Ms America and the Brouhaha on Broadway

by Diana Dempsey

  Those appeared in the tabloids just last week. And in my opinion they are even more revealing. Mario and Esperanza appear in workout clothes, with scrubbed and smiling faces, strolling along a foggy Montana Avenue in Santa Monica, according to the caption. Esperanza is carrying a lavender yoga mat and Mario has a takeout coffee. They’re both laughing. If you were a mile away you could see the joy they take in each other’s company.

  The caption provides one other telling detail: Esperanza is en route to her early morning yoga class. I don’t have to tell you what it means that Mario is by her side in the early morning. It means he was with her late at night. In fact, it means he was with her overnight. We tabloid readers all know what that means.

  Since I am not entirely without discipline, I am able to push these thoughts from my mind. I’ve taken to asking myself one simple question: do you love your husband? When I answer yes, as I always do, I realize I’m a fool to be thinking about Mario. That makes it a teensy bit easier to banish my wayward thoughts.

  At the moment it helps that our cab is pulling up to the theater. It’s time to focus on the task at hand. I pay the fare and leap out onto the now empty sidewalk, cheered that thanks to the wee item I purloined from Lisette’s satchel, the locked doors on our theater will present no problem.

  My heels click on the pavement as I head for the alley that leads to the rear of the theater and the stage door. It’s the way insiders enter and exit. Until this evening, I didn’t have a key. Trixie and Shanelle reach me as I’m poking Lisette’s key into the lock. Trixie slaps me on the arm. “You scamp!”

  The key fits. I turn it and pull open the heavy metal door painted emerald green. “I recognized this key from that time Lisette let us in behind her,” I whisper. “I thought it might come in handy.”

  “I knew you’d have some trick up your sleeve,” Shanelle murmurs.

  “Let’s be super quiet until we’re sure everybody is gone. It would be really hard to explain why we’re here at this hour. By the way,” I add, “I’m so glad you two came with me.”

  “Girl,” Shanelle says, “I may not always agree with you, but I’ve always got your back.”

  “I want you to have my back,” Trixie tells Shanelle, “in case there are any ghosts.”

  It is in this formation, with me in the lead and Shanelle bringing up the rear, that we enter the theater. Taking care to be quiet, Shanelle closes the stage door behind us. We pause to listen for sounds of life. The overhead lights are on, but the corridor in which we stand is dim. Lisette’s office is at the other end. Between here and there are dressing rooms, mostly, and halfway down there’s another corridor that splits off to the right. That’s the route to the stage, and everywhere else in the theater, for that matter. For some reason it’s a little better lit than where we are.

  It’s so quiet I swear I can hear my heart thud in my chest. But it’s not utterly silent. Old buildings like this creak. Something somewhere is whirring. And overhead I hear water trickle. I wonder where that’s coming from.

  I tiptoe forward, ruing my choice of footgear. I should know by now that chunky heels do not aid surreptitious investigation. Trixie and Shanelle creep along behind me. As I near the corridor to the right, I understand why it’s brighter. Somebody left his office lights on. I’m about to peek around the corner to see if the coast is clear when Oliver’s voice, loud and impatient, sails toward me. I reel backward, colliding with Trixie.

  “Since we can’t think of anything,” Oliver says, “let’s leave that for now. Go to page a hundred and twelve.”

  I twist around. Oliver’s here, I mouth.

  Next I hear a male voice that sounds as if it’s coming from a speakerphone. “I think we should leave it till the morning when we’re fresher. Let’s wrap it up.”

  “I want to finish at least this section tonight,” Oliver says. “Come on. Page a hundred and twelve.”

  “Who is Oliver talking to?” Trixie whispers in my ear.

  I shake my head. I don’t recognize the other voice. But I’m pretty sure I know what the men are talking about. Known as the libretto, or the book, it’s the script for a musical, for all the words that aren’t sung. Lisette wrote every one of those words and balked at changing any of them. It didn’t matter what anybody else wanted, not even Oliver, and in theater the director is The Big Dog. That’s why Lisette went ballistic when the new scene began. She didn’t write it.

  Lisette protected her work like a tigress does her cubs. But she’s not around to protect it anymore. Which means Oliver can make all the changes he wants.

  The unknown male voice pipes up again. “What was that line we had about the foxhole?”

  “That was good,” Oliver says. “What was that?” Silence, then: “You know, I marked up this section on another copy. I think I left it onstage. Let me go get it,” and we hear Oliver stride out of his office and away from us.

  “Come on,” I hiss, and sprint as noiselessly as I can up the corridor past Oliver’s office to a production room beyond. We slip inside and I close the door most but not all of the way. I want to hear the rest of this conversation, which some people might construe as eavesdropping.

  “We can’t go to the stage until Oliver’s left the theater,” Trixie whispers.

  “That could take a while,” Shanelle mutters.

  “It could,” I whisper back. “But don’t you want to hear what else they say? And isn’t it weird that Oliver’s here this late?”

  “Why isn’t he home doing this?” Trixie wants to know.

  “Maybe he has his kids this week,” Shanelle says. “Remember he said he hates being home when he has his kids?”

  “I hoped he was joking,” Trixie says.

  Oliver might be a dweeb, but he’s a Broadway powerhouse dweeb, which explains why he has three ex-wives and four children.

  I hear footsteps coming and make a zipping motion across my mouth.

  “I’m back, Enzo,” Oliver says a few seconds later. “I found it.”

  I twist around and mouth the name Enzo. Both Trixie and Shanelle nod with understanding. Oliver must be speaking with Enzo Donati.

  None of us have met Enzo, but we keep hearing his name. He’s famous for being a “script doctor” for plays and musicals, hired to make changes the writer can’t or won’t make. He’s not brought in when productions are going great guns, I can tell you. I know he worked with Oliver in the past. I read that when I was boning up on Oliver Tripp Jr. before I came to New York.

  Lisette exhibited her typical charm the one time Enzo’s name came up. “He’s talentless. Those who can’t do, consult,” she informed me with a glare, trying to dis both Enzo and me in one fell swoop. Unbeknownst to her, I was thrilled to be mentioned in the same breath.

  I had no idea Enzo was involved with Dream Angel. It’s certainly not public information, which this sort of thing usually is, to let critics and audiences know that directors are doing everything they can to improve a troubled production. And from the way Enzo and Oliver are talking about the libretto, it sure seems like tonight is not Enzo’s first time working on it. So I have to conclude that some time back, without Lisette’s consent, Oliver hired Enzo on the sly.

  The two of them must have come up with a great line because they start cackling to beat the band. “That’s good,” Enzo says, “that’s really good. But I’m thrashed. That’s it for me for tonight.”

  “Come on—”

  “No, that’s it. Don’t forget, I just got back from London. Let me ask you something.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Any chance Longley Sr. is going to pull his investment?”

  “No way,” Oliver says.

  “ ‘Cause his daughter’s not part of this anymore. Obviously.”

  “Let me tell you something.” Now Oliver sounds really serious. “Warren Longley knows this musical is his little brat’s legacy. I bet he’ll pour more money into it.”

  This is the first I’m hearing that Lisette’s father is
an investor in Dream Angel. Up till now I haven’t spent a second wondering who’s funding this production.

  “As long as I get some,” Enzo says.

  “You’ll get yours. As for me, I don’t know if there’s any amount of cash that’ll make up for having to kowtow to that—”

  “Easy, Oliver. The woman’s dead.”

  Good for Enzo. He might be greedy, but at least he’s got enough human feeling to shut Oliver up.

  “Let me ask you another thing,” Enzo goes on. “You’re sure you got rid of … you know.”

  “You mean—”

  “The eggs from the other day.”

  I go on even higher alert. What the heck is this about?

  “Of course I got rid of them.” Oliver makes it sound like Enzo’s an idiot to ask. He lowers his voice even though he must believe he’s alone in the theater. “You don’t think I’m stupid enough to keep those?”

  “I’m just asking. After tonight you can’t be too careful.”

  By this point, my ears are so perked up I must look like a Vulcan.

  “The last thing you want,” Enzo goes on, “is anybody asking any tough questions.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  By this point, Happy Pennington has several extremely probing questions she’s dying to ask Oliver Tripp Jr. But all she can do is listen to what he tells Enzo.

  “Nobody’s going to ask me anything about anything.” Oliver sounds serenely confident. “Lisette fell, pure and simple. It was her own damn fault for being on that staircase.”

  “What happened to her Wednesday wasn’t her fault.”

  “Nobody’s going to connect one with the other,” Oliver declares.

  “I hope you’re right. Because there will be an autopsy.”

  “Won’t matter. It’s more than twenty-four hours since she ate that sandwich.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” Pause, then: “There’s another thing. OSHA.”

  “I know. Just what I need.” Big sigh. I hear a clattering sound as if Oliver threw a pen across his desk. “If it’d been Tonya who fell—”

  Tonya Shepherds is the star who plays the beauty queen.

  “—I’d have a problem. But Lisette was never supposed to be on those stairs.”

  “One way or another we’ll have to change them now,” Enzo says.

  “Which is too bad. Because by this afternoon, half of New York would pay to see them.”

  Both men chuckle in what I consider a pretty unseemly fashion.

  Oliver speaks again. “Let’s start again at seven a.m.”

  “That’s five hours from now.”

  I glance at my watch—very on-trend with its stainless-steel band and face in rose gold—and remember that my mother and Bennie will descend on New York this morning. I have a deposition around the same time. I’m not ready for either event and I’m 100% sure that the Big Apple is unprepared for the cyclone that is Hazel Przybyszewski.

  “Let’s not talk until eight,” I hear Enzo say. “I need my beauty sleep.”

  They banter a bit then end the call. I am delighted to report that Oliver crashes around in his office only briefly before he departs. We hear him proceed toward the stage door along the very route we queens took just a short while ago. Then the stage door opens and clangs shut.

  Silence falls. “I think he’s gone,” I whisper. “Shanelle, do you understand that thing about OSHA?”

  “Yes,” she whispers back, “that’s the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. They could issue citations or penalties or something. Like they did to Cirque du Soleil when that woman acrobat fell and died during her high-wire act.”

  “That was terrible,” Trixie whispers. “I suppose they could shut this whole thing down. We might have to go home tomorrow.”

  “I hope not,” I murmur. “I feel like we just got here. We’ve barely had a moment to enjoy New York.” Hearing myself say that makes me realize just how selfish I can be. Here I am, wanting to have a good time when somebody just died. “Anyway, I had no idea Lisette’s father funded this production.”

  “I don’t think it’s normal,” Trixie whispers, “for the father of the writer to put up the money. I wonder if it means they couldn’t get money any other way?”

  We pause to consider that demeaning possibility. “That would make this kind of a vanity project for Lisette,” Shanelle says.

  I think about that. “It could also explain why she had so much say over what went on.”

  “No wonder Lisette got on Oliver’s last nerve,” Shanelle mutters. “He had to kowtow not only to her but probably to her father, too.”

  Lisette’s father the Tycoon Banker, who might be as unpleasant as she was. I don’t envy Oliver that task.

  “These Broadway musicals are seriously expensive,” Shanelle goes on. “I read they can cost ten or fifteen mil to develop. Then add to that the operating expenses, week after week.”

  Trixie’s eyes widen. “Is Lisette’s father that rich?”

  “We don’t know that he funded the whole thing,” I say. “But he must’ve put in a lot since Enzo sounded worried about what would happen if he pulled his money.”

  “Dream Angel could close for that reason, too,” Trixie says. “I’d better do my souvenir shopping tomorrow.”

  “Right now I’m not thinking about souvenirs,” I say. “I’m thinking about egg salad sandwiches. Remember Oliver ordered that restaurant down the street to bring those in for lunch Wednesday? Not that he ate one.”

  “Of course not,” Trixie says. “He only eats Japanese food.”

  Oliver is very showy about his strict Japanese-food-only diet. The rumor is that it has to do with a new woman he’s chasing. Every day he sends an intern to get sushi for him. It has to be a certain kind, at a certain temperature, from a certain restaurant. Pretty pretentious, if you ask me.

  Shanelle nods, understanding dawning in her dark eyes. “And that afternoon when we all had to eat egg salad, Lisette went home sick.”

  “Sick to her stomach,” I clarify.

  Trixie gasps.

  I continue. “I bet Oliver put something in Lisette’s egg salad sandwich to give her food poisoning.”

  “Girl, you got a sick mind.” Shanelle pauses. I see her mind working. “And I bet you’re right.”

  I smile. I much prefer when Shanelle and I are on the same wavelength. “And Enzo knew about it.”

  “They were in cahoots,” Trixie breathes. “But do you really think Oliver would go that far? Just to make Lisette go home so he could rewrite some scenes?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Shanelle says, eyeing me, “Happy thinks Oliver might have gone even further.”

  “Well, if Oliver made sure that Lisette got food poisoning just so he could get her out of the way for a day or two—”

  “He probably realized how many problems he’d solve by getting rid of her permanently,” Shanelle finishes. “But come on, Happy. It’s one thing to give somebody a passing bug. It’s another to kill them. Plus, we all saw Lisette topple down those stairs. It’s not like somebody pushed her.”

  True. Nobody could’ve pushed her: she was standing in front of the throne when she fell. And that throws a serious kink in my murder theory. “But just think,” I say, “of everything that’s riding on this musical.”

  “Millions of dollars,” Trixie says. “Oliver’s reputation.”

  “A director as big as Oliver can survive a flop or two,” Shanelle says.

  “Enzo said he just got back from London,” I remember. “That means he wasn’t at the preview tonight.”

  “So Enzo can’t be your killer. But I still say nobody’s your killer.” Shanelle wags her finger at me. “Ms. Happy Pennington, do not go looking for trouble where it doesn’t exist. Trouble will find you if it’s there. Believe me, I know.” Then she frowns and looks away.

  Trixie glances from Shanelle to me and shakes her head slightly. I know she’s thinking what I am: that it’s the second time tonight Shanel
le has gotten distracted by whatever is bothering her. I wish I knew what that was. I bet Trixie and I could help her.

  Well, she’ll share when she’s ready. And if she doesn’t, we’ll pry it out of her. That’s what friends are for.

  “Maybe we should walk to the stage now,” Trixie says, “even though it’s probably the most haunted part of the whole theater. Did Mario ever do a show on haunted Broadway, Happy?” she asks as I lead us into the corridor.

  “Not that I’ve seen. Haunted New York, yes. But not Broadway specifically.”

  “Don’t you go telling him he best come to Manhattan this very minute to shoot one,” Shanelle orders from behind me.

  “I would never!” Fortunately I’m not so fixated on Mario that the idea crossed my mind.

  We proceed to the stage, our heels echoing in the emptiness. It is very strange, and indeed quite spooky, for us to be alone in the theater. There are so many dark corners, and so many hulking items I don’t look at twice during the day, that somehow take on a menacing aspect now.

  Feigning confidence, I stride through the wings and onto the stage. It’s pretty much empty—the glittering staircase down which Lisette fell has been moved—and it’s saved from total darkness by a single light upstage center.

  “The ghost light,” Trixie whispers, coming up behind me.

  “Always left on when everyone is gone,” Shanelle murmurs. I watch her shiver. Even she seems cowed by the paranormal possibilities.

  Not that I took those very seriously until recently. But in Winona, Minnesota, Mario bore witness to a few spectral events. That went a long way toward banishing my skepticism, I can tell you.

  We look around. It’s so dark that I can’t see past the first few rows of the orchestra section. The front mezzanine could be loaded with ghosts taking our measure and I wouldn’t have a clue. My eyes drift to the apron of the stage where Lisette met her Maker just hours ago.

  I clear my throat. “The light is to ward off ghosts,” I declare firmly.

  “Maybe,” Trixie says. “Or maybe it’s left burning so the ghosts have enough light to see.” She hesitates. “So they don’t get mad.”