Fowl Prey (3 page)

“How do you know that?” queried Judith.

Renie grinned, heedless of the wine she was spilling on the tablecloth. “I just finished designing a commemorative brochure for the university's acting program. Max Rothside was listed among the three greatest theatrical impresarios of the twentieth century. You know me, I may be just the designer, but I don't trust anyone else to proof-read. There isn't a soul on that campus who can spell. Including Bill.”

Judith tipped her head to one side. “Maria did all right for herself for a pudgy kid from Heraldsgate Hill. I wonder whatever happened to Spud.”

Renie's eyebrows lifted. “Spud? Who's that?”

“Spud Frobisher. He played football for Heraldsgate High and Maria was madly in love with him. Beefy kid, no speed, but lots of desire. Some of it, I heard, was for Maria.” Judith leered slightly above the rim of her wineglass. “He got a football scholarship somewhere after he graduated. As I recall, both he and Maria were broken-hearted over the separation.”

Renie made a face. “They probably forgot all about each other as soon as they left town.” She put aside her salad plate, leaving most of the cubed beets in a little pile. “Then this was Maria's first marriage, I take it? No kids?”

Judith shook her head. “I doubt it. Where would she put one with that scrawny frame of hers?”

A suave waiter, who looked more Pakistani than Gallic, removed their starter plates and refilled the bread basket. The cousins had already demolished the crusty rolls along with most of the butter. Judith mentally kissed her pre-holiday calorie counting goodbye and verbally abused Renie for eating like a pig and looking like a pole.

“Metabolism,” explained Renie for what she calculated as the thousandth time in over four decades. “Nervous energy. I pour it all into my fabulous graphic designs.”

“I pour it all into my gut,” lamented Judith. She patted her midsection, which actually was nowhere near as ample as she made out. “It's aggravating. Look at Maria—she's as tall as I am and weighs about half as much.”

“I'll bet she's got thighs like a linebacker.” Renie paused as the waiter returned with her quenelles of pike in chive sauce and deposited Judith's mackerel poached in cider. “You'll note her oh-so-simple-but-chic dress came damned near down to her ankles.”

“True.” Judith looked for her fork and realized it had gone off with the first course. Leaning back in her chair, she tried to signal to the waiter, but he had been diverted by the burly customer at the next table. To Judith's surprise, the customer, rather than the waiter, sprang to attention.

“Excuse me,” he said, clumsily edging in between the
wine racks which separated the tables, “I eavesdropped. Did you mention Spud Frobisher?”

Judith and Renie exchanged curious glances. “We did,” replied Judith, warily surveying the intruder. He was middle-aged, with thinning blond hair, a fresh pink face, and pale blue eyes. “We were also about to mention a missing fork.”

Deftly, the waiter supplied the proper utensil. The burly man leaned on the table, causing it to sway slightly. “
I'm
Spud Frobisher,” he said, with a diffident smile. “You could be…oh, heck, I'm not sure…Joanne? Jennifer? Julia?”

“Judith. My God!” she exclaimed, her memory clicking into place, “you
are
Spud Frobisher! What is this, old home week?”

Spud guffawed as if Judith had made a hilarious joke. “Yep, in a way.” He gestured to his table where a gray-haired man with a goatee was paying the bill. “Let me see my friend off and then I'll tell you the story of my life. The short version,” he added, noting the look of alarm on both cousins' faces. “I'll be right back.”

“Well, well,” remarked Judith, starting in on the mackerel. “What is this, the land of coincidence? I feel like singing the old high school fight song. If I could remember it.”

“‘Fight on ye Harbingers,'” sang Renie in a mercifully soft off-key voice, “‘bring the news of victory…'”

Judith grimaced. “No wonder I forgot it.” She thought it best to change the subject. “Do you suppose Spud heard what we said about him and Maria?”

Apparently unfazed by her cousin's implied criticism, Renie responded with a quizzical lift of her eyebrows. “If he did, it didn't seem to bother him.”

“True,” agreed Judith. “He hasn't changed all that much, really. Bigger. Balder. Bolder. Spud always spoke in monosyllables.”

“I don't think I ever talked to him,” said Renie. “He
was, after all, only a sophomore. The only reason I talked to you was because we were related.”

“And then you acted like a snot if there was anybody else around,” Judith reminded her cousin with a hint of reprimand.

“It's not my fault you were a nerd. All sophomores were nerds. It was a new word then.” Renie lapped up her pike, while somehow managing to devour yet another roll almost simultaneously.

Having parted with his companion, Spud was wheeling back to the table. He hauled his chair over with a loud clatter and sat down, much like a water buffalo submerging into a lake. “Judith. Let me think…”

“Don't,” urged Judith, who didn't remember brains as being Spud's strong suit. “McMonigle now, Grover then. This is my cousin, Serena Grover Jones. She was two years ahead of us and a snot.”

Spud eyed Renie with apparent awe, as if the magic spell of high school hierarchy still lingered. “Sure! You were a cheerleader!”

Renie all but bolted from her chair. “I was not!” she protested, as if accused of some heinous crime. Judith smirked, figuring it served her cousin right for remembering the loathsome Heraldsgate fight song. “I was president of the Honor Society!” shrieked Renie.

“Oh, gee!” Spud was mightily embarrassed, his pink face turning crimson. “Gosh, I'm sorry, it's been awhile. I must have gotten you mixed up with someone else.” He gave Judith and Renie a sheepish, engaging grin. “I haven't been back to Heraldsgate Hill since I graduated. Dad got transferred and my folks moved to Denver that summer.”

“And you got a football scholarship,” said Judith, attempting to put Spud at ease. “So what have you been up to? Coaching?”

Spud emitted his boisterous laugh. “Well, yeah, sort of. But not football.” He leaned forward, his face earnest, his knees pushing the table a good two inches across the
stone floor. Judith and Renie clung to their plates. “I got that scholarship all right, to Nebraska, but I separated my shoulder in the first game against Oklahoma. That ended my playing days.” He paused, eliciting sympathetic looks from Judith and Renie. “But that was okay. I wasn't all that crazy about football. I'd gotten in with some of the drama students and they had a good theater program at UN. I tried acting, but I was too clumsy on stage. Still, I really loved the theater. All those words—I didn't know there were so many, or that you could put them together like that!” His face glowed like a baby's; he was suddenly the eager undergraduate once again. “My folks weren't much for culture,” Spud confessed. “My dad worked for the phone company.”

“That explains it,” said Renie, who'd had her share of run-ins over various presentations to the telecommunications industry's top brass. “Most of the officers think
Hamlet
is an egg dish.”

Spud howled. “Right,” he agreed, all but wiping his eyes, and beaming at Renie as if they had suddenly become soul mates. “So it was all new to me. And since I couldn't act and the technical stuff was too hard and I was no writer, I had to take what was left.” He lifted his wide shoulders. “I became a director. It
is
like being a coach, you know.”

A dim light shone somewhere in Judith's mind. In almost 19 years of marriage to Dan McMonigle she hadn't had the time or opportunity to keep up with the American theater scene. And widowhood's responsibilities with raising a son and running a bed-and-breakfast had prevented her from catching more than the occasional movie. But somewhere along the line, the name of Frobisher was known to her other than in the guise of Spud, Heraldsgate High School lead-footed fullback. “Not
Kent
Frobisher?” she asked in astonishment.

Spud pounded the table, rocking china and cutlery. “That's right, that's me! Isn't it a hoot?”

Renie was aghast. As season ticket holders to the repertory theater, she and Bill knew Kent Frobisher was one
of the most outstanding directors in the country. “Why, you've won a Tony! Or two! Good grief, how come the local media wags have never claimed you as their own?”

“Well,” Spud replied, turning ruminative, “I'm not sure they know I'm theirs. You see, we moved around a lot because of my dad's job, and I was only in town for the four years I was in high school. Then, when I went away to college in Lincoln, it turned out that a lot of Nebraskans work in the New York theater. I made all my contacts through them when I went back East. Everybody in the business thinks of me as a Cornhusker. Somehow, that Midwestern farm boy background was good for my image. Heck, even ‘Spud' fitted somehow, with all due respect to Idaho.” He leaned back in the chair, looking ingenuous, and threatening to tip over onto the wine rack.

Judith studied him with new appreciation. The bumptious exterior obviously masked a great deal of intelligence and cunning. Not to mention genuine talent. Spooning up the last bit of cider, Judith shook her head. “Amazing. Really, it is. The reason we were talking about you was because we'd just run into—” She caught Renie's warning glare and stopped. “Actually, we just met someone else who went to Heraldsgate High and it made me remember…”

Spud broke in on Judith's fumbling explanation. “Maria, right?” He jabbed Judith in the upper arm, knocking the spoon out of her hand. “Oops, sorry. I know, that's what I mean about old home week. My wife and I are here for Max Rothside's Sacred Eight reunion. We're staying with them at the Hotel Clovia.”

Suddenly, the resurfacing of Spud and Maria didn't seem like such a coincidence after all.

F
OLLOWING
S
PUD
F
ROBISHER
'
S
announcement, Judith and Renie had eyed each other surreptitiously. Old home week indeed, Judith was still thinking, and knew Renie would agree. The waiter had returned, whisking away the empty plates and pouring more wine. Spud groped at his wristwatch. “Hey, it's going on two o'clock! Gotta run, I'm supposed to meet the wife at some boutique on Queen Charlotte Street. Maybe we'll see you around.”

“You can't avoid it.” In brief, Judith summed up the cousin's plight over lost reservations and Maria's gracious invitation. Spud seemed delighted. They'd have a real hoe-down come the cocktail hour, he asserted, and almost knocked over the Pakistani waiter on the way out.

“This is the genius who directed that highly acclaimed revival of
Long Day's Journey into Night?
” gasped Renie over coffee. “I don't believe it!”

But Renie had no choice. Spud might be a Midwestern rube, but it appeared that professionally he was a city slicker. Or so Judith contended as the cousins
prowled the small, smart shops of Prince Albert Bay. Two hours later, with feet dragging and arms full, they headed back to the hotel, taking Renie's shortcut through an alley that led from the neighborhood's commercial strip.

“Are you sure Bill's Cuban cigars won't get confiscated?” Judith asked dubiously as a sleek Siamese cat that bore no resemblance whatsoever to Sweetums arched its back next to a dumpster.

“They never do,” Renie answered blithely. “Bill's been buying them up here for years.”

Judith said nothing, her mind veering off onto Joe. He, too, was a cigar smoker, and policeman or not, no doubt would have been elated with a gift of contraband Havanas. But Judith and Joe weren't exactly at the present-giving stage. Maybe they never would be, she told herself, and felt Renie stiffen at her side.

“What's wrong?” asked Judith, but a glance at the other end of the alley answered the question. A rotund figure in a tasseled cape pushing a popcorn wagon was heading straight for them.

“Pretend you don't speak English,” hissed Renie. “Act like you're deaf and dumb. Hold up a plague sign. Just don't let Bob-o get started or we'll be here all night.”

But the warning was in vain. Within ten feet of the cousins, Bob-o began his spiel, the sound of Bow Bells in his singsong voice. “Pretty ladies, spent every 'aypenny, now it's time for tea. What 'ave you got there, something nice for me?”

Judith opened her mouth to reply, but Bob-o had barely paused for breath: “Got me a parakeet, pretty as you please. Speaks like a proper lad, sits in the trees. Born on Armistice Day, when we beat the Kaiser. Been all over 'ell and gone, growing old and wiser. 'Ad me a collie dog, when I was…”

The voice rattled on as Judith and Renie stood imprisoned next to a pile of packing crates. Tuning out the words, Judith studied Bob-o and recognized that at least he was probably right about his Armistice Day birthdate:
His blotchy face showed all of seventy years and the watery gray eyes looked unfocused. Sprigs of white hair stood up around the bald spot at the back of his head. He was of medium height, and perhaps not really as fat as he looked in the billowing cape. His boots were old and worn, yet his brown wool trousers looked new, if cheap. As the words kept tumbling out, Judith had the feeling that Bob-o wasn't talking to her and Renie so much as he was babbling on cue. Judith snapped her fingers. Bob-o shut up.

“Nice to meet you,” said Judith, with a nod. “If you'll excuse us, we have to go do brain surgery.”

The watery eyes suddenly focused. “No! Not on me, you don't!” He held both hands up in front of his face, as if warding off attack.

Renie took advantage of the gesture to attempt escape, but couldn't surmount the popcorn wagon. Judith, however, was stricken with remorse. “I didn't mean that,” she insisted. “I meant we had to be someplace. For tea,” she added rather wildly.

Bob-o slowly lowered his hands, peeking out between his fingers like a child playing a game. “Tea? Well, there now!” He crooked a gnarled finger at them. “Come on, don't be shy, I've plenty of tea and biscuits, too. Tootle loves company, 'e does, and so do I, especially when they're pretty lasses.”

“Hold it,” cried Renie, digging in her heels.

But Bob-o had turned into a doorway next to the packing crates. “Shortbread, straight from Scotland, and some loverly creams. 'Ere we go.” The door swung open and he made a lavish bow, ushering his guests into the ground-floor entrance.

Judith gave Renie a helpless look. Renie's face hardened, but she knew her cousin too well. Judith was a real sap when it came to people. She actually liked most of them. To Renie, it was often a flaw, yet it was also the reason Judith was such a success in the bed-and-breakfast business. Renie surrendered, and tramped along behind Judith into Bob-o's tiny apartment.

It was everything they might have imagined, with newspapers stacked all over the floor, dirty dishes on the table and in the sink, grease running down the grimy stove, dust webs in the corners, and furniture that looked as if the Kaiser's men had plundered it before running up the white flag in 1918. There were dozens of objects strewn about, all of them old and battered—an accordion, a broken drum, leather ice skates with missing laces, even a conical cap with stars. Photographs, many of them framed, were plastered on the walls and sitting on whatever flat space was available. To Judith's surprise, they were recognizable: Olivier, Gielgud, the Lunts, the Barrymores, Noel Coward, and Beatrice Lilly.

“Hi, sluts!” The voice came from on high. Startled, Judith and Renie looked up in unison. A turquoise parakeet with a sour expression perched on top of a faded floral lampshade. “Tarts, trollops, hussies!” the bird chirped, then flapped its wings and flew off to the refrigerator.

“That's Tootle,” said Bob-o, blowing the bird a kiss.

“Gee, I thought it was Gertrude,” murmured Judith, wondering if they should attempt sitting down.

“I'll kill you for this,” Renie whispered back. “He's nuts, and so are you.”

But Bob-o was filling a kettle and turning on the stove. Judith removed a foot-high stack of newspapers bearing dates from five years earlier, and cautiously sat down on a rickety chair. Renie remained standing.

“Nice and easy does it, 'ere we go, ducks,” said Bob-o, shoving a tartan biscuit tin in front of Judith. “Shortbread, just like I promised. Tootle ate the creams.”

“Tootle's a scamp.” Judith remarked, exchanging hostile looks with the parakeet, who was doing something disgusting on top of the refrigerator. Fleetingly, Judith wondered what would happen if Sweetums and Tootle were left locked up together in the same room. The prospect was ghoulish, but not entirely displeasing.

“You must be a great fan,” Judith remarked to Bob-o's back as he fiddled with the knobs on the stove.

“Fan!” Bob-o turned halfway around.
“Friend.”
He undid the cape and tossed it onto a pile of old phonograph records. “Knew them all, I did. Larry. Jack. Bea.” His thumb jabbed at each famous face in turn. “A wonderful woman Bea was, nobody like our Bea. Used to leave my dog with 'er.” He picked up a smaller photo which had been lying facedown on an old magazine. “There's Viv. Beautiful. But troubles, lots of troubles.” He flashed the picture of Vivien Leigh in the cousins' direction. “Poor Larry, she gave 'im a rare bad time. “'E was a saint, really 'e was.”

The kettle hadn't whistled, but Bob-o poured the water anyway. Renie shifted uneasily, keeping a wary eye on Tootle. The bird flapped his wings, then burst out with a parody of his master: “Daddy put the kettle on, wearin' o' the green; Mummy come for biscuits, says we don't keep clean!”

Tuning Tootle out, Judith nibbled at the shortbread and was relieved to discover it was relatively fresh. “You knew them all in London?” Judith hazarded a guess, relieved that at least Bob-o, if not Tootle, had stopped rattling away like a nursery rhyme.

“Mostly.” Bob-o was nonchalant, dipping a single teabag in and out of the ceramic pot shaped like a sheep's head. “Cream? Lemon? Sugar?”

The cousins declined any risky additions. Bob-o poured the pallid tea into three unmatched cups. “Cozy, eh, ducks?” He winked at Judith and smiled, revealing two broken teeth. “Nice to have ladies to tea. People 'ere in Canada aren't as friendly as they're said to be. 'Ard to make new friends when you're old.”

Nuts or not, Judith was touched by Bob-o's candor. “People get too busy. They're afraid to be friends sometimes. But you must meet lots of folks in your…uh, job. I think that would be quite pleasant.”

Bob-o cocked his head to one side, looking not unlike
Tootle. “They come. They go. It's not like the old days.” He sighed, then took a deep drink of tea. “Nothing's like it used to be.” He waved a hand, taking in the entire squalid room. “They're all gone.” His voice dropped and his watery eyes came to rest on a picture Judith didn't recognize, a lovely young woman with golden curls and seductive eyes. “All gone,” he repeated under his breath.

“We should be, too,” interjected Renie, putting her cup down on an ancient television set. “It's been very kind of you,” she added, guilt finally catching up with her more fastidious nature. “We'll come by tomorrow and get some popcorn.”

Judith regarded Renie with approval. “We certainly will. I'll see if I can find some of those creams when we go shopping, okay?”

Bob-o's face lighted up. “Now what a fine idea!” He put out a hand and clutched at Judith's fingers. “I knew you were a kind lady, I could see it in your eyes. 'Appy eyes, I call 'em.” He shot a glance at Renie. “Some as 'as 'em, some as don't.”

To Renie's credit, she kept her smile in place. Judith thanked Bob-o again, let him see them out the door, and remembered to call a farewell to Tootle. The parakeet hopped off the refrigerator and landed on Bob-o's head. “Four ducks on a pond, the drake's on the make! So long, strumpets! Don't forget your key!”

“With any luck, I'll forget I've been here,” Renie muttered as the cousins trudged through the alley. “Damn, how could you do that to us, we've probably been poisoned! That place smelled like the old outhouse up at the cabin! Our English ancestors used to take tea with Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales! You get us stuck with a loony popcorn vendor and his dirty bird!”

Judith was unperturbed. “I did it because we didn't have any choice,” she asserted, stopping at the Empress Drive entrance to the Clovia. Admittedly, the red ivy on stout, twisting vines clawing its way up the walls was an impressive sight in the fading autumn sun. Judith paused
to admire the Clovia's stolid exterior with its mellow old brick and evergreen shrubbery. Brushing a tiny crescent-shaped bit of glitter from her slacks and giving thanks that her person hadn't collected something more disagreeable during their visit to Bob-o, she continued her self-defense: “And I'm glad. I don't know why, but there's something about him that upsets me. I guess I just feel sorry for the poor old guy.”

“You feel sorry for everybody. Except me.” Renie grumbled all the way up to the eighth floor. Only a session with toothbrush and mouthwash, a hot soak in the tub, and a stiff rye and water improved her disposition. It also revived her brain. “By the way,” she said, rubbing her hair dry with a thick towel, “did you notice the picture of Maria?”

“Maria?” Judith looked up from the Port Royal visitors' guide she'd been perusing. “Hunh. Well, she was a big star in England, as well as over here.”

“Was Bob-o talking nonsense all the time?” Renie inquired, plopping down on the plush sofa and retrieving her drink.

Judith was trying to track down a bicycle specialty shop for Mike. “What? Oh—probably.” She scribbled out an address, then glanced at her watch. “Hey, it's almost six. Let's get going. Didn't you make the dinner reservations at the Prince Albert Cafe for seven-thirty?”

“Right.” Renie was scrutinizing her travel wardrobe. “Shoot, what do we wear to something called the Sacred Eight?”

“Not much choice, with one suitcase apiece,” said Judith, then jumped as a series of explosions rattled the windowpanes. “Damn! More crackers?”

Renie nodded, less concerned with the revelers out along Empress Drive than her social dilemma. She finally wrapped herself in a reversible blue-green blouse and skirt that hadn't traveled as well as the Donner & Blitzen sales clerk had promised. Judith settled on a tailored ivory silk shirt and black velvet trousers. Shortly after six p.m. the
cousins approached the door of Suite 800 at the far end of the hall. Judith's knock was answered by Maria, looking divine in a black suede jacket trimmed with gold over red jersey harem pants. Her gold and ruby earrings looked like spaceships. Judith and Renie were properly impressed.

“My dears!” Maria welcomed them, against a back-drop of art deco furnishings and Cole Porter on tape, “come in, meet three-fourths of the Sacred Eight. The Castles got held up in Hong Kong. Jonny's new picture ran over schedule.”

“Jonathan Castle and Clea Rome?” echoed Judith, recalling Maria's earlier reference to the missing couple. “The movies' gorgeous hunk and the hot mama of hard rock?” She boggled at the thought of replacing two such mega-stars.

“Yes,” sighed Maria, steering Judith and Renie toward Max Rothside and the bearded man the cousins had seen coming out of the elevator upon their arrival, “it's a shame. Max was so hoping the reunion would be complete. Weren't you, darling?”

Max Rothside bowed over his cocktail glass and flicked ash from his cigarette into a crystal bowl atop the white baby grand piano. Everyone was smoking; in fact, the room seemed to be divided into Smoking and Heavy Smoking sections. Judith felt herself weakening despite her long months of total abstinence, but caught Renie's dark glare and repented.