The Apostrophe Thief (23 page)

The director didn't have a comeback for that; he nodded and fell silent.

“What we want from you now,” Murtaugh continued, “is a statement of where you went following Tuesday night's performance.” The autopsy report had said that because of the low temperature of Nordstrom's apartment, he could have died as early as eleven-thirty. Between eleven-thirty and two was the crucial time—but there was no need to make that public just yet. “We'll ask you two or three other questions as well. Sergeant?”

Marian walked out on the stage. “This shouldn't take long. If you know anything at all about Ernie Nordstrom or the Bernhardt jacket, now's the time to tell us. Please come forward when Officer Dowd calls your name.”

The uniformed officer had the stage doorkeeper's list of everyone in the company. Leo Gunn had set up two small tables with chairs on both sides for Marian and the captain to use. Officer Dowd called out two names, and the questioning began.

In addition to inquiring about alibis, Marian and Murtaugh also asked each interviewee if he or she knew of anyone in the company who collected theater memorabilia, rather than use the more direct
Are you a collector?
Additionally, they were all asked about Nordstrom/Norris and given a phone number to call if anything occurred to them later.

Marian's prediction turned out to be right; it didn't take long. Most of the company alibied one another. The rest gave names of people they'd been with and where they'd gone after the final curtain. Evidently no one in theater just went home to bed after the night's work was done. Only Mitchell Tobin and Leo Gunn admitted to having known Ernie Nordstrom, and no new collectors emerged from the crowd. To Marian's mind, the whole thing was a waste of time; but procedure demanded it be done.

She looked for Holland again and was wondering whether to get mad at being stood up when Murtaugh announced everyone could go. He came over to Marian's table. “I got nothing. What about you?”

“Same here. Alibis all around, nobody knows anything about the jacket. There's one person who wasn't here—Gene Ramsay, the producer. I'll check with him tomorrow.”

“Why would Ramsay steal his own property?” Murtaugh mused. “He hadn't donated it to the museum yet, had he?”

“Not yet. But I'll get his alibi just the same. When you said everyone could go, did you mean me too?”

“You and me both. I think I'll just take a look at the layout of the dressing rooms before I leave. See you tomorrow, Sergeant.”

As soon as he'd left, Marian heard, “Psst! Hey! Marian!”

She turned to see Kelly gesturing to her from the wings. “Psst, hey, Marian?” she repeated wonderingly.

“Are you off duty now?” Kelly asked in a stage whisper.

“Yes. Why are you whispering?”

“Oh, well, that's all right, then,” Kelly said in her natural voice. “Your date's here. Come on.”

“Holland's here?” He was, standing behind a tormentor, talking to Abby James. “Has he been here all this time?”

“He has,” Abby said.

“And a very
long
time it has been indeed,” Holland said archly.

“I'm sorry, I should have let you know. I goofed.”

“He wouldn't let us tell you he was here,” Kelly said. “Not until you were finished.”

Abby smiled. “Preferring to suffer nobly, unseen and unheard.”

“So long as suffering finds its just reward,” Holland announced, “in ample gustatory compensation.”

“There,” said Abby. “That's blank verse.”

“You mean you're hungry,” Marian said.

“I mean I'm hungry.”

“So am I,” said Kelly. “But I wouldn't dream of intruding.” She batted her eyelashes in mock coyness.

Marian laughed. “Not much you wouldn't. Come along, then. What about you, Abby?”

“Thought you'd never ask. Do you mind, Holland?”

“Do I mind escorting
three
ladies to supper?” He raised an eyebrow. “And run the danger of being the envy of New York? I'll risk it.”

“Good. I'll go get Ian.”

Holland stage-sighed. “If you must.”

Kelly went with Abby, to pick up her purse and coat. Marian turned to Holland. “I'm sorry you had to wait. Captain Murtaugh sprang this question-and-answer session on me late in the day, and I just didn't think to call you.”

“It doesn't matter. How is Murtaugh to work for?”

“So far, just fine.”

“Not another DiFalco?”

“
No
, thank goodness! Murtaugh was doubling for his lieutenant tonight—Lieutenant Overbrook's recovering from a coronary.”

“Then I imagine he'll be retiring soon.”

How quick he was! “Yes.”

He was quiet a moment. “You want his job.” Not a question.

Marian took a deep breath. “That's what I'm trying to decide, Holland.”

“I see.”

An uncomfortable silence growing between them, they moved automatically toward the stage door. Captain Murtaugh returned from his inspection of the dressing rooms and said, “Security isn't the greatest here, is it?” Then he spotted Holland. “Hello. Who are you?”

Marian introduced the two men, neither of whom offered to shake hands.

“Are you with the play?” Murtaugh asked. “Your name isn't on the doorkeeper's list.”

“No. I'm not with the play.” No further explanation.

Murtaugh's eyes narrowed at Holland's curtness. “Then may I ask what you're doing here?”

“Yes. You may ask.”

The captain was aware that Holland was giving him the once-over, and he didn't like it. Murtaugh was the taller of the two, towering over Holland by nearly a full head, but they still managed to lock eyes. Marian waited, but neither man seemed inclined to speak. “He stopped by to pick me up,” she said tiredly.

“Ah. Well, I'm sorry to have kept you so late, Sergeant. A policeman's lot and all that. Good night.” He nodded to Holland and went on out.

Holland laughed shortly. “Did he really say, ‘A policeman's lot and all that'? Stunning originality. And you'd rather work with that man than with me?”

“It's not a matter of people, Holland, it's a matter of jobs.”

“Are you sure of that?”

Just then the others arrived with John Reddick in tow, all four of them proclaiming a state of near-starvation, and Marian was saved from answering.

Bleary-eyed and fuzzy-headed from insufficient sleep, Marian kept out of Murtaugh's way the next morning. The captain was caught up in the aftermath of a restaurant fire on Ninth Avenue that had been set deliberately. Four people had died, thus taking the case out of the hands of the Bomb and Arson Squad; the investigation was demanding all of Murtaugh's attention for the moment.

It was just as well. Marian felt sure the captain would not have approved of her socializing with what he considered four murder suspects.
DiFalco
would have approved; he'd see it as a chance to worm something incriminating out of them. But Marian had happily ignored police protocol to join her old and new friends for a few hours of relaxation. She was confident they were, mostly, what they appeared to be: decent people who were only too aware that a man had been murdered, a man who was a stranger but whose life had touched briefly upon theirs.

Kelly's suggestion that they go dancing had been unanimously voted down; they'd ended up at Sonderman's again, with its big circular booths that could seat six people. Good food and drink and good company had in time eased away their tensions; even Holland had lost his brooding look, eventually. When he'd dropped her off in the wee hours, he'd merely said to call him when she'd decided. She'd repeated that she would not decide anything until the Nordstrom case was wrapped up. He'd smiled sardonically and driven away.

John Reddick was the only question mark of the bunch. Marian couldn't see John as a murderer; but as long as he had any kind of “collection” at all, she couldn't scratch him off the suspects list. At one point when Kelly and Abby had gone to the Ladies', Marian asked him about his collection. He invited her to come take a look; she accepted. She wanted to see for herself that he didn't collect things such as velvet jackets that had once been worn by theater legends like Sarah Bernhardt.

A reply had arrived from the French Sûreté; Gene Ramsay's receipt for the jacket checked out. The French official had thoughtfully worded his reply in English, apparently aware from past experience that New York cops were not fluent in the language of Racine and Hugo. Marian stepped out of Lieutenant Overbrook's office just as Perlmutter was getting up to leave. She asked if Captain Murtaugh had told him to show pictures to the doorman of Ernie Nordstrom's building, to try to get an identification.

“Yeah, but I'm going to have to
take
some pictures first,” he said, holding up a Polaroid. “I got publicity photos of all the actors, and of the director and the producer and … who else? Oh yeah, the playwright. But I got no pictures of the backstage crew. I have to track all those people down.”

“For the time being, just get Leo Gunn's picture,” Marian said. “If the doorman can't identify anyone, then go back for the rest of the crew. But right now, don't waste time on it.”

“You think Gunn's the one?”

She shrugged. “He has a ‘collection'—of sorts.”

Perlmutter scowled. “Sergeant, if one of these people knocked off Nordstrom, he's not going to admit to having a collection. He'd lie about it, keep it hidden.”

“Believe it or not, I did think of that,” Marian said dryly.

“But you know damn well I'll never get warrants to search all their homes on the chance that they
might
have a secret collection that
might
have something to do with Nordstrom's murder. We'll have to do it this way. Show the doorman the pictures.”

“Right.” He gathered up his things and left.

Marian called Gene Ramsay's office to check on his alibi for Tuesday night, but the producer wasn't in yet. And Captain Murtaugh wasn't in his office, either, when she went to see him. Marian left a note saying she was going to the Zingones' shop and then to John Reddick's apartment. But she cheated a little; she stopped off on the way and had a big breakfast.

Feeling better, she was prepared when the Zingones didn't want to buzz her in. The voice coming over the crackly intercom was as unintelligible as ever; Marian finally got them to open the door by shouting the word “warrant” several times.

Upstairs, only Matthew and Luke were on store duty. Matthew peered at her over his glasses and demanded to see her warrant.

“I said I'd
get
a warrant if you didn't let me in,” Marian told them blandly. “You really should get a new intercom system.”

They weren't interested in that. “You lied to us,
Sergeant
Marian,” Matthew said. “We read about you in the paper. You never told us you were a cop.”

“Yeah, you took the sails right out from under us,” Luke added.

“Ernie Nordstrom is dead,” Marian said. “Doesn't that mean anything to you?”

The brothers exchanged a look. “Sure, that means something,” Matthew said. “It's scary. Ernie wasn't what you'd call a friend, but somebody murdering him … that's scary. What's going to happen to his stuff?”

So much for Ernie. “It belongs to the city now. There'll be an auction announced in the legal notices section of the newspapers—I don't know when.”

Luke asked, “Do you know who killed him?”

“Not yet. That's where you can help.”

“After you put the wool in our eyes? Why should we help you?”

“To avoid being arrested on a charge of receiving stolen goods,” Marian said bluntly. “You guys were hot to deal with Ernie for the Broadhurst loot yourselves. I'm willing to bet you can't prove prior ownership of ninety percent of the stuff you've got here. Shall I get a warrant to examine your books?”

They both glared at her. “I don't like threats,” Matthew said.

“And I don't like making them. So how about it? Do I get a little cooperation or not?”

Heavy sighs. “What do you want us to do?”

She took the list of missing items out of her bag. “Keep an eye out for any of these things. We recovered everything taken from the Broadhurst except—”

“A jacket once owned by Sarah Bernhardt?” Matthew interrupted, reading the list. “A
jacket once owned by Sarah Bernhardt!
”

Luke's eyes were big. “Wow … that has to be worth thousands!”

“Twenty-two of them,” Marian told him. “You hadn't heard about the jacket? Kelly Ingram wore it in the play.”

They shook their heads in unison. “Sarah Bernhardt!” Matthew exclaimed. “My god, Luke, we've never had anything of hers, have we?”

“Never,” Luke agreed.

“Well, I doubt that anyone will waltz in here and offer the jacket for sale,” Marian said dryly. “Or any of the other items, either. The killer's no fool … he's not going to peddle something that'll place him at the scene of the crime.”

“Then what do you want of us?” Luke asked.

“I want you to get in touch with your contacts. Ask them to get in touch with
their
contacts. Whatever network you belong to, put it to work. Tell them to keep an eye out for all the items on that list. The killer had to unload them somewhere.”

“The river, probably,” Matthew said.

“Or garbage cans,” Luke added. “Dumpsters.”

“That's a possibility,” his brother said. “We know several people who regularly check the garbage in the neighborhoods where celebrities live.”

“Good!” said Marian. “That sounds promising.”

The doorbell rang; after some shouting into the intercom, Luke buzzed the customer in. “Matthew, you start calling people—I want to take care of this dude myself. He thinks he's a Sondheim collector, but he doesn't know his ass from a hole-in-one.” He moved away to meet the customer.