“Well, you know,” said Lettie, thoughtfully, “your body may age, but your brain still thinks you’re young.”
“Florence Tilderson.” Grace put her hands over her eyes. “I don’t even want to think about it, let alone imagine it.” She paused, then studied Lettie’s face. “How is Del doing? Is he over his scare at the high school?”
“I think so. He’s thankful he isn’t there during this week, at least on the weekdays, in the evening. The crazy woman has her play rehearsals at night now.” She picked up a plate from the dish drainer in the sink and began wiping it. “He still thinks it’s such a shame John Hardy and Evan Harrington were killed because Del admired them so. He reminds me quite often they were good people, then he simply shakes his head. This makes me think he’s dwelling on the morbid topic.”
“Well,” said Grace, taking her plate to the sink. “You know I love reading Ben Franklin’s wisdom. One of his epigrams is ‘Death takes no bribes.’ Even good people die, and sometimes they don’t die in peaceful ways. I certainly understand how Del feels—I worked with both and I share his opinion.” She paused, stacking her plate in the dishwasher. “Lettie, the world has become such an uncertain place. Lately, it seems to me it’s more the case now than it was when I was growing up. I’m almost afraid to watch the evening news these days. TJ would say, ‘People fall through the cracks and often they create chaos.’ ”
“I know what you mean,” Lettie said, a serious look on her face. “Danielle Baker was pulling out of her drive last week when she accidently hit her neighbor’s pet rooster. No more ‘cock-a-doodle-doo’ in that neighborhood. Opinion’s divided on whether she did it on purpose because the darn thing woke everyone on the block at dawn. I think, after a while, that would get quite old.” She shook her head. “You’re right. The world has become a violent place. You can’t even wake people up in the morning without becoming chicken stew.”
Sometimes Grace had to examine her sister-in-law’s face to see if she was being serious. This was one of those times. She was. “I need to get down to the newspaper. I’m not going to be here for dinner, Lettie. Have to go to the high school play rehearsal so I can take pictures.”
“With the nutsy play director?”
“Absolutely. Quite a few people will be at the rehearsal since the whole cast plus the technical people have to practice.”
Lettie stretched her arms wide. “They’ve carried two bodies out of the building, I tell you and Del to stay away from there, and people kill roosters, but no one listens to the voice of common sense.”
“I don’t look or sound like a rooster, Lettie, so I’ll be safe.”
Lettie had left the house an hour earlier, telling Grace to be careful when going back into that “scary death trap” for the play rehearsal. Grace was halfway up the stairs, planning to change her clothes, when she heard the doorbell ring. Now who could that be? she thought. As she turned around to walk back down the stairs and answer the doorbell, she saw a dark sedan parked out in front of the house. Then she heard loud pounding on the door before she even reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Good grief! Whatever could this be about?” she said out loud. She opened the door and came face to face with a towering, angry Seth Atkins, surrounded by a cloud of alcoholic vapors. His coat was half-buttoned, his face unwashed and covered with at least a week’s stubble of beard, and he was balanced precariously on legs that were not at all steady. She could smell his body odor, and she was close enough to see beads of sweat on his forehead. One of his arms was braced on the doorframe, and his movements seemed jerky and uncontrolled. She was so close to him she thought she’d pass out from the fumes. It all happened so quickly that Grace felt her heart race. She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out.
He looked down at her through dark eyes, and his voice came out in a shrill cacophony of confusion. “Grace…Kim…Kimbezel. You stay away from…from…from…my wife or you—” And here he stopped to get his bearings and seemed to look past her shoulder as if he weren’t sure where he was. “And…and you stop filling her—her head with poison about me…or…” He paused for a moment, smiled in a suddenly lucid way, and whispered in a moment of complete candor, “You’ll get what that bastard Hardy got.”
Grace started to say something, but he put his huge paw over her mouth and shoved her backward a few steps. Then, his body filling the entire doorframe, he literally fell through the doorway and moved toward her. He grabbed her arms, his foul breath hitting her face. Grace gasped, her eyes wide with fear, and she felt as if she were going to pass out.
“I warned that Har—Har—Hardy to stay away from her.” He swallowed and kept his face right in front of hers. He was so close Grace could see spittle on the corners of his mouth, and his eyes seemed unfocused. She didn’t have time to even consider what to do to get him off her. It was all happening so fast.
“Well, he got what he deserved, and if you don’t—”
Suddenly, Grace felt the pressure released from her arms and saw two hands come over the top of Seth Atkins’ shoulders. He was whipped around and away from her, and she fell to the floor in front of her stairway. When she looked up, TJ Sweeney had turned Atkins around and cuffed his hands behind his back. With her hands on his neck and in his back, TJ pushed him ahead of her out the door and marched him in a stumbling gait to her waiting squad car. Grace could see another officer standing by the door. They lowered him into the back seat and shut the door. Then TJ came back to the house.
“You all right, Grace?” She helped her up from the floor and sat her down on the stairs. Then she got down on one knee so she was even with Grace’s face.
Grace took a deep breath and blinked her eyes several times, still feeling light-headed. She put her hand up to her forehead and took several deeper breaths.
“Yes, TJ. He caught me by surprise. He threatened me and said I’d get what John Hardy got if I didn’t stop telling Marilyn lies about him.” Then she had a new idea and looked at TJ asking, “How did you know he was here?”
“Marilyn called me when he left the house and said he had threatened to come over here. He’s no one to mess with and probably outweighs you by eighty pounds. Even when he’s sober he’s scary because he’s devious and smart enough to have killed Hardy, and he has plenty of connections as far as getting his hands on chemicals. From what I can tell and have heard, he was still relatively sober but angry on the day Hardy was murdered.” She glanced back out at the squad car.
Grace sagged against the back of the step and pressed a hand to her forehead. “Thank you, TJ. I’ve never seen him like that before. It’s as if he’s a totally different person than the Seth I’ve met with…with Marilyn.” She drew in a deep breath. “It’s all right. I’m fine.”
“You sure? Do you want to press charges?”
Grace smiled. “No. I’m all right. I’ll be good as new in another minute. What will you do with him?”
“At this point, take him down to the jail, let him sober up in a cell, and then have a little ‘come to Jesus’ meeting with him. He’s already lied to me about the day Hardy was killed, and this will give me a chance to have a lengthy conversation with him about his whereabouts in the last week or two.” She turned to leave, but then remembered something. “You still planning to go to the play rehearsal tonight?”
Grace nodded her head thoughtfully.
“Don’t forget to call me before you go and when you leave.”
“Yes, I will, TJ.”
Grace arrived at the play rehearsal well into the second act. Ellen Terry had told her on the phone they would be rehearsing in earnest, but she could stage some scenes for photos at the end. Grace thought it would be amusing to watch the rehearsal, so she arrived early. She sat in the back of the darkened auditorium thinking the theater hadn’t changed any, but then she hadn’t been gone very long. The heavy, velvet maroon curtains were still hanging across the stage front, and now, with them open, Grace could see the flats representing t
he Brewster house in Brooklyn. A window seat generally held random dead bodies on the left side of the stage, a fireplace mantelshelf—the repository for the poisoned elderberry wine—sat against the back wall, and a door to the supposed basement was on the right, near the bottom of the stairs.
Three high school students were on the stage when Grace arrived, saying their lines as Ellen Terry walked around, yelling commands to the lighting crew. At one point, Ginger Grant stared out at Terry, saying, “Aren’t I supposed to have a dinner plate with pie in my hand?”
Terry called out, “Props!” They waited but nothing happened. She swore under her breath, saying, “Where is Andy?”
A few seconds later the door to the basement opened and Andy Pelvin came out, saying, “Oh, sorry. My bad. Here.” He handed a plate to Ginger, a look of chagrin on his face. “Sorry, I ate the pie.”
Ellen Terry clapped her hands. “People! People! We only have three more days to make this perfect. Your parents aren’t coming on Friday to see a big mess. So, come on, get with it. Okay, Ginger, take it from your line after Martha Brewster’s entrance. Remember, ladies, you are poisoning people to rid the world of useless human beings. Have fun with it!”
Grace winced at those directions, but watched for another half hour, as the play went smoothly, everyone remembering lines, cues, and entrances. The lights seemed to be the problem. “Obviously, they have a few things to iron out with the light crew,” muttered Grace to herself. Ginger walked down the side aisle, plopping down next to Grace.
“What do you think so far, Ms. Kimball?”
“So far, it appears you have a few bumps to level, but I think, all in all, you’re in a pretty good place. Three days isn’t long, but all your lines are memorized.”
“I have a spy report,” said Ginger, whispering. “Ellen—she says we should call her that—has been in a really foul mood lately. We took a test for her class in the fall, a test we repeated about a month ago. She didn’t hand them back, but I know the grades because I was in her office picking up her prompt book, and I saw them sitting on her desk. Everyone got A’s, so when I told some of the other kids, no one complained. ‘Why spoil a good thing?’ Jason Tucker said.”
Grace didn’t reply, but her mind was racing. Then a new thought came into Grace’s head. Maybe she could go down to the drama office and take a peek at those tests while Ellen Terry was up here working. She knew a restroom was near Ellen’s office, so it would give her an excuse to be in that area. She waited until Ginger was called back to the stage; then she picked up her camera and quietly slipped out the back door.
Carefully glancing around, Grace saw no one in the hallway behind the auditorium. She tiptoed down the stairway as softly as possible, watching for Terry or any of the students. She could barely hear them still rehearsing. The stairway led to the second floor, including Terry’s classroom, which was at the end of the hallway. Since the door was open, Grace could see the total chaos Del had complained about: costumes lying on top of pushed-together desks; makeup and hairspray sitting on tables, some of it spilled; empty soda cans and paper plates with food piled up on one desk; backpacks, scripts, and textbooks lying around on the floor; and an overflowing wastebasket. What a mess! But, thought Grace, it is a play rehearsal, so maybe it isn’t always like this.
Passing the classroom, she walked softly down the hallway past the math wing. Then she turned the corner so she was behind the stage. Tiptoeing around in the old building, she remembered the article she’d read about the auditorium renovation. Grace knew the drama department had an office off stage left, so she reasoned if the workers back in the past had left an opening to the underground orchestra pit and storage rooms, it would be somewhere near this office. She’d kill two birds of curiosity with one stone: tests and the underground. She walked clear around the back wall of the stage and over to the left side, opening a door from the hallway. Steps went up to the backstage area or down to the theater office. She watched the students from the stage wing, all engrossed in their rehearsal; faintly, she could hear Terry’s voice off in the distance. Then she turned, taking the stairs down. Maybe she could find out more about Ellen Terry, but she’d have to be quiet.
The door to the office was open, and Grace peeked in, checking to see if she was alone. She was. Walking into the room, she examined the desk, finding piles of papers from Terry’s classes, publicity for the play, and homework. She quickly thumbed through them but found no tests. Suddenly, she heard Terry’s voice coming toward the office. What can I say to explain why I’m here? She scanned the room to see if she had any options for hiding, but saw none. Then Terry’s voice grew more distant. Grace breathed out a long breath.
Besides the hallway entrance, two doors came into the room. Grace realized one was a closet because she opened it, spying the coat she remembered from Terry’s visit to the newspaper office. The other door, on the west wall, might be the door which went to the underground rooms they had sealed up. Its location would lead under all the seating area above in the auditorium. It was padlocked securely. Turning around the office three hundred and sixty degrees so she could see all the surfaces, Grace didn’t notice any keys on tables, hanging from nails, or lying on chairs or the floor. She walked past Terry’s desk, her eyes stopping on a pile of theater magazines with a pair of scissors lying on top of the pile. Something clicked in her head. The anonymous letter Liz Hardy supposedly received. It had words cut out of magazines. The warning Grace found on her windshield. She suspected Liz Hardy of her warning letter, but maybe she was wrong. She walked to the table, and just as she started to remove the scissors, she heard Terry’s voice again, this time closer, coming toward the office. The scissors slid off the pile of magazines, clattering onto the floor before Grace could catch them. This time she had no time to recover the scissors or slip out the door. Terry was definitely coming to the office. She froze.
She heard loud, clumpy footsteps on the stairs and Terry came through the door and stopped short. She stared at Grace, a confused expression on her face. “Ms. Kimball? What are you doing here?”
“I—I thought maybe it would be better if I waited down here for you to finish the rehearsal. You did say we should take some photographs after you were done.” Grace paused and added, “I didn’t want to interrupt anything.” Her knees locked and her shoulders tightened. She hoped the woman couldn’t detect fear.
Terry’s smiled thoughtfully as she studied Grace. “Where is your camera?”
“Oh, right there.” Grace recovered, and starting to breathe again, walked past Terry to the door where she picked up the camera from a chair. Thank goodness I didn’t leave it upstairs, she thought. Then she moved back toward the table.
Ellen Terry glanced at the table next to her, and Grace saw Terry’s eyes settle briefly on the scissors. Then she looked back up with what, Grace thought, was a puzzled face.
“Well,” Terry said, “the play is going fine; it actually runs itself. I’m a bit like a football coach. I make up the plays, the kids execute them, and I simply watch from the sidelines.”
“Sounds good,” Grace said, wishing she could get out of this space, but Terry was in front of the door. Then she thought of another idea. “By the way, when I was researching the high school, I ran across an article which mentioned some renovation done in this area back in the mid-seventies. I think it said a warren of storage rooms and an old orchestra pit were sealed up under the auditorium. I thought I might write a historical piece on it for the newspaper. Were you aware of that?”
Terry glanced at the padlocked door. “I believe the area behind this door is the pathway to which you are referring. I call it ‘hell,’ as in Shakespeare’s theatre.” She clasped her hands, rubbing them soundlessly. “I feel cold spirits from hell…Sometimes when I’m working here at night, I can hear fingernails scraping on the other side of the door. I’ve always been a person of the most delicate sensibilities, so naturally the spirits would attempt to contact me.”
“
Have you made contact with them?” Grace asked, lowering her voice, trying her best to sound serious.
“Sometimes I hear them whispering about me.” Her face took on a wide-eyed look, and then she muttered under her breath, “Laying their plans. But I am stronger than they are.”
Grace worked hard to keep her face a mask, but she was shocked. She cleared her throat and said, “Have you ever opened the door or checked out the underground area?”
“Once. It has passages, storage rooms, and old flats which were used years earlier. Nothing of any value, I believe. I keep it locked because the students must never go in there. I could not be responsible for their safety.”
“Sounds intriguing to me,” Grace said, hoping to win back the drama teacher’s trust.
Terry took a step toward Grace, and Grace took a step back, bumping into the table.
“Ms. Kimball. Despite your eagerness to be back in this building, and even though you have a positive aura here, I would beg you to remember the old adage about the cat, including what killed it.”
For the next forty-five minutes, Grace took pictures of scenes, writing down the names of the cast members, even though many of them she already knew. They were either exhausted, trying to balance their homework with their play schedule, or excited at the prospect of the play going on in three nights. She was always in the middle of a group of cast members, whose excited voices reminded Grace of her teaching days. Once again, her heart gave a tug about what she missed.
Finally, she finished the group photographs and turned to Ellen Terry, attempting to sound enthusiastic. “Now, let’s get a photo of you with the two Brewster sisters and their nephew.”
“No, I think we shall not,” Terry said, crossing her arms and turning away from Grace.
“Oh, but it’s your big production; you should get credit for turning out such a marvelous evening of entertainment.” Grace poured it on. “One little photo. We can line you up right here in front of the window seat.” She motioned Ginger and another girl over.
Death Takes No Bribes: An Endurance Mystery (Endurance Mysteries Book 3) Page 19