Backstage Stuff

by Sharon Fiffer

  Jane knew Nellie didn’t believe in reminiscing or telling childhood stories. Nellie moved forward—no pause, no rewind, no slow-mo. She didn’t believe in looking backward. Any time Jane or Michael questioned their mother her answer was always “Who cares about that old stuff?” or, if the question was personal, “That’s none of your business.” Even if Jane had recognized the old program for what it was, Nellie would never have taken its discovery as a cue to sit down and regale them with stories of her youth.

  Jane had filled Tim in on where she stood with props, managing to avoid commenting on his choice of her old rival Mary Wainwright for the role Jane should have been playing. It was odd, though. Tim had been Jane’s best friend, staunchest ally, and unrelenting supporter through high school, even if he had also been her sternest critic and tyrannical stylist as well. Jane relaxed her shoulders, which she realized had been bunched up around her ears all evening, and took Tim’s arm to lead him into the breezeway.

  “Okay, we’ve got some weird love triangle going on with my parents and Perkins the gardener, and you’ve managed to get Mr. Havens, everyone’s high school crush, to join your cast, and you somehow forgot to mention that you cast Mary Wainwright in the part I should be playing, but I’m willing to forget all about this since we’ve got something much more important to worry about,” said Jane.

  “Mary Wainwright needs this play,” said Tim. “She’s had nothing but trouble—”

  “Not now. You make your excuses and apologies later,” said Jane, handing Tim the note given to her by Rica Evans.

  “A cursed play?” said Tim. “Come on. Somebody’s just—” Tim stopped. “Isn’t that what they call Macbeth? The cursed play?”

  This was just like Tim Lowry. Pay attention to something negative just long enough to find something that could be twisted into a positive, a compliment. Jane could see his wheels turning. Somehow this threat was morphing into a comparison of the play he was directing for Kankakee Community Theater and the work of Shakespeare. Only Tim Lowry would be able to see the hand of the bard in Murder in the Eekaknak Valley.

  Jane had asked Rica not to mention the note to anyone else in the cast. Neither confirming nor denying that her “hangman doodle” was anything more or less than she said it was, Jane took the scrap of paper from Rica and promised to make sure that it was nothing more than a joke and a coincidence.

  Actors are superstitious. Even actors in community theater productions will not say the name of Shakespeare’s “Scottish play” backstage, and if someone does make the mistake of uttering “Macbeth,” determined to show how silly all the hoopla is? Someone else will be just as determined to make the offender turn around three times, go outside, and perform a variety of tasks to lift the bad luck he or she has invoked. The last thing Tim Lowry needed for his production of Murder in the Eekaknak Valley was any link to the cursed “Scottish play.”

  Jane went over her notes on the necessary props for the play. She almost felt guilty about accepting the tech stipend, since there wasn’t going to be a lot of work to dressing the stage. Freddy had been specific about the props, including notes about where they could be found, boxed up in the attic of the family home. He wrote his own possessions into the play, both in a note at the end of the script and throughout, within scene descriptions and stage directions—paintings, silver sets, furniture—everything was annotated. Jane knew from reading the stage directions and descriptions that the painting of Myra’s father that was supposed to hang over the sofa was the portrait that hung in the entry hall of the house. If everything at the house had remained as untouched as Tim said—and that is how it looked—the gathering of props for Murder in the Eekaknak Valley part of Jane’s job was going to be easy … practically paint by number.

  Since she could pick up most of the stuff for the play at the house, Jane told Tim her work hours for the Kendell house could be pretty much nine to five. She handed him an estimate of the time she would need for props, trying to formalize her role, but Tim waved it away. Instead, he offered his own notes in trade: a list of all the Kendell relatives and those who had keys to the house.

  “Who’s Penny Kendell? Why does that name sound so familiar?” asked Jane.

  “You just met her,” said Tim. “Penny and Bryan carpooled here with Henry Gand. They’re playing dinner party guests, then Bryan will be one of the cops in Act Two and Penny will be the visiting nurse. Bryan’s a second cousin or something to the Kendells and Penny has a key to the house. She was helping them sort through things before they called me in. Likes antiques and thought she could help, but was overwhelmed by sheer volume.”

  Jane drew a lopsided star next to her name. Might as well prioritize. Here was a Kendell who had a key to the house and was involved with the play. She had been in the house, could have slipped a note into a script.

  “The thing is,” said Jane aloud, “that note looked really old. It was either put there years ago, in Frederick’s time, or someone went to a lot of trouble to make it look old,” Jane stopped when Tim’s cell phone rang and he fished it out of his pocket. He held up one finger as he answered, but Jane finished her thought. “The good news is that Mr. Bumbles pulls pranks but hasn’t really caused any harm. Nothing bad—”

  “Oh my God,” said Tim. “Where did they take her?”

  “Vanilla okay?” said Nellie over her shoulder to Don as she walked through the kitchen door, hand already holding an imaginary ice cream scoop. “I think it’s all we got.”

  “What?” said Jane, looking at Tim.

  “What?” said Nellie, looking at Jane.

  “What?” said Tim, looking into his phone. He turned it to the side, stared at the screen, then held it back up to his ear. “It looks like them. Sure. Before noon tomorrow. Please give her our best. I’ll be up to see her.”

  “That was Bryan Kendell. He and Penny are at the hospital. She walked into their bedroom and as she was turning on the light she slipped on some marbles and hit her head; they think she might have fractured her leg.”

  Jane studied her list of names.

  “Marbles?” said Nellie. “Who the hell has marbles…”

  “Penny Kendell. She collects marbles. Has jars of them all over the place. But these, the ones on the floor, were antique clay marbles. When Penny was at the Kendell place and the cousins asked if she wanted anything, she said she wanted the jar of clay marbles that she saw in the playroom and they said as soon as everything was inventoried she could have them. She said she’d buy them from the estate sale, just save them for her. Bryan said the marbles on the floor looked just like the clay ones from the house.”

  Jane held her cast list in one hand and the list of people with keys to the Kendell house in the other. “Any chance one of your Kendell clients, Bryan’s cousins, dropped them off? Do they have a cat who could have knocked over the jar?”

  Tim shrugged. “Don’t know about the cat, but Bryan found a note next to the jar.”

  “Yeah?” said Nellie. “Stop being so dramatic. What the hell did it say?”

  “Here are your marbles. Don’t lose them.”

  Nellie finished scooping Don’s ice cream and licked the bowl of the old serving spoon before dropping it into the sink.

  “So somebody from the family dropped them off and made a little joke. Then the cat knocked them over and the joke isn’t so funny,” said Nellie.

  “We don’t even know if…” Jane stopped when she saw Tim staring at the picture on his phone. He passed it over to Jane.

  On the screen was a surprisingly clear photo of two clay marbles on top of a block-printed note that said just what Tim had reported. The note was signed Your friend, Bumby.

  7

  The two Kendell heirs no longer lived in Kankakee. According to Tim, they never really did. Both had attended boarding schools and had never really deeply dug in and lived in the family mansion. Margaret, who, as a child, went by Margie, and Frederick, who thankfully did not add to any Fred/Freddy confusion and went
by Rick, were the great-grandchildren of Frederick Kendell, the lumber baron, construction magnate, and outdoor equipment fabricator; the grandchildren of Frederick “Freddy” Kendell Junior, the playwright, author of Murder in the Eekaknak Valley; and the children of Frederick “Fred” Kendell III, who died after selling off his namesakes’ companies and redirecting the family business into stocks, bonds, property—ostensibly retaining the fortune while ridding the family of the messiness of day-to-day work. Both lived at least part-time in Chicago. Frederick Kendell IV, Rick, a lifelong bachelor, divided his time between a high-rise in the city and an oceanfront mansion in Florida, and Margie, now divorced for the second time, spent half the year in London. It had taken the brother and sister well over a year to agree to sell the mansion and allow Tim to begin prepping.

  Those were the facts Jane culled from the messy explanation of the children Tim had given her. Apparently Margie and Rick didn’t like each other much. Since they had boarded and summer camped separately for all of their younger lives, Jane wondered how they even knew each other well enough to know they didn’t get along. The brother and sister finally agreed that the house and its contents must be sold and finally concluded that some of the fine art and a few of the museum-quality furniture pieces could be shipped off to auctions in New York and London, but they continued to argue about who would supervise the Kankakee sale. Neither wanted to let it go and neither wanted to be totally responsible.

  “It’s like this in almost every sale I’ve ever done,” said Tim. “The sibs tell me to sell it all, they’re done with it, then one of them shows up and sees an old Martha Washington sewing stand with $195 price tag on it and decides maybe he should take it home to the wife. Then the sister shows up and hears that the brother took the sewing table that she never wanted in the first place but she has to have something comparable so she finds the father’s antique pipe rack and decides it would be just the thing for her husband’s office. Brother pops in while I’m prepping and asks about the pipe rack since he’s decided he might like to smoke a pipe, finds out that Sis nabbed it and all hell breaks loose. I’ve had to cancel sales because the brothers and sisters start snatching back objects one by one to keep up with each other. And don’t get me started on the wives and husbands of the siblings … they can get just as competitive and twice as grabby.”

  Jane had been up early, working on a list of the Kendell family members as well as finishing up her costume and props lists, so she could get to the bottom of the Bumby mischief. Actually, now that Penny Kendell was undergoing surgery for a badly broken leg, Jane upgraded mischief to malicious mischief. Tim had his fingers crossed that the cat-knocking-over-the-marble-jar explanation would pan out, but Jane was sure that unless the cat was named Mr. Bumbles and wrote a passable cursive, they would not be able to blame the family pet for Penny’s fall.

  The Kendell family tree was an easy sketch. A straight up-and-down birch rather than a spreading oak. Frederick and wife begat Freddy; Freddy and wife begat Fred; Fred and wife begat Margaret/Margie and Frederick IV, who shuns the first half of the family moniker altogether and calls himself Rick. Jane had asked Tim if Margie had children who were involved in the estate sale. She didn’t. Rick was unmarried and Jane knew that didn’t preclude having children but felt she could safely assume none of his offspring would be carved by name onto the family tree. Jane looked at her drawing. Margie and Rick were the end of the line

  “Wait a second,” said Jane, talking to Rita, who had been wandering around the house all morning, searching and sniffing, before settling at Jane’s feet in the breezeway. Rita seemed disappointed that Nellie and Don had already left for the EZ Way Inn by the time Jane got up and showered. When Jane and Rita had visited before on the weekends, Nellie had been first up, cooking bacon and eggs and pancakes, all of which made an appearance in Rita’s bowl. But this was midweek, an EZ Way Inn morning for Don and Nellie. Jane had slept in, made coffee, skipped breakfast altogether and filled Rita’s bowl with an uninspired cup of dry dog food. Rita now looked at Jane as if to say, “Now you expect me to listen to your nonsense? On a kibble breakfast?”

  “How can Bryan and Penny Kendell be Kendell cousins?” asked Jane. “Only child, only child, only child?”

  “Easy,” said Tim, when he arrived to pick Jane up. “I told you, they’re like third or fourth or something. Frederick the first had a younger brother who had kids and that line continued, not as rich, not connected with the business. Bryan’s great-great-uncle was Margie and Rick’s great-great-grandfather,” said Tim. Then he added, “I think that’s how it goes.”

  “And they’re close?” asked Jane.

  “I don’t know about that,” said Tim, picking up her bag and gathering her notes. “But Margie gave them the go-ahead to walk through the house and they seemed to be somewhat familiar with the place when I showed them around. Now let’s get moving, sweetheart. I want to start getting that house inventoried and I was wondering…”

  “Let me guess. The carpenter you hired moved to South America and now you want me to actually build the set,” said Jane. She knelt in front of Rita, reassuring her that Nellie would be back early afternoon to overfeed her. “Play your cards right, and she’ll be bringing you cream pies.”

  Jane pointed at her giant tote, which Tim handed over. Opening it up, Jane ticked off aloud, “Notebook, measuring tape, flashlight, string tags, loupe, large magnifier, antiseptic, Band-Aids, pens, pencils, gloves … do I need anything else?”

  “Nope. I’ve got all this stuff, too, honey, you know that. And the stage carpenter’s fine and staying put. You’ll like him, great guy. Marvin’s an old professional who’s moved back here and does this all out of love. But I do need a little assistance with something else.”

  Jane stayed mum, waiting. She didn’t want to help him out with another sarcastic remark or by asking another question. If she made another wiseass comment, it would only make it easier for him to answer back in kind. She was trying to put into practice what Detective Oh tried to teach her. “Your silence, Mrs. Wheel, makes everyone else around you so much noisier.”

  “I need a little help with blocking,” said Tim.

  “How far have you gotten?” asked Jane. She was thinking that Tim might have a handle on this directing business after all. Tonight was an early read-through and he was already planning ahead, preparing to move his actors around on the stage.

  “What?”

  “What scene are you on? How many scenes have you done?”

  “Let me rephrase the question,” said Tim. “What is blocking?”

  Jane caught herself before laughing—his timing was so perfect she was sure it was a joke until she looked at him, clutching his script in one hand and a worn library paperback called Directing the Director.

  “Everyone in this book talks about blocking—how it is important, how it isn’t the most important or how actors should have input or actors shouldn’t have input, but”—he took a deep breath—“no one really says what it means.”

  “How about we exit by way of the garage and I’ll explain on the way over to the Kendells’.”

  Jane described blocking as choreography onstage—getting the actors on and off the stage and around the furniture—adding movement to enhance the storytelling and keeping the stage picture balanced.

  “We won’t be putting all the furniture on one side of the stage; we’ll make areas of interest and you’ll have to move the actors around accordingly. No one moves on anyone else’s line or steals focus. You have to make sure the nonspeaking actors are actually listening when others are talking and let the script tell you what to do. Follow the exits and entrances that old Freddy Kendell put in already for you,” said Jane. “I can talk you through it. And Freddy was generous with this directions and notes. He told you how to stage it. And another thing,” Jane added, “let’s consolidate Acts One and Two. Easier to make one intermission. And in the long run? Less blocking.”

  Jane tossed her bag into t
he backseat, allowing her old more-than-distressed leather tool satchel to mingle with Tim’s tonier, albeit vintage, work bags. Between them and their carryalls, they carried all that any picker needed to measure, authenticate, clean, test, or dismantle. When Jane climbed into the front seat, she was caught off guard by the look Tim gave her. He held up one hand as if in surrender and with the other, took hers and squeezed.

  “Janie, I’m sorry I didn’t ask you to be in the play,” said Tim. “I really didn’t think you wanted to be onstage. I just figured you wanted to be busy and have some fun, you know, no-pressure fun.”

  Jane knew he meant it and welcomed him back into her heart with a nod. She hadn’t really locked him out, just wanted to keep on the porch for a while until he acknowledged his missteps.

  “I get it and I think I get it about casting Nellie, although I think you’re in deep trouble there, but what I don’t get is—”

  “Yeah, Nellie seems to be a little more hands-on than I expected. I mean, I knew she’d talk trash and all, but she actually seems to know a little about the play and about being in a play,” said Tim.

  “Yup, she’s trod the boards, and God help the director responsible for her comeback. I’ll dig around later and find the program Michael and I saw with her name in it. It’s one of those little Nellie things I totally forgot about after I saw it, because she never gave us any details, no explanation at all. Michael and I saw her name and she snatched away the program and stuck it back into the bookshelf and we just knew that it was never going to be spoken of again. But she’s not the actor I question,” said Jane. “What’s the deal casting Mary Wainwright?”

  “Oh, honey,” said Tim, turning onto the block of the Kendell mansion. It was the only house on the block and across the street there was a private park with stone benches and manicured gardens that edged the Kankakee River. Although the house was located in the heart of the historic district of the town, it might as well have been a country estate, since no other house was visible from the property.