“Next time,” Nellie promised, allowing his arm to remain for a second or two before shrugging free.
Several in the audience applauded the punch and knockout.
“It’s all over now, Suzanne,” said Jane, standing and brushing herself off. “I’m going to help you explain what happened. Detective Oh will help, too.”
“Who?” said Suzanne, in her own voice, dropping Bumbles onto the couch.
“Oh,” said Bruce Oh. “I am the plumber’s assistant.”
Suzanne handed the gun to Jane, who handed it to Oh, who passed it on to Ramey, who joined them onstage.
Claire and Margaret reached the stage and Claire snatched the urn from Jane’s arms. “This, my dear, is your fortune,” said Claire, holding the urn up to Margaret’s face.
“The paintings, too,” said Jane. “Underneath those paintings are the ones that should have been sent to auction. I don’t think your brother sent the wrong ones on purpose. Freddy had been spiriting valuables out of the house for years and disguising them for use in Murder in the Eekaknak Valley. That’s why he kept rewriting the play—it was to accommodate the props. You might want to check that jewelry chest. I thought it was all costume, but there might be some real treasure in there.”
“No, I didn’t kill Rick Kendell,” said Suzanne. “You can’t arrest me for that, I didn’t do that.”
Jane turned and saw Ramey nodding for another officer to come and take Suzanne away.
“She didn’t do it,” said Jane.
Now Ramey was giving her the look she usually saw on the faces of Kankakee policemen. The uh-oh-now-is-she-going-to-tell-me-how-to-do-my-job look.
“Did she, Margaret?” asked Jane.
Claire Oh looked from Jane to Margaret and back.
“How dare you…” Claire began.
“There was no blood. Whoever killed Rick didn’t put a nail in his neck like Frankenstein’s bolt, which was how you said you’d do it, right, Suzanne?” said Jane. “Whoever slipped in that front door and killed Rick Kendell knew something about science, knew exactly where to place that nail,” said Jane.
“Knew about pithing,” said Oh with a small sigh.
“It’s how we killed the frogs,” said Margaret, looking up at Claire. “Remember in biology class? You didn’t want to do it, but I volunteered to come in early and take care of it for everyone? It didn’t hurt them. I’m sure it didn’t hurt them.”
Ramey now signaled for his female officer to transfer her attention from Suzanne to Margaret.
“Rick was going to turn out all of those people that Freddy took care of. And when he asked me to meet him at Geppetto Studios, he accused me of stealing the treasures from the house. He was a horrible man. He had lost all his money and now he was going to take all of mine and lose it. He was just like our father.”
Margaret took a deep breath and looked over at Mr. Bumbles, sitting askew on the couch where Suzanne had dropped him.
“But you were always more like your mother,” said Bumbles.
“Yes, I was,” said Margaret, nodding at the dummy. Jane had to admit that Margaret Kendell was a fine ventriloquist. Her lips never moved.
23
Only after Margaret stood up straight and allowed Ramey and a female officer to escort her from the stage did Jane look out into the audience.
A full house stared back at her, many of them leaning forward in their seats, straining to catch all the action, some of which had begun to be played out in much quieter voices.
Suzanne and Henry Gand had also exited, stage right, accompanied by police officers, and Jane was sure that although Henry was, as Don had pointed out, a hell of an actor, thanks to Nellie’s punch, he was too groggy to be able to lie outright to the police about his argument with Marvin and his impulsive shove, which had brought the board crashing down on Marvin’s head.
Remaining onstage, in addition to the cast of Murder in the Eekaknak Valley, were Oh, Claire, Don, and Jane. Tim had signaled to Mandy, the stage manager, to close the curtain, but she seemed to be in shock and had been talking rapidly on her cell phone, apparently giving a play-by-play of what was going on, ever since Jane had crashed the party in the middle of the second act.
Nellie walked down to the apron of the stage and Jane thought for a moment she was going to make a speech to the audience. Still facing front with a smile, arms straight, she reached her hands behind her. Rica Evans and Mary Wainwright understood immediately and stepped forward, each taking one of Nellie’s hands and reaching their own back for the rest of the cast. Don took Claire’s elbow and they walked forward and joined the line of actors. Jane and Oh looked at each other and approached the line from the other side. The entire line, holding hands, with Tim breaking into the center between Nellie and Rica Evans, took a deep bow. Only then, when the audience broke into thunderous applause, did Mandy realize she was supposed to bring down the curtain.
The cast remained in place for a second curtain call, but Jane and Oh took advantage of the briefly closed curtain, stepping offstage and into the wings.
“I got your message, Mrs. Wheel,” said Oh.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t clearer,” said Jane.
Oh shook his head. “You were quite clear. I knew someone was listening and you were bluffing that someone else knew what you had figured out. I only wish I had actually figured it out in time to save you the discomfort of being held by Henry and Suzanne underground.”
“The pit-trap room,” said Jane. “This is quite a theater. If they ever give Tim another shot, he can put on something fairly complicated here.”
There was a third curtain call, and Jane had a feeling Tim might try to milk it for a fourth, so she told Mandy, rather loudly, to leave the curtain closed and bring up the houselights.
“Poor Margaret,” said Jane. She knew she should be saying poor Rick, since he was the murder victim, but there was something about that fragile woman. It was so clear that she never had a chance at normal, let alone happy, and that prompted sympathy.
“I should have seen it,” said Oh. “Her brother had tortured her as a child. Claire told me stories Margaret shared with her when they were in boarding school. He was a bad man and to have him for a brother with those parents…”
Jane saw Don and Nellie and Claire heading toward them from the other side of the stage. Only then did Jane become aware that she and Oh were still holding hands. She quickly untangled her fingers from his and walked toward her parents.
“Are you okay?” she asked Nellie, knowing the answer.
“I might have to ice my hand,” said Nellie, sounding surprised at her own admission of weakness. “I haven’t punched anyone in a while. I forgot what it feels like.”
“He feels worse,” said Don, pleased.
“Glass jaw,” said Nellie.
Claire looked at Oh sadly, then turned to Jane. “When did you know?”
“Not until tonight. When Suzanne said she and Henry planted the nail gun but that neither of them did it, I thought about what Bruce had said about pithing and what you had said about Margaret being strong because she was a scientist. And to tell you the truth, I still hoped I was wrong.”
Claire nodded and walked over to the paintings that Jane had asked Mandy to take down and put in the wings. Jane was sure that three of them were the masterpieces Claire had been searching for, but it was possible there were even more treasures hidden on the set. One of the stagehands had gone down into the pit-trap room and gotten Jane’s bag for her and she had pulled out all the scripts. She handed them to Oh.
“Claire should read these. She might recognize allusions to more stuff that Freddy hid in plain sight.”
Tim was encouraging everyone to go out front and mingle with the audience. When he came to Jane, he hugged her, and through smiling, clenched teeth, talked into her ear. “If you ever do anything like this again…”
“You’ll what?” asked Jane. “Hang a ventriloquist’s dummy from a chandelier to scare me?”
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“Let’s go out to the lobby and get some food,” said Jane. “I’m starving, and something tells me this crowd is going to want to applaud your success.”
“It was a disaster and how did…?”
“Three curtain calls, Timmy, and you couldn’t have done it without me,” said Jane.
“You turned my classic whodunit into Dr. Who meets the Marx Brothers,” said Tim.
“Trust me, you’re going to miss me tomorrow when the play really opens,” said Jane. “The audience loved this new and improved version.”
“Yeah, they did, didn’t they?” said Tim, acknowledging congratulatory nods and shouts from across the lobby.
“Next time you want to interest me in a job, you don’t have to go to such creepy and elaborate extremes,” said Jane. “Shame on you.”
“How…?”
“The foyer at the Kendell house was dark when we went in. Even with the light on, there was no way to tell that was an Hermès silk scarf tied to Mr. Bumbles. Only you would have picked out something so classy and only you would have freaked out when you saw the scissors in my hand to cut it down.”
The president of the theater board waved Tim over with a big smile. Jane could tell he was going to tell Tim how happy he was about the job he had done spicing up this old chestnut. Jane hoped for Tim’s sake that the prez wouldn’t be coming back tomorrow to see the real play.
Jane could see from the lobby that Claire was directing the volunteer stagehands to pack up several items and load them into her car. At least Freddy’s legacy would help Margaret find a good lawyer.
Oh came up behind her and placed a glass of champagne in Jane’s hand.
“I think you deserve a drink, Mrs. Wheel,” said Oh.
Someone tapped a utensil against a glass and the theater board president cleared his throat.
“Congratulations to Tim Lowry as a first-time director—we hope he’ll agree to participate in many more productions, and we’d also like to thank the cast and crew. We’ll be dedicating the weekend performances to Marvin, who was such a friend to…”
Jane saw Nellie roll her eyes at what promised to be a long-winded speech. Nellie clinked her own glass with a fork, interrupting.
“Yes, let’s drink to Marvin and Freddy and the old theater club and to Murder in the Eekaknak Valley. If anyone can put on an ass backward show in Kankakee, it’s Tim Lowry,” said Nellie.
Everyone laughed and continued to talk and eat and drink, and then Jane heard it again. That noise. That buzzing vibration that sounded like a loose fan belt inside of her brain. This time, though, she knew what it was. Ramey had returned her cell phone to her after she had asked him to check Henry’s pockets.
The vibration announced a message from Nick. They must be in a town or somewhere they could get a signal.
was tonite grams opening? howd it go?
This tweeting was going to kill the English language. What was the expression Nick had been using for everything? Jane tweeted back.
Killer. It was killer.
Jane slipped her phone back into her jeans, slipped off Rollo’s work shirt, and grabbed a mini quiche off the tray. Jane looked around at the happy crowd of EZ Way Inn regulars who surrounded Nellie, the theater board who surrounded Tim, and began to walk across the lobby to where her partner, Detective Bruce Oh, stood, alone and patient.
As she threaded her way through the crowd that separated her from Oh, Jane allowed herself only a moment to reflect on this long year of sleepless nights and recriminations, loneliness and guilt, and she silently toasted the end of her marriage and a new beginning of … something … although she wasn’t sure what that something would be. Like all the collectibles that crowded her shelves, the objects of her affections and desire, she really didn’t know what they were until she saw them. That’s how she felt about the next chapter of her life: She’d know it when she saw it. She accepted a second glass of champagne from one of the theater board members who congratulated her on her performance. Laughing, Jane Wheel decided to join the party.
ALSO BY SHARON FIFFER
Scary Stuff
Hollywood Stuff
Buried Stuff
Killer Stuff
Dead Guy’s Stuff
The Wrong Stuff
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are use fictitiously.
BACKSTAGE STUFF. Copyright © 2010 by Sharon Fiffer. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fiffer, Sharon Sloan, 1951–
Backstage stuff / Sharon Fiffer.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-312-60979-5
1. Wheel, Jane (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Antique dealers— Fiction. 3. Women private investigators—Fiction. 4. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3606.I37B33 2011
813'.54—dc22
2010037539
First Edition: January 2011
eISBN 978-1-4299-7472-1
First Minotaur eBook Edition: January 2011
Backstage Stuff Page 26