Laurel and Hardy Murders Read Online Free PDF Page B

the balls for a new game, and Kilgore protested that he wasn’t having Butler as a partner again.
    Just then, O. J. stood up and cleared his throat. “All right, gentlemen, everyone’s here. Meeting time.”
    “Oh, Christ, already ?” Hal Fawkes blurted out. “I gotta make a phone call.”
    “You’ve made at least thirty,” Natie argued. “C’mon, we’ll never get finished!”
    Hal shook his grizzled head. “Can’t wait. Be right back.” He headed for the phones again, nearly tripping en route.
    The rest of us started to take our places at the big semicircular seat, setting drinks on the enormous round tabletop. Tye Morrow brought over a huge platter of crackers and cheese spread and placed it in the center so everyone could help himself. Kilgore put his cue-stick away a little reluctantly. Barry Richmond asked me if I minded his sitting next to me, and I swiveled my legs out long enough for His Excellency to squeeze in. (The title went with his self-bestowed position of President of Montmartre. Barry is tall, gangly, and wears glasses with a built-in snigger; he looks like an older Tony Perkins from Psycho, and Kilgore frequently calls him “Norman” after the disturbed motel keeper in that film.)
    Eight of us occupied the great arc of the large seat. To my left, next to Barry, sat Phil Faxon, a character actor who was one of the damnedest vocal mimics I’d ever heard. Thin, sandy-haired, with weak eyes (and no spectacles), Faxon could imitate accurately anyone from Herbert Hoover to Charles Laughton, but only with his voice, not his body. If radio were only still an important dramatic medium, he’d be rich, but as it was, he earned what income he did from an occasional voice-over for a TV commercial, or a narration for an army training movie.
    O. J. sat to his left, his mild blue eyes scanning the company, fingers tapping the neatly inscribed memorandum book he used for running meetings. Too well-mannered to hurry the start of proceedings, he displayed his impatience to those who knew him well enough by the involuntary tapping. But his face gave away nothing.
    Next to O. J. was Natie Barrows, our treasurer. Though he still had an automatic grin on his face, Natie was busily and anxiously wiping off a wayward gob of cheese from Mary Tyler Moore’s nose on his sweatshirt. To Natie’s left, Al Kilgore watched the loving ministration with undisguised astonishment. Beside Al sat Toby Sanders, dwarfed by his neighbor, and on the far end opposite me, Frank Butler perched, bald spot neatly concealed by his carefully combed hair fringe. He puffed away at one of his odd-looking, peculiarly aromatic stogies.
    There was no room left for Dutchy or Tye, so they pushed wooden curved-back chairs to the end of the table, including one for Hal, if he ever decided to return.
    At that particular moment, waiting for O. J. to begin the meeting, few of us had Wayne Poe in mind, I’m sure. Even with hindsight, it probably never has occurred to most of the SOTD executive committee that the murder of Wayne Poe was first conceived and plotted during that very meeting.

I F THERE IS EVER a normal committee meeting, the order of business will be as follows: 1. The president will call the meeting to order (beer, Scotch, etc.). 2. The treasurer will apologize. 3. Heads of standing committees will proffer excuses for their inefficiency. 4. Old business will be dragged out, dusted off and lovingly tabled for a future meeting. 5. New business must be tabled as soon as possible, in order that it may be brought up at a future meeting as old business. 6. The president shall then inform members of the committee that while they were at the bar and/or pool tables, the meeting ended. 7. At the discretion of the president—a concept which will be theoretically, though laughingly granted—the above order of business may be hopelessly screwed up.
—from The Sons of the Desert Guidelines to Decorous Behaviour (by-laws)
    O. J. began with new