Dog Dish of Doom, page 13
The tall man, smiling in a way that was both ingratiating and creepy (which is not easy to do), took my hand willingly after the older woman let go, as soon as she possibly could. “Mike Goldberg,” he said. “Family friend. Glad to meet you.”
“Mike came all the way from New Rochelle,” Louise said, her voice vague and unfocused. She was still on sedatives, I’d bet.
“I wish it could be under happier circumstances,” I told Mike. That’s what you say.
“The food’s under the sink,” Louise said. “Yellow bag.” She made no move to get it, as that was clearly my cue to earn the fifteen percent I had probably already spent from Bruno’s commission.
“Thanks,” I said, and went to get Bruno his early dinner. I found the bag, poured some of the kibble into the bowl, and put it next to Bruno’s water dish, which I fervently hoped had been washed since it had become Trent’s nose’s final resting place.
Now, one of the things you don’t want to say is, “How was the funeral?” First of all, that’s a stupid question. Are there good funerals? But it would be odd to say nothing, so my mind was racing in search of the proper sentiment, and I settled on, “How are you holding up, Louise?” That seemed to at least acknowledge the awful turn her life had taken while showing some concern for her own welfare. Often at a funeral the attention is so heavily focused on the person in the room least likely to appreciate it that the survivors, whose futures have just been massively uprooted, are lost in the shuffle. So I thought I’d done fairly well.
Not so Louise. “My husband was just knifed to death,” she informed me as I poured some food into her dog’s dish. Bruno walked over to eat and gave me a glance as he did, apparently thankful for my effort even if it was the same old kibble. “How do you think I’m holding up?”
“I’m sure it’s extremely difficult,” I said. You have to remind yourself sometimes that even though the animal is the client, the money comes from the people. It hardly seems fair, but the financial system is fixed in the favor of humans.
Mike sat down on the living-area sofa as if it were his own. He loosened his neon-blue tie and crossed his legs. If there had been a coffee table, he might well have taken off his shoes and rested his feet on it. I was glad there was no room for one. But at least he tried to bail me out of Louise’s (you should pardon the expression) doghouse.
“The service was very touching,” he said with almost no inflection in his voice at all, as if he were reporting on pig-belly futures. “The rabbi did a very nice job.”
“The man didn’t know Moshe at all.” Trent’s mother, who had not even told me her name, said with a sniff. “He was practically reading off cards.” She turned toward Louise. “Since when do you have a dog?”
“You know about it, Mama,” Louise said. “You’ve known for months.”
“No I didn’t,” Trent’s mother said.
Mike Goldberg smiled sadly and shook his head a little. Apparently Mrs. Berkowitz had some memory issues.
Bruno, unperturbed that his adopted grandmother didn’t know him, ate each piece of food separately and looked up with each bite to make sure someone was watching him. A born performer, he clearly felt that everything he did would be of the utmost fascination to the humans in the room. I made sure to maintain eye contact with him whenever he looked up. Nobody else was paying him any attention.
“That rabbi didn’t know Moshe,” the older woman said again. Apparently she was falling back on her greatest hits.
“Trent wasn’t very religious,” Louise said to her mother-in-law. “Rabbi Engler didn’t really have time to get to know him. He did the best he could.”
“It wasn’t good enough for Moshe.” That settled it.
“We should be expecting people to start showing up soon,” Mike told me. “We’re sitting shiva here for three days.”
We?
I looked over at Louise. “Would it be better for you if I took Bruno home with me until you’re not expecting more people?” I asked. “I don’t want you to have to worry about him during this difficult time.” I was stressing the difficulty just in case Louise thought I was trivializing her burden.
She stared at me. “Why do you keep trying to get Bruno away from me?” she demanded. “You wanted to take him home tonight and now you want to keep him for three days. What’s your angle?”
My angle? Who was I, Edward G. Robinson? “I have no angle,” I protested. “I’m trying to make things easier for you and keep Bruno on his schedule for work. If you prefer I don’t, I’ll be happy to let you take him to the theater tonight. But I know you’re expecting people, it’s bound to be very late when it’s time to come home, and you’ve had a long day.”
“You’re plotting something,” Louise said, “and it won’t work.”
Again, Mike tried to come to my defense. “Lighten up on her, Lou,” he said. “She’s just trying to help.”
Oddly, Louise changed her whole bearing as soon as he spoke. “Of course,” she said, her facial muscles pulling into a smile she clearly hadn’t planned on her own. “My apologies, Kay. But I prefer you bring Bruno back to the apartment tonight, okay?”
“Sure.” Bruno had finished eating, lapped up some water, and was now walking around in an attempt to be noticed and petted. Trent’s mother literally turned up her nose at him. Louise didn’t actually notice Bruno at all. Mike patted him twice on the head awkwardly like someone who was once bitten by a dog and is pretending he’s not afraid. Bruno didn’t really react to any of them because he was coming over to me.
I scratched him behind the ears and Bruno sat without being told to do so. “I’ll be happy to deliver him home as soon as I can tonight,” I said to Louise. I reached over for Bruno’s leash, which I’d left on the kitchen counter. “But now I think it’s time for him to go out and then over to the theater.” Bruno did need a walk, and frankly I wanted out of this apartment as soon as I could find the door.
Mike stood up and extended his hand again, careful not to get it too close to any part of Bruno. “So nice to meet you, Kay,” he said. The real pros have all sorts of memory devices to speak back the name of a new acquaintance and make her feel special. It wasn’t really working in this case, but that was largely because I was trying to understand the mysterious hold Mike seemed to have over Louise.
Trent’s mother did not turn her head or look at Bruno and me as we headed for the door. I was the help, he was the inconvenient pet, and the whole thing was just too hard for her because nobody was watching her suffer properly.
“Try to be quiet when you bring him back,” Louise said at the door. I assured her I would and then hightailed it out of that building as fast as I could.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“They’re all busy,” Det. Alana Rodriguez said. “Everybody’s getting ready for the show. But you probably knew that would be the case, didn’t you?”
I held Bruno’s leash tightly, although he had shown no signs of anxiety since we’d come back to the Palace. I was more anxious about this evening than I’d anticipated, and I couldn’t figure out why. All I had to do, after all, was sit with a dog and watch a musical.
“Well, I tried to say something, but you hung up on me,” I protested, but even I wasn’t buying it. I was trying very hard not to grin at the detective, who was standing in the wings, stage right, watching pieces of scenery moved into place and seeing actors in varying states of undress flitting about in an incongruously casual fashion. Most of them, after all, had been doing this every day for months. There were no opening-night jitters in this crowd and hadn’t been for quite a while. “Still, you are the police. Wouldn’t they talk to you when you flashed your badge or something?”
One of the dancers, stretching hamstrings, wandered a little bit too close to us, so Rodriguez said, “Ms. Powell, I’m just trying to find out what happened the day before Trent Barclay was murdered. Don’t you think you could be a little more cooperative?”
She was covering for me, making sure nobody would find out I was her theater snitch. And she seemed just a little irritated when I stifled a laugh at her attempt.
“These are performers,” I told Rodriguez. “They’re thinking so hard about themselves now, concentrating on the show and wondering when they’ll get a call from their agents telling them they have a shot at a featured role that will get them out of the ensemble, that you could scream confidential information into the rafters and nobody would hear it.”
But Rodriguez was not breaking character. I guess cops can be Method too. “This is not my idea of cooperation, Ms. Powell,” she said. “Do I have to run you in on a charge of obstruction?” Classy.
I made my face serious again by focusing on my own anxiety. Maybe it was being so close to a show about to start, I thought. The old instincts were kicking in and I was getting butterflies vicariously. I didn’t have to go on tonight, but my digestive system didn’t know that.
“Okay,” I said quietly as the dancer stretched herself away from us. “Sorry to spoil your mood. What can I do tonight? I’m just sitting up in a mezzanine box with Bruno.”
“There isn’t much,” Rodriguez admitted. “I spoke to your Akra, and got the same story you did, just from her mouth. She went to school with Barclay back when he was Berkowitz, hadn’t seen him in years until he showed up with the dog the other day.” She pointed at Bruno, in case I didn’t know which dog she might have meant.
“Do you think that’s likely? She just runs into this old school chum and he gets a knife in his back that very night?”
Rodriguez shrugged. “There are coincidences in the world. I can’t say I think that’s what happened, but until I have evidence to the contrary … look, if you think you can stonewall me, I can show you what the NYPD does when it gets serious.” From the direction in which her eyes were looking I could tell there was someone from the company behind me, and a little over my head. Someone tall.
Les McMaster said from the very area in which Rodriguez was looking, “Don’t be too hard on her, Detective. The woman is here at my invitation.” Les, like most showbiz people who have achieved any success, can’t conceive of a set of circumstances that are not truly about him.
“I understand, Les,” Rodriguez answered. Les? “I’m afraid I showed up at an inconvenient time for your cast and crew.”
I turned to look at Les; he shrugged. “We’re a busy company,” he said. “But the morning no one’s here, and after the show everyone’s exhausted. There’s no such thing as a good time to ask us about a knife murder, I’m afraid. Feel free to bother people until twenty minutes before curtain, all right?”
“Sure, Les.” Rodriguez had clearly been told—probably by Akra—that the police department gets the rare privilege of addressing the famous director by his first name. I’m sure also that she was sufficiently awed by her good fortune.
Les walked away after giving Bruno a head pat. “So you heard the man,” I said. “I’m sorry—you heard Les. Go bother his crew. You’re not going to find out anything more from me.” I said that last part a little more loudly than the rest in case Rodriguez wanted to maintain this bad drama that she was intimidating me into giving up the dark secrets I harbored about Trent’s murder.
“If that’s the way it’s gonna be.” Rodriguez was an amateur and had to have the exit line.
I gave a yank on the leash. “Come on, Bruno. Let’s go find our comps.” I wanted it to sound like I was dissing Rodriguez with the information that Bruno and I weren’t paying for our seats. Childish? Of course. This is the theater, darling.
Bruno got up and followed good-naturedly. It didn’t hurt that I had some liver treats in my pocket and he knew it. He’d pretty much follow me anywhere anyway, but with all the chaos around us I wanted to make sure he was focused on me and didn’t walk into a stray piece of scenery or into an open trapdoor. I hadn’t seen this production before; for all I knew Les had set entire scenes in quicksand and needed ways to drop actors through the stage. While singing upbeat songs, of course.
As we headed toward a door with an Exit sign that I knew led to a stairway, we had the great good fortune (I have learned the ways of sarcasm while living in New Jersey) to run into Gwen Harper, who thankfully did not have Horatio with her at the moment. No doubt he was backstage getting his nails done.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. Always tactful, that Gwen. “Horatio’s going on tonight.”
“I know,” I assured her. “Bruno’s just here to get a feel for the place with an audience in it.”
“Huh. They didn’t do that for Horatio.”
Just pretend she’s not a shrew. “I guess he just had more stage experience, huh?” I said. See, there are ways to sound like you’re being sweet when in fact you’re sticking in the knife, and I was certain Gwen would notice it.
“Yeah, but they’re still firing him. I’ve got him locked up in a dressing room so he won’t take out his frustration on somebody, you know?” Gwen looked like she wanted to take out her own frustration on somebody, and I was climbing the list rapidly. Time to head upstairs, I thought. But just one thing.
“Did you know Trent Barclay?” I asked Gwen out of the blue. You can get an honest response from people when you catch them off guard.
“Who’s that?” she asked. And I believed in her performance.
“Forget it,” I said. “Which way is the mezzanine?”
Gwen pursed her lips at my ignorance of the theater. She pointed in the direction I’d already been walking. “That way.” I’d given her that opportunity to feel put upon and superior at the same time, and I’d done it for free. Never say I’m not a kind person.
I wasn’t really familiar with the guts of the theater, but finding our way upstairs to the mezzanine wasn’t really difficult at all. There are only so many stairways going up that are situated toward the front of the house, after all, and besides, Akra was leading the way because she just seemed to always show up whenever anyone needed anything. Perhaps Akra was some sort of clairvoyant/empath who could sense what you needed and provide it, all while being my favorite current suspect in a rather grisly murder.
People are such interesting contradictions, don’t you think?
“These are the house seats,” she said, pointing to two in the “box” on the side of the mezzanine, the seats people always think are for when counts and duchesses show up. They’re actually house seats, those given to insignificant types like the playwright, because they usually offer a partial view of the stage and are therefore less marketable than something all the way in the back row of the balcony. “I hope you enjoy the show.” Akra in a crime of passion? Wouldn’t I have to prove she had a pulse first?
She walked away with another thousand or so things to do, so Bruno and I settled in to our seats. Yes, Bruno took a seat. Why should he have to watch my feet while I saw a professional Broadway musical? Besides, I wanted him as much in the action of the show as possible so I could see how he reacted.
But the curtain wouldn’t be raised for another half hour. No actual paying customers had been allowed into the auditorium yet, although they would be any minute now. I settled back in my chair—Bruno simply sat up in his and looked around, tongue hanging out of his mouth. It had occurred to me to bring treats in case he got antsy, but I hadn’t thought about a water dish. I looked down toward the stage to see if I could attract someone’s attention.
There were a few company members ambling around the stage, warming up and socializing with one another. The curtain would be lowered in a minute or two and they would no longer be visible, but right now I could see down well enough.
Les McMaster was standing in the wings looking like Steve Jobs about to introduce the iPhone. He was in a dark turtleneck and jeans and had his hand up to his chin with the other across his chest, supporting the right elbow. He was the very picture of concentration. Which was weird.
The director of a successful musical hit normally wouldn’t even be in the theater on a weeknight seven months into the run. He’d be off directing his next successful musical hit in another theater, one designed specifically to siphon off ticket sales from this one because that’s the kind of business the theater is, and if anyone tries to tell you it’s a family and a great big support group, I would urge you to suppress your laughter until you are out of their earshot.
Why was Les this active in a show that had been running all this time? Why was he in the wings before an average performance, clearly showing off how hard he was thinking about the show? Because he had to replace a dog who was in the show for only a small percentage of the stage time? There had to be something else.
Les had apparently lost his chance to direct a serious straight play, and he was consoling himself by watching his hit musical fire on all cylinders. That was my guess anyway.
But that wasn’t my immediate concern; finding a water dish for Bruno was. I could search for Akra, who seemed to handle every situation that came up in the company, but she was no doubt rewriting Act Two while replacing some lightbulbs in the marquee and making sure the bartenders’ bow ties were all straight. Which the bartenders themselves probably weren’t, but that’s a whole other story.
Anyway, it wasn’t Akra who caught my eye from the mezzanine; it was Louise Barclay. She was walking down the aisle toward the stage, trailed by Mike Goldberg, still dressed as they had been at her apartment. What the heck were they doing here on the day of Trent’s funeral (when they supposedly had guests coming to Louise’s apartment), and how had they gotten seats for tonight? More important, why again had I not been told? What was the strange hold that Louise held with this company that she could pretty much do as she pleased and everyone felt it necessary to keep her whims quiet? Or was I projecting?
Bruno looked down at Louise and I heard him whimper a little. That was the first time I’d heard him make that sound except when he was called upon to act, so it took me by surprise. I’d seen Bruno in Louise’s presence a number of times and he had never so much as taken notice of her, let alone been worried about her presence. What had he seen in her apartment two nights before?
