Acting Dead (Michael Quinn Thriller)

by John Moralee

  “Okay, just a few minutes.”

  Doug Clark asked what the best and worst things were about being an actor. For best, I said the working hours. For worst, I said the media scrutiny. He was taken aback by that until he realised I was being ironic. Then he laughed, somewhat nervously. He questioned me about my television and movie roles. It could have been annoying, but fortunately he had done his homework and didn’t ask anything dumb. When his tape recorder stopped on its own accord, I realised we’d talked for thirty minutes.

  I looked at my watch and stood up. “Well, I hope I’ve given you enough material.”

  “More than enough,” Doug said. “I owe you one, and I mean that.”

  He pumped my hand vigorously. Then, as I was leaving, he said, “Michael, there’s something I have to say. You know when we were at school?”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “A lot of people said I was a homosexual because I liked poetry. I remember you because you defended me. You said it didn’t matter if I was or wasn’t. You said I was a human being and deserved respect. Well, I just want you to know I appreciate what you said. It was a tough time for me growing up and it meant a lot. I was gay, but I couldn’t admit it even to myself until I was in my college years. You were the first person I met who didn’t care one way or the other. Seeing you make it in Hollywood gave me the confidence to come out. You were my inspiration. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “If you need a favour, just call me. Again, thanks for the interview.”

  After he left, it got me thinking about those high school days. I could recall Doug Clark, but just as a face. It was strange to realise that I had influenced his future without remembering him. I felt guilty for forgetting so much about high school. I wished I could remember more. Forgetting seemed worse than remembering.

  One summer Scott and I had this idea of going fishing, but we didn’t have a boat of our own.

  We were about thirteen, fourteen. We were bored and had the whole day to ourselves – which was why we circumvented reason. What we did was borrow a crappy speedboat. I say borrow, but it was more like stealing.

  The boat was owned by a cranky teacher who believed in cruel and unusual punishments, so we felt justified in using up some of his fuel while he was off the island. The boat was a cheap and nasty thing worth less than the fuel inside the tank, but I figured after all the dreary lessons and detentions I’d sat through the teacher owed me at least a day of fun.

  Scott was reluctant, but I persuaded him. He came along as a sort of prisoner, warning me to take it easy on the speed. We fully intended to bring the boat back, leaving the teacher none the wiser. And so we took the speedboat on a journey around the island.

  Ignoring Scott’s protests, I pushed the boat to its speed limit. I didn’t want to waste time getting to the good fishing ground.

  We never got to where we planned to fish, though.

  As we were speeding along, the boat bouncing over the water like a skipping stone, I hit an underwater rock close to Emerald Point. The boat was torn apart in seconds. We both landed in the water. Scott hurt his left arm quite badly, twisting it on impact. I hit my head on something that knocked me out. I would have drowned but Scott pulled my head above the water. I woke up in panic, not sure where I was. Scott calmed me down. He saved my life by dragging me to shore, risking his own life. He swam the whole way using just his legs, using his good arm to keep my head above the water.

  The teacher never did discover who sunk his boat because we never told anyone about that day. Scott never boasted about how he’d saved my life - we did not even tell our friends. It was our secret. I owed Scott my life, but more than that, he had shown me what loyalty and friendship truly meant.

  I hated myself for not learning from his example.

  And I would do anything to find him now.

  Chapter 6

  On Saturday there was a large crowd on the playing field in front of Cape Mistral High School. The bleachers were packed. Douglas Clark’s feature article had hyped me up into a big celebrity status, which wasn’t exactly true in the Hollywood Fame Game, but in a small town, like Cape Mistral, I did make news. From the side of the stage, I scanned the crowd for familiar faces, but they just seemed to blur into a mass of colour. The principal was addressing the audience of students and parents using lots of power words like ‘strive’, ‘courage’ and ‘self-empower’. I could tell the students were bored. I certainly was. The principal, a man with the unlikely name of Clarence Clairborne, seemed oblivious to their boredom as he spouted his speech over the squealing microphone.

  High school. I’d no happy memories of high school. I remembered how the jocks treated me because Hanna Devereaux had died. I was the brother of the kid who killed the prom queen. They loathed me. I remembered locker room brawls with guys twice my size. I remembered coming home with bruises that I’d tell my father I had received by accident in the gym. I remembered the way half the faculty punished me with low grades, like Cs for As, Fs for Bs. I’d been told by more than one teacher that I’d fail their class no matter how hard I worked. Hanna Devereaux had been their favourite student - and it wasn’t right that she was dead. As a consequence, my grade-point average got worse and worse until I knew there was no point in trying, so I stopped trying. Nobody in authority wondered how I could get high scores in the SATs and yet have so poor a GPA. It had to be laziness on my part, not the school’s fault. The teachers were beyond reproach. But I knew what they were doing. They couldn’t hurt Billy for Hanna’s death, but they could hurt me. Mercifully, I could not see any of those teachers today. I would never forget their names. You never forget bad teachers. They stay with you for the rest of you life.

  Clarence Clairborne was still talking. It was my turn next. My speech was in my hands, but I wasn’t thinking about it.

  Scott was still missing, and I was brooding over what that meant. The sheriff was now investigating his disappearance officially. A search for his car was underway and the ferry records had been checked to see if he had perhaps driven off the island – he hadn’t. His car was still here on the island. But where? Fiona was deeply depressed and taking Prozac. She believed something catastrophic had happened to Scott and it was only a matter of time before someone discovered his body. She reckoned he’d been robbed and murdered. Her neighbours were looking after her and the kids. What a mess. But the worst thing was, I felt totally responsible. If I had not come back, perhaps Scott would not have gone missing …

  “Mr Quinn?”

  Startled, I looked up at Margaret Highsmith. Today she was wearing a red dress with a green scarf. She looked like a tomato. “Am I on?”

  “Two minutes,” she warned.

  Jesus. I didn’t know what I was going to say. The principal was rambling on, his words making no sense to me. I felt like Charlie Brown listening to his teacher, every single word sounding like blah-blah-blah. Sudden enforced applause alerted me that I had to stand up. I climbed the steps onto the stage. The principal shook hands. Mine was sweaty. He stepped to one side, folding his arms, discreetly wiping his wet hand on his jacket.

  I faced the sea of faces. Many actors love having a live audience, but I wasn’t one. I’d never been an enthusiastic theatre actor. In movies and television and commercials you rarely had an audience (if you didn’t count the camera crew). But there I was with thousands of people expecting something enlightening, something interesting, something entertaining.

  And I didn’t know what to say.

  I leaned over the microphone.

  (What was I going to say what was I going to say what was I going to say?)

  “Hello Cape Mistral!”

  That was what I said. A lot of thought went into it, believe me.

  They reacted with cheers.

  Now what?

  Walk off the stage while the going was good?

  Everyone was waiting.

  I looked down at my speech, but couldn’t read it.

  It w
asn’t honest. It was the kind of thing people read at the Oscars. It was a real pleasure attending Cape Mistral High … I picked it up and ripped it in half.

  There were gasps and nervous chatter – mostly from the school board governors sitting in the front row, looking up with distaste.

  Looking at the crowd, looking at the students, I knew what to say. They were not sitting there to listen to me. They wanted to hear the Michael Quinn they knew already, star of the silver screen. He could deliver a speech and a half. I opened my mouth, letting him do the talking.

  The Michael Quinn Speech went down well. I was stunned at the applause. The principal had recovered from strange start of my speech thinking it was all part of my plan. He concluded the boring part of the day by telling everyone it was their civic duty to buy as many lottery tickets as possible for the draw at four. Next, I was asked to stay to sign autographs for one dollar a signature. Several giggling girls queued up before anyone else. I wished I had been as popular at school. Maybe then I would have stayed around. Then, when everyone had lost interest, I wandered around the fair.

  It was then I saw Abby.

  Some women reach about 25 and all of a sudden their looks vanish practically overnight. They become early middle-aged. Not Abby. She was exactly how I remembered. Abby was not beautiful in the classic sense, not like a cheerleader. She was too slim for that. She had a special delicate quality, as if her bones were made from fine china and her skin from muslin. Her dark hair was cut short and parted in the middle, curling at her shoulders. Her eyes were a light blue, sometimes green. They looked sad. She was drinking out of a paper cup by a hotdog stand. She sipped at the drink pensively, wiping her lips with her fingers each time. Her long-sleeved dress went down to her shoes. It was light blue, the same colour as the sky. She was alone and looked bored. She had a faraway look as though daydreaming.

  I waved.

  She didn’t notice.

  I knew it was a bad idea, but I paid for two toffee apples and sneaked up on her. I crept up behind her and tapped her shoulder. She flinched.

  “Hi, Abby.” I held out a toffee apple.

  She recovered, smiling. It was a smile that made me feel good inside. She remembered me, the same way I remembered her.

  “This is for me? How sweet!”

  Which was what she said on our first date. Our first date, when we were sixteen. After Billy’s death Abby had been nice to me when most people sided with the Devereauxs – blaming Billy for the accident. We’d been friends before Billy’s death, but it drew us closer, slowly turning friendship into love. It had taken me two years to pluck up the courage to ask her on an official date because she had meant so much to me and I had feared losing her friendship if the date went badly. We went to the carnival in Portsmouth and rode on the Ferris wheel. We kissed at the very top. Her lips had been soft and silky and smeared mine with her cherry-red lipstick.

  We had been together two years. We had broken up because I could not stay in Cape Mistral, where she wanted to stay to be near her family. She wanted to go to college at Brown University, but I could not – not with my bad high-school record. I had known I could not find a decent job in the town with or without qualifications, so I had no choice but to leave. As long as the Devereauxs hated my family and had influence over the businesses in Cape Mistral, I could not stay. I was a social outcast. I had to leave for LA.

  It may have been the right decision, but I regretted losing Abby.

  And now she was here with me again.

  I wished she wasn’t married.

  I thought she did too.

  “I heard your speech,” she said. “It was very good. I cried at the end.”

  “You did?”

  “Uh-huh. It was very sad and poignant. You moved a lot of people.” She paused, as if embarrassed by what she’d said. “Afterwards, I wanted to see you, but you were busy signing autographs for those beautiful cheerleaders.”

  “What were you doing here?” I hoped she’d come specifically to see me.

  “I’m an English teacher, Mike.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  She shrugged. “I like it.”

  “I hear you’re married.”

  She winced. “Yeah. I’m Abby Boone now.” She paused. “I couldn’t wait forever, Mike. I heard you got married, too.”

  “Twice married, twice divorced. Typical Hollywood lust story. They were both actresses. I don’t think any of us could act married for long; we were afraid of being typecast.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I always wanted you to be happy, Mike.”

  “I know.”

  She was silent.

  “Are you happy now?” I asked.

  “What is happiness?” she said.

  “Abby …”

  I wanted to kiss her, to make her feel happy. Perhaps sensing my feelings, she stepped backwards.

  “Mike, sometime next week, would you consider coming to speak to my class? They’re reading Shakespeare and it would be really good if a professional thespian gave them some advice.”

  I would have walked barefoot on nails for Abby. “Sure. I can do that.”

  She suggested a time. I agreed. Anything to see her again.

  You never really get over your first love.

  Again, I wished she were not married.

  Actually, that’s not true. I wished she were married – to me.

  Suddenly she was distracted. I looked where she was looking. The sheriff was coming towards us. A gap appeared for him to walk through, almost like magic. I asked him if he’d found Scott, but he passed me and went to Abby. They kissed. He patted her buttocks. Then he noticed me.

  “Quinn, I see you’ve met my wife.”

  “We went to school together.” I felt hollow. Someone had taken out my heart and stomped on it.

  “Is that right?”

  “Yeah.” I changed the subject. “Have you found out anything about Scott?”

  “Scott?” Abby said.

  “He’s missing,” I explained.

  She put her hand to her chest. “My god. I didn’t know. Tom, why didn’t you say anything?”

  The sheriff glared at his wife. “I didn’t know you knew him. You do know a lot of guys, don’t you?”

  She was silent.

  The sheriff faced me. “I checked the phone records on the call he got.”

  “And?”

  “It was from a public phone.”

  “And?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Someone must have seen something.”

  “The phone’s near a bar.”

  “Which bar?”

  “The Boat House.”

  “I know it. My father owns it. The phone’s in the parking lot.”

  “I know that. That’s an odd coincidence, isn’t it?”

  I didn’t like his tone. Was he accusing me?

  “You were at the bar around that time. You could have made the call ...”

  “I went home to get ready, Sheriff. Look, you should be out looking for other suspects.”

  “I’m exploring every angle,” he said. “I’m well aware hundreds of people use that particular phone. It is on the corner of two busy streets. Whoever made that call would know it would be near impossible to know who made that specific call. You would know that, right?”

  “Yeah. So would anyone.”

  “How true,” he said. “Too many suspects. Damn it. But I’ll narrow it down, Michael.”

  “Good,” I said defiantly.

  “Excuse me, but I’d like a private word with my wife.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  I took my toffee apple to a pie-throwing stall. There I half-heartedly threw a foam pie at the vice-principal locked in some stocks, but I looked back at Abby and her husband. They were arguing. I could not hear what they were saying, but I could read the body language.

  They were arguing about someone.

  Me.

  Chapter 7

  My dad was at home i
n his basement den watching his wide-screen television. He was engrossed in a NFL game, a baseball cap slanted over his eyes. A tube of Pringles was between his legs. He was eating the potato chips one after another like they were going out of date. He looked up when I came down the stairs.

  “Unbelievable,” he said.

  “Good game?”

  “No, just unbelievable.”

  He didn’t elaborate. He knew my interest in football extended to switching over the television. “Dad, did you see anyone using the phone at about six the night Scott disappeared? That would have been just after I left.”

  “The sheriff asked me earlier, son. I told him no. I don’t watch the parking lot as a rule.”

  “Think, Dad.”

  He stopped eating. The tube was empty. He removed his cap and scratched his bald head. “We’re real busy then, what with people coming off work. Maybe you could ask Ed? He’s good at remembering faces. Oh, that woman phoned.”

  “Which woman? Abby?”

  “No – Fiona.”

  “Did she say what she wanted?”

  “She wants you to call her back.” He raised an eyebrow. “If you ask me, she sounds a little unstable. What have you done to her?”

  “It’s not like that, Dad. She’s Scott’s wife. She’s concerned.”

  He went back to watching the game.

  Fiona picked up on the first ring.

  “Mike?”

  “Yes.”

  “The sheriff came over to speak with me.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He kept asking me if we were having marriage problems. I told him no, but he didn’t look like he believed me. I think he thinks we’ve just had a falling out and that’s why Scott’s missing. He may even think I’m a suspect.”