GRIM REHEARSAL Press agent Pierce Kirby is thrilled when his Uncle Doc visits, and takes him that night to a Manhattan play. They all know Pierce at the theater, so he takes his uncle backstage to introduce him around. While he is arguing with Ginette, the leading lady, his uncle wanders off. When Pierce can't find him, he figures that his uncle got tired of waiting and walked back to his hotel. The next morning Pierce is informed that Uncle Doc has been found murdered, and probably right there in the theater. That's when he meets acting-Captain Gridley Nelson. But Pierce isn't satisfied with the pace of Gridley's investigation, and so sets out to discover who killed his uncle himself. But who in the theater could have wanted the harmless old man dead? And why? DEAD YESTERDAY Thea had been a beautiful model until she met Count Dino Mazzani. But after they married, his true womanizing colors came out. And after his death, she just let herself go. Now, overweight and barely recognizable, she sits in her apartment and drinks. Until her old love, Grant Barstow, shows up. Seeing the shock in his face, the countess has her maid clean up the apartment. Then Coley Spenser, her late husband's former valet, makes an appearance, looking for cash and whatever else he can find... soon followed by Thea's niece, whom Thea has never met before, but who bears a striking resemblance to her younger self. What Spenser finds and how Thea reacts to seeing her niece for the first time leads to a room full of death for Gridley Nelson.