Cassandra's Last Spotlight (Charlotte Diamond Mysteries - Christmas)

by Olivia Stowe

  * * * *

  “The son of God fled into Egypt, and the slaughter of the children by Herod began.”

  “The words are so common to our understanding at Christmas time, but the way Brenda delivers them . . .”

  “I know,” Charlotte Diamond said, as she watched her precious “other” standing on the stage in Curtain Call’s dayroom in the evening of December 23rd, delivering lines during the dress rehearsal for the Christmas program. “I don’t think there are lines so simple and common that Brenda couldn’t make them magical.”

  “It’s almost too bad that they are Cassandra Carlisle’s lines rather than hers,” Geneva Tindle said.

  The program was little more than the singing of Christmas carols interspersed with recitations from the stage. What was magical was that they were delivered by the voices of some pretty famous movie stars of yesteryear. The entertainers were sitting in a semicircle around the stage, waiting their turns to deliver their lines or sing their solos or duets. Cassandra was sitting there too. But this wasn’t one of her good days. Brenda, who was directing the program, was delivering her lines from the stage for her—and was prepared to go on the next evening if Cassandra wasn’t able to.

  Charlotte Diamond, the mayor of Hopewell and a retired senior FBI investigator, who was cosponsor of the Curtain Call retirement home and lived with her spouse, Brenda, in Brenda’s ancestral plantation house farther along the shoreline of the Choptank River from the rest home complex, was sitting at a table at the back of the room. Sitting with her were Geneva Tindle; Evonne Clagett, the whirlwind “gets-everything-done” director of the facility; and Don Dunkel, the pastor of the town’s Episcopal church. Dunkel had just come down from the stage where he and young Billy Zirkel, the proprietor of the town’s gas station, located on the same street as the Episcopal church, had been working for days on the stage backdrop. Billy was still there, perched on a ladder and putting final touches to the scene of Bethlehem on a snowy night.

  Charlotte and Brenda’s two dogs, the Siberian husky Sam, and the boxer Rocket, were mingling with the retirement home residents, who were stroking and murmuring to the dogs as the two canines worked the room. Sam and Rocket were frequent visitors to the rest home and were favorites of the residents. Rocket was doing most of the roaming. Sam mostly remained plastered to Cassandra’s side, almost as if he knew she needed the extra attention, and Cassandra was stroking him almost absentmindedly, a little, vacant smile on her lips.

  Cassandra hadn’t been as “out of it” earlier in the day as she was now, but she had withdrawn into herself after the incident that morning with Karl Dickson, and Brenda had had to take her place in the program dress rehearsal. The incident had happened when Karl had seen Cassandra’s son, Harold Snoddy, talking with Cassandra outside her room. Karl had become agitated and pushed himself between Harold and Cassandra. He had screamed something about Harold trying to murder Cassandra. By the time the staff had sorted that out, Cassandra had disappeared within herself, the son had disappeared, and Karl was being wheeled back to his room for pills and, everyone hoped, a nap behind a closed door.

  By the time the dress rehearsal had started, life at Curtain Call had pretty much settled down again. The four sitting at the table at the back of the room felt separated enough from the production being rehearsed on stage that they conversed with each other in whispers, only occasionally redirecting their attention to the rehearsal.

  “Brenda says that she has her hands full with directing the program,” Charlotte said.

  “But we all know that it’s just Brenda making sure that Cassandra has one last moment in the spotlight,” Evonne said. “Which is wonderful of her considering how hard Cassandra has worked since she came here to seem more important than Brenda.”

  “Which will never happen,” Geneva murmured. “Cassandra was a star of the moment. Brenda is a star for all time.”

  “Yes, she is,” Charlotte agreed—with the thought that Brenda wasn’t just a movie star. She was the star of Charlotte’s life. The two had married earlier that year, taking quick advantage of the changes in Maryland law on same-sex marriage.

  Both had been with men before—and both were pursued by men still—but Charlotte had never been as happy and contented in her life as she had been since retiring from the FBI to Hopewell and meeting Brenda, who also was attempting to retire from the movies to her girlhood home. That both were being periodically pulled back into their former elements—Charlotte to solving crimes and Brenda to dabbling still in movies—had been the major threat to a stable life together. Working together on this retirement community for movie folks, however, was giving them common cause, and the nine months of peaceful pottering about in Hopewell since their marriage and “horrid honeymoon,” as Charlotte insisted on calling it, which had started with a stolen limousine and a dead body and nearly ended in piracy at sea, had been the best nine months of Charlotte’s life. Brenda frequently said it was the same for her. Sam and Rocket certainly were pleased to have their mistresses home for such a long period.

  “The program is going to be great,” Evonne said, with satisfaction. “The dramatic readings provide perfect punctuation to the singing. Those attending will be astounded to learn that so many of their favorite movie actors are also accomplished singers.”

  “And dancers too,” Geneva added. “Most don’t realize that to have made it on stage in years past required the full complement of talent—singing and dancing as well as acting. Although I hope none of our residents attempt the dancing tomorrow night. We don’t need to be overseeing any hip replacements on Christmas morning.”

  “The program is going to be great, yes,” Dr. Dunkel said, “But I remain a little worried about it meeting its primary goal.”

  “You mean in better melding the people of the town with the residents of Curtain Call?” Charlotte asked.

  “Yes,” the pastor answered. “I was so hoping that more would come out to help set it up. When we planned this, the residents were to provide the program and the townspeople were to provide the stage set. We were encouraging the mixing of the two. I’m embarrassed that only Billy Zirkel showed up to help me with the set. We barely finished it in time. And ticket sales in the community have been slow.”

  “Perhaps we shouldn’t have charged admission,” Geneva said. “But I think it’s a shame that only you and Billy have shown up to work on the set. It’s beautiful, though.”

  “People don’t value what they get completely for free,” Evonne said, her jaw setting. “And we made clear that the proceeds would go to Christmas decorations for the town. The townspeople should appreciate that. Maybe we’ll sell most of the seats at the door.”

  “I’ll lean on Mary and Walt Miller,” Charlotte said. “If they come, others will feel obligated to show up.” Mary Miller was the town clerk and the owner of the beauty salon, and her husband, Walt, ran the barber shop. Both had tripled their business since Curtain Call had opened. Walt had also recently opened up a hardware store. Curtain Call residents didn’t shop there much, but their presence had increased the number of houses being built in the town for Curtain Call staffers and, thus, the shopping needs of the town across the board, and his business was doing well.

  “We don’t want them to feel obligated to come. We want the townspeople and the home residents to want to mingle.” Brenda had vacated the stage and come back to the table.

  “I want to see Bonny Levitt come through those doors tomorrow night,” Geneva said with a snort. “She told me when I first met her in town that she’d never set foot in the place—that old people made her nervous. And then I found that she’s older than more than half of the residents here.”

  They all gave a little chuckle at that. Bonny proclaimed herself as the oldest village resident and was wheelchair bound. But she had a biting sarcastic humor, acquired from outliving three husbands, that livened up town council meetings as she did battle with her nemesis, Hannah Helgerson, who rivaled her in the claim to village
longevity and memory of what happened when.

  “You sounded great up there,” Geneva went on to say to Brenda.

  “Thank you. I think I should speak to Cassandra, though, and assure her,” Brenda answered. “Have you seen her?”

  “She’s just over there,” Don Dunkel said, swiveling around to his side and extending his arm.

  But Cassandra wasn’t “just over there” anymore. And Sam wasn’t there either. Neither of them was anywhere in the room.

  “Oh, dear, I should have kept an eye on her,” Geneva said, as she stood up from the table. “This turned out not to be a good day for her, and when she’s confused she goes on the prowl.”

  As quietly as possible, the five of them started rounding up staff members and, as unobtrusively as they could manage, started searching the rambling complex for the wayward actress.

  The jig was up, though, some minutes later, when Karl Dickson overheard that a search was on. He started wheeling himself through the corridors and, eventually, into the dayroom, disrupting the dress rehearsal, and hollering out, “I knew it. The man has murdered Cassandra and buried her out in the yard. I told you all this was going to happen—and none of you paid a bit of attention to me. Well, the old girl’s dead now, not thanks to you lot.”

  Needless to say, the residents of Curtain Call got a little worked up by the excitement, and now the staff had a multidimensional problem on its hands.