Laurel and Hardy Murders (20 page)

A bowl of white Ping-Pong balls was brought onstage and placed next to the pie. Dutchy showed a single black ball and mixed it in with the others.

“The candidates will be blindfolded, then they will select one ball apiece until someone draws the black ball. That person will be the scapegoat.”

That brought quite a few anticipatory chuckles from the audience, as well as a few shouted suggestions as to who would be the best choice to be smashed with glop.

Hilary hurried over to me. “I didn’t want to blow the whistle during this, but watch out. I think I saw somebody sneaking in at the back door.”

“Tell Butler,” I whispered.

“I already did. Get ready.”

“I am.”

I circled around to the back of the spotlights for a moment to find out if I could see better. As I did, I bumped into someone.

“O. J.! You finally arrived.”

“Just a few minutes ago,” he said quietly. “Shh. We don’t want to disturb anyone.”

I hurried quickly back to my observation post. The black ball had just been selected and Jerry Freundlich was helping the victim, one of the young men, get into a plastic rain slicker and hat. Dutchy had the pie in his hand and was waiting at the front of the stage.

From where I stood I could see a little way into the wings. It was dark, but I thought I discerned a shadow detaching itself from the surrounding gloom. Butler was out of my line of vision. I didn’t know precisely where Hilary was. It was up to me.

I crept closer, revolver in hand, but still in my jacket so no one would see it and panic.

“Hey,” somebody called to my back, “get down! I can’t see through you!”

I turned to apologize, then realized it was no time for a gratuitous display of manners. But the split second of inattentiveness was all Dutchy’s aggressor needed.

The audience gasped. Dutchy let out a yelp. I whirled, drawing my gun...

I couldn’t shoot. A figure in black, with a hood covering the entire head, had Dutchy in a stranglehold and was pointing a pistol at his temple. There was no way to get off a shot without felling Dutchy.

I hoped the Old Man knew it.

“I told you not to come here!” a voice snarled in Dutchy’s ear, loud enough for everyone to hear. “You bastard! You don’t give a damn about the Sons of the Desert! All it means to you is a way to cheat on your wife!”

I could see the finger squeezing the trigger. Maybe I could leap the distance and knock the gun upward? It was a lousy idea, but the only alternative to certain murder. I tensed for the effort—

Suddenly, Butler’s voice bellowed from the back of the hall. “DON’T WORRY, DUTCHY! THE OLD MAN’LL SAVE YER ASS!”

“
No
!” Hilary yelled, also from the back of the room.

The sound of a struggle.

“Give me that gun!” Hilary shouted.

“Leggo my arm, damn it! I’ll blow a hole in that—”

Hilary said something unintelligible, and then Butler let out a loud yelp of pain.

“GODDAMN BITCH! You coulda broke my SHIN!”

Onstage, the figure in black no longer held Dutchy, but instead, blundered about in the wings, trying to find the way off the platform.

Whirling, I sprinted toward the rear of the room where Hilary and Butler were still fighting. I felt frantically along the wall for the light switch. Everyone was shouting and calling for help, and there was a general air of chaos.

I found the switch and threw it. The sudden glare dazzled my eyes. I blinked to get used to the light, then, seeing Hilary wrestling Butler, clinging to his upraised gun arm, I sped in their direction.

O. J. dashed in front of me, probably with the same notion to assist Hilary. We collided. O. J. skidded on his pants. I sprawled into the back row of chairs. A skinny woman with a martini lurched forward from the impact, dousing her drink all over a bald man. He yelled something vulgar.

People started running all over the place. I struggled to my feet, then finally made it to Hilary. I grabbed Butler’s arm and helped wrest the .45 from his grip.

But not before it fired.

Fortunately, the bullet went high. It hit the moose head. The thing tottered, then toppled from its perch and plummeted down toward Toby Sanders, who was standing beneath it trying to avoid being trampled.

“TOBY!” I yelled. “HEADS UP!”

He looked up, surprised, just in time to protect himself with his upraised arms. He caught the moose head, but it was too heavy for him to hold long. His arms sagged beneath the great weight, and it settled on his shoulders.

The woman I bumped shrieked. The man she’d spilled the drink on retaliated by pouring his beer down her bodice. She demanded that her escort defend her, but he was doubled over with laughter. Snatching away his drink, she poured half of it over him and tossed the residue at her antagonist. It missed and doused a big matron in purple.

Pushing me to one side, Hilary started for the front of the auditorium.

“Gimme that gun!” Butler howled, chasing her.

She dodged Toby, but the Old Man piled into the blindly staggering young man. The pair went down, legs flailing on the slippery floor: two men and a moose head.

“
Gene
!” Hilary called above the tumult. “
This way
!”

Trying to avoid the pileup, I slammed into O. J. coming from the other direction. He tottered past and ended up tangled together with Butler, Toby, and the moose. The latter somehow managed to transfer itself to the Old Man’s shoulders.

I dashed past the back row of the audience, noticing as I hurried by that the purple matron was taking her revenge by getting even with her enemy’s husband, ripping his pants off.

Hilary met me at the front of the stage, face flushed, eyes dancing. She gave me a quick hug, then pointed to the other side of the platform.

“Quick! She ran out the back door!”

We raced to it, flung it open, plunged through. It gave access to a long corridor where the rest rooms were located. Halfway down the hall, a black object lay discarded on the floor.

The hood.

The woman in black was in the corridor and had almost attained the far end. But just then, the door to the women’s rest room opened and Sandy Sable walked out.

The woman in black shrieked. Sandy stopped, blinked, then shrank away from the other, but Isabel Hovis leaped and buried her fingers into her rival’s blonde hair.

It came off in her hands.

Sandy squealed. She flailed her arms wildly until she gained a few inches of clearance, then started to gallop in our direction.

Isabel, wild-eyed, forgetting her need to escape, headed after Sandy, her fingers clawing the air in front of her as if she already had the comedienne in her clutches.

The corridor was too narrow. There was no way to fire at Isabel, Sandy was in the way. She kept coming straight at us. Neither Hilary nor I could get out of her way fast enough.

We all stumbled backward, out the door into the main hall again. I caught Hilary’s arm and stopped her from landing on her fanny. Sandy hugged me tight and yanked me around so I was between her and Isabel.

“Nice to see you, Gene,” Sandy panted, releasing me into Isabel’s claws. The younger woman scooted back into the hall.

“OUCH!” I grabbed the woman round her waist and lifted her so she couldn’t reach my eyes with her nails.

“Put me down!” she ordered, placing her gun at my temple.

I set her on the floor and backed up. She gestured to Hilary.

“Get over there with him!”

Hilary stood next to me. She spoke in a low voice.

“Gene, did you ever see a weapon like that?”

I shook my head. The barrel was too long. The balance would be impossible.

“All right!” Isabel barked, her dark eyes pinioning us like hurled daggers. “Turn and walk. Slowly.”

Rounding the platform, we encountered total madness. Nearly 150 members of the Sons were embroiled in a colossal brannigan. Drinks were being thrown all over the room. Pants were being ripped, jackets and dresses torn. One angry couple was busily engaged in a program of shin kicking and hair pulling.

In the midst of it, the Old Man wobbled dizzily around, moose head still in place. O. J. clung to his jacket to stop him from colliding with anybody else, but the floor was too slick and Butler pulled O. J. along as he lumbered about in his elephantine way.

On the platform, Dutchy, standing next to the pie, shook his head in near-terminal astonishment. He flinched when he saw his wife.

Isabel jerked the gun in the direction of the stage and made us climb onto it.

“Take his arms, you two!” she yelled, partly to be heard above the din.

We did what we were told.

“How did you know?” she shouted.

“You were the only person who saw the original threatening note,” Hilary said. “When Gene was examining your typewriter, he told you all about it. Very opportunistic.”

The other nodded. Then she waved the peculiar pistol and made us bend Dutchy over so his face was right above the pie. She aimed the gun at the top of his forehead.

“You think I didn’t know what you and that slut were doing?” she sneered.

“Baby,” Dutchy whined, “you’re not gonna—”

“SHUT UP!” He did. “I told you to stay away from here, but you
had
to hop in her pants again, didn’t you? Now I’m going to give you what’s coming to you!”

And she smooshed his puss smack into the pie.

He came up sputtering, startled. The first thing he saw when he wiped the white from his eyes was the barrel of the pistol aiming dead center at the middle of his forehead.

She pulled the trigger.

Dutchy screamed.

The front of the gun flew outward, then quivered to a stop. A gaudy red flag unfurled, dropped into place from the interior of the weapon’s long barrel.

The scarlet cloth said BANG!

We gaped at the thing. And gaped.

Then, all at once, Hilary and I began to giggle and guffaw so hard we nearly fell down.

Hilary finally brought herself under control long enough to fling her arms around Isabel Hovis and give her a bear hug.

“Oh, right on, sister!” Hilary said, shaking with laughter. “
Right on
!”

B
ETTERMAN SCRATCHED AT THE
scraggly growth he called a mustache and glowered at O. J.

“Before I decide to release Hal Fawkes,” he grumbled, “suppose you tell me how you can back up what you’re telling me.”

Hilary interrupted. “You’ll get corroboration if you’ll come with us.”

“Yeah, yeah. But first, suppose Wheete explains why he kept this all to himself so long.”

The Sons of the Desert president gazed down at his carefully manicured fingers and murmured, “I wanted to avoid a scandal.”

“For your organization?”

“Partly. But really more as a favor to Billy.”

The policeman sighed. “All right. I guess we’d better go talk to the old geezer.”

F
RANK BUTLER WAS STILL
in Philadelphia helping with the regional convention, so there were only four of us in the police car. Betterman drove, with O. J. sitting next to him. Hilary and I shared the back seat.

It was a sunny summer afternoon and the AGVA home looked green and peaceful. The inspector had called on ahead, so it took only a minute to clear with the front desk and be shown to Billy White’s room.

The old man looked a lot better than the last time I’d seen him. His cheeks were freshly shaven because he knew guests were coming, and his color was back. The strands of white hair (what there were) had been carefully combed across his bald head, and he’d been helped to dress in jacket and tie for the occasion, even though the weather was hot.

“He insisted on it,” the nurse told us.

“A little style is all I’ve got left,” he wheezed. His jaw was still slack from the stroke and we had to listen very carefully to understand him.

He turned to O. J. “So you tattle-taled after all, Oliver?”

“No, no.” O. J. shook his head. “This lady figured out what happened, and I had no choice, Billy.”

White turned his gaze on Hilary. “Not bad! Come over and make an old buzzard happy.”

Hilary went to his wheelchair and knelt beside it.

“Your brother Sam was the adviser on the Irish pub sketch, wasn’t he?” she guessed.

He nodded, patting her hand. “Clever. We never told anybody. How’d you know?”

“I learned he did the hardest work in
The Knifethrower.
Then when I saw that incredible shot in the TV kinescope—”

The invalid laughed, a frail ghost of humor. “When I stick the dart into the board while Jackie’s back is turned, and then he takes his shot as Robin O’Hood and lands the damn thing right in the tail of my dart! We made quite a splash on the tube with that number.”

“I couldn’t believe it when I saw it,” said Hilary. “The camera didn’t move...it was done in
one
shot.”

White leaned his head over conspiratorially and spoke softly to Hilary, but we all could hear. “Let you in on the secret, angel. That was one of the first taped TV scenes they ever made. Jackie took lessons from my brother, and Sammy wanted to do the shot, but Jackie insisted on doing it himself. He got so he could make it maybe two times out of twenty. We just kept filming it till it happened.”

Hilary turned to include the rest of us. “That was the scene that made me suspect Jack Black right away. After I checked into the background of
The Knifethrower
, I was even surer. But by then, he was dead and I didn’t see any reason to smear his name.”

“They
did!” White accused.

“Who?”

“Some of those buttinskys down at the Sons of the Desert. O. J. told me about it. I made him promise he’d throw them off the trail. I didn’t want Jackie’s name and memory destroyed just for doing what he knew was right!”

“Why
did
he do it?” she asked. “As a favor to you?”

“That was mainly it,” White agreed. “He knew why I had my stroke...because of what that no-good louse Poe did to my nephew Bryan.” His eyes strayed to the inspector’s, and the old man suddenly hunched over, looking exceedingly crafty. “Understand,
I
didn’t know anything about it at the time. Jackie talked to O. J. one night while the Sons was having a committee meeting, and from what I’ve heard later, he found out that Poe was going to be on the banquet program. So Jackie thought it over and decided to borrow one of my late brother’s knives without me knowing about it.”