Rehearsal for Murder (Maggie Ryan) (25 page)

“Maggie, I just hope I can pay you back someday, somehow! You’re a regular Good Samaritan!”

Her radiant smile beamed full on him. “Hey, glad to help, Buzz!” She tucked the bear in her briefcase and flew away down the street.

Steve really did stumble as he limped into the coffee shop. Maybe he should get some caffeine. He was weak with nervous excitement, thrilled at how smoothly the José Santos side of him was taking over, overcoming obstacles. Steve Bradford would never have been so ruthless. Steve Bradford’s plan involved a bystander who could prove himself innocent within hours. Not so Maggie. In one smooth, instinctive reaction Santos had added an inspired touch to the crude plan: the same unknown person who would be identified as the kidnapper by the Montessori staff was now picking up the ransom! It would create not just hours, but days of confusion! Steve congratulated himself.

Or rather, he congratulated José Santos.

Of course it was frustrating to have to wait for Maggie to take her baby to wherever she was going; but even so, this idea was brilliant.

In the coffee shop he ordered a cup, black.

Ramona’s lawyer, Ken Martin, turned out to be a tubby, red-faced giant who would have looked more appropriate in jeans driving a pickup truck in rural Appalachia than in his Manhattan lawyer’s pinstripes. It was clear from his sour expression that he hadn’t wanted to bring Simon Jenkins, who stood bristling at his side. “Now, just wait here, Simon,” he soothed the glaring Jenkins. “This won’t take long.”

“Don’t give them a thing!” Jenkins’s voice was blurred with grief or drink. Probably both, Nick decided.

“Just what we have to,” Martin agreed. “Now, sit down, Simon. We’ll be done soon.”

Nick glanced around the loft. Everyone was here except for Daphne and Jaymie. Too many sorrows today. He was suddenly very eager to be done with this, to start something new, to get away so he could grieve in quietness.

Martin addressed them crisply, his concise phrasing at odds with his comfortable farmer’s voice. “I know we are all deeply upset, so I’ll try to make the situation clear in brief. I have your checks. They are the last obligation that the producers have to you. You have already completed the last obligation you have to the producers. We wish you well. Are there any questions?”

Edith voiced the secret wild hope that they all had. “Mr. Martin, this is such a good show. Ramona believed in it. Don’t you think, with the right replacement, she’d want us to go on?”

Jenkins started to erupt but was stopped by Martin’s imperious hand. “The right replacement?” Martin bellowed. “For Ramona Ricci? My God, there is no one on this earth who could replace her!”

Taken aback by the unexpected attack, Edith could only gape at him. Martin drew a deep breath that traveled the long length of his pudgy shirtfront. He continued calmly, efficient again, “The producing corporation exists only to produce a musical
,
Victoria
R
, starring Ramona Ricci. So you see, a different legal entity would have to be created in order to do what you suggest. We can’t do that now.”

“You don’t think she’d want it to go on?” faltered Edith.

“What I think and what you think is irrelevant,” Martin rumbled. “In fact, what Ramona wanted is irrelevant. There is no suggestion in any legal document that this show is to continue. Are there any other questions?”

Derek pushed a strand of pale hair from his eyes and asked incredulously, “Nothing in the will either?”

This time even the massive Martin was unable to keep Jenkins in his seat. “You greedy little bastards! Isn’t it enough that you killed her? You want to take all her money too?”

Derek was short, pale, usually self-effacing, but today he leaped to his feet so angrily that Nick and Larry both grabbed at him to restrain the little Englishman, an enraged bull terrier charging unflinchingly at the snarling Great Dane. “If anyone in this bloody room killed her, it was you, Simon Jenkins! You think I didn’t hear about your plots to keep her off the stage? Your affairs that broke her heart? And when she tumbled to your little games, you had the bloody guns already planted for your revenge, didn’t you?”

Ken Martin had grasped Jenkins’s arm with both hands and was hauling him away from the livid Englishman, but Jenkins raged on. “Damn right I wanted to keep her away from the likes of you!” he stormed. “You think it’s easy for a man to see his wife run off to mingle with scum like you people? Ramona is a star! A goddess! She doesn’t need to wallow in the mud, doing a trashy two-bit show like this! I tried to tell her you only wanted her money. Tried to reason. But there was something—” Suddenly he seemed to run out of energy. Martin dragged him back to his chair, and Jenkins allowed himself to be pushed down, shaking his head, looking mystified at the scuffed floor as Martin made motherly clucking noises. “It was like a fire in her,” Jenkins murmured plaintively to Martin. “I’d think it had been put out, that I’d made her happy, and then it would flare up again.”

“I know, Simon.” His hand still resting on Jenkins’s shoulder, Martin turned back to Derek, who still stood fuming, held by Nick and Larry. The lawyer said, “In answer to your question, there is no provision in her will about the show, other than the stipulation that her debts be paid. Once that is done, the residual amount, which is to be divided equally between family and charity, is very small. Probably in the hundreds.” Derek, hopeless again, fumbled his way back into his chair, but Martin continued relentlessly. “There are commitments to costume designers, publicists, many others that must be paid. Your own union requires payments to your Welfare Fund and the Pension Fund. We have to pay you your rehearsal salaries, and also two weeks’ performance salary, though you never performed. It all adds up. Ramona invested her entire personal fortune into this show, but since there was no chance to recoup any of it through ticket sales, it has effectively vanished.”

Nick leaned wearily against one of the peeling columns. Was this what Ramona’s death meant, this sad haggling over money? But it was not just the money, he realized; it was the hopes and dreams they shared with her that had vanished. That was the real tragedy. Now she could never see her beloved show succeed, never give her husband the forgiveness he craved, never help the bucktoothed nun in Brooklyn save other young Ramonas. It left a sour taste in his mouth.

“Let’s have our money, then,” said Larry, tossing his jacket over his shoulder and straightening. Nick could almost see him switching compartments: close up the grief-for-Ramona compartment, concentrate on the financial one. But it took energy to keep life so neatly divided. Larry’s jaw muscles were knotted tight despite his relaxed stance.

“Very well,” said Martin.

Derek said, “Daphne couldn’t be here, and Jaymie isn’t here either. I’ll take their checks for them.”

“The hell you will!” burst out Simon Jenkins, but this time he didn’t stand up.

“Daphne asked me to get it for her!” Derek was on the verge of attack again too, his hands clenched.

“I’m sorry,” said Martin smoothly, a wary eye on the explosive Jenkins. “I can give checks only to the people named.”

“Well, Daphne will come to me for it!”

“You’ll have to tell her it’s at my office, then, Mr. Morris.”

“Lovely,” muttered Derek; but he leaned back in his chair.

Martin called out their names and distributed the checks, then arranged with Derek for the return of tapes and scores that Ramona had in her possession. At last he escorted the glooming Jenkins from the loft. Nick glanced at his watch as the others dispiritedly collected their things and began to plod out. Four forty. End of chapter. Time to move on.

XV

Friday, 4:45 PM

March 9, 1973

Maggie’s glowing eyes and airy step contrasted so with the departing tide of the disheartened cast that she seemed to have arrived from a different, more ethereal, world. He had to smile. “O spirit of love! How quick and fresh art thou!”

“Quick is right! Nick, hurry, take Sarah! The game’s afoot!”

“What game?”

“You did reach Elaine Bradford?”

“Yes. She should have Muffin back by now.”

“Well,” said Maggie, “Mr. Bradford-Hartford wants me to run another errand. I’m to take this bear and trade it for another one, and then deliver that bear to him.”

“Damn, Maggie, you don’t mean to do it!”

“Of course I do! Here, take the baby.”

“Maggie, you idiot!” Grabbing her arm, he led her out of earshot of the few remaining people. “This is the ransom pickup!”

“I know! Nick, listen, it’s clear—well, mostly clear—what he’s up to. He tricks me into picking up Muffin and tricks me into picking up the ransom. I pass it to him, and he disappears while the police follow me.”

“So why the hell cooperate?” Automatically he was strapping on the baby carrier.

“Well, suppose instead I follow him? The police track me, I track him, and we all find out what he’s up to. Whatever it is, he’s got to do it soon, because once Muffin is back and the police pick me up for questioning, he knows it won’t be too long before they’ll want to question him.”

“Maggie, I don’t like it. You’ve been set up—”

“Nick, I’ve got to! Look, that prick tricked me into helping kidnap a helpless little girl.” Her eyes flamed blue with anger. “And he’s going to pay for that!”

“Let me go, then!”

“No, he’d know there was a problem if I didn’t show up. Tell you what. If I run into trouble, I’ll head back here.”

“I’d rather watch.”

“But Sarah mustn’t be there. The Ming Bazaar is only a block and a half from here. If it looks like Steve knows I’m following him, or if anything makes me uneasy, I’ll run right back here, okay? You can hang around and be ready to do your famous US Cavalry impersonation if I come running. Otherwise I’ll just quietly track him and lead the police to his lair. Wonder if it’s that apartment?”

“You’re making me lose faith in the good sense of the American mother,” grumbled Nick.

“Yeah, I was thinking about that,” said Maggie cheerfully. “Maybe if I weren’t a mother, I could just say, ‘Ooh, how awful,’ and forget it. But little girls are important.”

“Yeah.” Nick had taken Sarah, who was half asleep, looking around dopily. He needed no convincing; this blinking, drooling creature was possibly the most important thing there was. And then there was Maggie. Not your ordinary American mother or wife or statistician. She was unique, unpigeonholed. A woman who relished love, duty, and adventure, all three. A woman who could even relish marriage to an actor. Who could understand the fire inside that baffled Jenkins, because she had fires of her own. “Well,” said Nick, “I’ll be watching. I insist. But from a distance. And we’ll meet here if things get iffy.”

“Okay.”

“But before you go, there are a couple of things that I wanted to ask about.”

Suddenly focused on him, she searched his face, the eager anticipation of her plan switching to concern for him. “Nick, I’m sorry. Something else has happened, hasn’t it?”

“Callie was killed. Daphne’s niece.”

“Oh, God! The older one, right?”

“Yes. She was bringing her little sister to meet Daphne, to go to the hearing. Someone in a ski mask shot her in the subway transfer tunnel.”

“
Merd
e
!” Maggie sagged into one of the folding chairs, long legs stretched before her, brow contracting in grief and dismay. “Why? Why the hell would anyone shoot a kid? It looked like a mugging, I suppose?”

“Yeah. But …” Nick shrugged.

“Exactly: But.” Maggie leaned forward, pulled her feet under her, put her elbows on her knees and her chin in her fist. Rodin. “Nick, it’s too unlikely. Maybe she knew something—she was here the night Ramona was shot.”

“Right.” Nick detached Sarah’s fist from his nose and set her carefully on the platform to coo at the ceiling. “And I wonder if it fits with something else I thought of. About Ramona. I saw the toy pistols for the assassination scene in the prop box and remembered that Victoria wasn’t killed. I wondered if maybe we were going at things the wrong way around. I mean, maybe the shooting was on purpose, but not the killing. Maybe she was only supposed to be wounded.”

A breeze from the open window, cool in the late sunlight and bearing tidings of bacon in Anna Maria’s coffee shop downstairs, stirred Maggie’s dark curls. “So the waist really was the target!” she exclaimed. “To get her out of the way, but just temporarily. So she wouldn’t cut the solo, maybe. Or would rethink filing for divorce.”

“Yes.”

“That’s good, Nick. That explains a lot. And Callie—well, suppose she noticed something. She was here that night. She’d become a serious danger for the gunman when Ramona died and the charges became murder.”

“Just what I was thinking. Yesterday she was bragging that she knew something about Ramona, but Daphne shut her up.” He shook his head. “But this idea doesn’t explain how the man Perez is holding got the gun.”

“Found it in a trash can, I imagine, just as he claims. Even junkies probably tell the truth sometimes. In any case he couldn’t have killed Callie if he was locked up.” She glanced at her watch. “Nick, together with what you were saying about the black gloves—well, we’ve got to talk about this soon!”