by Parnell Hall
“Well, what about her? Anything interesting going on?”
“I wouldn’t think so. She’s a little old for that sort of thing.”
Ah, youth. The woman had to be younger than me. But Beth didn’t seem to notice that what she’d just said could be construed as rude.
“She had no special problems with Goobie Wheatly?” I said.
“No. I really think you’re on the wrong track. With this resident-company bit. But if you’re looking for scandal ...”
“Yeah?” I said.
She looked around to see who was in earshot, then turned back and whispered, “Margie Miller.”
I took a breath. That’s what I thought she wanted to tell me. Herbie wasn’t that discreet, and his affair was most likely public knowledge. Chief Bob knew about it, and probably most everybody else did too.
It wasn’t going to help much, but I figured I’d better hear about it as if I hadn’t. “Margie?” I said. “What about her?”
“Well, this is the juicy stuff,” she said. “I mean, forget the resident company But Margie, she’s something else. I mean, she’s having an affair with Herbie, right? Everybody knows that—it’s how she got the part in the play, for god’s sake. So here she is, having this affair with the producer/director of the whole theater, and you’d think she’d be discreet. At least until the play was over. But no, she’s gotta have something on the side.”
I blinked. Jesus Christ, Margie’s little fling with the tech director was public knowledge too?
I frowned. “What do you mean?” I said.
“I mean, here she is having her affair with Herbie, and at the same time she’s fooling around with someone else.”
“Oh? And who might that be?”
“Walter Penbridge.”
“Who? Oh, you mean the actor?”
“Yeah. The one whose part you’re taking. I suppose it’s to be expected. Co-stars, they have a fling. It always happens in the theater. It’s a wonder she’s not coming on to you.”
I rubbed my head. “Oh, good lord.”
“What is it?”
“Well,” I said. “That’s interesting as all hell, but it’s not what I want. I mean, maybe they had a relationship. Fine. But it was over. I mean really over. The guy died. This was a done deal. It doesn’t really tie in with Goobie Wheatly and the general scheme of things.”
“Well, maybe not.”
“Well, what about him?”
“Who?”
“Goobie Wheatly. Did Margie Miller ever come on to him?”
Her eyes widened. “Of course not. He—
“Was too old,” I finished for her.
I was feeling pretty old myself. After a few more questions I let Beth escape back to the apprentices.
For my own part, I had a lot to think of. What Beth had told me was rather disturbing. And not just the opinion that old men couldn’t find love. All that schoolgirl chatter about Peter being gay, David being asexually fat, Nellie being a cock-tease, Catherine woman-whose-name-I-missed-again being too old and particularly Margie-poo being a nympho—god, how had she missed that word?—well, all that was a lot to mull over.
There were some pretty good clues in that, I thought. Either that or it was all gibberish. I’m not sure Beth was entirely accurate, but she sure did have a nice smile.
Plus the show had gone well.
So all in all, it was a pretty good night.
29.
SERGEANT MACAULLIF WASN’T PLEASED TO hear from me. No surprise there. I can’t recall a time he ever was pleased to hear from me, or at least let on he was. MacAullif was an NYPD homicide sergeant, and I’d worked with him on a number of investigations. If that’s the right word for it. It’s not, really, but I don’t know how better to say it. Anyway, he and I had a sort of friendly adversarial relationship. A little long on sarcasm, but still comfortable, if that makes any sense.
At any rate, he voiced what had become his routinely obligatory displeasure at hearing it was me. For my money, his irritation became much more genuine when he learned there was a murder, then escalated when I told him where I was.
“Connecticut?” he said. “What the fuck you doing in Connecticut?”
I explained about doing the play. As expected, that did not cheer him.
“Jesus Christ, what a moron,” he said. “Can’t you do anything right?”
“This was not my doing,” I said.
“Yeah. You wanna know what your problem is? You have the Midas touch in reverse. Everything you touch turns to shit.”
“Thanks a lot. You want to waste a lot of time blaming me for this, or could we discuss it rationally for a minute?”
“What’s to discuss? You’re in Connecticut, aren’t you? I got no jurisdiction in Connecticut. Whatever the hell you want, I can’t do it.”
“I don’t want anything.”
“Then why’d you call?”
“To ask you a question.”
“See, you do want something. You want advice.”
“Not advice. Just a simple question.”
“With you, nothing’s simple. Look, I’m up to my ass in work this morning. I ain’t got time to fuck around. You got a question, ask it and let me get on with my life. But it better be important. If it’s not important, I’m gonna be pissed.”
“It’s important.”
“Fine. Fire away. What’s your question?”
“How do you spell actor?”
There was a long pause. I could practically hear MacAullif s teeth grinding. I could imagine a cartoon character doing a slow burn.
“What ... did ... you ... say?” MacAullif said ominously.
“I know it sounds stupid,” I said, “but I gotta know. Look, in a homicide, if it’s a shooting, the cops call the perpetrator the shooter. If it’s not a shooting, they sometimes call him the actor. Instead of the perpetrator, they say the actor. Referring to the guy who did it. Don’t you sometimes do that?”
There was a pause. I could hear the tension in MacAullif’s voice, like he was about to explode.
“Yeah. I sometimes do that. So?”
“So how do you spell it?”
The explosion came.
“Who the fuck cares!” MacAullif bellowed. I think I could have heard him without the telephone. “What the fuck difference does it make?”
“I need to know,” I said. “See, I’m here with a group of actors, and the cops are referring to the killer as the actor. I don’t know how to take that. I asked them how to spell it. The investigator at the scene says a-c-t-e-r. The chief of police spells it a-c-t-o-r. So what’s the real way?”
There was another pause. “Real way?”
“Yeah. When you type up an official report, how do you spell actor?”
“Who the fuck cares!” MacAullif bellowed again. “Jesus Christ, what the hell difference does it make how I spell it. How I spell it isn’t official. How any other cop spells it isn’t official. What, you think there’s some guide with the legal definition and proper spelling in it? I spell it any goddamned way I feel like it. And so does any other cop in New York City. And that doesn’t make it official and that doesn’t make it right.
“But even if there was some goddamned official spelling of the fucking word, what the hell difference could it possibly make in a fucking homicide? I mean, how could it possibly matter?”
I didn’t know. I just knew it mattered to me. Ever since I’d heard the cop say it the night of the murder I’d been obsessed with the idea. And even knowing it was stupid, it was something I couldn’t get out of my head until I’d resolved.
Which was why I’d braved calling MacAullif. Knowing the extent of the abuse I’d have to endure. Or perhaps needing the abuse to snap me out of it, to stimulate me and get my thoughts back on track.
But it hadn’t helped. The phone call to MacAullif had not exorcised the demons.
I could not get the phrase out of my head.
“The actor was not on the scene.”
> Actor.
Acter.
Any way you spelled it, it bothered the hell out of me.
I had a feeling it always would.
30.
CHIEF BOB WAS OUT WHEN I stopped by, and Felix said he wouldn’t be in till after lunch, so I strolled over to the playhouse to check out the Glass Menagerie rehearsal. Only when I got there, the house and work lights were off and there was no one there.
I went out in the lobby and bumped into Rita, the box-office girl, who was busy hanging up posters for Glass Menagerie. I asked her why they weren’t rehearsing and was told in a tone of voice that implied I was a moron that they were. Me being a stranger in these parts who had never attended a rehearsal other than the dress, and Rita not being the swiftest individual ever to grace god’s green earth, it only took a few minutes for me to glean the information that the rehearsal wasn’t onstage, that there was a rehearsal hall in one end of the scene shop and that the rehearsal was up there.
The jerk of her thumb Rita used to punctuate “up there was rather vague, but I figured I could find it. Before I went, it occurred to me she was another person I hadn’t thought to question since the murder. In fact, I wasn’t even sure if she was there that night.
It turned out she was, though not in the box office. She’d been sitting in the audience with everybody else.
That stirred a chord in my memory. It took me a moment to put my finger on it.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You were in the audience for all of Act Three?”
“That’s right.”
“But Herbie’s wife made a phone call from the box office. Called the baby-sitter. Didn’t you have to go out and let her in?”
She shook her head. “No. Why would I? It was open.”
“You leave the box office open when there’s no one there?”
She looked at me as if I were an idiot. “Why not?”
I felt like an idiot. Why should I debate the subject with her? If she did, she did.
I was just turning to go when Amanda came rushing out of the box office with some papers in her hand.
“I’m glad I caught you,” she said. “You came late, so we never signed you in.”
I frowned. “Signed me in?”
She smiled. “So to speak.” She thrust the papers at me. “Here. If you wouldn’t mind, just be an angel and do it now.”
“What’s this?” I said, taking them.
“W-4 and a health form,” she said. “You do want to get paid, don’t you?”
I certainly did. I accepted the pen, quickly filled out the W-4.
The health form was harder. A full page, both sides, seemingly hundreds of questions.
I frowned. “What’s the purpose of this?” I said. “Doesn’t a doctor have to do it?”
Amanda shook her head. “No, no. It’s just for insurance purposes. We need your general background, plus the names and addresses of the doctors who would have your medical records.”
I took a breath. What a pain in the ass.
“Look,” I said. “Could I fill this out and hand it in tomorrow? I’m going to have to call my wife to get my doctor’s address, you know. I mean, I know where it is—I can find it just fine—but the street number?”
I could tell Amanda would have liked to have had the form right then, but what could she say? I escaped from the lobby with the form unfilled, and set out in quest of the rehearsal hall.
I followed a dirt road through the meadow in the direction from which I’d seen the apprentices carrying a flat on strike night, and soon came to what had obviously once been a barn but now served as the theater’s rehearsal hall and scene shop.
A half-dozen apprentice girls were painting flats on the lawn outside. One of them was Beth, who smiled and waved. It was a hot sunny morning and she was wearing a bikini bathing suit, which made my day. At least until I looked by her and saw who else was sunbathing on the lawn.
Avery fucking Allington. TV star and ham extraordinaire. With no rehearsal of his own to go to, he had donned a bathing suit, set up a deck chair out on the lawn, and was lounging in it and obviously flirting with the apprentice girls.
When he saw me, he smiled and nodded, a regal, condescending nod that I had to either acknowledge or look like a schmuck. I gave him a wave but otherwise ignored him and walked up to Beth.
“Hi,” I said. “I wanted to check out the rehearsal. Where is it?”
She smiled, pointed to steps leading up to the far end of the barn. “In there,” she said, then lowered her voice and smiled. “But I hear it’s boring.”
“Oh yeah?” I said. “Who said that?”
“Avery.”
“Oh? Has he been in there?”
“No. But he says it’s a boring play.”
“I’m sure Tennessee Williams is rolling in his grave,” I said. “I hope Avery won’t mind if I make my own assessment.”
I walked over, climbed the steps to the rehearsal hall.
It was like a theater without the audience or wings. A small raised stage, with just enough space in front of it for the director and a few other people to sit.
Today, those few other people were Margie-poo. Back from her dalliance with the tech director, no doubt.
The four actors, Peter Constantine, Nellie Knight and the man and woman playing Major Petkoff and Catherine (mental note to learn their names #403) were all onstage doing the scene at the dinner table where the lights go out. It occurred to me that made life easy for Herbie—no blocking. It also occurred to me to wonder if, when there was blocking, Margie-poo would open her mouth and chime in.
Herbie saw me, motioned me over.
I went over, bent down by him, whispered, “What?”
“Do you want something?” he whispered.
“No. Just thought I’d look in on rehearsal.”
He frowned. “Look, I’d rather you came back when we’re running. Right now we’re blocking things, and it’s slow as hell. Also, it’s distracting for the actors.”
I put up my hand. “No problem, Herbie. Since I never got in the rehearsal hall myself I just wanted to see where it was.” I nodded, eased my way out the door.
Right, Herbie. Distracting for the actors. And I suppose Margie isn’t.
I came down the steps, walked by the flats on the lawn again.
Avery Allington seemed to have distracted Beth, at least enough for her to be chatting with him while she painted. I walked on by and followed the sound of power saws through the wide double doors into the other end of the barn, where the apprentice boys were busily assembling more flats.
The tech director, lighting and set designer, stage manager, and Margie-poo seducer was supervising the construction. I wondered if he realized she was in the rehearsal hall in the other end of the barn. I wondered if he cared.
While I watched, Ridley came by carrying a coiled-up length of electrical cable. He appeared, as always, to be in his own little world. He walked right by me, with no recognition whatsoever, to a ladder at one side of the shop leading up to what must at one time have been a hayloft. He climbed the ladder disappeared from sight.
A voice said, “Excuse me.”
I looked up, saw two apprentice boys carrying a newly constructed flat. One of them looked familiar, and after a moment I realized it was because he was the one who played the officer who searched Raina’s bedroom in Act One. Which made him the one who’d been involved with Beth. The one Goobie had broken up. The one who’d tried to hit on Nellie Knight.
I wasn’t standing there like a clod thinking all this, by the way; I’d stepped aside to let them pass. I was looking after them thinking all this.
“Can I help you?”
I turned, found myself face to face with the tech director. In that moment it occurred to me that, aside from Mary Anne, in the space of the last half hour I had just seen every single person connected with the theater.
Which meant I had seen the murderer.
If I could only figure out who.
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I took a breath, blew it out again. Shook my head.
“Christ, I wish you could.”
31.
THE HEADLINE THAT AFTERNOON was PLAYHOUSE MURDER BAFFLES POLICE. The paper was out early, by one o’clock, so I read it during lunch at the snack bar, then strolled over to the police station to see what Chief Bob thought about it.
He didn’t think much. “No big deal,” he said, waving it away. “Hell, you can’t have a simple break-in or car theft without the paper suggesting I’m not doing my job. It’s small-town politics. It’s the same all over.”
I wished I shared his lack of concern. It occurred to me Chief Bob might not be so damn indifferent if he were a suspect in the case. I didn’t voice the thought—no reason to remind him that I was. Though I’m sure he knew that well enough. Instead I filled him in on my conversations with Peter Constantine and Beth Scott.
“Excellent,” he said. “Now you’re doing what I hoped you would do. Mingling with the suspects and keeping your ear to the ground.”
“Not that we got anything useful,” I said.
“Maybe not, but it all helps. You see patterns. This one actor may be gay—though this apprentice girl’s opinion on the subject is not necessarily right. The guy isn’t admittedly gay, so there’s room for error. But it’s interesting, because if he is gay and isn’t admitting to it, there’s a whole dynamic there that could mean something. Add that to his insane jealousy of any visiting actors—guest stars, if you will.”
“How does that add up to murder?”
“I didn’t say it did. But you put it all together and we begin to get a picture.
“Then this stuff about Margie,” Chief Bob added. “If she really did have a fling with this Walter Penbridge ...”
“I think she did,” I said.
“Oh? Why is that?”
I told him what I thought I’d seen of Margie-poo and the tech director.
He nodded. “There you are. This is just the sort of thing I need.”
I looked at him. “Why?”
He frowned, thought a moment. “I know, I know. It’s the type of stuff soap operas are made of. But you know, I like that. The intertwining patterns. The more you learn about them, the more you know of motives. They don’t have to be motives for the murder. Just normal, everyday motivations. The more you learn, the better chance there is something in there that will help.”