A Motive For Murder Part 13

"I just want a quick word with you," she explained, tilting the fedora back so he could see her face. "You're part of the technical crew, aren't you?"

"I'm Ricky Lee Harris, the lighting director," he said slowly.

"Were you working the night Bobby Morgan was killed?"

He stared for a moment without speaking, as if waiting for a signal to be sent from his brain to his mouth. "Yes," he finally said. "I work every opening night. Most nights, in fact. And most matinees, too. I need the overtime. What's it to you?"

"I wondered if you noticed anything unusual that night," she asked, wondering if Ricky Lee Harris was all there. Perhaps his lights had fallen on his head once too often.

"Unusual like how?" he demanded, shifting impatiently from foot to foot. "I went over this with the cops, you know."

Auntie Lil glanced up at the rafters. "Unusual like someone up on the catwalk where they don't belong."

"Hey," he said, holding up a palm and backing away. "I was the only one up on the catwalk, okay? Me, myself, and I. Are you saying that makes me the killer?" His tone grew instantly belligerent as he changed moods with the mercurial swiftness of the drunk.

"Not at all," Auntie Lil replied sharply. She had no patience with people who could not control their liquor intake. "I just need the benefit of your eyes. You were here. I was not. Did you see anyone unusual near the catwalk, even just on the third floor near its entrance perhaps?"

He shook his head but opened his mouth at the same time, froze for a second, then snapped it shut.

"You did," Auntie Lil stated matter-of-factly. "You saw something, didn't you?"

The man stared at Auntie Lil as if debating whether to try to fool her or not. "Maybe," he finally admitted.

"Please tell me," Auntie Lil said evenly. "You may be in danger if the killer believes you know something. It might be better if you tell."

Harris shifted the clipboard and slipped his right hand into a rear pocket. Rocking back and forth on his heels, he studied Auntie Lil. "No one saw me," he said quietly. "I saw someone, but I can guarantee you they didn't see me. I was hidden behind that side curtain over there." He nodded toward a series of short curtainways stored at stage right. "I saw a guy who was sort of out of place."

"What did he look like?" Auntie Lil asked.

"I couldn't tell," Harris replied. "It was just a guy in a cape."

"Why didn't you step forward earlier?"

He laughed and the sound was bitter. "They'd think I was hallucinating. Puccinni's out to get me. Says I drink on the job. You think I'm stupid enough to come forward and say that I saw some tall dude in a big black cape all wrapped around him so I couldn't see his face?"

"A cape?" Auntie Lil asked. "Maybe it was Mikey Morgan playing Drosselmeyer?"

Harris shrugged. "Could have been," he acknowledged. Except his cue is on the opposite side of the stage. Hard to say."

Auntie Lil nodded. "Did you notice anything else unusual about him?"

He chewed on the end of his pencil. "He wasn't wearing the right kind of shoes. They were shiny and black. Dress shoes. That's all."

"What size?" Auntie Lu asked.

He stared at her like she was daft. "Do I look like a shoe salesman to you?" he asked, before turning and walking away.

She was disappointed he couldn't tell her more, but her thoughts were distracted by the scene unfolding onstage. In the final moments before curtain, Fatima Jones was practicing the timing of a difficult pa.s.sage. It was the first time that Auntie Lil had seen the young ballerina dance outside the confines of a rehearsal room. The girl was impossibly lithe and as delicate as a gazelle, an impression enhanced by her creamy tan color. Her arms flowed through the air as if made of fluid, not flesh, and her long neck curved up to cradle an oval head. Her features were delicate and uniformly slender, from her thin curving nose to an exquisite mouth and perfect almond-shaped eyes. As she moved about the stage she seemed to float from spot to spot, propelled by long legs unfettered by gravity. As she executed a series of graceful jumps, a pair of young dancers scurried across the set, anxious to take their places in time for curtain. Fatima missed crashing into them by inches and drew back angrily, her eyes flashing fire. Her body rose in height as her long neck appeared to grow even longer, like a snake advancing on its prey. Her nostrils flared as she advanced on the two boys and her dark eyes pinned them in a haughty glare. Before she could scold them, they dashed away in fear.

Fatima Jones had more than the physical requirements for a prima ballerina. She also had the att.i.tude.

Auntie Lil's thoughts were interrupted by the sound of applause. The orchestra was taking its place. Should she wait around and see the first act from backstage, trying to find out more about when Bobby Morgan could have been killed? Or should she take the information she had learned from Ricky Lee Harris and call it a day?

Her decision was made for her. A tall blond man hurried toward her and gripped her elbow. "How nice to see you again," Andrew Perkins said between clenched teeth. "But I believe we are both trespa.s.sing."

"Get your hands off me," Auntie Lil whispered, shaking her arm free as she pried his fingers from her flesh.

"You're strong for an old lady," he said, rubbing his hand where she had dug ito it. "Don't get excited. It's just that I saw Martinez heading this way. I a.s.sume you know him and are as eager to avoid him as I am."

Being discovered by Martinez was a good reason to hurry. Auntie Lil slipped silently along the back wall toward the exit, followed by Perkins. "What are you doing here?" she asked.

He hesitated as if he were about to lie, but changed his mind. "Looking for my daughter," he said. "Julie hasn't been home in over a week."

"I know," Auntie Lil said as they emerged into the bright light of the afternoon sun. "Want to tell me why?"

"No," Perkins said, turning on his heels and hurrying down the pathway to Ninth Avenue.

She was about to follow when the unmistakable hulking figure of Lane Rogers turned the corner and headed down the walkway toward her. A smaller figure shouted at Lane from behind, and when she turned to see who it was, Auntie Lil took the opportunity to slip into the familiar bower of bushes so prized by Ben Hampton. She waited in the cool darkness, protected from anyone's sight by thick overhanging leaves, as Lane Rogers and Ruth Beretsky walked past.

"But you can't have a meeting about getting rid of her without inviting her," Ruth was saying. "It isn't fair. You don't even know if she promised him the seat."

"What do you know?" Lane said angrily. "Just shut up and do what I tell you."

"I know plenty," the smaller woman cried, stopping to glare at her companion. "I know a lot more than you think."

"What does that mean?" Lane asked calmly.

"I heard you talking to Bobby Morgan," Ruth said angrily "That was nothing," Lane rea.s.sured her. "I didn't mean it."

"Yes, you did," Ruth hissed back. Her voice caught in her throat-she was close to tears. "You meant every word."

"Oh, Ruth," Lane said, putting an arm protectively around her friend's shoulders. "You make too much of the little things. Sometimes we say stuff we don't really mean. Come on. We're going to be late for the meeting." They hurried down the pathway, leaving Auntie Lil to contemplate just exactly what had been said to whom.

"Why do you want to talk to Mikey?" Nikki Morgan asked. She was dressed in a black linen dress and wore a matching hat decorated with tiny red roses. She looked quite Italian and very beautiful. More than one man pa.s.sing by slowed to admire her.

"I've talked to some people who were backstage the night that your ex-husband was murdered," Auntie Lil explained. "They may have seen an extra person. Perhaps someone who didn't belong. I want to ask Mikey what he remembers."

Nikki checked her wrist.w.a.tch before squinting through the sunlight at the door of the theater. "He'll be out in about five minutes. He meets me away from the crowd so no one will know who he is. But I have to pick up the other kids from the YMCA in half an hour after their swim lessons. It's about five blocks down Broadway." She tapped a delicate foot against the pavement, her high heels making a firm tap, tap, tap as she thought things over. "I'll let you talk to him for the half hour it takes me to get the other kids dry and dressed. Then we'll meet back here. You can take him to a coffee shop or something. Buy him an ice-cream soda."

"Ice-cream soda?" asked Auntie Lil. "That sounds like a normal kid to me."

Nikki Morgan looked at Auntie Lil from over her sungla.s.ses. "Don't be too sure. You'll find that he eats only brand-name ice cream and real whipped cream. And he knows the difference."

Auntie Lil was in agreement with Mikey Morgan on the subject of real whipped cream. Perhaps that was why she felt so instantly at home nestled with him in a booth at Rumpelmeyer's, the ridiculously overpriced cafe on Central Park South. It was famous for its ice-cream treats and solicitous nature toward the children of rich tourists. At that particular moment, late on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon, the joint was quite literally jumping as screaming children crawled over leather-back chairs, raced through the dining room, careened around scowling waiters, and knocked seven-dollar-a-scoop ice cream into their parents' laps.

"More sugar all around," Auntie Lil murmured, but nonetheless did not hesitate to slurp the bottom of her ice cream soda out with a straw. "Let's order another one," she told a surprised Mikey Morgan.

He had been very quiet throughout his first course of plain ice cream, ordered so he could vouch for its freshness and designer label. He perked up at her suggestion of more and decided on a banana split. Auntie Lil told the waiter to make it two. The waiter agreed readily since, at Rumpelmeyer's prices, two more orders of dessert would come close to pushing the bill into high tip territory. He had decided that Auntie Lil was an aging film star who no doubt lived in a nearby hotel. He was not quite sure if Greta Garbo was dead or not, but he knew enough to be certain that confident old women in black fedoras were forces to be reckoned with-and might even be able to get him a part in a movie or two.

"Know why I want to talk to you?" Auntie Lil asked Mikey when the overly helpful waiter had left and they were alone again. They had exhausted their supply of small talk, which had chiefly consisted of making fun of Paulette Puccinni. Both Mikey and Auntie Lil had suffered humiliation at her hands in ballet cla.s.s and this had helped establish common ground between them.

"Yes. About Dad's murder." The boy's expression was hidden behind the oversized sungla.s.ses he wore. They were an effective means of disguise. His face was so small that the lenses obscured most of his distinguishing features. The only recognizable components of Mikey Morgan, child star, were his ears and his generous mouth. So long as he refrained from his trademark grin and stifled his well-known war whoop, they had a chance of remaining undetected.

Auntie Lil got right to the point. "You entered from stage left when you danced Drosselmeyer, didn't you?"

"Yeah," he said. "So what?"

"So you weren't hanging around onstage right the night your father was killed? Near the spot where his body was cut down?"

The boy stared at her, but his eyes were hidden from her return scrutiny by the sungla.s.ses. "No. Not until afterward."

"I saw you with your friends today before the performance," Auntie Lil said. "Examining the spot where they cut him down."

"So?" he said defensively, squirming in his seat.

"What were you doing?" she asked gently. "I heard some of the boys laughing."

"I wasn't laughing," he said.

"But what were you doing?" she persisted.

"We were just trying to figure out how he had been hung up that way," Mikey explained. "Why we didn't see him fighting back or hear him or anything." He might have been talking about a scene in a movie for all the emotion he displayed. Auntie Lil was not fooled. She wondered how long he would be able to keep it bottled up inside him.

"And the laughter?" she prompted.

Mikey sighed. "Just kid stuff. We were nervous. We were talking about hanging Pork Chop Puccinni next time around. We thought she'd be a good addition early on when Drosselmeyer first enters the party. It would make the scene so much more interesting. Drosselmeyer could reach out his boney old fingers for Clara and whap! Pork Chop's fat body could come flying across the stage and smack him in the face." He stretched out his hands to demonstrate. "I hated playing that part," he added. "Dad made me."

"Why?" Auntie Lil asked.

Mikey shrugged. His banana split arrived and he dug in with gusto, eating each section precisely in neat bites before proceeding to the next one. Auntie Lil watched the whipped cream disappear and one half of a banana before she spoke again. "Did he say why he wanted you to dance the part?"

"He wanted us to be in New York," Mikey explained. "And he thought it would do me good to sit a couple of months out, make people a little anxious that maybe I wasn't coming back. Might drive my price up. Do you know how much I get per movie now?" He raised his eyebrows expectantly.

"Yes, I do know," Auntie Lil said firmly, hoping to stop him before he could slip into his movie-star role. "Are you aware that your father pulled you out of a movie and broke a contract for you to do this?"

Mikey shrugged again. "It happens all the time. It was a dumb movie anyway. The story line treated me like a kid. Dad explained it all. It would have been bad for my image."

"Did you always do everything your dad told you to do?"

He had finished the other half of the banana and was carefully spooning hot fudge into his mouth. The lower half of his lip was smeared brown with the goo and this typical display of childishness was rea.s.suring to Auntie Lil. "I tried to," he finally said. "Dad knew what he was doing."

A young girl walked by dressed in seductive clothing far too old for her tender preadolescent years. Her blond hair was coiled on top of her head and she wore plenty of makeup, though Auntie Lil doubted she was even a teenager yet. Mikey watched her walk by with obvious appreciation. "Her skirt is up her b.u.t.t," he said, giggling, then eyed Auntie Lil for a reaction.

It reminded Auntie Lil of something: like father, like son. "Did your dad have many girlfriends?" she asked. "Did you meet any of them?"

Mikey wiggled his eyebrows theatrically. On the movie screen, it was cute. In person, it bordered on the obnoxious. "Dad was a stud. He had tons of girlfriends."

"How lovely for your mother," Auntie Lil murmured.

"They were divorced," he explained patiently, as if she were particularly dim-witted. "Guys are supposed to be studs," he added. "Besides, Dad said Mom was seeing someone new anyway. Except I can't figure out who it is."

Auntie Lil mumbled something under her breath and Mikey looked at her with interest. "What did you say?" he asked.

"Nothing," she replied. What she had said was that she hoped Nikki Morgan was dating a marine so he could help whip Mikey into shape.

"You don't like kids, do you?" Mikey asked as he sc.r.a.ped the last of the crushed pineapple from one end of his dish.

"No," Auntie Lil admitted. "I don't like children. Not that you seem like much of one to me."

"I'm very mature for my age," he explained matter-of-factly. "Most adults love me. Why don't you?"

"I don't like your att.i.tude," Auntie Lil replied. "You strike me as being a bit on the flippant side. Considering your father has been killed."

He sat back and stared at Auntie Lil. "Everyone thinks I should be boohooing," he said angrily. "I'm not going to cry unless I really feel like it." Auntie Lil shrugged, which only made him madder. "Why should I cry just because he got himself killed?" Mikey demanded. "It was his own fault. He was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g people right and left, everyone told me so. He was a shark, they would say, like it was such a great thing. I was the one who made all the money, but he was the one who got all the credit and he was the one who got to spend it. It wasn't fair. I didn't even like him very much." He thumped the backs of his heels against the seat with vicious energy and several people turned to stare.

"You didn't like your own father?" Auntie Lil asked quietly. "Are you sure that's true?"

"I know what I like and don't like," Mikey said belligerently. "Dad didn't care about me. He just thought I could make him rich. He never spent any time with me. He was always running off to dinner with some producer or taking some bimbo out for lunch or attending some reception where he knew there would be lots of girls with their b.o.o.bs hanging out of their dresses. He was always out having fun while I had to sit alone in some dumb hotel room watching movies on television. He wouldn't even let me go home and visit Mom and the others last Christmas. Said I had to stay and finish this stupid, stupid movie in Toronto. I hated him."

"No wonder," Auntie Lil said quietly.

"He just wanted to come to New York for some dumb old woman," Mikey said suddenly. "He acted like it was for my own good, but I heard him talking to her every night." His voice rose as he mocked his father, his eyes rolling up in his head as if he were in the throes of ecstatic love. "Don't worry, beautiful. I'll be there soon! We'll have hours together. He'll be too busy. He'll never notice. I have the perfect cover." Mikey finished his imitation and pushed his empty dish away grumpily. "He was a real jerk."

Auntie Lil stared at the young boy. His lower lip was pulled in tightly and his face was rigid. He was determined that no emotions escape. "Mikey," she said. "If you are ever in trouble, you can come to me for help."

"What do you mean by that?" he asked sullenly.

Auntie Lil shrugged. "If you ever want to talk to me about anything, or if you find yourself in trouble, just call me or come by my apartment. I'll help you if I can." She wrote her phone number and address down on a napkin and slid it across the table toward him. It was insurance against all the things she was sure he had not told her.

He stared at the napkin for a moment, then crumpled it up and stuffed it in a back pocket At least he hadn't thrown it on the floor-or blown his nose with it, as she had first feared.

Auntie Lil reached across the table and took his hands in hers, ignoring his attempts to pull away. "Mikey," she said, "your mother loves you very much. And she is angry and sorry for what happened to you over these past few years. She missed you while you were gone and now she's happy that you're back with the family where you belong. Why don't you let her help you right now? If you feel bad, she can make you feel better."

He tugged his hand away but could not stop the flush spreading up his face. "Of course I'll let her make me feel better," he said in a mocking tone. His voice dropped, growing serious. "She is my mother, you know. I'd do anything for her."

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

It had been a maddening week of missed phone calls for T.S. and Lilah. When he returned her call about the Metro-board mess, he got her answering machine. When she returned his return call, he had just stepped out with Auntie Lil. In his opinion, modern technology only meant modern frustration.

Thus, when Monday rolled around, T.S. made the decision to stay put. "I'm not going anywhere today," he told Auntie Lil. "I'm tired of traipsing all over Manhattan. I want to stay home with my cats and, yes, turn my brain to jelly watching television. Maybe I'll order in a deli sandwich for lunch. I may even put on a torn T-shirt and watch some more football."