A Motive For Murder (19 page)

“What in the hell does he think he’s doing?” Jerry
Vanderbilt whispered. He had joined them on the catwalk and was
staring down at the action below. “Martinez will break his neck if
he catches him interfering.”

The four ballerinas were huddled together, giggling.
They had no intention of following Glick’s advice. But since they
would not be the ones getting roared at by the artistic director,
they considered Glick potential entertainment and made no move to
stop him.

“Is that Julie Perkins?” Auntie Lil whispered. “The
dancer on the right?”

T.S. squinted through the bright lights. “I think
you’re right,” he said.

“What in God’s name are you doing on my stage!” a
voice roared from the auditorium. Pounding footsteps followed and
the massive figure of Raoul Martinez dashed into view. He scurried
around the orchestra pit and, without bothering to take the steps,
swung himself up onto the stage with the deftness of a panther. He
waved his arms and screamed at Glick, “How dare you presume to
instruct my dancers? How dare you presume to interfere on my stage?
Get out! Get out or I will break your neck now!” He advanced on the
suddenly frozen Glick, arms outstretched as if he intended to
follow through on his threat.

Glick swayed to one side, eyes wide, as he calculated
his exit routes. “I was merely waiting for the rehearsal to end so
that I could speak with you in private about a certain matter. I
suppose now is a bad time?”

“Get out!” Martinez roared again. He took another
step forward and a frightened Glick retreated, catching his foot in
the sunken pit that housed the prompter for operatic productions.
He tumbled backward, falling over the small metal hood of the pit.
His arms flailed and his slender body did a full turn as he slid
down the curve of its roof and tumbled over the edge of the stage
into the orchestra pit, crashing on top of several music stands and
tipping over an entire row of metal chairs in a dominolike effect.
The din was unending. It sounded like a parody of a cartoon sound
effect. Yet neither Auntie Lil nor T.S. dared laugh for fear of
being discovered.

Martinez marched to the edge of the stage and peered
into the pit. “See what happens when you interfere with my
authority?” he yelled down at Glick.

Paulette Puccinni had crept to the edge of the pit
and was gazing fearfully down at Glick. “I think he’s hurt,” she
stage-whispered.

“I am hurt!” a voice wailed from the pit. “I’ve
broken my foot.”

“Good!” Martinez thundered back. “Now get out of my
theater before I break your head!”

Glick needed no further convincing. He crawled past
the fallen chairs and clawed his way over the lip of the orchestra
pit, hauling his body into the seating area. Glancing nervously at
Martinez, he hobbled up the center aisle, dragging one leg behind
him like a character from a horror movie. The dancers began to
laugh and Paulette turned her head to hide her smile.

Martinez was not amused. “If I catch you in here
again without authorization,” he shouted after Glick, “I’ll throw
you out personally. Maybe next time from a window!”

Auntie Lil and T.S. exchanged a glance. “We’ll just
slip quietly out,” Auntie Lil whispered. “There’s been enough
excitement for the night.”

Jerry Vanderbilt had gone pale. “I’ll go with you,”
he whispered back. “Don’t make a sound.”

They tiptoed single file from the catwalk, taking
exaggerated care not to make any noise. As the elevator bore them
down to street level and away from the artistic director’s furious
temper, Auntie Lil suggested that they wait outside the auditorium
for Julie Perkins to emerge after rehearsal.

“Are you serious?” T.S. asked. “What if Martinez
comes out first?”

“We’ll hide in the bushes,” Auntie Lil suggested. “I
hear you know a good spot.”

“You two can hide away,” Jerry Vanderbilt told them
as he scurried toward the subway. “But I’m getting the hell away
from Martinez.”

Most any girl would have screamed in fright had two
figures emerged from the shadows and flanked her in the middle of
the night. Julie Perkins was not like most girls. She seemed to
regard T.S. and Auntie Lil’s sudden presence as nothing more than a
stage cue well met.

“Who are you and what do you want?” she asked, her
dancer’s bag held slightly behind her, ready for a swing if need
be. Although only sixteen, Julie Perkins had the bearing of a
confident woman. Her delicate face had been hardened by fatigue and
glowed with a dull ashen sheen in the reflected light of the street
lamp. Her blond hair was still pulled back in a tight dancer’s
knot, although thin wisps of it had escaped at each temple and
waved prettily down the sides of her high cheekbones. She wore
jeans and a light turtleneck underneath a leather jacket
embroidered with the logo of a recent Broadway hit show. Her makeup
lay heavy against the paleness of her gaunt face.

Auntie Lil explained who they were and why they were
there. Julie looked at her for a moment then got right to the
point. “Why do you want to talk to me?” she asked, staring down the
side street as if searching for a cab. “Lane Rogers told one of my
friends we were not to talk to you.”

“The board has empowered me to talk to anyone who may
have been backstage the night Bobby Morgan was killed,” Auntie Lil
explained. “That includes you. I think he was killed just before or
during the performance. What do you think?”

Julie made a face. “I’m trying to forget about it
all, if you don’t mind.”

“But did you see anything unusual?” Auntie Lil
persisted. “Anything that might point to the killer?”

The young girl reached for a pack of cigarettes
stored in a back jeans pocket. Auntie Lil and T.S. watched in
silent disapproval as she lit the cigarette with an expensive gold
lighter shaped like a flat oval and began to puff away. Smoking was
an occupational hazard, they were beginning to realize, a necessary
evil relied upon by ballerinas desperate to keep their weight down.
T.S. saw that Julie smoked the same brand as her father and with
the same intense non-enjoyment.

“Well?” Auntie Lil prompted.

The girl blew smoke out her nostrils, sending
tendrils curling in T.S.’s face. He suspected it was deliberate,
but remained silent. She was stalling for time and he did not want
to give in to her distractions.

“Look,” Julie finally said, “I was in over my head,
okay? I was being sent out center stage in front of a full audience
dancing a part that I really wasn’t ready for, okay?”

She looked defiant in the moonlight, hard and
otherworldly, like someone whose cynicism was not shaped by age or
circumstances but somehow innate. “I didn’t want to dance the part.
I told Paulette I couldn’t. She insisted. My father insisted. Raoul
insisted. Everyone insisted. I knew if I failed, I wouldn’t get
another chance at a lead for a long time. I didn’t want to, but I
did it. I did it knowing that everyone would compare me with Fatima
and that I would end up looking bad.”

She sucked deeply on the last of her cigarette then
dropped it to the sidewalk, letting the butt smolder. “So in answer
to your question, I noticed absolutely no one and nothing the night
of the performance. I was too scared to notice anything but my
cues.”

Auntie Lil appraised her silently. “How do you feel
about being replaced?” she finally asked.

“Relieved,” Julie answered. “I’m no fool. I could
probably never dance that part. Perky is not in my repertoire.”

It certainly was not,
T.S. thought to himself.
He had never run across a more depressingly mature teenager. It was
as if Julie Perkins had been born old, made weary at birth by the
weight of expectations.

“Why don’t you live with your father anymore?” Auntie
Lil asked abruptly.

The girl looked up in surprise. “He told you that?”
she said.

“No, we went to see him and I looked in your room. I
could tell you had moved out. Where are you staying?”

“With a friend,” she said. “And I’m not telling you
who because then you’ll tell my father and he’ll come and get me
and try to make me come home. He sent you, didn’t he?”

“No, he did not. Why don’t you want to go home?”
Auntie Lil asked.

“Because my father lives at home,” Julie said simply.
“And I hate my father.”

She slipped her dancer’s bag up on one shoulder and
stepped between them, walking away as naturally as if she had just
bid them a loving farewell. Two cabs screeched to a halt on Ninth
Avenue when they saw her and she hopped into one nimbly, zooming
away without a backward glance. Her silhouette was framed in the
back window of the cab and looked as regally unmovable as the bust
of an ancient Egyptian queen.

The next day Auntie Lil wasted no time in moving
forward. The lawsuit had piqued her interest in Bobby Morgan’s
ex-wife, Nikki. And she knew a way to get to her. As Auntie Lil
suspected, her lawyer, Hamilton Prescott, knew the partners of the
firm representing Bobby Morgan’s children. He arranged a meeting
between Auntie Lil and Nikki Morgan for the next evening, but
balked when told he could not attend.

“That is most unwise,” he warned Auntie Lil. “I
cannot allow it.”

“I’m not going to talk about the lawsuit,” she said.
“Just her ex-husband.”

“Her lawyers will be there,” he warned her. “I can’t
let you go alone.”

“I’ll tape the entire conversation and bring
Theodore,” she promised. “But I cannot go in looking like I have
litigation on my mind. I want to talk to her about everything but
the lawsuit, don’t you see?”

Prescott sighed. He knew there was no arguing with
Auntie Lil. When she had her mind set, she was more immovable than
a hound dog intent on sleep. “What about her lawyers?” he
asked.

“Let me handle them,” Auntie Lil said. “Don’t worry.
I will make no promises. I’ll hear no evil, see no evil, speak no
evil.”

Yes,
the lawyer thought,
and you’ll end up
making monkeys out of us all.
“Good luck,” he told her. “And
tape it.”

“I will,” she said, though she had no intention of
bringing a tape recorder. She knew that Nikki Morgan would be
reluctant enough to talk as it was. The newspapers had carried few
comments from her on Bobby Morgan’s death.

T.S. needed little convincing to attend the meeting.
“Sure,” he said. “The evening is fine.” He’d be done with his dance
lesson by then.

But when he returned from his lesson with Herbert, he
found a most surprising individual waiting for him in the lobby of
his high-rise. Mahmoud the doorman had allowed the visitor to wait
for T.S. and was maddeningly nonchalant about the fact. “But he is
an injured man,” Mahmoud explained with feigned peasantlike
simplicity when T.S. complained. “How could I turn him away into
the streets?”

T.S. glanced at the forlorn figure of Hans Glick
slumped on an upholstered love seat near the elevators, his right
foot encased in a heavy cast. Crutches were propped against the
wall behind him. “Did I leave instructions to admit any visitors?”
he asked the doorman, teeth gritted.

“But Mr. Hubbert,” Mahmoud protested, spreading his
arms wide. “You live such an exciting life. I am but a humble
doorman. I cannot resist the impulse to participate in your
adventures. Please forgive me.” His dazzling smile did little to
lessen T.S.’s suspicion that Mahmoud lived to torment him. Still,
there was nothing to be done.

“How do you do,” he said, extending a hand to Hans
Glick.

Glick struggled to stand. “You must forgive the
intrusion,” he said in his clipped accent. “I took the liberty of
looking your address up in the phone book. I hope you do not
mind.”

Despite his apology, T.S. noticed, Glick did not
hesitate to hobble after him into the elevators. “How can I help
you?” T.S. asked as the elevator doors shut. He reminded himself to
get an unlisted phone number and address as soon as possible.

“I must speak to you,” Glick explained. “Businessman
to businessman. I know your aunt relies on your good judgment. I
have seen you with her often, and I have heard from my business
colleagues that you are a most meticulous man. Like myself. That is
why I have come to you and not to her.”

“My aunt doesn’t rely on anything except her own
common sense,” T.S. said firmly. Asking Glick inside was redundant,
he realized. The man had no intention of going anywhere else.

Glick glanced about T.S.’s immaculate apartment with
approval. Modern chrome furniture gleamed immaculately atop
spotless white area rugs and a highly polished wooden floor. The
built-in shelves, understated sculpture, and open space appealed to
his spartan sensibilities. “I see we are alike in our living
tastes,” he said.

But his look of approval turned to one of
apprehension when Brenda and Eddie crept from their favorite hiding
spot behind the couch. Tails switching, they slunk in unison toward
the stranger, sniffing cautiously. Glick sat down on the couch
abruptly, as if the weight of the cast had suddenly proved too
much. He held the crutches in front of him and eyed the cats. “Why
do they twitch their tails in that manner?” he asked faintly.

“Habit,” T.S. replied. “Relax. They’re big for house
cats, I admit. But they are house cats.”

Brenda and Eddie reached out their paws to scratch at
the smooth surface of Glick’s cast. Glick endured the contact with
stoic dignity. “As I was saying,” he said. “I have come to appeal
to your good sense.”

“In what way?” T.S. asked. He would not offer Glick a
drink. The man’s smooth exterior irritated him. T.S. had worked for
decades with such men and had learned long ago not to trust
them.

“Two things,” Glick explained. “Your aunt seems
convinced that I am to blame for this misunderstanding about the
liability insurance.”