Murder: The Musical (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery, #5) (20 page)

“What’s going on?” Under scraggly white brows, Fran looked serious. He paid no attention whatever to Mort’s ravings, and Wetzon was too overwhelmed by the realization that Smitty was Mark Smith. In the sum total of what was important in her life, Mort and his posturings had no ranking. She picked up Fran’s cane with its ornately carved death’s head, surprised by its weight, and handed it to him.

She threw a look back along the path she’d just come, then pressed a hand to her mouth. Shaking her head at Fran, she made a dash for the ladies’ room and upchucked the beer and what little else she’d had in her stomach, all the while thinking,
This is stupid. Stupid!
She dried her eyes with toilet paper and rinsed her mouth with cold water from the sink.

Someone was hammering on the door. Fran? If he was doing it with his cane, he’d break the door down. What had Bernstein said about the murder weapon? A blunt cylindrical object? She tucked that thought away for future rumination.

“Birdie! Are you all right?”

“Barely.”

“What? Oh, forget it.” Carlos opened the door and came in, concern making his face mushy.

“Carlos! You can’t come in here.” Another wave of nausea hit her.

“Oh, please!”

“Okay then, change with me.” She shrugged out of her coat and thrust it at him. “I don’t want to barf on my fur.”

“Oh, I get it.” He grinned at her. “Barf is okay on my leather. Mmmmmm.” He stroked the fur. “Just try and get this back.”

Shivering, she wrapped herself in Carlos’s leather coat and gave him a wan smile. “Thanks. I’m okay now. It was from drinking beer on an empty stomach.”

“Really, darling? Do tell. Fran said, rather quaintly I thought, that you were running as if the devil himself was chasing you.”

“Moi?
Oh, no.” She became engrossed in the buttons on his coat. Anything to avoid meeting his shrewd eyes. “It was just an accident in the dark. I tripped over his cane....”

“Birdie, I know you’re hiding something, and I won’t have it.” He jumped up and down with both feet doing a dancer’s version of Rumplemortskin. A clever gypsy had once dubbed Mort in mid-tantrum Rumplemortskin, and it had stuck. “Tell Carlos at once.”

Wetzon laughed and hugged him. “Hanging around Mort is contagious.”

“Don’t breathe on me, please.”

“God, I love you,” she said, “but you’re not going to be any happier about this than I am. And for totally different reasons.”

“Birdie—”

“It’s Mark Smith.”

“Mark Smith? Who’s that? Oh, wait, don’t tell me. The Barracuda’s kid. What does Mark Smith have to do with anything?”

“He’s your Smitty.”

“Smitty. Smitty?” The implications of it began to sink in. “Oh shit! I thought he looked like someone I knew ...”

“Carlos, he’s barely seventeen, and—”

“Trouble.” Carlos looked as green as Wetzon felt. “I can’t believe the Barracuda could produce such a nice kid.”

“I just saw Poppy trying to—”

“Don’t tell me, I know. She’s been at him for weeks, torturing Mort. Mort is crazy about him.”

“Oh, come on, Carlos.”

“Birdie, believe me, Smitty is gay.”

“God, Carlos, Smith will
die.”
Wetzon had a sudden, terrible thought. “Did anything happen between you?”

“No. But it could have. Shit, he’s told everyone he’s twenty-two.”

“You all right in there?” Fran called, thumping on the door.

“Yes.” Wetzon groped in her purse for her lipstick and made her lips pink again.

“Come on, Birdie.” Carlos bumped shoulders with her gently. “We decided to break for dinner. Let’s get you some tea. Personally, I need something a whole lot stronger.”

They exited the ladies’ room to find the stage lights dimmed. The theatre was almost deserted, except for some activity near the orchestra pit. Wetzon could make out JoJo’s profile because he was such a lump of lard.

Kay Lewis’s assistant Nomi sat with her feet up on the tech table. She was watching one of the computers and eating out of a cardboard container. The aroma of Chinese food surrounded her.

Wetzon’s stomach gurgled. How could she be hungry now? But she was.

They came out through the front of the house because it was easier. Sunny Browning stood in the lobby with Twoey, examining the picture boards holding photographs of the actors. Later they would be replaced by scenes from the play the photographer was shooting at the dress.

“We’re going around the corner to Remington’s,” Sunny announced. She kept a proprietary eye on Twoey.

“Birdie?”

“Let’s go with them. You can get a drink and I can have ginger ale and saltines.” She was thinking:
Smith is going to need someone who loves her very much once she finds out about Mark. Someone like Twoey.
It’s a pity Smith was so hardheaded. Wetzon had the uneasy feeling that Smith would lose Twoey to Sunny Browning.

“You’re looking a little pale.” Twoey planted a kiss on Wetzon’s cheek. He was flushed. Well, at least Twoey was enjoying himself.

“And you look as if you’re having a wonderful time.”

Twoey laughed. “I am. Sunny’s been filling in the gaps for me. I’m going to be an expert in out-of-town tryouts. Would you believe it cost $150 thou to load the scenery into the theatre?”

“Going out of town may cost a bloody fortune,” Sunny said, “but it’s better than staying in New York and trying to fix a show with the theatre mavens second-guessing you all the way. It’s vicious. And with a little luck we’ll cover salaries, at the very least, out of box office receipts.”

Boylston Street at night. This part of Boston had changed little from Wetzon’s road experience. Derelicts and panhandlers sized them up on the sucker quotient. Twoey emptied his pocket change into the cardboard cup a bedraggled woman held out to them.

“Now every vagrant in a three-mile radius will have your number,” Sunny warned.

“Listen, Sunny darling.” Carlos grabbed Sunny’s arm and walked ahead with her. “I’m a little worried about Phil. He’s not up on the cues. The changes are consistently late. I hate to say it but Dilla would have ...”

Wetzon and Twoey fell in behind Carlos and Sunny.

“Twoey, Mark’s here.”

“I know. Xenie told me. He’s sitting in on some classes at Harvard. Maybe we’ll get to see him.” Twoey held the door for her, and they followed their companions into Remington’s, which Wetzon remembered as having been a bank in an earlier incarnation. They had to wait for a table.

“I don’t mean in Boston. I mean Mark’s on the show. He’s got some sort of gofer job. And he’s calling himself Smitty.”

“Good for him!” Twoey said heartily. Then he frowned. “Xenie’s not going to be happy about it.” He shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know that that’s true. Xenie may surprise us. There’s no telling what she’ll do.”

“That’s
true.”

“You say he’s working on the show now?”

“Yup.”

“I’ve been here since Tuesday. How has he managed to stay out of my way?”

“Twoey, he’s been hanging around rehearsals in New York telling everyone he’s twenty-two and in college. Mark’s got a vivid imagination, and he’s inventive, but he must have had a jolt when he saw you, and then me.”

Twoey chucked her under the chin. “Don’t worry about him, Wetzon. He’ll be all right.”

“I’m worried about him, and I’m worried about Smith, too. She’s especially vulnerable where Mark is concerned. You know that, Twoey.”

The bar was packed with serious drinkers. More people lined up behind Wetzon and Twoey. Still, it was only ten minutes before they were seated in the crowded dining room opposite the bar.

Obscene things were ordered, by Wetzon’s taste, like knockwurst and baked beans, fish and chips, New England clam chowder—“Fridays only,” and beer. Wetzon stuck with ginger ale and a crock of French onion soup.

“ ... have to give the devil her due,” Carlos said, seemingly continuing on a subject he and Sunny had discussed on the walk over.

“She could cajole the crew to do anything for her. I don’t know how she did it,” Sunny agreed. She was absently stirring her Bloody Mary.

“Dilla?” Wetzon, sitting opposite Carlos, was weary and a bit lightheaded. She felt her eyelids droop.

“Yes.” Sunny looked at her intently. “Leslie, you know these detectives. Do they have a clue who killed her?”

“I’m not piped in, Sunny, if that’s what you mean, and they wouldn’t tell me if they did.”

“I’m sure it was a robbeiy. Her purse was missing—and—did anyone notice? I’ll bet anything she wasn’t wearing the ring when they found her.”

“What ring?” Wetzon snapped quickly alert.

Sunny frowned. “Someone gave it to her, I would think. It was not the kind of thing you give yourself. Probably that mysterious investor she was bringing in. It was hard to miss it. She wore it all that week.”

“Did you see it, Carlos?”

“What is this, Birdie darling, the third degree?” He was chomping on fries with such pure abandon that Wetzon was jealous.

Her foot nudged his under the table. “Come on, give.”

“Yeah, I saw it. Who could miss it? It had a stone as big as ... the Ritz.”

Sunny closed her eyes for a brief moment, then opened them. “It was this wide yellow gold band, right, Carlos?”

He nodded. “And set flat into it was a humongous yellow diamond.”

Wetzon
comme
Holmes felt a tingle of pleasure. It was elementary. A crack addict could turn that little item into a number of hits. Why hadn’t anyone mentioned the ring earlier?

Another thought struck her. Could the diamond ring have anything to do with the pouch of jewelry Izz had brought Wetzon in Dilla’s apartment? She hadn’t gotten a good look at the contents of the pouch. The question was, had Dilla been wearing the ring when she died?

The names embroidered in the pouch were
Lenny
and
Celia.
Susan had called Dilla’s mother Ruth. Sunny could be right. Dilla might have been murdered for her ring. Unless Susan ... no, that couldn’t possibly be.... But Wetzon well knew that given certain circumstances even she herself was capable of ... What if Dilla was leaving Susan for someone else? The mystery investor in
Hotshot
who had never come forward. Maybe the ring was Susan’s. If Susan had done it, she could have taken the ring and ... God, no. Not Susan. Enough of that, she scolded herself. Close it down, put it away, think about the show.

They got back to the theatre at seven and the tech/dress for the second act began. The company was in “ten out of twelves,” which meant the unions would allow producers to rehearse ten out of a consecutive twelve hours until the opening without an overtime penalty. Theatrical union contracts were based on an eight-and-a-half-consecutive-hour day, of which seven hours could be spent on rehearsal. But in the few days before an out-of-town opening, everything changed. Producers were given more leeway. Rehearsals ran eight to noon, one to six, and seven to midnight—when everything stopped dead. After midnight was “golden time,” when stagehands received double their rate—fifty, sixty, or seventy dollars an hour—although they were already getting overtime.

Wetzon chose an aisle seat three rows behind the computer board, which was even denser with crumpled napkins, coffee, and food containers, keeping half an eye out for Mark. The theatre was cold and stale.

The light cue was late again.

“Stop!”

Mort came blasting out of the shadows front of house right screaming for Kay. But when he turned, Wetzon saw it was not Mort, but Sam Meidner, wearing that Mort-sort of cap. With his gray beard, at first glance in the dim light, the composer looked remarkably like Mort. But there was Mort sitting in the third row with Carlos.

Fran shuffled down the aisle and sat in the row behind Wetzon. His cane rattled against the arm of the seat. He pressed her shoulder firmly. “How’re you feeling?” He spoke conversationally, making no stab at a whisper.

Wetzon nodded and smiled at him.

“From the top,” JoJo ordered.

Sam retreated and the actors started the number from the beginning. When they finally got to the first ending without interruption, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. The encore went smoothly until the last note. Then a backdrop designed for a speedy transition came down way too fast, crashing to the stage. The actors scattered. There was a moment of stunned silence. Like an eruption, minus his sling and cervical collar, Mort rose out of his seat behind JoJo.

“Phil! Where
the fuck
is he?
Phil!
Goddammit. I’ll
kill
him.”

“Everyone okay?” JoJo called.

Everyone was.

Behind Wetzon, Fran was emanating angry vibes, muttering under his breath.

When Phil finally appeared, stricken, Mort screamed, “What the fuck is wrong with you? Can’t you get
anything
right?”

The stage manager hung his head. “I’m sorry, Mort. I don’t know what happened.”

“Bastard,” Fran mumbled.

“Go easy on the kid, Mort. We’re all feeling a little stressed out,” Carlos interjected.

Mort turned on Carlos, but thought better of it. He stamped his foot and shook both fists. Rumplemortskin was having a fit. “Get this cleared!” he roared.

Walt Greenow and a stagehand came out on the stage. They looked up into the flies, pointing. Walt spoke to Phil, who went back to the wings. “It’s okay,” Walt called to Mort. Then, “Take it up.” The backdrop jerked. A groan rose from the orchestra pit. “Slowly!” Walt urged.

The drop went up again, tilted briefly, came down, then went up like a breeze.

The relief was audible. Wetzon turned to say something to Fran, but he was gone.

“All right, let’s take it from the end of the encore.” Mort seemed to have cooled off. He put an arm around Carlos’s shoulders and whispered something. Carlos laughed.

This time the drop came in as it was supposed to. A spattering of applause from different parts of the house greeted it.

JoJo raised his hand and the dress continued. Flash bulbs flared. The photographer was indeed Irwin Rodgers. Wetzon recognized him when he turned to reload. His toupe was askew.