Hocus Croakus

by Mary Daheim

  “Go inside, have a drink,” Pancho urged. “In fact, I’ll go with you. I could use a drink myself.”

  He tried to steer Inga into the casino, but she refused to budge. “I want my car,” she announced, wringing her hands. “I want it now!”

  Pancho tightened his grip on Inga’s shoulder. “Don’t. You’re in no state to drive, especially on these winding roads. It’s going to rain again, and it might be mixed with some snow.”

  Inga tried to yank herself away, but Pancho’s grasp was firm. “What are you, the weatherman? I want to know what that loser is up to! I don’t trust Manny Quinn an inch!”

  Judith noticed that Bob Bearclaw had kept his back turned to the embattled pair. But when Inga kicked Pancho in the shins, forcing him to loosen his hold, Bob turned just in time to block the angry woman’s path down the stairs.

  “Now, Ms. Polson,” he said gently, “you need to take a deep breath. Smell the evergreens, listen to the wind, look up at the passing clouds. Become one with nature. You’ll feel much better.”

  Waving her fist, Inga started to speak, but stopped. To Judith’s surprise, she did exactly as Bob had suggested: a deep breath, a tilt of her head, a glance at the sky. The gaze she settled on the doorman was far from serene, however.

  “So I’ve done it,” she said sharply. “Now what?”

  Bob merely smiled.

  “Well?” Inga pressed.

  Bob turned away to assist an SUV filled with new arrivals. Inga stared at him for a moment, then stomped back up the stairs. Pancho had disappeared. Intent upon the scene between Freddy’s sister and the casino doorman, Judith hadn’t noticed Pancho leave.

  “Well?” Inga demanded as she reached the top step. “What are you looking at?”

  “Nothing,” Judith replied innocently. “I came outside for some air.”

  “I can’t say that I think much of your husband as a detective,” Inga declared, scratching at her hands. “He won’t listen to a word I say.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Joe,” Judith responded. Joe was an excellent listener, trained to hear each syllable, every nuance. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I know who killed Sally,” Inga said so loudly that the newcomers from the SUV turned to stare as they came up the steps.

  Judith maintained her innocent expression. “Who?”

  Inga narrowed her eyes at Judith. “Why should I tell you? I’ve already told your husband at least six times. He ignores me.”

  “Do you have any proof?” Judith inquired. “Joe’s a professional, he believes in hard evidence.”

  “Evidence!” Inga threw both hands up in the air. Judith noticed that they were red and raw. The woman must be a nervous wreck. “Why do you have to have evidence when the truth is plain as the nose on your face?”

  “Then tell me who killed Sally,” Judith said simply.

  Inga’s shrewd eyes studied Judith closely. “Why should I trust you? You’re not involved in the investigation.”

  “That’s not precisely true,” Judith replied. “Joe always discusses his cases with me.” Most of the time. Occasionally. The truth was in there somewhere. “As a matter of fact, we talked about the investigation shortly before I came outside.” That was definitely true. Judith felt very virtuous.

  Inga, however, shook her head. “I can’t. I don’t know you. I can’t trust you. I’m not even sure I should trust your husband. He seems to be a friend of Pancho.”

  Judith shivered as the wind picked up. “What’s wrong with Pancho?”

  “Never mind,” Inga said, starting for the entrance. “You ask too many questions.” She bustled on inside.

  Judith remained near the door. She didn’t want Inga to think she was following her. The wind in the evergreens blew harder. Judith heard the cry of a flicker in one of the nearby cedars. She looked up but couldn’t spot the bird.

  Bob Bearclaw was looking up, too. He stood very still for several seconds, then shook his head and walked on.

  Judith shivered again.

  “Bill went straight to bed,” Renie announced, meeting Judith just inside the casino. “I haven’t talked to him yet. He was out for the count. I’ll wake him around six if he isn’t up by then.”

  “Coz,” Judith said in a humble tone, “as long as you’re losing, why not take a break and brainstorm with me? I think I’m making some progress.”

  Renie looked puzzled. “With…?”

  “The homicide case,” Judith replied, now no longer humble, but irritated. “Let’s have a drink and talk.”

  Renie looked at her watch. “Okay, but I have to collect Mom from the conference at five-thirty. That gives us half an hour.”

  The cousins proceeded to the Autumn Bar, where realistic maple, cottonwood, alder, and mountain-ash leaves formed a canopy of every imaginable fall color. They sat down at a small round table set on a pedestal that looked like a real tree stump.

  “What do you remember about the magic act?” Judith asked.

  Renie looked intentionally vague. “That it was long? That I was bored? That the lights went out? That the live Salome turned into a dead salami?”

  “That’s crass,” Judith remarked.

  “It’s also true, or we wouldn’t be sitting here like a couple of dopes trying to figure out how Salome got that way.” Renie paused to give her order as a young man placed two coasters on the table. “You’re trying to sucker me into this thing, coz,” Renie went on after the waiter had left with both beverage requests. “Which means, I surmise, that you’re stuck. Joe’s not sharing.”

  “He is and he isn’t,” Judith replied as a middle-aged blonde sat down with her poodle at an adjacent table. “The problem is, Joe and the other detective, Jack Jackrabbit, are feeling frustrated. Joe wants to call in the FBI.”

  “Isn’t that the usual way since the reservation’s on federal land?”

  “I guess so.” Judith watched the blonde insist on a coaster for her poodle. The large dog wore a rhinestone-studded collar and looked as if he—or she—had been clipped recently.

  “Fou-Fou drinks only French wines,” the woman declared. “She prefers a Pinot Gris from the Loire Valley.”

  Renie turned to see what had captured Judith’s attention. Apparently, the waiter, whose back was turned to the cousins, had demurred about serving alcoholic beverages to a dog.

  “Nonsense!” the woman retorted with a snap of her fingers. “I’ve never once known Fou-Fou to overindulge! Her behavior is impeccable. And in human years, she’s over twenty-one.”

  “Does she have a driver’s license?” the waiter inquired with a straight face.

  “Of course not! She can’t pass the written exam. Now be a good lad and see that Fou-Fou is served.”

  The waiter said something that seemed to temporarily appease the woman. With a faint shake of his head, he went back to the bar.

  “She prefers a bowl, of course,” the woman called after him. “Leaded crystal.”

  “Hoo, boy,” Renie murmured, turning around to face Judith. “And you think we’re nuts because Clarence wears swimming trunks.”

  “He’s a rabbit,” Judith pointed out.

  “So?”

  Judith’s Scotch and Renie’s bourbon arrived before the cousins could launch into a discussion of the Joneses’ weird menagerie, which included a dwarf Holland lop, a stuffed ape named Oscar, and a small, cheerful doll who always accompanied any family member headed for the hospital. There was also another doll named Cleo who was said to be a rabid Oakland Raider fan and swore like a sailor. Or a Raider fan, which was much worse.

  “Let’s get focused,” Judith said with a serious expression. “Think back to the performance, and don’t make any smart cracks. Tell me what you saw.”

  “Oh, jeez,” Renie cried, “all of it?”

  “No,” Judith replied, “just from after the power failure.”

  “Okay.” Renie took a sip from her drink, then gazed up into the autumn foliage as if it were a cluster
of tea leaves she could read. “Mandolini was still blabbing about the history of illusion.”

  “Was he in the same place he’d been when we left to go to the rest room?”

  “You mean onstage? Yes, toward the front. Why?”

  “Just asking.”

  The waiter returned to the adjacent table with a glass of wine and a glass bowl, possibly not made of leaded crystal. The blonde, however, seemed content. So did Fou-Fou, who immediately began slurping up the bowl’s contents.

  “I’ll bet that’s not really wine,” Renie said.

  “You may be right. Come on,” Judith urged, “concentrate.”

  “Mandolini went offstage,” Renie resumed. “The guy with the theremin came on, downstage. Then we had snow or something and Mandolini reappeared to announce the”—Renie grimaced—“death-defying finale.”

  “Very good.” Judith nodded.

  Renie shot her cousin an acerbic look. “Okay, okay.” Renie closed her eyes and screwed up her face in an exaggerated manner. “The cabinet comes out. Or does Salome show up first? I forget.”

  “Think.”

  “Salome shows up, announced by Mandolini. Then comes the cabinet, pushed by the theremin guy and Joe’s buddy, right?”

  “That would be Pancho Green, the casino manager,” Judith said. “The ‘theremin guy,’ as you call him, is Lloyd Watts, the other creative force behind the illusions.”

  “Oh.” Renie paused to take another sip. “I thought they were part of the segment at first, but they didn’t show up again. What happened to the stagehands we saw in the first part of the performance?”

  Judith explained about how the stagehands had been called in to help during the power failure. “Then what?” she urged Renie.

  “Salome hops around and swings her cape like a matador, then she shows that the cabinet is empty,” Renie recalled. “She steps inside, Mandolini closes the doors, and then there’s a lot of suspense and drums and whatnot before he begins slashing the thing with his sabers. When he’s done, he opens the cabinet, and there’s Salome, sans cape but allegedly intact. Tumultuous applause. Curtain. I rush off to gamble. How’s that?”

  “Good,” Judith said. “That’s how I remember it, too. So when was Salome—her real name is Sally, by the way—killed?”

  Renie tapped her nails on the tabletop. “You’re talking illusion here,” she finally said. “Or impersonation. Thus, Salome—Sally—was killed while the lights were out. It’s the only way her body could have been transported to the Corvette without anybody noticing.”

  “Where do you think she was murdered?” Judith asked.

  “Where?” Renie echoed. “Backstage, I suppose. Her dressing room, maybe. Of course it was dark…”

  “Exactly.” Judith stopped as the poodle’s owner signaled to the waiter.

  “Another round, please,” the blonde called out. “For both of us.”

  “Since it was dark,” Judith continued, fighting to obliterate a mental image of Sweetums seated in a bar and wearing a dead mouse as a pendant on a diamond chain, “the killer had to work fast. Stab Sally, remove body, go from the cabaret area to the casino floor, remove the mannequin, and put Sally in the driver’s seat. So to speak.”

  Renie nodded. “How long were the lights out? Ten minutes?”

  “It could have been longer,” Judith allowed. “We couldn’t see our watches in the dark. It seems to me that we spent several minutes on the casino floor after we came out of the rest room.”

  Fou-Fou and her owner were both lapping up their second servings. Judith forced herself not to stare.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Renie asked with a conspiratorial expression.

  “That one person couldn’t have done all that?” Judith nodded. “Yes. Unfortunately, I’m afraid we’re talking about not one, but two killers. Somehow, that’s worse.”

  Renie gave a slight shake of her head. “It could be worse than that. What if there were more than two?”

  The cousins left the bar just as the blonde and her poodle were on their third round. The woman was looking bleary-eyed; the dog seemed alert and was eyeing a bowl of mixed nuts on the bar. Since Judith didn’t have to meet Joe until between six and six-thirty, she offered to accompany Renie to fetch her mother from the conference.

  The sign on the meeting room door read, “INNOVATIONS FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, Drawing on the Past to Create the Future, 4 to 5:30.” Just as Judith and Renie arrived, the double doors swung open and a happy and energized group of attendees began pouring out into the hallway.

  “Amazing,” somebody remarked. “Provocative,” another said. “The best conference yet,” enthused someone else.

  “Don’t tell me I actually missed something good,” Renie whispered to Judith as the cousins went against the flow to find Aunt Deb. “These things are usually a big bore where I have to stick pins in my palms to stay awake.”

  “I used to enjoy the library meetings I attended,” Judith said. “There were so many nice people. Of course, I really think librarians are special.”

  The crowd, which had probably numbered over a hundred people, was dispersing except for about twenty people who remained clustered near the speakers’ dais.

  “Where’s Mom?” Renie asked. “Do you suppose she left early? She might have gotten tired. Or maybe they took her out ahead of everybody else because she’s in a wheelchair.” Renie pigeonholed a short woman with long hair who was collecting brochures and other leftovers from the folding chairs. “Have you seen Mrs. Gro—” She stopped and feigned a cough. “Sorry. Ms. Jones?”

  The woman, who wore her glasses on a silver chain around her neck, smiled broadly. “I certainly have, and am I glad.” She gestured toward the dais. “She’s still here, holding court. What an amazing woman!”

  “Good grief,” Renie murmured just as the hangers on seemed to part like the Red Sea to reveal Aunt Deb in all her amiable glory. “Thank God this is a western regional conference, with hardly anybody here from town,” Renie whispered to Judith. “I don’t recognize a single person. Thus, they don’t know that my mother is a big fraud.”

  “Renie, dear,” Aunt Deb called, propelling herself away from her admirers, “are you warm enough?”

  “Thank God,” Renie also murmured, “none of them would know me as Renie anyway.”

  Aunt Deb gave a final wave to her coterie. “Such lovely people,” she said with a pleasurable sigh. “I can’t wait for tomorrow’s session. It’s about the Internet.”

  “But,” Renie objected as they moved out into the hallway, “you don’t know anything about computers.”

  “That’s so,” Aunt Deb admitted, “but I type rather well. I had to, when I was a legal secretary to Mr. Whiffel. And if I do say so myself, they liked my contribution on the panel. In fact, they were agog.”

  “Your contribution?” Renie shot Judith a quick glance as they waited for the elevator. “What was it?”

  “Stick figures,” Aunt Deb replied, wheeling herself into the elevator. “The panel was past and future, you know. They referred to something as ‘retro.’ Well, it seemed to me that nothing was more ‘retro’ than old-fashioned stick figures. No one seems to draw them anymore. The other people just loved it. They’re calling stick figures…let me see, what was it now? Oh, yes, ‘stick figures are the comfort food of graphic design.’ Isn’t that sweet?”

  Fortunately, Aunt Deb couldn’t see her daughter’s reaction, which was to run a finger across her throat in a slashing motion. Judith, however, felt compelled to say something kind.

  “I can see that,” she declared. “It seems these days people are trying to find ties to the past. Nostalgia is reassuring because it’s so safe. We lived through it and know how everything turned out.”

  Aunt Deb nodded. “That’s what I said. Stick figures take people back to their childhoods, where everything was clear and simple. As someone remarked, a stick figure can represent any race or religion or either sex. I think it’
s good that these nice folks consider stick figures the wave of the future.”

  Renie was still shaking her head when they arrived at their floor. Upon entering the old ladies’ room, they found Gertrude in front of the TV, playing keno and smoking a cigarette.

  “Back already?” she said to Deb. “Seems like you just left. Now shut up all of you and don’t break my concentration. The numbers for this game are coming up in about ten seconds.”

  Judith had to bite her tongue. But except for a couple of gentle coughs and a martyred sigh, even Deb kept quiet while Gertrude waited for the game to end.

  “Aha!” she exclaimed as the last number lighted up. “I got three out of twenty. That means I get another free game.”

  “Mother,” Judith inquired, “how many games have you played?”

  Through a gray haze of smoke, Gertrude scowled at her daughter. “How should I know? They number the blasted things, but sometimes they’re red, sometimes they’re green. Look, here comes number two hundred and six green. Next time it might be four hundred and eight red. The only numbers I care about are the ones I pick and the ones that come up. When’s supper?”

  “Whenever you want it,” Judith said, handing Gertrude the room service menu.

  “I’m practically sticks up from starvation,” Gertrude said. “I like my supper at five. Do you know what time it is?”

  “Yes, Mother.” Judith deliberately stood in front of the TV screen. “You can order whenever you like. I’m not serving you here. And I don’t want you playing keno the whole time. You’re bound to lose.”

  “It costs a dollar,” Gertrude declared. “I’ve won at least ten dollars so far and a half dozen free games. I played bingo yesterday in the parlor downstairs and won fifty bucks. Go away. I have to pick my keno numbers right now.”

  “But, Mother—” Judith began.

  “Beat it.” Gertrude waved an arm in a shooing gesture. “Don’t pull a fast one and stand there so I can’t see the TV.” She turned a hard stare on Deb. “And don’t start gabbing your head off. I don’t want to hear about all the nice people you met and how nice the food was and wasn’t it nice that you didn’t fall out of the wheelchair and break your neck. I’m busy.”