Baby Doll Games

by Margaret Maron

  Still smarting from the humiliation of the last two hours, Eric Kee was half a minute away from slugging Ginger Judson. His green eyes crackled with anger and his fists clenched and unclenched. “If you can't do it right-”

  Ginger stood on the first step of the spiral staircase and her sturdy body was rigid with equal belligerence. “You're the one who screwed up last night. Don’t blame me if you can't-”

  “Just get it right today or get out of my way." His blue-black hair stood up in angry tufts.

  Gingers face flamed redder than her hair. “And just who the hell died and left you king?" she shouted.

  As the actual sense of her angry words sank in, the girl moaned and fled up the stairs, almost bowling Roman over as she pushed past him. The glasses on his tray tilted precariously and he watched in dismay as one tumbled over the edge, hit the iron railing, and smashed to the floor below in a hundred glittering shards.

  Chapter 14

  Roman hurried down the circular iron steps, his deep voice resonant with basso apologies and warnings. "Do be careful. Shoes everyone! A broom.”

  “You stupid dolt!” Eric Kee’s black eyebrows contorted in an angry V; his lips thinned into a snarl of rage. “You know we dance barefoot. You want to cut our feet to ribbons?”

  Offended, Roman halted on the bottom step and drew himself up to his full six feet. “I assure you I do not break glasses for personal gratification.”

  Kee's quarrel with Ginger Judson, followed by the sound of shattering glass, had drawn the others from the green room.

  “C’mon, Eric, chill out, man,” advised Win West, laying a friendly hand on Kee’s arm.

  The honey-skinned dancer jerked away and stomped past Cliff Delgado and David Orland, who stood watching silently. As he passed, Cliff said, “Nerves going, pal?” and gave one of his ill-timed laughs.

  Eric Kee kept walking. He knew he was being stupid, lashing out at Ginger like that, snarling at Tramegra. But after what he’d been through this morning, what did they expect?

  He paused at Nate Richmond’s door, heard children’s laughter inside, and kept going. As much as he usually enjoyed watching Nate interact with the kids, he was in no mood for a trip to Never-Never Land just then.

  Helen Delgado looked up as he entered the office but her smile faded as she saw the expression on his face. “Oh Christ! What’s happened now?”

  “Nothing.” He flung himself into the nearest chair.

  Helen gave an earthy snort and waited. Today’s ensemble included turquoise stretch pants and a high-necked tunic, a jungle print splashed with vivid greens, blues, purples, and reds. Iridescent rose shadowed her eyes, a plummy red glossed her lips, her shiny dark hair was piled on top of her head, and a small enameled parrot sat inside one hooped earring, while a monkey dangled from the other one. It brushed the line of her chin as she tilted her head toward him. “I hate to tell you this, doll, but an inscrutable Chinaman you ain't.”

  She didn't get the smile she had hoped for. Eric pushed up from the chair and began to pace the room. When he’d completed his second circuit without speaking, Helen shrugged and turned back to the papers on her desk. Her seeming indifference loosened his tongue.

  “Ginger doesn’t give a damn about the way she dances anymore and Tramegra’s down there breaking glasses on the stairs and I don't know, Helen. Maybe we ought to pack it all in.”

  "Because Ginger missed a few steps and Roman's dropped a glass? Don't you think you’re overreacting a bit?”

  Eric continued to pace the room like an edgy tiger. Helen’s designers eye noted how his black hair and golden skin resembled a tiger’s tawny-and-black fur. His slightly splayed walk even mimicked a caged predator’s bitter frustration.

  "Okay, doll, want to tell Mama what's really bugging you?”

  He paused at Emmy’s drafting table. Her notes and diagrams were still spread there just as she’d left them yesterday morning. He picked up one of her ballpoint pens. “The police came.”

  “I know. They were already in here asking if I remembered anything more about the telephone call and when I’d actually talked to Emmy last.”

  “Not here,” he said impatiently. “At the apartment.”

  “Ah,” said Helen, suddenly understanding.

  ‘They poked through everything. Everything there was, which wasn’t much. You know Emmy. She kept most of her things here.” The sweep of his arm encompassed her dance books, sketchpads, and scrapbooks, as well as various knickknacks and souvenirs cluttering the bookcases and pinned to the walls.

  ;;so?”

  “So they saw the empty drawers and hangers. And her suitcases. She was moving out, Helen.”

  “Yes.”

  “You knew?” He dropped the ballpoint pen and strode across the bare wooden floor to look into her brightly painted eyes. “She told you?”

  “She didn’t have to.”

  “Emmy wasn't gay.” It was a plea as much as a statement.

  Helen shrugged her heavy shoulders and the jungle print rippled across her full body. “What difference does it make now?”

  “She loved me!” he insisted. "And damn it all, Helen, we were good together. What kind of sex would she get with Ginger? Emmy in bed with her? Jesus Christ!”

  “Don’t knock it if you haven't tried it, doll.”

  As Kee flung himself back into his angry pacing, Helen added, almost to herself, “Maybe it wasn't sex she wanted from Ginger so much as peace.”

  "Peace?”

  “Or tolerance.”

  “I loved her,” he said solemnly.

  “So you loved her, big deal. Peter, Peter, Pumpkin-Eater.”

  “What's that supposed to mean?”

  “That I've been working much too long in children s theater, probably,” she said with a wry quirk of her full red lips. “The sex might have been good but Emmy just didn't want to live in your pumpkin shell, Eric.”

  He wheeled away from the desk and her dark eyes followed him consideringly. “It's too bad you and Rikki never got it on. I bet she'd love a pumpkin shell.”

  Upstairs, Rikki Innes watched unhappily as the two police detectives went through Emmy Mion s things. They had finished with the dressing counter and moved over to the pipe racks.

  ‘These don’t look like costumes,” said Elaine Albee, flipping past a plaid jacket and heavy winter coat.

  Rikki nodded. “Emmy keeps-I mean, kept most of her extra clothes here.”

  “Even though there was plenty of closet space at Eric Kee’s place?” prodded Albee.

  Rikki remained silent, wondering how much they knew about what Emmy had planned to do; and Jim Lowry said, “Did you know they were splitting up?”

  “I guessed it,” she answered reluctantly. “Only they weren’t splitting up like you mean. Eric loved her and I think-no, I know Emmy still cared for him. She just didn’t want to live with him anymore.”

  “Why was that, Miss Innes?”

  He had a nice face, thought Rikki. Not handsome, but open and friendly. She wondered if he was sleeping with the blonde yet. The way he watched her, almost but not quite touching, hinted at an awareness beyond the professional. The way Nate was when…

  “Miss Innes?”

  “Sorry. I was thinking of something else.” Her long hands turned palms-up in a helpless gesture. “Sometimes, maybe even most times, one person in a relationship loves more than the other one and there’s no way to figure out why. I don’t know why Emmy felt she had to move out. You’ll have to ask Eric, won’t you?”

  “Look,” said Detective Albee, “I know it seems disloyal to answer questions about other members of the troupe, but your friend was killed, Miss Innes. By one of those men.”

  “They’re my friends, too,” Rikki said quietly. “If I knew for sure-”

  “Just make a guess,” urged Jim Lowry.

  “No.” There was a mulish set now to her pointed chin. “A guess would be like saying one of them’s more likely than the others and then
you’d concentrate on him and it’d be awful if he wasn’t the one, so you’ll-”

  Glass broke and furious yells erupted from the end of the corridor. Elaine Albee stuck her head out the door just as Ginger Judson rushed down the hall, her face convulsed with tears. She saw the police officer and her steps faltered, then she hurtled into die bathroom next door.

  Before the door could slam behind her, Ginger had fled to the farthest cubicle, hooked its door, then sat down upon the closed toilet seat and simply howled with a mixture of grief and pure rage.

  How dared he? How dared he treat her like that! She should have stood her ground. Should have spit in his smug face. His smug male face. Tears flooded down her freckled cheeks and sobs racked her body.

  It isn’t fair, she thought. Nobody thought twice anymore about men being bisexual. All the way back to the Greeks even. But women- Even Emmy. After they’d planned! Then in the dressing room yesterday, in front of Rikki. To say she’d changed her mind, that she wanted to live alone for a while. No love in her eyes when she said it. Only pity.

  Remembered pain and humiliation spurted through her heaving breast; then she thought of Emmy’s small sweet body impaled on those spikes and fresh weeping for what might have been bent her own sturdy frame double again.

  As she groped for the roll of tissue to blow her nose, she saw slippered feet appear on the other side of the swinging door only inches from her feet. “Ginger? Are you all right?”

  She hadn’t heard Rikki enter the room and she was startled by the nearness of her voice. “Go away,” she sobbed.

  The cubicle door rattled and the noise echoed off the tiled wall. “Come on, Ginger. Let me in. You can’t stay holed up there forever. It’s only two hours till curtain time.”

  “I’m not dancing today. I’ll never dance here again. Not as long as Eric’s here.”

  “Eric’s a pig,” Rikki soothed. “Don’t let him rattle you. You're better than that.”

  The hook fell and Rikki pushed the door open to see Ginger huddled on the toilet seat, her face and eyes swollen with tears, her red hair badly in need of a brush. Rikki put her arms around her and drew her from the cubicle.

  When Ginger saw Elaine Albee standing before the row of white porcelain sinks, she instinctively tried to retreat, but Rikki held her firmly. “What did Eric do now?”

  “He said I was the one who screwed up with the dummies in the crossovers last night and I didn't, Rikki. You saw it. He rushed the music. It was more his fault than mine.” She blew her nose. “He mixes me up and then blames me.”

  Indignation seemed to be getting the upper hand on sorrow again, Elaine Albee noted, and temper could spill into indiscretion. She made her face sympathetic. “Is that what he did with your pumpkin head yesterday?”

  “And left me with one that wobbled like it had the shakes!”

  “Ginger, the heads were all identical,” said Rikki.

  “No, they weren’t. I'd wired one to fit my head better and left it on the dressing counter and Eric took it because he was too lazy to go look for his. Don’t you remember how I had to run downstairs and find his at the last minute yesterday? And then how I almost couldn’t find it last night when-”

  "Wait,” said Elaine Albee. “Let me get this straight: Eric Kee wore your jack-o’-lantern head in the first scene yesterday?”

  With her copper-colored hair streaming across her shoulders, Ginger Judson nodded vigorously. Behind her, Rikki Innes shook her head but Ginger had her back to the mirrors over the sinks and didn’t see.

  “So you wore his, right?”

  “Yes, but-”

  “Wait a minute, please,” said Elaine. “Now after the first scene, you took off the head you were wearing and put it where?”

  “Under my chair in the wings,” the redhead answered promptly. Tears forgotten now, she automatically flexed her legs, beginning some simple warm-up movements.

  “But it wasn’t there last night. Someone had kicked it under the stairs.”

  Elaine turned to Rikki. "Miss Innes, you said Eric Kee went up the steps ahead of you yesterday and that he was still wearing his pumpkin head?”

  “That’s right. They really are all the same,” she added, with an indulgent smile for the younger dancer. “Ginger may have tightened the wire inside one of them, but from the outside they still look identical.”

  “And Wingate West was wearing his as he reached the men’s dressing room?”

  "Yes.”

  “But Cliff Delgado took his off immediately and went down the hall toward his wife’s workshop-isn’t that what you told us, Miss Judson?”

  Ginger looked at Albee warily. “Yes.”

  “Was he carrying his head or had he parked it somewhere?”

  Frowning, the dancer made two deep knee bends as she tried to recall. “I don’t think he had anything in his hands, but he was walking away with his back to me.” She did another knee bend with her feet pointed in opposite directions, using the edge of a sink to steady herself. “I think he had his right hand down by his side and it was empty, but the other hand was in front of him so I guess he could have been carrying it.”

  "What about your head, Miss Innes?”

  "I took it off as soon as we exited. They’re so hot.” Unconsciously, her hand mimed wiping perspiration from her fair brow.

  “Did you take it upstairs with you?”

  “No,” said Rikki, shaking her head. “I usually leave it beside my goblin dummy there in the wings.”

  “Was it still there when you returned?”

  “Why certainly.” Her face clouded. “I think so.” She looked confused. “I don’t remember. On the other hand,” she added helpfully, “I don’t remember it not being there, if you know what I mean.”

  “But you couldn’t swear to it,” Albee persisted.

  "I couldn’t either,” said Ginger, who’d listened closely even while continuing her stretching exercises. “When I went to look for mine later, remember? It was under the stairs. Somebody could have sneaked it out.”

  "While you were sitting there?” Rikki was dubious.

  “I was concentrating on Emmy,” the redhead insisted.

  Elaine was disappointed. If David Orland had come in through the alley door yesterday, he would have found not one but two jack-o’-lantern heads ready for the taking. For a moment there, she’d thought that at least one of the four men could be definitely eliminated by lack of a disguise. Since it was not to be, she fell back on a previously unanswered point.

  “We’re beginning to think that something must have happened late yesterday morning, near enough to curtain time to make the killer decide Emmy Mion had to be done away with immediately. You two were with her almost till the last minute. Did she say anything while you were dressing that might give us a lead? About that phone call perhaps? Or something about the men?”

  “No,” said Ginger Her voice sounded unnaturally loud in that tiled room.

  Rikki hesitated, then shook her head as Ginger took a deep breath and seemed to notice her mottled face and wild hair in the mirror for the first time. “Omigod!” she shrieked. “Look at me! I’ll never be ready in time.”

  She turned the cold water on full force and splashed her face energetically.

  Over her bent back, Rikki Innes flashed Albee a rueful smile. “I guess the show goes on.”

  With Elaine closeted in the bathroom with Innes and Judson for who knew how long, Jim Lowry decided to go back downstairs and sound out Nate Richmond again. Noticing that Kee and the Delgado woman were in heavy conversation as he passed the open office door, he continued on to Richmond’s room.

  There he found the slightly built lighting designer occupied by two small boys and a girl. The three children looked up at him accusingly, as if he’d horned in on a private party.

  * * *

  “Maybe it’s Eric’s way of saying he wants to dissolve the company,” said David Orland.

  He stood with his left leg straight, his right
leg extended at a ninety-degree angle to the tabletop, and his face touched his right knee while his hands grasped his right foot. “Otherwise, why get Ginger p.o.’d this near curtain time?”

  "Because he’s a card-carrying jerk, okay?” said Cliff Delgado, watching Orland’s back muscle stretch and contract beneath his thin leotard each time he bent from the waist.

  Wingate West took one of the dirty glasses from the tray Roman had left atop the refrigerator, rinsed it out, and poured himself a glass of orange juice from the refrigerator. “He’s still jealous,” he said lazily. “Weird to be jealous of another woman.”

  “A waste, too,” grunted David as he switched legs.

  Cliff Delgado made a coarse remark. "What was she like in the sack?” he asked avidly, looking from Orland to West.

  “There!” Roman Tramegra bustled through the bright green door, in one hand a broom and in the other a dustpan, which he emptied into the garbage pail near the sink. Glass crashed against the metal sides and clattered to the bottom.

  “I defy you to find a speck of glass on that floor,” he announced cheerfully as he hung the dustpan on a nail beside the sink and added another piece of equipment to his tray of misplaced articles atop the refrigerator. “And I found Helen’s paint mask as well.”

  "All you need is a frilly white cap and apron,” sneered Cliff and banged out of the room.

  David Orland was glad to see him go. The guy’s weird, he thought. The way his eyes glitter and the way he laughs at the wrong time, two beats ahead or behind everybody else or sometimes when nothing’s funny. Always trying to find out what everybody else’s sex life's like. Especially with Emmy. Tough too ties, guy. West won’t tell you and you’re never going to know from me how sweet Emmy was in bed.

  He had a sudden memory of her lying naked there on his mattress on the floor of his room, her funny little face suffused with laughter as he bent over her and caressed her small breasts. The memory was so vivid that he viciously bit the inside of his lip, needing a different, physical pain to block out the pain of knowing that Emmy, sweet Emmy was gone again. This time forever.