Ms America and the Brouhaha on Broadway (24 page)

“But some venues that are big enough and nearby enough,” Trixie says, “aren’t considered Broadway theaters. Like Radio City Music Hall.”

Shanelle weighs in. “And the various unions have to agree that something qualifies as a Broadway production.”

“If it doesn’t, its actors can’t win Tony Awards,” Trixie adds. “So everybody on
Dream Angel
is out of luck because this is an Off-Broadway production.”

I keep to myself my opinion that no one involved with
Dream Angel
would run much risk of being nominated for a Tony, anyway. “There are rules about what qualifies as Off-Broadway, too,” I say. “In that case the theater has to have at least a hundred seats. And of course some productions try to skate past that because they don’t want to be called Off-
Off
-Broadway.” Which does sound a trifle insulting.

A few minutes later we decide to watch the rehearsals from a box, just for fun. Bennie pipes up again. “Is it always like this? Everybody running around like a chicken with its head chopped off?”

“This is even more frantic than usual,” I say. “That’s because previews start up again tonight. And the musical has been changed a lot, so everybody’s worried they’re going to make a mistake.”

“Remember that site AllThatChat.com that Tonya told us about?” Shanelle asks me. “I hope she’s not reading the latest reviews. They’re nasty.”

“Who’d be posting nasty reviews now? That’s really unfair,” I say to Bennie, “since so much of the show has been changed since the last preview.”

This is the eternal dilemma for Broadway directors. They can’t finalize a show until they know how an audience reacts to it in previews, yet people who attend those previews might ream the show that’s still very much in flux.

Of course I can’t resist taking a peek at AllThatChat.com. The first post I see is indeed scathing.
Is it vicious to call
Dream Angel
sophomoric and banal? No. It’s too kind.

I cringe. I’d hate to be on the receiving end of that. No wonder everybody involved in this production is a basketcase. Onstage even now, two techs are yelling at each other, an actor is demanding that from now on he get hit with a spotlight, and an actress is in tears.

“I heard the stage manager yell at her backstage,” Trixie murmurs. “She forgot the golden rule: ‘Ten minutes early is on time. On time is late.’ ”

You do hear that a lot around here. That said, there’s no sign rehearsals will commence any time soon. We settle in to wait.

I’m lost in thought when rehearsals get going a bit later. And while the run-throughs are fairly entertaining, my now-cranking brain soon recalls the tasks I wish to accomplish. I excuse myself from Bennie et al., and make my way backstage in search of the DVDs of
Dream Angel
’s preview performances, recorded by your favorite strumpet and mine, Miss Kimberly Drayson.

The DVDs are kept in a small windowless room off the same corridor as Oliver’s office. Fortunately, it is unoccupied. I slip inside and shut the door. A motley assortment of file cabinets that looks to be from the dawn of time lines the perimeter, topped with random objects and no doubt filled with documents no one ever needs. A dusty DVD player and small-screen TV squat on a desk that saw better days decades ago. I perch on a director’s chair sagging from the weight of countless butts and rummage among the DVDs scattered on the desktop. Soon I find the one I want to see most: from the night Lisette died. I mute the volume, since I don’t want to call attention to my dubious activities, and skim through to the end.

What do I discover? The recording cuts off well before Lisette mounts the killer staircase. In fact, it halts a full scene before Tonya even begins the final song, which accompanies her climb up the stairs to the tacky gilded throne.

I flop back in the chair. So it’s partially true what Kimberly said the night Lisette died: that she wasn’t recording when Lisette pitched down the stairs. I was disappointed at the time because it meant there was no record of what happened, which no doubt my homicide-seeking self would have perused time and time again.

But the rest of what Kimberly said is not true. No, she did not stop recording when Lisette appeared at the head of the stairs; she stopped considerably before that point.

Why? The preview was proceeding normally. Why wasn’t Kimberly recording it?

I eject that DVD and insert the recording from the night before Lisette died. After I scan it, I go through the same procedure with every other preview performance I can find. And wouldn’t you know, on every other one Kimberly records all the way through to the finish, even including Lisette’s nightly tirades.

Why, on that one night only, did Kimberly not record until the conclusion?

I am pondering what that husband-stealing vixen might have been up to when my cell buzzes with a text. It turns out to be from said husband.
You won’t believe where I am
.

I hope not Kimberly’s apartment. But I simply text:
Where?

K’s uncle’s place on Long Island
.
What a spread!!!

Great. So now Jason and Kimberly are holed up not in her apartment but in a swanky private home. And it is quite possible there’s no Uncle Jerry on the premises to chaperone. I clutch my phone, wishing Jason had stayed put in Central Park even if that would’ve meant freezing his perfectly toned buns off.

Since I don’t reply fast enough, Jason pops off another text.
Not that big but right on the water. Dock too. Amazing!!!

I’m not loving the hyper punctuation. My husband is having way too good a time. I wonder if he’s getting the idea that Kimberly’s uncle is loaded.

I certainly am. I can’t imagine coastal real estate on Long Island is cheap. As my mother’s facial so rudely reminded us, nothing in these parts is cheap.

Took a while to get here
, Jason texts.
I’ll be back late
.

Have a good time
, I reply, because I don’t know what else to say. Then I search for the weather forecast, hoping we don’t get slammed with another snowstorm and the roads become impassable. How crazy was it for the two of them to go all the way out there? And doesn’t that pint-sized conniver have to be back in the city tonight to record the preview performance?

I get one piece of good news, at least: there are no squalls on the horizon. I clean up my DVD mess and go in search of the day’s sign-in sheet. It is as I feared: Jerry Drayson has a call time, but his niece doesn’t. Kimberly is off tonight. And I bet Uncle Jerry is in the city and not on Long Island if he’s got to work tonight.

I go to the break room to fetch myself a sustaining cup of coffee, hoping no one got mad enough today to pee in the pot. I resist downing a chocolate chip cookie from the ever-present stash. Now that I’ve got competition from a woman ten years my junior, it is not the time to bulk up my hips and thighs.

Now is the time to trust my husband and my marriage, I tell myself. Jason has had to deal with me having loads of one-on-one time with Mario and now I must react with equanimity while he spends hour after (semi-clothed) hour with that cunning minx Kimberly. And while I have been sorely tempted where Mario is concerned, I have never actually been naughty.

True, there was that one unforgettable kiss in Minnesota. But that’s easily explained! We were under mistletoe at the time and it would have been very rude to turn away in that situation.

At least that’s what I tell myself. And surely Jason will exercise the same self-control that I have been able to summon most of the time ...

“What the hell are
you
doing here?” squeaks Oliver from behind me.

I see our esteemed director has come in search of sustenance as well. “To be honest with you, I just love being here at the theater,” I tell him. “But don’t worry, I’ll keep your father away tonight. He wouldn’t bother showing up during mere rehearsals, anyway.”

Oliver pours hot water into a mug. I’m sure he’s got some fancy Japanese tea he wants to steep. “What makes you so sure?”

“Rehearsals aren’t splashy enough for your father. He wants to flaunt himself, not get ignored while everybody’s busy.”

Oliver arches his brows. “Good for you. You’re starting to figure him out.”

“By the way”—I edge closer even though Oliver and I are alone in the break room—“are you aware that Kimberly’s recording of Thursday’s preview cuts off way before Lisette even shows up on the stairs?”

He looks surprised but dodges the question. “What’s it to you?”

“I just wish I understood better how she fell. I have nightmares about it,” I lie, adding to my list of Sunday sins.

Oliver shakes his head. “I haven’t watched it. It’s too morbid. Besides, so much of the production has changed since then that it’s beside the point.”

“Did you see Lisette actually fall? Where were you when it happened?”

“Where do you think I was? In my office trying to recover from her latest diatribe. Gotta go,” he says, and spins away.

It’s certainly plausible he was in his office. That doesn’t mean I’m buying it.

I’m finishing my coffee and trying to relax about Jason when I get the idea to google Gerald Drayson’s name. Let’s see just how big a dog Kimberly’s uncle is. The first hit that comes up is his web site, which turns out to be a thing of beauty. One stunning Broadway photo fades seamlessly into the next. Up top are a few shots of the man himself, wielding a still camera and laughing, wearing jeans, a sport coat, and a dress shirt open at the neck. He looks professional yet warm and approachable. I will add that the flawlessness of the site creates the impression that his services are extremely expensive.

He does wedding and engagement photos, too, I soon realize, though he warns that his availability for such events is “very limited.” Nevertheless, I can tell that within the last year he found time to do one wedding in Lake Como, Italy, and another in France’s Loire Valley. I click on the gallery of photos for a mundane affair in boring old Manhattan and nearly keel over.

I recognize the bride.

It’s the photographer’s own niece Kimberly.

The little finagler is
married
?

Of that, there can be no doubt. This is a wedding if ever I’ve seen one, complete with church ceremony, horse-drawn carriage, release of doves, and gigantic candlelit reception. Hundreds of people are in attendance.

And the bride is Kimberly. There are no names on the site, but even massively dolled up I recognize the Machiavellian schemer. She went all out on her wedding day, from her beaded Jimmy Choo stilettos to her upswept curls studded with pearls. The poor dupe who married her, traditionally referred to as the groom, is a moderately attractive dark-haired man who looks a few years her senior.

These days Kimberly doesn’t wear a wedding or engagement ring, but there is a close-up of both in the photo gallery. I am struck by their modesty relative to the rest of this nuptial extravaganza.

With a wedding of this grandeur, I bet there was an announcement in
The New York Times
. Sure enough, there was. It appeared on Sunday, August 24. So it was five months ago that Kimberly Drayson married … Damian Paganos.

As this shocking news careens from one end of my brain to the other, I struggle to remember what I know about mystery man Damian Paganos. One fact comes to mind: to quote Uncle Jerry, Damian was “seeing” Lisette. And as I recall, it is clear from Lisette’s phone that they exchanged a goodly number of calls and texts.

So Damian was seeing Lisette even though he was married to Kimberly?

Yes, Uncle Jerry, I agree wholeheartedly with what you said in the ladies room: a man seeing one woman while being married to another creates a conflict of interest between those two females.

Maybe it would even create—I catch my breath—a motive for murder.

As that idea bats around in my head, becoming less outlandish by the second, I realize that something doesn’t add up. In the ladies room, Uncle Jerry was angry that he hadn’t
known
Damian was hooking up with Lisette. Shouldn’t he have been angry simply that Damian was hooking up with Lisette? Shouldn’t he have wanted to string up the brand-new husband of his beloved niece, whom, along with “Nonni,” he apparently played a big role in raising?

And why wasn’t Kimberly either spitting mad or sobbing buckets that her groom was involved with another woman?

Maybe because by that point her rival was lying in a chilled drawer in the morgue—and Kimberly had helped put her there.

I skim the wedding announcement, which contains no bombshell information. I do learn that Damian Paganos works as an electrician in theater production. That sounds like a fun job though not a very highly paid one. Maybe that explains the unassuming nature of Kimberly’s rings.

Why would Lisette have been drawn to Damian, I wonder? He’s good-looking enough but hardly god-like. His job isn’t prestigious by Longley standards and I’m guessing his bank account isn’t, either. Was she rebelling? Did she and Kimberly have a longstanding beef and Lisette was dating Damian to get revenge?