Blackbird 10 - A Little Night Murder (12 page)

“Somebody will hear you,” Lexie warned, low voiced.

“This piano is out of tune. And judging by the dust, nobody has played it for a long time.”

She noticed my frown. “So?”

“Everybody has told us that Jenny played the piano. But she obviously didn’t play this one.”

“Maybe she played the baby grand downstairs?”

“Maybe,” I said. “There must be a bunch of pianos in this house.”

“Why do you want to know what piano she used?”

My thoughts were jumbled, and I tried to make sense of all my impressions. “Things don’t add up, Lex. Fred seems to be the only one who’s sorry Jenny is gone, yet it looks as though somebody might have hit him. Why? And this Tuttle musical is going to be big and important, but the backer of the show isn’t anywhere to be seen. Why again? I was told Toodles would never have left unproduced music behind, but there’s scads of it here. Plus, Boom Boom is blue, for heaven’s sake, but nobody around here seems to notice! And we’ve heard how much Jenny played the piano, but if she wasn’t playing for rehearsals and she didn’t play in this room, where did she go?” I turned to my friend. “This house is exactly like yours. Where could we find another piano? The basement?”

Frowning, she shook her head. “A basement is too damp for an instrument. And the attic is probably too dry. And the rooms in the service wing are all too small. Why are you so concerned about what piano she was using?”

“I don’t know. I just— Everything seems muddled.”

She said suddenly. “The folly!”

“There’s a folly?”

“The little building out behind the house. My great-grandfather and his brother loved classical architecture. Out behind my pool house, there’s a kind of miniature Roman temple. It’s where my mother keeps all the pool furniture in the winter.”

I went to the window and tweaked the shade aside. I could see down into the back terrace, where the chorus line appeared to be taking a break. The dancers lounged on the serpentine stone wall,
all fanning themselves with their top hats. Beyond the rehearsal terrace, I could see the rotunda roof of the folly as it poked up from behind a thicket of trees. It looked like the kind of place where vestal virgins awaited their fate.

At my shoulder, Lexie said, “We’ll never get there without somebody noticing.”

From downstairs, we suddenly heard angry voices rise.

Lexie said, “If that’s reporters, I better make myself scarce.”

I went straight to the door and listened before opening it. I recognized one of the voices. Bridget O’Halloran’s.

Lexie and I left the bedroom as we had found it and hurried toward the landing. Cautiously, we peered over the staircase to the foyer below. Bridget was pushing her way into the house.

“Y
ou can’t come barging in here!” a girlish voice cried indignantly.

“You can’t stop me, babycakes.” Bridget’s deeper voice carried easily from the front hall. “Where’s Mr. Oxenfeld? He said he wanted to see me dance today.”

Tiny Poppy Fontanna stood squarely in Bridget’s path, creating a small but determined blockade. The diminutive dancer’s face was pink with anger, and her small frame vibrated with outrage. “Mr. Oxenfeld isn’t here. Besides, we are in the middle of rehearsal. You can’t interrupt.”

“What’s the matter, short stuff? You afraid of a little competition?” Bridget cut around Poppy and stalked into the house, her heels clicking sharply on the marble floor. She looked like an Amazon, dressed in a tight white skirt with a zebra-print blouse tied at her trim waist.

“It would hardly be a fair competition,” Poppy said. “You’re a complete amateur. I have twenty years of experience on the stage.”

Bridget swung around, eyes narrowing with raptor intensity. “I thought you were some kind of chorus girl. Now you want the lead role?”

“Boom Boom is playing the lead,” Poppy snapped with pride. “I’ll be her understudy.”

“Understudy? You mean the one who sits backstage and never gets to shine?”

From above, I saw the gleam of ambition in Poppy’s face and knew she had two key things figured out: first, that Boom Boom Tuttle might make a grab for the lead role in her husband’s musical, and second, that Boom Boom was too old to actually go on stage. Poppy planned on opening the Broadway show herself.

Primly, Poppy said, “I’ll do what’s best for the show.”

Bridget made a rude noise and poked her long forefinger into Poppy’s chest. “What’s best for this show is me. Jenny Tuttle told me so herself.”

Poppy was full of scorn. “When did you ever meet Jenny Tuttle? At a rest stop on the Jersey Turnpike?”

“She got out more than you think,” Bridget said. “On Friday nights, she was the first one at the bar at Del Marco’s Crab Paradise—where I was the headliner all last winter. She heard me do my set. Said I’d be great in
Bluebird of Happiness
.”

“If that crazy story is true, how come you haven’t been rehearsing with us?”

“Because Jenny said she had to keep her old lady happy for a while—until she raised enough dough to get the show off the ground.”

“We don’t have the money yet. So you can shove off, lady.”

Bridget gave Poppy a little push. “I’m here to claim my role, short stuff. So back off.”

A red flush crept up the dancer’s neck, and Poppy batted Bridget’s hand away. “Jenny doesn’t have anything to say about this show anymore. Go back to your crabs.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Bridget intended to give Poppy’s poofy hair a derisive flick of her fingernail, but she must have flicked harder than planned. The hair suddenly bounced off and hit the floor, exposing Poppy’s bare head. Without her wig, only thin white strands of hair barely covered her pale skull.

Poppy shrieked with rage, steam almost bursting from her ears.

Lexie and I were halfway down the staircase, hoping to break up a girl fight before it started. On the bottom step, Lexie shoved me out of the fray and made a leap to grab Poppy just as she launched herself at Bridget with her claws bared.

Bridget took advantage of Lexie’s inadvertent help by taking a roundhouse slap at Poppy’s face.

At that moment, who should come through the open door but Michael. He grasped the situation instantly and lunged to stop his mother.

As if in slow motion, I saw Bridget swing her hand at Poppy just as Michael seized her other arm. Bridget couldn’t stop her forward motion, however, and the blow came around and connected hard with Michael’s face. His head snapped back, but he also had the self-control to pull his mother close and subdue her before she could inflict any more violence.

In the following heartbeat of silence, I picked up Poppy’s wig from the floor and handed it to her.

Poppy snatched her trademark blond hair from me, her face a mask of fury. “I’m calling the police!”

She jammed the wig sideways on her head, stalked around us and disappeared up the stairs.

“Jeez, Bridget,” Michael said as he released his mother, “you can’t go around hitting people. You’re going to get yourself arrested.”

“I didn’t hit
her
. I accidentally hit you.” Huffy, she straightened her zebra blouse. “And you’re not going to press charges.”

“Give me a minute to think about that,” Michael said.

I said, “Let’s get out of here before the police show up again.”

When we got back to Lexie’s house, Michael and Bridget retreated to the far end of Lexie’s patio for a private discussion. As I relieved Samir of babysitting, my cell phone rang. I sat down on one of the lounge chairs and answered. I plugged one ear to block out Bridget’s strident voice.

“Where are you?” Gus demanded. “We needed you here four hours ago!”

“It’s Friday. I don’t go into the office on Fridays because I have so many evening events.”

“Don’t you know that putting in time at your desk will get you ahead in your career?”

“You ran the photograph,” I said, already guessing the cause of his temper, “and now all hell has broken loose.”

“I never took you for an I-told-you-so kind of person. But yes, our phones have been ringing off the hook. I’ve declared all hands on deck until the calls slow down.”

“All your callers are claiming to be Tuttle heirs and demand their rightful inheritance?”

“The stories have small variations, but they all want money, yes. Don’t gloat. I’ll admit I was unprepared for the number of phone calls from avaricious opportunists. One money-grubber in particular says he won’t speak with anybody but you.”

“Who is he? What does he want?”

“He wants to talk to you!” Gus roared. “So call him!”

“Do you have a number where I can reach him?”

Gus reeled off the phone number, and I scrambled to jot it down on my pad. I said, “Have you reversed it? Tried to find out who this number is registered to?”

“I’m a journalist,” Gus snapped. “Of course I tracked down the bloke. His name is David James Kaminsky. He’s a
twenty-eight-year-old schoolteacher in rural Delaware. He owes fifty thousand dollars in student loans and four thousand dollars on a used Volvo. No speeding tickets, no arrests. No guns registered to him. As a side business, he makes zithers.”

I thought I’d heard wrong. “Zithers?”

“Which he sells at something called a Ren Faire.” Gus spelled that part for me. “In other words, he’s an average American nut-job, so he’s probably safe. Call him.”

Gus slammed down his phone.

I punched in the phone number for David Kaminsky and got a voice-mail system. I said, “This is Nora Blackbird, returning your call to the
Intelligencer
.” I gave him my phone number and disconnected.

From his bassinette, Noah gave a sigh and then a squawk, so I picked him up. “Don’t become a reporter, okay? Think about becoming a minister. Or a librarian. Something quiet.”

He jammed both fists in his grinning mouth and gurgled. But raised voices caught his attention, and he turned around in my arms to watch Michael and his mother renew their disagreement. Before it escalated any further, I gathered Noah closer and took him inside to change his diaper and warm him some milk.

In the breakfast room, Lexie and Samir stood at the window, watching from a safe distance while Michael and his mother hashed out their differences.

“She hit him again,” Lexie reported.

Samir added, “She ought to be doing that lady wrestling show on TV. You know, the one where they tear each other’s clothes off and try to beat each other’s heads against the floor?”

Lexie and I exchanged concerned glances. Maybe her self-imposed house arrest was having a deleterious effect on Samir, too.

At that moment, Bridget stormed off toward the Tuttle house, where she’d left her car. Michael paced around the pool for a few
minutes before he came inside. His left eye was puffing up already. Lexie handed him an ice pack. Noah stopped swinging his bare foot to give Michael a long, puzzled stare.

To all of us, Michael said, “Sorry. She gets a little out of control sometimes.”

“It must have been interesting,” Lexie said, “growing up with her.”

“I didn’t grow up with her.” He applied the ice pack to his eye.

When I knew my voice would sound normal, I said, “I have to go in to work early. It seems the switchboard at the paper is swamped with phone calls, so I’m needed. Can you drive me to the train?”

“I’ll drive you into the city,” Michael said.

“No, Noah shouldn’t spend all his waking hours in a car seat.” I handed the baby into Michael’s arm and the sippy cup, too. “Take him home. Play with him. I’m perfectly happy riding the train.” I turned to go upstairs but hesitated. “Michael, did Bridget tell you she knew Jenny Tuttle? They met at a crab shack where Bridget sings on Friday nights.”

“No, she didn’t tell me.” He gave up on the ice pack and held the sippy cup for Noah. His expression was uneasy. “How long have they known each other?”

“Maybe you could ask Bridget?”

“Before the police do,” he agreed.

I went upstairs to change out of Libby’s superpower T-shirt and into one of my grandmother’s flirty A-line go-go dresses from back in the day when she partied with Ali MacGraw. Grandmama had bought a few choice couture pieces for the years after having her own children when she hadn’t quite regained her figure. This one was a pink and tangerine Pucci print, off one shoulder. I had barely enough room for my baby bump in the front, which gave me a
butt-hugging figure in the back. I hoped the perky geometric print and my bare shoulder might distract attention from the faults of the dress. I borrowed a squirt of Lexie’s lotion to bring out a shine on my shoulder, touched up my lipstick and gave my hair a jolt of hairspray to create some spikes out of the bun at the crown of my head—another distraction from my size.

Back downstairs, I thanked Lexie for her hospitality, and Michael and I took the baby outside, where Michael had parked another gigantic vehicle—this one a monster painted with desert camouflage and with
HUMMER
printed on its hood.

“Michael, this one is literally a tank! I can’t reach to put Noah in his car seat!”

“I’ll help,” Michael said, but even he had trouble getting Noah buckled in. He finally managed to settle the baby, then hoisted me up into the passenger seat, saying, “It’s not a tank. It’s a soft skin—no armor. It might be a little inconvenient to get in and out of, but this one is really safe.”

“Safe can’t be our only criterion,” I said when he had climbed behind the wheel and fired up the noisy engine. “What’s wrong with a nice minivan? With cup holders and good gas mileage and a backup camera so we don’t bump into anybody at a Little League game?”

“I can’t be seen driving a minivan!”

“Why not?”

“Because I run the Abruzzo family!”

“I thought you were shutting down the Abruzzo family. Now suddenly you’re Tony Soprano again?”

“That’s not what I— For the benefit of the local punks, I’m now the top of my family tree. They’re supposed to be afraid of me, not laughing about what I drive.”

“Why do they have to be afraid of you?”

“Because that’s the way intimidation works.”

“Intimidation?” I cried. “Michael, what are you doing? Have you hurt somebody?”

“Do you really have to ask me that? Look, I can’t go around driving something silly. I’m a mob boss, not working at a Verizon store at the mall!”

We had both raised our voices. Before I could answer, Noah gave a whimper from the backseat. I turned around to look at him, and his lower lip was quivering. Huge tears trembled in his eyes. His parents argued in front of him, and now we were doing the same thing. Pretty soon shouting was going to be a normal part of his life.

I collected myself. With a reassuring smile, I stretched around and gave the baby his pink bunny to play with.

“There must be a happy medium when it comes to cars,” I said, endeavoring to erase any trace of the annoyance from my tone when I turned around again. “We should have something that doesn’t straddle two time zones.”

“Okay, I’ll keep looking.” Michael sent a chastened glance in the mirror at Noah.

“And we’re going to have to figure out a different way of disagreeing.”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry, but yelling is still my default option. I’ll work on it.”

“It’s not just you,” I said. “I’ll work on it, too.”

We had reached the bottom of the lane that connected Lexie’s driveway with the route up to the Tuttle house. I craned around to see if Ox Oxenfeld’s Bentley had reappeared in front of the house. It hadn’t. And Bridget O’Halloran’s white convertible was gone.

As Michael turned the Hummer toward the train station, I said, “How determined is your mother to get a role in the Tuttle show?”

“Not any role. The lead role. She’s obsessed.”

“Obsessed enough to threaten Jenny?”

“As far as I can tell, it’s Boom Boom she’s fixated on. If Boom Boom was dead, I’d be figuring a way to get Bridget to a country with favorable extradition laws.”

I decided against immediately telling Michael about the letter I’d found in Jenny’s nightstand. “Boom Boom does seem a much more likely target. A lot of people want her out of the picture.”

Intrigued, Michael said, “Like who?”

“Poppy Fontanna, for one. She wants to play the lead in the show, too. At the moment she’s settling for the understudy, but I think she’s only biding her time. Poppy has a temper and isn’t afraid to throw a punch. And remember how Ox Oxenfeld reacted when he heard that Jenny was dead? He turned white and ran out of the room.”

“Not just because he wanted to get away from my mother?”

“That’s possible, too,” I said amicably. “But I thought he was genuinely worried about what Jenny’s death meant to the future of the musical.”

“I got the same vibe,” Michael said. “What about the piano man? Fred.”

“He’s the only one who seems genuinely upset about Jenny’s death. That’s sad, isn’t it? She didn’t leave much of an impression behind.”