A Motive For Murder (38 page)

Rudy scrambled up the remaining rungs. The ladder
didn’t reach all the way to the catwalk. He couldn’t catch hold of
the railing or reach the pathway. Besides, it was swaying too much
to chance a jump. He spotted the clump of heavy ropes hanging down
from the rafters. Grabbing the nearest cord, he shimmied up the
remaining distance until he was above the catwalk, flush against
the wall behind Auntie Lil. He leaped lightly onto its surface and
stepped in front of her, pushing her down on the floor to protect
her from Perkins. He faced her assailant.

Andrew Perkins froze in surprise as, with one
beautiful, soaring, and perfect leap, Rudy launched himself from
the swaying surface of the catwalk. He flew through the air, his
right foot held straight out in front of him as unyielding as a
steel pillar. The weight of his entire body was focused on that
single, muscled leg and it slammed into Andrew Perkins’s groin with
the force of a locomotive. Perkins crumpled to the ground, his face
a mute mask of agony as he writhed on the narrow steel ramp. Rudy
reached for Auntie Lil and helped her to her feet.

Perkins tried to sit up, his body rocking violently
as the full impact of the blow sank in. He rolled to the right and
attempted to scramble toward them in his rage. His body teetered
and he rolled toward the edge of the catwalk, part of his upper
body slipping between the two thick wire ropes that served as the
railings. His torso disappeared over the edge and he arched
desperately, trying to grab the lower railing to pull himself back
up. But his sudden movement only tipped the catwalk even more
steeply. The lower half of his body slid almost gracefully from the
steel floor, slithering over the side until one foot caught on the
lower railing. The catwalk danced under this uncertain weight and
Rudy grabbed Auntie Lil to steady
her.        

They heard the scream as Andrew Perkins’s foot pulled
clear and he began to fall. It sounded as if it went on for
moments: a deep, agonized scream that faded in sound as he tumbled
three stories to the stage below. It rang in their ears, echoing
and echoing in its madness. There was a thump—and the theater fell
silent.

Rudy pulled Auntie Lil to him and patted her head.
His arms were so strong and reassuring that she began to cry,
overcome at a single overwhelming thought: another boy had, too
soon, been forced to become a man.

The boardroom was packed. Calvin Swanson brought in
two loads of folding chairs and still some members had to stand.
Faces that hadn’t been seen since the hula hoop was popular
appeared to hear the inside dirt. Everyone knew this was one board
meeting of the Metro Ballet that should not be missed.

“What will happen to the girl?” someone asked from
among the crowd as Lane opened the floor for business. Andrew
Perkins had died two days after his fall from the catwalk. A young
girl was now fatherless. Finally, it seemed, people were catching
on that this tragedy extended beyond the lurid headlines: many
people had been hurt.

“Julie Perkins has accepted a position in the corps
of the San Francisco Ballet,” Raoul Martinez announced. “She
intends to take a hiatus from dancing and join their company next
fall.”

“Her mother will be living with her,” Lilah
explained. “My private investigator tracked her down in
Sacramento.”

“Why didn’t you just have her do it?” one of the
socialites on the board asked, nodding at Auntie Lil.

The room burst into laughter and applause as Auntie
Lil accepted their accolades with unconvincing modesty. Lane Rogers
endured the scene, her lips clamped in an unhappy line. Ruth
Beretsky rather defiantly took great pains to record the comment
and subsequent outburst in her meeting notes.

When Auntie Lil did not offer any details, however,
one of the many curious among the crowd finally broke protocol in
favor of satisfying her curiosity. “How did he do it?” a thin woman
with gold bracelets the size of handcuffs asked eagerly.

The room fell silent. This was why they had come.

“Andrew Perkins killed Bobby Morgan early in the
first act,” Auntie Lil explained. “We’re not sure what happened
because only Julie is left to tell us and she herself does not know
everything. She thinks that her father found out about her and
Bobby Morgan in this manner: the day before the premiere, she
couldn’t find the white toe shoes she wanted to wear for
The
Nutcracker
dress rehearsal and complained to her father about
losing them. Later she realized she had left them at Morgan’s
apartment earlier that afternoon. The next day, right after the
performance started, Bobby Morgan walked past Perkins toward the
locker room, holding Julie’s shoes. Perkins may have been smoking a
cigarette in a doorway, hidden from Morgan’s view. Perkins
confronted Morgan when he realized that the shoes belonged to his
daughter—and that the flowers and phone calls she had been
receiving were coming from Morgan and not his son, as he had
thought. The two men went upstairs to argue in private to avoid
being heard during the performance. They ended up in the storage
room and there was a scuffle. Somehow Morgan went down. There were
bruises on one side of his head, a fact the police kept from the
papers but that Hans Glick inadvertently guessed—which is one
reason why the police arrested him when he came to them. Either
Morgan died from a blow or a fall, or he was knocked unconscious
and suffocated later when Perkins wrapped the ribbons from his
daughter’s white toe shoes around his neck and strangled him, then
stuffed the shoe down his throat for good measure.”

An appreciative murmur ran through the crowd. This
would make excellent cocktail conversation indeed.

“So he was already dead when he came swinging across
the stage?” a board member asked eagerly, sweeping an arm across
the table for emphasis.

Auntie Lil nodded. “Perkins wanted to shame and mock
Morgan. The length of the first act gave him time to plan just how.
Perkins disguised himself in Drosselmeyer’s cape and made a quick
tour of the backstage area, finding out what he needed to know.
Replacing the cape, he returned to the third-floor storage room and
dragged Morgan’s body out onto the catwalk. He then tied a noose
around Morgan’s neck using the spare end of the counter rope that
anchored the huge Christmas tree. Morgan was left securely hanging
against the bricks way up in the shadows of the rafters, where no
one could possibly see him. Perkins planned to cut the rope holding
the heavy weight on the other end of the noose when he was safely
downstairs and could quickly leave the scene. He expected the body
to plummet to center stage. It would have been the perfect gesture.
Not only did it mimic in many ways a scene from a recent Mikey
Morgan movie, it stripped Morgan of all dignity in front of as
large an audience as possible. But Perkins had not accounted for
the fact that the Christmas tree had unevenly distributed weight.
Without the counterbalance, it tipped as it fell and Morgan’s body
was jerked about and got caught behind the scrim instead of
dropping to center stage. Perkins needed to humiliate Morgan so
badly that he took a chance and actually dashed to where the body
hung and grabbed it. Repositioning the body, he sent it swinging to
center stage. In the confusion afterward, it was easy for him to
slip out an exit door. He ran around the back pathway and into the
lobby. By the time the lights went up, he was standing at the back
of the auditorium, blending in with the audience, looking just as
confused as the rest of us. We know that because the Reverend Ben
Hampton heard Perkins in his dress shoes running down the back
path.”

“How much do you think the girl knew?” someone asked,
and a lively debate arose. It halted only when Lane Rogers thumped
the table vigorously with her gavel.

“I will stop this discussion if it does not remain
civilized,” she announced, but she, too, was burning with
curiosity. So long as her own embarrassing fixation with Bobby
Morgan did not come up, she wanted to hear the dirt as badly as the
next person.

“Julie Perkins actually tried to break things off
with Morgan the day of his death,” Auntie Lil explained. “That is
the irony of the situation. And it was also why Morgan was in such
a bad mood that day. Julie was afraid her father knew or suspected
and realized what it might do to him if he found out. He was the
only parent she had left, in her eyes. That’s why she never turned
her father in, though she couldn’t bear to live with him after she
discovered what he had done. But more important, Julie had grown
tired of Morgan. She thought he was ‘old and boring.’ For once, I
believe Morgan was about to get the boot instead of the other way
around.”

A small blonde woman coughed discreetly in the crowd.
Many eyes looked conspicuously away from Raoul Martinez.

Lilah Cheswick took charge. She believed discretion
was the mark of a civilized society and was determined to
reintroduce the concept to this crowd. “As some of you may be
aware, I was never comfortable with Mr. Morgan’s stated reasons for
having his son dance in
The Nutcracker,
” she said. “A desire
to give Mikey more stage experience did not seem plausible to me.
It turns out that Mr. Morgan devised the plan so that he would have
a good reason to come back to New York City and frequent these
premises as often as he needed to in order to conduct a romance
with an unnamed but married member of the Metro company. A woman
older than Julie, who was perfectly capable of making an informed
decision on becoming involved with Mr. Morgan. I do not believe it
is necessary to divulge her name.”

Raoul Martinez stared stonily ahead as Lilah
continued.

“The affair began a few weeks before auditions while
Morgan was conducting preliminary negotiations with Hans Glick.
However, during this period, Morgan met Julie Perkins in the
hallway of the Metro. Eventually, this led to his last-minute
demand that Fatima Jones be dropped from the role of Clara before
Mikey would agree to join the company. He knew the role would pass
to Julie Perkins and he wanted to surprise her with the lead. His
scheme worked. He overlapped his affairs with the two women for
several weeks, if it is fair to refer to a sixteen-year-old as a
woman, before he called a halt to the affair with the older one.
Through sheer exhaustion, I presume.”

“You say the unnamed woman was a member of the dance
company!” someone asked. Lane Rogers fidgeted in discomfort and
ignored the slightly smug stares of her compatriots.

“In other words, this was a dancer, right?” a blonde
dressed in a designer suit clarified. “Not a board member?”

“I believe we have discussed this topic long enough,”
Lane interrupted grimly, banging the gavel for emphasis. “Let’s
move on to new business.”

“Do you think we look out of place?” T.S. asked
Herbert. They were sitting on stools in a slightly seedy bar at
Broadway and Seventy-second Street, dressed in tuxedos and waiting
for the Metro meeting to adjourn.

“I prefer to think of it as raising the caliber of
the establishment,” Herbert replied. He could not bring himself to
admit that what had really attracted him to the bar was the
old-fashioned neon sign in the shape of a giant martini glass that
blinked on and off outside. It had evoked the emotions of an
earlier era within his soul. It seemed a fitting beginning for the
evening they had planned.

The bartender planted himself between them and
admired their finery. “Nice suits, gents,” he said in a heavy Bronx
accent. “How may I be of service tonight?” Just seconds earlier he
had flung a mug of beer down the bar toward a toothless patron like
a saloon keeper in a cheesy Western movie, but their tuxedos had
called out the gentleman in him. If these two patrons could aspire
to something better, then, by God, so could he.

“Dewar’s and soda,” T.S. said automatically, his eyes
sliding to a bank of video machines arranged in a far corner. Two
drunken construction workers were busy abusing the nearest one. The
far-off pinging of electronic bells was calling to T.S. as surely
as the singing of sirens, stirring deep desires within his
immaculately clad bosom.

 “I’ll have a martini,” Herbert decided with
uncharacteristically reckless abandon. “Tonight we trip the light
fantastic.”

T.S. tore his eyes from the lure of the flashing
lights and back toward the bar. “I’ve changed my mind,” he told the
barkeep. “I’ll have a martini, too.” He had sworn to himself—as
well as to Auntie lil—that he would give up video games cold
turkey. This was not a task easily accomplished sober. A martini
was most definitely in order.

“You made the reservations?” Herbert asked, his glass
hovering on the edge of his lower lip as if he would not allow
himself to drink until business had been taken care of.

“A table for four at
The Rainbow Room,”
T.S.
confirmed. “Fairly near the orchestra but with a truly spectacular
view of the city skyline.”

“Nervous?” Herbert asked.

T.S. sipped his martini and nodded. “But only about
the fox trot,” he lied. “I think I’ve got the rest down pretty
well.”

The man next to them got up with a belch and patted
his enormous belly in satisfaction. A squadron of empty beer
bottles had been neatly lined up in front of his seat beside the
decimated remains of a double cheeseburger platter. He had
efficiently polished off close to a six-pack while perusing the
day’s newspaper and enjoying his dinner. As he rumbled contentedly
out the door T.S.’s gaze slid to the open paper.

“Is that
Newsday?”
he asked Herbert.

Herbert checked the front page. “Yes. Shall I?” he
said.

T.S. closed his eyes and took a gulp of martini.
“Yes,” he decided. “May as well.” All week long Margo McGregor had
been uncovering every secret that the Metropolitan Ballet had ever
concealed. Thus far, T.S. had managed to avoid mention in her
column but was sure that one day soon some ugly and forgotten
tidbit of his private life would be revealed.