Cassie stood. “I don’t mean to be impolite or anything, but where’s the Jane?”
Ebony said, “I’ll show you,” and Cassie followed her, hoping that Margaret was following as well.
She was. When they were alone, Cassie opened her purse. “I said I’d give you a raise if you did a good job, remember? You can earn that raise right now. Here’s ten bucks.”
Margaret accepted it, pushing it into her sleeve.
“Maybe you’ve heard of Gideon Chase. He’s a friend of mine, and he’s got an apartment someplace in the city — I don’t know where. He teaches close to Providence, so he’s probably got another one around there. Got it?”
Margaret nodded.
“Get on the phone — directory assistance, the Babybell Search Engine, all that stuff. Find him. Tell him who you are, and tell him I’m here and I’m scared. Tell him to get himself over here quick.”
When Margaret had gone, Cassie held the door open to watch her hurry away. The party at Ebony’s table seemed unchanged. Ebony had resumed her seat, and India was holding forth. It occurred to Cassie that she need not rejoin it. Other tables dotted the tapestried room; there was even a crowd around the bar. After washing her hands twice, she slipped out of the restroom.
She was halfway to the bar when Palma pounced. “You were marvelous tonight, Cassiopeia Fiona Casey. Truly and absolutely marvelous! It was a privilege and an honor to tread the boards in your distinguished company. You made my poor scheming detective look very poor indeed, and that was all to the good. I know that the audience, God bless ’em!, made bold to let you know how merveilleux you were; but none of these hams will, so I intuit that I should do it myself. One strives, one endeavors, you know, to leave our poor old Earth a better place, eh? You have, and I do my own threadbare trifle by telling you how greatly you dazzled us. Come sit by me, and I’ll tell you much, much more.”
Palma had been steering her as a tall and unusually cruel tomcat might steer a captive mouse. They had nearly reached a table at which Donny Duke sat sipping something green, and at which Norma was in the act of sitting. “I was going to the bar,” Cassie protested weakly.
“Donny will fetch it for you, Cassiopeia. Be seated, tell him your desires, and it shall be done.”
Tempted to ask for a beach cottage, Cassie refrained. “I don’t care what you get me, Donny, as long as it knocks my panty hose off. If you and Vince have to carry me out of here and pour me into a cab, you’ll have done your job.”
Borne up by half a smile, Donny floated from his chair and drifted toward the bar.
“I take it you’re celebrating,” Norma said.
“Try taking it that I’m scared.”
“Cassie shall prophesy evil,” Palma intoned, “but she shall not be believed. Save by me. Alone.”
“Tell us,” Norma said.
“There’s nothing to tell.” Cassie looked around for the Chablis she had left on Ebony’s table, and failing to find it took a healthy swallow from Donny’s glass. It was like drinking toothpaste.
“The Irish,” Norma remarked, “are rarely afraid of nothing.”
Palma smiled, and brushed an invisible yellow feather from his lips with a manicured and be-ringed paw. “She has heard the banshee.”
“Seen it,” Cassie said, “and I think I’m going to be going out with it in a day or two.”
“Why Cassie!” Norma was grinning. “You always seemed so hetro.”
“English speakers,” Palma lectured her smoothly, “are invariably deceived by the second syllable. It merely conveys that banshees are to be numbered amongst the Grey Neighbors.”
“I’ll be damned if I’ve the foggiest idea what that’s supposed to mean,” Norma said, “but doesn’t Cassie have a gray neighbor right now?”
“She’s talking about me,” Margaret whispered.
Turning, Cassie caught her arm. “Did you get him?”
Margaret shook her head. “I tried all those things. I talked to answering machines at both his apartments. I left a voice mail — ”
Cassie raised at hand. “That’s plenty for now. You can tell me the rest later. Find a chair, sit down, and talk about something else if you want to talk.”
Donny returned bearing a tall and narrow glass thick with frost. Solemnly he passed it to Cassie, who sipped, shuddered, and sipped again.
“Would anyone care for ugly news?” Donny inquired. “Perhaps everyone has already heard? Am I to know shame because I had not?”
Cassie wet her lips from the glass and licked them. “It depends on what bad news you have in mind. My God! I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this stuff.”
“You weren’t planning on two?”
“Lord no!”
“Are you going to be displeased because I bribed the man to mix it to my own specifications?”
Palma touched Cassie’s elbow. “I had supposed you celebrating, Cassiopeia darling. I see how mistaken I was. Rest assured, I beg you, that your friends — and everyone at this table is your friend — will stand by you through thick and thin.”
Norma had taken out her compact and was studying herself in its mirror. “The cavalry’s not coming, Vince. You’ve made westerns. I know you have. The Apaches are closing in, and back at the fort nobody knows. You’ve got to learn to listen.”
Donny raised an eyebrow. “Listen to... ?”
“You weren’t here.” Norma snapped her compact shut. “To Alexis’s dresser. Cassie sent her to the colonel, but she couldn’t find him.”
“This is my personal thing.” Firmly, Cassie set the frosted glass down. “Whatever you’ve heard, Donny, wasn’t. Or I don’t think it was. So tell us.”
Margaret returned with a glass, sat, and sipped primly.
“Well, I um... ?” The scarlet dots of Donny’s pimples stood out like bloodstains on a sheet. “Was the security guard back at the theater a, er, special friend of anyone here? I believe his name was Jeremy? I, ah, perhaps you thought I knew him?”
“I consider him a friend,” Cassie said. “I did and still do. Has he been fired? He always seemed like such an honest, cheerful sort of man.”
Margaret spoke more loudly than usual. “He was, Miss Casey. I knew him about as well as I know anybody. James K. Warshawsky was his name, and he’s passed away.”
In the silence that followed, she added, “Or that’s what they say. I think that’s probably what Mr. Duke heard at the bar.”
Donny nodded.
“Let me guess.” Cassie closed her eyes. “They found him in the alley outside the stage door, and he’d been shot. Maybe stabbed. Is that right?”
“Oh, shit!” Norma spoke under her breath, adding, “I’m back in the show.”
“I didn’t hear about shooting or stabbing,” Donny said, “did you, Margaret?”
She shook her head.
“Quiet, everybody! Quiet!” The voice was India’s; she was standing in the middle of the room, speaking into a mike.
It had the desired effect.
“Thanks! We call this the cast party, but it’s not all cast. Some of us were never onstage, but we’re all in showbiz and that’s what this’s really about. Now I’d like to introduce you to a gentleman you really ought to know. He’s in showbiz, too, or he soon will be.”
There was a subdued buzz of talk. Cassie gulped her drink.
“It always seems like big stage musicals are few and far between,” India continued, “but the legitimate stage is coming back. Maybe it’s just a cyclic thing. That’s what some people say. Maybe it’s all these hoppers, and people vacationing on barren worlds. Honeymoons on the moon, when grandpa was happy just to do it on his honey. All that shit. I don’t pretend to know, but I do know that lots and lots of the old movie theaters are reopening as legitimate playhouses, where people can sit and watch talented people like you onstage doing a show.” She fell silent, looking toward the door.