She snatched up the pen, then bent over and grabbed a tablet of paper off the floor. “What’s your name, honey?” she asked, walking toward the middle of the room where I was standing, flipping over several pages of scribbles (
Gray’s phone messages? I wondered) to get to a clean sheet. “You want this made out to you, right?”
“Uh… yes… that would be nice, please.” I was so focused on watching the action unfold I almost forgot what I was supposed to be there for. “You can make it out to Phoebe Starr,” I said, dredging up an old alias I’d used several times before. (My ridiculous real name was hardly well-known, but it was entirely too memorable to mention. And I was in no mood to be laughed at.) “That’s Starr,” I repeated, “with two r’s.”
“Got it,” Rhonda said, sticking the tip of her tongue between (and quite a bit beyond) her lips as she wrote. Then she signed her name with a flourish, ripped the whole sheet off the pad, and handed it to me. “And what about you, sister?” she said to Abby. “You want one, too?”
I froze. What would Abby do now? Would she be a good girl and accept Rhonda’s offer of an autograph, or would her true personality break loose and blow our carefully planned cover to smithereens?
“Yes, please,” Abby said, fluttering her lashes and panting like an overheated sheepdog. “I’d simply love to have your signature. Just your name will do. It would make my pitiful, lonely, and hopeless life complete.”
I cringed. Would Rhonda pick up on the contempt in Abby’s voice? Would Abby’s belligerent, legs-apart, arms-folded posture lead Rhonda to realize that we were both just blowing air up her skirt?
Nope. Looking as satisfied as a cat with a saucer of cream, Rhonda blithely signed her name to the paper, tore the sheet off the tablet, and handed it over it to Abby. “It’s all yours, sis,” she said, tossing the pen and the pad down on the mattress of the open cot. “Better keep it in a safe place. It’ll be worth big money someday.”
“Oh, I know right where I’m going to put it,” Abby said, curling her lips in a nasty smile. She didn’t actually say the words “trash can,” but you could tell that was what she was thinking.
“Thank you so much, Rhonda!” I jumped in, hoping she wouldn’t notice Abby’s scornful expression. (She didn’t. Instead of looking at Abby, she was looking at herself in the mirror.) “We really do appreciate this! And we can’t wait to tell Gray we met you. Is he here now? Can you tell us where to find him? We want to congratulate him on his fab performance last night.”
“Yeah, you and everybody else, honey,” she grumbled, sitting down at the dressing table and looking at me in the mirror’s reflection. “The phone at the end of the hall’s been ringing off the hook all day. And I had to go out and answer it, and take down all of Gray’s messages, because he never bothered to show up! If you don’t believe me, take a look in the men’s lounge next door. He’s not there! He didn’t even call in. Can you believe that? One stupid night on stage and he’s acting like a freaking superstar!” Rhonda snatched up a hairbrush and started yanking it through her platinum fluff.
“You know what else?” she rattled on. “He didn’t come in for Thursday’s show, either. And that was before his goddamn dazzling debut. I had to take down a bunch of messages for him that night, too. What am I, his freaking secretary?”
“Well, it’s very nice of you to do that for Gray,” I said, just to keep the ball rolling. “I’m sure he’s very grateful.”
“Ha!” she scoffed. “That’s a laugh and a half. He was so busy taking bows last night, he never even looked at the messages to see who called. That’s how grateful he is!” She angrily tossed the hairbrush back down on the cluttered table. “And I’ll tell you something else. If our director, Mr. Kazan, ever finds out Gray wasn’t here Thursday or for the matinee today, he’ll fire him on the spot. An understudy has to be in the house for every single performance, no matter what!”
Even if he’s dead? I muttered to myself.
“Gray better show up for tonight’s show,” Rhonda went on, “or I’m going to report him myself. He can’t disappear whenever he feels like it. It’s not fair!” She spun around on her stool and then suddenly, out of the blue, took a long, cold, appraising look at both Abby and me. “Hey, what are you two pretending to be? What’s with the makeup and the sporty little outfits? Is your acting class working on a scene from
Picnic?”
“Good guess,” I replied, “but actually we’re crowd scene extras in
Bus Stop. It’s playing right across the street. We dashed over here the minute the matinee ended, hoping to catch Gray before he left the theater. That’s why we’re still in costume-we didn’t have time to change.”
“What a crock!” Rhonda said. “You’re really asking for it, you know!”
“For what?” I asked, getting nervous.
“For trouble, sister. And I mean big trouble.”
“Why? What are you talking about?” I was on the verge of panic now. Had Rhonda heard me and Abby arguing-and discussing the murder-out in the hall before? Did she know that everything we’d said and done since then had been a big fat act? Had she guessed our real reason for being there, and then put on a big fat act of her own?
“Don’t play the ingenue with me, honey!” Rhonda exclaimed. “You know darn well that all cast members of all Broadway shows are forbidden to wear their costumes in the street. That’s totally against the rules! And don’t say you didn’t have time to change, either. That’s a complete crock. You’re supposed to make the time, no matter what. So, you know what I say? I say you and your sour-faced sidekick over there have broken one of the most basic laws of Broadway-and you ought to be fired for it!”
Whew. Is that all? For a lowly understudy, Rhonda sure took her job (and everybody else’s!) seriously. I was staring at the floor, trying to think up a good excuse for Abby’s and my bad Broadway behavior, when a very soft, muted tinkling sound seeped into the lounge and captured my attention.
“Hey, what’s that?” I asked. “Do you hear a bell or something?”
“Cripes! It’s the goddamn phone again!” Rhonda snapped. “They keep it muffled in case it rings while the show is on.”
“Do you have to answer it?” I asked, hoping she would.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said, wearily rising to her bare feet and padding toward the door to the hall. “You and Tonto have to leave now, anyway,” she added, shooting us a snotty glance over her shoulder. “I’m going back to sleep, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll run back across the street and take off your goddamn costumes.”
“Oh, we will!” I assured her, as she sashayed out the door and disappeared down the hall to the right. “And thanks for the autographs!” I called out, even though I knew she wasn’t listening. (I can be-and often am-polite to the puking point. Abby swears I’m related to Emily Post.)
Abby erupted as soon as Rhonda was gone. “What a bitch!” she spluttered, looking as if the top of her head would blow off. (Considering the pressure that had surely been building up in her stubborn, short-tempered skull, such an event wouldn’t have surprised me in the least.) “I never met such a sniveling, pretentious, big-mouthed broad in my life! She’s a tattletale and a tramp. And I bet she’s a murderer, too. She probably killed Gray for taking too long for lunch!”
“Shhhhhh!” I cautioned, holding a silencing finger up to my lips and tiptoeing over to the cot where Rhonda had tossed the pad and the pen. Glad she hadn’t taken the message pad with her to the phone, I promptly snatched up the tablet full of scribbles, hid it under my purse, and scrambled for the door. Abby scrambled right along with me and-fleeing down the hall to the left like Bonnie and Clyde (or, more precisely, Lucy and Ethel)-we made a clean getaway.
Chapter 10
MOST OF THE SCRIBBLED NOTES IN THE pad really were phone messages for Gray-a fact Abby and I determined as soon as we were seated on the subway headed home. Somebody named Bradley had called to say “Bravo!,” a fellow name
d Lloyd had phoned to say goodbye since he knew Gray would never talk to a “nobody” like him again, and somebody calling herself Aunt Doobie had left her room number at the Mayflower Hotel.
There were other messages as well-some of them congratulatory, most with first names only, just one with a phone number. No days or dates were noted, and there seemed to be no order to the listings, so-unless a message was congratulatory-I couldn’t determine if the call had been made last Thursday night or this afternoon. As far as I could tell, Cupcake hadn’t called on either day. I flipped the pad closed and tucked it under my purse, saving my careful clue-hunting inspection for later, when I could concentrate.
“Are you going to give the notebook to Flannagan in the morning?” Abby asked.
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “Depends on how well he behaves. If he’s a good dog, I’ll give him the bone.”
“Ha!” she yelped. “Then you might as well bury it in the back yard. That man will always behave like a bastard.”
I laughed. “You’re probably right. He might even arrest me for stealing, or tampering with evidence. I’d better leave the pad at home.”
We got off the train at West 4th Street and climbed the steps to the street. The steamy heat engulfed me and I suddenly felt very weak. I hadn’t eaten much all day and-though I still wasn’t the least bit hungry-I knew I needed fuel.
“Want to grab a bite at the White Horse, Ab?” I asked, naming the popular tavern on Hudson Street that was famous for its cheap beer, lousy hamburgers, and literary clientele. They didn’t have air-conditioning, I knew, but very few places in the Village did.
“No way, Doris Day!” she said, shaking her head so violently her ponytail was twitching from one side of her back to the other, like a real horse’s tail swishing off flies. “I’m still full from lunch, babe. I’m just gonna mosey on over to the park, get a purple snow cone, see if Jimmy is there. Wanna come?”
“No, thanks. I’m too hot. And my head is too crazy for poetry or folk music. I think I’ll just go home, have a sandwich, catch some TV, and wait for Dan to call.”
The minute Dan’s name flitted out of my mouth, my heart started doing the hula. And my clammy forehead broke out in another sweat. I wanted to talk to Dan. The only thing in the whole wide world I wanted to do at that moment was talk to Dan.
I pulled Abby to a stop on the sidewalk and sputtered, “He’ll call me tonight, don’t you think? He probably tried to last night, but I was at the theater all evening, and after that my phone was off the hook. And he couldn’t get hold of me today since I haven’t been home. So he must be going nuts by now, wondering where I am and what I’ve been doing. Right? He’s going to call me tonight for sure, don’t you think?” (To say that I was eager to hear from my daring detective would be like calling the cruel heat wave cozy.)
“Be cool, fool,” Abby said, smiling. “If there’s one thing I know in this
focockta mixed-up world, it’s that a man likes a challenge. So it’s great that you’re playing hard-to-get. The harder you are to reach, the harder he’ll try to get there. You dig my meaning?”
I understood what Abby was saying, but I couldn’t accept her prognosis. She had never played hard-to-get in her whole darn hard-and-fast life, so what the heck did she know about it? And besides, I wasn’t playing games with Dan! I had gone to the theater at Abby’s insistence, and I had taken my phone off the hook to avoid a call from her, not him. And I had been out all day discovering a dead body and investigating a murder, for God’s sake, not toying with my boyfriend’s peace of mind. (Although now that I think of it, I guess that’s exactly what I
was doing. I mean, if Dan had known what I’d actually been up to, his peace of mind would have been pretty much shot.)
“Take it from me, Paige,” Abby added. “When you chase after a man, you’re just keeping him from catching you.”
“And that’s why you’re going to the park to look for Jimmy?” I teased. “To make yourself uncatchable?”
“Oh, shut up!” she said, giggling, nudging me with her elbow. Then she gave me a little bye-bye wave and quipped, “Catch you later, alligator. Tell Dan I said hi!” Before I could reply, she made an abrupt left turn and galloped across Sixth Avenue, her ponytail flapping wildly down her back.
I BOUGHT A LOAF OF ITALIAN BREAD AT Zito’s bakery, a few slices of salami and cheese at Faicco’s deli, and a green pepper at Angelo’s fruit and vegetable store before I went home. (That’s one advantage of living on Bleecker between Sixth and Seventh-anything you could possibly want to eat is right downstairs.) It was hot as hell in my apartment, but after I opened the back door and turned on the electric fan in the living room, it was almost suffer-able.
Switching on the radio and searching the dial for some cool music, I finally settled on Sarah Vaughn. She was singing “Whatever Lola Wants,” and-since Lola always got whatever she wanted-I wondered how hard it would be to change my first name.
Lola Turner, I thought. Has a nice ring to it. A tad too close to Lana’s label, but at least it’s not a stupid pun!
I took a bottle of Orange Crush out of the ice box, rolled its cold surface across my forehead, then pried off the metal cap using the handle of my kitchen drawer as an opener. Setting the soda pop down on the table, I removed the salami and cheese from the bag and slapped the slices on a plate. Then I grabbed a sharp knife from the kitchen drawer and-doing my best not to think of it as a murder weapon-used it to slash off a few pieces of bread and green pepper.
Dinner was served.
By the time I finished eating, the Four Aces were singing “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing,” and I was bawling like a baby.
(Well, I’d had a pretty hard day, you know! And I hadn’t spoken to Dan in over thirty-six hours. And I was so hot and tired and depressed I wanted to die. And poor Gray Gordon
was dead, lying gashed to ribbons in the city morgue, and I had to go to the police station in the morning to explain to a hotheaded homicide dick why Abby and I had tracked blood and fingerprints all over the crime scene, making a god-awful mess of the evidence… And to make matters worse, even if Dan did call me tonight, I couldn’t tell him what was happening because it would not only ruin the rest of his weekend with his daughter, but he’d get so mad at me for getting involved in another dangerous murder case, that… oh, why am I pestering you with all these whiney details? I’m sure you get the picture.)
I was still blubbering at the kitchen table, feeling sorry for myself and listening to the Penguins sing “Earth Angel,” when the phone rang. I sprang out of my chair, leapt into the living room, and-wiping my eyes and nose on the paper napkin clutched in my hand-yanked the receiver up to my ear.
“Hellooooh,” I said, trying to purr like Kim Novak, but surely creaking like Jerry Lewis with a head cold.
“Hi, babe,” Dan said. “What’s the matter? You sound awful. Do you have a cold?” (See, I told you!)
“No, I’m just a little stuffed up,” I said. “I think it’s from the heat and humidity.”
“Or maybe you’ve just been crying because you miss me so much,” he teased. (If I haven’t said it before, then let me say it now: Dan is a
really good detective.)
“I haven’t been crying,” I lied, “but I
do miss you. Like crazy, if you want to know the truth.”
“I miss you, too, baby,” he said, and the way his deep, delicious voice rolled around in my ear made my whole body vibrate. “I called you several times yesterday and today, and all I got was a busy signal or no answer. Has your phone been out of order?”
And thus another perfect cover story landed in my lap.
“It sure has!” I said, hating having to lie to Dan (again), but feeling certain it was for the best. “It’s so hot a bunch of cables melted, or some gaskets blew up, or something drastic like that. Workers from the telephone company have been hanging around this block for two days now, trying to fix the problem. It looks as though they’ve succe
eded now, since you were able to get a connection, but who knows how long the service will last? A couple of phone company trucks are still parked outside.” (I figured I’d better lay the groundwork for future communication failures. Dan would be out of town for two more days, and god only knew where I was going be!)
“How’s your trip going so far?” I asked, hurrying to change the subject. “Are you and Katy having a good time?”
“Katy’s having the time of her life.” Dan’s voice was crackling with enthusiasm and good humor. “My folks have taken her clamming and fishing and to the whale museum. Turns out she’s fascinated with marine life.”
“And what about you? Didn’t you go on these outings, too?”
“Oh, I tagged along, but I’m not very seaworthy. I’m a city boy, don’t you know. I like to hook worms, but only the human variety.”
I smiled. Dan was a man after my own heart (my body and soul, too, I hoped). “What’s on your agenda for tomorrow?” I asked. “Are you celebrating in any special way?”
“We’re going to the beach in the morning and to Captain Billy’s Mermaid Cove for lunch. Then we’re taking a glass-bottom boat ride in the afternoon. After dinner, it’s back to the beach to watch the fireworks. I’ll probably duck for cover every time a Roman candle explodes.”
I laughed. It was hard to imagine Dan sitting in shorts on the sand. Would I even recognize him without his trench coat, fedora, and shoulder holster?
“What are you doing tomorrow?” he asked. “Got any hot holiday plans? I bet Abby’s taking you to some wild bohemian bash where reefers instead of firecrackers will be the cause of all the smoke.”
He was trying to sound cool and cocky, but I detected a distinct note of discomfort in Dan’s voice. He was feeling insecure about me. I was certain of it. (As a woman who’s spent her whole life flailing in a giant vat of insecurity, I know what I’m talking about!) I was glad that Dan was concerned about me (it sure beat indifference), but I didn’t have the slightest desire to make him squirm. He’d be doing enough of
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