13 - Knock'em Dead (18 page)

“Physically? I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Look like anybody you know?”

“No. Average looking, height, weight. Slender build. Gray hair worn in a long, thick ponytail to make him appear younger than he is. Nondescript clothing. Big smile, when he chooses to display it. Very verbal. Jenny Forrest did a scene while I was there.”

“One of his pet students.”

“How do you know that?”

“Just what I hear. Did she perform well?”

“Yes.” I told him of her nasty comment to me at the end of her performance.

“She’s nuts.”

“Undoubtedly.”

I took note that the yellow crime scene ribbon keeping people from the backstage area where I had discovered Harry Schrumm’s body had been removed.

“Feel like revisiting the scene of the crime?” Hayes asked.

“All right.”

I left my half-eaten sandwich on a seat and followed him backstage to the hallway leading past the offices and to the prop and costume room, dressing rooms, and stage door. Being there again created an eerie feeling, bringing back memories of that day when I walked the hall in search of Linda Amsted. The bulbs above the shadowy twenty-foot section were still out, and that dim, gloomy stretch of hallway was as unpleasant as I remembered it.

“This is where I saw the ghost of Marcus Drummond,” I said lightly.

“Wearing a hat and smoking a pipe?” Hayes asked.

“Wearing a—? No. Is he supposed to?”

“That’s the way they found him all those years ago, very dead, and with a hat on his head and a pipe in his mouth.”

“A hat and a pipe,” I said flatly. “Harry Schrumm was wearing a hat and had a pipe in his mouth when I found him.”

“The same hat and pipe used by the actor playing the father in your play.”

“You aren’t suggesting some strange, psychic connection, are you, between the murders of Marcus Drummond and Harry Schrumm?” I said.

“No.”

He stopped. “How about retracing your steps the day you found Schrumm, Jessica.”

“All right. Let’s see. I looked in this office first, I think. This was Schrumm’s office.”

“Looked in it for Linda Amsted.”

“Correct. This next office belongs to the tech director. I checked it, too.”

“And after that?”

“I approached the three large rooms at the end of the corridor, the two dressing rooms, and the prop and costume room.”

We went to them.

“I noticed that the doors to the dressing rooms were closed, but the door to props and costumes was cracked open. That’s why I decided to go into it.”

This time, the door was wide open, and we entered. “The shoe was under this costume rack,” I said. “I reached down to straighten it—see how all the shoes are lined up so neatly?—and realized there was a foot in it. That’s when I moved the rack and discovered Harry Schrumm.”

Hayes pulled on his nose and grunted.

“The hat the killer had propped on his head fell off while I was looking at him. That how I noticed the bruise on his temple.”

“Which killed him,” Hayes muttered.

“It did? He was killed by a blow to the head?”

“According to the medical examiner. He was dead when the knife was shoved into his chest.”

I sat on a low stool used by the seamstress when adjusting costumes for the cast.

“What does that tell you, Jessica?”

“It tells me that the motive for killing him is different than if the knife had been the cause of death. Ramming a knife into someone is, I think, a more deliberate act than hitting someone on the head. Not always, of course, but in general. You plunge a knife into someone’s chest with the intent to kill. When you hit someone on the head, you don’t necessarily intend death.”

“I agree. Go on.”

“It seems to me that—why are you asking me these questions?”

“Oh, just to see what sort of detective a mystery writer makes.”

“How am I doing?”

“Great.”

“It wasn’t the Broadway serial killer who murdered Harry Schrumm, was it?”

“I think not.”

“It was someone who wanted the police to think it was?”

He nodded. “That’s a pretty safe bet.”

“Which means—”

He looked directly at me. “Which means it was probably someone connected with
Knock ’Em Dead.”

He was right, of course, and I wasn’t at all pleased with the conclusion. Until that moment, I’d never considered someone from the play being a suspect. Yes, there was the unbalanced Jenny Forrest who’d been fired, and Linda Amsted’s alibi had been questioned. And Harry Schrumm had lots of enemies within the ranks.

“Lieutenant Hayes, I’m afraid I’m going to need a little time to accept this new thesis.”

“Sure.”

“I assume you’ll start again questioning everyone connected with the show.”

“Detective Vasile has already started the process. But we’ll be doing it casually, as though it’s just routine follow-up.”

“Why?”

“Because I want everyone to believe it was the serial killer who murdered Schrumm.”

“Because they’ll be less on their guard that way?”

“Exactly.”

I fell in behind him as he left the room and rounded the comer to the stage door. Vic Righetti had been replaced by a uniformed security guard hired by Peter Monroe, the theater manager. The guard, who sat at a small table just inside the door, stood as we approached.

“Hello, Lieutenant,” he said.

“Hello, Warren. This is Jessica Fletcher. She wrote the book this play is based upon.”

Warren, a short, squat man with a round Irish face, smiled and shook my hand.

“Everything quiet?” Hayes asked.

“Sure.”

Hayes said to me, “Everyone involved with the production has been issued an ID this morning. No one enters the theater without showing it to Warren, or to the other guard in front.”

“I don’t have one,” I said.

“Oh, here.” He handed me a laminated card from his pocket.

“Thank you.”

“Buy you a cup of coffee?” Hayes asked Warren, who immediately got the hint—Hayes wanted him to leave for a few minutes. He walked away. Hayes opened the stage door to allow a cold wind to intrude.

“You said the door was open when you found Schrumm.”

“That’s right, although I didn’t see it. I felt a breeze, which I assumed was coming through the door.”

“I’m sure you were right. So Vic, the regular doorman, is asked to vacate for a few hours by a man who hands him two hundred dollars, ostensibly so that this unnamed man can meet someone without being observed. Vic goes down the street to Rafferty’s, flashes his newfound wealth, and does a little drinking. During his absence, Schrumm is murdered, perhaps by whoever he was meeting.”

“That scenario makes sense to me. The logical assumption is that it was Schrumm who paid Vic the money.”

“But if Schrumm was killed by someone connected with the play, why would he go to such lengths to meet privately? The cast and crew routinely enter and exit the theater through the stage door. And if Schrumm didn’t want anyone to know he was meeting with this anonymous person, why bother setting it up here at the Drummond? Why not meet in a hotel lobby, a restaurant, or at his apartment?”

“I don’t have an answer to that.”

“Neither do I. Just thinking out loud.”

He narrowed his eyes as he said, “Here’s what I want you to do, Jessica.”

“I didn’t realize I was supposed to do anything.”

“Excuse my abruptness. Here’s what I’d
like
you to do. Everyone working on
Knock ’Em Dead
knows you and I have been talking a lot. Makes sense to them, I suppose, a world-famous mystery writer getting friendly with a detective. At any rate, if you assure them that the police have absolutely no doubt that it was the Broadway serial killer who murdered Schrumm, that will accomplish what I’m after, a cast of suspects who aren’t on edge whenever Vasile or I speak with them.”

“I’m willing to do that. By the way, I did mention to the Factors that there might be a break in the serial murderer case.”

“And?”

“They wanted to know more, of course, but since I didn’t know more, I couldn’t tell them.”

“Good. Keep that rumor circulating with everyone.”

“Rumor?
It isn’t true?”

“Let’s just say it should provide comfort for them, knowing we’re getting closer to nailing the serial killer. I feel good making people comfortable.”

“What if the press gets wind of it?”

“They already have. The commissioner held a press conference at two this afternoon to announce we’ve developed significant leads in the case.”

“To make people comfortable.”

“You might say that. Go on back and enjoy the rehearsal. Looks to me as though your new producer, Mrs. Factor, is whipping the troops into shape for previews and opening night.”

Although I had not become fond of Arnold and Jill Factor over the past six months, I had to admit that Jill seemed to be working wonders with the cast and crew of
Knock ’Em Dead.
The bickering and backbiting had ebbed, and Cyrus Walpole had the actors and actresses working together smoothly, even with the never-ending stream of rewrites from Aaron Manley’s laptop computer.

Walpole called a break at four; rehearsal would resume again at four-thirty. April Larsen joined me in the darkened theater.

“Looks like it’s shaping up,” I said.

“It is going a little better,” she said, sighing and twirling a strand of hair that had fallen over her forehead.

“Mrs. Factor seems to know what she’s doing.”

April looked at me as though I’d just claimed the earth was flat. She smiled sweetly and said, “Spoken like a true Broadway neophyte.”

I ignored the pettiness of the comment and said, “I was speaking with Lieutenant Hayes before. He told me the police commissioner announced at a press conference this afternoon that there’s been a break in the Broadway serial killer’s case.”

“Bully for them,” April said. “Maybe we’ll find out who did mankind a service by killing Harry.”

I couldn’t help but grimace at the cruelty of the statement.

“That may sound callous,” she added, “but then again you never really did get to know the great Harry Schrumm.”

“You have pretty strong feelings about him,” I said. “But I suppose all the troubles the two of you had back in Hollywood are behind them.”

“You know about that?”

“I recently learned of it. All I’m trying to do is come up with reasons why you would be so negative about him to the extent of not caring that he was murdered.”

“Jessica,” she said, placing her fingertips on my arm and adopting the tone of a teacher about to deliver a complicated lesson, “Harry Schrumm lived his life as an unprincipled bastard. He didn’t care about anything or anyone except Harry Schrumm. He stole, he lied, he destroyed careers.
That
sort of person is seldom mourned.”

“But he also made careers, didn’t he?”

“Hired people to appear in his shows? Yes. Made careers? Hardly.”

“Yet with all the bad feelings between you and Harry, he reached out for you to star in this play, and you readily accepted.”

“It’s called being pragmatic. The character you created, Samantha, is a juicy one. This play, if handled properly, will be a Broadway smash and run for a very long time. I needed the work. When Harry called, my first instinct was to yell a few obscenities at him and hang up. But he can be as charming and persuasive as I can be practical and hard-nosed. He wanted me for Samantha, and I needed a decent role. It’s the definition of a good deal. We both got what we were after. Excuse me. Nature calls.”

As I watched her walk away, I realized that I was now looking at everyone connected with Knock ’Em Dead from a very different perspective. Until an hour ago, I saw the cast and crew as nothing more than creative professionals bringing my book to life on a Broadway stage. Now, after my conversation with Lieutenant Hayes, they were all suspects in the murder of Harry Schrumm. Every one of them.

Was April Larsen’s hatred of Schrumm sufficient to have prompted her to kill him? That was a possibility, although it didn’t make sense for her to do away with the man who handed her what she considered a juicy starring role on Broadway. Then again, it was always possible that Schrumm had thrown her some sort of a curve that sent her into a rage.

Wendell Watson had taken to sitting a few rows in back of me whenever we were at the theater and had been there when I spoke with April. He now joined me.

“She seems like a real nice lady,” he said.

“Very nice,” I said, not as convinced as I sounded.

“You know who I don’t like?”

I was surprised there was anyone he would dislike and that he would feel free to express it.

“Who, Wendell?”

“Her.” He pointed at Jill Factor.

“Why?”

“I heard her say something to one of the actresses about me.”

“What did she say?”

“She said she wished that dumb hick wasn’t always hanging around.”

“That’s not very kind.”

“I sure didn’t take kindly to it.”

“I don’t blame you, Wendell. But try to forget about it. Sheriff Metzger and the others from Cabot Cove will be here in a day. You’ll enjoy yourselves and forget about comments like that.”

“I’ll try,” he said.

“Could we please get started?” Jill Factor shouted from the stage. To Cy Walpole: “Would it be asking too much for the director to exercise some control over his cast and start directing again?”

“I gave them a break,” Walpole protested weakly.

“And I’ve ended the break. Places everyone! We’ll take it from the top.”

I left my seat and went to the stage apron as the cast meandered into place. Peter Monroe, the Drummond’s manager, came from the rear of the house and handed Walpole an envelope. “This was just delivered for you,” he said.