Dog Dish of Doom, page 11
“Good. Would you rather call her to walk Bruno tonight?”
I had to think fast. I put my hands in my pants pockets. I didn’t want Taylor anywhere near Bruno, especially tonight. After the way she’d acted at my house the night before, I couldn’t trust that she wouldn’t do exactly what Louise had been accusing me of doing just a couple of minutes earlier.
“Sure,” I said, having no intention of calling Taylor Cassidy. “But let’s be clear.” I wanted to be sure Akra heard this part, so I looked at her. She had put her hand to her earpiece, indicating that she was getting a message from someone else in the theater company. That had seemingly broken her concentration, so she’d given up staring malevolently at Louise and was looking at us dispassionately, which was almost as scary. Then she looked almost alarmed, which must have meant we were in the midst of a nuclear war. I chose to spend my waning moments clarifying my status with Louise. “If I can’t get Taylor tonight, I’m going to take Bruno back to my house. He was having such a good time playing with my dogs, and I don’t mind while you’re dealing with all this. You’re okay with that?”
I forced eye contact with Akra, whose face had reverted to impassive, and she nodded. Yes, she understood that she was my witness. “Of course,” Louise said. “But do call Taylor first. It’s easiest if Bruno is at home.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said. I didn’t tell her my best consisted of not trying to find Taylor except as a witness and definitely taking Bruno home with me that night. Why spoil the day of her husband’s funeral with such small matters?
“Thank you,” Louise said. “You’re invaluable, really.” She patted my hand. This after she had practically tried to have me arrested less than ten minutes ago, and had actually made that effort formally the day before. With real cops.
I looked over at Akra. “Have Horatio and Gwen Harper arrived?” I was taking a guess that was the message she’d just received.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Akra answered. “And Les is on his way. Let’s go.” She was back into her manic phase, hitting the left lane of life with intentions of passing everyone else. She turned and headed toward the dressing rooms again, expecting me to follow. So I did, but not before turning to Louise.
“My respects to Trent,” I said. “Be strong today.”
I left before the level of crap could rise any higher.
Akra led me through the maze of corridors and staircases that make up a theater’s backstage. I wasn’t especially well acquainted with the Palace, so her lead was welcome. But her pace was still at Grand Prix level, so Bruno and I had to stay alert and moving. Luckily, Bruno was in fine shape.
We won’t discuss what kind of shape I was in. Suffice it to say the sound of panting wasn’t from the dog.
In a dressing room without a name on the door—which was unusual but not unheard-of—were a woman of about fifty in sweats and sneakers, and a brown dog of about forty pounds, not terribly well groomed, with fuzzy, as opposed to curly, fur. The dog looked friendly enough, and neither he nor Bruno growled when we entered the room.
“Is that the new dog?” the woman said to Akra. “He doesn’t look like Horatio.”
I decided to step in and see if we could start things off on the right foot. Paw. Whatever. “This is Bruno,” I told her. “It’s nice to meet the two of you.”
“That’s it?” the woman—I presumed Gwen—said, again to Akra.
“This is the new Sandy, yes,” Akra told her. “His real name is Bruno.”
“He doesn’t look a thing like Horatio,” the woman repeated.
“Les decided he wanted to go in a different direction,” Akra explained. She gestured toward me. “And this is Kay, who’s Bruno’s agent.” She turned toward me. “This is Gwen Harper, and Horatio.”
“His agent?” The woman sniffed. “Horatio doesn’t have an agent. I do this all by myself.”
“Different strokes,” Akra said, and I wasn’t sure it was appropriate. “Now, would the two of you like to get acquainted?” Now she was talking to the dogs. I looked over at the dressing-room mirror to confirm for myself that I was still in the room.
“I thought you were going to take the other dog,” Gwen said, seemingly not pleased with the choice Les had made. “Now, that dog looked like Horatio.” I’m not usually huge on subtlety, but I was picking up the idea that she wanted the new dog in the role to look like her own. I’m not sure why that was important, but it clearly was high on Gwen’s priority list.
“Well, Bruno is very smart and very sweet,” Akra told her, kneeling down to give Bruno a nice pat. I considered sneaking out of the dressing room and letting Gwen and Akra finish this scene on their own, since I didn’t seem essential to the conversation. But Bruno needed to be here, and I needed to be near Bruno. “I’m sure once Horatio gets to know him, they’ll be the best of friends.”
Gwen regarded her with a look of pity and impatience. “It doesn’t matter if Horatio likes him,” she said slowly. “It matters if I like him.”
Akra stood up and Bruno’s face followed her as she did. Why would someone ever stop petting him? It was a wonderment. “Of course,” Akra said. “Well, I’ll leave you to it. Les is ten minutes out and I need to get everything ready.” Without elaborating on what “everything” might be and before I could ask, Akra was out the door.
That left me, Bruno, and Horatio alone with Gwen Harper. I considered calling out for reinforcements.
She stood from the sofa—old and rumpled, as in most theater dressing rooms—to better look down her nose at Bruno and me. She sized him up as if deciding how much he was worth per pound.
“He’s not much,” she said finally.
There was no point in engaging on that, so I picked the script pages we’d need out of my purse. “Why don’t we let the guys get to know each other before we start work?” I said. And without waiting for her answer, I removed Bruno’s lead from his collar, giving him the run of the dressing room. Being Bruno, he just sat there and looked at me, but it was the principle of the thing that mattered.
Gwen looked, sniffed again, and gave Horatio, who had never been on a leash to begin with but had seemed totally disinterested with the whole proceedings, a push on his backside, indicating he should stand up. He did.
He walked over to Bruno, who stood up and did what dogs do by way of acquaintance for a moment. Having satisfied themselves that, yes, that other animal was indeed another dog, each one took a moment to reflect on that information.
Then out of nowhere Bruno began to howl.
He was wailing like I’d never heard him before. It was as if he’d discovered some horrible secret about Horatio and was trying to warn me, everyone in the theater, and most of West Forty-Seventh Street about it before it was too late.
I knelt down next to him and stroked his neck and back to try to get him to calm down. “Easy, Bruno,” I crooned. “It’s okay. Horatio just wants to be friends, that’s all.”
For his part, Horatio was doing the “what’s-that-crazy-mutt-howling-about” thing, like a little kid who’s figured out the weak link in the kindergarten class and has just begun blaming his own misdeeds on the poor sap.
“Horatio is being a gentleman,” Gwen suggested. “What is wrong with your dog?” She had an odd smile on her face, one that made me want to punch her even more than I had a moment before.
I had an urge to explain again that Bruno wasn’t my dog, but it wasn’t going to do him any good to be abandoned by his only ally in the room. “Nothing’s wrong with him,” I said. “Something about Horatio has gotten him upset. What do you think it could be?” When in doubt, throw the ball into the other person’s court.
Gwen shook her head. “It’s nothing. There’s nothing wrong with Horatio. You’d better get that animal out of here.”
That was the first thing Gwen had said that I agreed with, so I reached over to put Bruno’s leash back on his collar. His howling had not stopped and he was actually backing up toward the door, always keeping his eyes directly on Horatio. He wasn’t aware of me, so he turned his head quickly and sort of snapped at me when I managed to attach the leash. He didn’t bite me, exactly, because he pulled back at the last second, but he was clearly very badly shaken.
“He did the very same thing when that man brought him here the other day,” Gwen said. “That is a very unstable dog. I can’t imagine why they would want to hire him. He should be muzzled.”
That was way too much information to process right away. “What man?” I said as I opened the door. Bruno was already bolting out. “What man brought Bruno here before?”
I had to follow the dog out of the room, but as I did, I heard Gwen Harper behind me answering the question. “Whoever that guy was. Brent, or something? The dog wailed like a banshee then too.” By then Bruno and I were halfway down the hall with no sign of stopping soon.
But I wanted to call out to Gwen now. She’d met Bruno before? And he was with the man I can only assume was Trent? Why hadn’t anyone mentioned this to me before? Just how mad was Gwen that Horatio was getting nudged out of his role in Annie?
Mad enough to kill?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Yes, Trent brought Bruno here once, after you were here, the night he died.” Les McMaster sat on the apron of the stage, looking up at me, his face the very picture of innocence, although puffier than when I’d seen him before. He was, as had become something of a custom with us, explaining why he’d gone behind my back professionally and then neglected to inform me he’d done so. “He felt bad about the way the audition had gone and he wanted to make it up.”
“This is even worse than the story you told about how Louise called you up to set up the callback and you didn’t tell me,” I informed him. Bruno, eager to get to work, was stage left, panting, but there was no one to give him his cue just yet. Gwen and Horatio had left the building. “At least that time you could try to pretend it was an oversight and blame it on Akra.”
Les did a “sue me” face. “Look, the guy showed up here an hour and a half after he’d stormed out. He didn’t tell me he was coming; I probably wouldn’t have spoken to him if he had. We passed Gwen and Horatio but didn’t speak. Is it my responsibility to keep track of your clients for you?”
“Ooh, better. This time it’s going to be my fault.” There was a chair at stage center, so I made use of it. Bruno walked over to me because he was confused, so I petted his head a few times to reassure him that he, among all of us, had surely done nothing wrong. “The best defense is a good offense, isn’t it, Les?”
He shrugged. “I have already spent about four more hours on the casting of a dog for a bit part than any other director on Broadway,” he said. “I’m tired of justifying every decision I make and every decision everyone around me makes. Kay, does Bruno want the part or not?”
The one thing we could agree upon was that Bruno wanted the part, so I caved in on Louise’s behalf, which was the core principle of my job description. My needs were less important than the dog’s, and even those of his owner, which didn’t seem right. But fifteen percent was fifteen percent.
I decided, in the interest of being Rodriguez’s eyes and ears in the production, to try to make up with Les. “I’m sorry Bruno and Horatio didn’t get along,” I said.
It had been decided that there was no point in the two dogs trying to rehearse together when Bruno had been unable to actually stay in the same room with Horatio without shouting to the clear blue skies the imminent danger to society he clearly believed the Labradoodle to be. Gwen, in something even more than her usual huff, packed up Horatio’s things and threatened, momentarily, not to bring him back for the evening performance. Les had said something about breach of contract and mentioned that there was in fact an understudy if Horatio couldn’t go on, whose salary the company would surely expect Gwen to cover if her dog didn’t make his entrance on time. Gwen grumbled, but gave in even more completely than I had.
“Horatio has been the terror of the company from the first day he set paws on the stage,” Les answered. “It’s one of the reasons we fired him.”
From Gwen’s attitude alone I had gathered that Horatio had been released unwillingly from the part of Sandy. The role in the musical is elastic—that is, each director decides what to do with Sandy pretty much for every production because there isn’t that much in the script—but Les had given the dog more to do than most, and had gotten great reviews for it.
“He chased everybody around backstage and actually bit one of the dancers,” Les said. “And I’d had to cut back on his work because he wasn’t wagging his tail enough. The little old ladies and the kids love it when Sandy wags his tail.”
“Did you call me back specifically because you knew about Bruno?” I asked. Bruno raised his head hopefully at the mention of his name. I knew Les was sizing him up and deciding what to teach him first, but so far there was nothing for the dog to do. He wasn’t sad, but he was puzzled.
Les looked surprised. “No,” he said. “How would I have known about Bruno?” Again, the dog turned to the person speaking his name and got the same result. “We called because Akra said you specialized in animals for plays, and you suggested Bruno to me.” His eyes narrowed, wondering if I was crazy. “You do remember that, don’t you?”
You have to carefully place your gossip time bomb to get the maximum effect, and I believed I had done so expertly. “Well,” I said, “I thought Akra might have recommended Bruno because she and Trent had gone to school together a long time ago.”
Les was a wonderful stage director, but he was a lousy actor. He tried to stifle his surprise, but his eyes bulged a little and his eyebrows very nearly hit the ceiling of the theater some thirty feet above our heads. He coughed.
“They did?” he said, his voice trying for calm and managing slightly agitated. “I … wasn’t aware of that.” Score one for my side.
“Yeah, they went to the same Yeshiva in New Rochelle when Trent Barclay was still Moshe Berkowitz and Akra was, actually, still Akra. I figured that was the connection.” I stopped and looked away, as if struck by a thought. “You don’t think she was involved in what happened to Trent, do you?” Beat, two, three …
This time Les reacted as if I’d thrown a bucket of cold water on top of him. He straightened as if he’d been electrocuted and stared at me in amazement. “Akra?” he demanded.
Sure enough, her voice came from the wings. “You need me, Les?”
That gave Les the moment he needed to compose himself. “No. Not now, Akra. Do me a favor and go to the office. Check on the house seats for Sarah Jessica, would you?”
Akra’s voice, still coming from the dark offstage, sounded a little puzzled. “Um … sure. I’ll get right on it.” I heard her footsteps bustling away.
Les turned back to face me. “You can’t possibly think that Akra had something to do with Trent’s murder,” he said.
“I have no idea,” I told him. “I can’t begin to imagine what happened. I was just speculating, you know, like playing a game of Clue.”
“This is no game.” Les seemed personally offended, as if Akra were his daughter, which wasn’t chronologically possible. “You can’t start throwing people’s names around and causing suspicion. Suppose the cops had heard that.”
“Sorry.” I petted Bruno’s smooth head fur some more, then tried to lighten the tone. “Do we want to try something with Bruno now?” I asked Les.
But he didn’t seem to want to let go of his thought, no matter how irrelevant it might be. “I mean, you go around accusing people,” he said.
“I didn’t accuse anyone. I asked you what you thought. What do you think? Who do you think killed Trent?” I knew what he’d say, but I was trying to move the conversation away from the area that seemed so distressful to Les.
“You know what I think,” he said, an indication that my strategy was beginning to work. “Louise had the motive if she knew Trent was fooling around on her. She lives in his apartment and could have stabbed him in the middle of the night. And besides, I don’t like her.” Sound reasoning, especially that last part.
I made a show of stroking my chin “in thought.” That didn’t take immediately, so I moved my lips back and forth as if I’d sucked on something itchy. That did it. Les squinted a little, and he wasn’t looking into any of the few lights that were turned on. “What?” he asked.
“It’s too typical,” I suggested. “It fits the pattern of too many murders in movies and on TV. The jealous wife offs the cheating husband. It’s a cliché.”
This time Les grinned and snorted a small laugh. “You’re basing your argument on the fact that the murder isn’t original enough?” he asked.
“Well, how about this: Why did she wait until the middle of the night? You’re right. Louise lives in Trent’s apartment. She lives with Trent. If she finds out he’s having a fling with … someone … why wait? If it’s a crime of passion, why did she put it off until three o’clock in the morning?” Also, why did she then send Taylor to kidnap her own dog and send me threatening texts for the same purpose? I didn’t mention that to Les because I wasn’t sure he didn’t kill Trent, and there was a certain necessity to keep the threats to my own safety quiet. Maybe the killer would forget about them if they didn’t come up often in conversation. Hey, it was a plan. I didn’t say it was a good plan.
“Well, why not?” Les answered, engaged in the guessing game now that Akra’s connection wasn’t being discussed. “Maybe that’s when she found out about Trent and the dog walker. Maybe once Bruno was getting the job, he was more valuable than before and she didn’t want to have to share him with her husband. Maybe she’d always wanted to put a knife in his back and that was the moment she finally couldn’t stop herself any longer.” Les had a really interesting view of marriage; I’d looked up his page on the Internet Broadway Database (ibdb.com) and sure enough, he was divorced. Twice.
“Are you going to be paying Bruno that much? Because the contract I saw didn’t include enough money to kill somebody.” Bruno, bored enough, got up and started to walk around the stage. I took a squishy toy out of my bag, one shaped like a hamburger, and threw it over his head. He happily chased it and then brought it back and lay down in front of me, chewing blissfully away at it.
