Murder: The Musical (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery, #5) (12 page)

Wetzon laughed. “Oh, sure.”

“Don’t laugh. Izz has a sixth sense about people.”

Voices rose again in the other room along with sounds of thumping.

“It’s not a question of money ...”

“What then?”

“I’m not a detective.”

“But you know how to do it. Even though we haven’t seen each other in a lot of years, I trust you. I think you’ll tell me the truth.” Susan’s face was bleak. Wetzon found herself responding to the desperate appeal in Susan’s teary eyes.

She asked slowly, “What do you think the truth is, Susan?”

“That Mort killed Dilla.”

“Mort? Good God, Susan, not Mort. Never! He’s a bully and a coward, but he’s not a killer.”

“Leslie, have you ever wanted to kill someone?”

Wetzon picked up her cup; her hand trembled and she set it down. Smith’s latest lover, Richard Hartmann, would be at the top of Wetzon’s death list. “Yes, but I wouldn’t. What about you?”

The commotion on the other side of the apartment commenced again, only louder this time, along with more thumping. Glass shattered. Izz sailed off Susan’s lap and raced out of the room yelping, tail down.

“Oh, damn them to hell! Excuse me.” She left Wetzon in the kitchen. The volume of shouting increased.

Wetzon poured herself another cup of tea and took a scone. A single bite told her it was slightly stale. She rose, looking around. No garbage can or bag in evidence. Look under the sink, dummy, she chided herself.
You
may leave your garbage bags for all to see, but this is the Fifth Avenue crowd. They
hide
their garbage. She opened the door to the sink cabinet and saw cleansers, bottles and crockery, and a brown plastic garbage bag into which she dropped the partially eaten scone. The kitchen windows looked out on a street of beautiful old townhouses and mansions. Night had come on quickly. Below, in the townhouses, light was diffused behind blinds and draperies. She wished she were home, or at the very least, with Sonya.

When Susan didn’t return, Wetzon wandered into the foyer. A huge Welsh cupboard sat against the wall opposite the door. The sun-bleached skull of a steer hung nearby. On the floor was a vivid Native American rug. It was all very Santa Fe. Dilla and Susan lived well, no doubt about it.

The solidly closed doors of the cupboard invited her to open them. She never passed up an invitation like that. The shouting confrontation in other parts of the apartment continued unabated, as did the sound of heavy furniture being displaced. Wetzon opened the cupboard doors. The shelves held an amazing collection of blue-and-white old Canton china, platters, teapots, serving dishes, plates, cups and saucers, pitchers, bowls, and an elegant, long-necked vase. Very nice. Very valuable. Whose was it, she wondered. She wouldn’t mind owning a piece or two of Canton.

She became aware all at once of the quiet. A door slammed. She was sitting at the cherry wood table again when Izz scampered into the kitchen making right for Wetzon with something in her mouth. “What do you have there, Izz?”

Wagging her tail, Izz dropped her bounty on Wetzon’s feet. Wetzon picked it up. It was a needlepoint pouch full of—she opened it—jewelry. Diamonds, rings and more, and gold bracelets, rings. God! Her fingers sifted through the glittering treasure trove. Embroidered on the inside lining of the flap closure were the words:
Lenny/Celia.
Lenny again. And who, pray tell, was Celia? Wetzon closed the bag, keeping it on her lap while Izz danced around begging to be picked up.

“Where did you get that?”

Suddenly, Susan swooped down on her. She snatched up the bag, turning it in her hands, checking the zipper clasp, frightened.

“Izz brought it to me. I’m sorry it upset you.”

“Oh, Izz, go away, bad girl.” Susan smiled. “Forgive me, Leslie. I am at my wit’s end with Dilla gone. I just can’t seem to tell the difference between friend and foe.”

“I’m not your foe, Susan.”

“I know that.” Susan sighed, opened the compartment under the sink and tucked away the bag.
What a peculiar place to put all that valuable jewelry,
Wetzon thought.

“Susan, I have an appointment—”

“Don’t think you’ll get away with this, bitch!” a woman’s voice screeched.

Susan turned, her face mottled with fury.

Wetzon stood up to get a better view of the enormously fat woman in a several-sizes-too-small mink coat who was standing in the foyer. Her hair was so black it had blue highlights. She was banging on the floor with a cane, enunciating each furious syllable.

“I think I’ve been very reasonable, Ruth.” Susan’s voice was iced steel. “I don’t have to put up with this. This is my home. You are not my mother. You made Dilla’s life miserable, but you have no hold on me. Get your things and your family and be gone.”

The fat woman’s face contorted. “Dilla owned this palace.”

Who would have guessed chic old Dilla even had a mother, Wetzon thought, let alone someone like that.

Susan’s lips moved but she wasn’t smiling. “Ah, but you’re wrong. This apartment is in my name.”

“It can’t be. You’re lying,” Ruth shrieked. “Dilla told me all about you. Dilla paid for everything. We’re going to take you to court.”

“Mother!” An apparition closely resembling the mother tottered into view. She looked like someone had filled Dilla with helium.

“Shirley, please take what you’re taking and get the hell out of here.” Susan began to cry. Izz howled.

Shirley shouted, “Rudy, bring the bags!”

This order produced more thumping and bumping as if things were being dragged across the floor, and then there was Rudy. He was definitely in the right family. Big as Shirley, but a head shorter, he was dragging two humongous suitcases and a black plastic bag stuffed to the gills. Izz ran at him and began nipping at his heels and whining, scratching at the bags, tail wagging, as if she knew what they contained.

“Oh, God,” Susan moaned. “She knows they’re Dilla’s.”

It was another five minutes before Dilla’s Munster Family finally left.

Susan returned to the kitchen, her face streaked with tears. “Aren’t they awful? They don’t give a hoot. Not one iota. All they care about is getting theirs. Poor Dilla.” She wiped her eyes with a tissue, then ran cold water in the sink and rinsed her face, drying it with a paper towel. “The only time Dilla had any happiness was with me. That’s why I want to find out who did it. For her.” She sat down opposite Wetzon. “So will you help me? I have money.”

“Susan, as I said, I’m not a licensed detective, and I couldn’t take a fee from you.”

“Please, Leslie. I’m begging you. I can’t ask a stranger to do this. No one would talk to him. You know everybody. Mort is bound to slip up and say something. All I want is for you to tell me, and I’ll deal with it.”

“What if it’s not Mort?”

“I can live with whatever you find. If it wasn’t Mort, it was one of them. They all hated her.”

“And what will you do with the information?”

Susan and Wetzon locked eyes. “I don’t know,” Susan said softly.

“I would have to tell the police, Susan.”

“Okay.” She said it too fast, and Wetzon tucked that away for later thought.

“I’m going up to Boston Thursday night. How about if I just keep my eyes and ears open while I’m there and if I come up with anything, we can donate the fee to the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in Dilla’s name?”

Susan’s face brightened. “Okay. That’s a deal.”

Wetzon got her coat from the hook and put it on. “Before I go, Susan ...”

The intercom buzzer blared. “Oh, please don’t tell me they’ve come back.” When Susan didn’t respond, it blared again. “Excuse me, Leslie.” She left the room.

The intercom snarled, then Wetzon heard Susan say, “Who?” The snarl came again. “No! I’m not here. Tell her I’m
not
here.”

When Wetzon came into the foyer, Susan was staring bleakly at the intercom, her shoulders slumped with misery. “Um, Susan?”

Susan whirled around. “Oh, Leslie, I’m sorry. You were asking me something....”

“I happened to see the royalty list on
Hotshot
, and I saw your name was on it.”

Susan didn’t seem surprised. “Lord, it’s going to get out. I told Dilla it would.”

“What is?”

“Sam needed help with the lyrics. I’ve been a published poet for years.”

“I didn’t know that.”

Susan nodded. “Under the name S. C. Orkin. Sam was in trouble, so I was helping him out with the lyrics, sending them in with Dilla. He’s become so weird.”

“I noticed.”

“He didn’t want anyone to know he needed help.”

“But there are never any secrets in the Theatre, at least not for very long. I’m surprised it’s not out already.”

Susan shrugged. “I didn’t care. I don’t have that kind of ego.” She squelched a sob. “I can’t believe Dilla’s never coming home again.”

She walked Wetzon to the door, so forlorn that Wetzon put her arms around her.

The doorbell rang.

Susan looked angry. “He sent her up.” She pulled away from Wetzon and yanked the door open. Standing in front of them was a bald man in tan slacks and a bright red cardigan sweater. His eyes were apoplectic in a fiery red face. Hands clenched at his sides, he screeched, “This has gone far enough! I’ve got a sick wife!” His accent was essence of Vienna, but the
schlag
was missing.

Behind him the elevator door was open and the elevator man’s mouth was agape.

Wetzon stepped around the enraged man carefully. “Bye, Susan.”

“What are you doing up here, killing each other?” the man demanded of Susan, ignoring Wetzon entirely.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Nadelman. It’s over now. They’re—”

Mr. Nadelman interrupted, his voice taut with anger. “First Friday, now today. Next time I call the police!”

The cold was crinkly, so dry that Wetzon felt the skin on her face pull taut. Good. She needed the cold to clear her mind. Susan was so sure Mort had killed Dilla, yet Susan and Dilla had had a dreadful fight on Friday, or someone in that apartment had, according to their downstairs neighbor.

On Fifth Avenue, car and bus traffic swept steadily downtown, a trail of headlights all rolling in one direction. Cabs still disgorged passengers, but rush hour was over, and except for a few isolated stragglers heading homeward, pedestrians were scarce. Only the dog walkers came out consistently day or night, summer or winter.

A woman in a black cloth coat was getting into a cab in front of the building. The street light reflected off her glasses as the doorman closed the cab door. Over his shoulder he called to Wetzon, “Cab, miss?”

“No, thank you.”

Across the street, Central Park was an oasis between the east and west sides of Manhattan. Mercury vapor lights bathed the park the pinkish hue of a magical kingdom within the nighttime of the city.

The indomitable Metropolitan Museum, closed on Mondays, was lit up like the White House. Wetzon plucked at the collar of her raccoon coat and loosened the gray cashmere scarf around her throat, drawing it upward to cover her mouth and chin. Monday evenings were always quiet in New York, as if everyone was recovering from the shock of returning to work after the weekend.

Just as she reached the shelter, the Seventy-ninth Street crosstown bus pulled up. She put her token in the slot, and having a rare choice of seats, chose one next to a window. Four teenage girls in an array of coats—down, suede, and wool—but with matching jumpers, were sitting across the back seat of the bus, howling with laughter. They would grow quiet for a second, then one would start and the others joined in.

The years were passing so swiftly, Wetzon thought. In another year she’d be forty, and ...

When the light changed, the bus crossed into the park. But Wetzon had tuned out of her surroundings.

There was really a simple explanation for Joel Kidde and the corporate jet going to Boston. Joel must be Mort’s agent. He might even represent every one of the creators on the show. It happened; small agencies had merged into big agencies, just the same as Wall Street firms had. That was it.

When Carlos had said corporate jet, she’d somehow assumed it would be the record company’s. Don’t assume, Wetzon. Never assume.

All right, that took care of Joel Kidde. On to the next curiosity. Why was Susan so upset about Wetzon seeing the little bag of jewelry? And why did she then put it under the sink? Had safe deposit boxes gone out of style? And who was Lenny? Who was Celia? The only show biz Lenny Wetzon knew was Leonard Bernstein, whom everyone called Lenny, and while he probably knew Dilla, there would be no reason for her, or Susan for that matter, to have jewelry that belonged to him. Besides, he was dead. And Lenny Bernstein’s wife had been Felicia. And she, too, was dead.

A bronchial cough close by jolted Wetzon back to the real world. Flu was rampant this winter. Sitting beside her was a distinguished woman in a ranch mink coat and matching hat. She was coughing into a tissue. “Oh, dear,” she gasped. “I’m so sorry.” She snapped the book she was reading shut—
Female Sexual Perversions
—and rose. The bus ground its winding course through the park and came out on Eighty-first Street and Central Park West, where the coughing woman, the four teenage girls, and most of the other riders got off.

The Museum of Natural History and the Planetarium, also closed on Mondays, stood like dark sentinels guarding the entrance to the West Side.

Wetzon took the bus to Seventy-ninth and Broadway. Then she got off and walked toward Seventy-third Street, where Sonya had her office in a shabby brownstone near West End Avenue.

Unlike Fifth Avenue, Broadway was crowded with people. It was the main thoroughfare of the open-twenty-four-hours-a-day Upper West Side. People were en route to and from aerobics classes, step classes—the latest craze of the exercise obsessed—dinner. Shoppers carried heaping bags from the Fairway Market, which had the best-priced quality selection of produce on the Upper West Side, or perhaps anywhere in the city, with the possible exception of the farmers’ market on Union Square.

Wetzon spun into the Fairway, dodged a white-haired lady with a speeding shopping cart, and managed to get stepped on and pushed by an ancient woman wielding a walker like a battering ram. The stack of Granny Smith apples was at least six feet high. Although the temptation to try to slip out one at eye level was overwhelming, the vision of a landslide of apples in this crowded market was too much for her. Instead she stood on the tips of her toes—after all, she was a dancer—and took one from the top. Her next stop was the dairy case, where she reached over for a Dannon coffee yogurt. The tiny amount of caffeine in the yogurt would give her the extra buzz to get through the session with Sonya. When she straightened, yogurt in hand, she was poked sharply in the calf by a cane in the gnarled hands of a tiny old man with patchy white whiskers, who was trying to take Wetzon’s place at the dairy case.