Murder Came Second (8 page)

By now we had turned the corner of the house, and the deck was before us. Harmon had done a good job. It looked sturdy and straight, and was painted a deep Wedgwood blue that looked great against the gray of the cottage.

“Aunt Mae, I didn’t do this, or have it done. I
meant
to. We enjoy it so much, and you are so generous about the rent, I was
going
to have it done, but I just hadn’t gotten around to it.”

“Then who did it?” Aunt Mae asked.

Then they both looked at me. “A-a-a-lex!”

I bowed. “Guilty. I love ya both, ladies, and I didn’t want you or anyone else getting hurt on it. My small gift. My great pleasure.” I bowed again.

At first there were lots of statements to the effect that it wasn’t in the least my responsibility, and lots of arms waving checkbooks. But then I got lots of hugs and kisses, and several choruses of, “You really shouldn’t have.” Wells ran down from Aunt Mae’s house and leaped for Cindy’s arms. Fargo ran around and barked. It was a Hallmark moment.

I soon escaped and went on my appointed rounds.

For years, Lainey and Cassie’s so-called dining room had been “furnished” with a dilapidated old kitchen table with four unmatched chairs and two sagging bookcases. But now all was changed. It was a lovely room, with soft green carpeting and a small apple wood breakfront as its focal points. A shining dining room table and six chairs with pink, lavender and beige needlepoint upholstery, plus a buffet of rich pecan wood finished off the room. A bouquet of fresh tall pink coneflowers on the buffet added a nice touch of drama.

Cindy, Wolf, Peter and I had offered numerous compliments on the room, and had sat down to a dinner that kept us making admiring comments. On a warm summer night, Lainey had chosen a cold dinner menu that was both delicious to eat and lovely to look at. It was a meal to die for. And it probably tasted all the better for its lovely surroundings.

Conversation had been desultory. I noticed we stayed on safe subjects: the disappearing alligator—interest was dying fast on that subject, the joys and disappointments of gardening, a break up that had surprised no one and, of course, the weather.

Cassie and Lainey had a really great, funny surprise for dessert. We were all led into the kitchen and told to make the ice cream sundae or banana split of our dreams from the great array of ingredients spread before us. Suddenly, we were like a bunch of kids, nudging and laughing, saying, “Oh, that looks good, give me some of that,” “Stop shoving!” and, “Don’t be a pig, save me some of that.”

I watched Cindy help herself to a small scoop of lemon ice doused with what must have been at least a teaspoon of chocolate sauce. Lainey, I saw, had dished up a bit of chocolate ice cream and a dab of raspberry topping. I won’t try to describe what all the rest of us had, I just noted that our plates were filled dangerously close to the rims.

Coffee was a welcome closer, and we took it out onto the porch, so that those of us who wanted a cigarette could horrify Lainey in some degree of peace. Peter deftly got the conversation off Lainey’s lecture.

“I guess you’ve heard the news? Paul Carlucci is coming to town and bringing his whole troupe!”

“Who’s Paul Caruso?”

“He’s bringing the cavalry? They still have a cavalry?”

“Or singing monkeys?”

“The opera singer? I thought he died back in the nineteen-twenties.”

“Is he that guy who hunted crocodiles on TV? I thought he died, too.”

Peter dropped his head and spread his hands in mock despair. “Ladies, ladies, you are so provincial!”

“Of course we are.” Cassie waved a hand to include the area around us. “We live in Provincetown.”

I laughed. “Very good, Cassie.”

Peter sulked. Wolf continued. “It’s Paul Carlucci, not Enrico Caruso. And it’s his
t-r-o-u-p-e,
a group of actors, a troupe of players, and they’re coming to town! This town! It’s quite a deal. They’ll be performing at the amphitheater, and if it goes well, it will become one of those yearly festivals that draws hundreds of people. He could put Provincetown on the map.”

“We’re already on the map,” Lainey snipped. “And if we get many more people out here, we’re going to sink.”

“Lainey, Lainey, this is Broadway writ large!” Peter cried. “Right here in our own backyards!”

“If I wanted Broadway in my backyard I’d live in New York.”

I sensed a little tiff brewing and hoped to avoid it. “Who’s this Carlucci guy and what does he do?”

Wolf looked at me gratefully. “He’s a writer/director in New York. He’s done several off Broadway plays that everyone thought had great, great potential, but somehow he just hadn’t clicked big-time. Well, he was being interviewed on some talk show a couple of years ago, and the emcee—an idiot, naturally—asked Carlucci if he thought Shakespeare was now outdated. Carlucci answered, ‘A great play knows no calendar.’

“Well, he realized he’d gotten off a really good, quotable line, so he took it and ran with it. He swore, then and there, he could take any great play—Shakespearean or other—and make it work today.”

“Not so.” I lifted my cup for a refill as Cassie walked around with the coffee carafe. “Shakespeare works because of the way he shows human strengths and weaknesses that never really change, no matter when you live. You know, an otherwise great person fails and falls because of too much jealousy or ambition or greed. The one fault finally gets an otherwise great person. Shakespeare doesn’t much deal with social issues per se.”

Cindy was nodding agreement. “She’s right. Look at George Bernard Shaw. His plays were wonderfully written, clever and timely, but you just about never see one produced now, because the issues aren’t exactly ours today. Unless you’re really into the Shavian politics of the time, you’re lost with old GBS.”

Cassie emerged with brandies, which she passed around, and Peter broke the tension with a flowery little toast to the new dining room.

Wolf wasn’t going to give up easily, however. “All right,” he muttered. “But Carlucci has proven his point. He’s done three plays and he’s made them work. First he took Ibsen’s
A Doll’s House
and—”

“Oh, hell,” Cindy laughed. “You’ve hit on the one possible exception.
A Doll’s House
, to womankind’s great misfortune, is still timely, as are one or two of his other plays. In fact, did you know that ‘women’s liberation’ in Chinese is actually the word nora-ism?”

“You’re kidding!” Cassie held a mug toward Peter for more coffee. “I didn’t know the Chinese
had
a word for women’s lib.”

“Well, they had to borrow it, but I am dead serious.”

“Aha!” Wolf crowed. “But in Carlucci’s version it wasn’t
Nora
who was made to feel less and less a necessary part of the marriage, less a real person. It was the poor
husband!
Carlucci changed the setting to the present and had Nora slowly take over every decision the poor man made. She even took over his business and left him stuck at home with the kids and housework. Finally, in desperation, he left the two kids and scarpered without even a note.”

“I love your phrase, Wolf.” Cassie had a glint in her eye. “If the husband was
stuck
at home with the kids and housework, what about all the women who are home with them everyday? Should they also
scarper
?” Somehow I felt we were working up to another evening of endangered crockery.

“Was the play a success?” I asked.

“Definitely.” Peter took up the baton. “Ran nearly a year, great reviews. And
then
our genius Carlucci came out with the biggie! Remember Somerset Maugham’s
Rain
, where the lady of rather ill repute slowly but surely seduces the young missionary on a south sea island during the monsoons?”

A couple of us nodded vaguely. A short story, I thought, and maybe a movie.

“Well, our
wunderkind
renamed it
Snow
and modernized the setting to a B&B in Vermont during a blizzard, with a young priest and a black drag queen, whom the priest thought was really a woman until Act Three! She looked just like Queen Latifah. It was
fabulous!
We saw it in Boston. It has become an absolute cult piece with gay men.”

“I can imagine,” Cindy said dryly. “But didn’t Carlucci have a flop just last winter?”

“Well,” Wolf admitted, “He produced
The Second Mrs. Tanqueray
by Sir Arthur Wing Pinero . . . called it
The Tanqueray Tragedy
. In the original, around 1910, I think, this rich guy divorces his wife of many years and marries a young thing. He insists his social clique accept her, and he is powerful enough to get compliance, at least on the surface. But behind his back they make her life hell. She finally commits suicide.” He got up and went to pour another brandy.

“Who cares?” Cassie asked. “People don’t place that kind of importance on divorce or social acceptance today. They just make new friends. Today, Tanqueray is just good gin.”

“You have a point. So, Carlucci updated the play and made the sweet young girl a sweet young lad.” Peter sighed reminiscently. “It was deemed a great succes d’arte, a most moving piece.”

“An artistic success?” I teased. “Isn’t that French for box office failure?”

“Worse than that,” Cindy recalled. “I remember reading one review that said, while the poor
laddie
offed himself in Act Three, the audience, unfortunately, had already done the same thing in Act Two.” That got her a roar from the lesbian contingent and scowls from Peter and the Wolf. “Who’s Carlucci’s next victim,
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms
?” My lady was on a roll.

“
Hamlet
.” Wolf almost spat. “And it will be earthshaking, I can tell you. It’s set in a small town down in Georgia, where the old King Hamlet lived. He owned a bunch of discount stores throughout the south. His cousin and wife want to sell out to a big national chain. They kill the old man, but young Hamlet isn’t sure exactly who killed him, isn’t sure they should sell, feels—like his father— it would be unfair to the employees. Hamlet and Horatio are gay lovers, of course. Take it from there. Can’t you just feel the tension! Oh, and it’s a musical. Can’t you just
see
it?”

“Hamlet is a musical, set in the rural south, about discount stores. Who is Ophelia, Miss Georgia Peach of 2007? I can’t wait. ‘To be or not to be,’ set to rockabilly.” Cindy stood and looked at me. “Take me home to Tara, darlin’, I can’t stand no more classic tragedy tonight, y’all.”

We made our farewells and went home to an ecstatic Fargo. I let him out for last patrol and turned to ask Cindy if she wanted a drink or some coffee. Usually, when we got home from any party or such, we dissected the evening over one of the two, and had fun all over again. This time Cindy shook her head. “I think I already had too many brandies or something. I feel numb.”

“That may have been the subject matter, not the brandies,” I suggested.

“Poor Ibsen. Poor Maugham. Poor Shakespeare.
Poor
Pinero. Nobody’s done Pinero since 1930. Hell, no one has
thought
of Pinero since 1930. And
Rain
—I guess Wolf said they called it
Snow
—with a drag queen. I shall take to my bed with a case of the vapors. Good night, my love, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.” She put her arms out, mimicking an airplane and giggled as she made a little misstep turning into the hall.

She stopped and gave the doorjamb an owlish look. “Damn door always was in the wrong place.”

She continued toward the bedroom, singing a little song I devoutly hoped she would forget by morning:

The last camel died at noon,

Humming an old Cole Porter tune.

And while the trail was steep and sandy,

We all enjoyed the Napoleon brandy.

Alas, my ladylove was looped.