by Jane Tesh
“If we don’t talk about these things, how can our relationship progress?”
“I told you she’d talk about Beth when she was ready.”
“She needs to talk about Beth now. I can see it’s killing her. She never talks to you about it?”
“She doesn’t have to.”
Of course not. He was able to feel her emotions, just as he felt mine. “Maybe I can’t be strong enough for me, but I can be strong enough for her.”
“So you’ve got everything worked out concerning Lindsey?”
Why even attempt to lie? “No.” I don’t usually ask Camden about my future because I don’t want to know, but this time had I gone too far? “Have I ruined any chance I might have had with Kary?”
“I wish I could be more definite,” he said, “but that’s up to her.”
***
To keep from thinking about my vast stupidity, I spent most of Thursday morning at the Drug Palace, foiling evildoers and talking on the phone to other cosmetic companies. Only one remembered being contacted by George and said his ideas were so preposterous she’d posted a copy of his letter in the company break room where it had been a source of great amusement for the staff.
I remembered to call Lucy Warner to ask about Viola’s scrapbooks. She assured me that someone from the theater had retrieved them. She had no further information about George.
“Did you find any other programs or posters in the house?”
“No. A cousin called to make sure everything else was donated to Goodwill.”
Good old Dahlia, not wanting to be involved in any way. I thanked Lucy and walked back up the aisle to the pharmacy to report to Ted that all was well in the Palace. Then Kary called with another invitation to lunch, which filled me with such relief I stopped breathing for a moment. We met at the Elms, a classy little restaurant near Friendly Shopping Center. Although there are no elms, each table is sheltered by its own little grove of palm and fichus trees in ornamental pots, so diners have privacy. Green and white tablecloths, real silverware, and fresh flowers in glass vases add to the garden theme. I was glad for the opportunity to let her in on what had happened.
Kary looked through the menu. “So there was nothing in Viola’s house or her scrapbook about Arsenic and Old Lace?”
“There was a place for it, right before the My Fair Lady stuff. I don’t believe Viola left them out. These scrapbooks were a well organized record of her life in the theater. I think someone took the Arsenic mementoes.”
“To cover up the crime?”
“Possibly. If a member of the cast was responsible, they wouldn’t want us to make that connection.”
Kary took out her phone. “The Herald might have had an online review.” She had to pause her search to give our waiter her order. Then she looked up the newspaper’s website and read for a while. Her eyes widened. “David, you’re not going to believe this. There isn’t a review, but I looked up a description of the play. Arsenic and Old Lace is a comedy about a man who finds out his two aunts are poisoning lonely old men with elderberry wine and burying them in the cellar.”
“What? You’re kidding.” She handed me her phone so I could read the synopsis.
Arsenic and Old Lace had been written in 1939 by Joseph Kesselring. The hero of the play, Mortimer Brewster, not only had two murderous little old aunts, but one brother who believed he was Teddy Roosevelt, and another evil brother on the run from the law who’d had plastic surgery to look like Boris Karloff, the actor who played the original Frankenstein’s monster. The play was considered a farce and a black comedy. “This is too much of a coincidence. Now I definitely need to find out who was in that play.”
“When the murderer was in Viola’s house, he or she must have gone through the scrapbooks and removed any mention of Arsenic and Old Lace so no one would find a connection.”
“But there’s bound to be some sort of record of the play at the theater. Don’t they have a website?”
“Here.” Kary took back her phone. “Let me see.” She made another search and scrolled down the page. “Okay, here’s all the info on My Fair Lady, dates and times of performances, cast list. Why isn’t there anything about Arsenic and Old Lace? They just did it in February.”
“Who’s responsible for putting information on the website?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll find out.” Our orders came, and she put away her phone. “I needed this, David.”
“What? Chicken salad on whole wheat? It does look good.”
“This case! Something else to do besides running into dead ends like Baby Love.”
“I’m sure you’ll find another shady company to bring down.”
“Thanks for letting me help you.”
“There’s one simple way to become a permanent member of the Randall Detective Agency, you know.”
She indicated my soup and sandwich. “Are you going to spell it out with crackers?”
“Do I need to spell it out?”
“No.” She took a few bites of her chicken salad and then put her fork down. She gave me a long look and came to some sort of decision. “I want to apologize.”
“For what?”
“For going off on you the other day about Beth.”
“You don’t need to apologize. I was out of line.”
“You were trying to help me. I shouldn’t keep everything so tightly locked away. I should say her name out loud every day until it no longer hurts so bad.” Tears formed in her eyes. “I know her little soul is at peace. My soul needs to be at peace, too, but it’s so hard.”
It took me a long time before I could even think about Lindsey. Even longer to look at her picture or watch her dance. Kary didn’t have any pictures of Beth. There had been nothing to see, nothing to hold.
I reached for her hand. “I wish I’d been there for you.”
She wiped her eyes on her napkin. “You’re here for me now. Thank you.”
“I’ll always be here for you.”
She thanked me again, blew out a shaky breath, and picked up her fork as if to say, that’s done. That’s all I can manage at this time. “I’ll check that website as soon as I get home.”
One elephant had been slowly pushed away. I was determined another would not take its place.
Chapter Fifteen
“I could’ve danced all night.”
Despite the prevailing icy conditions surrounding Camden and Ellin, My Fair Lady opened for a preview audience that night. I brought Rufus and Angie with me to the theater. Ellin was there, too, along with her mother and sisters and most of the congregation from Victory Holiness. The show was a hundred times better than the last time I’d seen it, but the fellow playing Henry Higgins had a bad case of opening night jitters. He made it through the first scene okay, the one where Higgins meets Eliza on the street and makes a bet with his cronies that he can teach her to speak proper English, but even I could tell he was missing lines and wasn’t sure where he needed to be standing. From his slightly unsteady stance, I had the suspicion he’d had a little too much to drink before the show. As he exited, he nearly toppled into the orchestra pit. He seesawed a bit then abruptly had his balance. The audience laughed as if this were part of the show and applauded as he went off stage, but I’d seen a very similar trick at home.
At intermission, I went in search of Camden. I found him around back, standing outside with all the actors who needed a smoke. He looked pretty snazzy in the old-fashioned gray suit and striped ascot. His Freddy haircut was mostly at the back, so he still had plenty to run his hands through.
“Was it too obvious, Randall? There wasn’t enough time to reach him.”
“He looked tipsy, that’s all,” I said. “The audience thought it was part of the show.”
“Thank God. We’ve got him in the dressing room, filling him with coffee. The poor guy was so nervous
he must have had way too much.”
“Will he be able to finish the show?”
“His understudy’s standing by.” Camden indicated another man dressed like Higgins going over a script with the stage manager. “Did Ellie come?”
“Oh, yes. I’m still on the case to find out what’s wrong with you.”
“I hope you can.”
“I think you ought to tell her. Maybe you won’t even have kids. You’ve always said your own future never comes in clearly. What if you’re wrong? You want to risk losing Ellin over this?”
“There’s still this—this moving things to contend with. She’ll go nuts.”
“Yeah, she’ll have a field day. But that’s a chance you oughta take. If she wants to marry you, she’ll have to back off.”
“Back off?” Ellin’s voice said, and we both jumped. She approached, her expression puzzled and annoyed. “Field day? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Just doing my job, ma’am,” I said. “Grilling a suspect.” Damn! How much had she heard?
Enough, evidently. “Cam, what do you mean, ‘She’ll go nuts’? And what’s all this about moving things?”
I could hear the synapses firing frantically. “In the house,” Camden said. “To make room for your stuff.”
“Why should that matter if we’re not getting married?”
Camden had come to the end of this burst of creativity. He started to stammer something else as I groped for an explanation. We were rescued by the stage manager.
“Places, everyone!”
Camden dashed back inside. As I headed back around the auditorium, Ellin ran after me. “Randall.”
I stopped and faced her. “I’m sure he’ll tell you everything when he’s ready.”
“Oh, that’s real comforting. That’s what I pay you the big bucks to say.”
“It’s all I’ve got right now.”
“Moving things?”
“Like he said, to make room for your stuff.”
“I’m not going to live there. If anything, he should be packing his stuff.”
“One problem at a time, Ellin.”
She gave me one of her deadliest stares. “You might want to think about packing your stuff, too.”
“No way. If you and Camden leave, the house is mine.”
She wasn’t about to cut me any slack. “We’ll see about that.”
***
The second act went without a hitch. The original Higgins pulled himself together and did a credible job. In Act One, “On the Street Where You Live” stopped the show, and Camden sang part of it again in act two. Despite whatever else might be happening in his life, when it comes to singing, Camden always manages to come through. His clear tenor voice filled the auditorium, and when he came to the part about wanting to be nowhere on earth but Eliza’s street, I saw Ellin give her cheeks a rough swipe.
I noticed that in one scene in the first act, the scene at the racetrack, everybody had on black and white. I thought I’d mention that to Camden, in case he hadn’t noticed. Black and white figured prominently in weddings, too, so maybe he was having flashbacks, or flashforwards I should say, to the happy day—if it ever happened.
After the show, we went backstage to congratulate everyone. Camden and Ellin made polite conversation, as if they’d just met. I heard her say, “Have you had enough time to think?” in a tone that could have easily made it rain in Spain. He shook his head. I couldn’t hear his reply.
I looked around for Kary and found her and Charlie still down in the orchestra pit going over a section of “I Could’ve Danced All Night” that apparently hadn’t gone the way they wanted it to during the performance. When they finished, I said, “Great show, guys.”
Charlie jotted a note in his book. “Thanks. I wanted to make sure Kary knew the repeat we added. She’s in charge tomorrow night.”
Kary also marked the place in her music. “Charlie’s agreed to go hear Taffy sing.”
I couldn’t believe how relieved I was. “Good news.”
Charlie didn’t look happy. “We’ll see.”
“What could go wrong?” Kary said.
Oh, so many things, I thought.
He turned off the piano and the light. “I don’t know, Kary. These songs of hers are really awful.”
“Either she’ll be glad you made the effort, or you’ll find out for sure if your relationship is in trouble. And you can come tell me all about it.”
That took care of my relief. Back to anxious worry.
The cast had to stay for pictures, so I took Rufus and Angie home and came back for Camden. The photo shoot was over, and he was in the dressing room he shared with Higgins and Pickering. He had on his jeans and shirt and was wiping off the last streaks of makeup.
“Stop, stop,” I said. “For the first time in your life, you have a tan.”
He grimaced. “I have to put on two layers, otherwise, I’m invisible. I don’t see how women stand this stuff. It’s like wearing a mask.”
“I think that’s the whole idea.”
He went to the sink and washed his face and hands. “I wish I could wash away this talent this easily. If I only knew what it was going to do, how strong it’s going to be.” He dried his face, now back to its original color: pale. “As soon as the show’s over, I’m going to tell her.”
“Wise move. If you tell her now, they’d be hard pressed to find another Freddy.”
Camden wanted to make sure he left matinee tickets for some friends at the box office, so we went up the aisle to the lobby. While he talked with the girl behind the counter, I checked out the photos and plaques decorating the walls. I didn’t think I’d find a picture from Arsenic and Old Lace, so I was surprised to see one and even more surprised to recognize a familiar moustache. George McMillan stood with the other cast members of the play. He was dressed as Teddy Roosevelt. Everyone was smiling except George, and that included Viola Mitchell and Millicent Crotty.
A connection.
“Camden, come have a look at this.” He came over. “Recognize anyone else in the photo besides Millicent who would know both Viola and George?”
The cast of Arsenic and Old Lace was nowhere near as large as the My Fair Lady cast. “I don’t see anyone who’s in our show.”
“I can’t believe there’s a picture here. We haven’t been able to find anything about this play.”
“Let me ask Emma.”
He went back to the box office and talked briefly with the girl before returning. “That photo was just put up today. Emma says the fellow who does the frames for them had misplaced it in his studio.”
A lucky break for me. Whoever was covering his or her Arsenic tracks missed this one. “Well, now I have a connection between George and Viola, and apparently, someone was after them both.”
“The stage manager might know more about it, if he’s still here.”
We went back into the theater and found the stage manager walking along the rows of seats and picking up discarded programs. “Yeah, I remember George,” he said. “He did only that one play. He did it as a favor to the director. He wasn’t all that good, but he looked the part, and they didn’t have anyone else who could play Teddy. They had a heck of a time getting him to rehearse, plus he made a nuisance of himself with the ladies.”
Good old dependable George. “In what way?” I asked.
“Thought he was hot stuff. I was dating the girl who played Elaine Harper, and I had to tell him several times to back off.”
“So he didn’t get any action. You figure that’s why he didn’t try out for another play?”
“Maybe. All he had to do was yell, ‘Charge!’ and run up the stairs, but you would’ve thought he was the biggest thing to ever hit the stage. I guess he thought the theater was the local passion pit and being in a show would make him a s
tud.”
“Did he ever talk about his job at BeautiQueen cosmetics?”
“I heard him bragging a time or two how he was going to invent some kind of cream that would revolutionize the world, but, like everything else he talked about, he was pretty much an old windbag. We were glad to see him go.”
“Who was the director for that show?”
“We had a guest director from the college, Wesley Lennox. I think he’s still there.”
I thanked the man for the information, and Camden and I walked back up the aisle.
“I had the same report from one of George’s co-workers and from the clerk at the Green Palms Hotel,” I said. “George was an expert at unwanted attention.”
“Maybe he hit on the wrong woman at the wrong time.”
“And she hit back.”
Chapter Sixteen
“And up to his old tricks.”
Friday morning, I went to the University of North Carolina at Parkland campus and found Wesley Lennox. Lennox was a big broad-shouldered man who looked more like a football coach than a drama professor. He met me in his office on the second floor of the university’s huge auditorium. Framed posters of past shows fought for space on the walls, and stacks of plays filled every corner of the room.
“See if you can find a spot to sit, Mr. Randall.” Lennox wedged himself behind his desk, which was also overflowing with scripts and notebooks. “How can I help you?”
I moved text books from a folding chair and sat down. “I’m investigating the deaths of George McMillan and Viola Mitchell.”
“I could hardly believe what happened to Viola. She was a feisty old gal, but I didn’t think anyone hated her. And you don’t think George committed suicide?”
“I’m checking all possibilities. I was told you directed Arsenic and Old Lace at the Parkland Little Theater and Viola and George were both in the show. I understand George played Teddy as a favor for you.”
“Sort of.” Lennox moved another stack of papers so he could lean his arms on his desk. “We went to college together right here at UNC-P, but over the years, we’d lost touch. The folks at Little Theater called me to direct Arsenic, but nobody showed up at auditions who looked anything like Teddy. Then I remembered George and his moustache and gave him a call. Teddy’s an easy role, lots of fun.”