A Motive For Murder (39 page)

“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?

Herbert checked his watch, wondering what in god’s
name T.S. was talking about. He had no Aunt Minnie, to his
knowledge. But then Herbert had observed that the drunker an
American, the odder their expressions. “How much before the meeting
is over, do you think?” he asked T.S. anxiously.

T.S. shrugged. “I’d give it another half an hour.
Bottoms up.” He drained the rest of his martini.

The televised studio audience was obediently
applauding as the hyperkinetic hostess introduced her first two
guests. To the utter disbelief of both T.S. and Herbert, Paulette
Puccinni and Jerry Vanderbilt bounded onto stage, holding hands
like the coziest of couples.

“Today,” the talk-show hostess announced breathlessly
into her microphone, “we have two very special guests from right
here in Manhattan. Two very talented artists who endured a
conspiracy of murder and mayhem at the Metropolitan Ballet, facing
death each day yet bolstered by the deep and enduring friendship
that exists between them.”

“If not for Jerry, I would never have survived that
wretched experience,” Paulette gushed as she settled her ample
caftan-clad rear into the guest chair. “I would have gone mad with
fear. But we had each other, and while we faced unknown danger
daily, at least with one another we knew we were safe.”

Paulette beamed at Jerry, who held his hands up in
the air then clasped them together like a boxing champion while the
audience broke into thunderous applause.

“Bartender!” T.S. bellowed. “Bring us another
round!”

“Why not?” Auntie Lil asked Lane. “It’s time for the
Metro to make a change. If we offer Ben Hampton a seat on the
board, we can only win. He will never attend the meetings. Believe
me, he’s far too busy and has more important items on his agenda.
But we will look serious about our desire to right past wrongs, and
most important of all, we will have found a way to differenttiate
ourselves from the City Ballet and ABT.”

“She has a point,” one of the socialites on the board
said, although her sentiment was rather more self-centered than
Auntie Lil’s. “I’m tired of having to apologize for the Metro to my
friends. We’re always not quite good enough. Why do we keep chasing
the other ballet companies? Let’s take a chance and do something
different.”

“Exactly,” Auntie Lil said, warming up to a topic
that had been percolating in her mind for a week now. “Let the
Metro Ballet become the real ballet of New York City, open to
people of all shapes and colors. Let our ranks reflect the true
nature and glory of this great international city of ours. Let
people years from now look back and say—”

“I quite agree,” Lilah interrupted smoothly before
Auntie Lil launched into some fractured version of Shakespeare’s
St. Crispin’s Day speech. “There’s no point in trying to be ABT or
the City. Let’s just be ourselves.”

“If you elect that man to this board, I will resign!”
Lane Rogers declared. She stood and glared around the room. “He
will make a mockery of us. I tell you—I will resign!”

The room fell silent. A board member in the back
coughed nervously and a handful of chairs scraped against the
wooden floor. Raoul Martinez studied the clock on the wall
intently, ignoring Lane’s gaze. Auntie Lil sat with her chin cupped
in her hand, content to let others do the dirty work on this
one.

Lane waited, standing alone at the top of the long
conference table, for her usual coterie of supporters to come to
her rescue. She waited in vain.

“Well, Lane,” one of them finally said with an
apologetic smile. “You have been chairman for three years now.
Perhaps it is time to take a rest.”

“Yes,” another agreed eagerly. “We can’t possibly ask
you to do more.”

“Ruth?” Lane said, turning to her faithful friend.
Lane opened her mouth to speak, but shut it when she couldn’t find
the right words.

Ruth shrugged. “They’re right, you know,” she said.
“Everyone’s tired of you. I nominate Lilah Cheswick to be the new
chairman of the Metropolitan Ballet. She was smart enough to find
out what Glick is doing and she knows everybody in the entire
world.”

“Oh, no. I’m far too busy,” Lilah protested as dozens
of heads nodded agreement and turned expectantly to her.

Ignored, Lane sat abruptly at her end of the table,
staring in shock at the faces around her.

“Quit some of those other boards,” someone suggested.
“We need you more.”

“Perhaps you should,” Auntie Lil agreed. “Being
chairman of the Metro would allow you to focus your energies. You
might have more time for fun.” She nodded ever so slightly toward
the clock to remind Lilah that fun awaited them that very evening
if only they could wrap up all their business and move on.

“Yes, Lilah—do it,” other voices echoed, eager for
the board to be ruled with grace and tact after years of dissension
and spite.

“I suppose I could...” Lilah began doubtfully, and
before the words were out of her mouth, a vote had been called.

Five minutes later Lilah Cheswick was duly installed
as the new chairman of the board of the Metropolitan Ballet. Her
first action was to call for a vote on the issue of the Reverend
Ben Hampton. Auntie Lil’s bid to offer him a seat on the board was
narrowly defeated, but she took the matter philosophically. By now,
she knew, the Reverend had probably forgotten all about the Metro
and was moving on to more important things. Besides, Lane Rogers
was in no danger of being suddenly re-elected and that was a most
cheering thought.

“Before we adjourn,” Lilah announced with admirable
aplomb given her short tenure, “I would like to announce that it is
my intention to divert any attempt to mount a production of
The
Nutcracker
next holiday season. This city is awash in
Nutcrackers and I for one have had enough. I don’t see our city’s
orchestras mounting dueling versions of the
1812 Overture
year after year.” The room burst into spontaneous applause. When it
had died down, she continued, “I propose we vote to commission
Emili Vladimir to create a new ballet for next holiday season. If
we act now, we will have months and months to perfect it.”

“How do you know she’ll agree?” someone asked.

“She will agree,” Lilah explained, “because this
ballet will star her son Rudy.”

“Yes,” Auntie Lil agreed emphatically. “Right now,
Fatima Jones and Rudy Vladimir are our biggest weapons in
establishing a new identity for the Metro.”