fall asleep with the mug in my hand. “The A-House was plain crazy. I’m surprised the fire department didn’t shut them down. It would have been easy to miss someone in that crowd. The Crown was not quite as bad, but I admit, I didn’t see Wolf. He could have been in the bar.”

  “Maybe,” Mitch conceded. “But the bartender doesn’t remember him being around until after eleven p.m., when he came in, soaking wet. And you’d think the barman would remember Wolf being there earlier, with Peter there playing the star.”

  “He was damn good.” For some reason I was getting irritated. I tried to credit it to fatigue.

  “I don’t doubt it, but see if this makes sense to you. Wolf drives Peter to the Crown. While he is gone, Lewis returns, maybe to get something he forgot from his room. And maybe, seeing the car gone he figures no one is home and goes in the main house to see what’s loose and easy to take—maybe from an unlocked guest room. Believe me, I don’t see Lewis as a choirboy!”

  I got up and poured us coffee. Mitch was reaching toward his notebook again, and I accidentally spilled a few drops of coffee on the back of his hand. He moved it quickly and licked the drops off and continued.

  “Wolf returns. Lewis sees the car lights and tries to run away or maybe tries to attack Wolf. Or maybe Wolf sees him moving around in the house and thinks it’s an unknown burglar. Wolf grabs the table leg from somewhere in the car or the garage or by the garbage cans—whatever. He belts Lewis—maybe in selfdefense—and gets so mad he just loses it and finishes him off. He knows he can’t leave the body in his yard, so he takes him to Race Point and lays him out like King Tut on stage. He rips the watch off Lewis’s arm and keeps it. He tosses Lewis’s wallet out the car window along the way—with or without the money—comes back and collects Peter at the Crown and Anchor.”

  I was weary. Mitch’s theory had some validity, but I felt constrained to defend the two old trouts. I don’t know why. The last person I had defended to the police had proved to be a double murderer. I hoped there wasn’t a pattern developing here. Maybe I just felt guilty about pouring tea and rum all over their living room furniture.

  “You’re stretching, Mitch. Whether it was defense or attack, if Wolf saw Lewis before getting out of the car, he could have grabbed the tire iron. If Wolf was already in the house when he became aware of Lewis, he could have grabbed the poker. I cannot
see him keeping a table leg in the car or in the garbage can or behind a shrub in the unlikely event he might someday need it as a weapon. And I cannot see him calmly unscrewing a table leg with Lewis about to jump him . . . or with Lewis running away. Next, you have Wolf at Race Point sometime before midnight, and then you have Harmon reporting their car out there around four-thirty a.m. I doubt Wolf took him there at eleven p.m. and went back five hours later to say farewell.”

  I slumped in my chair, lit a cigarette and sipped my coffee. It was a tossup which tasted worse. I was not happy to hear Mitch prolong his diatribe.

  “Oh, come on, Alex. I don’t know about you, but my tire iron is under a fiberboard floor in the trunk. It would take me ten minutes and plenty of noise to find it. The table leg was only held by two wing-nuts, fast and quiet to remove. And maybe Wolf was afraid the robber or Lewis could get to him before he got to the poker.”

  I had a great desire to go get my own poker, but I still had some hope of getting Mitch past this sticking point. I had to; there were other possibilities.

  “Mitch, it’s possible Lewis never came back to their house at all,” I began.

  “Of course it is. It’s also possible Wolf lured him there. We only have Peter’s claim that he paid Lewis his wages. Maybe they owed him money. Wolf told him to come to the house at ten. He was waiting, table leg in hand. Wolf could have dragged the body behind a shrub and gone back to the Crown to pick up Peter. They could have waited till the town quieted down and taken Lewis out there in the wee hours. Or maybe Wolf did take him out there before midnight, and the SUV Harmon saw later has nothing to do with anything. It works either way.” Mitch closed his damn notebook with a snap and a final tongue click.

  “Mitch, this is all very iffy and circumstantial.” And unfortunately, his last scenario made a lot of sense.

  “Agreed. But I want forensics to look at their SUV and that table. I hope to have a warrant for impounding them sometime tomorrow. It’s closing in on them, Alex. I think that’s what Sonny meant. I think he’s just being nice, advising they get legal counsel now, since they’re town residents and friends of yours.”