Nice Weekend for a Murder (A Mallory Mystery) Read online

  I stopped at the front desk and asked if I could borrow a flashlight; the guy behind the counter was accommodating and friendly—he didn’t even ask what I wanted it for, he just handed it to me. I wondered how accommodating (and friendly) he’d be if I came back later and reported a murder. Not to mention a disappearing corpse.

  And it had disappeared, all right. The snow on the ground outside my window showed footprints, and you could see where something had been dragged away—but only for a few feet. Then the footprints resumed; only the wind was blowing the snow around and to call these footprints, in the sense that some real detective could pour plaster of Paris into them and make a moulage and trap a suspect, would be a joke. You could tell somebody had been walking in the snow, and that was all. That was the most you could say.

  And there was no sign of blood. Or theatrical makeup or ketchup either.

  I poked around with the flashlight, looking in the trees and bushes, Jill at my side. Nothing. We walked up on the bridge; stood in the gazebo; looked out at the impassive frozen lake and the mountain beyond. The night was chilly, and the wind had teeth. So did we, and they were chattering.

  We went inside.

  We went to bed.

  “Some detective,” I said.

  She was cuddling me on my side of the pushed-together twins.

  “Who says you’re a detective? You’re a writer.”

  “I’ve played at detective before. You helped me once, remember?”

  “I vaguely remember.”

  That was sarcasm: the time she’d helped me out, she had seen the aftermath of some very serious violence; I’d almost been killed, and two other men had. So she knew that none of this was anything I was taking lightly. She also knew I’d had some experience with crime, with violence, and wouldn’t be easily fooled by pranksters.

  “Want to go down to the front desk?” she asked.

  “And report what I saw?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know what I saw anymore.”

  “Could it have been staged, like Curt thinks?”

  “It did seem sort of... ‘Staged’ isn’t the word exactly. But it was like I was watching a scene in a movie, not real life.”

  “Don’t discount its reality for that reason. I was in a rather bad accident once; I wasn’t hurt badly, but the car I was in got hit by a drunk driver.”

  “Jesus. I never heard this story.”

  She was sitting up in bed, now. “Well, this guy and I were driving home late at night, and a drunk driver got hypnotized by our lights or something and kept coming right at us. He wasn’t going fast, really, and we were able to slow almost to a stop, by the time he hit us. We swerved and he crashed into the side of the car. The guy I was with broke his arm; I had a little whiplash, is all.”

  “That’s a relatively happy ending, then. But what’s your point?”

  “My point is this: I had a minute at least during which to watch that car come toward us. Knowing the accident was going to happen. Knowing I might be killed.”

  “Did you panic?”

  “No. That’s the strange part. I felt detached. The world went slow motion on me. And—as you said—it was like watching a scene in a movie.”

  “Then you think I may really have witnessed a murder.”

  “I think you may have. What do you think?”

  “I think maybe Curt’s right. Maybe it was a prank.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And maybe it wasn’t.”

  She smiled, sighed. “We better try to get some sleep. You do have a role to play tomorrow morning.”

  She was right; I was, after all, one of the prime suspects in Curt’s whodunit. I didn’t know what was going on in that mystery, either—all I knew for sure was that I wasn’t the killer.

  But neither one of us could get to sleep till I got up and shut the curtain over that damn window.

  PART TWO

  Friday

  7

  Jill was showering again. The sound of it brought me up out of a deep but turbulent sleep. Closing the curtain on that window last night hadn’t kept the images I’d viewed out of it from returning to mock me in almost delirious Dali-esque dreams—none of which were sticking with me, exactly, as I sat up and rubbed the sand out of my eyes. But the feel of them lingered, the mood, and I knew they’d been about what I’d seen from my ringside seat at the window. I did remember one specific dream fragment: crashing through the window, glass shattering but harmlessly, I leapt like a hero into the fray, yanking the ski mask off the killer’s head... and seeing the face of a stranger.

  When Jill came out, her slim dark body barely wrapped in a towel, another smaller one on her head like a turban, she looked like a cute Arab. I told her so.

  “Oh?” she said. “And you look like hell.”

  “Sweet talker.”

  “Rough night?”

  “Awful. Sick dreams. I don’t have to tell you what about.”

  She sat next to me on the bed. “Does it seem any less real today?”

  I hadn’t been up long, but, groggy or not, I was firm on this one. “No,” I said. “What I saw was convincing.”

  “What do you want to do about it?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ll think in the shower.”

  I did; the water invigorated me, first cold, then hot, and some notions started tickling the inside of my skull and I started to smile. I’d been tired last night; beaten down by agents and editors and bus rides and, just possibly, Mohonk Mystery Weekenders. Screwy dreams or not, I’d had some sleep, and this was a new day. Something would be done about what I’d witnessed.

  I started to sing.

  When I came out in my Tarzan towel, Jill was dressed—a red jacket over a white blouse with navy slacks, patriotism Kamali style—and she smiled on one side of her pretty face and said, “You’re the only person I know of who sings ‘Splish Splash, I was takin’ a bath’ in the shower.”

  “World’s number one Bobby Darin fan,” I explained without embarrassment and a little pride. “If you want something more current, go out with somebody ten years younger. Than either of us.”

  “I better not risk it,” she said, sitting at a dresser before a mirror, putting on some abstract-shape earrings. “Heavy Metal in the shower might get me electrocuted.”

  I was over at the phone, by the curtained window, dialing. “You haven’t even met this younger guy yet,” I said, “and already you’re in the shower with him. Have you no shame?”

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Front desk. Want to check up on something.”

  “Front desk,” a female said. A nice sultry alto.

  “This is Mr. Mallory in room sixty-four. I’m one of the guest authors this weekend.”

  “Yes, Mr. Mallory.” Perky for an alto.

  “I wonder if you could give me some information about the hotel?”

  “We’re always anxious to provide information about the mountain house, Mr. Mallory.”

  The staff got touchy here when you referred to Mohonk as a “hotel.”

  “When my bus arrived last night,” I said, “a man was on duty down toward the bottom of the mountain. In a sort of a little house.”

  “Yes. That’s the Gate House.”

  “I didn’t see a gate.”

  “There was one years ago. It’s still called the Gate House. We’re big on tradition at Mohonk, Mr. Mallory.”

  “Oh. Okay. Well, the bus driver checked in with him before we headed up the mountain.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that common procedure?”

  “Absolutely, Mr. Mallory. No one is allowed in unless their name is on the list.”

  “I see. You don’t get a lot of walk-in traffic at the hotel, then?”

  “None. And it’s a house.”

  “Right. How long is that guard on duty?”

  “Well, there are several shifts. But someone is there all the time.”

  “Someone’s on duty twenty-four hour
s?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Any way up to the hotel other than that road?”

  “It’s a house, sir. And no there isn’t.”

  “Any way to get to that road, bypassing the Gate House?”

  “No.”

  “Hmmm. I wonder if I could talk to the man who was on duty in the Gate House last evening.”

  “Sir, I believe he’d be sleeping, now... and I couldn’t give out his home number. You might check with someone in management.”

  “Okay. Thank you very much. You run a nice hotel here.”

  “It’s a house,” she said, but there was a smile in her voice; she knew I was needling her.

  Jill was putting on her lipstick. “What was that about?”

  I slipped on my clothes and as I did told her what the front desk alto had told me.

  “So if Rath really left,” she said, pointing at me like a teacher, “he’d probably have been seen by the guard at the Gate House.”

  “Right. And more important—if he left only to return, he’d have been seen returning. Not only seen, he’d have had to log in with the guard.”

  “You mean you’d have a specific time.”

  “Exactly.” I was smiling. Also dialing.

  “Now who are you calling?”

  “Kirk Rath,” I said.

  The cornflower-blue eyes got very large, and she sat on the edge of the bed nearby. I called the hotel (mountain house) operator and she put me through to information for Albany, New York; Rath’s home number was listed. I wasn’t sure it would be. On the other hand, somebody as adversarial by nature as Rath wouldn’t duck a fight by going through life unlisted.

  The phone rang in my ear. I pulled the curtain as I waited. The view out the window seemed even less real in the cold gray dawn; several couples in winter clothes were making their way across the little bridge. One couple paused in the gazebo, to chat, their breath smoking. I didn’t find it particularly inviting—winter not being my favorite season in any state, New York and Iowa included—but neither was it ominous.

  On the ninth ring, he answered: “This is Kirk Rath.”

  “Kirk!” I said. “This is—”

  “At the sound of the tone, leave any message you might have for me, obscene or otherwise.”

  Shit.

  At the tone I said, “Kirk, this is Mallory up at Mohonk. If you’re alive, give me a call today, as soon as possible.”

  I hung up. Scratched my head.

  “Think he’ll call back?” she said.

  “That hinges at least partly on whether or not he’s alive,” I said, sitting by her.

  “Do you think he might be home and just has the answer machine on?”

  “With answer machines, that’s always a possibility. It’s still relatively early—he could be sleeping. A little later this morning I can call the business number.”

  “Didn’t you say the Chronicler was published out of his house?”

  “Yup,” I said. “Everything but printed on the premises. But it’s a separate number, the business is, and I’ll bet his staff will be working there even if he’s not. They live right there. It’s like a big fraternity house, I understand.”

  “So you can find out from somebody whether he showed up or not.”

  “Should be able to.”

  Jill sighed. “It’s too bad Rath himself didn’t just answer and put an end to this.”

  I said, “Suppose last night he had second thoughts, and came back, to play his weekend role? And got killed—really killed—for his trouble.”

  “Who by?”

  “Jesus, Jill. I haven’t even been able to establish the poor S.O.B. is really dead. Don’t ask me to name the killer just yet, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, with a little smile.

  “But one thing I do intend to find out,” I said, standing, looking down at her, touching her nose with the tip of a forefinger, “is which of these teams of game-players has theater pros on ’em, and who among ’em brought their makeup kits along.”

  She stood and straightened the collar on my pullover shirt, the type the Beach Boys and I have been wearing for decades.

  “Feeling more like a detective now, are you?” she said.

  “Thinking like one. That long day yesterday threw me.”

  She gave me a peck of a kiss and a wry grin and said, “Put on your Miami Vice jacket and let’s go down and have breakfast.”

  “Did you have to mention Miami Vice? This is Friday and we still don’t have a TV.”

  “I asked at the desk about that,” she said, helping me into my white linen jacket. “They have a projection TV in one of the parlors.”

  “But will it fit in this room?”

  I opened the door for her and in the hall we met Jack Flint and his wife, Janis, just coming back from breakfast apparently. Jack wore a lime blazer and a pastel green shirt, and Janis another floral print dress, yellows and greens; they looked like California. I wondered if, God help me, I looked like Iowa.

  We exchanged good mornings and, with a small wicked grin, Jack said, “I hear you got stung last night.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Curt mentioned that some of the game-players staged a little skit outside your window.”

  “So it seems,” I said. “I think George Romero directed it.”

  Janis cocked her head like she hadn’t heard me right, not understanding the reference; movie buff Jill said to her, “Night of the Living Dead.”

  “Oh,” Janis said. Nice of Jill to coach the wife of a screenwriter in film lore.

  Meanwhile, Jack was laughing. “Bunch of overgrown kids. We’ll be putting on a show for them, in an hour or so.”

  He meant, of course, Curt’s mystery in which we were playing roles.

  “Yes,” Janis said, “and I’m scared to death.”

  Jill resisted telling her that that was the title of Bela Lugosi’s only color film and said instead, “Why? Are you playing one of the suspects?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so,” Janis said, with a nervous little smile. “Aren’t you?”

  “No. Mal didn’t tell them I was coming along till the last minute.”

  Janis grasped Jill’s arm, in mock panic that was only part mock. “You wouldn’t want to take over my role, would you?”

  Jill grinned and shook her head no. “I’m no mystery fan, or puzzle freak, either. I’m here for a little peace and quiet; I mean to roam these endless halls and sit in every one of the hundred and eighty-one gazebos on this property. As Elmer Fudd once said, ‘West and wewaxsation at wast.’ ”

  I put a hand on Jack’s arm and said in almost a whisper, “Did you see any of that out your window last night?”

  “Your little passion play? No. When did it go on?”

  “Just before eleven.”

  “Janis and I went up and watched Pete’s flick. I’d forgotten how good Laura was.”

  “Yeah,” I said, glumly, “well, my favorite Otto Preminger film is Skidoo.”

  Jack did a little take; he’d apparently seen Skidoo.

  “He’s kidding,” Jill said, and took me by the arm and we exchanged good-byes with the Flints and were off to breakfast.

  Where, in the big pine dining hall, we found Tom Sardini sitting at our designated table, having a cup of coffee; Cynthia Crystal and Tim Culver were over at Curt’s table, only neither Curt nor wife Kim were present. I said good morning to Cynthia and Tim, both of whom (even the normally dour Culver) grinned at me. I had the feeling I was a comical figure.

  Jill went on over to our table, but I stopped and stood behind and between Cynthia and Culver, and leaned in, a hand on the back of either of their chairs.

  “Good morning, gang,” I said. “What’s so funny?”

  “Oh, Mal,” Cynthia said, the arcs of her pale blonde hair swinging as she looked back at me, blue eyes sparkling, “I just treasure it when you behave like a gullible hick.”

  “Me, too,” I said. “Takes me back to the days
when I traveled with Spike Jones and the band.”

  Culver’s smile was gone now; he sensed my feathers were ruffled. So did Cynthia—she just didn’t care. But Culver said: “Curt told us about that practical joke. Didn’t mean to rub it in.”

  “Oh, Mal,” Cynthia said, “how could you fall for amateur theatrics like that?”

  “Why?” I said, looking at her sharply. “Did you see it too?”

  “No, no,” Cynthia said, brushing the notion away with one lovely hand. “Last evening Tim and I went walking for hours around this charming old hotel.”

  “House,” I corrected.

  “Whatever,” Cynthia said. “But I’ve done several of these weekends before—never Mohonk, but Tim and I were on an ocean cruise variation of this, for Karen and Billy Palmer, last year. We know all about the lengths these lovable loons will go to, to get in the spirit of mystery and crime and spillikins in the parlor.”

  At Mohonk, that could be a lot of spillikins, because there were a lot of parlors.

  I said, “Your room does look out on the lake, though.”

  “Yes,” Cynthia said. “And it’s a lovely view.”

  “That’s debatable,” I said.

  She pressed my arm. “You’re such a child. That’s what I love about you.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I figure immaturity is one of my more admirable qualities. That, and poor judgment.”

  Culver said, “You don’t seriously think you saw anything more than some amateur theatrics, do you?”

  “I guess not,” I said.

  Cynthia’s brittle laugh rose to the high ceiling. “If only it were true.”

  “Pardon?” I said.

  She was putting preserves on a muffin as she responded: “If only somebody had knifed that little bastard.”

  I had no answer for that, so I smiled and nodded and joined Jill.

  “So,” Tom said as I sat across from him, “somebody made a sap out of you.”

  A waiter poured coffee in my cup and I drank some. “It’s nice of Curt to tell everybody what a fool I made of myself last night.”

  Tom smiled; even his beard twinkled. “So they murdered ol’ Kirk Rath in the moonlight, huh?”

  “That’s what it looked like.”

  “I tell ya,” Tom said, “this place is like some kind of demented summer camp. I mean, they really go all out here.”