Murder Came Second (12 page)

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Alex, what on earth were . . . ?”

“Well.” I stood up briskly. “I’ve got to get going on framing those photos. Fargo, here, you go outside for awhile.”

That was the way the day went. We met, parted, and met again. Late morning we gathered outdoors, where two of us had iced tea and one of us had a bowl of cool water and a biscuit.

Cindy called Fargo to her side and told him to sit. “Now, confess, Fargo, so I don’t have to beat you. Did you jump up on the table for some reason and knock off the lamp? And did Alex rearrange everything and really think I wouldn’t notice a dirty, wrong-side cloth and bent lamp?”

He knew he was being asked if he had done something bad, but since he had long forgotten that he had, he simply grinned and wagged his tail.

“I thought so,” Cindy said, and gave him a pretend spank on the hindquarters. But she couldn’t help grinning back. “What were you doing, fella, checking up on our new neighbors along with everybody else?” Turning to me, she asked, “Do we have anything special on for today?”

“Nope. Nor tonight.”

She looked askance. “You mean we are actually home on a Saturday night? Do you suppose this is just some social oversight, or should I check the expiration date on the deodorant?”

“I think it’s the midsummer doldrums. I suppose we could stir up some action,” I added without great enthusiasm.

She shook her head quickly. “No, not unless you really,
really
want to. It’s been a long week. Maybe I’ll just run over to Evans’s Market and pick up a roast chicken and some pasta salad. We’ll slice some of your prize tomatoes with mozzarella, and we’ll just have a private backyard picnic for you and me and Fargo and Wells. How’s that sound?”

“Per-fect-o!”

And again we parted to mulch the garden, prepare clothes for the next work week, patrol the wall against invaders.

Around five thirty Mom and Aunt Mae just dropped by, Mom with a big Cobb salad with seared scallops and shrimp, Aunt Mae with one of her richly magnificent applesauce cakes.

Then, in rapid succession, we accumulated Peter and the Wolf, with an enormous chunk of Jarlsberg cheese, some fancy crackers and two bottles of wine. They were followed by Cassie and Lainey with another of Evans’s chickens and a bunch of corn muffins. And finally, we acquired Trish and Sonny, bearing a small ham and four six-packs of beer.

It would seem Cindy and I had a dinner party underway, which no one had bothered to tell us we were going to host. We knew, of course, the devious reasoning behind the arrival of these people. But I wondered what they thought they would accomplish besides feeding us all a veritable banquet. Had they concealed telescopes somewhere in their clothing? Were they carrying cameras that looked like cigarette lighters or phones or pencils? Were they planning to speak in pear-shaped tones, hoping to be hired as extras?

Did they really think there might be some rehearsal taking place in the backyard next door, complete with armor and dueling foils and cries of, “Take that, you dastardly villain!” Or did they figure our semi-famous neighbors would simply hop the low wall and join the festivities when they got a whiff of the food?

In point of fact, that was exactly what happened, in a small way. I noticed Elaine and Noel come out onto their back porch and sit down with the evening papers. They looked sort of lonely and I called over to them.

“Elaine, Noel! We’re having a kind of impromptu picnic here. If you’re not busy, we’d love to have you join us.”

They seemed glad of the invitation. I introduced them around and got them drinks, and everybody seemed to be quite at ease. At some point, I heard Elaine and Aunt Mae discussing herbs. Noel and Cindy and Sonny were talking about college funds for kids. I heard Trish offering Elaine a ride in her boat, and then Peter was inviting Noel to one of their soirees, although Noel seemed to be delicately declining. Mother helped rescue him with a question about mastering different dialects.

Finally, we had all eaten our fill. Dusk was falling as we sipped coffee or beer or whatever. And silence fell comfortably over us as well. After awhile, I spoke.

“Well, Elaine, Noel, tell us. Why are you here?”

“Oh, my good lady,” Elaine quickly answered. “We are but a poor troupe of players, come to entertain you with our dramatic antics. We bring you now a tale rife with greed and passion, falsity and betrayal, and, alas, of murders most foul. Our play is called Hamlet.”

“And if you listen closely”—Noel set down his beer—“you may recognize some small resemblance to an earlier play with the same title.
Our
play is set in the present, in a small city in northern Georgia, named Dalton. Some years before the play opens, a businessman named Fred Hamlet made his home there and opened a discount store. It did well, and he opened another, and another, and another, until he had some thirty stores around the south and was a very wealthy man. Fred called his stores
KustomerKing Stores
, and he soon earned the nickname King Hamlet.”

Elaine took up the tale again. “A giant chain named
Big Mart
, sometimes called
Pig Mart
, wanted to buy him out, but King Hamlet was uncertain. He had a feeling this corporate giant would not be economically good for the various small town independent merchants in his areas, and he was afraid the large corporation would not treat his KustomerKing employees well when the behemoth took over his stores. Fred was a good man.”

She bummed a cigarette from Sonny, who actually had a pack, and continued. “Some of King’s executives and certain family members who owned stock in
KustomerKing
disagreed. They wanted to take the money and run. Among them were his wife,
Queenie,
and his cousin,
Duke Hamlet,
who was very,
very
fond of Queenie. Wanting
not
to sell was the CFO, Joe Polonius, who for years had been skimming millions off the profits and into his personal offshore accounts, and was afraid Big Mart’s audit would find him out. Undecided was King Hamlet’s son, Prince Hamlet, although he seemed to be tilting toward his father’s side. As you can see, we have a volatile situation here and much intrigue and possible treachery.”

Sonny and I freshened drinks all around, as Elaine went on. “Suddenly, on a weekend fishing trip to the family cabin on the lake, King Hamlet drops dead of a heart attack. The only other person with him is the Duke. The coroner is uneasy about the cause of death and wants to have the body examined by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The local police chief poohpoohs the idea. After all, didn’t the Duke have a big barbecue for the police and firemen every year? Wasn’t he a member of the NRA and the Slippery Elm Baptist Church? The Duke was a good ol’ boy who wouldn’t never hurt nobody, and that was that. There was no investigation, but there was a wedding.” She reached for her coffee.

Noel stood up and began to walk around us. “Indeed, wedding bells chimed for Queenie and the Duke, so hard upon the heels of King’s burial, that many people said the leftover funeral meats were simply sliced into cold cuts for the wedding feast.”

He paused and leaned on the back of Mom’s chair. She looked up and gave him a smile. “Er . . . uh, well . . .” He lost his train of thought. I imagined Mom’s smile could do that to you if you were a man. Recovering, he continued. “Now comes Prince Hamlet home from college for the funeral and into a hornet’s nest. He discovers the coroner’s misgivings. He finds that Polonius’s son Laertes, called Larry, has maliciously ‘outed’ Hamlet’s affair with Horatio, while Polonius is busy cooking the books. Lovely family. Prince Hamlet is now disgusted with, and untrusting of, his mother, his uncle and Polonius and Larry. He is sure of only one thing: he has inherited sufficient stock to swing the decision either way.”

I put down my beer and raised my hand, as if in class. Noel smiled and nodded for me to speak. “I always thought Hamlet and Horatio were gay anyway. I mean in the original play. Remember at some point Ophelia can’t figure why Hamlet won’t give in and marry her? She says something like, ‘You had promised me to wed, but would you have tumbled me if I came into your bed?’”

Noel paused in his perambulation and now rested his hands on the back of my chair. “Aha, ladies and gentlemen, a Shakespearean scholar among us!” My mother and aunt gave a couple of hand-claps. I felt myself turn red and buried my nose in my coffee mug as Noel went on. “Many of us have held that thought, but somehow it never took off with most scholars. My personal opinion is that the NRA squelched it. Probably figured it would be fatal to the male bonding they all find so masculine, yet so
terribly
satisfying.”

Noel got a good swell of laughter out of that one, combined with several calls of, “Hear, hear!” He bowed and took up the tale again. “Now Prince Hamlet starts his fatal downhill run. First, Ophelia kills herself, leaving a note that she can’t face her family and her social world with everyone knowing the Hamlet she so loved threw her over for another man.”

Sonny handed him a beer. He nodded his thanks and took a sip. “Then one night, as Hamlet comes home, he hears his mother scream, ‘Someone is on the balcony! They’re going to kill me. Help!’ Knowing his father kept a pistol in an end table, our brave prince runs in, grabs it and fires at the figure struggling to free himself from the folds of the draperies. And who falls out, dying, but poor old felonious Polonius? His last words are, ‘But, Queenie, you knew I was coming. You told me to meet you here so we wouldn’t be disturbed.’”

“But,” Elaine added regally, “I insist that Polonius was simply dying and confused, that I had told him nothing of the sort. And of course, the ever-faithful local cops write the incident off as a sad accident. That’s fine for the public, but Hamlet now is almost certain Mummy helped Duke with the king’s death and set up Polonius.”

She sank gracefully into a chair. “A few days later at a family ‘business’ meeting, Laertes bursts in, back from a trip to their Caribbean bank and shoots Hamlet to avenge his father Polonius’s death. Mortally wounded, Prince Hamlet fires back and kills Laertes, who manages first to blurt out that the Duke gave him ten grand to out Hamlet and Horatio. Hamlet blows the Duke away, turns to me and says I have no right to live after all I’ve done, and kills me. Finally, Hamlet collapses and dies in Horatio’s arms.”

“And there you have it, my lords and ladies.” Noel pulled Elaine to her feet for his bow and her curtsy. “A typical Shakespearean tragic ending—blood and corpses all over the stage.”

There was a spontaneous round of applause. My mother, however, shook her head. “Do you think, as they say, that it will fly?”

Noel looked embarrassed. Elaine gave a rueful smile as she spoke. “My dear Jeanne,
A Husband’s House
has been reviled by every women’s group on the planet.
Snow
has a dedicated, but small, cult of gay men who laugh at all the wrong lines.
The Tanqueray Tragedy
is not mentioned in polite theater society. If Paul Carlucci has another
succes d’arte,
the only thing that flies will be Paul’s backers getting out of the country before the loans and the bills come due.”

“Let me put it this way,” Elaine completed. “To say we are all nervous is the understatement of the year. We’re already snapping at each other like turtles, daring anyone to make a mistake or upstage us by an inch. That’s not necessarily bad. It can make for very keen performances, as long as everyone knows his lines and his moves and is very, very—
up.
But if one of us makes a blunder, the timing will all go to hell, which will throw us off our lines, and we’ll go down considerably faster than the Titanic. And I must add, having a nosy, second-rate, dirt-sniffing
journalist
privy to our every move does not help us hold it together.”

Noel muttered, “Oh, Christ!”

I assumed it was the evening’s closing prayer.

Chapter 11

I suppose if you lived next door to Buckingham Palace, you would eventually cease to pay attention when the Queen motored forth, or Prince Phillip came out to sneer or one of the Corgis picked out a tree and peed.

In any event, we grew used to our new neighbors and ceased to be intrigued by impromptu backyard rehearsals. The actual ones were held at the amphitheater, of course. Perforce, we heard Ophelia practicing her scales and songs. She had a good voice, and evidently had some good training, as opposed to so many of our current American performers. She hit her notes roundly and firmly, could exercise power without screaming and actually enunciated lyrics clearly.