“Odelia!” I cried, pointing to the figure.
“Oh, my God!” she said, and she and Chase quickly hurried over. But when Chase felt the man’s pulse by pressing his fingers into his neck, he shook his head.
“He’s gone,” he said as he stepped back.
Fifteen minutes later, the place was buzzing with activity. Abe Cornwall had arrived with his team, and they were dusting the area for prints, looking for DNA evidence, and checking the body.
“Well, he’s dead, all right,” said Abe finally. He removed his plastic gloves.
“How did he die?” asked Odelia.
“Too soon to tell. First we have to get him out of that… thing.” He frowned. “What is it?”
“One of his papier-m?ch? figures,” said Odelia. “He was famous for them.”
“Looks like the killer has a warped sense of humor,” said Abe. “He seems to have wanted to turn the artist into one of his works of art.”
Just then, a loud voice called out,“Oh, my God! What’s happened!”
We all turned, and found ourselves looking into the familiar face of Omar Wissinski.
“What are you doing here, Mr. Wissinski?” asked Chase, none too friendly.
“I just got a call from Dunc,” said Wissinski. “He said he was getting married!”
Chase and Odelia took the insurance broker aside, out of sight of his friend’s dead body. He looked very much stricken, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he hadn’t yet fully recovered from that thump on the head he’d received the day before.
“Dead?” asked Omar. “But I-I don’t understand.”
“We think he was killed,” said Chase, never afraid to be the bearer of bad news.
“Killed! But why? And by who?”
“We don’t know yet. So tell me, why are you here?”
“I told you. Dunc said he was getting married.”
“So you came to congratulate him? Suggest to be his best man? What?”
“No, of course not! I came here to stop him!”
Now we all stared at the man.
“He’s a little nutty, isn’t he, Max?” said Dooley.
“I’m not sure, Dooley,” I said. “Maybe there’s a method to his madness.”
“Look, I’m Dunc’s buddy,” Omar explained.
“Yes, I know. You were good friends with Dunc Hanover.”
Omar shook his head irritably.“Not just friends. I was also Dunc’s buddy.”
“You mean like in the AA?” asked Chase.
“Yeah, exactly like the AA. That’s where we got the idea. You see, we’re confirmed bachelors, all of us, and the buddy system was supposed to make sure we all stayed that way. So of course when Dunc told me he was getting married, I had to see him.”
“To talk him out of it?” asked Odelia.
“Yes, of course! It’s what a buddy does. I wouldn’t be much of a friend if I’d simply let him go through with it, now would I?”
“But… marriage isn’t an addiction, is it?”
Omar gave her the kind of look one gives a layperson. A person who just doesn’t get it. “Look, we all swore a solemn oath many years ago, that none of us would ever get ensnared by a woman—or a man, for that matter. And we took our oath very seriously. We like the bachelor life,” he said, spreading his arms. “It’s the only life for any sane person. And I was Dunc’s buddy the same way that he was mine.”
“Who else is in that group?” asked Chase.
“Well, Jona,” said Omar, “and Sergio Sorbet and Joel Timperley.”
Chase and Odelia shared a look. It was those five joyriders again. The ones the Careens accused of having killed Poppy and then closing ranks to hide the identity of her killer.
“The five of you swore a solemn oath never to get married?” asked Odelia.
“Yes, we did. We were eighteen at the time, and even though we all had girlfriends, we hated the idea of being tied down. I have to add that for all of us, our parents didn’t exactly set the example of what a happy relationship should look like. All of them were in a bad marriage, and so we decided that marriage was the last thing we wanted.”
“And you stuck to your guns and never married.”
“Until now, with Dunc.” His face sort of crumpled. “And now he’s dead!”
“Do you think his death has got anything to do with this bachelor’s pledge?”
Omar frowned and fingered his corrugated brow.“I-I don’t know.” He looked up. “You think it might? But how?”
“One of your merry bachelors, perhaps?”
“Are you crazy? Of course not. Dunc is one of my best friends.”
“Where were you just now, sir?” asked Chase.
“I was at the office. You can ask my new secretary. Miss Canyon. She’ll confirm it.” He was staring at Chase, as if horrified by the notion that he’d ever hurt his friend—and bachelor buddy.
“He looks very disappointed that his buddy is dead, Max,” said Dooley.
“Yeah, now he doesn’t have anyone to keep him from getting married,” I said.
“Is marriage such a bad thing?”
“It depends if you’re in a good marriage or a bad one, I guess.”
“Chase and Odelia are in a good marriage, though, right?”
“Oh, yes, a very good one. And so are Marge and Tex.”
“And Brutus and Harriet.”
I smiled.“They’re not married yet.”
Dooley looked up at this.“Do you think they’ll ever get married?”
“I doubt it. I’ve never heard of pets getting married.”
“I have. Some dogs owned by people on Fifth Avenue in New York recently got married. They had a whole ceremony with an actual priest, and a big wedding feast for all their dog friends afterward. It was a big to-do.”
“That’s dogs, Dooley. Everyone knows that dogs are weird.”
“True,” he agreed. “Dogs and humans both.”
Chapter 16
Justina McMenamy was a beautiful woman, and if her fianc? Dunc Hanover had lived, would have made a gorgeous bride. As it was, their marriage wasn’t to be, and after Justina had cried bitter tears of shock and surprise, she turned angry, and lashed out at her fianc?’s ‘so-called friends’ who surely were to blame for the man’s death.
“They did it,” she said as she spoke to Chase and Odelia, seated at her kitchen table in her cozy little home. “They’re the ones you should talk to.”
“His bachelor friends?” asked Odelia.
“Of course! They swore a stupid oath that they would never get married, and clearly the oath also assumed that they would do whatever it took to prevent any one of them from getting married—including murder!”
“So you think Wissinski, Sorbet or Timperley killed your fianc??” asked Chase.
“Absolutely.” She sighed and seemed to sag. “Dunc wasn’t like them, you see. They were all trust fund kids. Rich spoiled brats. But Dunc wasn’t. His parents weren’t rich like the others. His mom was a seamstress and his dad worked for Amtrak. But somehow he’d become friends with them,and even though he wasn’t in the same social class, they accepted him, and invited him to hang out. They even paid for him to be included in school trips that his parents couldn’t possibly afford. And even after they left school, they all remained friends. But by then Dunc had discovered his passion for art, and decided that he wanted to become an artist. And they backed him, against his parents’ wishes.”
“He was a great artist,” said Odelia. “We saw his work at his atelier.”
“He was a genius,” said Justina. “An absolute genius. And he made it all on his own. He became famous and wealthy through his art, not because of an inheritance or his parents’ trust fund, which made him all the more heroic in my opinion.”
“But why would his friends want to murder him?” asked Chase. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It does to them. They have this warped idea that marriage is evil, and that it must be prevented at all cost. Which is why Dunc didn’t want anyone to know that we were together. He never wanted to be seen with me, and never mentioned me to his friends.”