A Motive for Murder

by Gallagher Gray

  “What will happen to the girl?” someone asked from among the crowd as Lane opened the floor for business. Andrew Perkins had died two days after his fall from the catwalk. A young girl was now fatherless. Finally, it seemed, people were catching on that this tragedy extended beyond the lurid headlines: many people had been hurt.

  “Julie Perkins has accepted a position in the corps of the San Francisco Ballet,” Raoul Martinez announced. “She intends to take a hiatus from dancing and join their company next fall.”

  “Her mother will be living with her,” Lilah explained. “My private investigator tracked her down in Sacramento.”

  “Why didn’t you just have her do it?” one of the socialites on the board asked, nodding at Auntie Lil.

  The room burst into laughter and applause as Auntie Lil accepted their accolades with unconvincing modesty. Lane Rogers endured the scene, her lips clamped in an unhappy line. Ruth Beretsky rather defiantly took great pains to record the comment and subsequent outburst in her meeting notes.

  When Auntie Lil did not offer any details, however, one of the many curious among the crowd finally broke protocol in favor of satisfying her curiosity. “How did he do it?” a thin woman with gold bracelets the size of handcuffs asked eagerly.

  The room fell silent. This was why they had come.

  “Andrew Perkins killed Bobby Morgan early in the first act,” Auntie Lil explained. “We’re not sure what happened because only Julie is left to tell us and she herself does not know everything. She thinks that her father found out about her and Bobby Morgan in this manner: the day before the premiere, she couldn’t find the white toe shoes she wanted to wear for The Nutcracker dress rehearsal and complained to her father about losing them. Later she realized she had left them at Morgan’s apartment earlier that afternoon. The next day, right after the performance started, Bobby Morgan walked past Perkins toward the locker room, holding Julie’s shoes. Perkins may have been smoking a cigarette in a doorway, hidden from Morgan’s view. Perkins confronted Morgan when he realized that the shoes belonged to his daughter—and that the flowers and phone calls she had been receiving were coming from Morgan and not his son, as he had thought. The two men went upstairs to argue in private to avoid being heard during the performance. They ended up in the storage room and there was a scuffle. Somehow Morgan went down. There were bruises on one side of his head, a fact the police kept from the papers but that Hans Glick inadvertently guessed—which is one reason why the police arrested him when he came to them. Either Morgan died from a blow or a fall, or he was knocked unconscious and suffocated later when Perkins wrapped the ribbons from his daughter’s white toe shoes around his neck and strangled him, then stuffed the shoe down his throat for good measure.”

  An appreciative murmur ran through the crowd. This would make excellent cocktail conversation indeed.

  “So he was already dead when he came swinging across the stage?” a board member asked eagerly, sweeping an arm across the table for emphasis.

  Auntie Lil nodded. “Perkins wanted to shame and mock Morgan. The length of the first act gave him time to plan just how. Perkins disguised himself in Drosselmeyer’s cape and made a quick tour of the backstage area, finding out what he needed to know. Replacing the cape, he returned to the third-floor storage room and dragged Morgan’s body out onto the catwalk. He then tied a noose around Morgan’s neck using the spare end of the counter rope that anchored the huge Christmas tree. Morgan was left securely hanging against the bricks way up in the shadows of the rafters, where no one could possibly see him. Perkins planned to cut the rope holding the heavy weight on the other end of the noose when he was safely downstairs and could quickly leave the scene. He expected the body to plummet to center stage. It would have been the perfect gesture. Not only did it mimic in many ways a scene from a recent Mikey Morgan movie, it stripped Morgan of all dignity in front of as large an audience as possible. But Perkins had not accounted for the fact that the Christmas tree had unevenly distributed weight. Without the counterbalance, it tipped as it fell and Morgan’s body was jerked about and got caught behind the scrim instead of dropping to center stage. Perkins needed to humiliate Morgan so badly that he took a chance and actually dashed to where the body hung and grabbed it. Repositioning the body, he sent it swinging to center stage. In the confusion afterward, it was easy for him to slip out an exit door. He ran around the back pathway and into the lobby. By the time the lights went up, he was standing at the back of the auditorium, blending in with the audience, looking just as confused as the rest of us. We know that because the Reverend Ben Hampton heard Perkins in his dress shoes running down the back path.”

  “How much do you think the girl knew?” someone asked, and a lively debate arose. It halted only when Lane Rogers thumped the table vigorously with her gavel.

  “I will stop this discussion if it does not remain civilized,” she announced, but she, too, was burning with curiosity. So long as her own embarrassing fixation with Bobby Morgan did not come up, she wanted to hear the dirt as badly as the next person.

  “Julie Perkins actually tried to break things off with Morgan the day of his death,” Auntie Lil explained. “That is the irony of the situation. And it was also why Morgan was in such a bad mood that day. Julie was afraid her father knew or suspected and realized what it might do to him if he found out. He was the only parent she had left, in her eyes. That’s why she never turned her father in, though she couldn’t bear to live with him after she discovered what he had done. But more important, Julie had grown tired of Morgan. She thought he was ‘old and boring.’ For once, I believe Morgan was about to get the boot instead of the other way around.”

  A small blonde woman coughed discreetly in the crowd. Many eyes looked conspicuously away from Raoul Martinez.

  Lilah Cheswick took charge. She believed discretion was the mark of a civilized society and was determined to reintroduce the concept to this crowd. “As some of you may be aware, I was never comfortable with Mr. Morgan’s stated reasons for having his son dance in The Nutcracker,” she said. “A desire to give Mikey more stage experience did not seem plausible to me. It turns out that Mr. Morgan devised the plan so that he would have a good reason to come back to New York City and frequent these premises as often as he needed to in order to conduct a romance with an unnamed but married member of the Metro company. A woman older than Julie, who was perfectly capable of making an informed decision on becoming involved with Mr. Morgan. I do not believe it is necessary to divulge her name.”

  Raoul Martinez stared stonily ahead as Lilah continued.

  “The affair began a few weeks before auditions while Morgan was conducting preliminary negotiations with Hans Glick. However, during this period, Morgan met Julie Perkins in the hallway of the Metro. Eventually, this led to his last-minute demand that Fatima Jones be dropped from the role of Clara before Mikey would agree to join the company. He knew the role would pass to Julie Perkins and he wanted to surprise her with the lead. His scheme worked. He overlapped his affairs with the two women for several weeks, if it is fair to refer to a sixteen-year-old as a woman, before he called a halt to the affair with the older one. Through sheer exhaustion, I presume.”

  “You say the unnamed woman was a member of the dance company!” someone asked. Lane Rogers fidgeted in discomfort and ignored the slightly smug stares of her compatriots.

  “In other words, this was a dancer, right?” a blonde dressed in a designer suit clarified. “Not a board member?”

  “I believe we have discussed this topic long enough,” Lane interrupted grimly, banging the gavel for emphasis. “Let’s move on to new business.”

  “Do you think we look out of place?” T.S. asked Herbert. They were sitting on stools in a slightly seedy bar at Broadway and Seventy-second Street, dressed in tuxedos and waiting for the Metro meeting to adjourn.

  “I prefer to think of it as raising the caliber of the establishment,” Herbert replied. He could not bring himself to adm
it that what had really attracted him to the bar was the old-fashioned neon sign in the shape of a giant martini glass that blinked on and off outside. It had evoked the emotions of an earlier era within his soul. It seemed a fitting beginning for the evening they had planned.

  The bartender planted himself between them and admired their finery. “Nice suits, gents,” he said in a heavy Bronx accent. “How may I be of service tonight?” Just seconds earlier he had flung a mug of beer down the bar toward a toothless patron like a saloon keeper in a cheesy Western movie, but their tuxedos had called out the gentleman in him. If these two patrons could aspire to something better, then, by God, so could he.

  “Dewar’s and soda,” T.S. said automatically, his eyes sliding to a bank of video machines arranged in a far corner. Two drunken construction workers were busy abusing the nearest one. The far-off pinging of electronic bells was calling to T.S. as surely as the singing of sirens, stirring deep desires within his immaculately clad bosom.

  “I’ll have a martini,” Herbert decided with uncharacteristically reckless abandon. “Tonight we trip the light fantastic.”

  T.S. tore his eyes from the lure of the flashing lights and back toward the bar. “I’ve changed my mind,” he told the barkeep. “I’ll have a martini, too.” He had sworn to himself—as well as to Auntie Lil—that he would give up video games cold turkey. This was not a task easily accomplished sober. A martini was most definitely in order.

  “You made the reservations?” Herbert asked, his glass hovering on the edge of his lower lip as if he would not allow himself to drink until business had been taken care of.

  “A table for four at The Rainbow Room,” T.S. confirmed. “Fairly near the orchestra but with a truly spectacular view of the city skyline.”

  “Nervous?” Herbert asked.

  T.S. sipped his martini and nodded. “But only about the fox trot,” he lied. “I think I’ve got the rest down pretty well.”

  The man next to them got up with a belch and patted his enormous belly in satisfaction. A squadron of empty beer bottles had been neatly lined up in front of his seat beside the decimated remains of a double cheeseburger platter. He had efficiently polished off close to a six-pack while perusing the day’s newspaper and enjoying his dinner. As he rumbled contentedly out the door T.S.’s gaze slid to the open paper.

  “Is that Newsday?” he asked Herbert.

  Herbert checked the front page. “Yes. Shall I?” he said.

  T.S. closed his eyes and took a gulp of martini. “Yes,” he decided. “May as well.” All week long Margo McGregor had been uncovering every secret that the Metropolitan Ballet had ever concealed. Thus far, T.S. had managed to avoid mention in her column but was sure that one day soon some ugly and forgotten tidbit of his private life would be revealed.

  “It’s about Glick, mostly,” Herbert announced after a quick scan of the column’s contents.

  T.S. relaxed. Thank God. This called for another drink.

  He flagged down the bartender and ordered a new round, though his first martini still had a few healthy gulps to go. “Anything new?” he asked.

  Herbert reread the information more slowly. “Glick’s been transferred back to Zurich by his company and they have promised to make restitution.”

  “Does it say why he did it?” T.S. asked. “It was a most un-Swisslike thing to do. Imagine, embezzling money from the coffers of the poor.” Whenever T.S. drank, he had a tendency to slip into jargon more worthy of the Scarlet Pimpernel than a lifelong resident of New York City.

  Herbert absently sipped his martini and scrutinized the newspaper. “It seems he invested the Metro’s cash in some risky ventures and lost almost everything. It would have disgraced him. Or showed that he didn’t know what he was doing and that, apparently, was anathema to him. He was trying to make up for the loss by skimming cash off the Los Angeles benefit receipts. That way he could juggle a few numbers and fake a few entries and maybe no one would notice.”

  “Stealing from the Metro to pay the Metro?” T.S. mused, downing the last of his first martini and taking an inaugural gulp of the second. “A sort of reverse, postmodern, but not quite organized, Swiss Robin Hood.”

  He lifted his martini glass in homage as Herbert looked up at him sharply. What in the world was T.S. babbling about?

  “Where is Glick?” a board member demanded. “Am I the only one to notice that he is at the root of this entire mess? Negotiating with Bobby Morgan and not telling us, changing our insurance and not telling us, cooking the books...” Her voice trailed off indignantly.

  “Glick is in Switzerland. He’s been ‘promoted’ to director of corporate car rentals for his bank,” someone offered. “I read it in the paper today.”

  “There is no need to panic,” Lilah explained. “Glick’s company had insurance against malfeasance caused by his actions while an officer of the company. And that includes his serving on the Metro’s board.”

  “So the insurance on the insurance pays our insurance?” one confused board member asked as Ruth Beretsky dutifully noted the comment for the record.

  “Sort of,” Lilah conceded, giving up on explaining the concept. “The point is this: Even if Nikki Morgan continues with her lawsuit and wins, we won’t have to pay. Glick’s insurance company pays because he failed to pay our premium on time, violating his fiduciary duty.”

  “But we don’t think it will even get that far,” Lane Rogers interrupted as if she personally had arranged to sweep the entire matter under the carpet. “Nikki has indicated that she will be too busy overseeing her son’s new movie role on location in Vancouver to pursue legal matters. She will let the lawsuit drop. I intervened personally on behalf of the board.”

  “So now it was ‘Nikki,’” Auntie Lil thought to herself. “If you can’t land a famous person, then make a beeline for the warmest body who can claim to have known that person.”

  “Mikey Morgan is back to making movies?” Raoul Martinez asked. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Good thing. I always said he couldn’t dance. I was against his ever taking part in The Nutcracker in the first place, if you will recall.”

  They all recalled, all right. Just not the way he did. But no one bothered to call him on it.

  “He’s making one more movie, the one for Gene Levitt,” Auntie Lil explained. “Then retiring from show biz to finish high school and college.”

  “He must have a fortune,” a short brunette commented.

  “Look here!” Ruth Beretsky cried out suddenly. “Is money the only thing that any of you ever think about? I have asked twice now whether the board intends to send a representative to Andrew Perkins’s funeral and everyone ignores me. I am tired of being ignored. I want to know what the board is going to do.”

  Most people in the room were shocked into silence by her unexpected outburst. The others stared at her blankly, wondering whether they had ever seen her before.

  Lane recovered first and, bristling at her assistant’s rather roundabout accusation, was the first to respond. “I hardly think it is appropriate for the Metro to send an official representative to a murderer’s funeral,” she said.

  “He was a man,” Ruth cried out angrily, her voice wavering as she fought to regain control. “He should never have murdered Bobby Morgan, but we can all lose control if we are pushed far enough.” Her eyes blazed and Lane looked away. “Besides, Andrew Perkins helped the Metro for more than eight years—and he was a nice man once. Before... before things happened to him. And what about his daughter? We should go to support Julie, if nothing else. We’re the only people she knows. She’s spent her whole life here.”

  Lane’s rebuttal was swift. “As I said before, I hardly think that this should be our concern.”

  “Shut up, Lane,” a voice suggested from the back of the room. Other voices murmured their assent. It was not the first time that day that board members had called for the chairman to button her lip. Mutiny hung in the air.

  “I’m not going to turn my
back on a sixteen-year-old girl just because it may be embarrassing to the board,” Ruth declared. “Good grief, what in the world is there left to be embarrassed about? We’re already the laughingstock of Manhattan.”

  “I vote we appoint Ruth Beretsky the official board representative to Andrew Perkins’s funeral,” Auntie Lil suggested quickly. “And that we appropriate a modest sum for flowers.” She paused. “But make the card out to his daughter.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Lilah said quietly, patting Ruth’s hand. “My driver can take us. That is, if you’d like the company.”

  Ruth nodded mutely and the subsequent vote was swift and overwhelming. For the first time in her quiet life, Ruth Beretsky had been chosen by her peers to represent them.

  “Are you sure you’re not nervous?” Herbert asked again, one eye on the nearly empty martini glass by T.S.’s elbow. It was his third martini. Or was it his fourth? Herbert wondered uneasily.

  “Absolutely not,” T.S. declared. “My toes are positively twinkling.” He caught Herbert’s glance. “But don’t worry. I have no intention of having another drink.”

  A groan went up from the crowd at the far end of the bar as the bartender resolutely changed the channel on the television set, switching off a basketball game in favor of a local cable station. “Sorry, guys,” he announced. “This is my favorite talk show. Is this dame hot or what?” He turned up the sound and the canned applause of a prerecorded intro rolled down the bar. Dozens of images of a blond woman’s face merged and moved on the screen. Her smile was so wide T.S. could count the cavities in her molars.

  “I can’t stand this woman,” T.S. announced loudly as the opening credits segued into a shot of the talk-show host bouncing perkily onto the set. “She’s had more parts replaced than my Aunt Minnie’s Audi and her taste in guests deserves excoriation.” He slurred the final word a bit, but thought it unlikely that anyone had noticed. Who ever used “excoriation” anyway?