Nice Weekend for a Murder (3 page)

But back in the room we had a problem.

“Twin beds,” we said.

“There must be some mistake,” I said.

“Maybe it’s because we’re not married.”

“If it comes to that, I’m ready for a ceremony at sea. Where’s the captain of this ship?”

“Wouldn’t that be your friend Curt Clark?”

I paced between the beds. “When I made the arrangements with Curt, I told him I was bringing a female companion. I figured he would’ve guessed I didn’t mean my Aunt Mabel.”

“If you had an Aunt Mabel.”

“If I had an Aunt Mabel,” I said, and then, in midpace, I noticed something else that wasn’t there.

“Where’s the goddamn TV?” I said.

Jill poked around, looking in this corner, and that one; and in the bathroom, and she even, I swear to God, looked under the nearest bed.

“There doesn’t seem to be one,” she said.

“How do they expect me to watch
Hill Street Blues
?”

“Somehow I don’t think they do.”

“What the hell else am I supposed to do with my Thursday nights in Iowa?”

“We’re not in Iowa, anymore.”

“They got TVs in New York,” I said, irritably, “even upstate,” and went for the phone on the nightstand between the beds. Only there wasn’t one.

“There isn’t even a damn
phone
,” I said. “Maybe if I go down to the front desk, they’ll provide me with two tin cans and a long piece of string!”

“Cool it, lover,” Jill said, pointing to the table next to her. “There’s a phone here by the window.”

And there it was. It had been right in front of me before and I hadn’t noticed, so caught up in the view of the lake and mountains and such had I been.

“It’s on a long cord,” Jill said. “Want to move it over to the nightstand?”

“No,” I said, joining her, dialing 0. “All I want is my TV and a double bed.”

“I like a man who knows what he wants.”

“Curt Clark’s room, please,” I told the operator, and waited. I looked around the room some more, waiting for Curt to come on the line.

“If I got to pay a little extra myself,” I said, “I
am
going to get my double bed and TV. I’m a juggernaut on this one, kid.”

She gave me a thumbs up. She worked for a cable company. She believed in TVs. Double beds, too, for that matter.

The phone was ringing in Curt’s room and in my ear and it would have gone on forever, I guess, if I hadn’t hung up.

I stood. I spread my hands and said, not without a little desperation, “How do they expect us to have any fun in a room with twin beds and no TV?”

Jill shrugged expansively. “It’s a mystery to me.... But then this is a mystery weekend, isn’t it?”

“Come on,” I said, taking charge, heading for the door. “If I know Curt, he’ll be down in the bar. We can get this thing straightened out.”

My hand was on the door but I stepped back; somebody had trumped my doorknob with a knock. Okay, then. I was game; I opened the door.

Curt Clark was standing there, with a big grin on his face—and where else did you expect it to be?

He moved in past us, a good-looking, rangy guy in his late forties, with thinning blond hair and dark-rimmed glasses; he was wearing a sports coat with patched elbows, and corduroy trousers.

“Ah, good!” he said, gesturing about him. “You got one of the nice rooms.”

“The nice rooms?”

“Well, they’re
all
nice, but they don’t all have fireplaces. That’s cute, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, uh... it’s cute.”

Curt turned to Jill and said, “And you must be...”

“Mal’s Aunt Mabel,” she said, smiling, shaking his hand.

He didn’t get the joke, but he knew an inside joke when he saw one and laughed a little anyway. “Funny,” he said, “I figured you for this Jill Forrest person Mal’s always raving about.”

Tom Sardini wasn’t the only reason my phone bills were thicker than my latest novel.

“That’s me,” she said. “I have to admit I haven’t read any of your books yet....”

“You’re in good company,” Curt said, smiling some more.

“But I intend to soon,” she said. “I’m not really a mystery fan—”

Curt waved a hand in the air. “Me, either!”

“—though I’ve started to read a few, on Mal’s recommendation. I’m enjoying them.”

“Let me guess,” Curt said, stalking our room, checking it out, peering out the window at the icy lake. “He’s feeding you Roscoe Kane intravenously.”

This time I smiled. “I haven’t hit her with any Kane, yet. I’m starting her off on Hammett and Chandler.”

“Good, good,” Curt said, planting his feet in one place. “In twenty or so years he’ll have you worked up to me.”

“Oh no,” Jill said. “You’re coming up next... right after Mickey Spillane.”

Curt laid a hand on his chest. “Rating right after the Mick on Mal’s reading list is a high compliment indeed. This doesn’t prevent me from being horrified, of course. Speaking of which, isn’t this place
something? This
is where they should’ve filmed
The Shining
!”

Him again.

“Actually, Curt,” I said tentatively, “we were wondering about the twin beds....”

“All the rooms have twin beds,” he said dismissively.

“Well, uh, what about the television?”

“There aren’t any televisions. Why, are you still watching
television
? Nobody watches television. I thought you were a
writer
, for Christ’s sake.”

“This place does have me a little confused,” I admitted. “Look, let’s go down to the bar. I’ll buy you a drink and—”

“There’s no bar,” Curt said.

I laughed. “I could have sworn you said—”

“There’s no bar,” he said. “I said that, yes. That’s because there’s no bar.”

I looked at Jill; she looked at me.

“This place is owned and operated by Quakers,” he said.

“Quakers?” I said.

“Quakers?” Jill said.

“Quakers,” Curt said. “You know—like the oats.”

“Nixon was a Quaker,” I said. “He drank.”

“Not here,” Curt said. “The hotel—which insists on calling itself a ‘mountain house,’ by the way, because the Quakers who originated the place didn’t want to own anything so decadent as a ‘hotel’—has no bar, the rooms have no televisions, and there are no double beds. With that in mind, feel free to have as much fun as you want.” He checked his watch. “They’re serving supper now.”

“They do have
food
here, then?”

Curt grinned. “Sure, after you say grace,” he said, and went out.

I followed, and Jill hesitated at the door, locking up, then followed me.

“I’ll show you to the dining hall,” he said. Then he nodded to room sixty-two as we passed and said, “We’re neighbors, by the way. Feel free to knock for a cup of sugar anytime Kim and I aren’t in the room.”

Kim was Curt’s wife, a lovely woman in her late twenties, an actress.

“How did you do in the city?” Curt asked me.

“Well, I don’t have an agent anymore.”

“Jake Kreiger finally got to you, huh? What the hell, you’re due for a change.”

Jill said, “Maybe you could talk to
your
agent for Mal—”

I said, “Jill, please—”

Curt grinned. “My agent’s Jake Kreiger. Lack of tact doesn’t bother me much—I’m a native New Yorker.”

“Woops,” Jill said.

“Mal, forget all that career crap—the point of this place is getting away from it all,” Curt said, gesturing with both hands, walking fast. He seemed a little keyed up from all the responsibility. “Away from the modern world into something more peaceful.”

As he said this, three women in deerstalker caps scurried by, chattering like magpies.

“Right,” I said.

“Of course,” Curt said, as we followed him up the wide stairs to the dining hall, “there’s nothing like a little old-fashioned murder to liven things up a bit....”

The dining room was an expansive, pine-paneled affair with an open-beamed ceiling that went up a couple of stories, and would have seemed austere if not for the usual Mohonk soft yellow lighting from chandeliers. The scores of small tables with white cloths and hard wooden chairs were attended by young men, in gold jackets, and young women, in black dresses with white aprons, whose serving counters were built around support beams, coffee steaming, condiments awaiting someone’s need. It was like a Protestant church with food.

And the food was good, if surprisingly no-frills Midwestern in style. I was reminded of the many fine family-style restaurants at the Amana Colonies back in Iowa, where bowl upon bowl of basic but quite wonderful food is brought to your table till you say “when”; and those of us from farm stock take our good sweet time about saying “when,” too. Mohonk was the same dang deal—homemade bread and rolls, fruit, steaming parsley potatoes and mixed vegetables, and your choice of two meats, tonight fried chicken and roast beef, medium rare.

After two days in New York, lunching and supping with editors and my ertswhile agent at expensive hole-in-the-wall Manhattan eateries (I’ve always wanted to use that word in a sentence) serving haute cuisine and sushi and the like, my
middlebrow, middle-west taste buds were delighted to greet something so plainly, so purely
food
.

The heavyset gentleman sitting opposite me—a barrelchested man with short gray hair, gray eyes, and a startling tan, rather spiffily dressed in a blue blazer and open-collared peach-color shirt with a single gold chain at his throat—seemed to agree with me. He, too, was chowing down.

We had already introduced ourselves—he was Jack Flint (and I was Mallory, remember?) and I said I was pleased to meet him, and I was: he was one of my favorite writers in the genre, one of the handful of modern “tough-guy” practitioners that I kept up with.

Flint was in his midforties—and was that rarity among mystery writers: he had at one time been a private detective in what we laughingly refer to as “real life.” His detective novels were private-eye procedurals, dealing with such real P.I. practices as skip tracing and process serving, and were written in a beautifully understated manner worthy of Joe Gores.

“How does this compare to California-style fare?” I asked, knowing Flint was from San Francisco.

The pleasant features of his rather full face all seemed to smile at once, particularly the gray eyes. “It beats sprouts,” he granted me.

His wife, Janis, sitting next to him, was an unassumingly attractive blonde, wearing a white, yellow, and orange print dress and no makeup. She seemed to be eating only salad and such.

“This menu does play hell with a vegetarian,” I said to her.

She smiled shyly and nodded.

Jill, next to me, said, “I’m a something of a vegetarian myself, only I allow myself chicken and fish.”

Also hot dogs, tacos, and pepperoni pizza, if truth be told, but why spoil the spell?

Janis Flint said, “I eat fish too.” And smiled. She seemed almost painfully shy, but if anybody could bring her out, it would be Jill.

In fact, Jill began trading information with Janis—who, it turned out, was a grade-school teacher and who was involved in educational television, which gave cable maven Jill something to latch onto—while I questioned Flint.

At first I unashamedly told him about my agent problems, and he recommended his own guy—“He’s British and
long
on tact”—and wrote the info down on the back of one of his cards, telling me to feel free to mention his name. He had made a friend forever.

Actually, I was a little embarrassed by his straightforward kindness and, so, we ate in silence for a while after; silence but for Jill talking with Janis, who had loosened up some. I told you so.

“Haven’t seen a book from you in a while,” I said to him, finally.

Flint took time out from the breast of chicken he was working on to shrug and reply. “I’d like to, but the money is so much better in Hollywood.”

“Why, uh, have you moved there... ?”

He smiled. “No, but I’ve been writing for them. A couple of
Mike Hammers
and a
Magnum
, last season; a
Riptide
coming up. And the screenplay for
Black Mask
.”

Black Mask
was Flint’s most famous novel—a historical fantasy about a murder committed at a dinner attended by all the famous pulp writers of the thirties; Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett team up to solve the crime, which turns out to have been committed by Carroll John Daly. A movie had
been in the works for years; Spielberg himself had optioned it. Big bucks.

“Is that movie going to happen?”

He shrugged. “They’re in so-called preproduction now. Spielberg has one of his film-school cronies on it. The shooting script doesn’t have much to do with my book
or
my script.”

“That must be disappointing.”

“No. It’s just Hollywood.”

“Well, I sure hope your
Case File
novels get going again.”

He raised an eyebrow. “After what the critics did to the last one, how
dare
I?”

“Don’t be silly. The critics
love
your books.”

“Well, the last
Case File
didn’t even rate a
New York Times
review... and that little S.O.B. Rath savaged it. Library sales were pitiful. The paperback bailed us out a little.”

“Uh... I guess you aren’t aware that...”

“Rath is an ‘honored’ guest here? Yes, I am. Curt warned me; he knows how I feel about Rath. I came anyway.”

“How
do
you feel about Rath?”

“Let’s just say I wish
I
was the murderer.”

I remembered some of Rath’s reviews of Flint’s books. Rath had called Flint misogynistic and psychopathic, because his most recent novel focused on a psychotic rapist (is there any other kind?) as narrator. It was a bold book, a chilling and distinctive performance, perhaps the best novel of its kind since Jim Thompson’s
The Killer Inside Me
. The latter sentence is my opinion, however—not Rath’s. Rath trashed the novel and, by assuming the narrator’s sensibilities mirrored the author’s, made the most unpardonable blunder in literary criticism.

“His
Mystery Chronicler
is probably the single major obstacle keeping me out of the book business,” Flint said matter-of-factly.