A Motive For Murder (15 page)

“What did he look like?” Auntie Lil asked
eagerly.

“I couldn’t see clearly,” the Reverend admitted.
“There’s a string of bright streetlights in the alley on account of
it being a prime mugging spot. The glare was in my eyes and the man
was in the shadows when he reached the end.”

“Was he tall? Was he short?” Auntie Lil asked. “How
was he dressed?”

“He was tall and wearing dark clothes,” the Reverend
offered hopefully. “Couldn’t get more specific than that.”

“Was he black or white?” Auntie Lil demanded.

Ben Hampton looked offended. “He was most definitely
white. That much I can tell you.”

Auntie Lil was silent. It could have been the killer.
It could have been a man fleeing a mugger. But still... it was a
start. And the man had dashed past right after Morgan’s death so
the timing was right.

“What did the police say to all this?” she asked.

The Reverend shrugged. “Didn’t believe me.”

Auntie Lil bristled. She considered every scrap of
infor–mation valuable, regardless of the source. Preconceived
notions were dangerous. His story was important—and should have
been given the consideration it deserved.

“There’s more than one way to skin that cat,” she
promised. “I have a friend. Margo McGregor. I am sure you know of
her.”

The Reverend nodded. “She covers my activities
often.”

 “I can arrange for you to talk to her. She’d
probably do a column on your side of the story. But you’d have to
work it out with her about what you were doing in the park alone at
night. It might be better to focus on an entirely different subject
and not bring up the park at all. At any rate, I am sure Margo will
work with you. Would that help?”

Ben Hampton looked at Auntie Lil in keen admiration.
“I couldn’t have come up with a better solution myself.”

T.S. had one big concern about Auntie Lil’s visit
with Reverend Hampton. “Do you believe him?” he asked. They were
sitting in a coffee shop near Lincoln Center, discussing their next
move. T.S. had been surprisingly calm about foundation money going
to help Hampton. The truth was, he had never wanted the money in
first place and so didn’t care where it went.

Auntie Lil nodded. “Why would Ben Hampton jeopardize
his career by killing Morgan? Fatima Jones is just one cause in a
long line of causes. Unless a better motive comes up, I don’t think
he’s our man. I’d like to go over to the Metro this afternoon and
question some other people. Feel up to the trip?”

T.S. calculated his schedule for the day. He was
supposed to meet Herbert at four o’clock to learn the fox trot and
after that both he and Auntie Lil were meeting with Gene Levitt,
the producer who had lost millions when Mikey Morgan backed out of
his movie contract. Auntie Lil had arranged the meeting with her
usual tact: she had called up and demanded it. If T.S. could come
up with a plausible cover story to get away for a few hours for the
dance lesson with Herbert, he might be able to pull it off.

“Well, do you?” Auntie Lil demanded. “I can hear your
wheels turning, Theodore.”

“I can do it,” T.S. said quickly. “But will anyone be
there?”

Auntie Lil nodded. “They have classes and rehearsals
all afternoon. We’ll be able to find someone.”

The first someone they found turned out to be Lisette
Martinez, wife of the Metro’s artistic director and long its prima
ballerina. She was a self-conscious exotic beauty as she sat in the
sunshine on outside steps near a side door to the theater, smoking
a forbidden cigarette. She was wearing rust-colored leotards and a
black sweatshirt. Her legs were wound with strips of white cloth as
if she were a Thoroughbred preparing for a race. Her hair whipped
loosely in the wind. She was in her mid-thirties, but the physical
toll of her profession had aged her beyond her years. Up close, her
lack of body fat accentuated every wrinkle.

Auntie Lil perched on the steps below her and smiled.
T.S. hovered behind his aunt. Lisette stared at the two of them
without expression, her eyes flat and dark. She took a long drag of
her cigarette and looked up at the sky.

“Should you be smoking?” Auntie Lil asked, trying to
establish rapport.

“Who are you? My mother?” The ballerina blew a smoke
ring that was instantly dispersed by the breeze.

“No. I’m a member of the Metro’s board, looking into
the recent death of Bobby Morgan.”

The dancer’s eyes flickered. “Raoul told me about
you. So did Lane Rogers. She doesn’t want me to talk to you. Which
means that I will.” She stretched her legs in the sunlight and
admired them, flexing them with feline grace. “Who’s he?” she
asked, nodding at T.S. as she cataloged his charms.

“My nephew Theodore.”

The ballerina raised her eyebrows at T.S. in
amusement, but he was too besotted to notice. She was a little
haughty for his usual tastes, but Lisette Martinez had
something
all right. Fire seemed to flash from her eyes, her
lips were incredibly expressive, and she had a way of holding her
head and abandoning her hair to the wind that made T.S. think of
silky strands spread across a bed pillow. She represented all
things forbidden and exotic—and he was fascinated by her.

“We’re here to ask questions in an official
capacity,” Auntie Lil explained.

“Raoul will be thrilled,” the ballerina said, her
sarcasm elegant in its subtlety. “He’s rehearsing the brats inside.
Parents keep pulling their kids from the show so he’s helping Pork
Chop Puccinni train the new beasts.”

T.S. ignored the appropriate but nasty reference to
the Metro’s ballet master. “The parents are afraid their children
are in danger?” he asked.

Lisette smiled enigmatically. “They are in danger.
I’ve thought of killing a few of them myself over this past
week.”

“Did you know Bobby Morgan?” Auntie Lil asked,
watching in disapproval as Lisette lit up a fresh cigarette.

“Sure, I knew the late great Bobby Morgan. He put the
moves on me pretty hard when we met about six weeks ago.”

“Put the moves on you?” Auntie Lil asked.

“He’s the type,” Lisette explained. “I was the most
famous woman in the room. He had a biological urge to impress
me.”

“What form did his efforts take?” Auntie Lil
asked.

“Ambushing me in the hall between classes. Asking me
to lunch. As if I ever eat. Bringing me flowers. Cheap ones.
Telling me how much money he made. The usual.”

“Wasn’t your husband offended?” T.S. asked.

“Raoul wouldn’t have noticed if we’d fallen on him
from the rafters,” she said. “Which, come to think of it, Bobby
almost did.” She took another deep drag of her cigarette. “Raoul is
not exactly Old Faithful, if you know what I mean. He’s too busy to
care what I do.”

“Yes, but...” Auntie Lil began. Her voice trailed
off. She was routinely tactless, but not even she could decide how
to charge in on what was a very delicate topic.

“My aunt is inquiring about all the press stories,”
T.S. explained, correctly guessing Auntie Lil’s thoughts. “We often
read that your husband has a jealous temperament.”

“That’s just show,” she explained. “Good publicity.
Supports his reputation as a fiery artist. Raoul could care less
who I see or what I do with them when I see them.” A strand of hair
blew into her mouth and clung to one side of her generously made-up
lips. T.S. watched in fascination as Lisette carefully picked the
hairs free with a long fingernail.

Auntie Lil didn’t know who she wanted to slap more:
Lisette or Raoul Martinez. In fact, she became so lost in a fantasy
about the lecture she would give them both that T.S. had to take
over the questioning.

“How did Morgan act when you rebuffed him?” he
asked.

Lisette shrugged. “He didn’t care. By that time,
there were a dozen younger dancers hanging on him. Gold chains and
lots of money look good when you’re too young to know better.” She
glanced at her watch. “I have to get back in.”

The door behind her opened abruptly and Raoul
Martinez stuck his leonine head outside. The sunlight momentarily
blinded him, but when his eyes focused on his wife—and the
cigarette dangling from her fingertips—his face flushed in rage.
“How many times must I tell you!” he roared. He burst through the
door, snatched the butt from her hand, and ground it out beneath
his foot. “You must conserve every ounce of your energy,” he
thundered. “Why will you not listen to me? Do you want to continue
to be a star or are you going to give it up for the sake of this
poison?” Lisette sat calmly throughout the tirade, but both Auntie
Lil and T.S. inched as far away from the bellowing artistic
director as possible.

“Who are you?” Martinez demanded, staring at T.S.

“My nephew,” Auntie Lil said, wedging herself between
the two men. “He is helping me with my inquiries.”

“And who are you?” Martinez demanded of Auntie Lil,
his anger blinding him nearly as much as the bright sunlight.

“A board member,” she said indignantly. “Good
heavens, I sit next to you every month.”

Martinez peered at Auntie Lil, his eyes blinking in
the bright sunlight. “Oh, yes. So you are. But don’t bother my
wife. She has work to do.”

He grasped Lisette firmly by the elbow and pulled her
inside, letting the wind blow the metal door shut in Auntie Lil’s
face with a bang.

“A charming sort of fellow,” T.S. said.

“With a charming sort of temper,” Auntie Lil pointed
out. “Come on. Follow me.”

“Where are we going?” T.S. asked, following her
around the building toward the southwest side of the complex.

“I want to check out the Reverend’s story,” she
explained. “And I need your help.”

Auntie Lil’s idea of his help was to command T.S. to
stand in the bushes at the rear of the complex, back turned to the
pathway so he could simulate heeding the call of nature while she
briskly walked past in varying degrees of hurry. Feeling like a
complete ass, T.S. complied and was acutely embarrassed to find
himself the object of eagerly fearful scrutiny by a group of
gray-haired female tourists sunning themselves by the
bandstand.

“Hurry up!” he whispered fiercely as Auntie Lil
jogged past for the third time.

“Did that sound like a machine gun?” she asked
breathlessly, returning to his hiding place.

“No, it did not,” he told her, irritated. “Though a
machine gun is starting to sound awfully good to me.” She missed
the significance of his pointed stare. “What is the point of this?”
he demanded.

She gazed thoughtfully at the rear exit of the
Metro’s theater. “I’m just trying to see if Reverend Hampton’s
story makes sense. Can you see up the path while turned like
that?”

“Yes,” he said wearily. “And please don’t make me go
it again. Those ladies already think I have the largest bladder in
the history of mankind and all twenty of them are hoping I’ll
expose myself next.”

“But I haven’t yet sounded like a machine gun, have
I?” she asked.

“You’re wearing soft-sole shoes,” he pointed out. “If
you weighed five hundred pounds, you wouldn’t make a tapping
sound.”

“Good point,” she said, forehead furrowed in
concentration.

“Better hurry!” a breathless voice interjected. A
small blond woman scurried past with a hasty wave at Auntie Lil.
She was a member of the Metro’s board, one of the silent majority.
“You’ll be late.”

“Late?” Auntie Lil asked after her.

The woman checked her diamond-encrusted watch. “The
meeting starts at three-thirty today,” she explained, hurrying
around the corner toward the executive offices.

“A board meeting!” Auntie Lil’s anger was instant.
“They’re trying to hold a meeting without me!”

“Maybe they tried to leave you a message,” T.S. said.
“If you’d just get an answering machine like the rest of the world,
these things wouldn’t happen.”

“Nonsense. They are deliberately trying to exclude me
and I intend to find out why.” She started down the path before he
could protest. “You’ll have to meet that producer on your own,” she
called back. “Call me later and let me know what you think.” She
disappeared around the corner.

At least he wouldn’t have to think up an excuse to
cover up meeting Herbert,
T.S. thought to himself as he hurried
toward his clandestine dance lesson.
The fox trot? Hah! If a fox
could trot, so could he.

Herbert was not afflicted with T.S.’s lack of
self-esteem about romantic matters. When T.S. had confided that
Lilah seemed too busy to notice him recently, Herbert’s take on the
situation had been more objective and, most probably, more
accurate: Lilah was working too hard. She needed a hobby. Women in
her social class were taking up ballroom dancing again. If T.S.
would learn to dance, then he and Lilah would have a hobby they
could enjoy together, he pointed out. And T.S. might be able to
lure her away from board meetings for an evening or two each
week.

Put that way, it was hard to argue, which was why
T.S. was meeting Herbert nearly every day in a small rented studio
on upper Broadway. Herbert had long been a ballroom dancer
extaordinaire and often stepped out with Auntie Lil. “Your aunt
attempts to lead at all times,” he had once confided. “But she is
otherwise a fine and skilled partner.”

They finished the lesson early so T.S. would be on
time for his meeting with Gene Levitt. He hated being late for
anything, a trait Auntie Lil did not share.

“Do you think this producer has anything to do with
the murder?” Herbert asked as they changed into fresh clothes with
a masculine camaraderie that T.S. always felt was more like the
movies than real life.

“He has the best motive of anyone,” T.S. said.
“Morgan ruined him professionally and financially. But I don’t know
if he was even there that night. Do you want to come along while I
question him? Auntie Lil can’t make it.”