Uh oh. I glance at Trixie, whose hand has flown to her throat. When she dropped off the fur, she probably neglected to tell the salon not to call the number on the account to alert us when the repair was done. I probably would’ve forgotten that detail as well.
My mother gulps. “Uh … the lining got torn.”
“How did that happen?” Bennie wants to know. “You’ve barely worn the fur here. I was even starting to think you didn’t like it.”
Nobody says a word. If anybody is going to make this confession, it’s got to be my mom.
She throws a desperate glance in my direction, then: “I’ve got something to tell you, Bennie,” she says, and out the story comes, all of it, or nearly all of it, for she does not reveal why she was so distracted Saturday afternoon that she managed to leave the salon minus the fur.
“No wonder you were never wearing it.” Bennie isn’t saying much, but his hurt and disappointment are palpable. “And this has been going on for three days and you never told me.”
“I didn’t want you to be upset,” my mother says.
Bennie says nothing. I bet that he, like me, knows my mom isn’t being entirely truthful even now. She wasn’t so much worried that Bennie would be upset; she wanted him never to find out what she had done.
Finally he speaks again. “Well, you didn’t trust me enough to tell me. So I am upset. Excuse me,” and off he goes.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. P,” Trixie says a moment later. “It’s my fault for not—”
“No. It’s not your fault, Trixie.” She meets my gaze. “It’s mine.” Now she looks as dejected as Bennie. This is turning out to be a melancholy day all around. “You were right, Happy,” she tells me.
“I was just afraid Bennie would be more hurt by your keeping this from him than he would be that you mislaid the fur.” It’s deception that kills relationships, after all. Most everything else can be gotten past.
“So what do I do now?” she asks.
“You best leave him be,” Shanelle says. “Let’s tour some of the other exhibits and give him time to come back on his own.”
“I think that’s good advice, Mrs. P,” Trixie says.
I glance at my watch. Seven o’clock isn’t far away now. And somehow amidst all of this I have figured out what I will do. “I’ll go pick up the fur,” I say.
“Then we can all meet up for dinner before the preview,” Shanelle says.
“I hope nobody minds,” Trixie says, “but I invited Cynthia to join us for dinner. She seemed kind of upset when I talked to her earlier.”
“I think that girl’s always upset,” Shanelle mutters.
“You all go on ahead,” I say. “Don’t wait for me.”
“Do you have to babysit Oliver’s father again?” Trixie asks.
“I have another errand to run,” I say, careful to avoid Shanelle’s gaze. I turn to my mom. “I’ll drop the fur off at your room so you can wear it tonight.”
“Maybe that’ll make Bennie happy,” she says.
Maybe.
Since I don’t have much time, I take a cab to Saks. Given the Fifth Avenue traffic, even that takes half an hour. Fifteen minutes later, with the perfectly repaired fur in tow, I hail another taxi. “The Empire State Building,” I tell the driver.
It’s clear to me now. I cannot be with Mario. I love Jason and I want to stay married to him. He was my love the day I married him and he is my love today. But I need to explain to Mario what he’s meant to me, and why. Not showing up tonight seems like too strong a rejection of him and that’s not how I feel. I don’t know what would have happened between us if I’d been free when we met, but I must stop dwelling on what might have been. I must live my life the way it is.
The cab reaches 34th Street. “I’ll get out here,” I tell the driver, and hand him a ten. I don’t have time to wait for change. I scramble out of the taxi and stand on the sidewalk to gaze up at the Empire State Building straining toward heaven through the inky sky. Tonight the lighting at the top is the classic signature white.
I’m leaning back admiring the tower for one final moment when it hits me. I don’t have my mother’s fur in my arms.
I left it in the cab.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The cab is long gone. It’s one among a gazillion vehicles heading downtown on Fifth Avenue.
On the other hand, I realize a beat later, it can’t have gotten very far. All four lanes are crowded with traffic. If I hustle I might still be able to catch it.
I’m embarrassed to admit it, but for a fleeting moment I consider going to see Mario instead of chasing down my mother’s fur. Then I get a hold of myself. This moment is not about Mario. After all, why am I here at the Empire State Building in the first place? I’m here to say goodbye to him.
I raise my head and gaze up at the building, impossibly tall and wondrous. Mario is up there waiting for me. Deep in my soul I know he wants me to appear. He will be sad for a long time when I don’t.
I close my eyes, mouth a silent goodbye, and move on to the rest of my Mario-less life. Which begins with me getting my mother’s fur back.
If I can.
I chase cabs, oh, how I chase cabs. It’s a big help that my footgear is on the sensible side. But none of the cabs into which I peer is driven by my cabbie and none of them has my mother’s fur in the rear seat. And I soon realize it’s highly improbable that my cab is still on Fifth Avenue. It must have turned off by now. Meaning it could be anywhere.
Of course I don’t know the taxi’s medallion number and I don’t have a receipt. I paid with cash and skedaddled. I call yellow cab and file a report. No, they tell me, no driver has reported finding an abandoned Russian sable in their vehicle. They advise me to call the 17th police precinct, which handles lost property. Then I find myself on the receiving end of a call that gives me heart palpitations.
It’s my mother. “I’m back at the hotel about to go to that musical,” she says, “and I don’t see my fur.”
I take a deep breath. “Okay, try to remain calm.”
“Oh, my God! What happened now?”
I explain, at least sort of. I leave out the whole Mario part, but my mom sees right through that.
“There’s something wrong with you or this never would’ve happened.”
“There is something wrong with me, but we’ll talk about that later. I believe we’ll get the fur back,” I add, even though I don’t really believe that at all. Not the way things have been going. And the Przybyszewski clan is really pushing its luck with that fur.
My mother sighs. “It’s all right, Happy. I can’t blame you for making the exact same mistake I did.”
But mine is worse. I left the fur in a taxi as opposed to the relative safety of a high-end salon’s closet. “Have a good time at Dream Angel, Mom, and try not to worry about the fur. By the way, are things going any better with Bennie?”
“Not really.”
“Give it time.”
“He’s a good man, that Bennie. I could never love him like I love your father, but who could expect me to? Your father and I had forty-nine years together.”
It surprises me, and pains me, to hear her refer to her relationship with my father in the past tense. “Forty-nine years is a long time.”
“Nothing will ever come close to that,” my mother tells me. “But all the same, I don’t want that Bennie to stay mad at me.”
I encourage her again to give him time and we end the call. Now what do I do? I’ve done all I can to find the fur. I’m afraid all that’s left is to pray it turns up. So I decide to coddle myself. I’ll go back to the apartment, put on my jammies, pour a glass of wine, and eat something. I don’t care that I’m in one of the world’s most exciting cities. Right now all I want to do is cocoon.
I make a pit stop at a tiny, crammed grocery store to pick up a rotisserie chicken dinner and of course some wine. My evening passes quietly. I exchange texts with Jason, who’s preoccupied with writing up a report, and don�
�t allow myself to think about Mario. I force myself to ponder Lisette’s murder, but it’s fruitless. I can barely focus. And no one calls about the fur, not the cab company and not the 17th precinct. In this case I do not think no news is good news.
Around ten, when I’m brushing my teeth for bed, my phone rings at last. It’s Trixie. “You can stop worrying about the fur, Happy. Saks has it.”
“What? How?”
“Your cabbie took it there. I guess he read the label. Then the fur salon called Bennie, but he had his phone off for the show. So he just heard the voicemail now.”
“Oh, thank God.” I take a deep breath. I am beyond relieved.
“Bennie was pretty amazed the fur got lost again,” Trixie says.
“That poor man. He must think my whole family is nuts.”
“All’s well that ends well, though. And see how honest New Yorkers are? I knew it.”
Yes, many New Yorkers are wonderful peeps. All the ones who aren’t flinging around ball bearings. “Anyway, did my mom and Bennie enjoy Dream Angel?”
“They loved it. It really is so good now. It would’ve been a perfect evening if Bennie weren’t still so sad. And Cynthia, too. She was depressed all through dinner. Something to do with her foster mother.”
“That woman is kind of a basketcase, Trixie. What’s she going to do when you go home?”
“Beats me. Anyhoo, don’t wait up for us. We’re going to grab dessert before we call it a night.”
Waiting up is not an option I consider. I am thrashed, body and soul.
It’s in the middle of the night, when Trixie and Shanelle are huddled in their bed across the apartment, when I wake up. I sit upright, my heart thudding in my chest, and reach for my phone. It’s 3:36 a.m. Outside our floor-to-ceiling windows, the glass apartment building across the street is cloaked in darkness. Not a single light is on.
So it’s not true this city never sleeps. How many other lies did I buy since I’ve been here in New York City? Now that the truth about who killed Lisette is staring me in the face, I’m shocked at the deception I never saw before tonight.
There are a few important facts to establish, but I can’t do that until morning. I have to wait hours and hours, which will be very hard to do. Nor can I call Mario for help. Those days are gone.
I rise and dress as quietly as I can, then let myself out of the apartment and ride the elevator down to the lobby. Here I can make a call without waking Trixie and Shanelle.
Twenty minutes later, with an ice-cold drizzle chilling the near-empty streets, I hail a cab. At the police station I have to wait a couple of hours for the homicide detective who’s handling Lisette’s case to arrive. I don’t mind; there’s no way I could sleep, anyway. Armed with weak coffee, the free time allows me to review my reasoning. I am happy to report that the more alert I become, the more solid my case appears. Nor does it fall apart when I present it to the detective, a dark-haired fortyish man who looks like he spends a lot of time lifting barbells. Not only does he not demolish my case, but after he examines a computer database he’s able to confirm an important detail.
My heartbeat ratchets back up to where it was in the middle of the night. “Yes,” I tell the detective, “that’s the exact same crime that the heroine in Dream Angel committed.”
He stares at me for a few moments, tapping his pen on his desktop. Then: “We still have to establish a link between the two of them.”
“I have an idea how to do that,” I tell him.
By ten in the morning, the detective and I have established the link. “She called in sick to work,” he says, handing me a fresh cup of java. We’re pretty good buds by now.
“She’s got to be super upset today,” I say. “The show opens tonight.”
“You can’t come with us to her apartment.”
I knew he’d say that. No one can predict what will happen when the police try to haul her in. After all, she might not look dangerous, but she is a murderer. “What if she’s not at her apartment?”
“We’ll find her,” the detective asserts with confidence.
But it’s not the N.Y.P.D. that finds her first. It’s me. Because after I leave the police station, I get a hunch she won’t be able to resist visiting the Off-Broadway theater where her life story is being told. Not on the most important day of all: the day Dream Angel officially opens.
I don’t even have to wait a full hour before she appears. She’s stylish as ever in the pink double-breasted bouclé coat that caught my eye the first time I saw it, right here in front of the marquee. And even though it’s drizzling, her pixie hairstyle looks perfect.
At least she’ll take a good mug shot.
“Hello, Cynthia,” I say, coming up behind her. I was watching for her from across the street.
She has a startled expression when she pivots to face me. “Oh. Happy. Hi.”
“The show doesn’t open for hours.”
I watch her mind work as she tries to come up with a plausible explanation for why I’m finding her here yet again, nowhere near showtime. “I’m only passing by,” she lies.
I look up at the marquee, which features the Dream Angel illustration of a beautiful woman grabbing at a flying tiara as if it were a bridal bouquet. “You must wish the woman in the poster had a pixie haircut like yours.”
She gapes at me. “Why would you say that?”
“Well, it is your story, after all. Pretty much every detail. A woman who longs to be a beauty queen. Who had a tough upbringing. Who was a foster child and even did time in prison for shoplifting.” That’s the information about Cynthia Cowlin, convicted felon, that the detective found this morning in the database. Years ago she lifted a couture dress from Neiman Marcus and since the price tag was over a thousand dollars, it was grand larceny. “The only detail Lisette didn’t use,” I go on, “was that you work as a hairdresser.”
“Did Lisette tell you all that?” Cynthia asks, so quietly I almost don’t hear her.
“No. I think she wanted everybody to think she came up with the story by herself.” Cynthia stares at me, silent and wide-eyed. I keep going. “She never gave you the credit you deserve. Your name doesn’t show up even once in the playbill. That must hurt.”
Cynthia finds her voice. “I only found out she was writing a musical about me when I read a story about Dream Angel in the Times. She’d been working on it for years and never said one word to me.”
“And all that time you were doing her hair.” That’s the detail I found out today from Salon Marceau, whose proprietor promised help if I ever needed it. After he made a few calls to his colleagues in the business, he confirmed what I suspected.
“Until six months ago, I did her hair for years,” Cynthia says. “After a while we started confiding in each other. That’s why I told her about my past. She told me private things about herself, too.”
“You thought you were friends.”
“Everything I told her was between her and me. But then she turns around and uses it to make money! Even though she was already rich.”
“Did you ask her to compensate you?” Knowing Lisette, I can only imagine how that conversation would’ve gone.
“She refused! Totally refused!” Now Cynthia’s voice is nowhere near quiet. “As if you can just take somebody’s life and use it!”
I understand where Cynthia is coming from on this. If that happened to me, I’d be mad, too. “I can easily imagine you didn’t want some of that information about you to go public.”
“I don’t publicize my criminal record, if that’s what you mean. No one has a right to know anything about it. After all, I did my time. I paid my debt to society.”
Ironically, no one would’ve linked Cynthia Cowlin with Dream Angel’s storyline if she hadn’t killed Lisette. Now everyone will know not only that she did time for grand larceny, but that she committed murder.
“It really ticks me off that people think Lisette was so brilliant to write that musical.” Cynthia makes a scoffi
ng sound. “Putting her picture on the poster and calling her a ‘librettist extraordinaire’? How ridiculous is that? All she did was steal my life story and write it up. I’m not sorry she’s dead,” Cynthia adds. Then her lipsticked mouth slams shut.
I move a step closer, thinking now would be an excellent time for my new friend the detective to show up. Preferably with his partner and a pair of handcuffs. After all, before I walked across the street to chat up Cynthia, I alerted him I had our killer in my sights.
“For a while there,” I murmur, “everybody thought Lisette died accidentally. So you kind of got the last laugh.”
Cynthia narrows her eyes at me. For the first time I glimpse the killer behind the stylist’s façade. “What are you talking about?”
“The ball bearing hitting Lisette in the head? I guess you really are a Broadway geek because you managed to get backstage and hide out there until you shot it at her. How did you hit her so accurately, by the way?”
I guess I didn’t really expect Cynthia to answer that question. As it is, she bolts. She has one advantage over me in that she’s wearing ballet flats and I’ve got on my booties with the 3-inch heels. But even hobbled by those, and the fact that the pavement is slick from the light rain, I’m still pretty fast.
Since we’re in the theater district, it’s darn crowded. Cynthia dodges and weaves as she tries to evade me and I do the same. I’m about to tackle her from behind—I guess I’ll have to take her down and hold onto her until the detective shows up; it’s good I’m bigger than she is—when a few people squeeze between her and me. For a moment I lose sight of her, but then among a group further ahead I catch a flash of her pink coat.
I’m back on her tail when I spy the Tin Man not far in the distance. If Cynthia stays on her current course, she’ll run right past him. “Tin Man! Tin Man!” I scream. I wave my right arm above my head trying to get his attention. Finally he looks at me. “Stop the woman in pink!” I shriek. “She’s the one who killed Lisette!”
Ms America and the Brouhaha on Broadway Page 28