Clause & Effect

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

  Confusion slowly gave way to enlightenment on his bruised and battered countenance. “Naw,” he said. “I couldn’t have killed what’s-her-name. Grace. I was only a kid at the time.”

  I wondered if Diego had heard about Gilbert Baxter’s murder. I decided it was unlikely. He’d been otherwise occupied for most of the day.

  “Too young to interest her,” he murmured sleepily. “Too young to take an interest. Not like some people.” He sent a groggy leer my way.

  “I didn’t realize you were old enough to remember the bicentennial at all.” I knew he hadn’t been one of the boys on the stage crew. His name wasn’t in the program.

  “Nope.” The word slurred as he closed his eyes. “Never looked at kiddie porn, either.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  When the only answer I got was a snore, I looked to Audrey for an explanation. The fact that she was smiling fondly at her husband relieved my mind.

  “He’s kind of out of it,” she said with the hint of an apology in her voice.

  “You think? Dare I ask if you know what he was talking about?”

  “In fact, I do. There was an incident at the high school several years ago. All this talk of secrets and crimes must have triggered the memory.” Her smile vanished. “It isn’t a pretty story.”

  “I’m afraid I’m too curious to let you off the hook.”

  “Sadly, what happened isn’t all that rare. One of the coaches had a heart attack in his office at the high school. He was on his computer at the time . . . looking at pornography of the worst sort. The pictures were still showing on the monitor when Diego stopped by to talk to him about a student whose grades were about to get him kicked off the basketball team. My husband probably saved the coach’s life, but since he also reported what he’d seen to the authorities, the man was not particularly grateful.”

  “There are a few bad apples in any profession, but it’s especially appalling when they’re in positions of trust—teachers, police officers, scout leaders, preachers. The worst part is that they’re so often able to conceal their true nature for years, using their influence to silence those who know, or have been victimized by them.”

  “You’re preaching to the choir.” Audrey glanced at her sleeping husband. “Thanks for stopping by, and for taking over for Diego. He’ll have enough to worry about for the next little while without fretting about the pageant.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be back in front of the classroom in no time.”

  “From your mouth to God’s ear.”

  I was in a much better mood when I left the hospital room, in part because of Audrey’s choice of words. I hadn’t heard that expression since I was a teenager. It brought back a lot of good memories.

  Chapter 34

  By the time I reached the amphitheater that evening, most of the cast had already assembled. They’d heard about Diego’s accident and were understandably upset. As soon as they caught sight of me, they stopped milling aimlessly around and turned as a body to stare in my direction.

  “Hey, Ms. Lincoln,” one of the girls called out. “What’s going to happen with the pageant?”

  “Nothing.” I speeded up my descent but waited until I reached the performance area at the center of the amphitheater before I explained. “The show must go on, right?” I held up the binder. “I have Mr. Goldberg’s notes.”

  A notable lack of enthusiasm greeted this news. I wasn’t surprised. Although some of the cast members knew who I was, most didn’t have a clue.

  “That’ll work,” Luke said, earning a grateful smile from me. “She wrote most of the pageant. She knows what to do.”

  From your mouth to God’s ear, I thought.

  “Places, everyone,” I said aloud. “We’ll start at the beginning.”

  While Luke and the other young people playing the founders of Lenape Hollow arranged themselves, I tried to imagine them in period costumes. That was no easy task when they were wearing modern clothing suitable for a hot summer day. Almost everyone had opted for some form of shorts, wearing them with T-shirts, crop tops, and even one halter top. Diego’s actors were almost all high-school students, making Luke one of the oldest people there. I hoped makeup could age the rest, but I had a feeling adding a fake beard or two wasn’t going to be much help.

  Once launched into the rehearsal, things progressed slowly but without any serious setbacks. The actors still carried their scripts, but that was only to be expected. In another week at most, they’d have their lines memorized. Exactly fourteen days remained until our one and only performance.

  When he wasn’t needed onstage—or our version of one, since there was no proscenium or curtain—Luke joined me at the small table set up for the director’s use. He didn’t say much, but when he did make a suggestion it was usually a good one.

  “Have you done much directing?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “Drama major in college.”

  “Maybe you should be the one in charge.”

  “Bad idea. Directors who star in their own movies are like lawyers who defend themselves.”

  “Or writers who direct their own plays?” I asked, remembering what Judy Brohaugh had said on that subject.

  He had the grace to look abashed.

  “Never mind. With your help and these notes, I’ll muddle along.” Diego’s binder lay open on the table in front of us.

  “You ought to ask Adam for suggestions.”

  I sent him a questioning look. I’d learned a few of the cast members’ names, but I didn’t yet have all of them firmly attached to faces. Was there an Adam? I couldn’t recall.

  “Adam Ziskin,” Luke said helpfully. “He’s rounding up props for this production, but he talks about the one at the bicentennial all the time. Maybe he’ll have some ideas.”

  My memory having been jogged, I remembered seeing the name Ziskin on the program. He’d been one of the “boys” on Grace’s stage crew.

  “Is he here?” I asked. “Will you point him out to me?”

  Luke obliged, directing my attention to an overweight, middle-aged man standing off to one side to watch the actors run through their lines. When he glanced our way, I beckoned to him.

  Adam did one of those classic moves, looking behind himself to see whose attention I wanted. When he realized there was no one there, he pointed to himself and mouthed, “You mean me?” At my nod, he ambled over to join us at the director’s table.

  “You don’t look old enough to have worked on the bicentennial pageant,” I said after Luke introduced us.

  “Well, I wasn’t old enough to vote or to buy beer, but I was a big kid and they needed muscle to move the sets around.” He was still hefty, but the critical mass had shifted from upper body to midsection.

  “How does this pageant compare?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Your script is better than the last one, but that’s not saying much. History’s kind of boring, no matter what you do with it.” As an afterthought, he added, “Sorry to hear about Diego’s accident.”

  “Yes, I suppose you knew him back then, too.”

  He grinned. “Sure. Little Diego Goldberg. He must have been nine or ten at the time. He tagged along everywhere we went.”

  “Even when you were dismantling outbuildings in the middle of the night?”

  “You heard about that, huh?”

  “I hear a lot of things.” I glanced at Luke. “Could you check with the cast and see if they’re ready to resume rehearsal?”

  “Uh, that would be up to you, Mikki. You’re the director.”

  I sent him a too-sweet smile. “Just ask, okay?” My cousin didn’t need to hear the questions I had for Adam, or Adam’s answers.

  By the time I turned back to the older man, a knowing expression had come over his florid face. “Something else you wanted to know?”

  “I’m assuming you’re one of the people Detective Hazlett interviewed after Grace Yarrow’s body was found.”

  He nodded. “Want me to repeat
what I told him?”

  “I’ll settle for having you confirm that she was rather free with her favors. I don’t need to hear the details.”

  “Okay. Yeah, she was. That summer was a real learning experience for some of us, and I’m not talking about history lessons.”

  Some instinct told me that he meant more than a single encounter in a supply closet, the only incident Hazlett had mentioned. “These days that kind of behavior with underage boys would land Grace in jail.”

  He shrugged. “She wasn’t my teacher or my boss, so it wasn’t exactly sexual harassment.”

  “But you were underage, and as pageant director she was in a position of power.”

  His grin widened. “Sure was.” Clearly, Adam didn’t feel she’d taken advantage of him, but that didn’t make Grace’s behavior any less predatory.

  “Did you know who else she was, uh, seeing?”

  The moment I asked, I realized that no one at the rehearsal had mentioned Gilbert Baxter’s murder. I knew the press release had gone out, but it was possible the news hadn’t reached them yet. Either that, or their lack of interest stemmed from the fact that the cast and crew didn’t connect him with the pageant. Although he’d attended the previous day’s rehearsal with Tony Welby, he hadn’t, so far as I knew, interacted with anyone else besides Ronnie, Darlene, and me.

  “She was probably getting it on with every guy in the pageant,” Adam said. “My older brother was in the same class with her in high school. He said she was a wild woman even then.”

  “Did you go to the police with this information or did they track you down with their questions?”

  He sent me an incredulous look. “Why would I borrow trouble? They came to me.”

  I forced an encouraging smile. That meant he wasn’t the one who’d told Detective Hazlett about the ex-boyfriend with a temper.

  “Did Grace ever mention another lover, one who might have been jealous of her playing around with high-school boys?”

  He shook his head. “I’d have told the cops if she had. Huh! You think he was the one who killed her?”

  I thought I heard an undercurrent of relief in his voice. Had he really thought Hazlett suspected him of the crime?

  “Is there anything you didn’t share with the police?” I asked.

  His eyes narrowed, and his earlier friendliness was no longer in evidence. His defensive walls had gone up. “What are you getting at? And why do you want to know, anyhow?”

  Rather than lose his cooperation, I blurted out the truth. “I was at the historical society when Grace’s body was discovered. I want the brute who did that to her caught and punished. Promiscuity isn’t a crime, and it certainly doesn’t warrant a death sentence.”

  “Okay. Okay. I get it.” He eased into the folding chair Luke had vacated, but he was nowhere near as nonchalant as he’d been a few minutes earlier. His hands clenched where they rested on the table in front of him. “I never heard a name, but there was a rumor going around while she was still in high school that she was carrying on with an older guy. I guess he might have had a reason to be jealous, huh?”

  “I guess he might,” I agreed, although it seemed doubtful to me. That relationship must have dated from a half dozen years before Grace’s murder. Still, I wasn’t about to rule out any possibility. The affair might have continued beyond Grace’s high school graduation. “Do you have any idea who he was?”

  Adam shook his head. “My brother said they used to swap stories about Grace in the locker room. Odds are good at least half of those guys were lying when they bragged about what they’d done with her. Maybe the older boyfriend was something one of them made up, too.”

  I sighed. I’d like to believe attitudes have evolved, and that young men nowadays are more sensitive to women’s feelings, but I suspect the “boys will be boys” mentality hasn’t changed much over the years.

  “Hey, Mikki!” Luke hollered from the staging area. “We’re ready when you are.”

  “You got any more questions?” Adam asked.

  “Only one. Do you have a birthmark?”

  He sent me another incredulous look. Then he laughed. “No, and I don’t have any kinky tattoos, either.”

  I hid my flaming face by pretending to hunt for my place in the script.

  Diego’s notes were thorough, and his instructions were easy to follow. He had already figured out solutions to most of the problems that might arise during rehearsals. As he’d assured me, all the production needed now was someone to keep the show running. The job promised to be time-consuming, but not otherwise onerous, and Luke proved to be a willing and knowledgeable assistant.

  Working closely with him, I had the opportunity to probe a bit more into his past. I had no doubts about our relationship—he did have the Greenleigh nose, after all—but from time to time I still had the feeling he was keeping something from me.

  “Where’s home?” I asked when he joined me at the director’s table during a short break in the rehearsal.

  “Ohio. My mom still lives there.” He caught sight of my raised eyebrows. “What? Where did you think I lived?”

  “From the Red Sox T-shirt you were wearing when we first met, I was guessing somewhere in New England.”

  “Gift from an old girlfriend,” he explained. “She was from Braintree.”

  With a sideways look, I examined the jeans and tee he was currently wearing. The denim was ratty and sported holes at both knees. The T-shirt was clean, but it, too, had seen better days. He was the very picture of a young man on a limited budget.

  A short time later, when a piece of scenery had to be rearranged and the actors sloped off to refresh themselves with drinks from the cooler Ronnie had sent over, Luke took me aside. He had a serious expression on his face.

  “I owe you an apology, Mikki,” he said. “I didn’t tell Diego you said I should be in the pageant, but I should have straightened him out when he made that assumption. I just wanted him to know I had a local connection, y’know?”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure he cast you for your talent, not because of any misconception about how close we are.”

  Misconceptions are all too easy to come by, I thought when he took his place onstage as the comic at the Feldman. I’d begun to feel a little guilty that I hadn’t invited my cousin to stay with me for the duration. I hated to think of him living rough in a pup tent and commuting to rehearsals on that battered old Vespa. I doubted he was eating right, either. It wouldn’t kill me to ask him to come and share a meal or two at my place.

  By the end of rehearsal, I still hadn’t decided how much, if anything, I felt comfortable offering. The moment when I might have broached the subject was preempted by Spring Ramirez, one of the girls in the cast.

  “Hey, Luke,” she called to him. “We’re going for pizza. My treat,” she added. “Today is my eighteenth birthday.”

  I wondered if she meant to stand them for beer as well as pizza. Then I remembered that the drinking age in New York State was changed to twenty-one sometime in the 1980s. It was eighteen when I was young. We’d considered ourselves quite grown up by then.

  Perceptions do indeed change, I thought as I followed the merry band of laughing youngsters to the parking lot. To a girl of eighteen, my twenty-something cousin probably qualified as an “older guy.” That gave me more food for thought as I headed home to spend my evening with my cat.

  Chapter 35

  For the next couple of days, I was too busy to do anything but edit, supervise rehearsals, and accede to Calpurnia’s demands for food, water, and fresh kitty litter. I hit no major snags in any of those areas, but neither did I have time for snooping. This made it easy for me to follow Detective Hazlett’s advice and leave looking into the murders of Grace Yarrow and Gilbert Baxter to the police.

  Shirley was a huge help. She marshalled the resources of the historical society and saw to it that the million and one details entailed in mounting a production were taken care of—mostly by delegating
authority to people who actually knew what they were doing. Programs were proofed and printed, props and costumes acquired, signs made, and ads placed.

  Luke was in his element, picking up on ways to tweak the performances. Here and there he added bits of action to make the scenes more lively. Who’d have thought there could be opportunities for humor in a series of historical vignettes?

  I found unexpected pleasure in working with young people again. The teenagers Diego had recruited from the high school were a lively bunch. In some ways, their interests were alien to me, but in others I saw a little of myself when I was their age. Times change. Human nature doesn’t. The biggest difference I noticed was that where we’d been reticent to talk about certain subjects, and blissfully ignorant of others, these teens weren’t afraid to speak up. I learned a bit more than I wanted to in some areas.

  “I don’t put up with that crap,” said Spring, the young lady who’d just turned eighteen. “That old pervert tried to grope me, so I decked him.”

  She was talking about a custodian at the high school who’d been assigned to help with the concession stand set up in a cloakroom during basketball games. There was zero tolerance for inappropriate behavior, once it came to light. The man had been fired.

  “Good for you,” I told her.

  Thinking back, I’d been fortunate. Or perhaps naïve. Except for one fellow student at a frat party, I’d never been grabbed against my will or subjected to any other unwanted sexual advances. Let me amend that. If there were other incidents, let’s say a sly suggestion on the part of a male colleague, it went right over my head. I had been bullied by the principal of the first school I taught in, but I more or less ignored him, and after a few years he took another job and moved on.

  At my age, I assume I’m past the point where anyone is likely to hit on me. My success or failure in business isn’t dependent upon anyone but me. In any case, I don’t dwell on such matters. I prefer to take joy from the little daily pleasures. The pageant was coming together. The festival honoring the founding of Lenape Hollow was going to take place. Even if only local residents turned out for the event, I’d personally consider it a success.