* * *
Now that I’d calmed down I realized the thing that annoyed me most was that all the alcohol was onstage and there was nothing left backstage for me. I still had two acts of backstage Boner boredom and two lots of washing up to do before I got to the last night party and that bunch of thespians were out there getting plastered without me. I sighed and went downstairs for another cup of instant coffee.
Not all of the cast started on in the second act. Marlene, Tamara, Leon, Conway, and of course, Bill whose character was dead, were hanging out in the green room. One by one they went upstairs as their cues got closer and Bill disappeared into the dressing room. Marlene was the last to go on and I left her adding another layer of blush when I went upstairs to operate the trapdoor knife-arm mechanism again.
This time the knife-arm mechanism was supposed to fail in full sight of the audience. The cast were scripted to turn upstage to look at Marlene as she entered. With their backs to the knife-arm, Marlene would be the only person to see it. She was supposed to give a blood curdling scream and run off, the rest of the cast following her offstage to see what was wrong. Tamara and Jenny’s characters would stay behind for a few pages of dialogue in one of the show’s rare two-handed moments.
Our method to cue this little scene was a bit hodge-podge. Ben would emerge from his booth, headphones dragging on a long lead behind him. He’d whisper and giggle with Marlene for a few moments before she went on at the upstage entrance where I couldn’t see her. I’d stand in the dark in the downstage wing waiting for his cue over my set of cans.
“Knife-arm of death standing by,” I murmured into my headphones, trying to insert just a teensy bit of professionalism into tonight’s performance.
“Marlene’s not here yet,” Ben muttered back.
I turned my attention to the action onstage and peered at the page of script that had been taped to the wall with big cue marks. It was getting very close to her entrance. She’d better hurry.
“Where is she?” I whispered to Ben through the cans. “She’s got about fifteen seconds.”
I scurried back up the wing as far as my cans lead would allow me and peered into the dim blue light. Ben was hopping around anxiously and shrugged frantically when he saw me.
“Well, go find her! She’s probably having trouble hopping up the stairs,” I squawked at him.
He took off for stairs at a run then stopped dead as his headphone lead reached its limit. His head jerked backwards as his cans whipped off his ears, the mouthpiece catching him under his nose, and then fell to the ground with a clatter. We both froze as we heard the dialogue onstage came to an end and few seconds of uncomfortable silence hung in the air before the actors began to ad lib.
“That’s her cue!” Ben was in full panic mode now. He ran down the wings to me. The dialogue onstage was now circling and stalling painfully. “Scream!” he yelped at me, gripping me by the shoulders.
“What?”
“Scream! I’ll go find Marlene.” He pelted out of the wings.
I saw his point. All we needed was a scream to get the cast offstage so the other two actors could go on. I sucked in a deep breath and yelled my lungs out.
As I did, I heard a curious echo from the stairwell. It sounded like Ben and Marlene but within seconds the rest of the cast had piled out of the upstage entrance and were whispering and laughing breathlessly over their latest improvisation adventure. Nick rushed over to me, grinning his head off.
“Was that you, Kath? Love your work. Where’s Marlene?”
Ben barged through the stairwell door with a face like death. “Someone just tried to kill her,” he said, his voice much louder than our typical backstage whisperings. The cast stopped joking and turned to us, appalled. “Help!” he said. “Now! I’m going to try to catch whoever it was.” He dashed back down the stairs again and we followed, stopping in a pile-up when we got to the first landing.
Marlene was sitting beneath the painted-over window, her back pressed against the wall, her hair disheveled and tears streaming down her cheeks. She was coughing and gasping for breath. I knelt beside her and tried to lift her to her feet. Ben turned at the bottom of the stairs and pointed the wall above our heads.
“That window,” he said breathlessly. “There was somebody there!” He ran on into the green room and disappeared.
Leon and I helped Marlene up the stairs and into the props room. I poured her a glass of water and the cast crowded into the tiny room waiting for her to explain what had happened.
“I told you someone pushed me,” she began, defensively. “Well, this time they grabbed and pulled me backwards.” She sobbed and then coughed again. “I can still feel his hands around my throat!”
“Whose hands, Marlene? Who was it?”
She shook her head and screwed up her eyes. I could tell she was trying to hold back tears. “I couldn’t see. They were behind me.” Her voice pitched upwards and she began to wail.
We looked at each other. Everyone was here. Everyone except Jenny and Tamara, who we could hear onstage running through their dialogue and who probably didn’t even know what had happened yet, and Ben, who we’d just seen running down the stairs.
“Well, it couldn’t be one of us.” Hamish sounded bewildered. “Unless...”
“What? Unless it was Tom Stilton?” mocked Conway. “Don’t be stupid.”
“It wasn’t a ghost. He was too strong for that.” Marlene sounded indignant now. She looked like she was beginning the move from fear to anger. That was a good sign.
“I didn’t mean that,” said Hamish. “I mean, there might be someone else back here, in the theater, with us. A murderer. A killer.”
Leon snorted. “Well, that’s even more stupid. Who would want to kill Marlene?”
We looked at each other for a moment and Jenny and Tamara’s voices crackled from the speaker in the ceiling.
“Damn!” said Conway suddenly. “That’s my cue!” He pushed out of the room and we heard his feet pound across the back of the stage.
“And mine.” Nick followed him.
“Well surely we’re not going to continue with the performance,” said Leon. “There’s been an attempted mur-“
Marlene stood up. She threw back her shoulders and tilted her chin regally. “Of course we’re going to continue with the performance. I shall not be intimidated by such a cowardly individual. I shall rise above it. We all will.” She gave us a fierce stare. “Is my hair alright?” she asked and then hiccupped.
Tamara poked her head in the door. “What’s going on?” she asked, brightly. “I’ve been waiting in my closet over there to get hanged. Who wants to string me up tonight?”
The cast sprang into action. I guessed we were going on with the show. We trouped out of the props room and into the blue light of the backstage area. Bill was standing outside the door watching us over his coffee mug with his usual gloomy expression. Ben walked in from the stairwell panting breathlessly.
“Is she alright?” he puffed. I dragged him into the props room and pulled the door closed behind us. Over the speaker we could hear the play continuing as the actors discovered Tamara’s body swinging from the closet door and reacted with horror. I couldn’t help but notice how fake those reactions sounded now after we’d all just been through the real thing.
“I couldn’t catch him,” Ben said. “I figured whoever it was must have been in the office, reaching through that window in the stairwell to strangle Marlene as she walked past. But they were just too fast. I didn’t see anything.” His voice was still breathless and I could see he was full of adrenaline. “There’s a few ways into those office rooms too. I couldn’t cover all the entrances.”
I nodded, my mind racing. It didn’t feel at all right that we were still running the show just after one of our company had nearly been murdered, but I couldn’t very well stride out into the spotlight and drag them all off the stage.
“Lock the doors,” I said suddenly. Ben stared at me like
he thought I was crazy. “Lock the main door to the outside and lock that door in the corridor that runs to front of house. That way whoever this idiot is, they can’t get away. They’ll be trapped here backstage with us. I’ll call Steele. We can figure it out before the final curtain comes down.”
Ben nodded then ducked out of the props room, his keys jingling as he dug them out of his pocket.
Officer Rafe Steele was one of Goose Meadow Bay’s finest law enforcement officers. Well, I thought he was pretty dang fine. We’d gotten to know each other a few months ago during an investigation into the murder of our friend Adam Franklin, a theater player who had been killed in this very building. Steele had saved my life when the killer had come after me too. Sure, I had accidently belted Steele in the head with a vintage VHS player but if anything, that had only strengthened our relationship. Steele didn’t do theater, but we were both artistic types.
He was watching the game when I called.
“We need you down at the theater now,” I insisted. It took a force of nature to get Steele into a theater voluntarily but I heard him stand to attention as soon as I said the word ‘killer.’ Some guys are like that. Steele had a number of other redeeming qualities so I was prepared to think of this one as committed rather than ghoulish. “Someone tried to murder Marlene, just a few minutes ago. We think we’ve got him trapped in the building, but we need you here now. Text me when you get to the back door and Ben will let you in.”
I heard his car door slam before we’d finished the call.
There were laughs from the audience and some raucous whispering as Hamish and Conway carried the ‘dead’ Tamara off the stage. As soon as they were clear of the sightline all three of them burst into uncontrollable giggles, shushing each other dramatically then snorting into laughter again. It wasn’t hard to tell that all three of them were completely inebriated.
Tamara saw me watching them. She bounced over. “I belched,” she hooted. “I was lying there like I was supposed to be dead and I belched! I couldn’t stop myself.” The boys broke into giggles again. “Nick mixed me a Bacardi and Red Bull at the beginning of the act and they always make me burp. I couldn’t hold it in!” She seemed rather proud of herself.
Conway tiptoed over. “The audience cracked up so Nick said something about bodies ‘de-gassing’ after death. It was hysterical.”
Hamish punched him in the arm. “Buddy, we’re back on!” The two did their best to look sober and walked back onstage.
I rubbed my hand up through my hair. This was turning out to be disastrous in so many ways. Tamara continued through to the props room. “So, are we playing cards?” she asked, cheerfully. She picked up Ben’s packet of Skittles.
“We’re not playing cards,” I hissed and grabbed the Skittles. I was beginning to feel like a den mother at a camp full of sugar-pumped teenagers. Didn’t anyone have a sense of perspective here?
She rolled her eyes at me. “Alright, keep your hair on.” She wheezed and hiccupped, then giggled again.
Ben burst in and slumped down in his chair. “Doors are closed. The killer’s locked in. I don’t know if this is such a great idea of yours, Kath.”
Tamara looked from Ben to me and the mischief in her eyes began to fade. “You’re not talking about the show, are you?” she said, slowly.
Ben told her what had been going on and I realized Tamara had missed it all since she and Jenny had been alone together onstage while we had been reviving Marlene.
“Officer Steele’s on his way,” I told them.
“Good,” grunted Ben, “because I don’t know about you, but this show is bloody killing me tonight. Stairs! I hate them.” He grabbed the Skittles. “Deal me in, loves.”
I nearly jumped over the table and grabbed him by the throat. “We can’t sit here and play cards while there’s a killer stalking the theater,” I yelped.
“Shhhhhhh!” Tamara and Ben both shushed me instantly. “Keep your voice down,” Ben hissed. “Well, what else are we going to do? The killer seems to be after Marlene and she’s safe onstage. It’s not like he’s going to bust out onstage and top her with three hundred witnesses sitting there watching, is it? Relax! Steele will sort it out.”
Tamara grabbed the deck of cards with a triumphant smirk in my direction. What choice did I have? I didn’t fancy hunting through the backrooms of the theater by myself. I sank into my chair and sighed.
Two hands later Hamish ran in through the props room door causing all three of us to leap out of our seats like startled gazelles. Cards flew through the air.
Hamish stopped dead when he saw our panicked faces and his urgent expression turned mocking. “Did I scare you all?”
I switched my brain on. “What are you doing off? It’s not the end of the act yet!”
“I realized I had a page without any dialogue. I made something up about going to the toilet.” He grinned at us. “We need some non-alcoholic drinks out there!”
I blew a raspberry.
“No, really. Someone gave Marlene some Tylenol with codeine for her ankle before the show started and she’s had two Baileys and a vodka martini since then. She’s totally Moulin Rouged out there. She’s just... She’s just making stuff up.”
Ben shot out the door, Tamara close behind him.
“She’s completely forgotten the script,” he went on. I regarded him unsympathetically. “The rest of us are, um, half tanked out there too. We’ve still got the whole third act to get through yet,” he said, mournfully.
“Well, you should have thought of that before you tipped all my Canada Dry down the sink, shouldn’t you?” I snapped.
I pressed my eye up against a peep hole in the back wall of the set. Marlene was draped over the arm of the sofa, her legs crossed and her skirt pulled up to reveal rather too much thigh for her character. She was trailing her fingers around the back of Leon’s neck and mussing his hair. The two young girls playing her teenage nieces were ad-libbing for all they were worth trying to get her to sit in her straight backed chair and play the tightly-laced heiress she was supposed to be playing. At the bar, Conway had his head in his hands, and Nick was surveying the wreckage with a distinctly wicked grin. He and a few others kept the dialogue moving, and strangely, the audience seemed to be enjoying it.
Hamish was still standing at my elbow. “I can’t help you,” I hissed at him. “Get back out there.”
I saw him look over my shoulder and his eyes widen. He swallowed with definite fear then bolted back onstage. I spun around, terrified at what I might see.
Lori was striding across the back of the set with a look of thunder in her eyes. Officer Steele trailed meekly in her wake.
“What the hell is going on back here?” she roared, managing to turn a discreet stage-whisper into a threat of hell raining from above. Ben scurried out of wings and wrung his hands timidly. “The cast seems to be intoxicated, Marlene has turned into vampish seductress, Hamish is walking off the stage whenever he feels like it, and now I catch Officer Steele trying to break in the back door with some cock and bull story about a serial killer haunting backstage!” She paused to suck a breath into her more than ample frame and took the moment to pull herself together. When she continued, her voice was back to a level more suitable for backstage whispering. “Now, would someone like to please explain what is going on before I begin slamming heads together?”
Steele stepped forward and held his hands out placatingly. Ben interrupted him before he could begin. “Keep your hair, Loz. It’s all going fine. The audience are still enjoying it, aren’t they?”
She narrowed her eyes at him and crossed her arms over her chest. “Yes,” she admitted. “They are. But I don’t think that’s the point, Benedict.”
Conway burst out the upstage door of the set.
“The arm!” he whisper-yelled. “The knife-arm! We’re all improvising like crazy out there. Aren’t you guys listening? Do the stabbing thing! Now!”
Ben and I sprang guiltily towards the o
pp-prompt wing, colliding in our haste to get to the operable knife-arm mechanism. We jammed into the narrow space together and both grabbed the lever at the same time in our panic. The knife-arm shot out of its secret panel with twice its usual force and extended into the stage a great deal further than it would normally go. This was the moment in the script where one of the characters revealed the hidden knife, explaining how Mauvins the butler had met his end. It wasn’t supposed to kill anyone now, but it also wasn’t supposed shoot out that far and then hang there quivering as Ben and I wrestled over who should be holding it.
There was an odd silence on the stage.
“Ooo, it’s very big, isn’t it?” came Marlene’s voice eventually, and the audience exploded into laughter.
We reeled the knife-arm in again.
“That was my job,” I hissed at Ben.
“Well, you should have been doing it then.”
“I was!”
He sniggered suddenly. “Lori’s going mental. We’d better go back and explain it to her.”
Back in the props room, Tamara and Steele had just about been through everything with Lori. Tamara had a theory. “I think you should ask Bill where he was,” she whispered. “I mean, you said everyone was onstage when Marlene was attacked, but Jenny and I were in the wings and Bill would have been downstairs because he was already dead.”
Steele frowned.
“His character was dead,” I said quickly. “Stabbed in the first act. He’s been offstage since then. But Bill wouldn’t...”
“Bill wouldn’t what?” came a sepulchral voice from the doorway. We all spun around. Bill was lurking in the semi-darkness outside the door with another cup of coffee under his nose. “You do know you’re seconds away from the end of the act, don’t you?” he pointed out, his voice as dour as it usually was. “You might want to drop the curtain soon.”
Ben ducked out from under Lori’s hand as she swiped at his head and dashed to the door. Seconds later we heard the wave of applause from the audience and the cast tumbled out of the set.