Chapter 13
When I returned to the Savoy, it was already midafternoon, and I was hoping the bartender from last night had begun his shift. The bar, exquisitely appointed with antiques and plush chairs, was relatively quiet, with just a few patrons talking in hushed tones as orchestral music wafted in the background. I spotted one elderly woman clutching a bourbon straight up with one hand while grasping the side of the bar for support with the other as she teetered on top of an unwieldy stool. It was Dame Sylvia Horner. Claire was a teetotaler compared to this boozy broad. The bartender was nowhere in sight.
I ambled over to Dame Sylvia and slid onto a stool next to her.
“How are you, Sylvia?” I said.
She slowly turned, huffing and puffing, making a Herculean effort to maintain her balance. Her face was overly done with powder, and her lipstick was smeared and running over the borders of her lips. Her hair was hastily pulled up in a gaudy pink headband. And she wore a fur coat over a white and pink pantsuit. She looked more like a haggard drag queen after an all-night binge than a theatrical legend. Someone needed to delicately advise Dame Sylvia not to dress herself when she’d been drinking.
Her eyes squinted to focus on my face. She still wasn’t sure who was talking to her. Who could blame her? It was already three o’clock in the afternoon. Her happy hour had started at nine this morning.
“Jarrod, I thought you’d gone home,” she slurred, not the least bit happy to see me.
“Not yet. I’m trying, though.”
“Would you like a drink?” She looked around for the bartender, but the sudden movement caused her to sway and nearly topple over. I quickly leaned in, grabbing her by the elbow to help keep her upright.
“No, thank you. It’s a little early for me,” I said.
She gripped the bar with both hands and stared at me as if I were an alien from another planet who had come down to observe local custom. Not drink? It was an entirely foreign concept to her.
She shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
“Actually, I’m having a bit of a problem locating my boyfriend.”
“Did you try that fruitcake Anthony? You want to find a boy, he’s got them in all shapes and sizes,” she cackled.
“I just came from his flat. No luck there,” I said, suddenly realizing I never did get a look at the young buck he had hidden in the back of his flat. But the thought of Charlie and Sir Anthony together was just too fantastic, too ridiculous to even consider.
“He’ll turn up,” Sylvia spat out between gulps of her drink. “They always do. Whether you want them to or not. And believe me, I’ve had several husbands who would have made me much happier if they had stayed missing.”
“It’s just so strange. I mean, he’s never done this before . . .”
“Give him some time,” Sylvia said, not really concerned with my problem but content knowing I was there to keep her from falling to the floor.
“Time is one thing I’ve got,” I said. “The police would prefer I stay in town until they’re done with their investigation of Claire’s murder.”
Sylvia put her drink down and turned to me. This was a momentous occasion. She had actually let a glass of bourbon out of her sight for a split second.
“Why? You had nothing to do with it. It was Minx,” she said.
“The police just want to make sure they have it right,” I said.
Dame Sylvia’s mouth dropped open, appalled. “Why, that’s insane! I saw her mixing that concoction that killed Claire with my own two eyes! How dare they doubt me? Are they implying that I am an unreliable witness?”
“Oh no, not at all,” I said, trying to calm the old bat down. “They couldn’t ask for a more upstanding and—”
Dame Sylvia slammed down the remainder of her drink and banged the empty glass on the bar several times in an effort to find the bartender.
“And . . . lucid witness,” I said, trying hard to sell it.
“Any prosecutor would be proud to have me, a respected member of the artistic community, sitting in that witness box and pointing the finger at that manipulative little trollop Minx,” Sylvia said. “Or whoever it was.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
Sylvia was confused and her throat was parched. She was in need of more liquor, and the bartender was MIA.
I gently placed a hand on Sylvia’s fur coat sleeve. “Sylvia, what did you mean when you said whoever it was?”
Sylvia grumbled something to herself about the Savoy’s bad service, and then her glazed-over, dull eyes tried hard to keep me in focus.
“Jarrod, I saw Minx pouring some kind of liquid into the make-up. That fact is indisputable. But . . .”
“But what?”
“Well, to be perfectly honest, one of my many adoring fans had delivered a gorgeous bottle of scotch to my dressing room earlier in the day. And you see, even at this advanced stage of my career, I get terrible butterflies in my stomach on opening night.”
I suddenly knew where this was going. “So you had a shot?”
“Yes. Several, actually. I lost count after seven.”
The big reveal that Dame Sylvia was drunk on opening night was about as big a shock as finding out Joan Rivers had a face job.
“Dame Sylvia, are you saying you’re not absolutely sure it was Minx you saw mixing the peanut oil into Claire’s make-up?”
“Of course I’m sure. Why would I ever inform Detective Inspector Bowles it was Minx if I was not 100 percent positive of the fact?”
“But if you had been drinking—”
“I can hold my liquor, young man,” Dame Sylvia said, leaning forward, waving her finger, and completely sloshed. “And I am telling you right now, I am positive it was a woman.”
“You mean Minx,” I said.
“Yes, Minx is a woman. It could have been her,” Sylvia said.
“You’re not sure, are you?”
Dame Sylvia gazed around the room for the bartender. “I should slap your face for questioning my judgment, young man, but I won’t if you find the damn bartender and get him to pour me another drink.”
“Your vision was blurry from the booze. You saw a woman tampering with the make-up and you just assumed it was Minx because of all the jokes she had made about offing Claire so she could assume the starring role.”
Dame Sylvia was now embarrassed for divulging so much to me. “It had to be her. That hateful little bitch. Who else could it have been?”
She had a point. And even if Sylvia’s hazy recollections couldn’t be counted on in a court of law, Akshay did see Minx not only bring Claire the make-up but assist her in applying it. She was still the number-one suspect.
The bartender finally returned, much to Dame Sylvia’s relief. He was a small man, East Indian, wearing a red vest, white button-up shirt, and black pants. He had a tiny nose, but monstrous-sized teeth that threatened to swallow his face when he smiled.
“Young man, where the hell have you been?” Dame Sylvia barked.
“The bathroom, ma’am. Sorry,” he said, bowing to her great presence as he refilled her glass with another generous shot of bourbon.
“Where’s that?” Dame Sylvia snickered. “New Delhi?”
The bartender laughed, but his smile was tight enough to suggest he would have preferred knocking her bony, drunken ass off the bar stool.
“Excuse me,” I said, as sweet as I could be. “I hate to bother you, but I’m looking for someone who was in here last night.”
“I was here. Who are you looking for?”
I slid the picture of Charlie in front of him.
The bartender’s eyes lit up. “Yes, yes, of course I remember him. How could I forget him?”
“Why? What did he do?” I said.
“It’s not what he did. It’s whom he was with. Akshay Kapoor. He may not be that famous here, but back home he’s like a hero. I’ve seen all his movies. I own every one on DVD.”
I tapped the photo with my forefinger. “So this man met Akshay? Were they here long?”
“About twenty minutes. That is how long it took me to work up the courage to ask Mr. Kapoor for an autograph.” The bartender pulled a napkin out of his breast pocket and waved it proudly in front of my face. “See? He signed it. Do you know how much I could get for this back in India?”
I was trying to stay calm. “Did they leave together?”
“Oh yes. They seemed quite tight,” the bartender said.
Dame Sylvia took a big gulp of her drink and slapped the glass down in front of the bartender again. “I always knew that towel-head was a fag.”
I stood up from the bar and wandered aimlessly away, my whole world slowly falling apart.