Dead of Winter Read online

  “Who were you calling?” Hurley asks.

  Rebecca rolls her lips inward, appearing reluctant to answer. Then she says, “My father,” with a hint of embarrassment that I find puzzling.

  “Was there anyone else out in the main area with you at the time Helen screamed?” Hurley asks.

  “No. I went out there because, well . . . for privacy. I was supposed to be getting dressed in my costume, but I wanted to talk to Dad first.”

  There’s an undercurrent here that I sense, but don’t yet understand. While my original intention was to let Hurley do all the questioning, I have an irresistible urge to jump in.

  “Do you routinely call your father in the middle of the day?” I ask.

  She looks at me, abashed. “Depends,” she says with a shrug.

  “On what?” Hurley asks, shooting me an annoyed look that I ignore.

  “On how things are going here,” Rebecca says.

  “Here, meaning here?” I say, making a circle in the air with one finger. “Here at the theater?”

  Rebecca nods. I can tell she doesn’t want to offer any more than she has to, but something—perhaps the curious and determined look on my face—wears her down. She sighs. “My father is financing this play, or at least most of it,” she says. “He provides backing for a lot of the plays I act in.”

  Hurley, suddenly seeing some wisdom to my line of questioning, perks up. “Who is your father?”

  “Stig Dahl,” she says, looking sheepish.

  “As in the Stig Dahl who owns the chain of banks you work for?” I ask.

  “Yes.” She rolls her eyes, obviously irritated. “Look, I know what this looks like. Daddy finances the plays, and, in return, his daughter has to have everything done her way. But that’s not how it is. The stuff I asked Dalrymple for wasn’t dependent on any of the financing, even though I think he sometimes saw it that way.”

  “What sort of requests have you made recently?” Hurley asks.

  “Nothing major,” Rebecca says dismissively, looking around the vestibule area we’re in. “Some little rewrites on lines, or a costume change here and there. That sort of thing.”

  “How did you and the others get along with Dalrymple?” Hurley asks.

  Rebecca rolls her eyes. “He isn’t . . . wasn’t the easiest man to work with,” she says. “And today he seemed more irascible than usual.” She runs a hand down her side, as if she’s searching for a pocket. Realizing she doesn’t have one, she sighs and finally looks Hurley in the eye. “I could really use a cigarette,” she says in a pleading tone. “It’s a nasty habit, I know, but it helps calm me. Would you mind terribly if I have one?”

  “I would mind,” Hurley says. “And I’m almost done anyway. You can get by for another few minutes, can’t you?” He stares at her with those intense blue eyes of his, the faintest hint of a smile on his face.

  I can tell she wants to be irritated with him, but in the end, she can’t quite pull it off. She smiles at him and says, “Sure. Okay.”

  Hurley then deftly questions her about who was already by Dalrymple’s body, and who arrived from where, once she got there. Her answers match Ferguson’s with one exception: She swears Helen was standing by Dalrymple’s feet, rather than his head. Hurley then asks her if she has gone up onto the catwalk for any reason.

  “Sure,” she says. “We’re a small group and we all have to chip in and do things outside of our normal job descriptions from time to time. Depending on who is in a given scene, we all take turns handling the lights and scenery boards up there on the catwalk. I don’t think I was up there today, though.”

  “You don’t think you were?” I say. “I would think you’d remember doing something like that.”

  She looks at me with a hint of annoyance, like I’m a pesky mosquito buzzing around her head. “The days all blur together after a while,” she says. “But I’m pretty certain I wasn’t up there today.”

  Hurley thanks her and lets her go with a warning not to discuss the case with any of the others.

  “What’s your take on her?” he asks after Rebecca has left.

  “She’s a bit full of herself,” I say. “Possibly a daddy’s girl. Beyond that, I’m not sure.” I leave out the part about how I envy her thighs and feet. “Who’s next?” I ask.

  “Let’s do our cross-dressing fellow.” Hurley consults his notebook, flipping back a bunch of pages to the front. “His name is Brad Levy.”

  “Really?” I say, looking surprised.

  I went to high school with a guy named Brad Levy. If this is the same guy, I didn’t recognize him. Then again, the Brad Levy I knew nearly twenty years ago didn’t dress in women’s clothes—at least not that I knew of.

  This questioning session could prove interesting.

  CHAPTER 21

  By the time I fetch Brad, he has ditched his wig and the pumps he’d been wearing. Now that I know his name, I look at him more closely and see that he is indeed the same Brad Levy I had known in high school. The eyes are the same chocolate-brown color, and I remember the mole I can now see just in front of his left ear. The hair on the wig had hidden it from view before.

  “You’re Mattie Fjell, aren’t you?” he says, using my maiden name as I escort him out to the lobby.

  “I am, though I go by Mattie Winston now,” I tell him. I say this in a low voice, because it’s a bit of a touchy subject between Hurley and me.

  * * *

  Now that Hurley and I are married, it makes sense for me to take his last name and get rid of David’s. But I haven’t done it yet for two reasons. The first is basic laziness and a desire to avoid the bureaucratic claptrap involved with changing one’s name. I learned a hard lesson about financial independence when I left David, because everything we had was either in both of our names or David’s alone. I had no credit, no assets, no nothing in my own name, and it left me in a financial quagmire for a while, which I swore I would never be in again. I established bank accounts and obtained credit cards after the split, using the name of Winston, and after nearly three years, I’ve managed to establish a decent credit rating and some financial independence. I fear changing everything now might gum up the works and affect the credit I’ve worked so hard to build.

  The other reason I haven’t changed my last name is because it’s awkward when Hurley and I are working together. For some people, having the same last name implies a certain lack of impartiality, which we don’t want people to fear. As it is, Hurley and I have to be careful during any investigations we work together to make sure we document everything to the letter. We use videos whenever possible as a record of events, and often end up playing devil’s advocate with one another whenever we discuss a case.

  All that aside, Hurley says that maintaining my ex’s last name is something of a slap in the face to him. I understand why he feels that way, but it hasn’t pushed me into doing anything about it yet. Then I get an idea. Maybe that’s what I could give him for his birthday, finally changing my last name and taking his. I like the idea of it. It would make a unique gift and be a romantic gesture. But when I think about what’s involved with actually doing it, I start rethinking the whole thing.

  * * *

  “What have you been up to, Brad?” I ask, tabling the idea for now. “Last I heard, you had moved to California, or New York, or somewhere like that.”

  “Yeah, I lived in LA for about fifteen years, trying to make a go of it in the acting biz.” He shakes his head, looking woeful. “It’s tough out there, very cutthroat.”

  His comment reminds me of what Arnie said about all the young people in LA trying to break into the entertainment business, and I wonder what Brad went through.

  “I gave it my best shot and it wasn’t good enough. So I went to school and got a degree in English and a teaching certificate. I came back home two years ago and now I teach at the elementary school here. I do this kind of stuff”—he waves a hand from his face to his midsection—“to satisfy my creative side.” He giv
es me a meager smile. “Kind of sad, isn’t it?”

  “Not really,” I say. “Life seldom works out the way we plan it. Mine certainly didn’t.”

  “Yeah, I heard that you’d gone to nursing school and then married a doctor. I take it you aren’t doing nursing anymore?”

  “Nope, I work for the medical examiner’s office these days. No nursing, and no doctor husband anymore, either. I’m married to a cop now, the one you’re about to talk to, in fact. And we have two kids. So, see? Life has its own ideas about where it’s going to take us. We’re just along for the ride.”

  “Well, you look good. And happy.”

  “I am happy,” I say. “How about you? Married? Any kids?”

  “No, and despite appearances today, I’m not gay,” he says. “I’ve had a few relationships, but nothing seems to stick. My last girlfriend told me I had Peter Pan syndrome. The one before that said I had serious commitment issues. They all seem to want the ring on their finger and the happy-little-family scenario.” He pauses, giving me a wan smile. “That’s just not my scene, at least not at this stage in my life.”

  “To each his own,” I say. “I think it’s great that you’re self-aware enough to admit to that, and not give in to peer or societal pressure.”

  “Not to mention family pressure,” he adds with a roll of his eyes. “My mother is determined to get a grandkid out of me. She might, but I doubt it will be through any kind of marital arrangement.”

  “What about your sister? What was her name? Vicky?”

  “Valerie,” he says. I watch a veil of sadness descend over him. “She was killed in a car accident in Arizona four years ago. She moved there with her husband. They were only married for two years and didn’t have any kids yet.”

  “Wow. Sorry to hear that.” The door to the lobby opens and Hurley pokes his head into the auditorium.

  “What’s going on?” he says with a pointed look at his watch.

  “Sorry,” I say. “Catching up on old times. I went to high school with Brad.” I steer Brad toward the lobby and ask him if Junior has swabbed him yet. Brad, whose makeup is heavier than anyone else’s so far, nods and widens his eyes. “That guy came at me with so many swabs, I kept waiting for him to tell me to drop my drawers and bend over.” He laughs, and places a hand on my shoulder when he does so. I wince when he hits my wound, but I manage to chuckle along with him. Hurley does not.

  Once that awkward moment has ended, I direct Brad to the chair and take up the camera. Hurley starts his questioning with the usual introductory information, but then, surprisingly, his first few questions are off script.

  “Are you married, Brad?”

  “Nope,” Brad answers with a smile, apparently oblivious to the undercurrent I can feel.

  “And you knew Mattie back in high school?”

  “I did.” Brad looks over at me, smiles, and winks. “In fact, we went to a school dance together once.”

  I shoot a glance at Hurley and see his scowl deepen. “Did the two of you date?” he asks Brad.

  “Nothing official,” Brad says, bestowing another wink on me. “We were basically just good friends back then. It was a small school, so there was a lot of cross-dating, and pretend dating. But Mattie and I never hooked up or anything.”

  I wince at his choice of words and bite my lower lip. “Brad,” I say, “I forgot to mention that I’m video recording this.”

  My comment is more for Hurley than Brad, a not-so-subtle reminder that everything he’s asking is being recorded on videotape, a tape that might be looked at by any number of other people. Hurley seems to get the message. He looks over at me, then at his feet, clears his throat, and squares his shoulders. When he finally looks up, he starts asking Brad the same questions he asked everyone else, staying on focus.

  Brad’s answers are in keeping with the others’. He says Helen was standing beside Dalrymple’s head when he saw her, and that the others all arrived at the scene around the same time he did. When asked if anyone had any big issues or problems with Roger Dalrymple, his face clouds over for a moment.

  “Roger wasn’t an easy guy to work with at times,” he says. “Though I think maybe he was worse than usual today. I saw him right after he came back from lunch, and he looked kind of pissed off. And I think he’d been drinking.”

  Hurley asks Brad if he was up on the catwalk today, and he says he wasn’t, but had gone up there yesterday.

  The possibility that the makeup I found on the catwalk railing might have been left on a day other than today renders it of minimal value as evidence, and I wonder if there’s a way to prove when the makeup smear was created.

  When we’re done with Brad, we let him out the front door and check on the status of the storm. The wind has died down some, but I suspect it’s a temporary respite. The wet snow is still falling, but not as hard as it was earlier. Main Street has emptied itself in the time we’ve been here, everyone heading home to settle in for the storm.

  * * *

  Next I go out to the auditorium to fetch Mickey Parker, who is apparently the group’s multitasker. He does hair and makeup for the actors, as well as scenery and costume design. Mickey isn’t wearing any makeup, at least not in the usual sense, although he has smears of it on his shirt, his arms, his hands, and his pants. Not surprising, given that he must have applied it to the others.

  “You must be a very busy man,” I say to him as I walk him back toward the lobby beneath the death glare of Helen Niehls, who has made it clear she does not appreciate being left for last. “I understand you perform several jobs for the group.”

  “I do what I can,” he says. “It gives me an outlet for my artistic side, and since my paintings don’t seem to be earning me any recognition or money, this stuff keeps food on the table and a roof over my head.”

  I have to admit that Mickey doesn’t fit into my idea of what an artist should look like. If I’d had to guess his occupation after bumping into him on the street, I’d have gone with accountant. In his thirties, he is of average height, with short brown hair that he combs over from a side part, and glasses. He is dressed in jeans and a pullover sweater that has seen better days, judging from the holes in the elbows and the stains all over the front of it, some of which appear to be paint, while I suspect others are makeup. Beneath the sweater is a pale blue, collared shirt, and his jeans—also well stained—are a generic, knockoff brand. His feet are encased in a pair of old loafers that are so covered with paint that I can’t determine their original color.

  “Mr. Parker,” Hurley begins, after the usual introductory spiel as soon as I’ve started the camera, “I need to get your version of the events that happened here this afternoon regarding Mr. Dalrymple.”

  “Hurley, excuse me, but do you mind if I ask him a question?” I say, eyeing the plethora of stains on Parker’s clothing. Hurley gives me a nod. “Tell me something about this makeup you use,” I ask. “How long does it take for it to dry?”

  “Depending on how heavy it is, it can take as long as half an hour or more. When I clump it up on my palette, it stays pliable for up to two hours beneath the surface. It might crust over on the outside, but it’s a thin crust and the stuff underneath stays nice and moist. And it’s easy enough to make it wet again if you apply or mix in the necessary remover solutions. Why?”

  I don’t answer him, though I’m relieved to learn that the smear I found on the catwalk will be somewhat time-sensitive. “Did you apply makeup to all of the actors here today?” I ask him, checking out the splotches on his arms, hands, and clothing. Most of them look dry, but there is no way for me to know how old they are.

  “I didn’t do Dom, because he wasn’t here. I did everyone else, except that snobby bitch, Haugen,” he says. “She always insists on doing her own, and then she never applies enough of it. I keep trying to explain to her that it needs to be overdone for the stage so that the audience can see it, but she won’t listen to me. She says she doesn’t want to look like a whore, and that
she’s pretty enough without a ton of makeup.” He scoffs and gives Hurley a sidelong glance. “Did I mention she’s also very modest?”

  “I take it you and Ms. Haugen don’t get along,” Hurley says.

  “Nobody gets along with her,” Mickey says. “She’s a manipulative, egotistical control freak.”

  “Don’t mince your words,” I say with a heavy note of sarcasm.

  “Sorry, but it’s true,” Mickey says. “Her father finances these plays all the time, and because of that, she feels like she can dictate anything she wants. And trust me, she always gets her way. Though I have to say, Dalrymple typically puts up more of a fight than some of the others we’ve worked with.”

  “Were there tensions between Dalrymple and Ms. Haugen?” Hurley asks.

  “Tensions? I don’t think ‘tensions’ is a strong enough word for it. It’s been all-out war most of the time between those two.”

  “Give me some examples,” Hurley says.

  “Well, for starters, Dalrymple wanted Helen to play the role of the daughter rather than the family matriarch, because he wrote the daughter as someone with a weight problem who is self-conscious about her body. And Helen, while irritating in her own way at times, at least has no illusions about her body. She was perfect for the role. But Rebecca insisted she had to have it, and she refused to play the matriarch role, claiming that she couldn’t be convincing as some old lady. When Roger told her she’d have to wear a fat suit if she took the role of the daughter, Rebecca refused. Then she proceeded to rewrite the character the way she wanted her to be.” He gapes at us, wide-eyed with disbelief. “Can you imagine the gall? I mean, come on. This play is Dalrymple’s work, his vision. What kind of ’nads does it take to insist on rewriting it?” He shakes his head in dismay.

  “Dalrymple caved, I take it?” Hurley says.

  “He did this time, though he’s stood up to her before, but I don’t think he was up for it today. He was in a bad mood when he came back from lunch, and I think he’d had a few, you know?”