Who's Kitten Who? (16 page)

I ignored that too. Share and share alike, as far as I was concerned. And he wasn’t exactly doing a great job of sharing.

“And Aziza Zorn? What about her?” Falcone knew at least as well as I did that the victim’s love interest is almost always a suspect. Especially given Sunny’s report about Simon’s argument with a member of the female gender.

“We’re looking at her as well. Sorry, Dr. Popper, but your time is up.”

“Wait!” I cried. “What about Sheldon and Gloria Stone? What about other people in the theater company, like Derek Albright and Jill D’Angelo and—and—”

“Look,” he interrupted petulantly. “When are you gonna learn to leave the police work to the police, Docta Poppa?”

Neva, I thought. But I kept my response to myself.

As I climbed back into my van after making my afternoon calls, I glanced at my watch and saw that I still had some time before I was scheduled to go to Aziza’s house. It seemed like the perfect time to focus on two individuals whose relationship with Simon I hadn’t yet had time to explore. While love was often a motive for murder, money was probably an even more likely factor. I’d been curious about Sheldon and Gloria Stone since I’d met them at Simon’s wake. And it wasn’t the extreme difference in their personalities that had intrigued me. It was the fact that they were about to become very important people in Simon’s life.

And he, in turn, was about to become important to them—especially their pocketbooks. The two producers were on the verge of taking a huge risk by putting
She’s Flying High
on Broadway. Of course, that would have been the case with any theatrical production. But I wondered if in this instance there was some backstory, some goings-on that weren’t part of the obvious plot, that could possibly have erupted into murder.

My local public library seemed like a good place to start. Since I didn’t know much about the theater world, I started by strolling through the periodicals section, perusing the slick, colorful magazines that lined the shelves to see if anything caught my eye.

I stopped when I spied a magazine called
Theater World
. I picked up the current issue, which was right on top, and saw that the previous five or six issues were stacked underneath. Whose faces did I find smiling out at me from the cover of the November issue but Sheldon and Gloria Stone’s.

N
EW
Y
ORK’S
H
OTTEST
P
RODUCERS
B
RING
T
HE
H
OTTEST
S
UMMER
TO
B
ROADWAY
, the cover copy read.

I leafed through the glossy magazine until I found the article. It was mostly about the play, which had been written fifty years ago but never produced. Gloria had reportedly discovered it at an antiques shop, retrieving the dust-covered manuscript from the bottom drawer of a rolltop desk where its author, Arthur Nimsley, had apparently stashed it years and perhaps even decades earlier.

The second paragraph quoted her as saying,
“A chill ran through me as I stood in that dark, musty little store. I only had to read the first few pages to realize I’d stumbled upon a surefire hit. As I read the opening monologue, in my head I could hear Chucky Winthrop saying the words. I could see how the entire production should be staged. I knew then and there that we had to make it into a musical. Maybe Mr. Nimsley hadn’t realized it, but that’s what he’d written.”

I read on, soon finding a comment by some hotshot producer who was apparently a competitor but still had the greatest respect for her.
“Glo has a real instinct for what works and what doesn’t,”
he was quoted as saying.
“And with the minimum cost of producing a Broadway musical somewhere around $10 million, being able to pick a hit has never been more important. Understandably, backers are only interested in investing in shows whose producers have a strong track record. That’s something the Stones can offer.”

I continued looking through the rows of magazines until I spotted another likely candidate. Sure enough,
Behind the Footlights
had done a piece on the Stones in its January issue. When I flipped through the magazine, I found that facing the article was a full-page photograph of Sheldon and Gloria, standing back to back.
She has the nose, while he’s the financial wizard,
the caption read.

I read through the first few paragraphs and learned that Sheldon and Gloria Stone did, indeed, play different roles, each complementing the other’s talents. According to the article, Sheldon was a master at raising the tremendous pot of money required to stage a production on Broadway. But it was Gloria who was the real genius when it came to picking hits.

Gloria Stone has yet to make a mistake,
the article claimed.
The consensus among her peers is that she was born with a natural instinct that very few people in the business are lucky enough to possess.

Instinct
. There was that word again. The people who knew about these things agreed that Gloria Stone practically had a sixth sense about the theater.

As I tucked the magazines under my arm so I could photocopy the relevant pages, I wondered if these two articles were simply a case of theater people being kind to other theater people. After all, both were clearly magazines read only by insiders who lived and breathed the industry. But when I expanded my search to the thick red volumes of the
New York Times
index, I found an article from the Sunday Arts & Leisure section that had run the year before. I tracked down the correct microfiche reel, threaded it into the machine, and began to read.

BROADWAY PRODUCERS ATTRIBUTE
SUCCESS TO “INSTINCT”

While musical theater seems as much a part of the American landscape as rodeos and state fairs, the art form actually dates back less than 150 years. In 1866, William Wheatley, the manager of a 3,200-seat auditorium in downtown Manhattan called Niblo’s Garden, was worried about filling his tremendous theater. Fearful that the play he was producing would never bring in the crowds, he came up with the idea of adding songs, dance numbers, and lavish sets to the mediocre dialogue. The result was the world’s first musical,
The Black Crook
. The five-and-a-half-hour production instantly became a huge hit, running for over a year and bringing in over a million dollars.

Mr. Wheatley was probably not aware that he was setting a precedent. Yet over the past century and a half, the magic of the Great White Way has been kept alive by gifted individuals with his same sensibility, Broadway producers who possess the innate ability to recognize a potential hit and then pour their blood, sweat, and tears into bringing it to the stage. David Merrick, who produced such Broadway phenomena as
Gypsy, Oliver!, 42nd Street,
and
Hello, Dolly
. Joseph Papp, who produced
Hair, The Pirates of Penzance,
and
A Chorus Line,
in addition to creating the New York Shakespeare Festival. Hal Prince, the genius who gave us
West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret,
and
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

The latest names on that impressive list are theatrical impresarios Sheldon and Gloria Stone. This duo of dynamos has been waving its magic wand over Broadway for nearly three decades, lighting up the Great White Way with one record-setting hit after another. From
Red Riding Hood
to
Sad-Faced Clowns
to
Elizabeth the Queen,
the Stones have set a new standard. The couple has also made stars like Chucky Winthrop and Della Dormand household names, at least in households whose members enjoy this all-American form of entertainment.

Given their history, it’s hardly surprising that the Stones have done it again, this time with
Strange Bedfellows,
which opened at the Gower Champion Theater…

I skimmed the rest of the article, finding it packed with accolades. Then I checked more thick red volumes of the
Times
index. During their three decades in the Broadway biz, one article after another had appeared in the
Times
’s Arts & Leisure section, raving about the plays and attributing their success to the Stones’ genius.

The last article I read on the microfiche screen caught my interest for an entirely different reason. It was entitled, W
EEKENDS IN THE
B
ROMPTONS
R
ELIEVE THE
S
TRESS OF
S
HOW
B
IZ
. This article, which turned up in the
Times
’s Real Estate section, was about the Stones’ second home, which was located in the chic and ridiculously expensive village of East Brompton on the east end of Long Island’s South Shore.

But it wasn’t the detailed description of the stainless steel Sub-Zero freezer in the four-hundred-square-foot kitchen or the three different living rooms overlooking the beach—or even the collection of Tony Awards crammed onto the mantel—that intrigued me. It was the simple fact that the famous impresarios spent significant amounts of time on my home turf of Long Island.

That meant the Stones and their bull terrier were neighbors. And as far as I was concerned, it was definitely time to act neighborly.

After I finished at the library, I saw there was still time before my appointment with Aziza to check on my animals. Betty had been too busy to stop in at the cottage during the day, since she’d had a long list of prewedding errands to run, so I was anxious to see how Max and Lou and Cat and the rest were coping with their uninvited guest.

I was relieved that Max and Lou met met at the front door, as usual. And Prometheus started squawking some incomprehensible greeting, a mishmash of his favorite expressions. Within seconds, Tinkerbell came running in from the bedroom, where she’d undoubtedly been lounging in her favorite location: my pillow. Leilani looked as contented as usual, draped across a large twig in her tank.

Only Cat wasn’t in sight. As I glanced at her preferred spot—the middle cushion of the couch—I saw why.

It was occupied by Mitzi.

“Hi, guys,” I said, but without my usual enthusiasm. I couldn’t explain it, but I had a funny feeling something was wrong beyond Mitzi ousting the queen of the castle, no doubt exiling her to the rug in front of the refrigerator.

My feeling of doom was confirmed when Max failed to grab his pink plastic poodle in the hopes of engaging his favorite playmate in a rousing game of Slimytoy. After all, that’s generally the first thing he does when I come home. Instead, he just looked at me expectantly, his sturdy little body jerking every few seconds as if he was more agitated than usual. For a terrier, that’s saying a lot.

“What’s the matter, Maxie-Max?” I cooed, crouching down and scratching him behind the ears. “Don’t you want to play Slimytoy? Where’s the poodle? Go get the poodle, Max!”

Instead of bounding off to find his beloved toy, he let out a sharp little bark.

“Max, where’s the poodle?” I asked uneasily.

I was afraid I already knew the answer. A feeling in the pit of my stomach told me that some terrible fate had befallen his favorite toy. And I was pretty sure I knew who was behind it.

My eyes automatically drifted to the ball of white fluff nestled on the couch. Mitzi was watching us both with what I was certain was a look of defiance.

“Max, did Mitzi steal your poodle and hide it?” I demanded.

I knew my Westie couldn’t understand me. At least not the words I was saying. But something about the way he barked halfheartedly told me he knew exactly what I was talking about.

I spent the next ten minutes searching everywhere for that poodle. Max padded after me hopefully, following me from room to room and sticking his nose under the bed and behind the couch right along with me as if he was trying to be helpful. Even Lou joined in the search. Of course, he was even less help than Max, since he had no idea what this new game was all about.

But I did. So I looked everywhere. Behind the cushions. In the bathtub. Even in the refrigerator, carefully stepping around my lounging feline.