Max Collins - Nice Weekend for a Murder

That hurt her feelings a little; she glanced away and started toweling her hair again, though it was pretty much dry by now.

“Sorry, kid,” I said. “I know you’re just as shaken by this goddamn thing as I am.”

In a voice that seemed small for Jill Forrest, she said, “Maybe more. Maybe I never saw anything like that before.”

I slipped my arm around her shoulder and she dropped the towel and we held each other; we weren’t shaking, we weren’t crying, but we did feel battered — or anyway I did. And, oddly, guilty. I told Jill as much.

“Why guilty?”

“Well,” I said and sighed again, slipping out of her embrace and standing, adjusting my towel, “I didn’t like the bum. I’ve said terrible things about the son of a bitch... R.I.P. That makes me feel... guilty, somehow, now that he’s dead.”

“You didn’t want him dead.”

“No.” I shrugged, shook my head, and smiled without humor. “But I don’t feel particularly bad that he’s dead. I mean, the most I can muster is I feel kind of sorry for the guy. Jeez. That doesn’t quite cut it, does it?”

Her mouth was a straight line, which turned into two straight lines as she said, “He was a smug, pompous, mean-spirited little jerk. And now he’s a dead, smug, pompous, mean-spirited little jerk. Getting murdered doesn’t make him a saint.”

I went to the dresser and got out some fresh clothes. I dropped the towel and climbed into my shorts; when a man climbs into his shorts, it’s very likely the moment that day he will feel the most vulnerable, the most mortal. Then putting the rest of his clothes on, a man begins to feel less like some dumb doomed animal. It’s probably much the same for women. Getting into that outer skin of clothes, putting on the surface of civilization, applying the social veneer, creates a sense of order, taps into the security of ritual, makes us feel we’re going to live forever. Or at least the rest of the day.

“I feel I owe Rath something,” I said. “Maybe an apology. Or maybe to find his killer.”

“Would you be surprised if I said I could understand that?”

I smiled at her; she smiled back, and it was as warm as the fire we’d almost made.

I said, “You’re a constant surprise, as a matter of fact, but not in this instance. I’ve already picked up on your urge to play Nora to my Nick.”

She laughed a little. “It always comes back to that — role playing, game playing. We are at Mohonk. No getting around it.”

“And so is a murderer.”

“So is a murderer.”

I walked to the window; couldn’t see much out of its frosted surface. The howl of the wind and snow kept finding its way through the cracks and crevices of the old hotel, a constant underpinning of all conversation, like an eerie score from an eerie movie.

Jill noticed it, too. “Maybe God put Bernard Herrmann in charge of the weather this weekend,” she said.

I looked back at her, who still sat in her terry robe, hair dry now.

“We’re well and truly snowbound,” I said, “that’s for sure. So we’ll have this evening and most of tomorrow, unless I miss my guess, to do some casual investigating.”

“Good,” she said with a tight smile, fists in her lap.

“I will do the talking,” I said, gesturing with a lecturing finger. “We have to be very careful. Very careful. If the murderer tips to what we’re up to, we’re in deep shit.”

“Understood.”

“I hope you do. Now get dressed and let’s get something to eat. It’s getting late, and they only serve till eight.”

“How can you even think of eating?”

“Not only can I think of it,” I said, coming over and taking her by one upper arm and pulling her up, “I can actually do it. Finding a dead body does take an edge off one’s appetite, true. But hiking a couple of miles outweighs that, doesn’t it? And besides, I haven’t had a bite in over seven hours, and neither have you.”

She was on her feet. “You’re right. I am hungry.”

And she threw on a shaggy gray sweater with wide shoulders and tugged on her black leather pants.

Soon we were sitting with Tom Sardini and Pete Christian among the dwindling diners in the huge dining room. Tom, in a cheery orange and white ski sweater over which he wore a Miami Vice white linen jacket (jackets were required for evening meals at Mohonk), was working on his dessert, a Linzer torte. Pete seemed restless, looking, in his rumpled brown suit and tie, as if he’d walked away unscathed from a building that had been demolished about him. But then he always did.

“My,” Pete said, smiling, “you held out even longer than we did. I got in a conversation with some of the game-players and almost forgot to eat.”

I wondered if Pete had noticed yet that we were snowbound; I didn’t bother asking, though.

Jill said, “Is that kosher? Fraternization between suspects and players?”

“Sure!” Pete said, permitting that for all time with a wave of the hand. “You just have to watch them, that’s all. Do you know the Arnolds?”

I was filling out my menu, circling my choices. “Millie and Carl, you mean? Of the Casablanca Restaurant? Sure.”

“Well, they can be devious,” he said. He thumped a finger on the tablecloth. “You know, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they proved to be the ones who staged that phony killing outside your window the other night.”

“Somehow I doubt it,” I said.

“Don’t rule it out,” Pete said, smiling, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “Millie has a theatrical background, and Carl’s a karate expert. He could’ve staged some pretty convincing stunts on that snowy proscenium.”

“Anything’s possible,” I said. A waiter came by and I handed him my filled-out menu and Jill’s.

“Well, anyway, they were talking to me about my Charlie Chan movie book,” Pete said, “and really got me going. Some subjects, if you get me started, it’s like I’ve fallen off a cliff — I just don’t stop till I hit bottom.”

Jill was studying Pete; not too openly, I hoped. She said, “Why do you say the Arnolds can be devious?”

Pete’s enthusiasm for life was contagious, and his laughter was too. “They were studying me, waiting for me to make a slip, a mistake, asking me to recount various plots of mystery films, wondering about the ‘structure’ of the mystery form...”

“That sounds innocent enough,” Jill said.

Tom pushed his plate away, clean. “You don’t know Pete. If he saw a parallel between one of those stories and this weekend’s mystery, he might blurt it out. Not thinking.”

“Ah,” Pete said, “but I’m always thinking. It’s just that my enthusiasm gets in the way of my better judgment, at times.”

“What role are you playing in The Case of the Curious Critic ?” Jill asked him.

“I’m Rick Butler,” Pete said, sitting up, proudly. “Dapper man about town. Didn’t you see me in my tux this morning?”

“Oh yes,” Jill said, smiling. A waiter slipped a bowl of oxtail soup down in front of her. Me next.

“Curt’s poking some fun at me,” Pete said, smile settling in one corner of his mouth, “but I don’t mind.”

Tom was leaning back in his chair, grinning, gesturing at Pete with a thumb. “Curt turned Pete into a fashion plate.”

“With a neatness fetish yet,” Pete said. “You see before you a man who has now played both roles in The Odd Couple . My character also is an extremely fussy nonsmoker. Allergic to cigarette smoke, to be exact. Whereas if I don’t have a cigarette immediately, I’ll begin throwing chairs.” He stood and told Jill how charming she was and shambled off for his smoke.