Backstage Stuff Read online

  Nellie shook her head. “Don’t know about that, but Freddy wouldn’t have turned anybody away who wanted to be. He saw himself as a combination playwright and director and camp counselor and child psychiatrist or something. He said there wasn’t enough places for creative types and artists and sometimes kids didn’t feel at home in their own homes and he wanted them to always have a safe place to come to.”

  Jane looked at her mother and remembered she had been forced to quit school and work in the Bear Brand hosiery factory to bring in a paycheck to help her family.

  “Was Freddy’s club a safe haven for you, Mom?”

  “Hell, no. I had a home and my own mom and dad. I just wanted to put on the goddamn play.”

  Jane took the script Nellie offered her.

  “Was this the final one, the one you were rehearsing when you met Dad?”

  Nellie nodded. “Probably not final, but Freddy had that heart attack pretty soon after I left, so I don’t know if he kept writing after this one.”

  Jane read the dedication.

  For my dear grandchildren—Margaret and Frederick III

  Jane knew a treasure when she held one in her hand. It wasn’t because this script revealed anything new about Freddy and the club. This was an earlier version than some of the scripts spread out before her. She could tell by the dedications that grew increasingly more pointed about the play being the inheritance Freddy was earmarking for his grandchildren. This particular script’s value was in Nellie’s margin notes, her underlined part. This was part of the Nellie archive that Jane hadn’t even known existed, Nellie’s life before Jane and her brother, Michael; before the EZ Way Inn; before Don. This little volume had some power.

  “May I hang on to this?” asked Jane.

  Nellie nodded. “What about the rest of these?”

  “I think this is the order they were written. Or rewritten, actually,” said Jane, who had lined up the scripts on the table. “Mostly, it looks like he played with Marguerite and Myra’s scenes. They go back and forth between Marguerite in a coma or explaining things at the end. And the stepfather who is long gone—his character changes, too. He’s revered, then he’s a villain. In the last script, his ashes up on the mantel are a shrine—at least until the end. In the earlier ones, they talk about throwing the ashes in the trash bin.”

  Nellie picked up one of the scripts and read a few pages. “Freddy’s still bossy. He tells everybody exactly how to do everything and what kind of couch should be on the stage and what kind of painting is on the wall. He even makes it part of the speech. Like here, he’s got Perkins saying something about the cow in the picture. You can tell Freddy put that in so you’d know that’s the picture he wanted up on the wall.”

  “A lot of playwrights are pretty specific about stage direction and props, but Freddy’s right up there with the most particular,” said Jane. “He even specified the lamps and the wallpaper and the urn for the stepfather’s ashes, all of the vases and even what kind of flowers should go in the vases,” said Jane. “It was really important to him that the Kendell mansion be re-created as the stage set. I think that’s why he was so specific. But if the script is some kind of a treasure map, I’m just not following yet.”

  “Don’t we have things to do before the play tonight?” asked Nellie.

  “We?” said Jane. “Tonight’s your debut. You should just relax…” Jane stopped and looked at her mother. Nellie looked back at her, head cocked to one side, defying her daughter not to give her a job.

  “First, walk Rita, then I can go to the hardware store and pick up some sand or potting soil or something. We have to put something in the urn that will seem like ashes spilling when it gets tipped in the fight. I’ll call Oh and find out what he knows from the police and see how Margaret’s doing. We can take it from there,” said Jane.

  Nellie nodded and grabbed Rita’s leash. Rita sat waiting for Nellie to snap it onto her collar, but Nellie held up and gestured with the leather braid. “Now that you’ve seen all of them scripts when Marguerite knows all the answers, don’t you think at the end, she wakes up?”

  “Yeah, Mom. Marguerite probably knows what’s going on the whole time.”

  * * *

  Jane waited until Rita led Nellie down the street, then she picked up her phone to call Oh. As she told Nellie, she wanted to ask after Margaret and find out if Oh knew anything more about Rick Kendell, alive or dead. If, for example, they knew more about why he had shown up, they might know more about who had killed him.

  “Mrs. Wheel,” said Oh. “I was just about to call you.”

  Jane smiled. As Nellie and Rita had rounded the corner at the end of the block, she had sat down on the top step of the porch, planting herself in the only triangle of sunlight allowed by the not-quite-fully-leafed-out trees in Don and Nellie’s front yard. In another few weeks, there would be no sun-warmed step; the shade would keep everything dark and cool all day long. Jane wrapped her arms around her knees and leaned her head against the porch rail to listen to Oh’s report.

  “Then I decided to wait until I arrived.”

  Jane sat up straight, aware of her silly grin and schoolgirl pose on the steps as Oh pulled his car into the driveway.

  Both continued holding their phones until Oh sat down beside her on the steps. Shaded and cool. Appropriate, thought Jane. She, exposed and sunlit, Oh, shaded and cool.

  “Rick’s autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow morning,” said Oh. “Margaret decided she would let Bryan help her with the arrangements. He’s really the only relative, and although they were never close, Margaret needs to depend on someone. Claire, of course, has already done most of the advising. Margaret just needs a relative to help her to agree and move on.”

  “Everybody in Kankakee had a key to Freddy’s theater club,” said Jane. “How do we figure out who our particular Mr. Bumbles is?”

  “Everyone, Mrs. Wheel?”

  Oh had remarked before on Jane’s tendency to exaggerate, which prompted one of Jane’s attempts to get Oh to laugh. “Yes, you’ve told me a million times not to exaggerate,” Jane had said to him. Oh had not laughed, but he had almost smiled. “At least four times, Mrs. Wheel,” he agreed.

  “Nellie. Henry. Marvin. Bryan. Suzanne. Mary Wainwright, the Realtor. Apparently Rica Evans’s mother was in the club.”

  “Margaret and Rick,” added Oh.

  If Freddy was playing child psychiatrist and social worker to young people and giving the artists in town a safe haven, almost anyone could have had a key. Anyone could have known that there were valuable items in the house, in the theater club space. The missing valuables could have easily been removed by any number of Kankakee residents. Jane herself had opened up the back gate and could have unloaded anything from the studio into her car without a neighbor around to see.

  “So why kill Rick Kendell?” asked Jane. “It wasn’t about stealing from the Kendell estate. That could be accomplished without much interference.”

  “According to Rick, presenting himself as the new landlord at Geppetto Studios, Suzanne would lose her workspace and her home,” said Oh, looking at his vibrating phone.

  He nodded to Jane and answered the phone as if it were part of the conversation they were having. When he clicked off, he told her that Ramey wanted to meet with them at the police station.

  Nellie and Rita returned and Jane gave her mother a list of chores to be accomplished before the six o’clock call. Jane promised to keep in touch and apologized for not finishing hemming the nightgown.

  “Anybody can sew a hem,” said Nellie. “You got more important things to do today.”

  Jane felt herself blushing and before Nellie could squirm out of her grasp, she managed to give her mother a decent hug.

  * * *

  At the police station, Jane repeated what she had told Ramey the evening before—that she and Oh had shown up to ask questions about Mr. Bumbles, and stumbled into the memorial service for Marvin.

  “But you knew Ma
rvin?” asked Ramey.

  “Yes, of course. We were working together and I was there when he … when the accident…” Jane stopped. How could she pretend to believe it was an accident? Marvin was dead and Jane thought whoever killed him could be connected to the Rick Kendell murder. It was time to act seriously about a serious subject.

  “I’m not sure Marvin’s death was an accident,” said Jane. She was already picturing the swarm of police around the back of the cultural center, the taping off of the area, the closing down of the play after everyone had worked so hard. Ramey was distracted by something that flashed onto his computer screen.

  He held up one finger and picked up his desk telephone, listening. After a one-syllable reply, he hung up and stood.

  “That was the coroner calling on Kendell. Full autopsy scheduled, but we already know how— What did you say about Marvin?” asked Ramey.

  “Nothing. Just said we showed up at his memorial accidentally,” said Jane.

  Oh, standing in the corner of the room, cleared his throat and turned away to look out the window.

  “I’ve had a question about Rick Kendell since I found him,” said Jane. She wasn’t sure whether or not she wanted to claim the discovery so firmly, but maybe it would make her question seem more appropriate.

  “Why wasn’t there blood? I heard the officer tell you a nail gun was used and it seems like that would be messy, but the site was not— There wasn’t really any blood.”

  “A sharp object inserted into the brain stem, right at the top of the spinal cord,” said Ramey. “It’s a fairly clean death.”

  “Clean?” asked Jane.

  “Very little blood. It’s how my teacher used to kill frogs for biology class,” said Ramey.

  “Oh my God, sophomore-year biology. Sister DiBlasi asked for volunteers. I remember that,” said Jane.

  “Pithing,” said Oh.

  Jane and Ramey both looked at him.

  “It’s called ‘pithing.’ ”

  That’s just the kind of thing that Oh would know, thought Jane. She reminded herself that she should never agree to play Scrabble with him. As soon as she pictured the two of them sitting at her kitchen table leaning over a game board, she felt flushed, embarrassed that such a domestic thought had crossed her mind. Why would she and Oh ever spend an evening spelling out words together? And who besides Jane would ever think that an intimate enough pastime to be embarrassed by it?

  “Are you all right, Mrs. Wheel?” asked Oh.

  Jane nodded and finished giving her statement, managing to avoid the subject of Marvin’s accident. Jane did tell Ramey about the note from Bumbles in the other typewriter, to which he nodded. They had the note and Jane told them that Mr. Bumbles’s notes had appeared in the scripts, at the Kendell house, but that everyone at Geppetto Studios knew about the reference to Freddy’s dummies.

  “And do you have any idea who this Mr. Bumbles is?” asked Ramey.

  “I honestly think some of the notes in the scripts might have been left there years ago by Freddy Kendell,” said Jane. “There’s something about the handwriting, the language … but as far as our contemporary Bumbles?” Jane shook her head.

  What did she know? What facts? There was valuable property missing from the Kendell estate. Marvin had probably been killed by someone who wanted to keep his connection to Freddy’s theater club quiet, and that Rick Kendell might have been killed by almost anyone who wanted to keep Geppetto Studios alive. In other words, she knew nothing that would be of value to Ramey. On the other hand, if she babbled on about her suspicions concerning Marvin’s death and all of the interconnected members of Freddy’s club, it was highly likely that the show would not go on this weekend, and Jane believed positively that if the show did go on, the murders of both Marvin and Kendell would be solved.

  All of the answers were there—like all of those Scrabble tiles mixed up together in a bag. If she could just draw out the correct ones, the answer to the puzzle would be spelled out.

  Ramey was thoughtful when he told her she was free to leave. “We’ll talk again soon, Mrs. Wheel. It might help to continue to puzzle this out together.”

  Jane nodded. She had no idea whether Ramey was being kind or if he felt she was keeping something from him.

  “Both,” said Oh when they were back in the car and she asked what he thought. “Detective Ramey knows that you, too, are trying to figure out who is responsible, but I think he knows you have not yet reached any conclusions. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Detective Ramey and his team decided to attend the theater this weekend.”

  Jane asked Oh to make a stop at the hardware store, where she bought a small bag of sand, a bit of potting soil, and some granulated charcoal bagged for use in terrariums. She needed to mix up some concoction to be heavy enough that it could be seen from the audience when it spilled, but not so sandy and fine that it would be inhaled by the actors or fly into their eyes and blind them mid-scene.

  Oh asked Jane to come with him to pick up Margaret and Claire at Bryan and Penny Kendell’s home. Jane was sorely tempted because she wanted to see for herself how Bryan and Penny were handling the news about Rick. If they had anything to do with his death, they would be anxious to work their way into Margaret’s affections, although that might be the case anyway. They were the only other Kendell relatives that Jane knew of, and perhaps Margaret would be sharing some of the household with them. Or they might just be trying to be helpful because they were her only relatives—maybe they just wanted to be helpful. When exactly had Jane begun to believe that everyone in the world had an ulterior motive for everything they did?

  “No, thanks. I want to talk to everyone about Rick and I especially want to know when Bryan and Penny left the memorial, but you can find out all of that as well as I can,” said Jane. “I have too much to do at the theater. Director tonight, detective tomorrow.”

  Jane walked into the cultural center and waited for that warm feeling of opening-night excitement to wash over her, but this time, being alone in the audience and looking up at Marvin’s impeccable set did not give her the inexplicable giddies. Her footsteps echoed, and despite the warm sunshine outside, the theater felt dark and chilly.

  She plopped her giant bag down on a front-row seat and dug out her notebook, folded it open to her list, and stuck it into the pocket of her jeans. She opened up her hardware store bag and looked at the mix she had asked them to stir up while still at the store. Did it look like cremains? She wasn’t sure. She had never really seen the ashes of a cremated body, so she did not know if they were as ephemeral and delicate as fireplace ashes or if there was substance, bits of bone and such, that would give them more weight. She counted on the actors making such a fuss that the audience wouldn’t have much time to reflect on the authenticity.

  Jane filled the urn and replaced it on the mantel. It had two handles, like the loving cup Nellie had mentioned—her sister Veronica’s bowling trophy. It was painted a thick, flat black and felt like chalkboard to the touch. Jane adjusted the urn so it was centered in front of the painting, a pastoral scene specified by Freddy in his notes.

  Jane measured out the placement of the hospital bed, twelve steps from the stage right entrance in the first act where it was discussed that Marguerite would soon be coming home from the hospital and spending her final days there at the house with her daughter, Myra, and granddaughter, Hermione. Thinking about Mary’s portrayal of Hermione, Jane paced the stage and checked out the hiding places where Mary had previously hidden the scripts to make sure no extra copies lingered.

  Next, Jane made the bed, bouncing up and down on the mattress to make sure the legs were firmly slotted into place. She would ask her stage crew to double-check the bed between acts, too. Jane walked out the upstage French doors that were supposed to lead into the garden. Henry’s garden rake was leaned carefully against the rear wall so he could grab it before entering. The small tin box he was to uncover that held the diary revealing the family secrets leading to
the climactic final scene was also placed on a small table that held other personal props that actors would check and double-check for themselves.

  Jane walked over to the bar, downstage left, and held up the bottles to see that there was enough “alcohol”—in actuality, weak tea left from rehearsal, for Myra to pour for her guests in the first act. Jane held up the cut-glass decanter she had found labeled as the appropriate prop in Freddy’s trunk. The liquor looked real enough.

  In fact, it looked so real, that Jane unstopped the heavy crystal and sniffed the liquid. Scotch. Who put real alcohol in the bottle? Rica was the only one who poured drinks … no, Malachi poured himself a drink and sipped while he reminisced aloud to Marguerite. Jane had suggested Tim add that bit of business since it gave Chuck Havens something to do with his hands, preventing him from stroking his imaginary beard. Had he planted real alcohol so he could have a belt midway through the play? Jane knew he secretly smoked; maybe he was a man of more than one vice.

  Jane replaced the scotch with tea. She didn’t want to take the chance that someone would grab that decanter and cough their way through a stage drink. Chuck would have to wait for the cast party for cocktails.

  A large bulletin board hung backstage. There the actors could leave notes for one another, Jane and Tim left notes for the actors and each other, and the stage manager posted the calls. Next to the board hung a large clipboard. Jane used it to communicate directly with the stage manager, a young woman named Mandy who had been efficient throughout the rehearsal process. Jane checked off all she had done and wrote in a few chores she would expect Mandy to attend to. She signed it, See you all at the cast party—break a leg! JW, just in case she didn’t get a chance to speak to everyone individually before they went on. After all, she had promised Tim he could still do the quality-of-life directorial stuff—all the preshow pep talks and rituals. Jane would just tend to the concrete directorial chores. Next to the hook for the clipboard, an envelope was stuck to the wall with a piece of wide masking tape. J AN E W H E E L was printed on the envelope.