“More sugar all around,” Auntie Lil murmured, but nonetheless did not hesitate to slurp the bottom of her ice cream soda out with a straw. “Let’s order another one,” she told a surprised Mikey Morgan.
He had been very quiet throughout his first course of plain ice cream, ordered so he could vouch for its freshness and designer label. He perked up at her suggestion of more and decided on a banana split. Auntie Lil told the waiter to make it two. The waiter agreed readily since, at Rumpelmeyer’s prices, two more orders of dessert would come close to pushing the bill into high tip territory. He had decided that Auntie Lil was an aging film star who no doubt lived in a nearby hotel. He was not quite sure if Greta Garbo was dead or not, but he knew enough to be certain that confident old women in black fedoras were forces to be reckoned with—and might even be able to get him a part in a movie or two.
“Know why I want to talk to you?” Auntie Lil asked Mikey when the overly helpful waiter had left and they were alone again. They had exhausted their supply of small talk, which had chiefly consisted of making fun of Paulette Puccinni. Both Mikey and Auntie Lil had suffered humiliation at her hands in ballet class and this had helped establish common ground between them.
“Yes. About Dad’s murder.” The boy’s expression was hidden behind the oversized sunglasses he wore. They were an effective means of disguise. His face was so small that the lenses obscured most of his distinguishing features. The only recognizable components of Mikey Morgan, child star, were his ears and his generous mouth. So long as he refrained from his trademark grin and stifled his well-known war whoop, they had a chance of remaining undetected.
Auntie Lil got right to the point. “You entered from stage left when you danced Drosselmeyer, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” he said. “So what?”
“So you weren’t hanging around onstage right the night your father was killed? Near the spot where his body was cut down?”
The boy stared at her, but his eyes were hidden from her return scrutiny by the sunglasses. “No. Not until afterward.”
“I saw you with your friends today before the performance,” Auntie Lil said. “Examining the spot where they cut him down.”
“So?” he said defensively, squirming in his seat.
“What were you doing?” she asked gently. “I heard some of the boys laughing.”
“I wasn’t laughing,” he said.
“But what were you doing?” she persisted.
“We were just trying to figure out how he had been hung up that way,” Mikey explained. “Why we didn’t see him fighting back or hear him or anything.” He might have been talking about a scene in a movie for all the emotion he displayed. Auntie Lil was not fooled. She wondered how long he would be able to keep it bottled up inside him.
“And the laughter?” she prompted.
Mikey sighed. “Just kid stuff. We were nervous. We were talking about hanging Pork Chop Puccinni next time around. We thought she’d be a good addition early on when Drosselmeyer first enters the party. It would make the scene so much more interesting. Drosselmeyer could reach out his boney old fingers for Clara and whap! Pork Chop’s fat body could come flying across the stage and smack him in the face.” He stretched out his hands to demonstrate. “I hated playing that part,” he added. “Dad made me.”
“Why?” Auntie Lil asked.
Mikey shrugged. His banana split arrived and he dug in with gusto, eating each section precisely in neat bites before proceeding to the next one. Auntie Lil watched the whipped cream disappear and one half of a banana before she spoke again. “Did he say why he wanted you to dance the part?”
“He wanted us to be in New York,” Mikey explained. “And he thought it would do me good to sit a couple of months out, make people a little anxious that maybe I wasn’t coming back. Might drive my price up. Do you know how much I get per movie now?” He raised his eyebrows expectantly.
“Yes, I do know,” Auntie Lil said firmly, hoping to stop him before he could slip into his movie-star role. “Are you aware that your father pulled you out of a movie and broke a contract for you to do this?”
Mikey shrugged again. “It happens all the time. It was a dumb movie anyway. The story line treated me like a kid. Dad explained it all. It would have been bad for my image.”
“Did you always do everything your dad told you to do?”
He had finished the other half of the banana and was carefully spooning hot fudge into his mouth. The lower half of his lip was smeared brown with the goo and this typical display of childishness was reassuring to Auntie Lil. “I tried to,” he finally said. “Dad knew what he was doing.”
A young girl walked by dressed in seductive clothing far too old for her tender preadolescent years. Her blond hair was coiled on top of her head and she wore plenty of makeup, though Auntie Lil doubted she was even a teenager yet. Mikey watched her walk by with obvious appreciation. “Her skirt is up her butt,” he said, giggling, then eyed Auntie Lil for a reaction.
It reminded Auntie Lil of something: like father, like son. “Did your dad have many girlfriends?” she asked. “Did you meet any of them?”
Mikey wiggled his eyebrows theatrically. On the movie screen, it was cute. In person, it bordered on the obnoxious. “Dad was a stud. He had tons of girlfriends.”
“How lovely for your mother,” Auntie Lil murmured.
“They were divorced,” he explained patiently, as if she were particularly dim-witted. “Guys are supposed to be studs,” he added. “Besides, Dad said Mom was seeing someone new anyway. Except I can’t figure out who it is.”
Auntie Lil mumbled something under her breath and Mikey looked at her with interest. “What did you say?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she replied. What she had said was that she hoped Nikki Morgan was dating a marine so he could help whip Mikey into shape.
“You don’t like kids, do you?” Mikey asked as he scraped the last of the crushed pineapple from one end of his dish.
“No,” Auntie Lil admitted. “I don’t like children. Not that you seem like much of one to me.”
“I’m very mature for my age,” he explained matter-of-factly. “Most adults love me. Why don’t you?”
“I don’t like your attitude,” Auntie Lil replied. “You strike me as being a bit on the flippant side. Considering your father has been killed.”
He sat back and stared at Auntie Lil. “Everyone thinks I should be boohooing,” he said angrily. “I’m not going to cry unless I really feel like it.” Auntie Lil shrugged, which only made him madder. “Why should I cry just because he got himself killed?” Mikey demanded. “It was his own fault. He was screwing people right and left, everyone told me so. He was a shark, they would say, like it was such a great thing. I was the one who made all the money, but he was the one who got all the credit and he was the one who got to spend it. It wasn’t fair. I didn’t even like him very much.” He thumped the backs of his heels against the seat with vicious energy and several people turned to stare.
“You didn’t like your own father?” Auntie Lil asked quietly. “Are you sure that’s true?”
“I know what I like and don’t like,” Mikey said belligerently. “Dad didn’t care about me. He just thought I could make him rich. He never spent any time with me. He was always running off to dinner with some producer or taking some bimbo out for lunch or attending some reception where he knew there would be lots of girls with their boobs hanging out of their dresses. He was always out having fun while I had to sit alone in some dumb hotel room watching movies on television. He wouldn’t even let me go home and visit Mom and the others last Christmas. Said I had to stay and finish this stupid, stupid movie in Toronto. I hated him.”
“No wonder,” Auntie Lil said quietly.
“He just wanted to come to New York for some dumb old woman,” Mikey said suddenly. “He acted like it was for my own good, but I heard him talking to her every night.” His voice rose as he mocked his father, his eyes rolling up
in his head as if he were in the throes of ecstatic love. “Don’t worry, beautiful. I’ll be there soon! We’ll have hours together. He’ll be too busy. He’ll never notice. I have the perfect cover.” Mikey finished his imitation and pushed his empty dish away grumpily. “He was a real jerk.”
Auntie Lil stared at the young boy. His lower lip was pulled in tightly and his face was rigid. He was determined that no emotions escape. “Mikey,” she said. “If you are ever in trouble, you can come to me for help.”
“What do you mean by that?” he asked sullenly.
Auntie Lil shrugged. “If you ever want to talk to me about anything, or if you find yourself in trouble, just call me or come by my apartment. I’ll help you if I can.” She wrote her phone number and address down on a napkin and slid it across the table toward him. It was insurance against all the things she was sure he had not told her.
He stared at the napkin for a moment, then crumpled it up and stuffed it in a back pocket At least he hadn’t thrown it on the floor—or blown his nose with it, as she had first feared.
Auntie Lil reached across the table and took his hands in hers, ignoring his attempts to pull away. “Mikey,” she said, “your mother loves you very much. And she is angry and sorry for what happened to you over these past few years. She missed you while you were gone and now she’s happy that you’re back with the family where you belong. Why don’t you let her help you right now? If you feel bad, she can make you feel better.”
He tugged his hand away but could not stop the flush spreading up his face. “Of course I’ll let her make me feel better,” he said in a mocking tone. His voice dropped, growing serious. “She is my mother, you know. I’d do anything for her.”
11
It had been a maddening week of missed phone calls for T.S. and Lilah. When he returned her call about the Metro-board mess, he got her answering machine. When she returned his return call, he had just stepped out with Auntie Lil. In his opinion, modern technology only meant modern frustration.
Thus, when Monday rolled around, T.S. made the decision to stay put. “I’m not going anywhere today,” he told Auntie Lil. “I’m tired of traipsing all over Manhattan. I want to stay home with my cats and, yes, turn my brain to jelly watching television. Maybe I’ll order in a deli sandwich for lunch. I may even put on a torn T-shirt and watch some more football.”
“Nonsense, Theodore. You’re just waiting for Lilah to call.” Auntie Lil’s disapproval seemed to snake through the telephone wires. “Really, Theodore—sitting around mooning and waiting for a phone call like some lovesick teenager. I thought you were more in control of your life.”
“You’re joking, aren’t you?” T.S. replied. “What in the world makes you think I’m in control of my life?” He replaced the receiver firmly and turned his attention to the first soap opera of the day.
With T.S. unwilling and Herbert suspiciously missing in action, Auntie Lil was forced to tackle the day’s agenda on her own. She had slept little the night before, wondering just what the board had discussed about her. Surely they would have called if she had been voted off the board. Or would they? And if she had been voted off, who had decided that she was responsible for the Reverend Hampton misunderstanding? Okay, maybe she was responsible, but she still wanted to know who the tattletale had been. She contemplated the possibilities as she drank her four cups of black coffee and nibbled on an Entenmann’s cherry cheese strudel. The strudel was not as good as her mother used to bake—her mother’s had tasted straight out of Vienna—but it was good enough that she polished off an entire pound of it in a single morning.
She would have to confront Lane Rogers on her own. There was no other way around it. That was how you dealt with slugs anyway, she reasoned. You dragged them into the sunlight and watched them writhe. Lane would hate public exposure of her sneaky tactics. Auntie Lil would go right to where she worked and demand a conference and do her best to embarrass Lane into being up-front for once. Auntie Lil hated people who ruled through innuendo. Why had she fought Lane on her terms until now? It was time, Auntie Lil decided, to take a direct approach.
Lane worked in the corporate communications department of Bartlett Brothers International, a global investment bank. As the official arbitrator of corporate identity, her job was to ensure that the company’s logo and adopted colors appeared on every scrap of paper, coffee cup, T-shirt, trinket, and publication offered under the Bartlett Brothers name. It was the perfect job for Lane. It had little real importance to the bottom line, yet yielded her frequent opportunities to meddle in other people’s plans. She had no real power except the power to compromise someone else’s deadline. And she could squelch creativity at every turn, imposing a drab universe—so comforting to her—on anyone foolish enough to request official approval of a project. She also frequently sat in on meetings to review the design and copy of corporate brochures. Her favorite trick was to say nothing during the meeting—her enigmatic smile, she felt, was her best attribute—but shortly afterward, she would fire off a lengthy memo pointing out exactly where and why the writing or graphics were inadequate and why the writer or designer must be replaced. To say she was hated was an overstatement. She was not important enough to hate. She was, instead, loathed by all Bartlett Brothers employees with spines and pitied by all those with better things to do with their lives.
The opinions of Lane’s coworkers mattered little to Auntie Lil, however. The time had come to express her opinion about Lane. When she entered the gilded and mirrored tower in midtown that housed the posh offices of Bartiett Brothers, her resolve had built to the point where not even a tank could have stopped her. She steamrolled the lobby receptionist, shanghaied the elevator guard, talked her way past a dim-witted secretary on the public-relations floor, and confused Lane’s personal secretary so thoroughly (“Did you say you were related?”) that she gained entrance into a private conference room within seven minutes of setting foot in the front door. Lane was meeting with a junior copywriter who had made the colossal mistake of asking her to approve a two-page circular they hoped to provide the firm’s wealthiest clients with each week. Auntie Lil burst into the room wearing a lavender pant suit and matching hat just as the copywriter sputtered, “But how can you say that? You haven’t even read it yet!”
Lane’s mouth shut abruptly when she recognized Auntie Lil.
“Surprise,” Auntie Lil said gaily.
Lane’s face reddened and her co-worker stared. “Who in the world was this old woman?” he clearly wanted to know. “Lane’s mother? Lane’s lover? Lane’s boss?”
The young copywriter took a chance with the old stranger. “She says the copy isn’t corporate enough, not subdued enough,” he whined. “But she hasn’t even read it yet.” He thrust the pages toward Auntie Lil.
“The copy is just fine,” Auntie Lil said absently, pushing the manuscript back across the table. “What lovely headlines. Now run along and write something else.”
“Thanks!” the kid said, rising from the chair and fleeing with this mysterious approval in hand before his luck changed.
“Terrorizing babies now?” Auntie Lil asked.
“What do you want?” Lane demanded, but her voice was curiously weak. She was wearing a bright red A-line dress from an expensive department store. Auntie Lil knew the manufacturer well. The dresses went for four times their actual value to people attracted by labels and too stupid to recognize poor workmanship. A matching scarf had been tightly wound into submission and was anchored at Lane’s neck with a large gold pin. Her hair was still anchored in a severe bun and no offending tendrils dared escape during office hours. Despite her careful grooming, however, her inner spite still sat upon her face with a heavy dourness. Her eyes were puffy and red.
“What do you want?” Lane demanded again. “Tell me before I call a security guard.”
“Why did you hold a meeting yesterday and not inform me?” Auntie Lil asked.
“That is board business and it is inappropriate
to discuss it while I am under the employ of someone else.”
“You tell me right now,” Auntie Lil said, “or I will pick up the phone and call my nice banker at Sterling & Sterling, the one who is best friends with your chairman. I can have you selling hot dogs on a street corner by the end of the week.”
“How dare you?” Lane said, rising to her feet.
“How dare I?” Auntie Lil retorted. “Let me tell you something. I have sat back and let you rule that board like a petty demagogue for far too long. You have successfully blocked any attempt at bringing the Metro into the twentieth century thus far and Lord knows what you’ll do when faced with the twenty-first. But you have made it personal by going behind my back and I do not intend to roll over and play dead while you interfere with my life. You tried your best to block my appointment as the board’s official representative into Bobby Morgan’s death. I want to know why. I want to know what you are hiding. And you called a meeting yesterday with my name on the agenda. You tell me why right now.”
“This is my office,” Lane said angrily.
“This is my life,” Auntie Lil replied.
“It’s your fault, promising that awful Reverend a seat on the board.”
“I did no such thing. Whoever said that is misinformed.”
“He said that,” Lane shot back.
That made things a bit more difficult. “He misunderstood me,” Auntie Lil said smoothly. “I don’t consider it a very big deal. Simply tell him he is mistaken.”
“Apparently no one else considers it a big deal either,” Lane said bitterly. She stared out the window. “The board refused to remove you.”
A Motive for Murder Page 18