“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!”
9
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.
“Did you see anyone else entering or leaving Sloth’s room?” a guy who looked almost as nerdy as me asked.
“No,” I said. “But... well, it’s not really my place to gossip.”
A woman in a red and white ski sweater was amused by that, but followed up. “No, Lester. Go on. We’re interested in anything you saw that might be helpful.”
“Well...” I leaned forward conspiratorially. “I did see that private detective — that Darsini person — walking in the hall as I departed. He might have been going to Mr. Sloth’s room.”
“Were you aware that Darsini was in Sloth’s employ?”
“No,” I said.
“When did you find out about Sloth’s death?”
“This morning. The police came to my room to question me.”
The intense guy in gray pointed a pencil at me and made an accusation. “Isn’t it true that you saw Sloth murdered outside your window last night?”
That threw me. I’d done a pretty good job, I thought, of settling into the nerdy persona of Lester Denton; I’d even done a pretty fair job of putting Kirk Rath, and what may or may not have happened to him, outside my mind for a time.
But the story of the so-called prank last night had obviously found its way beyond the inner circle of authors and out into the mainstream of Mystery Weekenders, who (at least some of them) were dealing with what I’d seen as if it were a part of Curt’s staged mystery. And I didn’t quite know how to handle that.
Meanwhile, the intense guy in gray was doing his Hamilton Burger impression. “Answer the question, Mr. Denton!”
“I did,” I said. Or Lester said. “I did see it. But I must have been dreaming. I reported what I saw to the hotel staff, but when we went outside, there was no corpse in the snow. I must have imagined it.”
“Did you tell the police about this?” another interrogator asked.
Now I was floundering. I had done pretty well, as long as I had Curt’s script to lean on; but now that I had allowed myself to wander from it, I was no longer swimming; I was treading water, and not terribly well.
“The hotel manager told them about it,” I said. “And they questioned me, yes. But, as I told them, if I were involved somehow, why would I go to the front desk to report what I’d seen?”
The guy in gray was pointing his pencil at me again. “Yet you saw him killed with a knife — and that is precisely the way he was killed.”
He was just obnoxious enough to make me glad he was wasting his time down this blind alley.
“Excuse me for my boldness,” I said, “but wasn’t Mr. Sloth’s body found in his room, sitting at his... its... typewriter?”
“Yes,” said the guy in gray. “But the coroner has established time of death as late last night — corresponding with what you saw!”
I didn’t know what to say. I’d been trying to explain away the prank (or whatever it was) within the context of the fictional mystery they sought to solve, because otherwise it would only serve to throw them unfairly off their game. But we weren’t supposed to break character during the Interrogation Sessions, so stopping to explain (as Mallory) seemed out of the question.
And speaking of questions...
An attractive brunette in black said, “Are you Jewish, Mr. Denton?”
Was I? Curt hadn’t said. I winged it: “No, ma’am. But some of my best friends are.”
I — or Lester — got a little laugh out of that one.
“But do you speak or read Yiddish, Mr. Denton?” she continued. “Or are conversant with any dialect related to Yiddish?”
“No, ma’am.”
“So you couldn’t translate the phrase, tovl fof oy?”
“No, ma’am.”
And we seemed to be off the subject of what I — or Lester or anybody — had seen out my (his/her/their) window last night.
As the questioning continued, various interrogators left, while fresh blood filled in. Each team had assigned one or two members to be at each of the suspect’s grillings, and when their team representatives deemed a suspect sufficiently grilled, they were free to move on and help grill another one.
But my grilling was over; the hour was up.
I smiled and took off my bow tie and said, “Lester isn’t here anymore.”