Nice Weekend for a Murder (18 page)

“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.

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.”

“Thanks,” Kim said, dully.

This seemed short of what I’d expect from bubbly Kim, who, like any actress, had an ego at least as large as, well, Jayne Mansfield’s.

“You’re stunning in that gown,” I said, trying to coax some conversation. “But I thought you didn’t like tight clothes?”

“Curt likes me in them,” she said, distractedly.

“Kim, are you okay? What’s wrong?”

She smiled bravely. “Nothing.”

“Could I steal you for a dance? Curt’s tied up.”

“No—no, I don’t think so.” There was a drink before her, Scotch on the melting rocks; she sipped it, hungrily.

“How did the interrogation go this morning?” I asked her.

She looked at me sharply. “What?”

“Uh, when you played your part.”

“My... part?”

“When you played Sloth’s ex-wife.”

“Oh. That. That went fine.”

She sipped some more Scotch.

I took aim. “Curt told you, didn’t he?”

She looked at me with narrowed eyes. Said nothing.

“He told you about Rath.”

She looked into the drink.

“He told you about what Jill and I found on our mountain hike yesterday.”

She sucked air quickly in, let it slowly out. Then she said, “Yes.”

I had thought as much, from the look of her.

I put my hand on her bare arm, which felt cold. “I’m sorry you’re going through this,” I said. “It’s a burden knowing, trying to keep up a party facade.”

She nodded.

“It’ll be okay,” I said, squeezing her arm a little, in what I hoped was a reassuring manner. “The snow’s stopped. The plows will be out soon. The police will be here before long.”

“I wish he hadn’t told me,” she said.

I shrugged. “Husbands tell wives things. It’s hard to keep a secret like that from somebody you’re living with.”

She smiled tightly, meaninglessly, stood, said, “Would you excuse me?”

“Sure,” I said, and she was up and gone.

“She’s been crying,” Jill said.

“Murder could spoil anybody’s weekend,” I said. “I’m all danced out. How about you?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Isn’t there a movie pretty soon?”

I groaned. “Don’t tell me we’re going to do tonight’s movie?”

“It’s Mickey Spillane as Mike Hammer in
The Girl Hunters
.”

“Fitting of Pete to select that,” I admitted, interested in spite of myself. “An author playing a role in a mystery. Well, I can’t resist the Mick as Mike. You talked me into it.”

“I want to freshen up,” she said, standing. “Coming?”

I checked my watch; ten till eleven. The movie was at eleven-thirty.

“I haven’t had a chance to talk to Janis Flint yet,” I said. “Let me do that, and I’ll join you at the room.”

She said fine, and left, and I searched out the Flints; they were standing by an open support beam, talking with the Arnolds and the Logans—rival team players ganging up on a
couple of suspects. On cue, “Beyond the Sea” hit the turntable, and I asked Mrs. Flint for the dance. She smiled and accepted.

She looked quietly lovely in a floor-length floral gown, albeit vegetarian thin; she was a wisp of a thing in my arms, and we floated around to the Darin strains. She had on a little more makeup than usual, and I was quite taken with her eyes, a soft green with flecks of black. Jack Flint was a lucky man.

“How did your interrogation sessions go?” I asked.

“Very nicely,” she said. “Your encouragement was just the boost I needed.”

“What role were you playing exactly?”

“Sloth’s older sister Emma,” she said. “The last person known to have seen him alive.”

“Did you kill him?”

She smiled in an unaffected way that Cynthia Crystal had only heard about. “I’ll never tell,” she said.

I laughed, and we floated some more.

As I walked her slowly over toward her husband, I asked, “How bitter is Jack about Kirk Rath’s bad reviews? I heard him say the
Chronicler
’s keeping him out of the book market.”

“That’s just Jack talking,” she said with a quick dismissive shrug. “Both Mysterious Press and Walker are after him for another book. The editors are eager to get him back.”

“So why doesn’t he go back to it?”

“He will. He’s just amassing some ‘Hollywood money,’ as he calls it. When he’s built us some security, he’ll be back to writing his novels. Wait and see.”

“I’m relieved to hear that. So, then... how would you rate his bitterness toward Rath?”

“On a scale of one to ten? Seven.”

“Okay,” I said, smiling a little, and handing her over to her husband, with whom I stood and chatted briefly, before heading back to the room.

The halls were deserted, of course, everybody back partying at the dance, and I again thought of
The Shining
and wondered if that kid on his Big Wheel would finally come rounding the next corner to run me down. My feet padded on the carpet and I watched them walk, as my mind sorted through the tidbits I’d picked up tonight.