Murder: The Musical

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Murder: The Musical Page 26

by Meyers, Annette


  She gave him her most guileless smile. “You’ve heard of the To-Be-Opened-in-the-Event-of-My-Death letter, haven’t you, dearie? Well, we have one.”

  His lean face froze. “You’re out of your league,” he said. The door closed behind him.

  “Soon,” she murmured. “Soon.” She waited until she was sure Smith and Hartmann were gone, then stepped out in the hall. Pocketing her key, she made sure the door was locked, then walked over to Carlos’s room and rapped on the door.

  Carlos let her in, whispering, “I’m on with Mort.” He looked pleased but laid a warning finger across his mouth.

  Yawning, Wetzon sat on the edge of his bed.

  “Sure, Mort.... No, you’re right. ... I know. Uh huh. Tighten the second act. Oh? Good. Yeah, see you tomorrow.” He hung up and did a jeté. “Yeow!”

  “What? What?”

  “Mort threw Gideon out of the theatre and fired Joel. I’m going to fire Joel myself. For once, the Barracuda is absolutely right.” He grinned at her, caught her up in his arms and waltzed her around the room. “My darling Birdie,” he said, when he came to a stop. “So much joy. So much sorrow. Do you not think we live life full out?”

  “In technicolor.”

  “Yeah, well....” His mood deflated.

  “Smith is moving into Hartmann’s suite at the Four Seasons.”

  “Good for her. Better for you.” Head inclined, he studied her.

  She knew him so well, as if their nerve ends were connected. He was trying to get her to read his mind so he wouldn’t have to tell her what he wanted to tell her. “Mort sent Smitty away. I guess he was keeping his promise to me.... Joel’s limo took him out to the airport tonight.”

  “Away from all this. That’s good.” He sat down on the bed and looked at his watch, sighed, looked at Wetzon.

  “I’m off, dearie.” Wetzon opened the door.

  “Wait, Birdie.” He stood up, reached behind her and closed the door. “There’s something I didn’t tell you.”

  “Oh?”

  “The night Dilla died ... I told you Smitty came to me for help ...”

  “Yes?”

  “He said he’d tried to break up a fight between two bums and one had cut the other with a broken bottle.”

  “Oh, God, Carlos.” She leaned against the door.

  “Well, he was some mess. His clothes were torn and he was covered with blood.”

  45.

  The explosion, when it came, did not bring with it the expected, now intimate smell of cordite. Oh, she was on to it, though. She knew its tricks. This time she wasn’t going to let it run away with her. She would catch it, hold it, and make it go away for good.

  But it fooled her.

  She was outside her body, floating. The sky was ink-dark. Below her a car was traveling down Route 9 toward Claytonia, toward the farm, toward home.

  No! She tried to cry out, break the dream. Instead, she spun ahead. A car was coming from the opposite direction at full speed. In the wrong lane.

  “Daddy, watch it!” She was crying.

  For a nine-second freeze frame, she saw the startled faces of her parents through the windshield glass.

  The explosion brought with it a fierce yellow flame and then the suffocating odor of gasoline.

  No! No! No!

  She awoke uncovered, in a raging sweat, her arms over her eyes, rocking from side to side, shaking. The covers were on the floor. She pulled them up and hid under them, shivering. How could they die like that? She was only twenty. Didn’t they know they were abandoning her when she most needed them?

  Rolling over on her stomach, she buried her head in the pillow to stifle her sobs.

  This is what a breakdown is like, she thought. You lose control. Her parents had been dead almost twenty years, killed by a drunken driver in a fiery crash only three miles from their home. Why now? In the depths of her being she knew she had blocked it away, and kept it away. But not any more.

  When the fear subsided, the pain—a dull, raw ache under her breasts—remained. Was this what Sonya had referred to? Was this the other trauma that had to be dealt with? It didn’t take a shrink to translate the meaning of her dream.

  Wetzon dried her eyes on the pillowcase and groped for her watch, then the light. She was in Boston at the Ritz. It was still as death. Her watch said five o’clock. She was out of breath as if she’d tapped through the entire “Mirror Number” from Follies without taking a breath.

  The room pressed in on her. The ceiling seemed to inch down as in the Wilkie Collins story about the traveler in the strange bed. When she got out of bed, a cramp shot through her left calf, sending spasms of pain from calf to foot to thigh.

  What was happening to her? In agony, she hobbled to the bathtub and ran the water icy cold, massaging her calf. I’ve got to get out of here. Thrusting her foot into the cold water, groaning, she flexed and massaged the cramp away. Her right ankle was black and blue and tender. She was falling apart. Get dressed, pack up, and check out, Wetzon.

  In less than an hour, she was showered, dressed, made up and packed. She carried her own bag to the elevator. The hotel was just waking up. It was Saturday, after a snowstorm. No rush to go anywhere.

  When she got on the elevator, not expecting to see anyone she knew at that hour—theatre people were not morning people as a rule—she plowed into Joclyn, who was getting off.

  “I’m sorry. I thought this was the lobby.” The actress’s face was streaked with tears and mascara clung to the little creases under her eyes. Her flirtation with JoJo didn’t seem to be making her very happy. She turned away from Wetzon.

  “Joclyn, is there anything I can do?”

  ‘You?” It was an accusation.

  “Yes. I’ve been there, you know.”

  “Oh, have you really?”

  Shut up, Wetzon, she thought. You’re going to come out of this bruised. “I mean, I’m a gypsy still.”

  Joclyn seemed to be giving that some thought. When the door opened to the lobby, she walked out, then turned. “You’re not one of us anymore. You’re one of them.”

  The words were a stinging slap. They rolled around in Wetzon’s head as she waited for a cab. Joclyn was right about one thing. Wetzon was not a gypsy anymore. She was a neurotic woman, pushing forty, who had never had a decent relationship with anyone.

  The author of those words was getting out of a cab in front of the hotel. “Leslie, darling!” Mort greeted her with a wet kiss. “You’re off? Do well by us.”

  She got into his cab. “Where did you just come from?” she asked the driver.

  “Logan.”

  “Logan?” What the hell had Mort been doing at the airport? “Well, that’s where we’re going.”

  The ticket clerk at the USAir shuttle counter was talking to a cohort who had just handed him a cardboard container of coffee. Because Wetzon was the only customer, he was taking his time. Why shouldn’t he? After all, it was Wetzon who wanted to get out of town in a hurry. She would have sprouted wings and flown if she could.

  When he finally concluded his conversation, the clerk smiled at Wetzon politely and took her credit card. The first flight was at six-thirty, he told her, and that had just left. She picked up her bag and followed the gate number directions to the security belt, placing her coat, bag, and purse on it, then passed through the entrance without a problem.

  A tacky food service place—the airport equivalent of a greasy spoon—was just on her left. Wetzon ordered a small orange juice, decaf coffee, and a toasted English muffin; flicked a crumpled candy wrapper and assorted crumbs off the seat of a chair; and sat, careful not to touch the table, which was sticky enough to catch flies. The other tables were occupied by a workman in an airport uniform and two elderly women in polyester pantsuits and permed hair that had gone kinky.

  Spreading two napkins on the table, she set up her breakfast, taking her vitamins from their tiny Ziploc bag. Her thoughts centered on herself. The dream had shaken her, driven all other
thoughts away.

  “Leslie, hi! Gosh, I was hoping to run into you.”

  Wetzon came jolting out of a near trance. Sunny Browning was standing over her smiling with all those long, white teeth. Would her next words be a neigh?

  “Coffee, please,” Sunny told the counterman. She had pulled out a chair and was sitting before Wetzon had a chance to say anything. “Well,” Sunny said, “can you believe all this?”

  Wetzon shook her head. “How come you’re going back?”

  “Things to do,” Sunny said vaguely. She stood and took the coffee mug from the counterman and sat again. She was wearing the same outfit she’d worn on the plane trip up, black on black, sweater, jacket and boots, but instead of a skirt, black leather pants and a metal and leather chain belt. Her mane of streaked blond hair was caught under the collar of her coat. Before the shooting and her medically inspired haircut, Wetzon had loved the feel of her hair on the back of her neck in the winter. Sunny took a sip of coffee and left a lipstick ring on the cup. “Some odds and ends to tie up.”

  “Like?”

  Sunny stared at her, green eyes from dead white skin, fingering the strands of pearls that fell to her waist. “So you are a spy—”

  “A spy? Oh, please. Susan is an old friend. She’s terrified that whoever killed Dilla is going to come after her.”

  Sunny snorted. “Isn’t that a little ridiculous?”

  “You think Dilla’s murder was a once-only aberration?”

  “I’m not saying that, Leslie. It just doesn’t make sense to believe it’s one of us.”

  “Then how do you explain Sam?” Sunny played with her pearls, not bothering to respond, and Wetzon added, “Susan thinks someone in the Hotshot company killed Dilla and she’s probably right. She also thinks someone is stalking her.”

  “Stalking her? She’s crazy.” Sunny took a sip of coffee, her eyes on the counterman, then looked back at Wetzon. “You don’t think it’s me?”

  “Is it?” Wetzon pushed her half-eaten muffin away and reached for her mug. Little globules of fat fought for space on the black surface of the coffee.

  “God, Leslie, I’ve never seen this side of you.”

  “You’ve never seen any side of me, Sunny.” She gave Sunny a cynical half-smile.

  Sunny sipped her coffee, eyes downward. “Well, I couldn’t care less about Susan.”

  “What about Dilla? Did you guys get along?” Wetzon was starting to feel perky again. There’s nothing like a murder investigation to get the blood coursing through your veins, she thought.

  Sunny pulled her hair out from her coat. “Sure. She was okay.” She wasn’t very enthusiastic.

  “With Dilla out of the way, Mort will be more dependent on you.”

  “So? That isn’t enough to kill over. And what about Sam? Why would I ever do that?”

  “I think Sam died because he looked like Mort.”

  “Well, there you are. I don’t want anything to happen to Mort.” She grinned at Wetzon suddenly. “Yet. And you’re right about one thing, Leslie. With Dilla gone, Mort will depend more and more on me to produce his shows. He has no choice. I’m going to take very good care of Mort.”

  “Okay. Do you have any theories about who would want to kill Mort?” Wetzon asked.

  Sunny laughed. “How can you ask that with a straight face?”

  Now Wetzon laughed, too. “Yeah. I guess the answer to that question is ‘we all did.’”

  “I love Mort,” Sunny said, “but he’s selfish, manipulative, egomaniacal, and not a little crazy.”

  “How about sadistic?”

  “Well, that, too. He does seem to zero in on the very things that people don’t want to face about themselves. He’s very intuitive.”

  “He is indeed.”

  “But he’s always sorry after one of his tantrums.”

  “And he never apologizes, does he? He always gets other people to do it. That way he never has to admit he’s wrong.”

  Sunny looked at Wetzon thoughtfully. “You’re right. One of the things I’m going to do in New York is get Phil to come back.”

  “You mean Phil’s already left Boston?”

  “No one seems to know where he is. They must have gone back last night.”

  “They?”

  “Edna. His mother.”

  “I feel sorry for Phil,” Wetzon said, standing. “He’s young and eager. Mort has been pretty rough on him, and Mort usually likes young men.”

  “Leslie—”

  “How do you know he’ll come back?”

  “He will. Phil knows that the play is the most important thing. He comes from a theatre family.”

  “You mean, his mother, the treasurer?”

  “In a way. You remember Lenny Kaufer, don’t you? Well, Phil is Lenny’s grandson.”

  46.

  With an enormous sense of relief, Wetzon watched the city of Boston recede as the plane lifted off and climbed into the snow-clouded sky. Escape. Freedom. Whatever you called it, she felt she was home free.

  In truth, nastiness and backstabbing were not confined to the theatre, but there was something about this small, glittering world that made it particularly poisonous. She had always carried a deep nostalgia for her life in the Theatre, but now she saw with awesome clarity that it was mean, meaner than Wall Street could ever be. The Theatre was a faithless mistress. She seduced your heart and soul, then made a beggar of you and gave nothing whatsoever in return, but only seemed to because it was all artiface. Maybe, somewhere deep inside, Wetzon had always thought she might go back. But there was nothing to go back to. The Theatre was her past. She would never —could never—go back.

  “If Phil is Lenny Kaufer’s grandson, then Edna Terrace must be—”

  “Do you want a beverage?” The steward handed them small packages of salted nuts.

  “I’m coffee’d out,” Sunny said.

  Wetzon declined as well.

  “Edna Terrace?” Wetzon prompted. She broke open the bag of nuts with her teeth. Salt, sweet salt.

  Sunny nodded. “Yeah, Edna’s Lenny Kaufer’s daughter. I never knew Lenny. He was gone before I got into the Theatre. But everyone knows about him. He’s some sort of legend.”

  Sunny was looking at her expectantly, so Wetzon said, “I didn’t know him. He didn’t seem to ever work for any of the producers I worked for, like Papp or Hal Prince or Stu Ostrow. Women liked him and men liked him. Every show he managed paid back its investment. I think I’d already left the Theatre when he died. Edna and Phil must be fixed.”

  “I don’t know. Edna always looks frayed and frumpy. She doesn’t dress or act as if she has money. I heard the treasurers’ union gave her a card without the usual apprenticeship, because of Lenny.”

  Wetzon considered the massive yellow gemstone Edna had been wearing when Phil introduced them. It didn’t go with the picture everyone was drawing of her. “Did you get a look at that ring she was wearing?”

  “Noooo. What about it?” Sunny was fiddling with some papers in her handbag and didn’t look at Wetzon.

  Wetzon had the distinct feeling Sunny was lying. You couldn’t miss that ring. “It looked like the one you and Carlos described to me, the one Dilla was wearing.”

  Sunny smiled at her. “Oh, you must be mistaken, Leslie.”

  The plane climbed into another flight path above the clouds and dazzling sun streamed through the small window. The sky was a frosty blue.

  “What’s in all this for you, Sunny?” Wetzon demanded. It came out harsher than she’d meant it to.

  But Sunny didn’t take offense. “You mean, how long am I going to hang out in Mort’s shadow?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve been planning this for years, Leslie. I’m going to produce musicals with and without Mort. I’ve got two properties under option. Hotshot is the last show I work on as Mort’s assistant.”

  “Oh, when did you tell Mort?”

  “Leslie, I’m sure you know damn well I haven’t told h
im anything. I don’t need grief.” She grinned at Wetzon. “I’ve already talked to Carlos about directing and choreographing one of the shows.”

  “You did? That devil didn’t breathe a word.”

  “I left the book with him. It’s about relationships between the sexes.” She crossed one leathered leg over the other and the leather squeaked. “I’ll send you a copy. You might help convince him—”

  “I’m happy for both of you if it works out, but Carlos doesn’t listen to me.”

  “False modesty.”

  “Maybe. What about Mort? He’s still got a lot to say.”

  “Leslie, wake up and smell the roses. Mort’s old hat. If it weren’t for Carlos, there’d be no Hotshot. Frank Rich won’t pull any punches. Mort will be lucky if he comes out of this alive, let alone with the reviews in his pocket. And the way he and Poppy live, they’ll both end up in the Actors’ Home in Englewood. Do you know she had a limo drive her back to New York last night after the preview so she could get her hair done for the opening?”

  Wetzon giggled. She could think of no worse fate than to end up in the Actors’ Home, having to listen to actors puffing up their careers. There was no retirement home for Wall Streeters. Too bad. Traders were infinitely more amusing than actors.

  “The captain asks that you take your seats and fasten your seat belts. We are going into our landing pattern for LaGuardia and beginning our descent.” The plane dipped and banked, immediately clogging Wetzon’s ears. She opened her mouth and rotated her jaw, and then they were on the ground.

  It had taken less than forty-five minutes. A line of travelers was waiting for the next shuttle to Boston. Her peripheral vision caught a figure going into the men’s room. A slope of shoulder, the rolling gimp, something reminded her of Fran Burke. “Is Fran in New York?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  Short of running into the men’s room on a wild-goose chase, Wetzon chalked it up to the nervous aftermath of her dream. The individual had passed so quickly out of her line of sight, she wasn’t sure she’d seen anything at all.

 

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