“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.
“I like him,” Jill said. “He has a gentlemanly manner.”
“He’s a nice man,” I said. “But as much as he hates Kirk Rath, it’s a little surprising he’s here this weekend.”
Tom shrugged. “Pete’s just that kind of guy. He wouldn’t let a louse like Rath spoil his weekend.”
Jill was studying Tom, now. “Are you like everybody else around here?” she asked. “Did you hate Rath?”
“Rath or Sloth?” Tom asked.
Her past tense had confused him.
“Rath,” she said, a little nervously, realizing her slip.
“I don’t hate him exactly,” Tom said. “He’s cost me some money. I lost a series because of him.”
“Really?” Jill said, surprised but trying not to show it. “TV?”
“Books,” Tom said.
“What series was that?” I asked.
“That series I was going to do with a racetrack background. About a detective who worked for the racing commission?”
“Oh, yeah... Didn’t you do one of those?”
“Right. Only I was set to do two more till The Mystery Chronicler hung me out to dry.”
Tom’s bitterness had an edge to it, like the ice in the snow outside.
“What role do you play in Curt’s mystery?” Jill asked. She was doing her best to seem casual; I could read her like a book, however, and like a book I wrote, at that. But maybe Tom couldn’t.
“I’m Rob Darsini,” he was saying, “A boxer turned private eye who is suspiciously like my character Jacob Miles. I was working for Sloth, it seems, but he tried to stiff me for my bill.”
“Cost you money, in other words,” Jill said. “Like in real life.”
“Pete’s character echoes real life, too,” Tom said with a little shrug. “He mentioned it even touches on his having had a friend die by suicide after critic ‘Sloth’ trashed him — which is uncomfortably close to what happened to Pete’s mentor C.J. Beaufort.”
Jill seemed almost shocked. “Isn’t it in rather bad taste of Curt to include such a thing?”
Tom laughed, but it was forced and a little weary. “Cute and nasty, that’s our Curt. Though I think in fairness to him, it should be said it’s Rath he meant to needle. I’m sure he’s as disappointed as the rest of us that Rath split.”
“Disappointed?” I said.
“Sure!” Tom said. “Weren’t you hoping he’d hang around and be the murder victim? Don’t we deserve that vicarious pleasure, at least?”
And he rose and said he’d see us later and left us to our supper.
13
The entertainment for the evening was Peter Christian’s Charlie Chan movie marathon — three flicks preceded by an informative but not at all dry slide show, with Pete regaling the attentive crowd in the Parlor with anecdotes and little-known facts while flashing onto the screen rare stills, movie posters, and candid shots of the various movie Chans, as well as photos of the oriental detective’s creator, Earl Derr Biggers, and dust jackets of first editions and early paperbacks. From George K. Kuwa, the screen’s first Chan (in an abbreviated appearance in a 1926 silent), to the relatively recent (and disastrous) Peter Ustinov-starring-as-Chan film, it was all there.
And, as a mystery buff and late show devotee from way back, I was enjoying myself; but for my investigative purposes the evening’s entertainment was a bigger disaster than the Ustinov movie. Tomorrow night a dance was scheduled in this time slot, which would be ideal for mingling and casual questioning; however, this was tonight, and movies. In most Charlie Chan films, there is a scene in which all the suspects are gathered in one room and, suddenly, somebody turns out the lights! The situation tonight was similar — all the suspects were gathered here, in this mammoth hall, but the lights were already out. And, unlike a Chan film, where the lights would be out but for a moment, this would be a four-hour haul. In the dark.