Max Collins - Nice Weekend for a Murder

“Oh. That sense.”

Still waters run deep.

I wished her luck with her performance and wandered back to Jill, who was talking with Cynthia and getting along well.

“I don’t see Curt’s wife anywhere,” I said.

“She’s in the loo,” Cynthia said. Cynthia was the only person I knew who would use that expression. “Putting the finishing touches on her makeup and costume. Oh. There she is, now...”

And there she was.

Poured into a slinky black gown. Like Mary Wright, her figure was shown off to great advantage. Kim was slightly top-heavy, and a lot of creamy skin was showing.

“I’m just looking,” I said to Jill. “No pinching, please.”

“We’ll just both keep our hands to ourselves,” Jill said agreeably.

Kim’s eyes locked on mine and she grinned and, snugging her tight dress in place on the way, she came over to us. I hadn’t seen her since my last New York trip the year before.

“I hate tight clothes,” she said, not at all coy, as if she were unaware the clinging dress made the most of her voluptuous figure. She had a high, slightly breathy, Judy Holliday sort of voice, and exaggerated Madeline Kahn features, which landed her a lot of second female leads in Neil Simon comedies on the bus-and-truck circuit. Kim had only been in one Broadway production, and then late in its run, though she’d appeared in several off-Broadway shows.

I introduced Jill to her, and Jill immediately started asking her what films she’d been in. Kim had some impressive credits — everything from King of Comedy to The Muppets Take Manhattan — but she’d only done extra work in them. Jill was wowed anyway. Then Pete Christian, dressed to the nines in a rented tux, stole Jill away to talk film buff talk.

Kim smiled like an ornery kid and said, “I hear somebody auditioned for you last night.”

“Out my window, you mean.”

She nodded, batted her big brown eyes. “I’ve heard of off-off-Broadway, but this is ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous is right.”

“You make a fabulous nerd, Mal.”

“Gee, thanks. Have you been working, Kim?”

“Here and there. I’m curtailing the roadshows for a while.”

“Why’s that?”

She smiled a little, not showing her teeth. “Curt and I are buying a little house in Connecticut. After five years of marriage, we’re finally going the whole domestic route.”

“I thought you’d stay in Greenwich Village forever. Surely you’re not giving up the stage?”

“No! Just the traveling. And the Village is getting a little lavender for Curt’s taste. Anyway, I can commute to Manhattan for any theatrical or TV work that comes along.”

“Does ‘going the whole domestic route’ mean to imply that you and Curt are expecting an addition to the family...?”

“Not yet,” she said. Smiling a little. Then, in a whisper: “But we are trying.”

“Well, that’s great, Kim.”

She got serious all of a sudden. “It would mean a lot to Curt. He... he lost Gary six months ago, you know.”

Gary was his son, his only child, by his first marriage; his wife Joan had died in an automobile crash seven years ago. The novel he wrote thereafter — It Feels So Good When You Stop — was his first brush with critical acceptance; it had dealt, in a tragicomic manner, with the loss of Joan.

As for Gary, I’d never met him; knew nothing about him, except that he was an artist and Curt was proud of him.

“When you say ‘lost’...”

“I mean dead,” she said, with a sad shrug. “Pneumonia.”

“Damn. Aw, shit.”

“Curt took it pretty hard; but he’s getting over it. He’s working on a book, after a dry spell of a few months, and he took on this Mohonk weekend, at Mary Wright’s urging.”

“I wish I’d known,” I said. “I feel awful, not giving him any support...”

“You know Curt. He’s very open in some senses, but private in others.”

“Aw, damn. I’m so removed, living in Iowa. Something like this happens to a friend and I don’t even hear about it till six months later.”

She touched my arm. “Don’t give it another thought.”

“Is it too late for me to express my sympathy?”

“No. Not if you find the right time. It’s still very much on Curt’s mind. You saw the painting over the fireplace?”

“Yes, I did. Is that one of Gary’s?”

She looked over at it, smiling in a bittersweet way, nodding. “Curt won’t go anywhere without one of Gary’s paintings along.”

“That’s really sad.”

“I don’t think so,” she said cheerily. “He doesn’t stare broodingly at it,” she went on, nodding toward the swirling, fiery painting above the unlit fireplace, “but it comforts him having a part of his son in the room with him.”

“I wish I’d known Gary.”

“You’d have liked him, Mal. He was a lot of fun. Only twenty-six when he died... and if that isn’t a goddamn shame I don’t know what is.”

“Nor do I.”

Curt came over and said, “I see you’re putting the make on my young bride.”

I gave him a lopsided smile. “How else can I get back at you for spreading tales about me?”

“Think twice about dallying, my dear,” he said to Kim. “Would you really want our firstborn to look like that?” And he pointed to my nerdy countenance.

I had no snappy comeback for that, and, even if I had, it would have done no good: Curt was now moving toward the center of the room, and began waving his hands, impresario-like.

“Showtime!” he shouted, and the room quieted down. “If you don’t know where you’re supposed to be positioned for your interrogation session, stop and ask me on the way out. Any other questions? No? Do you want to save the malt shop? Then let’s put on a show! And like we say in show business — not to mention the mystery biz — knock ’em dead! ”

I ignored the plush, plump loveseats and the velvet cushioned armchairs and went directly for a straightback chair in one corner of the little open parlor, one of several on the second floor, off a wide, open hall. Morning light filtered in through the sheer-curtained windows, bounced lazily off the mirror over the fireplace. Glasses perched midway down my nose, bow tie straight, hair slick, I sat with my legs together, hunched a bit, striving to be inconspicuous. But the SUSPECT badge on my plaid suit gave me away.

“Are you Lester?” asked a young woman with short hair, glasses, and a red sweater. A short, plump woman in a blue sweater was with her.

“Yes,” I said timidly.

“Lester,” the young woman said, smiling warmly but with eagerness in her eyes, “could I ask you a few questions?”

“Yes,” I said woefully.

And the interrogators began to file in, some taking chairs, others standing, others plopping down on couches, but none of them leaning back — all angled forward, backs straight as boards, notebooks at the ready, expressions as alert as hunting dogs. Like reporters in a press conference, they began hurling questions at me, sometimes stepping on each other’s toes, verbally. They were members of competing teams, after all.

“When did you last see Roark K. Sloth alive?” an intense man in glasses and gray sweater asked.

“Last night,” I said.

“What were the circumstances?”

I swallowed. “Unpleasant.”

Some of them laughed at that; others seemed impatient with me. Time was precious, after all. But I made them dig for each truffle and, piece by piece, they were able to draw forth from me the story in Curt’s script. I held back only on the bribe, which I figured to reveal in the second of the sessions, tomorrow morning.