Encore in Death, page 25
She paused outside Interview A. “Mira will come observe if she can make it. So will Reo. On the e’s,” she began, and filled in what McNab found.
“If he finds anything more we can use, he’ll pull you out. Then we hit her with that. You set up the security feed, and we’ll hit her with that. No lawyer yet?”
“She made noises about false arrest, physical assault, personal injury, mental cruelty, and suing. I’m a duck there. You know, it rolls off.”
“Threats roll off ducks?”
“Water rolls off ducks, and her threats were like … You got that one. I can see it.”
“Yeah, I got it.” She opened the door. “Record on. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, and Peabody, Detective Delia, entering Interview with Bernstein, Debra, on the matter of case file H-8546, and additional matters of possession of fraudulent identification, trespassing, theft, fraud, fleeing from police officers and assault on a police officer, resisting arrest.”
“This is all nonsense.”
No more flowy summer dress, but an orange jumpsuit. No more sassy black wig, but a short brown do liberally streaked with sunshine blond and currently disordered.
“I haven’t yet contacted my attorney,” she continued as Eve and Peabody sat. “Initially I was in shock due to your vicious and unprovoked attack on my person.”
“Uh-huh,” Eve said.
“Now I simply want to get this matter settled and be on my way.”
“What way is that?”
“Back to my hotel, of course, where I intend to retrieve my things and leave this city and this horrible incident behind me. You’ve obviously mistaken me for someone else.”
“Like who? Maybe Debbie Starr. Maybe Madame Rose.” Eve stood, opened the evidence box, began to toss out the fake IDs. “Could be Rose Stein, Leah Starr.”
“Those are various stage and professional names. I’m an entertainer.”
“Are you entertained, Peabody?”
“Not yet.”
“Me, either. You can have all the stage names you want, but you only get official identification in your legal name. That’s Debra Bernstein, and not the identification or the name you used to register at the West End Hotel.”
“I simply wished to be incognito.” Debra pushed her shoulders back, did her best haughty stare. But the orange jumpsuit wasn’t doing her any favors. “It’s common practice for people in my art, my line of work.”
“Yeah, it’s common practice for frauds, cons, and grifters. What are you doing in New York?”
“That’s certainly my business, but I came to do some shopping, to seek work.”
“What kind of work?”
“I’m an entertainer. New York has countless venues for my talents. The stage, the screen, clubs, piano bars.”
“Cleaning services?” Eve pulled out the maid’s uniform, the blond wig.
Debra huffed out a breath. Her eyes, a tawny sort of hazel, radiated disdain. “Costumes, Lieutenant. An entertainer possesses costumes.”
“Who were you entertaining when you wore this outfit, this wig to enter the Belmont Tower on Central Park West at around eight-thirty Monday morning? And shortly after, the penthouse apartment of Eliza Lane and Brant Fitzhugh?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Peabody, cue up the security feed.”
As the screen blipped on, Debra began to twist her fingers together.
“Now, before you say that’s not you, I’ll tell you that the rest of the cleaning team each, independently, picked you out of a series of photos. So did the owner of the company, who interviewed you for the job.”
Instantly, like a tap turned, Debra’s eyes filled. “All right, you’re so determined to humiliate me. I needed the money, so I took a job cleaning. It’s honest work. I wore the wig and used another name so as not to be recognized. I have a small but loyal following.”
“It cost you three grand to get your pal J.Z. to set up the fake references so you could take the job. And it’s just some wild coincidence that this cleaning job you took—needing money despite having recently come into fifteen thousand dollars—happened to be Eliza Lane’s penthouse. Your deceased daughter’s onetime understudy.”
Now the tears fell, they fell like rain, like a torrent, gushing and sliding while Debra’s shoulders shook. “My baby! My beautiful girl, lost, lost to me, to the world, even before the Rose had bloomed.”
“For which you blamed, and continue to blame, Eliza Lane.”
“Her and that monstrous boy. They pressured my darling girl, tempted her, played on her weaknesses. Imagine my shock when I realized where I was!”
“Debra, you were not only told who owned the property you’d work in that day, you signed—under your false name—a nondisclosure statement to ensure the clients’—Mr. Fitzhugh and Ms. Lane’s—privacy.”
“I simply didn’t pay any attention at the time. I was so nervous.” Eyes drenched, she crossed her hands over her heart. “Desperate. I had to pay for housing, such as it is, for salon services, some wardrobe. One must look one’s best for auditions, after all. I didn’t realize until I saw photos and the others were chattering about it all.”
“Right. You had no clue. Are you saying you had no idea Lane was going into rehearsals for a revival of Upstage?”
“Of course I knew that! It broke my heart. A heart that has never, will never fully heal. May I have some water, some tissues? I’m very upset.”
“I bet you are. Peabody?”
Peabody rose. “Peabody exiting Interview,” she said, and went out.
“If you could give me a moment to compose myself. This is all very stressful.”
“Sure, take your time. I’ve got plenty of it.”
“I don’t know how you can be so cavalier, so heartless. Rose was my world, and she was about to be on top of her world. It’s all I wanted. I sacrificed everything for my bright, beautiful girl. My own career.” She flicked a hand in the air. “What did it matter when I had Rose? I devoted myself to her, and hers. We devoted ourselves to each other.”
“My information is she booted you the minute she turned eighteen.”
A quick flash in those hazel eyes, then more tears. “Artistic temperament, nothing more. A tender bird who had to fledge, spread her wings before coming back to the nest.”
“Why would she do that? Come back to the nest. I think she’d make her own.”
“It’s a figure of speech,” Debra said stiffly. “I gave her the room to spread her wings because she needed it, and we’d completely and lovingly reconciled before her death. I can thank God for that at least.”
“Huh. That’s strange, as my information is she had you barred from the theater.”
“Ridiculous. Lies. Lies perpetuated, no doubt, by that scheming, low-talent excuse for an actress who built her career on my daughter’s tragic death.”
“That would be Eliza Lane?”
“Who else? That grasping, conniving bitch drove my Rose to seek solace in pills and alcohol, aided and abetted by that sniveling bastard poor Rose fell for.”
“That would be Gary Proctor?”
“They were sleeping together, you can be sure of that!”
“How do you know?”
Debra looked down her nose at Eve. “A mother knows.”
“Peabody returning to Interview.” Peabody set the water, a stack of tissues on the table.
“Okay, well, moving on,” Eve began.
“Do you know what she did?” Fire came back, flamed from Debra’s eyes, shot harsh color into her cheeks. “That whoring, heartless bitch played on Rose’s giving nature, her kindness, and convinced Rose to agree to give her a matinee performance once a week, and an evening performance every month. Oh, to take some of the stress away, to give Rose time to rest her voice. Butter wouldn’t melt.”
She tossed her head, sniffed. “Well, I can tell you I put a stop to that as soon as I heard.”
“Did you?”
“I certainly did. I had a heart-to-heart with my daughter, reminded her you never, ever give anything away. Reminded her the name of the play was Upstage, and that’s just what that clawing understudy wanted to do. Upstage my Rose. I let that bitch know I was onto her, and Rose was, too.”
Though they’d dried up in fury, Debra took a tissue, dabbed it under each eye as if wiping tears away.
“When was this?”
“Right before the final run-through, the friends and family performance. Oh, she was brilliant, my Rose. She had the entire house in the palm of her hand. And I let that conniver know she’d never step into Rose’s shoes. As if she could! As if she could ever fill them. I let her know Rose knew what she was up to. Rose would make her mark on every performance, and bring down the house.”
“What did Eliza say to that?”
“Oh, she tried to make excuses, tell more lies, but I wasn’t having it! I’d have given her more pieces of my mind then and there, but…”
“But?”
Debra paused to sip some water. “Things got a bit heated, as you might imagine. I was protecting my daughter. She cried her fake tears to security and had me escorted out of the theater. I never saw my baby alive again. She saw to that.”
“That must’ve been very painful.”
Debra turned sorrowful eyes toward Peabody. “Beyond what you, or anyone, could imagine.”
“Losing a child…” Peabody pressed a hand to her own heart, shook her head. “How could you ever forgive Eliza Lane? It had to be a stab in your heart every time you thought about her, your daughter, the play.”
Well done, Peabody, Eve thought, and let her roll.
“Wounds that never heal.” After snagging another tissue, Debra balled it in her fist. “How can the world be so cruel, so cruel? How can it be that woman has everything, everything Rose should have?”
“And now,” Peabody continued, “bringing Upstage back to Broadway, to Crystal Gardens, the same theater, exploiting that, celebrating that, dredging up all that pain again. It’s brutal, just brutal.”
“It is, it is!” Debra actually reached across the table to grip one of Peabody’s hands. “How could I bear it? What mother could?”
“You had to find a way to stop it, to stop her. What else could you do?” Peabody gave the hand gripping hers a squeeze, as if she understood. “She’d never paid for what she’d done.”
“Profited, always.”
“You found a way to get in, get close, right inside her big, beautiful home. A home she built on Rose’s bones. You risked everything, what mother wouldn’t, to avenge your beloved daughter.”
“I wanted what was mine! What was Rose’s,” she corrected quickly.
“Risked everything,” Peabody said again. “Lowered yourself to scrubbing, polishing what should have been Rose’s so Eliza Lane could have her big celebration, one that should have been yours and Rose’s, twenty-five years of a life that should’ve been yours.”
“I’d worked so hard, gave so much.” She laid the back of her free hand against her brow. “We were so close.”
“You stayed behind when the others left, found a place to hide, to wait, to change so you could blend in with the party. Where?”
“A guest room on the third floor. Nobody was working. Assistants and assistants, as if that woman ever truly worked a day in her miserable life.”
“You took the award. That was risky, too. Someone might have noticed.”
“I took what was rightfully mine—Rose’s. And she was much too busy primping and posing and ordering people around to go into her self-important office.”
“Taking the award wasn’t enough, of course. You had to finish it, pay Eliza back for Rose, for all the years, for daring to bring Upstage back to Broadway.”
“I had a right! A mother’s right.”
“You styled the blond wig, put on the cocktail dress, fresh makeup.” All understanding, Peabody exuded encouragement. “But you had to get downstairs without calling any attention to yourself.”
“It’s simply a matter of timing and playing a role.” Debra brushed at her hair. “I’m a performer.”
“But you had that bag, that big bag holding the maid’s uniform, the award you’d taken.”
Now Debra smiled. “The greeter at the door, one of the”—she used her fingers to make quotes in the air—“assistants. I simply walked up behind her. ‘Oh, darling, would you mind tucking this into the closet here in the foyer?’ Expect, don’t explain.” She shrugged. “She put it away, and I had some champagne, mingled, ate some lovely canapés. I even had a lovely bit of conversation with Brant Fitzhugh. A pity such a charming man wasted a decade on that creature.”
“You talked to Brant?” Peabody said pleasantly.
“I made a point to. He couldn’t have been more charming.”
“I bet. Is that when you poisoned the champagne?”
“What?” Debra shot back in the chair. “What are you talking about? Have you lost your mind?”
“You didn’t mean for him to drink it. It was for Eliza. How could you know?”
“That’s insane!” The red wash came back to her face. “You’re trying to trick me.”
“You said it yourself,” Peabody pointed out. “You had a right.”
“To the Tony! To the party, the champagne, the caviar. To bask in what should’ve been mine. All of it. To poke around in her things, to see how she lived. I had a right!”
Eve stepped in. “You entered her home in disguise and under false pretenses. You laid in wait, for over five hours. You stole her property.”
“Claimed. I claimed what was mine!”
“Call it what you like.” Eve pushed up, leaned in. “You snuck downstairs to eat her food, drink her champagne. A woman you hate, a woman you believe took everything that matters to you, everything you want for yourself. And what, you want us to believe you just strolled out and less than twenty minutes later her husband’s dead, dead after drinking the champagne meant for her?”
“I had nothing to do with that! I didn’t even know about it until the next morning.”
“Bullshit.” Eve slapped her hands on the table and made Debra jump. “You didn’t risk getting busted for a statue, one with her name on it.”
“I—I’m going to have her name removed.”
“I can buy that one. And have your name put in its place? Yours, because all of this is about you.”
“That’s insulting!”
“Murder’s a lot more insulting. You were smart to get out before she drank it—or you thought she would. You’ve been around, you know how it goes. She drops, the cops show up. You can’t be there to see that—what is it?—curtain call. But you had the ending written in your head. She pays, finally pays. She’ll never stand in the spotlight again, in that play again.”
“I left because I had what was mine. I left because … she saw me. I’d been careful, but she saw me, and I think—she might have recognized me. So I got my bag and I left.”
“Where’d you get the cyanide?” Eve demanded.
“I didn’t get any cyanide! I didn’t kill anyone. She probably killed him herself. He probably finally saw through her and wanted a divorce. He was going to leave her, humiliate her. Everybody knows he was leaving for six months—it’s all over the entertainment blogs. He was leaving her and never coming back, so she killed him.”
She buried her face in her hands. “Like she killed my precious Rose.”
“Where’s all the money? You wheedled fifteen thousand. You sure didn’t spend it on accommodations. Where did you drop over nine thousand in under two weeks, Debra? How much did the cyanide cost you?”
“I didn’t buy any cyanide. I had expenses. I needed salon treatments and a new wardrobe. I had to pay for the résumés and the references and that horrible hotel. I had to eat! I had expenses!”
She lifted her head, and this time the tears seemed real enough.
“I have nothing more to say. She’s probably paying you to do this to me. I want a lawyer. I want to contact a lawyer, now. I have nothing more to say until I get a lawyer.”
“Your choice, Debra. You’ll need a good one.” Eve hefted the evidence box. “Dallas and Peabody exiting Interview. Suspect will be taken to holding and allowed to contact or request a lawyer, as she has invoked that right.
“Interview end.”
18
“Have a couple of uniforms take her down,” Eve said when they stood outside of Interview.
“I thought we had her.”
Eve just shook her head. “Good job in there, the way you strung her along. Damn good job, and we’ve got a solid picture of what she did, when and how, in her own words, on record.”
“Not a confession.”
“Round one. Go ahead and take this back to Evidence.” She passed the box to Peabody. “We’ll see if McNab finds anything more interesting on her e’s.”
She started to walk back to the bullpen. She needed to think, to go over everything she’d learned in Interview. Time for quiet, she told herself, and time to ditch the frustration of dealing with a liar with a persecution complex.
Poor fucking me, she thought, then stopped when she saw Reo and Mira step out of Observation. Roarke followed them.
“I was only able to observe the last few minutes,” Mira began.
“I can have the record copied to you if you want to evaluate the whole. Peabody softened her up, and McNab’s going through her PPC and ’link now, thoroughly. We’ve got her on possession and use of false IDs, trespass, theft.”
“But not the murder,” Reo pointed out.
“No. She’s only got about two thousand left out of the fifteen thousand she wheedled. We’ll track her salon expenses, the wardrobe, any other purchases. At this point, she doesn’t have enough left for a lawyer, and that means public defender. She may have more to say in a second round after she spends the night in a cell.”
“I want to review the entire interview, but from what I observed, she didn’t just feel entitled to the award, she considers it hers, through her daughter. That’s a key point,” Mira stressed. “Hers—for all her years of sacrifice. Rose was her conduit to fame, to fortune. And when that means to all she deserved was cut off, others were and are to blame. She bears no responsibility.”
