Setting the Stage for Murder

by Robert W. Gregg

  It was equally obvious that Merriman did not reciprocate his interest in her. Realizing this, several members of the cast had taken it upon themselves to be protective of her. But Gerlach’s stinging critique of her singing had hurt, and Carpenter’s support only embarrassed her. Heather began to cry.

  “Don’t. Please don’t,” she said, her words presumably intended for Carpenter, as she turned to Kevin for help.

  Eventually things settled down, but the episode had left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. Gerlach made no effort to hide the nips he took from a flask in his jacket pocket, and Kevin ultimately decided to bring the rehearsal to an early end.

  _____

  The third problem which Kevin reported on to Carol did not lead to harsh words between cast members. But it did not bode well for the production of Gianni Schicchi. It occurred one night when Kevin, who had been at the piano, turned the accompaniment over to Redman and briefly went to the back of the auditorium to get a better sense of how voices were carrying.

  Harley Gerlach was dictating the opera’s false will to the notary onstage, and his former wife was out in the auditorium, talking to the cellist who had made the offensive racial remark at the first meeting of the company.

  Kevin started to ask them to tone it down when he realized that they were discussing Gerlach. And it was obvious that they shared the view that the company’s Gianni Schicchi was, to put it charitably, a thoroughly despicable man.

  “I somehow assumed that Harley was your ‘nigger in the woodpile,’” Janet Myers said. “But how did you know I used to be married to him?”

  “I can’t remember when or where I heard, but sooner or later victims of the same person become aware of each other. And what he’d done to our lives. We should create a support group, don’t you think?”

  The orchestra wasn’t rehearsing that evening, but Conklin had come to Brae Loch anyway. What he was saying to Myers made it clear that his reason for being there was that he wanted to study Gerlach, this man who had destroyed his marriage.

  “I almost quit when I learned that Harley was in the cast,” Myers said.

  “Can’t say I blame you,” Conklin said, “but it was different for me. I knew Gerlach lived in the area, and like you, I didn’t want anything to do with him. Then when I heard about the Brae Loch opera, I figured he’d be in it. And all of a sudden I had to be here, too. Not quite sure why. The fascination of evil, I guess.”

  “Does he know you? I mean did you ever meet?”

  “No, never. But I knew the name. It’s not all that common. Helen eventually told me herself that the other man was Gerlach. She told me before she died—I think she felt she had to make one of those deathbed confessions. Told me all about him, about his singing at the Met—she’d actually seen him there, probably had heard some inflated story about how big he was in the opera world.”

  “But does he know who you are—that you’re here, playing all the while he sings his miserable little heart out?”

  “Not sure. But, yes, probably. After all, my wife’s name was Conklin, and we’re a small company. Anyway, he’s seen us talking, and I doubt that he thinks we’re discussing Puccini.”

  “So what are you going to do?” Myers asked.

  “Do?” Arthur Conklin looked as if he didn’t know what she meant.

  “Yes. You know, pretend you don’t know him. Or maybe confront him.”

  “No idea. Right now I’m just trying to figure out what makes him tick. Just watching him playing the ‘big I am.’ For all I know, he’ll never say anything, just act as if we’re fellow musicians who have a chance to be part of an amateur opera production.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Janet Myers said as she stood up and headed back to the stage for an ensemble scene which followed.

  _____

  “Has all of this taken away your appetite?” Kevin asked.

  “Not in the least,” Carol answered. “Just because your man Gerlach is doing his best to put everyone on edge doesn’t mean I’m not ready for one of your dinner surprises. What’s it going to be, by the way?”

  “Not much of a surprise. Would you believe hamburgers? Assuming, that is, my fire isn’t just ashes by now.”

  He got up and headed for the deck and his old grill, Carol right behind him.

  It was a beautiful evening, the hill across the lake bathed in a golden glow from the setting sun. Carol wrapped her arms around him from behind, and they watched the light slowly fade for several minutes before Kevin announced that he’d better be starting the burgers.

  “There are too many Gerlachs in this world,” she said. “I used to see them in my law practice, and I’ve run into a few here on Crooked Lake. Remember Britingham?”

  “How could I forget him,” Kevin said. After all, his relationship with the sheriff had begun the morning he found him dead on his dock.

  “Annoying as he is, though, Gerlach can’t be as bad as Britingham. Anyway, he’s got a great voice. You said it yourself. By the time the curtain falls on the last performance of your opera, I bet you’ll be singing his praises. He may turn into your ticket to a sabbatical at Brae Loch. Then you’d forgive him for everything, wouldn’t you?”

  “That I would,” Kevin said. As he put the burgers on the grill, he had no idea that he would never have a chance to forgive Harley Gerlach, much less sing his praises.

  CHAPTER 7

  “I’ve got a bed outside in the truck,” Andy Rogers said. “They told me to bring it over to the college. Where’s it supposed to go?”

  The woman at the front desk in Menlo Hall was obviously surprised by the question.

  “A bed? I don’t know anything about a bed. Are you sure it’s to be delivered at Brae Loch?”

  “That’s what Joe told me when we loaded it onto the truck. Here, let me show you the invoice.”

  Phyllis Melton reached across her desk and took the paper from Rogers. She studied it silently for a minute, her expression gradually turning into a scowl.

  “The name here is Whitman, and that means it’s for that opera they’re doing.” Her tone of voice suggested that she wasn’t particularly happy with Whitman and his opera.

  “I’ll be glad when they’re gone, all of them,” she said, making it clear that she was indeed unhappy with Brae Loch’s involvement in the production of an opera. “Always coming in here with questions—where’s so and so, who’s got a key to some room, have we got a saw—need it for work on the set. And on and on it goes. Anyway, the bed must be going over to the auditorium. We’ve got a student assistant who can show you where to put it.”

  Ms. Melton turned from her desk and called out in the general direction of the mail room off to her right.

  “Chris, are you there?”

  No one answered her, so she raised her voice and tried again.

  “Christopher Ellis, we need you out front. Man here needs to take a bed down to the auditorium.”

  It took a minute, but a lanky young man with a mop of curly blond hair soon made an appearance.

  “See if you can help this young man deliver a bed. It’s going to the auditorium. He may need another strong back.”

  “Probably won’t be necessary,” Rogers said. “Joe’s waiting for me out in the truck.”

  The two men disappeared out the front door, Ms. Melton watching them go.

  It didn’t take long for the bed to be set up on the stage where it was to serve as the principal piece of furniture on the spare set for Puccini’s opera. Chris looked at his watch and decided to take a walk down to the waterfront. He had finished the task of sticking the day’s mail in the pigeon holes reserved for Brae Loch’s faculty, and Ms. Melton would have no idea how long it had taken to unload the bed.

  Chris cut around the chapel and took the path that led to the boathouse where the school’s sailing club stored its boats. The beach stretched out for perhaps sixty yards to the north of the boathouse and gave way there to a pair of docks and a swimming area, cordoned off by
ropes held up by bright red buoys. The area was deserted except for a woman in a two-piece bathing suit who was lying on the bank above the beach.

  She appeared to be asleep. The blue and gold suit concealed little of what Chris thought was a nice body. He wondered if he had seen her around campus, perhaps in one of his classes. If only she would turn over.

  As if she had heard his thought, she opened her eyes and pushed herself up onto an elbow.

  “Hi. Mind telling me what time it is?”

  Slightly embarrassed to have been caught staring at her, Chris produced a sheepish smile and informed her that it was now close to noon. The last classes of the morning would be getting out in a few minutes.

  It was a small college, and registration for summer classes was modest even by Brae Loch standards. She looked like a student, but Chris was sure he had never seen her before. How could he not have noticed her?

  “Do you have to change for class?” he asked.

  “No, no. Nothing like that.” She favored him with a pleasant smile and rolled over on her back.

  “Mind if I sit for a minute?” he asked, surprising himself by doing so.

  “No, not at all. I’ve got another five minutes, maybe ten. What’s you name?”

  “Chris. Chris Ellis. I’m working for the provost. And taking classes, of course. Business. What’s your field?”

  She laughed.

  “I’m not a student here. Actually I go to school over in Buffalo.”

  Chris was puzzled and said so.

  “You probably know that they’re putting on an opera,” she said. “Well, I’m in it.”

  “You sing?” Chris made it sound as if he didn’t know that young college-age girls could sing.

  “Yes, I do. At least I’m learning to. It’s a great part. And by the way, my name is Heather.”

  Chris had barely been aware that an opera was to be performed at Brae Loch in a couple of weeks. And here he was having a conversation with a member of that opera’s cast, a beautiful girl who didn’t look at all like someone who would be into that kind of high-brow stuff.

  “I just helped deliver a big bed to the auditorium,” he said. “They told me it had something to do with your opera. Want to tell me about it?”

  Heather laughed good-naturedly.

  “Sure. You see, this old man has just died and his greedy relatives all want to find his will, find out what he left them. Unfortunately, he left everything to the church. But there’s this guy—he’s my father in the story—he gets an idea. Why not climb into the bed, pretend he’s the old man, still alive, and dictate a new will. Everybody’s excited, thinking they’re going to make out like bandits. Daddy’s got other ideas, though. He leaves everything to himself, which makes it possible for him to help me marry my sweetheart. So you see, without that bed, none of it would have worked.”

  “Sounds sort of improbable to me,” Chris said when she finished her capsule summary of the plot of Gianni Schicchi.

  “It is. You have to suspend disbelief.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I guess it’s what makes opera opera. It isn’t realistic. But this one isn’t as outrageous as most.”

  “Well, I guess I’m glad I got to help with the bed.”

  Heather broke into laughter again.

  “And we’re all going to be grateful,” she said. “That cot we’ve been using is a disaster—much too small. No way anybody could hide in it.”

  It was at that moment that a man came hurrying down the bank from the direction of the campus. Neither Chris nor Heather had seen him.

  “Lauretta! Where have you been?”

  The man who approached looked agitated.

  “Hi, Sean. I thought we said 12:30.”

  Chris Ellis tried to follow this exchange, a puzzled expression on his face.

  “We did, but no one had seen you, so I started to worry. What are you doing here?”

  By here, it was obvious that he meant on the beach. In a bathing suit. And talking to a stranger.

  “It’s called rest and relaxation. This, by the way, is Chris Ellis. He’s the one who got us the new bed. Have you seen it? Chris, this is Sean Carpenter, the man I’m supposed to marry in the opera.”

  Chris was still puzzled.

  “I’m sorry, but you called her Lauretta, didn’t you?” he said to Carpenter.

  It was Heather who answered his question.

  “Oh, that,” she said. “Sean thinks we should stay in character. Thinks it helps us get inside our parts. He’s Rinuccio. I’m Lauretta.”

  Carpenter shook his head.

  “You ought to try harder,” he told her. “It really works. Anyway, we ought to get moving. Why don’t you run along and change. I’ll wait here for you.”

  It was clear that Heather’s onstage partner had taken charge, that she had been told to get dressed, that Chris had been told to get lost. It was the end of what had been a very pleasant interlude in the day of the Brae Loch business major.

  CHAPTER 8

  The bed. It was the object of everyone’s attention, the subject of everyone’s conversation. The cast and the orchestra were arriving for what would be one of the first attempts by the entire company to rehearse together. The small cot that had served as a stand-in for a proper bed had been relegated to the wings, and the king-sized four-poster which had been donated by Mueller’s Furniture Store in Yates Center now occupied center stage. Moreover, the provost had persuaded his wife to let the college borrow some of their bedding, so the bed now sported a large colorful spread and a couple of matching pillows.

  Two or three members of the company wanted to test the big bed, and it wasn’t long before a small queue had formed for a chance to crawl under the covers and play at being Schicchi. It was as if they all had come to the realization that opening night was just around the corner, and the thought had made them momentarily giddy. Mercedes Redman was growing impatient with this particular form of tomfoolery, but not everyone had arrived and she knew she would have to put up with it for awhile longer.

  Puccini’s Zita, otherwise known as Janet Myers, was taking her turn under the covers when her ex-husband made a belated entrance via the back of the auditorium.

  “So here we are, we happy band of mischief makers,” he announced as he marched down the aisle. And then he noticed the bed.

  “My bed! At last, my bed! Who’s responsible for this miracle?”

  “It’s courtesy of the local furniture store,” Kevin spoke up. “Delivered this morning. Makes us look professional, don’t you think?”

  “Still a sow’s ear, silk purse problem, but it’s an improvement,” Gerlach said as he climbed onto the stage. He went straight to the bed and proceeded to throw himself down on it.

  The howl that ensued could have been heard in Menlo Hall. Harley Gerlach knew immediately that he had landed on something other than the mattress. Janet Myers knew just as immediately that a heavy weight had fallen on her. There was a violent thrashing about as Gerlach scrambled off the bed and Myers extricated herself from the bulky spread.

  Two surprised and angry members of the cast stared at each other from opposite sides of the bed, momentarily speechless. It was Myers who found her voice first.

  “You miserable cretin,” she hollered at him. “If I’ve got a broken rib, I’ll sue you from here to Sunday.”

  Kevin hastened to the scene unfolding before him, instantly worried that his Zita might have been hurt and anxious that this most unfortunate chance encounter on the newly arrived stage bed might derail the whole production of the Puccini opera.

  “Not to worry, Professor,” Gerlach said, recovering his composure. “She’ll be just fine. If I’d known she was hiding under the covers, I wouldn’t have gone near the bed. In fact, what the hell was she doing there? That woman has no business being in my bed. Ever.”

  “It’s not your bed. This is an opera, damn it, and it’s just a stupid prop.”

  Janet Myers turned on her hee
l and stormed offstage. Gerlach watched her go, then burst out laughing. No one else found the situation funny. Mercedes Redman was in shock. Kevin Whitman was fighting off panic.

  _____

  It had taken Kevin the better part of fifteen minutes to calm Janet Myers down. It had taken even longer for the company to get in the mood to rehearse Gianni Schicchi. Mercedes Redman had taken a long walk, after which she returned to the auditorium, still wondering what she had gotten herself into but more determined than ever not to let the troublemakers win. And there was no shortage of troublemakers. Gerlach was the worst, with his ex-wife currently running a close second. But although Mercedes had worked primarily with the orchestra, she had already seen enough of Paolo Rosetti and Sean Carpenter to realize that it might not take much to set off one or the other or both. And then there was Arthur Conklin, he of the ‘nigger in the woodpile’ remark. Who knew what—or who—might prompt him to say or do something that would place the production in jeopardy.

  And none of these potential problems had anything to do with such basic issues as keeping the singers and the orchestra on the same page or covering up for a member of the cast who suddenly forgot his lines or—heaven forbid—came down with an eleventh-hour case of laryngitis. Kevin’s worries were such that he had shifted more and more of the musical preparation to Redman. He found himself struggling with matters he had counted on the university people to handle, even including the printing and selling of tickets. On more than one occasion he had been reminded that the provost had consented to all of this because he viewed Kevin as a local celebrity, not because he loved opera or thought the college might benefit significantly from venturing into the realm of high culture.

  When the evening’s rehearsal finally began, Kevin took up the baton for the first time so that Mercedes could assume her place in the orchestra’s string section. It took only about three minutes for him to realize that Carol had been right. He was a teacher of opera, not a conductor. Oh, he could follow the score and wave his arms in time with the music, but he knew that his effort deserved at best a weak C. Maybe even a D.