AHMM, December 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Although a few diners were already seated over cocktails, the group from the Rolf Huizinga Senior Center made up the bulk of the audience tonight. They gradually distributed themselves among the available tables, the ones with rheumatism worrying about drafts and the ones with hearing aids investigating the position of the loudspeakers.

  Only two entrees were available—New York strip steak and Vegetarian Rhapsody—and the numbers of each that would be required had been submitted a week ago. The meal therefore began at once without the delay and inconvenience of ordering from a menu. Before the group was fully seated, an army of servers began dispensing soup and salad. They had scarcely finished when the show began with an eruption of wild noise and flashes of light.

  Against a background of canned organ music, an invisible announcer welcomed the audience and informed them that the program would consist of two acts, the first to be presented during the soup and salad course and the second to accompany dessert. He then plunged immediately into the introductory narration as members of the cast swept out from behind the screened enclosure and into the open area among the tables.

  As the story began, three college girls (a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead) were driving through the mountains of Transylvania during spring break. The blonde was a stereotypic nitwit—effervescent, harebrained, naive. Despite her makeup and wig, it was obvious that the actress playing the part of the blonde was at least ten years older than her companions.

  Having lost their way during a violent storm, the girls sought refuge at Dunraven Castle, where they were welcomed by a menagerie of comic horror figures, consisting of the proprietor, Lord Anthony Kilbride, his lame and hunchbacked flunky, Igor, and a chorus of “wraiths"—pale, melancholy female figures prancing and posturing in gauzy pastel robes. The actor portraying Lord Anthony was tall and somberly handsome, with a Vandyke beard and a mesmeric gaze. While he led his visitors among the tables on a tour of the castle, he and the other cast members engaged in giddy and often highly physical interaction with the diners.

  The plot, a clumsy blend of Bluebeard and the Dracula legend, gradually unfolded to a lead-footed, sophomoric script loaded with bad puns and maladroit allusions to current events. Lord Anthony had been married several times, and his wives had all died one after another in mysterious circumstances. With increasing fervor, he paid court to each of his guests in turn, but it was evident that Gloria DeVoyd, the blonde, had attracted his particular attention.

  By the end of Act I, two of the girls were planning to go on with their trip, while Gloria had decided to remain in Transylvania and become the latest bride of Dunraven Castle. “Stay tuned,” boomed the announcer, “for the gripping conclusion of our story.” The spotlights faded, the diners applauded, and the serving staff reappeared to clear away empty dishes and bring on the main course.

  The members of the cast now assembled at one of the tables bordering the performance area and joined the rest of the guests for dinner. Although they dropped their roles during the meal, they didn't abandon their mood of eerie jocularity in their bantering exchanges with the guests.

  As soon as the servers began removing the main course dishes and distributing dessert, the players disappeared once again behind the black screens. For Act II, all the electric lights in the dining room were extinguished, the flickering candles now providing the only illumination. Again the action began with storm effects created by a strobe light and volleys of recorded thunder. Lord Anthony and his new bride returned to Dunraven Castle from their honeymoon to find Igor and the resident wraiths just as weird and gruesome as ever.

  The story creaked on toward its conclusion from one moronic sight gag to the next. The table at which the cast had just dined now formed part of the set as the newlyweds sat down to a homecoming banquet while the storm raged outside. It gradually became evident that Gloria wasn't such a bimbo after all—that, in fact, she was planning to be not only Lord Anthony's last bride, but also his first widow.

  In the climactic scene, Lord Anthony opened a magnum of champagne and filled two glasses. When he turned to put the bottle back into the ice bucket, Gloria added a pinch of powder to his champagne. But something in her manner aroused his suspicions, so when she wasn't looking he reversed the glasses. Hearing the clink of the glasses on the table, she changed them back when he wasn't looking.

  There ensued a series of three or four further switches, the person doing the switching resorting to increasingly ludicrous and improbable ruses to distract the other. At length, Gloria outwitted her husband by picking up the drinks and setting them down again in the same places. After Lord Anthony switched them one final time, they both drank. Then, amid a screeching cacophony of music and flickering light, he dropped his glass, clutched his throat, and collapsed in agony on the floor. The wraiths fluttered around him, alternately bending to caress his brow and raising their hands in mute appeals to heaven. Gloria sipped her champagne with calm detachment while watching his final moments.

  Dr. Mickelhaws's seat happened to be at one of the tables adjoining the stage area. The first intimation the other guests had that anything was amiss occurred when Mickelhaws sprang up and knelt beside the writhing figure on the floor. In the frantically flashing light, he bent over Lord Anthony, feeling for a pulse in his neck while forcing his head back to clear his airway.

  With jarring suddenness, the doctor's shoulders were violently gripped from behind and his body flung sideways into the black shadows under the nearest table. His head struck something as hard as a telephone pole and the shadows engulfed him completely.

  * * * *

  The driveway to the parking lot at Weyermueller's Restaurant was completely blocked by two ambulances and two cruisers. Detective Sergeant Cyrus Auburn parked across the street in the covered pickup area in front of a dance studio, which was closed at this hour of the night. Two charter coaches were parked end to end along one side of the restaurant lot. The drivers stood smoking in the shelter of the portico, with the stoic resignation of their kind.

  The entry hall of the restaurant looked like the aftermath of a natural disaster. Two ambulance crews, each with enough gear to support a polar expedition, were busily ministering to their respective patients. A young woman in a server's uniform was receiving oxygen by mask, while an old man with a bulky dressing on his head glared malignly at the paramedic who was taking his blood pressure.

  No one paid any attention to Auburn. As he crossed the hall and entered the restaurant proper, he caught a glimpse of a large private dining room on his right, where the entire roster of a nursing home seemed to be assembled in somber silence.

  The main dining area was vacant except for four people, three of them uniformed Public Safety officers, conversing near the center of the room. On all sides Auburn saw evidence of a hasty evacuation—chairs shoved back from the tables in a mad jumble, napkins wadded up and thrown down at random, a dish of ice cream at each place melting into an unappetizing glop. No one had thought to blow out the candles. At the side of the dining room, a tall enclosure formed by black folding screens was evidently part of the theater arrangements. A pylon extending upward from within the enclosure carried banks of lights and speakers.

  The center of interest seemed to be a cleared space among the tables. Patrolman Fritz Dollinger came to meet Auburn.

  "What have we got here,” Auburn asked him, “a gang war? They only mentioned one casualty when they called from downtown."

  "What can I tell you, Sergeant? A lot can happen in a short time. And, by the way, we are downtown."

  Auburn studied the supine and lifeless figure on the floor, a man of tall and imposing build. His complexion was cadaverous under a full beard and the smeared remains of a film of greasepaint. Monitor leads placed by the paramedics were still sticking to his chest amid the shredded remnants of his shirt.

  "Do we have a positive ID?"

  "Professor Desmond Cossegrin, age forty-six. Chairman of the drama department at the university. His wife has
a part in the play too. She goes by her maiden name of Westgaard. She's in the manager's office right now, having hysterics or maybe trying for an Oscar, I'm not sure which."

  Auburn looked around at the props on the table next to the body—a bowl of plastic fruit, a platter of plastic pork chops, a genuine-looking champagne bottle in an ice bucket, one glass on the table and another on the floor.

  "The lieutenant said cyanide?"

  "If you get within a yard of him, you'll smell it. If you get any closer than that, you might end up like the gal out there in the lobby."

  Auburn didn't need to get within a yard to detect the pungent, acrid chemical fumes. “Like to give me an outline of what happened?” he asked.

  "We're still trying to put it together. This gentleman was here...” A tall, wiry man was explaining something to the other two officers with brisk, sweeping gestures as if he were swatting flies. His long, mobile face was deeply creased like a camel's.

  He identified himself as “Bish” Gardner, director of the play. “I was just telling these officers about the champagne. It isn't really champagne, just ginger ale. We chill the bottle in a freezer, pour in three cans of ice-cold ginger ale with a funnel, and then shove in the plastic plug.” He was doing the gestures over again for Auburn's benefit. “Just before we plug it, we add a big pinch of baking powder. And here in the bucket—"

  "Please don't touch that, sir."

  "—we put hot water instead of ice. All in the name of illusion, you know. So that the plug will pop out with a noise like a firecracker, and the champagne will foam and froth like the real thing."

  "Who's in charge of fixing up the champagne bottle?"

  "I am."

  "Do you use the same bottle every time?"

  "Yes, and the same wire on the plug. But I put on fresh aluminum foil each time.” When Gardner wasn't gesturing, his hands shook.

  "Who might have had access to the bottle?"

  Gardner shrugged. “Lots of people. I fixed up that bottle after the performance last Tuesday. We store our stuff during the week in a cupboard back in the kitchen, but it isn't locked."

  Auburn took another look around him. An upper gallery, which had been draped with black and purple crepe for the occasion, overlooked the main dining room on two sides. A sky-blue banner, hanging from one of the gallery railings proclaimed in shiny silver letters:

  Rolf Huizinga Senior Center of Wilmot

  "The Good Die Young"

  "So could somebody describe what happened here this evening?” he asked for the third time.

  Gardner pointed to the screened enclosure. “I was there in the production booth the whole time. Our music and narration all come off a CD, which I play through the sound system. That sets the pace and gives the cues for the whole performance. The actors with speaking parts wear clip-on microphones, and their dialogue also goes through the sound system. I can't see much from where I am, and all I hear is what comes through my headphones."

  "Let's start with what you did see and hear."

  "Okay. The climax of the play comes in the second act when the female lead slips the male lead a dose of poison in a glass of champagne. He takes a sip and does a slapstick death scene—"

  "Slapstick?"

  "Well, sure, it's a comedy, you know? He gives it this and he gives it that.” Gardner accompanied his words with a pantomime of Lord Anthony's final agonies. “And then he drops down dead.” His gaze strayed to the body on the floor and immediately rebounded elsewhere. “And that's exactly what Cossegrin did."

  "Does the woman drink too?"

  Gardner pondered for a moment. “Yes and no. They both act like they're drinking. But I wouldn't think either one of them would actually taste the stuff. I mean—ginger ale and baking powder?” He made a face like a camel tasting a batch of moldy figs.

  "You said she slips some poison in his glass?"

  "Again, strictly illusion. She goes through the motions of dropping something into one of the glasses. By candlelight, the audience can't tell that she doesn't really drop anything in."

  "Then again,” observed Auburn, “they probably couldn't tell if she really did. Where are the other people in the cast?"

  "They're all in one of the private dining rooms,” said Dollinger. “Except for the victim's wife. She's lying down on a couch in the manager's office."

  "So what happened to those two people out in the lobby?"

  "That's the only part I saw,” said Gardner. “I heard a strange voice coming through my headphones saying, ‘Somebody call 911.’ At first I thought it was just somebody in the audience playing it for a gag—they do that all the time, especially the ones that had a couple of martinis before dinner. Then he said it again, much louder, as if he were trying to make himself heard over the music. So I peeked out to see what was going on.

  "During that part of the show, we use a strobe light to enhance the shock effect of the death scene. That makes everything look jerky and distorted, but I could see a couple of people on the floor here next to Cossegrin. One of them was bent over him as if he were trying to resuscitate him. Then the other one—one of the waitresses—slammed into him like an express train, shoved him out of the way, and started jumping up and down on Cossegrin. By the time I cut the sound and put on the lights, she was whooping and gagging and rolling around on the floor, doing her own slapstick death scene."

  Dollinger consulted a notebook. “Morgan Carruth, age thirty-one. Certified EMT. Says waitressing pays better. She realized something was wrong with Cossegrin and tried to help him. But when she gave him mouth-to-mouth, she got her own dose of cyanide."

  "Has the coroner been notified?” asked Auburn.

  "Coroner's investigator and evidence technician are both on the way."

  Auburn nodded and turned back to Gardner. “Any idea who might be behind this? Any recent feuds, threats, friction in the group?"

  "I'm not aware of any trouble Professor Cossegrin was having with anybody, but actually I know very little about his private life. I sell and service audio equipment.” He fished a card out of his pocket and handed it to Auburn. “I just do this on Tuesday nights for the fun of it.” Suddenly realizing that the fun was over, he fell silent.

  Back in the lobby, where Auburn went in search of other witnesses, he met a woman striding energetically up and down while talking on a cell phone and gesturing with a clipboard to the empty air. As soon as she saw Auburn she rang off.

  "Hi, Sergeant. Kate Kinnear.” She shook hands with a grip like a nutcracker. “I know your mother from United Way breakfasts. I'm hoping we can expedite things a bit here. Sixty-seven people, not counting the bus drivers and me, have been waiting patiently for forty-five minutes to be interviewed. Some of our folks run out of steam around this time of night, and some of them start seeing goblins. It'll take ten minutes to herd them into the buses, and then we've got a twenty-five-minute ride back to the center in the rain."

  Ms. Kinnear seemed to have developed the knack, like a professional clarinetist, of inhaling through her nose while blasting away uninterruptedly through her mouth.

  "A lot of the folks don't drive,” she continued, “at least after dark, so family members will be waiting at the center to pick them up and take them home. Some of them will be worried, and some will be spitting nails. Here—the restaurant man made you a photocopy of my list. That's everybody that's here tonight, with addresses, phone numbers, and backup phone numbers. The main point is that none of our people were close enough to see anything, and they certainly didn't have anything to do with that man's death. Except of course Dr. Mickelhaws."

  "Doctor who?"

  "Mickelhaws—that man sitting over there on the stretcher with a thing like a turban on his head."

  "One of your professional staff?"

  "Goodness no, just a member. He—uh—got in the way of a very determined paramedic."

  "I heard about that. And what's become of the paramedic?"

  "They just took her to the hospit
al. Something about her color, I think."

  In the large private banqueting room that Auburn had noticed on his way in, the group from the senior center were huddled in mute dejection, like people waiting for a plane that has just crashed on the other side of the mountains. Although a few of them were talking quietly in groups, most of them were just sitting there yawning.

  "I know you all want to get home,” Auburn told them, “and I don't see any point in holding you up any longer. Unless somebody has any information that might help us figure out what happened here tonight?” Blank stares. “Were any of you acquainted with the man who died, Desmond Cossegrin? Or with any of the other people in the production? Okay. I think you can go. I'm giving Ms. Kinnear some of my cards. If anybody thinks of something they'd like to tell me privately, I'll be here for a while yet."

  He found the owner-manager of the restaurant, Karl-Heinz Weyermueller, pacing morosely outside the open door of his office. Stocky and bald, with small restless eyes like a lizard's, Weyermueller exactly matched Hollywood's conception of a sinister Oberst in the gestapo. He eyed Auburn's ID with deep disapproval, as if the murder in his restaurant and the adverse publicity it would bring were all Auburn's fault.

  "The players are waiting in the small dining room,” he said, with an accent as piquant as sauerkraut juice. “The door you just passed."

  "I'm looking for Cossegrin's wife. I understand she's in your office."

  "Ah, no. Miss Westgaard's son came and took her home. You could have got nothing from her tonight. She is completely broken down."

  "What can you tell me about what happened?"

  "Really nothing. I was in the kitchen when the music stopped. We thought at first maybe an electrical failure. Then we heard people screaming, and we thought maybe fire. But the truth was worse even than that."