Persephone Cole and the Halloween Curse

by Heather Haven

  “Did you ever meet his partner?”

  “No, he died before the play went into production. I heard about him and that he died, but other than that, I don’t know anything.” The actress gestured with beautifully manicured hands.

  Percy looked down at her own hands.

  Oy!

  “There was also something about you being poisoned, Miss Dowell. When did that happen?”

  “I wasn’t off the boat for twenty-four hours when I drank some bad tea. I know it was the tea. It tasted so funny.”

  “Where did you get the tea? Hope this isn’t it.” Percy pointed to the glass in her hand.

  The actress laughed softly. “No, this is Earl Gray. I don’t know where that other tea came from. They usually keep some around the theatre, I believe. We Brits like our tea. I had my dresser bring a cup to my dressing room in between shows. I only took a sip, but within minutes I felt dizzy and weak. It was terrible.”

  “Who or what is a dresser? Sounds like a piece of furniture.”

  “That’s the person who helps you in and out of your costumes during the performance. They’re part of the wardrobe union. There’s a wardrobe supervisor, her assistant and then the dressers. Everyone has one, although the lesser roles share, sometimes one dresser to six or seven actors. My dresser or I should say my ex-dresser is working with Cynthia now. Cynthia was my understudy and moved right into the part, within minutes of my leaving, I might add. She’s a little young for the role, but you have to take your opportunities where you can in this business.”

  Percy put the empty glass down and stood. “Pretty much the same in my line of work. One more thing, mind if I keep this?” She folded the threatening letter and put it in her pocket, without waiting for the other woman’s consent. “It might prove useful somewhere along the line.”

  Felicity Dowell shrugged and rose from the chair. “Whatever you’d like. I’m out of it now. In three days time I’m heading back to England to begin rehearsals for Medea. Lawrence Olivier will be directing.”

  “When did you negotiate that?”

  The woman looked stunned. She brought her hand up to her throat and forced a smile. “I…I...don’t understand.”

  “These parts that actors do, especially when they’re at your level, aren’t there agents and people like that involved? Doesn’t it take weeks, if not months of negotiating? How is it you’re going into another role in such a short amount of time?”

  An embarrassed chirp rose from the actress’s throat. “I...well…Larry and I have been talking about it for some time, having these ‘if only I was free’ conversations. Medea is a role to kill for. So when I was free, I wired him immediately and he wired back, offering me the role. It was most fortuitous.”

  “That’s one word for it.” Percy allowed a smile to cross her face. “Thanks for talking to me, Miss Dowell and sorry about the little white lie. Be sure to thank Derek for the iced tea.” Percy crossed the room and opened the door, thinking.

  Medea killed both her kids to get back at the king. Did Felicity Dowell kill anybody to play her life story? We’ll see.

  She glanced back to see a nervous or maybe guilty actress staring after her. Percy closed the door behind her.

  Chapter Nine

  Elsie, don’t be angry. I had to do it. Carlisle followed me up to the catwalk and found me cutting one of the ropes. He threatened to go to Wainwright and tell him. Then he lunged at me. I tried to defend myself, pushed him away, but he lost his balance and went over. I was afraid someone might have heard his screams as he fell, but I think everyone was gone. I left the microphone and the cord where I found them. I know the police took them, but their existence might be to our advantage. I don’t trust this woman detective, but if she gets in our way, we will deal with her. I don’t trust any of them. They have no idea what wrong has been done us, but Wainwright does and he will pay. They will all pay. Evelyn

  P.S. Keep the pearls. Mamma would have wanted you to have them.

  Chapter Ten

  Roland Gephardt’s address was a third-floor walk up about six blocks and several light years away from Felicity Dowell’s place. At Eleventh Avenue and Forty-Seventh Street, this section of Hell’s Kitchen was seedier than most. It was life lived amidst squalor in run-down buildings that nobody cared much about, including city officials. Percy stepped over a derelict lying on the front stoop, either high on something or sleeping it off. She decided not to ask which.

  The lock was missing from the partially opened front door. Percy noticed it rusting in a corner of the filthy hallway. Pried open mailboxes, now twisted, useless metal, hung on a wall. By the looks of it, the same tool was used on them that broke the lock. None of it had been done recently. Roland Gephardt was the only name she could see anywhere, so she hiked up to the third floor where it said he lived.

  Next to this place, she thought as she climbed the stairs, I live in a palace. There’s a sobering thought for a gal from the lower east side. But still. This man works on Broadway. What the hell does he do with his money? Percy knocked on the door, angling to find out.

  “You Roland Gephardt?”

  She studied the face of the unshaven man closing in on sixty years of age. He’d opened the door wearing a tattered bathrobe haphazardly tied at the waist, revealing a chest of matted grey hair. “Sorry to have awakened you.”

  He yawned in her face. “Who wants to know?” He leaned against the door, less than half way open. “Who are you?”

  “Dexter Wainwright sent me.”

  At the sound of the producer’s name, Gephardt straightened up and wiped the sleep from his eyes and mouth. “Mr. Wainwright sent you? Why? Am I being fired or something?”

  “Why would you think that? Can I come in?” She pushed at the door. Thrown off-balance, he stepped aside, allowing her entrance into the apartment.

  It was a small, cluttered room, smelling of dirty clothes and cigarette smoke. An unmade bed, only two or three feet from the door, had an empty bottle of vodka lying at its foot. Gephardt saw that she saw the bottle and made a grab for it. In his haste, the belt to his robe came undone, revealing baggy and faded boxer shorts.

  “You better tie yourself up. In case you’re on the shy side.” She watched him scramble to find a place for the empty bottle and close his robe. “Then you’re going to tell me why you thought I was here to fire you.”

  “I don’t understand. If he didn’t send you to fire me, what do you want? I don’t have to be at the theatre for another two hours.”

  “I want an answer to what I just asked. Why do you think I came here to fire you?”

  Gephardt walked over to a dresser littered with old newspapers, ashtrays loaded with cigarette butts, and empty glasses. He pushed through the mess in search of an unsmoked cigarette before he spoke. Finding one, he lit it and turned to Percy.

  “With everything that’s been going on around that theatre, it wouldn’t surprise me if we all got canned. I never seen a play so cursed.”

  “Like what happened to your friend, Bert Asher?”

  “Oh, Bert,” Gephardt said, taking a deep drag from the cigarette and exhaling it slowly in Percy’s face. It took him a moment to realize what he was doing. “Sorry. I was trying to think.”

  “Sometimes that’s not as easy as it sounds.”

  “Yes.” He nodded then looked at her, unsure of whether or not he’d been insulted. He clamped down on the end of the cigarette and chewed it between browning teeth.

  “Bert and me, we go way back,” he finally said. “Vaudeville, Bert and me. We were hoofers back then in the chorus. But those days are over. The circuit’s pretty much gone now and we’re too old. Being a spear carrier is all that’s left, when you can get it. Thirteen-fifty a week, and we’re lucky to get that. Can you imagine?” He shook his head and crossed over to a small chair in the corner of the room, throwing himself into it.

  “Tell me about Bert and his rooming house burning down.”

  He glared at her over
the hazy smoke drifting up from his cigarette. “What did you say your name was?”

  “I didn’t, but it’s Percy Cole. I’m the new assistant stage manager and my job is to make sure the cast and crew is happy in their job.”

  “What?”

  “Bert wasn’t happy.” She removed her hat and fanned herself with it. “And I want to know why. Just to make sure the rest of the cast stays happy and doesn’t take it on the lam like good, old Bert. Hot in here, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it is. I had a fan but it stopped working.”

  “Why don’t you open a window?”

  “I don’t want those pigeons flying in. When I open the windows, that’s what they do. Damn birds.” He crossed one leg over the other and studied her for a moment. His robe fell open. He didn’t notice or care. “You say part of your job is going around and finding out if we’re happy or not? I never heard of such a thing.”

  “You have to admit, Mr. Gephardt, some pretty extraordinary things have been going on around this production of Macbeth.”

  He started at hearing the name of the play said out loud, his crossed leg pulling off the other one and coming down with a thud. He leaned forward, a worried expression crossing his face.

  “Don’t be saying that name out loud, even outside the theatre. Bad enough things have been happening without doing that.”

  “Like?”

  “Like that fire you mentioned. It started in Bert’s room, you know. He told me. He said he woke up in time to see somebody crawling out the window and onto the fire escape.”

  “A man, a woman, what?” Percy was quick to ask. “What did the person look like?”

  “He didn’t say. Maybe he was too busy screaming and getting out of there. There was a fire in the corner of his room, he said, a blaze, and it took off before he could do anything. He just ran out the door and yelled ‘fire’. Then everybody got out of that dried up old place.”

  “Two people didn’t make it, I understand,” Percy said, quietly.

  “That wasn’t Bert’s fault. If he hadn’t yelled like he did, a lot of others would have been caught in it. Bert said the fire took off like it had gasoline in it or something. He was lucky to get out alive, he said.”

  “Did he tell the police what he saw?”

  “Bert? He doesn’t talk to police. He did time upstate for writing bad checks. He doesn’t talk to police,” Gephardt repeated.

  “So they don’t know about the person in his room.”

  The man shrugged. “Guess not. I didn’t tell anybody what he said to me. Except you.”

  “Where is Bert? Where did he go?”

  Gephardt shrugged again and stubbed his cigarette out in an already overflowing ashtray on a small table by his chair.

  “Mr. Gephardt, you’re a smart man.”

  No you’re not, but sometimes a fib will get me some place, so I’m going with this one.

  “Smart enough to keep my mouth shut,” he replied, with a smirk.

  “Aw, but sometimes that’s not so smart. Mr. Wainwright would be very grateful to someone who cooperated with him in getting to the bottom of this. Might be worth, say, fifteen-fifty a week from now on.”

  “You can do that? You can increase my salary like that?”

  Percy hedged her bets a little. “Well, maybe. I can try. As I said, he would be grateful.”

  Gephardt let out a bark of a laugh. “You don’t know Wainwright much, do you? He don’t get grateful like that. Too cheap. I did another show with him right before this one.”

  “You mean, Stars and Stripes Forever?”

  “Sure. I told you I was a hoofer. I did some dancing in the background, filled in the crowd scenes. Cheap bastard only paid me fourteen bucks a week for that. And with me dancing two numbers, too. Sorry I don’t have any place for you to sit down,” he said, suddenly overcome with gentlemanliness. “Only the one chair.” He gave her an apologetic smile.

  “Don’t worry about it. Bert work Forever with you?”

  “We were both in the chorus. We even did part of our old Vaudeville routine together. Didn’t get paid any more, but we did it anyway.”

  “Trip down memory lane?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Anything happen on that show? Something that stands out in your mind?”

  “No, not a thing. Wait a minute. I remember reading the wife of Wainwright’s partner died in England about a year after his partner did, but that’s about it.” Roland reflected for a moment. “Yeah, that’s right. Cohen died before the musical went into production and the wife died while we were in performance. There was even an article about it in Variety, saying Stars and Stripes Forever was jinxed. We thought Wainwright was going to say something at one of the shows, you know, like a tribute.”

  “Did you know Jacob Cohen?”

  “Yeah, I done a couple of shows for the two of them before the older one, Cohen, up and died. Uppity old geezer, thought he was better than everybody. They’d been partners for a long time. You think he would have said something, that’s all. But that’s Wainwright. That’s why I’m surprised he sent you on to see me like this. I didn’t think he gave a tinker’s damn.”

  “So do you know where Bert might be? We’d like to send him his last paycheck.”

  “Why don’t you give it to me? I’ll see that he gets it.”

  Percy shot him an incredulous look.

  “Hey, Bert’s the one who did time for forging checks, not me,” Gephardt said, defensively.

  “Where is he, Gephardt? Tell me.”

  He got up and went to the dresser in search of another cigarette. “Jesus Christ, I’m out of fags.” He brushed at the top of the dresser, sending ashy butts flying through the air.

  “I’ll buy you a carton of those things, if you’ll tell me what I want to know.”

  His face brightened as he turned to her. “Oh, what the hell. I’m not even sure that’s where he is, but I’ll tell you, anyway. He’s got a wife, an ex-wife, out in Phoenix. It’s a hot hellhole like this, but all the time, all year long. He says she’s got emphysema or some such thing and has to be there for her health. He goes out and stays with her from time to time. I think he’s there now. At least, that’s where he was heading. She still goes by his name. Mrs. Bert Asher,” he said, rolling the name around in his mouth. “Like it meant something to be married to him. You really going to mail him his last pay? He could use it.”

  “I am. I’ll see that he gets it.” She reached into her pocket and drew out two folded dollar bills. “By the way, do you know if he got any threatening letters right before he left?”

  “Sure, we all did.” Gephardt reached for the cash but Percy pulled her hand back.

  “Who’s ‘we all’?”

  “All six of us in the dressing room.”

  “Did you tell anyone about it?”

  “Naw, we thought it was funny, over the top, you know?” He laughed at the memory then began to cough. It took him a moment to get the coughing under control. Percy waited.

  “We figured it was Sir Anthony,” he went on. “He was always doing something like that, playing up the witches’ curse. His idea of a joke, but Bert took it hard. Went and complained about it, for all the good something like that does you.”

  “Did he?” Percy mused for a moment. “Know who he talked to?”

  “What am I, his mother? He’s just like that. A mousy kind of guy. Takes everything serious. Good friend, though,” Gephardt added wistfully. “I miss him.”

  Percy watched a look akin to sorrow cross the man’s face. “Gephardt, what the hell are you doing in a dump like this? It seems to me you could do better, even at the occasional thirteen-fifty a week.”

  “I own the place,” Gephardt said with a straight face.

  “Excuse me?”

  ‘Yeah, I bought it twenty, twenty-five years ago. It’s a place to flop when I’m in town. Nobody else lives in the building. I got it to myself.”

  “I’ll bet,” she sai
d, as she handed him the money. “Here you go. One thing, though, sort of as a warning...” She broke off speaking and looked into his eyes.

  Gephardt took the money but stared back at her questioningly.

  “I’d put a working lock on that downstairs door.” She turned and moved to leave. “You never know when someone’s going to creep up those stairs in the middle of the night and kill you.”

  “Vaudeville already did that, lady,” she heard Gephardt call after her, as she closed the door behind her.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Yeah,” said Percy to the older, balding man behind the counter of the Carnegie Deli. “That’s three pastramis on rye, two with slaw, the other with kraut, pickles on the side. Throw in a celery soda and two cream sodas. Give me an extra bag, while you’re at it. This is to go.”

  She’d been standing in line for nearly twenty minutes. This was one of the few places in Manhattan that rarely ran out of meat, so the short hike up to Fifty-fifth Street was worth it.

  Whenever Percy was in mid-town, the Carnegie Deli called to her louder than the mythical sirens, despite the lousy service. Besides, she knew O’Malley. Nothing softened him up more than a good pastrami on rye. Or Pop. If things worked out the way she wanted, she’d hand one of these to him in person. If not, she’d bring the extra sandwich home to him as a peace offering. That is, if she didn’t eat it herself beforehand.

  “You got a payphone around here? Hey!” She banged on the countertop, when he didn’t respond. “I said, you got a payphone around here?”

  The man, whose only words to her had been ‘Whaddaya want?’ glanced up from his order pad to give Percy a look of distain. He slapped the receipt on the glass top of the high counter.

  “You’re number seventy-three. Pay by the door. Behind you in the corner over there,” he said without a smile, gesturing to the dark wood phone booth freestanding near the fire exit.

  She squeezed her large frame in between dozens of people crammed around small tables piled high with food. Everyone was eating, laughing, and talking at the top of their lungs, military and civilians alike. If it hadn’t been for the uniformed men, it was almost as if the war didn’t exist.