11
We stood under the bare beams of the east porch, breathing hard and smoky, shaking the snow off our clothes onto the bare gray wooden slats beneath us. Despite the blizzard out there, the direction of the wind was such that the floor of the open porch was barely dusted with white, when I’d expected it to be drifted. Which it soon would be — the wind was whirling and would get around to it; the lake already was gone, its gray-blue surface buried beneath the white. Faces in the windows along the porch stared out into the ever-whitening world, some awestruck, others indifferent, while below the windows countless rocking chairs made a wooden chorus line. This time of year no one sat out in them, not in this cold, so the chairs were turned on end, rockers up, like a row of curved yellowed tusks in some elephant’s graveyard.
We stamped the snow from our feet on the mats inside the porch doors, but didn’t take off our outer winter clothing, barreling right on into the Lake Lounge, where Curt Clark was giving an informal question-and-answer session during the traditional Mohonk afternoon “tea” — cookies and cups, very genteel. Just like in a British drawing-room mystery.
Only I didn’t remember grotesquely maimed corpses like Kirk Rath’s showing up in such polite mysteries; or, if they did, the author would present an image considerably more tasteful than the police-photo-accurate dead-body picture that was burned in my brain like a concentration camp tattoo.
Curt glanced at me, smiled, squinted, not knowing what to make of our barging in, all bundled up and with winter dandruff on our shoulders. A hundred or so Mystery Weekenders were seated at tables and some again sat Indian-style on the floor as he stood before them fielding their questions, one of which he was currently in the process of answering: “So, while you may find it hard to accept, there are several movie versions of my novels that I have not seen. That I refuse to see. Friends have warned me off them. And I trust my friends.”
Upon the word friends he had glanced at me, squinting again, shaking his head in some unasked question. Perhaps my expression was sufficiently grave to tell him something was up; I glanced at Jill and her expression told nothing — like the Great-Out-of-Doors we’d just left behind us, her face was frozen.
Mary Wright, in a blue Mohonk blazer (its symbol — a tiny gazebo — on one breast pocket) and a white blouse with a blue ascot, approached us, looking confused and a little put out. Curt was, in the meantime, fielding another question. Mary smiled, but it was a strain; you just don’t walk into the Lake Lounge all wet and snowy.
“Is something wrong?” Mary asked, giving us the benefit of the doubt.
“Yes,” I said. “Perhaps we should talk in your office.”
“All right. Should Curt be there? If I read your tone of voice correctly, this is something serious.”
“Yes.”
She took me by the arm, huddled close. “Does it affect our weekend?”
“Oh yes.”
“Let me get Curt, then. He’s almost finished with this...”
Jill looked at her with flat dislike and said, “This can’t wait, honey.”
Mary let go of my arm and smiled at Jill. It was a smile that had nothing to do with humor or goodwill or cheerfulness. It was a smile that had a lot to do with one woman not appreciating another woman calling her “honey.”
“Mohonk moves at its own pace, dear,” she said to Jill. “No crisis is going to ruffle our composure. Understood?”
Jill just looked at her. She didn’t like being called “dear” any more than Mary liked being called “honey.”
Curt was saying, “And I think that about wraps it up. The rest of the afternoon is open for you to begin sorting through the information you gathered at this morning’s interrogations. Just remember the Mystery Writers of America’s slogan — ‘Crime doesn’t pay... enough.’ ”
A ripple of laughter was followed by applause, and Curt moved rather more quickly through the crowd than he might otherwise have, not pausing to chat or sign any of the books of his which various guests had brought along to the session. He knew something was afoot.
“What is it, Mal?”
“Not here,” I said. “Ms. Wright’s office?”
“It’s Miss,” she said, and smiled at me.
“There’s been a fucking murder,” Jill almost hissed. Nobody heard it but Mary and Curt and me, but she’d made her point.
Mary wasn’t shocked by Jill’s profanity, Mohonk manners, Quaker tradition, or not. But she did purse her lips in a skeptical smile and narrow her eyes the same way... but only for a moment. Our expressions apparently were ominous enough to get the point across.
Not to Curt, though.
“Mal,” he said, grinning, “if you’re pulling some cute counter-prank and making us the butt—”
“Let’s go to Miss Wright’s office,” I said. “Now.”
Curt pushed the air with his palms in a conciliatory manner. “Settle down, settle down. We’ll go to my suite. It’s closer, and we can have a drink. Mary’s office is shockingly short on Scotch.”
We walked wordlessly down the corridor, Jill unzipping her ski jacket, climbing out of it, her face blank, but blank in a way that I knew meant anger. Whether the cause of that was the intrusion of Rath’s death upon our more or less pleasant afternoon, or her dislike of Mary Wright, I couldn’t say. And I wasn’t about to ask.
Curt unlocked the room. We stood out in the hall as he went in. I caught a glimpse of his wife Kim, napping on the bed in a lacy slip, her bosom half-spilling out, heaving with sleep; she was a beautiful woman, but I didn’t give a damn. Violent death puts a damper on my libido.
A few minutes later, Kim exited, wearing a turtleneck sweater and slacks and a dazed expression. She smiled sleepily.
“Curt said you wanted some privacy,” she said. “Ours is not to reason why...” And she shrugged and waved and went away.
We went in. I unsnapped my jacket and found a chair to lay it on. Curt was pouring himself a glass of Scotch over at the table that served as a makeshift bar. Some vodka and bourbon and various bottles of soda were there as well.
“Can I get anyone anything?” he asked.
Mary Wright said no, and Jill went over and poured herself a couple fingers of bourbon. I asked him for some Scotch.
“On the rocks?” he asked.
Boy did that conjure the wrong image. I shivered and said, “Straight up will do. Just a little. I just want to warm up inside.”
Jill stood looking at the orange and yellow and red painting that leaned in its frame against the wall above the fireplace; its whirlpool effect seemed to draw her in. Then she pulled away and downed the bourbon in a couple of belts.
Curt sat on the edge of the bed, swirling his Scotch in his glass; Mary Wright stood nearby. So did I. Jill and her bourbon lurked back by the painting.
“Mal,” Curt said. “Before we get into this, I’d like to say I can understand your wanting to stage some sort of reprisal. You’re stubborn and you don’t like to be had. I can understand that. But you’re having fun this weekend, aren’t you? Let it go at that.”
Mary said, “What are you talking about?”
Curt said, “Do you mind if I tell her?”
“Go ahead,” I said.
And he did. His version, of course, treated what I’d seen last night out my window as if its being a prank were an established fact.
But when he finished, I said, “What I saw was not a prank. Kirk Rath really is dead.”
Curt smirked and sighed as if both amused and frustrated by the behavior of an irrepressible child; Mary Wright’s eyes again narrowed, and she tilted her head to one side, brunette hair swinging.
I told them, slowly, carefully, what Jill and I had seen.