Macdeath (An Ivy Meadows Mystery Book 1)

by Cindy Brown

  Wait, someone had stopped at the table. Though he had his back to me, I could see the black unitard with jagged silver stripes.

  Riley.

  He looked around to see if anyone was watching, then picked up the Big Gulp and carried it backstage.

  Riley? What did he have to do with anything? Hmm. He had been really solicitous about my uncle. And he had worked with Simon in Flagstaff.

  I was about to follow him backstage when he returned, Big Gulp in hand. He put it back down on the table.

  I leapt out of my hiding place and nabbed him. “Hey! Why did you take my Big Gulp?”

  “Uh, five second rule?”

  “What?”

  “You know. You left it there for more than five seconds, so I figured it was fair game.” Riley was good at improv.

  “I’m pretty sure that only applies to food dropped on the floor.” I took my drink from him.

  “Sorry.” He looked like a dog who’d been caught going through the garbage.

  “Why did you take it backstage?” Dang. Not only did I need to work on my improv, I needed to improve my indirect questioning skills.

  “So I could drink it without anyone seeing.”

  “But you brought it back.”

  “It was Diet Coke.” He made a face.

  For heaven’s sake. I started to defend my soft drink of choice, but had another question to ask. “What about Simon?”

  “Huh?”

  Too indirect that time. “Had you worked with him before?” I knew he had, but I wanted to see what he would say.

  Riley now looked like a puzzled dog. “Yeah, in a couple of shows. I do a lot of Shakespeare.”

  “What did you think of him?”

  Riley shrugged. “He was cool.”

  The loudspeaker squawked. “Places for Act Four.”

  I went backstage, climbed into the cauldron with my fellow witches, and formulated my next question to them carefully, not sure who I trusted. “I just caught Riley sneaking off with my Big Gulp. Do you think it’s okay to drink? I mean, I couldn’t catch bedbugs or anything, could I?” Riley had been joking about bedbugs a little too often for some of our tastes.

  “I wouldn’t drink it,” Tyler said as our cauldron rose up into the flyspace.

  “Me neither,” agreed Candy. “You never know what he put in it.”

  “You think he’d put something in it?” I asked.

  “Maybe a roofie,” said Tyler.

  I shook my head. Though the date rape drug Rohypnol was pretty easy to get in close-by Mexico, it wasn’t Riley’s style.

  “You know Riley. I’m still mad he put that fake cockroach in my coffee cup.” Candy shivered melodramatically. “About swallowed the dang thing.”

  Most shows have a resident practical joker. Riley was ours. He’d written “Feel my steel” on one side of his broadsword, stuffed his unitard to give himself man-boobs, and posted a fake online review on the greenroom bulletin board, where the supposed critic got him and Jason mixed up and said Riley was “the best Macbeth ever.” Everyone thought it was real (including Jason, who was royally pissed) until we noticed that the critic spelled witches “whiches.”

  “He’d probably just add salt or booze or something, but still,” Candy said. “I wouldn’t drink it.”

  Music began, and the lights dimmed. In the minute I had before the cauldron descended to the stage, I thought about Riley. He could’ve tampered with my Diet Coke. There was no way to be sure unless I asked Pinkstaff to test it, too, and I had the feeling that wouldn’t go over well. He could have put something in Uncle Bob’s Big Gulp as well. That possibility brought up another question: If it was Riley who put something in my uncle’s drink, could the poisoning have been accidental, a practical joke gone wrong? If that was the case, did that mean nothing else was “foul play?”

  By the time we touched down onstage, I realized my crime scene reconstruction had been a bust. I wasn’t closer to any sort of truth.

  CHAPTER 34

  Come What May

  Jason paced the stage under the dim work lights. He always arrived at the theater before the rest of the cast to get into character. He’d texted me earlier, asking me to meet him an hour before call. Said he wanted some private time with me. Probably also wanted to know why I’d been avoiding him. It was Thursday night. We hadn’t spoken since I overheard Edward and him on the phone on Saturday.

  Now I stood in the shadowy wings, behind a velvet curtain like the one Jason and I had wrapped ourselves in on opening night. God, that seemed like a long time ago.

  Jason delivered Macbeth’s lines to the dark emptiness. “Come, seeling night...”

  Falconers used to train their birds by sewing their eyes shut. “Seeling” them.

  “Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day.” Macbeth was asking the night to give him strength to murder his best friend. “And with thy bloody and invisible hand, Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond, Which keeps me pale!”

  The creepy speech was too much, and Jason delivered it too well. I decided to leave. Maybe we could talk later, in the open, in the sun.

  I must have made a noise. Jason turned. He was already in costume, sans boots. He followed my eyes to his bare feet and smiled a slow smile.

  “My boots make too much noise,” he said. He walked toward me silently, his eyes locked on mine. “I was afraid you weren’t going to come.”

  I stepped out from behind the curtain, but held onto its soft strength with one hand. “Why?” My laugh sounded nervous, even to me.

  He continued toward me with that catlike walk. “I thought maybe you were done with me.” He watched me for a reaction. I was careful not to give him any.

  “I was...busy.” I couldn’t meet his eyes.

  “Yeah, that’s what Genevieve said.”

  He was close now, so close I could smell the woodsy scent of the soap he used.

  “She said she saw you with another guy.”

  “Another guy?”

  “Come on, Ivy. She was on some commercial shoot at Encanto, and saw you on a picnic with some blonde guy.”

  Cody. An involuntary smile must have crossed my face, because Jason’s grew dark.

  “I don’t like to share,” he said.

  “He’s not the reason I didn’t return your calls.”

  “Why then? You haven’t talked to me since I was in the hospital.”

  It was true. I’d ignored his calls, and even managed to avoid him offstage during the shows on Sunday and Wednesday.

  “Why?” Jason planted himself inches from me. I could feel the heat from his body along the length of mine. I wanted to touch him so badly. Even now.

  “I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal,” I said. “You didn’t return my calls for almost a week when Uncle Bob was in the hospital.”

  “That was different.” Jason’s voice was husky with some emotion. Anger? Jealousy?

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. That was before we...made love.”

  He said the words awkwardly, like they didn’t quite fit in his mouth. I saw the seducer mask slip from his face, a glimpse of a real connection behind his eye.

  Or I wanted to see it. I wanted the Jason I thought I knew. The one I’d trusted enough to get close. Sex to me was never just recreational. My heart always came with the deal.

  “Ivy.” Jason stood in front of me, glowering. The muscles in his neck were tense, and he looked dangerous. And, God help me, hot.

  Down, girl. This is the guy who lies about why he was in the hospital, who shares some weird secret with Edward, who has a dead girlfriend.

  “What’s going on?” Jason grabbed my shoulders. “Who is this guy?” I could feel his fingers press into the flesh above my shoulder blades
. Not hard or hurtful. Strong. Powerful. Compelling.

  Ivy. Don’t forget the dead girlfriend.

  “Who is he?”

  I looked Jason in the eye. “Wanna trade secrets?”

  CHAPTER 35

  Wrought with Things Forgotten

  Backstage areas have lots of places to hide, if you know where to look. Jason seemed to know all of them. “C’mon,” he said, grabbing my hand. “Secrets deserve dark places.”

  A bunch of unused flats created a makeshift wall at one end of the backstage area. Jason led me behind them to a rectangular-shaped space between the flat-created wall and the real concrete block wall, about six feet wide and three deep. My heart pounded in my ears. Work lights shed gray pools of light around the area, but the space itself was deep in shadow. No one would notice it, or anyone in it, unless they were really looking. I cleared my throat, set my jaw, and tried to look tough. “Tell me about your old girlfriend. You know, the one who’s dead.”

  “Girlfriend?” Jason’s brow furrowed in concentration.

  “How many dead girlfriends do you have?” was on the tip of my tongue and nearly out of my mouth when his eyes widened with understanding. His face crumpled, just sort of caved in on itself. He looked the way I felt whenever I thought about Cody’s accident.

  Jason, his face still struggling under the weight of some emotion, slid down the wall, and sat on the dusty floor, his back against the cement block wall.

  “Danielle,” he said.

  He didn’t ask how I knew. Theater folk tend to gossip during the run of a show.

  It was so quiet I could hear us breathe. I sat down next to Jason, close, our thighs touching. I couldn’t help myself.

  “It was a couple of years ago,” he began. “I’d been seeing this girl, Danielle, for a few months. It was good for awhile, but she started getting needy. She always wanted to know where I was, what I was doing, who I was with. You know.”

  I did know. I kinda wanted to know his whereabouts, too. I stayed quiet.

  “So I broke up with her,” said Jason. “I was going to be going away soon anyway. Had a summer theater gig in Montana. She was devastated. Heartbroken. She kept calling, hanging around the theater, trying to talk to me. I hated it, felt like I was being ambushed. I wouldn’t take her calls. She used to park outside my apartment, too, so I didn’t think too much about it when I saw her sitting in her car outside one night. I didn’t even acknowledge her. The next morning, I heard sirens outside my window, saw red and blue revolving lights through my curtains.”

  He swallowed. “I walked outside. An ambulance and a police car were parked near Danielle’s. One of the policemen said, ‘Are you Jason?’ When I nodded, he said, ‘Sorry, man.’ He told me Danielle was dead. Overdosed on her roommate’s sleeping pills. She’d killed herself right in front of my house. I asked how he knew my name. He handed me a note she’d pinned to herself. It said, ‘Tell Jason I was pregnant.’”

  I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but it wasn’t this. I laced my fingers through Jason’s and squeezed his hand. His eyes saw me, but looked beyond me at the same time. He slumped against the wall.

  What in the world had I been thinking? Jason couldn’t hurt anyone. He had to talk to Edward, he was the director. And the allergy thing—all he had said to Edward was that it wasn’t peanuts. That didn’t mean he lied to me earlier. He was still pretty out of it then. Probably didn’t have all the information yet.

  The concrete wall felt cold against my back. I’d been dodging his calls because of this? I felt awful. So awful that I took a deep breath and told him my secret.

  CHAPTER 36

  From the Memory, a Rooted Sorrow

  “Cody—the guy I was with at Encanto—he’s my brother.” The breath I’d taken felt thick with dust.

  “I didn’t know you had a brother.” From the corner of my eye, I could see that Jason had turned his head to look at me. I didn’t look back.

  Hardly anyone knew I had a brother. I never talked about Cody. Not to anyone. Cody and the accident were locked tight in a box in my mind.

  A warmth crept up my neck. I was already ashamed of myself. Locks were for secrets. That wasn’t fair to my brother.

  “Cody is three years younger than me. He lives here in Phoenix.” I bit my lip and unlocked that box. “In a group home.”

  I felt Jason’s body lean into mine.

  “We grew up in Spokane.” I stopped, turning to look at Jason. “It’s in Washington.” I could tell by the look in his eyes that he recognized a feint. His eyes held mine, silently telling me it was okay to go on.

  “We all used to live there. Uncle Bob, too.” I could see the impossibly blue skies, hear the river, smell the pine trees. “People think of rain when they hear ‘Washington,’ but Spokane’s different than Seattle. Drier, but the weather can be really extreme. It snows a lot in the winter.”

  Uncle Bob used to come over and make snow forts with us. Once, when Dad was out of town, Uncle Bob was shoveling our walk and decided to dig a maze for us, squiggly paths all through the front yard, with snow walls taller than Cody. We ran through it whooping with delight, banging into dead ends and falling down laughing. Our faces streamed with tears from the laughter and the brilliant winter sunlight, the water freezing on our faces in the cold.

  I shivered. The chill from the concrete floor penetrated through my shorts. The cinder block wall was cold and unforgiving. I hugged myself.

  Jason watched my eyes, waiting, but patient.

  “It gets really cold, too,” I said. “All the little lakes and ponds freeze up, and we’d go ice-skating on them.”

  I must have shivered again, because Jason put his arm around me and pulled me close. His warmth felt good but inadequate, like half a blanket.

  “One day when I was eleven, me and my friends were all going to the park. There was a big duck pond there, where all the kids went to ice skate and hang out.”

  The pond had these big goldfish. Not koi, just plain goldfish that grew bigger and bigger over the years. Sometimes in the winter you could see a school of them beneath your feet, circling in the unfrozen water far below the ice.

  “Cody begged to go along, but I didn’t want him to. I was...too cool, I guess. My mom made me take him, though, and promise to watch over him.”

  Instead, I acted like he wasn’t there, like I didn’t have a little brother. Dissed by me and my friends, Cody skated away to the other side of the pond. He stayed there, practicing hockey-style speed stops, spraying imaginary foes with arcs of ice.

  I heard him shout just once, more of a yelp, really. I looked over to see what he was yelling about this time. But he was gone, a jagged hole in the ice where he’d been a moment before.

  I raced toward him, skates scraping over the rough ice. A patch of snow caught me, and I flew, landing with a hard crack as my chin hit ice. I tasted blood, felt the sting of cold on my cheek, but it was Cody who filled my eyes and mind and soul. I could see him, foggy beneath the surface of the water. His yellow hair floated gently around his head like a halo. He wasn’t even moving, just sinking slowly beneath the icy water, eyes closed.

  I guess it was because of the cold that he didn’t try to swim, the shock of it or something, but it was also the cold that somehow saved his life, slowing down his bodily functions so he basically came back from the dead. Except for his brain. It never came completely back.

  “And Cody fell through the ice?” Jason asked in a gentle voice.

  Hadn’t I said that? No, I guess not.

  “He...” My throat closed up. I couldn’t even swallow. I nodded.

  Jason pulled me onto his lap, curling his arms protectively around me. I buried my face in the safety of his chest.

  “I didn’t watch over him,” I whispered. “I promised, but I didn’t.” />
  CHAPTER 37

  Dwell in Doubtful Joy

  Jason held me while I wept like my eleven-year-old self. I couldn’t tell if I cried for Cody, for myself, or for the accusing silence that had blanketed my family ever since. I just knew Jason had given me a safe place to cry, curled up against his chest. When I finally lifted my face to him, he kissed my eyelids, soft kisses that mingled with my tears. Our lips found each other. Kisses that started out gentle turned hungry, and soon I was glad for the secret place we’d found.

  Afterward, Jason admitted he’d already chosen our rendezvous spot after scoping out the backstage area.

  “I wanted to seduce you right here in the theater. I thought it would be hot,” he said. “I never imagined we’d talk about...”

  He stopped, probably because I kissed him. I couldn’t help myself. If there was a Cloud Ten, I was on it. I felt buoyant, like I’d left my secret history at the bottom of that icy pond and floated up toward the light. I had told someone about Cody, and he hadn’t judged me.

  Now, I hummed to myself as I used the theater shower. I couldn’t place the tune but knew it was something happy. As I soaped up, trying to keep my hair dry, my mind circled back to Jason. I hummed again. My body hummed, too, with the memory of our recent lovemaking.

  One shadow in my sunny day: Jason asked we keep our real relationship to ourselves. He wanted to keep things light and playful in front of others. “I don’t want everyone saying it’s just a backstage romance,” he said, “when it’s so much more.”

  So much more. That’s what I chose to focus on.

  I stepped out of the shower and dried quickly, shivering in the air-conditioned room. I wrapped a towel around me and listened at the door. Hearing no one, I sprinted the few doors down to our dressing room. I found myself singing out loud: “Zip a dee doo dah.” That was the tune I’d been humming. My mom used to sing it when she was happy, a long time ago.