A Motive For Murder (27 page)

He decided he would go insane if he didn’t leave the
apartment. Perhaps a tour of the Museum of Modern Art would help.
At least it would give him something to talk about with Lilah later
on in the evening.

He selected a cashmere sweater from the pastel drawer
of his light coverings bureau before chosing a navy jacket from
among the depths of his meticulously organized closet to go over
it. He looked rather spiffy, he thought, surveying himself in the
mirror.

T.S. was a handsome man, but his immersion in his
career had occupied him so totally that he had never been aware of
his physical attractiveness. His lack of vanity was appealing, and
because of this, he was twice blessed: he was neither hard on the
eyes nor hard on the ego. His abundant head of thick gray hair was,
he felt, becoming more distinguished every day thanks to growing
silver highlights. He wore it fuller each year as others his age
fell by the thinning wayside. It was a tribute of sorts to the
great genetic god who had spared him the male-baldness-pattern
gene. His features were nearly identical to those of Auntie Lil. He
had high, round cheekbones, a solid nose, and a widely generous
mouth. His large eyes had a habit of growing dark when he was
angry, a trait that many an employee had noticed with alarm before
he retired.

“What do you think?” he asked Brenda and Eddie,
modeling his attire. The two cats yawned in boredom, then each took
a swipe at his trousers before wisely scurrying beneath the bed to
avoid counterattack.

T.S. was feeling incredible by the time the elevator
reached the lobby floor. He looked good, he had money in the bank
and Lilah lined up for dinner later on. Thus, all his elation
shattered in a thousand shards when he spotted a distraught and
disheveled Jerry Vanderbilt steaming toward him across the lobby
like a determined process server. Mahmoud the doorman scurried
behind him, shouting in a combination of Arabic and English.

“Mr. Hubbert! Mr. Hubbert!” Mahmoud pleaded, his
black-and-gold cap askew. “I told him you didn’t live here! But he
did not believe me!”    

“Good thing, too,” Jerry said angrily, glaring at
Mahmoud with indignation. “As we can both see that you were
lying.”

“You call me a liar!” Mahmoud cried. He took off his
cap and threw it to the floor as if signaling for a duel. T.S.
stepped quickly between the two men.

“Mahmoud was just acting on my orders,” T.S.
explained. “I was waylaid in the lobby by a distraught person this
weekend.”

“Well, you are now being waylaid by another
distraught person,” Jerry cried, grabbing T.S.’s sleeve like a
beggar desperate for alms. “I was picked up by the police. The
police! Right on the corner next to my apartment building. My
newsstand man saw the whole thing. How can I ever face him
again?”

“Picked up?” T.S. asked, prying the man’s strong
fingers from the arm of one of his best jackets.
Pianists sure
have strong grips,
he thought to himself.

“The police?” Mahmoud interrupted, his eyes
narrowing. “You are a fugitive?”

“Get this man out of here!” Jerry demanded, stomping
his foot like a petulant child.

“He works here,” T.S. explained tersely. “Why don’t I
get you out of here instead.” He fixed Mahmoud with what he hoped
was a no-nonsense gaze. “If anyone else comes looking for me,” he
warned softly, “I don’t live here. Understand? Anyone at all!” He
hustled the accompanist out the door, enduring the stares of
several residents entering. No telling what the neighbors thought
now that distraught gentlemen were accosting him with regularity
in the otherwise tranquil lobby of their exclusive building.

“I had no one else to turn to,” Jerry apologized as
T.S. marched him down the block to a nearby coffee shop.

“Where’s your pal Miss Puccinni?” T.S. asked
grumpily. He hoped Jerry didn’t start sniffling or make a scene. He
had to live in this neighborhood and his continued dignity was most
important to him.

“She’s turned on me,” Jerry said miserably. “Stabbed
me in the back. Revealed her true colors. She’s nothing but a
perfidious liar, a two-timing Judas. No telling what she’s saying
about me right now.”

“Let’s hope it’s nothing like what you’re saying
about her,” T.S. said. He steered the distraught pianist to a
corner booth where he had a hope of avoiding his regular waitress.
Ordering coffee for them both, he turned to Jerry with resignation.
“Tell me what happened,” he said.

“I’m a little hungry from all the excitement,” Jerry
hinted.

T.S. sighed. “What do you want?”

“I’ll take a jumbo cheeseburger, medium rare. With
fries,” he told the waitress as she hurried away. “You’re paying,
right?”

T.S. nodded, thinking to himself that Auntie Lil
would be the one to pay—with interest.

“Artist’s salary,” Jerry apologized mechanically. “I
haven’t eaten in six hours. Can you imagine? They picked me up
early this morning and dragged me into a grimy precinct somewhere
in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen and began grilling me like a common
criminal. I had to sit across a desk from two detectives who were
positively brutal in their questioning.”

“What did they want to know?” T.S. asked.

“You would not believe the extent of Puccinni’s
betrayal,” Jerry confided. He leaned forward and dropped his voice
to a near whisper. “When she heard that Gene had been detained by
the police, she called them up and said that we were lovers. She
intimated that I might have information on that odious Bobby
Morgan’s death. I know what they wanted. They were looking to hang
an accessory-to-murder rap on me.”

T.S. suppressed a groan. The recent popularity of
true-crime and law-enforcement shows on television made every man
and his brother think he was F. Lee Bailey.
“Are
you his
lover?” T.S. asked sensibly.

“Maybe I am,” Jerry answered, offended. “In this day
and age, reliable suitors of my age are hard to find. I will not
deny that there was a certain emotional attachment between us, but
the possibility of my having gained information via pillow talk is
absurd. We had better things to do than chat in bed.”

His burger arrived. T.S. felt queasy just smelling
it. He had given up consuming mass quantities of partially cooked
animal flesh several years before. He might nibble on a discreet
sliver of veal every now and then, but mountains of ground meat
were out. Jerry had no such reservations. He bit into his burger
and munched with the hearty enthusiasm that perpetually thin people
alone can afford to show.

“Why did the police think you were involved?” T.S.
asked.

“They believe that someone who knew the ballet must
have been involved,” Jerry explained. “They didn’t come right out
and say it, but I got the impression that Morgan was killed at a
very specific time during the first act. Probably during that
over-the-top crescendo the orchestra pulls out in the dance of the
brats.”

“Dance of the brats?” T.S. asked.

“You know. That melee in Act One when all the little
boys leap around with imaginary guns shooting each other and the
girls swoon with their imaginary dolls and the adults jostle each
other along the edges and everyone is vying for the audience’s
attention. God, more people than you see at Lourdes each Easter
cram the stage at that point. It would mean two things: hardly
anyone was left backstage and the sounds of a struggle would be
masked. But how would a person know to wait until then unless they
knew the ballet—and unless they knew Raoul’s vision of it? The
police naturally suspected me, thanks to Paulette’s filthy mind,
and the fact that I am the most well-known of the Metro’s pianists.
Fortunately, I convinced them otherwise.”

T.S. was silent, absorbing this information. “It
sounds like you think the police have a point,” T.S. finally
said.

“It makes sense,” Jerry explained, cramming several
fries into his mouth at once. “But it certainly wasn’t me and I
told them that. If they want suspects, I can give them
suspects.”

T.S. eyed him carefully. “Who exactly did you give
them?”

“For one thing, Paulette. It serves her right for
betraying me. Like she admitted to your aunt, she and Morgan fought
all the time because he thought she was pushing his son too hard in
classes. I just casually mentioned their mutual animosity. That,
and the fact that she’s under suspicion of reselling the company’s
pointe shoes for her own personal profit.”

“How helpful of you,” T.S. muttered.

“That’s nothing,” Jerry said defensively. “I’m sure
they didn’t take it seriously once I told them that the person they
really should be looking at was Ricky Lee Harris, that ghastly
lighting director. He had a knock-down-drag-out fight with Morgan
the day before he was killed. And the man drinks. I can smell it. I
figure he strangled him with an extension cord or something and
then tossed him off the catwalk.”

“The catwalk isn’t much of a secret anymore, is
it?”

Jerry shrugged. “Can I help it if people talk?”

“You better hope no one tells Harris you turned him
in,” T.S. pointed out sensibly. “If he’s the brute you seem to feel
he is.”

Jerry looked startled at the idea. “I hadn’t thought
of that. I have a class with Paulette at the Dance Center this
afternoon, but after that, maybe I should lie low.”

“Maybe you should,” T.S. agreed. “When your options
are getting strangled with an extension cord or being beaten to
death with a pointe shoe, I’d say that now is a good time for you
to develop a bad case of the flu.”

Auntie Lil had him hooked. T.S. had to admit it. How
else to explain why he was heading for Lincoln Center to talk with
Ricky Lee Harris and Paulette Puccinni instead of spending a quiet
few hours at a civilized museum? He had to admit he was a little
intrigued by this Harris fellow. Auntie Lil had described her
encounter with him and the lighting director had assumed a
Heathcliff-like stature in T.S.’s mind.

A harried-looking prop mistress directed T.S. around
a corner and up to the second floor, where he discovered Ricky Lee
Harris bent over a lighting board in a workshop room, muttering to
himself.

“Excuse me,” T.S. said. He had been right: the man
was dark, large, and brooding. The bushy eyebrows lent him a
nineteenth-century look.

“Who are you?” Harris growled. He removed a tiny fuse
from the back of the lighting board and held it up in the air,
scowling.

“T. S. Hubbert. My aunt talked to you Sunday just
before the matinee.”

Harris glanced at him without interest. “I think your
aunt has a few loose screws.”

“A lot of people think that,” T.S. admitted. “It’s a
common mistake.”

“A mistake?” Harris repeated. He bent back over his
work. “How much of a mistake could that be?”

“I wouldn’t underestimate my aunt,” T.S. said,
wondering how the conversation had wandered onto this strange path.
“She’s pretty hard to fool. There are a couple of people behind
bars who would agree.”

“You’re kidding?” Harris ran a hand through his
thinning hair and shifted from foot to foot. “What do you want? Are
you her cleanup batter?”

Pleasantries and small talk would only be wasted on
this character and as T.S. stepped closer he realized why: Harris
smelled of stale beer. “I came to ask you a couple more questions,”
he said.

“You an undercover agent or something?” Harris asked.
“Why should I answer any question you ask?”

“Technically, you don’t have to. But my aunt does
represent the Metro board. Your employers.”

“I don’t need reminding about who signs my paychecks.
Small as they are.” He began fiddling with the dials of the
lighting board. “Hurry up and ask your questions and leave. I have
work to do.”      

T.S. ignored his rudeness. “I heard you had an
argument with Bobby Morgan the day before he died.”

“So? I suspect half the company had an argument with
him that day.”

“Maybe. But why did
you?”

The big man shrugged. “He was being a Class-A jerk.
Accused me of not lighting his precious human money machine
properly. Hinted that I wasn’t sober enough to handle the light
changes. As if I didn’t have a computer to do that for me. If you
ask me, he was in the mood to climb down someone’s throat and I was
the one nominated.”

“How ugly did it get?”

“Pretty ugly,” Harris admitted. “If I don’t like
someone, I don’t bother hiding it. Know what I mean?”

T.S. knew. He could nearly feel the heat of the man’s
glare. “Did you threaten him?”

Harris laughed. It was an ugly, mocking sound. “I was
the one being threatened, not him. He said he’d make sure I lost my
job. And let me tell you—if he was able to force that no-talent son
of his onto the Metro stage, then I can guarantee you that he had
the power to get me fired.”

“Which made you pretty mad,” T.S. pointed out.

“Not mad enough to kill him.” Harris folded his arms
and spoke more slowly. “Let me spell it out for you. I was not the
only one to have a fight with Morgan on that day. He was in a foul
mood. He was biting people’s heads off left and right. Maybe he was
nervous for his son. Maybe he’d gotten a call from the IRS that
morning. Maybe his girlfriend left him high and dry. I don’t know.
But I do know that he created havoc backstage the day before the
premiere. So I didn’t take it personally when it was my turn, okay?
I have enough real enemies to worry about.”

He returned to the lighting board as if the matter
had been settled. T.S. stared at him for a moment before checking
the time. Paulette Puccinni would be getting out of her dance class
soon. His time would be better spent with her than with this lout.
He left without bothering to say goodbye.