A Motive For Murder Part 15

"When did she come up with the idea to replace me with Emili Vladimir?" Auntie Lil asked.

"She said something like it would be better to have Emili as a friend than as an enemy. I was sort of surprised that Emili even wanted a seat on the board. I thought she was too busy with the Freedom Ballet Company to care about us."

"Freedom?" Auntie Lil asked. "I've seen them at the Joyce Dance Theater. But they border on modern dance. Emili Vladimir is a.s.sociated with them?"

Ruth nodded. "She helped found it about six years ago, but she mostly ch.o.r.eographs and teaches. She doesn't like the limelight. It was sort of a big deal, that the great Emili Vladimir would turn her back on cla.s.sical ballet. One of those nuances dance people get all excited about. Hey, these are pretty good." Ruth gobbled down two more fried plantains.

Auntie Lil watched in alarm, wondering if she would have to order another plate to satisfy her own preferred quota. "I think I donate money to Freedom," she said thoughtfully.

"Sounds like you donate money to everything," Ruth observed. "That's another reason they wouldn't throw you off the board."

"Money can be useful," Auntie Lil admitted. "Very useful, indeed."

If Ruth had needed help returning to her office, Auntie Lil might have gone straight home to ponder the inner workings of Lane Rogers's weaselly mind. But since Ruth slammed the cab door shut and zoomed away in that singularly intent manner of drunks trying very hard to appear sober, Auntie Lil was left with most of the afternoon still at her disposal. What better way to spend it than taking a nice stroll up Hudson Avenue, which just happened to turn into Eighth Avenue, which, in turn, just happened to take Auntie Lil right by the Joyce Dance Theater? The woman at the box office knew her well, since it could be argued that Auntie Lil paid her salary in a roundabout fas.h.i.+on. She directed Auntie Lil to a rehearsal s.p.a.ce in a warehouse building on Twentieth Street. She would probably find Emili Vladimir there.

Many people have tried to articulate the difference between cla.s.sical ballet and modern dance over the years, particularly the exact categorization of modern ballet-which often seemed neither here nor there. But Auntie Lil had no problem defining what set one apart from the other: it was the att.i.tude. And it was a relaxed att.i.tude that greeted her when she stepped out of the groaning freight elevator onto the main floor of the Freedom Ballet Company's headquarters. The Metropolitan Ballet would never have tolerated the heaps of gym bags stacked in one corner, or the group of huddled dancers sitting cross-legged near the window, chatting while others worked out. Nor would the Metro ever have allowed the thumping ba.s.s beat that filled the room to contaminate its speakers.

Emili Vladimir stood in the center of the immense floor. She was dressed in plain black leotards, legs bent out to the side and pelvis thrust forward as she instructed a muscular black male dancer on the proper technique to use when flinging his redheaded partner high into the air. Unlike ballet, which allowed for only the most carefully prescribed movements, Emili's brand of ch.o.r.eography apparently called for wild twirling and an abandoned tossing of the female into the air by her partner. Each time the dancers rehea.r.s.ed their series of steps, it looked-and felt-quite different from the time before. This immediacy was one reason why Auntie Lil preferred the more spontaneous modern style to cla.s.sical ballet.

After about fifteen minutes of practice, the pair had the athletics down to perfection and retired to a far corner of the room to practice timing and ancillary gestures. Emili Vladimir watched them go, then ran a hand through her wavy hair and retied it loosely with a scarf. She was drenched in sweat but still breathing easily.

"Natasha!" she called out, snapping her fingers sharply. "Bruce, Marianne, Ralph, Trevor, and Sylvia: start from the top of the second movement. All the way through. Watch the pacing. You're dragging. Remember the half beat." She clapped her hands to ill.u.s.trate as dancers obediently scurried into position and the music segued into a New Age conglomeration of waterfall-and-bell sounds. Satisfied with their initial efforts, Emili turned her back on her dancers and strode toward Auntie Lil with confident grace.

"How do you do, Miss Hubbert," she said, extending a hand. It was dry and cool, despite her recent exertion. "How can I help you today?"

"You remember my name," Auntie Lil said.

"I remember everyone's name," Emili answered, managing to make it sound somewhat ominous. "Habit." She had a mournful voice that dragged at the ends of words, imparting all she said with an air of regret.

"Are you aware of my role in looking into Bobby Morgan's death?" Auntie Lil asked.

"Yes, of course I am," Emili answered, guiding Auntie Lil to an empty corner of the floor where they could not be overheard. "You're dragging, Bruce!" she shouted across the room, and a tall dancer with thinning hair instantly picked up the pace of his rapidly pattering feet in response.

"So you are aware of what I am attempting to do?" Auntie Lil asked.

Emili picked up a towel that was draped over a heating pipe and wiped the sweat from her neck and shoulders. "Let's not beat around the bush, as you Americans say," she said slowly. "You and I both know that the board must find his killer or the Metro will be finished."

"You'd make a skilled board member," Auntie Lil murmured, hoping to learn more about Lane's attempt to put Emili on the board.

"Perhaps. I have my doubts, however, as to whether I'd want a seat on the board. I have had enough politics to last a lifetime."

"But would you truly be effective on the board?" Auntie Lil wondered aloud, hoping to provoke a reaction. "I have heard that you and Paulette Puccinni are enemies. And she is the ballet mistress after all."

Emili sighed. "I am not her enemy. I am her excuse. She gave up a good, perhaps great, career to indulge a broken heart and a wounded ego. She blames me for her break with the American Ballet Theater. I had nothing to do with it. I have no emotion toward her except for pity. If she needs to blame me, so be it. Perhaps she could not live with herself knowing that she did not have the courage it takes to continue performing when your body begins to grow old. I could tell you much sadder stories than hers."

Auntie Lil suspected that this last statement was an offer to digress and refused to take the bait. She had visited Russia in the early fifties on a fur-buying mission and had learned to spot the Russian tendency of laying a trail of red herrings as a way to deflect unwanted attention from personal topics. "Did you know Bobby Morgan?" she asked instead.

Emili froze, the towel extended like wings on either side of her shoulders. She stared at Auntie Lil. "Of course I knew who he was," she finally answered. "He was the man responsible for blocking my Rudy from dancing the parts he deserved. Fortunately, talent triumphed."

"Did you ever talk to him?" Auntie Lil asked.

"I am in the habit of knowing my enemies," Emili replied. "Not consorting with them."

"Did he ever speak to you?" Auntie Lil persisted.

"I do not recall," Emili said. "If so, I have forgotten." She raised her eyebrows at Auntie Lil. "Your method of questioning is rather reminiscent of the KGB. You make me feel quite guilty and here I have done nothing to arouse suspicion."

In truth, she had not. But Auntie Lil could not shake the feeling that Emili was the key to some part of the mystery. Perhaps it was only her bearing, her obvious mistrust of others, or more simply, her foreign accent. It was nothing she could articulate, but she wanted to know more about the woman.

"You think I had something to do with his death," Emili stated. "Which proves you do not understand me at all. Come home with me tonight. I will show you something. And then you will understand."

"Home with you?" Auntie Lil asked.

"Yes. Have you ever been to Brighton Beach? I will feed you stuffed cabbage. You can spend time with Rudy. And I will show you something that will prove that I could not have partic.i.p.ated in the death of another human being." She turned her back on Auntie Lil to gauge her dancers' progress.

Auntie Lil thought the invitation over. It was singularly foolish to go rus.h.i.+ng off in the middle of a murder investigation to an unknown abode. Herbert and T.S. would be frantic with worry, she hoped. It would serve them right for abandoning her just when she needed them the most. Besides, she adored stuffed cabbage and she hadn't lived life to its fullest for more than eighty years by being timid.

"I'd love to come," she said.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

Waiting for a phone call was juvenile, but sometimes it worked. Besides, it gave T.S. the opportunity to reach his friend Victor in the personnel department of Salomon Brothers. But despite their long friends.h.i.+p, Victor was evasive. Andrew Perkins had not exactly quit voluntarily, but then he hadn't been fired either. In these days of lawsuits on every corner, it was the best T.S. would be able to get out of his former colleague.

"You're not thinking of hiring him, are you?" Victor asked. "I thought you were retired?"

"I am," T.S. admitted. "I'm just checking his references for some volunteer work with the Metropolitan Ballet." That much was true, at least.

There was a silence on the other end of the phone and T.S. could feel his friend's professional facade cracking. "Well, he's honest," Victor finally said. "But he probably wouldn't perform well under a lot of pressure. He had trouble coping with everyday stress during his final months here on the job."

T.S. thanked his friend and hung up grateful that he had left the fast-paced world of investment markets and changing fortunes far behind. A translation of Victor's words from personnel lingo pointed to a probability that Andrew Perkins had suffered a nervous breakdown. He would not have been the first superstar bond salesman to have bailed from a gut-wrenching career in such a fas.h.i.+on.

When the phone rang around three, T.S. knew instantly that it was Lilah. Despite his inexperience with matters romantic, he had learned in the past few months to trust those unfamiliar tingles that his heart produced long before his brain kicked in.

"Theodore? I can't believe I got you in person." Her voice caused a pleasant flame to ignite in his belly. He grinned idiotically at his cats.

"I've had the machine on for days," T.S. admitted. "That business with Reverend Hampton has the board up in arms. Everyone has been calling here looking for Auntie Lil."

"Did she have anything to do with it?" Lilah asked.

"Of course she did. But she says it's all a misunderstanding. Where have you been?" He had not intended to be so direct, but her voice, full of delight at talking to him, gave him courage.

"Very busy," Lilah said. "I can't tell you the details right now. I'm sorry I'm being so mysterious. It's business and it wouldn't be ethical to talk about things before they're completed. Please forgive me. One day I will explain."

T.S. was the king of keeping private matters close to his chest. But that didn't make him any less annoyed when others tried the same trick. "Agreed," he said with false cheerfulness. "Will this keep us apart forever?"

"It better not!" Her laugh was rich. "In fact, I was calling to see if you wanted to meet me for dinner tonight. Just you and me. It will have to be midtown, I'm afraid. I have a meeting with my lawyers before then."

T.S. suggested Michael's Pub since it was a Monday and Woody Allen would be leading a jazz and Dixieland band on his clarinet. Lilah agreed to meet him there at nine o'clock and T.S. hung up feeling like the winner of a particularly grueling Olympic event. He was exhausted and elated at the same time. He realized with surprise that a great band of tension had relaxed in some unexplored part of his psyche. Lilah wanted to see him after all. Her absence had nothing to do with her feelings about him. At least, that's what he thought for now.

There was no point in taking a shower. He was still so clean from his morning ablutions that he squeaked when he walked. Yet he was so nervous that he could not stand to sit in his apartment, watching the hands of the clock move.

He decided he would go insane if he didn't leave the apartment. Perhaps a tour of the Museum of Modern Art would help. At least it would give him something to talk about with Lilah later on in the evening.

He selected a cashmere sweater from the pastel drawer of his light coverings bureau before chosing a navy jacket from among the depths of his meticulously organized closet to go over it. He looked rather spiffy, he thought, surveying himself in the mirror.

T.S. was a handsome man, but his immersion in his career had occupied him so totally that he had never been aware of his physical attractiveness. His lack of vanity was appealing, and because of this, he was twice blessed: he was neither hard on the eyes nor hard on the ego. His abundant head of thick gray hair was, he felt, becoming more distinguished every day thanks to growing silver highlights. He wore it fuller each year as others his age fell by the thinning wayside. It was a tribute of sorts to the great genetic G.o.d who had spared him the male-baldness-pattern gene. His features were nearly identical to those of Auntie Lil. He had high, round cheekbones, a solid nose, and a widely generous mouth. His large eyes had a habit of growing dark when he was angry, a trait that many an employee had noticed with alarm before he retired.

"What do you think?" he asked Brenda and Eddie, modeling his attire. The two cats yawned in boredom, then each took a swipe at his trousers before wisely scurrying beneath the bed to avoid counterattack.

T.S. was feeling incredible by the time the elevator reached the lobby floor. He looked good, he had money in the bank and Lilah lined up for dinner later on. Thus, all his elation shattered in a thousand shards when he spotted a distraught and disheveled Jerry Vanderbilt steaming toward him across the lobby like a determined process server. Mahmoud the doorman scurried behind him, shouting in a combination of Arabic and English.

"Mr. Hubbert! Mr. Hubbert!" Mahmoud pleaded, his black-and-gold cap askew. "I told him you didn't live here! But he did not believe me!"

"Good thing, too," Jerry said angrily, glaring at Mahmoud with indignation. "As we can both see that you were lying."

"You call me a liar!" Mahmoud cried. He took off his cap and threw it to the floor as if signaling for a duel. T.S. stepped quickly between the two men.

"Mahmoud was just acting on my orders," T.S. explained. "I was waylaid in the lobby by a distraught person this weekend."

"Well, you are now being waylaid by another distraught person," Jerry cried, grabbing T.S.'s sleeve like a beggar desperate for alms. "I was picked up by the police. The police! Right on the corner next to my apartment building. My newsstand man saw the whole thing. How can I ever face him again?"

"Picked up?" T.S. asked, prying the man's strong fingers from the arm of one of his best jackets. Pianists sure have strong grips, he thought to himself.

"The police?" Mahmoud interrupted, his eyes narrowing. "You are a fugitive?"

"Get this man out of here!" Jerry demanded, stomping his foot like a petulant child.

"He works here," T.S. explained tersely. "Why don't I get you out of here instead." He fixed Mahmoud with what he hoped was a no-nonsense gaze. "If anyone else comes looking for me," he warned softly, "I don't live here. Understand? Anyone at all!" He hustled the accompanist out the door, enduring the stares of several residents entering. No telling what the neighbors thought now that distraught gentlemen were accosting him with regularity in the otherwise tranquil lobby of their exclusive building.

"I had no one else to turn to," Jerry apologized as T.S. marched him down the block to a nearby coffee shop.

"Where's your pal Miss Puccinni?" T.S. asked grumpily. He hoped Jerry didn't start sniffling or make a scene. He had to live in this neighborhood and his continued dignity was most important to him.

"She's turned on me," Jerry said miserably. "Stabbed me in the back. Revealed her true colors. She's nothing but a perfidious liar, a two-timing Judas. No telling what she's saying about me right now."

"Let's hope it's nothing like what you're saying about her," T.S. said. He steered the distraught pianist to a corner booth where he had a hope of avoiding his regular waitress. Ordering coffee for them both, he turned to Jerry with resignation. "Tell me what happened," he said.

"I'm a little hungry from all the excitement," Jerry hinted.

T.S. sighed. "What do you want?"

"I'll take a jumbo cheeseburger, medium rare. With fries," he told the waitress as she hurried away. "You're paying, right?"

T.S. nodded, thinking to himself that Auntie Lil would be the one to pay-with interest.

"Artist's salary," Jerry apologized mechanically. "I haven't eaten in six hours. Can you imagine? They picked me up early this morning and dragged me into a grimy precinct somewhere in the heart of h.e.l.l's Kitchen and began grilling me like a common criminal. I had to sit across a desk from two detectives who were positively brutal in their questioning."

"What did they want to know?" T.S. asked.

"You would not believe the extent of Puccinni's betrayal," Jerry confided. He leaned forward and dropped his voice to a near whisper. "When she heard that Gene had been detained by the police, she called them up and said that we were lovers. She intimated that I might have information on that odious Bobby Morgan's death. I know what they wanted. They were looking to hang an accessory-to-murder rap on me."

T.S. suppressed a groan. The recent popularity of true-crime and law-enforcement shows on television made every man and his brother think he was F. Lee Bailey. "Are you his lover?" T.S. asked sensibly.

"Maybe I am," Jerry answered, offended. "In this day and age, reliable suitors of my age are hard to find. I will not deny that there was a certain emotional attachment between us, but the possibility of my having gained information via pillow talk is absurd. We had better things to do than chat in bed."

His burger arrived. T.S. felt queasy just smelling it. He had given up consuming ma.s.s quant.i.ties of partially cooked animal flesh several years before. He might nibble on a discreet sliver of veal every now and then, but mountains of ground meat were out. Jerry had no such reservations. He bit into his burger and munched with the hearty enthusiasm that perpetually thin people alone can afford to show.

"Why did the police think you were involved?" T.S. asked.

"They believe that someone who knew the ballet must have been involved," Jerry explained. "They didn't come right out and say it, but I got the impression that Morgan was killed at a very specific time during the first act. Probably during that over-the-top crescendo the orchestra pulls out in the dance of the brats."

"Dance of the brats?" T.S. asked.

"You know. That melee in Act One when all the little boys leap around with imaginary guns shooting each other and the girls swoon with their imaginary dolls and the adults jostle each other along the edges and everyone is vying for the audience's attention. G.o.d, more people than you see at Lourdes each Easter cram the stage at that point. It would mean two things: hardly anyone was left backstage and the sounds of a struggle would be masked. But how would a person know to wait until then unless they knew the ballet-and unless they knew Raoul's vision of it? The police naturally suspected me, thanks to Paulette's filthy mind, and the fact that I am the most well-known of the Metro's pianists. Fortunately, I convinced them otherwise."

T.S. was silent, absorbing this information. "It sounds like you think the police have a point," T.S. finally said.

"It makes sense," Jerry explained, cramming several fries into his mouth at once. "But it certainly wasn't me and I told them that. If they want suspects, I can give them suspects."

T.S. eyed him carefully. "Who exactly did you give them?"

"For one thing, Paulette. It serves her right for betraying me. Like she admitted to your aunt, she and Morgan fought all the time because he thought she was pus.h.i.+ng his son too hard in cla.s.ses. I just casually mentioned their mutual animosity. That, and the fact that she's under suspicion of reselling the company's pointe shoes for her own personal profit."

"How helpful of you," T.S. muttered.

"That's nothing," Jerry said defensively. "I'm sure they didn't take it seriously once I told them that the person they really should be looking at was Ricky Lee Harris, that ghastly lighting director. He had a knock-down-drag-out fight with Morgan the day before he was killed. And the man drinks. I can smell it. I figure he strangled him with an extension cord or something and then tossed him off the catwalk."

"The catwalk isn't much of a secret anymore, is it?"

Jerry shrugged. "Can I help it if people talk?"

"You better hope no one tells Harris you turned him in," T.S. pointed out sensibly. "If he's the brute you seem to feel he is."

Jerry looked startled at the idea. "I hadn't thought of that. I have a cla.s.s with Paulette at the Dance Center this afternoon, but after that, maybe I should lie low."

"Maybe you should," T.S. agreed. "When your options are getting strangled with an extension cord or being beaten to death with a pointe shoe, I'd say that now is a good time for you to develop a bad case of the flu."

Auntie Lil had him hooked. T.S. had to admit it. How else to explain why he was heading for Lincoln Center to talk with Ricky Lee Harris and Paulette Puccinni instead of spending a quiet few hours at a civilized museum? He had to admit he was a little intrigued by this Harris fellow. Auntie Lil had described her encounter with him and the lighting director had a.s.sumed a Heathcliff-like stature in T.S.'s mind.

A harried-looking prop mistress directed T.S. around a corner and up to the second floor, where he discovered Ricky Lee Harris bent over a lighting board in a workshop room, muttering to himself.