Killed on the Rocks

by William L. DeAndrea

  Jack was still looking chipper this morning. He said his foot was a lot better, too.

  “No,” he said. “Nobody. He had a cousin, lived like a hermit raising sheep in Montana, died in ’77. That was it.”

  “Then the judge might rule that, agreement or no, Mrs. Dost is the only eligible heir to the estate.”

  “No,” Aranda said. “Oh, no.”

  Wilberforce smiled. He doesn’t have a charming smile. If a shark smiled, it would look like Charles Wilberforce. Aranda drew back visibly from him.

  “I think it’s quite possible, Mrs. Dost,” he said. “Though, as I say, I’m not an expert.”

  Carol Coretti had been listening with her finger on her chin, looking thoughtful. Now she brightened. “There’s something else,” she said.

  “Yes?” Wilberforce asked.

  “Did Barry Dost leave a will? Does he have any living relatives?”

  “Ahh,” Wilberforce said. He sounded like a man who’s just spotted the quotation in a Double-Crostic. A lot of lawyers are like that. Life is a game; the law is the rules; and they get to find loopholes and raise “interesting points.” That’s what Wilberforce said now, “Interesting point.” I don’t think it crossed his mind for a second that the woman’s husband and stepson were actually dead, laid out like a couple of mackerel in a fish store in the chill of the shed in back.

  “What’s the interesting point?” Jack Bromhead wanted to know.

  Carol Coretti deferred to her boss. “Well, Mr. Bromhead, suppose Barry Dost did not murder his father? Then the estate would pass through him, minus other bequests, of course. But now he’s dead, too. If he died intestate, and has no other relatives ...”

  “He doesn’t. His ma was the last of her line, too.”

  “Then it’s very likely a court would declare Mrs. Dost Barry’s next of kin, and she’d inherit the estate that way.”

  “I don’t care to talk about it anymore. Right now, I don’t care what happens to the money. I just want to get out of here and start putting my life back together.”

  “So do we all.” Haskell Freed’s voice was hearty. “You know, I wonder what’s taking them so long. You’d think at least the telephone service would be back.”

  Yeah, I thought, you would if you didn’t know the phone console had been smashed. That was a little mystery our supernatural visitation had failed to clean up. I decided to let the phone company go on taking the rap until I thought of something, or until we were rescued. Of course, in order to be rescued, someone’s got to suspect you’re in trouble. As far as I could tell, nobody did.

  Aranda wanted to talk about a different kind of communication.

  “You saw it, Mr. Cobb,” she said. “You were there and you saw it. Gabriel delayed his Crossing to help you solve the case.”

  “I certainly saw what there was to see, Mrs. Dost.”

  “You can’t still be skeptical! If it wasn’t a Visit, what was it?”

  “I am fully prepared to admit I saw something last night I can’t explain.”

  She smiled at me, not quite gloating. “Jack told me about your searching the inside of the TV set.”

  “Well,” I said. “We don’t want to leave any loopholes for future skeptics, do we?”

  “Future skeptics?”

  “Of course. This is going to be a sensation when we tell the story. The first mysterious death. Barry’s disappearance. Your husband’s voice from the Other Side. Jack’s heroics. I’m predicting no fewer than six books about it.”

  “People can be such vultures,” she said. She didn’t look especially horrified, however.

  “That’s why we’re lucky to have had this happen in front of so many unimpeachable witnesses. And no one had the chance to remove anything from the TV set before I checked it. So our story will stand up to scrutiny, which is sure to come.” I sighed. “Still, I think some people will never believe us. They’ll turn themselves inside out trying to come up with theories that would explain all of us being in a conspiracy to get away with murder.”

  “Nonsense!” Wilberforce huffed.

  “Think about it, Charles,” I said.

  “I—I don’t believe in the supernatural, but I saw what I saw.”

  “Then you must come to believe in the supernatural,” Aranda said gently. “How can you doubt the evidence of your own senses and reason?”

  Wilberforce subsided, muttering into his napkin.

  “How did you come to turn on the TV last night, Mrs. Dost?” I asked.

  She turned to me. “Excuse me?”

  “I was wondering why you turned on the television in that room. You must have known it wasn’t hooked up. Were you expecting something out of the ordinary to happen?”

  She smiled. “Oh, no. I was simply so tired, I didn’t really know what I was doing. Force of habit—I watch TV on most nights before I go to sleep. It relaxes me.”

  She tilted her head to the side and put a finger to her chin. Of course, it’s possible ...”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s just possible that my actions were channeled. That Gabriel was guiding my actions so that he could help me resolve my turmoil.”

  “Uh-huh. That makes sense. I also think it’s interesting that out of the eighty-three channels the set can receive, Mr. Dost’s spirit came in on the same one that the cable and VCR signals would come into.”

  That, it seemed, was funny enough to make her laugh. “Mr. Cobb, that’s the simplest thing of all!”

  “How so?”

  “That channel is where we’d expect to find a show. Gabriel’s business last night was to communicate a terrible truth. He wanted to make sure the message got across.”

  “Which it did. Thanks to you.”

  “I was the closest to him,” she said softly. “Another factor is that the TV would be ready to receive on Channel 4. That’s the way things happen all the time—the house’s aura would have preconditioned the TV to work best that way. Don’t you see?”

  An honest answer would have been, “Huh?” But I just nodded.

  “Well, there you have it. It’s not easy for someone to cross back from the Other Side, you know.”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” I said. “It happens so seldom.”

  “Oh, more than you think. The point is, these things happen efficiently, or not at all. And now, if you’ll all excuse me? I’d like to be alone for a while.”

  So, for the second morning in a row, she walked out on us. Today, though, she seemed as happy as any woman twice recently bereaved had any right to be.

  19

  Remember to keep it light!

  —Jay Johnstone, “The Lighter Side of Sports” (ESPN)

  “IF WE EVER GET out of here,” Ralph Ingersoll told me, “I’m going to college to become an accountant.”

  I played straight for him. “Why’s that, Ralph?”

  “Because accountants don’t get their goddam noses broken.” He brought his left hand up to the bandage and touched it gingerly. He hissed in pain and drew his hand down to his lap.

  We were up in Ralph’s room. He sat in one of the wooden-armed hotel chairs with his feet up on his bed. He said it hurt too much when he was lying down. I sat in another of the chairs, looking at the patterns the pale but determined winter sun made on the floor.

  “Maybe it would be better if you stopped touching it,” I suggested.

  Ralph groaned. “The only thing that hurts worse than touching it is not touching it.”

  “Pills working?”

  “I hope not,” he said. “If they are, I can just imagine what this is going to feel like when they wear off.”

  “Can I do anything?”

  “Can you get me to a real doctor?”

  “Not right now.”

  “Do you believe in mercy killing?”

  “No.”

  “Then you can’t do anything for me.” He raised his head, then thought better of it. “Goddammit,” he said. “All that football, never so much as jock
itch. And now this.”

  “And now what?” I asked him. “Football left you unscathed, so a simple thing like a murder case should be taken in stride? That’s the thing about murder cases, Ralph. People get hurt.”

  “That’s why I’m gonna be an accountant. Since Barry mashed my face, I’ve been thinking that being a deputy sheriff, no matter how bogus, and spending my life on the road in a big clunky limousine are both too high-risk for me.”

  “Want to come work for the Network?”

  Ralph said, “Ha,” a couple of times, then groaned. “Don’t make me laugh, it hurts. With Dost dead, who knows what the hell is going to happen to your Network?”

  “It’ll survive. The stock will go down, so what? The Network will still make shows, the advertisers will still pay for them, and people will still watch.”

  “And Matt Cobb will still come within an inch of being shotgunned into Gaines Burgers.”

  “The Network hires accountants, too.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” Ralph said. “Now, what the hell do you want from me?”

  “I think we should take the wraps off them. That you should. You’re in charge here, after all.”

  He’d been touching the bandage as I said it. Now he hissed, laughed and groaned all at once. “I told you not to make me laugh. What do you mean, take the wraps off?”

  “I mean, let them run around loose. Go skiing if they want to. Forget this three-at-a-time business. Just generally act as though we believe Barry killed Dost, Dost fingered Barry, and Bromhead shot a homicidally loony Barry. Case closed.”

  “Are you serious?” Pain or no pain, Ralph leaned forward to look at me.

  “I’m serious that that’s what I want you to do.”

  “I mean, do you seriously believe there was a haunted TV set here cracking the case for you last night?”

  “I seriously believe I can’t explain it. I said that at breakfast.”

  “I know. I heard you. I thought you were up to something clever. Listen, Cobb, I can’t explain what makes my Aunt Agnes’s bread rise, either. That doesn’t mean I have to believe little bread pixies blow it up like a balloon.”

  “No,” I said, “you don’t. But if you couldn’t have any bread unless you said you believed in the pixies, what harm would it do?”

  “You lost me.”

  “I think there’s someone who would like us to believe very much that Barry killed Dost, and that Barry’s death brings things to a close. With or without the intervention of the supernatural. And I think we’ll all be a lot safer if this person thinks we’ve bought it.”

  “Ah,” Ralph said. “We let him think we’ve bought it. What do we do in the meantime? Not that I’m going to be much good for anything, mind you. Just that if I’m supposed to be in charge here, I probably ought to know what’s going on.”

  “Come on,” I said. “If Jack Bromhead can limp around playing cavalry with a sprained ankle, you can still be in charge with a broken nose.”

  “That’s what I heed, a pep talk. What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I’m with you, so far.”

  “You’re getting good at this banter stuff,” I told him. “Let’s just say that my turmoil takes a whole lot more resolving than Aranda’s does.”

  “You don’t buy the message from the Other Side?”

  “Even if I did, I wouldn’t be satisfied with it. I mean, I know it’s rude. I know the guy came back from the dead for me and all, but the way I see it, what’s the point of resurrecting yourself if you’re going to leave so many questions?”

  “Like, why did Barry kill you in the first place?”

  “That’s the simplest of all, as our hostess would say. Barry was ‘unstable.’ So he did ‘unstable’ things. I had in mind questions more along the line of, how did your body get so far from the house without leaving any marks?”

  Ralph opened his eyes wide. They showed very white against the background of black and blue. “My God. I’d forgotten all about that, can you believe it? I guess my brain can only handle one impossible thing at a time.”

  “It’s not the impossible that bothers me.”

  “You sure acted bothered.”

  “Okay, it bothers me. But it’s a trick. The impossible stuff in this case doesn’t bother me nearly so much as the unfathomable stuff.”

  “Like?”

  “Like why was the phone smashed? That, more than anything, was what made me think we were locked in with some maniac who was going to try to pick us off one by one. I couldn’t think of another reason for us to be so vehemently cut off from the outside world.”

  “We’ve only been here a couple of days, Cobb.”

  “And we’ll only be here a couple more.”

  “Oh? Did you get a message from the National Guard or something?”

  “No, I got a message from The Weather Channel. Strong winds tonight as a warm front moves through. Heavy rain tomorrow, followed by unseasonably high temperature, perhaps into the fifties.”

  “Yeah. That happens once a winter. We call it the January thaw.”

  “This is February.”

  Ralph shrugged. “Maybe it forgot. In any case a lot of snow will melt. And wait till you see the mud.”

  “All I want to see is the cops. But let’s get back to the point. Can you think of a reason for the phone to be cut off?”

  “Not really.”

  “Work on it. I will, too.”

  Ralph said he would. “Any more unfa— What was that?”

  “Unfathomables. Yeah. The biggie. What the hell is going on with Aranda Dost and Carol Coretti?”

  “I thought nothing was going on. Coretti is a happily married whatever working for your Network, and you trusted her implicitly.”

  “Yeah. But none of it makes sense. Carol tells me Aranda made a pass at her. Aranda denies it. She not only denies it, she swears that if she’d known Carol was a lesbian, she would never have let her in the house.”

  “That’s an old-fashioned attitude, but a lot of people still have it,” Ralph said. “So what?”

  “So it’s a great big lie,” I said. “What have we been hearing since we got here? Gabby Dost, dealmaker of dealmakers, the slickest of the slick. Finds out everything findable about the people he’ll be dealing with. Has to know what makes them tick. The whole gang has been throwing little facts of my life at me since I got here.

  “Furthermore, we’ve had the tale of Aranda’s great interest in the purchase of the Network. Whether because she wanted to start singing again, or because she wanted a channel for her channeler, as it were, or if she was just interested because it’s show biz doesn’t matter. Everybody, including Aranda herself, has been telling us how she’s been kept up to speed on this whole deal.

  “But she didn’t know Carol Coretti is gay. I wouldn’t buy that for a bent nickel.”

  “Neither would I, once you line it out like that.” Ralph raised his arm high in the air to look at his watch. “Damn,” he said. “Still another hour before I can take my medicine. Keep talking. You take my mind off my troubles.”

  “I had no intention of stopping,” I told him. “Now, try to figure out why Aranda lied about that part of it at all. It was a dumb lie, the kind I was bound to catch.”

  “Maybe she was ashamed of wanting to take a fling with a dyke on the night her husband was killed. Maybe she was panic-stricken and guilty. She wanted to make it seem impossible that she’d made a pass at the other woman.”

  “I suppose it’s possible,” I said. “But does Aranda strike you as the kind of woman who would stay panic-stricken for hours at a time?”

  “That’s another thing,” Ralph said. “Accountants only have to figure out numbers. Not women.”

  “Still and all. This didn’t happen in the craziness surrounding the finding of the body. We asked her about Carol in the calmness of the sitting room, where we’d been asking people questions all afternoon. She had plenty of time to p
repare herself.”

  “You’ve got another theory, though.”

  “Yeah. How did you know?”

  “You wouldn’t have brought this all up if you didn’t have one. What is it?”

  “That Carol Coretti was spying for Dost at the Network. That she’s been feeding them details of what the Network was going to ask for, and that’s why Aranda pretended to know nothing about her.”

  I sighed. “Except, if that’s true, why did Carol go to Wilberforce, and ultimately me, with this whole lesbian business? That only served to draw attention to her.”

  “So that doesn’t make any sense, either.”

  “No,” I said. “It does not. As I said, unfathomable. I wish we’d had a whole lot more of the Ghost of Dost, or none at all. As it is, it’s a mess. Which, I think, is the way someone wants it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t think whoever’s behind this necessarily expects us to gaze into our crystals and chant that the supernatural has solved everything for us. I think he—or she—wants to make us feel that things are so screwed up now that it’s going to take the rest of our lives, and any succeeding ones, to make this make any sense, so that we’ll roll over for the easy solution.”

  “Barry did it.”

  “Yeah. In a way, it’s almost lucky for Barry that he’s dead. It would be hard to deny an accusation from a dead man.”

  “Don’t forget, if Bromhead hadn’t gotten there in time, you’d be in a position to make accusations from beyond.”

  “I know, I know.” I tried not to shudder. “Why do you keep reminding me of that?”

  “Because you seem so eager to forget it. What’s the point here? Are you trying to tell me you want to spend the rest of your incarnations working on this thing? I may have to, being in charge and all.”

  “No, no. I just don’t want to let a murderer put one over on me without doing everything I can.”

  “That’s the question. What can you do?”

  I shrugged. “We can stir a little freedom and goodwill and fresh air into the mix and see what happens.”