Acting Up

by A. A. Albright

  There were more marriages at this time of year than any other. There were also an awful lot of babies made.

  Despite the fact that I had no love in my life, I was looking forward to the abundance parts of the festival – the dance with all the yummy food and drink. Well, I had been looking forward to it until we had a murder to solve. Although if I got to see Finn and Lassie finally getting together, then that would go a very long way to cheering me up.

  ‘So why do you look so miserable? I know she didn’t say no to you. She likes you, Finn. She’s told me so.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really, you eejit. Like you don’t know. So what happened?’

  He pushed his plate of scrambled eggs away. ‘Callum Cool happened. Stupid beardy drummer! He got chatting to Lassie when she was on her way back from the loo, and he asked her to the dance.’

  He paused when Kitty poked his head out of my bag. ‘Hello there, attractive wench! Can I get some raisins for a change?’

  ‘Only if you stop calling me wench. Life isn’t some medieval play, Kitty.’ I picked out some raisins and handed them to him. ‘I don’t get it,’ I told Finn. ‘The Call of the Wild are the main act tonight. How can he dance with Lassie if he’s busy drumming?’

  Finn’s face went purple. I thought I saw a bit of smoke coming out of his ears, too. ‘That’s where it gets even more annoying. He asked her if she wanted to sit in the Super VIP seat and watch him play. You know that stupid thing he got for Melissa that time?’

  Oh, I knew all about the Super VIP seat. It was a throne, pointed directly at the drums, so that whatever woman was foolish enough to accept Callum’s invitation would have to spend the entire set looking at him, and only him. Unsurprisingly, Melissa had never sat on it. But as happy as I was that Callum had finally gotten over Melissa, I couldn’t believe that Lassie would actually accept a date with the drummer.

  ‘Lassie thinks Callum’s a twat,’ I said. ‘Or so she’s always said. If she’s agreed to sit in his throne, it’s only to make you jealous. Finn, just swoop in there and knock her off her feet tonight. Well, don’t knock her off her feet. You know what I mean.’

  ‘Hmm.’ He began to eat again. ‘Y’think?’

  ‘I think. Now come on. Shove that food down your gob and let’s get going. Kitty’s going to stay in my bag while we interview the last of the cast and crew. He’ll know if they’re talking crap or not.’

  ≈

  As the morning stretched into the afternoon, I learned that people in show business were very good liars. Shocking, right? There were about half a dozen people who hadn’t been on set yesterday morning. While each of them sobbed on my shoulder about how they couldn’t believe anyone would have even thought of killing poor Mandy or Felix, Kitty made puking motions inside my bag.

  According to him, the cameraman who said that Mandy was like a shining light had once had a cup of steaming coffee thrown at him by Mandy. The wardrobe assistant who professed to love Mandy like a sister had been forced to miss her own sister’s wedding because Mandy wanted all new costumes prepared for the next show.

  Every single person had more than enough reason to hate Mandy, but not a single reason to want Felix dead. The problem wasn’t going to be figuring out the true intended victim. It was becoming clearer and clearer that everyone had a reason to want Mandy dead. So how on earth were we going to figure out just who tried to make that happen?

  Before Finn got too drunk to think last night, Greg had given him a camera and a selection of filters, so he snapped away while I asked the questions.

  ‘It’s part of Greg’s aura-matching software,’ Finn explained to me. ‘He finally licensed it to us. He and Paul are taking pics of the crime scene as we speak. If we’re lucky, we might be able to get a match from one of these pictures.’

  I sincerely hoped so. Maybe this would be the easiest solve of my career so far. Hey, a witch could wish.

  Finally, at about five that evening, we got a call from Gillian White to say she was ready to speak with us.

  ≈

  I had watched Be My Witch, but I’d never been able to watch it for more than a few minutes before I wanted to throw something at the screen. The problem wasn’t that it was bad. The issue was that it was actually quite enjoyable. In the show, Mandy came across as likeable, and it flummoxed me. She had bagged the most handsome guy on the planet and she was a good enough actress to fool the world into thinking she was nice? It didn’t seem fair.

  Gillian’s character was the opposite of Mandy’s. She played Gigi, a ravishing redheaded witch who hated Mandy with a passion. She was sly and scheming, always trying to split up Mandy’s character and her husband. Gigi suspected that Selina – Mandy’s character – was really a human. She tried to prove it over and over, but Selina thwarted her at every turn.

  When I watched it, I’d hated Gigi, just like I was supposed to. Now that I was sitting in her living room, though, I started to think that Gillian must be an even better actress than Mandy. Because for a woman who played a scheming witch so well, she was coming across as ever so nice.

  ‘I’m so sorry to have put the Wayfarers out like this,’ she said as she poured us all some tea with shaky hands. ‘I don’t know if anyone else on set told you what happened to me.’

  ‘They said you fainted and got whisked away to some posh healing clinic.’ Finn grabbed a ginger biscuit and crammed the whole thing into his mouth. ‘Only we couldn’t track you down at any of the private healers hereabouts.’

  ‘Well, that’s because I wasn’t hereabouts. Dashell Berry sent me to his healer in London. It was so nice of him. I never could have afforded it myself. I don’t make the big bucks like he, Aidan and Mandy do.’

  ‘You get along well with Dashell?’ I questioned, swooping in for a biscuit.

  ‘Oh, he’s wonderful!’ A wide smile brightened up her face. ‘The whole cast and crew are, really. Well … most of them.’ She sat forward, her smile faltering as she worried at her lower lip. ‘Look, I’m going to have to level with you. I don’t like Mandy. Not one little bit. So yesterday, when I realised that poor Felix had died in her place, I …’ She paused and took a deep breath. ‘… Well, it was all a bit too much. Felix was such an amazing person. I loved him and Kitty – his familiar – so much. No one would have wanted to hurt him. And so I got angry, when I found out it was Felix lying there in her dressing room. I got so angry that I almost wished Mandy had been killed. At least then Felix and Kitty would still be with us.’

  Finn slurped his tea, letting the silence get just uncomfortable enough before he said, ‘No one else on set will say a bad word against Mandy Parker. They all think that the only person who could have wanted her dead was her fiancé. What do you think to that theory?’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Will? Never! Well … I suppose he has just as much reason to hate her as the rest of us do. She seems like quite hard work, even for him. But for some unfathomable reason, he seems to care for her. I don’t think he’d hurt her. And I definitely don’t think he’d be dumb enough to mistake Felix for her. Felix had a … unique … odour. He was rather fond of Witch Chips – the Smokey Sweet flavour. He ate so many of the things that he constantly smelled of paprika. It was a bit of a problem on set sometimes, to be honest.’

  ‘A problem?’ I asked.

  She let out a teary laugh. ‘Oh, it wasn’t a problem for me. I was only too happy to see Aidan suffer like that. He’s got a horrendous paprika allergy. His eyes stream whenever he’s near the stuff and he can barely breathe. He tried to get Bruno to ban Felix from eating the things, but Bruno told Aidan to go see a healer and get an anti-allergy remedy. Aidan hated to take anything that might affect his performance, so he suffered on in silence. Mandy used to laugh her socks off about the whole thing. She even bought Felix a year’s supply of Witch Chips for his last birthday.’

  Hmm. I’d only met Aidan briefly, but he definitely had a stuffed nose and streaming eyes at the time. I doubted he’d murder Felix
because of a paprika allergy, but stranger things had happened. Frequently. ‘Aidan tells us you, he and Dashell had coffee together yesterday morning. What time was that about?’

  She bit her lip, a worried look on her face. ‘It was … it was between seven and half seven, I’d say. Maybe we were there a little bit longer.’

  ‘You sure about that?’

  She looked away from me. ‘Mm hm. Why wouldn’t I be?’

  ‘Look at me, Gillian.’ She dutifully looked my way, but gulped as she did so. ‘This is a murder investigation. It’s as serious as it gets. Whoever killed Mandy, they’re not your friend. Someone who can do a thing like that isn’t anyone’s friend. So if you’re covering for anybody …?’

  She shook her head a tad too vehemently. ‘I’m not. I swear. Look, I don’t know who could have killed Felix. Even Aidan liked him despite the paprika thing. And as for Mandy … well, maybe everyone did like her as much as they said they did. I don’t know for sure. But I do know this. It wasn’t Will Berry. Even if he did finally get sick of Mandy, he wouldn’t murder someone else by mistake. He’d get it right first time.’

  She had come to the same conclusions as us, then. But I’d been thinking over that idea since yesterday’s interview with Will. With a murder by poison, you wouldn’t really have to get close to the victim, would you? Will could have pointed out the tainted food and drink and simply stood in the doorway while Felix, glamoured as Mandy, took a dose of death.

  Still, he would have said something to the person he believed was his fiancée. Wouldn’t he? A ‘Good morning, my love,’ maybe. Or ‘Doesn’t your nose look especially perky today.’ I shuddered, unable to make myself imagine any more possible conversations between the two. But just a few brief words would have revealed that it was really Felix in the dressing room.

  So if this wasn’t Will’s doing, then whose?

  I eyed Gillian, forcing myself to remember that, just like Mandy, she was an actress. No matter how genuine and likeable she seemed right now, I couldn’t help the feeling that there was something she was hiding.

  ‘I spend so much time at work that I know each and every colleague inside out,’ I said. ‘If Finn got murdered I’d like to think I could narrow it down to the thousand or so subordinates who hate his guts.’ Finn gave me an over-the-top eye roll, but I carried on regardless. ‘And with the hours you guys put in, you must be even closer. So I’m not really buying the fact that no one else moans about Mandy. You must have heard some talk about her. Any whispers? Anything at all? You can’t be the only one that doesn’t like her.’

  Gillian gave me a rueful smile. ‘You’d think, wouldn’t you? She’s so awful to everyone. But I swear to you, they won’t say a bad word about her. Even after a few drinks. Although …’ She chewed on her lower lip. ‘I sometimes think that Bruno might not love her quite as much as he says.’

  At Bruno’s name, I could feel Kitty sit up and take notice inside my bag. Interesting.

  ‘Go on,’ said Finn, waving a ginger nut in the air. ‘What makes you think that?’

  Gillian played nervously with her hair. ‘It’s just that … well, you know Bruno had a thing for Felix?’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘We did not know that.’

  ‘Oh. Well … he did. Or at least I thought so. I’d see him look at Felix sometimes – when Felix was out of his Mandy glamour, obviously. And while Mandy and I were getting our make-up done one morning, Bruno came in for a chat with Mandy. He mentioned he was thinking of asking Felix out. But Mandy told him that if he did that, she’d quit.’

  ‘Why?’ Finn’s brow grew creased. ‘Why would she care who the writer slash director dated?’

  Gillian shook her head and heaved her shoulders. ‘I don’t know. I have no idea how that woman’s mind works. She said that she didn’t think it’d be very professional, and Bruno agreed and shut up about it straight away. But I just felt like Mandy wanted to control everything and everyone. If Bruno got together with Felix, he might … I dunno … get Felix a better job. Find someone to replace him as Mandy’s body double. Or better yet, get the silly witch to do her own stunts like the rest of us have to. So I just think Mandy didn’t want things to change for her. And if that meant ruining someone else’s chance at true love, well, I doubt she lost any sleep.’

  Kitty was moving around a lot now, and I saw Gillian’s eyes go to my bag. ‘It’s my mobile phone,’ I said. ‘It’s got a crazy strong vibrate setting. So … if Bruno felt like Mandy was putting the kibosh on a date with Felix, then what makes you think he was annoyed about it? Maybe he agreed with her that it was unprofessional. Dating on set is bound to be messy.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. Lots of people do it and have no problems. And I know Bruno was annoyed with Mandy about Felix. And probably about a lot more, too. Because he still looked at Felix with the same amount of passion after that. But as for Mandy? Every now and then, when he thought no one was watching, I saw Bruno look at her with pure hatred in his eyes.’

  ≈

  Kitty was becoming so agitated that we left Gillian’s house soon after that and headed to the office. Paul was there, looking forlornly at his screen.

  ‘Please tell me that’s your I’ve solved the murder face,’ said Finn. ‘Did you get the photos I sent you? I’ve taken a couple more since then, but despite your current depressed expression, I’m hoping you won’t need them because you’ve already fingered the culprit.’

  Paul chuckled faintly. ‘I wish. Greg’s aura-matching software is amazing. I got the photo files you emailed me, and I’ve run them against the photos we took of Mandy’s dressing room and the set this morning. Come take a look.’

  We stood around Paul’s desk, looking on as the software ran. Greg had discovered that each supernatural left behind a trace of their aura anywhere they went, and that with the right filters, he was able to capture this on camera. His software could match the suspects’ photos to photos taken of murder scenes, and get a one hundred percent positive match. By looking at his photos, we could distinguish the auras of each and every supernatural, and we could refine it so much that the aura became like a fingerprint or a magical signature.

  Or that’s how it had worked on some of the cases Greg had helped to solve in Riddler’s Edge, anyway. Right now, every single photo Paul was loading was showing up as a one hundred percent match.

  ‘Maybe it’s like that book – the one where they all did it,’ Kitty joked, jumping out of my bag and onto Paul’s desk.

  At this stage, I wasn’t going to discount the squirrel’s theory, whether he meant it as a joke or not, but Paul replied with a blank stare. He knew all about my gift, but as a wizard he could only understand magical animals if they went out of their way to make themselves understood.

  There were a few non-witches who could understand any magical animal. Pretty much all familiars communicated with Max – apparently it was just because he was likeable. And werewolves and weredogs had an affinity with dogs and wolves, which meant that they had an easy time communicating with them. But Paul – like most non-witches – was going to need a little more help from Kitty’s side if the squirrel’s jokes were going to get any laughs.

  ‘I hope they didn’t all do it,’ I said, taking a seat and plomping Kitty on my lap. Greg had left behind a lollipop (I couldn’t help but notice that the guy seemed to have an endless supply of snacks – a fact that seemed at odds with how slim and good-looking he was), and Kitty snatched it from the desk and began to eat. ‘If they did, then that’s a whole pile of paperwork and trials that I’m not looking forward to. But I’m guessing we’re just getting so many matches because pretty much every member of the cast and crew managed to contaminate the murder scene before we got there.’

  ‘That’s it in a nutshell,’ said Paul. While Kitty’s head twitched at the mention of nuts, Paul continued to explain. ‘You can see just how many auras there are floating around.’ He zoomed in on a photo of Mandy’s dressing room. Reds, blues, oran
ges and greens were floating this way and that. It would have been quite pretty under different circumstances. ‘Did that stupid director let everyone poke around yesterday morning? Jeez! If I thought Bruno actually knew anything about Greg’s technology, then I’d almost think he did it on purpose.’

  Finn sat atop the desk, a hand beneath his chin. ‘And do a lot of people know about what Greg can do? I certainly heard plenty of rumours about it when they caught the person who was killing the dayturners on the Riddler’s Express.’

  ‘Yeah, but you heard about it because you’re in law enforcement,’ said Paul. ‘The methods used weren’t in the papers or anything. Greg keeps his developments to himself. I’d say it was just blind stupidity that made Bruno let the whole set swamp the murder scene.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Finn tapped a finger against his chin. ‘So what do you think, Kitty? You heard what Gillian told us about Bruno fancying Felix and being peed off with Mandy for putting the kibosh on it. Was that true?’

  Kitty shrugged, spitting the lollipop out with a hilariously disgruntled expression on his face. ‘This is horrendous,’ he cried, throwing it in the bin. ‘A treat forged, mayhap, in the pits of Hades. But on the question of Bruno’s feelings for Felix …’ He sighed. ‘Verily, I wish I could speak in certainties. But love is not a certain thing. Felix certainly harboured amorous desires towards Bruno, but he believed it was unrequited. And yet, how now? Think, ye lawmakers and Wayfarers brave. Think of the missed days and nights that my witch and this Bruno could have savoured in one another’s company.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Had it not been for the wicked witch of the set.’