Lethally Blond (23 page)

“Hardly. Like I told you, I had no clue about their relationship. If you
must
know, Locket was miffed because I wasn’t helping more with her book PR. I told her it wasn’t in my job description. You really think I might have killed her, don’t you?”

“No, I’m not saying that, Harper. But I do have reason to believe the killer might be a blond woman who has acting skills. Someone who can impersonate people and even make her voice sound like a man’s. Any ideas?”

“Oh, great. So now you’re implying Tom was seeing someone
else
?”

“It’s possible the killer is a man, and this woman is simply in cahoots with him. Does Deke ever have anyone like that around? Or even Alex?”

She looked as me as if her wheels were spinning but shook her head. “No one comes to mind.”

Surreptitiously, I glanced at my watch. I needed to make my way back to the theater. I thanked Harper for her help and signaled for the check.

“I need to know,” she demanded. “How’d you find out about me and Alex? Does everyone else know?”

“The police let it slip,” I lied. “I’m not aware of who else knows at this point, but you better be prepared for the fact that news may leak out on the set.”

It had started to drizzle when I left the hotel, and it took me forever to hail a cab. My clothes were damp and spongy by the time I collapsed in the back of one. I checked my phone and saw that Beau had finally called—I had turned off my cell phone before entering the hotel so there’d be no interruptions. I wanted to call him back and firm up our plans for tonight, but first I needed time to think.

I hadn’t suspected anything between Harper and Alex, but it wasn’t tough to accept it. What I couldn’t be sure about, though, were her claims of innocence. She was a former actress and now a professional spin doctor, and that meant she was probably a damn good liar. Maybe the whole point of her confessing to me about the booty calls with Alex was to deflect my attention from the bigger crime she was guilty of.

But if she wasn’t the murderer, who
was
? There was still Deke hovering in the wings. I wondered if he had a chick in his life, someone who would be willing to play havoc with my mental state by making scary phone calls and going through my steak knives. Maybe Chris would know.

As the cab pulled up in front of the theater, I could see movement in there. An overweight woman with long, lank red hair and thick black-framed glasses (the “I’m hip and live downtown” style) was screwing the cap back on a Pepsi bottle on a small table, left over obviously from intermission. I tried the door and this time it opened.

“May I help you?” she asked gruffly. “The box office is closed.”

“I just wanted to see if I could get some information. My name is Bailey Weggins, and I’m curious about a play you did a year or so ago.”

“I’m a member of the company—I can probably help you. My name’s Natalie.”

“
Taming of the Shrew
,” I said. “I want to check who was in the cast.”

She crinkled her eyes curiously but then cocked her head in the direction over my left shoulder. “We did it at the end of the winter. The program’s up there on the wall someplace.”

As she resumed her cleanup, sliding cookies from a paper plate into a plastic tub, I crossed to the other side of the small lobby. It was a shabby space, stuffed with a few worn armchairs and scarred café tables.

From the cheaply framed programs on the wall, I could see that the theater had done an eclectic mix of productions: some of the classics like
Julius Caesar
,
All’s Well That End’s Well
, Anouilh’s
Antigone
,
Six Characters in Search of an Author,
and then a range of contemporary stuff by playwrights unknown, with kooky titles like
Hearts Too
and
Black as Day
.

It took only a second to find
Shrew.
While some of the other programs featured illustrations or photos, this one was fairly simple, with just a border and the words set in a kind of Elizabethan-style type. My eye went instantly to Petruchio and then followed the line to the opposite side of the page: Tom Fain. In that split second, Tom seemed alive, and I felt a gigantic stab of remorse. I dragged my eye down to Katharina and then followed that line. When I saw the actress’s name, I gasped. Suddenly it felt as if someone had grabbed me hard by the back of the neck. It was
Blythe
who had played the role. The play had run last February—ten performances. That may have been when Tom had first met Blythe. Was
she
the mystery visitor in Andes? Had Tom quoted Baptista to Locket because it was Katharina herself who had driven up that day?

“Everything okay?” the woman behind me asked.

“Did you know Tom Fain?” I said.

“Of course,” she said soberly. “We all did. He was part of this company.”

“I’m a friend of a friend, and I’m looking into his death. Is there anything you could tell me about him that might be significant?” I wanted to know about Blythe, of course, but I sensed it was smart not to tip my hand with someone in the theater group.

“No—other than the fact that the guy was a real sweetheart. He was the only actor I ever met who asked questions about
you
. Why so interested in
Taming of the Shrew
? What would that have to do with anything?”

“I’m just following up every lead possible. Was he friends with anyone in the company?”

She pulled off her glasses and turned them around, examining the lenses—for
what
, a smudge? Her eyes seemed much smaller without the lenses in front of them.

“He had a few buddies,” she said, sliding the glasses back on. “And he used to date Blythe Hammell, the girl who played Katharina. She’s just sick about what happened—as you can imagine.”

Every muscle in my body froze.

“Oh, Blythe’s around?” I asked as casually as possible, but my voice seemed muffled to me, like the dampened sounds of laughter emanating from inside the theater. My mind was reeling. “I thought she’d gone to Miami.”

“She went somewhere south for a while—she had a part in an independent movie down there. But she came back when she heard about Tom.”

“And you had a chance to talk to her.”

“She dropped by yesterday. She wants to do another play. She thinks it will help take her mind off things.”

“Is she a good actress?” I said.

“Blythe? Oh, she’s brilliant. The problem with Blythe is that she’s a bit of a maniac. The reason she isn’t any further along in her career isn’t because of lack of talent—she just doesn’t realize that you’re only entitled to be a
diva
after you’ve made it.”

“Will she be around again?”

“Yeah, but I don’t know when.”

“She looks like she’s on the tall side,” I said, thinking of the visitor to my apartment.

“Tall?”
she said, her tone indicating that her patience was now wearing thin. “I
guess
. She’s probably five eight or nine.”

She glanced at her watch and gathered up a batch of empty soda liters in her arms. “I need to finish up here. Is there anything else?”

“A cell phone number for Blythe,” I blurted out almost desperately. I forced a smile. “I’d love to touch base with her—she might know something.”

“You’ll have to talk to the manager. He should be around the office tomorrow.” She rattled off a number that I hurriedly entered into my BlackBerry.

“I know you’re busy, but just one more thing,” I nearly pleaded. “Is there a cast shot somewhere—from
Taming of the Shrew
?”

“Over there,” she said, indicating another wall.

I hurried over there. Tom was dead center in the shot, his hair very short at the time. Standing next to him was a woman with thick black hair.

“Is this Blythe?” I asked. “With the black hair?”

“Yes, but she doesn’t actually look like that,” she said. “Blythe’s really a blonde, but she’s a master with wigs.”

Oh, I bet.

When I stepped outside a minute later, I discovered that it was teeming now. Ducking under an awning, I hit Beau’s number.

“There you are,” he said. “I was worried about you.”

“There’s a new development,” I blurted out. “I’ll fill you in when I see you.”

“Can you come over now? I want to hear everything.”

“It’s raining absolute buckets out here. I have to find a cab home first and then one to your place. It may take me forever to get there.”

“Why don’t I meet you at your place. That means only one trip for you—and it’s usually easy to find a cab around here.”

I thanked him for the offer and sloshed my way toward Fifth Avenue. A taxi came hurtling down the street, spraying water with its wheels, but as soon as I stepped into the street, a cab poacher leapt out a few yards ahead of me and shot up his hand. It was fifteen minutes before I managed to hail one successfully. I was soaked to the bone by the time I finally threw myself into the back of it.

As soggy as I was and as shivery as I felt, there was only one thought on my mind: Blythe. She was an actress, reputedly a brilliant one. Now I knew why I’d felt that jostling sensation in my brain: The stuff I’d read online about stalker behavior had clearly lined up in my subconscious with the memory of all those cards and notes Blythe had sent to Tom. Although theoretically her behavior was within the realm of what your average red-blooded girl might resort to in the desperate days after being kicked to the curb, it also hinted at a possible obsession. Perhaps Blythe had never gone to Miami at all. She may have been aware of the house in Andes and shown up there that Saturday afternoon. Tom, not knowing how dangerous she was, would have seen her arrival as more of a nuisance. He may have called to her from the window when she emerged from her car, told her to come up to the bathroom. At the time, her intention may not have been to kill him, just make him see reason. When he hadn’t, she could have attacked in a frenzy.

Why kill Locket, then? Perhaps she’d actually seen Locket leave Tom’s place in Andes and had decided she had to die, too, once an opportunity presented itself. Or maybe she suspected Locket knew something about Tom’s murder. But how would she have gotten wind of that?

As I climbed out of the cab in the rain, I glanced anxiously around the area in front of my apartment building. You’d have to be crazy to be out on a night like tonight, but whoever had talked their way into my apartment—Blythe or not—might very well
be
crazy, and I was worried that she’d be back at some point.

Even before stripping off my sopping wet clothes, I did a full under-bed-and-in-closet inspection of my pad—slightly overboard, perhaps, but I knew if I didn’t, I wouldn’t feel totally safe. The place looked exactly as I’d left it—no daggers lying about tonight. Once I was in dry jeans and a sweater, with water heating for tea, I grabbed my composition book and furiously jotted down notes and questions to myself. Should I go to the police immediately? It was hard to imagine them wanting to investigate Blythe simply on my hunch. A whole bunch of cutesy Hallmark cards spelled heartsick chick, not necessarily dangerous stalker. And the line to Petruchio was hardly a definitive link. Since Tom liked quoting the Bard, you could argue that he might have used that line to refer to
anyone
he was about to have an unpleasant conversation with, not simply someone who was in the play with him. I needed to gather more info before I approached Windgate with my theory.

If Blythe was planning to spend more time hanging around the Chaps Theatre, that could provide me with the perfect opportunity to come face-to-face with her and initiate a discussion. But in order to find out when she’d be there, I was going to have to proceed delicately, or someone might tip her off that I’d been making inquiries. If she were indeed the killer, she would be easily spooked.

The hapless roommate, Terry: That was another avenue to pursue. If Blythe was back in town, she may have made contact and revealed her whereabouts. I tried the number, and Terry picked up on the third ring, sounding as if she’d long since crawled under the covers for the night.

“I’m so sorry to bother you,” I told her. “It’s Bailey Weggins again.”

“I
just
got to sleep. And I’ve got a presentation on rolling benefits to do tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s really important.”

“Yeah, well, actually I was going to call
you
, but I lost that slip of paper with your number. Blythe is back in New York.”

“You
talked
to her?” I exclaimed.

“Yeah, she called me. She swears—and I mean
really
,
really
swears—that she’s going to pay me back everything she owes me. According to her, she made a nice chunk of change from the movie she did.”

“Is she planning to move back in with you?”

“No, and she won’t tell me where she’s staying. She won’t even give me her cell phone number.”

Damn, I thought. “Does she know about Tom?”

“Yes, I told her, and she said she’d already heard. And it was weird—all she said was that she felt sorry but that he wasn’t really all that nice of a guy.”

“Have you any idea what she’s up to?”

“Now that her movie is done, she says she wants to get back into
theater.
” She said the word
theater
in a fluttery, mock highfulutin way. “She practically told me to expect to see her as a presenter at the Tonys next year.”

“But did she say anything
specific
about her plans, about what she’s going to be doing over the next few weeks? Any auditions, for instance?”

“Well, I think she’s doing stuff with this theater company she’s a member of. It’s in the Village. I know she’s going there tomorrow afternoon because she said that afterwards she was going to drop by the apartment here and pick up some stuff she left behind. I told her she’d better have a check with her—for the
full
amount she owes me.”

“Did—did you mention me, by any chance?”

“I gave her your message—I mean, that’s what you
told
me to do. I thought maybe you’d have already talked to her.”