Encore in Death, page 21
“Busy.”
“Yeah, busy enough she’s got busts for fraud, for petty theft, for operating a business without a license, nonpayment of taxes, nonpayment of rent. She’s got a handful of outstanding warrants—out of Kansas, Nevada, Ohio, Tennessee, Florida. Nickel-and-dime stuff, but a handful.”
“Has she done any time?”
“Just time served when she didn’t make bail. Skimmed off with fines and/or probation. She’s got one semi-violent bust here, but charges dropped. It looks like she and another dancer got into it. Hair pulling, tit smacking. Both arrested, both released, charges dropped. But the dates match with the end of her Vegas showgirl stint.”
“Go back. What was she doing when her daughter died?”
“Second … Okay, she’s listed as agent/manager, with her daughter the only client.”
“According to the files, Rose Bernstein had someone named Fred Aaron as her theatrical agent—no manager—at TOD. I want to look again, but I think she’d had him for six or seven months when she OD’d.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me that she lied on an official doc at worst, assumed she’d talk her daughter into coming back at best.”
“Run the agent,” Eve ordered. “Fred Aaron. Maybe he’s worth talking to.”
Peabody found him as they pulled into the garage. “Retired in ’56, relocated to Costa Rica that same year. He’s still there.”
“Contact him,” Eve said as they walked to the elevator. “Get his thoughts on the mother, on Rose Bernstein, on the whole deal.”
“They’ve got all these monkeys running around, and parrots and exotic birds and like that in Costa Rica.”
“Yet another reason to stay the hell in New York. I want to find the mother. She’s a grifter, an opportunist, and Rose was her meal ticket for a long time. She didn’t like Lane, and here’s Lane about to hit the stage again in the same play.”
“She wouldn’t have been invited.”
“An experienced grifter could find a way in.”
Working it through in her mind, Eve shuffled back when the doors opened and cops poured on.
“She’s played a lot of roles. How hard would it be to wrangle herself into a plus-one? You can bet she pays attention to who the hell’s who in New York theater. Now she’s broke, got nothing and no one, and why? Because Eliza Lane got the big, juicy part before she could talk her daughter back into feeding her—ego, finances, dreams.
“She’s worth a look,” Eve decided.
The doors opened again. Two uniforms flanked a pair of women. One wailed, high enough to shatter glass.
“He stole my purse. I had everything in my purse. What kind of a place is it where somebody can just grab your purse right out of your hand?”
Eve thought: New York, as she pushed her way off.
She heard the second woman’s unmistakably excited reply. “It’s going to be okay, Winnie.”
Eve aimed for the glides. “How much do you want to bet Winnie had her purse dangling off her arm while she goggled up at a building over ten stories or at a pair of shoes in a shop window?”
“Since it’s a sure thing, a million dollars. Can I borrow a million dollars?”
“Or they’re strolling around Times Square like it’s a meadow in the spring. ‘Oooh, Mabel.’” Eve did some jazz hands. “‘Look at all the billboards! Oh my goodness’—gawk-gawk—‘look at those blimps!’”
“Her friend’s name is Mabel?”
“Probably. Now, after she files all the paperwork—which’ll never get her property back—she’ll go back to the hotel and tag Hank.”
“Hank’s her husband, right?”
“Probably. And she’ll cry about it until Hank says, ‘Well, Winnie, you were hell-bent on visiting that godforsaken city, weren’t you? Things like that don’t happen in Nobody Goes There, Idaho.’”
“They’re potato farmers. Idaho,” Peabody said at Eve’s blank look. “Potatoes.”
“Probably.”
She swung into Homicide. “Contact the agent.” Then headed into her office.
She printed out Debra Bernstein’s ID shot—eight months overdue for renewal—pinned it to the board. After snagging some coffee, she sat down, studied it.
“Had some work done here and there, didn’t you, Debra? A little nip, a little tuck, and one hell of a lot of makeup. Fancy hair, maybe a wig. What I’m wondering is, did you think of her as your kid first or your meal ticket first?”
She opened the file again, found the investigators’ notes on Debra, and her statements.
She claimed she hadn’t seen Rose for two days before her death, then retracted that after two witnesses placed her in the theater the evening of her daughter’s death.
She’d meant she hadn’t spoken to Rose, or only for a minute, as Rose was so busy. And the investigators verified she’d spent most of the day in a salon—hair, facial, makeup artist, nails.
To look her very best for her daughter’s opening night.
The theater manager stated he’d initially turned Debra away on the evening of Rose’s death when she’d demanded entrance. He’d offered to take the flowers she claimed to have brought for her daughter, but she refused.
Argumentative, the notes read. Angry.
That would be a pisser, Eve thought.
But she’d found a way in, according to statements. And since she got in, got into her daughter’s dressing room … Potential reason the daughter hit the booze and pills harder than usual.
“And who would someone like that blame?” Eve mused. “Not herself, that’s for sure.”
She read on until Peabody tapped on the doorjamb.
“I had a good conversation with Fred. He’s an interesting guy. He remembers Rose fondly. A bright light with dark places, and the light wasn’t enough to win over the dark. He claims he didn’t know about the pills until after, but knew about her affection for vodka. He talked to her about AA.
“He blames the mother.”
“Does he?”
“Fred says in his fifty-odd years of agenting, he’s dealt with a lot of stage mothers—fathers, too—but Debra was the worst of the breed. Pushy, bitchy, demanding, even after Rose fired her and signed with him. Debra came to his office, threatened him.”
“How?”
“She said she’d ruin him, say he molested her daughter. Raped her unless he cut professional ties.”
“That’s a step over bitchy,” Eve decided.
“Oh yeah. And he told her to go right ahead and try it, and they’d see who got ruined. That’s when, he says, she turned on the waterworks. Cried, begged, went on about how she’d dedicated her whole life to Rose. He suggested she try living her own life for a while.
“I liked him,” Peabody added. “He said Rose was seeing one of the guys in the company. That’s Gary Proctor, and that young Gary—his words—was a good influence. After, he heard they’d had an argument that evening, and Gary went off to the cast party thing without her.”
“He’s still in New York theater—I’ve got him on the list to talk to. Just to tie all the ends.”
“Well, Fred says Gary talked to him a week or two after she OD’d, said he hadn’t said anything to the cops, but that Debra offered to have sex with him if he’d convince Rose to fire Fred. He said he didn’t tell Rose, either, because he was embarrassed.”
“It’s in the file that they fought that night because when he went to get her to take her to the party, she was already into the vodka. She’d promised to lay off it, and he saw the bottle and the vial of pills, and she was already into them.”
“Yeah, I read that. We’ll talk to him anyway unless we track down Debra first.”
“One more? It turns out, back then, Fred was Lane’s agent, too. They parted ways a few months after Upstage hit, and she hit. She wanted bigger guns, you know? He didn’t hold it against her. She invited him to the party, but you know, Costa Rica, but he tagged her up to thank her, and they talked old times. He hasn’t seen Debra since Rose’s memorial.”
“He went to that?”
“Yeah, and he says Debra threw herself on the coffin, wailed about her precious baby. He also saw her go after Minx, just like she said happened.”
“Good to know. Why don’t you contact the old boyfriend, see if you can shake anything else out of the memory banks. There might be something else he didn’t tell the cops at the time.”
“Got it. I’m going to grab something from Vending. You want?”
“No, all good. I want to finish this, try to reach the primary.”
She went back to the files, got up, got more coffee, paced, studied the board. Then decided maybe she could use a boost after all.
She shut her door, locked it.
She got down on the floor, took out her penknife to work the thin line of tape from the bottom of her visitor’s chair. Under the lining of the ass-biting cushion, she’d slid in a candy bar, then carefully taped the frayed lining back in place.
But when she reached in for the chocolate, all she got was the empty wrapper.
She sat there, staring at it. And said, “Son of a bitch!”
15
Deprived of chocolate, thanks to the nefarious Candy Thief, Eve tracked down the primary on Rose Bernstein’s OD and prodded at old memories.
“Yeah, I got it. Booze and pills, history of issues with both, and hardly more than a kid. Damn shame. What’s up? You got a reason to open that one again?”
“Possibly related case, involving some individuals who were connected to your investigation. Eliza Lane was Bernstein’s understudy at that time.”
“Yeah, yeah, I got that, too.” Former Detective Wimbly of the NYPSD, now Chief Wimbly of Shoresurf, South Carolina, nodded. “You caught the Fitzhugh murder. Talk about a damn shame.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, he sure as hell wasn’t around back then. We talked to Lane a couple times, that’s in the file. Just a kid herself back then, but she was the one who’d benefit most, so you gotta look. Wits placed her at the bar from … before midnight, if I remember right, until closing. Seems to me TOD was in that window.”
“Zero-one-twenty,” Eve provided.
“Sounds right. We looked at the boyfriend, too, since they’d had a tiff, but had to clear him for the same reason. Fact was, Bernstein had a history, no signs of violence or force. Prescription uppers, downers, both bottles in her name. She mixed the downers with the vodka. She bought the vodka with fake ID the day before she died. Can’t see how it connects to Fitzhugh.”
“We believe Lane was the target, not Fitzhugh, and we’re looking at payback for Bernstein as a possible motive.”
Wimbly, a cool-eyed Black woman, shifted, straightened. “Ain’t that a kick in the head? You ask me—and I guess you are—the only one from back then I can see looking for payback is Bernstein’s pain-in-the-ass mother.”
“We’re looking at and for her.”
“We looked at her. Not just because pain in the ass, but the kid had kicked her old lady to the curb, right? And—what the hell was her name—”
“Debra.”
“That’s it. Ass-pain Debra wouldn’t take no. Kept going around the kid’s apartment, trying to get to her at the theater, even went after the boyfriend a couple times. And Lane, some of the others in the play. And this was before Bernstein died.”
“And after?”
“Went hysterical on notification. I mean off the charts. Jumped me like an alley cat, scratching, pounding. We had to call the paramedics. Turns out she did get into the theater, and into the dressing room, before the performance that night. Some special performance for VIPs and family. The boyfriend stated he found Bernstein with the bottle after the show, already half-lit, and they had their tiff. Ask me, the kid hit the bottle because of the visit from Mommy.”
Wimbly shrugged. “Couldn’t arrest her for that, and she went from the theater to a restaurant, had drinks and an overnight with the guy she was leeching off of. Got wits there, too, from the restaurant, then from the night man at the swank place where the guy lived who saw them come in around midnight if I remember right.”
“You do.”
“Plus, the kid was her meal ticket. She claimed she and the kid kissed and made up, and that was bogus ’cause we got wits from the bar heard her boo-hooing to her date about her ungrateful daughter. Then she spent a few hours the next day—before we managed to notify her—getting all buffed up in a salon for opening night.
“Piece of work,” Wimbly muttered.
“That’s coming through loud and clear.”
“Anyways, she went after Lane, the boyfriend, the director, kept at me and Holister, my partner, after we closed it as accidental.
“I can tell you she cleared out her dead girl’s apartment, but she was next of kin.”
“How did she go after Lane?”
“The boyfriend reported it.”
“Gary Proctor?”
“That’s it! That would’ve driven me crazy. Anyway, he told us—and this is after she’d cleaned out the apartment, taken the body back to Chicago—so she came back, see. Rent was paid up in the daughter’s place for three months, so she moved on it. Leech. She came to a performance. The woman playing the mother got her a house seat. And Debra, she knows her way around the theater. She gets backstage, into Lane’s dressing room.
“When Lane comes in, she starts at her. Accusing her of killing her daughter. The boyfriend hears the commotion, comes in, and she pops him one, says how he and Lane killed her daughter.”
Now Eve shifted. “That’s not in the file.”
“We’d closed the case. We’d have charged Debra with assault, but he wouldn’t press charges. He asked if Lane could file a restraining order on her, on the quiet, so there wouldn’t be any publicity, see?”
“Did she?”
“Didn’t have to. Debra wrangled back two months’ rent in cash from the landlord and took off. I’d hear how she popped up now and then, giving interviews on her daughter, but I never heard she bothered Lane or the boyfriend again.”
“Were they involved? Lane and Proctor?”
“No indication of it, before or after, though Mommy Dearest claimed otherwise. You ask me—I’m not saying the mother drove the kid to pills and booze, but she sure didn’t help.”
“You mentioned Maeve Spindal arranged a ticket for Debra Bernstein. Were they friendly?”
“Looked that way. Not what you’d call besties, but they got along.”
“Okay, Chief, I appreciate it.”
“No problem. Old dogs still like to hunt. Good luck finding her, Lieutenant. She struck me as slippery.”
“You’re not wrong.”
Eve got more coffee, put up her boots, and studied the board. Crosses and connections, she thought. Intersecting and diverging lives and fortunes.
She sat up again, then began the frustrating process of winding through channels to speak to Maeve Spindal.
The lady wasn’t pleased. She had her face thickly coated with some pale green gunk, her hair slicked back and coated with something that looked uncomfortably like sperm.
“I don’t appreciate being hounded by a police officer. I have a performance in three hours. You have five minutes of my time.”
“Then let’s not waste it. Do you know Debra Bernstein’s whereabouts?”
“No. Nor do I believe I know anyone by that name. If that’s all—”
“I don’t think my five minutes are up. Debra Bernstein, Rose Bernstein’s mother. Leah Rose’s mother.”
“Leah. Rose Bernstein was the cocoon, and Leah the butterfly who took wing. All too briefly.”
“You’re acquainted with her mother, Debra.”
“Of course. I was to play Leah’s mother, and in fact did on our out-of-town performances, our VIP performances. We connected, Leah and I, on a visceral level. She was a bright star who shone too briefly. It was a shame her replacement couldn’t reach such brilliance.”
“You provided her with a house seat for a performance after Leah’s death.”
“She asked; I accommodated. She was Leah’s mother, after all.”
“She and Leah didn’t get along.”
“As with Lily and Marcie Bright, Debra and Leah had a passionate connection, and passionate conflicts. I have no doubt, as with Lily and Marcie, Debra and Leah would have reconciled in time.”
“When did you last see or speak with Debra?”
“Why should that matter?”
“Is it a hard question?”
“Don’t be snippy. Perhaps two weeks ago.”
“You keep in touch?”
“She occasionally contacts me, as she did a week or two ago. She’s had a difficult life. I will, occasionally again, send her some funds. As I said, I felt a very deep bond with Leah, so I assist Leah’s mother now and again in her memory.”
“That’s generous of you. Where did you send the funds two weeks ago?”
Spindal let out a huge sigh. “How would I know? My business manager handles such matters. I know she was in New York, as she was completely bereft about Upstage going into rehearsals. I wasn’t pleased myself to know Eliza Lane will step into the role of a character I created and made famous.”
“Are you aware Brant Fitzhugh, Ms. Lane’s husband, was murdered?”
“Of course I’m aware. I’m in London, not in some off-planet colony. What does that have to do with anything?”
“I’d like the address where you sent the funds, Ms. Spindal.”
“Then talk to my business manager and stop harassing me! Do you know who I am? I have a great deal of influence in New York. It will only take a word to your superiors, to the mayor, for you to be disciplined for this badgering.”
An avalanche of bile wanted to spew, but she needed clearance to the business manager. “Ms. Spindal, my superiors, and the mayor, want me to investigate Mr. Fitzhugh’s death, and in order to do my job, I need to speak with Debra Bernstein.”
“You’re an idiot if you think Debra had anything to do with that. Police officers shouldn’t be idiots.”
