by Joël Dicker
“Please tell me you’re planning to include those incredible braised meat sandwiches on the menu.”
“You tried them?” Darla said, aghast.
Natasha tried to limit the damage. “When they went to Montana last week, I gave Jesse some sandwiches for the flight.”
“We agreed we’d let them taste everything together, the two of us, to see their reactions,” Darla said.
“I felt bad about them taking a plane at dawn . . .”
I thought that was the end of it, but Darla mentioned it again a few days later, when we were alone.
“You know, Derek,” she said, “I can’t get over the fact that Natasha did something like that to me.”
“Are you still talking about those damn sandwiches?”
“It may be nothing to you, but when you have a partner and your trust is broken, that makes it hard to work together.”
“Don’t you think you’re exaggerating, Darla?”
“Whose side are you on, Derek? Mine or hers?”
I think Darla, wonderful as she was, was a little jealous of Natasha. But I imagine all the girls were jealous of Natasha at one time or another. She was smarter, prettier, and had more presence than anyone. When she entered a room, she was the only person anyone looked at.
As far as the investigation was concerned, Jesse and I concentrated on what we could prove. One thing in particular stood out: Tennenbaum’s absence from the Grand Theater for a period of at least twenty minutes. According to him, he had not gone anywhere. So it was up to us to prove that he was lying. And on that point, we still had a margin for maneuver. We had questioned all the volunteers, but had not been able to speak with anyone from the company that had performed the opening play, since our suspicions had not turned to Tennenbaum until some time after the festival was over.
Unfortunately, the company, which was from the University of Albany, had disbanded in the meantime. Most of the students who had taken part had finished their courses and were scattered around the country. In order not to waste time, Jesse and I decided to concentrate on those who still lived in New York State, and we divided up the work.
It was Jesse who hit the jackpot when he questioned Buzz Lambert, the company’s director, who was still teaching summer courses at the University of Albany.
When Jesse mentioned Ted Tennenbaum, Lambert immediately said: “Did I notice any strange behavior in the fire officer on duty on opening night? The thing that I mainly noticed is that he wasn’t doing his job. There was an incident in one of the dressing rooms, around seven. A hair dryer that caught fire. We couldn’t find the guy, so I had to deal with it myself. Luckily, there was a fire extinguisher.”
“The fire officer was nowhere to be found on the premises at seven o’clock?”
“That’s right. When I saw the fire, I called for help and the actors who were in the next dressing room came running. They’ll confirm that. As for that fire officer, I gave him a piece of my mind when he magically reappeared half an hour later.”
“So the fire officer was away until 7.30?”
“That’s correct.”
JESSE ROSENBERG
Thursday, July 10, 2014
Sixteen days to opening night
While I was on my way back from California to Orphea, Betsy and Derek paid a visit to Buzz Lambert. He was living in New Jersey, where he was a drama teacher in a high school.
On the way there, Derek summed up the situation for Betsy.
“In 1994, there were two things that pointed to Tennenbaum: the parallel financial transactions, and his absence when there was a fire backstage at the Grand Theater. The possibility that he might have been absent looked crucial. One of the witnesses at the time, Lena Bellamy, who lived a few doors down from the Gordons, said she had seen Tennenbaum’s van on the street when she heard the shots, whereas Tennenbaum claimed he had not left the theater where he was the duty fire officer. It was Ms Bellamy’s word against his. But now Lambert, the director, had stated that just before the start of the performance, a hair dryer caught fire in one of the dressing rooms and they hadn’t been able to find Tennenbaum.”
“So if Tennenbaum wasn’t in the Grand Theater,” Betsy said, “it could have been because he had taken his van to drive to Mayor Gordon’s house and kill the mayor and his family.”
“Precisely.”
In the living room where he received us, Lambert, now a balding man in his sixties, kept a framed poster of the 1994 show.
“A lot of people still remember ‘Uncle Vanya’ at the Orphea Festival. Don’t forget, we were only a university drama group. The festival was in its infancy and the town council couldn’t hope to attract a professional company. Nevertheless, our show was exceptional. For ten nights running, the Grand Theater was sold out, the critics were unanimous. It was a triumph. It was so successful that everyone thought the actors would go on to have professional careers.”
It could be seen from the lively way the director talked about that period that for him it was a pleasant memory. As far as he was concerned, the Gordon killings had been nothing but a news item.
“And what happened?” Derek asked, curious. “Did the other members of the group make careers in the theater, like you?”
“No, nobody continued on that path. I can’t blame them, it’s such a difficult world. I know what I’m talking about—I wanted to be on Broadway and I ended up in a private high school in the suburbs. Just one person among them could have become a real star: Charlotte Carrell. She played Yelena, the wife of Professor Serebryakov. She was remarkable. When she was on stage she was magnetic. She had a kind of innocence and detachment that gave her a real presence. To be honest with you, we owed the success of the show to her. None of us could hold a candle to her.”
“Why didn’t she go on in the theater?”
“She didn’t want to. She was in her final year in Albany, where she’d been studying to be a vet. The last I heard, she had opened a clinic for animals in Orphea.”
“Wait,” Betsy said, struck by a sudden realization. “The Charlotte you’re talking about—could she be Charlotte Brown, now the wife of the mayor of Orphea?”
“Oh, yes. It was thanks to the play that they met. It was love at first sight. They were a wonderful couple. I was at their wedding, but over the years we’ve lost touch. Which is a pity.”
“So Kirk Hayward’s beautiful girlfriend in 1994,” Derek said, “was Charlotte, the future wife of the mayor?”
“That’s right. Didn’t you know that, Sergeant?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“That Kirk Hayward was a cop with pretentions, an artist manqué. He had always wanted to be a playwright and a director.”
“I was told his first play was quite a success.”
“The real reason it was a success was because Charlotte was in it. Charlotte enhanced everything she was in. The play itself was not a masterpiece. But when Charlotte was onstage, she could read the telephone book and you’d be knocked out, it was so beautiful. I never could figure out what she was doing with a policeman like Hayward. It’s one of the unexplained mysteries of life. We’ve all met stunning girls infatuated with guys as ugly as they were stupid. And this guy was so stupid, he couldn’t even keep her.”
“Were they together for long?”
Lambert took his time before replying. “A year, I think. Hayward was doing the rounds of the New York theaters and so was Charlotte. That’s how they met. She acted in that famous first play of his, and its success went to his head. That was in the spring of 1993. I remember that because it was when we were starting to work on ‘Uncle Vanya’. He got a big head, wrote another play. When the project of a theater festival in Orphea came up, he was convinced his play would be chosen as the main attraction. At the same time, I suggested ‘Uncle Vanya’ to the festival’s artistic committee, and after several auditions our group was chosen.”
“Hayward must have been mad at you.”
“He said I’d betrayed him, t
hat without him I wouldn’t have thought to suggest our production to the festival. Which was true. But his play would never have been performed anyway. Even the mayor was against the idea.”
“Mayor Gordon?”
“Yes. One day when he’d asked to see me in his office, I overheard a conversation between the two of them. It must have been mid-June. I’d arrived early and was waiting outside the door. Suddenly, Gordon threw the door open and said, ‘Your play is not good enough, Kirk. You’ll never put it on it in my town while I’m alive!’ And right in front of everyone, he tore up the script of the play that Hayward had entrusted to him.”
“The mayor said, ‘While I’m alive’?”
“His exact words. In fact, when he was murdered, the whole company wondered if Hayward had been involved.”
“Why did you never tell the police about that conversation between Mayor Gordon and Hayward?”
Lambert made a face. “What would have been the point? It would have been his word against mine. And besides, to be honest, I couldn’t really see the guy murdering the whole family. On the phone, you said you wanted to talk about a particular incident.”
“That’s right, Mr Lambert,” Derek said. “We’re interested in a hair dryer that caught fire in one of the dressing rooms before the opening night of ‘Uncle Vanya’.”
“Yes, that’s right, I remember now. A detective asked me if the fire officer had behaved in any unusual way.”
“That was my colleague at the time, Jesse Rosenberg.”
“That’s right, his name was Rosenberg. I told him the fire officer had seemed nervous. The main thing, though, was that when the hair dryer caught fire, he was nowhere to be seen. Fortunately, one of the actors found a fire extinguisher and got the fire under control before the whole dressing room could go up in smoke. It could easily have been a disaster.”
“According to the report at the time, the fire officer didn’t come back until 7.30.”
“That’s what I remember, but if you’ve read my testimony, why come see me now? It was twenty years ago. Are you hoping I can tell you anything more?”
“In the report, you say you were in the corridor, you saw smoke coming out from under the door of a dressing room, and you called the fire officer, but he wasn’t to be found.”
“I remember opening the door, saw the hair dryer smoking and about to catch fire. It all happened very quickly.”
“That’s understandable,” Derek said. “But what struck me when I looked again at your testimony is why the person in the dressing room didn’t do anything about the fire.”
“Because the dressing room was empty,” Lambert said, as if only just realizing this. “There was nobody there.”
“But the hair dryer was on?”
“Yes,” Lambert said, a troubled look on his face. “I don’t know why that never struck me before. I was pretty much focused on the threat of a full-blown fire.
“Sometimes, we have something right in front of our eyes and we don’t see it,” Betsy said, half recalling those fateful words of Stephanie Mailer’s.
“Tell me, Mr Lambert,” Derek said, “whose dressing room was it?”
“Charlotte’s,” Lambert said immediately.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because that faulty hair dryer was hers. She used to say that if she used it too much, it would overheat and start to smoke.”
“Would she have left it to get too hot? And why?”
“Oh, no,” Lambert said, summoning his memories. “There was a big power outage that night. There was a problem with the fuses, which couldn’t support all the power necessary. It was around seven o’clock. I remember that because we were one hour from the beginning of the show and I was panicking because the technicians couldn’t restore the power. It took quite a while, but finally they managed it, and, soon afterward, there was that little fire.”
“That means Charlotte left her dressing room during the outage,” Betsy said. “The hair dryer was plugged in, and started working again while she was absent.”
“But if she wasn’t in her dressing room, where was she?” Derek said. “Somewhere else in the theater?”
“If she’d been in the backstage area,” Lambert said, “she would definitely have come running because of all the commotion. There was a lot of shouting, a lot of movement. But I do remember she came and complained to me at least half an hour later that her hair dryer had disappeared. I’m quite clear about that because by then I was terrified at the thought that we might not be ready in time for the start of the show. The official part of the evening had already started, and we couldn’t afford to be late. Charlotte came into my dressing room and told me that someone had taken her hair dryer. I got angry and said to her, ‘Your hair dryer got burned, it’s in the garbage! Isn’t your hair ready yet, and why are your shoes wet?’ The shoes she was to wear on stage were soaked. As if she’d been walking through water. Thirty minutes before going on stage! You can imagine the state I was in.”
“Her shoes were wet?” Derek said.
“Yes. I remember all these things because at the time I thought the show was going to be a disaster. What with the fuses blowing, that little fire, and my leading lady not yet ready and showing up with wet shoes, I could never have imagined the show would turn out to be such a huge success.”
“And after that, everything went on smoothly?”
“Absolutely.”
“When did you find out that Mayor Gordon and his family had been murdered?”
“There was some talk during the intermission, but we didn’t really pay attention. I wanted my actors to concentrate on the play. When we started again, I noticed that some people in the audience had left, including Mayor Brown, which I particularly noticed because he’d been sitting in the front row.”
“When exactly did he leave?”
“That I couldn’t tell you. But if it might help in any way, I do have a videocassette of the play.”
Lambert went and rummaged through a heap of relics on a bookcase and came back with an old V.H.S. cassette.
“We made a recording of the opening night as a souvenir. The quality isn’t good, because of the technical limitations of the time, but it does capture some of the atmosphere. Just promise me I’ll get it back. It means a lot to me.”
“Of course,” Derek said. “Thank you for your invaluable help, Mr Lambert.”
Leaving Buzz Lambert’s, Derek seemed preoccupied.
“What’s the matter, Derek?” Betsy said as they got in the car.
“It’s that thing about the shoes,” he said. “On the night of the murders, the pipe in the Gordons’ automatic sprinkler system was broken and the lawn in front of their house was soaked.”
“Do you think Charlotte might have been involved?”
“We know now she wasn’t in the theater around the time of the murders. If she was gone for half an hour, that would have given her plenty of time to get to Penfield and back while everybody thought she was in her dressing room. And I’m thinking again about those words of Stephanie Mailer’s: something in front of our eyes that we didn’t see. What if that night, when the Penfield neighborhood was cordoned off and roadblocks had been put up all around the region, the person who had committed those murders was actually on the stage of the Grand Theater in front of hundreds of people, using them as her alibi?”
“Do you think this video might help us get a better idea?”
“I dare hope so, Betsy. If it shows us the audience, we may be able to spot something that escaped us. I must admit that, at the time of our investigation, what happened during the show didn’t seem all that interesting to us. The fact that we’re looking at it now is down to Stephanie Mailer.”
* * *
Meanwhile, in his office at the town hall, Alan Brown was listening less and less patiently to the doubts of his deputy, Peter Frogg.
“Kirk Hayward is your trump card for the festival? The former chief of police?”
“
Peter, it seems his new play is really good.”
“But what do you know about it? You haven’t even read it! You’re crazy to have promised ‘a sensational play’ in the press!”
“What else could I have done? Bird had me in a corner, I had to find a way out. Peter, we’ve been working together for twenty years. Have I ever given you occasion to doubt me?”
The door of the office opened, and a secretary shyly put her head inside.
“I asked not to be disturbed!” Mayor Brown said.
“I know that, Mr Mayor, but you have an unexpected visitor: a Mr Ostrovski.”
“That’s all we need!” Frogg said, aghast.
A few minutes later, Meta Ostrovski, all smiles, was sprawling in an armchair facing the mayor. He was pleased to have left New York to come to this charming town where he felt respected. But the mayor’s first question upset him.
“Mr Ostrovski, would you mind telling me what you’re doing here in Orphea?”
“Well, I was charmed by your invitation and I’ve come to witness your famous theater festival.”
“But you know the festival doesn’t start for another two weeks?”
Frogg, conscious of his boss’ exasperation, took over. “The mayor would like to know if there’s a reason for your coming—how shall I put it?—so prematurely.”
“A reason for my coming? But you invited me yourselves. And now that I’m here, to show fraternal solidarity, you ask me what I’m doing here? If you’d prefer it, I’ll go back to New York.”
“Don’t go anywhere, Mr Ostrovski! As it happens, I need you.” Mayor Brown had suddenly had an idea.
“Ah, you see . . .”
“Tomorrow, Friday, I’m giving a press conference to announce the opening play of the festival. It’s going to be a world premiere. I’d like you to be by my side and declare that it’s the most extraordinary play you’ve ever been lucky enough to read in your career.”
Ostrovski stared at the mayor, astonished by his request. “You want me to praise to the skies a play I’ve never seen?”