Taking the Fifth (14 page)

“Pushing?”

“Rolling, I guess. Toward the fence. There’s a fence there, to keep people from falling off the cliff. It’s pretty tall, but there’s a hole under it, a hole big enough to crawl through. She shoved him under it. He rolled down the hill and kept on rolling until I couldn’t see him anymore. I don’t know why he didn’t get hung up in the fence.”

“What happened then?”

“The lady walked around until she found her shoes. Then she took off.”

“Which way?”

“Down the stairs. The same way the man came up.”

“What did you do?”

“For a while, I didn’t do nothing. I was scared. I was afraid she’d come back and find me.”

“So you waited?” Belinda nodded. “How long did you wait?”

“I don’t know. Finally, when I was sure she was gone, when I was sure she wasn’t coming back, I got my stuff and left. I went down Western. It’s easier than going back up the hill with the cart.”

“Are you the one who called 911?” I asked.

Belinda gave a sharp, involuntary intake of breath. She drew away from me, shrinking against Reverend Laura. “How’d you know that?” she demanded.

“I didn’t know, I just guessed. It’s easy to get to the ferry terminal from the lower end of Western, and that’s where the 911 call came from. Why didn’t you leave your name?”

“I was afraid.”

“Afraid we’d think you’d done it?”

She shook her head. “Afraid you’d think I was crazy. Delusions, that’s what they called it years ago when I used to see things. This isn’t that, is it?”

“No,” I assured her. “The woman you saw was real enough. And the man you saw is dead. Is there anything more you can tell us about her or him?”

“Not really. I only saw her from the back, and after he got there, it all happened too fast.”

“Would you recognize her if you saw her again?”

Belinda shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“Did she say anything to him?”

“No. Not a word.”

“What did you do after you called 911?”

“I was still scared. I didn’t know if I did the right thing or not. I worried about it all day. Finally, last night, I came here to talk with Reverend Laura. She told me I should tell you.”

“Reverend Laura was right, Belinda. We needed this information. It helps us know who we’re looking for. You’re sure you never caught sight of her face?”

“Positive.”

“What color was the dress?”

“I don’t know. A real pretty blue or green. I couldn’t tell in the moonlight.”

“And you say she was wearing gloves?”

“Long ones. Old-fashioned ones. The kind that come up over the elbows.”

“Right, I know the kind. Do you remember anything else?”

“No. Nothing.”

I took my pencil and notebook out of my pocket. “What’s your address, Belinda?”

Belinda moved closer to Reverend Laura’s sheltering arm. “I don’t have one,” she said plaintively.

Reverend Laura patted the older woman’s shoulder reassuringly. “You can use this address,” she said to the bag lady quietly. Then to me she added, “I’ll have her stay here with me for the next few days in case you have to reach her.”

“Your last name, Belinda?” I continued.

She shrank close to her protector. “I…I…don’t remember,” she stammered.

I waited, but it was no use. If Belinda had a last name, she had long since forgotten it or blocked it out. I closed my notebook. It was par for the course. Every once in a blue moon, you have a real-live eyewitness to a homicide. Belinda was one of that rare eyewitness breed. I was sure that what she had told us would help me arrest Jasmine Day for the murder of Richard Dathan Morris, but I wasn’t at all sure it would help get us a conviction.

Defense attorneys make mincemeat out of totally reliable witnesses. And Belinda was decidedly not one of those. Not if she couldn’t remember her own last name.

CHAPTER 14

BY THE TIME I LEFT THE PIKE STREET Mission, I was already late to see Alan Dale. Instead of going straight to the Mayflower Park Hotel though, I drove through the misting rain to my place at Second and Broad. I parked on the street and hurried up to my apartment. I found the Jasmine Day souvenir program on the kitchen counter right where I had left it.

Turning on the fluorescent kitchen light, I held the glossy program up so I could examine the cover photo. Sure enough, what I didn’t want to see, what I dreaded seeing, was right there—Jasmine Day in a long blue dress with elbow-length white gloves. The long blonde wig was there, along with something else. Shoes. Blue high-heeled shoes. Cobalt blue shoes that matched the cobalt blue dress. Cole-Haan, size 8½B.

“Shit,” I muttered aloud as I sank into my old recliner, my thinking chair. Forgotten, the program dropped onto the table beside me.

One by one the ugly pieces were falling into place. Bit by bit, the puzzle was coming into focus. The only thing missing was motive. What was the deadly connection between the stagehand and the star?

Cocaine. That had to be the answer.

The lab had confirmed it was a brick of cocaine we’d found in Jonathan Thomas’s pillow. That was the only thing that made sense. Clearly, Jasmine Day wasn’t the squeaky-clean reformed addict she had pretended to be during her second-act inspirational chat. And I found myself doubting that anything she’d told me later that evening had been the truth either. So, if she was involved with the cocaine, was she buying or selling? Was she dealing or using? And who else was in on it with her?

In the long run, the answers to those questions weren’t important. Her involvement with drugs was nothing but an unsavory backdrop to the rest of the story. My focus had to be on only one issue, murder, and how Jasmine Day was tied in with Richard Dathan Morris and Jonathan Thomas.

In that regard, Jasmine Day was my prime suspect. My only suspect.

I used to think that as I got older it would be easier to turn off personal connection, but it doesn’t work that way. I had to force myself to lock away all memory of what had gone on between Jasmine and me. I had to blot out all remembrance of what had gone before and concentrate on the job at hand.

With a sigh, I finally dragged myself out of the chair and went into the bedroom. I knew what I had to do.

For a time I crawled around on my hands and knees, going over the carpet inch by inch. Eventually my patient search paid off. In the bathroom, on the floor near the sink, I discovered what I needed. A hair. A single long, blonde hair. I rummaged in several jacket pockets before I found a stray glassine bag to put it in.

That done, I headed out for my tardy appointment with Alan Dale.

I found him drinking a solitary cup of coffee in Clippers, the Mayflower Park’s elegant little hotel restaurant. He was sitting next to the window watching a busy remodeling project in the Times Square Building just across the street on Olive.

Clippers was a brightly lit, open room. It’s probably eminently suited to graceful dining, but it wasn’t so hot for my purposes. I needed dark, not light. I needed seclusion. I needed a place where I could ask Alan Dale some pointed questions without having to worry about whether or not someone was listening over my shoulder.

“Sorry I’m late,” I apologized, sitting down at the marble-topped table. “I got tied up.”

He looked up at me as I sat down across from him and nodded without humor. “I’ll bet you did,” he said.

Before, when I had tried to talk to him, Alan had been busy, hurried. His answers had been clipped, but there had been none of the undercurrent of hostility that was distinctly present now. I put myself on guard.

“You said you had questions,” Dale said. “Let’s get ’em over with.”

Obligingly, I pulled out my notebook. “How long have you worked for Westcoast Starlight Productions?” I asked.

Dale shrugged impassively. “Two and a half years, I guess, give or take.”

“And didn’t you tell me that Richard Morris had worked for you before?”

“Three shows that I’ve been on and a couple of other Ray knows about.”

“But you didn’t like him.”

“I don’t have to like any of the local hands. I don’t get paid to like ’em. I just have to get the job done. Morris always seemed to have his head up his ass, like he was really somewhere else. I complained about him, but he had a lot of pull with the local here. Complaints or not, he still got called out every time we brought a show through town.”

“And this time you fired him?”

“That’s right. It was the first time I caught the little sucker red-handed. I told Ed at the time that as far as I was concerned, he’d never work for us again.”

“You told Ed Waverly.”

“That’s right.”

“Would he have gone along with that?”

“You bet.”

“Were any of the other local hands friends of his?”

“Probably, but I don’t know for sure. I’ve had my hands too full with tech problems to worry about my stagehands’ social lives.”

“What about Jasmine Day?”

“What about her?” His clipped question in answer to mine alerted me.

“Did she have any connection with Morris?”

“No.”

Alan Dale had given me a categorical answer. Truth is hardly ever that absolute. I looked at Alan Dale closely, and he met my gaze without wavering.

“Have you ever worked with her before?”

Dale shook his head. “I was doing Broadway-bound bus-and-truck shows on the East Coast when she was into heavy-metal concerts at this end of the world. Those two lines don’t cross very often.”

“So how long have you known her?” I asked.

“A month and a half.”

“Can you tell me anything about her?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“What’s she like to work with? Temperamental? Hard to get along with?”

“When things are going fine, she’s fine, but when there’s trouble…You saw me working on that worm-gear drive, right?”

I nodded. “Well, that son of a bitch stuck on me in Portland. It got all bound up and busted the track right in the middle of the second act, with the orchestra half on and half off the stage.”

“So what happened?”

“We had to stop the whole goddamned show while the tech crew came out and bodily turned the orchestra until it was pointing in the right direction. After that, we went ahead and finished the show. As soon as it was over though, all hell broke loose.”

“Jasmine pitched a fit?”

“Are you kidding? I thought she was going to tear me limb from limb. She could do it, you know. She’s a brown belt.”

“So I’ve heard,” I observed. “Is there anything about her behavior that you’d classify as erratic?”

Dale looked at me. For the first time, a slow grin spread over his face. “You haven’t spent very much time around show people, have you?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“I didn’t think so. They’re mostly erratic. They wouldn’t be in the business if they weren’t.”

“Have you heard any rumors about her, like maybe she might be messing around with drugs again?”

The grin was gone as suddenly as it had appeared. “No.” Dale’s answer emphatic. “Absolutely not. If somebody told you that, I’d say they were trying to cause trouble. Jasmine may be screwed up in some ways, but I’d lay odds she’s clean. She’s worked too hard to get that way, personally and professionally.”

I tried coming from a different direction. “So you think she deserves what’s happening now—on the tour, I mean.”

“The success?” He snorted. “Believe me, it’s been bought and paid for.”

There was a hard edge in his voice, and I wasn’t sure what lay behind it. “What do you mean by that?”

“Do you have to ask?”

I felt the blood rushing to my ears. Alan Dale had landed the blow fair and square. No, I shouldn’t have had to ask. I knew the answer, from Jasmine Day’s own lips.

I went looking for more innocuous territory. “What exactly does a head carpenter do?”

“I’m a jack-of-all-trades, the one who keeps everything running. If it breaks, I fix it. If it wears out or just disappears, I get a new one.”

“In other words, you’re in charge of everything,” I said.

“Everything,” he agreed. “Particularly on this show. I’m double-carded, both IATSE and Actors Equity. I’m head carpenter and stage manager, both.”

“You handle costumes?”

He nodded. “Including costumes, if it’s something Bertha can’t handle. It helps keep expenses in line.”

“Who’s Bertha?”

“Bertha Harris. The head costumer. We call her Big Bertha for obvious reasons. She’s been in the business forever, and she’s one of the best.”

“Didn’t you tell me the other day that Morris was messing around with one of the costume crates? Isn’t that why you fired him?”

“Trunks,” Dale corrected. “One of the costume trunks.”

“Did you ever figure out what he was looking for?” I asked.

“Sure; that was easy, once Bertha told me what was missing.”

“What?”

“One of Jasmine’s costumes, complete with dress, wig, and a pair of shoes. The last pair of shoes, by the way. One of the heels on the next-to-last pair broke off in Portland. We just got in the replacement this morning.”

“Where from?”

“A shop in Beverly Hills. Rodeo Drive Shoe Salon. They’ve been good about keeping Jasmine’s shoes in stock in case we do run into problems.”

“So let me see if I’ve got this straight. Later, after you caught Morris going through the costume trunk, you found one whole costume had disappeared?”

“That’s right.”

“Any idea what he’d want with a woman’s evening dress?”

Dale shrugged. “Someone told me they spotted him down at the Edgewater. He wasn’t wearing it then, but he could have changed into it later.”

“The Edgewater. The hotel down on the waterfront?”

“Right,” Dale answered. “The one where you can fish out your room window.”

I remembered the matchbook with “The Edgewater Inn” on it, the one we’d found under Richard Dathan Morris’s body. I was genuinely puzzled. “What for?” I asked. “Why would he go there?”

“You mean to tell me you live right here in the city and you don’t know about what’s going on under your very nose?” Dale asked.

“I guess not.”