Hannah hoped she looked as shocked as she felt. “Tori did that?”
“Of course, she did! She was my understudy, so we went out together to get lunch on our break. I ordered soup and went to make a couple of telephone calls. When I came back, my soup was there and so was Tori’s.”
“But . . . what does that have to do with . . .” Hannah stopped waiting for Vivian to continue. When she didn’t, Hannah asked, “Did Tori put poison in your soup?”
“Of course not! If she had, I would have died. She put something else in my soup, something that gave me terrible stomach cramps that night. The cramps were so horribly intense that I couldn’t even leave my apartment. And even though I tried to make it to dress rehearsal the next day, I was still too sick to go.”
“Do you know what she put in your soup?”
Vivian shook her head. “No. If I’d suspected Tori right then, I would have gone in for a blood test and the doctors might have been able to tell. But I didn’t suspect her, partly because she was so nice to me while I was sick. She fed me, helped me bathe and dress, and stayed over that night to take care of me. And she seemed so grateful and embarrassed that she’d gotten such a lucky break, that I didn’t suspect her until I began to get better, and she stopped coming around to help me. It was only then that I realized that Tori had engineered the whole thing, just so she could play the lead on opening night!”
“Did you ever confront her about that?”
“Yes. She said I was crazy with jealousy because her performance was better than mine would have been. And she told me that she deserved the break she’d gotten.”
“But she never admitted that she’d caused your illness?”
“Of course not! People like Tori never admit to anything.”
There was a brief silence and Hannah knew her time was running out. She had to think of something else to ask Vivian, and quickly!
“There’s one more thing I’d like to know,” she said, hoping she could think of something in time. And that was when the idea hit Hannah and another line of questioning popped into her mind. “Did you call Tori and tell her you wanted to see her?”
“I called her, but I didn’t ask for an appointment to see her. That was her idea. And that’s the way I’d planned it.”
“What made her ask you to come to see her?”
“Panic. Pure panic. I told her I wasn’t sure I could be in the play, that my husband had taken a turn for the worse and I might have to drop out. And she asked me to come to see her at seven forty-five that night.”
“Was your husband really sick?”
Vivian laughed. It was a throaty chuckle that contained no humor whatsoever. “I’m not married. I only came here because I’d heard that Tori was retiring and moving here. It was simple curiosity. I wanted to see if she’d changed over the years.”
“What did you decide?” Hannah asked.
“She was the same person who’d put the drugs, or whatever it was, in my soup. She hadn’t changed at all! Tori had always been a selfish, scheming person and she still had all those traits.”
“Did you tell her who you were?”
“No. I wanted to see if she’d recognize me. But she never did. I acted in her plays right under her nose and she told everyone how good I was, but she never realized who she was complimenting.” Vivian was silent for a moment and then she sighed. “And then it happened. The catalyst. The denouement.”
“The pivot point of the play.”
“That’s right. The climax. You’re brighter than I thought you were.”
“What was it? What happened to convince you to kill Tori?”
Vivian smiled a cold smile and her hatred for Tori was clear on her face. “The STAG lifetime achievement award.”
Hannah could have kicked herself for not thinking of that, but this was no time for her to get distracted. “Tori won it and you didn’t?”
“Yes. And Tori didn’t earn it.”
“But you did,” Hannah said, hoping to soften the look of hatred that could be turned against her at any moment.
“Yes. I did. I was a successful actress on Broadway long before her, and even after Tori cheated me out of my starring role, I made a new, successful career for myself as a character actress. I deserved that award! And she was going to get it!”
“And you had to make sure she never got the satisfaction of attending the award ceremony and accepting it?”
“Exactly right. And now, that’s enough talking.”
As Vivian reached into her tote, Hannah knew that her time had run out. The last few grains of sand had dropped down to the bottom of the hour glass. She’d never make it out the back door of the auditorium, but . . . if she remembered correctly, there was a partially full sandbag attached to the scrim just over her head.
Hannah whirled, grabbed for the sandbag, and swung it forward as hard as she could. Since Vivian was looking down, into her tote bag, she didn’t see the heavy bag coming directly at her head.
She spun around from the bag’s impact, and Hannah was about to run forward to snatch the tote bag from Vivian’s hands when she heard a voice from behind call out, “Hannah! Drop!”
Mike! Hannah dropped down quickly out of the way, as Mike ran past her toward Vivian. Mike left his feet, driving his right shoulder straight into Vivian’s stomach and bringing her crashing down to the floor with a tackle worthy of one of the Minnesota Vikings linebackers. “Nice tactic with the sandbag,” he said to Hannah, after first cuffing Vivian and hauling her back to her feet.
“Did you hear her confess?” Hannah asked.
“Yes. And any second now, Rick should be . . .”
“I’m here, boss,” Rick called out, coming through the back door at a run.