Murder: The Musical (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery, #5) (39 page)

“Coincidence?”

“Maybe. Maybe. Dilla was Lenny Kaufer’s mistress. He gave her a mink coat.”

“Then he could have given his wife and his mistress the same jewelry. It’s been known to happen.”

Wetzon put her finger to her nose and looked at him cross-eyed. “Now why didn’t I think of that. It’s so logical.”

“You would have eventually, but two heads are always better than one.” He smiled down at her. His feeling for her was so intense, it upset her. She withdrew, not really aware she had done so until he snapped his fingers. “Hey, where did you go?”

“Oh. I was thinking that you’re such a nurturer, and I love you for it. You make me feel cared for and protected. We don’t
have
to get married.”

He set his drink down and crouched beside her so they were eye to eye. “Leslie, I don’t want you just for weekends. I want you every day for the rest of my life.”

“Alton—” She touched his cheek and was afraid. Had Mort been right, then? Was she—

“Leslie, tell me what you’re thinking.”

“Mort Hornberg told me I was incapable of having a real relationship with anyone.” Had she accepted Alton’s ring to contradict Mort?

“That’s ridiculous.” He stood and pulled her to her feet, dislodging the dozing Izz. “And you believed him?”

“Thirty-nine years of living proof, Alton. I’m not able to commit to anyone.”

“Until now.” He said it firmly.

“Until now.” She repeated it in a quavering voice. “Alton, do you think there’s something wrong that we don’t fight?”

“Fight? What do we have to fight about? Let’s go to bed.”

So there, Silvestri, she thought, but she got no further because the phone began to ring. “It’s Carlos!” She spun away from Alton, racing for the bedroom. “Hello?” She sat down on the bed, then jumped up, sat down again.

“Magic time, Birdie!” He was shrieking; she had to hold the phone away from her ear. “Birdie, you would not have believed it! Everything, and I mean
everything
; worked. Listen to this from the
Globe:
‘The production team of Morton Hornberg, Carlos Prince, and the late Sam Meidner have reinvented the musical.’”

“Wow!”

“The tip of the iceberg, m’dear. From the
Herald
we have: ‘What can be more American than the gun and what can be more American than the American musical theatre? In
Hotshot: The Musical
we have the felicitous marriage of the two.’”

“Oh, Carlos, I’m so happy for you.”

“Wait, darling, it’s not over. Try this on: ‘This show’s brilliance is staggering; its humor, demented; its music and dancing, radiant; its cast, stellar. There’s nothing to compare it to. It breaks its own ground and takes no prisoners.’”

She heard the rumble of voices in the background. “I couldn’t be happier for you all.
Us
all. Who’s there with you?”

Alton lay down beside her and she rumpled his hair and grinned at him, mouthing,
It’s a smash.

“Arthur, darling, and—wait—one more: ‘Wit and wonderment took over the stage of the Colonial Theatre tonight.’ So what do you think? Personally, I think I’m the second luckiest man in the world.”

“The
second
luckiest? Okay, I bite. Who’s the first?”

“Andrew Lloyd Webber, darling.”

“Very funny. Tell the truth, were there no quibbles?”

“I was saving it. The best. ‘One has to question the motivation for a show like this that goes all out to celebrate the symbol of violence in America.’ Is that good enough for you? I think we can handle it.”

“Well, after all, it is Boston. Carlos, is Twoey excited?”

“Beside himself.”

“Twoey is beside himself, Alton.”

“Wait a minute, Birdie. There’s someone here who wants to talk to you.” She heard muffled voices.

“I guess Twoey wants to talk, Alton.”

“Hello? Wetzon?”

Good grief. “Mark! I’ve been so worried about you.”

“Wetzon, I’m sorry. You’ve got to believe I didn’t mean it.”

Wetzon’s excitement chilled. “Mark, what are you saying?”

“Just tell me you’re okay.” His voice broke.

“Listen to me, Mark. I’m okay. Were you up at Susan’s this morning?” She looked at Alton. He held out his hand, and she switched the phone to her other ear and snuggled up next to him, inhaling his Glenfiddich aura.

“Leslie.” The serious, cautious tones of Arthur Margolies, Esq., Carlos’s lover, came across the wire.

“Arthur, thank God, a sensible person. What is this about? What’s wrong with Mark?”

“Leslie, what Smitty—er, Mark—is trying to say is that he was at Susan Orkin’s apartment when you got there and—”

“Oh, Arthur, no!” She buried her face against Alton’s chest.

“I’m bringing him home with me tomorrow after we talk to the police here in Boston. He’s trying to tell you he was sorry he hurt you. He was frightened and ran away.”

“Hurt me? I don’t understand.”

“It was Mark who attacked you this morning at Susan’s apartment.”

“So what do you think?” Wetzon was hunched up on Sonya’s couch. She had just finished describing the horrific alteration in her dream pattern.

Sonya studied her gravely. “I think you’ve lost too much weight.”

“I know.” She gave Sonya a wan smile. “Think of the fun I’ll have eating my way back. I’m really worried about Mark—”

“Mark Smith has a mother and he has friends. You throw yourself into other people’s problems as a substitution for dealing with your own.”

“What problems?”

“Oh, Leslie.”

Wetzon bit her lip. “Mort Hornberg told me I was incapable of having a real relationship with anyone. Do you think that’s true?”

“Why are you taking what he said as gospel?”

“Maybe because I have this gut feeling he hit on the truth about me.”

“If you can’t make a commitment to yourself, how can you commit to a relationship?”

Wetzon turned the emerald ring on her finger around and around. “Alton is a wonderful man. He’ll take care of me. I’ll never have to worry about anything.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Sometimes I get so tired of coping.”

“Are you angry with your parents for dying?”

“No, of course not,” Wetzon snapped. “It was an accident. It wouldn’t be reasonable to blame them, would it?” She watched her hands tremble. Stop it, she ordered.

“Reason has nothing to do with it. The child Leslie was abandoned.”

“I wasn’t a child.”

“You were child of your mother, child of your father. It’s okay to be angry.”

“I’m not angry. Why do you keep harping on that?”

“Leslie, why do you suppose your subconscious linked your own brush with death from the explosion of a gun and the car crash that killed your parents? It’s time to heal the past and move on. Look at it, and then let it go, Leslie. Old wounds fester if you don’t deal with them.”

Wetzon stared at Sonya and felt the first tears sting her eyes. She grabbed a handful of yellow tissues from the box on the coffee table. “They left me alone and I was so ...”

“I know. It’s all right to be scared. Soothe the child. Tell her it will be okay, that you love her.”

Wetzon sobbed into the tissues, unable to speak. Sonya left the room and returned with a glass of water, which she handed Wetzon. Gradually, the sobs subsided. Wetzon felt drained but strangely at peace. The release was a narcotic.

Sonya smiled at her. “Let it out, Leslie, this is just the beginning. Next Thursday? Six o’clock?”

Nodding, Wetzon took out her Filofax and wrote down the appointment. “Thanks, Sonya.” She put on her coat and beret.

“While you have your book out, do you have some time for me on the afternoon of April first? It’s a Thursday.”

Wetzon flipped over the pages. “April first?” The page was blank. “I’m okay. What time?”

“Save me the afternoon.” She was very solemn.

“The afternoon? The whole afternoon?”

“Yes. I’ll tell you more about it closer to the date.”

“Okay.” She wrote
HOLD—Sonya
in the April first rectangle and dropped her Filofax into her purse. At the door she said more to herself than to Sonya, “I’ve got Susan’s dog. I haven’t had a dog since I was a kid.”

“You don’t have to keep it,” Sonya said.

“Oh, but I do,” Wetzon said slowly. “I think I need her as much as she needs me.”

“Unconditional love.”

Unconditional love.
Wetzon turned the words over in her head as she walked back to the Beresford. The weather system had shifted again, and a wall of arctic air had invaded the city from Canada. The chill felt good. She was intensely aware of herself, every muscle, vein, and nerve end, her heartbeat, the breath going through her lungs.

The sharp change in temperature had caught most people in their raincoats, but not Wetzon. Above her, navy-edged clouds driven by gusts of cold wind scudded across the darkening sky.

She crossed over to Amsterdam on Seventy-ninth Street and walked east. Carlos was okay. She didn’t have to worry about him. And she, Leslie Wetzon, headhunter extraordinaire, and sometime detective, would marry Alton Pinkus, the perfect man, and live happily ever after. Of course she would.

And what about Mark, she asked herself as she put her key into the lock. Izz was barking her little head off on the other side of the door. Mark couldn’t have murdered anyone. And that was that. Any evidence that he did had to be circumstantial.

“I’m in the kitchen,” Alton called.

She hung up her coat, dropped her hat and bag on the hall table. In the kitchen she gave him a kiss on the cheek.

She sniffed. “Smells great, whatever it is.”

“Steamed mussels; pasta with tomato, basil, and fennel sausage; Eli’s sourdough; and Greenberg’s brownies. I’m going to enjoy fattening you up.”

A tiny buzz started in her brain. Was he trying to take over her life? “I’m okay the way I am.”

She saw him assessing the damage and assessed it with him.

“Leslie—”

“No, it’s okay. My fault.”

“Tough session?”

“Tough enough.” Did he want her to tell him about it? How could she say that she still hadn’t come to terms with her parents’ fiery death after so many years? That she felt she would always be abandoned by anyone she loved? That was it, wasn’t it? And then all at once she was telling him and he was holding her against him, stroking her hair.

“I will never, ever, leave you. You know that, don’t you?”

She knew that, but he was almost twenty years older than she was. It was inevitable that he would abandon her. She pushed the thought away, but it was still with her, lurking, as she and Izz walked back to her apartment that evening, over Alton’s objections.

He’d said, “I’d feel better if you stayed here.”

And she’d answered, “Not yet. Besides, Izz should get used to my place.”

The union pickets had called it a day at sundown, obviously, because they weren’t around. No one was on guard duty inside and the outside door was locked. She took her keys out and let herself in. Next to the elevator was a notice that no packages would be accepted for delivery until the strike was over.

Well, fine. She wasn’t expecting any.

While she was taking her mail out of the box and collecting the Sunday
Times,
left during the strike in a tall stack in the lobby with everyone else’s, someone rang the outside bell. Izz ran for the door territorially, barking.

“Izz, you are such a yenta.” Wetzon looked around the corner. A tall man in a buttoned-up rawhide coat stood there, motioning for her to let him in. She’d never seen him before. Shaking her head at him, she got on the elevator. She heard him banging on the iron grillwork over the door but paid no attention. She was not about to be a statistic.

Her home was an oasis. When she entered it and closed the door, she could block the world out. Here she was truly safe.

She changed into her terry robe, while Izz inspected the apartment. “I’m thirsty,” she told the dog, “how about you?” She filled a bowl with water and set it on the floor, wondering if she was going to be one of those old ladies who talk to their pets. Taking a beer from the fridge, she poured it into a glass, watching the head rise, pouring more.

The mail was mostly junk. A preferred customer sale notice from Saks. Two banks were trying to sell her Visa cards, offering outrageous credit lines. And a notice that a package was being held for her at the post office. Now what could that be?

The phone rang. She stared at it, listening to Izz’s little nails clicking on her hardwood floors as the dog roamed the apartment.
Oh, hell
She heaved herself up and grabbed the phone on the fifth ring. Too late. “Hi, hold on,” Wetzon said. “The message has to run through.” Damn. Her answering machine was blinking eight, counting this one, messages.

“Leslie.” Alton sounded relieved.

“I’m okay, Alton.” Don’t hover, she thought.

“A Detective Bernstein just called. He’s looking for you. He’d like you to call him.”

“I haven’t checked my messages yet.” She wrote down Bernstein’s number as Alton gave it to her. “I’ll call him.”

But she didn’t. She took a shower, sipping her beer while the hot water massaged her body. Her head was pounding.

Sometime later when she was laying her clothes out for the morning, she saw that she’d gotten another call; now there were nine messages.
To hell with all of them.

She got into bed next to Izz, who, being a dog of superior intelligence, had taken stock of her new home and chosen where she would sleep. The paper on which Wetzon had written Bernstein’s phone number crackled in the pocket of her robe. She pulled it out. A 718 area code, which meant Bronx, Queens, or Brooklyn. She guessed Brooklyn, where there were many communities of Orthodox Jews.

Bernstein answered on the first ring. His voice was neutral.

“Leslie Wetzon. I hear you’re looking for me.”

“Yeah.” Bernstein cleared his throat. “O’Melvany filled me in on the Orkin murder. And I’ve talked with your boyfriend.”

“My boyfriend?” It was odd to hear Alton called her
boyfriend.