A Question of Murder (15 page)

“Over my dead body,” said her father.

“Only the dead body wasn’t yours,” Carboroni said to Monroe. To Cynthia: “You ever hear your father threaten your finance?”

“My
what
?”

“Finance. The guy you were going to marry.”

“You mean fiancé,” Monroe said disgustedly.

“Yeah, whatever. Well, young lady?”

“My father hated Paul,” she replied. “It was no secret.”

“What’ve you got to say about that, Mr. Whittaker?” the detective asked.

“I may have disliked the boy, but not enough to commit murder.”

The actors turned as Victoria Whittaker entered the room. She was dressed in high style, more befitting attendance at a big-ticket society event than a murder investigation. She carried an oversized handbag, which she placed on a coffee table.

“Just the person I wanted to see,” Carboroni said.

“I’m afraid I only have a moment,” Victoria said, checking her appearance in a mirror. “I’m due at a luncheon.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you’ll have to change your plans,” Carboroni said. “I’ve got a dead body here and—”

Victoria sighed loudly enough to be heard at the rear of the theater. She gave her hair a final touch with her fingertips, went over to her handbag, opened it, and pulled out a revolver.

“Hey, lady, put that down,” Carboroni said.

“Yeah, lady, put that down,” Dolt echoed, eliciting a scowl from Carboroni.

“Here,” Victoria said, thrusting the weapon at Carboroni, who reacted by jumping back. “I assumed you might be looking for this.” She handed the gun to the detective and turned to her husband. “I’m terribly sorry, Monroe, dearest, but as the detective says, we do, after all, have a dead body to deal with.”

“Who owns this?” Carboroni asked.

“I, ah—I think it might be mine,” Monroe said.

“That so?” the detective said, turning the weapon over in his hands as though it might provide a visual clue. “You
think
it might be yours.
Think?
” He placed the end of the barrel to his nose and inhaled with gusto, causing some audience members to laugh. Carboroni turned to them and said, “This is no laughing matter.” He told Monroe, “This here weapon smells like it’s been fired recently.”

“If so,” Monroe said, “it wasn’t fired by me.”

Monroe now faced his wife, who was poised to leave for her luncheon. “Have you gone mad?” he demanded.

“Oh, darling,” she said, kissing his cheek, “don’t be angry with me. When Catarina showed me where you’d hidden this vile thing, I felt I hadn’t a choice but to do my civic duty and turn it over to the authorities.”

“Who’s Catarina?” Carboroni asked.

“Yeah, who is this Catarina?” Dolt asked.

“Shut up!” Carboroni growled.

“Catarina is our maid,” Victoria said. “She isn’t an especially thorough cleaner, but she’s pleasant enough—and, I might add, honest. Toodle-loo.” She flounced from the stage, bringing forth a smattering of applause. Cynthia ran after her.

Monroe started to leave the stage, too.

“You stay right here,” Carboroni ordered. He told Dolt to keep an eye on Monroe.

“Where are you goin’?” Dolt asked.

“To find this Catarina lady.” Carboroni said to the audience, “I got a feeling—just a hunch, but my hunches almost always are right—I got this hunch that this maid who don’t clean so good might have something v-e-r-y interesting to tell us.”

“I knew the maid had something to do with this,” a man in the audience said loudly to a team member as Carboroni left Dolt and Monroe onstage.

As the act continued, I observed the audience, who were paying rapt attention to the onstage business. The line between a theatrical production about murder and the actual thing had become remarkably blurred that weekend at Mohawk House. I didn’t know whether that was good or bad, only that while the farcical investigation was taking place among the actors and actresses, a very real investigation was under way.

I’d become so engrossed in the production, I hadn’t noticed that Detective Ladd had left my side and now stood at the rear of the auditorium, where he was engaged in what appeared to be a whispered conversation with Georgie Wick. She’d obviously enjoyed that miraculous cure her friend Harold Boynton had suggested. Was she confiding in Ladd about her supposed sighting of the fallen Paul Brody? If so, I thought, she was not likely to find a sympathetic ear. Ladd didn’t strike me as the sort who would believe in resurrected bodies and ethereal spirits. Neither did I, although I was not rigid enough in my beliefs to summarily dismiss such things simply because I hadn’t personally experienced them.

I decided to stay through the end of the second act. The silliness onstage was preferable to having to ponder true crime—a welcome diversion, if only for a few minutes. But as the actor playing Detective Carboroni had said to the audience, I, too, had a hunch—that pleasant diversions would be few and far between over the next couple of days. And like his, my hunches almost always prove to be true.

 

 

 

 

The rest of the second act went smoothly. I’ve always been impressed with the way the actors and actresses chosen by the Savoys were able to ad-lib, both onstage and with members of the audience. The scripts used in the productions, written by Melinda Savoy, were loosely constructed, leaving plenty of room for improvisation.

Carboroni returned to the stage with the maid, Catarina, in tow, and she histrionically overplayed the fear she was supposed to be experiencing at having to face her employer, the formidable Monroe Whittaker. It was all entertaining theater, and the audience enjoyed it immensely. The act ended with Catarina loudly denying that she’d found Monroe’s weapon and given it to his wife. There was more comic interplay between Carboroni and Dolt, broad, slapstick humor that had the onlookers laughing heartily. Of course, a Savoy production would not be complete without the actor who played the detective coming into the audience and questioning those who looked as though they might provide interesting, funny answers. The curtain closed with Catarina standing center stage and pleading for someone to come forward and help her. A couple of people started to do just that, but Larry Savoy stepped in front of them and announced, “Before you commit yourself to helping Catarina, think twice. She may not be the innocent young woman you think she is.” He started to put down the mike, then raised it to his mouth again and said, “Detective Carboroni and Officer Dolt will be making a special effort to interrogate more of you today. Be careful what you say—or
you
may end up in a pair of cold steel handcuffs.”

I slipped out of the auditorium the moment the curtain closed. I could find Larry later. I wanted to see where Georgie Wick and Detective Ladd had gone. They weren’t in the immediate vicinity, so I headed down a hallway in the direction of the private room Mark Egmon had provided for the detective. The door was shut when I approached, but I could hear Ladd’s voice and that of a woman through it. I looked around to ensure I was alone. Satisfied, I pressed my ear to the door and strained to hear what was being said. Ladd’s voice was the softer of the two; the woman’s was more clearly audible.

“. . . And, yes, I fired off the pistol when the script called for it,” she said.

“Where?”

“Offstage, in the hallway that leads backstage.”

“And you saw no one else in that vicinity?”

“No. I was alone and—”

“Ah, Jessica. Always with an ear to the ground—or in this instance, to the door.”

I turned to face John Chasseur. He was grinning, his pearly white teeth vivid against his tanned face.

“Goodness! You startled me,” I said.

“Eavesdropping, I see. Is that how you get information for your books?”

“On occasion,” I said, embarrassed to be caught.

The door opened. Detective Ladd looked from me to Chasseur, his quizzical expression asking the obvious question.

“I was just about to knock,” I said.

Ladd ignored me and asked Chasseur, “Something I can do for you?”

“As a matter of fact, there is,” Chasseur said. “No, to be more accurate, there’s something I can do for you.”

I looked past Ladd and saw Laura Tehaar, the young woman in charge of props and costumes for the Savoys, standing by the window. I already knew she was there, of course, by the snippets of conversation I’d heard through the door. She’d obviously been crying. She looked at me with wide, wet eyes.

Ladd started back into the room, stopped, turned and said, “Mrs. Fletcher, got a minute for me?”

“Of course.”

“Ms. Tehaar was just leaving.” Ladd said it loud enough for her to hear. She walked past us, a tissue pressed to her nose and mouth.

I followed Ladd into the room, Chasseur so close behind he was almost against me.

Ladd said, “Mr. Chasseur, maybe we can get together later today.”

“I thought you were a detective,” Chasseur said.

Ladd cocked his head and grimaced.

“I thought you’d benefit from some insight,” Chasseur said. “I’ve been keeping my eyes and ears open, and believe me, there are plenty of likely suspects. That’s one of the strengths of my novels. I develop suspects like nobody else in the business.”

“Sure,” said Ladd, “always happy to have input in a case. But right now I’ve got something to discuss with Mrs. Fletcher. Can you come back, say, in a half hour?”

“It might be possible,” Chasseur said, annoyed at being put off.

He turned to leave, but Ladd stopped him with, “By the way, I do have a question for you, Mr. Chasseur.”

“Do you? Maybe later.”

“Maybe now,” Ladd said. “Were you in the auditorium when the young man was killed?”

Chasseur screwed up his face in exaggerated thought. “Of course I was. Why?”

“I’ve been developing a list of people who were in the auditorium and those who might not have been.” Ladd said. “Most people have someone else to vouch for them, people on their teams, folks sitting next to them, things like that. I know Mrs. Fletcher was there because people said she was. Hard to miss a celebrity like her.”

His comment didn’t sit well with Chasseur, who frowned and pressed his lips tightly together.

“Well?” Ladd said. “Anyone with you in the theater when it happened?”

A forced laugh came from Chasseur. “I love it,” he said. “Making me a suspect. I’ll call my publicist in Hollywood. We can make some media hay out of this.”

“Yeah, you do that,” Ladd said. “In the meantime, if you come up with somebody who saw you there, let me know. Thanks for stopping by. See you in a half hour.”

Chasseur, still feigning amusement, left, and Ladd closed the door behind him. “Now, Mrs. Fletcher,” he said, “what’s with this friend of yours, Ms. Wick?”

“I’d hardly call her a friend, Detective. I just met her this weekend, although I have been a fan of her writing for quite some time. What are you getting at?” I remembered our previous conversation about GSB Wick when he’d indicated he found her a little strange.

“I had a talk with her this morning,” he said.

“Yes, I saw you two together.”

“She, ah—she told me something really weird.”

I smiled. “I assume you mean having seen Paul Brody’s ghost last night.”

“You know about that?”

“Yes. She told me, too.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And what do you make of it?”

I laughed and shrugged my shoulders. “I think that she has a vivid imagination, Detective. That’s one of the major strengths of her novels, her creativity. Plus, she sincerely believes in the supernatural.”

“Maybe she saw that earl who got his head cut off here years ago. Know what I think?” he said.

“Tell me.”

“I think she’s a loony. Gives me the creeps with that black hair and pale face. Looks like a ghost herself.”

“Oh, I think that’s unnecessarily harsh,” I said. “Frankly, I enjoy her way of looking at things. It’s different, and I’ve always appreciated people who use their imaginations to entertain us with a different view of our world—provided, of course, that they aren’t hurtful to others.”

I didn’t know whether or not he agreed with me because he didn’t say anything.

“I tried to reach her this morning,” I said, “to ask where exactly she thought she saw Mr. Brody.”

“I asked her.”

“What did she say?”

“She wasn’t really sure, but said it was on the third floor at the rear of the building. I popped up there to take a look myself. There are three rooms in a corner, separated from all the others on that floor. I figure they’re suites or something. Could have been any one of the three.” He gave me the room numbers.

“Well,” I said, “I’m sure there’s nothing to be concerned about. She thought she saw Paul, but it was probably someone else who reminded her of him.”

“And that’s just the thing.”

“What’s just the thing?”

“Ordinarily, I’d dismiss what she said as the ravings of a lunatic. Except—”

I waited.

“Except that she also told me she had this boy-friend back in New Orleans, an actor, who looked just like Brody.”

“She mentioned him to me, too,” I said. “Are you suggesting that she might have had a reason to shoot—to stab—Brody because of his resemblance to her former lover?”

“It crossed my mind,” he said.

“I have to admit, it crossed mine, too,” I said, “but I don’t really think she did it. She seems too timid for murder. But of course, I could be wrong. Have you found the murder weapon yet?”

“Still working on it,” he said. “Thanks for stopping by.”