Backstage Stuff Read online

  Jane and Tim both shook their heads.

  “There was good stuff in there. Gorgeous silver serving pieces and candlesticks, but not this. I would have called you if I’d found—”

  “I’d like to say something,” said Henry, standing and raising his glass, half-filled with what looked to Jane like whiskey and water.

  Although he had been sitting with a drink at the table of actors, Jane thought he still looked alone, shaken. She had seen him sitting still, half-listening to others, but had not seen or heard him talking about his friend or the events of the night.

  The sight of the small elegant Henry standing erect, head held high, silenced Claire and Margie, and the entire roomful of people waited.

  Jane noticed her father stood behind the bar with his arms folded, chewing on the inside of his cheek, looking as if he might be deciding something. Jane hoped he would not decide to begin the coughing and sneezing routine he had perfected at rehearsals.

  “Marvin was a good friend and an excellent craftsman. We went to school together and worked on our first play together when we were just about fifteen years old. We really wanted to do a bang-up job on this play … for Freddy Kendell, as much as for ourselves. He was a great old man, a real mentor to me and Marvin and all the kids in the theater club. So now, I’d like us all to do a bang-up job for Marvin. It’s what he’d want us to do. To our friend, Marvin!” Henry threw back the whiskey in his glass and sat down. There was a moment when all was quiet, then Don, slowly and solemnly, began clapping his hands. Everyone joined in and ordered more drinks, and once again, began trying to outdo one another with stories about Marvin, which gave way, as stories do, especially among theater people, to stories about themselves.

  Jane saw Nellie get up from her seat at the actors’ table and walk over to Don behind the bar. She whispered something short and most probably not sweet into her husband’s ear, then grabbed a towel from the stack next to the rinse tanks and started to wipe down the bar.

  Jane excused herself from her group and joined her parents behind the bar. Jane touched her father’s arm.

  “It was nice of you to be so respectful when Henry made his speech, Dad. I noticed you started the applause.”

  Don, still looking thoughtful, gazing out at all of the patrons gabbing away in the dining room, smiled down at his daughter. “Oh sure, honey, Henry’s a hell of an actor. Always was.” Don walked to the opposite side of the bar and began gathering up glasses and bottles.

  Her mother, still cleaning the bar, worked her way toward Jane. Nellie looked so small and fierce as she wiped down the worn wood. Jane had an odd feeling that if her mother stopped her motion, she would fade away and disappear. It appeared as if Nellie’s frantic movement was what kept her earthbound. If she stopped, she would simply become untethered, invisible. Jane badly wanted to put her arm around her mother but knew from past experience that the gesture would not be accepted in the spirit in which it was given.

  “What are you staring at?” said Nellie, not even looking up to see Jane staring at her.

  “I’m just sorry about your friend, Mom. You saw a horrible—”

  “Don’t you say accident, because it sure as hell wasn’t an accident,” said Nellie.

  “Okay,” said Jane. Maybe she should apply Oh’s listening discipline to Nellie. Maybe Nellie would talk more if Jane questioned and commented less.

  “It wasn’t an accident, and it’s going to be up to you and me to find out who did it, because the police sure as hell didn’t listen when I told them somebody clobbered old Marvin. And none of these bozos seem to care very much even though they act like they do. They just want to be in this silly play. If I hear one more idiot say Marvin would have wanted the show to go on…”

  “Do you think Tim should cancel?”

  “Hell, no. But not because Marvin would have wanted it that way. Who the hell knows what anyone would have wanted? Especially when they’re dead? People just say that because the dead person can’t argue back. I sure as hell hope you don’t start saying what I would or wouldn’t want once I’m dead. Tim shouldn’t cancel the damn play because it’s important to keep everyone together.”

  Jane was touched that her mother was thinking about all of the nerves and anxiety that had erupted with Marvin’s death. It probably would be better for everyone if they continued the play. It would be therapeutic to finish what they had all started together.

  Nellie folded her arms and looked around the room. “Yup, keep everyone in the same damn place every night until we find out which one of these phony bastards murdered Marvin.”

  13

  We find new things every day and it never gets old.

  Starting to really like plantains.

  Margo taught me to make cowboy coffee. Still don’t like coffee.

  Jane had taught herself to enjoy Nick’s tweets. Complain as she might about 140 characters offering anything substantial in the way of information, she realized that Nick’s distilled comments did offer pocket descriptions of his life with Charley in Honduras, his day-to-day observations. And after all, a teenaged boy didn’t usually speak in whole sentences and tell his parents stories with beginnings, middles, and ends anyway, so having these nuggets from a son on a daily basis would probably make many mothers envious. Plus, she had the Facebook postings. Either Nick or Charley put up new photos every other day. It didn’t make up for her son being so far away, but Nick had kept his promise to stay in touch.

  Jane kept her promise, too, tweeting back about the play, the treasures she was finding in the Kendell house. Jane wasn’t quite sure what her message would be today, though, since she wasn’t sure one could communicate anything as serious as Marvin’s death through a post or a tweet. Some pieces of information were just not appropriately passed along through social media. Nick’s tweets, however, were perfect. Jane thought of them as her daily haiku from her son, usually repeating them over and over after receiving them, often with a smile on her face. A few days ago she was repeating to anyone who asked her that Nick was starting to really like plantains. Today she found herself asking, Who’s Margo?

  She also found herself with a list of questions concerning Marvin’s death, not the least of which was whether or not it was a deliberate attack as Nellie insisted or an accident. She, too, might be persuaded it was deliberate because of the way the wood had been placed against the tree. But the why and who of the question remained unanswered.

  The rest of today’s list of questions? So many and pointed in so many directions. What happened to the valuable antiques and paintings that were supposed to be sent to the auction house? Did Margie’s brother steal them, sabotage the sale, subvert the share-and-share-alike plan between the siblings?

  There was another question that was unanswered. Jane had asked Oh about the Kendell fortune. She had wanted to know if Rick and Margaret were as rich as everyone had assumed, but Oh had not answered her. Jane knew that no matter how large a fortune the brother and sister had inherited, they would still be concerned over forgeries and fakes. They would still want their property to be valued as it should be … and yet there was a whiff of the desperate in Margaret’s manner when she spoke about the missing items. She had seemed so nervous, so lost … not angry or puzzled about the news from the auction house that the silver and paintings weren’t valuable. Claire was livid, but Margaret seemed defeated. She didn’t have the aura of privilege that one might expect of someone as wealthy as she and her brother had been portrayed.

  The Kendell place was close to being finally prepped for the sale, so Bruce and Claire Oh and Margaret were staying at a motel on the outskirts of Kankakee, rather than at Margaret’s family home. Jane and Tim had arranged to meet them all at the house around noon. That would give Margaret the morning to try once again to reach Rick and try to get to the bottom of at least a few of the questions that were beginning to hover over this sale.

  Jane, after e-mailing Nick, avoiding the subject of Marvin’s death altogether
and trying to respond to all of his tweeted information with a little of her own, decided to take Rita for a long walk. The dog deserved some attention. Nellie, whom Jane had assumed never liked the messiness of dogs or any other animal who couldn’t control its own shedding or sweep up after itself, had turned out to be Rita’s best friend, but during this visit, Nellie was distracted. This morning she did manage to prepare bacon and scrambled eggs for Rita before leaving with Don for the tavern but was not her usually Dr. Doolittle self, talking away and communicating with the dog on some Nellified plane of consciousness. Rita knew something was wrong. The giant-eyed dog sat completely still, watching Nellie move from refrigerator to stove to sink. Rita’s whole doggy being seemed to quiver with a question. Jane wasn’t sure whether the dog wanted to ask What troubles you, Nellie, my friend, or What? No pancakes? But clearly there was some canine curiosity in the air.

  Rita also deserved a decent walk before Jane took off to spend a long day at the Kendell house, then, Jane presumed, another long night at rehearsal. The cast had been so discombobulated after the “accident,” there was a lot of catching up to get back to where they were in the rehearsal process. Which wasn’t far enough. Jane knew she could use a little purposeful exercise herself to clear her head before her day of writing down prices and folding and refolding linens … since she knew that Claire would unfold each piece and examine and question the prices agreed upon by Jane and Tim. Even without a possible murder to solve, it was going to be a full day.

  Snapping on Rita’s leash, Jane locked the door of her parents’ house behind her. They set off, Jane choosing the destination but allowing Rita to decide the route. Since this neighborhood had not been Jane’s territory growing up, she didn’t have favorite spots or secret childhood haunts to revisit. Instead, she allowed Rita to follow the scent of the lilacs still in bloom and the flowery trails of yellow forsythia that was beginning to spend itself, leaving the lawns littered with gold. Fall was Jane’s season, particularly when she visited her hometown, where the crayon-box colors of maples along the Kankakee River filled her with joy and longing, a heady mix to which she had long been addicted, but today, walking through this Kankakee neighborhood on a spring morning felt equally seductive. The palette held more green and blue, rather than red and orange, and Jane saw its lively beauty. In fact, as she walked briskly, trying to keep pace with Rita, who sorely needed the exercise, Jane felt a curious sprig of a spring blossom take root inside of her.

  Maybe all that new-beginning-spring-has-sprung-hope-is-eternal nonsense was beginning to sort itself out in Jane’s head. She had spent a long winter reconciling herself to the divorce with Charley. Even though she usually referred to their split as a separation, she knew in her newly minted spring heart that it was a divorce. Her marriage, although not her motherhood, was definitely over. But instead of the lingering good-byes and endings of fall and the weight and shiver of snow and ice, she felt something else now. Blooming, blossoming, growing? Well, that was a bit much. But there was a sprig of something … a sprout of something new. Change? Hope? Beginning?

  Jane couldn’t answer her own musings since she and Rita had arrived at the spot she had intended they visit when they began their morning walk. Rita’s muscle had pulled Jane along for seven blocks in a zigzagging walk past houses, a church, a park with tennis courts, and Jane had pulled back, directing the dog to where Jane herself had wanted to go. They arrived in front of the Kankakee Cultural Center, both breathing a little harder, both feeling like they had won the tug of war. Standing in front of the large building in the daylight managed to drown out Jane’s personal reflections and brought back all the chaos of the night.

  As much as Jane preferred to stand still and re-create the events leading up to Marvin’s death, she couldn’t resist the tug of the leash. Rita wanted to explore the wooded walking path behind the center and Jane couldn’t blame her. Trees, bushes, blooming shrubs, and, best of all, squirrels, lived back there, and Rita deserved to sniff and lunge and think about everything she could do if dogs ruled the world and she weren’t at the end of this ridiculous leash.

  Instead of walking through the parking lot, where all of the actors including Nellie had entered and exited the building, Jane allowed Rita to tug her around the other grassy side of the building. This was lawn and trees, a wide swath of green before reaching the rear of the building, where the wooded walking path wound around. Jane noted that Marvin’s tools were all still neatly covered and the canvas still snug and tied as she and Oh had left them. Rita sniffed along the path and, just for a moment, Jane let herself fantasize that her dog would look up at her, bark once or twice, and then lead her mistress on a romp through the woods, ending at the very hideout of the bad guy who had killed Marvin, and—why not if it was a fantasy—had also stolen all of Margaret Kendell’s valuables and hidden them away in his lair.

  However, although Rita was a large empathetic animal, part German shepherd and several parts dog unknown, and a sweet, smart, loyal pet who more than once had earned her place as top dog in Jane’s heart, she was, indeed, a dog, not a detective. Instead of sniffing out the bad guys, she buried her nose in the mulch of the path alongside the table saw, then barked once, shaking her muzzle to dislodge pieces of bark and grass. Jane noticed something clinging to her and reached down for it, thinking it was something vinelike and stringy coiled around her ear.

  Jane straightened up, holding not a natural piece of debris but instead a piece of fabric with a part of a clip still attached. Blue-and-green polka-dotted grosgrain—a hair bow—that had fallen out of the braid or ponytail of some little girl who had walked this path with her parents or friends … probably recently, this spring for sure, since the ribbon was not faded or stained as it would be had it lain under a blanket of snow or been stepped on through several seasons. No, it was a spring hair bow, this spring … but more than that, Jane couldn’t tell. Rather than toss it back on the ground or into the large garbage barrel that was between the saw and the tree where the pieces of lumber still rested, she slipped it into her pocket, since Jane Wheel, magpie-at-large, had never found a broken bit, a lost thingamajig, a worn scrap, or a discarded odd and/or end that she didn’t, at least for a short while, slip into her pocket and keep.

  “Ready to head back?” Jane asked Rita aloud. She wanted to jot down a few notes and check her props list before driving over to the Kendell house. If the show truly must go on, there were still a few prop spots to fill.

  “Almost.”

  Rita was an intelligent animal, but even Jane, who was prone to flights of fancy, had never heard her speak before. She turned around at the familiar voice.

  “Mr. Havens? God, I mean Chuck,” said Jane, feeling her face grow hot.

  “Sorry, Jane. Didn’t mean to scare you. Just finishing my run, decided to cool down on the walking path here. I live just over on Fraser. You can almost see my house from here.”

  “You didn’t scare me. I just have a hard time with the name change,” said Jane. “I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to call you Chuck without feeling I’m about to be smacked upside the head by Sister Kelley.”

  “First of all, I’ll bet Sister Kelley never laid a hand on any of you girls, right?”

  Jane nodded.

  “Second of all, turnabout’s fair play. You think I didn’t get red in the face every time I passed a gaggle of you giggling senior girls my first year teaching? I was twenty-two years old, only four years older than all of you. I could hear you whispering … oh God, it was awful. So, if you get caught now feeling a little uncomfortable considering us as equals in the world, I’m actually okay with that.”

  “Fair enough,” said Jane, adding, “Mary seems to have overcome any student-teacher awkardness.” Jane hoped that didn’t sound as snarky as she thought it might.

  “We’re friends. She sold me my house and there’s nothing like contracts and frank discussions about money to banish embarrassment. I mean, once you have to confess your pathetical
ly low teacher’s salary, you have to give up any cachet you might have had as the new young English teacher. Besides, I’m one of the oldest teachers there now. And, since the school is coed, the old gaggle of girls has been replaced by coed groups who don’t pay attention to teachers now that they get to pay attention to each other.”

  Jane thought she heard just the slightest frost form over his words. She had indeed sounded snarky.

  “It’s odd for me to be back home right now. Staying at my parents’ makes me regress, I think. I’m their high school daughter again. Sorry if I sounded—”

  Chuck shook his head and held up one hand. “No apologies. If you were wondering if Mary and I are more than friends, though, you could just ask me.”

  Now Jane was blushing and it had nothing to do with high school. That is, of course, exactly what she was wondering. Could she have been any more obvious?

  Jane tried to sort through the debris flying through her mind. Does he think I’m attracted to him? Does he think I’m still trying to beat Mary Wainwright at every game in town?

  “And if I did ask that…?” said Jane, raising an eyebrow.

  “The answer is that we date,” said Chuck Havens. He shifted his feet and nodded in the opposite direction. “I’ve got to get going. Took the morning off because there was an assembly, but have to teach after lunch. I’ll see you tonight at rehearsal?”

  Jane nodded.

  After taking a few long strides in the opposite direction, he turned back. “Mary and I date, but not exclusively,” he said, waving.

  Jane fought the urge to laugh out loud at the high school triangle being set up before her eyes … that she herself had put in motion … and watched him trot off toward home.

  She had let the scene speak and tried to practice listening more than talking, just as Detective Oh had taught her, and it worked.

  She knew that Mary and Chuck had said they were together in the parking lot when Marvin was hit. If they were a couple, they might be providing an alibi for each other. If Mary thought they were a couple, but Chuck did not, one of them might be persuaded to chat a little more freely about what they saw and heard last night. And, if Chuck was out running this morning, why was he wearing leather loafers instead of running shoes and why hadn’t he broken a sweat before his cooldown walk?