A Question of Murder (25 page)

Carboroni jumped back in mock horror. “Don’t touch me,” he said. “I’m pledged to another.”

“Don’t touch the detective,” Dolt said, walking in a circle around Ms. Carlisle and bending down to peer under her veil.

“You’re cute,” she said to Dolt. “I’d like to take you home with me as a mascot.”

He beamed at the audience. More laughter.

Carboroni referred to the notes I’d provided. “I’m here investigating a murder, Ms. Carlisle,” he said, “and I have to know who my suspects are. Sorry, but the veil has to go.”

She gasped in shock at what he’d suggested.

“Come on, Ms. Carlisle,” he said, “don’t play games with an officer of the law—which is what I happen to be.”

“If you insist,” she said.

Instead of following his order where she stood, she sauntered to the front of the stage and looked down at the audience, batting her long eyelashes and thrusting out one hip. “I have the feeling I am about to be exposed,” she said, laughing softly. Then, in one swift, unexpected motion, she whipped off her black veil and red wig and tossed them into the crowd.

“I am,” she said in a dramatic female voice, “Paul Brody.”

There were gasps, followed by loud expressions of disbelief by some, affirmation by others.

“I knew he wasn’t dead,” a man yelled as Ms. Carlisle continued to disrobe until she’d shucked her long black dress and women’s shoes and stood there in a pair of running shorts and a T-shirt.

My attention went to Harold Boynton, who looked as though he’d gone into permanent shock. He leaned forward in his seat, mouth hanging open, confusion written all over him as he stared at the “woman” who’d been his seat companion only moments earlier.

Detective Ladd came up the aisle, flanked by the two uniformed officers. He looked up at Brody, who’d assumed a dramatic pose, a broad smile on his heavily made-up face. “Arrest him,” Ladd said.

I stepped up next to the detective and said, “No, not yet.”

“This isn’t in the script,” Monroe Whittaker intoned from the stage.

Larry Savoy came from the wings and asked me, “What’s this all about, Jessica?”

“It’s about the murder of Paul Brody,” I said.

“He wasn’t murdered,” a woman in the audience said. “See? They did it to throw us off.”

I waited for the conversations to cease. “I’m afraid you’re wrong,” I said to the woman. “Paul was murdered, both in the play and in reality. This isn’t Paul Brody. This is his twin brother, Peter.”

“He looks just like Paul,” a man exclaimed.

“Identical twins usually do,” I said.

I climbed the steps to the stage and stood next to Peter, who was going through a series of poses for the audience, the smile never leaving his face. “Why did you come here?” I asked. Carboroni brought the microphone to us so the audience could hear.

“Why, to kill my brother, of course,” he responded, sounding gleeful.

Detective Ladd started up the stairs, but I shook my head and held up my hand. I said to Peter, “Why did you want to kill Paul?”

“To get even,” he said, no longer using his forced feminine voice. He was now a baritone. “He had all the breaks in life, thanks to daddy dearest, and he even stole what money was left to me. My brother was not a very nice person. I hated him.”

Behind us, Victoria Whittaker said to Melinda, “This is better than the script.”

In front of us, someone shouted, “Help!” I looked to where Harold Boynton had apparently fainted, pitching forward off his seat to the floor. Those close to him fell to their knees, and the physician who’d been on the stage joined them and took over reviving him, with Georgie Wick at his side.

“Oh, poor Harold,” Peter said. “I’m afraid the shock was too much for him. Such a dear man.”

This time, Detective Ladd and the two officers wouldn’t be put off. They mounted the stage, and Ladd confronted Peter. Carboroni held the microphone in front of him as the detective said, “You’re under arrest for the murder of Paul Brody.”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“He confessed,” Ladd said. “He said he came here to kill his brother.” To Peter: “Isn’t that right, young—man?”

I answered for him. “He said he came here with that intention, Detective, but he didn’t say he went through with his plan.”

Ladd faced Peter again. “Well, did you kill your brother?”

“I would have,” Peter said, “but someone beat me to it.”

“Who?” Ladd asked me.

I looked out over the audience and saw that John Chasseur, who’d joined his wife, had gotten up and was heading for the door. “I don’t think anyone should be allowed to leave,” I said to Ladd.

“Hey,” Ladd shouted. “Mr. Chasseur. You can’t leave.”

Chasseur stopped just short of the door. “I’ll go wherever and whenever I want,” he said.

“No sir, you will not,” Ladd replied, sounding as though he meant it. He instructed the two uniformed officers to go to the door and prohibit anyone from leaving the auditorium. Chasseur muttered under his breath as one of the officers escorted him to his seat next to Claudette.

I took the microphone from Carboroni and addressed the audience. “You’ve all had a chance to meet John Chasseur and his lovely wife, Claudette. You may know that John is a successful writer and Claudette was a Hollywood actress. What you may not have known is that they knew Paul Brody in Hollywood. He was in a film that John produced, and in which Claudette appeared.”

A wave of murmurs rolled across the auditorium. Many people pulled out their pads and began scribbling.

“So what?” Chasseur called from where he sat. “What does that prove?”

“It doesn’t prove anything on the surface,” I said, “but you both know that certain things happened in Hollywood with Paul that provide you, John, with a motive for wanting him dead.”

Chasseur stood. “That may be,” he said, “but wanting somebody dead isn’t against the law.”

“That’s true,” I said, “but battering one’s wife is.”

He looked down at Claudette and muttered an obscenity.

I returned my attention to Peter Brody. “Why did you stay?” I asked. “Once you knew that your brother was dead, why didn’t you leave?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he replied. “I thought about leaving, but the snowstorm changed my mind. Besides, I was having too much fun.” He looked to where Harold Boynton had come to and was back in his seat. Georgie Wick sat next to him in the chair that Peter Brody, aka Ms. Carlisle, had occupied. “I’m glad you’re feeling better, Harold,” Peter said. “I apologize for misleading you.”

“You stayed because you were having fun making people think you were a woman?” I said.

“Yes. Why not? After all, I make my living doing that.” He told the audience: “If you’re ever in San Francisco, you must come and see the show I’m in.” He mentioned the name of the nightclub a few times, then turned to me and asked, “Anything else, Mrs. Fletcher? Am I free to go?”

“You followed me when I explored some out-of-the-way places in the hotel, didn’t you?”

He nodded.

“Why?”

“Why not? My friend Harold told me that you would probably solve the murder of my brother, so I thought I’d see what you were up to. By the way, have you solved his murder? Not that I care very much.”

“That remains to be seen,” I said. “Mind another question?”

“Ask all you want.”

“You and your family used to come here to Mohawk House when you and Paul were little.”

“Yeah. I loved this place. We were constantly exploring to find the secret rooms and passages, playing pranks on the staff. I wished we could live here.”

“You did for a while,” I said, “as an adult. You came back here one summer to appear in summer stock at a theater, the Newsome.”

His brow furrowed. “That’s right,” he said, drawing out the words as if he had trouble remembering.

“And you did odd jobs in order to make ends meet.”

He forced a laugh. “You’ve really been digging, haven’t you?”

“I’m a good listener,” I said. “People at this hotel thought it was Paul who’d come here that summer. But when Paul was reminded of it, he said he had no memory of it. That’s because it was you, not Paul.”

He laughed again. “I’ve pretended to be Paul many times, Mrs. Fletcher. That’s one of the few advantages of being an identical twin. There aren’t many advantages, especially when your father favors one over the other. The old man always preferred Paul to me, gave him financial backing when Paul was trying to break into Hollywood. He never did that for me. I have a lot more acting talent than Paul ever did, but he got all the breaks. A lot of good it did him, huh? He’s dead and I’m very much alive.”

I noticed that members of the audience were frantically taking notes. Did they still think this was part of the play? Obviously, some did. The cast onstage stood mute, taking it all in.

“Okay, Mrs. Fletcher,” Detective Ladd said, “this has all been very interesting. But if this Mr. Brody—Paul. No, Peter—whatever—if he isn’t a murderer, who is?”

“I wouldn’t say Peter Brody isn’t a murderer,” I said.

“But I thought you said that—”

I walked to the side of the stage near where Mr. and Mrs. Pomerantz were seated. He sat stone-still, his eyes glazed, looking straight ahead.

“Mr. Pomerantz,” I said.

He slowly raised his head to look at me. His expression hadn’t changed. He had the look of someone who’d just had a devastating message delivered to him.

“Quite a shock, isn’t it, Mr. Pomerantz?” I said.

He sat in silence.

“You thought it was Paul Brody who’d strangled your wife, didn’t you?”

“I killed the wrong man,” he said so softly I almost missed it.

I turned to Peter Brody. “If Mr. Pomerantz wanted to avenge his wife’s murder, he should have focused on you. You’d spent the summer in this area pretending to be your brother, Paul.”

“He was off in Hollywood making dirty movies. He never knew I pretended to be him,” he said. A faraway look came into his eyes. “It was the only time my father ever gave me a pat on the back—when he thought I was Paul.”

“What happened with Mrs. Powell?” I asked.

He squirmed. “She caught me stealing money and said she was going to call the police.”

“So you strangled her?”

He seemed to realize all of a sudden that he was still onstage. “I didn’t say that,” he said. “You didn’t hear me say that. I want a lawyer.”

Mr. Pomerantz was now on his feet and approaching the stage, his wife close behind him. They climbed the steps and came directly to where Peter Brody stood with Detective Ladd. Carboroni, the detective in the play, continued to hold the microphone, moving it from speaker to speaker like a talk show host interviewing guests.

“All these years,” Pomerantz said, “I’ve been accused of having murdered my wife. I’ve had to live with it and turn my back on the cruel comments people made about me and Ethel”—he pointed to his new wife—“I had to turn the other cheek, excuse them for their behavior. I’ve spent the years since the murder trying to find her killer, using every cent I made to pursue justice. I finally narrowed it down to only one person—Brody, who was here that summer acting in a play and doing odd jobs. My wife told me she’d hired someone to help do some gardening and other small jobs around the house, but she never told me his name. He’d only worked at the house for two days, and just a few hours at that. And then he killed her. I’ve devoted my life to finding him, and I thought I had.”

He fixed Peter Brody in a hard stare. “But I was wrong. It was you.”

It occurred to me as I listened to his confession that he no longer spoke with the catch in his throat. Had this moment of soul-cleansing rid him of that affliction? His wife, who’d stood stoically by his side, her hand in his, said in a quiet voice, “It’s all right, Sydney. You did what you felt you had to do. Everything will be all right.”

One of the uniformed officers led Pomerantz away.

Ladd said to Peter Brody, “Looks like we got two murders solved at once. You’re under arrest, too, for the murder of Mrs. Sydney Powell.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Brody said.

“Take him away,” Ladd instructed the other officer.

Brody put up a struggle but was no match for the brawny officer and Ladd.

Up until the arrest, the audience had watched and listened in rapt attention. Now a cacophony of voices broke out, everyone eager to discuss the scene they’d witnessed. I looked at Larry Savoy, whose expression was bewildered.

“What do we do next?” he said.

I leaned over the microphone still held by Carboroni, “There’s one more murder to be solved,” I said. “The one in the play.”

I turned to Larry and the cast. “I think your audience is anxious to see if they’ve correctly solved the mystery.”

“You mean—?”

“Yes! The show must go on.”

 

 

 

 

 

As was so often the case with the Savoys’ interactive murder mystery weekends, it was virtually impossible to come up with the solution on the basis of what was presented onstage. This play was no exception. In Melinda’s convoluted script, Victoria, the mother, had had an affair with Paul’s father, the New York City cop, and had given birth to a son she put up for adoption. She shot Paul, her own son, to keep Cynthia—the daughter she and Monroe had together—from marrying the young man, and in the process committing incest. And Paul was actually an undercover cop looking to get the goods on Monroe, an embezzler, using Cynthia to get close to him and trying to keep the maid, his former lover, from exposing who he really was.

There were many moans the next day when, after each team had presented their conclusions, this plot was revealed by Larry and Melinda. The winning team was nowhere close to having figured out the murder mystery, but they put on a delightfully creative sketch that wowed the judges, including myself. An older man got the most correct answers to the questions posed by Larry, and won a free weekend at Mohawk House. But while the performances had been fun, the real murder of Paul Brody dominated most conversations. The morning ended with a round of applause for the winners and for all the participants.