Murder in the Past Tense (Miss Prentice Cozy Mystery Series Book 3) (11 page)

The next afternoon, as I took my seat in the auditorium, I felt a tap on my shoulder. “Look at his head,” Adele Foster murmured in my ear from her seat behind me. “He musta got hurt in that fall after all.” She nodded in the direction of Danny DiNicco, who had a bandage on his forehead.

Ben Patchke was sitting next to her. “I saw that rung on the ladder. It broke right off.”

“It might have been cut. Y’think somebody’s got it in for him? Maybe it’s those Mafia relatives of his,” Brenda Bernard speculated with a delighted
frisson
. “That fish could have been, you know, a warning or something.”

She must have been talking to Lily, I surmised.

“Nah,” Ben said, “it was just a freak accident with an old ladder. Terence chewed out the building crew, and then had Elm and me fix it last night. We used extra wood and nails; reinforced all the rungs. That kinda thing won’t happen again.”

“That’s good,” I said.

The memory of Danny’s fall gave me the same sick feeling I had had while watching him fight with Neil.
He’s so brave to keep going despite his misfortune.

Lily plopped down next to me, clearly unhappy.

“What’s the matter?” I whispered.

“I’m through with Mr. Neil Claussen forever!” she hissed in my ear.

“Why?”

“Not now. Tell you later.”

Terence spent the next several hours with us, re-blocking the play to accommodate the unusual surroundings we’d encounter in Lake Placid using masking tape on the stage floor. “No, no, no—you just pirouetted right into the swimming pool!” he warned. “And remember, you’ll be performing practically in the laps of the audience. They’ll be that close, so be careful!”

After all this, I was beginning to dread Lake Placid. If I had really known what was going to happen, dread would have been the mildest of my emotions.

Finally we were given a half-hour break. Lily and I laid claim to two places in the back row of the auditorium and opened the bag of peanut butter sandwiches I’d brought from home.

I took the opportunity to ask quietly, “Why are you finished with Neil? I saw you talking to him when we first got here.”

“The rat. He refused to tell me what was going on with Danny out in the alley.
Me
! He wouldn’t trust
me
! If a relationship isn’t based on trust, what good is it?” She took a violent bite of sandwich.

The sick feeling returned. “Oh, Lily! You told him that we saw? Did you tell him I was there too?” I was embarrassed and a little scared, although I couldn’t have told you why.

She had the grace to look embarrassed. “Sorry. It slipped out when I was telling him why he owed me an explanation. And when I refused to—as he put it—keep my trap shut, he just walked away. Ignored me! The nerve! Ordering me around like a child, and then just leaving!”

“Who’s a child?” It was Gilly Dickensen, draped over the back of the seat next to me.

“Here.” Lily stood, handed me the remains of her sandwich, and snapped at Gilly, “Mind your own business!” She departed with as much dignity as she could manage, working her way sideways down the long row of seats.

Gilly came around and sat one seat away from me. “Who put a burr under her saddle?”

“Oh, she and Neil broke up, that’s all.”

He propped his feet on seat in front of him. “Well, good for her. She’s better off.” He pointed to Lily’s abandoned half-eaten sandwich that I was re-wrapping. “D’you think she’s gonna want that?”

“No, here. But why is Lily better off? They really seemed to like each other. I think it’s kind of sad.”

He took a huge bite and shook his head mournfully as he chewed. “You young girls. So naïve. You know, guys talk different to each other than in front of you.”

“Different-
ly.
Don’t chew with your mouth full.”

“Yeah, whatever. What I mean is let’s just say Neil Claussen had a kind of bet with some of the other guys about . . . well, about Lily. I’m glad to see she messed it up for him.” He popped the last morsel of the sandwich in his mouth and wiped his hands on his jeans.

“A bet?”

“A bet, a wager, a gamble. That’s all I’m going to say on the subject. If you don’t understand it, I’m definitely not going to be the one to tell you.” He stood abruptly. “Whew! You
are
a baby, you know that?” He ambled off down the aisle, leaving me angry and outraged at the entire male sex. I’d understood exactly what Gilly was talking about.

I had to find Lily right away.

Ages ago, when all this stuff started, I had promised to be in only one play that summer. So, since I wasn’t going to be in
The Merry Marinade
, I now had my mornings free and spent them doing the job my parents had originally planned for me, filing and typing at the lumber yard office. It was a bit boring, but it was a way to earn a little extra money and pass the time until the evening performances of
The Last Leaf
.

Lily had a small speaking part in
Marinade
, so I didn’t see much of her that last week. When I did, before the performances, she spent her time making snide comments about Neil Claussen’s every move and commenting on just how far gone Dierdre was over Danny.

“I feel a little sorry for her. She follows him around like a sick puppy, but he won’t give her the time of day anymore.”

“What happened to none of our business?” I asked her.

“What can you do when it’s all happening right before your eyes? I can’t help it.”

I loved being in
The Last Leaf,
but after a while, the songs became a constant noise in my head, especially when I tried to get to sleep at night.

I’m doing this for you, your heart will see you through . . . blah, blah, blah.

Gilly was right. The lyrics were insipid. I gradually became sick to death of them. I was both relieved and sad to see that the last performance, what Terence termed our field trip, was coming up the next day.

It was a long trip to Lake Placid in the early morning hours. Dierdre had tried to grab a seat beside Danny on the rented bus, but he’d deftly managed to do a kind of doh-si-doh maneuver and plopped down beside plump, middle-aged Adele Foster.

He probably regretted that move. Adele spent most of the trip whispering probing questions. If she thought she would get some kind of gossip scoop, she was disappointed. Danny shrugged and smiled wanly, slumped down in his seat and closed his eyes as if he was sleeping.

Janey found a seat near the driver. The whole trip, she chewed her nails and gazed anxiously through the bus window at the slowly-awakening countryside.

Lily pointedly ignored Neil. She’d claimed not to believe a word of what Gilly told me about the bet, but there was still a definite chill wind blowing in Neil’s direction.

Fahrenheit-wise, things began to warm up as we walked in the side entrance of the Belle Colline Hotel.

“Whew! Muggy in here,” Lily said to me, pulling her shirt away from her body. “I’m sweating already.” She picked up a hotel towel from a neat stack on a nearby table and mopped her forehead.

“And that chlorine smell,” I added with a grimace. “I can’t stand chlorine.”

The pool area of the hotel was luxurious, equipped with tropical-looking plants and beach-oriented furniture, but the humidity was undeniable. I had a strong aversion to that particular chemical.

“Oh, yeah, that’s right, I remember why. You flunked the swimming test, didn’t you?” Lily’s tone was more sympathetic than my classmates’ had been at the time. “You do know, don’t you, that you have to pass that swimming test to graduate from high school?” She dropped her vanity case and her hanging bag on a nearby patio table and took a seat in a chair.

I followed suit. “No, you don’t. I researched it. You just don’t get some little stamp thing on your diploma. Big deal.”

So what if I couldn’t swim? My plunge to the bottom of the YMCA pool had been a source of much embarrassment, and I didn’t want to go back over it.

“Is everybody here?” Terence stood near the edge of the pool and called the group to order. “All right. As you can see, this isn’t going to be the easiest job in the world, but we can do it.”

The ensemble swept their collective gaze balefully around the large, rectangular, high-ceilinged room, half occupied by a beautiful blue swimming pool.

At one end was the entrance to the hotel lobby and a flat expanse filled with reclining chairs and a few tables. This was where the audience chairs would be. At the other end was the pool, entrances to the men’s and women’s locker rooms and an exit to the parking lot.

“It’s pretty simple,” Terence explained, waving his arms to take in everything. “This is exactly like a big gymnasium with a pool in one end of it. How hard can it be?”

We all chuckled, but hesitantly. We had rehearsed this over and over, but how on earth could we change scenes, let alone dance, with all that water in the middle of everything?

“The good news is that there’s adequate floor space on either side and in front of the pool. And fortunately, since there’s that thing up there,” he pointed to the aerial running track that encircled the room and the steps that led up to it, “we can set up Johnsie’s apartment on the stair landing, though we’ll have to change scenes in full view of the audience.”

“Where do you want us?” Irene asked.

She was carrying a large case containing an elaborate electronic keyboard. Gilly stood behind her with a cube-shaped speaker under each arm and miles of electric cord hanging around his neck. They were followed by the drummer, rolling his paraphernalia on a wheeled cart and the flute player bearing her tiny instrument case.

“Well, that may be part of the bad news. We can’t have you too near the water, what with all the electronics, of course, so you’ll be stationed behind the audience.” He pointed to the hotel end of the pool enclosure, where a trolley containing perhaps a hundred folding chairs stood next to the wall. “We’ll need to set up the chairs to see where we can put you. Let’s get started, everybody.”

I used enjoy the old Judy Garland movie where she said, “Come on, everybody; let’s put on a show!” and before you could say “unlikely,” a full-fledged musical in a barn was ready to raise the curtain. While our results weren’t quite so impressive, I really was reminded of
Babes in Arms
that morning. The male members of the troupe carried in several of the smaller flats, wrestling them through the parking lot entrance. The huge ladder that had literally been Danny’s downfall and played such an important part in Act Two had ridden with us in the aisle of the bus, tripping up anyone who tried to move from seat to seat. Once it was set up next to the stair landing and the landing itself was precariously furnished with a small chair and a tiny cot, things started coming together. The tall flat representing the ivy-covered brick wall stood next to the ladder.

We spent two hours re-blocking scenes to accommodate the pool and after a box lunch provided by the hotel, we did one more quick run-through and were dismissed to the men’s and women’s locker rooms to get ready for the early evening performance.

At least as far as costumes are concerned, it’s good that this will be the last performance,
I thought as I stepped into my washerwoman’s skirt and buttoned the waistband. I’d brought my costume home four times during the two-week run, and after each washing and ironing, it looked a little more ragged. Mine wasn’t the only outfit to show the strain. Buttons on Janey’s overburdened bodice had popped off twice, and the shirt of Danny’s Lover costume had torn at the shoulder. Lily and Pat had repaired everything by hand.

Over the past two weeks, we’d learned that Janey herself had dyed her hair reddish brown, and the credit for her enhanced bosom went to whoever manufactured foam rubber inserts.

“Her Highness sure is edgy today,” Lily whispered to me as we applied our Tan #2 in front of the long bank of mirrors in the locker room. “Look, her hand’s shaking. That’s the second time she’s put on her eyeliner.”

As if to confirm Lily’s observation, Celia dropped a hairbrush on the floor, and Janey jumped in surprised alarm at the clatter.

“Don’t do that again!” she said sharply, as if it had happened on purpose. Celia just shook her head and retrieved her brush.

“Oh, shut up,” Dierdre snapped. “You’re not the only one getting ready here!”

“Sheesh!” Lily leaned closer and whispered, “Two prima donnas in one show. We better stay out of their way!”

We could hear the overture beginning, even from inside the locker rooms. “Showtime, ladies,” Chris said, sticking his head in the door. “Take your places.”

Since we didn’t have a curtain to delineate the scenes, we were required to bring in props, set up and hit our marks in a kind of semi-darkness. As we moved to our designated places, I remembered what Terence had said about the audience being on the same level as the cast. It was a little unnerving to see all those peoples’ eyes watching us in the dim light, and when the lights went up and our first number began, actors and audience were far closer than was comfortable.

Just don’t think about it,
I reminded myself,
maintain the Fourth Wall.

The overture faded, the Lover stepped forward, took Johnsie’s hand, said, “Do you think you could paint my portrait?” and we were off, just as we had been for the past twelve performances.

There were no problems during the first act. Nobody fell in the pool. Nobody tripped during the dances and the singing went well, though it was a little difficult to hear the band, situated as they were behind the audience.

The Belle Colline’s guests made an appreciative audience, even better than the ones at the Adirondack Bijou. They laughed at all the right places and clapped longer after the songs. Being so close to them, I could tell when someone was looking at me. To my relief, more people followed Janey and Danny with their eyes than anybody else. There was one elderly man in the front row who seemed especially enraptured. When the first act ended, the audience stood as they clapped, then milled around, talking to each other. Waiters entered from the lobby to take orders for refreshments.

We had thirty minutes before Act Two. The intermission was longer than usual, but the Belle Colline wanted to give the guests extra time to order beverages, Terence had told us.

Back in the dressing room, Lily powdered her forehead. “I’m starving. That box lunch was pretty measly.” She pulled some coins from her purse. “Go tell that hippie to get us some candy bars. I think there’s a machine in the lobby.”

“Oh, Lily, I don’t know—” I began, but I was hungry, too, so I sidled out of the locker room, hid behind a flat and tried to hail Gilly. During Act One, he’d turned music pages for Irene, and he continued to sit there behind the audience, having an apparently cordial conversation with her.

“Psst!”

He didn’t seem to hear me. It was a lost cause unless I wanted to walk out into the midst of the crowd in full costume and makeup.

“I’m going to the bar for a smoke,” I heard an elderly man with an unlit cigar say to the smaller man sitting next to him. “Flo’s coming. You wanna come, too, Gino?”

Though he, too, had an unlit cigar, the man named Gino shook his head. His friends moved through the crowd toward the lobby.

I watched him from my hiding place. He was the one who’d been staring at Danny all through the play. He was short, maybe five-six in his deck shoes—no socks. He had the comb-over hairstyle of the balding and elderly. His seersucker pants were striped pale blue and he wore a sports shirt with an expensive logo over the heart.

Suddenly, he looked around, stood and began walking resolutely along the side of the pool, headed toward the locker room. His stride was strong and confident. He passed the first stage flat and I followed, curious. He was now trespassing into cast-only territory.

Without hesitation and before I could politely restrain him, Gino leaned his head into the men’s locker room and called loudly, “Daniel DiNicco? Is Daniel DiNicco in here?”

When Danny emerged in costume with a towel around his neck and a puzzled expression on his face, the man embraced him.

“Wh-what?”

The old man reached up and patted Danny’s face. “I’d know that kisser anywhere! My boy, my nephew, my little sister’s only child!” said Gino with feeling. “I haven’t seen you since you was a baby, but I knew right away it was you!” He put his hand to his chest. “It’s your Uncle Gino!”

Danny looked decidedly uncomfortable. “Um, hello.”

Gino stepped back. “Let me look at you. Pretty good lookin’ fella, if you took off all that sissy makeup.”

“Now, wait a minute—”

Gino punched him in the arm. “I’m just kiddin’ ya. You got a gift. What a voice! What actin’! I’m proud o’ ya. You got definite talent, kid.”

“Thank you.” Danny was a head taller than his uncle. “I’m glad you like it. About Mom—”

“Oh, sure, I know what your mother says about me. Don’t pay attention to that. We’re blood, kid, blood! That means somethin’!” He slapped Danny on the chest, moved his inert cigar to his other hand and reached into his pocket. “I been followin’ your career with interest, so to speak. Puttin’ in a good word wherever I could.” He pulled a newspaper clipping out of his wallet and held it up. “See? I carry this with me everywhere. A rave review!” He poked Danny with his bony elbow and grinned. “I had a little somethin’ to do with that. I know a guy who knows a guy, and, well, you know . . . ”

Danny’s eyes widened. He pointed back toward the dressing room. “I have to get ready for—”

“Sure, sure, back to work. Don’t worry, kid, we’ll meet again.” He patted Danny on the cheek again, hard, and began to walk away.

I heard a gasp. When I turned, I realized that Janey had been standing directly behind me, observing this strange reunion too. Feeling a little guilty about my spying, I turned my attention to her.