Chapter 15: The Bracelet

"That's my mother's," I said.

Nobody in the booth answered me.

"Call the cops," she said. "Call them right now. I'll drive her to the precinct myself. In the trunk."

Ward already had his phone out.

The detective came to the production office at nine Thursday morning.

He watched the clip four times without a word.

Then he slid the laptop back across the desk.

"That's a hand," he said.

"That's my stepmother's hand."

"That's a bracelet on a hand. Do you know how many gold charm bracelets there are in Manhattan?"

"With that charm? My father bought it at a shop on 45th that closed in 1999."

"I believe you," he said. "A jury needs a face. A lawyer will hold up six bracelets and ask you to pick."

Ward stood at the window with his arms folded.

"She has an all-building pass," he said. "I can pull it this afternoon."

"Then she knows you've got the tape," the detective said. "She stops. She waits. She tries something else, somewhere you aren't looking."

"So we let her walk around my theater."

"You let her walk around your theater," the detective said. "And you get me her face."

At noon Bettina came through the stage door in her camel coat with a box of pastries for the crew.

"I heard you had a little scare last night," she said. "Poor thing. You look exhausted."

The bracelet hung on her wrist six inches from my face.

I smiled at her. It was the hardest cue I've ever called.

"Just a loose pin," I said. "The flyman caught it."

"Thank God for the flyman," Bettina said, and gave me a cruller.

I threw it in the trash when she turned the corner.

That night, after the show, Joanie and the flyman and I put a second camera on the gallery.

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