Murder Among Talking Fools And Other Mystery Short Stories

By Charles Schwarz

This second volume of hilarious, socially incorrect 'who done it' mystery short stories by Charles E. Schwarz is filled with unforgettable Dickensian characters and is a joy as the readers try to spot the villain. This is best illustrated by the title's story, Murder Among Talking Fools, where, in a bar, desperate lonely people engage in outrageous exaggerated fictions about themselves until one is shot. From first to last, the fast pace of these eight short stories never diminishes but keeps the reader page turning, laughing and guessing until the ending.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charles Schwarz
• Release date: Aug 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370220274

Book preview

The Smashwords Edition

MURDER AMONG TALKING FOOLS

AND OTHER MYSTERY SHORT STORIES

7 Classical, Humorous, Satirical Mysteries

SECOND COLLECTION OF MYSTERY SHORT STORIES

CHARLES E. SCHWARZ

Copyright © 2003 Charles E. Schwarz

All Rights Reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the author.

Smashwords License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment. It may not be resold or given away. If you would like to share this ebook, please purchase an additional copy for each person with whom you want to share it. If you're reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or if it was not purchased for your use only, please return to smashwords and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

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Disclaimer

This is a work of fiction, a product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance or similarity to any actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Formatting by Debora Lewis arenapublishing.org

Table of Contents

Murder Among Talking Fools

Uncool Tryst Explosion

Bride’s Tattoos

Snow Sled Championship

Outsider’s Solution

Dangerous Hunt for the Elusive Silver Tea Service

Sensitive Guys Don’t Wear Underwear

About the Author

Murder Among Talking Fools

Because a stupid fool believed all the foolish bar talk, and another fool was squeezed, one of the six fools was murdered. It was a sad death made especially ridiculous by the foolish, absurd, pathetic illusions living and breathing in that bar late Saturday night.

It was so late into the night (and I had been sitting there so long) the bar’s neon reds, blues, and oranges turned into natural light, and the bar’s cheap whiskey lost its bite and went down expensively smooth. So late the laughter became real, the personalities true, the conversations honest, the jokes funny, the women young, the men successful, and my strange inner sense of isolation seemed normal and not too unpleasant. So late my hands felt numb, my mind sharp, my legs unsteady, and my eyes so clear that I saw beneath the bar’s bullshit.

So late two average women became attractive and, becoming attractive, attracted my notice. One man, nondescript, fortyish, of average height and mediocre physique was desperately trying to engage the interest of the taller, better looking of the two women while fighting to hide his mundaneness and his odious aroma of eagerness. Time was against him; it was reaching the time when, for most of the inhabitants, after an evening of touching, of shared whispers, of buying and drinking drinks that accentuated their closeness, nonsensical understandings were being reached and purposes joined.

Standing on the outside, he desperately strove and strained to break into the two women’s mutual protective closeness. Besides his false laugher, forced conversation, and artificial interest in what they said, he also expended serious money, which said he was as resolute as he was desperate. He bought for three, and I could see the women laughing over being able to drink his money while promising nothing.

Because it was late, because I was lonely, because their glasses were filled, I decided to make my move. Standing beside them I generously offered to buy drinks for everyone. Unable to down his full glass, he was forced to refuse, while the women, who hadn’t bough a drink since they’d met him, shrugged no and measured me. Their eyes and bodies said I measured better than he did, but lacked the dimensions to fix their attention. Pointing to myself I said, Eric, and they, sufficiently interested, introduced themselves. The tall, better looking one was Tiffany; the smaller, more deficient looking was Kerri, and he was Brian.

Being a tenuous part of a tenuous group, I had to solidify my inclusion so, looking nervously at the bar’s entrance, I told the ladies to excuse any apparent rude disinterest in them if I kept an eye on the front door, but I was expecting an extremely important and dangerous man. The tall, better-looking Tiffany, who was getting ninety percent of my eye contact, asked who was I expecting. The shorter one, Kerri, asked why. Brian, the poor bastard now slightly behind my shoulder, asked the women if they wanted to play dollar bill poker and took out a thick wad of bills clipped with a Playboy money clip. (Playboy, for Pete’s sake! That alone said loser in every sex category.) Flashing around his phony roll topped with a twenty, he took a dollar out of its heart.

To Tiffany I said enigmatically, A dangerous man, a Mafia don who is head of all the drug traffic in America, a man who has and will kill over the slightest slight.

Who is he, Eric? Tiffany asked.

Why is he coming here? Kerri asked.

Brian, waving his dollar bill, asked if anyone wanted to raise his three aces.

Standing directly in front of Tiffany, but talking to Kerri so as to include her, I told them it would be worth their lives to know his name, and when he comes, they’re not to look at him. They should ignore him, act natural, and if they value their lives when I make contact with him not to watch us.

Tiffany asked, Why?

Kerri asked, Why?

Brian, from behind me, said over my shoulder, I bid four aces. Anyone want to call my bluff? Getting no calls whatsoever, he attacked me. Why are you girls listening to this guy’s bullshit? Then he pathetically offered to supply the girls with dollar bills to play the game. Taking two more from the roll’s heart, he continually waved them about as if trying to chase away bar flies.

Hey, I said, turning to him but maintaining my blocking position. I’m not saying anything. I just wanted these beautiful ladies to know why I have to watch the bar’s entrance. I don’t want to seem impolite. There’s nothing here to believe or disbelieve. Just excuse me if I occasionally look at the front door, and don’t be surprised if I suddenly leave. Then, with a meaningful look at Tiffany, hopefully a look of an acceptable mixture of love and lust, I added, Of course, I’ll definitely be back.

Putting his dollar bills back, Brian tried, with ill grace, to maneuver past me, asking the girls if they’d like to get some Chinese food later.

I let him get to the front of Kerri, whose front teeth I noticed slanted in, making her chin and nose protrude toward each other, almost witch-like. Still, in a bar, in neon light, late Saturday night standards slip a little with each passing hour, with each drink finished. If I could deflect him to Kerri we could become two couples and not a foursome.

Eric, what do you do? Tiffany asked, giving me some meaningful eye contact.

Leaning over and touching her arm, making us a twosome, I whispered confidentially, FBI—a special agent of the FBI—and I’m on assignment right now. Please don’t say anything to the others.

Uncertain, she mumbled FBI. Her eyes, maintaining our contact, showed an internal teetering balance between belief and disbelief. She suspended belief and coyly said, I don’t believe you, which really meant, I would love to! Would you, could you prove it?

Let’s drop it, I modestly requested and gave a swift, furtive glance at the entrance.

She carried her doubt to Kerri. "Eric says he’s a special agent of the

FBI. Can you believe it?"

Kerri, from her caved in mouth, said she didn’t.

Brian pushed his outraged sensibilities to our small group’s center, pronouncing it a ridiculous bullshit come-on line.

Shrugging as if I little cared whether they believed it or not, I asked the girls what they did besides looking beautiful. Laughing—but because it was night’s A.M., they were drinking, and Brian and I were courting—they could and did believe they were beautiful, and laughingly said they were models and were paid to look beautiful.

Not expecting the truth I was able to keep belief, surprise and awe in my expression, in my eyes, and in my voice.

Kerri, whose looks brought to mind the damning with faint praise saying, Well, I wouldn’t kick her out of bed, asked if I had seen her in Vogue.

After I expressed profound disappointment at having missed her layout, and leering so she’d get the double entendre, she launched into a monologue accompanied with theatrical eye-rolls over how people mistakenly believe a fashion model’s life is fabulous but it’s really just a job. "Oh sure, the money’s there, the travel’s there, the fame’s there. But the hours, the excruciating pain of holding poses for hours, the constant dieting," and she paused as she slowly turned to put her empty glass on the bar in order to let Brian and me eye her diet-formed figure. It was good. It almost made up for her teeth.

After stretching her sweater taut to outline her breasts, twisting her waist to show her tight butt, and stretching out a leg to show its hard muscle, Kerri finally managed to put her glass down and, returning to normal stool position asked Tiffany, as a fellow model, if what she’d said wasn’t true.

Tiffany, whose attractive face said thirty plus, and whose figure advertised a healthy appetite, ample eye-catching breasts, and corresponding ample ass, agreed, adding that even being able to buy these beautiful and expensive pieces of jewelry didn’t make up for all the pain they had to go through to look beautiful. Both fingered the costume jewelry they wore between chin and breast. Tiffany, wearing a cherry-sized, cherry-colored, faux-pas ruby hanging from a gold chain, plucked it out of her cleavage, inviting Brian and me to bend over and admire the view. Eagerly we bent over. giving the view honest oh’s and ah’s.

Putting her chin out as if for a kiss, Kerri showed a tight choker of diamonds, which if real represented the DeBeer’s monthly diamond production.

Tiffany said she was thinking of going to Hollywood after shooting the Cosmo spread in Cancun, but her agent was begging her to stay in New York for a big upcoming Modern Bride layout.

Kerri said her agent had given her some movie scripts to look over, while bashfully admitting that she’d appeared in a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Then more modestly added, But not on the cover.

That last one tested my facial and vocal control as I asked which issue.

Coyly, she refused to say, telling Brian and me she’d be embarrassed if we saw her in such a skimpy string bikini under a tropical waterfall.

Brian was about to say something suggestively tasteless when I asked Tiffany if she had posed in string bikinis, giving her another leering and hopefully expected look.

Yes, she coyly answered. And lingerie catalogue ads. But that was a few years ago.

Suddenly a beeper went off and everyone started to reach. Shit, what pomposity! It was Brian’s, and he excused himself to seek a phone, saying a big, multi-million dollar stock deal was pending and would probably be completed tonight.

Models…big financial deals…what a trio of phonies! Here we are, in a bar, just a drink above the Muscatel and Thunderbird crowd, and Hollywood scripts, financial deals and beepers abound.

While watching out of the corner of my eye the wild gestures Brian ultimately made to the phone and to us, his excited talking, the inexplicable giggles into the phone, I felt the girls were losing interest. Their eyes went from looking at me to looking over my shoulder, then passing quickly to looking over my other shoulder without resting on my face. Their glasses were empty and, though they didn’t show signs of wanting a refill, the aroma of the expenditure of money was in the air. But there was no hint of an appropriate sexual reciprocity from them.

But if I bought now, I’d escape buying for Brian. As I was trying to decide to buy or do the little boy’s routine, the girls were discussing whether their current hunger warranted, and their strict diets would allow, a late-night meal. Brian’s stupidity in going Chinese had put ideas in their heads, and if I was any judge, they were thinking surf ’n turf with cocktails before, during, and after, not egg roll, noodles and a pot of tea.

Brian, still on the phone, was looking at us and shaking his head vigorously up and down—whether at the phone or at us was a toss-up.

Suddenly some character, old enough to be the girls’ father, that is if the girls were the actual age they desperately were trying to imply, joined us. He was early fifties, possibly late fifties, fat, wearing a blue blazer with a gold crest, gray pants and a light blue sports shirt opened to a depth that on Tiffany would bring forth tears of manly joy, but on him evoked only disgust. Bald on top with the customary seven long strands of dyed hair across his dome valiantly trying to look like a thousand, he succeeded in looking ridiculous. He asked Kerri if she had the time as his watch was running slow.

Taking in his expensive-looking clothes, she decided to give him an invite by leaning forward, letting her boobs hang over her watch while telling him it was 1:15.

Thank you, he replied and, adjusting his watch as if a space launch depended on its accuracy, complained his Rolex had been running two seconds slow. We all peered at his wrist as he adjusted his watch.

Asking to see it, the girls told each other they never actually held a Rolex before. I’d have bet ten rounds of drinks it was a phony, but he never let me get my hands on it. Brian came over and went bug eyed at the Rolex, trying desperately to get hold of it, but Tony, as the new guy introduced himself, grabbed it back, complaining that his first Rolex had lasted twenty years and never lost a hundredth of a second. He was about to say how long he’d had the second, then stopped himself. If you’re fifty plus you want age arithmetic problems about as much as the girls did, so he dropped the subject, mumbling something about jetting to Switzerland for a new watch.

Asking if he could join us, and offering to buy the next round, which was quickly accepted, he brought out an expensive leather wallet embossed with a crest and initials. As far as the girls were concerned, the more the merrier, knowing they’d pick and choose from the herd later. Maybe they’d throw us all back.

Tony threw a crisp, uncirculated hundred, one of those new play-looking hundreds, on the bar. The bartender picked it up, squinted at it under the neon lights, turned it over, rubbed it, felt it, did everything but tasted it, then tossed it back, lying when he said he didn’t have enough change. Tony sighed, dropped his eyes, patted his blue blazer pockets, his gray slacks pockets and, almost crying, lamented all he had was hundreds, observing you can only carry just so many twenties before they get too bulky.

While everyone sympathized like we all had similar crosses to bear, the empty glasses were aligned in front of the waiting bartender’s expectant hands. A round had been spoken for and a round had to be bought. The Vogue and Cosmo models were out. Big-business-deal Brian, head down, was too busy checking his beeper to flash his bullshit dollar bankroll. Tony was vigorously patting and repatting every pocket in jacket, pants and shirt, desperately searching for an elusive, mythical twenty.

That left me and the toilet. There was nothing else to do. I ordered the round with a jaunty wave of my hand and everyone smiled as beepers were put away and patting hands relaxed. As the bartender turned to make the drinks, I excused myself to go to the gents’ and quickly left. I relieved myself and peeked out the door. As the bartender stood expectantly in front of a row of five drinks, I could see renewed pats and beepers being re-inspected. After washing my hands ’til they were clean enough to do open-heart surgery, I again peeked out and saw frantic hand gestures at the toilet and ominous headshakes from the bartender as the girls, embarrassed, looked away. Pathetic, I thought and, splashing cold water on my face again, peeked. Tony was frantically waving a hundred, Brian was waving a beeper, the girls were looking annoyed, and the bartender was decidedly pissed. After combing my hair, I peeked. Brian was counting out a lot of singles from his big roll, while a desolate Tony was putting his suspicious hundred back into his embossed-leather wallet and the girls, to calm their nerves, were taking hefty swallows from their drinks, possibly worried these could be their last free ones. Time to venture out, washed, refreshed, and relieved, to sip my drink courtesy of Brian.

The girls, if you could call thirtyish broads who had been around every block in the city more than once girls, were now looking over the bar crowd, trying to find Mr. Right. Or was it just Mr. Better? Brian, unfairly out the cost of a round of drinks, was in a foul mood and, with his experience as a big stockbroker, was beginning to suspect all the money he’d poured into the girls was turning into a bad investment.

He looked at me, hoping optimistically I’d reimburse him. Of course I made a big display of my bitter disappointment over being absent and unable to pay for the round, but with generosity and magnanimity only empty promises can generate, I promised to even things up with Brian later. It worked out just right. The impression was that I’d bought the drinks and was being generous to Brian for allowing him to serve as my stand-in. He couldn’t force me to reimburse him without appearing cheap, so he just growled, It’s all right. You can get the next round.

Meanwhile Tony, the man with the hundred-dollar bills, in an effort to move the conversation away from buying drinks, asked the girls what they did. The girls started on their bubbly lamentations about how a model’s glamour, money, parties and fame wasn’t as fabulous as people think, and Tony, after yeah, yeahing them to a quick finish, launched into his own, well-versed, well-rehearsed bar bullshit.

Apparently he ran one of the largest Broadway casting agencies, with offices in New York and Hollywood. Having cast the Broadway production of Cats and Evita, he was now busy casting the next Broadway production. Suddenly leaning over ’til his chin was one inch above Tiffany’s boobs, he confidentially whispered, Hillary, America’s Wife and Mother.

They said, Hillary?

He whispered, "It’s the name of the new musical. It’s going into rehearsal next month. It’s a tender musical love story about the former first family’s great romantic love for each other, along with some powerful orchestral treatment of Bill Clinton’s fight for the poor. Did you see Les Misérables?"

No, they confessed.

You know the story! Sort of, they hedged.

"Well it’s going to be like that. Lots of powerful, emotional music about Bill leading the struggle for the black poor, and Hillary standing on the barricades