Rehearsal for Murder (Maggie Ryan) Read online

  Steve had a sudden vision of Elaine’s tanned, balding father on his hospital bed, wearing a white gown and a pith helmet, being rolled across the veld by a combination of native bearers and nurses in white, his big-game rifle booming to bring down herds of charging rhinos in the best Hemingway fashion. No mere operation would stop Avery Busby. A spirit as free as Susan’s.

  Rachel seemed to agree. She said, “Boy, you’ve got quite a dad. Well, listen, I’d better get my casserole out of the oven before it fuses together. Your plane is at noon Thursday, right?”

  “Yes. I’ll drop Muffin at Mitzi’s, then drive to the airport. Dad should be coming out of the anesthesia about the time I arrive in Palm Beach.”

  “Not a complicated operation, then?”

  “Just a typical male complaint. But he’s not pleased.”

  “He doesn’t think he’s a typical male,” said Steve. “But he’ll be pleased enough to see you.”

  “Oh, I know. But he’ll bluster around and send Mom and me on lots of pointless errands and won’t admit he hurts.” Elaine sighed in resignation. Avery Busby liked his men rugged and his women refined, and had seen to it that his daughter spent her summers at a Swiss finishing school, her college years at Mount Holyoke. Steve appreciated the results. Convincing Elaine and her formidable father that he would be the best choice among her suitors was one of the great victories of Steve’s life. His elation had lasted months, even years. He felt a nibble of melancholy now; did all joys in life become flat eventually? He had been happy then. He’d thought it would last. And in a way it had; he loved Elaine deeply, loved his enchanting daughter, appreciated the good life they lived here. But somehow joy had succumbed to time, worn away by little daily frustrations, and by big ones. Catalog of the decline of joy: A bleak night at the hospital, the doctor’s professional sympathy: “I’m sorry, Steve, we couldn’t save the baby. Your wife needs your support now.” At the office: “I’m sure you’ll understand, Steve, Bill’s in a better position to take the assignment in Japan. No family to worry about. We all thought it would be better just now to send him.” At his own doctor’s office: “You’re in great shape, Steve, but we’d better keep an eye on that blood pressure. We middle-aged types can’t be quite as carefree as teenagers, you know.” At the target range, his father-in-law’s genial reiterated confidences: “I always told Elaine she and her family would make their own way. Advice, sure. Recommendations, sure. But no handouts. That’s how I was raised. It makes a man sharper, hungrier, ready for a little adventure.” And Steve, the Japan adventure so recently snatched from his grasp because he was married to this man’s daughter, could only nod soberly and blast away at a cardboard target. And yet—

  And yet, he knew the value of what he had. Count blessings: security, status, health, love, the beginnings of wealth.

  Rachel was letting herself out the kitchen door, saying something about dinner. He waved good-bye and wondered if love and wealth could survive in South America.

  Sarah’s waving fist smacked against the spoon in Nick’s hand and sent a dollop of oatmeal splattering onto the refrigerator door.

  “Thou clay-brained guts!” complained Nick.

  She stared in fascination at his face and breathed reverently, “Ah-yah!”

  His annoyance dissolved into addle-brained rapture. Nick the besotted. Gazing into her delightful brown eyes, he murmured, “Fond of Shakespeare, are you? How about, ‘thou knotty-pated fool?’”

  “Ah-yah!”

  “Obscene, greasy tallow-keech!”

  Sarah chortled and slapped the tray of the high chair.

  “All right, now, enough of this idle banter.” Nick succeeded in getting most of the last spoonful into her mouth, then mopped her chin, dropped the unspeakable bib into the pile of souring laundry in the corner, called the dog to lap up the spills on the floor, and got out her bathtub.

  She had just dropped off to sleep and Nick was swabbing down the refrigerator when Maggie returned from work. “Hi, love,” she said. “How’s it going?”

  “The usual. Gracious surroundings, scintillating conversation, impeccable linen.”

  “You’re right. Time for the laundry.” She dropped her briefcase and coat in the butler’s pantry and picked up the armload of soiled bibs and blankets. “Any word about Ramona?”

  “No. I called Derek to tell him. He said he’d go to the hospital and ring me back when he heard something. But he hasn’t called.”

  “I’m worried, Nick.”

  “So am I, love.”

  “And I can’t figure it out.” She was stuffing things into the washer.

  “What?”

  “Why did she go into that building? Why was she shot? Why there?”

  “Carlotta said Ramona seemed to think someone was hurt in there.”

  “Okay. So her soft heart overcame her street smarts. But someone grabbed her, right? Made contact? Carlotta saw that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Grabbed her, threatened her with the gun, got the bag. Okay, I’m with it so far. But next?”

  “Shoot her and run.”

  “Shoot her where?”

  Nick nodded. “You’re right. The guy is close enough to grab her. He’d probably have the gun against her head. Maybe her heart.”

  “Couldn’t miss.”

  “You’re sure the only wound was the one at her waist?”

  “Yeah. I kept checking for trouble somewhere else because there’d been two shots. But that was it. Entrance and exit wounds.”

  “Couldn’t have been two different shots?”

  She shrugged unhappily. “Then why both at her waist? Why a powder burn on the front of that light cape and none on the back? It was close range, Nick.”

  “Maybe she was struggling.”

  “You don’t struggle if the other guy has a gun!”

  “Ramona’s feisty.”

  “Okay. Here’s another problem then. Why that street? Lots of other places are more deserted.”

  He rinsed his dishcloth and tossed it to her to add to the laundry. “Maybe he didn’t want to wait too long for a victim to happen by. And maybe with construction scaffolds on both streets he thought it was a good setup to escape. Somebody pried off that hasp, after all, and broke down the plywood, and I doubt if it was the building’s legal owner.”

  “Maybe.”

  “There’s something else, though,” Nick admitted reluctantly.

  “What?”

  “Well, you remember the mood she was in. How we kidded her out of it? She had us all fuming.”

  Maggie considered. “But even supposing it was one of you people, that doesn’t explain any of the problems we’ve been talking about.”

  “I know. And besides, no matter how nasty she might be, every one of us wants her to be wildly successful in this play. We’re part of the show. We aren’t going anywhere without her.”

  “Yeah. And none of you are black kids, either.”

  “Well—”

  “What?”

  “There’s Callie. Daphne’s niece. Expelled from school for the day, just visiting. She watched very politely, but Ramona lit into her too.”

  “A kid?”

  “This particular kid has a tongue as rough as Ramona’s. But she shut up when Daphne told her to.”

  “Daphne seemed to have control?”

  “I thought so.”

  “Well—hell, it’s just that nothing quite fits. Guess I’ll let the police worry about it.” Maggie added the soap and started the washer. “Is Sarah sleeping?”

  “Like a baby.” Nick followed her upstairs to the bedroom floor. Sarah’s nursery and the kitchen were the only two finished rooms in the house. If Ramona recovered and he got his promised pay, they might get two more painted this year. Damn, this was not the profession for home and family. Ninety-five percent unemployment, and that was among actors good enough to belong to Equity. He’d been lucky so far, a couple of jobs a year, waiting tables or janitoring in between. This risky,
up-and-down life had seemed full of freedom and joy when shared with an eagerly adventurous companion like Maggie. But his choice of profession felt rash and irresponsible now as he looked down into the crib at Sarah, tiny and defenseless.

  Maggie adjusted the cotton blanket over her, smiling, then met Nick’s eyes and grew serious again. “You’re worried about Ramona,” she said.

  “Yeah. Not just because she’s a friend. Goddamn it, Maggie, in most businesses if the boss has an accident, you don’t lose your job!”

  “There are two of us, Nick.” Her blue eyes were troubled. He threw an arm around her shoulder.

  “Hell, Maggie, maybe it’ll all work out. But somehow, now that Sarah’s here, the future counts. I’m not quite as carefree and liberated as I thought I was.”

  He half expected her to argue that she could provide for them all, that his own career was surprisingly dependable, that their successes to date were more than freak good luck—all true observations. But instead she burrowed her nose into his neck and murmured, “Neither am I, Nick. Neither am I,” and somehow he was more comforted than if she had said all those other true things.

  III

  Wednesday

  March 7, 1973

  By the time Nick arrived at the loft on the drizzly Wednesday, Derek was mounting the platform to call the rehearsal to order. Nick was struck at the alteration in the mild little Englishman. Today the pale twinkling eyes were feverish and worried, the genial optimism converted to anxiety. The subdued actors quieted instantly. Most had not heard what had happened until their arrival minutes ago.

  “We’ve got a problem, mates,” Derek announced. “To be brief, Ramona was badly hurt last night during a robbery. She is in the hospital and in quite serious condition. Still unconscious.”

  Edith stroked the blond wig she wore as young Victoria’s German nurse. “Was it a mugging? A knife? What?”

  “The hospital blokes were not very forthcoming, but I gather the problem is internal bleeding from a bullet that nicked her liver. They assured me that she has been attached to all the appropriate machines. I can’t give you a firsthand report because only relatives can visit.”

  “God!” said Edith with an indignant heave of her ample bosom. “That bastard Simon? He won’t visit. She’ll be alone!” Alone. The words echoed in Nick’s mind:in the crowds, still alone, forever alone.

  Derek shrugged. “It’s regulations. And she’s unconscious at the moment.”

  Daphne asked anxiously, “Is her life in danger?”

  Derek licked his lips. “They made no predictions. Just repeated that it was serious. My own feeling is, if there’s any sort of a chance, she’ll rally round. She’s a fighter.”

  “That’s true,” said Edith, slightly consoled.

  “How did it happen?” Larry, who had been quietly inspecting his shoes, looked up.

  “She was on her way to a restaurant, and—but here, Nick, you tell it. You were there.”

  “You were there?” exclaimed Jaymie.

  “Not quite. Half a block away,” said Nick. Poky O’Connor, dull and muddy-mettled. The big man who wasn’t there. “We—Maggie and I—walked with her most of the way to the subway, but she turned off before we reached Canal. She was meeting someone at L’Etoile. We went on a few steps, then heard shots and ran back. We found her in a gutted building, already unconscious. Maggie gave what first aid she could while I called the ambulance.”

  Larry’s hard glare burned across the room at him. “Why the hell didn’t you stay with her?”

  “Guess I forgot to consult Madame Astra yesterday,” snapped Nick. Larry’s words rankled. It was not the first time that he had found himself standing by, helpless to prevent tragedy. Last night had brought back old nightmares of his first wife limp and cold in a dressing room, of a teenager machine-gunned by the Berlin wall.

  “Hey, he did what he could,” Edith was saying. Short, bosomy, thick-waisted, she viewed herself as peacemaker. “None of the rest of us would have gone anywhere near her, the mood she was in yesterday.”

  “Did you say it was a robbery?” Daphne’s fingers jabbed at her Afro, mushrooming it away from her slender neck.

  Nick said, “A witness told us she was pulled into the building. I saw that the things in her bag had been dumped out, but there was no sign of her billfold.”

  “But God, why not just snatch the bag? Why shoot her?” asked Daphne.

  “I know. We wondered about that too. We thought maybe she was struggling.”

  “She wouldn’t have resisted if there was a gun!” Edith objected. “We were talking about it just last week. Remember, Jaymie? When we all left together? She’d gotten herself a little pistol and was telling us we should get one too. She said she was ready for anybody now. And I said, what if a mugger already had his gun out? And she said of course she’d be sensible then. She wasn’t pretending to be the fastest draw in the West.”

  “Did she keep this gun in her bag?” asked Nick.

  “That’s where it was when she showed it to us. Why?”

  “Well, there was no gun in the stuff he’d dumped.”

  “You think he took it too?”

  “I think you should tell the police it might have been there. If there’s a record of it somewhere, it might help trace the guy eventually.” He didn’t add the grim corollary: when it was used on another victim.

  “You mentioned a witness,” said Larry.

  “Yes, did someone see it?” asked Jaymie. She tapped her cigarette into the battered brown wastebasket by the piano.

  “A woman walking a short distance behind her. She said she saw Ramona pause, then step closer to the gutted building. There’s a temporary plywood wall with a missing piece. She said a black kid pulled Ramona into the shadows. The woman panicked and was running away even before the shots were fired.”

  “So maybe she can identify him!” exclaimed Edith.

  “She claims she didn’t see much. But maybe in a lineup ...” Nick shrugged.

  “What happened next?” asked Daphne.

  “Maggie and I came blundering back, and the police and ambulance got there soon and took over. We told the officers what we knew and they sent us away. I called Derek, and he found out the rest.”

  “God, why couldn’t you have walked her just that one block farther?” demanded Larry.

  Derek cut off Nick’s angry response. “Steady, mates, no use now playing what-if.”

  “Right,” agreed Daphne hastily. She stretched and added, “Well, Derek, what do we do now?”

  “I got through to Ken Martin this morning. Ramona’s partner in the production company. He’s a lawyer and said he’d check into the contract. His first response was to let you people go immediately, and ...”

  A din of objections drowned him out. Derek nodded and raised his palms for silence. “I know, I know. I suggested we continue working for a few days until we know more certainly how long she’ll be recuperating. He said to go ahead till the weekend and he’d let us know.”

  “Anyway, he can’t fire us!” exclaimed Jaymie. “Ramona told her husband there was no backing out! Or—do you mean the contract is tied to her being able to perform? I mean, she’ll be back!”

  “Martin’s checking on the legal bits. And of course he agreed that if she was going to be back soon, it would be silly to disband the cast even if he legally could. And you know Ramona will tell him the same thing when she wakes up.”

  “Still,” said Edith, “it’ll be hard to work without her. She’s in most of the numbers.”

  “We’ve got Jaymie,” said Daphne. Jaymie flashed her a trembly smile.

  “Ramona will never agree to do things Jaymie’s way,” said Larry.

  “Well, we can at least do the rough blocking,” insisted Daphne. “Work on the choruses. And if you think about it, she usually doesn’t object to the concepts. She just adjusts details sometimes.”

  “Yeah. Details like cutting a whole solo,” griped Larry.

  Nick
said, “I don’t think we should take her complaints yesterday too seriously.”

  “You didn’t have a number cut!”

  “Look, Larry, she had other problems. She told me she’d been taking it out on us and said she’d try to be better about it.”

  Edith, dubious, shook her head. “After everything she said yesterday? I don’t know.”

  “She meant those things,” agreed Jaymie. Even Derek looked skeptical.

  Nick felt he had to defend her. “You all know she’s not usually as difficult as yesterday. She’s got personal problems right now. Under a lot of strain. And she’s opinionated, and around here she gets her way. She should! We’ve all worked in star vehicles before, and that’s the way things are. But Ramona’s been pretty decent. Doesn’t usually hurt people. I think she’ll be reasonable. She even apologized yesterday.”

  “Whether we believe all that or not, Nick, it doesn’t solve our problem now.”

  “Well, we can’t just quit!” said Jaymie. “She’ll probably be better soon. Doctors fall all over themselves for famous people. Not like most …” She bit her lip, bowed her head.

  Daphne reached over to pat her hand and said, “What do you think, Derek?”

  “I think we should try. Believe me, mates, as soon as I have any real answers, I’ll let you know. But for now it seems best to assume that she’ll be back in a couple of weeks and rehearse without her as best we can. We’ll lose less time in the long run.”

  Larry shrugged. “Well, then, let’s start.”

  Everyone nodded, willing to go along with this least unsatisfactory plan. Derek plunked himself onto the piano bench, announcing act two, and Daphne explained, “Kick line comes on from stage left, everyone except the Disraelis and Gladstones. And Victoria of course.” She demonstrated the steps quickly, her lithe dark body flitting impudently through the comic music hall routines. It was basically a repetition of the show opener, called “Sixty-four Years,” the length of Queen Victoria’s reign. The verses were different, but the choreography echoed the opener.

  “And at ‘running an Empire alone—all alone’ you all pull back into a vee. Lights up on Victoria’s throne at the apex. Okay, Jaymie?”