Theater Nights Are Murder

by Libby Klein

Mrs. Galbraith, humbled from her errant accusations, promised to be mindful of her fluffy nemesis. I had a hot date with a gorgeous Italian and slipped on my heels.

  Gia had set a folding table in the kitchen. It was covered with a white tablecloth and had two taper candles burning in the middle. China cups and plates were laid out for brunch, and a single red rose sat in a vase in the center.

  “Look at how fancy.” I giggled.

  “I wanted today to be special since we can’t go to dinner until Monday.” He helped me out of my coat and hung it in his office. When he returned he held out a black-velvet ring box. “For my Bella.”

  “Ooh. A gift.” My blood was thudding in my ears. There was no way this was what it looked like. It was much too early. I lifted the latch and pulled out a red ribbon. Attached to the ribbon was a little silk bag, and inside the bag was a pair of tiny blue crystal earrings. “Oh, Gia. They’re gorgeous. I think it’s too much. This had to . . .”

  He cut me off with his lips. “Shh. None of that. I want you to have them.” He kissed me long and hard, with all the emotion that had been building between us for six months. “Poppy. Do you not know yet that I love you?”

  It was as if the floor had dropped out from under me on one of the old boardwalk rides. He loved me. And I knew in my heart that I loved him too. But something held me back and the words wouldn’t leave my mouth, so I reached up and let my kiss tell him how I felt.

  Gia looked deep in my eyes and read the writing on my heart. “I am a jealous man and I don’t want to share you.”

  I nodded.

  He grinned. “Think about that while I get the coffee. Sit.” He picked up a remote and started the music playing “Unchained Melody.”

  I sat at the table feeling helpless. What was I going to do? How did I feel about Tim? If my head had any answers, my heart was beating too loud to hear them. The only things I knew for sure were that I wasn’t ready to jump into the unknown yet and I wanted to put on these earrings.

  Gia had convinced Momma to make a gluten-free breakfast cake for us, and there was booze in the coffee. I was feeling very loose and giggly while we talked about Gia’s five-year-old son, Henry, and the rest of his family. I had apparently dodged a bullet by not meeting most of them yet. Gia wanted to introduce me, but now he had me terrified. We talked about Duke and his play, and Gia agreed with me that his script held a likely source of motives. There was a lot of just looking at each other and smiling. I didn’t want it to end because I was afraid guilt over Tim would spoil the memory of today.

  We cleaned up and Gia made me two coffees, sans liquor, to take to meet Sawyer in her bookstore for my next coffee date. Gia gave me a long kiss goodbye in the front dining room amid the snickers of his sister, Karla, and the crushed stares of the young ladies who were hanging out, hoping to catch his eye today. “Think about what I said. I want you to be all mine, Bella.” Then he gave me a smile. “I’ll see you tonight for the performance. I hope it’s just as exciting as you said last night’s was.”

  I floated across the courtyard to Sawyer’s Alice in Wonder-land –themed bookstore. The first thing she noticed was the blue earrings. “Oh my God, let me see them!”

  “Aren’t they pretty? What do you think they are? Topaz?”

  Sawyer gave me an incredulous look. “Ah, Poppy, those are blue diamonds.”

  “What? No.” I gave her a hard look, so she’d be sure to know I thought she was crazy.

  She got out her phone to fact-check me. “I’m telling you, I know what I’m talking about. I almost bought a blue diamond necklace in Jamaica. See.” She held up her phone and showed me a picture. “Gia spent a small fortune on you.”

  I couldn’t process that right now, so I reverted to what I was comfortable with. Snark. “Well then, we both got diamonds today.”

  Sawyer rolled her eyes and giggled. “I’m so excited for you. I think Gia is wonderful.” Then she stopped with her coffee halfway to her lips. “But what are you going to say to Tim?”

  “I don’t know. Gia told me he loved me.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “Yes. But I’m still as in love with Tim as the day we broke up. How can I commit to either one under these circumstances?”

  “Does Tim want to be exclusive?”

  “A month ago, I would have said yes, I thought this was our second chance, but now I think he really did just want me to make desserts for Maxine’s. If only I had a sign that we had a future together . . .” I let the words trail off, knowing it would mean saying goodbye to Gia, and I wasn’t ready for that.

  I reached in my tote bag and dug around for a pack of tissues. I pulled out a wad of paper. “Look. It’s Duke’s script. I’ve been carrying it back and forth to the theater the whole time.”

  Sawyer and I leafed through it, looking for a crime that could possibly be linked to someone in the play. I turned the page and my eyes nearly burned through the script. There was Duke’s suicide note. Ripped right from his own script. He had been talking a jumper off a ledge. “I have to call Officer Birkwell.” Dispatch put me through and I had to leave him a voice mail. I frowned at Sawyer and threw my phone back in my bag. Immediately, it dinged that I had a new review. I found a scathing Facebook post by Luv2Fly. “The Butterfly Wings B&B was the worst place we’ve ever stayed. The owner promised us a suite and when we arrived it was a dingy little room on the third floor with the bathroom down the hall.” It went on from there. I handed Sawyer my phone. “Do you see what I’m dealing with? I really hope Kim gets some answers from her old PR boss.”

  Sawyer’s face scrunched up as she read the review. She tapped the screen a couple of times, then her eyes grew big and white. “Oh my God!” She jumped to her feet.

  I jumped to my feet, even though I had no idea what was going on. “What? What is it? Do you know who Luv2Fly is?”

  “Not yet. But we’re going to find out. Come on.”

  She ran out the door holding my phone in front of her like a tricorder. “Whoever just left this review on Facebook has location finder on. It says they’re just around the corner. Let’s catch them.”

  She locked the bookstore and we took off down the mall. I wished I’d changed back into my flats now that I was prancing over the bricks. I hope Gia isn’t watching this.

  “They just checked into the Ugly Mug!”

  We crossed Jackson Street, and the balls of my feet felt like I was walking on knives. Why do we do this to ourselves? Who said this was sexy? I saw my reflection in a shop window. I looked like a round stork trying to walk a tightrope. I slipped the shoes off and ran the rest of the way barefoot.

  Sawyer bounced past the greeter and into the dining room of the Ugly Mug. There were only a couple of booths occupied. She ran up to the first couple. “Are you Love2Fly?”

  They shrugged and shook their heads, like please don’t hurt us, deranged lunatic.

  I saw a man sitting by himself and ran to him. “Are you leaving reviews as Love2Fly?”

  “What?”

  I repeated, “Are you Love2Fly?”

  He shook his head. “No, I hate flying.”

  Sawyer had moved on to the waiter and asked who just arrived in the last couple of minutes, but someone caught my eye in a dark booth. “Oh no, she didn’t!” I marched right over to Joanne Junk and grabbed her table. “Do you really hate me that much? High school is over, Joanne. What do you think you’re doing?”

  She had a tuna melt halfway to her mouth.

  “Eating?”

  “I know we’ve had some bad blood, but this is too far.”

  Joanne looked about as confused as I felt. She blinked a couple of times and Swiss cheese dripped onto her My Little Pony sweatshirt. “I don’t know . . .”

  She didn’t say any more because Sawyer cut her off. “Poppy!”

  I spun my head around and Sawyer was jerking hers to the other side of the restaurant. Sitting in the back corner with a pink baseball hat pulled down over her blond curls was Tim’
s old mentee, Gigi. She had promised to destroy me when Tim rejected her. I’d thought she meant that metaphorically. I was wrong.

  I looked back at Joanne. “Never mind.” Then I joined Sawyer to face the troll.

  Tim’s fellow chef and mentee had declared her love for him and he’d turned her down . . . for me. She’d promised to make me regret it. I opened my mouth to tell her just what I thought about her trying to ruin my business with her lies, but Sawyer beat me to it.

  “What is wrong with you? You hideous little troll. You’ve been lying about Poppy all over the internet and trying to destroy every business she works with. That’s called libel and it’s a crime. You just got yourself a lawsuit, you petty little fool.”

  Gigi’s eyes looked like they were going to pop out of her head.

  “What’s the matter?” I slammed my palm down on her table. “Don’t you have anything to say to me in person? Or do you only have nerve when you’re hidden behind the internet?”

  Gigi pulled herself up to her full height of about five feet. Her voice squeaked. “I don’t know what you’re taking about. You need to leave before I call the cops.”

  Sawyer held up my cell phone and took a video of Gigi. “We’re here on February 14, 2015, where we’ve used the location finder on Facebook to track the review left by Luv2Fly. It’s just one bad review in a sea of many left by this woman under various screen names.”

  Gigi was squirming in her seat. “I haven’t left you any reviews. You’re crazy.”

  I grabbed her cell phone off the table and turned it on. She was lunging at me to get it back, but Sawyer was blocking her, still recording.

  Her phone opened to the Yelp account she had created under the name Luv2Fly. She had been in the process of leaving me another review when we caught up with her. I held her phone up and Sawyer captured it on video. I tossed it onto the table. “You can try to delete all those accounts, but nothing on the internet ever really goes away. My late husband, John, was a lawyer. They can subpoena all your accounts—Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, TripAdvisor—they’ll turn over your data and the records of all the reviews you left. It won’t take much to see that all the accounts were created with the same IP address. My lawyer will be in touch.”

  Gigi’s lips started to tremble and her eyes filled up. “You took Tim from me.”

  “You never had him.” Sawyer and I turned and walked out of the Ugly Mug, leaving her there to wallow, unmasked in her disgrace.

  “You were awesome in there,” I told Sawyer as we walked back down the mall.

  “Me? What about you? I wish I had thought about the IP address.”

  “Yeah, but you’re the one who found her in the first place. I don’t know anything about Facebook. I didn’t know you could do that.”

  “Apparently, neither did Gigi. Or she would have turned it off.” Sawyer handed me my phone and it rang the opening bars of “Crazy Train.” “Who is that?”

  “Aunt Ginny.”

  “What’s my ringtone?”

  “ ‘Count on Me’ by Bruno Mars.”

  “Nice.”

  “Hello?”

  “Poppy?”

  “Why are you whispering?”

  Aunt Ginny said something I didn’t quite get.

  “Can you say that again?”

  “I said we’re in trouble. We broke into the house and they came home unexpectedly. We need you to get over here, now.”

  “Whose house?” I heard muffled voices talking. “Aunt Ginny! Whose house are you in?”

  The line went dead.

  “Oh my God, Sawyer. Aunt Ginny’s in trouble and I have no idea where she is.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Sawyer took my phone. “I’m downloading a family tracker app.” She set up an account pretty fast. “Do you think Aunt Ginny will respond if I send her a link to join your circle?”

  “I have no idea what Aunt Ginny will do. The biddies are like spider monkeys. They’re cute until you’re responsible for them. Then they create mass destruction.”

  Sawyer drummed her fingers on the back of my phone for a couple of minutes while I bit my nails. “She accepted it. Now we ask the app to find her.” She drummed her fingers some more.

  “How do you know how to do all this?”

  “Kurt. When we were married I installed it on his phone when he wasn’t looking so I could follow him and see where he was going. It’s how I found out he was cheating on me with the United Bimbos of Cape May County. That and the thong I found behind the Snoopy cookie jar.”

  Sawyer handed me my phone. There was a map with an icon of a car blinking. “That’s where Aunt Ginny is. She’s in a residential neighborhood at the Point.”

  We flew to Cape May Point as fast as I could get my flats on. It was an eight-minute drive down Sunset, but I made it in five.

  Sawyer pointed to a gorgeous, yellow two-story beach house on the waterfront. “That one.”

  Every room facing the ocean had floor-to-ceiling windows. There was a local security sign in the yard. “Are you sure Aunt Ginny is in there?”

  Sawyer tapped my screen. “This is where her GPS is coming from. And isn’t that her car?”

  I pulled over on the side of the road next to Bessie, which was covered with a couple of anorexic branches of dead leaves being used as the world’s worst camouflage. “This is a million-dollar neighborhood. Whose house do you think this is?”

  “I have no idea. Let’s go up and knock. We can say we’re selling Avon.” Sawyer opened the passenger-side door.

  “Shouldn’t we call the police?”

  “And tell them what? Aunt Ginny broke in, got caught, and is being held hostage?”

  “What if you stay here with the car and if I’m not back in twenty minutes, you call the police?”

  Sawyer frowned. “But I want to go with you.”

  “I don’t know what I’m walking in to. I don’t want us both getting hurt. I’d feel better knowing you’re watching my back if things go south.”

  “All right, but hurry up. Rich neighborhoods give me the willies. So many Pomeranians.”

  I dashed around the corner and up the wide walkway to the front door. I knew breaking in was out of the question since the owner was home, so I rang the doorbell.

  Blanche Carrigan opened the door with her good arm and gave me an appraising once-over. “Poppy. What are you doing here?”

  I was rendered speechless.

  “Well? Why are you at my house? I’m not apologizing, if that’s what you came for.”

  “Actually . . . I wanted to talk to you . . . about . . .” What, Poppy, what? “Aunt Ginny and Royce.” Yeah, that’s good.

  “What about them?”

  “I think Royce is leading Aunt Ginny on. I think there’s someone else he’s really interested in. I overheard him talking with Neil after the play last night that he only came back to Cape May to reignite his romance with an old partner.”

  A smirk crossed Blanche’s almost wrinkle-free face. “Well, well, well. Why don’t you come in?” She stepped aside for me to enter. I immediately looked around the large foyer. There was a spacious living room on the right and an equally impressive sitting room on the left. In front of me was a wide staircase and down a hall to the back of the house I could see a gorgeous open chef’s kitchen. This house was enormous. How in the world was I supposed to find four biddies in less than twenty minutes without looking suspicious?

  Blanche led me to the sitting room and motioned for the couch in front of the fireplace. She took a wing chair opposite me. “So what else did Royce say last night?”

  “You know, my throat is parched. Do you think I could have something to drink?”

  If Blanche was afraid that someone would accuse her of not being a good hostess, she needn’t worry. She threw herself out of the chair and loped to the kitchen like I’d asked her to go gluten free—and I would know.

  When she disappeared, I shot up and looked behind the couch. Then I crept out to the hal
l and opened a door. It was a powder room. No biddies. I flew back into the sitting room before she came around the corner.

  “Here, I brought you some water.”

  “Don’t you have anything stronger, like some tea maybe?”

  She huffed and went back to the kitchen. I sprinted across the hall and checked the living room. The only closet was full of shelves and not old ladies. I sprinted back to the sitting room as Blanche brought in a large glass of tea. “Here. Now tell me about Royce.”

  “Does this have sugar in it?”

  Blanche narrowed her eyes. “Yes.”

  “I’m so sorry. I can’t have sugar. Could I have the water back?”

  Blanche yanked the tea out of my hand, splashing some of it on her hardwood floor. She stared me down and I grinned. “It’s a really good story.”

  She left to spit in my water and I jumped back in the hall. I ducked into a room with a cherrywood desk and built-in bookshelves. I looked under the desk. No biddies. “What are you doing in here?” Blanche was standing behind me with the glass of water, and she was looking very agitated.

  “I’m sorry. I was looking for the powder room.”

  “It’s in the hall. If you don’t really have anything to tell me, I’d like you to just leave.”

  I went to the door I knew was a powder room and grabbed the doorknob. “Trust me, it’s worth waiting for. Royce was in rare form last night, talking about the good old days when the two of you were onstage.” I motioned to the powder room. “I’ll be just a moment.”

  Blanche scowled and went into the sitting room to wait. I ducked back into the hallway. This was a growing disaster. Would the biddies be upstairs?

  I heard a scratching sound come from under the steps. I turned around and saw a crack in the glossy white paneling. It was a hidden door. I slowly creaked it open and found four little biddies stuffed in a broom closet. I stuck my head in the dark space and whispered, “Dear God, what are you doing in here?”

  Mother Gibson held up her copy of Duke’s script. “I found it. And look.”

  It was Duke’s suicide note.

  “I know. I’ve seen it.”

  Mrs. Dodson tapped the script. “It’s all about an unsolved bank robbery in 1962 that resulted in a double homicide.”