Murder: The Musical (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery, #5) (11 page)

“Count on that, too.”

Carlos got up and reached around for his bags. “What did you start to tell me, Birdie?”

“Forget it. Go on. I’ll catch up with you in Boston.” Wetzon rose.

“Hi, Birdie.” Phil wore a big smile and a cap just like Mort’s. It didn’t take long, Wetzon thought, greeting him, for everyone in the theatre to imitate Mort. Pretty soon, there’d be nothing but beards and caps. Phil took Carlos’s carryon outside to the car. He seemed fully recovered from the trauma on Saturday.

“I take it he’s into the Broadway Show League,” she said to Carlos.

“A real fanatic. He’s lined me up for center field.”

“You? Oh, my God, that I have to see.”

“You mock me. Just you wait.” He patted her on the rear. “Bye, pet. Give us a big kiss and wish us
merde.”

“Merde,
my love.” She gave Carlos a big hug and a kiss. Then another. She felt chilled. “Be careful.”

She received one of his sardonic winks, but it didn’t make her feel any better. She was scared for him, for herself.

After Carlos left, Wetzon stared at the paper in her hand without focusing on the numbers. Maybe she ought to try to reach Sonya now. She went into the Edison from the coffee shop and found a pay phone. Sonya’s number was in her address book. She put a quarter in the slot and picked out the digits. She would leave a message on Sonya’s answering machine and perhaps there’d be a message from Sonya when Wetzon got home later. She listened to the ring, waiting for the machine to pick up.

“Sonya Mosholu.”

“Sonya! I’m glad I caught you.”

“Leslie?”

“Yes. Is this a bad time?”

“No, you caught me between patients. How are you?”

“Not my usual sparkly self. I need a consultation.”

Sonya’s voice became instantly professional. “When can you come?”

“How about tonight?”

“Oh. Mmmm. Okay. How about eight o’clock?”

“You’re on.”

There, she’d done it. She hung up the phone feeling proud of herself. The phone box chung and clunked, and damned if her quarter wasn’t returned to her in the change well. It had to be an omen. She made a gun of her right hand and shot herself in the side of the head. She was getting more and more like Smith.

When she dropped the quarter in her coat pocket, her fingers touched the paper with the phone number. She might as well try it while she was still here and get Thursday squared away. She picked out the number and listened to the phone ring, once, twice, three, four, and was about to hang up when a voice said: “Joel Kidde’s office.”

The cab she’d just gotten out of was captured by the doorman of Susan Orkin’s building for an older couple in evening clothes. The woman had a mink cape loosely over her shoulders, revealing her skeletal frame. Her face had the frozen look of one too many lifts. Her companion was one of those androgynously handsome white-haired men of the flashy tans and fine gold jewelry who often escorted rich widows and divorcees about town.

This was so typical of the East Side that Wetzon had to smile. Her Upper West Side with its actor-musician-dancer-writer and young upwardly mobile professional Zabar-dependent inhabitants was more to her taste.

She paused for a moment listening to the wind
snap-slap
at the awning overhead, then she pushed hard on the heavy lobby door and crossed a marbled vestibule bigger than the office she and Smith shared. Down two steps was another lobby the size of her whole apartment. The decor was chocolate brown leather sofas and good reproduction walnut tables. Waxy leaved plants filled fat, pebbled brass pots. Floor-to-ceiling windows on the far wall looked out into a winter-blighted garden of brown manicured hedges and walkways.

A second, older, doorman, his face a treasury of broken blood vessels, stood at a telephone board. He waited for her to approach him, blinking faded brown eyes.

“Mrs. Orkin,” she told him.

“Your name, Miss?” His Irish brogue was downright plush.

“Ms. Wetzon.”

He plugged a cord into his tenant intercom box and announced her, actually pronouncing her name properly but giving it a romantic lilt. “Ms. Wetzon here for you, Mrs. Orkin.” He disconnected and nodded to Wetzon. “Go right up. Eighteen C. Elevator’s to your right.”

This building on Fifth Avenue was a full square block, half facing Madison, half facing Fifth. It was legendary for the size and layouts of its apartments. You couldn’t buy in without being connected, and its co-op board was notoriously rigid. Even with the recession, which had severely hurt highflying New York real estate prices, Wetzon knew prices here had not dropped. People were willing to wait for years for apartments in this building to come on the market.

The elevator was wood-paneled, its brass trim polished to the nth degree. The elevator man was young and rolled curious eyes over Wetzon when she told him the eighteenth floor. Whose apartment had it been, she wondered. Dilla’s or Susan’s? The reactionary board of this building would not look kindly on a lesbian couple, that was for sure. They consistently refused to accept entertainers, even classical musicians.

There were only two apartments on the eighteenth floor, C and D. The little foyer was embellished by rust ceramic floor tiles and taupe-striped wallpaper with tiny rust flowers. Four old floral prints in plain black frames were lined up on the wall opposite the elevator. A photocopied letter to all tenants was taped to each door informing that negotiations with the Building Employees Union had broken off and that there would be a strike. She had seen a similar notice taped to the inside wall of the elevator in her own building that morning.

Wetzon rang C’s bell and, fully expecting soft chimes, heard instead a rasping ring followed hard on by barking, the kind made by a small dog.

The woman who opened the door was not someone Wetzon would have recognized as the Susan Cohen she’d known in college. This woman’s hair was spun-sugar white, absolutely devoid of color, parted on the side and puffed around her small face, making it look even smaller. All that hair made Susan’s head seem too big for her body, which was as tiny as it had been almost twenty years ago. Susan was actually a woman in miniature, shorter than Wetzon and nicely rounded without being fat.

They stared at one another for a brief moment, then clasped hands, and Susan drew her into the apartment and closed the door. The sound of barking increased in volume. Susan ignored it.

“I would never ever have known you,” Wetzon said. “Your hair ... it’s so beautiful.” There were so many things that were different about Susan, but the hair was probably the safest to mention.

Susan’s smile was perfect. In college she’d had a snaggled front tooth. “New nose, silicone chin, collagen cheeks and lips. I was so ugly in college.”

“No, you weren’t,” Wetzon protested, and meant it.

Susan led Wetzon through a foyer filled with antiques and into the kitchen. The dog’s barking became frenzied. “I hope you don’t mind. It’s easier to talk here. Dilla’s mother and sister and brother-in-law are in the back.”

The kitchen was huge: a work island in the center, and off to the right an old cherry wood table, French country chairs with pretty paisley cushions. Hexigons of brown quarry tile covered the floors, and on the walls were framed posters of Dilla’s shows. Wetzon pulled out one of the chairs and sat down, laying her coat, briefcase, and purse on another chair. She watched Susan fill a copper kettle with water and turn the burner up so high on the massive Garland stove that the flame licked the edge of the kettle and crept up the side. The room was cold; she could hear the wind whipping against the windows, which were not curtained, and rattling the service door.

“What a great apartment.”

“It is, isn’t it? We were lucky to get into the building.”

“I thought you couldn’t without connections.”

“That never stopped Dilla.” Susan smiled. “Actually, it was Fran Burke who had the connection. He has friends in the building. You know Fran, don’t you?”

“Yes. He company managed a few of the shows I did.”

“Tea? Or something stronger?” Susan’s eyes were dark ringed and spidery lines ran from the outside corners. She wore little to no makeup, not even lipstick. “Do you want to hang your coat?” She nodded toward the rack of Shaker-style pegs where several coats and mufflers and two black felt borsalino hats were already hanging.

“Tea is fine. With lemon, please.” Wetzon took her coat from the chair and hung it from the only free peg. The kettle began to shrill.

A muffled howl came from the dog, and somewhere in the apartment, quarreling voices were raised. A door opened and a woman shrieked in frustration. A hard slam followed. Then the sound of scurrying, nails on bare wood floors, and a round bit of white fluff exactly the color of Susan’s hair streaked into the kitchen and hurled itself into Susan’s outstretched arms. Susan laughed and buried her face in the little dog’s fur, letting the animal give her a face wash. Presenting the Maltese to Wetzon, she said, “This is Izz. Izz, behave.”

“Izz?” The dog flapped her ears and peered at Wetzon with jet, glass-button eyes. She wore a wide red collar and dangling from a brass loop, her license. “Such a pretty collar.”

“Short for Isabella. The collar has this little pocket for my key. Isn’t that ingenious? You can’t even see it. And it’s useful, too, because I am always losing my key.” Susan set the dog on the floor and poured a splash of hot water into a porcelain teapot, swirled it around, then poured it out. She filled a mesh ball with tea leaves and dropped it into the pot, covered it with boiling water, and put the lid on the pot, letting it steep. Izz danced on the tiles, slipping and tumbling, begging to get picked up again. “She misses Dilla. She keeps wandering around the apartment looking for her or running to the door. Oh, God.... They’re taking her to Pennsylvania today, to the family plot.” Susan removed some scones from a tin box and arranged them on a plate. She set the plate on the table in front of Wetzon.

“Is that where Dilla’s from?” Izz jumped on Wetzon’s lap and nuzzled the plate of scones with her coal black nose. Wetzon cuddled the squirming animal and got a nose and chin wash in quick succession.

“Yes. King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.” Susan took a lemon from the fridge and sliced half of it, put the slices on another plate and returned the remainder to the fridge. “We met at camp ... when we were kids.”

Loud voices again. The dog growled, jumped off Wetzon’s lap, and ran to the doorway, barked furiously, came back and jumped at Susan’s legs. Susan scooped her up. “I wish they were out of here.”

“What is that about?”

“They’re fighting about what to take. The sister wants all her clothes and so does the mother. I said go ahead and take them. Dilla had so much stuff—designers were always sending her samples. And I—” she looked down at herself, “wear nothing but jeans.” Still holding the dog, she set out lemon slices and cups.

“You are planning to have a memorial service here?”

“Oh, yes. Mort’s arranging it. It’ll be after
Hotshot
opens.” She poured tea into the cups, then sat down with Izz in her lap.

“I guess Dilla and Mort were very close.”

“Too close sometimes.” There was just a feather of resentment in Susan’s voice and then it was gone. Izz jumped off her lap and left the kitchen, her nails clicking on the tile.

“Oh? It’s been so many years for me—”

“Oh, Leslie, I’m sure you know Mort—how he uses people, soaks everything good out of them and then takes all the credit.”

“I guess he hasn’t changed much.”

“He’s gotten worse, if anything. And he’s such a bully. The tantrums are worse—everything—oh, damn it all.” Tears began running down Susan’s cheeks and she brushed them away impatiently with her fingertips. “He was making Dilla crazy. Calls all hours of the day and night. He wouldn’t leave us alone. I kept telling her to stand up to him and she was just starting to—”

“Funny, I always thought Dilla was the tough one and that she had Mort wrapped around her little finger.”

“Oh, Leslie, how little you know. People misjudged her. She wasn’t that strong. And she made emotional decisions that often got her into trouble.” She swirled sugar into her tea. “Dilla and Mort had a screaming fight in the theatre Friday night.” There was satisfaction in her voice.

“How do you know?”

Susan stared at her. “Dilla called me. She was frightened. I could hear it in her voice. She hadn’t been herself the past week, sort of edgy and nervous. I thought it was because the show was undercapitalized. I wanted to get in a cab and come right down there, but she said no. She’d get it settled once and for all and would be home later. But she didn’t come home.”

“God, Susan, weren’t you worried?”

“Worried? I was furious. It’s so funny.” She wasn’t laughing.

“Furious?”

“I thought she made it up with Mort by spending the night with him. He demands total loyalty. He hates—
hated
—me because Dilla always put me first. She was my lover. There’ll never be anyone else for me.” Her eyes were magnetic, fixed on Wetzon’s. “Does my being a lesbian make you uncomfortable?”

“Not at all.”

“I didn’t think it would, but I wasn’t sure.”

“I always thought Mort was ambivalent about women.”

“Mort’s ambivalent about a lot of things, especially about coming out of the closet. That’s what makes him so mean. He and Poppy ... well, you know ...”

Wetzon squeezed a slice of lemon into her tea, wincing when the acid juice touched a paper cut on her finger. She dropped the slice into the tea and licked her wound. “Why am I here, Susan?”

“I’ve read about you, Leslie. You and your partner. I know you’ve been involved in things like this before.”

“Not exactly.”
Oh, shit,
Wetzon thought.
She’s going to ask me to find out who killed Dilla.
Nevertheless, a ripple of excitement ran through her.

“Well, I hope you’ll do it for me, then. I can pay you. Oh, Izz.” The dog scampered into the room, a straw hat in her mouth. She dropped the hat at Wetzon’s feet and wagged her tail, looking up at Wetzon for approval. “She likes you.”