Murder: The Musical (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery, #5) (48 page)

A devilish swirl gathered up her shoes before she could get to them. She ran after them—Ferragamos did not come cheap—then gave it up.

When she turned back to the stage door, it was standing open.

Nothing lit the backstage entrance. Wetzon groped her way in, leaving the door as it was to let in a faint gleam of light from the parking lot. The door had probably been open all the time.

She stood in the darkness. It was hopeless. What was she to do? Take a breath, she told herself. She did, and yoo-hooed as if she were paying a social call, “Carlos? Are you here?” Her voice fell on dead air. She inched forward, touching the wall. She had done
Fiddler on the Roof
in this theatre. She ought to remember the basic layout.

The stage doorman’s desk came up and bumped her. So far, so good. Now all she needed was a flashlight. Experience told her there would be one in the desk or on a hook nearby. She found it hanging from a hook on the side wall next to the desk.

Her feet were freezing on the stone floor. She should have gone back for her shoes. Too late now. She turned on the flashlight; its beam flickered. Dying batteries, damn it. She swept the light around, saw nothing, moved through the corridor into the wings. From there onto the stage. Even in the wan beam she could see the blue canvas case was gone. But where could Carlos be? Not wanting to think about what could have happened, she trained the light down on the orchestra pit and into the house. Standing on the stage of an empty theatre was creepy. She felt as if hidden eyes were watching at her.

“Carlos?” She crossed the stage to the stairway leading to the dressing rooms. She’d have to go up. Maybe Smith had found Bernstein and they were already on their way.

She put her foot on the first step and flashed the light upward. Nothing. “Carlos? Alley alley oxenfree!”

A low moan sent a shiver up her spine. “Carlos?” Where had the sound come from? Not up—down below. But the orchestra pit had been empty.

The costume room. Blast. That was a death trap, a maze. Another soft groan brought her down the stairs to the basement and into the costume room. She panned the dying beam around. Costumes on racks. Cluttered shelves, cartons of fabric scraps, a sewing machine, a dressmaker’s dummy. The smell of fabric chemicals. And something else. The distinctive, sweet smell of blood. Someone groaned again close by; slowly, she turned.

The beam of light caught a movement on the floor near one of the costume racks. She scrambled over. Carlos lay on the floor. A nasty gash just above his right eye dripped blood. “Carlos!” She dropped to her knees and the flashlight slipped out of her hands and rolled away. “What have I done?” She lifted his head to her lap and almost immediately felt the blood seeping through her dress.

“Birdie—” He caught her hand feebly. “Get out of here.
Now.”

“I’m not going to leave you. Who did this? Was it about the bat?” He didn’t respond. “Don’t die, Carlos. Please don’t die.” She fumbled for his pulse. Damn it, where was Bernstein?

In the darkness she groped among the costumes above her for something soft to put under Carlos’s head. Crawling toward the weak beam of the flashlight, her hands came on a pair of shoes. It took less than a New York minute for her to grasp that someone was wearing them. And that someone had picked up the flashlight.

The light slammed into her eyes, blinding her. “Girl, what are you doing here?” Fran poked her shoulder hard with his cane. A ball of pain shot down her arm. “Didn’t I tell you to leave it be?” He sounded furious.

“Fran, please don’t hurt me. Carlos is lying over there bleeding. Can you help me get him out of here?”

“Fran?” A woman’s voice, saturated in fear, called down the stairs. “Are you down there?”

“Yeah, Edna.”

“Is Phil with you?”

“No. He’s probably at Sardi’s.” Fran reached down roughly and pulled Wetzon to her feet. “Get out of here, now.”

“But Carlos—”

“I’ll see to Carlos.”

Trust a murderer, she thought. No way. She’d go up the stairs and his accomplice would whack her with the bat. “Let me help you, please.”

He grunted something which she took for acquiescence.

They couldn’t lift Carlos’s dead weight between them.

“Go get an ambulance,” Fran said. His voice had grown weak. She felt his body shudder. The flashlight fell first, then the cane. Finally, Fran. Crashing, like the felling of a great oak.

“Fran, my God, what’s wrong?”

He groaned. A fetid odor drove away the sweet smell of blood. Wetzon’s stomach heaved. “Girl,” Fran rasped, “tell them ... tell ... it was me. Lenny ... my friend ... dying ...” His voice faded so she could hardly hear.

“Fran?” She put her ear close to his lips. His chest heaved and twitched.

“The car ... Bitch had to have ... tell them I did it.... She was something ... felt she was doing you while she ... stood there talking to you.” He broke off, coughing, and couldn’t catch his breath.

Wetzon raised her head and touched Carlos’s wrist. Still a pulse there, thank God. “Fran?” He was still wheezing.

Fran caught his breath and began again. “She took it all ... the key did it ... nothing left in the box ...” He grabbed Wetzon’s hand in an iron grip. “Tell ... I did it....”

When he was silent, Wetzon tried to free her hand, but he wouldn’t let go. His tortured breathing chilled her. “Fran? Can you hear me? Let me get an ambulance.”

“Bum actor ... left Edna and the kid ...” A cough rumbled in his throat again, and his voice grew weaker. “... always said she didn’t take ... the box ... believed her, and then ... wore Celia’s ring ...”

“Fran, why did you kill Sam?” Fran didn’t respond. His breathing came in short gasps. Maybe he was dying.

Carlos groaned. “Birdie?”

“Carlos, do you think you can stand?”

“Fran, where are you? What’s going on down there?” Edna again.

Wetzon called, “Edna, get an ambulance! Fran is very sick.” She heard a scream, followed by running footsteps.

Carlos groped for her, got to his knees. “Shit! I’ve got one major headache.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. I got the goddam bat and came down here to hide it.” She could feel him fumbling around the floor. “Where is it?”

“Fran must have conked you.” She picked up the flashlight and spun the beam in circles. “I don’t see the bat.”

“Fran? Jeesus, Birdie, not Fran.”

“I’m afraid so. He confessed.” She helped Carlos up and with her arm around his waist, his arm over her shoulder, they climbed the stairs awkwardly as she played the light on each step.

“I don’t believe this. Christ, the reviews—did they come in?”

“You would think of reviews at a time like this.”

“Birdie, if Fran confessed and only you heard him, is that good enough?”

“I don’t know. He’s not dead yet, but I think he’s dying.”

“Yeah, the Big C. of the liver.”

When they got upstairs, there was no sign of Edna. “She’s getting an ambulance, I hope,” Wetzon said.

The shrieking whine of the wind jolted drafts of frigid air through the theatre and tore at the sides of the house. “What’s going on out there?”

“It’s like a hurricane. Do you want to wait here?”

“Not on your life.” They made their way through the stage door and out into the alley, where the wind hammered them, lifted and ripped at their clothing. “If we can get to Shubert Alley, I can leave you near the Booth and get help.”

They staggered like two drunks, buffeted by surly gusts of wind, clinging to each other. Oddly, the theatre area had cleared and there was practically no traffic. At the entrance to Shubert Alley, a tall black figure appeared to be waving and screaming at them, but they couldn’t hear. They could hardly see for all the debris flying around them.

As they came closer, Wetzon cried, “It’s Smith,” but the wind ate her words. What was Smith doing jumping around like a crazy person? She was running toward them. As they reached Shubert Alley, she pounced on them, knocking them over. As she fell Wetzon saw something pass within an inch of her head. “What the—Smith, are you crazy?”

Carlos screamed. Wetzon turned and saw Phil, bat raised over his head. Above them the windows of the building seemed to be undulating. The scaffolding was gone. With a mighty boom the windows exploded. Glass shards showered on everyone below. Wetzon covered her head with her hands as great glass panels began to tear off the building. Captured by the fury of the wind, they were buffetted like bits of paper.

Edna came running from Forty-fifth Street. Wetzon saw Phil with his bat raised again, saw the look of astonishment on his face as a saber of glass touched his neck, separating head from body as neatly as the guillotine.

Phil’s body, bat in hand, lingered suspended for a moment, then crashed.

“Dear God,” Wetzon cried. “Dear God.”

The wind bounced and tossed Phil’s head like a football, and dropped it on the street in front of the souvenir shop. Edna’s screams mingled with the wail of the wind and the sounds of sirens. She bent over the head of her son as if she would pick it up. Wetzon jumped to her feet, unaware of the glass cutting her soles. “Edna, no, you mustn’t. Come away.” Edna’s mouth was frozen in a scream.

An ambulance pulled into Shubert Alley, followed by two police cars. Bernstein in his tacky tux and his yarmulke. Slowly and methodically, barricades were put up, closing Forty-fourth and Forty-fifth Street. The wind, as if it knew, began to die down.

Dawn found Wetzon, Carlos, and Smith in an outpatient room at Roosevelt Hospital, drinking coffee with an antsy Bernstein. Carlos’s head was bandaged, one eye partially covered. Wetzon’s feet were bandaged and in blue hospital booties. A three-inch cut on Smith’s shoulder had been sewn and bound in a dressing. They were shell-shocked.

“We got the whole story from Edna Terrace,” Bernstein said, pacing. “How her mother died not long after her father. Phil heard stories about Dilla Crosby all his life. When Edna recognized the ring Dilla was wearing as her mother’s, he decided to right the wrong and get it back.”

“But why kill Sam?” Wetzon asked, even though she thought she knew. She set the coffee container down on the floor. Her whole body ached.

“He mistook him for Mort Hornberg.”

Wetzon nodded.

“Christalmighty,” Carlos said. “That poor bastard. What a way to go, mistaken for Mort.”

“And I guess Phil killed Susan because he wanted the jewelry and the money.”

“Yeah. Edna went to see Susan Orkin and begged for it. She was afraid her kid would kill again. And Orkin called the police to get Edna out of there. That did it.”

“But why didn’t Edna turn Phil in?” Wetzon asked. “She could have saved two lives.”

“She’s a mother,” Smith said softly.

“I’m going to send you people home in one of my cars,” Bernstein said. He picked up Wetzon’s untouched coffee and drank it. “We’re going to have to slip you out the side entrance; the front is crawling with reporters.”

“Has anyone seen the
Times?”
Carlos asked plaintively.

“Oh, I forgot. There are some people here to see you.” Bernstein opened the door and Arthur and Smitty were there.

“Well?” Carlos demanded.

“Frank Rich approved. ‘Superb, albeit somewhat overproduced, which is Mort Hornberg’s signature.’ I think that’s the gist of what he said.”

“Ma. I’m so glad you’re okay.” Smitty hugged his mother. “Can you believe it? Phil did it. He was so nice to me.”

Arthur touched Carlos’s face gently. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“Not by a long shot, darling.” Carlos was grinning diabolically. “Birdie, come here, you.” They opened their arms and gathered her in.

“I thought I’d remind you that I’m not coming into today,” Wetzon said into the phone. She looked at her watch. “I’m going to Sonya and Eddie’s wedding-”

Izz sat up, watching her.

“I remembered, sweetie pie.” Smith sounded calm, even happy. “Smitty and I are having lunch and we’re going to the zoo.”

“How’s it going with him and with you?”

“Fine, just fine, sugar. You see, I’ve discovered something over these few weeks.”

Good God, maybe it
was
the new Smith. Wetzon put her feet into her new patent leather Ferragamos. Her soles were still tender and lightly bandaged. “What have you discovered, if I may ask?” One of these days she was going to have to bite the bullet and tell Smith that B.B. was leaving them.

“Actually, it was something Carlos said to me when we were at Roosevelt Hospital.”

“And what was that?” She kissed Izz’s wet black nose.

“He said gay men love their mothers best.”

“Well, I’m very happy to hear that, Smith.” Wetzon hung up laughing. Carlos was too much. And Smith would always be Smith.

Intending to wear her black suit, she changed her mind when she opened her closet. From the back she pulled out her red Gloria Sachs suit, which she’d paid only one hundred fifty dollars for because it had lost its buttons.

She’d marched herself to Tender Buttons and bought antique Victorian glass buttons and made the suit hers.

Dressed, she studied herself in the mirror. The red suit suffused her face with color. The skirt came almost to her ankles. Perfect. Long was back. The jacket was meant to stay buttoned, so no need to wear a blouse underneath.

Izz whined and hung her head.

“You are so spoiled.” Wetzon shook her finger at the little dog and Izz licked it lovingly. “I’ll be back. I promise.”

In honor of April Fool’s Day and Sonya’s wedding, Wetzon treated herself to a cab downtown. Spring was here. The magnolia and dogwood trees blossomed along streets and in parks. Everything, everywhere, was abudding. Breathing in the balmy air, Wetzon thought,
God is in his heaven and all’s right in the world.

And she was foot-loose and fancy-free, in her red suit and going to Sonya’s wedding.

Alton had finally stopped calling her every day. Six months, she’d asked him for. She needed six months to sort everything out, and he’d reluctantly agreed.

The cabdriver’s name was Mohammad. He was bronze-skinned and wore an embroidered pillbox on his head. There were a lot of Mohammads driving cabs now in New York. “That’s a nice dress,” he said, eyeing her in the rear-view mirror as they rode down the FDR Drive.