A Toast Before Dying (25 page)

Her frown grew deeper, so I said, “Okay, here are some numbers if you don’t hear from me in two hours.”

I gave her Bertha’s number, Elizabeth’s number, and the address of the theater.

“You have Dad’s number, but don’t call unless you really have to. He worries too much.”

She jotted them down and looked at me. “Anyone else?”

I thought of Tad, but since I wasn’t going to war I saw no need to call out the cavalry.

“I think that’s sufficient.” I pressed her hand and headed for the elevator.

“Two hours,” she reminded me.

S
tar Manhattan’s door was unlocked and I pushed it gently and again listened to my footfalls grow quiet and disappear as I approached the stage. Three sliding wall panels, over six feet high and painted black, were on each side with enough room to walk between each, like a narrow maze.

I quietly walked around the panels to the back. In the dressing area, the glow of a small glass-shaded lamp lit a table overflowing with the actor’s usual accessories. Buried in the clutter, a small transistor with fading batteries sent out a thin crackly tune.

“Teddi?”

The name sounded cool in the silence.

“Teddi?” I called again to test the sound and also to figure who might have disappeared when they heard me step across the stage. The lamp and the radio were on. Someone had to be here. I looked around at the area, which seemed more disorganized than on my previous
visit. The cables were still coiled like glutted pythons, and the trunk, empty of its contents, lay open with its lid held up by a length of iron piping. I wondered where all the stuff had gone.

I turned off the radio to allow the battery to die a decent death, then placed the chair so that my back was to the wall and sat down to wait. The silence seemed different now, and I knew I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t in the mood for cat and mouse, so I left the chair, approached the stage, and slipped into the maze of panels, following a faint skittering sound.

When I moved between the second and third panels, facing me at the other end was Teddi’s mother, Marcella Hamilton Hamil Eden. At least I thought it was her. She came nearer, moving soundlessly on the balls of her feet, and decked out in a surprising outfit: black hooded cotton jacket, jogging pants, and black tennis shoes.

All you need, I thought, is blackface and you’d …

“Well, we meet again,” she said. Her voice was low and her smile showed a lot more teeth than last time. The smile was by no means friendly, and I expected to hear the whine of sinister organ music break out as she approached. I did not back away because pound for pound I knew I had the advantage and could take her down without breaking a sweat. But when her hand came up out of the dark, the equation shifted: I saw the gun.

“Now,” she whispered, “let’s step back where we can sit and talk.”

“Talk about what?” I asked. I moved back to the chair and sat down again. “I came to see Teddi. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is your nosiness. Why did you come here in the first place? You weren’t interested in any audition.”

I considered several answers but looked at the gun again and chose the one least likely to tick her off. “Teddi called me,” I said, “and here I am.”

She had been standing in front of me but now eased away to sit down on a large packing crate. The gun hand never wavered.

“You’re making me nervous with that weapon,” I said. “Why don’t you rest it?”

“I will. In my own good time. But first, let’s talk.”

“Fine. Where’s Teddi?”

“On her way upstate to an old farmhouse where she’ll be for the next week or so, working on a script. With a little luck, she should be halfway across the Tap-pen Zee Bridge as we speak. I left that message for you.”

I said nothing. The voices had sounded so much alike on the machine. Now I wondered how long I could engage her in conversation, stall her until Miss Adele got worried. Now I was sorry I had asked her not to call Dad, but the others. What could Bert do but get more nervous? What could Elizabeth do?

“My daughter should be more careful,” Marcella said. “It took some time but I managed to examine her phone bills. There were no Brooklyn numbers. Several upstate, a few Long Island, but mostly Manhattan.
Nothing even near Brooklyn. I knew Teddi was lying. At first I even thought you might be related to Kendrick—”

“That’s a possibility. You know we all look alike.”

She flinched as if I had struck her and I watched her brush her hair back with the same nervous gesture that Teddi used. That Thea had used. And perhaps Dessie might have also used.

I thought of the clipping in my pocket. If I died and the clipping disappeared, that would be the end of everyone’s nervous condition. But it wasn’t going to be that way.

“What did Teddi want?” she asked. Her voice had dropped to a whisper and an edge of impatience or panic had crept in.

Be calm, speak softly, I said to myself as I looked at her. I could manage her impatience but panic was another matter once it got out of control.

She shifted position on the edge of the packing crate and now the gun rested in her lap. Her eyes had narrowed so much I thought they had closed, but she was still on alert.

“Teddi wanted to find out more about Thea’s death,” I said. “And since I live in Harlem, she thought I could help her.”

“And were you able to?”

“Not yet.”

“Who do you think killed her?”

“Someone who’s missing a diamond earring,” I said, expecting to play twenty questions for at least another hour, but I miscalculated. The hand with the gun
flew up and her eyes blazed wide. She moved quickly from the edge of the crate.

“You bitch! You nosy bitch! You’ll be sorry you ever came down here! Get up!”

She pointed the weapon at me and waved. “Come on. Step over there. Move!”

I moved slowly, circling away from her, knowing that I couldn’t move far enough, and knowing that a .45 was powerful enough to blow half my face away. Just like Thea’s face.

“Stand there!”

I glanced down into the empty trunk. I was going to take the place of the junk that had been cleared out of it.

“Did you kill her?” I asked.

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

“Well then, you’ll never know.”

She maneuvered into position, never taking her eyes from me.

“How are you going to justify killing me?” I asked, stalling for more time. I had to keep her talking.

“Justify? They’ll have to find you first. This trunk is going to the bottom of an old well on that farm upstate. No one interferes with my life. No one. Not Thea, not that fool in the wheelchair … and not you. I’ve worked too hard to—”

“You killed Flyin’ Home?”

She didn’t answer but instead lifted the gun and held it in line with my nose, steadying her aim with both hands.

I raised my arms like a traffic cop. “You think I came in here without a backup? I’m telling you: If I’m not back uptown within a few minutes, the police will be in this place in a blink.”

“Well, that simply means I have to move faster, that’s all.”

She hesitated for the briefest second to glance at her watch in the dim light, and that was the second I needed to grab the iron pipe. The lid of the trunk slammed down and I ducked to the floor as she pulled the trigger. The recoil was terrific, and in that second I was on her with the pipe, knocking the gun from her hand. It slid across the small space and we both dove for it. She got to it first, but before she could bring it up, my hands closed on her wrist and around her throat.

“Let it go! Dammit, drop it!”

My thumb pressed on her windpipe and she flipped the gun out of her hand and kicked me in the stomach, knocking the breath out of me. I was ready to kill her now. Where was the gun? I spied it less than a foot away, and we scrambled for it. My stomach felt as if an elephant had stepped on it. She slid away from me and came up with the weapon again. She was in a crouch now, and blind with panic. Her breath was coming in deep bursts. She looked around as if I were no longer there and ran toward the maze onstage.

I backed toward the dressing table and knocked over the lamp, smashing the bulb. She had the gun. I had the darkness.

The small light still shone from center stage but was too weak to reach beyond the maze. Everything
was in shadow or darkness. I bent down and crept toward the stage, freezing each time I heard movement. My eyes adjusted to the dark and I tried to gauge where the next sound might come from. I took off my shoe and threw it against the panel farthest away, and the flash and roar of the gun followed.

The acrid smell of gunpowder drifted over me as I eased along the wall toward the flash. I heard her moving away on the other side. Then she stopped. There was no movement, no breathing, no sound. Where was she? I waited, straining to hear in the dark. Then I took another step and stopped when I felt the steel nozzle pressed against the nape of my neck. She had crept so close I could feel her breath.

“Well,” she said. “Thea wouldn’t let sleeping dogs lie. Wouldn’t stay out of my life. I got rid of her and now you come along to stir things up again.” Her voice echoed in the silence. “But it’s not going to happen. This is it!”

She tried to steady the weapon with both hands but still trembled violently. I looked at her face in the dim light and saw a mask of madness. There was no room for dialogue, rational or otherwise. I braced myself for what was coming but it was a different click, sharp and small—like a switch—and lights flooded the entire theater in blinding brightness.

T
eddi leaned against the far end of the panel, wide-eyed, struggling to catch her breath. Her face was drained of color and her arms hung limply. Then she moved toward us and stopped.

“Mother! What … what in heaven’s name—?”

She moved nearer, staring past me as she held out her hands.

“Give that to me. Please, please. Don’t make it any worse …”

I had been pressed against the panel with the weapon to my neck. When it dropped away, my heartbeat started to slow and the dryness left my throat. My tongue moved again but no words came. I began to shiver and realized that my outfit was soaked with sweat.

Marcella collapsed against the panel, and Teddi managed to get her to a chair.

“How? How?” Was all I could manage. I still couldn’t speak.

Teddi shook her head slowly. “I was on my way upstate. I knew I’d be gone for a week so I called Elizabeth for a last-minute check on things. When she told me you were at the theater to meet with me, I knew something was wrong and I turned back.”

I glanced at my watch and knew that Miss Adele, bless her soul, must have gotten on the drum as soon as I stepped out her door.

Teddi was leaning against the panel, studying her mother’s drawn face, wondering what to say, what to do.

Finally, she whispered, “Thea wouldn’t let sleeping dogs lie? Wouldn’t stay out of your life? I can’t believe what I just heard.”

Marcella did not look at her but focused on some distant point that neither of us could see.

“She … she had started to blackmail me,” she murmured. “Wanted to be paid for her silence—”

“No she didn’t,” Teddi cut in. “I saw that letter and—”

Marcella whirled to face her and I was glad Teddi had put the gun in her handbag and out of her mother’s reach.

“You … you little sneak! You were reading my mail?”

“Not your mail, Mother. Just that particular letter that seemed to finally send you over the edge. You were always on edge, looking over your shoulder as if someone or something were shadowing you. As long as I
could remember, you were running, running from one doctor to another. Pills and more pills. Neither Dad nor I could understand it.

“I couldn’t figure it out until that letter. It shook you so that you dropped it and ran to your bedroom to get your pills. I don’t know which ones or how many, but you were out cold in two minutes and that’s when I read it.”

A minute passed before Marcella found her voice. When she opened her mouth, it sounded as if she had swallowed sand. Her face was a complete blank, as if she had found one of the pills in her pocket and quickly consumed it.

“I was running. It was like running a marathon—no, like trying to stay a step ahead on a monstrous wheel. But it seems I wasn’t quite fast enough.”

She gazed at Teddi, then at me, and went on. “All that girl had to do was stay away. Let me live my life. That’s all she had to do!”

“
That girl
, as you call her, was your daughter,” Teddi said. “She was your daughter. Didn’t that mean anything?”

“She was a mistake. I had no intention of allowing a mistake to ruin my life. As far as I’m concerned, she never existed.”

“But why?”

“Because I didn’t need any reminders about who I’d been. I was concerned with what I could become, what I did become.”

Teddi eased into a chair opposite her mother and leaned forward, though she did not touch her.

“So you killed her? You killed her before I had a chance to get …”

“To get what?” Marcella snapped. “What did you want? Why didn’t you mind your own business?”

“Thea
was
my business, Mother. Just as much as she was yours. I decided to find her. When I did, I sent her one thousand dollars a month.”

Marcella sat up, leaning on the edge of her chair, her face swollen with anger. “You did what? You always
were
a fool. She would’ve bled you dry!”

“You’re wrong. I wasn’t buying her. I did it because she was my sister. And once I knew her name, it was easy to have my banker access the rest.

“I found out where she lived and I was trying to find a way to approach her, to be her friend, and then to be her sister, but I didn’t move fast enough.” Teddi paused, shaking her head at the wonder of it. “You got to her first. Trying to protect yourself and your stupid secret! She was black. You and I are black. I don’t feel any different about myself now that I know. Why couldn’t you have—?”

Marcella waved her hand. Her voice dropped low, as if she were trying to warn a child whose fingers were too near an open fan, who didn’t know any better than to stick them into the blades. She spoke slowly so as not to frighten the child.