“It’s unfortunate,” Mrs. Furst pronounced.
“Some crummy friend,” Neil said. “You’re a better writer than he is, anyway.”
Mike beamed at him. “Kid, I’m five better writers than he is. What the hell.”
“He used you,” Kenni said.
“It wasn’t like that. At least I don’t think it was. It was Jolson syndrome. Anyway, who cares? He wasn’t a happy man when I knew him, and six best-sellers and a million dollars later, he’s still not happy. Besides, I’ve probably helped fifty writers get started, and forty-nine of them are still good friends. If foreign aid worked that well, America would rule the world. Now, Kenni, Judy tells me you’ve done some writing you’re afraid to show people.”
Kenni said Judy had broken a promise not to tell, and she didn’t want to be a bother. Mike said it was no bother, and not to blame Judy, because he beat her if she didn’t tell him everything. Mike told her to pick out her favorite manuscript and send it to him.
Kenni was overwhelmed, and I was pretty impressed. Billy and Karen seemed to have cornered the market on helpful writers, what with Nicola Andrews and Mike offering to critique Kenni’s stuff. Mrs. Furst said that if she’d written anything in the Romantic Suspense line, she (Mrs. Furst) would be delighted to see it, but after the first of the year, since she had an early December deadline on her own current book.
Everything was sweetness and light until dessert was cleared away (I didn’t have any—big Ping-Pong match tonight) and Mrs. Furst took out a pack of Virginia Slims and a black Bic lighter.
A tall, slender black man in a white tuxedo with a red carnation in his lapel rushed toward the table. I thought he was going to be one of those lightning lighters, the guys in fancy restaurants who can get a flame under your nose faster than Billy the Kid could clear leather. These guys never fail to impress me. Every time I’m in a restaurant with someone who smokes, and one of these guys shoots a flame past my nose to light a cigarette for someone who has been perfectly capable of lighting twenty-six of her own so far during the course of the day, I make it a point to say, “Whoa, am I impressed.”
He wasn’t there to light Mrs. Furst up, at all.
“I am so sorry,” he lied. “That is not allowed.”
“I beg your pardon?” Mrs. Furst said.
“Smoking is not allowed in this section.”
Mike said, “What about them?” He pointed to the people at the next table, who were happily puffing away.
“That table is in the smoking section.”
“But I was supposed to be in the smoking section,” Mrs. Furst said. “I specifically said so in my reservation.”
“I’m sorry, madam, but it was not possible to seat you in the smoking section.” He kept smiling. His smile was fierce, almost angry. He had a pointed face, and his medium-length Afro had retreated to a sharp widow’s peak. He looked like a black Satan. And he was enjoying this.
“But she specifically requested it,” I said.
“But she also requested to be with the writers, sir. She was the only one who smoked. I thought she would be cooperative.” The usually musical lilt of a Davidian accent couldn’t hide the scorn in his voice. This was shaping up to be a hell of a cruise. I was meeting either people I liked a lot, or people I couldn’t stand.
“You fall into the latter category,” I said.
“Sorry?”
“It should be a simple matter to adjust the boundary of the smoking section to include this table,” I said.
“Quite impossible, sir, I’m afraid. It would be an imposition on the rest of the people in the no-smoking section. Perhaps madam would exchange seats with someone.”
“Why don’t we ask the other people if they mind?” Neil suggested.
The satanic smile widened. Neil shrank back. “That would put them on the spot, wouldn’t it.” It wasn’t a question the way he said it.
“Mrs. Furst,” Mike said sweetly. “May I have your permission to punch this officious jerk?”
Mrs. Furst was becoming exceedingly embarrassed. This, of course, is the weapon of the rude—the good taste of the polite. “Please,” she said, “no.”
“Then,” Mike went on, “may I please have a cigarette?” He looked up into the grin and matched it. “Let’s see you bully me into putting it out.” I happened to know Mike had spent six miserable months kicking the habit two years ago, and like a reformed alcoholic, hadn’t touched a butt since. Apparently, this clown got on his nerves as badly as he did mine.
It wasn’t smoking. I hate smoking; I’m not crazy about being around smokers. I literally will not touch a cigarette with my fingers. But this guy was taking such delight in ruining a nice old lady’s meal, was being so ecstatically uncooperative and gleefully obstructive, I was almost ready to choke down a lungful of Virginia pollution just so I could blow it in his face.
“Who makes the seating arrangements?” I asked.
The smile widened. “I do.”
“And who the hell are you?”
“Watson Burkehart, Acting Chief Dining Room Steward.”
“Acting, huh? Enjoy it. The president of the line is going to get at least one letter telling him just how you’re acting.”
Smile never wavered. “I have my duties, sir.”
“And don’t hold your breath waiting for a tip from this table.”
No words, just more grin.
Then I saw something from the corner of my eye. Lee H. Schaeffer was watching this as if it were an episode of the “Newlywed Game,” or something equally embarrassing. And his grin was as wide as Mr. Watson Burkehart’s. Maybe wider.
“Then tell me this. How much did the gentleman give you to ruin our meal?”
The grin slid from his face like an egg from a Teflon griddle. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“I just bet you don’t.”
“Please,” Mrs. Furst said. “Let it go. I really should quit smoking in any case. I only started because Eleanor Roosevelt did, and I admired her so—”
Jan didn’t hear her. Or, if she did, she wasn’t prepared to let the matter drop. She, too, caught a glimpse of Schaeffer’s grin (and, I thought, damn if he isn’t staring at her), set her lips, put her napkin down, and got up.
She stalked over to the other table, smiled radiantly at Billy and Karen and Phil and Nicola and the rest, just to show this wasn’t a table-to-table feud, then bent over Lee H. Schaeffer and put a few low, but intense words in his ear.
I could read his lips as he responded, “There, there.” He tried to take Jan’s hand.
She showed him where. She smacked him across the face with her other hand. Mike and Neil cheered out loud. Mike said, “I always used to tell him—don’t touch.” The rest of us smiled. I reflected that if my forehand was as good as Jan’s, the Ping-Pong match would be a snap.
7
“...The thrill of victory; and the agony of defeat— The human drama of athletic competition...”
—Jim McKay
“ABC’s Wide World of Sports” (ABC)
I WALKED INTO THE gym humming “Sloop John B.” I’d been doing it for hours, but I wasn’t sure why.
I looked around at the gym and was impressed. It wasn’t big enough to have a decent full court basketball game in, but the ceiling was high, the lights were good, and there was enough run-back room to have a decent game of Ping-Pong. There were even little bleachers along one wall for people to sit in, and sit they did. In surprising numbers. I decided these cruise lines have a racket—here these people had paid hundreds of dollars to be entertained for a week, and their idea of a good time first night out is to watch two amateurs play table tennis.
Kenni and Jan were not here yet—they were stowing Kenni’s prize away in the cabin. Yes, the luscious librarian had won another contest, folks, this time in her own name.
It was actually quite a clever little mystery. The disco had been renamed the Enquiry Room for the occasion. The Bogie’s custome
rs, and anybody else who wanted to, entered, read the sign that said THIS WAY TO VIEW BODDY, then were led past a sheet-shrouded form on a table. The form was that of a young man named Bob Madison, who has been hanging around various mysterious functions since he could take the subway by himself, and probably held the record for portraying Bogie’s corpses. When the sheet was lifted, a really remarkable job of effects makeup was revealed. Bob had a bullet hole between staring eyes, and a stab wound in his chest. He was tied up like a silent-movie heroine about to be placed across the railroad tracks. There was a stain at the back of his head that matched the red stain on the piece of pipe that lay beside him. The light from a single candle cast an eerie light on the whole business. I could almost believe he was dead—until I walked past him, and the staring eyes recognized me and he gave me a wink.
Having seen the body, everyone was now hot to question suspects, but there were no suspects to question.
“You can get all the information you need,” Billy announced, “speaking to each other, being polite and introducing yourselves to the waiters who will soon be circulating among you, and thinking hard about a famous clue. The victim had a house party; each guest prepared a dish—which will now be served to you—and the killer is the odd one out. Have fun.”
This sort of thing separated the sheep from the goats in a big hurry. Half the crowd said huh and scratched their heads and gave up, and half got into it and really began to think.
For those who were actually looking for a challenge, it was an added fillip that Billy and Karen had not told the mystery writers about this, so they were just as in the dark as anybody else.
I didn’t play. I got a glass of orange juice from the bar, found a chair in the corner, and defended it against all comers. Table tennis puts a remarkable strain on legs and feet, and I wanted to give them every chance. I might have looked, even to myself, a little silly, compared to Lee H. Schaeffer, who was working the waiters as if his chance of heaven depended on it, but it’s who looks silly after the game that counts.
Besides, it didn’t make that much difference. All six of the waiters were very conscientious, bringing their wares to every corner of the room. I did play along with the game sufficiently to introduce myself to each of them, and to find out that all of them claimed the name “Parker.” When I asked them about it, they replied, smiling or grave, that they were sextuplets.
The food they brought around was quite whimsical, too. Each Parker sextuplet had just one kind of food on the tray. The first one who came by had marshmallows. The second had little sandwiches, mustard and cress. The third had chicken wings. The fourth had peeled and sliced kiwifruit, which, I was given to understand, was becoming a major crop on St. David’s Island. The fifth had strawberries, and the sixth had prunes.
I didn’t take anything—I would eat at the midnight snack buffet after the match, if I was still showing my face in public—but it occurred to me that if you ate all that other stuff, you might need the prunes.
A couple of people from Chicago came by, and asked me what I thought of such shenanigans. I told them that with some of the shenanigans I had pulled, I had no right to judge. We discussed shenanigans.
Kenni made her way through the crowd and came up to me, very excited. “I’ve got it!”
I introduced her to the couple from Chicago, then asked her, “Got what?”
“It’s a Clue game.”
“We’ve got a Clue game, too,” the couple from Chicago said. “The kids love it.”
“This puzzle here. It’s a Clue game. That’s the key. Billy said to remember ‘a famous clue.’ The waiters are the Parker Brothers. The sign spelled ‘body’ wrong, but ‘Mr. Boddy’ is the victim in a Clue game. Also, he was killed with a lead pipe. And there are all these other weapons.”
“Well, don’t tell me, tell Karen or Billy, before somebody figures it out and claims the prize.”
“Oh,” she said. “Good idea. Thanks. I’ll be right back,” and left.
The lady from Chicago wanted to know if we were engaged.
“Lord, no,” I said. “We just met today.”
The husband said, “Talk about shenanigans,” and his wife gave him an elbow in the ribs.
Anyway, since Kenni had figured out the hard part, it was easy to see who the killer was. Everyone prepared a dish, and the killer was the “odd one out.” Okay. Miss Scarlet did the strawberries, Colonel Mustard did the mustard-and-cress sandwiches, Mr. Green did the kiwis, Mrs. White did the marshmallows, and Professor Plum brought the prunes. Mrs. Peacock brought neither peacock nor something blue. Therefore, she was the killer.
And that’s the way it turned out. Billy announced the contest was over, and that there was a winner. Kenni won a huge stack of books autographed by the authors on the cruise. When he asked her how she figured it out, she just said it was easy. Billy reminded everybody that the main mystery, to be solved by one of the teams officially registered for the mystery—sorry about that folks, but there was a lot of Bogie’s Murderous Mystery Tour literature available if you’re interested—might begin at any time, but he would advise everyone to be sure to be at breakfast tomorrow.
Somebody who told me, in the middle of my vacation, which (I reminded myself) this was supposed to be, that I was advised to get up for breakfast, even if I didn’t feel like it, was likely to get a resounding “up yours” as a reply. The revelers, however, took it with great excitement and anticipation.
I headed over to congratulate Kenni, and to help carry her books home, but Phil DeGrave intercepted me en route. “That was a rotten thing you did,” he told me. His tongue bulged his left cheek.
“What was that?”
“Giving your girlfriend the answer to the mystery so she could win the books.”
“What the hell—?” I ran a hand through my hair. “Phil, there are so many things wrong with that I hardly know where to begin.”
“How about,” he suggested, “saying you just met her today, and she’s not your girlfriend.”
“That’s good,” I said. “Or the fact that I didn’t know the solution to the mystery. Kenni came over and told me. I’ve got witnesses.”
“Bah,” Phil said. “A put-up job. You told her long ago.”
“She’s a librarian, for God’s sake. Why would she need to cheat to get some books? Are you playing one of your obscure intellectual games, DeGrave, or is someone actually saying this contest was a fix?”
He grinned. “Oh, someone is actually saying it. A little old lady—not part of the tour—who has been going to St. David’s Island since before all these disgusting tourists discovered it. She had it on good authority that it was all staged. She would not reveal the authority. To paraphrase Rex Stout, I express no opinion as to who it might be, but boy, I sure have one.”
“This stinks,” I said. “This is really making me angry.”
Phil nodded. “Forget what it says about you or Kenni, it makes Billy and Karen out to be liars. And that could ruin their business.”
I said, “Mmm. I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right. They said no one but the two of them knew the solution, but for me to have told Kenni, they would have had to tell me. What’s he got against Billy and Karen, for God’s sake? They love him. Billy was collecting that asshole’s books before anybody. He even takes some of his stupid bread in the restaurant.”
“I don’t think he’s thinking. Or maybe he’s a psychopath, and doesn’t give a shit about anybody but himself. Maybe he’s trying to get you upset and put you off your game.”
“Maybe,” I said. If Phil was right, Schaeffer was making a big mistake. I always perform better when angry. It comes of being a young white boy haunting Harlem playgrounds because that’s where the best basketball was. It wasn’t until I’d taken a few elbows across the eyes that I’d gotten mad enough to forget that these kids had no special reason to love white people and a lot of resentment to work off, especially resentment against a white boy who could go back to a decent neigh
borhood when the sun sank. When I got angry, I could forget all that, and show them I could play the game. And through the game I got respect.
I took a deep breath. “Perhaps,” I said, “a few words with him will be in order.”
“I thought that myself,” Phil said, “but Nicola convinced me it would be better if she did it. On account of the fact I’m about ready to slug the guy.”
“You?” I demanded. “What about me?”
“You,” Phil said, “are going to get the opportunity to feed him a Ping-Pong paddle. I’m counting on you.”
“Good,” I said. “More pressure. Just what I need.”
“No pressure. Just remember that if you lose, no one will ever speak to you again.”
“Thanks.”
“Anyway, I just wanted you to know why people were giving you the hairy eyeball, if you run into any.”
I told him I appreciated it, and went to my cabin to walk Spot and change for the match. Kim had remade the bed I’d slept in, and turned down both. Force of habit, I guessed, or he figured Spot was such an aristocratic dog he slept in a bed. There was a chocolate on each pillow. I’ve always wondered about that. Chocolate is fat and sugar and caffeine. Just what you need before going to sleep. I ate them both for energy.
This was about the time “Sloop John B” started running in my head. I kept coming back to the line “This is the worst trip I’ve ever been on.”
The cruise director was a guy named Vic Ramis. He was, in public, at least, bouncy, witty, patient, and absolutely impossible to get a negative word out of. The Catskills and the Poconos are full of guys like this, usually guys who didn’t quite have the drive to make it as stand-up comedians. They fascinate me. Anybody who has to be nice all the time fascinates me, probably because I could never do it. What do these guys do? Go home and throw darts? Beat their kids?
Vic had agreed to referee the match. He called us over to the table, and I got my first look at Lee H. Schaeffer in shorts. He had muscles on those long knobby legs, not surprising, considering the running and skiing he did. He was wearing gray shorts and shirt, just dark enough so I couldn’t say he was wearing white for me to lose the ball in, and a baseball cap that had a patch on the front reading “Rocky Mountain Ski Club.”
Killed in Paradise Page 5
