Disappearing Nightly

—William Shakespeare,
Hamlet

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

COMING NEXT MONTH

I’
m not a heroine, I just play heroines. Also psychotics, vamps, orphans, hookers, housewives, and—on one memorable occasion—a singing rutabaga. It was never my ambition to utilize my extensive dramatic training by playing a musical vegetable. However, as my agent is so fond of pointing out, there are more actors in New York than there are
people
in most other cities. Translation: Beggars can’t be choosers.

This same sentiment explains how I wound up painting my body green and prancing around stage half-naked the night Golly Gee disappeared.

For those of you fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with the world of rock idols, Golly Gee was the wet-lipped, surgically improved, B-list pop star who had been chosen to play Virtue, the female lead in
Sorcerer!

I, who had studied my craft at Northwestern University and the Actors Studio, was cast as her understudy. Such is the life of an actor.

However,
Sorcerer!
was a respectable off-Broadway musical, and I had been “resting” (i.e., waiting tables fifty hours a week) for four months. Although I was only a chorus nymph in
Sorcerer!,
at least I was working again. Besides, with any luck, Golly Gee would have an accident—not a fatal accident, mind you, just a disabling one—and I’d step into the lead role.

Sorcerer!
had no plot, and Virtue had the only good songs. The Sorcerer, played by magician Joe Herlihy, was the centerpiece of the show, which had been conceived and designed around his magic act. Joe was a highly strung guy whose wife’s production company had financed
Sorcerer!
He was a competent magician, but he couldn’t sing or act, and he was too inexperienced to carry an entire production comfortably on his shoulders. Although his magic act had improved considerably in recent weeks, his performance still varied unpredictably. He was losing weight, and he lived in terror of Gol
ly Gee, who bullied him during rehearsals and upstaged him in performance.

The really worrying thing about working with Joe, though, was that he panicked whenever anything went wrong, and with all of the changes that are made during the development of a new musical,
lots
of things go wrong. Anytime someone missed a cue or bumped into a misplaced piece of scenery, Joe lost h
is concentration. So, although I wanted Golly’s part, there were days when I was glad that I wasn’t the girl Joe sawed in half eight shows per week.

We were still ironing out the kinks at the end of our first week of public performances the night that Joe went to pieces. Golly Gee’s nasal singing had already inspired a series of tepid-to-scathing reviews, so she was feeling nasty that night—and Golly wasn’t the sort of person who kept it all bottled up inside. During intermission she accused Joe of nearly immolating her during the flame-throwing routine. Personally, I wouldn’t have blamed him.

However, despite Golly’s histrionics, we were getting through the show smoothly for once, and I grew optimistic as I frolicked around the set dressed as an oversexed wood nymph who never felt the cold. Joe’s concentration was better tonight than it usually was, so this was our best performance to date. Waiting in the wings during the final scene now, I heard my cue and gamboled onto the stage.

Amid a bucolic forest setting, I capered and cavorted with elves, hobgoblins and faeries. I wriggled delightedly when a satyr caressed me, biting back a scream at the touch of his ice-cold hands on my skin as we performed a lift. The satyr grunted as he heaved me overhead. His arms trembled under the strain, and he glared up at me. I had promised to give up Ben & Jerry’s ice cream for the duration of the run; I had lied.

My long green hair fluttered around us as we twirled around and then subsided onto the floor to gaze at the Sorcerer with rapturous fascination. This was the point in the story when the Sorcerer, feeling kind of bitter about things, threatened to make Virtue vanish forever, which would be a pretty sad thing for the Kingdom (indeed, as one reviewer pointed out, it would then be just like New York City).

All the scantily clad woodland creatures watched while the Sorcerer demonstrated that he was putting Virtue into a perfectly ordinary crystal cage—the sort of thing you might find in any enchanted forest. I had spent enough rehearsal time in that cage to feel a little sorry for Golly Gee, who would pass the next few minutes squeezed into the false bottom like a jellied eel.

My sympathy was limited, though. I was a broke, half-naked understudy in the chorus, and that overpaid, egotistical slice of cheesecake was going to reappear in a puff of smoke—while the Sorcerer was busy fighting the handsome Prince—and give a nasal rendition of the best song in the show while I discreetly exited stage left.

The Sorcerer covered the crystal cage with a shimmering gold cloth. I and another nymph spun the covered cage around on its wheels three times while the Sorcerer muttered spells and incantations beneath the swelling music.

I heard a faint noise come from beneath th
e gold cloth as we brought the spinning cage to a stop. It was a brief, shrill squeal, muted by the orchestra. I entertained my favorite fantasy, the one in which Golly’s expensively augmented breasts could no longer fit inside the false floor of the cage and she had to leave the show. I would take over her role, and my agent would get every reviewer, producer and director on the East Coast to come see the show. I might even let my parents come to New York to see
Sorcerer!
once I was playing someone who wore clothes.

Lost in this pleasant fantasy, I was almost disappointed when the Sorcerer lifted the golden curtain to reveal that Virtue had disappeared. Golly was safely hidden, and I was still an obscure dryad. Someone wheeled the empty cage offstage. The rest of the scene passed quickly, and soon it was time for Virtue to reappear in a glorious cloud of smoke and sing the ballad that would make the Sorcerer and the Prince both see the error of their ways and be nice to each other.

There was a small explosion. Smoke billowed. The music throbbed.

And Golly missed her cue.

For once, I was glad to be nothing more than a chorus nymph. The most dramatic moment in the show had just bombed, the audience stopped suspending their disbelief, and Joe was staring blankly into the smoke, wondering what to do.

Luckily the conductor was on his toes. He had the orchestra repeat the last eight ba
rs before the smoke cleared completely. The cue echoed, faded and died—and still no Golly.

We all looked at one another. This was one of those moments that all actors enjoy telling war stories about but which none of us actually wants to experience. This was considerably worse than losing a prop or flubbing a line. What the hell should we do now?

Joe looked around the stage with glazed eyes. His face shone with sweat. He appeared to be hyperventilating. He was obviously done for the night. In fact, somebody had better get him offstage right away.

Then I remembered that squeal. I’d been so busy wishing evil things upon Golly, it hadn’t even occurred to me she might be in trouble. Injured, stuck, unconscious…She was still in the crystal cage, of course, trapped beneath the false bottom. We had to get her out of there. Then we could figure out how to finish the show.

In sheer desperation, I hopped up and down, pointed into the wings, and cried, “Look! There goes my lady! She has escaped the Sorcerer’s spell! Let us go…you know…hear what she has to say!” I cheered wildly.

The other actors looked at me as if I’d gone mad.

I elbowed the satyr and whispered, “Come on, cheer! And help Joe offstage before he passes out.”

“Huh? Oh, right.”

The other actors followed suit, cheering a
nd waving as they hustled Joe offstage while the orchestra tried to cover the moment with some transition music.

I ran over to the crystal cage and started trying to tear it apart with my bare hands. Everyone stared at me. “Help me get her out of here!” I urged my fellow forest creatures. “She’s still inside. She must be stuck.”

“You don’t get it, do you? You don’t get it!” Joe cried, still hyperventilating. He started to laugh hysterically.

“Pull yourself together,” I told him. “Has anybody got a hammer back here?”

“No!” cried Joe’s wife Matilda, rushing into the fray. “You can’t destroy that cage. Not on our budget!”

“Who’s the Equity deputy on this set?” one of the nymphs demanded. “There must be a rule about this kind of thing.”

“Man, you just don’t get it!” Joe shrieked.

“Darling, say your mantra,” Matilda instructed him soothingly, patting his sweaty face.

“I can’t remember my mantra! Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod!”

I got a hammer from one of the techies. “Stand back,” I ordered the milling cast and crew.

“No!” cried Matilda, abandoning Joe. “I’m warning you—this will come out of your paycheck!”

“I wouldn’t say that to her while she’s got a hammer in her hand,” advised a satyr.

I panted as I smashed the glass and pried
open the bottom of the cage. “You want to leave a union member in here to suffocate? I’m sure Equity will be—”

“She’s not
in
there. Don’t you get it?” Joe said, his voice raspy.

I gave a mighty heave and fell back a few steps as the secret compartment was revealed. There was a moment of astonished silence as we all stared at its vacant interior.

“Joe’s right,” I said at last. “Golly’s vanished.”

I
despise movies where the heroine is threatened and simply ignores it, acting as if there’s nothing to worry about. I mean, if you got a mysterious note telling you not to go into the attic, and you knew that the last person who’d gone into the attic had gotten into a whole lot of trouble—well, would you really just shrug, toss the note aside, and head for the attic without another thought?

If you would, then frankly, you’re the kind of person who
deserves
what’s going to happen to you up there.

So naturally, when I received my mysterious threatening note, I gave it my full attention.

It arrived a few days after Golly Gee disappeared.

The night of the performance the stage manager had brought the curtain down in front
of a surprised audience, the hapless house manager had announced that there’d been an accident backstage and the show was over, and we had spent the rest of the evening giving our statements to the police—who were less interested in the case than you might suppose.

Golly wasn’t all that stable to begin with, and her recent discovery, during hypnotherapy, that she had been Marilyn Monroe in a previous incarnation had resulted in some very strange behavior, including a marked obsession with the Kennedy family.

The police seemed to think Golly had walked out in the middle of the performance and gone off on some bizarre quest. Since there was no sign of violence or foul play, the good-looking detective who interviewed Joe and me evidently didn’t plan to do much more than file a missing persons report if Golly didn’t reappear (so to speak) in a couple of days.

I didn’t necessarily agree with Detective Lopez’s view of the matter, but I hardly knew Golly and certainly couldn’t claim to miss her. Besides, with the leading lady missing (and in breach of contract), I finally had that big break I’d been fantasizing about since the beginning of rehearsals: I’d be playing Virtue from now on. If, that is, we could get Joe back onstage.

The night Golly vanished, Joe had been too hysterical to give a coherent statement to Detective Lopez—who had, in any case, not seemed to expect much coherence from any of the actors. (I
sensed that our being painted green and covered in glitter affected the detective’s impression of us.) Joe seemed to blame himself for Golly’s disappearance, and he refused to do the show again. Consequently, Matilda was forced to cancel our next few performances while she tried to talk some sense into him. We didn’t have an understudy for Joe. He
was
the show.

We couldn’t even get him into the theater for the rehearsal I had requested. I didn’t want to go on as Virtue without a complete run-through. For one thing, there had been several changes in the show since my last rehearsal in the role. More importantly, I wanted to make sure I could trust Joe to pull himself together before I let him saw me in half, balance my body on the point of a sword or do the flame-throwing routine with me. Things can go terribly wrong onstage when people lose their concentration. Actors have been stabbed to death while playing Richard III. They’ve been shot to death
with misloaded prop guns, as well as strangled to death in malfunctioning harnesses. It’s a much riskier profession than you might suppose, and I was determined not to be among the ranks of thespians whose reviews read “R.I.P.”

It was in this frame of mind that I read the messages handed to me by the assistant stage manager as I arrived at the theater on Tuesday. The first note informed me that Joe would not be at rehearsal today. The second note advised me that there would b
e an Equity meeting that afternoon to discuss our circumstances; in other words, the actors would all get together to fret about whether we were going to lose our jobs, as well as to make empty threats about what we’d do to management if they folded the show on us just because a pop singer had gone AWOL and a magician was having a nervous breakdown.

The third note was handwritten on expensive monogrammed paper, initials
M.Z.
It was written with a black fountain pen in elegant, archaic-looking script. It read:

“I’m looking for Detective Lopez,” I told the uniformed sergeant at the muster desk. The precinct house was chaotic and noisy, just like in the movies. I had practically sprinted here from the theater on Christopher Street. The desk sergeant sent me upstairs to the squad room, a large, cluttered, overcrowded area painted a vile green.

I spotted Lopez right away. He was sitting at his desk, apparently begging a chubby white man with a loud tie not to force a large, overflowing box of file folders on him. The man, whose expression was irritable, dropped the box on Lopez’s desk and walked away. Lopez, looking like he wanted to weep, lowered his head and banged it against his desk a few times.

Perhaps I had come at a bad time.

However, the mysterious note was burning a hole in my pocket, and there was no way I was going to turn around and leave without reporting it to the police.

I took a breath and squared my shoulders as Lopez lifted his head and reached for his ringing phone. After a moment, he cradled the phone between his ear and his shoulder and, still talking, started unpacking the overflowing box. It appeared to contain a lifetime supply of old paperwork—dog-eared, a little dusty and flaking. Frowning, Lopez brushed something away from his face and kept unpacking the box while he continued his phone conversation.

I crossed the room, nearly bumping into someone whose hooker costume looked really authentic, right down to the runny mascara and handcuffs. Lopez, whose gaze was fixed on his mountain of paperwork, didn’t see me. His jacket was slung over the back of his chair. He wore a holster over his shirt; the gun inside it looked really authentic, too. I stared at it while he kept talking on the phone.

He had the body of an athlete—soccer or tennis, perhaps, a sport that required lithe muscles and physical grace. He was around thirty years old, and he had a dark, strong, slightly exotic face framed by thick, straight, jet-black hair. His eyes were blue, and just as I was wondering where that trait had come from, I read the nameplate on his desk: Detective Connor Lopez.

“Connor?” I said in surprise. He didn’t look like a Connor.

He glanced up and saw me. There was no look of recognition, but my use of his name must have made him realize I was there to see him. He gestured to a utilitarian chair next to his desk, and I sat down.

“Uh-huh,” he said into the phone. “Yes. No. What time?…Can’t you get it to me any sooner? I need it before I can apply for a warrant.”

Someone called across the squad room, “Lopez, line four!”

He raised a hand in acknowledgment, then closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead as if it ached. Well, he
had
banged it rather hard against the desk. “One hour,” he said firmly. “No, one hour.
Please.
” He grinned after a moment and said, “I almost love you right now.” Then he hung up and said to me, “I’m sorry, miss, I’ll be with you in a minute.” He hit another phone line and said, “Detective Lopez.”

It was clear from his expression a moment later that the call was personal. “Hi. Uh-huh…What?” His expression darkened. Turning away from me, he said, “No, I can’t.”

Though I could tell he didn’t remember me, he had certainly made a memorable impression on the cast of
Sorcerer!
the night he’d questioned us.

“Okay, you’re right,” Lopez said to his caller, “I don’t
want
to. Now I have to go. I’ve got—”

He was interrupted by a voice on the other
end of the line, loud enough that even I could hear it. The caller sounded like a woman.

Some of the show’s nymphs had been openly interested in him, and although his behavior couldn’t be called unprofessional, he’d obviously enjoyed their flirting. He’d been caught off guard by the same sort of interest coming from a couple of the satyrs, but he’d nonetheless been courteous about it.

“No.
No.
No!” Lopez sounded exasperated. “Look, what part of ‘no’ didn’t you—” He sighed and closed his eyes, listening again. After a moment, he said, “Why do you persecute me like this? Why,
why?
” A pause. “Besides that.”

Two cops hauled someone past me who looked like a rapper. A very annoyed rapper.

“Look, this isn’t a good time,” Lopez said into the phone. “Can we—” He winced.

Even I winced. His caller’s voice was getting shrill.

Lopez took a deep breath and said, in a voice filled with dark despair, “Mom, I can’t talk now. Goodbye…
Bye.
” He scowled and said, “I’m hanging up now.
Right
now.”

The voice was still squawking as Lopez gently placed the receiver in its cradle. Looking a little paler than when I’d arrived, he turned to me and said, “Now, what can I do for you, Miss…”

“Diamond. Esther Diamond. You took my statement Saturday night at the New View Venue on Christopher Street.”

“Oh, yeah! Miss Diamond.” His gaze traveled over me slowly, then he grinned. “You look different without all that green body makeup.”

“I’m also wearing a lot more clothes today,” I said, noticing where his eyes lingered.

He raised them to my face. “And much less glitter.”

“Have you made any progress on the case, Detective?”

“That singer who disappeared—Gosh Darn?”

“Golly Gee.”

He smiled at me, and I realized he’d been kidding.

“She’s still missing,” he said.

“I know.”

“No ransom demands?” he asked.

“No.”

“Have you heard from her family? I’ve tried to get a hold of her mother, but—”

“Oh, I doubt that Golly was of woman born,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“Um, her mother’s in Europe just now. Golly’s manager got a hold of her yesterday. She hasn’t heard from her, either.” I shrugged. “She’s really missing, Detective.”

He nodded. “I’ve filed a missing persons report.”

“That’s all?”

“It’ll be compared to any likely Jane Doe that turns up.”

“You mean, like…a body?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

He said, “Her family—or her manager—might consider hiring a private investigator.”

“I see.”

“Anything else?” he asked.

“Yes. This is a little strange….”

He raised one black brow. “Last week you told me that a woman had vanished into thin air in front of hundreds of people—”

“Not hundreds. Our house wasn’t that good.”

“But you’re afraid that what you’re going to tell me
now
is a little strange? I can hardly wait.”

I pulled out the note and handed it to him. He read it over briefly and then frowned at me.

“This came in the mail?”

“No. Someone left it at the theater for me.”

“Did you get a description?” he asked.

“The assistant stage manager, who accepted the envelope from him, says he was a short, slightly chubby, white man, at least seventy years old. Lots of white hair and a beard. He wore a fedora and a duster.”

“A what?”

“You know. One of those long coats they wear in cowboy movies.”

“Oh. Anything else?”

“I don’t think so.”

“‘As you value your life, do not go into the crystal cage,’” Lopez read aloud. “‘There is Evil
among us.’ It has a certain ring to it. But why does this guy think you intend to go into the cage?”

I explained. When I was done, Lopez studied me speculatively. His silence got on my nerves, so I asked, “Do you think it’s important?”

“What?”

“The note,” I snapped.

“Well, it provides a new theory.”

“So you no longer think Golly walked off on her own?”

“Actually, that’s exactly what I think happened. According to the statements I took, Miss Gee is a temperamental twenty-three-year-old who’s got less fame than she wants and less sense than she needs.”

“That hardly—”

“She’s got cash flow problems, and she’s deep in debt—mostly to plastic surgeons and diet clinics. She’s also got a police record—mostly minor drug busts. Two of the Kennedys have had to slap restraining orders on her, and—”

“You’ve checked up on her!” I shouldn’t have sounded so surprised. He looked insulted.

“Yes, Miss Diamond, I did. But now I find myself obliged to concentrate on more mundane matters—assault, murder, armed robbery, extortion and so on.” As he gestured to the mountain of paperwork on his desk, a clerk dropped another armload of files onto it. Lopez stared after her with a tragic expression.

“But what about the note?” I said. “Do you think—?”

“I think it’s a hell of a promotional opportunity for an off-Broadway show with overextended producers and an ambitious understudy.”

“You think
I
had something to do with this?”

“I have to consider all possibilities.”

Okay, I had seen enough cop shows on TV to know that. So I tried not to take offense. “Look, I’m not reaping any benefits from this fiasco. Joe Herlihy is refusing to perform the show again.”

“He didn’t get along with Golly Gee, did he? She insulted him, humiliated him, upstaged him and accused him of attempting to set her on fire that very night.”

“Surely you don’t think Joe is behind this?”

“I’m still not even sure what ‘this’ is,” he said.

“But—”

“Look, we know the girl was in the cage before it was rolled offstage. A dozen witnesses backstage saw no strangers, no violence, nothing unusual. The only people who touched that cage were you, Herlihy and the other nymph.” He paused before saying, “As it happens, Herlihy hates her, and you wanted her job.”

“Joe and I were onstage the whole time!” I said.

“And besides Miss Gee, does anyone in the cast know that prop as well as the two of you do?”

“I’m the one receiving threats!” I waved my note in his face.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said courteously.

Getting exasperated, I said, “Look, just tell me if you think it’s safe for me to get in the cage.”

“I thought you destroyed that thing? It was all your producer could talk about.”