The Speculative Short Stories of Barbara Paul, page 22
“A partnership!”
Gil reddened.
“Then why did you pay Milo to kill him?”
Two feminine voices raised in immediate protest.
Milo shouted: “I don’t even know this man! I never saw him before tonight!” Kimmel just raised his arms in a gesture of hopelessness and headed toward the costume room.
LaBoz went down to the edge of the stage and spoke to Gil.
“You’re going to get yourself sued if you go on saying things like that.”
Gil shook his head.
“The question had to be asked.”
“But why now? Why wait a whole year?”
Gil nodded toward Shalimar. “This is the first time the councilwoman has left the Andamans since he died. And since she’s a contributor…”
She stared at him.
“What a presumptuous puppy you are.”
“I wish I were in the Andamans,” Milo proclaimed in understandable ill temper. “You truly are impossible, Gil. You insist I come here and then you accuse me of murder—I must say that’s not my idea of a good time. When’s the next funicular due?”
“Relax, Milo. We’re almost finished.”
Shalimar gestured toward LaBoz
“What about your Horatio? Is he next?”
LaBoz doesn’t perform,” Gil said.
“He had nothing to do with my father’s death.”
“And all the rest of us did,” Phoebe said neutrally, slowly getting to her feet.
“So you saved me until last, Gil. How flattering.”
“Have you had time to make your choice?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it? The gravedigger scene. The only appropriate conclusion to a death day party. Besides, that’s what this play-acting is all about, isn’t it?
“You’re digging someone’s grave?”
A silence followed.
“When you’re ready,” Gil finally said.
“No costume,” Phoebe announced. “Just the auditory feed.” LaBoz fitted the button in her ear, and she took her place center stage.
“Start.”
A graveyard flicked into view. The gravedigger sang a little song. Phoebe: “Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that ‘a sings in grave-making?” Phoebe didn’t move at all, ignoring the stage directions murmuring in her ear and speaking all her lines from the spot where she’d positioned herself. The holo figures in the scene moved across her, spoke to an empty place in the stage.
“Alas, poor Daddy! I knew him, Gil,” Phoebe was saying.
“A fellow of no jest whatsoever.” In the wings, LaBoz felt a chill. Kimmel, now changed back into his own clothes, said, “What’s going on?”
“I’m not sure.”
Phoebe intoned: “He hath borne grudges a thousand times against me.”
“He helped you!” Gil shouted from the audience.
“My gorge rises at it,” she said coldly. LaBoz groped for the volume dial, turned off the sound. Silent images moved back and forth over the stage, Phoebe immobile in their midst.
“He saved the festival for you, Phoebe,” Gil said heatedly.
“How can you be so thankless?” It was hard to read Phoebe’s expression with the projected images moving over her face. “And do we simply ignore the fact that he was the reason the festival almost closed in the first place?”
“That’s not true.”
“What festival?” Kimmel asked LaBoz
“Local music festival. Phoebe was in charge a couple of years ago.”
“Gil, it is true,” Phoebe was saying. “He knew you and I were on the verge of splitting and he wanted to obligate me to the family, to keep me from embarrassing his little boy. He bought up all our debts and then had his agent call them in. Just so he could step in at the eleventh hour with his big bankroll and play the rescuing hero.”
“That’s preposterous.”
“And it didn’t work. I left anyway. That sort of highhanded interference was so typical of your father. And Gil—you were growing more like him every day.”
A holographic funeral procession entered in phantom silence from upstage right, then started crossing slowly and majestically to the grave. “For God’s sake, somebody turn that thing off!” Milo’s voice called out shrilly. LaBoz took care of it. The graveyard and its spectral figures vanished; a white, harsh light flooded the stage. Kimmel walked out from the wings and faced Gil. “You need to learn how to listen, Gil. You’ve idealized your father to the point of unrecognizability.”
Gil made a dismissive gesture.
“You have to paint him a villain to justify your own actions. Phoebe, do you know what he did when I told him you’d gone? He threw up. That’s how much he wanted you to stay.” “That was never the question, Gil. Of course he wanted me to stay. A disgruntled ex-spouse is always a vulnerable spot.”
“He was so upset he couldn’t think straight.” Gil spoke slowly and with emphasis. “He couldn’t protect himself in the clinches. His defenses were down.”
Phoebe eyed him suspiciously.
“Now you’re saying I am responsible for his death?”
“You are responsible.”
“Are you out of your mind? Do you think I got Milo to push him overboard?”
“I can’t stand it!” Milo roared.
Shalimar stood up. “Gil, you’ve accused everyone here except LaBoz. Do you have any idea what you’re talking about?”
Milo was pounding the back of the seat in front of him.
“I—did—not—push him overboard! I did not push him.”
Gil looked at him a long moment—and then said:
“No, of course you didn’t, Milo. I never for one minute thought you did.” Five startled faces turned toward him. “Sit down, all of you… please. I’ll try to explain.” He stood with his back to the stage facing them when they were all seated.
“LaBoz, I apologize for dragging you through all this. I just needed one friendly face to look at.”
LaBoz smiled, nodded.
“As for the rest of you,” Gil went on, “I apologize for nothing. I accused each of you in turn because I wanted you to face your own roles in my father’s death. Oh, there was no murder in the legal sense-he really did lose his footing and fall overboard, just as the investigators said. He cracked his head on the anchor chain … a gruesome way to die. But it wasn’t murder. It was an accident.”
Phoebe was frowning.
“Then why…?”
“Because you four did kill him, you know. At least, the four of you created a set of circumstances that resulted in a man’s death. That was not your intention—but you contributed, in various ways and in varying degrees.”
Kimmel snorted.
“Finger pointing.”
“You started it, Kimmel,” Gil said.
“If it weren’t for that stupid, vicious rivalry between the two of you … all my life I heard Gotta get Kimmel. That was the atmosphere I grew up in.” He turned to Phoebe.
“It was too rich an atmosphere for my loving wife.”
“Too noxious an atmosphere,” she corrected.
“Tell me something. Did you leave me—or did you leave my father?”
“What difference does it make? You were becoming indistinguishable.”
He nodded.
“So you walked out just as the Ferrence Transportation deal was coming to a head. You threw him off-balance at a time he needed to be especially sharp. And so he lost out to Kimmel. I don’t know why Ferrence was so important to him. But he was crushed at losing it.” Gil paused, gathered his thoughts. “Phoebe, you knew how much that deal meant to him. You timed your departure to coincide with the final stages of the negotiations. You chose a moment to leave that would hurt him most.”
Phoebe actually smiled.
“Tit for tat.”
“So one reason my father is dead is that his old enemy defeated him in what was more than just another contest. Another reason is that that defeat was made possible by his own son’s wife. Phoebe and Kimmel—you two started him on his downhill slide. The other two of you had a chance to stop that slide—but you didn’t.”
“He demanded too much,” Shalimar said sharply.
“I’m sure he did.” Gil answered unhappily. “He expected one hundred percent from everybody. But the fact remains, the third reason my father is dead is that Shalimar did not throw him the lifeline he was looking for. So he came back from the Andamans and doped himself to the gills.”
Milo began to squirm.
“Yes, Milo, you’re last. I think I know what happened on the yacht. You just froze, didn’t you? You saw a man drowning, but you couldn’t move—you were paralyzed.” Milo was nodding wordlessly. “You didn’t mean to let him drown. You just didn’t know what to do. The last reason my father is dead is that Milo is the kind of man he is.”
There was a long silence. Eventually Kimmel cleared his throat.
“You’ve overlooked the main reason your father is dead. He himself contributed. He let these things defeat him because he was the kind of man he was. If we were responsible for his death, so was he.”
Gil threw up his hands in frustration.
“But his death could have been prevented! If any one of you had acted differently, he’d still be alive. If Kimmel had left Ferrence alone, or Phoebe had waited one more week before leaving … if Shalimar had taken a leave of absence from her duties or if Milo had conquered his fear of water … if any one thing had happened differently—ah, if, if, if! But no, you all did what you did, and my father is dead because of it. Maybe he should have handled his setbacks better—I know he was flawed. He was just a man. But he deserved better from all of you. He deserved better.” No one seemed inclined to argue the point, or to concede it, either. They were all feeling the strain of the past couple of hours; they’d gone as far as they could go. Shalimar stood up, brisk and all business.
“When does the next funicular get here?”
LaBoz looked at his wrist. “Ten minutes.” Without another word, Shalimar turned and started out.
“Wait—I’m coming, too,” Milo hurried after her.
Phoebe got to her feet slowly. “What an incredible evening. All this… just to say Shame on you? Goodbye. Gil. Let’s not meet again.”
She was gone.
Gil’s pinched face did a poor job of hiding his feelings.
LaBoz dropped a friendly hand on his shoulder: “Hang in there.”
Gil looked at Kimmel.
“I suppose you stayed to tell me what a fool I’ve been.”
“No. I stayed to tell you why your father wanted Ferrence Transportation so badly.” The man looked troubled. “He wanted it for you. My spies told me he wanted to make you independent of him, and for his own reasons he’d decided Ferrence was the best way to make it happen. The minute I heard that, I knew I had to get Ferrence away from him.” Kimmel rubbed the bridge of his nose. “It never occurred to me he’d go to pieces. It was just another move in the game as far as I was concerned.”
Gil was surprised but recovered quickly.
“That time it wasn’t a game.” “I realize that now. He didn’t crack up overnight, not him—it must have been building for a long time.
But Ferrence was the trigger.” He broke off, thinking.
“You want to know something? Nothing has been as much fun since your father died. He was a rotten, underhanded son of a bitch—and I miss him. Maybe I should have left Ferrence alone. You were right about one thing. He deserved better.”
Gil swallowed.
“Well.”
Kimmel made up his mind to something, stood up.
“Gil, come see me. We can talk. We’ll talk about Ferrence. I could never be partners with your father, but… don’t get me wrong, I still think my picture of him is more accurate than yours. Yet maybe there’s a chance you can still be your own man after all.” He paused. “It’s time we both laid his ghost to rest. I’m not promising anything, but it won’t hurt to talk.”
Kimmel nodded to both young men and turned to go.
“Come tomorrow,” he growled back over his shoulder, and left.
Gil and LaBoz took their drinks out onto the balcony.
They leaned against the railing and looked down at the lights on the river that ran past the base of the hill. The funicular had come and gone, carrying the four murderers back to their own lives.
“Kimmel!” Gil said in bemusement.
“What an unpredictable man. No wonder my father was afraid of him.”
“He’s crafty,” LaBoz said lazily.
“I hope you’re taking fifteen lawyers with you tomorrow.” LaBoz loved Gil’s place; looking down from the hilltop on the world below always made him want to write something. “Did you notice how they all revealed something essential about themselves when they were acting out their scenes?” Gil asked. “Shalimar’s authority and self-possession. Milo’s ultimate uselessness. Kimmel’s flexibility and his determination. Phoebe’s… Phoebe’s immovableness
“The play’s still the thing,” LaBoz murmured.
“They say.”
“At least I got through to one of them. Not the one I expected, but one anyway.”
“Oh? Which one did you think?”
“Phoebe. I thought that now, after he’s been dead a year... well. There was never any chance of reaching Milo, and Shalimar was an unknown quantity. But Kimmel—I never thought he’d be the one to listen.”
Neither of them spoke for a few minutes. Then LaBoz asked, “Is it safe to say ‘The rest is silence’ now?”
Gil smiled.
“I think so. Yes, it is.”
The funeral was over.
SPACECAT
Barbara Paul
Published in Feline and Famous anthology, February 1996
The very dead man had invaded McCat’s space, cramming himself into the nice hollow made by the oblique juncture of two mock computer banks. What’s more, the very dead man was leaking blood all over the place. Someone was going to have to do some serious housecleaning before McCat would use that space again.
He leaped to the Captain’s chair and switched his tail at the two strangers to show his annoyance at the present revolting state of affairs. Like most humans, they didn’t notice.
His humans weren’t paying any attention to him either. They clustered around the two strangers, quiet in a way McCat had never beard them be quiet before. Finally Male Stranger looked around and said, “What’s this supposed to be? The bridge of a spaceship?”
“That’s right, Detective,” Boss Human said nervously. “We’re shooting a flash-and-dazzle space adventure called CyberTime.” He stared glumly at the dead man. “We were shooting it.”
“You’ll have to cancel?”
Boss Human grunted. “Nathan was in eighty percent of the scenes we’ve got in the can. I don’t know if we can get the financing.”
“To start over?”
“To start over.”
Female Stranger spoke. “And this happened right after he’d shot a scene? How long from the end of that to the time he was found?”
“About fifteen minutes,” Boss told her. “Twenty at the most. We’d just stopped to make a minor adjustment on the set... a prop was missing. We weren’t shooting here—we were over on the engineering deck.”
None of this was solving McCat’s problem. He wanted his space back, but all these humans were doing was talking. He let out a low growl to remind them of his displeasure.
“What was that?” Female Stranger asked.
“Just the studio cat,” Boss said. Just? “Why was Nathan’s body stuffed in there? Crammed into that little nook like that? He’s not really hidden.”
“You weren’t shooting here, you said. Then the lights were off?”
“That’s right, Detective.”
“Then most likely this was only a temporary hiding place. You weren’t using the set—it was convenient. Maybe the killer meant to move the body later.”
“Yeah,” Male Stranger added. “And that makes if sound spur of the moment. Which of you found the body?”
“I did,” said Tinyvoice Human.
Female Stranger walked over to her “What were you doing on this set... when everybody else was on a different one?”
“I was looking for the missing prop,” the other woman said so softly as almost to be inaudible. “It wasn’t in the prop room, and this was the last place it was used.”
“You’re in charge of props?”
She murmured something.
“I can’t hear you.”
Tinyvoice raised her volume to a whisper. “Not in charge,” apologetically. “I’m on the properties crew.”
“Did you find the missing prop?”
“Yes... oh! I think I dropped it when... when I saw Nathan.” Tinyvoice started looking around.
“Here it is,” said Groomer Human, picking up a plastic gizmo from the floor. “It doesn’t do a damned thing—but oh, it does flash pretty lights and it looks high-tech as all get-out.” He held the prop out to the two strangers. “No blood on it, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
Male Stranger took the gizmo and weighed it lightly in his hand. “He was hit with something heavier than this. Then the killer pushed the body into this cranny and hid the weapon. All in fifteen to twenty minutes.”
“Impossible,” Boss said flatly.
“Your time schedule,” Male Stranger reminded him. “Are you sure it couldn’t have been more than fifteen or twenty minutes?”
“Positive.”
“Less, I’d say,” Groomer added.
The two strangers exchanged a look. “Reenactment?” Female asked.
Male sighed and nodded. “All right, everybody. I want you all to go stand exactly where you were standing when you finished the last scene.”
“On the, er, engineering deck set,” Female added. “Let’s do it now. Come on, folks.”
With a minimum of murmuring, McCat’s humans turned and started walking away. The two strangers, both of them named Detective, followed.
