Delphi sat up in bed and wolf-whistled. “Pretty vavoom, for you.”
Isobel frowned at her cleavage, which was closing in on her chin. “You think it’s too much?”
Delphi stretched and yawned. “Depends. What are you auditioning for again?”
“City of Angels. What I’m really right for is the vocal quartet, but I could also play Mallory, the starlet. So I figured I’d sing for one and dress for the other.”
Delphi wrapped her arms around her knees, as if to protect herself. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re a little too ‘girl next door’ for Mallory, even with the boobage.”
Isobel tossed her hair, freed from its customary ponytail. “Can’t hurt to keep my options open, right? And it never hurts to look good. You did say I looked good.”
“I said you looked vavoom.”
“Since when is vavoom not good?”
Isobel pulled open the closet door and reappraised her efforts in the full-length mirror. She had played Appassionata von Climax in Li’l Abner at theater camp. Delphi just wasn’t used to seeing this side of her. Even if there were sexier pots, she thought she still looked pretty hot in her hip-hugging skirt and luscious chocolate leather boots.
“I’m going,” she said, slamming the closet door louder than she intended.
“No, really. You look great.” Delphi gave her a loyal thumbs-up. “Kick butt!”
Despite Delphi’s guarded enthusiasm, Isobel found herself growing more optimistic as she walked to the audition studio. Because it was so close to her apartment, she’d rolled out of bed at the crack of dawn to sign up for an audition slot and then gone home to prepare at leisure. It had warmed up in the past hour, and she quickly regretted her leather jacket. Without stopping, she shrugged it off first one shoulder, then the other, balancing her bag, which overflowed with her audition music, dance shoes, and various books and scripts. As she staggered slightly under its weight, she resolved to do some pruning when she returned home. She had learned the hard way that it was important to carry all her audition music with her at all times, plus extra pictures and resumes, but the dance shoes were probably not necessary for a two-minute open call, although you never knew.
She arrived at the studio sweating, but in time to pull herself together. After signing in with the monitor, Isobel retreated to the bathroom for some makeup repair. Then she returned to the hallway, seated herself, and adjusted her cleavage.
“Omigod! Look at your boobs! You have the best boobs!”
Isobel glanced up at the tall, sleek brunette next to her, surprised, but flattered. “Thanks. It’s a push-up bra from Victoria’s Secret. It sure does the trick, doesn’t it?”
The brunette blinked. “Um…your boots. I said I like your boots.”
A giggle burbled up from the back of Isobel’s throat. She closed her mouth to suppress it, but the force was too strong. Her body heaved with laughter, and tears streamed from her eyes—she hoped she’d used her waterproof mascara. Through the haze, she saw the brunette turn away and pretend to study her music, which only made Isobel howl even harder.
“Isobel Spice? You’ll be next.”
“Oh! I…um…okay.” She turned to the brunette, hoping they might switch places so Isobel could catch her breath, but the other woman was staring determinedly at her music. Isobel swung her eyes up to the ceiling—a trick she had learned from Delphi to keep from cracking up onstage—and managed to pull herself together. Praying she wouldn’t get the hiccups, she collected her music and entered the audition studio.
“Hi, I’m Isobel Spice,” she said, her naturally bright tone tinged with hysteria.
The director, a woman with friendly eyes and mannish hands, took Isobel’s resume. “What are you going to sing for us today?”
Isobel swallowed. “I’ve got ‘You Took Advantage of Me.’” Isobel walked over to the piano with her binder and added over her shoulder, “I’d love to be considered for the vocal quartet. I’m really good at close harmony.”
“Great!” The director made a note on Isobel’s resume.
Isobel set her music on the piano, and her heart sank. The accompanist was a skinny, pimply-faced twerp who had played for her before and never missed an opportunity to be snarky.
“Sixteen bars. Where do you want to start?”
“I thought they wanted to hear a whole song.”
He bared his teeth. “Sixteen bars.”
“Right. Um…” She pointed to the beginning of the bridge. “I guess I’ll start there.”
She moved to the center of the room, and he started to play. Somehow the chords sounded different, but she chimed in anyway—and derailed after four words.
“I’m sorry, I can’t find my note.” She shook her head helplessly and turned to the pianist. He returned an evil grin and pounded out her part.
Isobel plastered a smile on her face and bravely launched into her song again, but she knew it was a lost cause. Really good at close harmony—except she couldn’t find her starting pitch. She could write this one off, unless the director was more impressed with her cleavage than the woman outside and called her back for Mallory.
“Thanks,” said the director without looking up.
Burning with embarrassment, Isobel stumbled over to the piano and snatched up her music. She was sure the pianist had played the wrong chords on purpose. She took a step away, before turning back with a sweet smile on her face.
“You know, I could use a good coach.”
He looked up from his smartphone with a prissy smile. “That’s an understatement.” He indicated a small pile of business cards stacked at the end of the keyboard. “Call anytime.”
Isobel took a card and left, seething. What an egotistical jerk. He had sabotaged her audition, and he really thought she was going to call him for help? No, she had something entirely different in mind for—she glanced down at the card—Kevin Rabinowitz.
“Hey, Isobel!”
Isobel took one look at Jemma Rhodes striding toward her and thought, now that’s Mallory. She felt a wave of annoyance at Delphi for being right. Jemma’s formidable cleavage seemed to be giving its own separate audition, and if Isobel didn’t know better, she’d have thought Jemma had drawn the heart-shaped beauty mark on her cheek with eyeliner.
“Let me guess, you’re auditioning for Mallory,” Isobel said.
Jemma’s face fell. “No, Oolie.”
Isobel started to protest that Jemma was perfect for Mallory and totally wrong for Oolie, the sassy secretary, but stopped herself. She suddenly understood something people had been telling her for years: actors couldn’t be objective about themselves. You could convince yourself by whatever means necessary that you were right for the role of your dreams, and you might come close—until the real thing walked through the door. Even if Jemma knocked Oolie’s song out of the park, her breasts would be called back for Mallory. Isobel could push her boobs through her nose, and directors would still see her as…well, after her disastrous showing, nothing.
“So what do you think?” Jemma asked.
Isobel had been so lost in her epiphany that she hadn’t heard a word Jemma said.
“About what?”
“Who killed the judge?”
“Oh!” Isobel’s hand flew to her mouth. “I have your check.”
“What?”
“Peter forgot to pay us. I sent you an email yesterday. Didn’t you get it?”
Jemma grimaced. “My email’s been down for days. But why do you have my check?”
“I met up with him, and he gave me all the checks to give out,” Isobel explained. “But I left them at home.”
“Jemma Rhodes!” called the monitor.
“Wait for me?”
Isobel nodded. How funny, she thought. She’d lied to Peter about running into the others at auditions, but now it had happened. Then again, she and Jemma had probably crossed paths before without realizing it. Now they’d probably run into each other all the time. Jemma emerged a
few minutes later, frowning.
“How’d it go?” Isobel asked.
“I have a callback tomorrow. For Mallory.” Jemma’s tone was faintly accusatory.
“It’s a great part,” Isobel reassured her. “You’ll have plenty of time to play Oolie. She should be older anyway.”
Jemma brightened. “Yeah?”
“Oh, at least thirty-five. Look, if you’re not doing anything right now, do you want to come back to my apartment? It’s not far from here. I want to dump my bag and change before I go to work. I can give you your check.”
“Sure. Okay.”
On the way, they chattered companionably about the reputation of the theater they’d just auditioned for, parts they’d played, and dream roles that had gotten away. Finally, as they turned the corner onto Isobel’s block, there was a lull in the conversation.
“Before we got off on the check and the audition, you were asking me about the judge,” Isobel said. “What do you think happened?”
“Oh, that.” Jemma rocked back and forth on her heels as Isobel put her key in the lock. “I don’t know. I was just wondering if you saw anything or had any idea who did it.”
As they climbed the stairs, Isobel had a sudden flash of Jemma knocking her unconscious from behind with a heavy binder of audition music. After all, Jemma had been alone, unsupervised, in the small dining room. She could have snuck back into the main room and—
Isobel whipped her head around, surprising Jemma in the act of doing nothing.
“Here we are,” she covered breezily.
Jemma followed her inside. “Mmmm. A bit cozy for two, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but Delphi and I get along pretty well.”
“Is she here?”
“She’s probably at the gym.” Isobel dropped her bag and walked into the kitchen, where she’d placed the checks under a canister of kosher salt. “Here you go.”
“Thanks.”
“And to answer your question about what happened, I have no idea. I was in a full death spiral, and the Brioschi was foaming all over my face, so I didn’t see a thing.” Isobel paused. “How about you?”
Jemma poked at her bottom lip with the corner of the envelope. “I didn’t see anyone, but I might have heard something. I didn’t remember until I got home that night.”
Isobel’s senses prickled. “What?”
“I was coming back from the bathroom, and I got turned around with those mirrored hallways, so I can’t even say for sure where this happened, but I heard someone whimpering.”
“Male or female?”
“Hard to tell. Could have been either. But then a male voice said, ‘Pull yourself together. You can do this.’”
“Did you recognize the voice?”
“No. It was kind of hushed.”
Isobel wondered. The words were just vague enough to refer to anything, and Jemma’s story seemed a little too ready-made for her question.
“Why were you in that small dining room anyway? We were supposed to be camping out in the private dining office.”
Jemma wrinkled her nose. “It was too cramped in there, and Andrew’s pacing was making me nervous. I don’t think anyone minded. It was this whole empty room, and nobody else was in there.”
Which means that nobody can confirm whether that’s where you really were, Isobel thought.
“You didn’t know the judge, did you?” she asked on impulse.
Jemma blushed bright red. “Me? I’ve never been in trouble with the law.”
“No, of course not,” Isobel said quickly. “I meant…” She floundered. What had she meant?
“Thanks for the check,” Jemma said, tucking the envelope into her bag. “I’d have remembered to call Peter about it eventually.”
A sudden imp possessed Isobel. “Did you know that when he did the fireman’s carry after you died, your skirt flew up?”
Jemma gave a dismissive snort. “Of course! I tucked it up on purpose.”
Isobel’s eyes widened. “You did?”
“My part was so small, I figured it was my only chance to make an impression.” Jemma winked. “You know what they say—always leave them wanting more!”
TEN
“What a tramp!” Delphi’s exclamation was so loud that Isobel had to pull the receiver away from her ear.
“The peep show doesn’t bug me as much as my sense that she’s lying.” Isobel flipped through the pile of contracts on her desk. She was supposed to be sorting them for Sarah, but she was much more interested in Delphi’s reaction to her report on Jemma.
“You always think everyone is lying.”
“Because most of the time, in a murder investigation, everyone is. Damn!”
“What?”
“Paper cut.” Isobel sucked her finger. “I think she just made up what she overheard.”
“Will you take your finger out of your mouth? I can’t understand you.”
Isobel waved her finger in the air. “I said I think she made it up. It smacks of B-movie dialogue.”
“What did you expect her to say?” Delphi imitated Jemma’s breathy rasp. “Oh, yeah, now that you mention it, I left that dining room where nobody was watching me, snuck into the big room, shot the judge, and then—”
Isobel stopped air-drying her finger. “Wait a second.”
“What?”
“What happened to the gun?” Isobel asked.
“Search me.”
“Well, they didn’t. Remember what Officer Gonzalez said? Not without cause.”
“They must have conducted a search of the premises at least.”
“Maybe Andrew took it with him.”
“Why are you so sure Andrew shot the judge?” Delphi asked. “Just because you saw him running out of the restaurant? He could have done that for any number of reasons.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he was just freaked out by the whole thing. Weren’t you?”
Isobel could hear the impatience in Delphi’s voice. Her tolerance for endlessly rehashing clues was significantly lower than Isobel’s.
“Besides,” Delphi continued, “you don’t know that the police didn’t find the gun. You probably weren’t the first person on their need-to-know list.”
“If they did find the gun, they haven’t made an arrest. That would be in the paper. That I would know about.”
Delphi paused. “If I had to guess, I’d say the murderer ditched the gun in all the chaos. And I’ll bet you anything it turned up in some poor busboy’s bin, butt up in a champagne flute. With no fingerprints on it, because our man—”
“Or woman—”
“Our person obviously planned this ahead of time. He or she must have had an exit strategy, at least for the gun.”
“Maybe Andrew wasn’t the only person who ran out of the restaurant,” Isobel said thoughtfully. “Every dining room I saw had an exit into the park. I think the Jewel Room had two.”
“What do you do, check the exits every time you go into a room?” Delphi asked.
“These days? Yes, I do,” Isobel said somberly. “And you should, too.”
Delphi sighed heavily in Isobel’s ear. “Either the murderer fled, gun in hand, or the police found it but aren’t a hundred percent sure who it belonged to. Those are your choices. Listen, I gotta get ready for work. See you later.”
Isobel disconnected her headset and looked down at Sarah’s contracts, which unfortunately hadn’t sorted themselves while she was on the phone. If Delphi was right and the murderer had fled with the gun, and it wasn’t Andrew, surely somebody else would have reported a missing dinner companion. And then there were the waiters. Would anyone have noticed if one of them had slipped out?
“Not done yet?” Sarah leaned over Isobel’s cubicle wall and clicked her tongue in mock disapproval. “I’m not sure I should give you this, then.”
Isobel sat forward eagerly. “What is it?”
“An email from my friend in surrogate’s court. About the j
udge’s will. Very interesting stuff.” Sarah held the paper teasingly out of reach.
“I’ll never be able to concentrate on sorting these if I’m wondering what it says,” Isobel protested.
“Promise you’ll sort them as soon as you’re done?”
“Promise!”
Isobel took the email from Sarah and scanned it eagerly. She frowned and shook her head.
“Can you even do that?”
“Absolutely. You can put in whatever restrictions you like.”
“So if either son is caught using drugs, all money in trust to that son reverts to…” She looked up at Sarah. “Candy?”
“I have to say, I’m surprised. Did you read the rest?” Sarah asked. “The trust for the boys is what reverts to Candy, but only if they haven’t stayed clean. That’s one-third of the estate. The second third goes to—”
“Gordon Lang.” Isobel made a face. “Who leaves money to their lawyer?”
“Nobody I represent,” Sarah grumbled. “He’s also a trustee and executor.”
“What happened to Harrison’s first wife?”
“No longer living.”
Isobel pointed to the page. “So who is this Angelina Rivington who gets the rest?”
“No idea. But no investigating now. You promised you’d sort my contracts.”
“Wait! How come you weren’t notified about the will as Candy’s lawyer?”
“They first have to determine whether the boys are eligible. She’s a contingent legatee.”
“Do you think the boys know about this clause?”
“What would be the point of that? Dad dies, you know you’d better clean up—and fast.”
“Have you ever seen this sort of restriction before?”
“Once or twice. It’s generally reserved for when the maker of the will has a particular reason to think it might happen.”
“Did Harrison?”
“In this case, it could simply have been awareness of how easy it is to follow the wrong path. He was a family court judge, remember.”
“And one of the sons already had run-ins with the law.” Isobel rattled the paper thoughtfully. “You’d think if he were going to include a restriction, it might have been about stealing, since that was his crime.”
And Justice for Some Page 6