Ms America and the Brouhaha on Broadway

by Diana Dempsey

  Darn. Now I’ll start crying.

  “And it’s not that I don’t love your mother, because I always will. It’s not even that I love Maggie the same way I love your mother, because I don’t think I ever will. It’s that your mother and I got divorced for a reason.”

  I hate when Pop says stuff like that. It’s a punch right in the gut of one of my fondest fantasies: that my parents will get back together.

  “Don’t you want me to find happiness with somebody else?” my father asks.

  Actually, no. But I can’t say that. So instead I offer a grudging compromise. “I suppose.”

  We move the conversation onto less controversial ground, but before long we’re interrupted by another call on my end. I know immediately that this caller is not trying to reach me to convey birthday wishes. “Get in here ASAP,” Oliver orders. “I want to hear how you kept my father away from the theater last night.”

  “Nothing’s wrong, is it?”

  “Not a thing. And I want to know how you pulled that off.”

  I’ll tell him, but I’ll keep some details to myself. No way will I divulge that Junior’s own father is the source of those AllThatChat.com posts. I don’t know what Junior would do with that information and for my own purposes I must lord it over Senior’s balding head for quite a while longer.

  “Tell you what,” Trixie says when I get off the phone. “I’ll drop the fur off at Saks and you go straight to the theater. We can meet for lunch when you’re done.”

  “Maybe by then Shanelle will be able to join us.” She had to catch up on work this morning, but knowing Shanelle she’ll fly through it.

  I’m emerging from the subway station closest to the theater when I get a text from Oliver. Something’s come up and now he wants to see me in two hours. Great: a wasted trip. Then my mom calls. “You got the fur?” she asks me.

  “Yes and no.” I explain what happened, including that the fur’s lining is ripped but now her mongo expensive facial is free. I don’t say it in so many words, but basically she’s getting off scot-free.

  “So I’m getting a gift today, too,” she says, “thanks to you. By the way, your gift is back home. It was too big to bring here. Plus, that plane would probably lose it. Anyway, will you come over here and do my makeup for those photos?”

  “So Kimberly’s coming through, huh?” That doesn’t surprise me. I’m sure that vixen is super eager to claw her way back to Jason’s good side.

  “That husband of yours called to say she’ll be here in half an hour. By the way, I don’t like how close those two are getting.”

  “You’ve never been a big fan of Jason’s, Mom. I would think you’d be thrilled if he went bye-bye.”

  “I want you to leave him. I don’t want him to leave you.”

  On that warm maternal note, I reroute myself to the Plaza Hotel. By now I could find it in my sleep. I have just set my mother up in a chair by the window in her room when Miss Kimberly arrives, again today done up in skinny jeans and a curve-hugging top. If she had any more makeup on, she’d get a citation. From the sheepish look she throws my way I can tell she’s still embarrassed by last night’s revelation of her married state.

  Poor thing. My heart bleeds for her.

  Perhaps my mother also senses Kimberly is wounded prey because she doesn’t waste a second before pouncing. “Where’s my son-in-law?” she demands.

  Kimberly looks taken aback. “I think he went for a run.”

  “You all done with that shoot of yours?” My mother is being fairly hostile given that Kimberly is doing her a favor, but that’s Hazel Przybyszewski for you.

  Kimberly blushes. “Almost. We have a little more to do this afternoon.”

  My mother harrumphs. I pipe up. “My mom really appreciates your taking the time to do this shoot for her.”

  “I’m thrilled to do it,” Kimberly lies.

  She sets her camera bag on the bed and busies herself with her equipment while I go back to work on my mother’s face. Her skin is so radiant that I bypass foundation and apply only the merest hint of powder. “So,” I say to Kimberly, figuring this might be my last chance to bring this up, “I was going over those recordings you make of the preview performances and noticed that you quit taping really early the night Lisette fell.”

  Kimberly’s hands stop moving. “Did I really?”

  “You missed the entire final sequence. Every other night you recorded all the way to the end.”

  Kimberly says nothing. I instruct my mom to close her eyes so I can move on to eye shadow, but instead she twists toward Kimberly and blasts a query in her direction. “How do you explain that?” I guess she can’t resist an interrogation even though she has no idea what the point of it is.

  Kimberly swallows. Then: “I got a text.”

  I frown. “You stopped recording for a text? You’re not even supposed to have your phone on during a performance.” Those flashes of light are a real distraction, to actors and audience members alike. And Kimberly’s recording location, in the front middle of the mezzanine, is visible to both.

  Kimberly shakes her head, clearly flustered. “I … I was expecting an important text.”

  “From who?” I ask. “Jason? Damian?”

  “Who’s Damian?” my mother wants to know.

  “How do you even know his name is Damian?” Kimberly sputters.

  “Because I overheard you and your Uncle Jerry in the ladies’ room.”

  “Oh, that’s right.” Now Kimberly sounds semi-belligerent. “That time you were eavesdropping.”

  “I still don’t know who Damian is,” my mother says. “And you can’t eavesdrop in a public place like a ladies’ room.”

  Thank you, Mom! “Damian is Kimberly’s husband,” I tell my mother.

  Her jaw drops. “Knock me over with a feather! This one is married?”

  “I’m getting divorced,” Kimberly says.

  “It had to have bothered you,” I say to Kimberly, “that Damian was seeing Lisette.”

  “So her husband”—my mother gestures to Kimberly—“was keeping company with that woman who died on the staircase?”

  “Exactly,” I say.

  “Divorced, married, I don’t care,” my mother opines. “No woman likes it when her husband starts dating another dame.”

  I only half hear what my mother is saying because my mind has started cranking in a new and shocking direction. I clutch the back of a chair. “Is there any chance, Kimberly, any chance at all, that Lisette fell down that staircase because she got distracted by the light of your phone?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Kimberly gasps. I would, too, if I were on the receiving end of that kind of accusation. “I can’t believe you’re saying I had something to do with Lisette falling!” She tosses her camera onto the bed and sets her hands on her hips. “Jason told me you were obsessed with this sort of thing, but I thought he was joking. Now I know he wasn’t.”

  I’m not thrilled that Jason described me as “obsessed” with sudden death, but I skate right past it. “Just answer the question, Kimberly. Were you texting next to your recording equipment when Lisette fell?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but no, I wasn’t.”

  Maybe I believe that and maybe I don’t. “So does that mean you abandoned your equipment before the preview was over so you could text?”

  “I didn’t abandon anything, all right? It was an important text. And I was afraid it might be upsetting.”

  “Why would it be upsetting?” my mother wants to know. “Did it have something to do with your family? Was somebody sick?”

  “Nobody was sick!” Now Kimberly is raising her voice.

  “So who would be sending you an upsetting text?” I ask.

  “I don’t understand that, either,” my mother says.

  “You two are impossible!” Kimberly shrieks.

  I have to say my mom and I are pretty effective when we team up. “I am just not understanding this,”
I say when more screeching spews from Kimberly’s mouth.

  “It was from the calendar company, okay? They were texting about whether or not the shoot was a go.”

  “Of course the shoot was a go,” I say, until I take in Kimberly’s flushed face and rapid breathing. “Oh, my God. Are you telling me it wasn’t a go?”

  She looks away. “It sort of wasn’t a go,” she mumbles.

  I throw out my arms. “You and your sort of’s! You’re sort of married and now the shoot is sort of a go! Which is it? A go or not a go?”

  She looks down at the carpet. “Okay, it wasn’t a go.” Then she turns those baby blues on me. Like that’ll work. “But they promised they’d reconsider if they really like the photos.”

  “So bottom line,” I say, “you’re doing this whole thing on spec?”

  She nods.

  Wow. “Does Jason know this?” I ask.

  Now she shakes her head.

  “I didn’t think so.” He never would’ve taken time off from his new job to do something on spec. “I can’t believe this! It’s like you concocted this whole thing to spend more time with my husband.”

  “I didn’t concoct it!” she cries. “The calendar could still happen!”

  “And now you’re talking about moving down south? What’s that all about?”

  “You have to ask?” my mother hollers.

  “I have every right to move closer to my sister,” Kimberly says.

  “I bet that sister of hers lives in North Carolina,” my mother says, and we all know she’s got that right.

  “Kimberly, you listen to me and you listen but good,” I say. “Jason is a married man. And that means you better back off.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she tells me. “All we’ve ever done is work together. And I was super confident the calendar would be approved.”

  “If you were super confident, you wouldn’t have been so worried the text from the calendar people would be upsetting. So where were you, anyway, when you were texting with them?”

  “I was backstage.”

  Likely story. Then something else occurs to me. “So who’s covering Jason’s expenses? Do you expect him to pay for the Sofitel?”

  “Of course not! I’m covering everything.”

  More proof Miss Kimberly has money. This so-called business trip of Jason’s is big-time costly. “You’ve got to tell him the calendar is on spec. And I mean today.”

  Her face crumples. “He’s not going to be happy.”

  “Tell me about it.” Now I understand why Kimberly was crying so hard the night Lisette died. It wasn’t grief, as I thought at the time. It was either guilt, because she feared her texting had precipitated Lisette’s fall, or sadness that Jason’s calendar had gotten nixed. I suppose it could’ve been both.

  “I still want my photo shoot,” my mother says.

  I guess nothing short of thermonuclear war breaking out on Madison Avenue would deter her from that. “You up for it, Kimberly?” I ask.

  She throws out her arms. “Fine! But I want a little air first,” and off she goes.

  Once the door slams shut behind Kimberly, my mother shakes her head. “That girl’s trouble.”

  I agree. The only question is how much. It’s certainly possible she’s lying when she says she was backstage while Lisette was on that staircase. She has a strong incentive to claim she was nowhere near the mezzanine while she was texting. And how would I find out otherwise? Somebody seated in that area might’ve noticed Kimberly was using her phone, but how would I ever find that out?

  And this whole thing about Jason’s calendar boggles my mind. I dread his reaction. At least it’ll be Kimberly and not me who has to face the immediate fallout.

  I glance at my watch. “Let me finish your makeup, Mom, because I’ve got to get out of here in ten minutes.” I don’t want to be late for Junior.

  Although by the time I make it back to the theater, he puts me off again, this time for a half hour. I point myself toward the backstage coffeepot before I realize it’ll be empty. It’s Monday, which means the theater is dark. Naturally the unions insist that cast and crew get time off every week—whether opening night is coming up fast or not—and then there’s the age-old superstition that a theater’s ghosts need one night a week to conduct their own performances. I wander into the empty, shadowy auditorium and just for variety decide to wait in the orchestra pit, one of the few locations I haven’t checked out yet.

  I seat myself on a random folding chair in what I think is the string section. Around me are empty chairs and music stands, some of those empty, too, but some holding sheet music. I have to admit that when it’s dark like this, I find the theater spooky. I do my best not to think about ghosts, but however hard I try, one recently departed individual keeps coming to mind. She’s got long blond hair and favors a boho-chic look and is excellent at getting on everybody’s nerves.

  I wonder if Lisette is haunting this theater where she died. How would she feel today, 48 hours before the musical she wrote is to open? Now that I think about it, I realize Lisette is more attached to Dream Angel than anyone. She gave birth to it, really. She conceived it; she wrote every word; she nurtured it through all those stressful days when it must’ve been very tough to stare at a blank computer screen.

  Especially with her father’s expectations watching over her shoulder.

  I understand so much better now all the work she put in. A musical is like a string of pearls, Enzo explained to me, and it’s up to the writer to decide not only which pearl goes where, but when the spoken word should give way to song. He said there is an ideal moment: when an emotion is bubbling below the surface that screams to be expressed in the way that touches the heart best: through music.

  Broadway lore has it that the book writer gets the blame if a musical flops and the composer gets the credit if it hits. After all, nobody walks out of a theater humming the dialogue.

  Now years of work, by Lisette and scads of other people, are about to culminate in opening night. It would be thrilling and terrifying at the same time.

  And bittersweet. Because that long chapter of Lisette’s life would be ending. But talk about a whole different kind of final curtain …

  I wonder. What do I really think, in my heart and soul? Do I think Lisette was murdered?

  The truth is I can’t give a yes or no answer to that question. I recognize that I’m sort of in love with homicide. (Now that’s a sort of for you.) And I find it really hard to judge to what extent that affects my thinking.

  On the yes-for-murder side of the ledger, numerous people had a strong motive to want Lisette dead. Four I know of: Junior, Kimberly, Tonya, and Violet Honeycutt. And there could well be more since Lisette excelled at making enemies.

  On the no-for-murder side, how in the world could a murder have been committed in this case? We all saw Lisette fall. It’s clear she wasn’t pushed because she was standing in front of the throne at the time and we all would have seen it. She might well have fallen accidentally; that’s the conclusion the N.Y.P.D. drew. She might’ve lost her footing on her own or perhaps something distracted her, for example the cell phone belonging to that well-known menace Kimberly Drayson.

  How could a murderer have intentionally caused her to fall? I suppose they could’ve put something slippery on the staircase, like water or oil or marbles or something, but I know for a fact the cops reported the treads were clean and dry and no one—including me—ever found anything suspicious on stage. Plus, the murderer would have had to count on Lisette once again interrupting the preview by appearing atop the staircase during the final song. Otherwise, Tonya would’ve gotten up there first and she would’ve been the one to topple to her death.

  Unless it was Tonya who did the dirty deed. She would’ve known not to mount the stairs all the way to the top unless Lisette beat her to it.

  My phone buzzes with a text. It’s Junior. He wants me in his office.

  I’m making my
way out of the orchestra pit when I bump into a music stand and sheet music flutters to the floor. I’m gathering it up when I notice something rolling away from me. I have to chase it before I can bend down and pick it up.

  It’s a ball bearing, a bit smaller than an inch in diameter and really heavy for its size. It’s not super clean, though nothing on this floor would be. I roll it around on my palm and peer at it closely. There’s something crusty on it that’s reddish in color. Some of that, whatever it is, flakes off onto my hand.

  I can’t stop staring at the darn thing. It seems an odd object to find here and yet there are lots of odd objects in a theater, little bits and pieces that belong to props or equipment to move props. Nevertheless, I wrap it in a tissue and put it in my handbag. Believe it or not, I can feel its weight as I hustle to Junior’s office.

  I’ve barely gotten inside when he barks at me from behind his desk. “Took you long enough. Clear the crap off that chair and sit down. And stop wearing so much perfume. My head’s already pounding. I don’t also need to suffocate.” He throws a marked-up script on his desk and pinches the bridge of his nose, shoving his glasses up onto his forehead.

  “I have a couple aspirin if that’ll help.”

  “There’s only one thing that’ll help and that’s to drown every member of the Longley family in the East River.”

  I guess one question is answered: Junior does have at least some homicidal tendencies. “So what happened now?”

  He drops his hand from his face and looks at me. “You really want to know? You’re my shrink all of a sudden?”

  “You’re the one who brought it up, Oliver. And I’m happy to be your sounding board.”

  “Fine.” He leans his elbows on his desk. “Tell me why somebody who knows nothing about the creative process thinks they can exercise creative control.”

  “That’s what Warren Longley is doing?”

  “He insists I freeze the production. He’s pissed at all the mistakes that were made last night and he thinks we need to lock it down and let everybody rehearse it as is.”