How to Succeed in Murder

by Margaret Dumas

  “Tell me we’re not still talking about snake soup.” I set the stack of dishes, napkins, and serving spoons on the low table between them, nudging aside the steaming cartons of food they’d taken out of the bags.

  “No.” Jack handed me a mai tai—complete with little paper umbrella. “Harry was telling me why he didn’t hear us at the door.”

  Harry smiled broadly and raised his glass. “I was working. And whenever I’m working I have the delivery guy come to the back door. So he doesn’t interrupt my work. Usually I keep working while I eat, but this is a special occasion.” He rattled his ice cubes.

  From the number of times he’d used the word “working” in that explanation, I gathered I was required to inquire, “What are you working on?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.” He set his glass down and put up his hands, palms out, in a “just visualize this” gesture.

  “I’m writing a play.”

  Oh, my God.

  ***

  “…I mean, I saw all of your plays last season, and I just thought ‘Goddamn! I could do that! I have some stories to tell!’”

  I realized Harry was still talking. I must have gone into some sort of dissociative fugue state for a moment.

  He was giving Jack one of his trademark winks. “You’d better believe I have some stories to tell.”

  “I have no doubt,” Jack said evenly. I looked at him. Only the slightest twinkle in his eye betrayed how very amusing he was finding this conversation. That twinkle would cost him later.

  “…so I’ve got all that figured out.” Harry was looking at me, glowing with excitement.

  “All what?” I asked, still dazed.

  “The plot!” he exclaimed, reaching for a carton and digging in to the noodles it contained. He passed it to me. “Eat something—you’ve got no color in your face.”

  I blinked several times, fast. “Harry, you can’t just write a play. I mean you can’t just pick up a pencil one day and decide—”

  “I bought a laptop,” he announced, tearing the wrapper off a pair of wooden chopsticks. “I even got this program that takes care of the formatting and everything.”

  I looked to Jack for backup. He shrugged. “Well, Pumpkin, if the man bought a laptop…”

  I considered impaling them both with chopsticks, but decided the ones that had come with the takeout weren’t sharp enough. I turned back to my uncle.

  “Harry, have you ever even read a play?”

  “Well, sure.” He found the carton with the crab in it and inhaled deeply, a look of pure joy on his face. “Ah, crab season. My favorite time of year. Jack, you’ve got to try this.” Then he returned to my question. “I mean, they made us read all kinds of Shakespeare and shit when I was in school.”

  Shakespeare and shit. Lovely. I was about to launch into a minor rant when the next thing he said stopped me short.

  “Of course, I understand there’s probably lots of technical stuff I don’t know. So I think the best thing to do is get a collaborator.”

  I froze. “A collaborator?”

  “Yeah, you know, like Rogers and Hammerstein.”

  “If there’s a God,” I said carefully, “you’ll tell me you’re not writing a musical.”

  “No, no, no.” He waved with his chopsticks, sending bits of crab shell flying. “But you know what I mean. Lots of plays were written by more than one person.”

  Sure. Comden and Green. Kaufman and Hart. But not Harry and anyone. And certainly not Harry and me.

  He was still talking. “…just a little help with the language and things.”

  “Oh,” I said acidly. “It will have language?”

  He wouldn’t be deterred. “So what do you think, Charley? Will she want to?”

  She? “She who?”

  He sat back and spread his hands. “Brenda, of course.”

  Oh, hell.

  ***

  “Okay, Jack. You can cut it out now. I get it. You think this is hilarious.” We were halfway back to the city and he hadn’t stopped laughing for miles.

  “Oh, come on—it’s cute,” he protested.

  “Cute? Nothing Harry has ever done could be considered cute.”

  “You don’t think it’s cute that he has a crush on Brenda?”

  “Harry doesn’t have crushes. He has conquests. And Brenda isn’t going to be one of them.” It was a fate I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, let alone my best friend.

  “Hey, Charley.” Jack’s tone softened. “You know there was a little something between them a while ago, and it wasn’t just on his side.”

  I hated it, but he was right. Brenda had stayed at the Hills borough house with Harry and my cousin during a period of time when it would have been dangerous for her to go home. I’d known she’d gotten to be fond of him. But I’d told myself—rigorously and repeatedly—that’s all it was. Just fondness. Like you’d have for your eccentric uncle, assuming he was simply eccentric and not a paranoid delusional nutcase.

  “Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” I said. “Because she’s taking a bunch of students to Europe. And by the time she gets back, Harry will probably have moved on to his next whacko idea.”

  “Um, about that…”

  His tone sent little drops of dread sliding down my spine. “What?”

  “I mentioned Brenda’s trip to Harry. When you were putting the leftovers away.”

  “Okay…” I braced myself. “And Harry said…”

  “That maybe he should change the setting to Paris and tag along with the trip.”

  This was not good.

  ***

  “Brenda, I have to talk to you.”

  I waited on my end of the line while I heard her make waking-up-and-looking-at-the-clock noises. I’d called her from the bedroom as soon as we’d gotten home. Jack was checking his email before coming up, but I didn’t have much time.

  “Charley, it’s after midnight,” she informed me.

  “Sorry, it’s just that…” It’s just that I’m completely freaked out by the thought of you and Harry? That probably wasn’t the best approach.

  “Charley, what’s going on?”

  I told her something guaranteed to get her interest.

  “I found out the coroner has declared Clara’s death an accident.”

  It became very still on the other end of the line for a moment. Then she spoke. “So what are we going to do about it?”

  “What?” I thought I heard Jack on the stairs.

  “Charley, we have to do something. What are we going to do?”

  Excellent question. I thought fast.

  “Are you busy tomorrow night?”

  “I have a faculty meeting until six. What’s the plan?”

  “I think we should go for a late-night workout.”

  I heard a sharp intake of breath. “Can we do that?”

  “Why not? Jack’s a member of WorkSpace, and it shouldn’t be a crime for us to go check out a gym.”

  “Oh, but Charley—”

  I did hear Jack. “Brenda, I have to go. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  I hung up the phone and managed to grab a random manuscript from the floor before Jack appeared in the doorway. I flipped the pages nonchalantly.

  “Any interesting messages?” I was innocence personified.

  He looked at me with a certain wariness. Or maybe that was only my imagination. “Not much. Anything interesting going on up here?”

  I widened my eyes. “Here? In the bedroom? Without you? Never.”

  I think he bought it.

  ***

  The next morning I found myself leaning out the third-floor window and shouting to the figure below.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Simon looked up. “Ringing your doorbell, darling. Do you think you might answer it?”

  I looked up and down the street. Shouting out windows was probably frowned upon in Pacific Heights, but the last thing I’d expected at nine-thirty on a Tuesday morning was an energetic
Englishman on my doorstep. Particularly since this Englishman hadn’t shown signs of energy in weeks. I closed the window and hurried down the stairs.

  “Good lord, darling, I thought you’d be up and about by now.” He pecked me absently on the cheek and pushed past me into the entrance hall. “I mean, if experience is any judge, by the time I’m up the world’s up.” This was spoken with the certainty of a man at the center of his universe.

  “I had a bad night.” I wrapped my robe a little more tightly around myself and tried to put the images that had haunted me all night out of my mind. Visions of my uncle pursuing Brenda across Europe, nightmarishly mixed in with visions of women bleeding to death on steam room floors.

  Simon snorted. “Don’t get me started on the subject of bad nights. Not unless you want to hear about the very charming piano player I met at the Redwood Room last night.”

  I didn’t, which didn’t seem to matter.

  “Gorgeous, talented, and quite surprisingly athletic,” he went on. “But also the victim of some congenital sinus abnormality resulting in snores that could peel the paint off the walls.”

  “Simon, as interesting as this is…why are you here?” I yawned.

  “My God,” he said, circling the entrance hall and looking into rooms. To the left of the door was an arched entryway into a large, lovely room. Hardwood floors and a perfectly proportioned fireplace. A series of windows looking into the front yard. “Not a stick of furniture,” he marveled. “Brenda was right.”

  “Brenda!” Now he had my interest. “When did you talk to her? What did she say?” Anything about Harry making a nuisance of himself? Or about our planned expedition to the scene of Clara Chen’s death?

  “Only that you were either paralyzed by indecision…” He crossed the hallway and looked into the den and dining rooms, much as Brenda had done the day before. “…or exhibiting some sort of denial on a scale hitherto—”

  “Oh, come on!” I slammed the dining room door, my relief at Brenda’s apparent discretion overpowered by my irritation with her fixation on interior design. “I have no dark psychological issues. I just haven’t been shopping yet.”

  “Exactly.” Simon arranged himself on the stairs. “Which is why I’m giving you ten minutes to go put on some clothes—” He squinted at my face. “—and some makeup. Then we’re going shopping.”

  I stared at him. “I can’t go shopping!”

  “Why not?” He raised his eyebrows eloquently.

  “I have things to do!”

  “Such as?”

  Damn him. The last thing I wanted was Simon insisting he could accompany us to the women’s steam room at WorkSpace.

  “Such as reading all those plays,” I said triumphantly.

  “Don’t bother. They’re all rubbish. I read them yesterday.”

  “All of them?” That was fast work.

  He sighed. “Have you forgotten that my life is as empty as your pathetic parlor? I had all day stretching in front of me.” His expression sharpened. “And it’s not as though you invited me along on your girls-only detective day at Eileen’s office.”

  Oh. That stopped me. “Brenda told you about that, too?” I sat on the step next to him. Hardwood floors are cold on winter mornings. “I guess you heard we didn’t come up with much.”

  “That’s not the point! Charley, I told you if there was going to be any detective stuff I wanted to be in on it.”

  “It wasn’t detective stuff. It was internet research.”

  “Nevertheless—”

  “Simon, I promise you that at the first sign of donning trench coats and skulking down back alleys, I’ll call you.” Which carried no commitment to tell him about donning towels and skulking around locker rooms. “In the meanwhile…”

  “Yes,” he said briskly. “In the meanwhile we’re going shopping. And you now have exactly eight minutes.”

  Fine. I wasn’t going to meet Brenda until nightfall anyway. If Simon wanted to perform a one-man decorating intervention, I could deal with it—on one condition.

  We were going shopping south of Market.

  Right near Zakdan, Inc.

  Chapter Eight

  I returned in triumph. Simon had dragged me through every inch of the San Francisco Design Center. I’d seen oriental rugs and French provincial buffets and classical revival fainting couches and modern urban settees.

  And I’d studied the exterior of the Zakdan building from every possible angle. But my husband didn’t need to know that yet.

  “Jack!” I yelled as I came in. “I’ve been shopping!”

  “I know.” He appeared at the top of the stairs. “I got your note. Come on up.”

  “Jack, I really think I’m getting somewhere. I mean, I looked at a ton of stuff and I really feel like things are coming together.” I bounded up the stairs and grabbed his hand, intending to pull him up the next flight to the bedroom.

  “That’s great, Charley.” He pulled me the other direction, and I realized he was heading for his office. “There’s something—”

  “Jack—how do you feel about shabby chic? It’s when you buy really expensive stuff that looks like it’s been rotting in a barn for a hundred years, and—”

  “Whatever you want, Pumpkin. But first—”

  “Or we could go for all clean lines and geometric shapes—think the W hotel—and stay with a neutral palette and dark finishes and uplights…” I’d picked up a lot of lingo on the expedition. “What do you think?”

  I stopped him before he got to the door, and leaned against the wall in the most provocative pose I could manage—given that I still wore last year’s quilted Burberry coat and I was carrying the world’s heaviest shopping bag. “Wouldn’t that be sexy?”

  His eyes darkened. “I never really thought about it that way.” He moved closer. “But if you say so—”

  I nodded. “I say so.” He got within necking range, so I dropped the shopping bag and went for it. I ran my hands up his arms. He smelled good. He smelled like…veal marsala?

  “Hi, Charley. Oops!”

  I opened my eyes and saw Jack’s partner, Mike, ducking back into Jack’s office. I looked up at my husband, who was doing a poor job of hiding his amusement. “Well.” I straightened the Burberry. “You at least have to give me credit for some improvement. I used to scream when your friends suddenly appeared out of nowhere.”

  Gordon suddenly materialized behind Jack and I screamed. But it was just a little one.

  “Please excuse me, Charley. I was trying out a few recipes and thought I’d bring something up for you and Jack.” Gordon came as close to looking flustered as I’d ever seen him.

  “Would that something be veal marsala?”

  His expression cleared. “Are you hungry?”

  Suddenly I was famished.

  ***

  The three of them were clearly in the middle of something. There were stacks of folders, half a dozen thick binders, and three laptops in the office. Jack had installed some shelving and unpacked a couple boxes of books, but there was still a lot of stuff scattered around, including the remains of an impromptu picnic. The guys had apparently been sampling Gordon’s menu while spread out on the floor.

  Gordon smoothly removed some paperwork from Jack’s desk and set a place for me in front of the one and only chair. I heard him mutter something about “at least one person sitting like a civilized human being” as he went about it, but he had fully recovered his considerable composure.

  The three men were roughly the same age—late thirties or so, and when I’d first met him I’d thought Mike looked a lot like Jack. They were both tall, and had similar builds, but after knowing him a few months I had to admit that Jack’s business partner was a geek to his probably-computerized core.

  Sadly, although Mike had the raw material of a hunky-brainy type, he apparently had no interest in cultivating the look. Instead, he had the appearance of a man who cut his own hair with dull scissors and dressed without benefit of a mi
rror.

  Gordon, on the other hand, was impeccable. He was slighter than the other two, and his hair was thinning at the crown. He was a study in control, and I had to admit that when I’d first met him I’d cast him in the role of a mild-mannered serial killer. Luckily, I’d been wrong.

  Although he clearly had no moral reservations about the murder of baby cows—and smelling the veal dish I put aside mine as well—Gordon had turned out to be surprisingly softhearted. He could even put up with Uncle Harry.

  “What are you guys working on?” I asked innocently, taking off my coat and trying not to drool as Gordon composed a plate of baby root vegetables, roasted new potatoes, and veal, then ladled the rich mushroomy sauce over it.

  Nobody answered me.

  “I’m rethinking the plate.” Gordon placed the meal before me. “I’d been thinking classic white with a one-and-three-quarters-inch rim, but now I’m not sure if it needs a little something more.”

  I took a bite. “It needs nothing.”

  “Of course, in the restaurant I’ll do a dusting of fresh parsley, and that will add visual interest…” he mused.

  I’ll stack my foodie credentials up against any other self-respecting San Franciscan, but I’ve never fallen into the trap of valuing presentation over taste. “It’s amazing,” I assured him. “You’re a genius.”

  “He knows he’s a genius,” Mike said. “He just wants to be a successful-restaurant-owning genius.”

  “Unlike you,” Gordon replied. “I suppose you want to be a bankrupt computer-security consultant?”

  Mike ran his finger around the one-and-three-quarters-inch rim of his plate, then licked it. “Nope, I’m pretty much in it for the money.”

  “How’s it going?” I asked. “What are you working on?” Not that I didn’t have my suspicions.

  “Zakdan,” Mike said. “It’s fascinating. They’re—”

  I was too busy giving my husband an “ah ha!” look to pay attention to what Mike found so fascinating.

  Jack interrupted his colleague using his best it’s-no-big-deal voice. “We’re working on the computer glitch that Morgan Stokes first approached Mike about.”