Dying to be Famous (7 page)

By now everyone was feeling the pressure – we’d lost three days and opening night was just a week away. Peregrine solemnly informed his reduced cast that we would have to “work like demons” if we were going to be ready in time.

It was a major challenge, particularly with the number of policemen crammed into the building. They were guarding every window and every door. It was hard to move without falling over one.

“Which isn’t much good if the stalker is one of us,” I said to Graham. “I know Maggie said Peregrine is obsessed with Tiffany. But suppose he isn’t?”

“What do you mean?”

“He could be pretending he’s smitten to cover up how he really feels. Suppose he’s trying to do away with her so he can claim on the theatre insurance?”

“As we know, money is frequently a motive in murder cases,” opined Graham. “But Peregrine wasn’t here in the building when Cynthia was killed. We were the first to arrive after she did.”

“So Maggie said. But someone must have already been here to bash Cynthia. I know it looked like he’d climbed the fire escape. Yet it would be easy enough to hide in here overnight, wouldn’t it?”

“Any one of us could have done that,” said Graham.

“True,” I conceded. I turned it over in my mind. “You don’t reckon Jason might have something to do with it, do you?”

“If he knew Tiffany at school it’s possible that he’s been obsessed with her since then. But why would he choose to act on it now?”

“Cynthia said he’d been trying to get a job with the company for ages. Maybe he didn’t have the chance before. Although he wasn’t here when Geoff died,” I pointed out.

“No. But he could have come up the fire escape and sneaked in to poison her tea.”

“Good point. And I suppose he could have written that first note and stuck it on the theatre door,” I mused.

“That wizard was too tall for Jason,” objected Graham.

“He could have been wearing platform shoes or something,” I suggested. “I didn’t look at his feet, did you?”

“No,” said Graham. “But if he did do all that he could have easily arranged the chocolates and flowers too.”

“And bashed Cynthia.”

“Yes,” said Graham finally. “It’s certainly a plausible theory. Jason could be our man.”

Which wasn’t a very reassuring thought considering our lives were literally in his hands. I mean, it was Jason who strapped us into our harnesses for the flying sequence. Jason who pushed the buttons that made our wings flap up and down. Jason who programmed the computer that controlled our trajectory. If the mood took him, Jason could send us crashing to the floor. We’d end up just like the Wicked Witch of the East. As flat as cowpats.

Graham and I were both tense and nervous but for almost a week nothing bad happened. Everyone was working their socks off, desperate to be ready for opening night.

On the morning of the dress rehearsal Mum needed to be at work extra early so once again she dropped us off at the end of the alley before any of the other kids had arrived at the theatre.

As usual, Maggie was at the stage door flanked by a couple of police officers. She waved to us as we approached.

I waved back but Graham didn’t. He was frowning and I recognized it as a sign of Deep Thought.

“What is it?” I asked.

He pointed to the building. “There’s the fire escape. If the stalker climbed that to poison Tiffany’s tea, how did he get up there without Maggie noticing?”

“Someone must have distracted her. Delivered flowers or something. He could have sneaked past then.”

“So he must have an accomplice,” said Graham.

“But Maggie’s not stupid. She’d have put two and two together. If she’d seen a stranger she’d have reported it to the police,” I said thoughtfully. “So she must have been distracted by someone she already knew.”

“Which means that one of the cast must have given him a hand…”

We reached the stage door and Maggie let us in, saying, “Hi you two! My, aren’t you keen? You’re the first in again. Peregrine should give you a prize for your enthusiasm!”

Graham and I headed towards the kids’ dressing room. We were planning to just sit and wait for everyone else to arrive but over the intercom we could hear Tiffany up on stage, singing the opening bars of “Over the Rainbow”.

“I thought Maggie said we were the first ones here,” said Graham.

“Maybe she just meant we’re the first kids to arrive,” I replied, shrugging. I was more interested in the sweetness of Tiffany’s song. “She’s got an amazing voice. Magical.” I suddenly remembered Cynthia’s remark. “It’s very consistent.”

“Which is odd, when you think about it,” said Graham.

“What do you mean?”

“Well in theory it ought to be impossible to reproduce exactly the same effect each time. The vocal chords change, you see, with variations in temperature and humidity. Strong emotion, diet, hot drinks – all sorts of things can affect the human voice.”

Graham and I exchanged looks.

“Shall we go up and watch?” I said.

“Yes,” said Graham slowly. “But we ought to be very careful.”

So we were. We crept like mice through the corridors. By the time we tiptoed into the wings Tiffany’s song had just finished. The last note was still hanging in the air but there was no one on stage but Jason.

Tiffany Webb had vanished. It was as if she’d clicked her ruby slippers and been magically transported home to Kansas.

Graham
and I reversed without a word and crept back to the dressing room before Jason could see us. Once there, we shut the door firmly behind us and checked there was no one else around before we started discussing the possibilities.

“Maggie said we were the only ones here. Do you think she didn’t know Jason had arrived?” I asked.

“But how could he have got past her?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “He could have stayed here last night, couldn’t he? Perhaps he pretended to be working late. He might have told Maggie he’d lock up when he left. He’s the technician – could he have his own set of keys?”

“That would explain an awful lot,” replied Graham.

We both sat in silence while we considered the implications.

“But what about Tiffany? Do you think she was hiding just now?” I said.

“I suppose it’s possible…” Graham didn’t sound convinced.

“But not very likely.”

“No… It’s a big floor area,” mused Graham. “We were there just as the song ended. She’d have had to sprint across the stage to get out of sight. And she doesn’t look like a very fast runner to me.”

“Plus we’d have heard her heels clicking across the floor.”

Then we both said at the same time, “Why would she hide anyway?” We looked at each other, baffled.

“It’s weird.” I sighed, and Graham nodded. There was another long pause and then I added, “Suppose Tiffany wasn’t there at all…” I talked slowly, speaking the ideas aloud as they came into my head, waiting for Graham to laugh or disagree with me but he didn’t do either. Instead he nodded again. I continued. “If she wasn’t there … then she couldn’t have been singing … and if it wasn’t her singing … well, it certainly wasn’t Jason. Was it?”

“I don’t think so.” Graham looked at me. “As far as I can see there’s only one explanation that would fit all the facts.”

“Which is?”

“It was a recording.”

“A
recording
?” I echoed.

“It would explain the consistency of her performance,” said Graham.

“No!” My mouth fell open as I took in what Graham was saying. “You think Tiffany’s been miming?”

“It’s a definite possibility. It’s not uncommon for popstars to do it, especially for television appearances. Tiffany could have been miming all along.”

“But … is that
allowed
? I thought it was supposed to be
live
. I thought that was the
point
.” I felt quite indignant.

“Well … yes. Live theatre should be live. It would go against the Trade Descriptions Act if it wasn’t.”

“Do you think Peregrine knows?”

Graham shook his head. “I doubt that very much.”

“Should we tell him?” I asked.

“We haven’t got any proof,” Graham said flatly.

We sat there for a bit, and then I exclaimed, “All that going from the beginning stuff! No wonder she looked so scared when Peregrine wanted her to skip to the end – it couldn’t be done with a recording, could it?”

“Not without giving the game away.”

“And that look up she does before she starts a song; that finger flick – she must have been giving Jason signals!” I exclaimed.

“Well, yes. I assume he is in on it. That would account for the strangeness of the sound system. I wondered from the beginning why he was using such complicated equipment – it didn’t seem to make sense. But now it does. She’s got what looks like two mikes. But one’s a device to play the song and the other’s an amplifier to make it sound like she’s really singing. Jason must be using a remote control. It’s very clever. He’s been giving Tiffany her songs.”

“Do you remember when we had to come back for my lunchbox and we heard that awful singing? Do you reckon that was her?”

“It could have been.”

“That’s probably why they said she was funny in the paper. If she was singing that badly in the school production they must have thought she meant it as a joke.”

“But I don’t get it,” Graham said, suddenly exasperated. “How does all this fit in with the stalker? Why would Jason be helping Tiffany and then trying to kill her?”

We couldn’t say any more to each other because the other kids had started to turn up. But later, in the dress rehearsal when we were sitting right at the back in our flower costumes, we managed to have a whispered conversation.

“OK,” I said. “So if Tiffany’s not really singing… Do you reckon Hannah noticed?”

“Maybe.”

“That could be the reason for all those strange looks.”

“Could be,” agreed Graham.

We’d got to the bit of the song where we had to stand up and slowly twirl full circle three times, which was a tricky thing to do without getting our petals tangled so it was a while before we could say anything else. My mind was whirring furiously. We’d worked out what Tiffany and Jason were up to but that meant Jason couldn’t be the stalker. He wouldn’t be trying to kill the woman he was helping. Unless…

My next thought chilled me to the core. When we sat back down I said, “Graham, I’m scared.”

“Why?”

“All this time we’ve been thinking the stalker was after Tiffany. But what if he wasn’t?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well it was Geoff that died first, wasn’t it? And then he got replaced. By Jason! What if killing Geoff was the whole point?”

“So what you’re saying is that maybe Tiffany put the poison in her own cup to get rid of Geoff?” said Graham incredulously.

“Yes. And I think I saw her doing it!” I was practically exploding. “She put sweeteners in her tea. Suppose they weren’t real ones? Suppose they were poison? Then all she had to do was accidentally-on-purpose spill Geoff’s tea and give him her cup.”

“That’s why Maggie didn’t see anyone come in,” said Graham eagerly. “Tiffany was already there!”

“Yes!” I gasped. “She could have opened the door to the fire escape when she went to make a fresh cup of tea. She almost sprinted off the stage, do you remember? She’d have just had time to do it before her bodyguards caught up with her. Jason could have made those marks on the door frame when the building was empty – in the middle of the night or something – to make the police think it was an outside job. And that’s why Cynthia didn’t notice the door was open earlier. Ohmygod! Cynthia! She said that stuff about Tiffany’s voice and Tiffany looked really angry. Maybe they thought she suspected something. Maybe they killed her too.”

“They’d only have had to open the dressing room window to make it look like it was someone else,” Graham agreed.

“Exactly.”

We wafted woodenly to the left and then to the right not quite in time with the music. Tiffany set off for the Emerald City, ruby slippers skipping along the yellow brick road. We got to the end of the scene and there was a blackout when the inhabitants of Munchkinland had to leave the stage. But for a moment I couldn’t move. I grabbed Graham and in the pitch darkness I hissed at him, “The chocolates!”

“You don’t think…?” His voice trailed away to nothing.

“Yes. They weren’t meant for Tiffany! No wonder she took the only toffee. It was a hard centre. She knew there wasn’t any poison in it. She was trying to kill us!”

The lights came up then, catching me and Graham in their glare. The scenery had moved all around us and we were standing in the Scarecrow’s field.

“Get off the stage!” shrieked Peregrine.

Graham and I fled, earning sour looks of disapproval from the Munchkins.

After that things went from bad to worse as far as Graham and I were concerned. We couldn’t talk in the dressing room – there were too many people around. There wasn’t any point even attempting to say anything to the police: we knew from past experience that they aren’t very keen on listening to unproven crime theories from a couple of kids. So all we could do was get through the dress rehearsal in an agony of panic and anxiety. Our flying scene was dreadful: Toto wandered into the wrong place, and when we landed I ended up treading on his tail. He yelped and then sank his teeth into the Cowardly Lion, who swore very loudly. When we got hold of Dorothy and took off, Graham – in a sudden spasm of nervousness – jerked sideways and kicked the Tin Man’s head as we flew past him so he started swearing too.

Peregrine was furious. “I have never seen such a shambles! That was appalling. Truly appalling,” he berated us at the end of the rehearsal. “I hardly need remind you that we open tomorrow night. And right now this show is just not good enough. I expect everyone back here first thing tomorrow morning. We’ll have to squeeze in another rehearsal. Two if necessary. It’s our only hope.”

So Graham and I felt tired and forlorn as well as in fear of our lives. We waited outside the theatre for Mum to pick us up, looking over our shoulders every five seconds to check that neither Tiffany nor Jason were sneaking up on us.