Romance by Evan Hunter

Author:Evan Hunter [Hunter, Evan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Suspense
ISBN: 9780340638156
Publisher: Warner
Published: 1995-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Sitting and smoking in her dressing room at the theater, wearing rehearsal clothes that consisted of a shirred purple tube top, white boating sneakers without socks, and low-slung jeans that exposed her belly button, Andrea Packer snubbed out her cigarette the moment they entered the room, like a kid who’d been caught sneaking a drag in an elementary school toilet.

Nineteen years old if she was a day, lean and coltish, her long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail held with an elasticized band the same color as her precarious purple top, she stood at once, extended her hand, told Kling she was sorry if she’d sounded distracted on the phone, but she’d been studying her new lines, Freddie had put in a whole new scene, would he like a cup of coffee or something, there was a big coffeemaker on the table near the stage door where Torey stayed. All of this in a breathless rush that made her sound even younger than she was.

“I thought you’d be coming alone, Mr. Kling,” she said, making the focus of her interest immediately apparent, and flashing him a brown-eyed glance and a radiant smile that in tandem could have melted granite. She then turned her chair so that her back was almost to Carella, who understood body language about as well as any other detective in this city. He felt suddenly useless. In fact, he felt invisible.

Kling explained that they were here because they’d been told that she and Michelle had shared a dressing room here in this small rehearsal theater …

“Yes, that’s true. Well, now Josie and I do.”

… and they were wondering if Michelle might have mentioned anything to her that could possibly throw some light on her murder.

“Confidential girl talk, huh?” she said, and smiled again at Kling.

“Anything she might have said about anything that was troubling her, or annoying her, or … ”

“Everything annoyed her,” Andrea said.

“How do you mean?” Carella asked.

“Well …”

They waited.

Carella moved around in front of her so that he could see her face and her eyes. Outmaneuvered, she sat in the chair before the dressing-table mirror, her hands spread on her thighs, and looked up into their faces. In a tiny little girlish voice, she said, “I don’t wish to speak ill of the dead,” and lowered her eyes.

“We know how difficult it must be for you,” Carella said, bullshitting her.

“I’m sure you do, sir,” she said, bullshitting him right back, and then raising her eyes to meet Kling’s, excluding Carella as effectively as if she’d again turned her back to him. “The thing is,” she said, “and I’m not the only one who felt this way, Michelle was a total pain in the ass with an ego out of all proportion to her talent. Well, look what she put him up to doing. Johnny, I mean.”

“What was that, Miss Packer?” Kling asked.

“Stabbing her in the alley,” Andrea said.

From the stage, Kling could hear the other actors running a scene over and over again.

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