Up on the brilliantly lit stage, nine children were making enough noise for nineteen. Barefooted, dressed in lollipop-colored tights and leotards, they shrieked with laughter as they tried to adjust their rhythmical march whenever Ginger Judson varied the beat of her bongo drums. They appeared to range in age from five to eight.
The iron fence was nowhere in sight this afternoon. The scaffold tree had been unbolted from its spot at stage right and pushed over into the wings. The cardboard tombstones were also gone and the painted backdrop had been hoisted overhead to uncover the mirrored wall behind.
Sigrid occasionally had trouble differentiating between boys and girls when they were that young, but after watching a few minutes from one of the side pews and seeing them reflected from all angles, she rather thought there were five girls and four boys until she heard Cliff Delgado’s voice above the laughter and drum beats: “Okay now, boys march like elephants and girls gallop like ponies”; whereupon five small bodies hunched over with their arms swinging together in front of their heads like elephant trunks.
Although she concentrated on the way Delgado and Judson were conducting the children s dance class, Sigrid was suddenly overwhelmed by such an intense conviction that Nauman was somewhere near that she turned to the pew behind, fully expecting him to be there. Instead, she saw a rather homely young man with a smear of yellow ocher beneath his left ear and a bulky wool sweater that exuded a familiar aroma of turpentine and paint thinner, odors that instantly conjured up a vivid memory of Nauman whenever she smelled them now. Another artist, no doubt.
He gave Sigrid a friendly smile and slipped along his pew till he was close enough to murmur, “Mine’s the one with the yellow-and-purple leotard. Which one’s yours?”
“I don’t have one,” Sigrid replied, noting for the first time three unfamiliar women seated six rows down on the opposite side of the theater, two as young as Liz Weinberg, the third several years older. More mothers and a grandmother?
She watched the child in yellow and purple, the tallest of the four girls, as she galloped with the others in and out of the slower-moving line of “elephants.”
“Do you always come with your daughter?” she asked.
He shook his head. “We’re only three blocks away, but after what happened here Saturday… Caitlin-my wife-she thought we ought to take Shannon out of class, but she loves it so much. Just look at her!”
The ponies and elephants tumbled into a noisy heap at Delgado’s feet, and if that little girl’s blissful face were any barometer, she did indeed love the class.
“Besides,” said her father, “I don’t figure the kids are in any danger and since they’ve got that psychiatrist coming back to talk with them today, Shannon ought to be here for it.”
“Did she know the child who was killed last February?” asked Sigrid.
He looked at her suspiciously. “You connected with the theater?”
“I’m a police officer,” she answered and introduced herself.
“Howard ©’Brian," he said. “Yeah, Shannon knew her. Not well, though. They overlapped in this class for a month, then last January the Gillespie girl moved up to the Wednesday-afternoon class for the nine-to-twelve age group. A month later and she was dead.” He rested his arms on the back of Sigrid’s pew; his eyes followed his daughters movements onstage. “It’s a bitch when something like that happens,” he said softly. “You get paranoid with your kids, don’t want to let them out of your sight. I walked Shannon everywhere till Memorial Day, till her friends teased her so much she made me stop, and here I am doing it again.” Sigrid nodded toward the other parents. “You don’t seem to be alone.”
O’Brian frowned. “There’s usually fifteen to twenty kids in this session. About a third of the parents have pulled theirs out and maybe they’re the smart ones. I don’t know. Emmy Mion wasn’t much taller than Shannon or Amanda.” He leaned closer to Sigrid and the evocative smell of turpentine grew even stronger “Tell me the truth, Lieutenant: Is some nut running around with a thing against small girl dancers?”
“We certainly hope not, Mr O’Brian.”
“Weird that some guy could sneak in from the alley and waltz right onstage to kill her”
“Is that what they’re saying?”
“That’s what someone told my wife. That it was some psycho loony Emmy used to dance with out in California who followed her here. We made them promise to keep that alley door locked from now on and somebody’s going to sit out in the lobby whenever classes are on to sign people in and out.”
Sigrid sat half-turned in the pew so that she could both look at O’Brian and see the stage. “Did your daughter talk much about Emmy Mion?” ^ “Not more than eighteen or twenty times a day,” he answered wryly. “Did you know Emmy could do a somersault in midair, walk on her hands, hey! swing from the rafters, too, for all I know?”
Sigrid smiled. “Nothing negative, then?”
Howard O’Brian’s face became serious again. “You mean any hanky-panky going on, like those day-care centers where the kids were molested?”
“It happens.”
“Not here,” he said emphatically. “That’s the first thing the kids were asked after the little Gillespie girl was killed and we wouldn’t have let Shannon stay on if there’d been the slightest hint of any funny teacher stuff. There’s always been a good feel about this place. These people really seem to like working with kids. It’s not just a job for them-hey, they’re only kids themselves. Look at diem.”
Up on the stage, Eric Kee and Ulrike Innes had joined in with the children for some monkey-see, monkey- do pantomime as Cliff Delgado called out, “Happy! It’s your birthday!”
Ginger’s bongos gave way to the lighthearted slap and jingle of her tambourine.
“You got balloons for your party! They’re so big they almost swoo-oop you off the ground.” As Cliff’s voice swooped, Eric and Rikki each swung a child into the air and pretended to bobble him across the stage while the other children mimicked being tugged upward. The musty maroon velvet curtains had been pulled all the way back and Nate Richmond’s reflection could be seen standing before his lightboard at stage left. A pixie smile lit his ageless face as he bounced colored lights over the children like confetti.
“Ooops! Billy just popped his balloon!” Cliff called. “Oh, he’s sad. So sad, and you’re sad for him.”
The children drooped around a small boy, Ginger switched back to the drums and beat them in a somber dirge, and the confetti-colored lights merged into a pale blue.
As the class wound down, a slender figure emerged from one of the side doors that led backstage and paused to speak to the three women, who immediately stood up and moved to the rear pews. The figure continued over to Sigrid and Howard O’Brian.
“Hi! I’m Dr. Ferrell and-Sigrid! I didn’t realize you were here.”
Christa Ferrell beamed at her old schoolmate happily. She wore an expensive-looking green sweater that had whimsical giraffes knitted into its design; and with the sleeves pushed up and her cornsilk hair piled loosely atop her head, she looked as fresh and young as one of the children. Her smile included Sigrid’s companion. “Are you a daddy?”
Looking dazzled, Howard O’Brian stuck out his hand. “Shannon’s my daddy, yes. I mean, yes, I’m Shannon O’Brian’s father.”
The psychiatrist shook his hand and explained, “I’m asking all the parents to move as far from the stage as possible so that the children won t be inhibited by your presence when I meet with them in a few minutes.”
“Oh sure,” said O’Brian and scooped up his scarf and jacket. “Nice talking to you, Lieutenant, and I sure hope you people catch the guy soon.”
Christa Ferrell looked at Sigrid dubiously. “You didn’t want to sit in on this first session, did you? Strangers are sometimes tricky until I’ve established trust”
“I’ll poke around backstage,” Sigrid said. “But when you’re through, I’d like to hear how it went.”
“Fine.
” Christa Ferrell moved toward the stage as Helen Delgado rounded the mirrored wall at the rear with a tray that held a pitcher and some paper cups. Today the designer had sleeked her hair back into a smooth braided chignon, and enormous yellow plastic sunflowers bloomed in her ears.
“Now then,” she said warmly, “who’s ready for juice?”
With six members of the 8th-AV-8 out front among the children, backstage seemed deserted. Beyond the circular iron staircase, the door to the prop room was open so Sigrid stepped inside and looked around. Painted flats were piled against one wall and shelves held a limited inventory of props that reflected the troupe’s meager budget: cheap umbrellas, plastic canes, a collection of hats that might have come from thrift stores. Hanging from the ceiling was a net filled with multicolored plastic beach balls, and directly beneath, looking like leftovers from an EA.O. Schwarz fire sale7 were a life-size stuffed lion, tiger, and ostrich in mangy velour.
A table in the far corner of the large room held numerous cans of spray paint; brushes, rollers, and a couple of small face masks hung from nails over the table. Judging by the thick mat of newspapers on the floor and the overlapping layers of colors splattered on both comer walls, Sigrid decided this must be where Helen Delgado painted her flats.
Propped against the fourth wall was the spiked iron fence. Its removal from the stage, unlike that of the scaffold tree, appeared to be permanent.
“We didn’t think the children ought to have to keep looking at it,” said Helen Delgado from the open doorway.
"Probably wise of you," Sigrid murmured and, as she accompanied the designer down the hall, asked, "Have you learned anything more about the telephone call Miss Mion expected Saturday?”
“Me? Nope. But the phone’s been on automatic most of the time since Saturday and who knows whether anyone’s listened to the message tape yet?” She balanced the tray with the plastic juice pitcher on one hand and opened the door to the green room with the other. “Eric and Rikki and I’ve been splitting the clerical work-even Sergio’s taken a whirl-but none of us seem to have Emmy’s flair for it. I guess she took more of the load than we realized.” Hearing his name as they entered, Sergio Avril looked up like a startled rabbit from the conversation he and Roman Tramegra were engaged in while seated upon that rump-sprung green couch.
“The lieutenant wants to know if that telephone call Emmy expected Saturday ever came,” Helen explained, handing the tray to Roman, who carried it over to the sink and began to rinse out the pitcher.
“Oh, dear,” said the composer. He turned pink, stood up, and nervously cleared his throat. He was so shy and self-effacing in a threadbare suit too large for his thin frame that Sigrid had carried an impression of smallness. In truth, he was taller than she and even skinnier, with a questing, forward thrust of his head as if continually trying to get his myopic eyes closer to the object in view than his body could decently permit itself.
He cleared his throat again. “Rikki didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?” asked Helen, her hands resting on her generous hips.
“She was showing me how to work the message tape this morning-you know Fm no good with things like that,” he bleated.
“Let me guess, doll.” She shook her glossy black head in mock disbelief. “You erased the tape.”
His face even pinker, the composer nodded. “Not all of it. At least I don t think all of it, but-”
“Don’t you compose on an electronic synthesizer?” Sigrid asked curiously. “That seems much more complex than a message machine.”
“It is,” Avril sighed, turning his nearsighted gaze toward her voice. “Half the time, what I do is instinctive. Before I met Nate, I could never rely upon duplicating something a second time. He’s helped me enormously with programming my compositions. And I know how to work my own tape player, of course, but a telephone’s totally different. I thought I understood Rikki’s instructions but-”
“Okay, okay!” Helen said, holding up an impatient hand. “No need to blither on about it. If it’s urgent, people’ll probably call back. Don’t sweat it, doll.”
Relieved, Avril sank back upon the dilapidated couch, removed his glasses, and began polishing them with a less-than-immaculate handkerchief.
“I know you’ve been asked several times already, Mr. Avril,” said Sigrid, “but are you sure you formed no impression of who might have joined Miss Mion onstage Saturday?”
Across the room, Roman pursed his lips at her and shook his head. Sigrid shot a glance at Helen Delgado, but the designer was intent on Avril’s answer and didn’t see.
Avril stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket and looped the gold frames around his ears, although as far as Sigrid could tell, the lenses were as smudged as before. “I wish I could say, Lieutenant, but everything’s a blur at that distance.”
“No wonder,” Helen snorted. Deftly, she removed his thick glasses and carried them over to the sink, where she dipped them into the pan of hot soapy water Roman had been using. “I’ve told you a hundred times that a handkerchief picks up grit in your pocket and scratches the lenses. And a dirty handkerchief-how can you be such an idiot?”
“You’re right, of course,” he said meekly, but Sigrid thought she detected a sly smile that came and went so quickly that she couldn’t be sure.
On the other hand, she knew there were men- women, too, for that matter-who pretended to be more incompetent than they actually were. Perhaps this was Avril’s way of making himself noticed?
“It’s too bad about your eyesight,” she said mildly. “You were directly across from Delgado and Kee. It would certainly help if you could alibi even one of them.”
"The fence and the tree were between us,” he reminded her as his now-shining spectacles were returned to him. “Thank you, Helen. You’re very kind.”
Helen smiled at him indulgently, a smile that turned to annoyance when her attention focused on the tools atop the refrigerator which Roman had forgotten until that moment.
“I tore the prop room apart looking for that mask yesterday morning,” she said, “Where the hell was it?”
“Under the spiral stairs,” said Roman. “Cliff must have left it on the steps and it fell off.” Archly, he held the rigid cupped plastic shape over his nose and mouth. The filter lining was missing but his words still sounded muffled as he spoke through the air holes. “Don’t worry about the operation, mein liebchen. I studied under ze famous Dr. Frankenstein.”
“Where’s the strap?” asked Helen, unappeased, reclaiming her equipment. “If Cliff’s broken it, I’ll strangle him.”
“No sign of a strap,” Roman told her. “Your tack hammer was up in the women’s dressing room. Along with Nate’s pliers. The tape dispenser was in the men’s dressing room. I’ll just return it to the office.”
“If you don’t mind, Mr. Tramegra, I’ll come with you," said Sigrid. “There are some questions I wish to ask.”
“Certainly, Lieutenant.”
Once inside the corner office, Sigrid went straight to the answering device on the telephone while Roman pointedly closed the door with a conspiratorial flourish.
“How long has Avril been connected with the company?” she asked when she’d zipped through the answering tape and found nothing of import in the three remaining messages.
“He came in last spring after they got that fabulous grant. I told you about that.”
“That’s right; I remember now. And you said he brought you in because you two had collaborated on some poetry readings last winter at the Y.”
As Sigrid had only known Roman since the spring, she hadn’t attended those readings of his haiku poems set to electronic music. It was not an experience she regretted missing. Although she was receptive to most poetry- especially poetry with enough formal structure, metrical rhythm, and felicitous attention to language to satisfy her sense of order-haiku had never appealed to her. Nor was she much enamored of electronic music. Nauman had tried to educate her ear as well
as her eye, but with small success in bringing her very far into the twentieth century. “Teddy Bears’ Picnic,” by Peter Klausmeyer, a contemporary American composer, made her laugh each time she heard it, and his “The Cambrian Sea” stirred her emotionally-the rest was simply so much sound and fury with little significance as Bur as Sigrid was concerned.
She clicked through the tape again, then abandoned it to fix Roman with her piercing gray eyes. “Do you think Avril would deliberately erase the tape to protect someone in the troupe?”
“Surely not!” he protested. “I fear that Sergio is something of a cultural snob. He is not ungrateful for their commission-the money has allowed him to continue work on his serious music-but he would not consider that a children’s dance company had purchased his immortal soul. Or even his loyalty.”
“If he’s that snobbish, why’s he still here so much?”
“They feed him,” Roman answered simply. “Ginger washes his shirts, Helen mends the tears in his clothing, Win sends him home with vitamin pills and bags of oranges, Nate helps him understand the machinery that David and Eric have procured so that he can work here. Few electronic composers make even a subsistence living with their music. I’ve never visited Sergio’s rooms, but I daresay they do not offer the physical comfort he has here.”
He paused and looked at the telephone thoughtfully. “He scorns the level of intellect here, yet these same creature comforts clearly offer an inducement to preserve the status quo.”
“So that if he heard something on the tape which he thought would wreck the company-?”
“He might indeed erase it deliberately,” Roman concluded. “If-and it’s a large if, my dear-if he could figure out how to manage the erasure with Rikki standing right there watching. He truly is frightfully incompetent with unfamiliar mechanical contrivances.”
“I’ll speak to Innes,” Sigrid said. “In the meantime, have you learned anything I should know about?”
“Alas, no. Ah, but wait a moment! Something Ginger said this morning makes me think that Emmy was not going to move in with her as she’d thought.”
Baby Doll Games Page 15