A Catered Tea Party

by Isis Crawford

“Sarcasm does not become you,” Bernie told her.

  “Neither does the heat.” Libby fanned herself with the edge of her hand to make her point. “The Blue House is like a sauna.”

  “Such a delicate flower,” Bernie observed.

  “At least, let’s wait for a cooler day.”

  Bernie put her hands on her hips. “You mean to tell me that you’re going to be put off by a little heat with Casper’s life hanging in the balance?”

  Libby snorted. “Let’s not overdramatize here. Casper is fine.”

  “For now,” Bernie said. “But if we don’t solve this, he’ll be going to jail.”

  Libby waved her hand in the air. “Now is what counts.” She went on. “And have I mentioned the fact that in my humble opinion looking for the teapot is going to be like looking for a . . . ?”

  “A needle in a haystack, to use another well-worn phrase,” said Bernie, finishing her sister’s sentence for her. “And yes, you have. Several times.”

  “Plus there’s Magda,” Libby continued, undeterred by her sister’s adversarial stance.

  “What about her?”

  “Shouldn’t we tell her what we’re doing?”

  “Why would we?” Bernie inquired as she watched a cicada land on the grass in front of her, its wings glinting in the sun.

  “So she won’t call the police or think we’re a burglar and shoot us.”

  “She won’t know we’re there, and she doesn’t have a gun.”

  “What if she does hear us and she does have a gun?” Libby argued. “What then?”

  “Then we’ll just have to be very, very quiet,” Bernie told her.

  “We should tell her,” Libby argued.

  “No, we shouldn’t!” Bernie told her.

  “Why not?”

  Bernie transferred her glance from the cicada to her sister. “Obviously, because she could be the one who took the teapot. She could be the one who killed Zalinsky.”

  “Even if you’re right,” Libby said. “Why do we have to do this now? Why can’t we wait till she’s gone? It would be easier.”

  “And we’re going to get in how?”

  Libby went silent. They’d given their key to Magda, and the place was still alarmed.

  Bernie rubbed her hands together. “So are we going to do this or not?”

  “I guess,” Libby said with a notable lack of enthusiasm.

  Five minutes later, they were inside The Blue House. Bernie quietly closed the side door behind her. It shut with a soft thud, blocking out the afternoon sun. They’d come in that way because Magda had a clear line of sight to the front door.

  “I don’t see how Magda can stand this,” Libby observed as she held up her hair to cool off the back of her neck, then pulled out her polo shirt to let the air circulate.

  “She dressed for it,” Bernie observed.

  Libby let the dig go by. “God, I hope they get the money to fix the air-conditioning because it’s even hotter in here than it is outside.”

  “Told you you should have worn something cooler,” Bernie couldn’t resist pointing out as she blinked her eyes to get used to the dim light.

  Libby just grunted. She stood there for a moment, fanning herself. “Where to?” she asked Bernie. “This is your party. You pick.”

  “Stage and backstage area first,” Bernie said because those were the areas that were the farthest from where Magda was sitting. “Then the rest of the space.”

  The thick beige carpet muffled their footsteps as they walked down the side corridor. At ten feet in, they took a left, walked twenty more feet and took a right. The place seemed huge with no one in it. It was quiet, dead quiet, tomb quiet, in contrast to when Zalinsky had been alive. Then the place had been full of people running about, excited people busy having meetings, willing the future into existence. Now, except for Magda, no one was here.

  “I wonder if Zalinsky is going haunt this place,” Bernie mused. “Or maybe he already is.”

  “What an odd thing to say,” Libby told her.

  “Not really. After all, this was his baby,” Bernie said running her fingers along the wall. Who was going to pay the bills for the place, she wondered, and how long would the lights stay on if no one did. It would be a shame to see a space like this go to waste. “He did die here, and ghosts are tethered to places.”

  Libby couldn’t get her sister’s words out of her mind as she walked next to her. She was sure it was because her sister—damn her—had suggested it, but she kept thinking she saw something out of the corner of her eye, and when she turned around nothing was there. She would be very glad to get out of there.

  “What’s the matter?” Bernie asked as she and Libby neared the backstage area.

  “Nothing,” Libby lied.

  “Because you’re looking a little spooked.”

  Libby glared at her sister. “Let’s just do what we came to do and get out of here.” She blinked the sweat out of her eyes. “I feel as if I’m going to dissolve into a puddle.”

  “Do you think the g—”

  Libby held up her hand to stop her. “Don’t go there.”

  “Just sayin’,” Bernie replied.

  “Well, don’t,” Libby snapped. Being backstage was creeping her out anyway, without thinking that Zalinsky’s ghost was looking over her shoulder.

  “He could be a helpful ghost,” Bernie went on. “Maybe he wants to help us get the teapot back.”

  “And maybe you should shut up,” Libby hissed.

  “Fine,” Bernie said. “If that’s the way you want it.”

  “It is,” Libby said. “It definitely is.”

  “You take the right side, and I’ll take the left,” Bernie said.

  At which point they got to work. They looked under and around the curtains, they went through the prop area and down into the areas underneath the trap doors. They lifted up the floor panels and examined the areas between the floodlights, then they opened up the cabinet drawers and moved the chairs.

  “Hey,” Libby cried, as she picked up one of the cushions on the chair, “look what I found.”

  Bernie came over. She stared down at the pair of white gloves that had been underneath the cushion. “Wasn’t Zalinsky looking for those?”

  “Oh yes,” Libby said. “Remember? He was running around, accusing everyone of stealing them.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t wrong,” Bernie said, studying them. “Maybe someone did.” She indicated the gloves with a nod of her chin. “Somehow I have the feeling these didn’t get under the cushion by themselves.”

  “Maybe someone hid them to annoy him,” Libby suggested.

  “Possibly,” Bernie said as she picked up the gloves and slowly turned them over. They were white cotton. But they felt funny. She ran her fingers over them. They were lined, which was unusual for cotton gloves. She turned the gloves inside out. They were indeed lined with a thin layer of rubberized material. She showed the lining to Libby.

  “Odd,” Libby said.

  “Suggestive,” said Bernie as a glimmer of an idea began to occur to her. She closed her eyes and tried to picture the scene in the kitchen when she’d run in and found Zalinsky on the floor. “He was wearing gloves onstage.”

  Libby nodded. “Yes, he was.”

  “I wonder where he got them from,” Bernie mused.

  “He must have had an extra pair,” Libby suggested.

  Bernie grunted.

  “What are you thinking?” Libby asked.

  “I’m thinking you should call Marvin,” Bernie replied.

  “And why should I do that?”

  Bernie explained.

  “It seems far-fetched,” Libby said of Bernie’s idea.

  “It is,” Bernie agreed. “But it’s possible. Do you want to call Marvin, or should I?”

  “I will,” Libby said. “Although he’s not going to like this,” she predicted.

  She was right. He didn’t. But he agreed to it nonetheless.

  “When?” Bernie ask
ed after Libby lowered her phone.

  “Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow,” Libby told her. “Depends on when everyone clears out.”

  “I guess that’ll have to do,” Bernie told her as she took photos of the inside and outside of the gloves, then put them back where Libby had found them. She had been going to give them to Clyde but had decided to leave them where they’d found them and show Clyde the photos instead.

  “Now what?” Libby asked as she watched her sister.

  “Now we go through the lounge, the changing rooms, and the kitchen.” Especially the kitchen, Bernie thought. She definitely wanted to see the kitchen.

  Libby groaned. “I’m getting light-headed,” she complained.

  Bernie rummaged in her bag. “Here,” she said. “Drink this.” And she handed her sister a flask of homemade lemonade.

  “Is there anything you don’t have in there?” Libby asked, referring to Bernie’s tote as she opened the flask and gulped it down.

  “You’re one to talk,” Bernie answered. “Feeling better?”

  Libby had to admit she did, which was a good thing because they were coming to the tricky part. While the stage area was away from where Magda was presently ensconced, the lounge, the dressing rooms, and the galley kitchen were not. Now they’d be in close proximity to Magda, or at least close enough so that Magda would be able to hear them moving around if they weren’t very quiet, especially since there were no other sounds in the building, not even the hum of the air-conditioning unit.

  Libby reflected on that as she and Bernie walked down the hallway to the lounge. When they got there, Libby took a deep breath, grasped the handle of the door to the lounge, and pulled. The door creaked as it opened. Libby cursed under her breath. She and her sister stood there waiting for Magda to come, but she didn’t, and after a minute they went inside.

  Everything looked the way it had the last time they had been in here, Libby thought. The sofas and the chairs were in the same places; the coffee table was still littered with paper coffee cups and crumbs from the muffins everyone had been eating before they’d gone onstage; rose petals still marked the spot where Zalinsky had thrown the vase with Erin’s flowers.

  Looking at the lounge, Libby couldn’t help thinking about everyone gathered here the evening before the performance. One of those people had killed Zalinsky. They were moving closer to the how, but not to the who. Everyone had hated him, but who had hated him enough to take things one step further? Libby thought back to that night. Had anyone been acting strangely? Had anyone said or done anything that indicated they were planning on killing someone? She shook her head. If they had, she hadn’t seen it.

  But one thing was for sure. No one in that room had been happy. No one in that room had wanted to be there. Everyone there was there under duress. Certainly she and Bernie were. Libby closed her eyes and pictured the scene. She could see Erin’s fury when Zalinsky had thrown the vase with her flowers on the floor and told her to clean it up, and she could hear Casper cursing Zalinsky under his breath. Then there’d been the Holloway boys in a major sulk over their costumes and Magda with her blood-red fingernails sitting by herself, looking as if she’d like to rip someone’s heart out and eat it, and Hsaio looking as if she wanted to disappear into the sofa.

  Libby was trying to remember exactly what everyone had said when Bernie poked her in the ribs. “Are we going to do this or what?” she asked her sister.

  Libby startled. “Sorry,” she said, and she got to work.

  Fifteen minutes later, she and Bernie were through searching. They’d covered every inch of the space, and Libby felt reasonably sure that unless Zalinsky’s teapot was buried under the floor or secreted somewhere in the walls, it wasn’t there. She was on her knees, having just finished looking under the sofa, and was thinking about how she and Bernie were going to handle the dressing rooms and the galley kitchen, and that maybe they should have started with the kitchen because that, after all, was where everything had begun, when she heard a noise.

  Libby turned around and saw Magda standing in the doorway.

  It took Libby a second longer to see the gun Magda was holding in her hand and a second after that to realize that it was pointed at her and her sister.

  Chapter 32

  This, Libby thought, is not good. She turned to her sister. “Don’t worry, you said,” Libby told Bernie, imitating Bernie’s voice. “She won’t have a gun, you said. She’ll never hear us, you said.”

  “So I was wrong,” Bernie replied. She had just finished looking under the chairs in the corner. “So shoot me.”

  “I have a feeling that could be arranged,” Libby retorted.

  Bernie tsk-tsked. “That’s not nice.”

  “But true,” Libby exclaimed.

  Bernie sniffed. “Hopefully not.”

  “Don’t you two ever shut up?” Magda exclaimed, taking a step into the room.

  “It’s a sister thing,” Libby explained.

  “Makes me glad I’m an only child,” Magda told her.

  Bernie nodded toward the gun. “How about lowering the weapon?”

  “And why should I be doing that?” Magda asked Bernie.

  “Because it’s not as if we’re strangers,” Bernie answered. “You know who we are.”

  “Precisely,” Magda said. “And anyway, how do I know you’re not here to do something awful?”

  “Like what?” Libby demanded.

  Magda shrugged.

  “Then at least put the safety back on,” said Bernie, who had noticed that it was off. “Accidents can happen.”

  Magda smiled brightly. “Da. They can. They happen all the time in America. Now what are you two doing here?” she asked.

  Libby said the first words that came to her. “Looking for a charm bracelet.”

  “My charm bracelet,” Bernie said to Magda. “I loaned it to her, and now she can’t find it. Can you . . .”

  Magda interrupted before Bernie could finish. “This is a stupid story you are telling me.” She waved the gun around. “You think maybe I am a stupid person?”

  “Not at all,” Bernie quickly replied. “Frankly, I wouldn’t believe it either.” She turned to Libby. “See,” she said, “I told you we shouldn’t have snuck in here like this. I told you Magda would be angry. I told you we should tell her what we were going to do.”

  “No, Bernie, I told you that.”

  “No, you didn’t, Libby.”

  “Yes, I did, Bernie. I told you Magda looked like the type who might have a gun.”

  “And you were right, Libby,” Bernie told her sister.

  “Stop this . . . this . . .”

  “Bickering,” Bernie said, supplying the word.

  “Yes, bickering,” Magda said.

  “Fine,” Bernie told her. “I’m just surprised, is all. You just didn’t strike me as the type,” she pointed to the weapon, “to have one of those.”

  “It is Zalinsky’s,” Magda informed her.

  “So I don’t owe you a dollar after all,” Bernie told Libby. “We bet,” she explained to Magda, even though she and her sister hadn’t.

  “Was Zalinsky’s,” Magda corrected herself. “He keep it in the drawer for just in case.”

  “In case what?” Libby asked. She’d gotten up off her knees. At least Magda hadn’t objected to that.

  “In case people, bad people, come to visit. Of course.”

  “Of course,” Bernie said, also rising. She brushed her legs off. “Were there a lot of those?”

  “He said there were going to be,” Magda replied. “Myself, I did not see them. But he always talk big.”

  “Talk big?” Libby asked.

  Magda explained. “He always make things bigger than they were.”

  “He exaggerated?” Bernie asked,

  Magda nodded. “Da. That is the word I am looking for.”

  Libby indicated the gun with a nod of her head. “Maybe you should put that down. Your arm looks like it’s getting tired.” />
  Magda scowled.

  “Or not,” Libby told her.

  “Did Zalinsky ever find his gloves?” Bernie asked, changing the subject. “I know he was looking for them before the performance.”

  “Such a fuss about nothing,” Magda said, nodding in remembrance.

  “Good thing he had another pair,” Libby observed.

  “No. He find his pair right where he leave them,” Magda said.

  “Interesting,” Bernie said.

  “This is not interesting,” Magda snapped, the color rising on her face. “This is just stupid.”

  Bernie decided a change of subject might be beneficial. “Have I told you I love the new you,” Bernie said to Magda, going for disarming—both literally and figuratively. And it was true. Looking at her again, Bernie realized that Magda had blossomed since Zalinsky’s death. She had a new look, a younger, more fashionable one, one that Bernie was sure had cost a fair amount of money to achieve.

  For openers, Magda had gotten a makeover. She’d abandoned her bright red lipstick for a softer shade of pink and dialed down the black eyeliner to a more flattering shade of brown. She’d cut her bangs and changed the color of her hair to a pretty auburn and caught it up in a loose bun on the top of her head. Tendrils escaping from the bun framed her face.

  Then there were her clothes. They were different too. They were funkier, Bernie decided. More flattering. Softer. Definitely more expensive. Magda was wearing a loose-fitting, yellow and blue, pin-striped, knee-length dress that looked like an old-fashioned house dress, but Bernie had seen it featured in Vogue. If she remembered rightly, the dress had cost somewhat over four hundred dollars. And then there were Magda’s shoes. Platform sandals. Bernie had seen them in Bloomingdale’s for three hundred dollars. Not bad for a working girl.

  “I love the dress,” Bernie said.

  “Good for you,” Magda replied, but she lowered the gun a little.

  “And the shoes. Were they expensive?” Bernie asked, encouraged by Magda’s response. “Did you get them at Barney’s or in Little Russia?

  “None of your business,” Magda told her.

  “I seem to be getting a lot of that lately,” Bernie remarked ruefully.

  “Maybe that’s because you’re sticking your nose in where you shouldn’t,” Magda replied. “I could have shot you,” she added, but then, to Bernie and Libby’s relief, she put the gun on the end table by the sofa.