Max Collins - Nice Weekend for a Murder

“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.”