Тимоти Уилльямз - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 769 & 770, September/October 2005

“I hope not. From what you tell me, we’d have to grill half the show’s fans. There’s a good team on this from the Two-Four. While they do the pick-and-shovel work, I’m going to start where Marsha’s trail ended.”

“Where the dog was tied up? Outside the dentist’s office?”

“Exactly.” He was flipping through his notebook. “Dr. Paul Chastney.”

“I’ll bet he’s tall and dark, with a strong chin and a thick head of hair. Right out of the soaps.” Sylvie shivered with anticipation.

Dr. Chastney was tall enough and not bad-looking, but his chin, Farber decided, was a shade too weak to make it on the soaps. He had just finished with a patient when Farber showed up and short-stopped the next patient from taking the chair in the sleek state-of-the-art surgery. “I won’t be long,” he promised, flashing his badge and closing the door to the waiting room.

“This is about Marsha Pembroke, isn’t it?” said Dr. Chastney. “Faye Gayle phoned me with the news. She sounded totally shattered. What a hideous business. And a tragic end to a promising career.” He sounded more dutiful than regretful.

“Yes, a tragedy,” Farber said, and got down to business. “As I heard it, Marsha tied her dog to a parking meter practically at your door, but she didn’t come into the office.”

“Why would she? She didn’t have an appointment.”

“I understood you two had a personal relationship.”

“Yes, we’re casual friends. But a visit during office hours...” His gesture made clear that would never do.

“Then how did you discover the dog?”

“I park my car at the curb and have to feed the damn meter once an hour. My assistant usually does it, but she’s been out ill the past couple of days. I saw Buster on two meter-feeding expeditions and then I called the girls’ number.”

“Which you got from your files or off the top of your head?”

A sly grin. “You mean, how close am I to those two women?”

“I was too flip. You don’t have to answer that.”

“I don’t mind. Caps are the best friend to a dentist’s retirement account. When you’re in someone’s mouth an hour a week for X number of weeks you’ve established an intimate relationship. Does that answer your question?”

“Graphically. Is there anything you can think of that might help us in our investigation?”

The doctor considered this request. “Marsha was a strong woman, a confrontational woman. And damn good-looking. I’m not surprised that she got herself in a jam of some sort. Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with me. And now if you’ll excuse me, I have a patient waiting to be tormented.”

Dr. Chastney was certainly not in deep mourning for his lost friend.

Clinton Peck’s office turned out to be a bare-walled studio apartment in a faceless residential high-rise near Lincoln Center. It was furnished with a large desk, a computer, a row of metal file drawers, and a studio couch. It had all the charm of a monk’s cell. “You don’t live here, do you?” Farber asked. He had phoned ahead that he was coming.

“Good God, no,” Peck replied. “I come in two or three times a week to meet my muse.” Ruefully, “She doesn’t always show up. I’m a country boy. Northern Westchester.” “Boy” was stretching it past hyperbole; he was fifty-plus, pudgy, in need of a shave, and unkempt. At that, come to think of it, he was something like an overripe boy.

Farber said, “My apologies for catching you at a bad time — losing an actress. I’d guess you’ve got your work cut out for you writing her out of the show.”

“Not at all, the work’s basically done. It’s a damn shame about Marsha. I hardly knew her but she was a good little actress.”

“How will you dispose of the character she plays?”

Peck considered for a moment. “This is not yet for public consumption, but in due course it will be revealed that Willa Wade has been hideously scarred by an angry rival who threw acid in her face. She will be bandaged to the eyebrows for months and eventually revealed as a new actress. One bob-nosed young blonde looks pretty much like the next.”

Farber’s professionalism surged. “Acid wouldn’t change the structure of the face.”

“So? There’s medicine and there’s soap opera medicine,” Peck snapped. “Look, I’m the head writer. I create the character and story arcs — the show’s bible. I do a bit of editing, but four underlings flesh out the daily episodes.”

“Where are they?”

“At home. Through the magic of the Internet we rarely need to meet.”

“So the show is not in trouble.”

“Not nearly. I could slap a blond wig on Marsha Pembroke’s roommate and she’d make an acceptable Willa.”

Farber’s eyes widened. “You know Faye Gayle?”

“I rarely remember actresses we don’t hire, but this one has stuck in my head.”

“Why is that?”

“She read for Willa the same day Marsha Pembroke did. It came out that they were roommates, a rare occurrence at castings. We liked both readings.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“The casting committee — producer, the casting woman, and your humble servant.”

“I would guess that you’re the five-hundred-pound gorilla.”

“That’s what Marsha figured. She called me here later that day to say how much she enjoyed reading for me, how ‘challenging’ it had been. That was nervy enough. Then, somehow, she let it be known — ever so delicately — that if she got the part sexual favors would follow.” He had been swiveling in his desk chair, but now he leaned forward across the desk. “I thought, ‘This is what Willa would do. Marsha Pembroke is Willa to the bone.’ So she got the role.”

He leaned back in the chair, having sailed through the hard part, and said, “Of course I claimed no sexual favors. Yes, there’s a certain amount of that in this line of work. If you’re in footwear you get shoes. In show business...” He shrugged. “But I’m a family man.”

“Without that phone call, would Faye Gayle have gotten the part?”

“She might very well have. But Marsha cut her roommate off at the pass. It was cold, it was calculating, it was pure Willa Wade.”

Having established a conversational bond, Farber asked the question that had brought him here. “Did Marsha come to see you yesterday afternoon?”

Again Peck leaned forward, his elbows on the desk. “No,” he said firmly. “What would make you think she had?”

“She was headed in this direction when she disappeared. She stopped at her boyfriend’s and at her dentist’s office and then the trail ended. I thought she might have come here. To find out if her contract was being picked up. And maybe to couple that question with a renewal of her previous generous offer.”

“Marsha was not here yesterday.”

“Something tells me I’m close. How about day before yesterday?”

“No.”

“We can play twenty questions or you can tell me. When was she here?”

Grudgingly, “Four or five days ago.”

“To discuss her contract?”

“She wanted to talk about her part. The direction it was taking. Bernard Shaw had it right when he said, ‘Hell is an actor talking seriously about his work.’ I kept it vague with Marsha. I told her nothing. Once you open up to one actor, none of them will leave you alone.”

“But after meeting with Marsha, did your decision about her future go into the — what do you call it? — the bible?” Peck went tight-lipped. “You might as well tell me. I can always get it from your quartet of gospel writers.”

“We decided to renew her contract. We had considered dumping her, but the story possibilities were just too tempting to dismiss. Willa Wade is the eye of a hurricane on Life Is for Living, an energy source too valuable to kill off.”