He’d brought back everyone to the Sherbourne Playhouse who’d been there last night. Mind you, when I say everyone I don’t mean the likes of Jackie O or Gentleman Gerry Cooney. The celebrities who’d packed the house weren’t summoned back. By everyone I mean Mimi, who looked extremely tense. Her jaw was clenched, her sky blue eyes narrow slits. I mean Cyril Cooper, aka Coop, the ponytailed crew chief, and the volunteers who’d been helping him ready the stage for act two while Greg Farber was busy drowning to death downstairs in the men’s dressing room. Corralling all of them had taken some doing. Nona Peachy, for example, had already split town. Tedone had to put out an APB on the Brown drama student. A Rhode Island state policemen pulled her over on I-95 near Watch Hill.
“I was on my way to visit a friend whose family has a beach house there,” she told me, wide-eyed, as we all stood clustered on the stage. “Never been so scared in my life.”
“You have no reason to be. The lieutenant is just being thorough.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You didn’t have a cop chase you down on the highway with his siren blaring.”
By everyone I mean Dini, who looked frightfully pale under the stage lights as Glenda stood watch over her, acting highly indignant. Cheyenne and Durango stood very quietly together near Dini, holding hands. By everyone I mean Merilee, who was calm and unruffled in that way she has of being calm and unruffled at uncommonly tense moments. My ex-wife would have made an excellent NFL quarterback or astronaut, I’ve always felt. By everyone I mean Marty, who wasn’t calm at all. He was chain-smoking Lucky Strikes, his left knee jiggling, jiggling.
Lieutenant Tedone slurped from a carton of coffee and paced the stage, shooting baleful looks at me. “We’ve put a lot of people to a lot of trouble. I sure hope you know what you’re doing.”
“That makes two of us, Lieutenant.”
“Okay, that right there—what you just said—that didn’t fill me with a ton of confidence.”
“I apologize. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about. Actually, that’s not true. There’s quite a bit to worry about. But before this hour is over I assure you that you’ll have your killer in custody.”
The stage set from act one—the French hotel terrace—had been resurrected. The backdrop was in place. Coop’s stagehands had fetched the furniture and props from the warehouse and positioned them just as they’d been last night. Everything was exactly as it had been, minus the rain pouring down. Also minus Sabrina, who was no longer seated in the wings on a folding chair in her frumpy Louise costume, due to her presently being on an autopsy table in the M.E.’s lab. Nona Peachy had been immediately recruited to take her place, maid’s costume, frumpy wig, the works.
The dressing rooms downstairs were all prepared. The makeup tables were fully stocked. The act two costumes were hanging in readiness—minus Greg’s tweed suit, which, like Sabrina, was presently at the M.E.’s office. As was Greg.
“Darling, is this absolutely necessary?” Merilee wondered when I asked her, Dini and Marty to change back into their act one costumes.
“I’m afraid so. We need to reenact what happened down to the tiniest detail. I’ll stand in for Greg.” Although I refused to put on makeup. I also couldn’t wear Greg’s act one costume, which didn’t come close to fitting me. Instead, I wore the ensemble that I was already wearing—my persimmon linen blazer, vanilla pleated slacks, pink shirt, striped bow tie and white bucks. This is why it’s important to dress appropriately for any occasion that might arise, no matter how unexpected or bizarre.
The curtain was up. Mimi sat in the same front row seat she’d been in last night, as did Glenda and the twins.
“Are we ready?” asked Tedone, who stood in the wings with Sergeant Angelo Bartucca and a half-dozen troopers in uniform.
“I believe we are,” I said.
“Then let’s do this, okay?”
By “this” he meant run the final lines of dialogue from the end of act one between Sybil (Merilee) and Victor (me). Victor says, “To absent friends” and raises his champagne glass. Sybil raises her glass and says, “To absent friends.” They both laugh rather mirthlessly, then sit down on the balustrade with an incredibly stubborn ham of a basset hound parked between them. There was no denying her so I didn’t even bother to try. “It’s awfully pretty, isn’t it?” Sybil says, gazing out at the view. “The moonlight, and the lights of that yacht reflected in the water—” And Victor says, “I wonder who it belongs to.”
And then the curtain slowly fell, just as it had last night, minus the roar of applause.
“Okay, let’s everyone stay put for a moment, please!” Tedone called out before the crew sprang into action to clear the stage for act two. “Just to be perfectly clear, Miss Hawes, where were you and Mr. Miller while Miss Nash and Mr. Farber were saying those final lines?”
“Right here in the wings next to Sabrina,” Dini recalled.
“That’s right.” Marty nodded his balding head. “Right here next to . . . sorry, hon, what’s your name?”
“Nona.”
“Is that short for Winona?”
“It’s not short for anything. It’s my name, Mr. Miller.”
“Call me Marty,” he said, grinning at her.
“You don’t mind if I continue, do you, Marty?” Tedone asked him.
“Not a bit, Lieutenant. Go right ahead.”
“So you two were still here. You hadn’t gone downstairs yet.”
Dini nodded. “That’s right.”
Now Tedone turned to the show’s director. “What happened next?”
“Coop and his crew had fifteen minutes to transform this stage from a rain-soaked balcony in the south of France to Amanda’s flat in Paris,” Merilee replied. “They also rigged up a rain canopy over the sofa so that we could sit on it without getting soaked. A brilliant bit of improvising, Coop. I meant to tell you last night and didn’t get the chance.”
“Weren’t no big thing,” Coop said modestly.
“Do it now,” Tedone told him.
“Do what, boss?” Coop asked him.
“The set change. Same way you did it last night, canopy and all. On the clock. Can you spare Nona?”
“If you’re telling me she needs to stand in for Sabrina then so be it. Okay, gang!” Coop called out. “Let’s get it on!”
And with that his crew immediately sprang into action. One team of stagehands hoisted the backdrop of the harbor and lowered the back wall of Amanda’s Paris flat into its place, complete with windows overlooking the city. One team hustled the balustrade and terrace furniture offstage while another came in with the sofa and end tables, setting them on their marks on the floor. As they worked, swiftly and silently, the Sherbourne Playhouse’s lighting man, an old pro, shifted the moonlit terrace into the interior of an apartment at 10:00 A.M.
Meanwhile, the play’s three surviving stars, Greg’s stand-in and Lulu hustled down the spiral staircase to the dressing rooms. Mimi and Glenda followed, as did Lieutenant Carmine Tedone and Sergeant Angelo Bartucca. Even though the dimly lit basement corridor was no longer flooded, Tedone asked Mimi to turn the sump pumps on.
She frowned at him. “Whatever for?”
“I want the noise level down here to be the same as it was last night.”
“Of course.” Mimi flicked them on, one by one.
“I’m not comfortable doing this,” Glenda complained, raising her voice over the rumble of the pumps.
“Doing what, Mrs. Hawes?” Tedone asked.
“Leaving the twins upstairs without someone to look after them. Sabrina I knew. I don’t know this Nona person. And that stage crew is a motley group. Some of the language I’ve been hearing . . .”
“A trooper will watch over them, okay? Sergeant, have a man sit with the twins.”
Bartucca squeezed past Glenda and darted up the stairs to take care of it.
Reluctantly, Glenda stayed put, glancing around warily.
“We’re just trying to be accurate, Mrs. Hawes,” Tedone explained. “You folks encountered major pandemonium down here. The flooding. The racket that those pumps were making . . .”
“And everyone was concerned about Dini,” I said. “That’s why you came down here, wasn’t it, Glenda?”
“Well, yes,” she acknowledged. “My girl was running a fever of a hundred and two point eight that afternoon, and even though she’d gotten some rest at the inn before the show I thought she still seemed unsteady on her feet during act one.”
“How are you feeling now?” Tedone asked Dini.
“How do you think I feel?” Dini demanded.
He reddened. “Sorry, I just meant . . .”
“No, I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I didn’t mean to bite your head off. I feel better, thank you. My fever seems to have broken.”
“Well, that’s good.” Tedone turned to me and said, “And you came down here to . . . ?”
“Check on the flood conditions with Mimi. We got down here just in time to see Marty come sloshing out of the men’s dressing room in his boxer shorts and charge straight across the hall into the men’s john to attend to his roiling innards. The men’s dressing room door was open. Greg was changing into his tweed suit. I waved to him and called out that the show was going great.”
“As did I,” Mimi said.
“And how did Mr. Farber seem?”
“Excited.”
“Very much so,” Mimi agreed.
Tedone ran a hand over his face, mulling it over. “So he was changing costumes while Mr. Miller was experiencing his, um, intestinal difficulties. Meanwhile, in the ladies’ dressing room . . .”
“We were changing for act two,” Merilee said. “Or trying to. It wasn’t easy. It’s a tiny space. Hoagy and Mimi had stopped by. And so had Glenda, who insisted upon checking on Dini.”
“She was very shaky,” Glenda said defensively. “You weren’t feeling well, were you, dear?”
“No, I wasn’t, Mother,” Dini allowed. “I felt weak and nauseated. In fact, I had to dash across the hall to the ladies’ room to throw up.”
Glenda nodded. “I went with her and waited right outside of the bathroom door. I could hear her in there, even over the racket of those sump pumps.”
Tedone turned to Mimi. “What did you do next?”
“Started back upstairs. I was hoping our plumber would show up with more sump pumps.”
“And how about you?” he asked me.
“I chatted briefly with Merilee in the ladies’ dressing room while she was changing. Then Dini returned from the bathroom, which was my cue to leave. Glenda’s as well.”
Tedone turned his attention to Glenda. “Mrs. Hawes, were you outside of the ladies’ room the entire time your daughter was in there?”
“Yes, I was.”
“So you can vouch for the fact that she didn’t leave the ladies’ room.”
Glenda looked at him in confusion. “And go where?”
“Say, into the men’s dressing room to kill her husband.”
Glenda’s eyes flashed at him angrily. “She went from her dressing room to the ladies’ room and then back to her dressing room. She didn’t visit Greg. And she for darned sure didn’t kill him.”
“Even though he’d been cheating on Dini with another man?” I pressed her. “Even though he’d given her the AIDS virus?”
Now it was my turn to get a nasty look from Glenda. “I don’t know if you’re trying to bait me, young man, but I don’t appreciate your insinuations.”
“Duly noted. And thank you for calling me ‘young man.’ That doesn’t happen very often anymore unless I visit my parents at Essex Meadows. Lieutenant, if I may . . .”
“Go ahead,” Tedone grunted.
“It seems to me that we have a generous choice of plausible scenarios here,” I said over the rumble of the sump pumps. “But, first, may I ask you to turn those damned things off? I’m getting this weird grinding sound inside of my head and I’d swear I’m starting to hear ‘Paul is dead, Paul is dead, Paul is dead . . .’”
“You’re hearing what? Wait, never mind. I don’t even want to know.” Tedone went around and flicked them off.
Blessed silence.
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” I said. “Dini came out of the ladies’ room after being sick and went into the dressing room with Merilee to change, which meant it was time for me to leave. Mimi had already gone back upstairs. Glenda was heading up the staircase herself. I was just about to join them when Marty came out of the john and asked me if I thought it was safe to flush the toilet. We talked briefly about septic overflow—although not briefly enough to suit me—before he returned to the men’s dressing room from the john. That’s when he called out to me. When I went in there I discovered Greg lying facedown on the floor in the floodwaters with the back of his head bashed in. Now let’s examine the players here . . .” I looked from Merilee to Dini to Marty, then at Glenda before I settled on Mimi. “We know, for instance, that you’re an excellent candidate. You were down here at the time of Greg’s murder and you’ve been harboring a deep hatred for Greg for years. The man broke your heart into a million pieces when he didn’t say, ‘I love you, Mimi. Let’s have our baby together. Marry me.’”
“What?” Dini shrieked. “Hoagy, what in the hell are you—?”
“Sorry, Dini. I assumed you knew. I guess he kept that particular nugget to himself. It so happens that Greg and Mimi were a sizzling hot item back when Greg was starring in a revival of Picnic and she was at the height of her cover girl fame. It also happens that he got her pregnant.”
Dini looked at Mimi coldly. “So I gather.”
“It was before you two got married,” Mimi said defensively. “He told me you split up after you left Yale.”
“We went our separate ways for a while,” Dini conceded.
“All I’m saying is he was flying solo when it happened. He wasn’t cheating on you with me. Not like he was cheating on you with Eugene.”
“Okay, that’s not helping, Mimi,” I said.
“Well, excuse me,” she shot back. “But this is your doing, not mine. Why did you even have to bring it up?”
“Because it speaks to motive. You loved him.”
“I did. But he didn’t love me. When I told him I was pregnant the thought never occurred to him to do anything other than get rid of it.”
Glenda bristled. “It’s not an ‘it.’ A fetus is a human life, and abortion is murder.”
Mimi rolled her eyes at her. “Glenda, I’ve had a hard couple of days, and I already can’t stand you, so kindly spare me the pro-life diatribe or I swear I’ll smack you right in your fat face.”
“All right, let’s settle down, ladies,” Tedone growled. “Go on, Hoagy.”
“My point, Mimi, is that last night was finally your chance to get even with him. But after talking to you in your office this morning I don’t believe that you killed him.”
She tilted her head at me curiously. “And why is that?”
“Because it was you who brought up that Greg got you pregnant. I didn’t know a thing about it. What killer goes out of her way to drop a motive on herself? Have you ever heard of a killer doing that, Lieutenant?”
“Can’t say as I have,” he replied, thumbing his jaw.
“Besides, Mimi, you couldn’t possibly have gone to Sabrina’s room at the inn this afternoon and forced her to shoot up that fatal dose of heroin.”
Tedone frowned at me. “Why not?”
“Because if she’d been in Sabrina’s room today Lulu would have smelled her Obsession and started sneezing her head off. She’s highly allergic to it.”
Merilee nodded. “That’s true, Lieutenant, she is. And she’s very, very reliable when it comes to her allergies, aren’t you, sweetness?” She bent down and gave Lulu a pat. Got a tail thump and low whoop for her trouble.
“Therefore, Mimi’s in the clear,” I said. “Which brings us to Dini and Glenda—either acting alone or together. Personally, I’ve been leaning toward the idea of together. Let’s set the scene again. I was in the ladies’ dressing room with Merilee. We’d closed the door. Mimi had gone upstairs. Marty was in the john. Greg was alone in the men’s dressing room. The only person who can vouch for Dini actually being in the ladies’ room at that particular moment is Glenda, who was standing right outside of the ladies’ room door. What mother wouldn’t lie to protect her daughter if that daughter, say, went flying out of the ladies’ room and whacked her cheating, bisexual husband in the head with a brick?”
“And then what about Sabrina?” Tedone asked. “Who killed her?”
“Glenda, of course. Dini was at the beach with the twins. That left it up to Mommy. Don’t forget she arrived at the beach house at virtually the same time I did, which leaves her unaccounted for at the time of Sabrina’s death. And she’s a retired nurse who knows her way around a hypodermic needle.”
Glenda glared at me with total contempt. “You have all of the answers, don’t you? And just exactly where did I get the heroin that I used to kill that unfortunate young woman?”
“That’s a very good question. Where did you?”
“Young man, I didn’t like you when I first met you. And now I’m liking you even less.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. But thank you again for calling me ‘young man.’”
“And I don’t care for the way your little dog is staring at me.”
“That’s because you’re behaving toward me in a hostile manner. She’s very protective of me. And she’s not little. She’s just short.” I turned back to Tedone. “Sabrina told me she got an idea during the act break that a slash of bright red lipstick would make Louise, the frumpy maid, look even frumpier. She started down the spiral staircase to the ladies’ dressing room to test it out on Merilee, but encountered such a crowd of people that she turned right around and went back upstairs. But I’m positive she saw something while she was down there. She wouldn’t tell me what, but she was afraid. I could see it in her eyes. My guess? She saw Dini coming out of the men’s dressing room after Dini had just brained Greg. And Dini saw her. Dini’s a big star. She could have derailed Sabrina’s career with one snap of her fingers. So Sabrina kept her mouth shut. Sabrina would have kept it shut, too. But you couldn’t take that chance, could you, Dini? So you had your mom go to the inn and inject her with that ‘Tango and Cash.’ Glenda, how did you manage to shoot her up without a struggle?”
“I do not know what you are talking about,” Glenda said to me in a slow, clear voice, as if she were addressing a recalcitrant child. “I did not purchase any heroin. I did not go to the inn. I was shopping in Sherbourne. There are shopkeepers who can vouch for me.”
“Perhaps they can,” I conceded. “But they can’t vouch for where you were ten minutes before you got there. It all adds up, Lieutenant. After all, Dini had been wronged by Greg in the worst way imaginable.” I looked over at Dini. “Are you going to come clean or are you going to stand there and tell us that you didn’t duck into the men’s dressing room and smash Greg in the head with that brick again and again and—”
“Hoagy . . . ?” Merilee’s hand was on my arm. “She’s been through a lot. Must you be so harsh?”
“We’re not playing beanbag, Merilee. And Greg was my friend. I liked the guy. He messed up big-time, but he didn’t deserve to drown facedown in that filthy water.”
“Well, I don’t feel a drop of sympathy for him,” Glenda said heatedly. “And I resent you suggesting that he deserves any.”
Tedone ran a hand over his layered mountain of black hair. “We know where that 1924 Tuttle brick came from. There’s a pile of them out in the courtyard. But what was it doing in the men’s dressing room?”
“Propping up one of the dressing table legs, Loo,” his young sergeant replied. “The table’s all rickety now.”
“That’s a good catch, Ang.”
“Plain as day,” he said modestly.
“Seems like an open-and-shut case to me, Lieutenant,” I concluded. “Dini smashed Greg in the head with that brick until he toppled over facedown in the floodwaters. No one heard it happen because the sump pumps covered the sound of the attack. By the time Marty found him and called out to me, the poor guy was already dead. We were too late to save him.”
Marty nodded gravely. “Too late.”
“And then Glenda coldly eliminated Sabrina, who had witnessed Dini leaving the dressing room.”
Tedone considered this a moment before he turned and looked at Lulu. “Your dog . . .”
“What about her, Lieutenant?”
“This afternoon, she went up the stairway to the third floor of the inn from Sabrina’s room and started barking. How come?”
“Because she smelled the traces of gunk that were still on Glenda’s shoes from the flooded dressing rooms last night. I’ve no doubt that Glenda cleaned them thoroughly. Just not thoroughly enough to deceive a top-shelf scent hound like a basset. You should have worn a different pair of shoes today, Glenda.”
“These are my only comfortable pair,” she said defensively. “My feet bother me. Besides, I already told you. I never went near that girl’s room.”
“And yet Lulu followed your scent up the staircase from Sabrina’s room to the room that Dini used to grab a nap, the one right across the hall from Marty’s room. You went up there to retrieve something that Dini had left behind.”
“It didn’t happen that way,” Glenda maintained, shaking her head. “Dini didn’t kill Greg. I didn’t kill Sabrina. You’re wrong about all of this.”
“I was figuring a new guest would have moved into the room, but the manager informed me that you folks still had the key. So you went up there after you killed Sabrina to fetch whatever it was that Dini had forgotten to take with her. What was it, Glenda? What did she forget?”
“I didn’t kill that girl!” Glenda’s face was getting tomato red. “I was never there at all, I swear!”
“That’s the only thing I still can’t figure out, Lieutenant. What it was that Dini left behind,” I said as Dini gaped at me in fright. “I’d suggest your men search every inch of that room, because aside from that one nagging detail this case is as tight as a drum.”
“It is not!” Marty spoke up angrily. “It’s total bullshit! Dini would never kill Greg. She couldn’t. It’s not possible.”
Tedone raised an eyebrow at him. “Do you know something more than you’ve told us, Mr. Miller? Did you see or hear anything?”
Marty shook his head. “No, nothing. Just what I’ve already told you.”
“Then you can’t help her, Marty,” I said. “No one can. Here are your killers, Lieutenant. Glenda committed an act of premeditated murder, so she’ll never see the outside of a prison again. Dini is another story. What do you think, will she be tried for manslaughter?”
“That’ll be up to the district prosecutor,” Tedone replied. “I wouldn’t rule out second-degree murder.”
“Whatever she’s charged with, she’s a beloved movie star and will doubtless become a figure of great sympathy, what with the extenuating circumstances and all. Greg having a gay lover and giving her the AIDs virus. Her being a single mother who has to raise the twins on her own now. Hell, a slick criminal defense attorney might even convince a jury that it was Greg who committed the crime against her.”
“I doubt that,” Tedone said. “It’s manslaughter at the very least.”
“How many years behind bars will she be looking at?” I asked him.
“Somewhere in the neighborhood of eight. Maybe five if she’s lucky enough to get a sympathetic parole board.”
“And lucky enough to get her proper dosage of HIV meds while she’s in prison,” I pointed out. “Penitentiaries are hotbeds of theft and black marketeering when it comes to AZT. Not exactly the healthiest environment either. There’s the starchy, greasy food, lack of fresh fruit and vegetables. Plus those places are petri dishes for germs. Bronchitis and pneumonia always going around. I’d have major, major health concerns if I were you, Dini. And with your mother in prison God knows who’ll end up looking after the twins. I imagine they’ll be placed in foster homes. Maybe the same foster home if they’re lucky. It sure would be a shame to separate them. But, hey, Greg got what he deserved for what he did to you. I can see your side of it. Truly, I can.”
“But, Hoagy, I didn’t kill him!” Dini cried out helplessly. “I swear!”
“Ladies, I’m afraid we have to continue this conversation at the Major Crime Squad headquarters in Meriden,” Tedone said.
Dini blinked at him, aghast. “I’m under arrest?”
“No, but I am bringing you and your mother in for official questioning. If I were you I’d contact your lawyer. I’d also suggest that you say nothing further.”
“B-But she didn’t do it!” Glenda sputtered. “I didn’t do it!”
“Please follow me,” Tedone said, starting for the spiral staircase.
“Hoagy, this can’t be happening!” Merilee protested, utterly distraught.
“I’m afraid it is, Merilee. I’m sorry.”
“The twins,” Dini said to Merilee pleadingly. “Would you . . . ?”
“We’ll bring them home to the farm with us,” Merilee promised her. “We have plenty of room, and they’ll be fine there until this horrible mistake gets straightened out.”
“I didn’t kill him!” Dini sobbed. “Hoagy, I’m telling you the truth. You’ve got to believe me!”
“I wish I did believe you, Dini. I’ve always liked you. And you’ve been a good friend to Merilee. But you have to admit how painfully obvious it is that you’re the one who grabbed that brick and smashed Greg over the head again and again and—”
“Stop this, damn it!” Marty erupted furiously. “Don’t you talk to her that way! She’s the victim here, you coldhearted prick. Don’t you see that? Don’t you possess so much as one single fucking ounce of human decency?”
I gazed at him sympathetically. “I’m sorry, Marty. Truly, I am. I should have taken into account how hard this must be for you. I completely forgot.”
“Wait, forgot what?” Tedone asked me.
“That he and Dini were romantically involved back when they were in drama school together.”
“We lived together for an entire semester.” Marty smiled at Dini fondly. “I still think that’s the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.”
Tedone peered at him. “You two lived together? I didn’t know that.”
“She took up with Greg after me,” Marty said. “Before me she’d had a fling with that lowlife greaseball Romero. Dini and every other girl in our class, including Merilee.”
Merilee’s jaw tightened, but she remained silent.
Marty pulled a Lucky Strike from the breast pocket of his mothball-scented vintage checked sports jacket and lit it with a butane lighter, dragging on it deeply as he continued to look fondly at Dini. “I thought we were for keeps, you and me. But it was rock-solid Greg who was right for you. Not someone who’s as screwed up as I am.”
“Your personal hygiene may have had something to do with it, too,” I suggested. “Have you considered that?”
Marty looked at me, bewildered. “My what?”
“Did I just say that out loud? I do that sometimes. Sorry. I took a lot of psychedelics in my youth.”
Marty turned back to Dini. “It’s funny how wrong you were about him. Greg was just as screwed up as I am. The only difference between us was that I was the better actor. Am the better actor. Audiences really, really liked him. He was very good at convincing them that he was a decent guy. He genuinely believed he was a decent guy. But that’s not acting.” He looked over at Merilee, his eyes coldly serious. “Tell me the God’s honest truth. Do you think Greg could have played Willie Loman?”
Merilee said, “I really don’t see how that has anything to do with—”
“Could he?” Marty demanded.
“No, I don’t,” she replied, uneasiness creeping into her voice. “I don’t think he was capable of understanding Willie’s despair.”
“I understand it.” Marty stabbed himself in the chest with a stubby thumb. “I live with it every day of my life.”
“You’ve never had a long-term relationship with anyone else after Dini left you for Greg, have you, Marty?” I said.
“They don’t seem to work out,” he said with a shrug. “So?”
“So maybe that’s because you’ve never stopped loving her. You have your little flings with bovine teenaged waitresses but the only woman who you’ve ever loved, and still love, is this one standing right here.” I looked over at Dini, who was staring at Marty wide-eyed, not blinking, like a terrified bunny. “You’d do anything for her, wouldn’t you?”
Marty stubbed out his cigarette on the basement floor with his shoe. “If I could. So?”
“So let’s climb out on a shaky limb for a second and say that Dini and Glenda are actually telling the truth—that after Dini threw up in the ladies’ room she returned directly to her dressing room. At that particular moment, Marty, you were . . . where were you?”
“Parked in the men’s room. I had the shits, remember?”
“Right. The Lieutenant and I even saw the evidence to prove it. But what we don’t have is proof that you were in the men’s room that entire time. Such as, say, before Dini got sick, when Glenda had barged into the dressing room to check on her. Mimi and I had stopped by, too, which means there was a brief window of time when there was no one in the corridor. You could have raced across the hall from the john into the men’s dressing room—unseen—bashed Greg’s head in, dumped him facedown in the floodwaters, raced back into the john—unseen—closed the door and stayed in there while Dini was throwing up in the ladies’ room and Glenda was hovering outside of the ladies’ room door. Then Dini returned to the dressing room and Mimi and Glenda headed back upstairs. I was just about to follow them when you emerged from the men’s room a second time and engaged me in that stimulating conversation about septic overflow. Then you returned to the men’s dressing room, pretended you’d just discovered Greg and called out my name. I came running. We tried to save him but we were too late. Very clever on your part, Marty, except for one small, unforeseen circumstance.”
“What circumstance would that be?” Tedone asked me.
“Sabrina had decided to experiment with that slash of bright red lipstick. On her way down the stairs to the ladies’ dressing room she saw you, didn’t she, Marty? Saw you darting back into the john in your billowy boxer shorts after you’d killed Greg.”
“You tell me, Hoagy,” he responded. “You’re the one who’s spinning this fable. I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”
“You’re a huge star. Sabrina didn’t want to make any trouble. Didn’t want to get involved, period. So when I asked her if she saw anything she kept her mouth shut. But you couldn’t count on her keeping it shut, could you? Eventually, under repeated questioning, she was going to contradict your version of the events and testify that you weren’t in the john that whole time—which would have blown a great big hole in your story and ruined everything.”
Marty said nothing in response. His face had gone blank.
“You’ve used drugs off and on for years. I have no problem believing that you scored some ‘Tango and Cash’ back when it was around. No problem believing you carry it with you wherever you go. It’s your suicide kit, isn’t it? In case you decide you can’t cope with the total misery of your life for one minute longer. Like father, like son. I also have no problem believing you talked your way into Sabrina’s room at the inn, sobbing about your good friend Greg. You sobbed and you sobbed. In fact, you were such an emotional wreck you told her that you’d decided to shoot up. You talked her into shooting up with you, didn’t you? That was a genuinely cruel thing to do to her, Marty. She was fragile.”
“We’re all fragile,” Marty said in a quiet, faraway voice. “Besides, she wasn’t exactly that hard to convince.”
The dimly lit corridor fell eerily silent now.
“Marty, you did this?” Dini’s voice was barely more than a whisper. “How could you . . . ?”
“He took you away from me!” Marty cried out. “I wake up miserable every day. I stuff my face. I get drunk. I get high. I fuck stupid, doughy waitresses. But it doesn’t help. Nothing helps. Nothing. The pain never goes away. Never. Sure, I’ve managed to keep going. And I’ve survived, in my own pathetic way. But when I found out that he’d cheated on you with Eugene and that you’re now HIV-positive, there was no fucking way I was going to let him get away with that. He was rotten to the core, Dini. He didn’t deserve you. He deserved to die.”
Dini began to weep. “Oh, Marty, you fool . . .”
“Did you say anything to him?” I asked.
Marty looked at me curiously. “Did I what?”
“Did you say anything to Greg?”
“You mean did I deliver a soliloquy? What was there to say? It wasn’t as if I planned it or anything. Sitting there on the hoop I suddenly realized that he had to die. The clarity was remarkable. So I poked my head out, saw that the coast was clear and ran across the hall. Grabbed that brick from under the table leg and bashed the hell out of him with it. After he fell facedown into the floodwaters I ran back across the hall into the men’s room and closed the door, like you said.” Marty looked at all of us as we stood there staring at him. “I had to do it, don’t you understand?”
“I do understand, Marty,” I said. “The same way I understand that his killer had to be you.”
He frowned at me. “Why do you say that?”
“Because you were the only person down here who nobody had eyes on for those few precious seconds that you needed—aside from Glenda, that is, who was parked outside of the ladies’ room all by herself listening to Dini vomit. But there’s no way in the world that Glenda would have ever killed Greg.”
Glenda looked at me in surprise. “Why not?”
“Greg was the father of your grandchildren. He was family.”
She lowered her eyes. “It’s true, he was.”
“And then there’s that footprint scent in the carpet from Sabrina’s second-floor room to the third floor. Lulu wasn’t following Glenda’s shoe prints to Dini’s room. She was following your highly scented flip-flops to your room across the hall from hers, which is where you went after you killed Sabrina.” I paused, feeling a heaviness in my chest. “I blame myself for that. I should have kept an eye on her. Brought her to Point O’Woods with me. Only I didn’t, and I’ll never, ever forgive myself for that. For as long as I live, whenever I hear Erroll Garner or watch Buster Keaton, she’ll be in my thoughts. And I have you to thank for that. But she seemed okay out there in the rose garden, writing her postcard to her mom. So I left her there. And while I was driving down to the beach she went back up to her room and you knocked on her door. Marty, you’ve just made it sound as if you didn’t plan to kill Greg. That it was a sudden moment of . . . what did you call it, clarity? But not Sabrina. Killing Sabrina was cold, calculated, and incredibly cruel. You preyed on her weakness. You’re a great actor, Marty. One of the best. But you’re not one of the good guys. This is who you are.”
Marty had started to breathe more heavily. Beads of perspiration were forming on his forehead. “My career is all I have,” he said vehemently. “Without it I’m just another fat nobody. Sabrina would have taken it away from me if she’d talked.”
“Don’t ever do that around me again, Marty,” I said.
“Don’t do what?”
“Try to put the onus on Sabrina. She’s not to blame. You are.”
“Is that a fact?” he shot back at me, his voice suddenly turning cold as ice. He’d assumed a different role now. He was no longer a pathetic, heartbroken figure. He was a wily, cornered predator. The transformation was so swift it was breathtaking. “Prove it.”
“What do you mean by that?” Tedone asked him.
“I mean there are no bruises on Sabrina’s body. Prove it wasn’t an accidental overdose. Prove that I was even there.”
“They’ll find your prints all over her room,” Tedone pointed out.
“So what? I had a fling with her. We were getting it on.”
“In your dreams.” Mimi looked at Tedone. “I heard him try to hit on her the first night of rehearsals. Sabrina blew him off.”
Tedone mulled this over. “Still, he does raise a reasonable point. She was a recovering addict, alone in a strange town. She’d just been through a heavy emotional experience. She was depressed.”
“She wasn’t depressed,” I insisted. “She was in good spirits when I left her there in the rose garden. Her career was about to take off.”
“That’s what freaked her out.” Marty nodded sagely. “I’ve met a ton of actors who are terrified of success. They’re much more comfortable being failures.”
“I’ve met writers like that, too. They feel much safer wallowing in a nice, soft cushion of self-pity. So what? We’re overlooking what really matters here.”
Marty peered at me. “Which is what?”
“The ripe scent of your flip-flops that Lulu followed from Sabrina’s room up the stairs directly to your room on the third floor. The scent that meant Sabrina wasn’t alone in her room. You were there. And you’re not really going to do this, are you?”
“Do what?”
“Expose yourself as a no-good, lying weasel right here in front of Dini. You love her, or so you keep telling us. You love her so much that you killed Greg because of what he did to her. So now’s the time to man up, Marty. Man up and tell us the truth.”
“The truth?” Marty let out a huge sigh, his chest heaving as he breathed in and out. “I went down to Sabrina’s room in tears. And I wasn’t acting. I truly was a wreck. I killed Greg. I-I told her I wanted to shoot up. She tried to talk me out of it. Wanted to take me to the hospital. She was so sympathetic and caring. A real nice girl. And I was sorry I had to do what I did to her. You can choose to believe that or not. I’m guessing you won’t.”
“Good guess.”
“I told her that the only way I’d make it through my grief over Greg’s death was if she’d shoot up with me. I talked her into it. I’d brought my suicide kit with me from New York, just like you said. I bring it with me wherever I go, because I never know when I’m going to crash and burn. A couple of packets of ‘Tango and Cash.’ Disposable syringes. A spoon. A length of rubber tubing to tie off. I cooked it and filled two syringes. I tied off with the tubing. She tied off with a belt. We counted to three and then . . .”
“And then . . . ?”
“She shot up and I didn’t. Just gathered up my kit and left. She was probably a goner by the time I was back upstairs in my room.”
“What did you do with your kit?” Tedone asked him. “The other syringe, the spoon, the heroin . . . ?”
“It’s in a suitcase in my room.”
Tedone peered at him in surprise. “It’s evidence. Why didn’t you get rid of it?”
“Get rid of it?” Marty’s eyes widened. “No way. I’d freak out if I didn’t have it with me.”
Tedone continued to peer at him, trying to understand this famous, gifted Oscar and Tony Award–winning actor Martin Jacob Miller. I could tell from the expression on his face that he wasn’t having any luck. “After we found Miss Meyer’s body we knocked on the door to your room. You weren’t there. Where were you?”
“Taking a walk around the village.” Marty shrugged his soft shoulders. “Contemplating what a miserable son of a bitch I am.”
We all fell silent. Dini stood there grief-stricken. Both Merilee and Mimi had their arms around her.
“It’s time to head upstairs, Mr. Miller,” Tedone said finally.
Marty nodded defeatedly. “Sure, whatever you say. Am I under arrest?”
“When you’re under arrest you’ll know it.”
“How?”
“Because I’ll tell you. Right now, I’m taking you in for formal questioning.”
“Wait, are all of those media people still out there?” The thought of this seemed to greatly distress Marty.
“I’m not going to put you in handcuffs,” Tedone said to him in a calming voice. “We’re just going to walk out to my car and go for a ride, okay?”
Marty lit another Lucky, his hand shaking, and dragged on it deeply before he said, “Sure, okay. But before we go upstairs is it okay if I use the john down here? My insides are about to explode. I should never eat onion rings.”
“Not a problem,” Tedone said. “Only, wait a sec . . .” He patted Marty down. The checked sports jacket, starched white shirt, pleated cream-colored slacks, even his argyle socks.
“You think I’m wearing an ankle holster or something?” Marty asked, watching him in amazement.
“Mr. Miller, I don’t know what to think. I just do my job.”
“I’ll be right out.”
“Take as long as you need.”
Marty went in the men’s room and closed the door.
The rest of us moved down the basement corridor toward the stairs.
“He’s loved me all of these years?” Dini sounded dazed and forlorn. “That’s why he killed Greg?”
“He was defending your honor,” I said. “Rather chivalrous in a sick, twisted sort of way.”
“Marty’s always been partial to grand, Shakespearean gestures,” Merilee recalled. “He’s also a devotee of Dumas—The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo. And he loves The Prisoner of Zenda with Ronald Colman. I swear he knows that movie line for line.”
“Big Errol Flynn fan, too, or so he told me.”
That was when we heard the thud.
It came from the men’s room.
Tedone raced back there. “You okay, Mr. Miller?” he called to him through the door.
There was no response.
I joined Tedone. “Marty?” I hollered.
Still no response.
Tedone flung open the door and Marty came tumbling out headfirst onto the hallway floor. That thud we’d heard was the sound of his head thumping against the door when he’d passed out. His jacket was off, his shirtsleeve rolled up so that he could tie off with a length of rubber tubing. The needle was still in his arm, the vomit still spewing from his mouth as he gagged, shuddered and then went still. Dini and Mimi both screamed. Merilee just stood there and stared. She isn’t given to screaming.
Cursing, Tedone hollered up the stairs for an EMT crew.
Glenda, the retired Chatham County school nurse, knelt with a grunt, feeling for Marty’s vital signs. “They can’t save him,” she said heavily, her gaze fixed on the rubber tubing that was still knotted tightly around his arm. “He’s gone. More of that same ‘Tango and Cash,’ I imagine.”
Tedone peered in dismay at the kit on the men’s room floor. “He didn’t have that on him when I just patted him down. I’d stake my career on it.”
“He planned ahead, Lieutenant,” I said quietly. “Hid it in there when we were still upstairs. He knew.”
“He knew what?” Tedone demanded angrily.
“That he wasn’t going to get away with it.”
Dini fell to her knees, resting her cheek on Marty’s chest despite the stench of his vomit, and began to sob. They were painful, gut-wrenching sobs. I stood there looking at her and wondered how she was going to put her life back together. Her husband was gone. Her health was compromised. What would she do? Take the twins and flee home to Siler City with Glenda? Stay put in New York and slug it out? My guess was that she would stay put and fight to keep working. She came across as fragile, but she was a battler to her core. All great actresses are.
I knelt and put my hand on her shoulder. “Dini, I’m sorry I had to get a little rough with you and your mom, but I needed to piss him off. It was the only way.”
Dini sniffled softly. “I understand.”
Glenda didn’t. Just glared at me with a Vulcan death stare. She wasn’t the forgiving type.
I helped Dini to her feet.
She stood there, swiping at her eyes, then moved away from Marty toward the staircase. “Mother, shall we take the twins back to the beach house now?”
“Certainly,” Glenda responded. “But Eugene has to leave.”
“Absolutely. I’ll tell him to go.”
“We’ll be needing statements from both of you,” Tedone said to them. “Can you stick around for another day before you go back to New York?”
“Of course, Lieutenant.”
“Thank you. I’ll be in touch. And I’m sorry that it . . . that it came to this. I should have been able to stop it from happening.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Dini responded quietly. “There was no way you could have known he was planning to kill himself.”
“I’m going to follow them down to the beach,” Merilee said to me. “Do what I can to help out. I’ll see you later at the farm, okay?”
“I’ll be there. Wait, hang on, there’s something on your cheek . . .” I leaned over and kissed it and gave her a hug.
She hugged me back, tightly, for so long that I thought she was never going to let me go. When she did her green eyes were shining at me. “Thank you, darling.”
“For what?” I asked, getting lost in them.
“For being you.”
Then she went up the spiral staircase behind Mimi, Dini and Glenda. I stayed down there with Tedone and the Oscar and Tony Award–winning actor Martin Jacob Miller, who none other than Kazan himself had said was the best Willy Loman ever.
Tedone looked at me, nodding his head. “Okay, I get it now.”
“Get what, Lieutenant?”
“Very told me you’d irritate the hell out of me but that I’d end up thanking you.”
Lulu let out a low moan of protest.
“You and your partner both, I should say.” He bent down and patted her. She thumped her tail happily. Tedone watched her carefully, frowning. He seemed a bit disappointed. “That’s it? There’s nothing more?”
“Such as . . . ?”
“I thought maybe she’d bark three times or give me her paw or something.”
“You watched too much TV when you were a kid, too, Lieutenant. Lulu’s not Lassie or Rin Tin Tin. She’s a real dog.”
“Sure. Right. Don’t know what I was thinking.” But he still seemed disappointed.
“Besides, I’m the one who should be thanking you.”
“For what?”
“You’ve kept us safe and relatively sane these past twenty-four hours by keeping Romero on ice.”
His face fell. “Yeah, about that. I’m afraid he’s been arraigned on the grand theft charge, which means he’ll be out on the street as soon as he raises bail. Then it’ll take him about a minute and a half to find a shyster lawyer who’s dying to get his name in the tabloids. Your troubles with Romero are far from over.”
“I know.”
“What are you planning to do about it?”
“You’re not hinting again at that arrangement your brother Pete and I discussed, are you?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Tell me, Lieutenant. What would you do if you were me?”
Carmine Tedone suddenly looked very weary. “I can’t answer that. Not officially. If it was my woman whose life and career were being threatened I’d do something, I’ll tell you that much. I wouldn’t just sit back and let that creep drag her through the mud. But you don’t strike me as the type who’ll let that happen. You know how the world works.”
“You’re right, I do. And I’m sorry that I do. I was a whole lot happier before I did.”
“You and me both, brother.”