Polly Deacon Mysteries 4-Book Bundle

by H. Mel Malton

  I warmed up a tin of baked beans (comfort food) and prepared to fire up the laptop, so I could check my e-mail. (Gosh, how glib that sounds. How quickly the Luddite turns cyber-puppy.) It was chilly in the cabin, and I lit a small fire, discovering in the process that Jason’s drowned notebook had slipped down between the woodstove and the wall. I fished it out and brought it to the table, where the oil lamp was casting a cheerful glow. It had dried out to the extent that I could separate the pages without tearing them, and like any waterlogged book, it was now three times its original thickness.

  The first few pages were full of the predictable and panicstriken notes of the young stage manager who has blithely taken on a gig without realizing the extent of the work involved. The first page was titled: “Production Meeting”, dated the beginning of the week before, when Jason had arrived at Steamboat. There were scribbles about pyro stuff, lighting stuff and what appeared to be preliminary notes about the van pack. He was an experienced enough stage manager to know the “If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage” rule, and every little thing was written down.

  It got interesting a bit further in.

  “Background,” Jason had written at the top of the page. Then each member of the cast and production staff was listed, with curious little notes beside each one.

  “Juliet Keating: Fucking Harvey Ogilvie, chairman of board,” it said. “Guy is married.”

  “Tobin Boone: Deals dope.” Now this I didn’t know. My friend was holding out on me.

  “Sam Ruttles: Money guy. Petty cash? Check records.” It looked like Jason had been collecting stuff about every one of us, even if there was nothing to collect. I felt the hair prickle at the back of my neck. When had he had time to go snooping around getting this kind of information? I read on.

  “Ruth Glass: Dyke singer. AIDS?” This was pushing it, and I was beginning to get pissed off. If anyone else had seen this, I could understand why they might have been tempted to push the little creep into the Kuskawa River.

  “Polly Deacon: Dope smoker. Likes cops. Used to date Drew Franklin.” Now where did he get that esoteric piece of gossip? Drew was the reason I’d moved to Kuskawa in the first place. Our breakup hadn’t been pretty, but it was more than three years old, and the only thing unresolved about it was a phone bill that Drew claimed I owed him for. How on Earth had Jason made that connection, and why the heck did he think it was important enough to include in his little hate sheet?

  He had a shoplifting charge on Meredith (I’ll admit this little tidbit gave me some pleasure), a failed marriage and three small children on Bradley (no surprise and hardly scandalous) and the accusation of gayness on the guy who was supposed to play Kevin, Steven Higgs. Higgs’ name had been crossed out, though, and what Jason had done to the page, presumably when he’d been told that Shane Pacey was replacing him, was the notebook equivalent of road rage.

  “Shane Pacey: Fucking bastard!!!” was scrawled with a heavy hand and underlined several times, and the hand which had written it had pressed hard enough on the paper to tear it.

  Staring at the notebook, which was blank after this page, I wondered what to do about it. Here was a fairly interesting list of motives, perhaps not enough to point in one particular direction, but enough to suggest to Becker and Morrison that Jason was obviously a rather nasty little chap who liked to get his jollies by collecting dirt on his co-workers. More than ever, I was convinced that Jason was adding to the snowmobiler soup at the bottom of the Kuskawa River.

  I dialled the server from the cellphone (see? I can talk the talk) and logged on.

  Twenty-Nine

  DRAGON: There’s little I like better than the glitter of a gem / But I’m also fond of maidens—can you offer one of them?

  -The Glass Flute, Scene x

  [You have mail]

  “Hey, Luggy,” I said. “I’ve got mail.”

  There were thirteen messages in all. Normally, I didn’t get much mail. In the previous year, the only stuff that had come through old-fashioned channels and arrived in envelopes had been a couple of nasty “pay up or you’re toast” notes from Petrocan (addressed to George, whose name was on the card, but given to me because I was the one who used it) and a bi-annual, chatty letter from an old friend on the east coast. I’d had a Christmas card from Rico in December (a lovely picture of a nearly naked bodybuilder wearing a Santa hat—I’d hung it in the outhouse) and an anonymous note from the States telling me that if I didn’t repent me of my sins, I’d burn in Hell, which I suspected came from Eddie Schreier’s estranged father, Samson, who had reason to dislike me. That was it. I have never been a subscriber to magazines (the people who produce them sell your address directly to their advertisers, who sell it to marketing firms, et cetera) and I refuse to fill out “Win a Free Widget” contest ballots. Because of this, I haven’t had a piece of junk mail in years.

  Eleven of the messages on my e-mail were from people I didn’t know, offering me schemes for making money in my own home, exhortations to do all my shopping on the Internet and opportunities to set up my own website. I can just imagine a Polly Deacon website. Polly dot com. A picture of me and Luggy on the rickety porch of the cabin, with the inscription “nothing to report.”

  I deleted them all except for two. One was from steamboat@kuskawa.com, which I assumed was Juliet’s, and probably contained a written reprimand for my reaction to the daisy-puppet murder. I decided to smoke a joint before I read that one. The other was from Becker.

  To: pdeacon@kuskawa.com

  From: oppbeck@kuskawa.com

  Subject: Flaky, Luddite stuff

  Dear Polly;

  If you have found out anything about the Jason McMaster case, I’d expect you to tell us. It’s not for you to decide what is important to the case and what is “flaky, Luddite stuff”, as you call it. Like I said in my last message, the investigation is ongoing. Just because you don’t see us at the theatre, doesn’t mean we’re not working on it.

  Mark Becker

  I wrote back right away, not even bothering to draft my message first. After all, I was calling on Juliet’s nickel.

  To: oppbeck@kuskawa.com

  From: pdeacon@kuskawa.com

  Re: Flaky, Luddite stuff

  Dear Becker;

  I thought you had concluded that “the Jason McMaster case” was simply a matter of a young guy who was miffed because his girlfriend’s former flame was back. If the investigation is truly ongoing, there are things you should know. Jason was collecting dirt on everybody at the theatre (I can prove this) and somebody has pulled a couple of sick stunts at the theatre that seem to allude to a death that happened in Laingford about ten years ago. If you’re interested, I can tell you about them. Have you fished up any more bodies yet?

  Polly.

  I pressed “send” and the message disappeared, presumably transformed into an electronic gibber, skittering through the phone lines into the belly of whatever infernal machine processed it. It still blows me away that this actually works. If I’d been born in Alexander Graham Bell’s time, I would have denounced him as a loony.

  Then I logged off, rolled a small joint and smoked it, cobbled together a cheese sandwich and started cleaning up my worktable, perfectly well aware that I was procrastinating about reading Juliet’s message. Perhaps if I waited a few minutes, the laptop computer, like the proverbial homework dog, would eat it and I’d have an excuse for having missed it.

  It didn’t.

  To: pdeacon@kuskawa.com

  From: steamboat@kuskawa.com

  Subject: preview

  Polly;

  I know this is short notice, but we’ve arranged to do a preview of the show at Laingford High School on Friday afternoon. Please inform the cast tomorrow morning, and tell them not to worry about it. Most of the audience doesn’t speak English. As you know, Laingford is sponsoring a group of Kosovar refugees, who arrived in Kuskawa last week, and the show is a way of making them feel welcome. There will be about 50 p
eople, adults and children, plus town officials and some people from the Salvation Army. I’ll talk to you about it tomorrow night. Please put the cast through a couple of runs of the show tomorrow. I’ll be in Toronto until about 6 p.m.

  Juliet

  I just sat there, staring at the screen, my mouth open. The cast was going to go ballistic. To schedule a preview of a complex show like the Flute after only four days of rehearsal was totally insane. Our preview wasn’t supposed to happen until Monday, and we hadn’t done a complete run yet. There was no way Ruth would have the show tapes ready by Friday, and nobody was entirely off-book. Not only that, but we hadn’t integrated the flashpots into the show yet, either. This was a recipe for disaster.

  I’d heard about the Kosovar refugees coming to Kuskawa. There had been a big splash about it in the local newspapers, a welcoming ceremony and a general atmosphere of “aren’t we wonderful to be doing this?”

  The group of fifty Kosovars who were welcomed into the heart of northern Ontario cottage country had languished in a camp in Macedonia for more than a month, after being expelled from their own country by the Serbian army. They’d been flown to Canada by military jet and housed on an army base in Petawawa for another month or so, before being “adopted” by the Laingford Town Council. The provincial government had generously donated a property it owned in the region. It was, ironically, an abandoned summer camp on the shores of Lake Kimowan, complete with cottages, several dilapidated outbuildings, a main dining hall and a beach. In a frenzy of well-meaning preparation, Laingford council had repaired the cottages, painted over the “Camp Gitchee-Goomie” sign and organized a district-wide drive for food, clothing and household goods. The community had responded with the boundless enthusiasm of an elementary school classroom getting ready to receive a new pet.

  When they arrived, the Kosovars had been photographed mercilessly by the local media, their faces scrutinized for signs of gratitude. The presentation of The Glass Flute, I suspected, was being offered in order to coax a smile or two from Kuskawa’s newest citizens. In most of the pictures I’d seen, they’d been pretty grim, and Laingford council must have been disappointed. I wasn’t sure how they’d react to our puppet show. If they didn’t speak much English, the story would be hard to follow, and while the pyrotechnics would certainly produce a reaction, I wasn’t sure the bomb-traumatized Kosovar kiddies would be crowing with delight. I said as much in my reply to Juliet’s e-mail, but I doubted that it would make much difference. Juliet’s big on community involvement.

  “Is she crazy?” Meredith said, after my announcement of the news the next morning. Her voice rattled the casement window and Amber’s puppy, Portia, who had been asleep in her playpen, woke up and immediately started yipping.

  “Shut that dog up!” Meredith said. “Christ, this is the most unprofessional outfit I’ve ever had the misfortune to be associated with. A measly one-week rehearsal period, then the chicken-shit stage manager walks out on us, then we get hit with a preview for a bunch of immigrants way before we’re ready and the director waltzes off to Toronto, leaving a hippie puppeteer in charge. I’m calling Equity.” She headed for the door.

  “Scared you’ll look like an incompetent idiot up there?” Shane said. Meredith stopped and squared off against him. Showdown. Everybody scrambled for cover.

  “I think it’s kind of exciting,” Amber said from the door.

  “Meredith, chill out,” Bradley said from the safe side of the stage manager’s table.

  “I won’t look half so stupid as you’ll look, Pacey,” Meredith said.

  “I guess Ruth’ll be playing live, eh?” Amber said, trying for a segue with a frantic smile, looking at me, willing me to do something.

  Smarting from the “hippie puppeteer” crack, I was inclined to wade in and pour kerosene on the burn by using a highly improper Anglo-Saxon epithet referring to the nether regions of the human female.

  “Yup, Ruth will,” I said.

  “You’re just afraid you’ll dry in the middle of the opening scene and crack up like you did at Gananoque,” Shane said. “Wanna be blacklisted again?”

  “I didn’t know you were at Gananoque,” Bradley said to Meredith.

  “So, if Ruth plays live, then if we screw up, she can get us back on track and, like stall, right?” Amber said to me.

  “I did not crack up, Pacey. I had mono,” Meredith said.

  “Bullshit. You went crazy and wrecked the show. Nobody but kid’s theatres has hired you since,” Shane said.

  “Listen, Meredith. The audience doesn’t even speak English,” I said. “If you lose a line, nobody’ll notice.”

  “I never lose lines,” Meredith said. “And if you think I’m going onstage with this asshole opposite me, without the proper rehearsal, think again.”

  “Are you the one that played Anne in Anne of Green Gables and had the nervous breakdown on opening night?” Amber said, letting her curiosity get the better of her diplomacy. “I heard about that.” She turned to Shane. “You never told me that was her.”

  “The show closed the week after and we were all out of a job,” Shane said. “Her fault.”

  “Wasn’t there an understudy?” I said.

  “You don’t have understudies in summer stock,” Shane said. “The company was in trouble anyway. Every actress in Toronto who ever played Anne was away somewhere doing it. The actress playing Diana took over the part but she was awful. So the show closed, and the company lost a bundle.”

  “Don’t talk about me like I wasn’t here,” Meredith said. “That show closing wasn’t my fault. The actor playing Gilbert sucked.”

  “I don’t think so,” Shane said.

  “Not only did he suck onstage, he sucked offstage, too,” Meredith said. “Most actors wait on tables between jobs, Shane. I guess the tips were better waiting on Johns, eh?”

  Shane got the look in his eye that I’d seen once before, just before he threw Rico down the stairs at the party.

  “Hey, you guys, that’s enough!” I shouted, and stepped between them. “Whatever the hell happened the last time you worked together is history, got it? I don’t think anyone in this room gives a good goddamn about the details. We’ve all got a past—big deal. Right now, we’ve all got a rehearsal. If anyone here can’t do this gig, then for heaven’s sake quit now so we can hire somebody who can.”

  There was a long, impossibly theatrical pause.

  “It’s going to mean a lot of overtime,” Meredith said.

  “They’ll pay,” I said.

  “They’d better,” Shane said. Truce, for now. We headed downstairs to unload the van.

  Thirty

  CAT: It pays to be observant when there’s danger close at hand / The things that scare us most are things we just don’t understand.

  -The Glass Flute, Scene vii

  The rest of that day, the cast of The Glass Flute worked with the kind of demented, desperate energy usually saved for the kind of opening night when the set’s not finished, half the costumes are missing and the lead actor arrives drunk. Oddly enough, the morning storm had cleared the air a good bit, and I actually caught Meredith and Shane running lines together, staring into one other’s eyes with the intensity of championship chess players, each daring their opponent to make a mistake.

  As soon as Ruth arrived, we set up for a run. Rico, who had come in with me that morning and was downstairs still working with Kim and Sam, came up to the studio and told us he’d ordered a couple of on-the-house pizzas from his uncle’s place, Amato’s, across the river. The cast agreed to a half-hour lunch break, provided that the company paid the Equity lunch-hour infringement. Juliet’s premature preview was going to cost the company a pretty penny, and we all agreed that that was only fair. There was a “them and us” feeling in the studio—the cast against the management, and rather sadly, against our poor, unsuspecting preview audience, who could hardly help the fact that the command performance was creating hardship for the entertainers. Heck, they�
�d probably have preferred to stay at home. I know I would.

  We arranged to do three runs, the first with music, but no black hoods, working under the regular fluorescent overheads, so the cast could see what they were doing. The second, after a break, would be done with the UV lights on, to make the puppets glow, but still with no hoods, then the last would be a real dress rehearsal, hoods on, peripheral vision zero. The staff of Steamboat agreed to come and be a test audience for that one, and we figured we wouldn’t get to it until after the dinner break, so Juliet would be able to see it, too.

  I had agreed to be backstage for the preview, prompting (on book), in case anybody lost it so completely that they needed to be fed a line. Usually, stage managers are at the opposite end of the playing space from the actors, either in a booth or at a table at the back, calling lighting and sound cues (or running them) and taking notes. There were no lighting cues for The Glass Flute, because everything was done under UV light. Well, I guess there were two—“ON” and “OFF”. Under normal circumstances, I would be running the show tapes from out front. Being backstage was weird, because I couldn’t see very much of the action. Still, the actors were all suffering from chronic Yikes, so it was only fair that I was there sharing it with them. Fine tuning would come later, when we were on the road and everything had settled down.

  At its proper pace, the show runs just under an hour. It’s for kids, so there’s no intermission, no chance for the young audience to lose the thread of the story. It’s action-packed, colourful and exuberant, designed to hold onto the fragile thing that is a modern child’s attention span. Juliet Keating knows her market. The Glass Flute fits very nicely into a school schedule, to be played in the first class period of the day, or the first one directly after lunch. This means, on tour, that you’re on the road at seven in the morning, toting barges and lifting bales to get set up by showtime at nine-thirty. If you want to know what this is like, imagine how fine your voice sounds during your morning shower, then imagine that you’re singing that same shower song in front of two hundred pint-sized critics, after having just rearranged your office furniture by yourself, dressed up in your best duds afterwards without benefit of a shower, climbed up on your desk under a harsh spotlight and struck a pose. There are reasons for calling this kind of theatre work “paying one’s dues.”