An Old Faithful Murder

by Valerie Wolzien

  “You were upset. You said some things you shouldn’t have. Everyone alive has done that. The only difference is that Randy died before you could tell him how sorry you were.” Susan tried to comfort him.

  “Yeah. I guess so. But what makes it worse is that Randy didn’t even argue back. He just said that I was upset and he was going to practice alone for a while, and skied off in the direction of the woods.”

  “And you?”

  “I headed back to the lodge. I was upset and my feet were killing me. All I wanted to do was take a quick shower and get into normal clothing.”

  “Did anyone see you?”

  “I suppose people in the hall or something. I didn’t see anyone from my family.”

  “And when did you realize that Randy was missing?”

  “He didn’t come to lunch.”

  “But certainly—”

  “Randy was raised by a cranky old lady. He is, I mean was, absolutely reliable about things like mealtimes and washing behind his ears. We used to joke about it. So when he didn’t come to lunch, I assumed that his absence was intentional—that he was purposely not coming. And then, when he didn’t appear later in the afternoon, I thought he might have gotten so mad that he left the park. The snowcoach out of Yellowstone leaves around one each day. Since then, I’ve heard that all the seats are reserved months in advance—but I didn’t know that then.

  “That night I started calling the apartment in New York. It was silly, of course; even if he had left at one, he could never have managed to get to New York City from Wyoming in less than twelve hours. But, of course, it turned out that he wasn’t going to be answering any more of my calls anyway.”

  “Did you ever think he might be dead?”

  “Actually, I did. I wondered if he could have been in a plane crash or a taxi accident on the way into the city from the airport. It never occurred to me that he might be lying dead here in the park. I don’t know why. That’s not true—I do know why. Because Randy was very, very careful. He would never have skied off alone; he simply didn’t take risks. So I thought of accidents. Or the possibility that he was so mad that he decided to hide—to stay with someone else or something like that. It never occurred to me that he might be murdered. Why would anyone want to kill Randy?”

  “You thought your father had,” Susan reminded him.

  “You seem to be the only person who doesn’t think so,” he said, looking at the fire. “And let’s face it, Father hated Randy. But even Father wouldn’t kill someone just because he hated them. The world would be littered with corpses if that were true. Father didn’t like a lot of people.”

  Susan digested that bit of information. “Your parents were the only ones staying in the main lodge, right?”

  “Yes, the rest of us are in the building where you’re staying.”

  “Did anyone else in your family talk with your father about his feelings, about what was happening?”

  “I’m sure Mother did. In fact, we were talking about that last night. She insists that I did the right thing by bringing Randy here. Not, of course, that the murders were a good thing, but she firmly believes that Father would have adjusted to my life-style in time and that we could have had some sort of viable adult relationship.”

  “You don’t sound convinced of that.”

  “I know it would never have been like that. I don’t remember a time in my life when Father and I got along. And he’s had years and years to come to accept me as I am. Why would he suddenly do so now?”

  “But your mother—”

  “Is an eternal optimist. Which you would have to be if you were married to my father.”

  Susan was silent for a moment. “Darcy, if you weren’t your parents’ son, what would you think of them?”

  “Interesting question. I’ve asked it myself, in fact.”

  “And have you reached any conclusion?”

  “Sometimes I love them. And sometimes I hate them, but that’s not the answer you’re looking for, is it?”

  THIRTY-TWO

  Darcy stared up at the ceiling for a few minutes before continuing.

  “My mother is a very creative woman—and very domestic. She’s the type of person who decides to paint the dining room, and two weeks later she’s learned to stencil and to glaze, and she has created something wonderful out of a dull nine-by-twelve room.” He paused again.

  “And your father?”

  “He’s the one who noticed that there were fingerprints on the walls and that the repainting was necessary. Probably he blamed me for making them. Okay, I’m not being very objective, am I?”

  “Not really,” Susan agreed, although she still found the conversation revealing.

  “The truth is that my father is not that bad if you don’t have to live with him. He’s well educated, he’s led an interesting professional life—I mean, he’s been all over the world doing research and giving speeches. He’s one of the leaders in his field, in fact. He makes a decent living, although I guess a lot of the family’s money comes from my mother.…”

  “Your mother works?”

  “No, her family has money. She’s one of the Boston Applegates—it’s an old shipping family, and she’s always had money. There was a trust fund from her grandmother when she was twenty-one, and more money when her parents died.”

  “And did your father have any trouble with that?”

  “With getting money from his wife? Not a bit! He’s always said that the first thing a college professor needs is brains, and the second is a rich wife.”

  “And he had both.”

  “Yes. And he had a family. If I were looking at this thing from the outside,” Darcy said slowly, “I would say that family was very important to my father—in a good way. He probably worked hard to include Jon and me in his life; I know he brought us presents and made phone calls from all over the world. But, in fact, I don’t remember a lot. Jane and Charlotte were into their teens before I was five years old. And Carlton wasn’t even living at home when I was born. I remember thinking that he had escaped and that I could do that, too.”

  “Do what?”

  “Go to college, get out of the house, make a life for myself.”

  “And you did.”

  “Yes. My mother always insisted that, no matter what, each of her children must train for a career. Her parents didn’t believe in women working unless they had to support themselves and their family, but Mother always said that everyone should be productive, and in this world, that meant earning a living.”

  “An artist’s life isn’t always lucrative,” Susan suggested.

  “Now you sound like Father. He said that each of his children had careers, but that I was just acting like a spoiled brat when I decided to become an artist. I did think of getting a more practical degree, something like art therapy or a teaching certificate, but Mother thinks that I have enough talent to support myself, so I’m doing my degree work in fine arts.”

  “Do you think your mother regrets not having a career?”

  “Not really. I think she just realizes that the world she grew up in doesn’t exist anymore. Inherited money doesn’t go as far as it used to. I think my mother was happy raising her children and keeping house.’

  “Do you think your parents had a happy marriage?”

  “Hard question.” Darcy glanced around the small room as if expecting to find the answer written on a wall. “I don’t know. Maybe they were happy before I came along. I … I seem to have put a wall between them.” He looked straight at Susan. “You know my father didn’t even want to have me, don’t you?”

  “I … I heard that.”

  “My mother told me that once. I was just a kid at the time, but I never forgot it.”

  “Why did she tell you?”

  “I don’t know. I think she was trying to tell me that I had to be good, that I had to please my father. I don’t think it had to do with me completely. Possibly Carlton was drinking then, and one of my sisters was involved wi
th a man that no one in the family approved of, Jon was going through adolescence like a crazy person, involved in drugs and not appearing at school regularly, but I remember that it was fall and I had been helping my mother rake leaves late one afternoon. I was happily piling up the leaves, thinking how spectacular the colors were, when I noticed that my mother was leaning against the trunk of an old maple that stood in the middle of the backyard, and she was crying so hard that her whole body was shaking.”

  “How old … ?

  “I think I was nine or ten at the time. I was terrified,” he continued. “One of the kids in my fifth grade had a mother who died of cancer in the summer, and when I saw Mother like that, it was all I could think of. Anyway, I asked her if she was hurt or if I was doing something wrong, and she said no, that she loved me just the way I was. Then she told me that my father was very, very unhappy—I remember that she said ‘very, very’—and that she and I must work very hard to make things right in the family.

  “Well, I had spent most of my youth making my father unhappy. He wanted me to be involved in competitive sports, he didn’t like what I was interested in, he didn’t like me taking art lessons—”

  “Were they private lessons? Lessons with a private teacher?”

  “Yes. I was identified at a very young age as being artistic and every Saturday, for truly as long as I can remember, I had private lessons. I suppose my parents fought over that, too. But if they did, my mother won, because I had those lessons.

  “Anyway, that afternoon Mother sat me down and explained the facts of life to me—the facts of my life, that is. She told me that my father hadn’t wanted me to be born, had all but ignored me in the hospital, had traveled so much the first few years of my life that I didn’t even recognize him until I was over a year old. She told me that I had to be very, very good so that my father would love me as much as she loved me.” Darcy was near tears. “But even though I was only a kid, I knew that I couldn’t be myself and be a person that my father would love. I knew that I couldn’t do it.…”

  “But your mother loved you.…”

  “Yes, I know. My mother has always loved me, and I know that has made it easier.”

  “Made what easier?”

  “Being such a disappointment to my father.”

  “What happened after Randy disappeared?” Susan asked, regretting that she had to ask all these painful questions.

  “Well, of course, I called everyone I could think of, and then I talked to some of the rangers here to find out if anyone had seen Randy join the afternoon trip out of the park, and then I had a horrible argument with my father.”

  “About Randy?”

  “Yes, but not just that I had brought my homosexual lover to the family reunion. You see, my father had the balls to accuse Randy of making that damn dummy and dumping it into the pool.… Here was Randy lying dead under a snowdrift, and my father is accusing him of committing some petty crime.…”

  “But your father didn’t know he was dead at that point, did he?”

  “I don’t know.…”

  “Presumably only the person who murdered Randy knew where he was.”

  “Aren’t you going to ask?”

  “Ask what?”

  “If I think my father killed Randy. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to go? I discovered that my father killed Randy and so I killed him?”

  “We started out this conversation like that,” Susan reminded him. “And I told you that I don’t think you did it.”

  Darcy looked at the door through which he had thrown the note she had written.

  “So why don’t you tell me what happened between Randy’s disappearance and finding your father, and maybe we’ll figure out who did do all this.”

  “I ran into Father in the hallway outside of my room right after I had talked with the people at the desk about Randy. I … I was pretty upset, and I think I said something to him about how Randy was missing and he probably was glad about it. I was pretty nasty, in fact. Anyway, he was actually fairly nice to begin with. He said that he was sorry Randy was missing, but that he had probably left the park and I’d hear from him eventually. He suggested that I just go lie down in my room and try to relax, that getting so upset wasn’t going to help anything. But he wasn’t mean about it. I mean, I honestly think that he was trying to be kind.”

  “And you were very upset at that point,” Susan prodded.

  “Almost hysterical. Maybe I had some sort of premonition that something terrible had happened to Randy, I don’t know. All I know is that I was horrible to Father. I told him that I was in love with Randy and that his attitude toward us was destroying me. I told him that he was trying to ruin my life. I told him that I hated him, that I would never ever talk with him again.… I was dreadful.”

  “And?”

  “And that’s when my father suggested that Randy wasn’t the person I thought he was, that Randy had made the dummy and put it into the pool. And that was so unfair. Randy didn’t have a mean bone in his body. He was one of the kindest and gentlest men I’ve ever known. He would never do anything to hurt me or a member of my family. He just wouldn’t!”

  “And you told your father all that?”

  “No, I just called him some names, and he said something about this not accomplishing anything and he left.”

  “And you?”

  “I went into my room and actually did what my father had suggested. I was exhausted and I fell asleep.”

  “But you were at dinner that night.”

  “I only slept for an hour or so. Then, when I woke up, I realized that I was going to be late for dinner. You know, I almost didn’t go. But I thought that if I stayed in my room, it might just make things worse. Randy and I had talked about it the night before, and he thought that the only way I was going to get through the week was to just do what I was supposed to. And I had decided that he was right—I even thought about how I would see him again in New York and I would tell him about how I did just what he suggested.… I’m not going to finish if I keep thinking like that, am I?”

  Susan just smiled and put one of her hands on his.

  “So I got up and changed my clothes and went over to the lodge for dinner. My family had left a place for me—my mother was seated between my father and myself, presumably as a barrier or some sort of neutral zone—and I sat down, apologized to everybody for being late, and ordered a drink.”

  “And then?”

  “My mother—she was trying to be helpful, I know—whispered to me that maybe it was for the best that Randy had left, that now my father and I would have a chance to sort out our problems, and I … and I blew up. I shouted threats of some sort at my father and left the room.”

  “I was there. I remember.”

  “I guess everyone who was there remembers. People have been looking at me rather strangely ever since.”

  “But you were all back together at the ranger talk that night.”

  “Yes. My mother came to my room right after dinner and begged—actually begged—that I join the family for that. And I did. It was the last time I saw Father, in fact. I don’t think I even said good night to him before going to my room. I had a terrible time sleeping, though. I was upset, and the hotel was very noisy—kids running up and down the halls and people chatting. I think I fell asleep around five a.m. And then I got up late. I was meeting Charlotte and Jane for breakfast; we had arranged it the night before. I stopped along the way to call one or two friends that I thought might have seen Randy, and later I joined Carlton, Joyce, and Mother for the trip around Old Faithful. Then we found out that Father had been murdered.…”

  “Darcy.” Susan called him out of the past. “Who did you ski with yesterday?”

  “Everyone. I started with Carlton, Joyce, and Mother, and then Mother went on ahead. Jane and Charlotte skied with me for a while—I ran into them when they were watching the moose eating in the stream—and Jon and Beth passed by and then circled back to get the camera equipment
they had forgotten. I don’t actually remember the order all the time. I do know that I got to Father’s body right after Joyce. You were there,” he added.

  “Yes. But I can’t remember the order everyone appeared,” Susan explained.

  “I guess I haven’t helped you very much, have I?” he asked as the door opened.

  “Looks like you’re going to have company,” a ranger announced, entering the room. “Two more members of your family have suddenly remembered that they killed your father.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  “I really don’t have any choice other than to take all confessions as true. Although, of course, all three couldn’t have murdered their father. At least, I hope they couldn’t have. Frankly, I’m beginning to think I’m going crazy. Have some more herb tea.” Marnie Mackay pushed a tall green thermos across the table to Susan. They were sitting together in the tiny, windowless office allotted rangers in the Visitor’s Center. “They probably shouldn’t be kept together, should they?”

  “I—”

  “But I don’t know where else to keep them. I did think of confining them all to separate rooms in the lodge, with guards standing outside the doors, but that seemed a little too public. It isn’t fair to the other guests to turn part of the hotel into a jail. So I told them not to talk to each other about the murder—not that they’re likely to listen.” She reached out and refilled her own mug with tea. “So which of them did it?”

  “Or did any of them?”

  “I was afraid you were going to say that,” Marnie said. “What can we do? Wait until each member of the family has confessed except for one and then arrest that last person for murder?”

  “Crazy, isn’t it? What did Jane and Charlotte tell you?”

  “Actually, I think it was Jane who did all the talking. She’s the one with longer hair, right?”

  “Yes, and she’s the more vocal of the two,” Susan said.

  “They seem so alike—almost twins,” Marnie mused. “Oh, well, that’s neither here nor there. They came to me, and Jane said that they had killed their father and they wanted to confess to the crime—just like that! As though two people confessing to a murder was an everyday occurrence. Although it may get to be, if this keeps up.” She sipped her tea.