“I know, Simon.” His hand still resting on Jenkins’s shoulder, Martin turned back to Derek, who still stood fuming, held by Nick and Larry. The lawyer said, “In answer to your question, there is no provision in her will about the show, other than the stipulation that her debts be paid. Once that is done, the residual amount, which is to be divided equally between family and charity, is very small. Probably in the hundreds.” Derek, hopeless again, fumbled his way back into his chair, but Martin continued relentlessly. “There are commitments to costume designers, publicists, many others that must be paid. Your own union requires payments to your Welfare Fund and the Pension Fund. We have to pay you your rehearsal salaries, and also two weeks’ performance salary, though you never performed. It all adds up. Ramona invested her entire personal fortune into this show, but since there was no chance to recoup any of it through ticket sales, it has effectively vanished.”
Nick leaned wearily against one of the peeling columns. Was this what Ramona’s death meant, this sad haggling over money? But it was not just the money, he realized; it was the hopes and dreams they shared with her that had vanished. That was the real tragedy. Now she could never see her beloved show succeed, never give her husband the forgiveness he craved, never help the bucktoothed nun in Brooklyn save other young Ramonas. It left a sour taste in his mouth.
“Let’s have our money, then,” said Larry, tossing his jacket over his shoulder and straightening. Nick could almost see him switching compartments: close up the grief-for-Ramona compartment, concentrate on the financial one. But it took energy to keep life so neatly divided. Larry’s jaw muscles were knotted tight despite his relaxed stance.
“Very well,” said Martin.
Derek said, “Daphne couldn’t be here, and Jaymie isn’t here either. I’ll take their checks for them.”
“The hell you will!” burst out Simon Jenkins, but this time he didn’t stand up.
“Daphne asked me to get it for her!” Derek was on the verge of attack again too, his hands clenched.
“I’m sorry,” said Martin smoothly, a wary eye on the explosive Jenkins. “I can give checks only to the people named.”
“Well, Daphne will come to me for it!”
“You’ll have to tell her it’s at my office, then, Mr. Morris.”
“Lovely,” muttered Derek; but he leaned back in his chair.
Martin called out their names and distributed the checks, then arranged with Derek for the return of tapes and scores that Ramona had in her possession. At last he escorted the glooming Jenkins from the loft. Nick glanced at his watch as the others dispiritedly collected their things and began to plod out. Four forty. End of chapter. Time to move on.
XV
Friday, 4:45 PM
March 9, 1973
Maggie’s glowing eyes and airy step contrasted so with the departing tide of the disheartened cast that she seemed to have arrived from a different, more ethereal, world. He had to smile. “O spirit of love! How quick and fresh art thou!”
“Quick is right! Nick, hurry, take Sarah! The game’s afoot!”
“What game?”
“You did reach Elaine Bradford?”
“Yes. She should have Muffin back by now.”
“Well,” said Maggie, “Mr. Bradford-Hartford wants me to run another errand. I’m to take this bear and trade it for another one, and then deliver that bear to him.”
“Damn, Maggie, you don’t mean to do it!”
“Of course I do! Here, take the baby.”
“Maggie, you idiot!” Grabbing her arm, he led her out of earshot of the few remaining people. “This is the ransom pickup!”
“I know! Nick, listen, it’s clear—well, mostly clear—what he’s up to. He tricks me into picking up Muffin and tricks me into picking up the ransom. I pass it to him, and he disappears while the police follow me.”
“So why the hell cooperate?” Automatically he was strapping on the baby carrier.
“Well, suppose instead I follow him? The police track me, I track him, and we all find out what he’s up to. Whatever it is, he’s got to do it soon, because once Muffin is back and the police pick me up for questioning, he knows it won’t be too long before they’ll want to question him.”
“Maggie, I don’t like it. You’ve been set up—”
“Nick, I’ve got to! Look, that prick tricked me into helping kidnap a helpless little girl.” Her eyes flamed blue with anger. “And he’s going to pay for that!”
“Let me go, then!”
“No, he’d know there was a problem if I didn’t show up. Tell you what. If I run into trouble, I’ll head back here.”
“I’d rather watch.”
“But Sarah mustn’t be there. The Ming Bazaar is only a block and a half from here. If it looks like Steve knows I’m following him, or if anything makes me uneasy, I’ll run right back here, okay? You can hang around and be ready to do your famous US Cavalry impersonation if I come running. Otherwise I’ll just quietly track him and lead the police to his lair. Wonder if it’s that apartment?”
“You’re making me lose faith in the good sense of the American mother,” grumbled Nick.
“Yeah, I was thinking about that,” said Maggie cheerfully. “Maybe if I weren’t a mother, I could just say, ‘Ooh, how awful,’ and forget it. But little girls are important.”
“Yeah.” Nick had taken Sarah, who was half asleep, looking around dopily. He needed no convincing; this blinking, drooling creature was possibly the most important thing there was. And then there was Maggie. Not your ordinary American mother or wife or statistician. She was unique, unpigeonholed. A woman who relished love, duty, and adventure, all three. A woman who could even relish marriage to an actor. Who could understand the fire inside that baffled Jenkins, because she had fires of her own. “Well,” said Nick, “I’ll be watching. I insist. But from a distance. And we’ll meet here if things get iffy.”
“Okay.”
“But before you go, there are a couple of things that I wanted to ask about.”
Suddenly focused on him, she searched his face, the eager anticipation of her plan switching to concern for him. “Nick, I’m sorry. Something else has happened, hasn’t it?”
“Callie was killed. Daphne’s niece.”
“Oh, God! The older one, right?”
“Yes. She was bringing her little sister to meet Daphne, to go to the hearing. Someone in a ski mask shot her in the subway transfer tunnel.”
“Merde!” Maggie sagged into one of the folding chairs, long legs stretched before her, brow contracting in grief and dismay. “Why? Why the hell would anyone shoot a kid? It looked like a mugging, I suppose?”
“Yeah. But …” Nick shrugged.
“Exactly: But.” Maggie leaned forward, pulled her feet under her, put her elbows on her knees and her chin in her fist. Rodin. “Nick, it’s too unlikely. Maybe she knew something—she was here the night Ramona was shot.”
“Right.” Nick detached Sarah’s fist from his nose and set her carefully on the platform to coo at the ceiling. “And I wonder if it fits with something else I thought of. About Ramona. I saw the toy pistols for the assassination scene in the prop box and remembered that Victoria wasn’t killed. I wondered if maybe we were going at things the wrong way around. I mean, maybe the shooting was on purpose, but not the killing. Maybe she was only supposed to be wounded.”
A breeze from the open window, cool in the late sunlight and bearing tidings of bacon in Anna Maria’s coffee shop downstairs, stirred Maggie’s dark curls. “So the waist really was the target!” she exclaimed. “To get her out of the way, but just temporarily. So she wouldn’t cut the solo, maybe. Or would rethink filing for divorce.”
“Yes.”
“That’s good, Nick. That explains a lot. And Callie—well, suppose she noticed something. She was here that night. She’d become a serious danger for the gunman when Ramona died and the charges became murder.”
“Just what I was thinking. Yesterday sh
e was bragging that she knew something about Ramona, but Daphne shut her up.” He shook his head. “But this idea doesn’t explain how the man Perez is holding got the gun.”
“Found it in a trash can, I imagine, just as he claims. Even junkies probably tell the truth sometimes. In any case he couldn’t have killed Callie if he was locked up.” She glanced at her watch. “Nick, together with what you were saying about the black gloves—well, we’ve got to talk about this soon!”
“Right. After you’ve done your foolish jaunt for little-girldom. If that doesn’t land us all in prison. But the prop box gives me another idea. Here.” Leaving Sarah on her pad on the platform, he crossed to the box and pulled out the blond wig Edith had used to rehearse Baroness Lehzen, the youthful Victoria’s German governess. “Take this along. Just in case things get tough and you don’t want the police to be making connections between the ransom pickup and the little-girl pickup at Montessori.”
Maggie clapped it on her head with a grin. “Great! Do I look like Jean Harlow?”
He cocked his head, considering. “No. More like a Valkyrie. Or Alice in Wonderland. I can’t decide which.”
“Part Alice, part Valkyrie—Nick, what peculiar taste you have in wives! Well, see you soon. Here I go!” With a toss of the blond curls she pranced toward the door.
It sprang open and Jaymie hurtled in, trench coat flared open, tan tote bag bouncing beside her. “Where’s—where are the checks?” she gasped.
“I’m sorry, Jaymie,” said Nick. “You missed him. He said—”
“Missed him?” There was such a depth of pain and exhaustion in her cry that Nick hurt too. He was glad to see Maggie spontaneously hug her.
He said, “The lawyer told us he’d hold the checks at his office for you and Daphne.”
“Oh. I—I ran all the way.” She was still panting, speaking in little bursts between breaths.
“You can get your check soon, Jaymie,” Maggie soothed her. She looked frivolous in the flaxen wig, but Jaymie seemed too distracted to notice.
“But it’s Daphne, you see. It’s my only chance. I have to give Daphne her check.”
“But he wouldn’t let us do that,” Nick explained gently. “Derek offered to take your checks to you, but the lawyer said he wouldn’t give a check to anyone except the person named on it.”
“Then it’s all over! If you love someone, they leave you!” Jaymie raised her hands to her face hopelessly. “Oh, God, I want to die!”
“But you’ll get the check soon!” coaxed Maggie, flashing a puzzled glance at Nick. “So will Daphne.”
“But she won’t talk to me!” Jaymie pulled away from Maggie, walked to the window, and leaned her hands on the sill, staring out at the grimy kitchen roof below. “She said, ‘All I want from you assholes is my check!’”
Understanding began to flicker. Nick said, “Daphne is sad and angry right now, Jaymie, but I’m sure she’ll want to see you soon. It’ll take a while for her to get back to normal, because she loved Callie very much.”
One of Jaymie’s hands made a fist and she thumped the windowsill rhythmically, as though trying to pound away her thoughts. “More than me, more than me,” she murmured.
“Callie was her niece,” Nick tried to explain. “Of course she was attached to her.”
“But I need her! Mama, Daddy, Loreen. All gone away. And now Daphne. I’m alone. Forever alone.” She gave a little sob and shrugged her shoulder bag forward, clasping it across her chest with both arms. “And I did everything for her.”
“I know it’s hard—”
“And she’s gone anyway! Oh, God!” She twisted away from the window, head turned toward the left, neck arching gracefully, hand to her temple. In the hand was a little gun.
“Jaymie, no!” The tremor of horror in Maggie’s first syllable modulated instantly to a soothing tone. “Things seem bad now, that’s natural. But wait, they’ll look better soon.”
“I did everything! And still—”
Maybe it was Jaymie’s theatrical pose against the backlight of the window that inspired him, maybe the whimper from Sarah on her pad, maybe just the sight of Maggie’s frizzy blond wig as she moved toward Jaymie. Nick opened the piano, soft-pedaled, and began to sing gently, “Vickelchen, nap in your wee elfin cap, sleeping happy with never a tear.”
The gun at Jaymie’s temple wavered, and drooped. Maggie glanced at Nick. He nodded and she eased her arm around Jaymie again while Nick crooned on, “I know a charm that will keep you from harm, and disarm all the demons you fear.” Powerful demons indeed that poor Jaymie was wrestling in her despair. But now she was sinking to her knees as in the show, clutching Maggie’s skirt with her left hand. Maggie, half-sitting on the windowsill and stroking Jaymie’s glossy hair, had succeeded in catching her right hand, gently easing the gun loose and into the bag again. Despite the chill that suddenly gripped at his heart, Nick sang on, “Life, like our stories, has goblins and glories. It’s gentle and hard as a stone. But I’ll be beside you to keep you and guide you. You won’t have to face it alone.”
Jaymie was sobbing as the last chords sounded. She tensed, groping at her tote bag. Nick went back to the beginning of the lullaby and she relaxed again, almost hypnotized by the childish tune and the gentle hand on her hair, sliding into the role as she had at rehearsals. Maggie’s foot crept out and nudged the tote bag away from Jaymie and back along the wall.
“Things will be better, Vickelchen,” she murmured as the last chords sounded, instinctively improvising to keep Jaymie in the character of the compliant Princess. “I’ll take care of you. You won’t be alone. Now, come, I want you to find something for me.” She stood, very slowly, and coaxed Jaymie to the costume box. “Where’s your wee elfin cap?”
Automatically, a little-girl look of wonder on her face, Jaymie pulled out the cap.
“Good.” Maggie, all comfortable earth-mother, tied it under Jaymie’s chin. “We have a special treat today, Vickelchen.”
Sarah whimpered again and doubt flitted across Jaymie’s face. But Maggie’s words soothed her. “We’re going to go out now, and we’re going to get you a cuddly bear!”
“No!” exclaimed Nick involuntarily. Maggie couldn’t know, might not have guessed. That gun in Jaymie’s hand had been Ramona’s.
And in Jaymie’s disintegrating half-fantasy world, who could guess what she might do next? Little Hedvig, shooting herself for fear of losing a father? Annie Oakley, who might shoot anything? But that gun was not a prop. They had to keep her away from it, to call the police somehow, to get Jaymie into professional hands.
Maggie was smiling at him serenely. “Yes!”
“But—” But how could she still be concerned about the kidnapping now? How could she suggest taking a killer away with her?
“It’s all right, you see. People should take care of little girls.” She was patting Jaymie’s shoulder, but Nick’s mind jumped at last to comprehension. Maggie was protecting Sarah by taking the dangerously unpredictable Jaymie away. Protecting Jaymie by separating her from the gun in the tote bag. And calmly, still acting the solicitous governess, leading the unsuspecting Jaymie to the team of police who were doubtless watching the ransom pickup.
He nodded his understanding and Maggie picked up her briefcase and led Jaymie away.
The closing door seemed to renew Sarah’s fussing. Nick checked, discovered that she’d thoroughly messed herself, and reflected a moment. He couldn’t do anything this minute anyway, because Maggie needed time to get Jaymie down the stairs and out the door. He mustn’t follow yet, mustn’t even call the police from the phone on the top landing until they had left. In any case he couldn’t be too close to the activity with his beloved, yowling, vulnerable infant. Potential hostage, potential victim. He’d have to trust Maggie and the police. Meanwhile, might as well see if he could reduce the yowl factor.
In record time he rushed through the diaper change and got Sarah mobile again in the carrier. Then he trundled her out to the ha
ll phone and called Perez.
“Sorry, sir, Sergeant Perez is not available,” a chipper young voice informed him.
“Well, tell him that I’ve found Ramona Ricci’s second gun.”
“Okeydoke. Who are you and where?”
“Nick O’Connor. Tell him it’s at the rehearsal loft.”
“Sure thing!”
“It’s a homicide case,” said Nick, suddenly dubious about the knowledgeability of a police officer who owned such a cheery outlook on life.
“Hey, natch, it’s Perez, right? Thank you, sir,” said the voice.
“Okeydoke,” said Nick, and hung up with a worried look at the receiver.
He walked Sarah back into the loft and looked at Jaymie’s tote bag. Might be a good idea to be sure that gun was unloaded before people began poking around in the bag. He took Sarah back to the piano, arranged her carefully on the side away from the bag, and then went back to open it gingerly.
The reflected sunlight from the window was strong. He needed it; the bag was chock full of the necessities of an actor’s life. A scarf on the top. Hairbrush. Umbrella angling up from the lower depths; don’t touch that yet, in case it in turn touched the gun. The first few of many lipsticks and makeup pots. A script forVictoria R. The appointment book he’d seen her use for casting notices. Curious, using the scarf to keep from obliterating fingerprints, he opened the dark leather cover and flipped through the pages. Here was February, here was March. March 6.
5:30, RR—L’Etoile.
Somehow he hadn’t fully believed it till this moment. Jaymie, so sweet-faced, so hardworking. How could she? And yet—what was it she’d said of Daphne?I did everything for her.
Ramona’s death had been an accident, then, as they’d conjectured. The shot had been fired, not to kill her, but to keep Ramona from retracting her letters and harming Daphne’s court case, to keep her temporarily out of the way. How stricken Jaymie must have been to hear of Ramona’s death—but yes, he could remember her anguished cry: that’s impossible! All day she’d been struggling to cope with the sudden horror, the shock that an action meant only to delay instead had killed. She was right; she needed Daphne, needed mothering, needed someone to get her to the help she needed.
Rehearsal for Murder Page 19
