by Bill Noel
Joy was picking up bottles from the tables.
“I’m too old for these late nights,” Cal said as he flopped down in a chair at our table.
Joy yelled from across the room and asked if he wanted anything.
“Peace, quiet, two new feet, a new ticker.”
She grinned. “How about a beer?”
Joy was back to the table with his drink before he said that it was his next choice.
Cal took a gulp and said, “Now that they’re gone, what’d you think about their show?”
I said, “They had some good jokes but, like Pete told us, they were rusty. I could tell they were better back in the day.”
Charles smiled. “Looked more like the over-the-hill gang than the Legends. And what’s with Wallace? Forgetting lines, screwing up times, The Tonight Show the other night. Get real.”
“Think the geezer’s gone bonkers,” Cal said.
That showed the singer’s high-level grasp of psychiatry. Or did it? Granted, I’d seen Wallace dazed, confused, and struggling to maintain a grasp of reality. I’d also seen him remember some of his routine and appear normal during a couple of conversations. And there was his statement about killing someone.
“Charles, what’s your take on his comment about killing him?”
“Don’t know. I’m certain it didn’t have anything to do with their performances.”
Cal leaned forward. “What’re you talking about?”
I explained what Wallace had said while Cal was singing.
Cal took another draw on his beer, slipped a chair in front of him, and put his feet up on the seat. “Think he was talking about Michael Hardin?”
Charles glanced at me then back at Cal before pointing his cane at the stage. “The boy’s performance up there was schizoid: memory accurate, memory sucked, loss-of-reality powerful. From what you said, his other performance, the one in the middle of the street, would qualify for a straitjacket. Think I’m leaning toward Cal’s bonkers diagnosis although, by the time they left, they were a few beers passed soused. They were all jabbering nonsense.” He looked at the table where Janice Raque had been seated. “Why’d you leave our outstanding company to hit on that Raque chick?”
Cal pointed at me. “In the middle of my set.”
I smiled at the aging singer. “Guilty. I wanted to see how she’d react to me mentioning Michael Hardin.”
“Well?” Charles said with his usual amount of patience.
“Don’t think she’ll be sending flowers to his funeral.”
Cal took his feet off the chair and leaned toward me. “Think she killed him?”
I shrugged.
“What’d she say?” asked Charles, not satisfied with my shrug.
I filled in the details, at least, the few I knew from our brief conversation.
Charles said, “That the best you can do?”
I said it was. Charles stretched and clasped his hands behind his head. “This’s been quite a night. Got to see some Legends, or maybe that’s Legends in their minds, right up on Cal’s stage. Got to know about two people who might’ve killed the bookie. And got to watch Chris stay up two hours past his bedtime. Will wonders never cease?”
I didn’t know about all that, but knew I was leaving Cal’s with more questions than when I’d entered. Did the “Legends” believe that they were Legends of comedy? I didn’t, but wondered if they did. Did Janice have something to do with Michael’s death? Then there’s Wallace. Did he kill someone, or see someone get killed? If he did, why did he say what he did?
Chapter Twenty
The phone rang not long after I’d fallen asleep. I wasn’t aware of research to back me up although, from personal experience, the odds were mighty slim, like being-struck-by-a-meteor slim, that a call at three o’clock in the morning would bring good news. It only took me saying, “Hello,” to confirm my suspicion.
“Could you come to the house? Oh, yeah, this is Theo.”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s dreadful. My God, horrible. Dead, he’s dead. Please come.”
“Who’s dead?”
“Please.”
I was sitting on the edge of the bed and realized that Theo was so shaken, it’d be useless to ask anything else.
“On my way.”
I shook the cobwebs out of my head, got dressed, and drove through the deserted streets to Theo’s. It became apparent as soon as I turned on his street that I wasn’t the first person summoned. Flashing red and blue lights from two Folly Beach patrol cars, one fire engine, an ambulance from Charleston, and two unmarked police vehicles reflected off street signs, each other, and windows from nearby houses.
I pulled off the street a half-block behind the emergency vehicles and headed toward a familiar face, Officer Trula Bishop, who was standing in the middle of the street ready to direct traffic for any curious citizens who might be driving by. Traffic at this hour could be counted on one finger, so she had little to do.
“Good morning, Mr. Chris.”
I’d met Officer Bishop shortly after she’d started on the force three years ago. We’d talked on numerous occasions, and she’d helped me out a couple of times when I’d managed to find myself in awkward situations.
I nodded toward Theo’s house. “Trula, what’s going on?”
Instead of answering, she looked at her watch, then said, “What brings you out at this ungodly hour?”
“Theo Stoll, the owner of the house, called to ask me to come over.”
She smiled. “Then you know what happened.”
“No. Theo sounded in shock. That’s all I know.”
She nodded like that’d made sense. “Seems that someone fell down the steps, broke his neck. Killed him.”
I exhaled. “Who?”
“Don’t know. I haven’t been in. Two officers and the chief were already on the scene. She asked me to stay out here to keep riffraff, like you, away.”
She was teasing about me being riffraff, or so I hoped. I asked if it was okay for me to see what had happened. I reminded her that the owner requested my presence.
“If I had to shoot you to keep you away,” she smiled, “I’d get in trouble for shooting wildlife out of season.” She flicked her wrist toward the house. “There should be one of our guys at the door. Check with him before you go in.”
I thanked her and wished her well on riffraff patrol.
I reached the door and lucked out, the second time since arriving.
Officer Allen Spencer met me. “Chris, is there some reason that I see you at as many death scenes as I see the coroner?”
He said it with a smile, although it was only a slight exaggeration.
I shrugged and told him that Theo called. Then I asked what’d happened.
Allen moved aside.
I moved to the entry and saw several cops, medics, plus someone from the coroner’s office standing around a body at the bottom of stairs. The object of their attention was already in a body bag. The coroner, with the help of one of the cops, was hefting it on a stretcher. I asked Allen who was killed.
He moved me out of the doorway, so the body could be wheeled out, and said, “One of the visitors staying at the house with Mr. Stoll, in fact, the son of one of the visitors.”
“Raymond Bentley?”
“Think that’s it.”
Theo and two of his houseguests were seated in the great room. I wanted to learn what I could before joining them.
“How’d it happen?”
“According to Mr. Stoll, Theo, not his brother, the group performed at Cal’s last night. They consumed more adult beverages than their bodies could handle. Mr. Stoll said he was driving for the group and had a couple of beers, but the others were inebriated when they dragged in here around midnight. He said they barely staggered their way upstairs.”
“Did anyone see what happened?”
“You’re beginning to sound like the chief.”
“She’s my role model,” I said, smiled,
and reworded my question. “Witnesses?”
Allen looked toward the group in the great room. “I was second on the scene. Officer Fish beat me by a few minutes. When I got here, the body was where it was when you came in, Theo and the others were where they are now, and Fisk was calling the Sheriff’s Office. If any of the guys in there, except for Theo, had been driving and I pulled them over, they’d be spending the night in the drunk tank. Their eyes are redder than Santa’s suit. They weren’t making sense. When the ambulance got here on a wasted trip, they’d settled down. From what I could gather, they’d been in their rooms when it happened.”
“Who else is here?”
“The chief and Detective Callahan got here fast. They had each of the guys move to separate rooms, so they could question them individually. Callahan is still with one of them.”
“No one saw him fall.”
“Only Raymond Bentley.” Allen shook his head. “He won’t be telling us much.”
Chief LaMond started down the steps and saw me talking to Allen. Instead of greeting me with an insult, she said, “Hi, Chris.”
“Chief,” I said then waited for her to say something snarky.
“Glad you’re here.”
If I had false teeth, they would’ve fallen out when my jaw dropped. “You are?”
“Theo asked if he could call you,” She looked around the stairs to the group gathered in the great room. “He was so shaken that I was afraid he was going to drop dead in the middle of my crime scene. I was beginning to worry about him so, in a moment of weakness, I said he could call.”
I asked her the same question I’d asked Allen. She said that from the statements each of the guys made, no one saw him fall. They claim that when they got home from Cal’s, they were pooped and went to their rooms.
“Did they tell you Ray left Cal’s before the others?”
“One of them did.” She flipped open her notebook. “Marvin Peters, who said he would rather go by Pete Marvin.” She shook her head. “Hell, I’d rather go by Jennifer Lawrence, but I’m stuck with Cindy LaMond.”
“Pete’s the only one who mentioned Ray leaving Cal’s? That seems strange.”
“Detective Callahan is upstairs talking to Theo’s brother, so I don’t know what he’s said. The confused one, Wallace, is so out of it, I doubt he knows if he was at Cal’s tonight, umm, last night, or climbing the Eiffel Tower. That boy’s got a spittoon full of screws loose.”
“Anything else?”
“Crap, Chris, want me to email you the police report when we get it finished? Even better, if the coroner’s wagon hadn’t skedaddled, I’d let you go with them to help with the autopsy.”
I bit my lower lip to keep me from smiling. “So, nothing else?”
Cindy pointed toward the great room. “Get in there. Work your calming charm on poor Theo.”
I saluted, said, “Yes, chief,” and joined the comics and poor Theo.
Sal’s questioning must have ended because he was back in the room, wearing blue and white horizontal striped pajama bottoms with a navy-blue top. He stared at the floor and held his head between his hands. Pete was staring out the window at total darkness. His bright red PJs would’ve made a stop light feel anemic. Wallace had on the same clothes he wore in Cal’s. The only things missing were shoes and socks.
Theo looked up. Not only did he look up, but he pushed himself off the couch and hugged me. His white robe tickled my chin. His arms were more powerful than I would’ve imagined. I had to pull them away to break his grasp.
“Thank you for coming. I didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know who to call.”
I was pleased that he felt comfortable calling, although I would’ve preferred a more decent hour. I told him I was glad to come.
He turned to the other three sitting on the couch. “Guys, Chris is here.”
They weren’t as happy to see me as Theo had been.
Only Sal’s nod acknowledged my presence. He didn’t speak.
I was confident that I knew, but still asked Theo what happened. He told me the same story I’d heard from the police. He added that he was asleep when he heard commotion in the hall outside his bedroom. One in the group screamed for someone to call an ambulance. Theo didn’t know who yelled. He ran to the top of the stairs, looked down, saw Ray, and called 911.
“How’s Wallace?” I whispered, although Ray’s father looked like he was in a trance and couldn’t hear anything.
Theo glanced over at him and whispered, “How do you think? He found his son dead at the bottom of the steps. I can’t imagine what’s going through his head.”
Wallace must’ve sensed that we were talking about him. He shook his head, looked at Theo and me, and said, “My wife wanted to see the world, so I bought her an Atlas.”
I smiled, and Theo faked a laugh.
Pete returned to the couch and put his arm around his friend. “It’s okay, Wallace. Everything will be fine.”
And I thought Wallace was the one losing touch with reality.
Cindy and Detective Callahan conferred by the front door while the comics, Theo, and I sat in the great room.
The detective left.
Cindy came in, said the police were done in the house, and told the assembled group to call if anyone thought of anything he hadn’t shared. If the guys heard her, they didn’t acknowledge it.
Theo and I walked Cindy to the door.
We watched her go, then Theo looked back at the group, still unmoving in the other room. “Chris, could you spare a few more minutes?”
I would’ve been hard-pressed to come up with a reason to be somewhere other than in bed at 4:00 in the morning. I nodded.
Theo ushered me to an office off the kitchen. “Chris, do you think Ray’s death was anything other than an accident?”
“Why ask?”
Theo closed the door. “Just letting my mind run amok.”
“Go on.”
“Sal’s the only one of the group I knew before they showed up at my door. Ray has been fighting with each of them since the day they arrived. He may be funny on stage but, from what I saw, he was a royal asshole. He made fun of the others behind their backs. He kept bragging about how many high-paying, prestigious gigs he had recently, and never hesitated to tell the others they were has-beens.”
“Did he get along with his dad?”
“Not that I could tell. When Wallace was making sense, not that often, I might add, he tried to defend his overbearing, obnoxious son. He talked about how horrible a childhood Ray had with Wallace traveling all the time. Wallace may’ve taken up for Ray although, if you ask me, Ray treated his dad like crap. The others tried to get Ray to calm down.” Theo smiled for the first time tonight. “I remember a couple of days ago, Pete had to step between Ray and Wallace to keep Ray from punching his dad. Pete pointed his seventy-five-year-old bony finger in fifty-year-old Ray’s face, and said something like, ‘You’re fortunate that I don’t flatten your nose.’”
“Was he serious?”
“I don’t know. After he said it, Ray laughed, and Pete joined in. Besides, each of the other guys felt that way about Ray and told him so since they were here.”
“Because Ray was obnoxious doesn’t mean someone killed him.”
“True,” Theo said. “I don’t know about Ray because he left Cal’s before the rest of us. I know the other guys had so much to drink that they were probably seeing double when we got here.” He smiled for a second time. “Doubt they’d know which of the two Rays they were seeing to push him down the steps.”
“Theo, do you know what got Ray so upset that he stomped out of Cal’s? Wallace made that joke saying that he remembered when Ray was young and was smoking something. Why did that bother him so much?”
“That may’ve been the last straw. I’ll tell you it was only part of a larger hay bale. Ray was pissed when they piled in the car for me to take them to Cal’s. Before you ask, I don’t know why.”
“Was Ray here when you got
home?”
“I think so, but I didn’t see him. His door was closed, so I figured he was in his room.”
“What was he wearing when you found him?”
“Same thing he had on at Cal’s. Why?”
“Curious. A minute ago, you mentioned something about when Wallace was making sense. He seemed to be having a tough time with reality when he was performing. Has he been getting worse?”
Theo looked at the closed door. “You know I don’t like to talk unkindly about anyone.”
Other than calling Ray a royal asshole, I thought. I motioned for him to continue.
“I never know what year he’s living in. One minute he’s as coherent as can be; the next, he’s talking about something that happened three decades ago.”
“What do the others think?”
“They go back a long way. Other than Ray, they get along well, occasionally finishing each other’s jokes. They listen when one of them tells a story that I know the others must’ve heard countless times. I think they would do anything for each other. That’s all to say that, if they know Wallace is drifting out of reality, no one mentioned it. Think it’s something they’ve come to expect.”
I didn’t know how to casually broach the topic, so I didn’t try. “Remember the other day when Wallace said he’d seen a body. He was confused about when?”
“Sure, turned out to be that bookie.”
“Remember last night when Wallace said something about killing him?”
“When Sal jumped in and tried to make us believe that Wallace was referring to killing the audience?”
Theo was old by many standards. In the walking group, he had been teased about being as fast as a snail on Ambien, but anyone who thought he wasn’t as sharp as a chef’s knife didn’t know him. It wasn’t by accident that he’d been a successful business owner and inventor.
“Exactly,” I said. “Any idea what he was talking about?”
“No. I wanted to get him aside later and ask. Then this happened.” Theo waved toward the stairs.
“To answer your question about what I thought, I wasn’t here, so I have no idea what happened. Unless someone changes his story, none of your guests saw what happened.”
