Read Ms America and the Brouhaha on Broadway for Free Online Page B

forget, I just got back from London. Let me ask you something.”
    “Shoot.”
    “Any chance Longley Sr. is going to pull his investment?”
    “No way,” Oliver says.
    “ ‘Cause his daughter’s not part of this anymore. Obviously.”
    “Let me tell you something.” Now Oliver sounds really serious. “Warren Longley knows this musical is his little brat’s legacy. I bet he’ll pour more money into it.”
    This is the first I’m hearing that Lisette’s father is an investor in Dream Angel . Up till now I haven’t spent a second wondering who’s funding this production.
    “As long as I get some,” Enzo says.
    “You’ll get yours. As for me, I don’t know if there’s any amount of cash that’ll make up for having to kowtow to that—”
    “Easy, Oliver. The woman’s dead.”
    Good for Enzo. He might be greedy, but at least he’s got enough human feeling to shut Oliver up.
    “Let me ask you another thing,” Enzo goes on. “You’re sure you got rid of … you know.”
    “You mean—”
    “The eggs from the other day.”
    I go on even higher alert. What the heck is this about?
    “Of course I got rid of them.” Oliver makes it sound like Enzo’s an idiot to ask. He lowers his voice even though he must believe he’s alone in the theater. “You don’t think I’m stupid enough to keep those?”
    “I’m just asking. After tonight you can’t be too careful.”
    By this point, my ears are so perked up I must look like a Vulcan.
    “The last thing you want,” Enzo goes on, “is anybody asking any tough questions.”

CHAPTER FIVE
     
    By this point, Happy Pennington has several extremely probing questions she’s dying to ask Oliver Tripp Jr. But all she can do is listen to what he tells Enzo.
    “Nobody’s going to ask me anything about anything.” Oliver sounds serenely confident. “Lisette fell, pure and simple. It was her own damn fault for being on that staircase.”
    “What happened to her Wednesday wasn’t her fault.”
    “Nobody’s going to connect one with the other,” Oliver declares.
    “I hope you’re right. Because there will be an autopsy.”
    “Won’t matter. It’s more than twenty-four hours since she ate that sandwich.”
    “I suppose you’re right.” Pause, then: “There’s another thing. OSHA.”
    “I know. Just what I need.” Big sigh. I hear a clattering sound as if Oliver threw a pen across his desk. “If it’d been Tonya who fell—”
    Tonya Shepherds is the star who plays the beauty queen.
    “—I’d have a problem. But Lisette was never supposed to be on those stairs.”
    “One way or another we’ll have to change them now,” Enzo says.
    “Which is too bad. Because by this afternoon, half of New York would pay to see them.”
    Both men chuckle in what I consider a pretty unseemly fashion.
    Oliver speaks again. “Let’s start again at seven a.m.”
    “That’s five hours from now.”
    I glance at my watch—very on-trend with its stainless-steel band and face in rose gold—and remember that my mother and Bennie will descend on New York this morning. I have a deposition around the same time. I’m not ready for either event and I’m 100% sure that the Big Apple is unprepared for the cyclone that is Hazel Przybyszewski.
    “Let’s not talk until eight,” I hear Enzo say. “I need my beauty sleep.”
    They banter a bit then end the call. I am delighted to report that Oliver crashes around in his office only briefly before he departs. We hear him proceed toward the stage door along the very route we queens took just a short while ago. Then the stage door opens and clangs shut.
    Silence falls. “I think he’s gone,” I whisper. “Shanelle, do you understand that thing about OSHA?”
    “Yes,” she whispers back, “that’s the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. They could issue citations or penalties or something. Like they did to Cirque du Soleil when that woman acrobat fell and died during her high-wire act.”
    “That was