Mac Westward nodded like a man drifting into senility.
Constance Bebb sat down. Lara Hardhouse, Sam and Queenie Drayton, and I introduced ourselves. Hoping it would do some good, I stressed Brew. Then Buffy Altar took over again.
“You’re a wonderful group. I think this camp will be the best we’ve ever had.”
The way she drove showed that she knew what she was doing, but I had to keep reminding myself. The tone of her enthusiasm didn’t inspire confidence. I didn’t trust people who had such a pleasant relationship with their own lives.
“You all know what we’ll be doing, so I don’t need to explain too many things. We’ll be at Deerskin Lodge for a vacation. It’s as simple as that. All we have to do is relax and enjoy ourselves—until the mystery starts.
“But there are a few points I want to emphasize.” A few of which she was especially proud. “Fow of the people in this van are professionals. Two of you are actors, and two of you are private investigators. For you, there’s one absolute rule. You can’t reveal who you really are. All the rest of us are counting on you to keep your real reasons for being here secret.
“With everyone’s cooperation, we can make our mystery really unique. For instance, one of our actors is probably here to be the murderer—unless it’s me or Rock—but that doesn’t mean the other will be the victim. The victim could be any of you. But that doesn’t mean you’re out of the game. You’ll be informed that you’ve been killed, and we do ask that you play along, but you’ll be informed in a way that doesn’t reveal who killed you. After that, you can continue to try to solve the crime yourself. The only restriction—since you’re dead—is that you won’t be allowed to ask any questions. You’ll only be able to listen and observe.
“Doing it this way has tremendous advantages. Because the victim doesn’t have to be one of the actors, we can have more than one victim. We can have a whole series of murders. In fact, that’s one of the ways the murderer can win. He can win, of course—or she—by not getting caught. Or he can win by killing us all.
“And since the victim doesn’t have to be one of the actors, we can’t guess the murderer simply by knowing who the victim came with. That’s partly why it’s so important for the actors and the private investigators to keep their identities secret.
“Now.” Buffy’s speech was like her driving—her enthusiasm concealed her expertise. “How will you be informed that you’ve been murdered? We used to use notes, little pieces of paper that said something like, ‘There’s an adder in your bed. As soon as you pull back the covers, you’re dead.’ But that made life too easy for the murderer. He could leave his notes anywhere. There was too little connection to the crime. And the notes always gave you the chance to argue that you didn’t pull back the covers of your bed, so you weren’t dead.
“Instead we now use blue marbles. The murderer has a supply. If you find one in your purse or your pocket, you’re dead. If you pull back the covers and see a blue marble in your bed, you aren’t dead, but if you find the marble after you’re in bed, you are. Of course, if you don’t find the marble at all, the attempt on your life failed. To kill you the murderer has to put it where you’ll be sure to find it.”
At this point Joseph Hardhouse made a show of turning out his pockets.
“No,” Mrs. Altar laughed. She’d seen him in the rearview mirror. “Nobody’s been killed yet. Our murderer doesn’t want to take the chance that we might stop and call the police. In fact, nobody will be killed for at least a day. That will give us all the time to become familiar with Deerskin Lodge, to get to know each other a bit—and give the murderer time to figure out the best way to start killing us.”
My pain had one advantage. It gave me an excuse for the way I looked. My companions weren’t likely to realize that most of what showed on my face was disgust. The idea that fourteen grown men and women would spend the next six days hunting for blue marbles should’ve been funny, but I was in no mood for it.
Luckily for me, the speech was almost over. “Oh, just one more thing,” Buffy said after pausing long enough to make me think she’d finished. “The weather forecast. You’ll all be delighted to hear that we have a big winter storm coming in. We should get it sometime tomorrow or the next day. The mountains are supposed to get at least a foot of snow. We’ll be practically snowbound—I hope.”
Oh, good. More ambience.
For the first time in twenty-four hours, it occurred to me to wonder whether those guns had actually been locked away.
The rest of the guests seemed appropriately excited by Mrs. Altar’s announcement, but Mac Westward chose this occasion to emerge from his silence. In a cold lumpy voice, he asked, “Will we be safe?”
Apparently the surprise of hearing Westward speak acted as a catalyst on Rock. As soon as Buffy answered, “Oh, of course,” her husband pulled up his head and faced the back of the van.
“Deerskin Lodge,” he said firmly, “is fully supplied and equipped for the worst winter weather. If necessary we can live there comfortably for weeks. There is a phone. We can call for help if we need it. And if the line goes down, the manager, Arthur Reeson, has a snowmobile he can use to reach the nearest town. I think we can all count on our safety, Mr. Westward.”
In response the male half of Thornton Foal folded his arms over his chest and subsided.
Now that Buffy was done, the guests started talking to each other. Most of them seemed genuinely excited about this vacation. Almost simultaneously, Simon Abel and Catherine Reverie leaned across their respective aisles to tell Mac Westward and Constance Bebb how thrilled they were to meet one of their favorite writers. Joseph Hardhouse acted like he was eager to resume a conversation with Ginny, but Houston Mile interrupted him. Despite his accent, Mile knew how to enunciate clearly when it came to money, and his voice carried—I heard him ask Hardhouse how much profit could be made in the restaurant business. Maryanne Green listened as if she were entranced.
To distract myself from the particular smile Ginny focused on Hardhouse, I turned to Sam Drayton and asked the first brilliant, insightful question I could think of.
“What’s your specialty, Dr. Drayton?”
He looked at me, grinning like a movie star. Just for a second, he hesitated. Then he said privately, so that the women in the next row wouldn’t hear him, “Rebar accidents. You know what I mean—puncture wounds with blunt rods, slow poisoning, that sort of thing. Amazing how busy it keeps me.”
He took me by surprise. “In other words,” I muttered, keeping my voice as quiet as his, “you don’t believe me.”
He nodded. “Just getting poked in the stomach wouldn’t do enough damage. Having one of those rods rammed right through you would do too much. You wouldn’t even think about a vacation like this.”
Too bad the other people on the bench seat were listening. Queenie Drayton I could tolerate—I already had an almost adolescent crush on her. But Lara Hardhouse was another matter. She took everything we said too seriously.
However, I couldn’t do anything about Lara or Queenie, so I concentrated on Drayton. “You think I’m faking it. You think I’m one of the actors.”
Still grinning, he mouthed the word no. “You’re no actor. The pain is real. I just don’t buy your explanation.”
As if she’d been holding her breath, Lara said in a little bursting whisper, “Mr. Axbrewder is a private investigator.”
“Good God.” She startled me, which helped me sound convincing. “What makes you think that?”
Both Sam and Queenie stared at her, but she didn’t hesitate. “You aren’t just in pain,” she explained. “You know about pain. All about it. I can see it in your face. You work with it all the time, you live with it. You aren’t the kind of man who takes this kind of vacation.”
Well, shit. So much for my cover. But I couldn’t just give up on it. Constance Bebb and Cat Reverie might’ve overheard what we were saying. And I wanted to do whatever I could to make Lara less interested in me.
>
“You’re wrong,” I said straight at her. “I just look like this because I’m an alcoholic.”
That was a mistake. Sam Drayton nodded to himself, and Queenie looked away as if she were embarrassed. Their reactions were about what I expected. But Mrs. Hardhouse suddenly became so interested in me that her whole face burned with it.
At least I didn’t have to put up with any more conversation for a while.
5
Instead of probing me, Murder on Cue’s guests talked to each other. I suppose I should’ve been listening—you never know when a “clue” will crop up. But between them Sam Drayton and Lara Hardhouse had given me a scare. And that made me want to go to sleep. It was like having a hole in my moral guts as well as in my stomach. Leaning my head against the wall of the van, I closed my eyes and tuned out my fellow travelers.
Ginny wouldn’t be amused if the people around me already believed I was a private investigator.
Buffy would be livid.
I was in pretty sad shape if I couldn’t even get through the first hour of a nursemaid job without screwing up.
I wanted a nap, but I didn’t really expect to get one, not under these conditions. So I was surprised when I jerked open my eyes, blinked my vision into focus, and found that we were already high in the mountains. It must’ve been the deterioration of the road that woke me up. Sunlight glittered on the leftover snow, still clean and mostly unmarked, and the trees arranged themselves against the hillsides and the sky like they were posing for a travel poster. For a minute there I felt completely disoriented, as if someone had changed the world around me and all the rules were different.
I hoped I hadn’t been snoring.
During my nap, some of the guests had traded seats. Cat Reverie now sat opposite Simon Abel, talking with Ginny and Joseph Hardhouse. Lara Hardhouse had moved across from Mac Westward, where apparently she’d actually succeeded at engaging him in conversation. Sam and Queenie Drayton listened quietly. I had Houston Mile beside me, with Maryanne Green beside him and Constance Bebb in the other corner. Maryanne was quizzing Connie about Thornton Foal while Mile supervised. He smelled like petroleum oozing through an inadequate buffer of breath mints.
When he noticed that I was awake, he showed me how bad his teeth were. “Feelin’ better, son?”
Well, no. I felt disoriented and bitter—not to mention bloated, as if my guts were filling up with blood. So I nodded and gave him a smile as convincing as his.
“Like Ah say,” he continued, “Ah’ve done this before. Crime is intriguin’, and ol’ Rock and Buffy put on a fine show. It do challenge a man to keep up.” Then he paused and peered at me expectantly.
A moment or two passed before I realized that this remark was intended as a question.
I didn’t want to encourage him. “Not me,” I muttered. “This is Ginny’s idea. She’s the boss. I’m just here because bed rest makes me crazy.”
In response he chuckled and leered. “Ah know what you mean, son. Bed ain’t good for but one thing, and rest don’t come into it.”
With one hand, he stroked Maryanne’s upper thigh.
Luckily for me, touching Maryanne distracted him. He turned to lean over her and left me alone.
Eventually we reached the gate and the long driveway that led down to Deerskin Lodge. Buffy stopped to announce our destination and let everyone take a look. Then she drove down into the hollow and parked in front of the lodge.
One by one, we off-loaded ourselves into the mud and slush. I was the last one out.
By the time I’d dragged my sore carcass between the seats and through the door, a man had emerged from the lodge to deal with the luggage. He had a peculiarly old-world face, with creased sallow skin, a drooping off-white walrus mustache, and bland innocent eyes—the kind of face you’d expect to see on some Mafia don’s simpleminded cousin. He wore a battered old peacoat which concealed his frame, but the way he handled the suitcases convinced me that he was strong.
He must’ve been Petruchio Carbone, Truchi. He and his wife, Amalia, were the only members of the staff I hadn’t met.
I half-expected Art Reeson to put in an appearance. Welcome the guests as Deerskin Lodge’s official representative. But he didn’t show.
Mrs. Altar had already reached the steps to the porch, keeping her contact with mire and muck to a minimum, but the rest of us stood around near the van and studied the mountains and trees and buildings, the absolute sky. Getting used to being here. Ginny had joined a little cluster that included Joseph Hardhouse and Cat Reverie. I edged closer to her, looking for some hint to help me interpret the way she dissociated herself from me. But her glance in my direction was studiously impersonal.
Under the circumstances, however, I couldn’t help noticing that her entire face had changed since the parking lot of the Camelot. Now she looked fascinated rather than disinterested. The lines of her jaw and nose were keen, and her eyes shone like glass after you clean away a film of dust and oil.
I also couldn’t help noticing that she seemed to have lost the self-consciousness—or the shame—that used to make her hide her claw. Now she treated her stainless steel hand as if it were as much a part of her as anything else.
And, on top of all that, I positively and entirely couldn’t help noticing that her attention and keenness were focused on Hardhouse. She actually reached out to him a couple of times, touched his arm gently, like a girl hoping to be asked out on a date. His pleasure, which shone like his hair, was divided sort of equally between her and Catherine Reverie, but she ignored Cat to concentrate on him.
That hit me hard. Harder than it should’ve, probably, but I wasn’t exactly at my best. I’d known Ginny for years, loved her for years, but I hadn’t seen her look at me like that since I could remember.
All of a sudden, I knew what introducing me as Mick meant. She was leaving me on my own—abandoning me, as they say, to my own devices. She’d done what she could for me by bringing me here, putting me in a safe place. That was enough. Now she intended to pursue her own interests.
At the moment those interests had nothing to do with me. Instead they revolved around Joseph Hardhouse.
The insight left me numb with shock. Instinctively I tried to retreat.
When I turned away, I found myself blinking dumbly into the face of Lara Hardhouse.
She stood close to Mac Westward. Something about the way she accompanied him conveyed the impression that she’d appropriated him, probably without his being aware of it. But the ache in her eyes was aimed at me, and it was so intense that it practically stopped my heart.
She regarded me like she understood what had just happened.
Because I was numb with shock and couldn’t afford to think, I pushed that possibility away. Instead I decided—on no basis whatsoever—that I knew what troubled her. Her husband was a philanderer, and it was killing her. She worked to make herself beautiful and share his recreations, trying to win him back, but nothing could make him love her the way she wanted. She needed help. She didn’t look at me like that because she pitied me. She just thought we had something in common.
We did. But I didn’t want to think about it. All I wanted was distance from my own dismay.
By then Buffy had started talking again, making a speech of welcome. I came in on the part where she said, “Truchi will take care of your bags. Unless they don’t have tags on them.” Pleased with her own humor. “In that case, you’ll have to sort them out for yourselves.
“Come inside, and I’ll show you where your rooms are. Once you’ve had a chance to settle in and freshen up, you can get oriented and do a bit of exploring before dinner.”
I didn’t know what else to do with myself, so I lurched along behind the group toward the stairs and the porch.
“This is the den,” Buffy announced as she led us into the big lounge with the tree trunk and the stuffed heads. The room was considerably warmer than yesterday, heated by fires crackling in all three fireplaces—which solved
the back-draft problem. “The dining room and kitchen are that way.” She pointed in their direction. “The bedrooms are along these other two halls. There are more rooms than we need, but we’ll be scattered to give you all”—she smiled a mystery lover’s smile—“as much privacy as possible.”
As if she were heading up a regatta, she steered us toward our quarters.
Sam and Queenie Drayton shared a room, of course. So did Houston Mile and Maryanne. And Rock and Buffy. I wasn’t surprised that Connie, Mac, Simon Abel, and Cat all had separate rooms. But I was a little taken aback by the fact that Joseph and Lara Hardhouse weren’t together.
Neither were Ginny and I. Her room was down the other hall from mine.
On top of that, I didn’t much care for my room. Sure, it had a bathroom and a bed, which were about the only things I absolutely required. But the bed looked to be about a foot too short, and the chairs were delicate. Chintz and doilies mostly decorated the room, and on the walls hung sepia prints of hunters standing over dead beasts. It was the sort of room where you’d expect vacant women to sit and knit while they waited for their menfolk to come home from putting holes in animals. Or people.
I sneered at it in an attempt to distance myself.
I needed as many ways as I could find, so I was glad when I heard a knock on my door, and Petruchio Carbone came in with my suitcase.
He tilted his head to ask me where I wanted him to put my stuff.
“On the bed.” I didn’t have any better ideas. “I’ll take care of it later.”
With a shrug, Carbone flipped my suitcase onto the coverlet like it weighed practically nothing—which it probably did. Then he moved toward the door.
I wasn’t eager to be left alone. To stop him, I asked, “Have you worked here long, Mr. Carbone?”
He paused, looked at me with an air of impersonal sorrow, scratched his head as if the question were more complex than I realized. After a moment he said uncertainly, “Ten years?”