Frank sidled up on the other side of me; he smelled like English Leather. I used to use it. Now I wear nothing at all.
Frank said, “We think maybe the Arnolds pulled that stunt.”
“The Casablanca restaurant couple?”
“Yes. She used to be an actress, and he’s—”
“A karate expert,” I said. “Yeah, I know.”
Jenny said, “Have you talked to them yet?”
“No, uh... but I will.”
Frank moved away, leaned over the table and banked the eight ball into a corner pocket. “They seem to be the only group this year,” he said, “that brought along fairly elaborate theatrical gear.”
“That we know of for sure,” she added. “There are at least half a dozen theater pros here, and some of them may have brought along more stuff than they were willing to cop to, to the ‘enemy.’ ”
I put the pool cue away. I liked these people, but they were too attractive and smelled too good for me to be comfortable around them.
“Thanks for checking,” I said. “You don’t need to do anything more.”
“It was fun,” Jenny said. “We felt like industrial spies.”
Frank slipped his arm around her waist. “We still think you did it,” he said.
“No comment,” I said. “How do you like being snowbound?”
“I think it’s cool,” Jenny said, beaming.
An understatement worthy of Hammett.
They went back to playing pool and hiding out, and I walked out into the hall. I was nearing our room when somebody called out to me.
“Excuse me!”
I turned and looked.
It was the intense young man with glasses who’d been so dogged in his questioning at the interrogation this morning; he was wearing the same gray sweater, and the same pained expression.
“Mr. Mallory,” he said. “A moment of your time, please.”
It was the kind of politeness that respects social ritual but not you. His words were bullets, fired in a rush at me, and they fairly dripped dislike.
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” I said.
His hair was short and mouse-colored, and the eyes behind the thick glasses were as gray as his sweater and bore dark circles and red filigree. He would have been a bigger nerd than Lester Denton, except he seemed muscular, if a head shorter than me, and the veins stood out in his hands. That is, his fists. Clenched fists, actually — it may seem redundant to describe a fist as “clenched,” but not if you saw these fists.
“I’m Rick Fahy,” he said.
Not to be confused with Rick Butler, Pete’s character in the weekend mystery, of course.
“Pleased to meet you,” I said. I guessed. I extended a hand for him to shake. He thought about it, unclenched his right hand, and we shook. His grip was a vise and my fingers were so many toothpaste tubes to be squeezed.
I pulled back my hand; I could feel my pulse five times in it.
“Okay,” I said. “So you work out. I’m impressed. Who the hell are you?”
“I told you. I’m Rick Fahy. Has something happened to Rath?”
That stopped me. I rolled Fahy’s name around in my brain and gathered who he was.
“I know you,” I said, pointing at him. “You’re with The Mystery Chronicler.”
“That’s right,” he said.
“You’re up here covering the weekend for your magazine.”
“Yes.”
“A piece from the perspective of someone who’s been here and played the game.”
“Yes. Has something happened to Rath?”
“Not that I know of,” I lied. “Why?”
He looked at me hard; his mouth was a thin pale line. A vein throbbed in his forehead. The skin around his eyes was crinkly, like Charles Bronson deciding who to kill. Was I about to get the crap beaten out of me by a Chronicler intellectual? And if so, why the hell?
“I asked you this morning,” he said, carefully; the bullets firing more slowly now, “if you saw something out your window last night.”
“Actually,” I said, “you asked Lester Denton if he’d seen Roark K. Sloth killed outside his, that is, Denton’s, window last night.”
“I don’t like smart-asses.”
“I don’t like threats.”
He thought about that; he tasted whatever was in his mouth at the time. Baskin-Robbins Flavor of the Moment, perhaps.
Then he said, “Did you see Rath outside your window last night?”
This time I thought before responding. Then I told him what I’d seen, ending with, “But whether it was Rath or not, I couldn’t say. Maybe it was — I thought at the time it was — but I understand there are plenty of players here with theatrical training, and makeup kits and props and such along with them.”
“I’ve tried to call Rath.”
“So have I,” I said, “and I haven’t had any luck.”
He looked at me like I was a slug; then he looked away. He sighed. There was frustration in it, and anger, too.
I said, “If you’re a friend of Rath’s—”
“He’s my employer. And he’s missing.”
“Did you know he was going to stalk out like that Thursday? Refuse to play the weekend game?”
Fahy’s lip curled ever so slightly; it wasn’t a sneer exactly — it seemed to correspond with him thinking, deciding whether or not to answer me.
He decided.
Not to.
He walked away and I watched him go, and shrugged, and went into the room.
Where I found Jill sitting before a roaring fire, a blanket wrapped around her like an Indian chief.
“What happened to Charlie Chan?”
“I watched half an hour,” she said. “Then my mind started to wander... thinking about the murder and all.”
“Ah.” I pulled my sweater off.
“Come sit with me.”
I stripped off the rest of my clothes, and did. It was cold outside, the windows rattling, wind whistling, snow piling up, but it was toasty warm in here, two naked people in a blanket before a fire.
“You should’ve let me build this,” I said, rubbing my hands, basking in the orange glow and the warmth.
“You build a truly pathetic fire,” she said.
“I do not!”
“But you do.”
“Well. I suppose.”
“The really good fires, back in Iowa, have been the ones I started.”
“This is true,” I admitted. She was starting a sort of fire right now, as a matter of fact.
“Did you find Culver?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“Did you talk to anybody?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Who?”
“Later,” I said, and kissed her.
And then I kissed her again.
“Nick...”
“Yes, Nora?”
“Let’s do what married people do.”
And we did. Maybe we didn’t have the river view from my little house in Port City, Iowa, but we did have the fire, the blanket, and each other. And we sure didn’t give a damn about anything else.
For the moment.
Part Three
Saturday
14
I woke up rested, but aching. Yesterday had been a long day, and despite everything I had on my mind, I slept soundly. Nobody at Mohonk, save possibly Kirk Rath himself, could have had a deeper night’s sleep. I had no memory of having dreamed, so apparently my exhaustion had kept me from pursuing Rath’s killer through slumber-land. But the mountain hike in the real world had taken its tolclass="underline" muscles I didn’t know I had made their acquaintance by twanging like painfully out-of-tune guitar strings whenever, wherever I moved.