Nice Weekend for a Murder by Max Allan Collins Read Free Book Online Page B

phone.
    “Yes,” I said.
    “Mal? Curt. I hope I didn’t wake you—it’s early yet, I didn’t expect you to sack out so soon.”
    “Me, either.” He sounded a little hyper. “What’s up?”
    “I wondered if you’d mind doing double duty tomorrow.”
    “How so?”
    “You have a speech to give, but after that, we need to fill Rath’s slot with something, remember?”
    “Yeah....”
    “I was hoping you and Tom and Jack could throw together a sort of panel on the resurgence of the hard-boiled private-eye in mystery fiction.”
    “That’s a mouthful, Curt... but, sure. Why not?”
    “I knew you’d come through for me.”
    “You sound a little frazzled.”
    “Mary Wright’s upset with me. She’s an efficient young woman, but she doesn’t deal well with surprises, or with changes of plan. She doesn’t know how to think on her feet, like us mystery writers.”
    “I do most of my thinking sitting down, but I know what you mean.”
    “Anyway, I promised her I’d get everything rescheduled tonight. That way she can sleep soundly, I guess.”
    “Well, anything I can do to help out.”
    “Much appreciated, Mal. I guess I screwed up, thinking I could depend on that pompous ass Rath to play my corpse.”
    “The only thing you can depend on that pompous ass to be,” I said, “is a pompous ass.”
    “You’re right,” he said, laughing a little. Then he sighed. “This thing is starting to get to me. I just hope we don’t get snowbound.”
    “Why, is that what they’re predicting now?”
    “Yeah. Heavy snow tonight or tomorrow. Is it snowing out there?”
    I glanced out the window. It wasn’t snowing; there was nothing out there, except two people standing on that open walkway bridge, in the gazebo. They seemed to be arguing.
    “No snow,” I said.
    “Yet,” he said fatalistically.
    We hung up, and I stood there a moment looking out at the moonlit lake and cliffs and evergreens.
    But those people in the gazebo got in the way of any peacefully reflective moment.
    The two figures were both heavily bundled in dark winter clothing, one of them, at left, a stocky figure in a red and black ski mask—probably, but not necessarily, a man. The other, at right, was bareheaded and obviously a man, or one very shorthaired woman. Two figures standing on the gazebo at night was hardly remarkable, even if they were arguing—except these figures were going beyond that, shoving each other around. The bareheaded guy gave Ski Mask a shove that about knocked him (or her) off the bridge—a fall of about a story and a half.
    Ski Mask managed to keep his/her balance, and the shoving stopped, but the body English of the two figures was even more disturbing. They were, indeed, arguing. Violently. Their gestures, at least, were violent.
    It wasn’t my business, but I couldn’t not watch; and I felt oddly removed from it—distant—as if I were the audience and they were the play, an ominous pantomime, as the thick pane of glass that separated me from the outside was keeping the sound of the argument from getting in. I couldn’t hear them argue, but I could watch them. Which I did, my face tensed, my eyes narrowed, watched the quarrel turn into something ugly.
    Something dangerous.
    The bareheaded man pushed past Ski Mask and walked down off the bridge, onto the patch of ground sloping down to the lake, which stretched out before my window; his feet scuffed the powdery snow.
    Ski Mask followed quickly, down off the bridge, sending up little flurries as his/her feet cut a quick path toward the bareheaded man, who didn’t seem to know his pursuer was behind him. Something caught in my throat as I saw an object in Ski Mask’s hand catch the moonlight and wink.
    A blade.
    Ski Mask’s free hand settled on the near shoulder of the bareheaded man—they were less than a hundred feet from my window, now—and spun him around. I cried out, but couldn’t be heard, it seemed; my role was so minor in this little drama as to be