Nice Weekend for a Murder

14

I woke up rested, but aching. Yesterday had been a long day, and despite everything I had on my mind, I slept soundly. Nobody at Mohonk, save possibly Kirk Rath himself, could have had a deeper night’s sleep. I had no memory of having dreamed, so apparently my exhaustion had kept me from pursuing Rath’s killer through slumber-land. But the mountain hike in the real world had taken its toll: muscles I didn’t know I had made their acquaintance by twanging like painfully out-of-tune guitar strings whenever, wherever I moved.

Jill was again showering — it was a wonder she didn’t go all pruney, as many showers as she took — and I stumbled into the john and took an unceremonious pee. I brushed my teeth and splashed some water on my face and pretty soon Jill came out, wrapping her slim, tan, water-beaded body in a towel (a body whose attributes I noted only with clinical interest, because anything more than thought would have twanged too many painful guitar strings) and bequeathed the shower to me.

Five hot minutes later, I was refreshed, awake, still hurting, but also thinking. The Rath murder had hold of me and it wasn’t going to let me go till I did something about it.

Jill sat in her terrycloth robe, doing her makeup at the dresser, “How are you feeling today, Nick?”

“Couldn’t be better, Nora. Unless I could trade this tired old body in for a new one.”

“I like your body just fine.”

“My body isn’t interested. Not until it gets some aspirin, anyway. What’s the situation outside?”

“Still snowing.”

“You’re kidding! Hasn’t let up?”

“Well, if it did, it started back up again.”

I went to the window and rubbed a place to look out. The snow was piled up just past the sill. The white stuff was indeed still coming down, however rather lazily now — just dusting the drifts. The blizzard was over, apparently, but its aftermath would take an army of snowplows.

“It’ll be a miracle if the cops get up here today,” I said, climbing into my shorts.

Jill was stepping into some loose-fitting gray slacks. “Looks like we’re still in the detective business.”

Her remark made my enthusiasm for the real-life Curious Critic case wilt like the ardor of a bridegroom whose mother-in-law showed up at the honeymoon.

I finished dressing and went over to her. “We have to talk. Sit down for a minute.”

She did, on the edge of the bed, looking at me curiously.

I sat next to her, put my hands on her shoulders, and stared her right in those cornflower-blue eyes that had helped make me fall so hard for her.

I said, “I think maybe we should forget about the Nick and Nora bit. I think maybe we should wait for the police like everybody else, even if it does take till tomorrow.”

“Nobody’s waiting for the police except you and me and Mary Wright and Curt Clark.”

“Don’t get technical. You saw that body.”

She didn’t say anything.

“You saw that body,” I said.

She looked away.

“Look at me, Jill. Look at me!”

She looked, but her mouth was twisted up a bit.

“You saw that body,” I said. “You saw the way Rath was killed.”

She sucked in some breath; then, slowly, she let it out, nodding as she did, nodding several times.

“You get my drift? And I’m not talking about the weather.”

“I get your drift,” she said. “There’s a murderer among us.” The latter was delivered rather archly.

My hands were still on her shoulders. I squeezed. “There is a murderer among us. Somebody vicious. Rath’s body wasn’t the result of a scuffle that got out of hand or something. That was a savage goddamn murder — a bloody, psychopathic job of one, too, I’d say.”

“So we should just wait for the police,” she said, “to sort it all out.”

I took my hands off her shoulders. “Yes. In the cool clear light of day, that’s how I see it.”

“It’s not cool, it’s cold, and if there’s any clear light out there, you’ll freeze your butt off in it.”

“Agreed. But you do get my point?”

“I get your point. I get your drift.”

She rose. Walked to the door.

“It’s quarter till nine,” she said, indifferently. “They only serve breakfast till nine. Shake a leg.”

In my condition, shaking a leg was out of the question, but I did follow her, down the hall, and I do mean follow. She was walking quickly. I couldn’t keep up with her at first. Finally I caught up, grabbing her arm, gently but firmly, stopping her.

“Why are you angry?”

She pouted. “Because you’re no fun.”

“I’m no fun.”

She smirked in a one-sided, humorless fashion. “That’s not it, really. It’s that you’re... well... shit. It’s that you’re right.”

I smiled at her, just a little. “I can’t help it. I just don’t want you or me, singly or together, to do anything that will put you — or us — in any danger. Which if we keep nosing around, we will be.”

She nodded, faintly amused, overtly disappointed, hooked her arm in mine, and we walked up the stairs and down the hall to the big dining room.

Which at this hour was damn near empty.

Instead of sitting at our own table, we went to the adjacent one, where Curt and the rest of the guests usually sat. Curt wasn’t there, however — the only person left at the fairly large table was Cynthia Crystal, who sat drinking a cup of coffee, gazing into not much of anything.

“You mind if we join you?” I asked.

Cynthia’s trance broke, and she smiled in her elegant, crinkly fashion. She was dressed in designer jeans and a red MURDER INK sweatshirt, which was as casual as I’d ever seen her; but she still looked like a million dollars. Two.

“Do please join me,” she said, gesturing to a chair on either side of her.

We took our places, and a waiter came over and I asked him if we were too late for breakfast, and he said, “Not at all,” even though we were. Jill and I quickly circled our chosen items on the little green gazebo-crested menus, and passed them along to him.

“Tim’s out jogging,” Cynthia said. “He jogs every morning without fail.”

“In that?” I said, pointing, vaguely, toward the Great White Out-of-Doors.

“No, dear,” she said with a brief brittle laugh, “he’s running the halls on the upper floors. My Tim is eccentric, but no fool.”

“You know, Cynthia,” I said, carefully, “the last time I saw you, you and Tim seemed, well...”

“On the verge of the abyss, where our relationship was concerned? Ah, yes. But we’ve retreated to the sunny countryside of connubial bliss. Which is to say, now we’re planning to get married. Make it official.”

“No kidding! Congratulations.”

I offered her my hand to shake, but she shook her head and smiled in near embarrassment, as if to say, How gauche, and turned her cheek for me to kiss. Which I did.

Jill congratulated Cynthia as well, asking, “How did you manage to go from nearly splitting up, to about to tie the knot? If I’m not prying.”

“Oh you are prying,” Cynthia said, without malice, smiling rather regally, “but as a gossip myself, I don’t mind at all. Fact is, Tim... and Mal knows all about this... was rather jealous of me.”

Jill narrowed her eyes, tilted her head, not understanding.

Cynthia clarified: “Not of my ability to charm the... socks off the likes of young Mallory, here... nothing so sexy as that. Well, you tell her, Mal. My modesty prevents me.”

“Your modesty,” I said to Cynthia, “wouldn’t prevent much of anything. But in fact,” I continued, directing this to Jill, “Cynthia’s had a good deal of success in recent years. And while Tim’s always been a critical darling, his books have never sold very well. He’s bounced from publisher to publisher, never taking hold.”

Jill was nodding — our earlier conversation with Cynthia coming back — saying, “Whereas his brother Curt’s done well both in book sales and with all those movies.”

“Precisely,” Cynthia said, precisely. “So God bless Kirk Rath.”

“And Lawrence Kasdan,” Jill put in.

The waiter put my orange juice down in front of me. I sipped it, then said, “Then the combination of Tim’s movie sale and Curt’s favorable Chronicler reviews not only got Tim and his brother Curt back on speaking terms, but—”

“But helped Tim overcome his career jealousy of me, as well, yes,” she said. “Thanks to that little weasel Rath.”

Her praise for the critic surprised me, even if it was lefthanded. “I sensed Thursday night there was no love lost between Rath and Tim,” I said. “Tim seemed about an inch away from pounding Rath into jelly, for getting rude with you.”

“Tim despises Rath,” Cynthia said, lightly.

“But I saw two major articles on Tim in the Chronicler, and even an interview...”

“Yes,” Cynthia said, “but remember — Tim’s never been lacking for critical praise. That’s typical of Rath, the little dilettante, giving favorable reviews to someone who’s safely singled out already by other, more astute, critics.”

“Still,” Jill said, “why dislike somebody who praises your work, whatever the reason? It seems like plenty of people have been burned by Rath. Shouldn’t your fiancé be relieved, at least, that Rath’s never attacked him?”

“Fiancé,” Cynthia said, rolling it around. “That has a nice sound, doesn’t it?”

She was ducking the issue.

“Weren’t Rath and Tim rather close, at one time?” I asked.

“Yes we were, Mr. Mallory,” Tim Culver said.

He had come up behind us. Like his brother, whom he resembled just enough to make it spooky, he was a big, lean man; he was wearing another lumberjack plaid shirt and jeans. He was polishing his wire-rim glasses with a napkin from a nearby table and his expression was solemn and not particularly friendly.

I stood. “Please call me Mal, if you would. And I apologize for prying.”

“No problem,” he said, though it clearly was. He sat next to his fiancée, in the chair I’d warmed, and I moved to the other side of Jill.

Who rushed in where Mallory feared to tread, saying, “We were just wondering why you would dislike somebody who gave you so much favorable press. Rath, that is.”

Culver sighed; pressed his lips together. Turned inward even more, to consider whether or not to address this subject.

Then he called a waiter over and said, “Breakfast?”

“Certainly, sir,” the waiter said, and Culver put his glasses back on and quickly marked a menu and handed it along.

Then Culver looked past his fiancée and Jill, toward me, and said, “I blame myself.”

Culver intimidated me a little, so I said nothing.

Jill doesn’t intimidate worth a damn, and said, “Blame yourself for what?”

Another heavy sigh. “For being... seduced.” The latter was spoken with quiet but distinct sarcasm.

“How so?” Jill asked.

“Rath’s praise was so effusive, it took me in.”

“Was it?” Jill said, continuing to prompt him. Culver spoke in telegrams.

“I’d never had that kind of praise before.”

I finally got the nerve to get in the act. “Tim — if you don’t mind my calling you that — you’ve had nothing but praise from critics since the day you published your first novel...”

Culver shook his head slowly, twice. “Not that kind of praise.”

“Oh,” I said. “You mean, the mystery-fandom-goes-to-graduate-school sort of praise you got in the Chronicler. Highfalutin’, pretentious, toney-type praise. You and Hemingway and Faulkner and Hammett all in the same sentence.”

“Yeah,” Culver said, disgusted with himself.

“So,” Cynthia said, being cautious not to step on her lover’s reticent toes, “Tim agreed to be interviewed.”

“I never give interviews,” Culver said, sneering faintly. “I’m like Garbo: leave me the hell alone.”

“But you gave Rath an interview,” Jill said.

“Yes,” Culver said.

“Why?” Jill asked.

He pounded the table with one fist; silverware jumped. “I said why. The little bastard flattered me into it.”

Silence.

The waiter brought Jill her poached eggs and me my corned beef hash and Culver some coffee, refilling Cynthia’s cup as well.

Then Culver said, “I’d been drinking. They flattered me, and we began drinking, moved from bar to hotel room like so many seductions and then I said, ‘Sure. I’ll do an interview.’ ”

Cynthia smiled nervously. “Tim does loosen up a bit when he drinks. Christ, I wish you could smoke in here.”

Tim said, “I talked too much. I said things I shouldn’t have.”

“Such as?”

Tim drank some coffee. “I said insulting things about another writer.”

I leaned forward, squinting at him, as if that would make me see inside him better. “You’re not involved in one of Rath’s libel suits, are you...?”

“No! I wish to God I were.” He leaned an elbow on the table and covered his eyes with the thumb and third finger of his right hand.

When he took the hand away, his eyes were red and a little wet. He said, “I said awful things about C.J. Beaufort.”

“Oh,” I said. Pete Christian’s friend and mentor, the one who’d committed suicide not long ago, after several years of ridicule in the Chronicler.

“I had nothing against Beaufort or his work,” he said. “I’ve probably not read more than a short story or two of his, over the years. But we were drinking, and Rath and his crony started laughing about the ‘King of the Hacks...’ ”

Cynthia, one of whose hands rested on Culver’s nearest one, said quietly, “It grew out of a discussion of Tim’s working methods — out of the fact that Tim publishes only one book a year, a finely polished piece of work, unlike many others in the business — like your friend Sardini, say, who fairly churns them out.”

“You have to make a living,” I said, in defense of those writers. “And some, like Tom, write very well.”

“I know,” Culver said. “Perhaps I resent the likes of Sardini... and Beaufort. I had to supplement my writing career with a teaching job. They make a living from their words alone. But, hell — I had nothing against Beaufort. If I’d been given the opportunity to edit my interview, as I’d been promised, the references to Beaufort would’ve been deleted. I’d have been sober, then. Goddamn — I never even met Beaufort.” He shook his head, his mouth tight with self-disgust. “And the poor son of a bitch blew his brains out over a copy of the Chronicler. Opened to my interview.”

The only sound in the high-ceilinged hall was the clink of a dish and the wind-rattle of the windows.

I said, “You can hardly hold yourself responsible...”

Culver looked at me with eyes like glowing coals and thumped his chest with a thick forefinger. “I hold myself responsible for every thing I do, every word I speak. And I have no respect for any man who doesn’t.”

I swallowed. “That’s a pretty charitable outlook.”

Culver scowled at me, and then looked away, and raised his coffee cup to his lips and drank.

Jill, not knowing when to leave bad enough alone, said, “Why in God’s name did you agree to come here, then? If Rath was going to be here?”

Culver put the coffee cup down. “Because my brother asked me.”

Jill still didn’t get it. “If your brother knew about the bitterness between you and Rath, then why would he impose on you so?”

If I’d asked him that, he might have smacked me; but his Hammett-like code included a certain surface chivalry toward the ladies.

He said, “My brother doesn’t know how deep my bitterness runs. We’ve never discussed the subject of Rath.”

“Besides,” Cynthia said lightly, her smile forced, “what could Tim say to the invitation but yes? He and Curt had just, well, patched things up after being estranged for so long... he could hardly refuse him. And, besides, who could be mad at Curt for inviting Rath? It was the natural thing for him to do.”

“Why?” I asked. “Because Rath always praised Curt in the Chronicler?”

“That,” Cynthia said, “and, of course, they go back a very long way.”

That was news to me. I said so.

“Oh, they go back ages,” she said, as if everybody knew that. “Curt’s son Gary was Kirk’s roommate when they were college kids at NYU.”

“It’s the first I heard of it.”

Culver spoke, reluctantly. “That’s part of why I allowed Rath to sucker me. He was like one of Curt’s family.”

“Or anyway, he was back in those days,” Cynthia added. “I think it was meeting Curt that turned the young Kirk Rath on to mystery fiction in the first place.”

“And with Gary gone, now,” Culver said, “my brother feels a bond to that little bastard.” He meant Rath. “So I wasn’t about to bring up my feelings about Rath, not with Curt still so broke up.”

“About the loss of his son, you mean,” I said.

Culver nodded. Then he shrugged facially. “I guess it’s like old home week for Curt.”

“How’s that?” I asked.

Culver shrugged his shoulders. “That social director here, what’s her name? She’s the one that booked Curt in to do this Mystery Weekend.”

“Mary Wright, you mean?”

“Yeah. Mary Wright. She was thick with both of them.”

“Both of who?”

“Kirk and Gary. She went with Gary, for a while, I think, back at NYU. They were schoolmates there, the three of them.”

15

Jack Flint was giving a talk, which he’d begun at ten o’clock, on the differences between real-life private eyes and fictional ones. I would have loved to hear it, under other circumstances; but what I was there for was Mary Wright, who I found standing in the back of the Parlor, in her blue Mohonk blazer, clipboard in hand.

I had asked Jill to wait in our room; I knew she didn’t like Mary Wright, and I knew Mary Wright didn’t like her. So I figured I might get further with the Mohonk social director, alone.

“Could I have a few minutes of your time?” I asked her.

She looked at me gravely, dark brown eyes narrowing; as one of the handful who knew about the Rath murder, all I meant to her was bad news. Any inclination to flirt with me was long gone, now.

“Is something wrong?” she whispered.

“Everything’s peachy. Where can we talk privately?”

We went to her small office on the ground floor; she sat behind the desk and fussed with some artificial flowers in a vase as we spoke. A framed print of kittens playing with a ball of yarn hung on the wall nearby. I sat across from her.

“Yes, I knew Kirk Rath,” she said. “Did I ever say I didn’t?”

“No. But it does seem relevant.”

“Does it?”

“I think so. Why didn’t you mention it?”

“Why should I? Is it so surprising? Did you suppose I arranged weekends like these by placing my finger on some random name in the phone book? Of course I call upon people I know.”

“Then it was you who invited Rath here.”

“I suggested him to Curt, when I first invited Curt to do the Mystery Weekend. He was reluctant at first...”

“To invite Rath?”

She shook her head, mildly irritated. “No, to take over planning the Mystery Weekend. You see, previously we had Don Westlake, and Curt was reluctant to follow in Don’s footsteps.”

I understood that; Curt worked the same literary territory as Westlake but had always played second fiddle to him with the reviewers.

“But then he said yes,” she said, “after I told him some of my ideas.”

“One of which was to have Rath as a murder victim.”

“Well, to invite him, anyway, yes, that was my idea. You know what a wicked sense of humor Curt has, and Kirk was certainly a controversial figure. I thought it would be... fun.”

“It has been a million laughs, hasn’t it?”

She said nothing, frowning, fiddling with the artificial flowers.

“You didn’t — and don’t — seem too broken up about the death of your old friend, now do you?”

She shrugged, her mouth tightening; then she said, “We were never close. Just acquaintances. We went to school together, college I mean, ran with the same bunch.”

“Specifically, Curt’s son.”

She frowned. “Yes. Gary was a mutual friend.”

“He was your boyfriend, wasn’t he?”

“Gary?” Now she smiled, but there was sadness in it. “We were just friends.”

“Didn’t you go together?”

“Briefly. We tried to make it work. Look, Mr. Mallory, this is getting a little personal.”

“As opposed to something as detached as murder.”

She sat up; looked at me pointedly. “Kirk Rath is dead, and I’m sorry, but there can be little doubt that the mean-spirited way he treated people got him killed.”

“I hate it when a critic pans me,” I said, “but I never killed one for it. I don’t know of any instance in the history of man where a critic got killed by his unhappy subject.”

“Maybe you don’t know your history,” she said coldly, looking away from me now, playing with the flowers again.

“Or history maybe got made here,” I said.

“Is that all? I’m a busy woman.”

“Ah yes. You have a weekend to run. Answer my question, and I’ll go.”

“What question?”

“I guess I never got around to asking it. Why did you and Gary break up?”

She sighed, straining for patience, looking at me with mock-pity and genuine condescension. “Gary was gay, Mr. Mallory.”

“Oh.”

“He didn’t know it, or didn’t admit it to himself, till college. He tried to be straight. Wanted to. We were friends... we tried to make something more of it. It just didn’t work out.”

“I see.”

“Now, if you’re quite through prying into my personal life, could I ask you to leave? I believe you have a role to play in just a few minutes...”

She was right; at eleven-thirty, to be exact. This was Saturday morning, which marked the second and final interrogation of suspects in The Case of the Curious Critic, just half an hour from now. I excused myself, and she wasn’t sorry to see me go. I went to the room, reported Mary Wright’s revelations to Jill, who said nothing, just mulled them over as she helped me get ready, as once again I nerded myself up to be Lester Denton — pencil mustache, Brylcreem, window-glass glasses, black-and-red-and-white-plaid corduroy suit and all.

But my heart was not in it, as I again sat in the little open parlor, with the cold frosted windows to my back and a roaring fireplace to my left, and a new batch of eager Mystery Weekenders all around, all but grilling me over that open fire.

The teams had divided their memberships up differently, so that no player would interrogate the same suspect twice — with one notable exception: Rick Fahy was again in the audience, in a front-row seat, in fact. Today he wore a green sweater and blue jeans, but his expression remained pained, and the gray eyes behind the thick glasses were still red-veined and dark-circled. He looked like hell.

Only today he didn’t ask a single question; his Hamilton Burger routine at yesterday’s interrogation — and the one conducted in earnest in last night’s encounter in the hall, for that matter — was conspicuously absent. He just sat staring at me with haunted eyes, unnerving me.

Jill was in the audience too, in the back, leaning against a support beam, getting her first look at Lester Denton in action.

Taking Jenny and Frank Logan’s places in the Overenthusiastic Yuppie Division were the fabled Arnolds, Millie and Carl. Millie — a slim little bubbly redheaded woman with attractive, angular features — was the interrogator, while her dark, mustached husband — a small man behind whose mild demeanor lurked a black belt in karate — sat taking the notes. They both wore ski sweaters and jeans, and sat forward, hanging on Lester’s every word.

“Are you aware that Sloth had published a vicious review of his own grandmother’s first mystery novel?” Millie said, her words rushing out. All of Millie’s words came rushing out.

“No,” I said. I was aware, however, that the grandmother role was being played by Cynthia Crystal.

“And that upon reading the review,” Millie continued, “she had a heart attack?”

“No,” I said. None of this was on my Suspect sheet; they were wasting their time going down this alley. But what the hell, it was their time.

Another player — a heavyset woman of about forty, dressed all in dark blue — gestured with her pen and said, “Sloth’s grandmother was seen going to his room shortly before you did. Did you see her?”

“No,” I said, meekly. “But I’m most relieved to hear the dear lady made a full recovery.”

“Then you weren’t aware,” Millie said, “that Sloth hired a thief to break into his grandmother’s house, to see if she’d changed her will, in the aftermath of that review?”

“No,” I said. All I knew of this aspect of Curt’s mystery was that Tim Culver was playing the thief.

Carl Arnold spoke; his deadpan expression barely cracked as he said, “Did Sloth say anything about his grandmother when you saw him?”

“No,” I said.

“He said nothing about a bribe?” Millie pressed.

“Well...”

“Did he say anything about a bribe? Specifically, that he told his grandmother he’d review her next book favorably, if she put him back in the will?”

“I knew nothing of that,” I said.

Another of the players, another Yuppie male in a white cardigan and pale blue shirt, picked up on my reaction to the word bribe and said, “You have a wealthy background, don’t you, Mr. Denton?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say ‘wealthy’...”

“What would you say?”

“Mother is well-fixed.”

“Did you offer money to Sloth that night?”

“Well, uh...”

“Did you, Mr. Denton?”

Whereupon I broke down and confessed having attempted to bribe Roark K. Sloth; I further confessed to his having laughed off my “pathetic” attempt to do so.

Millie Arnold’s eyes were glittering; she smelled blood, and it put a great big smile right under her nose. “Did Sloth threaten you with a tape recording?”

“Y-yes,” Lester and I said. “He had recorded our entire conversation on a pocket machine.”

Soon the interrogation was over; I’d done an all right job — not as good as the first time around, but the first time around I had only a probable prank on my mind, not a real live murder. Still, a number of the interrogators hung around to compliment me and chat and laugh a little. They were having a great time, the players were; this was the best Mystery Weekend yet, several veterans said.

Among the lingerers were the Arnolds. Millie approached me and asked if she could give Lester a kiss; I said sure and she bussed Lester’s cheek.

“You were great,” she said, slapping me on the shoulder. I wasn’t great. She was just enthusiastic.

Jill wandered up and I made introductions all around.

“You seemed pleased to get that piece of business about the tape,” I said to Millie and Carl, making polite conversation.

“Oh, yes — that helps us confirm a suspicion. Sloth tape-recorded everybody — Tom Sardini’s private-eye character has admitted to helping Sloth go so far as to wiretap.”

“Also,” Carl added, “Jack Flint’s character admitted to being threatened with a blackmail tape... but no tapes were found in Sloth’s room.”

“I see,” I said, not really giving a damn.

“Could I ask you a question?” Millie said, which was a question itself, actually.

“Sure,” I said.

“Did you send Jenny Logan around to check up on us? We figured she was trying to find out if we pulled that stunt outside your window. Because we brought our theatrical gear along and all.”

“Actually, I did ask her to check around.”

“Then you weren’t in on it?” Carl said.

“In on what?”

“The stunt,” Millie said. “We figured it was a part of the Mystery Weekend — something Curt Clark cooked up. Most of the teams are working it into their solutions.”

“Then they’re going down the wrong road,” I said. “The mystery is strictly limited to the information you gather from the interrogation sessions — nothing else before or after counts.”

“Then why,” Millie said, her constant smile momentarily disappearing into puzzlement, “would Rath have gone along with it?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Why would he have taken part in that stunt?”

I exchanged glances with the unusually silent Jill. She shrugged and smirked — you’re on your own, brother.

So I said to the Arnolds, “Uh, who says he did?” I didn’t know what else to say, short of expressing the view that the “stunt” hadn’t been a stunt at all, but a real murder in which Rath (one would suppose) took only a reluctant part. Which I couldn’t hope to prove without mentioning that I’d stumbled upon Rath’s body in a condition consistent with the way he died in said “stunt.”

“Oh, it was him, all right,” Millie said.

Jill, interest piqued, cut in. “Why are you so sure?”

“Well,” Carl said, ever deadpan, “I guess it’s possible it was somebody else. Somebody playing Rath.”

Millie said, “But Carl’s right — Rath was around.”

“What?” Jill and I said.

Carl said, “Rath only pretended to leave.”

“Why do you say that?” I said, just me, though Jill no doubt was thinking it.

Millie lectured Carl, waggling a forefinger. “You don’t know for a fact he pretended to leave... He could’ve left and come back.”

“Same difference,” Carl shrugged.

“But who was he helping, by playing along?” Millie asked her husband. “Somebody on one of the teams?”

“What the hell are you two talking about?”

They looked at me, shocked to have heard such force coming from me, who after all was still wearing the Lester Denton facade. A little dab’ll do ya.

“It’s just that we saw him Thursday night,” Millie said, shrugging elaborately, eyes wide, palms up.

“After he got mad and supposedly left,” Carl added.

Jill asked, “When was this?”

“We were out walking in the snow,” Millie said. “We were on that little gazebo bridge by the lake.”

“What did you see?” I said, grasping Millie’s arm.

She pulled back, wincing, not understanding my urgency. “Hey, take it easy! We didn’t see anything, much — just Kirk Rath.”

“Yeah,” Carl said, thumbing through his notebook, “I jotted some notes. Wasn’t sure it might not have something to do with the Mystery Weekend. We saw him out walking, along by the bushes near the lake, all by himself. It was about eleven fifteen...”

But that was after I’d seen Rath killed!

I was mentally reeling, so it was Jill who asked, “Are you sure of this?”

“Sure,” Carl deadpanned. “It seemed odd to me, that’s all.”

Now I had presence of mind to speak again: “What did?”

“The front of his jacket was all slashed, ripped up. But he was fine.”

16

That evening, at seven o’clock, the high-ceilinged pine dining hall transformed itself into a dimly lit night spot, where Frank Sinatra and big band music held sway. The snowstorm had prevented the arrival of the New York City — based dance band who’d been booked, but Mary Wright had put together a sound system and found a nice stack of smooth forties and fifties pop sides to create a nicely nostalgic aura; whether you were into Christie or Chandler, it didn’t matter — all mystery fans like to slide into the past.

Mary Wright herself was playing DJ, in a pretty pink satin gown rather than a Mohonk blazer for a change, and I — looking pretty natty myself in my cream sports jacket and skinny blue tie and navy slacks — went up to her and asked if she had any Bobby Darin.

“I think I can round up ‘Beyond the Sea,’ ” she said.

“Thanks. It’s not a ‘Queen of the Hop’ crowd, anyway.”

She smiled at that and it was a pretty, pretty nice smile; I wished things hadn’t gotten tense between us. But what the hell, it kept Jill from pinching me.

I went back to our regular table, where a few of us — myself and Jill included — were finishing up dinner (as this was a dinner dance, after all). Sardini and I were having a Vienna nut torte (not the same one) and Jill was putting away some pumpkin pie. Jack Flint and his wife sat across from us, and Jack was having a drink. Quaker roots or not, the Mohonk dining room did serve drinks with the evening meal, if you insisted on it.

I hadn’t. I wanted my brain nice and clear. While the day had been uneventful since my talks with Mary Wright and the Arnolds, I was still trying to make sense of what I’d learned. After the noon buffet, and before the afternoon panel on which Flint and Sardini and I discussed the recent comeback of the private-eye story, Jill and I had tried to put some of the pieces together — and hadn’t gotten anywhere much.

Fact Number One: Kirk Rath had been seen by the Arnolds after I supposedly saw him killed.

How was that even possible? Were the Arnolds confused about the time, or maybe just confused in general? Or did they see somebody else who merely resembled Rath — but if so, how do you explain the shredded jacket?

Fact Number Two: Kirk Rath and Mary Wright and Curt’s son Gary were college chums.

What did that mean? Nothing much that we could see, other than that Mary entered the circle of suspects by virtue of having previously known Rath.

Fact Number Three: Gary Culver (Culver being Curt Clark’s real last name, as you may recall) had been homosexual.

Did that mean anything? If Kirk Rath was Gary’s college roommate, did that make Rath homosexual as well? And if so, so what?

The latter subject Jill and I had disagreed on hotly, in an afternoon brainstorming session in our room. I insisted that the notion that Rath might have been gay was nonsense. In college, as a rule, you’re assigned roommates in dorms, particularly in the first year. So, the odds were (poor choice of words, admittedly) Gary and Kirk had become roommates by chance. Just because Gary had been gay, that hardly meant it figured Kirk was, too.

“Besides,” I told her, “Rath was too conservative. Politically, he was a reactionary — he’s taken stands on issues that make the Moral Majority look like the American Civil Liberties Union.”

“A perfect reason to stay in the closet,” Jill had said.

“He just wasn’t the type.”

“You mean, he wasn’t particularly effeminate? Grow up, Mal. Don’t expect every gay male to be a drag queen.”

“Give me a break, will you? I’ve seen him at various mystery conventions and such, and he’s always in the presence of a stunning girl.”

“Girl or woman?”

“I’d call them ‘girls’ — late teens, early twenties.”

“Have you ever seen him with the same girl twice?”

I thought about that.

“No,” I said. “It’s always been a different one, but then I’ve only seen him at three or four conventions.”

“Real babes?” she asked, archly.

“Yeah — real babes.”

“Prostitutes, perhaps?”

“Oh, Jill, don’t be ridiculous—”

“A call girl makes a nice escort for a gay man who’s pretending to be straight.”

I gave her a take-my-word-for-it look. “Look, I’ve heard rumors that he was a real stud, okay?”

“Rumors fueled by his being seen with knockout women. I think Rath was trying a little too hard to seem heterosexual.”

“Ah, I just don’t buy it.”

“Mal, he was a guy in his late twenties living in a houseful of men, right?”

“That’s his place of business — they all work with him.”

“I got a news flash for you, kiddo — at most businesses, you don’t sleep in.”

“I just don’t buy it.”

“Notice that you no longer can find any reasonable counterarguments. Notice that you begin to sound like a broken record.”

“Notice that you are getting obnoxious.”

“Okay, okay,” she said, patting the air. “Just think about it... Rath was a guy who liked to smear people. He was politically conservative, a regular self-styled William F. Buckley of the mystery world. If — and I say only if — he were gay, wouldn’t he be likely to hide it?”

“Jill—”

“If. Hypothetical time.”

“If he were gay, yeah, I guess he might try to hide it.”

“Somebody as hated as Rath, somebody as into smearing people as Rath, somebody who was very likely just as insecure as he was egotistical, sure as hell might have tried to keep his off-center sexual preference under wraps.”

“I just can’t buy it.”

“Change the needle. When you called his business, which is to say his home, where he and all the boys bunked, where did they say he was going on vacation?”

“Well... after Mohonk, he was going into the city. New York.”

“And didn’t they say he couldn’t be reached — that even his staff couldn’t reach him?”

“Yes. But I don’t see...”

With elaborate theatricality, she said, “Why would the editor and publisher of the Chronicler, a magazine so intrinsically tied to the personal vision of selfsame editor and publisher, not tell even his own staff where he could be reached? Does that sound like reasonable business behavior to you?”

“Sometimes executives do like to get away, Jill. Sometimes they need to be able to get away from the pressure, and the phones. That’s not so uncommon.”

“Yeah, and maybe he went into New York from time to time, for a little taste of forbidden fruit.”

“Bad, Jill. Very bad.”

“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.

17

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.

So Jack Flint’s bitterness toward Rath was a seven on a scale of one to ten. That hardly seemed a murder motive; particularly when you considered that Jack Flint was making a small fortune in TV and movie writing.

And Curt had told his wife about Rath’s murder. That didn’t surprise me much — as I’d said to Kim, most husbands in his situation would have shared that awful secret. It’s not the kind of thing you can keep to yourself; if you swallowed it, it’d just burn a hole in your stomach.

As for Pete Christian and Tim Culver, there seemed to be no enmity there, despite Tim’s inadvertent role in C.J. Beaufort’s suicide. That didn’t make either of them less a suspect though, did it? If anything, it opened up a new possibility: a team effort to wipe out Rath.

I’d also learned that the only person who called Cynthia Crystal “Cindy” was her Aunt Cynthia. The question was, where was Cynthia’s aunt when Rath was killed?

Screw it, I thought, and a hand settled on my shoulder and jerked me around.

A red-faced Rick Fahy was standing there; he was in evening clothes — I’d spotted him at the dance, earlier — and apparently he’d followed me.

“What do you want?” I said irritably, picking his hand off my shoulder like a scab.

“This,” he said and smacked me.

I took it on the side of the jaw, and it didn’t feel good, swinging my face to one side, but one thing about my jaw is, it ain’t glass, nor am I slow to react, and I threw one back at him.

And he deflected it with a karate-style swipe of a hand; I sensed I was in deep shit. Where was Carl Arnold when you needed him?

Fahy grabbed me by the lapels of my sports coat and flung me against the nearest wall; I slid down and just sat. It was humbling being tossed around by somebody smaller than me.

Nonetheless, I got up and charged him, and he stepped aside and sent me crashing into another wall, like an outfoxed bull. But I braced with my hands, didn’t hit my head, and managed to turn and give him a sharp elbow in his side.

That hurt him, and he stumbled back, and I sent a good right hand into his face and bloodied his nose some.

He did not go down, though, tough little bastard; and when I threw my left, he deflected it again, karate style, speaking of which, his next blow was a sideways chop to my stomach, which doubled me over, and all the wind in me went south as first my knees, then my head, hit the floor.

He climbed on the back of me, like I was a bronc, forcing me flat on my stomach. I wondered, idly, why we were fighting. Only we weren’t fighting anymore, were we? I had lost.

He grabbed a fistful of my hair and yanked back, till I thought my Adam’s apple would punch through my throat.

“You’re going to tell me what you know,” he said.

Then he let go of my hair and my head flopped forward and hit the carpeted floor. Ouch.

I said, “Any particular subject?” It was hard to get it out; my wind was barely back.

“Kirk Rath,” he said.

“He’s dead.”

There was silence.

I felt him climb off my back. I rolled on my side. Fahy was stumbling; it was like I’d gotten in that telling lick that when we were fighting I never managed to. He braced himself against the wall, like a drunk.

I got on my feet somehow.

“Are you okay?” I asked him. I shouldn’t have cared, but I could tell already he was in worse shape than me.

He swallowed, thickly. “Tell me what you know,” he said. It wasn’t a demand, this time. In fact, he added, rather pathetically I thought, “Please.”

So I told him. I stood next to him in the hall while he leaned against the wall and I told him everything, from what I’d seen outside my window, to finding the body, to such strange items as the Arnolds claiming to have seen Rath after he’d seemed to have been killed.

About halfway through, he began crying.

Quietly. Tears just rolling down a face that seemed impassive if you didn’t notice the quivering.

A while after that he sat on the floor. Crying. Still crying. Listening to my story. By this time I was sitting next to him.

“You were his lover, weren’t you?” I asked.

Fahy nodded.

“Did he tell you he was going to storm out Thursday night like he did?”

“N-no. I was as surprised as anybody. He told me we’d be seeing plenty of each other this weekend.” He sighed, raggedly. “Carefully, of course.”

I chewed on that for a minute.

Then I said, “Remember that little lounge area, where I played Lester Denton?”

He looked at me, narrowed his eyes, shook his head yes.

“Meet me there at eleven-thirty.”

“W-why?”

“I’m going to round some people up,” I said. “We may be able to sort this thing out before the police get here.”

He nodded again; I helped him up. Me, the guy he’d just beat the ever-living crap out of, helping him up. The poor bastard.

I knocked on the door of our room and Jill answered it, her eyes going very round and very wide.

“What the hell happened to you?”

“I think I just figured out who killed Kirk Rath,” I said, licking some blood out of the corner of my mouth. “Though I hope to hell I’m wrong.”

18

It was nearly midnight by the time everybody showed up. There was some grumbling, but everybody made it: I’d enlisted Tom and Jill, and we tracked everybody down just as the dance was starting to dwindle. Pete, who’d had to impose on a friend to change reels for him on the film currently showing in the Parlor, was the last to arrive; he’d somehow found time to change into a sweater. The rest, still in their evening clothes, mostly sat on the plush furniture, some of them squirming, others just going with the flow, chatting, basking in the soft yellow light; the shadows of the flames from the fireplace flickering over them. The exceptions were Mary Wright, who leaned against a pillar in the background, brooding, and Cynthia Crystal, who sat on a bench at the nearby baby grand, noodling various Cole Porter tunes. Tim Culver, a drink in hand, stood nearby, leaning against the piano.

We’d have the small sitting room to ourselves — the Mystery Weekenders were either at Pete’s movie in the Parlor or holed up in their rooms preparing their presentations. An occasional gamester might wander by, but this party would be a private one. No one would even think to crash it.

Two of my invited guests were roaming, a bit. Pete Christian, chain-smoking, was pacing as usual, sitting only occasionally; and Curt Clark stood by the fireplace, encouraging the fire with an iron poker, at one point tossing a log on. His wife Kim sat nearby in a big thronelike chair with her hands folded in her lap, looking in her tight low-cut gown like an overdeveloped and emotionally battered teenage girl.

The only one irritated, however, was Jack Flint, leaning forward in his seat like an angry bear, his wife putting a slight but restraining hand on his arm. “What’s this about?” he growled. “I wanted to see that movie. I never got a chance to see it before.”

“I’ll send you a videocassette,” I told him flatly, giving him a look that said I wasn’t kidding around here. That seemed to momentarily calm him. I was standing; I’d prepared the seating before the others arrived to create a sort of semicircle — although Cynthia had chosen to sit outside of it, at the piano — with me near the fireplace. Curt was now sitting, on the arm of Kim’s chair, near the fireplace, which he continued to now and then prod with the wrought-iron poker, reaching in his long-limbed way from where he sat.

Curt and Kim were at my left; Jill was sitting at my right, and next to her was a putty-faced Rick Fahy — the life seemed drained out of him. The warmth of the fireplace was to my back.

“I asked you all here,” I said, “so that we might be able to prepare ourselves for the police, who should be arriving within the hour.”

“The police?” Flint said, and his stunned look was a typical reaction; questions came from everybody all at once, words tumbling on top of each other, but I made a stop motion with my hands, pushing back the air.

“This will take a while,” I said, “but I intend to explain everything that I know — and then to share some speculations with you. Frankly, I intend to share these speculations in the hope that I’m wrong. I want to confront the person I suspect before I share any suspicions with the police; and I want to share those suspicions with all of you, in case some of you might have something pertinent to add. And, to be quite honest with you, I would like to put everything I know, and everything I suspect, out in the open now — before the police arrive — in the hopes that we might arrive at some conclusion among ourselves... since, like you, I will soon be a suspect in a murder investigation.”

The place went up for grabs, of course, but I quieted them down, by gesturing and waving as if they were a rebellious choral group I was directing.

“Please don’t ask any questions,” I said, forcing my voice above their collective one. “I think I can anticipate most of your questions, and after I’ve put the basic facts before you, you can grill me all you want.”

Curt Clark said, “Let Mal speak. He’s been wanting to report a murder all weekend.”

“Thank you, Curt,” I said. “And he’s right. All of you know about the ‘prank’ I witnessed outside my window Thursday night. What only a few of you know — specifically, Curt, Kim, Mary Wright, Jill Forrest and I — is that Kirk Rath really was murdered.”

They kept it down this time, but they were whispering among themselves, heads were shaking, is that guy crazy or what?, but all eyes were on yours truly. I had the floor; I hadn’t had so much attention since I played Lester Denton this morning in this same little parlor.

I told them about the mountain hike and how Jill and I had found Rath’s body; also that the police chief had asked the few of us who knew about the murder to keep mum for the time being — a directive I now felt compelled to ignore.

“So the prank wasn’t a prank,” Tom Sardini said, matter-of-factly. He wasn’t a guy who fazed easily. “Rath was killed outside your window, and somebody hauled his body in Rath’s own car up to Sky Top and dumped it.”

“That’s how it looks,” I said. “But why do that? The body was bound to be found there before very long; if it hadn’t started snowing yesterday, there’d have been other hikers out besides Jill and me, and the body would’ve been found even sooner. That’s a standard hike to take when you’re visiting Mohonk.”

Jack Flint, his irritation gone, was somber as he said, “You don’t hide a body out in the open like that — not with all these woods around.”

“Exactly my point,” I said. “Somebody wanted that body found while we were all still here.”

“Why?” Flint asked.

“To get the inevitable investigation over with,” I said. “We were all invited here because we had real-life motives to kill Kirk Rath. Oh, some of us aren’t really very convincing suspects, I’ll grant you. As I pointed out to somebody earlier tonight, you generally don’t kill somebody over a bad review. But Kirk Rath was no ordinary reviewer. He caused a lot of misery — Pete blames him for a death and so does Tim Culver. Most of us have suffered career setbacks because of Rath. Face it... we’re suspects. That’s why we were invited here.”

Curt stood and said, “But I invited you here, Mal. I invited all of you here.”

“I know. But then, unless I’m very mistaken — and God knows I hope I am, Curt — you killed Kirk Rath.”

Curt’s smile was faint; the shadows of flames from the nearby fireplace reflected off his glasses and made him look just a little crazy. Which is exactly what he was.

But he was also smart and shrewd, and he said, “Don’t be silly. I couldn’t have killed Rath. You and I spoke on the telephone, just moments before you saw him killed.” He pointed at me like Humphrey Bogart pointing at Mary Astor. “And you yourself said the killer was a stocky man; in case you haven’t noticed, I’m about six-three in my bare feet.”

“For the record, I didn’t say Rath’s supposed assailant was a man; I said ‘person.’ It could’ve been a woman.”

Cynthia had long since stopped noodling at the piano; she was quite serious as she asked, “Why do you say ‘supposed assailant’? Haven’t you been saying all along that what you saw outside your window was a real killing?”

I laughed a little. “I sure have. Because Curt was right, from the very beginning — what I saw was a prank. A ‘Grand Guignol farce,’ as he put it, staged for my benefit.”

Now people were shaking their heads and shifting in their seats and climbing all over each’s attempt to tell me how ridiculous I was.

“Wait,” I said, holding up my hand, palm out, stop. “Just wait.”

They quieted, somewhat reluctantly.

I said, “Curt wrote, produced, and directed that skit; but he didn’t appear in it. He had an accomplice for that. But consider this — he and Mary Wright have been making all the arrangements for the weekend—”

From the back of the room, Mary Wright said, “I had nothing to do with this — leave me out of this!”

I ignored her, pressed on: “The point is, Curt knew well in advance which room was mine. In fact, Thursday evening, he dropped by and looked it over... walked to the window and glanced out, like a producer checking out the theater the afternoon before the night the curtain goes up on his new show. Oh, and he was ready for that curtain to go up. Before I checked in, he’d been in that room — for one thing, he dragged my phone from the nightstand over to a table by the window. Having the phone by the window allowed him to call me later, supposedly about a scheduling crisis caused by Rath’s leaving, but in reality merely making sure I was right there at the window to witness the show he was staging. He even directed my attention where it was supposed to be, by asking me to look out my window to see if it was snowing yet. Also, he’d jammed my window shut, beforehand — superglue, nails, what have you. Somehow he made sure that window wouldn’t open, to keep me from getting into the act.”

Curt said, “I wish you’d refrain from referring to me in the third person. And, if I might add, this is the most harebrained plot you’ve ever come up with. Just who was playing the role of Kirk Rath in this supposed charade of mine?”

“It was typecasting,” I said. “Rath was playing himself.”

I expected a chorus of what’s from my audience, but they had settled down, now. They had decided I was worth listening to. I hadn’t convinced anybody yet, but they were willing to listen.

“When I found Rath’s body on those rocks, two things struck me — first, his face was passive, not contorted, as it had been when I’d seen him slashed outside my window. This, on reflection, suggests to me that Rath’s face might have been slashed after he was dead, as part of an effort to keep his corpse consistent with what I’d witnessed. Second, when I checked his pockets I found his envelope of instructions, like the one I’d been sent by Curt for my role in the mystery weekend. But if you’ll recall, we all received two things: a list of our fellow suspects in Roark Sloth’s murder; and, for our eyes only, a description of our own role in the weekend’s festivities. In Rath’s envelope, however, I found only the list of suspects. Not the instructions for his own part. Why? I think it’s because the murderer — which is to say, you, Curt — destroyed that sheet.”

Pretending amusement, Curt said, “And why would I do that?”

“Because it would reveal that Kirk Rath was only playing the game you outlined for him to play.”

He laughed at that, glancing at Kim, shaking his head; she wasn’t laughing.

“You instructed Kirk Rath to throw that tantrum and leave,” I said to him. “You told him that that was part of his role this weekend — to storm out, pretend to leave... but then appear near my window later and, with someone’s help, playact a murder.”

“That’s preposterous.”

“The Mohonk Mystery Weekend thrives on the preposterous. The scenario I’ve just suggested is very much in keeping with the activities here. My guess is that Rath thought he was supposed to make a surprise reappearance the next morning, perhaps after the suspect interrogation; he probably planned to sneak back in, to a room you arranged, later Thursday night, possibly wearing a ski mask to keep from being recognized — or he could have stayed in a motel in New Paltz. That detail I’m not sure of. But I feel very sure that Rath — like so many of the game-players here this weekend — thought the prank was a part of the mystery. Hell, the Arnolds and the Logans have as much as hit me over the head with that... that it had to be part of the Mystery Weekend, in which case it could only be the work of one person: Curt Clark.”

Curt’s smile seemed nervous now; twitching, just a little. “How,” he asked, rather archly, “did all of this lead Kirk Rath to Sky Top and his grisly fate?”

“You asked him to meet you there. He was like the rest of us — he’d received his instructions by mail and needed some on-the-spot final instruction, final coaching. You told him to drive up to Sky Top after the ‘stunt,’ where you could speak privately, without giving away the joke you and he’d pulled on the Mystery Weekenders. And, in return for his cooperation, you killed him.”

Curt was smiling, shaking his head.

“He trusted you — you’d been friends for years. Some friend. You slashed him, you stabbed him; it was very brutal. You hated him. Enough to kill him that savage way, enough to plot it like one of your mystery stories — intricately, cleverly.”

He ignored that, saying, “How did you come up with this theory? You have no proof whatsoever; it’s the purest of speculation, based on almost nothing.”

“Not really. One of the couples here — the Arnolds, I mentioned them before — said they saw Kirk Rath skulking around out in the snow, after what I’d seen out my window. That’s what got me thinking about the possibility of the so-called prank being a for-real prank.”

He wasn’t smiling now; his expression was blank, though he held his head back, rather patricianly, I thought.

“Also,” I said, gesturing over to the expressionless Fahy, “this gentleman was a good friend of Rath’s. His name is Rick Fahy, as some of you know, and he writes for The Mystery Chronicler. He is here at Mohonk as a game-player, as a matter of fact — to write about the Mystery Weekend from the perspective of a participant. Kirk Rath told Mr. Fahy, here, that they’d be spending a good deal of time together this weekend. I take this to mean Rath intended to stay around.”

“That doesn’t mean he didn’t storm out on impulse,” Tim Culver said. He was still standing over by Cynthia, but he was challenging me with hard eyes that crossed the distance easily. I was putting his brother on trial, after all.

I said, “Mr. Fahy insists that he would have at least had a phone call from Rath, in the aftermath of that; and he didn’t.”

Pete, who was smoking and pacing along the right wall, stopped to ask: “Why didn’t Rath tell his friend Fahy about the prank, if that’s what it was? That he’d be pretending to leave and all?”

“Rath and Mr. Fahy were very close,” I said. “So close that I believe Rath would have told his friend all about it — under any circumstances but one: Rath had assigned Mr. Fahy to a story for the Chronicler — and the dictates of that story were that Mr. Fahy play the game like everybody else. Rath would’ve been breaking the rules — and spoiling the story for his magazine — if he shared his role-playing secrets with Mr. Fahy.”

“It wasn’t even my idea to invite Kirk Rath,” Curt said, openly defensive now.

“No,” I admitted. “It was Mary Wright’s. And she told me she had great difficulty talking you into coming to Mohonk to stage the mystery... that is, until she mentioned her idea about inviting Kirk Rath. And that’s when you said yes to Mary Wright. Because that’s when your mystery-writer mind started whirring. Only a mystery writer could commit a murder like this. Only Curt Clark could commit a murder so convoluted, so nasty, so... cute.”

“I’d take that as a compliment,” Curt said, “had I really done all this.”

“Then convince me that you didn’t,” I said, meaning it. “I don’t want you to be guilty. You’re my friend. You gave me my first career break. I learned half of what I know about writing from you. I look up to you. Goddammit, Curt — tell me I’m wrong. Convince me I’m wrong.”

Curt studied me and something human flickered in his eyes, behind the glass, or maybe it was just the shadows of the flames.

But all he could find to say was, “It’s your show. Try to make it play. See if you can.”

“Damn you, anyway. You know me too well. You knew how I’d react. That I’d buy what I saw out that window as real, and then you were right there, weren’t you, telling me it was a prank. But you knew me better than that — you knew I’d ask around. That I’d have to look into this.”

“Why would any ‘murderer’ invite that?”

“It was partly arrogance. But it was mostly a very clever way of clouding what really happened. You made me your alibi... and what an alibi! Through me, you’d sell the cops that the murder had been committed Thursday night, outside my window. From my description of the killer, and because we’d just been talking on the phone, you’d be clear. No one would be asking questions about what you were doing an hour after I saw the ‘murder’ — when you were really killing Rath, up on the mountain, your goddamn knife flashing in the moonlight.”

“How writerly,” Curt said.

“Shut up,” I said. “You did it. You even sucked your poor wife in.”

Kim was covering her face with her hand; she was weeping, probably. The room was dim enough, you couldn’t tell.

“She was in my room,” Curt said. “You heard me talking to her, when you came to our room, moments after what you saw—”

“I heard you talk to her,” I said. “I didn’t hear her reply, and I certainly didn’t see her. No, she was your accomplice — unwitting in my opinion. Like Rath, she thought the prank was a part of the Mystery Weekend. She’s an actress, and a good one. She has the know-how to do the makeup, to stage the stunt; bundled up, in a ski mask, she made a convincing ‘killer.’ But she wasn’t in on it, not the real murder. I saw how shattered she was today, having found out Rath was really dead. You told her about it now, so you could manipulate her public behavior later. What, did you assure her you didn’t do it, but that if anybody ever found out about the ‘murder’ prank you’d both been involved in with Rath, no one would understand, and you could both be innocently dragged down? Something like that. Anyway, Kim doesn’t have it in her to have gone along with your loony plan. She may stand behind you — cover for you. She may do that. There isn’t much she wouldn’t do for you — from dressing to please you, to putting her career on hold so she could try to give you a second family, a second chance, which you should’ve taken. She loves you. Love makes people do deranged things. Like it made you do.”

“Love?” Curt said.

“Love for your son. He died six months ago, just twenty-six, of pneumonia. That struck me as strange, when Kim mentioned it. She said something else that threw me, though I didn’t think much about it at the time — that you were moving out of Greenwich Village because it was getting too ‘lavender’ for your tastes, Curt. That hit me funny, because for one thing, Greenwich Village didn’t just suddenly go lavender; even somebody from Iowa knows gays have been a part of the Village scene since around the dawn of time. But I also didn’t take you for somebody who’d be bigoted toward gays; I never saw it in you before, and in fact you’ve always been liberal in every way, the epitome of the hip New Yorker.”

Curt was standing looking into the fire, now.

“Then Mary Wright told me how she’d dated Gary for a while, in college, but they couldn’t make a go of it. Seems that first year, Gary had come to a realization: he was gay.”

Just looking into the fire.

“You worshipped your son, your only son, the only son of your first marriage; you loved your wife, your first wife, Joan, very much — and Gary was all you had left of her. You carry one of his paintings around with you, wherever you go. You love him, even now, to the point of obsession. But he was gay. Why, when your beloved son had been gay, did you suddenly begin to hate gays?”

He turned to look at me sharply, and almost answered; but then he looked back at the fire, as if the flames were hypnotizing him.

“Why,” I asked, “would a twenty-six-year-old man die of pneumonia? It’s hard to say; hard even to hazard a guess, why that would happen in this day and age. But add something to the description — a gay twenty-six-year-old man — and another possibility arises: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. AIDS — a disease you don’t die from, not exactly... it just destroys your body’s immune systems. So that a healthy young man is suddenly dead of pneumonia.”

Cynthia Crystal had come over to put her arm around Kim, who was weeping openly now, into a handkerchief.

“I’m only guessing,” I said, “but I think, Curt, you blamed your son’s gay lifestyle for his death. That’s your oversimplification, not mine, of course — AIDS is hardly God’s punishment for homosexuality, but it did allow you to focus blame somewhere. Suddenly sophisticated Curt Clark finds Greenwich Village ‘too lavender.’ But blaming gays in general for Gary’s death wasn’t enough. You had to get specific.”

Curt turned to look at me; he was leaning against the hearth — he was sweating, he was so close to the flames. His expression was tortured. He said, “And how did I do that?”

“You blamed the person who introduced your son to the gay lifestyle: his college roommate, Kirk Rath.”

Some gasps came from my little audience; Rath’s homosexuality had indeed been well closeted.

I went on, relentlessly: “You convinced yourself that if it hadn’t been for the unhappy circumstances of Gary drawing a gay roommate who, in your mind anyway, seduced him into that world, he might have led a happy, healthy, straight life. Why, he’d be alive today.”

Curt swallowed. He said, “Wouldn’t he?” Bitterness tinged his words, but it was a question; some doubt was there.

“Who can say? But you didn’t have any right to blame Rath; you can’t know for sure what was in your son’s heart, his mind. You don’t really know that Rath was, in fact, your son’s first brush with homosexuality. Logic and experience would say, probably not. It’s too easy an answer to blame a ‘seducer’ like Rath for the road your son chose to go down. Rath was a pretty rotten guy, but he didn’t deserve that rap; but perhaps his mean-spiritedness makes a little more sense, now that we know that he lived a public lie, a smug facade behind which an unhappy man with a secret hid. If his public political and moral stance is to be at all believed, it’s a secret he was no doubt ashamed of. Did he give you all those good reviews because he knew you knew about his past, knew the truth about him? No matter. It is a little ironic, of course, that he invoked the wrath of a mystery writer like you... like me, like all of us poor schmucks in this business who write about a world where mysteries can be solved and blame can be placed and wrongs can be righted. The real world just isn’t like that. And when you treat the real world like it’s a mystery story, Curt — you’re going to make a mess of things. A real mess.”

Curt smiled; turned to me. He was still near the fire, but he wasn’t leaning against the hearth anymore. He had his composure back, one hundred percent. But his eyes behind the dark-rimmed glasses were still tortured.

He said, “If you expect me to confirm or deny any of what you’ve said, I’m afraid you’re in for a disappointment. I applaud your audacious, if convoluted, plotting, but I would suggest that I’m only one of a roomful of suspects, here... and neither you, nor the police, will ever manage to single me successfully out from the pack.”

Then Curt took a sudden step backward, looking past me, startled, and suddenly I was pushed to one side, something, somebody moving past me like a goddamn freight train. The audience I’d assembled was on its feet, now, calling out, crying out, as they and I saw Rick Fahy grab the iron poker and lift it and with one swift stroke, one savage blow, cave in the side of Curt Clark’s head.

Fahy got in another bash before I pulled him back, by both elbows, and he struggled for a moment, but then relaxed, and dropped the bloody poker with a clunk, as he... as I... as we... saw Curt slump to the floor. His brains were showing. Those clever, creative brains; exposed. He flopped forward, and Kim began screaming.

Jack Flint took charge of Fahy, pasty-faced, slack-jawed, limp, just some flesh and bones flung into evening clothes; and Cynthia and Culver were restraining Kim, whose screaming was subsiding into sobs, while I leaned over Curt’s body and touched the side of his face. His glasses had come off. His eyes were open, wide. But they didn’t seem tortured now. That was something, anyway.

“Shit, Curt — damn it all, anyway. I’m sorry— I’m sorry...” He couldn’t hear me, I suppose; but I had to say it. I was as responsible for this as Fahy, in a way; but not as responsible as Curt Clark.

Jill was at my side, pulling me up, helping me, making me stand. “Mal, I’m sorry — so very sorry.”

“It wasn’t supposed to happen this way,” I said.

“Nothing happens the way it’s supposed to,” she said.

Neither one of us felt much like Nick or Nora.