Name Games

by Michael Craft

  Lucy leaned to ask me under her breath, “What’s that got to do with poison?”

  I laughed, acknowledging my non sequitur. “Sorry. The play is Arsenic and Old Lace. It’s about little old ladies who—”

  “—who poison little old men,” Lucy finished my sentence with a chuckle, remembering the play. “Which role, Thad?”

  “Dr. Einstein, the plastic surgeon who drinks a lot.” Then Thad hammed a line or two, demonstrating the accent Neil had taught him.

  “Congratulations,” Glee and Lucy told him. “That’s marvelous.” Lucy had been in my office with Pierce on Thursday afternoon when Thad called with the news, but Pierce and I were just then rushing out to visit the coroner, so she never got the full story.

  Thad told us, “We’re having a read-through of the script tonight. Mrs. Osborne says it’s very important—it’s the first time the whole cast gets to hear the whole play.” He slurped some milk.

  “That’s right,” Neil told him, having nibbled a bit of kringle. “Once rehearsals start, you won’t get to hear the whole play again till weeks later. The read-through is lots of fun—you get to know the rest of the cast, and there isn’t much pressure yet.” Neil must have liked the pastry because he now sliced off a palm-size chunk of it and slid it onto his plate.

  Thad quavered, “I am a little nervous about learning all the lines, though. I’ve never done it before.”

  “Here’s a tip,” said Neil, after swallowing. “Count the pages on which you have lines to learn, then count the days you have till lines are due. Divide the pages by the days, and you’ll know exactly how much you need to learn each day—every day, without fail. Then you know you’ll be ready.”

  “Yeah…” Thad seemed surprised by the simplicity of this surefire plan. “Thanks, Neil. I’ll get to work right after breakfast.”

  “When you get further along,” Neil offered, “I’ll help you run your lines.”

  The discussion continued in this vein for a while, all of us encouraging Thad and predicting that he’d be great in the role. Though our intention was to calm his nerves and to assure him there was no need to worry, our words revved him up even further. Not that he seemed frightened by the uncertain prospects of the production—on the contrary, he was chomping at the bit, barely able to remain seated. You’d have thought that that evening’s read-through was not a first rehearsal, but opening night.

  After managing to down several pieces of toast, half a melon, and a quart of milk, he excused himself from the table, took his dishes to the sink, and darted from the kitchen, telling us, “I’ll be in my room working on lines.”

  We couldn’t help laughing as he left. Pierce told me, “If you were worried that he needed some ‘involvement,’ I think he’s found it! He’s a great kid, Mark.”

  “Thanks, Doug.” Responding to this compliment, I was surprised to realize that the emotion I felt was pride—parental pride. I realized too that I’d done little that seemed worthy of credit. For less than a year, I’d sheltered the kid, encouraged him, tried to understand his problems and to nurture his interests. Was that, in essence, the nature of parenting? Was it really that simple?

  “Meanwhile,” said Lucy, ending my wistful thoughts, “who killed Carrol Cantrell?” Her four-word question brought abrupt focus to our purpose that morning. Stacking a few dishes aside, she pulled a folder from the briefcase propped near her chair and opened it on the table. “I’ve done a bit of research on succinylcholine, the drug that Coroner Formhals told us about yesterday.”

  Glee shivered, stabbing a piece of melon with her fork, slicing it from the rind. “Such a gruesome prospect—to think that the mere prick of a needle could fell someone so robust as Carrol Cantrell without leaving a trace of evidence.”

  “Any evidence would be indirect then, right?” asked Neil. The night before, I’d told him all about Dr. Formhals’s experience with succinyl during his residency at an Eastern hospital in a dangerous neighborhood.

  “Right,” answered Pierce. “It’s a long shot at best, but if Carrol was injected with a lethal dose of succinyl, the drug itself would be fully metabolized and therefore undetectable. To make the case for this scenario, we’d have to establish credible circumstantial evidence. In short, we’d need to show that someone with a motive to kill Carrol had access to the drug and an opportunity to use it.”

  I turned to Lucy. “What have you learned about the drug?”

  She leaned over her notes. “Succinylcholine is technically classified as a depolarizing neuromuscular blocker. Its fast onset and short duration make it a drug of choice for such procedures as terminating laryngospasm, endotracheal intubation, and electroconvulsive shock therapy…”

  “Meaning,” I said, “it’s essentially a surgical anesthetic.”

  “Essentially, yes. Sux has been widely used in anesthesia for some fifty years. It’s very stable, with an indefinitely long shelf life under refrigeration. It has its share of adverse reactions, including hypotension and allergic reaction. Its contraindications and drug interactions include…” Lucy prattled on, teaching us more than we wanted to learn about the history and uses of succinylcholine.

  In the midst of all this numbing detail, a thought managed to grab me. “Wait a minute,” I stopped Lucy. “The drug has been around forever and it’ll keep forever—if refrigerated.”

  “Yes.” She sat back, taking a breather from her notes. “So?”

  “This may sound nutty, but during the course of this story, which began a week ago Thursday, I’ve encountered no less than three suspicious refrigerators.”

  Neil grinned. “What, pray tell, is a ‘suspicious refrigerator’?”

  I also grinned, aware that my statement sounded absurd. Pushing my chair back a few inches, I explained to everyone, “On the day Cantrell arrived, Glee and I helped Grace Lord move some things from the coach house to the garage below. Among all the stuff stored there, mostly remnants of the Lord’s Rexall store, was a refrigerator, an old Kelvinator, with a padlock on its handle. Grace said she kept it locked ‘so little kids won’t play in it,’ shuddering at the thought.

  “Then, a few days later, this past Tuesday, Doug took me over to Dr. Tenelli’s house and introduced us. When the doctor went to the basement to fetch us some imported beer, his wife Mary mentioned that he never let her near that downstairs refrigerator, claiming it contained ‘his own private stash.’

  “Finally, yesterday morning, Glee and I visited Miriam Westerman at her goofy New Age School. In the kitchen was a glass-doored refrigerator containing, among other things, a strongbox hidden under a bunch of vegetables. Miriam told us it held her ‘secret recipes.’”

  Without further comment, I crossed my arms, allowing my listeners to consider this tale of three suspicious refrigerators.

  “Mark,” blurted Neil, suppressing a laugh, “there are thousands of refrigerators in Dumont, any one of which could be used to store succinylcholine.”

  From the side of her mouth, Glee told me, “He’s got a point, boss.”

  I was feeling a bit deflated when Pierce said, “Now hold on. Remember our formula for suspicion: motive, means, and opportunity. All three of Mark’s refrigerators relate well to this formula. Unfortunately, there isn’t one of them that fits all the criteria.”

  The rest of us glanced at each other, confused—Pierce was a step ahead of us in analyzing the riddle of the three refrigerators.

  Leaning forward, he elaborated, “First, consider Grace Lord’s locked Kelvinator. She was trained as a pharmacist, so we can assume she has knowledge of succinyl and its uses. The fridge is there in the garage with lots of other stuff from the Rexall store, so it could conceivably be used to store drugs. If we assume, for the sake of argument, that Grace had access to both succinyl and hypodermics, then she had the means to kill Carrol.”

  Neil nodded. “And by the same line of reasoning, she also had the opportunity.”

  “Right,” said Lucy, starting to draw the familiar gri
d on her notepad, “Grace had constant access to the coach house.”

  “However”—Glee raised a finger—“what she did not have was a motive.”

  We all weighed this statement for a moment, then nodded our agreement. I spoke what we were all thinking: “Grace had no reason to want Cantrell dead. She stood to gain nothing from it. To the contrary, she had every reason to want him alive today for the opening of her show. That’s why she invited him here—for professional esteem. If anything, his death has blackened her reputation among the miniatures crowd.”

  “On top of which,” added Neil with a tone of heavy understatement, “Grace doesn’t quite fit the homicidal profile.”

  Lucy wryly pointed out, “Neither did the sweet aunties in Thad’s play.”

  We all shared a good laugh, needing to lighten the moment.

  “Refrigerator number two,” said Pierce, refocusing our conversation. “Ben Tenelli is a retired doctor, so he certainly had knowledge of succinyl and access to it. Yes, he could have stored it with the Chinese beer in his basement. Like Grace, then, he may have had the means to kill Carrol. But while Grace had ample opportunity, I have no reason to think that the good doctor ever had access to the victim at the coach house.”

  I reminded Pierce, “People came and went for three days. Cantrell had many visitors, and Grace was often busy in the exhibit hall—she didn’t see everyone. Tenelli could easily have slipped up there.”

  “All right,” Pierce conceded, “that’s arguable. But we’re still left with the fact that Dr. Tenelli had no motive to kill Carrol. They didn’t even know each other.”

  I corrected Pierce’s statement: “Tenelli had no known motive to kill Carrol. But I’m still not convinced that Tenelli’s hands are clean. I still suspect some sort of conspiracy between him and the DA with regard to the obscenity case, so it’s very likely that both Tenelli and Kaiser viewed the victim as an enemy.” Turning to Lucy, I asked, “Were you able to dig up any background on the doctor?”

  “Sorry”—she shook her head, tapping her notes—“still nothing. I expect to be at the office all weekend. I’ll keep digging.”

  Pierce chuckled. He told both Lucy and me, “You’re not going to find anything, but go ahead, satisfy your curiosity. You’re wasting your time though.”

  I reminded him, “We’re doing this for you, Doug.”

  He smiled. “I know that. And believe me, I’m grateful. So then: door number three, Miriam Westerman’s refrigerator.”

  Under my breath, I told the group, “Here’s a suspect we’d all like to nail.” I crossed my legs—the memory of my dream was still achingly vivid.

  “Absolutely,” agreed Glee, stabbing another piece of melon. “That woman is capable of anything—her snap mood-shifts are downright frightening. Even if she didn’t commit the murder, she has no business working with children, running a school. One way or the other, we ought to run her out of town.” With fork and knife, she delicately butchered the fruit on her plate.

  Neil said, “Clearly, the woman had a motive to want Cantrell dead—he was a threat to her feminist porn battle. And yes, she kept a locked box in her fridge, which could be used to store succinyl. But the rest doesn’t fit. Where would she get the succinyl? How would she even know about it? She has no medical background.”

  I tossed my palms in the air, conceding that Neil’s questions were hard to answer. Summing up, I told them, “What we’re left with, then, is this: Grace Lord and Ben Tenelli both had access to the drug, but neither had an apparent motive. Miriam, on the other hand, had a motive, but no apparent access to the drug.”

  The five of us fell silent—we were stumped. What’s more, I reminded myself, the succinyl theory was little more than a far-fetched hunch. Were we merely “grasping at straws,” as Harley Kaiser had said? Was I merely fishing for any feasible explanation of Cantrell’s death that would offer an alternative to the case being built against Pierce? Had friendship clouded my objectivity? Might Pierce have in fact strangled his paramour to silence him? Such a conclusion was unthinkable, but then, our other theories (succinyl poisoning or a lethal reaction to nuts) simply were not panning out. Our Saturday-morning brainstorming session had raised more questions than answers.

  “All right, then,” I told my two editors, exhaling a frustrated sigh, “I know you both need to be going. Sorry to take so much of your time on a weekend.”

  “No problem,” said Lucy, rising, gathering her notes. “I’d planned to spend the day on research anyway.”

  “I’m on duty too,” said Glee, also rising. “The miniatures convention opens later this morning—I’ve got to be there.”

  “I’d nearly forgotten about that,” I told her, wagging my head. “With everything else going on…”

  Standing, Neil told Glee, “We’ll see you later at The Nook. Mark and I both want to check out the action. Our friend Roxanne will be with us.”

  “God,” I said, rising with the others, “I forgot about that too.”

  Neil reminded me, “She’s coming up for the weekend.” Checking his watch, he added, “She’s on the road even as we speak.”

  Pierce, last to rise from the table, told Glee and Lucy, “Thanks, gals. I appreciate all your efforts.”

  Hefting her big flat purse, Glee assured him, “We’re on your side, Doug. I only hope we can help.” She pinched her oily red lower lip between her teeth.

  Lucy, the less effusive, more pragmatic of the two, told us, “We’d better be going. My computer terminal awaits.”

  I thanked them again, and we said our good-byes. Having parked in the driveway next to the house, both women left the kitchen by the back door.

  Pierce said, “Let me help you clear the table.”

  Gazing down at our breakfast debris, I wondered aloud, “How’d we make such a mess? Sure, Doug, we’d appreciate a hand.” Then he, Neil, and I set about cleaning the table, rinsing dishes, bagging uneaten pastry. “Don’t clear the coffee,” I suggested. “I haven’t had a chance to look at the paper yet.”

  So a few minutes later, we were seated again with our coffee and the pile of newspapers. Tapping the front page with a finger, Neil said, “This obscenity business is really heating up. Kaiser is sounding awfully aggressive: ‘Dumont County will at last score a resounding victory for family values.’ What a flake.”

  I laughed at Neil’s tame epithet for Kaiser—I’d have been far less charitable.

  Neil continued, “It’s a pretty good article though. Well written.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, “Charlie did a good job with it. It’s a complicated story—the history of the dispute, the legal angles—difficult to report concisely, on deadline.” I raised my coffee mug to my mouth, hiding a grin.

  Neil lifted the paper and peered at the byline. “Just who is Charles Oakland?”

  I reached to refill his coffee, asking, “Back in college, in the dorm, didn’t you ever play that name game? It was good for a laugh or two at dinner.”

  He stared at me blankly, as though I’d lost it.

  I turned to Pierce and filled his cup. “How about you, Doug—remember?”

  He watched the coffee swirling in his cup, then his head bobbed up as he asked, “Something to do with your mom’s maiden name?”

  “That’s it. You’d ask someone his middle name, then his mother’s maiden name. Put those two together, and you’d invented that person’s new pen name. Sometimes, the results were pretty funny, but most of the time, you’d end up with something sounding credibly ‘literary.’”

  Pierce laughed. “I do remember that. If I myself should ever attempt to scribe the great American novel, I’ll write it as Lewis Swan.”

  “‘Lewis Swan’”—I roared with laughter—“I love it. How about you, Neil?” I knew his middle name, naturally, but he’d never told me much about his mother’s family. Both parents had died before we met.

  He thought a moment, grinned. “I’d be Michael Ellison.”

  “That works,”
I told him. “I like it.”

  Pierce said, “How about you, Mark?”

  I hesitated. Neil chuckled, asking, “That doesn’t quite make it, does it?”

  “No.” I explained to Pierce, “Mom was a Quatrain, so I was named Mark Quatrain Manning, which I’ve always liked. As a nom de plume, though, Quatrain Quatrain just wouldn’t fly.” We all laughed.

  Pierce thought of something. Scratching his head, he asked, “Wasn’t there a second part to the name game?”

  “You bet—and that’s where it gets truly interesting. After everyone’s decided on their pen names, you move on to stage names.”

  “Of course,” said Pierce, pounding the table. “Pets!”

  “Right. First you ask someone the name of a childhood pet, then you ask the name of the street where he grew up. Put those together, and you usually end up with something that sounds like a stage name.”

  “Or a stripper,” said Pierce, again on the verge of laughter. “Girls with cats were especially prone to embarrassing monikers, like Boots Astor or Fluffy Center.”

  “There was a demure young lady in our crowd,” I remembered, “who had a dog. Her unfortunate new handle: Gypsy Jupiter. She never lived it down.”

  Pierce told Neil, “If you get enough people around a table, you’re bound to come up with some doozies. Of course, if a person’s hometown streets were numbered, the game’s out the window.”

  We continued to amuse ourselves by concocting more ridiculous examples (the gals all sounded like hookers, the guys like brainless beefcake), when Neil stopped short. “Hey,” he asked me, “what’s your stage name?”

  “Well, I had a cat named Charlie—”

  “Yeah!” Pierce interrupted. “Charlie the cat. You told me about him.”

  “And I grew up on Oakland Avenue.”

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “I’ll be damned,” said Pierce. “Charles Oakland.”

  Neil asked me, “You’re Charles Oakland?”

  “Yup. You see, when I bought the Register a year ago, I knew I’d never be content to settle into the role of an administrator, writing a few editorials. Reporting is in my blood, and I saw no reason to resist the occasional lure of a strong story. Unfortunately, there’s always a certain amount of prejudice that runs against a paper’s publisher, especially in small towns. I felt that readers here might question my objectivity as a reporter, since I also own the paper. So I needed another name. Turning to the old name game, I knew that the pen-name formula wouldn’t work. Not only would Quatrain Quatrain look ridiculous in print, but also, I wanted anonymity, and the Quatrain name is too well known here because of Quatro Press. I turned, therefore, to the stage-name formula and have been writing contentedly as Charles Oakland ever since.” I paused, then grinned, offering, “More coffee?”