Nice Weekend for a Murder (2 page)

A mystery weekend is a gathering at which mystery buffs and puzzle fanatics converge and, forming into teams, try to solve a mystery. At Mohonk, the plots were always concocted by a famous mystery writer, acted out by invited guests who are themselves nationally known mystery writers (the latter a category I barely fit, if my ex-agent and current editors were to be polled on the subject). On this very bus were a gaggle of mystery fans, chattering and flying high, almost giddy, on the idea of the weekend to come. Most of these people seemed fairly normal, although there were more Sherlock Holmes–style deerstalker caps than I’d ever encountered on one bus before.

None of my fellow mystery-writer guests seemed to be on this bus, which had departed New York late this afternoon,
Thursday. Some of them were going by car, and others had taken an earlier bus. Both buses had left from Casablanca—an Italian restaurant on Twenty-second Street in Manhattan with a Bogart/mystery theme. Its owners, Carl and Millie Arnold, were among the most diehard Mohonk players, I’d heard. They were on the bus, already planning strategies. Apparently the two of them had been on the winning team for three years in a row.

Everybody on the bus was having a great time. It was a party atmosphere—except for yours truly, party-pooper extraordinaire. I sat looking out a frosty window at the New York State countryside whizzing by; it didn’t look much different than the Midwest to me—more like Illinois than Iowa, maybe, but otherwise just generic winter countryside. Nor did New Paltz itself, as we moved down its main street of shops and restaurants, seem like anything other than the small college town it was. New York, strangely, seemed to be a part of America, once you got out of New York City, that is.

It was dark now, and we went over a bridge, took a right at the Mohonk sign, and started up the narrow blacktop road that climbed the mountain. The resemblance to the Midwest had come to an end. This was not a hill, which we have a few of in Iowa. This was a mountain. The real thing—rocky, big, and up. We stopped at a little rustic house, where the bus driver got out and checked in with a guard in a green blazer, who logged us in on a clipboard before allowing us on. Then the denseness of the snow-covered trees around us and the steepness of the climb settled in on us, as the bus finally began its upwardly mobile way through the darkness, creating an unreal mood. Almost a surreal mood.

“Agatha Christie, here we come,” Jill said.

“More like Stephen King,” I said.

Because suddenly the hotel was looming up before us like a monstrous movie set, a sprawling Victorian affair with towers and spires and gables and windows and windows and windows and balconies and balconies and balconies, wooden wings alternating with stone ones, a man-made cliff rising into the night sky.

Many of the players on the bus seemed unimpressed; they had been here before—they weren’t naive Iowa farm boys, either. They were imperturbable Easterners, scurrying toward the entrance as bellboys in winter coats began transferring luggage from the underbelly of the bus onto carts.

I, on the other hand, stumbled off the bus with my mouth open and my eyes open and my mind reeling and just stood there.

“What the hell planet is this?” I asked nobody in particular.

“The planet Mohonk,” nobody in particular responded, nobody in particular being Jill.

Some snow was falling, lightly, and the air was bitter cold. Everybody’s breath was visible as we moved into the hotel and into warmth and another era. A Victorian era, where the woodwork was dark and polished, the halls were wide and carpeted, off of which were little parlors—sitting rooms—where the furniture was antique and plush, the lighting soft-focus and yellow. Wonders never ceased: frondy plants and fresh-cut flowers were everywhere; wide wooden stairways rose like a challenge to ignore those newfangled elevators; here, a carvedwood and stone fireplace; there, a Chinese vase as tall as an eight-year-old child.

Which was fitting, because it was like being a child again, in your grandparents’ house, where everything seemed to belong
to yesterday, and where the rooms went on forever, and where the air was musty and fresh at the same time.

Jill saw it a different way; she cuddled to me and said, “It’s like a huge haunted house... only we’re the ghosts.”

“Yeah,” I said, grinning.

Because suddenly I wasn’t depressed anymore.

Why? Hey, I’m a mystery writer, after all.

And this was a great place for a murder.

The lines at the check-in counter were long, but in their vicinity we ran into Tom Sardini, an old writer pal of mine, who was already checked in. He stood with us while we waited, so we at least could talk (or, as they say in New York,
schmooze
).

Old pal Tom wasn’t all that old, really—in his early thirties—but we went back seven or eight years. Tom had written me my first fan letter, and I’d given him some help with some of his early manuscripts. He had gone on to be a successful writer himself—more successful than I actually, which is an excellent argument for not helping out aspiring writers.

Except that I liked both Tom and his stuff, anyway that which I’d been able to keep up with. He was widely known as the “fastest typewriter in the East,” books flying out of his word processor from his Brooklyn home in a blur of typescript, the royalty checks flying in the same way. He was making a small fortune (maybe not so small) by churning out adult westerns—his “Shootist” series of paperbacks was among the top three in the field; but his love was private-eye fiction: He was the founder of the Private-Eye Writers of America, and more important, his latest novel about ex-boxer-turned-P.I. Jacob Miles was so good I hated him.

Which is exactly what I told him, as I gave him a hug.

“This is Jill Forrest,” I said, and Jill smiled at him and they shook hands. What kind of world is it, when two men hug, and a man and woman shake hands?

Tom, by the way, was five-ten, bearded, bespectacled, and a tad overweight, as befits a successful writer. I was leaner and taller and better-looking. Well, leaner and taller, anyway. He wore an off-white long-sleeved shirt and slacks; I was wearing jeans and a dark green sweatshirt that said “
THE BUTLER DID IT
,” if it matters, winter coat slung over my arm.

“I’ve heard all about you,” Tom said to Jill, taking in her slim figure with an appreciative smile. That figure was ensconced in a white and gray vertical-striped top and snug, black leather trousers, ball of white fur winter coat draped around her. She was a slightly snazzier dresser than me, as you have already gathered.

“I’d imagine you
have
heard about me,” she said. “I’ve seen Mal’s phone bills.”

Tom and I shared long and expensive phone conversations into the wee hours; friendships in the writing game often require long-distance maintenance.

“And,” Jill went on, showing Tom the ironic smile that was among the laundry list of reasons why I fell in love with her, “I’ve heard about you, too. Is it true you’ve written more books in your short life than Mal’s read in his longer one?”

“Probably,” Tom said.

Jill turned to me and squeezed my arm. “Look, I’ll get in line here, Mal, and get us checked in. You two go sit over there and insult each other for a while.”

We took her advice, settling down on a velvet-cushioned settee. Various game-players were milling about expectantly, but here and there people sat and quietly talked—Tom and I, for
instance, basking in the soft yellow lighting and warm, homey atmosphere of the old resort.

“Where’s Anna?” I asked.

“She couldn’t make it this trip,” he said with a regretful little shrug.

“I haven’t seen Anna since Bouchercon,” I said. Anna was Tom’s lovely,
zoftig
, Oriental spouse, who’d accompanied him to the annual mystery convention, held last year in San Francisco. “Hey! Wasn’t she pregnant?”

“You really are the king of amateur detectives,” he said. “She was only six months along, and you figured that out.”

“My powers of observation are legend,” I said. “Meaning, greatly exaggerated. So, what? She’s home nursing a two-month-old?”

“Literally,” Tom said, nodding. “Normally, I wouldn’t do one of these things without her—but being invited to be part of Mystery Weekend at Mohonk is kind of an honor.”

And it was. If I wasn’t a friend of Curt Clark’s, I wouldn’t have been invited; I was just too small a fry in the mystery world to qualify. Curt, who was the latest of several top-rank mystery writers to head up the Mohonk Mystery Weekend, was “an acknowledged master of the comedy caper,” as
The Mystery Chronicler
had put it.

“I see you’re going to be speaking tomorrow afternoon,” he said, referring to a program he held in one hand. “On ‘Translating True Crime into Mystery Fiction.’ ”

“I haven’t seen that yet,” I said, meaning the program. “All I got in the mail from Curt was the suggested topic for my speech, and a cast list and description of my character in the mystery. Which I assume each of us playing a role got, so we could put together an appropriate wardrobe.”

“Right,” Tom said. “I play a tough private eye.”

“Typecasting,” I said.

“I guess. All I had to do was pack a trenchcoat and fedora and .38. Well, it’s a full-scale replica of a .38, anyway. How about you?”

“I play a nerd,” I said. “Sort of Pee-Wee Herman on the Orient Express. And no further comments on typecasting are necessary.”

“All I can say is,
some
of us are
obviously
typecast. Did you get a load of who the murder victim is?”

“No. I mean, from the write-up Curt sent me about my character, I gather it’s a critic.”

“It sure is a critic,” Tom grinned.

“Can I infer, then, that the role of critic is being played by some
real
critic?”

“You can. Care to guess who?”

“I don’t remember seeing a critic on the guest list....”

“Clark left that name off the list. He likes to play things cute, you know. That’s what he’s famous for, in those books of his—his wicked sense of humor.”

“Who, then? The only critic
I
can think of that anybody might want to murder is that weasel Kirk Rath.”

Tom beamed. “The very weasel in question.”

Kirk S. Rath was, at the ripe old age of twenty-seven, easily the most famous and controversial critic in mystery circles. A smug, pedantic critic (his professed role model being John Simon), Rath was the editor and publisher of
The Mystery Chronicler
, published out of his home in Albany. This monthly magazine, famed for its in-depth interviews with mystery writers and its scholarly, yet entertaining, articles about the classic writers of both the drawing-room and tough-guy schools of
mystery fiction, had been the surprise publishing success of the mystery world in recent years. Starting as a fanzine,
The Mystery Chronicler
had spread to the mystery bookstores and now was circulated to several of the major bookstore chains.

More important, it was widely circulated to libraries, and was having a big impact on which mysteries got bought by the libraries themselves, which, of course, was the major market for most hardcover mysteries.

For all its distinctions, however,
The Mystery Chronicler
was best known for one thing: the articulate but mean-spirited, often viciously personal criticism written by smug young Kirk Rath himself. Rath was currently tied up in no less than three libel cases, all stemming from his personal attacks upon various mystery writers.

“Brother,” I said. “I don’t know if I share Curt’s sense of humor on that one. Every guest he’s invited has reason to hate Rath.”

“Including you.”

“Yeah, he’s fileted me a few times. And you, too.”

“He
really
hates my work,” Tom said, rolling his eyes. “ ‘Sardini also writes adult westerns. Perhaps the prolific Mr. Sardini should stick to sagebrush and sex; his private-eye “yawn” features a dim-witted detective who may be the most singularly uninteresting character in mystery fiction.’ ”

“Don’t tell me you memorize bad reviews.”

“They sear into my brain like a branding iron, as we cowboy writers from Brooklyn like to say. So... what did Rath say about you, Mal?”

“Which time?”

“Last time.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Try.”

“Umm, it might’ve been something like ‘Mallory writes fictionalized accounts of real-life cases, and this latest is his most unengaging, unconvincing mock-up of all—thin on character, weak on basic storytelling skills.’ ”

“Yeah,” Tom said. “I don’t let bad reviews get to me, either.”

Jill came over with our room key and said, “We’re on the ground floor. I’d been hoping for one of those rooms with balconies and a view, but what the hell.”

“I’m just down the hall from you,” Tom said to her as he and I stood. “So my view isn’t any better.”

“Maybe Kirk Rath’ll let us borrow his view,” I said. “No matter what floor he’s on, it’s bound to be aloof.”

“The room’s this way,” Jill said, gesturing; she’d had enough snappy patter and milling around. “I want to freshen up before dinner.”

We told Tom we’d see him in the dining hall, and I followed Jill around a corner, down a wide corridor, subdued wallpaper and polished woodwork all around; it was one of those endless halls like in the movie version of
The Shining
(Stephen King again—he’s everywhere) and I half expected that little kid to come pedaling his Big Wheel around the corner at us.

But he didn’t and we finally found our room—64—and Jill worked the key in the lock, saying, “Tom seems like a nice guy.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “And he’s probably written another book since we saw him last.”

We stepped inside. The room was small—make that cozy—but it had its own polished-wood and brick fireplace with a fresh supply of firewood nearby. Our bags awaited us as well. The walls were papered in vertical stripes of yellow shades and the ceiling was high and the window looked out on a patch
of snowy ground beyond which was the white frozen lake. A wooden, Japanese-style walkway bridge spanned a near section of the lake, from one ledge of rock to another, with a gazebo at midway point; the wooden bridge did not at all obscure the view of the lake, beyond which rock ledges rose, as well as towering evergreens, distinct and distinctly unreal in the blue-gray moonlight.