A Motive For Murder (34 page)

Lisette Martinez stood crouched over an open drawer
of her husband’s desk, a sheaf of papers in one hand.

“What are you doing here?” she and Auntie Lil asked
simultaneously.

Before anyone could react, the door of the office
flew open and the overhead lights blazed on. Auntie Lil shielded
her eyes. In the seconds that it took for her vision to clear she
realized that they were trapped: Raoul Martinez blocked the doorway
and he held a heavy cane in one hand—a prop from
The
Nutcracker.

“Raoul!” Lisette cried, dropping the papers.

“What are you doing in here?” Martinez asked his
wife. “You said you were going home to bed early.”

“What are
you
doing here?” she asked him back,
the color draining from her face.

Herbert Wong did not hesitate. He took advantage of
their inattention to dart past Martinez, knocking the cane away
with one hand while grabbing the bigger man’s shirt collar with the
other. He shoved a surprised Martinez against the door and sent him
sprawling. “Run!” he shouted to Auntie Lil.

Auntie Lil sprinted from the room, the ache in her
legs forgotten. She barreled toward the outer exit doors, flinging
her weight against them. The doors were illegally locked from the
inside. She whirled around and saw that the nearest side door was
blocked by a recovered Martinez. The artistic director had leaped
back to his feet and was struggling with Herbert for the cane.
Lisette stood in the background as if frozen by fear, watching her
husband tussle.

“Go, Lillian!” Herbert shouted, aiming a kick and
catching Martinez solidly on a shin.

Auntie Lil began to run through the darkness of the
backstage area, crashing into scenery and props as she did so.
Scrims fell to the floor with a crash and props tumbled from
tables. Her progress was easily marked by the tremendous din that
followed her. She could hear Martinez moving after her and began to
fling objects out of her way, clearing a path toward stage right,
pushing heavy curtains away from her face, and for one terrifying
moment, becoming lost in a series of overlapping side curtains
before finding her way free again. She reached stage right and
hesitated. How could she leave Herbert alone with Martinez? She
turned to go back and discovered her friend right behind her.

“Go, Lillian!” Herbert shouted again. “The side door.
Try the side door up ahead.” But as they scurried toward the door,
they heard the heavy thud of Martinez cutting across the stage to
block their exit. Auntie Lil stopped uncertainly, her hands
reaching out in the darkness. She touched the metal of a permanent
ladder embedded into the backstage brick walls. It probably led to
an upper floor. Perhaps she could find a place to hide, a
telephone, or a way out from there.

“Come on,” she whispered to Herbert, pulling herself
onto the bottom rung. With Herbert pushing her from beneath, she
climbed steadily upward, breathing hard, her shoulders aching from
the effort. The ladder jiggled beneath her and she felt dizzy. She
stopped to catch her breath.

“He’s following us!” Herbert whispered frantically.
“I can feel his weight on the rungs beneath us!”

Suddenly the backstage lights blazed on, illuminating
the brick wall and scattered scenery with a blinding glare.

“Leave them alone!” Lisette Martinez screamed at her
husband. The back curtains of the stage opened with a jerk,
creating a gap of several yards. The ballerina dashed into view
from stage left, breathing hard. Her husband was only a dozen rungs
up the ladder. She jumped in the air, grabbing at his legs as if to
stop him. He climbed up out of her reach then paused to stare down
at his wife.

“Let them alone!” Lisette shouted again. “Enough
people have been hurt. Leave it, Raoul. It’s time to let it go.”
She stepped back and looked up at Auntie Lil.

“I did it!” she shouted. “Is that what you want to
hear? I killed him. I killed him because he left me and no one
leaves me. He left me for someone younger. Just like him.” She
pointed a finger at her husband and he stared back at her, his face
crumpling in despair.

“No,” he yelled. His deep voice reverberated across
the empty stage and rolled up into the rafters. “It won’t work,
Lisette. We must tell them the truth.” He leaned back and dangled
from the ladder so he could see Herbert and Auntie Lil better. “I
did it,” he said. “I killed him because he was flaunting his affair
with my wife. No one does that to Raoul Martinez.”

“He’s lying,” Lisette shouted. “I’m the one. He’s
only saying that to protect me.”

“No, it won’t work,” Raoul yelled at his wife. “They
know you haven’t the strength.”

“I have the strength,” Lisette screamed back, and as
if to prove it, leaped onto the bottom rung and climbed up to her
husband. She grabbed one of his legs and attempted to pull him from
the ladder. “Let it go, Raoul,” she ordered. “I’m going to the
police right now and turn myself in.”

Auntie Lil stared at the battling couple in
confusion. She had spent weeks trying to track down a killer and
now these two were arguing for the right to claim the title. “What
should we do now?” she asked Herbert.

Herbert glanced down at Raoul Martinez. He was only a
few yards below but was making no move to climb higher. Instead he
had grabbed his wife’s hand and was staring into her eyes,
murmuring her name over and over as if it were a spell he could
cast upon her. “Lisette, Lisette, Lisette,” he murmured. “You must
not do this, my darling Lisette.”

“Which one of them did it?” Auntie Lil asked
loudly.

“I don’t think either one of them did,” Herbert
replied.

Raoul and Lisette Martinez sat in the front row of
the Metropolitan Ballet’s magnificent theater separated from each
other by three red velvet seats. They stared at one another in
incomprehension, their faces reflecting a combination of joy and
relief. Auntie Lil and Herbert waited cautiously a few feet away,
watching the strange scene unfolding before them.

 “You didn’t do it after all, did you?” Raoul
asked his wife. His eyes filled with tears of happiness.

Lisette shook her head. “I thought you had done it,”
she said softly. “I thought they would take you away from me
forever. I knew that you had found out about us...” Her voice
trailed off.

“How could I ever have thought you could do such a
thing, my precious angel,” her husband replied. He moved to the
seat next to her and encircled her with his arms. “I didn’t blame
you for seeing that man, you know. I have flaunted my affairs. I
knew when you were... doing the same.”

“Oh, Raoul,” Lisette said, turning her face to the
side so her expression was hidden from all but her husband. “None
of them meant anything to me, you must know that.”

“My beautiful ballerina, I do know,” he replied. The
couple began to kiss, their bodies melding together until they sat
in the same seat.

Auntie Lil cleared her throat loudly. When that did
not work, she coughed as if she were in imminent danger of dying
from tuberculosis. Not only was she annoyed at their mutual
stupidity, she was feeling queasy at this display of dramatic
affection. And she was determined to wring whatever information she
could from the situation.

“Now you two listen to me,” she finally announced
firmly, marching over and planting herself beside them until they
were forced to turn their attention to her. “You are both grossly
guilty of obstructing justice, and thanks to you two, a killer has
gone free for far longer than he should.”

They stared at her as if she were speaking
Swahili.

“You owe me,” Auntie Lil told them. “If you tell me
what I need to know, then I promise I will walk away from this
nonsense, never breathe a word of it to the board, and leave the
two of you to find your way through your most peculiar marriage all
on your own.”

Martinez looked as if he might put up a fight, so
Auntie Lil continued. “Don’t tempt me,” she warned them. “The board
would be most interested to learn of your extracurricular behavior
if, as I suspect, your hobbies happen to involve students at the
Metro School.”

“They were all of age!” Martinez protested.

“No matter. It’s tacky at the very least.” Auntie Lil
shifted her gaze to Lisette. “Why did Bobby Morgan dump you?” she
said. “I’m sorry to be so blunt, but that is exactly what happened,
isn’t it? He came back to New York and insisted his son be in
The Nutcracker
just to be near you, didn’t he? But then he
grew bored.”

The ballerina nodded slowly. “He was a pig.”

“Nonetheless, why did this pig dump you?” Auntie Lil
asked firmly.

“He began seeing someone else, someone younger. I’m
sure of it.”

“Who?” Auntie Lil demanded.

“I don’t know,” Lisette shouted, her anger real. The
fire in her eyes told Auntie Lil that she was telling the truth.
Lisette did not know who her rival had been and her lack of
knowledge rankled.

“Then why do you think it was someone younger?”
Auntie Lil asked.

“Something he said to me,” she said bitterly. “I will
not repeat it here.”

“You have no idea who it was?” Auntie Lil said.

Lisette shook her head. “I assumed it was one of the
other dancers. He was always surrounded by them.”

“Do you know who it was?” Auntie Lil asked Martinez.
“Since you seem so well-informed about the dancers.”

Martinez. shook his head. “I watched him closely when
I knew he was seeing my wife,” Martinez admitted. “But I didn’t
care about him once I knew they had broken up.”

“How did you know they had broken up?” Auntie Lil
asked.

“My wife’s behavior. She was desolate. So angry at me
for every little thing. Tearing me apart for such small
transgressions. That is how she always acts when her affairs
fizzle.” He made a hissing sound like a firecracker being dipped in
water.

“Small transgressions?” Lisette cried, moving away
from her husband. She perched two seats away and glared. “I suppose
you consider your four affairs in six months small transgressions?”
she asked. “I suppose you think it’s perfectly acceptable for me to
have to take a mental audit every time I enter a class. ‘Who in
this room has slept with my husband? You? You? What about you?’ How
dare you dismiss your despicable behavior as acceptable? You do
not deserve to be married to me.”

Raoul began to protest.

Auntie Lil and Herbert exchanged a glance. Herbert
nodded and the two of them marched up the short set of stairs at
stage right without bothering to look back. As they pushed through
the side exit door and breathed in the fresh night air, they could
still hear the couple battling, their passionate shouts echoing in
the emptiness of the magnificent auditorium.

Auntie Lil woke out of a sleep so deep it was like
swimming up from the depths of a heavy sea. Her dreams had been
ominous and exhausting: she was being chased by small creatures
dressed in black cloaks and forced to climb ladder after ladder to
flee them. The pursuit felt so real that she woke grateful for the
respite that awakening offered. She rose and touched her toes in
front of the mirror. At least the ache in her shoulders had
subsided somewhat. She had slept for over ten hours and her body
had welcomed the rest.

As she brewed her morning pot of coffee Auntie Lil
reflected on the events of the night before. She had followed a
trail, but when it ended, she felt little closer to a solution than
when she began. Neither of the Martinezes was guilty, she was sure.
Worse, they had no idea who was. She could try to find out who had
usurped Lisette Martinez in Bobby Morgan’s affections, but that,
too, could prove to be a fruitless path. The possibilities were
limited only by the size of the Metro’s corps and school. His new
lover could have been one of over sixty girls. Perhaps it was
better to pursue another direction. She could try to identify the
man that Mikey Morgan claimed to have seen backstage replacing
Drosselmeyer’s cloak. He had been a man of average height with dark
hair. That could be several people, even with Raoul Martinez ruled
out. Jerry Vanderbilt, Gene Levitt—he was the most likely
prospect—or he and Jerry could be in it together. But something
about the description Mikey gave just didn’t make sense.

She took her second cup of coffee to a window and
stared out at the street below. Mikey said the man replacing the
cloak had been of average height, but then he had claimed that the
man following him was tall. Either there were two people involved
or Mikey was mistaken. But hadn’t Reverend Hampton said it was a
tall man running down the path behind the Metro just a few minutes
after Morgan’s body swung across the stage? She felt more
comfortable with Hampton’s assessment. He was an adult and both
shrewd and observant. Perhaps she should call the Reverend and ask
him again just to be sure.

The phone line was dead. She remembered disconnecting
it the night before so she could sleep late without interruption.
No wonder no one had rung her up yet. She reconnected the jack and
dialed Reverend Hampton’s home. As usual a polite voice answered
and, when she gave her name and said it was an emergency, the man
on the other end promised to track down the Reverend as soon as
possible. No more than four sips of coffee later, Ben Hampton
called back.

“You aren’t going to yell at me about the
seat-on-the-board comment, are you?” he thundered into the phone in
lieu of saying hello. “It’s just politics, you know. Although, for
the record, I wouldn’t turn a seat down.”

“Any other time I’d have to differ with your handling
of the situation,” Auntie Lil said. “But I’ve got far more
important things on my mind.”

“So have I,” the Reverend replied. “Have you seen my
latest opinion polls?”