Blackbird 10 - A Little Night Murder (11 page)

I was glad to see someone genuinely sorry Jenny was gone. I said, “We’d also like to pay our respects to Mrs. Tuttle. If she’s not indisposed, may we see her?”

Fred had been in the act of accepting the plate with weepy pleasure, but at the mention of Boom Boom, his demeanor cooled. “She’s upstairs. Follow me.”

“You all seem so hard at work at rehearsing,” I said as Fred led us up the stairs. “No time off to mourn?”

“Some of us are more affected by Jenny’s death than others,” he said with another sad sniff. “But if the show is going to open on schedule, we have to keep working. The choreographer and I are doing what we can to move forward, but we’re in limbo at the moment.”

“In limbo because of Jenny’s death?” I asked.

“No.” As he neared the bedroom doors, he dropped his voice. “According to some, Jenny’s death is just a pothole on the road to a
Tony Award. Problem is, we’re still waiting for the rest of the money to come in. We can’t hire more people without the big cash.”

“The big cash?”

“From the backers. A show like this is astronomically expensive to produce. Not all the money is lined up yet.”

“I thought Ox Oxenfeld was the producer.”

“He’s the managing producer.” Fred led us along the upstairs hallway. “That means he does a lot of work but doesn’t fork over much cash. Boom Boom says we have big money coming from a very important financial backer, but he hasn’t sent the check.”

“Who is the big backer?” Lexie asked.

Fred put his hand on one of the bedroom doorknobs but didn’t turn it yet. He looked at Lexie and said with great dignity, “I’m told that’s none of my business.”

Before we had time to sympathize or ask more questions, he opened the door and waved us into the inner sanctum. The large, dim room was dominated by a gigantic canopied bed upon which Boom Boom Tuttle was laid out like an Egyptian mummy, complete with bandages over her eyes and perfumed smoke wafting in the air. The smoke did not obscure the color of Boom Boom’s skin—still very clearly blue.

Without moving from her prone position or out from under the strips of material on her face, Boom Boom snarled in a raspy voice, “Who the hell is there? What are you doing? I’m having my treatment!”

Fred said, “It’s some of the neighbors.”

“Freddie? What’s wrong with your voice? You softie, are you still all
verklempt
? Why don’t you go bake something and take your mind off everything?”

Fred’s tears overflowed all over again, and he let himself out of the bedroom with a bang.

I pulled a tissue from a conveniently placed box and held it over my nose and mouth to avoid breathing the smoke. I approached the bed cautiously and moved the tissue long enough to speak to Boom Boom. “It’s me, Nora Blackbird, Mrs. Tuttle. And my friend from next door. We’ve come to pay our condolences.”

“Your what? Oh, right. You mean because of Jenny. Sorry, I can’t get up right now. This is my two-hour pheromone treatment. It’s part of my invigoration program. I’m getting in shape for the show. Building energy. I’m playing the starring role, you know.”

Lexie crossed the room and opened a window.

Boom Boom had elastic wraps around her chin, and both skinny arms were encased in towels that appeared to be soaked in some herbal liquid. Her bare blue legs were smeared with an ointment that gave her skin a ghastly sheen. Greasy socks did not disguise the bunions on her bony blue feet. In addition to the smoking pots, a humidifying steamer sat on the bedside table, directing a moist flow of damp air directly at her nostrils.

In a chair beside the bed, her bored nurse sat leafing through a magazine. Higginbotham wore a pair of eyeglasses on a chain and a medical mask to avoid breathing all the fumes. She met my eye and shook her head, as if despairing of Boom Boom’s irreparably lost youth.

The rest of the bedroom had been set up like a theatrical dressing room, dominated by a lighted mirror over a makeup table. Every other horizontal surface was cluttered with framed photographs of Boom Boom in her younger, pre-blue days. Sometimes she posed with famous people. A few of the pictures showed her with Toodles. But most of the photos were of Boom Boom herself.

She had been very pretty in her heyday—a perky face with a keenly flirtatious gleam in her eye. There was a series of shots of Boom Boom in her single television role as the wisecracking wife in a comedy about a talking dachshund. For that role, she had been
seen most often wearing an apron and rhinestone-rimmed eyeglasses. In one picture, she appeared to be clowning around—pretending to strangle the dog while laughing wildly. In all the pictures, her skin was perfectly normal.

Lying on the bed, she was disconcertingly corpselike.

“We’re very sorry about Jenny,” I said, trying again. “She was a lovely person. Everyone’s going to miss her.”

“She was never going to be a star, but she was a nice kid. Too bad about her heart.”

“How long did she have a heart condition?”

“Always,” Boom Boom said promptly. “From the time she was little. Good thing all she ever wanted to do was play her piano. She played it day and night, all the time. Between her and Toodles, it drove me crazy. Never a quiet moment.”

It felt a little strange to be talking to a motionless body stretched out on a bed, steaming with stinking chemicals. But I said, “Was Jenny playing the piano for your recent rehearsals?”

“Sometimes, but that’s what Fred’s for. She was a pain in rehearsals. A real balabosta. Always making everybody stop and do things over. That’s no way to get a show up and running.”

Lexie had taken her time looking at all the framed photos, but finally she spoke up. “Fred mentioned you’re waiting for a backer to come through.”

“Fred should keep his mouth shut.” Boom Boom moved restlessly. “Him and Jenny—they’ve been bugging me for weeks about one thing and another. We need money for a director, to hire more dancers, to pay a costumer. Hell, I got a money guy, but he’s a little late, that’s all. He’s—right now, he’s in England. Probably going to those fancy horse races where the shiksas wear big hats. But he’ll be here soon.”

“Meanwhile, Mr. Oxenfeld is financing the rehearsals,” Lexie prompted.

“Yeah, Ox threw in the gelt to get us started, but he’s the stingy type. He takes care of the business side of things. He was a big help to Toodles.”

“And a good friend to you?” I asked.

“Naw, he wasn’t my type. I like ’em brawny.”

A brawny man might snap frail Boom Boom like a dry matchstick, but I didn’t say that aloud. I couldn’t imagine her stepping on a Broadway stage in her condition.

Instead, I said, “I understand you’ve been bothered by people who have read this morning’s story in the
Intelligencer
. About the photograph that was in Jenny’s pocket at the time of her death.”

Another dismissive wave from the bed. “The people downstairs are answering the door and the phone. It’s not my problem.”

“Do you know anything about the photograph?”

“I never saw it,” Boom Boom replied. “It’s a kid, right?”

“Yes, a small boy. Do you know who he was?”

“Who knows? Every once in a while Jenny sent money to lost causes. You know, a few bucks here or there to help a poor kid in some backwater place or other. It was probably one of her charity things.”

Lexie said, “The newspaper hinted there might be money coming to the boy in the photo.”

“He’d have a hell of a job proving it. Say, maybe I should check about Jenny’s life insurance. Maybe
I
got some money coming!”

Without glancing up from her magazine, the nurse made a disparaging noise with her lips.

Boom Boom said sharply, “Higgie, shouldn’t you be organizing my pills or something? I don’t pay you to sit around on your
tuches
.”

Higgie sighed and heaved herself out of her chair. She lumbered over to a dresser topped with a tray packed with pill bottles. She took the eyeglasses from the chain around her neck and
perched them on her nose so she could read the labels on the bottles. Methodically, she began selecting various pills and lining them up on a plate.

A doorbell gonged from the floor below.

On the bed, Boom Boom stirred like an old dog that had caught a whiff of its dinner. “Hey, if that’s some reporters, I should invite them up here to talk about my comeback.”

“Nora’s a reporter,” Lexie said.

At that news, Boom Boom sat up and removed her mask. Behind it, her eyes were pink holes in her otherwise blue face. She stared at me with stunned interest. “You’re a reporter? Maybe you could get us some press for the show?”

“Well—”

“Absolutely,” Lexie said, nudging my foot with hers. “Nora’s column would be a perfect place to give you some buzz.”

“Okay,” I said. “Maybe I could interview the cast?”

“And me!” Boom Boom said. “I could tell you all about my career.”

“Of course. And everyone else who’s been staying here to work on the show. “

“Nobody else is very interesting. Hey!” Boom Boom snapped her fingers. “You want to come to the preview on Monday? We’re performing parts of the show for some money guys Ox has rounded up. You could take some pictures, maybe get us on TV?”

“I’m with the
Intelligencer
,” I reminded her. “Maybe I could put you on our online edition, but I’m not—”

Lexie said, “Nora will do her best to get you all the publicity she can manage.”

“Right,” I said.

“Great! The preview’s on Monday. Don’t forget. Between now and then I’ll dig up some of my old scrapbooks for you.”

Lexie and I went out into the hallway together and breathed deeply of the fresh air. We could have gone down the stairs then, but I paused on the carpet.

Lexie cut her eyes toward the bedroom where we had found Jenny the day before. “What are you thinking?”

“I wouldn’t mind taking another look at Jenny’s room. Boom Boom has given us permission to investigate, hasn’t she?”

“Interview, yes. Investigate, no. But it’s a fine line, isn’t it?”

Together, we crept into Jenny’s bedroom and eased the door closed. Immediately, I noticed that someone had removed the area rug on which she had died. It gave me a pang.

But time was limited. Not sure what I was looking for, I began opening the dresser drawers. I found clothes—mostly beige. Same with the closet. A few hanging blouses and pants, a couple of sensible dresses—all arranged in descending sizes. She had obviously been losing weight for many months. I caught the faint whiff of mothballs. An assortment of old garden hats and beige handbags were untidily arranged on the shelf above the hanging bar. No photo albums.

On the floor were two large boxes. I opened the top one and discovered it was full of music—large sheets of it covered with notes and scribbles.

Lexie peered over my shoulder. “That’s a conductor’s score, with the composer’s notes, see?” She pointed at the scrawled words on the margin.

“One of her father’s scores?”

“I don’t know. Do you recognize the title?”

“Lover, Sing Me a Tune.” The title didn’t mean anything to me. I dug down past it into the box and found more music. “Wedding Belles”; “I Love You for Always, My Dear.” The box was stuffed with pages of it.

“Lex, maybe these are more undiscovered Toodles Tuttle songs!”

“If so, the Tuttles have a gold mine on their hands. But look. His signature’s not on any of the pages.”

I flipped through many of the large sheets. “No signature at all,” I reported.

Lexie turned away to look through the things left on the bedside table. Over her shoulder, she said, “I remember more stuff being here.”

“The police must have taken evidence.” I peeked into the adjacent dressing room, where I had rested after discovering Jenny dead. All of her prescription bottles had been removed. Someone had emptied the trash. All the energy drink cans were gone.

Lexie opened the drawers of the bedside table, then flipped through the books that were stacked there. Something fell out of one of the books and fluttered to the floor. She bent to retrieve it. “Here’s an envelope.”

I went to her side, and we looked at it together. Jenny’s name and address on one side, no return address, a forever stamp that had been processed by the post office. Figuring my fingerprints were all over the room already and that I had nothing more to lose, I took the letter from Lexie. “How many federal laws will I break by looking at this?”

“Nobody would send a woman as pregnant as you to federal prison. You’d take up too much space.”

“That’s comforting.” The envelope had been slit as if by a knife or letter opener. It was easy to slip out the letter and unfold it.

Dear Miss Tuttle,

How come I have’nt heard a word from you? I thought you said I could audition for your show, but you have’nt called? I think you and
me both know I could make things tough for you, so how about coming through for me? Or else.

The scrawled signature was none other than Bridget O’Halloran’s.

“Oh, great,” I muttered.

Lexie read the note over my shoulder. “Bridget knew Jenny? Before she died?”

I stuffed the note back into the envelope. “Michael’s going to be peeved about this.”

“Not as peeved as the police. Nora, this note sounds threatening.” Lexie’s eyes were wide. “Do you think . . . that Bridget could have murdered Jenny?”

“How?” I asked. “Bridget arrived in the house just minutes before the body was found. And Jenny had been dead for some time.”

“They could have met the night before Jenny was found, though, right? And maybe Bridget—did what? Slipped Jenny a poison? Or some drugs?” Lexie took the envelope from me and used it as a fan to cool herself. “This note implies a lot.”

Reluctantly, I handed the book to Lexie, and she tucked the envelope back inside.

My only hope to clear Bridget from the list of suspects was to keep looking. I headed for the upright piano. Since Jenny’s death, someone had taken the framed photo of Toodles and put it facedown on top of the piano. As if nobody wanted to see his smiling face anymore? I opened the piano bench. Empty. I closed the bench and sat on it, thinking. At that moment, I noticed the layer of dust on the piano keys. I touched one, and a sour note sounded from inside the piano.