“Great!” Willie announced. “You three will do some comedy sketches. That has to be comedy gold right there.” He looked around for a minute. “You gals can work here in Archer’s dressing room. Geraldine and I will take the big stage.”
Willie and Grandma Dean left the room, and I stared at Greta and Virginia, hoping they would take charge. Thankfully, they did.
Virginia pulled her notebook from her purse and handed it to me. “Okay, let’s all brainstorm. Nikki, you write everything down.”
I sat down at Archer’s vanity, and Greta handed me a pen. Greta suddenly laughed. “It is pretty funny, isn’t it?”
“What?” I asked.
“That a sex education writer, a wedding planner, and a serial bride have all crossed paths like this. It’s like our Creator brought us all together to write this sketch.”
Virginia chuckled. “Well, our Creator is either a genius or has one heck of a sense of humor.”
Greta smiled. “I think it’s both.”
“Wait,” I said, pen ready. “Can we use that? Should I write that down?”
“Sure,” Greta said. “Jot that down.” She thought for a minute. “I’ve never really written anything funny. Have you, Virginia?”
Virginia shook her head. “Not really.” She grabbed her head like she was dizzy. “How is it that we’re the ones writing this, and Hattie and Irene are singing hymns? It’s like the world is upside-down in Branson.”
I had thought that same thing myself.
“Think . . . think . . .” Greta told herself. Then she had an idea. “What if we came up with some jokes about each of us and then incorporated that into a little sketch? We can do it like Willie and Billie did it. We can set each other up for our jokes.”
“Okay,” I said, pen poised in the air. “Like what?”
Greta bit her lip and thought for a moment more. “Okay! I got it! Virginia, you could come up to me and say, ‘Hey Greta, what do you think about sex on TV?’ and I could answer, ‘Seems a bit dangerous. What if you fall off?!”
She laughed at her joke, and that made Virginia and I laugh.
“We’ve been spending too much time with Lloyd,” I said as I wrote down the joke.
“We’ll ask Willie if that’s too racy for the crowd,” Virginia said. “But let’s keep on writing!”
Greta’s joke had gotten us started, and soon, we were coming up with jokes one right after the other. We didn’t know if they were any good, but they sure made us laugh. I wrote down another one and then flipped the paper over to write some more.
“Shoot!” I said, turning to face them. “We’re out of paper.”
“Well, poop,” Greta said. “My notebook is in Virginia’s vehicle which is with the other girls.”
“We’re almost done,” I said, turning back around. “Surely there’s a piece of paper around here somewhere.”
I opened a drawer in Archer’s vanity. “Here’s one!” I said, pulling it out.
I started to write on it, and Virginia stopped me. “Wait! I think something is written on the other side.”
I flipped it over and saw the hot-pink, feminine handwriting. “It’s a note from Roxy to Archer.” I started reading it out loud.
“Dear Archer, I’ve sat down to write this a hundred times, but I don’t know what to say. Part of me wants to say that we broke it off months ago, and what we had was never that serious to begin with. I can date whoever I want, just like you can date whoever you want. But part of me feels like I should apologize. I’m sure seeing me with Lou the other night wasn’t easy. I had my reasons for being with him, but I’m sure they’ll just feel like excuses to you. Maybe one day, we can sit down and talk about this, but for now, just know that I made a mistake. Lou and I are over. He’s been making promises he can’t keep, and I’m going to put a stop to it. I hope you and I can still be friends. I don’t want to lose what we have. Love, Roxy XOXO”
I looked up at Greta and Virginia. “Put a stop to it? What do you think that means?”
“Hand me that notebook,” Virginia said to me. “I think we have another suspect.”
I looked at the time. “It’s nearly noon. Should we go grab a quick lunch and see if we can pay Roxy a little visit?”
Virginia looked determined. “Let’s go. Maybe we can bust her and clear Billie’s name before the show tonight.”
I silently prayed that was possible. The last thing I wanted to do was get on that stage. Especially if there was someone out there intent on taking anyone out who performed on it.
19
“Pull around the back,” Greta told the Uber driver as we pulled into the parking lot of Roxy’s theater. “Maybe there’s a back door we can sneak into,” she whispered to us.
As he drove around the backside of the building, I noticed a loading dock with a door next to it. Virginia and Greta saw it too.
“Just drop us off here,” Virginia told the driver.
Once the car was out of sight, I tried the back door, but it was locked. I decided to climb up onto the loading dock and try that door. To my relief, it came right open. I ran around and unlocked the regular door for Virginia and Greta. Once we were all inside, we made our way through the halls, looking for Roxy’s dressing room.
The theater was already alive with workers. Since it was a dinner theater, the staff was already busy in the kitchen prepping the evening’s meal.
“I saw her car out front, so I’m sure she’s here,” Virginia said.
“How do you know it was her car?” I asked.
“There was a hot pink car with the license plates ILUV80S. I assume that belongs to her.”
We walked past an unmarked door, and we all stopped when we heard singing.
“I think that’s her,” Greta mouthed.
Virginia knocked on the door, and the singing stopped. A woman with short blond hair opened the door.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Virginia said. “We were looking for someone. I’m sorry we bothered you.”
The woman looked familiar, and a sly smile rose on her face. “Who are you looking for?”
Greta started to answer it, and then it hit me. “Roxy?” I asked.
She smiled even wider. “Didn’t recognize me without my wig, did you?”
Virginia’s mouth was wide open. “You look completely different!”
Roxy laughed and invited us in. “How did you guys even get in here?”
“We snuck in the back,” I admitted.
She laughed again and motioned for us to sit down.
We all sat down on one of her black, leather couches, moving hot-pink, furry pillows out of the way first.
Roxy took a seat on the couch across from us. “So, what can I do for you ladies? I’m guessing you’re not here for tickets to my show.”
Virginia was in no mood for small talk, so she got right to it. “We want to know what happened between you and Lou.”
Roxy leaned over and picked up a bottle of alcohol from a tray in the middle of the coffee table between us. She slowly poured the amber liquid into her glass, then gave it a swirl. “And why should I tell you?”
Virginia stood up, fists clenched, and Greta and I pulled her back down to the couch.
“My friend is a bit emotional,” Greta said to Roxy. “You know that Billie was arrested this morning . . .”
Roxy stopped her. “Wait, what? I didn’t hear that.” Now we had her full attention.
“He was arrested for Lou’s murder,” I added. “But we don’t think he’s guilty.”
Roxy’s jaw flinched. I didn’t know if she was angry or fighting back tears or both.
“We just want to know about your relationship with Lou,” I continued.
“No,” Roxy said. “You want to know if I killed him.”
The room went silent.
“Well,” Greta said. “Did you?”
“You three think you can break into my theater and then accuse me of murder?” Roxy was not happy.
“We read th
e note you wrote to Archer. You told him you were going to put a stop to whatever Lou was doing. We want to know what that was,” Virginia said.
Now Roxy was furious. “AND you read my personal letter to Archer? Does he know you did that?”
This was not going well. We weren’t going to get any answers like this. This would be a good time for Greta to pull out some tasty treat from her purse and pass it to Roxy, but instead, she had her hands full, holding Virginia back. My mind raced. Could I pull off the snack trick? Did I even have a snack in my purse?
I remembered I had some caramels in there that I had picked up from the gift shop at the zip line place. I reached in my purse and felt around. There it was! “Here,” I said pulling out a caramel. “Would you like this?”
As I stretched out my hand toward her, I saw the look of disgust on her face, and then I saw what I was holding. My caramel had come out of the wrapper on one side and was stuck to a tampon.
I pulled it off and tried to hand it to her, but she looked at me like I was crazy. Which I was. Obviously, that trick didn’t work if you were under the age of sixty or if you frequently left your purse in the car on warm days.
Greta leaned forward and grabbed a bottle of alcohol from the table. “May I?”
Roxy sighed. “Why not.”
Greta poured herself a drink and took a long, drawn-out sip. “Look,” she said to Roxy. “We’re in deep on this one. We didn’t mean to get here, but we are.”
Suddenly, Greta reminded me of a mob boss, sitting there staring at Roxy. And was that a hint of an accent I detected? “We don’t want anyone else to get hurt, if you know what I mean.”
I looked up at Roxy to see if she was buying Greta’s mobster act. She had to think we were nuts. I just tried to give her a caramel tampon and now this.
Roxy sighed and leaned back in her chair. “I don’t want anyone else to get hurt either. What do you want to know?”
Greta took another sip, but otherwise didn’t move. She narrowed her eyes, and yep, when she spoke, there was definitely an accent. “We just want to know what you know.”
Roxy was hesitant but finally spoke. “Lou walked me out to my car a couple of weeks ago. We had been at the diner after a show, and he was always coming on to me, so him following me out to my car was nothing new. But then he said something to me he had never said before.”
“What was that?” I asked. Greta gave me a death stare. Clearly, she was running the show here.
“He told me that if I went on a date with him, he could get me in their show.”
“Why would you be interested in that offer?” Virginia asked. “You have your own show. Wouldn’t that be a step down?”
“Opening the show for the hottest guy in Branson?” Roxy scoffed. “I’d take that any day. For two years, I’ve tried to get Archer to talk to the guys and let me in on their little show.”
“Why would you give up your own show?” I asked her.
Roxy went quiet, then slowly got up and walked to her dressing table. She opened a drawer and took out a paper. She handed it to Virginia. “Take a look at my numbers. My audience is dwindling. I get this printout every month, and every month it looks worse. I’m tired of the stress, the pressure of trying to keep things fresh and new. I sing eighties songs, for goodness sake. How fresh and new can you make something that is almost forty years old?”
Greta gasped and broke character. “The eighties were almost forty years ago?!” She collected herself and narrowed her eyes again.
Roxy went on. “I know it was wrong, but I thought maybe Lou was my way in. So, I went on a date with him.”
“Just one date?” I asked.
“No, several. He kept telling me he was talking to the guys, and things were looking good. I thought I had a real chance. And then one afternoon, I was driving by Archer’s theater and saw Lou’s truck out there. I don’t know what made me stop. But for some reason, I did. I walked into the theater and was surprised to see a woman standing on the stage singing. I hung back to see what was going on. When she stopped, Lou clapped for her like he clapped for me every time I would sing to him. Then he said something that made me sick. He told her that if she went on a date with him, and the others thought they were serious, they would be more likely to let her into the group. That dirty scoundrel was just using his position to get women.”
“So, what’d you do about it?” Greta asked, her accent getting thicker.
“I confronted him after the woman left. I told him that he was just using her. That she was trying to move up the Branson ladder, and he was taking advantage of her. He didn’t even deny it.” She plopped back down on the couch across from us. “I felt like such a sucker. By that time, Archer had already seen us kissing at the diner by the bathroom, and he wasn’t talking to me . . . I just felt like I had lost any chance I had to actually get in the group.”
“So, you wrote Archer the letter apologizing, and then what? How were you going to put a stop to Lou?” I asked.
“I told Lou that I was going to tell Archer what he was up to. See, Lou was always worried about losing his position in the group anyway. He’s not actually Willie and Billie’s brother.”
“He’s not?” we all gasped.
“No, he’s their cousin. Willie and Billie started the group a long time ago and were popular long before they hired Lou. And Lou was always paranoid that they were going to cut him out one day. I think he thought that if he was able to con a woman into dating him, and then he got her in the group, she would always feel like she owed him something and wouldn’t vote him out if the brothers actually took it to a vote. He wanted an ally, or at least, someone else lower on the totem pole.”
She looked at us and rolled her eyes. “And before you ask again, no, I didn’t kill him.”
“You had a motive,” I said to her. “And no one would even think twice about you being back in their dressing rooms since you always hung out together.”
“I’m trying to make my life less stressful,” she scoffed. “Murdering someone is not less stressful. Besides, Archer can pull a lot of strings in this town. I need to be on his good side. Killing one of his friends isn’t going to get me there. Plus, I’m not the kind of person who just goes around knocking off people who do me wrong. I’d have one heck of a hit list.”
“Tell me about it,” Greta said, still keeping up her act.
Virginia burst into tears. “If you’re innocent, then how are we going to free Billie?”
“I told you what I know,” Roxy said. “Now you tell me what you know. Maybe I can help connect the dots.”
We told her about the applesauce and antifreeze and about what was found in Billie’s room in a box. And how someone had tipped the cops off and told them where to look. “And there was a blond horsehair in his hand.” I added.
“Horsehair? Willie is terrified of horses. The only person I know who has horses is Kodiak, and I think they are actually ponies.”
“They are,” I confirmed. “And we checked last night, and they weren’t a match.”
“So,” Roxy said, thinking, “Lou is dead, and Billie is framed. Did anyone try to do anything to Willie?”
“Not yet,” I answered.
“It seems like someone wants their show,” she said. “And they want it bad enough that they don’t care who they hurt or kill to get it. Whoever did this knew Lou’s routine. They knew he took his medication every night after the show, and he put it in his applesauce.”
“Medication?” I asked. “That’s why he ate applesauce every evening?”
“It has to be someone in his inner circle,” Virginia said. “Someone who knew he ate it every night and would be able to get into the theater.”
“You ladies saw how easy it was to get in during the day. The front doors are always locked, but people are in and out of the back all the time,” Roxy pointed out. Then her eyes opened wide. “What if it was one of the women Lou was stringing along? Maybe he told her about the applesauce or it came
up in conversation one day. She could’ve snuck it into his dressing room.”
“But who would do that?” I asked.
Roxy shrugged. “It could be anyone trying to rise through the ranks here.”
I looked at Greta and Virginia, and they looked back at me, sadness in their eyes.
Greta dropped her mobster accent. “Who did you see on stage that night you walked in?”
Roxy shrugged again. “I had never seen her before. But she had the voice of an angel. She had a lot to learn about performing, though. She reminded me of a much younger version of myself.”
“Amy,” I said quietly.
Greta pulled one of her flyers out from her purse. “Is this her?”
Roxy took it and studied it for a minute. “No, that’s not her.”
We breathed a sigh of relief. But clearly, Lou had been making promises to a lot of women. Who knew how many?
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and when I pulled it out, I saw I had a text. “It’s Grandma Dean,” I told them. “She said she and Willie are ready for us, and Hattie and Irene are on their way.”
We stood up and thanked Roxy for her time and promised her we would keep her in the loop. As I started toward the door, she grabbed my arm. I looked up at her, surprised.
“Your grandma is one lucky lady,” she said to me.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Archer has really fallen for her, which is strange because usually, he likes younger women. But he told me the other night that this is different. That there’s something special about her.”
I didn’t know what to say. They had only known each other for a short time, but I noticed the connection too.
Roxy released my arm. “I hope it works out for them,” she said. “I really do. Archer is an amazing man, and he deserves to be happy. Your grandma seems amazing too.”
“She is,” I said to her, “and she isn’t someone to mess with.”
Roxy laughed. “Noted.”
We walked out of the theater, and I felt anxiety grip my chest. It was showtime. Or at least, rehearsal for the showtime.
Road Trip (Glock Grannies Cozy Mystery Book 6) Page 10