To Have and to Kill (9 page)

Chapter 29

Sunday, December 12 . . . Twelve days until the wedding

E
ight-letter word for thorn in one’s side,” said Casey. “Begins with an N.”

Glenna stopped attending to a pile of accumulated mail, got up from her desk, and walked across her apartment’s large living room. She sat on the sofa next to her fiancé and studied the puzzle.

“Nuisance?” she suggested.

“Yes. That’s it,” said Casey, filling in the empty spaces.

“Sweetheart?” asked Glenna as she put her hand up to caress his cheek.

“Um-hmm.” Casey didn’t look up from the puzzle.

“I’ve been thinking I should have gone higher.”

“Higher for what?” he asked, still focused on the crossword clues.

“For the photo session with Martha Killeen.”

That got Casey’s attention. He looked at her with an incredulous expression on his face.

“You’d actually be willing to pay over a hundred thousand dollars to have that woman take your picture?” he asked.

“
Our
pictures,” Glenna gently corrected him. “Pictures of the day we start our marriage, the happiest day in our lives.” Glenna turned and stared at the flames dancing in the fireplace. Her eyes moistened.

Casey put down the magazine and pencil. He pulled Glenna close. “What else is bothering you?” he asked, kissing the top of her head.

“Travis. I just can’t believe he’s dead.”

“I know he meant a great deal to you, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.”

They said nothing else as he held her.

T
he sweet-potato casserole and chicken were roasting in the oven, the table was set, and Casey was helping Susannah with her science project. With a half hour until dinner would be ready, Glenna went back to her desk and the mail. One by one, she opened envelopes. She tossed some, wrote checks for others, and put aside the ones that couldn’t be responded to until later. When she neared the bottom of the pile, Glenna inhaled sharply.

She recognized the envelope.

Chapter 30

L
ame, Mom,” said Piper when she finished reading the little script that Terri had put together for the commercial. “This is lame.”

“It is
not
lame,” insisted Terri. “With Emmett doing his part, it will be adorable.” She held up a cookie and the dog rose up on his hind legs, holding the pose until Terri gave him the reward.

Piper recited the words on the page, bringing her voice to a high pitch. “ ‘The treats at The Icing on the Cupcake Bakery will make you sit up and beg.’ Really, Mom? It’s so cheesy.”

“When you say it like that, of course it sounds ridiculous,” said Terri, snatching the paper from Piper’s hand. “Never mind, Piper. You don’t have to help. I’ll do it myself.”

Instantly, Piper regretted that she had made fun of her mother’s idea. After all, they weren’t staging Shakespeare. They were shooting a homemade commercial for a local bakery, starring a dog. And who was Piper to be a critic? Everyone who saw the commercials loved them. More important, her mother took pride in making them.

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

Terri didn’t say anything.

“That was bratty of me.”

“It was.” Terri’s face broke into a smile. “And now that you’ve admitted it, let’s go ahead and shoot this baby. You handle the camera and I’ll do the tricks with Emmett.”

“I thought you liked to do the camera work so much,” said Piper. “You never want anybody else to touch it.”

“Not anymore. Now that you’re home, that can be one of your jobs.”

“One of my
jobs
?”

“Um-hmm. Don’t you think everyone has to pitch in and help around here?”

Piper nodded, knowing her mother was right, but not exactly relishing the idea. “What else do you want me to do?” she asked.

“For one, your father and I think you should take over with the vacuuming. It has to be done every day, you know.”

“Good ol’ Emmett and your constant shedding,” said Piper as she bent down and scratched the terrier behind the ear. “Thanks, Em. Thanks a lot.”

Chapter 31

Monday, December 13 . . . Eleven days until the wedding

S
he knew she should probably take mass transit to save money, but Piper didn’t want to deal with the hassle on her first day. Her mother was lending Piper her car.

Concerned about road conditions, she left home extra early to drive into Manhattan. She arrived twenty minutes before her call time, carrying a box containing more than enough gingerbread men to share with the entire cast and crew. She was nervous. Not only was this her first acting job in quite a while, but her lines had only been e-mailed to her the night before. Piper had stayed up late going over them, trying to commit the words to memory. She didn’t have them down yet.

Roosevelt, the beloved security guard, was in his booth at the entrance to the Midtown studio, there to greet and screen, as he had been every day for the last fifteen years.

“Good to see you again, Miss Donovan.” He smiled, checking his clipboard. “You are in dressing room 16.”

“You don’t know how great that sounds to me, Roosevelt,” said Piper, smiling back. She opened the bakery box and held the lid open. The aroma of gingerbread burst from the container. “Help yourself,” she said.

He reached in and took one, smiling as he noticed that the gingerbread man had ALRMF piped in icing on its chest.

“Thank you, miss.”

“You’re welcome,” said Piper. “Take another.”

D
ressing room 16 was at the end of a long hallway. Piper was thrilled to see
MISS DONOVAN
posted next to the door. Inside, the room was a small box, dominated by a large mirror, rimmed with round lightbulbs, on one wall and a big closet on the other. A makeup table in front of the mirror, chair, and chaise longue were the only furnishings. Piper couldn’t have been happier had she been at Versailles.

Piper laid the bakery box on the makeup table and took off her coat. Opening the closet door, she took a deep breath as she saw the three white evening gowns hanging there. Piper separated the dresses so she could get a better look. Each one was gorgeous.

Oh, man, I’ve missed this. It’s so wonderful to be back!

There was a soft knock on the dressing-room door.

“Come in,” said Piper as she reached for the knob.

A middle-aged woman with close-cropped white hair and warm hazel eyes stood in the doorway. Piper noticed that the skin beneath her eyes was red and puffy and her porcelainlike skin was blotchy.

“Peggy,” cried Piper, opening her arms and grinning. “It’s so great to see you.”

The women embraced.

“It’s been too long,” said Peggy as she pulled back, her eyes searching Piper’s face. “How’s everything?”

People automatically asked that question, but Piper knew that Peggy actually wanted to hear the answer.

“In a nutshell, haven’t been getting much acting work and moved back in with my parents for a while,” said Piper. “How sorry is that?”

“It’s not easy,” said Peggy.

“And what about you?” asked Piper.

Peggy’s mouth turned down at the corners. “I’m not moving out to the West Coast with the show because my parents aren’t doing so well and I don’t want to be that far away from them. I don’t have another job yet, but God is good and I know something will turn up. What really has me thrown, though, is what happened to Travis. I can’t stop crying about it. When I think I was right there. . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“You were at the auction last night?” asked Piper. “I didn’t see you.”

Peggy nodded. “Glenna called me at the last minute and asked me to come with another dress. I rushed in and out pretty quickly, but I grabbed a copy of the program on the way out. It was very impressive. In fact, I was going through it again just this morning.”

The wardrobe mistress straightened resolutely. “Well, let’s get to what we have to do,” she said. “The show must go on and all that.”

Peggy took one of the garments out of the closet and handed it to Piper. “The script calls for all the characters in the dream sequence to be dressed in white. I still had your measurements on file, Piper, so all three of these should fit you. Start trying them on. Let’s see which one looks best.”

A
fter it was decided that the white dupioni-silk asymmetrical gown was the one, Peggy took the dress away to alter the hem. Piper put on a robe and settled down on the chaise. She pulled the script from her bag and began to go over lines while she waited to be called. After forty-five minutes, Piper decided to go out to the set and see if she could gauge how long it would be until they would be ready for her scene.

Within the cavernous space, an entire world had been created. The
Little Rain
studio contained a doctor’s office, a nurse’s station, and hospital operating and waiting rooms. There were sets for the interior of a chapel, a bar, a delicatessen, a classroom, a pharmacy, and the ballroom of a country club. In storage rooms and hallways adjacent to the studio were carefully marked cartons and bins containing the contents of the bedrooms, kitchens, and living areas of the various houses and apartments of the characters on the show, along with flats that could be rolled in and out to assemble the walls of the fictional dwellings.

The studio was bustling with activity, much of it taking place in the country club ballroom where stagehands were feverishly decorating. In the middle of the set, silver tinsel was being draped on a tall, white Christmas tree with hundreds of clear lights twinkling from its branches. All of the tables and chairs in the ballroom were covered in white, and swags of white garland hung from the crystal chandeliers. Other workers were beginning to cover the floor with artificial snow.

There was none of the usual banter as the stagehands went about their jobs. The studio was eerily quiet. Travis York’s death was on everyone’s mind.

From the information she had gotten the night before, Piper knew that this was to be the scene for the dream that Glenna’s character, Maggie Lane, was going to have. Before Travis’s murder, the plan had been to kill off only Maggie, since Glenna was leaving the show. Now, both Glenna’s and Travis York’s characters were dying. The white dream sequence was going to wrap it all up and would feature Maggie’s dead sister, Mariah, played by Piper.

The story line had been amended to include an explosion that would injure and kill some of the daytime drama characters. Glenna’s and Travis’s characters would be among the dead. Travis immediately, Glenna hanging on for a while. It was while Glenna, aka Maggie Lane, was unconscious that she would have the dream in which her dead sister appears to her.

Piper was admiring the stagehands’ work when she noticed that Quent Raynor had entered. Hands on hips, Quent squinted as he perused the set. The area got noticeably quieter while everyone waited for his reaction.

“It’s still not glamorous enough,” Quent proclaimed, taking off his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose. “It needs more glitz.”

Chapter 32

W
alden’s was within walking distance of the Metropolitan School for Girls. During his lunch period, Casey made his way on the shoveled sidewalks one block over and a few blocks down, entering the elegant storefront on Madison Avenue. A security guard was stationed just inside the door.

“Hiya, Joe,” said Casey. He cupped his hands and blew on them. “It’s cold out there.”

“Hello, Mr. Walden.”

“My brother around?”

“Yes, sir. He’s downstairs.”

“Thanks, Joe.” Casey strode through the luxurious showroom, passing velvet-lined display cases containing exquisitely designed necklaces, bracelets, and earrings twinkling with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires. He noticed there was easily more sales staff behind the cases than there were customers on the other side. Casey rationalized that Mondays were always slow.

The elevator took him down one floor to the workrooms. Six artisans were bent over well-lit jewelers’ benches. Four of them worked on pieces that would find their way upstairs to the display cases in the showroom. The other two artisans fashioned specially ordered pieces, filling specific requests made by customers in advance.

The room led to another space, where tables supported a lathe, a grinder, a polisher, hammers, casting equipment, and a sonic cleaner. There was also a separate ventilated soldering room and an area where large rectangular tanks were outfitted for electroplating gold and silver. Containers of chemicals were carefully lined up on shelves along one wall.

Casey found Arthur watching as a shining silver teapot was pulled from one of the tanks.

“Can you imagine?” asked Arthur after the brothers shook hands. “This teapot is old, Victorian. Its beauty lay not only in the graceful and ornate design, but in the patina it had acquired over the last century. Yet its owner, who actually bought it at an antique show, mind you, wants it to look like new. I told her she was ruining both the aesthetic and monetary value of the piece. She didn’t care.”

“Just goes to show that money doesn’t buy taste,” said Casey.

“True enough,” huffed Arthur. “Some of the people moving in around here are making money hand over fist but you should see the things they order. Dripping with stones, but not in a good way.”

“I didn’t think that would be a problem for you,” said Casey.

“Oh, I don’t mind selling as much as I can; it offends me if the stones aren’t set off artfully and with taste. The gaudy things some people want are repulsive.” Arthur shook his head in disgust.

“I want to talk to you about something, Arthur.”

“Shoot.”

“Privately.”

“Don’t mind me,” said the electroplate technician. “I’m going to lunch.”

“Have a seat, Casey,” said Arthur, waving to a couple of metal chairs.

“I’ll get right to the point,” said Casey as he sat. “I could use a hundred thousand.”

“Dollars?” asked Arthur. “So could I.”

“I mean it, Arthur. The wedding is coming up and I need the money.”

“I’m not in a position to take it out of the business accounts right now,” Arthur said seriously. “Times are tight, Casey.”

“I thought you just told me that all your nouveau riche customers are buying up a storm.” Outwardly calm, Casey stared at the shelves on the wall. Inside, he was seething. “Let’s get it out in the open, Arthur,” he said. “You don’t want me to marry Glenna. You don’t even like her.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Arthur. “Of course I like her. Why else do you think I’d go to the trouble of packing up a case of diamonds for her?”

Casey was puzzled. “I don’t get it. What are you talking about?”

“I got a call this morning from the guy who runs Glenna’s soap opera.”

“Quent Raynor?”

“Yes. He asked if Walden’s would lend him diamonds for a special finale scene they’re doing for Glenna before she leaves the show. I agreed to have the diamonds there on Friday,” said Arthur. “Believe me, I wouldn’t go to the trouble if it wasn’t for Glenna.”

“Thank you,” said Casey, slightly mollified. “But I still need that hundred grand.”

“May I ask why?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but Glenna has her heart set on having Martha Killeen photograph our wedding. I want to make that happen. Actually, I should be asking for more. I’m going to have more expenses when I’m married and I have no intention of being a kept man.”

Arthur sighed deeply. “All right,” he said. “But you have to promise me that’s it for a while.”

Casey shook his head. “I’m not going to promise anything of the kind, Arthur. All these years, I’ve only taken that small stipend from the business when I was entitled to much more. That was fine with me then, but it’s not now. Going forward, I have to get what’s mine.”