by Vicki Delany
“Yes, but—”
“Get them. If he’s not in, all the better. We might find the letters he’s been getting from Westenham.”
I slowly got to my feet. I did not want to have anything to do with this, but it seemed that I would be involved whether I wanted to be or not. Monahan had been dismissed, quite rudely, by the FBI. Clearly he was trying to compensate by ordering me around. I grabbed the giant bunch of keys and clipped them to my belt. Long ago, I’d seen an illustration in a history book of the chatelaine of a medieval castle with her key ring attached to her belt, and I’d adapted the style rather than have to carry a purse around all day.
All eyes were on us as we once again crossed the outer office. “Carry on with what you’re doing,” I said.
No one even pretended to do so. Instead of going back through the lobby, I continued down the small dark hallway that ends at the kitchen deliveries door. From the kitchen itself came the sounds of someone threatening to kill someone else, men’s laughter, a woman shouting, “Have some respect,” and a pot hitting the floor.
“Busy place,” Monahan said.
“It never stops.” And it didn’t. We served nine full meals a day: to adult guests in the main dining room, children in the children’s, and staff in theirs. By anyone’s standards the meals were huge and elaborate. Then there was tea with sandwiches and cake on the veranda in the afternoon, a cocktail reception before dinner, and a late-night dessert buffet. Plus room service anytime between six a.m. and one a.m. It’s said many people come to the Catskills mainly to eat. When Rosemary presented me with the week’s grocery bills, I believed it.
The path up the hill to the staff accommodations was rough, worn flat by generations of passing feet, unmaintained, edged by struggling saplings and heavy undergrowth. We wasted no money on grounds’ maintenance here. I walked slowly, pretending not to notice Chief Monahan—his uniform shirt already soaked with sweat, his face red and forehead dripping—huffing and puffing with every step. Staff passed us, coming or going, and every one of them nodded respectfully to me or said, “Mrs. Grady,” and glanced warily at Monahan as they gave us as wide a berth as possible on the trail.
When Olivia and I first arrived here two years ago, the staff quarters were barely decent enough for wildlife to live in. I’d done what I could, with what little money we could spare and what time we had, to improve things a bit. No one in the Catskills indulged their employees—room and board was part of staff wages—but at least we’d been able to get the bathtub water in the female entertainment staff building running again, move the family of raccoons out of the lifeguards’ ceiling, and rip out the black mold growing on the walls of the bellhops’ rooms. Some of our workers lived locally, but most of our summer staff were college kids from the city. Some of them, I knew, didn’t spend all that much time in their bunks anyway. I’d been told that some of the hotels encouraged (or didn’t discourage) the better-looking male staff to “make friends” with the married women who spent the entire summer in the mountains with their children while their husbands stayed behind in the city and came up occasionally to join their families for the weekend. The husbands were supposedly working, but I had no doubt some of them had special “summer friends” also.
Charlie Simmonds might be an up-and-coming comedy star, but he wasn’t a headliner yet, and so he didn’t get the better accommodations we kept for the real stars, if we were lucky enough to be able to book them.
Monahan and I emerged from the line of trees protecting guests from views of the shabby structures that make our hotel work. A double line of wood-framed buildings with torn shutters, forest-debris-covered roofs, sagging porches, and leaky gutters.
“Number five,” I said to Monahan.
We climbed the steps, creaking dangerously beneath our feet, and I opened the screen door. We stepped into a small, dark foyer, leading into a damp, gloomy hallway with doors both open and closed running off it.
“Good morning,” I called. “Mrs. Grady here.”
At the end of the corridor a door slammed. Another door opened, and the tousled head of the trombone player popped out.
“Hi,” he said cheerily. Behind him, I caught a glimpse of what might have been one of the dance instructors scurrying across the room.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m looking for Mr. Simmonds. The guest comedian. Do you know what room he’s in?”
“Seven,” he said. “Hi, Chief Monahan. Nice to see you. It’s been a while.”
“Let’s keep it that way, Lenny,” the chief said.
Wondering what on earth that meant, I walked down the hall and knocked on the door of number seven.
“What?” came a voice from inside. I was glad of it. I did not want to have to enter the man’s room if he wasn’t there.
“It’s Mrs. Grady, resort manager. I need to speak to you for a moment. I’m with the police.”
The door flew open. I was pleased to see that we had not woken him up. Charlie Simmonds was dressed for a day in the mountains in orange-and-brown-checked Bermuda shorts held up by a wide black belt, an open-necked gray shirt, and knee-high white socks in brown sandals. He might have used half a bottle of oil to slick back his dark hair, and he’d so recently trimmed the edges of his thin mustache that tiny bits of hair were stuck to his upper lip.
“Sorry to bother you,” I said.
“Is there a problem?” he asked Chief Monahan.
“Mind if we come in?” Monahan asked.
Charlie glanced at me. I tried to smile as I studied his face, not sure what I was looking for. Guilt? Fear? Wariness? I read nothing but mild disinterest. The room contained a single bed, a small dresser, and a window looking directly into an overgrown patch of sumac, but as a guest entertainer, he’d had a private room written into his contract. He still had to share the bathroom down the hall, though.
Charlie shrugged and stepped back. Monahan turned to face me. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Grady. I won’t be needing your help any longer.”
“I—”
He went into Charlie’s room, and slammed the door in my face.
I debated what to do next. Aside from my normal workload, I needed to be a visible, calm, comforting presence, reassuring staff and guests alike that I had everything under control. I went outside to the rickety porch and sat on the rickety railing and waited.
At this time of day it was quiet enough I could hear birds calling to one another from the trees and the distant sound of guests enjoying themselves in the pool or the lake. I closed my eyes and took deep breaths of the fresh forest air, heavy with the scent of pine needles and leaf mulch. As well as the contents of the overflowing ashtray on the porch table. It was nice to take a quiet moment out of the day, but I’d be paying for my idleness later.
I didn’t have long to enjoy my solitude before Monahan emerged from the building, slapping his hat onto his head. He didn’t see me, sitting quietly in the shadows, and thumped down the steps and up the path. I watched him go and then slid off the railing. When I turned, Charlie Simmonds was watching me.
“All okay?” I asked.
“I didn’t murder one of your guests,” he said.
“Glad to hear it. Did you have anything to tell the chief?”
He dug in the pocket of his shirt and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a gold lighter. He tapped out a single cigarette, offered it to me, which I refused, and then he put it in his mouth, flicked the lighter, held the flame to the cigarette, and took a deep breath. As he exhaled he snapped the lighter shut and said, “I’m to go into town at one this afternoon. To the hospital to see the body.”
“You knew Mr. Westenham?”
He picked a piece of tobacco off his lip. “I knew a man named Harold Westenham. Sounds like it might be the right guy. Right age anyway, so the chief wants me to have a look. I didn’t see him last night, and no one came to talk to me after my
show, except a couple of smart-aleck kids who want me to introduce them to my agent. If it is the same guy, I knew him in the army. He was an infantry major, and I was with JAG.”
“JAG? You mean military justice? What did you do there?”
The corners of his mouth turned up. “In my former life I was a lawyer. Gave it up for the glamour of comedy.” He held his arms out to take in the silent woods, the crumbling, leaky accommodations. “And, yeah, before you ask, I like this life better. I was a lousy lawyer.”
“What did that have to do with Mr.—then Major—Westenham? Was he in trouble with the law?”
“No, nothing like that. Our paths crossed, as so many did in the chaos of the war. It was France, I think. We were stuck in the same miserable town for a while, that’s about all. Got to chatting now and again. He’d been a history professor in his past life, and he knew all sorts of interesting things about the area we were in. I remember one day when we drove through a town where the old cathedral had been just about completely bombed out. I thought he was going to cry. Come to think of it, he did cry.”
“The Mr. Westenham who was staying here was a college professor.”
“Doesn’t mean it was the same guy, but sounds like it. We moved on, went separate ways, and I never thought about him again. Westenham, if it was the guy I knew, was one of those really serious types. Never laughed, never shared a joke. He worked. And then he worked some more. Not a lot to laugh about, in France and Germany at the end of the war, but even in the worst of times people need to laugh, maybe even more in the worst of times. That’s probably why I went into comedy, if I stop to analyze it. Which I don’t.”
“Thanks for telling me.” I started to leave. “I’d better get back to the hotel.”
“I don’t care to be called a communist, though.”
I stopped. “Chief Monahan said that?”
“He seems to think Westenham was up here, at your pleasant little hotel, plotting the overthrow of the US government, and he came right out and asked if I was conspiring with Westenham. Guy’s not all that bright. If I was a coconspirator, I’d be unlikely to admit it, wouldn’t I?”
“Indeed.”
“I didn’t know Westenham well. We weren’t friends, and I haven’t seen him for eight or nine years. He was a serious guy, and he took his job seriously. He never talked politics, not to me anyway. I told your chief that.”
“He’s not my chief.”
Behind Charlie, the door creaked open and a dancer came out. Her hair hung loosely around her face, but otherwise she was dressed as she would have been last night—one-inch heels, low-cut dress, crinoline-stuffed skirt. She ducked her head and slipped past Charlie.
“This is the men’s accommodation,” I said. “Do you have reason to be here?”
“Yes, Mrs. Grady, yes, I do.” She lifted her head and looked intently into my eyes. Her own eyes were red and the bags beneath them deep. “My friend wasn’t feeling too good, so he asked the kitchen to make some chicken soup. I brought it up to him.” She laughed nervously. Her breath was terrible. “Nothing like chicken soup, is there?”
“No,” I agreed.
She ran lightly down the stairs and disappeared into the woods.
“They don’t tiptoe back to their rooms and slip quietly into bed with a mug of hot cocoa and a letter from home intent on getting a good night’s sleep as soon as the evening entertainment ends, you know,” Charlie said.
“I know that perfectly well. I don’t care what any of them get up to in their own time, as long as it doesn’t disturb the guests. It’s to make sure they don’t disturb the guests that I have to pretend I’m keeping a stern eye out.”
“No need to keep a stern eye on me,” Charlie said. “I’m not much of a party guy. I like to think I’m a ball of laughs onstage, but offstage I prefer my own company. I came straight here when I was finished last night, and I didn’t go out again. I was, in case you’re wondering, alone. I told your chief that. I didn’t see Westenham, if it was him. The walls in this building are mighty thin, and the place was buzzing all night. Someone had died they said, and the cops were here. I figured one of your guests had a heart attack. Half of them are heading that way.”
“Did Chief Monahan believe you?”
Charlie’s face twisted. “No. He thinks I followed Westenham out of the ballroom after my act finished, down to the lake, and bashed him over the head because we’d had a falling-out. As we communists, according to him, do. He says I can expect a visit from the FBI.”
“Is that a problem?”
He threw up his hands. “It most certainly is a problem, Mrs. Grady. I don’t need a reputation as a red. My career’s finally getting off the ground. My agent’s working at getting me into the Concord and he says we have a good shot at it. Word gets around I’m a possible commie, and my bookings will dry up overnight. Goodbye, Concord. I hope you don’t have anyone moving into my room later this week?”
“Why do you say that? We have a magician starting on Saturday and he’ll take the room.”
“Chief Monahan told me I’m not to leave. Not until he, and the FBI, have completed their investigation.”
I sputtered.
“Yeah,” he said. “Typical Charlie Simmonds luck. A guy I didn’t talk to, didn’t even see, came to catch my show and winds up dead, and I’m under suspicion. My name’s not all that unusual, but you had my picture displayed in the lobby, right?”
“Of course. We always inform the guests who’s appearing that night.”
“Westenham, if it was the guy I knew from the army, must have seen it. Recognized me, and wondered what I was up to these days. Monahan says he didn’t take part in the dancing or even take a seat. He came in, caught my act, and left. Didn’t try to find me to say hi. Maybe he expected I’d hang around for a drink at the end of the night. I didn’t.”
“He might have been planning to talk to you tomorrow. Meaning today. At a better time.”
Charlie shrugged. “Doesn’t matter now, does it? I’m under suspicion for being not only a communist but a murderer. And you have an unexpected guest for a few more days. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to my room to change. I intend to take advantage of staying here, and I’m going to check out the pool.”
“What sort of place are you running here, Elizabeth Grady?”
Instead of sneaking to my office the back way after my talk with Charlie Simmonds, I’d foolishly come into the lobby to check on how the day was going.
It was not going well.
Mrs. Brownville and her circle of cronies were sitting in a solid line on a sofa, backs straight, feet planted firmly on the floor, hands folded tightly over their purses. A row of vultures waiting to pounce. I sighed, smiled, and crossed the lobby.
“Good morning, ladies. It’s going to be another beautiful Catskills day.”
Mrs. Brownville clutched her massive handbag to her chest. “Not if we’re all murdered in our beds.”
Passersby stopped to stare.
“No one’s going to be murdered in their beds or elsewhere, Mrs. Brownville.”
“That man was. That . . . that communist.”
Her friends nodded in unison. They even dressed alike: pastel shirtwaist dresses, pearl necklaces, heavy belts, stockings, closed shoes, rigid purses, hair wound into tight rolls.
“A guest died, yes,” I said. “Most unfortunate. That he was murdered has not been determined.”
“That’s not what I heard.” A man wearing a particularly florid shirt pushed his way through the crowd of onlookers. “He was shot and dumped into the lake, but the cement overshoes weren’t attached properly, so he floated to the surface.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said.
“I heard knifed,” Mrs. Brownville said, “but that doesn’t matter. He was a communist, here to plot with other communists. And I want t
o know what you”—a finger stabbed in my direction—“knew about it.”
“I knew absolutely nothing about it. Not that there’s anything to know. The man, our guest, was a US Army veteran, here on vacation.”
“Why did I never see him around? Can you tell me that?” Mrs. Brownville demanded.
“We have almost four hundred guests staying here this week. You can’t say you noticed everyone.”
“I certainly can. I keep myself attentive to my surroundings at all times.”
She was probably right about that. She would have been searching for fault in every one of them.
“He was here to write a book. He wanted his privacy, and we honored that.”
“Ha!” Mrs. Brownville crowed to her circle. “A writer. I knew it!”
The crowd was building. Guests wandered in from outside to see what was going on. Staff members were coming out of the offices or the dining room. The bellhops gathered at the entrance, wondering if they should be doing something.
“The police were at the staff cabins just now,” a man said. “I saw them poking around. Asking questions. No smoke without fire I always say. Are you aware your staff harbors communists?”
“I . . . I . . .” I floundered for words. None came.
“What were the police looking for?” another guest asked.
“Did they arrest anyone? Maybe we should think about leaving if there’s a killer on the loose.”
“I . . .”
“That comedian has something to do with it,” Mrs. Brownville snapped. “Mark my words.”
“I . . .”
“If they aren’t communists, then why are the FBI here?” the flowered-shirt man said. “Those guys don’t come out for any common murder.”
“Mabel,” a man said. “We’re checking out. Now.”
“But we’ve paid for another week,” Mabel protested.
“We’ll ask for our money back.”
“You can ask, but you won’t get it,” I said. “Ladies and gentlemen, please. There’s nothing to be concerned about. Go back to what you were doing and continue to enjoy your day. The police were only doing . . . what police do.”
