13 - Knock'em Dead (9 page)

“I don’t know. He was just coming down the sidewalk in the opposite direction I was going.”

“You didn’t see him come out of the alley separating the theaters?”

“No.”

“Well, how about that cup of tea?”

“All right, although well have to make it quick. The director has called an extra rehearsal this evening.”

“A problem with the show?”

“No, just ironing out some wrinkles.”

We’d reached the doors to the street when his beeper went off. He checked the number displayed on the tiny screen. “Sorry, Mrs. Fletcher, but well have to postpone the tea.”

“That’s quite all right.”

“We’ll catch up again.” “I hope it’s just for a pleasant cup of tea and a chat, not about murder.”

“Hopefully.”

“Detective Hayes.”

“Yes.”

“Your name is Hayes. Any relation to the great actress, Helen Hayes?”

“As a matter of fact yes. Maybe that’s why they gave me this case. We’re third cousins twice removed.”

“You didn’t elect to follow in her footsteps as an actor?”

“Not for a living, but I do act in community theater. Excuse me, Mrs. Fletcher, I have to run.”

He left as members of the cast and crew came through the doors, including Pamela South, who’d been hired to replace Jenny Forrest.

“How did the press conference go?” asked Charles Flowers, who played the detective in the play.

“Fine,” I said, my fingers involuntarily going to the rip in my coat.

“Hi, Jessica,” Hanna Shawn said. She played the daughter, Waldine, and was alleged to be one of Harry Schrumm’s girlfriends. She wore a white T-shirt with KNOCK ’EM DEAD emblazoned on it in red, a gift from Schrumm to every cast and crew member. Although she was older than the character I’d created, and might have been cast because of a personal relationship with Schrumm, she was a wonderful Waldine in my estimation.

“Hi, Hanna. All set for another run-thmugh?”

“No. I had other plans tonight. But the show comes first. It
always
comes first.”

I wandered into the theater where the stage was being readied for the rehearsal.

“Has anyone seen Linda?” I asked.

No one had.

“She said she’d be here tonight,” I added.

“She’ll show up,” Cy Walpole said, sounding as though the thought wasn’t especially pleasing to him.

“I saw her a half hour ago,” a member of the crew offered.

“Great. I’ll go find her.”

I climbed a short set of steps up to the stage, watched the activity for a few minutes, then went backstage, carefully navigating lighting paraphernalia strewn on the floor, and made my way to a narrow, poorly lit hallway off of which opened a series of tiny rooms and offices. I poked my head into Schrumm’s on-site office, then into the tech director’s space. Both were empty.

At the end of the hall were the three largest rooms, one devoted to props and costumes, the other two serving as dressing and makeup rooms for the male and female members of the cast. Because
Knock ’Em Dead
was relatively contemporary, costumes in the classic sense were few; the story took place in the late 1940s, which meant only that characters wore clothing appropriate to that decade. The stage door leading to the alley separating the Drummond and Von Feurston Theaters was just beyond and around the comer from the costume and dressing rooms.

“Linda?” I said. The only response was an echo of my own voice.

I proceeded down the hall. “Linda?” I repeated, looking into an office shared by the costume and set designers. No answer.

I took a few steps in the direction of the prop and dressing rooms, which brought me to a section of the hallway where the few bulbs in the ceiling had burned out, creating a dark, shadowy span of twenty feet. I stopped. What was that noise? Someone laughing? I looked up at the ceiling, then turned and peered down the length of the hall. I narrowed my eyes. What was I seeing? It couldn’t be. A man’s face, chalk white, with blood-red lips, seemed to hover in the air at the hallway’s end. He laughed, more a cackle—or was it traffic noise from outside?—then disappeared as quickly as he’d appeared.

I drew a deep breath and reminded myself that I was seeing things, an apparition, my mind playing games with itself. Herbert Spiegel, one of the world’s foremost experts on the use of medical hypnosis and a friend of mine, often says that if you tell someone
not
to think of purple elephants, that’s all they’ll see—purple elephants. The ghost of Marcus Drummond, indeed. I must have been subconsciously thinking of the legend and saw him, my purple elephant.

I laughed, shook my head, and continued in the direction of the dressing and costume rooms.

“Linda?”

As I approached the larger rooms, I noticed that the door to the costume and prop room was partially open. Light from within spilled through the gap and slashed across the hallway floor.

I went to the door, raised my hand to knock, then pressed my fingers against it. It opened slowly, making a grating sound. I stepped inside. The clothing to be worn by the actors and actresses hung from metal garment racks with wheels. There were three of them, one for each act.

I sighed. Linda wasn’t there either. The crew member must have been mistaken, or she’d been there and left.

I was suddenly aware of a strong cold breeze coming from outside the room. Someone must have opened the stage door when entering from the alley. Usually, there was a man at the door, an old-timer named Vic who’d been working stage doors, he told me, for more than fifty years. Vic—I didn’t know his last name—was a sweet man, obviously mentally impaired to some extent, but whose pleasant personality and dedication to his responsibilities as guardian of the door more than made up for any intellectual deficiencies.

I didn’t hear the stage door close, and started to leave the room with the intention of going to see why it remained open, letting in the cold. But as I did, something caught my eye. Shoes worn by the cast members were neatly lined up beneath the rack of clothing for each act. The woman in charge of the room was a stickler for detail and order and had thrown more than one tantrum when someone failed to hang up their costumes with the left-hand sleeve facing out, or had placed their shoes beneath the appropriate rack without having the toes pointing out.

Because everything was so neatly arranged, a black shoe lying on its side was blatantly evident. I crouched and grabbed it with the intention of setting it right with the others. But it wouldn’t move because—because there was a foot in it.

I stood and backed away, then slowly and with trepidation approached the clothing rack again. I was tempted to close my eyes but forced them to remain open as I wheeled one end of the rack into the center of the room. In doing so, I was now able to see the person whose foot occupied the shoe. It was Harry Schrumm,
Knock ’Em Dead’s
producer. He was slumped against the wall, the foot I’d grabbed jutting out beneath the rack, his other foot tucked beneath him. I didn’t know which was more shocking, the round circle of blood the color of cardinals oozing around the knife in his chest, staining his white shirt, or the macabre scene the killer had created. The soft-brimmed tweed hat worn by the father in the play was propped at a bizarre angle on his head, and the pipe used by the father hung from his slack mouth. His eyes were open; he was looking directly at me as if asking for help.

Too late for that.

I crouched and took a closer look. As I did, the hat fell off, revealing what appeared to be a bruise on his left temple that had been covered by the hat.

I straightened up, drew a breath, took in the rest of the room, then left it and walked with purpose down the hall, past the empty offices and the dark area where I thought I’d seen the ghost of Marcus Drummond, and to the stage where Cyrus Walpole was about to begin rehearsing a scene from the third act. Everyone stopped and stared at me as I stepped into the middle of the scene.

“Jessica?” Walpole said. “Is there something—?”

“There’s been a murder!” I said, surprised at the calm in my voice. “Harry Schrumm. In the costume room. Someone has murdered him!”

Stunned silence.

I looked into their faces. Actors and actresses. A play, a fictitious dramatic performance. Broadway. The stage. All the magic of make-believe. A murder mystery created by me in my imagination.

But the reality of my announcement was all too apparent at that moment.

This wasn’t playacting.

This murder was the real thing, real life, real blood, a real weapon that didn’t retract into its handle or shoot blanks.

I preferred the fictitious version.

I don’t know who called the police, but they were there within minutes, dozens of them swarming all over the Drummond Theater. The first to arrive were uniformed officers, but Lieutenant Hayes walked in minutes later. I was with the cast, crew, and Cyrus Walpole and Aaron Manley on the stage where we’d been told to remain until further instructed. Hayes disappeared backstage for ten minutes, then reappeared and came directly to me.

“Didn’t think I’d see you again so soon,” he said.

“I wish you hadn’t”

“I understand you discovered the body, Mrs. Fletcher.”

“That’s right. In the costume and prop room.”

“Touch anything?”

“No. Yes. I pulled on the shoe on Mr. Schrumm’s foot to put it in line with other shoes, but I don’t think I moved it. And I pulled the costume rack out. That’s when I saw him.”

“See anybody else in the vicinity?”

“No.”

“Did you go out the stage door?”

“No, but it was open.”

“How do you know that?”

“I felt cold air coming through it.”

“Where was the doorman? What’s his name, Vic?”

“Yes, Vic. I don’t know where he was.”

Hayes looked at the others on the stage. “Anyone have anything to offer before we get down to individual questioning? Anyone see anything?”

Walpole was the only one to respond. “I realize you have a job to do, Inspector, and a nasty one at that, but I have a play to get ready for previews. How long will you be disrupting us?”

I thought Hayes might respond angrily, but he smiled and said, “First of all, sir, I’m a detective, not an inspector.”

“And I’m British,” Walpole said. “Pardon the misnomer.”

“Confucius said that the first step to wisdom is calling things by the correct name. I tend to agree with him.”

“Quite,” Walpole said.

“Second, the extent of disruption will depend upon you and your cast and crew, how cooperative you are.”

“Why wouldn’t we cooperate?” Manley asked. “We didn’t kill Schrumm.”

Hayes ignored him. “Third,” he said, “you’re free to continue your rehearsal as long as you can concentrate with officers and forensics personnel climbing over you.”

“Maybe we should call it a day,” Joe McCartney said.

“Absolutely not,” Walpole insisted.

Hayes said to the assembled, “To any of your knowledge, is everyone who was in the theater at the time of the murder present here on stage?”

We looked at each other.

“Where’s Linda?” Hanna Shawn asked.

“Who’s Linda?” Hayes asked.

“The casting director,” Dave Potts said.

“She was in the theater,” said the crew member who’d told me the same thing.

“I looked for her but couldn’t find her,” I said. “In fact, that’s what I was doing when I came upon Mr. Schrumm’s body; looking for her.”

“How many of you saw the deceased here in the theater this afternoon?”

A few people indicated they had, and Hayes questioned them about the circumstances under which they’d seen Schrumm.

“See anybody here in the theater who shouldn’t be here?” Hayes asked. “A stranger? Somebody not involved with the show?”

Denials all around.

“Does anyone know why the doorman, Vic, wasn’t at his post?”

Another round of negative responses.

Hayes told his uniformed officers that no one was to leave the theater without his permission, and repeated the admonition to us. He asked Walpole where there was an empty room in which he could begin individual questioning. “That way we’ll be out of your hair and you can go on with your rehearsal. I would appreciate it, however, if no one discusses the murder until after I’ve had a chance to question everyone.” Although he put it gently, his voice said it was an order, not a request.

“The theater manager’s office is upstairs.”

“Is he here?”

“I don’t believe so,” Walpole said, “but it’s open. I went up there myself a little earlier.”

“All right,” Hayes said, “that’s where we’ll go. Mrs. Fletcher, would you come with me?”

“Of course.”

As we started to leave the stage, an officer stationed at the rear of the theater came down the aisle: “Hey, Detective, there’s a guy in the lobby who wants in.”

“Who is he?” Hayes asked.

“Name’s Factor. He says he owns the show.”

“Owns
it?” Aaron Manley muttered.

“Mr. and Mrs. Factor are the financial backers of
Knock ’Em Dead,”
I explained.

“Bring him in,” Hayes told the officer.

Arnold Factor, dressed in a tuxedo, strode down the aisle, topcoat over his arm, a white silk scarf trailing behind. “What’s this about Harry Schrumm being murdered?” he asked loudly.

“I understand you’re the financial backer of the play,” Hayes said pleasantly, extending his hand. “I’m Detective Henry Hayes, NYPD.” He flashed his badge with the other hand.

“A pleasure,” Factor said. “Harry’s dead?” He asked the question of me.

“I’m afraid so,” I said.

Factor turned to Hayes. “My God, how could such a dreadful thing happen? The Broadway serial killer?”