A Motive For Murder by Katy Munger Read Free Book Online Page B

the
murder, no matter who is involved. Deal?”
    “Deal.”
    Margo flipped back to some well-worn pages near the
front of her notebook. Auntie Lil tried without success to read the
writing upside down in hopes of finding a clue to her source’s
identity. Margo, well aware of Auntie Lil’s tricks, pulled the
notes closer to her chest and smiled. “Bobby Morgan approached the
board,” she told Auntie Lil sweetly. “Hans Glick, to be 
specific. It was Morgan’s idea to put his son in the role and he
said it was because his son was at that awkward stage between child
star and adolescent. He thought legitimate stage credits and a
little seasoning would help his son make the transition more
smoothly. Also, he was adamant about no Fatima Jones being in the
show from the very beginning, but no one seems to know how he knew
about her in the first place.” She looked up at Auntie Lil. “What
you have to remember about Bobby Morgan is that he had his own
agenda here. He was a student himself at the Metro thirty years ago
and didn’t do very well. When he was plucked from the student ranks
to audition for a new sitcom back in the sixties, he was one of two
Metro students to get a part. The other had stage experience as
well. Bobby Morgan left dancing behind to try to become a child
star. For a while he succeeded. His sitcom ran for a good eight
years and he was a big television star in his own right during the
late sixties and early seventies. Until he turned eighteen.”
    “What happened then?” Auntie Lil asked.
    “Talk about an awkward age. He was hit with
everything most adolescents go through at age twelve. Height gain.
Pimples. A month’s worth of bad hair days at a stretch. Mood
swings, all that stuff. Delayed adolescence had helped prolong his
appeal for many years, but when it hit, his career was over. He
wasn’t cute anymore and the show had gone stale. Both his looks and
the show disappeared, almost overnight. I don’t know what happened
to him in the years in between, but by the time he arrived back on
the scene a few years ago, this time as manager to his son, there
were a lot of people who felt that the father was using the son to
settle some old scores.”
    “So Bobby Morgan was also a child star?” Auntie Lil
said. “Like father, like son?”
    Margo nodded. “In a manner of speaking. He was
nowhere near as successful as Mikey has been, but that’s in part
because he didn’t make the move into film and he didn’t have a good
manager when he was Mikey’s age. I understand his parents blew most
of his earnings and he didn’t have much left by the time his show
was canceled. He’s been living pretty well off his son’s earnings
for the last couple of years. Twenty percent of twelve million a
year is not too shoddy.”
    “And he sent Mikey to the Metro Ballet School to
follow in his footsteps?”
    Margo nodded. “A lot of stage parents do that, at
least at first. Ballet teaches a child grace and stage presence.
They also learn to work like dogs and the constant rejection of
auditions is good for them. Toughens them up.”
    “Sounds like they’re breeding pit bulls,” Auntie Lil
said.
    “Believe me, some of them are.”
    “Where is the child’s mother?” Auntie Lil asked. “Why
has no one heard of her?”
    “That’s an interesting story,” Margo admitted. She
checked her watch and began to speak even faster. “The mother and
father divorced a few years ago, apparently over the future of
their oldest son and biggest asset— Mikey. It seems that Mom was
not keen on nonstop exploitation of Mikey and was worried about the
effect of all the attention on his younger brothers and sister. But
Dad was adamant on cashing in while the cashing in was good. So
they split. There were a few other reasons, too, I understand.”
    “A few other very female reasons?” Auntie Lil
guessed.  
    Margo rolled her eyes. “Some women go for the
ponytail-and-gold-jewelry look. Me? I like wrinkled Irish faces