Toured to Death (12 page)

T
he laughter in the dining room was friendly, harmless and, at least to the Price team, annoying. Burt did his best to be a good sport. He was certainly taking it better than Holly, who was back at the team table, shrinking sullenly into her chair.

“No, no,” he stammered into the microphone, straining to be heard. “Think about it. The actor who played Fidel in Monte Carlo had a bit of that androgynous look. Kind of a slight build and wide hips . . . Damn, I just know I'm going to say something derogatory about women or the transgendered and my career is going to be shot to hell.” The judge tried to cover his embarrassment by leaning over the podium to retrieve his water glass.

“Are you saying that actor was a woman?” Frank Loyola shouted from one of the tables of four.

Burt was talking into the glass. “Well, maybe. Or maybe he was just hired to give the illusion that he was a woman playing the role of a man.”

“Is this a comment on me?” The captain of the Fidels stood and posed, his fists pumped playfully into his hips.

“No, no,” Burt shouted above the laughs. “Marcus, please.”

Burt had donned his deerstalker cap in honor of his team's official solution. Now he removed it, setting it on the podium's upper shelf. “I am required to give my team's theory, whether I agree with it or not. And if you quote me, I'll deny it.”

There had been a certain amount of heckling all evening, and the others were now almost euphoric to see the last team presenting such a far-fetched solution.

“Anyway . . .” It was only a game, as he'd told Holly so often. “It is our opinion that Daryl's very private secretary, Fidel, is a woman in disguise.”

Applause and whoops greeted this official declaration.

“Let Burt have his say.” Amy was seated next to the podium. “After all,” she added, “after all, transsexual disguises are a tried-and-true convention in the mystery field.”

“Burt has a perfect right to hang himself,” yelled Georgina.

The finale had convened at seven o'clock in the red baroque dining room. For much of the actual meal, the tables of four whispered and argued in private as they worked out the fine points. And then, during dessert, the captains, fortified with various amounts of wine, one by one rose and came forward to become the somewhat willing targets of abuse. Each outlined his or her team's theory—the murderer, the method, and the motive, including such details as why Daryl left the table and what had prompted him to flee all the way to Rome.

The judge continued with a smile, determined to enjoy this as much as anyone. “Fidel—or Fidelia, as we've dubbed her—disguised herself as a man so that she and Daryl could carry on an affair right under his wife's nose.”

“Weak,” shouted Frank Loyola.

Burt ignored the critique. “Price found out about the affair. Not knowing Fidel's real sex, Price assumed his father was a latent homosexual. Not latent. Closeted.” Burt looked up from his notes. “This is merely our interpretation of the evidence. Anyway . . .”

Burt soldiered on, managing to make a certain amount of sense, but only a certain amount. The audience was on his side now. They admired his tenacity and imagination and greeted the conclusion of his painfully bizarre explanation with a hearty round of applause.

“Thank you, Burt,” Amy said, taking over the microphone. “Now if I can have all the captains come up to the table . . .” From her briefcase, she brought out seven scripts, six for them and one for herself. “Everyone please take a script and a chair.”

Amy had hoped for a round table. A round table would have been more reminiscent of the original scene in Daryl's mansion. Instead, she had settled for a thin rectangular model. It was in front of the podium, set with chargers and silverware and glasses for dessert wine. During the entire six-course meal it had stood conspicuously empty.

The captains all took their scripts and their seats. Instinctively, the dominant males, Price and Stew, or rather the captains representing them, gravitated to the two edges of the table facing the audience. Dolores, as matriarch, was granted the spot in between. On the opposite side, Bitsy Stormfield and the sexually confused Fidel took the edges, leaving the center position for Dodo Fortunof.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming.” Amy had retrieved Burt's deerstalker and had borrowed Vinny Mrozek's unlit pipe. “My name is Inspector Abel of Interpol.” Her transformation was greeted with appreciative chuckles.

From her true-crime reading, Amy knew that Interpol was just an international fact-gathering system, little more than a building full of files and computers, and had no official jurisdiction. But the “Interpol inspector” had served fiction well throughout the years, and Amy saw no reason to second-guess Otto's script.

“What does this have to do with Interpol?” Jolynn Mrozek read from her script. Her sour tone was just right for the freshly widowed Dolores. “We, my family and a few friends, came down to Rome for a vacation. Daryl went off by himself for a walk. His senseless murder in that chapel today . . .” Pause.

Amy jumped in a second late. “You are not here on vacation, madam, and your husband did not go out for a walk. He has been missing for two weeks. This is an international matter.” She turned a page. “I have been following this case from Monte Carlo, and I am prepared to make an arrest. Daryl Litcomb was murdered by someone at this very table.”

“One of us?” Frank Loyola read the line as a threat. “Explain yourself, sir.”

And so Amy explained.

As the twenty-four players listened, she circled the table, head bent over her script, outlining the entire plot, detailing each one of their secret relationships to the victim and their possible motives. Gently mocking snickers bubbled up as it grew apparent that Fidel was indeed a man and had always been one.

“I told you,” Holly hissed into Carla Templar's ear. “Why didn't you listen?”

At this point, the Fidel character had several lines of dialogue, and Marcus made the most of them. He rose from the table, borrowed Amy's borrowed pipe, and swaggered straight up to Burt Baker. In place of the obsequious whine he normally used for Fidel, Marcus adopted a broad, macho accent with origins somewhere between Brooklyn and South Boston.

“Yo, Inspector.” He pointed the pipe into Burt's face, and even though the lines were written to be delivered to Amy, they worked beautifully. “I hope you realize that youse is running my good name tru da mud. Dese allegations is slanderous. My relationship with Mr. Litcomb was strictly on the up-and-up. And, may I remind you, you cannot prove a ting.” Marcus grabbed his crotch and snorted. “Not a ting. I am gonna have to demand a public apology.”

Judge Baker joined in the fun. “I apologize, sir, from the bottom of my heart.” He pushed himself to his feet. “I don't know what I could have been thinking.” And before Marcus could prepare himself, the crippled man took his face in both hands and planted a long, exaggerated kiss on his lips. The crowd went wild.

Except for Holly, of course.

It was well after ten when Amy announced the solution and placed Georgina in handcuffs. Then she explained how and why Dodo had murdered Daryl, the man who had bankrupted her family through a labyrinth of fiscal skulduggery.

“You are completely broke, Miss Fortunof. I found that out in Assisi.” She was referring to a clue they'd all unearthed at that particular stop. “You came to Monte Carlo to beg for a loan, but Daryl just sneered at you—you, the woman who had given him his start in business.”

It was nearly eleven when Amy handed out the trophies to Frank and the Stew Boys, a surprise win that had been achieved by a combination of good guessing, respectable times, and their own limited imagination, which, unlike the Prices' imagination, never went too far.

Holly was nearly asleep in her chair. The adults all looked pleasantly full and ready to call it a night. That was when Marcus rose from the narrow table.

“I offer you the warmest congratulations of Otto Ingo.” Their sleepy smiles faded, as did the warm, soft buzz. “I know how proud he would have been. There was nothing Otto enjoyed more than creating mysteries and seeing people solve them.” Marcus caught the maître d'hôtel's eye and signaled him with a raised finger. “I was honored to have been Mr. Ingo's assistant, working at his side while he created some of his most intriguing games. Including this one.”

“He's a ringer,” Jolynn muttered.

Confused glances darted around the red oval room. Nowhere was the confusion more pronounced than at the Fidel table, where Marcus's partners were wondering if his presence on their team had been an advantage or a disadvantage. It certainly had to be something.

“You wrote this game?” asked Martha.

“No, no. Otto sent me here for an education, to see how his games worked in real life. He kept me in the dark, made me play it for real.”

This time, Amy was grateful for the lie. She could feel the tension ease.

Marcus went on. “I didn't know anything more than you. Sorry, Harry, Rosemary, June. I did my best. I do, however, have one official duty to perform.”

The maître d' was approaching with a tray. On it were a small wine bottle and a glass, the freshly removed cork lying between them.

“Before I left New York, Otto asked me to share this dessert wine with you. It was presented to him two years ago by the king of Sweden.” He accepted the bottle and made a pretense of examining the label. “There is only enough for the team captains, unfortunately. Or fortunately. After all, it's a Swedish wine.” The ripple of laughter from the lower six tables was tinged with disappointment.

Once again, Amy was surprised by the facility with which Marcus could spin a yarn. She had seen him buy this bottle yesterday in a wine shop on Via Goito.

Marcus circled the long table, pouring the pale liquid into the six glasses. Like an experienced waiter, he stopped at each captain's left, reached over with the bottle, and single-handedly measured the right amount. He was at the middle of the table, leaning over to pour for Georgina, when the bottle's mouth clinked against her glass. Marcus had to grab the glass with his free hand to keep it from tipping over.

He finished the round in front of his own chair. Several of the captains had already picked up their glasses and were sniffing them curiously.

“And I had to leave a taste for our wonderful leader,” added Marcus, taking the lone glass from the tray. It was spoken as an applause line, though the audience needed little prompting. Amy stood to accept their noisy, heartfelt tribute.

“Good job.” Marcus's hand brushed against hers as he handed her the wine. Amy's pulse quickened. She took a deep breath and tried to deny the feeling, tried to pass it off as a reaction to the whoops of appreciation coming from the other twenty-three.

“To Otto.” Marcus raised his glass and was respectfully mimicked by his fellow captains. About half the non-captains joined in on the toast, honoring Otto with everything from after-dinner port to Pepsi to one hastily prepared dose of Alka-Seltzer.

“To Otto,” Georgina echoed with the others. Not being all that fond of sweet wine, she was a little slow in picking up her glass, the last on the table. She toasted and sipped. It was even worse than expected. How could they drink this swill?

Jolynn smiled at her from across the table and executed a mini-toast.

Georgina felt obligated to take another sip. What was that taste? Under the tannin and the sweetness was a slight fragrance of amaretto, she decided and followed this observation with another, more curious sip. Not a natural amaretto, either. There was something metallic to it.

Lowering her nose to the rim, she sniffed. Again and again she sniffed, forcefully, in and out, not so much to identify the sweet-sour bouquet anymore. No, that was no longer a priority. Her mouth exploded open. She was just trying to breathe.

With her mouth gaping wide, Georgina began to gulp. Air. She needed air. But the more effort she put into breathing, the less oxygen she took in. Shallow, fast breaths now. Terrified breaths. And before she knew it, she was choking.

Amy was not the first to hear the gasps.

Martha Callas, to Georgina's left, wrinkled her nose, quick to show disgust at what sounded like the throaty gurgle. A few seconds later and Martha knew something was wrong. She stretched an arm to the other woman's shoulder. “Something go down the wrong way?”

Georgina responded by collapsing, dropping her head onto the empty charger that marked her place setting.

Frank Loyola threw back his seat and rushed to her side. Meanwhile, Burt pushed himself to his feet and began propelling his crutches around the table. He looked down helplessly as the Bronx patrolman stooped over Georgina, grabbed her around the rib cage, pulled her to her feet, and pulled sharply upward. Then he did it again.

The rest of the room looked on as Frank lowered Georgina into her chair, turned her head sideways, and pried open her mouth. As he worked on clearing an already unobstructed air passage, Amy's eyes fell on Georgina's wine.

She felt self-conscious doing it but did it anyway, picked up the glass and sniffed inside the rim. Having just tasted the wine, Amy knew what to expect. This wasn't it, not quite. “Does anyone have any heart medicine?” She asked the question without really thinking.

“She's not choking,” Frank said, his fingers coming out of Georgina's mouth. “You think a heart attack?”

Amy sniffed the glass again. “Anyone with amyl nitrite? It's an emergency.”

“A heart attack?” Burt asked, looking completely helpless.