Polly Deacon Mysteries 4-Book Bundle

by H. Mel Malton

  “Darlings!” Juliet said, transferring her smoke to the martini hand and pulling each of us towards her with an iron grip to deliver a couple of air-kisses. Her raven hair was helmeted to her head with spray, and the makeup was laid on with a trowel.

  “Ricki, you look divine,” Juliet said. “Absolutely delicious. A triumph.” Rico glowed.

  “Polly, dear, are you dressed as a cow?” she said to me. She was referring, I think, to the coy pink udder that was part of my costume. Nothing outrageous, but it was there because I’m a stickler for detail.

  “A goat, Juliet.”

  “Oh. A goat. That would make Ricki . . . I know, Heidi!” She howled with laughter, and Rico joined in. I chuckled to be polite, but my heart wasn’t in it.

  “Oh, lighten up, Polly. You look sweet. Go in and get a drink,” Juliet said.

  I hate costume parties, and I hate being told to lighten up.

  We waded into the crowd.

  “I haven’t met the cast yet, but I’ve seen their head-shots,” I said. “I think that’s Amber Thackeray over there. She’s playing the Princess and the Serpent.”

  “Didn’t I see her in that new McDonald’s commercial?” Rico said.

  “That’s her. Juliet said she’s fresh out of theatre school. She’s done some commercial and modelling work, but I don’t know if she can act.”

  “She probably doesn’t have to,” Rico said. Amber was cover-girl gorgeous. She had a long, luxurious mane of real, honest-to-God red hair, her teeth were white and even, her skin was flawless, sprinkled with cinnamon freckles, and her body positively vibrated with sexual energy. She was dressed in a Greek-goddess toga, but she could have been wearing sackcloth and ashes and she still would have had every eye in the room. I just hoped that her beauty hadn’t made her mean. It can do that sometimes.

  She bounced over to us.

  “Well, hello there,” she chirped. Her voice was lightweight, and I knew instantly that she was going to have trouble projecting through the black hood she would have to wear in The Glass Flute. I wondered if she had been told that she would have to be masked from the audience, swathed in black velvet.

  “I’m Amber Thackeray. Are you in the cast, too?”

  “Polly Deacon,” I said and held out my hand. “I’m the puppet designer.” She shook hands by clasping mine in both of hers and squeezing. A large diamond ring glittered on her left hand.

  “Oh, I just saw your stuff upstairs. All those cool props. Pleased to meet you, Polly.” She smiled with a warmth which was almost tactile. People would be falling in love with Amber all over the place. Maybe the ring on her finger was a talisman to ward off unwelcome suitors.

  “This is my friend, Ricki,” I said, putting my hand on Rico’s shoulder. “She’s not in the show, just came for the party.”

  Amber shook his hand, too. “How come you didn’t wear a costume?” she said.

  Rico smiled a secret smile. “Short notice,” he said. “I loved your McDonald’s commercial.”

  “Oh, thanks. I’m trying to avoid that stuff now, though,” Amber said. “I want to work at Stratford one day.”

  A Steamboat Theatre children’s puppet show was a long way from doing Shakespeare, I thought. Amber read my mind and grinned bashfully. The effect was adorable.

  “Yeah, I know. But you gotta start somewhere. I’m taking voice with Bob Green in Toronto, and he told me to audition for this to build up my stamina. I almost died when I got it. You’re teaching us puppetry, right?”

  “Yep,” I said.

  “Who’s doing voice?”

  “Well, I don’t think anyone’s actually hired to coach in that department, Amber. Ruth Glass is the music director, and she’ll be working with all of you on the singing numbers, but I don’t know if she’ll have time for individual coaching. I guess you’re on your own.”

  Amber squealed and hopped up and down, in a cute way. “Ruth Glass? You mean, the Ruth Glass? Of Shepherd’s Pie?”

  “Uh huh,” I said. “She lives around here. Taking a break from touring.”

  “Oh my God,” Amber breathed. “Like, oh, my God.” She was in full Valley-girl mode, but it was still cute. I began to find her annoying. “Oh, God. I hope I can do it. I’m so nervous,” Amber said and rushed away to greet someone else who was just arriving.

  “She’s a bit eager, isn’t she?” Rico said.

  “Positively puppyish,” I said. “I hope she survives. Touring kids’ theatre is the worst kind of trial by ordeal. If you haven’t got the chops for it, you sink real quick.”

  “You’ve done it?”

  “In spades. I was a touring stage-manager and performer with a company out east for years. Even kept my Equity standing, although I haven’t been on stage for a long time. Touring is murder, Rico. There’s no way I’d ever do it again.”

  “Never say never,” Rico said, shaking a manicured finger in my face. “Anyway, good thing you don’t have to tour with that one. She looks like she may be a sinker. Mind if I mingle? I’ve got to see if the bartender recognizes me.” He gave me a pert wave and pushed into the crowd.

  “What did Amber just say to you?” said a voice in my ear. I turned to find Jason McMaster, the stage manager, gazing intensely at Amber’s retreating form. He was dressed in stage-crew black, the uniform of stage managers everywhere, and carried an arm-load of audio cable. Black was not his colour. I swallowed my preferred response, which would have been to raise an eyebrow and say in a chilly voice: “You are her keeper, yes?”

  “Excuse me?” I said, instead.

  “What did she say to you?” he repeated.

  “She introduced herself,” I said. “Does she need your permission for that?” Jason and I had enjoyed a couple of run-ins already and weren’t destined to become bosom buddies.

  He shook himself like a wet whippet and glared at me. “Of course not. It’s just that she seems to be avoiding me, and I can’t figure out why.”

  “I think she just wants to meet everyone,” I said, carefully. I could at least make an effort to be friendly, I figured. “You know her, I take it?” I had known Jason for less than a week. He came up in advance of the cast, as per his Equity contract, to do the stage-manager’s organizational thing. He was originally from Kuskawa and a graduate of the Laingford High drama club. I’d heard that he’d been through the theatre tech program at Kingsway Theatre School in Toronto, and he took his job seriously.

  He’d never mentioned a connection with any of the cast-members.

  “Amber’s my fiancée,” he said.

  Two

  MOTHER: You’ll meet with strangers on the path, take care / Be wary, but polite, and comb your hair.

  -The Glass Flute, Scene ii

  Jason’s eyes started flickering around the room. He’d lost sight of Amber, and he was panicking.

  “Have you been engaged for long?” I said.

  Jason looked at his watch. “Three and a half hours,” he said, then grinned. “And six minutes.” The smile perked up his face, lending it a kind of basset-hound sweetness. I’d never seen him smile before. He usually looked as if a timber wolf had just bitten his butt. The smile was the first warm moment we had shared.

  I grinned back. “Congratulations,” I said. “You work fast.”

  His face immediately soured. “We’ve been going out for three years,” he said. “Both of us getting this contract was a fluke, and it speeded things up, that’s all.”

  “I was kidding,” I said, backtracking. Golly. Touchy. “Well, congratulations, Jason. Why don’t you let me buy you a drink?”

  “I’m working,” Jason said. “Setting up the rehearsal space for tomorrow.”

  “Oh, relax. Take a minute to celebrate. You don’t get engaged every day. One drink isn’t going to hurt.” He thought about it, shrugged and followed me over to the bar.

  Sam Ruttles, the theatre accountant, was in charge of the drinks. Short and bald, with a horrible taste for practical jokes, Sam was known as the Don
Juan of Sikwan. Women were drawn to him like flies to a Vapona strip, for reasons which they thankfully kept to themselves. He was surrounded by his usual harem, which included Rico, who gave me the thumbs-up sign. That meant that Sam hadn’t recognized him, I supposed.

  “Scotch on the rocks, please, Sam. And something for my friend Jason, here, who has just gotten engaged.”

  “What would you want to get engaged for, Jase?” Sam said, grabbing a bottle of generic Liquor Control Board of Ontario mystery scotch. “Marriage takes all the fun out of it.” He handed me my drink—a quarter inch of pale yellow liquid with too much ice. Jason asked for a beer, which was wise, because Sam couldn’t be stingy with that.

  “We’re engaged because we’re in love,” Jason said, simply. All Sam’s ladies said “Awww,” including Rico.

  “Love’ll get you through the first month, tops,” Sam said. “I should know. Been married six times.”

  “He’s the only guy I know who owns his own tux,” I said. We all looked at Sam. He was wearing it.

  “What are you dressed as, Sam? The robber bridegroom?”

  “No, Polly,” Sam said, “just a wicked bachelor.” He made a lunge at Rico, who swooped away, shrieking. I chuckled. Sam would just poo when he found out.

  Jason took his beer and audio cables and melted away. I winked at Rico and moved off into the crowd. Listening to Jason talking about Amber had reminded me that I was very single, with no prospects on the horizon.

  My last affair, back in the fall, had ended miserably. I had lived in the District of Kuskawa for almost four years, and all I had to show for it in the relationship department was a failed flirtation with one of Kuskawa’s finest, an Ontario Provincial Police officer called Mark Becker. We had been overcome by a roaring chemical attraction, which turned into one admittedly wonderful date, which turned into chaos after I offered him a post-coital joint. We hadn’t spoken much since, other than to exchange polite greetings in town.

  One night of passion in the last forty-eight months. I think I had the right to be a little depressed.

  “Why the long face?” It was Tobin Boone, the technical director, with whom I’d been working for the past four weeks in the shop downstairs. Nice guy. Very married.

  “Oh, you know, Tobin. The kissy-face thing. Singlehood. Jason just got engaged.”

  “Oh yeah, I’d heard that. Guy plays close to the chest, eh?” Tobin said. “But you, Polly? You don’t strike me as the marrying type.” He flashed his pearly-whites at me. Tobin was dressed up as a black-face minstrel, white gloves and all. He’s black to begin with, so it was okay.

  “I’m not,” I said. “Maybe I should make more of an effort, though. I could take lessons from our fearless leader.” We both glanced over at Juliet, who was flirting madly with Jason. The young stage manager looked annoyed and defensive.

  “She should know better than to hit on the kid,” Tobin said. “We’ll be dealing with a sexual harassment suit before you know it.”

  “Why is he setting up the rehearsal space now?” I asked.

  “He said he wanted to. I swear, I’ve never met a more obsessive SM in my life,” Tobin said. “Never quits.”

  Jason was handsome in a petulant, underfed way. He had a flop of dark hair that fell romantically over his brow, and he was always flicking it back impatiently. I had vowed a week earlier to tie him down and hack it off with a pair of shop scissors. Tobin had promised to help.

  In the theatre, there’s a long-standing tradition that all stage crew people wear black. The idea is that if you wear black, you can’t be easily seen onstage or in the wings as you go about your job. Most of the stage managers I’ve known have a wardrobe almost entirely made up of black stuff. Jason was no exception, but he took it to extremes. Every time I’d seen him, he was wearing the same trademark black leather vest, with multiple pockets for notebook, keys, pens and tiny flashlight, the tools of the trade. He wore black boots, black socks and black T-shirts. It was likely he wore black underwear as well. The vest clanked and jingled when he walked, and I would bet he wore it to bed. The vest was his authority, and without it, he’d be diminished.

  He was the kind of stage manager that we used to call a stage-mangler when I was in the touring biz—the officious kind who gave everybody folders at the first rehearsal, with schedules and contact sheets with everybody’s home phone number on them. He would read the company rules aloud and make sure everybody had a copy. He would call Equity coffee breaks in the middle of an important moment in a rehearsal, then get huffy if the actors said they wanted to continue to the end of a scene. He would be a pain—well, he already was. He had already been in my face downstairs in the shop, criticizing my work, which is why, as I said, we weren’t destined for lifelong friendship.

  “That’s going to be too heavy for Amber,” he’d said, just as I put the finishing touches on the serpent puppet.

  “There’s a waist-belt inside, Jason,” I’d said. “The weight’s carefully balanced.”

  “If you have to rebuild it, don’t come crying to me,” he’d replied. His face told me that if the puppet turned out to be too much for the actress to manage, he would be secretly delighted. This power-tripping was not uncommon in young stage managers, but it was obnoxious nonetheless.

  “I’d better go over and interrupt,” Tobin said, “before Juliet hauls him into her office for a private audition.”

  As Tobin moved away, he squeezed my elbow. “Go downstairs,” he said. “The party’s better in the shop.”

  Steamboat Theatre is housed in an old marina on the shores of Sikwan Bay, next to the falls. On the main level are the offices and lobby, the rehearsal space is upstairs in the attic, and downstairs, where the boats used to be, is the shop.

  Steamboat doesn’t have a performance space. There’s no point, because Steamboat’s a touring company. Their performance spaces are wherever there’s an audience; school gymnasiums, libraries, community centres, whatever.

  The workshop is a wonderful space, but cold. They never got around to boarding up the open water, so the paint-tables and storage racks surround a square pool where several boats would be moored if the place were still a marina. It’s great in the summer, but awful in winter. They have space-heaters, but there’s still frigid water in the middle of the room, no matter what you do.

  In the spring, when the smelt are running, you can dip a net into the pool, scoop up a bunch of flashing silver fish and fry them up right there on the workshop hotplate. In the summer, you can stop what you’re doing, strip off and have a swim. In the winter, your fingers freeze. The only good thing about the workshop in winter is that the cold temperatures make the contact cement dry really, really fast. I had been working in the shop since early April, and in Kuskawa, you never discount the possibility of snow until mid-June. It was May 7, and there was still a little snow on the ground, in the shady places.

  It was jeezly cold down there that May evening. You could see your breath. A bunch of people were standing in a circle at the bottom of the stairs, and they all glanced up furtively when I opened the shop door. That could only mean one thing. Something of an illegal nature was being passed around. Goody.

  Closest to the stairs was Meredith Forbes, the Belleville-based actress hired to play the Mother and the Cat characters. She had toured The Glass Flute before, twice—a Steamboat Theatre veteran. She was a moody-looking woman in her late twenties with dark smudges under her eyes. She wore crimson lipstick and was aggressively muscular and fit. She probably jogged every morning. On tour, she’d inevitably be the first person up in the mornings, the one to hog the motel-room shower. Rooming with her would be awful. She probably went to bed at nine. She wore a cat-costume which I had seen hanging in the wardrobe room, and she didn’t look very pleased about it. It was too small for her, and made her look like a lion that has eaten too much zebra.

  Next to Meredith was Bradley Hoskins, the Toronto actor playing the Woodsman and the Dragon, an older man whose presence
in the cast was unusual. Touring kids’ theatre is normally considered “paying one’s dues,” something every young actor has to do. It’s not a job that’s readily accepted by the more mature members of the theatre community. Maybe Hoskins really needed the money. I’d heard he was recently divorced and had a kid. I didn’t know for sure, but the tour would probably be a stretch for him. The job isn’t just about acting. It’s about loading and unloading sets and costumes and performing a show twice a day with a half-hour lunch break. It’s about sharing a room with several other actors and sitting in a cramped van on the road when you’re not performing. It’s not easy, and Bradley was kind of pudgy.

  I didn’t envy Jason. It would be his job to drive the van and keep the peace. The cast, it seemed to me, was a bit oddly-matched.

  Ruth Glass was down there, too. Ruth is the lead singer for Shepherd’s Pie, a folk band that’s pretty hot right now. Her partner, Rose, was in Seattle with her dying brother, so the band decided to take a six-month break. Ruth, never one to sit around, took on the Steamboat gig to keep her mind off Rose’s absence. She was officially the music director, and we were all pretty excited about it. Her job would be to work with the actors on the musical numbers in the show and to record the show tapes. She’d probably end up doing a lot of voice coaching as well, seeing as Amber Thackeray likely couldn’t project her way out of a wet paper bag.

  When I joined the circle, Bradley was just sparking up a joint. I immediately imagined Detective Constable Mark Becker coming down the stairs and arresting all of us. I tensed up. Meredith pointedly didn’t partake, which made me wonder why she was down there. Maybe she was afraid she’d miss something, or perhaps she was secretly in league with Becker. When Meredith passed the doob to me (at least she wasn’t afraid to touch the stuff), I took the sweet smoke into my lungs, held on and wiped Becker from my thoughts. Take that, Officer. We started talking about the play.