Final Catcall

by Sofie Kelly

  Abigail nodded. “Ben told me that about two years ago she just seemed to drop out of sight. For months no one knew where she was.” She rolled her eyes. “You know the kind of stories that start going around. People said she had a drug problem. They said she was in rehab.”

  Andrew gestured toward the gazebo. “I’m just going to double-check those bungee cords. I’ll be right back.”

  Abigail and I started toward the parking lot.

  “So Chloe was in a car accident?” I said.

  “She was visiting family in Florida, driving to the beach in a convertible with the top down. A glass-repair truck ran the light and hit the car broadside. There was a lot of broken glass and Chloe was cut all over.” Abigail shook her head. “Ben said it was a miracle her face was okay.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “Remember when we were talking about how some people think Yesterday’s Child is jinxed?”

  I nodded.

  She gave me a grim smile. “Chloe was in a production of Yesterday’s Child right before her accident.”

  “C’mon, don’t tell me you’re starting to believe in the jinx?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Originally Yesterday’s Child was going to be part of the festival lineup.” Abigail held out both hands. “There was a fire at the theater in Red Wing and now Hugh’s dead.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I don’t believe in jinxes or curses or anything like that.”

  “Normally I don’t, either, Kathleen. But you have to admit there’s been a lot of negative energy associated with this festival.”

  “Hugh Davis isn’t dead because of a play,” I said.

  Abigail looked thoughtfully at me. “Then why is he dead?” she said.

  That was the problem. I still didn’t know.

  20

  Chloe arrived at the library at five minutes to one. We walked over to Eric’s and settled at one of the quieter tables against the end wall. After Claire had poured coffee and taken our orders, Chloe took off her jacket and folded her fingers around her mug.

  “I like this place,” she said, looking around the room with a smile. “It reminds me of this little place in Florida called Alexander’s.”

  “Florida’s home?” I asked.

  She nodded. “What about you?”

  “Boston,” I said. “My parents are there and so are my brother and sister. Mom’s been in LA doing Wild and Wonderful and Ethan is about to go on the road with his band, but Boston is home. We all end up back there eventually.”

  “This is a beautiful little town,” she said. “Everywhere I turn I see something that looks like a postcard. Did you see the sun coming up over the water this morning?”

  I nodded.

  “The other day I saw three sailboats anchored in the water and the surface was so still it looked like glass. I’ve taken dozens and dozens of pictures and I only got here Saturday.”

  “I did the same thing when I first got here,” I said with a smile.

  Chloe tipped her head to one side. “Do you mind if I ask why you’re a librarian and not a performer?”

  I laughed. “No. I don’t mind. I’m not a performer because I have absolutely no talent. I couldn’t carry a tune if it came with handles. I have two left feet and calling me wooden when I’m onstage is an insult—to wood.”

  Chloe laughed. “Kathleen, there’s no way you can be that awful.”

  “Sadly, there is,” I said with a grin. “I just didn’t get the performer gene. What about you? Did you always want to be an actor?”

  She traced a finger around the rim of her mug. “You know, I never thought about it that way. It’s just what I’ve always done. I was onstage before I could walk.”

  Claire came back then with our orders of Eric’s beef noodle soup and thick slices of sourdough bread, still warm from the oven. As we ate we talked about our favorite plays. I was surprised to find out Chloe had done several musicals.

  Claire brought the coffeepot around for refills as we finished our soup. “Dessert?” she asked. “Eric made chocolate pudding cake.”

  “I shouldn’t,” I said.

  “I didn’t ask whether you should,” Claire said with a sly grin. “I asked if you wanted to.”

  “Okay, I want to,” I said. “Please.”

  “Me too, please,” Chloe said.

  Claire smiled. “I’ll be right back.”

  Chloe glanced at her watch.

  “What time do you need to be back at the theater?” I asked.

  “Not until two thirty, for a fitting.” She leaned forward to brush part of a dried leaf off her pants. I noticed she was wearing a pair of gray spike-heeled leather boots. They added a good three inches to her height.

  “Chloe, is the festival really going to be ready to open next week?” I asked.

  “Absolutely.” She took a sip of her coffee. ““Don’t tell me you believe all that silliness that the festival is jinxed because of Yesterday’s Child?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s just that with the fire and Hugh’s death there’s a lot to come back from.”

  “You know the old saying: The show must go on.”

  I nodded as Claire served our dessert. “I know. I also know a lot of actors are very superstitious.”

  Chloe picked up her spoon. “I’m superstitious about some things, but not about Yesterday’s Child. I was in the very first production. Hugh directed. You probably knew that.” She tried the pudding and smiled across the table at me. “Mmmmm. This is good.”

  I reached for my own spoon. “So how did all the rumors start that the play is jinxed?”

  “The script is very dark in places. Hugh is . . . was pretty intense as a director. One of the actors quit the first week of rehearsals. Then there was the fire at the theater.” She shrugged. “That was really all it took. After that, the idea that the show was jinxed just took on a life of its own. You know how those things go.”

  I nodded. I’d been around enough theaters to know how quickly rumors spread in a closed community like a production in rehearsal.

  Chloe licked a bit of chocolate from the back of her spoon. “Every production has issues, but every time there was a problem with Yesterday’s Child, someone would start talking about the jinx.”

  She set her spoon down, pushed back her left sleeve and extended her arm. It was etched with a web of fine scars.

  “Abigail told me you’d been in an accident,” I said.

  Chloe pushed the sleeve down and rested her arm back on the edge of the table. “Do you know what people assume when they see those scars? They think I did it to myself.”

  What had my mother said about Hugh? I heard from an unimpeachable source that he pushed one of his leading ladies so hard she started cutting herself. If Abigail hadn’t told me about Chloe’s accident, I might have thought it had been Chloe.

  As if she could read my mind, she tipped her head forward and brushed her hair away from the left side of her face. I could see more scars snaking up her neck into her hairline, scars that clearly had been stitched by a doctor. They hadn’t been made by Chloe cutting herself. I felt my face flush with embarrassment.

  “I was in an accident right after the play finished its run,” she said. “That was the jinx, people said. Another actor had problems with his voice and had to have surgery. More so-called proof.” She shook her head. “Even though Ben had dropped Yesterday’s Child from our schedule months ago, when the fire happened at the other theater it was enough to get the whole idea that the play somehow has a black cloud over it resurrected. Maybe if the four of us from that original production hadn’t been part of the festival, all the talk wouldn’t have started again. I don’t know.”

  I frowned at her. “What do you mean, the four of you?”

  “Hugh, me, Hannah and Ben.”

  I stared at her, my spoon halfway to my mouth. “Hannah and Ben were part of the original staging of Yesterday’s Child
?”

  Chloe scraped a bit of chocolate from the side of the heavy stoneware bowl. “Uh-huh. Ben was the original director. So I guess technically he wasn’t really part of the show.”

  “He was replaced by Hugh?”

  She nodded. “Before we started rehearsing. The producers didn’t like Ben’s interpretation of the script. Rumor has it that Ben showed up before the first rehearsal and he and Hugh had a screaming match backstage, although I didn’t hear anything.” She reached for her coffee. “Of course that just added to the myth that the production was jinxed.”

  “I’ve been thinking about doing a display at the library with information about the plays and the main actors,” I said. “I might need to pick your brain.”

  “Anytime,” she said with a smile. She folded her fingers around the stoneware mug. “I was surprised that Ben offered the festival job to Hugh. There was a lot of bad blood between them, from what I heard.”

  “I don’t think Ben is the kind of person who holds a grudge.”

  “Life’s too short for that kind of thing,” Chloe said.

  “So Hannah had a part in the play, too?” I asked. The pudding cake was delicious, but I was getting distracted by the conversation.

  Chloe held up her thumb and index finger about a half inch apart. “Very small, but she was very good. I remember because she was working on a script herself then, something to do with some volunteer work she was doing with a program for teen alcoholics. She used to pick Hugh’s brain whenever she got the chance.” She drank the last of her coffee and set the mug on the table. “I’m sorry, Kathleen. That was a very long-winded answer to your question. The festival is going to be wonderful. There’s no jinx, no black cloud over our heads.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” I said. “And I’m looking forward to seeing you onstage.”

  We finished dessert and Chloe glanced at her watch again. “I really need to get going now,” she said. She reached for her purse and I put out a hand to stop her.

  “You’re my guest,” I said.

  She hesitated.

  “Please,” I said.

  She smiled. “All right. Thank you.”

  We both got to our feet. “I enjoyed this, Kathleen,” Chloe said. “I hope we can do it again while I’m here. Next time my treat.”

  “I’d like that,” I said.

  I picked Mom up at the Stratton at the end of the day. Her hair was pulled back in an unkempt knot, her reading glasses, lenses smudged with fingerprints, were perched at the end of her nose, and there were papers poking out of the top of her large woven tote.

  She got in the truck, fastened her seat belt and slumped against the seat with a groan.

  “Good day?” I asked.

  She turned her head and gave me a huge smile. “Wonderful,” she said.

  I heated up the remainder of the pea soup for our supper with some of Rebecca’s bread. We sat across from each other at the table, Owen and Hercules parked beside Mom. I figured they thought she was the best possibility for a little ham from the soup.

  “Mom, do you know anything about Ben directing the very first staging of the play Yesterday’s Child?” I asked.

  “Does this have anything to do with the silly idea that the play is jinxed?” she said.

  “Not really, no,” I said. “I just heard that Ben was supposed to direct the original production but he was replaced by Hugh Davis, and there was some animosity between them. I wondered why Ben offered Hugh a job if he couldn’t stand the man.”

  Mom dipped a bit of bread in her soup and popped it in her mouth before she answered. “First of all, the theater community is a very small world. If we didn’t work with people we don’t like, we’d never work at all.” She smiled at me. “And second, Ben is not the kind of person to hold on to hard feelings. I’ve known him for years. Whoever told you that got it wrong.”

  She broke off another piece of bread and dropped it in the bowl. “I like your detective.”

  I held up a finger. “Number one, he’s not my detective.” I put a second finger up with the first one. “And number two, you said two or three sentences to the man. How can you decide you like him just based on that?”

  She waited a moment before she spoke. “Is there a number three?”

  “No.”

  She smiled then. “He’s definitely your detective, Katydid. The way you two look at each other makes that much very clear. And as for how I can tell I like him, well, I’m a very good judge of character.” She scooped a chunk of ham from her dish and ate it while two furry faces followed her every move. “The two of you are lousy actors, by the way.”

  “Excuse me?” I said, dribbling soup onto the back of my hand.

  “You’re acting like you’re not crazy about him. He’s acting like he’s not crazy about you. But the rest of the world, the audience, can see right through you.”

  I wiped my hand with my napkin and frowned at her across the table. “This is the real world, not a production, and Marcus and I aren’t acting.”

  “‘Quod fere totus mundus exerceat histrionem,’” she said, waving her spoon for punctuation at the end.

  “Did you just quote ‘all the world’s a stage’ to me in Latin?” I asked.

  “‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.’” She smiled at me. “No, I didn’t. But you’re close. I quoted Petronius to you. ‘Because almost all the world are actors.’”

  “Thank you,” I said dryly. “That was so helpful.”

  “It could be if you thought about it.” Mom put her spoon down. “When I’m part of a production, what am I doing?”

  I shrugged. “Acting. Directing. Trying to entertain people. Maybe make them think.”

  She nodded. “I’m trying to get the audience to look at things a certain way. Just for a little while. I want them to forget that what they’re really looking at is just actors in costume on a stage.” She leaned back in her chair. “Do you remember the first time you saw Peter Pan onstage?”

  I nodded.

  “Remember the scene when Tinkerbell is dying and Peter yells, ‘Clap if you believe in fairies’?”

  I smiled at the memory. The clapping had begun slowly and spread through the theater like a wave of sound. I’d been enchanted when Tinkerbell came to life again and soared over the stage.

  “The audience claps every time,” Mom said. “But there’s always someone who doesn’t. There are always one or two people who can’t get past the fact that Tinkerbell is just an actor being pulled through the air in a harness. They can’t stop looking at the wires long enough to see the magic.”

  She reached up and took off her earrings. “That’s what you and your detective are doing. You’re too focused on the wires to see the magic.”

  She got to her feet and kissed the top of my head. “I have to brush my teeth before I go back to the theater.”

  I drove Mom down to the Stratton and told her I’d be back in a couple of hours to get her. There was no sign of either cat when I got home. I wandered into the living room, thinking maybe I’d call and see if Roma was back from her visit to Eddie.

  Owen was lying on his back in the middle of the footstool, feet in the air.

  “Owen!” I snapped. “What are you doing?”

  He rolled over, jumped to his feet, and immediately hung his head. For months I’d suspected Owen was napping on the stool. It was old and I knew the fabric wouldn’t stand up to a cat’s claws, so the only time either cat got anywhere near the footstool was if he was sitting on my lap or sprawled across my legs.

  I glared at him. “Get down,” I said.

  He jumped to the floor and slunk past me to the kitchen.

  Mom had been sitting in the wing chair before she left, talking to my dad on the phone. She’d left her purse behind and it had slipped to the floor, spreading its contents all over the polished hardwood.

  I bent down and started picking everything up. Mom’s wallet felt like it had a couple of po
unds of change inside. And why did she have a little tin of bacon-flavored mints?

  I thought about what she’d said. Was she right? Were Marcus and I focusing on the wrong thing? Were we getting too distracted by our differences?

  A clump of gray cat hair floated down from the top of the footstool. Owen was losing his touch. I knew he’d been lounging up there for months, but he’d always managed to be sitting on the floor, the picture of innocence, when I walked into the room.

  And then I got it. I looked at the tin of bacon mints in my hand and suddenly I wasn’t trying to push a square peg in a round hole. I’d been had. By a small gray tabby cat, and not for the first time.

  I sat back on my heels. Owen let me catch him on the footstool to divert my attention from the greater sin of rummaging through my mother’s purse in search of the almost irresistible smell of bacon. Could a cat really be capable of that much subterfuge and misdirection? I was fairly certain this one could.

  Suddenly it was as if everything had shifted just a little to the right and now everything was lined up properly, every peg sliding into the right hole. If Owen could misdirect my attention, why couldn’t someone who’d spent their life creating a fantasy, making people believe in fairies and forget about the wires, do the same thing?

  I put everything back in Mom’s purse except the little white tin and then I went to the kitchen. Owen was under the table doing his shamefaced act. I leaned down and looked at him. “Come out from there,” I said. “I know what you’re up to.”

  He came to stand in front of me and I held out the little tin. “Were you looking for these?”

  He meowed and reached out a paw before he remembered he was supposed to be pretending to be guilty over rolling on the footstool. He hung his head again.

  I patted my lap. “Give it up, Fuzz Face,” I said. “I know you went through Mom’s purse and spread everything all over the floor looking for these and then you couldn’t get them open. You left teeth marks on the package.”

  He understood either my words or my tone because he gave up the act, climbed onto my lap and leaned over to lick the plastic wrapping around the tin.