Name Games

by Michael Craft

  Was a game being played? Thinking through Lucy’s revelations, following them to their logical conclusion, I again drank in the sight of the beautiful young man frozen, leaping, on the screen. Rascal Tyner’s Hottest Hits…Rascal Tyner’s Hottest Hits…Rascal Tyner’s Hottest Hits…

  Then I gasped. “My God, that’s it!”

  “Well, duh,” said Roxanne. “Of course ‘that’s it.’”

  “What now?” asked Lucy, ready for action.

  I thought quickly. “I need to tell Doug. Then he can call Tenelli and ask him to meet us on some pretext—anything. Does Glee happen to be at the office?”

  Lucy answered, “That’s where I left her. She was working late on her report of the opening of the miniatures convention.”

  “Perfect,” I said. “Swing back and get her—and ask her to phone Grace Lord. She can open the coach house for us. That’s where I want all of us to meet, there at the crime scene.”

  “Let me guess,” Roxanne said playfully. “We’re all going to try to establish whether Dr. Tenelli had the opportunity to visit Carrol Cantrell on the morning of his murder.”

  I paused, smiled. “Perhaps.”

  Minutes later, I pulled into Grace Lord’s driveway. Getting out of the car with Neil and Roxanne, I noticed that Sheriff Pierce had already arrived. He stood near the back door of the house, talking with Grace under the porch light.

  “Wait here,” I suggested to Neil and Roxanne as I stepped from the driveway up to the porch.

  Pierce turned from his conversation with Grace to tell me, “Dr. Tenelli was just finishing dinner. I asked him to meet us ‘at the crime scene,’ as you asked, and he said he’d come right over.” Pierce’s words were weighted with the exhaustion of the past week. Though I’d speculated on the phone that this evening’s meeting would exonerate Pierce, he was still skeptical that the good doctor could have any involvement with the crime, and he was clearly bothered that I’d asked him to summon Tenelli.

  “What is it?” Grace asked either of us, her voice wrought with confusion. “Why is Dr. Tenelli coming over?” She too looked exhausted. With the opening day of the convention behind her, she’d obviously planned on a quiet evening at home alone, kicking back—she was wearing jeans again, with a heavy flannel shirt to ward off the evening chill. She told us, “I’ll be happy to unlock the coach house for you, but why tonight?”

  For Pierce’s benefit as well as Grace’s, I answered, “Because we now know who killed Carrol Cantrell.” My statement was unequivocal—no speculating, no waffling—and the surety of my words registered on both of their faces.

  Grace studied me for a moment, glanced at Pierce, then turned back to tell me, “I just can’t believe that Ben would…” She left the thought unfinished, drew a hefty breath of night air, then said, her tone resolved, “Come what may, we have to get to the bottom of this. We have to know. I’ve got my key—let’s go.” And she led us from the porch.

  The cool night air was still and dry. A fat orange moon, not quite full, hung low in a clear sky peppered with stars—beyond them gaped a blackened universe. Silhouetted by moonlight, trees drifted like tall ships with billowing sails on the rolling waves of the expansive lawn behind the house.

  Walking from the driveway to the coach house, we were joined by Roxanne and Neil, who greeted Pierce and Grace in subdued tones, everyone aware of the gravity of our visit. As we spoke, a pair of headlights pulled in next to the house—it was Lucille Haring and Glee Savage, arrived from the Register. They too knew the purpose of our assembly, joining the group with mumbled good-evenings.

  With the seven of us gathered at the foot of the stairs, I told the others, “Everyone’s here but Tenelli. Why don’t we go on up? He’ll find us.”

  Roxanne leaned and whispered into my ear, “I’m sure he knows the way.”

  Grace took the lead, pinching the key in her fingers as she started up the stairs. We filed behind her in twos—Pierce and I, Roxanne and Neil, Glee and Lucy. Our quiet procession rose tread by tread with the grim stateliness of a funeral march. As we turned the stairway’s landing, I peered out across the lawn to the tree that sheltered a grave. There lay the collie that once romped with Ward Lord, the nephew Grace doted on. The pointed shaft of the dog’s stone obelisk was dappled with moonbeams filtered by leaves.

  Arriving on the covered porch, we clustered behind Grace as she fiddled with the key in the lock. “I haven’t been up here since the police left,” she told us. “You’ll have to excuse my housekeeping if things aren’t quite up to snuff.”

  With a soft laugh, I assured her that there would be no white-glove test.

  She swung the door open, switched on a light, and led us inside. The guest quarters had been closed up for a few days, smelling stale, feeling warm. We left the door open, Grace raised a window on the far wall, and fresh air swept through the room. Otherwise, everything appeared normal and neat—nothing suggested that a murder had been committed here.

  We settled into the room, Pierce and I at the table, Grace in a comfortable maple rocker. Lucy and Glee pulled chairs to the cramped writing desk, spreading out their notes. Roxanne and Neil, who had never before set foot in the coach house, perched on the edge of the bed, where the rest of us had seen Cantrell’s body sprawled. Silence fell over us. The chatter of crickets drifted in on the night air.

  Pierce cleared his throat. “Well, Mark? You called this meeting.”

  Self-consciously I stood, feeling a bit professorial. I began, “I think you all know Lucille Haring, my managing editor.” (I was fully aware that everyone in the room was by now well acquainted, but I needed to open with something, and the statement had a preambular ring.) “Lucy has spent the day doing some background research on Dr. Benjamin Tenelli, and her digging has yielded some troubling information. It seems that Dr. Tenelli has some real-estate holdings that point to a vested interest in the outcome of next week’s obscenity trial.”

  A car could be heard pulling into the driveway and parking behind the others. As the driver cut the engine and opened the door, I raised a finger to my lips, commanding silence. We listened as the car door closed. Shoes ground the gravel, walking in our direction. The walking slowed, hesitated, then stopped. After a few moments, we heard the feet climbing stairs—only three. The new arrival was on the back porch of the house. A fist rapped at the screen door. “Grace? Douglas?” called Tenelli’s voice. He laughed. “Where is everyone?”

  I stepped out to the porch of the coach house and leaned on the banister. “Ben!” I called to him. “Mark Manning—up here.”

  He looked up at me, shielding his eyes from the glare of the porch light. “Evening, Mark. Where’s the party?”

  “Up here,” I repeated. Clearly, he had no idea why Pierce had phoned him. Also, it seemed, he had no idea how to get up to the porch where I stood. I explained, “The stairway is along the side of the garage. Careful—it’s not well lit.”

  Peering into the moon shadows behind the house, Tenelli acknowledged that he now saw the stairs. Leaving the house, he crossed the path toward the garage, gripped the green railing, and started up. “Sorry to keep everyone waiting,” he told me as he climbed. For a man of seventy, he was remarkably vigorous—the steep stairway didn’t daunt him in the least. Arriving at the top, he asked, “What’s up? Douglas certainly sounded mysterious on the phone.” He laughed with gusto.

  I simply told him, “Come on in, Ben. Glad you could make it.”

  Swinging the door open for him, I followed him inside and quickly introduced him to Neil, Roxanne, and Lucy. No introductions were needed for Pierce, Grace, or Glee—they’d known Tenelli all their lives. I suggested that he take the chair in which I’d been sitting, at the table with Pierce. As the doctor settled in, everyone fell mum. In a jocular tone, he asked, “What on earth’s the matter?”

  “Ben,” Grace said flatly, trying not to protract this encounter, “Mark has just told us that you own some real estate that relates’ to the obscenity tr
ial. What’s he talking about?”

  Tenelli’s smile fell. He hawed, “I own quite a bit of property, Grace. There’s no safer investment than land, and I’ve been lucky.”

  “Specifically,” I butted in, “we’ve learned that you own Star-Spangled Video.”

  “Huh?” said Pierce.

  Grace gasped so forcefully, her rocker shook.

  Tenelli sputtered defensively.

  I qualified my statement, “You don’t own the business, just the land—and the hot-pink barn. But now you have a vested interest in getting the porn shop off your property. Due to your civic-minded efforts on the County Plan Commission, that land is now worth a fortune.”

  “Ben,” said Pierce, crestfallen, “is any of this true?”

  Tenelli paused. Then he admitted, “Yes, all of it.” He knew there was no point in denying these facts, as they were a matter of public record—if anyone bothered digging deep enough. “How’d you figure it out, Mark?”

  I gestured toward Lucy. “My managing editor’s research savvy reaped the particulars just this evening, but my suspicions were first aroused last Monday morning, when Doug and I spotted a car like mine out at Star-Spangled. The next afternoon, we learned that it was yours. You said you had picked it up on Monday.”

  With a slow, frustrated shake of his head, he explained, “The Commission’s study had raised some technical questions regarding zoning setbacks, and I wanted to confirm the exact property line with my own eyes. So I went out there to nose around for the original surveyor’s stakes—I presumed the new car was a perfect cover.” He sighed. “Guess not…”

  Pierce raised a stickier issue. “Harley Kaiser claims that you’ve been pressuring him to speed up his obscenity prosecutions.”

  “Gentlemen,” Tenelli told us matter-of-factly, “that’s the way of the world. That’s business.”

  “That’s hypocrisy,” Grace corrected him, rising from the rocker and confronting him nose to nose. “I’m ashamed of you, Ben—collecting rent from those filthy smut peddlers all these years, then turning on them when it suits your needs.”

  “Sorry, Grace. I never claimed to be a saint.”

  Everyone else had claimed the doctor was a saint, though, and I felt calmly vindicated for my skepticism. Hoping this point was not lost on Pierce, I reminded him, “I had a theory all along, Doug, that Dr. Tenelli’s interest in the porn issue was less than altruistic.” Pointedly, I added, “Now we know that he also had an interest in silencing Carrol Cantrell, whose true purpose in Dumont was to scuttle next week’s porn trial.”

  Grace looked confused. “What are you talking about, Mark? Carrol came here to judge the roombox competition—at my invitation.”

  Before I could respond, Tenelli piped in, “Now see here, Manning, if you’re implying that I had anything to do with that man’s murder, I…I’ll…”

  “Look, Mark,” said Pierce, rising, placing a hand on my shoulder, “these developments are troublesome, I admit. Yes, I think Ben has some explaining to do regarding his chairmanship of County Plan, but I don’t think he’s connected to the murder. Remember, you instructed me to phone him tonight and ask him to meet us ‘at the crime scene.’ When he arrived, we all heard him—he didn’t know where we were, and you had to direct him to the stairs.”

  From the writing desk, Glee concurred, “He’s right, boss.” It was the first time Glee, Lucy, Neil, or Roxanne had spoken since Tenelli’s arrival. All heads turned, surprised by the sound from the perimeter of the room. Glee responded with a sheepish shrug.

  I smiled. “I know, Glee. Doug is correct. Dr. Tenelli’s interest in the pornography issue had nothing to do with Cantrell’s murder. The murder, however, had everything to do with pornography.”

  I paused, letting this riddle settle on the ears of my listeners. Everyone turned to one another, whispering, twisting their features. Everyone wondered what I meant. Everyone, that is, except Grace Lord, who stood near me in the middle of the room.

  Turning to her, I said, “The murder was about pornography, wasn’t it, Grace?”

  She shook her head, as if clearing her thoughts, as if she didn’t hear me.

  I told her, “The porn star Rascal Tyner, who died of AIDS in the early years of the epidemic, was your nephew, Ward Lord.”

  “What…?” She looked at me with a dull lack of comprehension, searching for words. Then her legs went limp, and she looked as if she might collapse. Pierce and I grabbed her by the arms and walked her to the rocker. As she sat, everyone else rose, forming a circle around the chair. The faces surrounding her bore expressions ranging from concern to astonishment. She swallowed, then told me weakly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mark.”

  Standing directly in front of her, I explained, “The morning I met you, the Thursday morning when you were preparing for Cantrell’s arrival, Glee and I helped you move some things out of the coach house. I carried a picture of a young man playing with a dog, a collie. You told me, ‘That’s Ward and Rascal.’”

  Neil mumbled, “Oh, my God,” raising a hand to his mouth.

  I continued, “A few days later, on Sunday morning, just before we found Cantrell’s body, I asked you about that obelisk under the tree, and you told me, ‘That’s Rascal’s grave,’ referring to Ward’s collie.”

  Roxanne leaned to Neil, asking, “So what? I don’t get it.”

  I told everyone, “There was a name game we used to play in college. You’d combine the name of a childhood pet with the name of the street where you grew up, and that would become your new stage name. Ward Lord had a collie named Rascal, and he grew up right here on Tyner Avenue.”

  Grace sat speechless as the others voiced expressions of dismay. I silently chided myself for not having earlier decoded the porn star’s name. After all, Grace had told me the collie’s name at least twice. As for Tyner Avenue, I saw the street sign every day, driving from home to the office and back. The street was specifically mentioned in Glee’s article announcing Cantrell’s “royal” visit. When I drove Glee to The Nook that morning to meet Cantrell, I needed directions, and she pointed out the turn. Subsequently, I drove there myself, often noting the street. But it wasn’t until that very evening, minutes earlier, when Lucy had interrupted our video-viewing at the house, that I finally recognized the freeze-frame image of Rascal Tyner leaping in midair. He flashed a perfect smile, flexed a perfect body, exactly as Ward Lord had done in the old snapshot. And superimposed over that image was the name Rascal Tyner.

  “Mark,” said Grace, mustering some energy, “I loved Ward like a son, but after he went away to college in California, I didn’t see him much. I haven’t heard from him in many years.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “I don’t know what happened to him.”

  Dr. Tenelli told us softly, “My God, I haven’t thought about Ward Lord in ages. What a beautiful baby he was—I delivered him some forty years ago, during the early years of my practice.”

  I dropped to one knee, resting an arm on Grace’s chair, looking into her face. “Now, Grace,” I told her, “I’ve seen Ward’s picture—he looked like Rascal Tyner. And we can easily find out what Rascal Tyner’s real name was—it’s a matter of simple research. But that’s not necessary. We know that Ward and Rascal were the same person, don’t we, Grace?”

  Leaning back her head, she glimpsed the circle of faces looking down at her. Then, with just a trace of defensiveness, she asked me, “What if they were the same person? What does that prove?”

  It had to be said: “It proves that you killed Carrol Cantrell.”

  “Mark! What? I…I,” she sputtered.

  Pierce quietly cautioned me, “Hey, Mark. Easy now.”

  Roxanne asked me, “That’s a bit of a leap, isn’t it?”

  “No,” I told everyone, “it isn’t a leap. It’s a logical conclusion. Everything else fits.” Rising, I stepped away from the group around Grace’s chair, gathering my thoughts. From the middle of the room, I told them, “Consider this scena
rio:

  “Grace doted on her nephew. She never married or had her own kids, and she just now told us that she loved Ward like a son. He went away to college in California, where his astounding good looks led to a career as porn star Rascal Tyner. Grace did not lose touch with Ward, but knew exactly what he was doing and expressed her disapproval. Their conversations revealed that a man named Carrol Cantrell was responsible for Ward’s unseemly video career.

  “Then Grace’s worst fears were realized: Ward died of AIDS contracted from the unsafe sex practices he performed in Cantrell’s videos. Grace held Cantrell responsible for the death of her beloved nephew. Vengeance was an appealing notion, but she knew the possibility was remote, since she and the porn producer moved in such different circles, two thousand miles apart.

  “Years passed. Grace’s career plans changed from pharmacy to miniatures, and she eventually discovered that a man named Carrol Cantrell had established himself as a big name in her little world. Along the way, she had gotten computer literate; she mentioned to Glee and me that she used the Internet to locate the inventory of miniature products for her Rexall roombox. Tapping this research knowledge, she easily determined that Carrol Cantrell was the same man who had produced Ward’s videos, and she further learned that Cantrell had become something of a free-speech crusader in pornography battles—the very same sort of legal battle that was shaping up here in Dumont. So she hatched a plan.

  “She decided to host a convention of the Midwest Miniatures Society at The Nook, inviting Cantrell to judge the roombox competition—she even offered to lodge him here in the coach house. Her letter of invitation, which was found among Cantrell’s things, made specific mention of the porn trial that was looming. She guessed correctly that this ‘coincidence’ would lure him to Dumont. Once he was here, under her own roof, the rest was easy.” Needing a breather, I paused.

  Grace had listened silently, shaking her head lamely, sniffling. The others heard my scenario with less emotion, judging its plausibility. Tenelli, who had not been privy to the many turns of the investigation, told the group, “This is all just speculation. I’ve heard little that would actually link Grace to the crime.” He patted her shoulder.