I turned back, and nearly knocked into the props table, covered in brown paper, the outlines of the props all marked with masking tape. Various daggers and goblets, and of course, poor Yorick's skull. Ah, how could one forget poor Yorick? The props would be back at the theater, or more likely locked up in the trailer in back of the stage at this point. In my day, a trunk on the stage was sufficient to keep them out of harm's way. But times had changed.
Back at the Cottage, I found a few groggy actors up, brewing coffee, nursing hangovers with cold cereal and orange juice. We'd been introduced at some point, but I could not remember their names. “You open tomorrow?” I asked, just to be polite.
"Final dress this evening. Hopefully Bristol will fix those lighting cues that were still a mess yesterday. You'll watch the run?” they asked hopefully.
I nodded. What else was I going to do? Actually write something? That seemed unlikely.
Ginny was still a rock, so I fumbled around for some more clothes, and snuck off to the shower—made it quick, in case others were waiting. I too helped myself to coffee, cereal—though I couldn't wait to crawl into my own bed. My body had quickly staked claim to the blue room, and I felt displaced without it.
Hair wrapped up in a towel, wearing torn jeans and a T-shirt, I plopped myself back onto the couch. The afghan was still there, and for some reason I felt cold. Coffee, an old New Yorker. I lost myself in the pages until Jaime pulled me out.
"Sheila?"
"Don't look so shocked. Writers can get up early too."
"I'm just a bit of a mess, with Hamlet so close to opening. There's some sort of problem with the programs, and they're predicting rain for tomorrow night.” I thought it odd she didn't mention Dara.
She'd always seemed so calm before the shows in my day—let others do the stressing for her. “I'm sure it will all work itself out,” I said. And then Bristol came bursting into the Cottage.
"Ginny promised to meet me down at the theater at eight-thirty."
"She was pretty smashed last night.” I shook my head. “I'll get her."
"And tell her that Alice in costumes needs to see her, too,” he called after me as I made my way up the stairs. Something about wigs and humidity floated up as I stepped back into the blue room.
"Ginny, you up?” I whispered, seeing full well that she was where I'd left her. “Ginny ... oh director dearest..."
I placed my hand on a lump that was too stiff to feel human. I pulled back the covers. A pearl-handled pistol clunked to the floor. Bristol would have to wait indefinitely. Ginny's hangover was worse than predicted.
* * * *
Another suicide—unlikely. Ginny had been shot in the back. As for the gun that was found at the scene: “Just a prop, like the last one,” I heard a young officer remark. It seemed that no one in the Cottage had heard the shot, all the way up on the top floor. And it would have been easy enough to muffle the sound with a pillow. I found myself back on the couch being questioned by a detective.
"But what was she doing in your bed?” she asked for the third time.
"We weren't lovers, if that's what you're thinking,” I finally answered, hoping this would satisfy her, and told her again about Ginny's lost keys, which someone had found on the kitchen floor, and returned to Jaime.
Yes, I was the only one who knew she was there. No, I did not know why anyone would want to harm Ginny.
"And you?"
"Me?"
"It was your room, your bed. Any reason why someone would want you dead?"
The thought should have occurred to me. There were reasons, none that I cared to share.
* * * *
But the show must go on, as the old saying goes, rain or shine or death. Bristol would be left to his own devices to tweak those final lighting cues, and the question of wigs would never fully be resolved. The apprentices were atwitter with speculation and self-importance, as they too were being questioned. An actress, a director—who was next? Why on earth leave prop guns at the scene? And who would want to kill them? These were the questions I'd hear them whispering. Me—after having my belongings fully searched, I was allowed to relocate to the Inn. My room was sealed until further notice.
I slept for hours, and tried to write, but my words kept transforming into morbid rhymes, in iambic pentameter, of course. I hadn't even glanced at my novel yet. I decided to waste more time by strolling back down to the pasture early for the dress rehearsal—buying a Diet Coke and a Snickers bar for dinner along the way. That had been a staple meal of mine that summer. There was something comforting in its unhealthy simplicity.
I stretched out straight on the grass—I hadn't thought to bring a blanket—and stared up at the sky, eyes wide open, watching the clouds as the sky dimmed slightly. A small crowd began to gather: a few townies who, for whatever reason, preferred to watch a dress rehearsal. Most would come back during the next few nights for the real deal.
The play grew out of the pasture organically. No dimming of the houselights, just the setting sun. Cars still drove by on the main road—"backstage"—some bored tweens wandered away from Grandma, giggling, toward the porta-potties, which had already been set up along the side of the pasture. There were problems with the microphones, a missed exit, a dropped goblet. I kept my eyes open for the one prop that interested me, the one I had spent hours creating. “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him.” Yes, it was the same skull, locked away in the prop cabinet all those years.
I stayed away from the pasture for the next few nights, but I heard the crowds, felt the swell of people wandering about town at night, eating dinner at the Inn. Not that the crowds for the other shows hadn't made an impact, but the theater only seated 250 people. More than twice that flocked to the pasture each night.
From what I could gather, Hamlet was a success. Plump little Gertrude had stepped up to the plate, and Ginny's job had, in truth, been done by that point. “Really, after opening, the director just gets in the way,” Gavin almost chuckled, and then stopped himself.
With the bustle of the show, it was easy to ignore the police presence. The questions—daily. I had been interviewed two more times. They had the sense that I was holding something back, but it wasn't what they thought.
And then closing night rolled around. I decided I should see the show at least once. “You've been avoiding us,” Jaime had joked.
"No, just busy writing,” I lied.
* * * *
The show was exquisite. It had truly come together since the dress rehearsal. Little Gertrude dazzled. Ophelia stunned. Gavin was quite convincing as Polonius. Hamlet's need to avenge the death of his father crept over me. I glanced back at Jed, milling by the tech tent, which was set back toward the middle of the pasture. I'd heard from Gavin that the police were quite interested in him. He had access to the prop closet. He'd found Dara's body. He'd had the key to the blue room. Had he been visited by Harrison's ghost?
Before the final crowds had left the pasture, the apprentices pounced on the stage with their power drills. A dumpster was hauled up in back of the trailer. Within hours, the last trace of the stage would be gone, the props and costumes would all be safely stored away in the theater, and the apprentices would be tapping a keg and celebrating the end of their summer. The younger actors would join them. The older ones would have already phoned their agents and be looking ahead to their next gig: regional theater if they were lucky, word processing in a law firm if they were not.
I decided to wait at the theater. Eventually some apprentices would come carrying a trunk full of props. I would offer to help them with it, then slip Yorick's skull into my canvas bag, and leave Vermont forever. I'd cover it with plaster, toss it into the East River. Out damn spot—my hands would finally be clean.
So I did just that. I waited. But as usual, strike took longer than expected. The trips back to the theater were fewer because the path was off limits. I retired to my room at the Inn and dozed off.
I woke just as the first hint of sunshine pe
eked through my window. I hopped out of bed, tossed on my clothes from the night before, and was at the theater before my mind was awake. The back door was locked, but someone had left the side door ajar; they usually did during the summer, since it was rare that the theater was empty. It was a place for lovers to sneak away in the middle of the night. That's what Harrison and I had done. Rather, we didn't sneak, we just stayed. Had he seduced me, or I him? His hands brushing against mine ever so slightly as we glued fake jewels onto a sword, or painted used books to look leather-bound. I was old enough to know better. So was he.
I'd heard rumors of a wife in Manchester, figured they were separated. I knew nothing of a child. And I presumed that Dara Mills was old news, until the night I'd found them shacked up on the Equity cot, making the beast with two backs. That was the weekend before Hamlet opened. The Agatha Christie play, it had been And Then There Were None that year, was closing the next night. And then, of course, there was strike. I was stuck in the theater with him, sorting through all those murder mystery play props—tumblers and prop guns and suitcases—and we still didn't have Yorick's skull for the Shakespeare, and I should have known it was just a summer fling.
The theater was dark. No lights. No life. The Mousetrap had been swept away without a trace, and the community troupe that used the barn during the year for their productions hadn't moved back in yet. I made my way to the set shop. Someone had left a light on.
"I thought you'd come. I expected you sooner."
Jaime sat on a stool, perched above the sawdust that was splayed across the work table. The skull sat delicately on her lap.
"Is this what you're looking for?” She held it up.
I nodded.
"How did you know?” I managed to ask—my mouth dry, a choking feeling creeping across my neck.
"I didn't. You'd think a mother would recognize her own son....” She held up the skull. “Funny, fifteen years ago it wouldn't have occurred to me. And then Jed was sorting props in the spring, before our season started, and he said something about the jaw line. But even then, I refused to believe it."
I didn't say a word. Anything I said at that point would have been an admission of guilt.
"You didn't know, of course, that Harrison was my son. No one did.” She was right about that. So the rumors were true—he'd been that backstage baby. “I always imagined that he'd turn out to be a great success. His talent was clear. He was bound to be a grand sensation—designing Broadway shows. He never had the chance.” She didn't seem to be looking at me at all, but she was. “It wasn't fair that his killer's career should take off."
Her phone call. Her timing. It made sense to me now.
"At first I suspected Ginny. She thought it was her directing skills that got her the job. She should have known better. I'd forgotten that she'd gone home sick. Mono my ass. I knew that Harrison had that effect on young girls. I thought, it must have been either her or Dara. It was easy enough to convince Ginny that Dara was the perfect Gertrude. Of course, then Ginny reminded me that you had taken her place that summer. I didn't mean to kill her."
"Of course not. But if you knew—"
"I didn't know. I didn't know anything for sure. The police had suspected Dara, so I thought I'd start with her."
I could picture her driving down the path in her pickup truck, holding a gun to Dara's head. The gun found at the scene was just a prop...
Before I could finish my thought, Jaime continued: “She sputtered something about Harrison working on props that night. The terror in her eyes. If she hadn't killed Harrison, then it must have been you. I knew for sure then that this didn't just look like Harrison, it was Harrison.” She held up the skull in one hand, a pistol in the other. This gun was no prop.
"You don't have to kill me, Jaime. You could call the police.” I tried to reason.
"And tell them what? That I've killed two innocent women attempting to avenge my son's death? Besides, I plan to turn myself in when I'm done with you. I thought leaving props by the bodies would be a nice touch—a tribute to my son. Unfortunately, it's cast suspicion on my grandson."
Her eyes wandered for a moment. It was all the time I needed. My hands had found the axe. The same axe that I had used fifteen years ago—in a jealous rage. It had been so easy to dispose of the body. The dumpster from strike had been right outside. No one had noticed the splatters of blood I had missed. They mixed right in with the paint. And Harrison's head had solved the one prop problem that he hadn't been able to fix before his demise. Hours of boiling and scraping—bleach and steel wool—had transformed him into Yorick. It's amazing what the sleep-deprived mind will concoct.
Jaime would prove to be trickier. The dumpster was out at the pasture, but her truck was nearby. Work gloves to keep the prints off. All the actors and designers would be sleeping off their hangovers. I had a few hours to clean up the mess I had made.
And then what? I could get myself to a nunnery. Drown myself in a river. Or return to the city and hope that ghosts were figments of Shakespeare's imagination.
Copyright © 2009 by Nina Mansfield
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Novelette: THE CASE OF THE PISS-POOR GOLD by Lee Goldberg
Fans of the Monk TV series and followers of Lee Goldberg's tie-in novels about the obsessive compulsive San Francisco P.I. are in for a treat. Mr. Goldberg's winter 2009 book in the Monk series, Mr. Monk inTrouble, contains this stand-alone short story. It stars not TV's Adrian Monk but an ancestor of his, Old West assayer Artemis Monk, who shares some of Adrian's obsessions, but has to cope with them amid the filth of an 1855 mining town.
Trouble, California, 1855
A dream killed my husband Hank Guthrie before his twenty-fifth year.
We'd been working this barren patch of dirt in Kansas, trying to make it into a farm and having no luck at it, when he read about all the gold that was sprinkled on the ground out west in California.
The newspapers said the riverbeds there were lined with gold and that anybody with two good arms, a shovel, and a tin pan could earn at least a hundred dollars a day without breaking a sweat. It sounded too good to be true, but that didn't stop every poor farmer from catching gold fever anyway.
My Hank was one of them.
I tried to talk sense to him, but his mind was set on abandoning the farm, packing up what little we had, and heading to California.
I could hardly blame him for wanting to go.
When you're killing yourself trying to grow a crop in a land as ornery, dry, and infertile as my old granny, you want to believe there's an easier way.
I knew California couldn't be the paradise of gold that the newspapers made it out to be, but I figured we couldn't be any worse off than we already were. Besides, I was raised to obey my husband no matter how thickheaded, foolhardy, and stubborn he might be.
So in 1852 we teamed up with four other families and went west. Along the way, we lost nearly all of our cattle and had to toss our stove, our dishes, my momma's candlesticks, and just about every possession we had to lighten our load. Those losses were nothing compared to the human toll. Half of our party died of cholera.
The way west was littered with valuables, graves, and animal carcasses from Kansas to California. More than once during those long, brutal months I wondered what wealth could await us that could match what we'd all lost.
I took it as a bad omen of what was to come. If that wasn't enough of a sign, the first California mining camp we rolled into was named Trouble.
I'd have preferred to stop in a place called Opportunity, Happiness, or Serenity, but I suppose it could have been worse. The place could have been called Futility, Misery, or Death, all of which would have been a more accurate description of what awaited us.
It certainly wasn't a pretty place. The main street was a mire of mud, sawdust, rocks, and horse droppings with an occasional wood plank or two flung atop it to make crossing less of a slog.
Everything looked like it was erected in a hurr
y by people with little regard for outward appearance, skill in construction, or any thought of permanence.
Most of the structures were one story, with log walls and sawed-timber storefronts with tall, flat cornices of varying heights. There was also a smattering of shacks, log cabins, and tents of all kinds, some crudely cobbled together out of boughs and old calico shirts. The hotel was a lopsided, two-story building with a sagging veranda. There was a wood-plank sidewalk on each side of the street and plenty of hitching posts.
I didn't see a church, but that didn't mean one of those tents didn't contain a preacher or two. In my experience, preachers and gamblers always showed up where there was whiskey and money around.
The men on the street looked like they'd all just crawled out of their graves. They were covered in dirt. It was caked to their tattered wool shirts and patched britches, it dusted their mangy beards and ragged hats, and it clung to their hair, which was slicked back with wagon-wheel grease and caught everything.
If there were womenfolk around, they were either in hiding or hadn't emerged from their graves yet. Seeing the menfolk, I couldn't blame them for keeping out of sight.
The only evidence of prosperity that I could see was the existence of the camp itself, and as ugly as it was, it was a strong indicator. Trouble wouldn't have been there at all, or expanding, if there wasn't gold to support it.
Hank and I might have passed right through, and probably should have, but he couldn't wait to stick his pan in a river. He found some flakes of gold in that first pan of gravel and was so excited about it that he staked himself a claim right away, convinced that we were sitting on our mother lode.
We weren't.
When that patch didn't pan out, we worked our way up and down that river, never straying far from Trouble, staking new claims, hoping we were just one pan away from striking it rich.
EQMM, November 2009 Page 10