Show Business Is Murder Read online

  There was one problem. How would she get Tiffany to eat the salad? Everyone knew Evelyn hated the woman. She barely said hello to Tiffany in the newsroom. She had one month to make friends with her enemy: Evelyn would have to swallow her pride so Tiffany would swallow her salad.

  Next morning, Evelyn walked into Margaret’s office and said, “You’re right. It’s time I buried the hatchet.”

  “In Tiffany’s forehead?” Margaret said, suspiciously.

  “For real,” Evelyn said. “Yesterday, I had some time to think about what you said. I’m only hurting myself. I want to take Tiffany to lunch. My treat. Would you come as referee?”

  “Delighted,” Margaret said, her pale face turning pink with pleasure. “I’m so happy you’re taking my advice.”

  Tiffany was wary when Evelyn invited her, even when she explained that Margaret would be there, too. But she could not resist Evelyn’s handsome apology. “I’ve behaved stupidly, Tiffany,” she said. “I want this lunch to be a peace offering.”

  Tiffany looked flattered. She considered Evelyn’s olive branch a tribute to her power. During a two-hundred-dollar lunch at a premier power spot, Tiffany prattled on about her favorite subject—herself.

  “Tiffany Too and I are the marshals for the Hill Day parade,” she said, while the worshipful waiter refilled Tiffany’s water glass, and forgot Evelyn’s.

  The Hill was the Italian section of the city. “Your dog will love the fire hydrants,” said Evelyn. “They’re painted red, white, and green.”

  “Oh, no, she isn’t allowed out of the parade marshal’s convertible,” Tiffany said seriously. “Not in those crowds.”

  Tiffany babbled on. Mentor Margaret smiled benignly. Evelyn cut her swordfish into smaller and smaller pieces until the waiter took her plate away. No one ordered dessert. The reconciliation lunch was over, and declared a success.

  Evelyn suffered through two more Tiffany lunches with Margaret’s approving company. Because she silently endured Tiffany’s monologues, the beastly blonde now considered Evelyn her friend.

  “I can talk to you,” she said. “You’re such a good listener.”

  Peace was declared. The nasty newsroom rumors ceased, and the gossip mongers went after the noonshow anchor, who was having an affair with the consumer reporter. The jokes about what she was consuming were relentless.

  At their third lunch, Tiffany finally gave Evelyn the opening she needed.

  “I’m not looking forward to covering the fair,” Tiffany said, sighing dramatically. Evelyn knew Tiffany was dying for an excuse to talk about her big assignment. At least, Evelyn hoped the twit would be dying.

  “It’s going to be such a long day,” Tiffany cooed. “Almost ten hours. The station is keeping Tiffany Too in the air-conditioned satellite truck. My little puppy will be cool, but I’ll be out on the hot fairgrounds all day from eleven o’clock on.”

  Evelyn ground her teeth as she thought of Tiffany’s taking over her assignment, but she forced herself to sound sympathetic. “That is a long day. What are you doing about lunch?”

  Tiffany shuddered delicately. “I can either eat the station’s food—tuna salad and ham sandwiches—all fat—or the fair food—hot dogs and buffalo burgers. Yuck.”

  Actually, the fair offered delicacies from chicken satay to, yes, buffalo burgers. But how would Tiffany know? She’d never covered the fair.

  “I come in at noon,” Evelyn said. “How about if I bring salads for you, me, and Margaret? I have this terrific recipe, with field greens, Gorgonzola, walnuts, and dried cranberries. A good healthy salad will get us through the day.”

  “Super!” said Tiffany. “You’re a lifesaver!”

  Yeah, thought Evelyn. I’m saving my life. And my career.

  The night before the fair, Evelyn drove to the pasture near Granny’s and climbed over the fence. Her pants were full of stickleburrs and her hands were scratched with brambles, but she picked the plants she needed by moonlight. The lights were off at her grandmother’s house. Deep shadows along the pasture fence hid Evelyn. Even the night conspired to help her.

  In the morning, she concocted the salad, adding the freshly picked rue to the store-bought field greens. She made her salad dressing with a carefully calibrated dose of rat poison. It was the exact dosage for one small healthy woman. Divided by three, of course. Because they’d all be sharing the salad.

  She put the salad into a big disposable bowl. She would make sure everyone saw there was only one salad container. At lunch, she served the salad on paper plates, dividing the poisonous portions exactly in three.

  “Delicious,” Tiffany said, eating her salad greedily.

  “Perfection!” said Margaret. Evelyn was too excited to eat. She forced herself to finish her salad.

  After lunch, Evelyn gathered up the serving bowl, paper plates, and forks; even the napkins. After Margaret and Tiffany left, Evelyn threw the trash into an overflowing can at the far end of the fair. The incriminating remains would be taken away by the trash haulers long before Tiffany’s first symptom.

  All three women worked in the sweltering afternoon sun. Tiffany, with Margaret’s award-winning assistance, was interviewing the big stars performing on the main stage. Evelyn went with Rick the cameraman for what he called “Bubba bites”—sound bites from dreary fairgoers.

  After they interviewed a hefty woman from Herculaneum and a downright fat man from Florissant with two chubby children, Rick whispered to Evelyn, “Is there a weight requirement for this fair? Do you have to weigh at least two hundred pounds to get in the gate?”

  Evelyn loved his misanthropic remarks. The sun was beating on her with almost physical blows. Sweat dripped off her nose. She knew on camera her face would look oily and her hair would look French-fried. She prayed that same sun was working on Tiffany’s white skin.

  When they heard sirens near the main stage, Rick said, “Maybe one of the fairgoers melted. Let’s go see if there’s some video.”

  More sirens screamed. Now police cars, fire trucks, and an ambulance were heading toward the main stage. The music stopped abruptly.

  “What happened?” Evelyn asked a woman running from the area, clutching her baby protectively.

  “Some TV lady started staggering around and grabbing her throat,” the woman said. “Her face swelled up something awful. Even her eyes were swollen shut. She looked horrible. I didn’t want my Becky to see it.”

  Yes! thought Evelyn triumphantly, but she made concerned noises.

  Rick was running surprisingly fast for someone with a heavy video camera. He loped past Evelyn. Other fairgoers were running after him, eager to see the tragedy. Evelyn felt a sharp elbow in her ribs. A small boy darted between her legs and she fell on the dry grass.

  By the time Evelyn brushed herself off, the excitement was almost over. She saw the paramedics loading a stretcher with a small figure strapped to it. The figure was absolutely still, although the ambulance left with lights flashing and sirens howling.

  Evelyn composed her face into a sorrowful mask to hide her glee. She didn’t know if Tiffany was sick or dead, but she was definitely out of action. The fair was hers now. Evelyn would return to her rightful place on camera.

  She went looking for Margaret. The satellite truck would be the logical choice. At least someone there could tell her where Margaret was. Evelyn was about to enter when the door opened slowly. Out stepped Tiffany. Her hated rival looked disgustingly healthy.

  “How? What?” was all a stunned Evelyn could manage.

  “Oh, Evelyn,” said Tiffany, her blue eyes tearing artistically. “Margaret started gasping and choking and staggering around like she was having some kind of fit. Nobody knew what happened to her, and by the time the ambulance got there, she wasn’t breathing at all. It was terrible. They don’t think she’s going to make it.”

  “Margaret?” Evelyn said. “Are you sure?”

  What had gone wrong? Margaret was a brunette. If rue plants made blondes sick, why was
Tiffany well and Margaret dying? Damn Granny and her crazy country remedies.

  Blonde Tiffany had eaten no more salad than anyone. But brunette Margaret had the severe symptoms. Evelyn had eaten the greens, too, and they’d had no effect on her. They certainly weren’t poisonous to one brunette—why another?

  “I must see Margaret,” Evelyn said.

  But Jason, her producer, stopped her. “I’m sorry, Evelyn,” he said. “You can’t do anything for Margaret. We need you to carry on with the fair coverage.”

  But she couldn’t. Evelyn couldn’t concentrate. She missed her first cue for the live remote at the food booths. When she was finally on the air, she looked sweaty and disheveled. Several viewers called the station, asking if Evelyn was drunk. But it was shock, not booze, that slurred her speech.

  Evelyn’s “Bubba bites,” the interviews with the boring fairgoers, were dropped to make room for the special report on the death of Emmy-award-winning producer Margaret Smithson.

  Tiffany narrated that report. Everyone agreed that she did a splendid job, showing just the right amount of professional sympathy. Tiffany’s story about sharing her salad with the deceased was especially touching.

  Evelyn drifted in a fog, waiting for the autopsy results. Maybe the pathologist would find something that would exonerate her. Maybe Margaret had been stung by a bee and gone into shock. Maybe Evelyn didn’t kill her mentor and best friend.

  But when the report was released, Evelyn knew there would be no reprieve. Margaret had extensive swelling of the face, lips, and tongue. She’d suffocated. The details were too horrible to think about.

  The pathologist said the severe symptoms were caused by an overdose of Coumadin. Margaret had been taking the blood thinner for her heart. The pathologist believed Margaret had mistakenly taken a double dose of Coumadin and died from it. Her death was an accident.

  Only Evelyn knew it was no accident. Only Evelyn knew she’d killed her best friend. And she couldn’t figure out how.

  At the station, Evelyn stumbled through her standups, missed deadlines, flubbed her lines. She felt numb. She didn’t care, not even when the station did not renew her contract. She knew Tiffany would take her anchor spot.

  She didn’t know why Margaret died, and that made her crazy.

  Margaret had only had one-third of a normal dose of Coumadin. It shouldn’t have killed her, even if she was already taking the blood thinner. The sun, celery, and rue might intensify the effect, but Margaret was a brunette. It should have been blonde Tiffany who swelled up from the sun exposure. It should have been Tiffany who died.

  All Evelyn could do was ask herself, “What went wrong?”

  She found out at Margaret’s memorial service. Margaret’s grieving family displayed photos of their daughter throughout her too-short life.

  Evelyn saw the first-grade picture of a grinning gap-toothed Margaret. The little girl was blonde—and not just blonde, but so pale her hair was almost white. In high school, a teenage Margaret used too much eyebrow pencil and mascara to darken her pale brows and eyelashes.

  By college, Margaret was a stunning platinum blonde. It was only after graduation, when she got her first job at a little station in Sedalia, Missouri, that Margaret had dark hair. She was a brunette in every photo after that.

  “You were Margaret’s best friend,” said her mother, a plump gray-haired woman in black. She took both of Evelyn’s hands in hers.

  “I didn’t know she was a blonde,” blurted Evelyn.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “Margaret had lovely hair. Natural platinum. But Margaret said she couldn’t take the ‘dumb blonde’ jokes at work. She said when she dyed her hair dark, her IQ went up 50 points.”

  That’s where I went wrong, Evelyn thought.

  Margaret was blonde. And Tiffany? She remembered why Dolly Parton said she wasn’t offended by dumb blonde jokes. “ . . . I know I’m not dumb. I also know that I’m not blonde.”

  Tiffany must have dyed her hair blonde. She recalled her nasty remarks about Mr. John being the city’s finest colorist . . . “so natural.” Of course. He certainly made Tiffany look natural. That’s why the poison salad didn’t bother her. She wasn’t a real blonde.

  It was the ultimate blonde joke on a dumb brunette. It never occurred to Evelyn that Tiffany was a bottle blonde. She should have known. Everything else about her was fake. And in TV, mistakes start at the top.

  Evelyn realized Margaret’s mother was still holding her hands and talking. “I told her, ‘Margaret, it is a sin and a shame to cover up that beautiful platinum hair.’ And you know what she said? ‘Mother, I would rather die than be a blonde.’

  “Evelyn? Are you okay? Why, you’re white as a sheet, dear. Sit down here. It’s not healthy to be that white . . .”

  Lah Tee Dah

  ANGELA ZEMAN

  HERMIONE LISTENBERGER CONTEMPLATED her name as she plucked a slow riff of perfect, clear notes from her six-string acoustical Gibson (the three-quarter size model to better fit her small frame).

  The ringing tones mellowed the acrid air with a leisurely sweetness she hoped would entice the West 50th Street subway patrons to slow their mad pace. In a few moments, after the number 9 train resumed its screaming rush downtown, she’d segue into her next tune.

  Just this morning she’d re-strung the guitar with all steel strings, although this type of guitar was really created for nylon. As the train sat gathering its strength, she took advantage of the relative quiet to listen hard to the steel’s sharper delineation of each note. As she had hoped, the sounds lingered longer, blending and reaching deeper into the tiled subway tunnel. The tunnel itself was her sound system.

  Excellent.

  Her attention returned to her name. Hermione possessed an orderly mind that trudged remorselessly down the path she had laid for herself. A new name was next on her agenda. Something memorable. Striking. Not for the first time, she marveled at her parents’ choice. Did it reflect the stultified Utica environment they adored? As soon as she had judged herself wise and strong enough to protect herself among strangers, she’d run to Manhattan with the desperation of a drowning man who knows only one place to find air. Hermione? Coupled with Listenberger it lost all hope of working as a stage name. For one thing, it was ugly. Now, ugly might have worked if it fit her musical image. However, she knew her music was strong. Also disturbing at times, an effect that delighted Hermione. But not ugly.

  Also from long, detached inspections in bathroom mirrors she knew that she herself had beauty of a type. After careful consideration, she had eventually chosen to make her beauty an asset, to play it “up” onstage. Even though her current finances forced her to sluice her body as completely as possible in public facilities and to subsist mainly on juice and discarded sandwiches from overflowing trash barrels, her ivory skin was of such luminous softness that it seemed to invite touches from fascinated admirers. However, she allowed no touching. Her healthy abundant hair shimmered in any light, from bright brassy gold in the sun to a dusky red glimmer in the tunnels under fluorescent lights, even in subway air dusty with stressed steel and crumbling cement. In this July heat, tiny curls edged her peach-flushed face. In winter cold, she paled, her hair reddening by contrast, a flame in frost. Her figure had never had the leisure or the income to pad itself with baby fat. She had the lean litheness of an athlete.

  Never mind. A name. Suddenly the edge of her consciousness registered that the train had left. After so many months, one learned to tune out the subway roar and thunder. So she quickly launched into a new song she’d written. With this one, she tasted success in its notes. Instinctively she knew this was going to be her signature, her door into the world of success. The song. It wasn’t yet at its peak, but with practice she’d soon polish it into the perfect gem she’d heard in her head when she first thought of it.

  She launched her voice, clear and high, with a fierce push on the highest notes, a rough drawl for the low ones: “Leave me now, I’ve moved on anyhow. Lah
tee dah, down the MTA highway, the next stop will be better, lah tee dah . . .”

  To her annoyance, a tall young man in vintage bell-bottom cords and a skin-tight tee shirt with the sleeves and neckband ripped out stopped short and stared at her in shocked recognition. She was used to this. Some of these guys were twice her size and sometimes nuts from drugs, or just plain nuts. Some were musicians who recognized her talent and wanted to use her to elevate themselves. Either way, she wished—oh how she wished—she had some means to keep him and those like him away, for there had been many.

  This one was a musician. She read the thoughts crossing his face as if they were the moving electric letters on the Times Square news sign: He heard the work behind the melody, the breathing techniques that gave her voice the unearthly compelling quality that, although he probably didn’t know it yet, was her trademark. He would want to hook up with her. They all did. It was a Manhattan thing, nearly half the population wanting to be a singer, an actor, an artist. A thousand competitors for each elusive “break.”

  Her eyes closed, not to submerge into the heat and thrum of the song, but in irritation. Yep, he was coming closer. She felt his intent stare through her closed eyelids. She opened her eyes and glared. Oblivious, he inched closer until rage, far too familiar by now, rose in her anew, choking the words in her throat. For a few lovely seconds an image of herself transformed into a she-wolf came to mind, bringing her visceral pleasure. With little effort her imagination gave her razor teeth with which to gnaw insanely at the muscular throats of these leeches, glorying in the taste of their ruined flesh. She dreamed how, covered with blood, she would lunge at horrified spectators, making them squeal, the spectacle a warning to others to leave her alone! Her frustration had reached a pitch where mere escape from their self-serving attentions would no longer satisfy.

  But she was small and slight, and no fool. So she swallowed her fury yet again and only turned slightly to face another direction. Hoping the song and not her body had attracted him, she stopped playing to fuss with the tuning keys at the top of the guitar neck.