Center Stage: Magnolia Steele Mystery #1

C
opyright
© 2016 by Denise Grover Swank

Developmental editing: Angela Pollidoro

Copy Editing: Shannon Pagge

Proofreading: Carollina Valddez Miller

Cover Design: Damonnza

A
ll rights reserved
.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

I
stepped
onto my mother’s front porch for the first time in ten years. Typical of my mother, not much had changed. Same red brick with white trim. Same black, steel-reinforced front door. Same silver knocker, the word STEELE etched into it in bold capital letters.

“Get it?” my dad used to ask when I was a little girl. “The door is made of steel, and our last name is Steele.”

I worshiped my father, so I always laughed even though I
didn’t
get it. I would have done anything to please him.

Until he disappeared.

My mother put a lot of stock into the safety of that front door. When I was younger, she would tell me it kept the boogeyman away. A month after my father left—when I was fourteen—I heard my mother whispering with her best friend Tilly as they lay sprawled out on the patio chairs on the deck, drinking their third—or was it fourth?—white wine sangria.

“If only he’d been home that night,” my mother drawled with a slur. She may have spent most of her adult life in Franklin, Tennessee, but you couldn’t remove her Sweet Briar, Alabama roots.

“Lila,” Tilly groaned. “Not that again. The Good Lord has his mysterious ways.”

My mother had bolted upright and pointed her finger at her best friend, swaying in her seat. “The Good Lord had nothin’ to do with it, Tilly Bartok. It was that good for nothin’—”

She looked up at me and her face went blank. “Magnolia. How long have you been standin’ there?”

“Not long. I just finished my homework.”

“Then go on upstairs and tell your brother to wash up for dinner.” She gestured toward the house.

I turned around to do as I was told, wondering if the Good Lord wasn’t to blame for my father’s absence, who actually
was
? But I knew better than to ask. Besides, I’d heard the whispered rumors.

“Magnolia!” she called after me. “Did you lock the front door?”

“Yes, Momma.”

“Good. You can never be too careful.”

A lesson learned too late. Perhaps if I’d been more careful after my high school graduation, the big bad thing wouldn’t have happened.

But now I stood before her front door again, prepared to eat a heaping slice of humble pie, wearing the wrinkled clothes I’d worn to the theatre yesterday afternoon. Maybe the disheveled look would make my groveling more convincing.

While I had grown accustomed to the anxiety that slammed into me whenever I thought about coming home, I wasn’t prepared for the wave of fear that almost brought me to my knees. I was nervous about my mother’s reaction, yes, but this was pure terror.

I started to turn around, but the door swung open before my fist made contact with the wood. My mother stood in the threshold, looking noticeably older. I counted backward to the last time we’d seen each other. Had three years really passed since that Christmas in New York City?

She gaped at me in shock, her face turning pale. She looked like she was staring at a ghost. I hadn’t haunted her house in ten years, so I could hardly blame her. It wasn’t as if I’d issued a warning.

The sight of her quieted my fear. “Hello, Momma.”

“Magnolia.” She blinked, taking in the sight of my two large suitcases. “You’ve come for a visit?”

I shifted my weight, fighting every instinct to flee. “I’ve come home to stay.”

“For how long?”

“Maybe for a while.” Although I sure as hell hoped I was wrong about that.

“But . . . what . . .”

My mother was speechless, but I was too nervous to truly bask in the moment. Maybe hell was freezing over.

She finally regained her senses, wrapping her arms across her chest and squeezing tight. “I thought you were making your big Broadway debut this week.”

I grimaced. “I did.” Last night, actually.

“Then what are you doing here?”

Rather than answer her, I glanced over her shoulder into the entryway. Like the exterior of the house, it appeared as unchanged as if it had emerged from a time capsule. But one thing was different: me. I was no longer the sheltered naïve girl my mother had raised. I was cynical and jaded, and it had nothing to do with the ten years I’d spent in the Big Apple, even if all the scraping by and trying to make a living in the theatre world had sharpened my edges.

“Oh,” she finally said. “I see.” She took a breath, still blocking the entrance, a true sign that I had thrown her off her game. She would never dream of keeping a guest standing on the front porch. Even me. “Do you have a job?”

“What?” I asked, surprised by her question. “No.” Two days ago I’d been the lead in
Fireflies at Dawn
, the hottest new musical to hit New York in several years. Now I was jobless, penniless, and homeless.

Oh, how the mighty had fallen.

That seemed to jar her out of her stupor. “Then you can help me out tonight.” She stepped through the doorway, grabbed one of my suitcases, and rolled it over the threshold. “I know you’re into theatre music, but have you heard of Luke Powell?”

“Luke Powell?” I asked in disbelief. You had to be living off the grid—and for the past five years at that—to have never heard of the hottest country music star. “Yeah, I’ve heard of him.”

“We’re catering a big event at Luke Powell’s to celebrate the release of his new album. It starts in two hours, and I’m short one member of the wait staff. It has to go over perfectly. I only have inexperienced fools to take her spot, so you can fill in.”

“
What?
” My mother’s catering business must have exploded if she was working the hottest country music star’s album release. But she wanted me to work as a waitress? Had she lost her mind?

She sensed my reluctance. “You used to wait tables up until three years ago, right?”

Two, not that I was about to admit it. “Well, yeah. I have food service experience, but I was on Broadway, Momma. I can’t be wait staff.”

“If you’re so high and mighty on Broadway—” she said the name as though it were a curse word, “—then what are you doing here?”

I couldn’t tell her. At least not yet.

She pursed her lips. “That’s what I thought. If you’re moving back home, you’ll need to pay rent. And since you’re unemployed, you’ll need work. I can apply your salary to your balance.”

“Rent?”

She put a hand on her hip. “It wouldn’t be fair to your brother if you didn’t. Roy lived here for two years after he graduated from the University of Tennessee, and he paid rent the entire time.”

I pushed out a sigh. “I’m not living here forever, Momma. Just until I figure some things out.”

She put her hand on her hip, looking down her nose at me even though we both stood five foot seven. “And Roy didn’t live here forever either. But if you plan on doing nothing but fussin’ and thinkin’, you’ve got plenty of time to fill in for Patty at this party. She’s going to be off for another two weeks with a sprained ankle.”

“Momma, I just got here. I’ve had the worst two days of my life, and I just want to hide out in my room.”

Fire filled her eyes. “Magnolia Steele, I raised you better than that. We don’t hide from our problems. We take ’em
head on
.” She curled her hands into fists and shook them.

I’d done the exact opposite after my high school graduation. I’d run as fast and as far as I could. But of course my mother didn’t understand why I’d packed a single suitcase and left town without warning. No one understood.

Not even me.

Hazy dreams had haunted my sleep for those first two years in New York City. Each night, I would cry myself to sleep from fright and loneliness, trying not to wake my cranky roommate. But the very thought of going home was enough to give me a panic attack, so I never did. No matter how much it hurt my mother.

Something had happened the night of my high school graduation party. Something I couldn’t entirely remember. The nightmares had faded over time—terrifying dreams I couldn’t remember when I woke—but the horror was still a part of me. But I was sure I knew someone who did know what happened. . . or was maybe even responsible.

Of course Momma didn’t know any of that either. Sometimes my acting skills had a practical purpose. “You’re made of steel, Magnolia Mae, so no whining. Now carry your suitcases up to your room, and I’ll bring you a uniform to change into.”

I stayed on the porch for a moment, trying to decide if it was worth crossing the threshold. If I walked over that line, it would mean going back into her world, her rules. I would be reopening the very Pandora’s box that I’d shut the moment I stepped onto that plane on a warm May afternoon ten years ago. But if I stayed on this side, I had nowhere else to go. I’d burned too many bridges.

I took a deep breath, and walked inside.

If I’d known then what I know now, I would have turned around and run.

I wasn’t just crossing the threshold to my mother’s house. I was walking through the gate to hell.

M
y room was exactly
how I’d left it, which was simultaneously comforting and frightening. Same full-size bed with the white wood headboard. Same pale pink bedspread with the OPI Big Apple Red nail polish stain in the middle, a relic of my friend Maddie’s clumsiness our junior year. I opened the top drawer and found my old underwear and bras. Buried underneath the plain white panties were two of the three sets of Victoria’s Secret bras and panties I’d hidden from my mother. I’d bought all three the April before graduation, preparing for my
first time
with Tanner McKee. I’d only needed one, but since I couldn’t decide which color would be best, Maddie—always the wiser member of our duo—told me to get all three. The red and black set were still pushed back into the corner of the drawer. The white set were God knew where . . . I’d worn them under my dress to graduation. Momma had never offered to bring the rest of my things to me, and out of pride, I’d never asked.

I shut the drawer and moved on to the closet. All my clothes still hung on the plastic hangers Momma had bought in an attempt to make me organize my closet. For some odd reason she’d thought the matching hangers would inspire a sudden desire to clean. Luckily for me, Maddie loved to organize as much as I hated it. She’d spent a Saturday afternoon cleaning out my closet while I wrote her English paper.

Definitely a good trade, especially since she got an A minus.

A cardboard box sat on the floor in the back corner with the words
Photos—Keep Out, Roy!
scrawled in black marker on the side. Eleven years of memories with Maddie Hoffman were stuffed into that box. Maybe I’d look at it later. It hurt too much right now.

I sat down on the bed, nearly moaning with happiness when the duvet cover and mattress topper sank underneath me. Then I flopped backward, spreading my arms wide as I stared up at the ceiling. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed this bed. This room. My mother.

But an undercurrent of fear hummed behind all the warm and fuzzy feelings.

I shouldn’t have come back.

Too late for that now.

“No time for a nap, Magnolia,” my mother said as she bustled into the room, then laid a set of clothes on the bed. “We need to go over the protocol for the night as well as the menu.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Momma, isn’t there anyone else you can get to fill in? I don’t feel well.”

“That’s a fat load of bullcrap. You don’t think I can see through your excuses? I’d hoped you would grow out of the drama, but then you’ve spent the last ten years trying to get paid for being dramatic, haven’t you?” she said in a theatrical tone. My mother was chock full of drama. Where did she think I’d acquired it from?

“That’s not entirely true,” I said, sitting up. Fighting my mother was like wrestling with a bull. While it was possible, it wasn’t always worth the effort. “I didn’t start acting until I’d been in New York for two years.”

She was silent for a moment, her blue eyes holding my own. “Then why
did
you leave, Magnolia?”

She’d asked me in the beginning, of course, but I’d refused to tell her so many times she’d stopped asking. My unannounced appearance must have knocked the question loose.

I leaned over and picked up the uniform. A white button-down shirt, black pants, and a black tie and vest. “No skirt?”

“The men and women match this way. Everyone’s more uniform.” She paused. “You change the subject every time I ask you why you left. Even now, after all these years.” Her voice was quiet, and she sounded more vulnerable than I’d ever heard her.

I studied the shirt in my lap, fingering a button. “It had nothing to do with you. I promise you that.” That was more than I’d ever given her.

“You just left, Magnolia. And you never came back. Not even for holidays.
Never
. And now you’re back out of nowhere when this was supposed to be your big break.”

I looked up at her with tears in my eyes. “I’m here because I literally had nowhere else to go.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“No, but just know that when I decided to leave New York,
you
were the person I turned to for help.”

“But I don’t even know what I’m helping you with.”

“It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you let me come back home. After everything.”

She bit her bottom lip, then rolled back her shoulders and lifted her chin. The take-charge woman who had raised me was returning. I knew better than to expect declarations of love from Lila Steele. She took her acquired last name to heart. “Well, get dressed and come downstairs. We need to get to the store to make sure things are ready to go.”

“The store?” Momma used to prepare for her events in her own kitchen. Apparently that had changed. I could smell something delicious floating through the house, but Lila Steele’s kitchen always smelled like fresh baking, whether she was preparing for an event or not.

She put her hand on her hip and narrowed her eyes. “You’ll figure it out soon enough. Now hurry up and get dressed. I’m running late as it is. It’s a good thing Tilly has everything under control.”

It was only after she shut the door behind her that it occurred to me what a disaster this might be. Theatre and country music people don’t exactly share the same circles, but with the advent of social media, those circles had begun to overlap. I’d spent most of the last eight years in chorus roles and off-Broadway parts. But I’d gotten a lot of attention after landing the lead role of Scarlett in
Fireflies
,
and the previews had gone really well. The fact that the songs had been written by a country music crossover artist made it likely that there might be people at Luke Powell’s party who would know me.

I wasn’t sure I could handle the embarrassment.

But no more running. I had decided that the moment I stepped off the plane at the Nashville airport. Of course it could be argued that I’d run away from New York, but that was a moot point.

I could face those country music industry professionals and hold my head high. What had happened on the stage on opening night wasn’t my fault—not really—no matter how many people thought differently. Besides, I owed my mother for all the grief I’d put her through. What was one night of serving at a party? And who would expect to see Magnolia Steele holding a tray of appetizers at a country music artist’s release celebration?

I pushed out a huge breath. I could do this.

I quickly changed, touched up my makeup, then put my long brunette hair into a French twist and studied my reflection in my dresser mirror. My concealer had covered most of the dark circles under my eyes, the aftereffects of two sleepless nights and weeks of stress. My blue eyes were wide, my dark lashes long and thick. I’d dusted my high cheekbones with a hint of blush and applied pale gloss to my full lips. A director had once told me that I had a face for movies—something he’d meant as a compliment—but I had no desire to have my face in the public eye any more than it already was. When I’d started acting eight years ago, most people couldn’t have named a Broadway star if their life depended on it. I’d taken a chance by accepting the role of Scarlett in
Fireflies at Dawn
, but the risk had seemed low
.
That would teach me.

“Magnolia!” my mother shouted up from downstairs.

“Coming!” I grabbed my jacket off the bed and slipped it on as I headed down the staircase. I stopped halfway down to look at the photos on the wall. They were still the same ones that had hung there ten years ago. A family photo of Momma, Daddy, me, and Roy, taken back when we were happy and complete. School photos of my brother and I that spanned all the way from kindergarten to senior year. But there was a new photo I hadn’t seen before—one of Roy and a woman in a white dress. A photo from the wedding he hadn’t invited me to attend.

My stomach cramped at the reminder that I didn’t belong here and hadn’t for a long time. My family had moved on without me.

“Magnolia!”

I met Momma at the foot of the stairs. She was wearing the same monochromatic outfit I had on, minus the tie.

“Let me look at you.” She grabbed my shoulders and looked me up and down before her gaze rested at the base of my throat. “You put your tie on by yourself. And it’s straight.”

“I worked at a restaurant where a tie was part of the uniform. I got tired of asking the waiters to knot it for me.”

Thinly veiled annoyance covered her face. “You could always get the boys to do whatever you wanted.”

I rolled my eyes and headed out the front door. “I couldn’t help that, Momma.”

“You can’t rely on men to solve all your problems, Magnolia,” she said, following behind me.

“The very fact that I’m here with you now is proof enough that I know that.” Anger simmered in my chest. Her statement was also proof that she didn’t know me. Not anymore. I’d spent two lonely years in a city of eight million people, living with a roommate who didn’t give a shit about me other than if I paid the rent on time. I’d lost track of how many nights I’d cried myself to sleep that first year, wishing I’d never seen Ashley Pincher giving Maddie’s boyfriend Blake a blowjob. Wishing I hadn’t run into the woods to get away from him. Wishing I could remember what had happened after that, but also wishing that I could forget anything
had
happened.

But wishing never got you shit.

We both got into her car and she backed out of the driveway, then took off down the street.

“There’s no need to get snippy with me.” Her mouth pursed as she gripped the steering wheel, staring at the road like she thought it would get up and walk away. “I’m only pointing out the obvious.”

I held my tongue.

“What happened with your debut?”

“Do you want to know so you can gloat?”

“Was it that bad?”

“Worse.”

“Want to talk about it?”

Not really, but she was bound to find out, and I wanted her to hear my version first. “There was an . . .
incident
on stage. On opening night.”

“What happened?”

How much did I tell her? That I’d been living with the director for the past three months? That rumor had it I’d only gotten the part because I was screwing him? The thing that stung the most was that I’d really believed in the asshole. Griff had claimed to love me, and I’d hoped that I could learn to love him in return. That we could build something together. Griff, me, and the play. I had wanted that so much that I’d given him pretty much every penny I had for the sake of
Fireflies at Dawn
. Then, minutes before our opening performance, I’d caught him screwing my understudy.

“I tripped on stage,” I said, opting to give my mother as little fodder for gloating as possible.

“You lost your job because of a little trip?” she asked in disbelief.

“It was more than just a little trip.” I’d knocked down part of the set when my understudy—who also filled the role of
Girl on Train #3
in the sixth scene of Act One—had started taunting me on stage. I’d lost it and tackled her, knocking over a good bit of the backdrop. Of course my mic had picked up my expletive-laden rant. If my mother found out about that part, there was a good chance she would disown me.

“Did you embarrass yourself?”

“You could say that.” Scarlett’s costume was a short, tight, strapless dress, and the understudy had grabbed the front and ripped it down the middle. While topless scenes weren’t unheard of on Broadway, there definitely wasn’t one in the
Fireflies at Dawn
script. There were more photos and videos of me on the Internet than I could count.

“Are you going to tell me
anything
, Magnolia?”

I looked out the window, taking in the rolling green hills. It was springtime in middle Tennessee, and I’d forgotten how beautiful it was here. “I got fired, Momma. Is that what you wanted to hear? But I’m pretty sure I was going to get fired anyway. My director was about to replace me with his newest conquest.” He always used his muse, and apparently I no longer fit that role.

“And who was his previous conquest? You?”

My silence was answer enough.

“Then I’m glad you didn’t go down without a fight,” she said with a hard edge in her voice.

I whipped my head around in surprise.

“Don’t look so shocked, Magnolia. It sounds like that man used you, then tossed you aside for another pretty bauble. I taught you to stand up for yourself. Good for you.”

Had she known all of the details of the fight—
Man on Train #2
and the
Conductor
in scene six had dragged us apart, but not before
Man on Train #2
rounded to second base right in front of the one thousand two hundred six people in the audience—she probably wouldn’t have sounded so proud.

She’d find out soon enough. Of
that
I was sure.

“Have you catered a party since you left?” she asked.

“No.”

“You’re to remain in the background, Magnolia. No looking for the spotlight. You’re not center stage at this event.”

“Momma,” I sighed. “Trust me. That last thing I want to do is draw attention to myself.”

“You can’t help yourself, darlin’. It’s in your blood . . . your father’s influence.”

I rolled my eyes. “Not that again.”

“Which part?” she demanded, narrowing her eyes. “That you can’t help yourself or that your father always demanded to be the center of attention? Both are true, but for the moment, let’s focus on
your
need for attention.”

I turned in my seat, my irritation growing. “Need for attention? I told you that I wanted to hide in my room. Does that sound like someone who wants attention?”

“Like I said, you can’t help yourself, Magnolia.” She waved her hand in my direction. “It just oozes out of you. Like sap from a tree. Or oil from a sausage on the grill.”

“I could do without the mental image.” I cringed. “Besides, you’ve barely seen me in the past ten years.”

“And whose fault is that? You refused to even come home for a visit. I have a business to run. I can’t just traipse off to New York whenever I feel like it.” She wrinkled her nose. “All that’s beside the point. Your need for attention is innate and you know it. It’s like breathing to you.”