A Clean Half-Wit Room

My name is Splinker. D.H. Splinker. I’m a private eye. I wanted to be a piano player, but that’s another story. A better story. It was a dark and stormy night when I arrived at the Northern Bates hunting lodge. Later, the rain would let up, and a fog would roll in. A fog full of mist and mystery. The kind of fog that made it hard to see. But by the time that happened, someone would be dead.

The lodge was built in the late sixties by an eccentric banker who was obsessed with Alfred Hitchock and and old-fashioned corsets. The obsession with Hitchcock explained the hunting lodge's name. He had even put wrought iron cresting around the lodge's roofline, in homage to the Bates hotel; although to say it looked out of place on the large wooden ranch would be an understatement. As for the corsets, mind your business.

The lodge stood out like an eyesore on top of a once heavily wooded hill, miles from any proper town. Blight hit the area almost to the day the lodge was open for business. The forest went fast, and the game soon followed. Now The Northern Bates was a hunting lodge with nothing to hunt, which explained the run-down look and Motel 6 vibe of the godforsaken place. These days the only game the Bates saw was dueces wild and blind man's bluff at the occasional bachelor party. What little natural beauty remained was sitting on the porch smoking a Virginia Slim.

Margaret Mellon wasn’t the kind of dame you’d expect to find in a overpriced, dilapidated shack in the middle of nowhere. She had curly blond hair, full lips that made a guy want to go “wubbah,” and legs that didn’t know when to quit. She had poured herself into a red dress that made my imagination say "shut up, and let me drive," and that was just Jake by me. Margaret and I had a history that went back to my greener days, when I still had a shot with a woman like her. But that was ancient, blurry history. Part of me yearned to pick up where we had left off, minus the police raid, but I knew the best way to play this was to keep it professional. I got out of the car just as the rain let up and pulled my trench coat tight against the cold wind.

“Splinker,” Margaret purred, “thank goodness you’re here!” Even in distress, her voice was smoother than top-shelf liquor.

“Wubbah.” I cleared my throat. “Margaret. They in there?”

“Yes. I haven’t gone inside since I called you.” Margaret shuddered and took a deep drag on her cigarette before flicking it away. “They rented the lodge in July like they’ve done every year since I’ve been running the place. God only knows how long they’ve been like that. I need this mess sorted out quickly and quietly, Splinker.”

I fished out the last Lucky Strike from my crushed box and lit up. “Best get to it then.” I pushed open the door and stepped into a triple homicide.

The room smelled a bit rough, but was surprisingly clean. The bar in the back was well lit, the large mirror free of dust. An old painting, clearly motel art, hung above the bar. An albatross, or maybe a large seagull, flew over a dark ocean with what appeared to be a red herring in its beak. On the opposite wall, the room’s only witness, a large Elk’s head that had been ordered from Sears-Roebuck, wasn’t talking. Neither were the three corpses seated at the card table in the middle of the room. They’d been sitting there a while. All three faces looked worse than Willie Nelson on a Monday, and their fingernails were long enough to make Bela Lugosi green with envy. Even in death, though, I could tell those fingernails had been well manicured. All three were men, and all were dressed in black tuxedos with bowties, which were remarkably straight. They were almost mummified and had an air of formality about them. Three empty glasses and a half-empty bottle of good whiskey sat on the table. There was also a small notepad, the kind you might use to keep score in a rummy game, but there weren’t any cards.

“That’s Christopher Port, Anthony Hotchkins and Todd Golish,” Margaret said. She was standing by the door, obviously afraid to come into the room.

“And you say they rented the lodge every year?”

“Yes, for the retreat.”

Something cold settled in my gut then. The unexplainable cleanliness of the room. The tuxedos. The godawful fingernails. “Retreat?”

“The Butler’s retreat,” Margaret confirmed.

“Damn it.”

*****

I rubbed my eyes, suddenly feeling very tired. Three dead butlers. Again. That was another time, and another spectacularly interesting story. Almost solving that murder had taken everything out of me. It had cost me the great love of my life, and ruined the careers of several prominent politicians. The bizarre events had made the headlines for weeks, and there was some talk of a movie deal. But we were never able to solve the case. I'm telling you, THAT story would have you on the edge of your seat. If I were telling that story, you'd never forget it.

Taking a deep breath, I pushed those thoughts out of my mind, giving my attention to the three dead butlers before me.

“Every year, they’d rent the place for two days, drink some whiskey, clean the place up, and leave.” Margaret nodded at the corpse with his back to the bar. “Christopher would mail the key to my place in Reno two days later, like clockwork. Still, I didn’t think much of it when the key didn’t show up. It wasn’t until I was ready for the October turn down that I remembered I’d never gotten the key. So I came here and that's when I found them.”

I walked over to the table and picked up the notepad. The top half of the page was filled with numbers that I assumed were rummy scores. On the bottom of the page was an address.

“33 Winding Way. There’s a Winding Way in the swank part of town in Englewood. Do you know if any of them worked there?” I looked up at Margaret and frowned.

“Were you wearing that diamond tiara before?”

She absently adjusted the bejewelled crown on her beautiful mane of hair. “Maybe Todd may have worked there. I don’t really recall," Margaret breahted.

"Wubbah," I replied under my breath.

I flipped the page on the notepad. The words “You Clang?” were written at the top. Underneath was a drawing of a large sailboat.

"You Clang," I frowned. "Could be the name of a boat. Butler humor?" I guess a butler could have a sense of humor, like anyone else. And it wasn't too unusual for a butler to own a boat. Maybe he worked on one. Sailboats could cost plenty, but maybe butlers made good cash. But why draw a boat here? Maybe they were playing charades? I wondered how butlers ever started playing a game. I imagined one saying "after you," and the others saying, "No, no. After you." I tossed the notepad back on the table. This was getting me nowhere.

“So, you figured it out.”

I looked up. Margaret held a gun with the business end pointed at yours truly.

“I did?”

“Don’t be coy, Splinker. I can see you putting the pieces together.”

“Wubbah?”

“That’s right. They came every year for their stupid butler’s retreat. But this year they came to celebrate. Seems every year these three went in on the state lottery. Todd wanted to use the winnings to buy a boat for the three of them, and sail around the world. They laughed about having a butler of their own, and how this was their lucky day. But it turned out to be mine,” Margaret laughed.

“Yours?" Then it hit me. The diamond tiara, the pricey cocktail dress. The way she casually tossed her barely smoked cigarette into the dirt.

“You. You killed them for their winning lottery ticket!”

“Ya think?” Margaret stepped further into the room, and the size of that gun almost made me forget about the size of… of other things. Almost. “When I found out what they were celebrating, I put a little extra something in their hooch.”

“You can’t think you’ll get away with this,” I said, because that was the kind of thing you say when you've got nothing. "And why call me in the first place? Why not just leave them here for however long and go somewhere warm to spend their money?"

“Oh, I think I will 'get away with it'.” The best way to get away with a crime, is to make sure it's solved." Margaret waved a piece of paper in her other hand. “A two-bit detective who failed to solve three previous butler murders snaps from the stress, kills these three, and leaves a suicide note telling the world how he dreamed of being a butler, but was never good enough, and how after you killed the first butler, you just couldn’t stop killing.”

The worst part, I thought, was that I’d never get to say “The butler did-“