The Opening Night Murders

by James Scott Byrnside

  Christine’s eyes lit up with the realization of a forgotten memory. She slapped at Edward’s hand. “No, Eddie, it wasn’t the nurse I saw.” They both looked at her with astonishment. Rowan asked what she meant. “I didn’t see the nurse. I saw the girl with the black hair.”

  Edward said, “She’s tired.”

  Rowan took a long drag. “The girl with the black hair? She was at the hospital?”

  Edward wrung his hands. “Christine gets batty sometimes, imagines things that aren’t there.”

  Christine smiled. “She’s the one whose voice I recognized. She’s the reason I went to the hospital.”

  Edward tried to pull her from the chair. “Christine, it’s time for you to go back to bed. You need to take longer naps. You get up too soon, and you’re still half asleep. It isn’t good for you.”

  She refused to budge. “I’m not tired though.”

  Rowan said, “What did she do to you, this black-haired, nasty girl?”

  Edward said, “Mr. Manory, don’t provoke her. You can’t rely on what she says.”

  He kept his gaze on Christine. “What is the girl’s name?”

  “Christine, I’m taking you up to bed.”

  She tried to push Edward aside. “She wanted to kill me.”

  “Was her name Maura?”

  Edward swung around and screamed, “Manory!”

  The room remained quiet for a bit. Something far away was humming, but mostly the sound of stillness filled the air. That is quite the temper you have there, Ed. I have not seen it before. “May I use your telephone?”

  Stunned, Edward only offered a meek nod.

  Rowan tossed the unfinished cigarette into the fireplace and called the office. “Williams.”

  Walter sighed and put down the pencil. “I was just writing you a note, old man. I’d almost finished and now you call me and ruin the whole thing. What’s the rumpus?”

  “Drop everything. We need to find Maura Lewis immediately.”

  “No can do, boss.”

  “What do you mean, no can do?”

  “I thought I’d take a little vacation.”

  “Where?”

  “Adair.”

  “Adair?”

  “I can rhyme with you if you’ve got time to spare.”

  “Timothy Brown’s hometown? What do you hope to find …there…goddammit, stop it!”

  Walter giggled. “I was looking at Grizz’s map of Illinois, and Timothy’s hometown was one of the circled cities. This plot might even be bigger than we thought. I figure while you’re off in Baraboo, I’ll head to Adair. It should take about nine hours, so it’ll take me fifteen. Give me a couple days to report back. I’ll either call you at the office when you get back, or I’ll leave a message at the Brown Bear. This clue is calling me, Manory.”

  Rowan sighed into the telephone. “Have something good for me when you return.”

  “Will do. And hey, remember, as soon as we wrap this up, we’re on a plane to Los Angeles.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Don’t yeah yeah me. You promised me that—”

  Rowan hung up. He put his hands on Edward’s shoulders. “Do you remember when I told you about Lisa’s fall?”

  “Yes, you said it was like a trance.”

  “Or a coma. The same thing that happened to your aunt may have happened to Lisa Pluviam, only Lisa was not near a hospital, she was twenty feet in the air.” He exhaled a long breath. “I know you have been lying to me.”

  “I—”

  “Shut up. I know. Despite appearances to the contrary, I am not a fool. Was Maura alone with your aunt before she went into her coma?”

  “Not really.”

  “Yes or no? The truth now.”

  Edward stammered. “Yes, but only for a few minutes.”

  “A few minutes may have been plenty of time. Has she offered to take care of Christine for you?”

  He said nothing.

  “Edward, Christine is in danger. I know you have feelings for Maura, but you’ve got to be careful. And for God’s sake, don’t leave her alone with your aunt.”

  Edward watched through the window as Rowan shuffled down the walkway to the street.

  Christine said, “He’s right. She’ll try and kill you too, Edward. She pretends to be innocent. Oh, I’m just a girl. I need your help. Rubbish. She knows exactly what she’s doing. Every moment, every single flip of the hair is calculated. I told you to get rid of her. You should have heard her in the attic. I’ve never heard such filth.”

  He made a break for the stairs, leaping two at a time up to the second floor. In the guest bedroom, the receiver lay off the hook. Edward stuck his head out the open window. The back gate to the alley was still swaying in the hot breeze.

  CHAPTER 12 re-cast

  5:30 p.m. Friday, April 12th

  Rowan tossed his suit coat over the desk. He felt the case had to be nearing its end. All the little gathered pieces had filled the outer edges of the puzzle nicely and at a reasonable pace. He would go to Baraboo the next morning, and the tangled web of revenge his mind had reconstructed would become altogether obvious. It always reveals itself to be incredibly simple. Patience, old man.

  The phone rang. “Williams?”

  The voice on the other end groaned. “No, ahh. This isn’t Williams. Doctor Crandall.”

  “My deepest apologies. This is Rowan Manory Investigations. How may I help you?”

  “Are you Rowan Manory?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Why doncha have a secretary? Mighty unprofessional.”

  “I will take it under advisement. How can I help you?”

  “Well, ahh, like I said, I’m Doctor Crandall. I’m the chief of surgery at Mercy Hospital. I understand you’ve been trying to get a hold of me.”

  Rowan sat in his chair. “Yes, sir. Thank you so much for calling.”

  “About the Pluviam woman?”

  “I take it this is the hospital she went to in 1913.”

  “Ahh, that’s right. And there’s been an accident?”

  “A terrible accident, yes.”

  “Well, what happened?”

  “Lisa was performing a scene at the top of a tower and, unfortunately, she fell twenty feet to her death.”

  “My God. Horrible news.”

  “Yes, there was a full house in the theater when it happened. It caused quite a bit of panic.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “I am attempting to contact her sister Jenny to inform her. Tell me, were you the surgeon who performed the amputation?”

  “Uh-huh, ahh. I remember the Pluviams very well. Fine women. Such a shame about Lisa. Remarkably intelligent girl. Good looking too.”

  “Oh, I know.”

  “That’s some real rotten luck she had. Probably the worst luck anybody’s ever heard of.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, ahh, first she loses her hand. It turns out that doesn’t stop her from becoming an actress—against all reasonable odds. Then what happens? She dies onstage in some sort of freak accident.”

  “No, I think you have misunderstood me. Lisa Pluviam is the one who died.”

  “Yeah, ahh. Lisa. The one who lost her hand.”

  “But…” Rowan dropped the phone. The gears in his brain began rolling forward. The puzzle flipped.

  “Have you ever been here before?” The security guard pushed the button for the fourth floor.

  “Never.”

  “Awful kippy. Awful kippy.”

  Rowan gave a polite smile and tried to think of the meaning of kippy. “How do you mean?”

  With a rattling jolt, the elevator reached the fourth floor. The guard grabbed the handle. “Did you read the sign at the front desk?”

  “I must have missed it.”

  “One hundred percent transparency.”

  There were eight rooms, four on either side. The walls to each room were glass, allowing everyone on the floor to see one another. Each room h
ad an oblong desk with a client surrounded by anywhere from one to three skinny lawyers wearing double-breasted Livingston suits. The tie color appeared to be optional.

  How witty.

  Jenny Pluviam sat in the third room on the right, a small pile of papers and a mountain of pencils in front of her. She turned her head as Rowan came down the hall. He met her stare through the glass.

  One of the lawyers frowned and shook his head. “Highly irregular.”

  The guard opened without knocking. “Terribly sorry, but there’s an urgent message for Miss Pluviam.”

  The lawyer stood up and shook his fists. “No, no, no, Eli, we are discussing sensitive matters. This is highly irregular.”

  Rowan put his hands behind his back. “Miss Pluviam, this cannot wait. I regret to inform you that your younger sister, Jenny, has died. I hate to be the wicked messenger, but I thought you would like to know.”

  Jenny put her elbows on the table and clasped her stump. “Would you gentlemen give us a moment of privacy?”

  “But, Miss Pluviam—”

  “Fuck right off.”

  The suits collected the messy pile of papers without further comment. They scurried out the door and stood in the hall, staring in wonderment at the two poker-faced combatants in the room.

  A maddening panorama of reflections bounced off one another at various angles on the glass. Several faded Rowans paced along with the real one. “They must spend a fortune on Windex.”

  Jenny began without Rowan prompting her. “There were two sisters long, long ago in the old, hard-up struggling days. She was always the clever one, the one who could write. I was the happy one. I loved people and parties. She preferred staying in and scribbling away at her precious stories. I’m not sure I can do our relationship justice in words, Mr. Manory, but we needed one another. She needed an object for her jealousy. When I came home reeking of alcohol with smudged lipstick and a smile on my face, she stewed with hatred, fed off of it like some monster in a fairy tale. I suppose I needed the stench of failure around me. I pitied her and it made me feel good to be able to pity such a helpless creature. It was some kind of love.”

  “You met Clarence?”

  “Clarence is very important to you, but he didn’t mean all that much to me. I wasn’t in love with the man. He asked me to marry him. I refused.”

  “Was Jenny in love with him?

  “Yes. When men have ignored you all your life, it must feel like true love when one drunkenly looks your way. One night, he came looking for me and Jenny answered the door and…let’s just say that Clarence wasn’t a very picky man. It was two months later when Jenny told me. I can see it like it was yesterday. She poured into the kitchen with this shit-eating grin. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I’m pregnant and I’m getting married and you’ll never guess the father. The silly bitch thought it would devastate me. Wouldn’t you know it, when she told him the news, he didn’t serenade her with promises of his love. He offered to drive her to St. Louis for an abortion.”

  “Did she?”

  “No, Jenny had the baby, a little girl.”

  “What happened to the child?”

  “She went to an orphanage. Jenny wasn’t interested in keeping a memento from her one night of bliss with Clarence.”

  “Did she kill him?”

  “I always thought it was her.”

  “And you said nothing to the police.”

  She shook her head. “I told you. Clarence didn’t mean very much to me. I was a little pissed when I had to make the trip to Baraboo, but I was also proud of my little sister.”

  Rowan sat down at the opposite end of the table. “Why?”

  “She actually stood up for herself.”

  “No.” He slammed his hand on the table. “Why?”

  “Oh.” She held up her right arm. “It didn’t take long before I realized my acting days were over. There aren’t many plays that call for a one-handed woman. I was lying in my hospital bed when she first mentioned the idea. We could both write. She would teach me. Now she pitied me, and she rather liked that. That’s when it occurred to her, I’m sure of it. Things began to change for me. The first few months were hard. Children were the worst.”

  “Children?”

  “On the street. Children have no filter. When they see my condition, they ask their mothers, What’s wrong with that woman? What happened to her? People weren’t as friendly as they once were, especially men. I began to stay away from everyone. I stayed inside, Mr. Manory. Ice cream and cigarettes became my best friends. Jenny changed too. She went outside more, quit smoking, got in shape. I called the school and asked if we could both get into the writing program. There were two spots held for us. One was for a playwright and one for an actress. That was it. One day, she dyed her hair black and she told me she could be me. I laughed it off, but Jenny wasn’t joking.”

  “Why would you continue to dye your hair, keep up the charade? Even now, after returning to Chicago?”

  “I don’t expect you to understand. Have you ever read any Erik Erikson?”

  Rowan slowly put it together. “Identity crisis. In the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity.”

  “That’s right. Trouble was, I didn’t have one anymore. I wasn’t the woman I had been and there was no one else I could become. It wasn’t even a conscious decision. One day she called me Jenny. I answered her. I’ve done it ever since. That’s the one way I could live.”

  “So when your father died, you were the rightful heir. But your sister received the money.”

  She tossed back her blonde hair. “I threatened to reveal our secret if she didn’t fund my play. I thought the death threat was a way for her to get back at me. Seems we’ll never know now.”

  Rowan stood, his body shaking with contempt. “She chastised me for using too many words, said it was a habit from her writing days.”

  “She was a good writer, but she wasn’t as good as I am. And she wasn’t half the actress I was.”

  “Are you sorry she’s dead?”

  “I didn’t want her to die.”

  “What if she wanted you dead?”

  “Me? But…” Her mouth remained open, the lower lip wavering.

  Now you see the obvious angle. “The biggest obstacle to murder is not the nerve, nor is it the inclination. No, no, it is the punishment. How does one get away with it? There are a million ways, most of them obviously transparent. One rather clever way is to paint yourself as the victim. Say, if you were to make it seem as if you are the one who is in danger. How to do that? Set it up properly.”

  “A death threat.” Jenny’s eyes softened.

  “Yes. You receive the death threat. Then when the murder is committed, it can be called self-defense. That is all well and good, but the police—they will naturally wonder why you didn’t report such a thing.”

  “You report it to a detective.”

  “No, not just any detective. You find a foolish, senile old…” Rowan’s face curled in hateful knots. “Someone who was desperate enough to think that a beautiful woman would find him interesting. A man who would blind himself in an effort to believe. You tell him and then you beg him not to go to the police. Of course, he says yes. You have to be a good actress. You plan to tell him the scene upon which you found the note—the balcony scene. But this man, he’s such a fool, he’s the one who brings it up, and you sit back and ask, Is that important? He agrees to watch you. When your sister is called to the catwalk and thrown to her death, you say you witnessed her pointing a gun at you. You pay off Grizz a portion of your inheritance, and voila. Grizz is a hero. None of the audience members sees him do it because they are watching the actress on stage. Edward doesn’t see it because the light on the catwalk is blinding from his position on the balcony.”

  “And the detective?”

  “He confirms all the details. You give him a peck on the cheek and leave him comfortable in his ignorance.”


  “Well?” asked Jenny.

  “Well what?”

  “Is it better knowing the truth?”

  “I do not know the truth. Tomorrow, I will take the train to Baraboo, and I will find out what exactly happened all those years ago.” Rowan paused at the door. “In the meantime, you had better hope no one else discovers your identity.”

  “Why is that, detective?”

  “Because if the killer wanted to murder Lisa Pluviam, then he has some unfinished business, doesn’t he?”

  CHAPTER 13 EYewitness

  7:45 p.m. Saturday, April 13th

  The last futile rays of the sun stretched to the flat Adair horizon, the streaky greens and purples melting into gray under the emergent moon. A row of traffic lined the road out to Peoria as the employees of Brown Laboratories steeled themselves for the ride home along lengthy, boring stretches of farms and muddy fields. At the opposite end of the town, the main street lay dormant, the families shutting themselves indoors for supper and gathering round the radio for an episode of Jungle Jim.

  Brown Laboratories was isolated from the goings-on of Adair, only a few farms within a half-mile radius. People rarely drove by, and no one really knew what was done in the strange looking building besides what they read in the paper. From above, the construct resembled a T except the top short line was curved at the ends, as if someone had taken a hammer to the two top corners.

  Walter came out of Dr. Brown’s office with a rush of adrenaline he had not felt for some time. The receptionist poked her head out from behind her copy of The Red House Mystery. When Walter reached the desk, he froze. His eyes looked over the grain of the wood and lost focus.

  She tilted down a thick pair of glasses with her pinky. “Are you all right, Mr. Williams?”

  He sputtered to attention, and the focus came back. “Don’t call me Mr. Williams. I’m not a school teacher. Call me Walter.”

  She chuckled, looking back at the door to Dr. Brown’s office. “Are you all right, Walter? Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “Oh, yes. I did, but I’ve remembered something just now. It didn’t seem important before.” Lisa, Timothy, Edward, Allison, and Maura. The names! The gears in his brain clicked into place, and the elusive puzzle revealed itself to him in all its complicated glory. “Oh, my God! Of course. Lisa—”