Murder Can Ruin Your Looks (6 page)

‘‘We asked him about that. But he didn’t know a thing. And what’s with you, anyhow? You’re red as a beet.’’

I didn’t care to explain. ‘‘Any problem with Foster about wanting to leave the country?’’

‘‘None. In fact, he voluntarily turned over his passport.

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Says he has no intention of going home until he finds out what’s what with his sisters.’’

I could see from the direction of his gaze that Fielding was checking the wall clock behind me again. ‘‘Jeez, it’s one-thirty,’’ he announced, confirming my thoughts. ‘‘
Some
of us gotta get back to work—even if you high-priced P.I.s can keep your own hours.’’

He was unsuccessfully attempting to signal the waiter when I gave it one last shot. ‘‘I suppose you’re aware that Mary Ann was engaged once—before Peter, I mean—and that it ended very badly.’’

‘‘Now,
that
I didn’t know.’’

I relayed the meager information my client had given me, and when I was through, Fielding said, ‘‘Looks like we’ve got another suspect, doesn’t it? Or we will once we can pin a name on this guy.’’

I left Tim that day feeling somewhat gratified. While I’d been on the receiving end through most of our lunch, I’d finally been able to come up with a piece of information for him. Maybe it wasn’t all that much, but, as I learned a long time ago, it’s important to have
something
on the credit side of the ledger.

Chapter 5

From the coffee shop, I took a cab to Greenwich Village. Finding the Berkeley Theater was an adventure in itself. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that area, but it’s like a maze. It’s not unusual to find a street breaking off at an intersection and then turning up a few blocks north or south of where it was before. Compounding the problem was the fact that my young driver, who was Indian or Paki

stani or some Middle Eastern nationality, spoke almost no English. I guess the really amazing thing is that we made it to the Village at all.

We must have circled the same five or six blocks for fifteen minutes, with me instructing Ahmed (that’s what the license said) to stop and ask directions at least half a dozen times and him saying ‘‘Sure, lady,’’ every time and then tossing a quick, beatific smile over his shoulders as he con

tinued to zip up and down the same damned streets. Fi

nally, just as I’d more or less made up my mind to get out and see if I could find the place on foot, we stopped for a traffic light alongside another taxi.

Well, it was worth a try.

I rolled down my window, sticking my head out so far that most of the rest of me was hanging outside the cab, too. ‘‘Do you know where the Berkeley Theater is?’’ I yelled.

The light was changing. And it’s a rare New York taxi driver who, sans passengers, will waste much time being helpful. ‘‘Two blocks
mmft,
’’ he shouted before zooming off in a cloud of gas fumes. I wasn’t sure whether that last word was ‘‘up,’’ ‘‘down,’’ ‘‘north,’’ ‘‘south,’’ or what. But the finger he dangled out of the window
had
been pointing left when he said whatever it was he said.

‘‘Did you hear that?’’ I asked Ahmed.

‘‘Sure, lady,’’ he said, smiling. Just before turning right.

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I told him to pull over. He gave me another of those beaming smiles of his, said, ‘‘Sure, lady’’ again, made one more turn, and—astonishingly—we were right in front of the Berkeley Theater.

I paid the outrageous amount on the meter (and resented

it like hell, expense account or no expense account). I even added what I thought was a generous tip—under the cir

cumstances, that is. Just as I was leaving the cab, Smiley gave me one last, blinding smile. ‘‘It was a true pleasure driving you, lady,’’ he said in flawless English. ‘‘And please to have a lovely day.’’

The Berkeley was a small theater—I don’t think there were more than a hundred seats—and rehearsal was in full swing when I got there. I spotted a man seated in the mid

dle of about the tenth row, so I tiptoed down the aisle and entered the row behind him. I leaned over, tapped him on the shoulder, and very quietly explained who I was. He responded with a long, loud snore.

‘‘Hey, you shouldn’t be in here!’’ someone shouted at me from the stage, as everyone else up there stopped in their tracks and turned to stare. ‘‘I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’’

Now, you might think that, being a P.I. for so long, I’d be used to getting thrown out of places by this time. Well, I don’t think I’ll
ever
get used to it. I was feeling pretty uncomfortable right about then. Nevertheless, I marched purposefully up to the stage and even managed to speak with all the authority and composure you’d expect from a confident, in-control, Sam Spade type of investigator. ‘‘I’d like to talk to the cast about Meredith Foster; my name’s Desiree Shapiro,’’ I said, addressing the large, sandy-haired man who had so unequivocally requested my departure. ‘‘It won’t take long,’’ I assured him, waving my license at him. He bent down and reached over the footlights to accept it, then quickly returned it to me.

‘‘The police have already questioned the entire com

pany,’’ he informed me, not unkindly, ‘‘and I’m sure we’ve all told them everything we know. Which I’m afraid isn’t much.’’

‘‘I’m sure you have, too, but I’ve got some additional questions.’’ I could see a look of apology begin to form on the well-lived-in, fortyish face, so I quickly intercepted it.

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Selma
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‘‘It’s very important. And we’re all interested in the same thing, aren’t we? Making sure this murderous slime is caught.’’

‘‘All right,’’ the man agreed with a sigh. ‘‘C’mon in back. You can use my office.’’

‘‘I guess I should introduce myself,’’ he said when he was leading me backstage. ‘‘I’m Larry Shields; I’m directing this play.’’ He showed me into a room so tiny it could barely contain its sparse furnishings. Sharing the extremely cramped quarters were a smallish, badly scarred desk, which was piled unbelievably high with papers of every sort, and a pair of identical and extremely rickety straightbacked chairs. ‘‘Have a seat,’’ Shields said, indicating the chair nearer the door. Then he lifted the other chair from behind the desk, placing it a couple of feet from where I now sat nervously shifting my buns and praying that my own chair would not let me down. (And I’m talking
liter

ally
.) ‘‘I’ll have the company come in one at a time; I as

sume that’s what you want,’’ Shields told me.

‘‘Thanks. I’d appreciate it.’’

From the first five people to enter what I now regarded as my interrogation room, I discovered that
everyone
liked Meredith Foster. Of course, she didn’t really socialize much with the other cast members, I was told. But that was be

cause she was so committed to her craft. She was always sitting there studying her lines whenever she had even a few minutes’ free time, her fellow thespians said admiringly. As for Lucille Collins originally having been promised Meredith’s role, no one seemed to know a thing about
that
. Okay. So who took over the part after the shootings? I wanted to know.

We-e-ll, it was reluctantly conceded, Lucille
was
playing Hope
now
. However, a suggestion from me that there was some ill-feeling between the two actresses, that even Mere

dith thought Collins resented her, was met with firm deni

als, a couple of them pretty impassioned.
Everyone,
I was informed again and again, liked Meredith Foster.

Then Tara Wilde walked in. Small and dark, with huge brown eyes and a totally ingenuous manner, she couldn’t have been more than nineteen years old. I immediately pegged the young actress as my best hope.

‘‘Someone mentioned that Lucille Collins was all set for

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the part of Hope before Meredith came along,’’ I said, not even bothering with foreplay.

‘‘I never heard that,’’ the girl responded, eyeing me warily.

‘‘From what I understand, it was a pretty good part, so it would—’’

‘‘
Pretty
good? Are you kidding? Any actress would
kill
for a part like that!’’ Tara’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘‘Oh!

I didn’t mean it like that! I would
never
. . .
Lucille
would never—’’

I interrupted quickly. ‘‘Oh, I don’t think either of you would, either. Still, if what I heard about Lucille’s losing out is true, it would be understandable if she’d been a little jealous of Meredith, don’t you agree?’’

‘‘Lucille liked Meredith just fine,’’ Tara retorted. And then she added, almost as if she were parroting the words,

‘‘
Everyone
liked Meredith.’’

I can’t tell you how fed up I was with that tune. Also, I decided that a little shock therapy could conceivably do some good here. ‘‘Not
everyone,
’’ I reminded her in a voice dripping with irony. ‘‘Someone disliked Meredith Foster enough to shoot off her face. So if there’s anything you can tell me—’’

‘‘But there isn’t!’’ Tara protested, her improbably large eyes growing even larger and her voice rising sharply. ‘‘If there
was,
don’t you think I
would
?’’

When she rushed out of the office moments later, she was almost in tears. And I was furious with myself, con

vinced that if I’d just pushed the right buttons, I could have gotten her to open up. But as it was, the only thing I learned from my meeting with Tara Wilde was how it must

feel to kick a puppy.

Two other people came and left after that, including the show’s snoring producer, who was still no more than semi

conscious. Then Lucille Collins put in an appearance. I hadn’t exactly formed a mental picture of the woman—

not that I was aware of, anyway. Still, what I saw sur

prised me.

She was well into her thirties, tall and very thin and al

most plain-looking. Except for her long, thick hair, which was this incredible shade of auburn. (And, I realized with a twinge of jealousy, the color was natural, too.) But it was when Collins began to speak that she seemed totally

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transformed. Her voice was low and husky. And she had this way of turning her complete attention to you and fixing you with these piercing hazel eyes of hers—eyes that an instant earlier you probably wouldn’t even have noticed. I didn’t waste much time before asking how she felt about the part of Hope going to Meredith Foster. She said she was disappointed; maybe, for the first week or so, any

way, even angry about it. ‘‘But I didn’t blame Meredith for what happened. How could I blame
her
for someone else’s decision?’’ she pointed out. Quite rationally, I thought. Still, that didn’t let her off the hook. ‘‘Would you mind telling me where you were on Monday night between quar

ter to eight and nine o’clock?’’

‘‘Home alone with a book. And it was a lousy one, too.’’

Collins stayed a couple of minutes more without saying much of anything else. And soon afterward Larry Shields poked his head in.

‘‘That wraps it up,’’ he informed me. ‘‘That was the last one—except for me.’’ He came in and set his meaty sixfoot-two-or -three-inch body down opposite me. (And it was with some kind of perverse satisfaction that I noted that, with his oversized frame, Shields’s little chair was as imperiled as mine was.)

I opened with, ‘‘How well did you know Meredith

Foster?’’

‘‘Very well,’’ he said gravely. ‘‘We were going together.’’

It took a few seconds to digest what—to me, at least—

was very interesting news. Then I said, ‘‘How did Lucille Collins feel about the part she’d been promised going to Meredith?’’

‘‘First off,
promised
isn’t exactly the right word. I’d planned on doing this play for some time, and I mentioned the part of Hope to Lucille quite a while ago. I knew she’d do a fine job.’’ And then with a trace of irony: ‘‘In fact, she
is
doing a fine job. But at any rate, once I saw Merry, I realized I needed someone younger—someone more like Merry—although I wasn’t thinking of Merry herself at that point. Not consciously, anyway. All I knew was that if I put Lucille in the role, I’d be settling.’’

‘‘You said
once
you
saw
Merry
. When was that?’’