“She blamed an intern,” Lacey said.
“Did she? That’s weird. We don’t have any interns right now. They’re a mixed blessing anyhow. All I know is the costume was on the rack and one of our volunteers rang it up. This pretty black woman handed over the cash. I can see why, she’ll look great in it. I told Amy to chill. Wrong thing to say! Boom! I just thought it was her anal side, you know. Us stage managers, born control freaks. But she was all flipped out, like she thought she’d lose her job or something.”
She lost a lot more than that. Lacey didn’t know what to make of DeeDee’s story. Nobody saw the costume on the rack until it was sold? Did someone deliberately hang the dress on the rack, hoping to rid the theatre of it? Was lending it to all those actresses becoming a burden? Did they know how the dominoes would fall? And where did the hollow Lenin medals fit into the whole thing?
“How did you find out she died?”
“The police called her brother and he called me. Some kind of accident. In her apartment. The landlord found her. He had complaints about loud music and said she wouldn’t open the door.”
“Did she listen to loud music?” Amy didn’t seem the type.
“Maybe after a hard day with Yuri.” DeeDee paused and checked her sack again. “Amy meant well, but she could be frantic about details. She got very stressed.”
“Why do you work here?”
“Me? Theatre major in school. Always loved theatre. Working here? You gotta let things roll off your back. Lots of people are intimidated by Yuri. Mostly, I find him funny. He barks at everyone, but he treats people okay. That’s why I’ve been here so long. You have to understand that right now, before a new show, he has to maintain focus. Things like death? Losing his stage manager right before press night? That’s a big deal. Kinda freaks him out.”
Things like death. “What else freaks Yuri out?”
“Oh, man. Missed cues. Misplaced props. Actors. Anything out of place. Basically anything.” DeeDee lifted a small plastic superhero figure out of the Amy Keaton bag. “Wonder Woman. Kind of sad, don’t you think?”
“Very sad.” The contents of a life reduced to a shopping bag struck Lacey as beyond melancholy, right into tragedy. But surely there was more to Amy Keaton than this sack of office detritus? “This was just her job, right? What was the rest of her life like?”
“This job was pretty much her life. She lived in a tiny studio apartment up in Mount Pleasant. She loved the theatre. I’m not sure it loved her back. Oh damn, I forgot her mug, the one she used for tea. I bet it’s still on stage.” DeeDee turned and marched out of the lobby, down one of the side aisles toward the stage. Lacey followed and watched while the other woman picked up a big black coffee mug. It didn’t look valuable.
“Sentimental value?”
“No, I just don’t want someone to walk away with it, or use it. This may sound superstitious, but I don’t want bad luck hanging around just before opening. Nobody does.”
DeeDee boosted herself up on the lip of the stage to sit. Lacey leaned.
“Doesn’t sound any stranger than anything else I’ve heard lately. What can you tell me about Amy as a person?”
DeeDee sighed. As if she couldn’t stay still for very long, she jumped to her feet and adjusted some furniture on the stage, matching it with squares of glow-in-the-dark tape that marked the stage. The set was swathed in drapes of blue velvet and white sheers. She sat down again on the lip of the stage.
“She was a good stage manager. Stage managers aren’t really like anyone else in the theatre,” DeeDee said. “Actors care about their art. Their lines, their marks, their cues, their applause, nothing else. Techies care about physical stuff, like lights and sound and costumes and props and furniture placement and the set not falling down. Nothing else. Directors care about everyone following orders. Nothing else. But the stage manager worries about everything. Everything! About getting everyone and everything on stage, on time, in place, in the right order, and then off again. It’s like running an entire railroad. All night, every night.”
“Big job,” Lacey said. “Will you be the head stage manager from now?”
“Just temporarily, as far as I know. Believe me, it’s intense working directly under all these mad Russians. But dramatic.” She grinned, indicating that was a little joke. “Never boring. I like it when this place is empty, though. It’s amazing that we can create a show out of almost nothing. An empty space, a few pieces of painted wood, some scraps of material and glitter, and a bunch of actors. It’s a kind of alchemy.”
“What do you do, when you don’t work here?”
“I’m working on my master’s in theatre right now, so I can teach and stop living in poverty.” She grinned. “With a little help from the long-suffering parents who are desperate to see me become a valuable and viable member of society. I also part-time at Starbuck’s. And when I can get another paying gig, I help out with lighting, set building, costumes. Whatever.”
“Have you always worked here, at Kinetic?”
“Off and on for years. Since college. A liberal arts degree with a theatre major gives you only so many options. I didn’t want to be somebody’s administrative assistant, so I started working in the shop here.”
“Are you familiar with their production of The Masque of the Red Death?”
DeeDee stared at Lacey for a moment before answering. “Yeah. The Red Death. I worked on it. That was a trip. Kinetic blazed its path to fame and fortune with that show. My first big production out of undergrad. Definitely a trial by fire.”
“You knew Saige Russell?”
She rolled her eyes. “Ah, Parsnips! That’s what we called her, backstage.” DeeDee giggled wickedly. “Her real name was Patience. Didn’t fit her at all. I guess she thought ‘Saige’ was a more interesting stage name, earthier or something. But nothing could make Parsnips more interesting.”
“Parsnips?”
“You know. Like that old song?”
“The song?”
“You know, ‘Parsnips, Sage, Rosemary and—”
“You mean ‘Scarborough Fair’? I thought that was parsley, not parsnips.”
DeeDee laughed again, an unexpectedly musical laugh. “Right, sure, but in my theatre crowd in college we used to sing it as ‘parsnips, sage,’ and Saige was like a vegetable you don’t want on your plate, so she’ll always be Parsnips to me.”
“You didn’t like her, I take it.”
“I didn’t.” DeeDee leaned back on her arms and studied the catwalk and lighting grids. “Parsnips was temperamental and bitchy, and not very good. If she were bitchy and brilliant, well, all right then, but bitchy and bad is a terrible combo. Every time there was a problem, every time she blew a line, Parsnips yapped about how she was a professional. She was the lead. She shouldn’t have to help move props or take care of her costume or clean up after herself. Or God forbid, learn her lines. And she barely had any lines.”
“A professional?”
“When people have to tell you what a professional they are, they aren’t. She wasn’t even Equity. Real pros don’t bitch about the little things.” Lacey had to agree. There were “professionals” she’d had to deal with who were anything but. “I don’t know why Yuri didn’t kill her. Or can her ass. And he was a total madman after Parsnips died.”
“Why? Was he in love with her?”
“Oh, the farthest thing from it. He was just greatly offended that she died in his theatre. Like how dare she.”
“And the night she died, where were you?”
“Oh, I was at the cast party. Didn’t hear about Parsnips till the next day.”
“You were there all evening, then?”
“The whole crew and I. We got to the party really early, ’cause we didn’t have to strike the set. The children’s theatre show was going to use it. If we’d had to strike, we’d have been working till dawn, instead of partying.”
“How was Parsnips in the role?”
“Barely adequa
te. And that was because everyone was covering her ass. She could dance, but she had no chemistry with Maksym. And that’s weird, because he was such a babe.”
Maksym Pushkin? Lacey recalled the name from the clippings. “The actor who played Prospero?”
“Good memory, Smithsonian. Prospero tries to keep Death out of his castle, but when she appears anyway, he falls in love with her, et cetera. But Maksym couldn’t stand to be in the same room with Parsnips.” DeeDee shook her head and sat up, hugging her knees. “She hated him too. I don’t know what her problem was with him, except he didn’t think she was the stars and the moon. Major offense with her. She was a total narcissist. Like some politicians I could name.”
“She had a wonderful dress,” Lacey said.
“Agreed. And she wore the hell out of it. She looked amazing in it. That costume Nicky made was really something. You could have put a robot in that outfit and it would get raves. And when the spotlights dimmed and the black light hit it, you could hear the whole audience gasp. Every night.”
Even Gregor and Olga were impressed. “So if clothes make the man, costumes make the actors?”
“Sometimes. When Nicky designs them, they do.” DeeDee was loyal. “It made Parsnips seem a lot more fabulous than she was.”
“That’s Nikolai Sokolov? Is he around?”
“He’s been in and out today, but you should probably catch him later. Tensions are running high.”
“Because of Amy Keaton’s death?”
“No. Press night. Well, Amy too. But I’m here, I’ll get it done.”
So press night outranks death. “Can you tell him I dropped by and I’d like to talk to him?” Lacey handed DeeDee her card.
“Sure. You know, if you want to get another insider’s view of Parsnips, I mean Saige, you should talk to Gareth. Maksym wasn’t crazy about her, but Gareth—”
“And Gareth would be?”
“Gareth Cameron. I think it’s a pen name. He’s the playwright who adapted The Masque for the stage. If you want to find someone with another opinion about Parsnips, try him.”
“Playwright? That’s right, the Poe story was only a few pages,” Lacey said.
“Right, it had to be fleshed out. And Kineticized. Honestly, a lot of the visual design was inspired by that cheesy old Vincent Price movie version, did you ever see that? This was sort of an ironic homage, Kinetic style. But Gareth wrote all new dialogue for it in iambic pentameter, in blank verse. Not that anyone noticed. Anyway, Gareth is dreary and miserable enough to adapt Poe.”
“He’s a tortured artist?”
“He’s the tortured playwright’s poster boy. He can write, though. He also adapted our new show, The Turn of the Screw.”
“He sounds perfect for that. Where do I find him?”
DeeDee pulled out her phone and gave Lacey the number. “That’s his work, I don’t have his home. It’s some kind of trade association. Gareth is some kind of assistant to someone who lobbies Congress about—something. Not sure what. He hates it.”
Lacey smiled at DeeDee. “I’d be disappointed if he didn’t.”
Pounding started backstage. It sounded like jackhammers. A few sweaty and sleepy-looking people started trickling into the theatre, armed with large cups of coffee.
“Rehearsal. Caution, Men Acting!” DeeDee grinned. Lacey picked up her tote bag just as Yuri Volkov stormed up the aisle to the stage.
“I was just leaving,” she told him. He pointedly ignored her and jumped up on the stage.
“DeeDee, I have changes, many changes! We must go over these. Now.” He dismissed Lacey with a wave of his hand. “Next time you come to my theatre, Smithsonian, buy a ticket.”
Maybe I should. I’d like to see Kinetic in action. She wondered if there were any cheap tickets available.
I’ll see if Tamsin can get me a comp.
CHAPTER 24
DeeDee Adler promised Gareth Cameron was a downer. Even in D.C., sometimes promises come true.
The playwright agreed to meet her in the lobby of the K Street building where his plastics association was located. She assumed he didn’t want to be seen in his office in some lowly day job, but he left her cooling her heels for nearly half an hour. Portentous things must be popping in plastics, she decided. It gave her time to write most of today’s Fashion BITE in her notebook. She tried out a couple of headlines: D.C. Street Style in the Sizzling Summertime. Or maybe, Keep Cool! Seersuckers Rule!
In between sentences, Lacey admired the building’s décor. The lobby was grand in an old-school kind of way, with leather couches and coffee tables settled around an abstract rug. WPA art decorated the walls, brawny working men and women with sinuous arms and chiseled jaws, all with a look of noble purpose in their visage.
Lacey shivered. She’d strolled from the steamy sunshine into subzero air conditioning, but even with the shivers the chilly air felt good. Until that shiver turns into a dreaded summer cold.
When Cameron finally appeared, his misery was palpable. Lacey found him instantly comical in his gloom, as if he carried his own private raincloud around with him, shedding thunder and lightning as he went. Every furrowed line in his forehead reflected an artist’s anguish: a badge of honor, like his pilled brown sweater vest on this miserably hot day. The vest was paired with a tan shirt and khaki slacks, and his shaggy hair, which he kept sweeping off his forehead with one hand, was as brown as his eyes.
After the preliminaries, wherein his hopes were dashed—she was not writing a piece on him—Cameron asked, “Let me get this straight. You’re not a theatre reporter?”
Gareth Cameron was attractive in a shaggy, poetic, even-featured way, and in his mid-thirties. He spoke with a slight New England accent with a twinge of preppy. In his hand was a bottle of kombucha. It looked revolting. He didn’t offer Lacey any of it. Just as well.
“No, but as I mentioned on the phone, I’m researching the Kinetic production of The Masque of the Red Death,” Lacey said. “I understand you wrote the script.”
“The adaptation, yes.”
“There were some very impressive reviews.” A little butter can’t hurt.
“Thank you. First time out of the gate.” He smiled ever so slightly. “It was so long ago. Before I got my master’s in playwriting. Yale School of Drama.” This was clearly meant to impress. Lacey knew Yale Drama was a major force in the theatre world, but she wasn’t about to let it show. “After Yale I worked in New York theatre for a while, then back to D.C. Frankly, I don’t know why I came back here. But of course there’s Kinetic.” Cameron settled his lanky frame into the faux-modern sofa angled next to Lacey’s.
“That must have been a great opportunity. Yale, I mean.” Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth, William and Mary, those had all been unattainable dreams for her.
“It was. I was lucky enough not to need financial aid,” he said.
Lacey admired Cameron’s ability to casually drop such credentials into the conversation. He might have said, I’m rich enough to pay for Yale and you are not, but this was so much classier.
Lacey’s journalism degree was from a giant public university that later abolished its Journalism School and replaced it with a “School of Communications,” whatever that meant, which was reported to have become a safe haven for football-team mouth breathers. Lacey suspected her J School degree was now invalid. She was glad she already had a reporting job and didn’t have to produce her worthless diploma.
“My degree impresses no one,” she said.
“There’s no place like Yale,” Cameron said, successfully achieving the dramatic rule of three repetitions of his theme, the importance of Yale and an Ivy League education. He smiled, a slightly superior-yet-sorrowful smile. “Though I expected more from Yale, to be frank. And these days, theatres prefer younger playwrights. I’m thirty-five. I might have missed my window of opportunity.”
“Surely not,” she said, thinking that anyone thirty-six or older would find this ridiculous. Flatter, remember to
flatter! “And you look so young.”
“You’re too kind. You’re a writer too, of a sort,” he acknowledged grudgingly. “Are you working on a book, or anything important?”
“Depends what you call important.”
Unless you count investigating seven possible deaths related to poison needles hidden inside KGB medals.
“I thought every D.C. reporter was working on a book.”
“Maybe someday.” If I live that long. “Let’s talk about you, Gareth. You’re a produced playwright. You wrote the script for Kinetic’s Masque, and now you’ve done their new Turn of the Screw. That’s quite an accomplishment.”
He dismissed the compliment with a shrug. “Adaptations. I’m currently working on a new play, a new original work.”
“Can you tell me about it?”
“It won’t be produced here in D.C. I’m talking to a major New York theatre. But I really can’t talk about it yet.”
But he can talk about Yale Drama. “I appreciate your seeing me. I’m writing about the costumes from The Masque of the Red Death, one costume in particular. Could you tell me what it was like to work with Saige Russell?”
Gareth Cameron wrinkled his nose and mouth into a sneer. “Not to speak ill of the dead, but—” He let a dramatic pause hang in the air.
“But?”
“It was so long ago.” And every moment enshrined in memory, Lacey was willing to bet. “It’s hard to remember. It was a challenging production. We got through it.” He ran his hands through his hair.
“I’m guessing there’s more.”
“To be perfectly honest, Ms. Smithsonian—”
“Call me Lacey.”
“To be honest, Lacey, Saige was a dreadful, dreadful actress. DeeDee Adler and the rest of the crew started calling her ‘Parsnips’ and it stuck. It suited her. Parsnips. Pretentious little bitch.”
“Dare I ask for an example?”
He swigged some kombucha. “Saige couldn’t learn lines. Pretty basic requirement for an actor, wouldn’t you think?”
The Masque of the Red Dress Page 18