by Sarah Dreher
It looked as if there might be a budding romance here. At the very least, from the way Roseann was looking at Barb and blushing slightly, she had one heck of a crush on the technical director. Maybe Marylou wouldn't have to worry about finding the ideal date for Roseann, after all.
"I guess it wasn't my fault," Roseann said.
“What wasn't your fault?"
"Falling off the stage."
"No," Rebecca assured her, "it wasn't your fault."
“Well, that's a first." She thought for a moment. "Funny thing. Right before I fell, the floor turned all kind of eely, like there was egg white on it or something."
“What?" Barb shouted from the stage. "Egg white?"
"Felt kinda like egg white. Of course, you wouldn't necessarily know what I'm talking about, since you probably never gave anyone an egg white mousse."
"Not likely," Barb said. She blew her nose, then got down on the stage and sniffed the floor boards. She sniffed again, then blew her nose again and sniffed one more time. "Goddamn," she grumbled, and ran to the back stage area. She returned carrying an aerosol can. Popping the cap, she sniffed it. "Silicone," she announced. "Someone sprayed the floor with silicone."
Rebecca rolled her eyes. “What next?"
"I don't know about you," Roseann said through clenched teeth, "but I sort of hope they get back here with the ice before I get too much older, you know what I mean?"
"Hang on," Stoner said, and squeezed her hand. She turned to Rebecca. “What happens if she can't do the dances?"
"She can still do the show," the director said. “We can have someone else fill in for the dances. In the old musicals, they had separate casts for the acting and the dancing."
"They did?"
"Look at the 'Out of my Dreams' sequence in the movie Oklahoma! some time. It works." She glanced over at Divi Divi. “What do you think, Div?"
Divi Divi shrugged. "That's the director's decision, not the playwright's."
"I think it would look doody," Marcy put in.
"Spoken like a true understudy," said Divi Divi.
That made her stop and think. If the point of all this was to give Marcy the leading part, and the seemingly unrelated incidents were a smoke screen...
All of a sudden she was doubting herself again.
"Listen," Roseann said loudly, "it's making me crazy, all of you standing around like this. Don't you have something better to do?"
Rebecca smiled. "I guess you'll live, huh?"
"I'll live."
Rebecca raised her voice. "Okay, let's run a light check. Barb, you set?"
Barb said, "Yo."
"Company, entrances and exits. Places."
The rest of the cast and crew went to their assigned stations.
"Ready? Cue 1, opening. One and three to half, area two full. Schlafley enters. Joan of Arc enters. Medea enters." One by one, the actors filed onto the stage.
“What' s going on with you?" Roseann asked in a low voice. "Lips are flapping faster than at the Unisex."
"What do you mean?"
''You and Gwen? That was some blow-out you had this morning. We heard you all the way into the dining room."
''You should have heard us when we got upstairs.”
“We did," Roseann said. ''Your windows were open."
Stoner told her about the fight. "It was all a misunderstanding. It's fine now. But we're pretending we're still angry. We think we might get more information that way."
"Good idea," Roseann said with an approving nod.
“What are people saying?"
"Nobody knows what to think." Roseann rubbed at her ankle. "Some say you're out of your mind, others say Gwen and Sherry are a couple of sluts. Most are just confused, and a few don't care one way or another."
"Good." She didn't care what other people thought, as long as Sherry continued to believe they were still estranged. They needed to control and monitor Sherry's comings and goings, and to do that Gwen had to be around her at all times. "Don't let on what I told you, okay?"
"As Sherry would say, 'No problemo.' Just let me know what you need me to do."
They should be getting back with the ice. Stoner glanced out the window and saw them, coming toward the barn. Gwen was talking excitedly, her posture angry. Sherry gave her a sympathetic hug. It was working.
“I need an amber gel on seven," Barb shouted.
Marcy complained that she'd come to rehearsal expecting a complete run-through, and it wasn't happening, and she could feel her timing going off.
The screen door squeaked. Gwen and Sherry crossed the room, Gwen leaning into Sherry a little as if for protection.
Stoner glared at them and moved to the stage.
“Want to hold book?" Rebecca asked sympathetically.
Stoner looked at the complicated system of light cues and shook her head.
"Hang in there," Rebecca whispered. "It'll pass."
"Page fifteen," Barb called. "Coming up on thirty-eight. Cue: 'I must be mistaken.'"
"I must be mistaken," said Rita/Medea.
All the lights went out. Barb turned to the back of the room. "Lisa, can you give me thirty-eight?"
"I am," said the woman at the console.
"It's not right."
"I have cross-fade to area three."
"That's not what you're getting."
"I don't understand," Lisa said.
Stoner had the feeling she understood. Understood all too well. "Try a few others," she said to Barb.
"Okay, Lisa, give me thirty-nine. Forty-two. Fifty-six." She turned to Stoner. "They're all wrong."
"Uh-huh. It's been sabotaged."
Barb pulled out her handkerchief and blew her nose loudly. "I can't believe this. We have to redo the whole light plan." She jumped up onto the stage and strode from one side to the other, peering up at the lights and down at the floor and making notes. "This is going to take us the rest of the day."
"You can't do that!" Marcy wailed. “We have to rehearse."
"Calm yourself," Rebecca said impatiently. ''You'll get a chance to rehearse.”
“If I have to take over for Roseann, I'd better get a lot of rehearsal time."
"I don't think you'll have to take over for Roseann."
Stoner tried to cast Marcy in the part of their villain, and couldn't. Marcy was much too impatient. There was no way she'd have the fortitude to construct the complicated plot they were dealing with here.
She glanced over to where Gwen and Sherry were tending to Roseann. Gwen was looking down, focused on holding the ice against Roseann's ankle. Sherry had glanced toward Joyce on the ladder, her lips parted in just the hint of a smile. The glittery look was back in her eyes.
Was she excited about what had happened, what was going to happen, or all of the above?
And if it was about what she had planned for the immediate future, how dangerous was that? How much farther was Sherry willing to go to accomplish whatever it was she was accomplishing? Physical injury wasn't beyond her limits. What about serious harm? What about murder?
It was time to put an end to this.
And how was she going to do that?
If Esther couldn't come up with some hard evidence, she really had nothing to go on. So the only way to trap Sherry was to get her to trap herself.
She was beginning to get an idea. Edith Kesselbaum had said that people like Sherry enjoyed setting people against one another. So why not give her the perfect opportunity? Bring the entire company together, accuse Sherry of being the troublemaker, and watch her try to manipulate the situation. In front of everyone. It would be a classic confrontation in the Miss Marple and Jessica Fletcher tradition. Everyone assembled and watching, while Stoner and Gwen outlined Sherry's dastardly plot from beginning to end, quoting times and dates, displaying irrefutable evidence. Leaving Miss Sherry Dodder sputtering with incoherence and guilt, while the rest of Demeter Ascending raised, as one, the angry voice of condemnation.
It was a great idea
. Trouble was, she didn't have the slightest idea if she could bring it off.
Better pray Esther and Clara come up with something more concrete.
For now, she'd have to settle for collecting as much evidence as she could, and hope for the best.
But she couldn't do that in the middle of a rehearsal. And she had to make certain Sherry was being watched at all times.
Steeling herself, she marched over to Gwen. "I want to talk," she said gruffly.
Gwen glanced up. "I don't have anything to say to you."
“I have something to say to you." Good grief, she should have gotten Divi Divi to write better dialogue.
"Yeah?" said Gwen. “Well, I'm busy."
"Hey, listen, guys... " Sherry said, stepping between them.
Stoner stepped around her. "I want to talk to you, and I want to talk to you now. Or should I make a scene?"
Gwen emitted a heavy sigh and got up. "All right." She glanced at the others. "I'll be right back. Right back."
Stoner strode from the barn. Gwen followed.
"Can you keep close to Sherry for the next hour?" she asked when they were out of ear shot. She waved her arms a little in the way she thought people might wave their arms if they were having a shouting match.
Gwen planted her hands on her hips in an annoyed, stubborn way. "I guess so. What are you up to?"
She filled Gwen in on her thinking, and Esther's activities. "She knows I suspect her. If she planted the night shirt, she knows we re-keyed the locks. And she knows I don't have good feelings about her any more. We can't take the chance of her finding out what we're doing, and hiding some evidence."
"Just be careful, will you? I'll do my best, but she might slip away from me. We already know she's slippery." Gwen folded her arms across her chest and turned her back. "I love you."
Stoner grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. "I love you, too. We must look like Lucy and Desi."
"Don't you dare make me laugh." Gwen brushed her hand away.
It was hard not to smile. "Get out of here, will you, before I blow it?"
Gwen turned on her heel and stalked back to the barn. Stoner watched her for a moment, then began loping toward the inn.
She hesitated outside the door to their room. If she went in, and if Sherry was keeping track of their comings and goings, the opening of the door would register on Sherry's receiver.
Stoner had to laugh at herself. Sherry already knew she was under suspicion. She'd already been in their room, to take and return the night shirt, and knew they'd changed the locks. Face it, no one was fooling anyone any more.
She hoped Gwen was fooling Sherry.
Pulling her knapsack from the closet, she emptied the contents onto the bed, sorted through and decided on taking her knife, note book, and pencil. After all, this was an evidence-collecting expedition, not a camping trip.
A glance at her watch told her she had about an hour to see what she could come up with. She consulted her notes. The marijuana. Clara had said she found a patch growing wild down by the lake. If she could find it, along with evidence of recent harvesting, that would account for the Boneset Tea incident.
She slipped out of the inn through the parking lot entrance, and followed her previous path along the edge of the woods. There was a slight chance she' d be seen, if Sherry happened to be looking out a barn window at just the right angle. But that might be all right. It might make her nervous. She loved the idea of making Sherry nervous.
Problem was, it would probably just give her a thrill and add to the excitement.
It was warm in the sun, but cool under the trees. Yesterday's rain had washed away the humidity and left the air with a dry, autumn-like feel. The white furniture shimmered against the flagstone patio. Pines took on a deep green intensity, while the sky above them was light and high and the palest blue washed with wisps of cloud. The lake sparked silver through the trees. From everywhere and nowhere came the scent of ripening grapes. Women's voices drifted to her from the barn, indistinct and murmuring as a swarm of bees.
She reached the lake and looked for a path around. There had to be something, at least a fairly smooth area, to accommodate Clara's wheel chair. Water lapped at the shore and caressed dark stones. Across the pond, water lilies were in full bloom where the little outlet stream formed shallows. The marijuana patch wouldn't be beyond that spot, unless there was a bridge over the brook...
Suddenly she remembered the first night, when Sherry had met them by the boat house. She'd come by car, then left the car and followed a path. That would be the way Esther and Clara would come. Not to the right, where the pier jutted out over the water. There was too much traffic in that section for a marijuana patch to remain for long. Someone would have smoked it or reported it back in July. Left was the direction to take.
The path appeared almost immediately, and beyond it a thinning of the woods, where the road cut through. She passed the parking spot. The path was less worn here, but still passable for a wheel chair if you didn't mind a few bumps. Clara and Esther didn't remind her of women who minded a few bumps.
She glanced back in the direction of the boat house. A figure emerged from the building and stood for a moment as if looking back and forth along the far shore. Sherry? She wasn't certain, but ducked back into the dark tree shadows just to be safe.
Another figure joined the first, and this one she definitely recognized. Gwen, in her sleeveless pale blue work shirt and faded jeans. Then it was Sherry, all right. They talked for a moment, then turned together and went into the boat house.
Stoner decided to stay put.
A few seconds later they came back out, Sherry carrying what looked like a large hammer. Stoner noted her pink shirt and bibbed blue shorts. Another play suit.
They were gone. She slipped back to the path and kept walking.
A strange odor, the odor of old, wet, burnt wood came to her. She looked around and found a dead camp fire, to her left away from the lake and in a small cleared area ringed with stones. Bits of unburned logs lay in a jumbled pile. The remnants of Boneset's ritual bonfire? Stoner looked overhead, at the close-packed canopy of pine needles and birch leaves. Not here, certainly. A bonfire here would be much too risky.
But someone had made a fire here. Campers, maybe, hiking the Appalachian Trail and veering off for the night.
She knelt down to take a closer look.
Beneath the pile of ash and charcoal and burnt logs, she saw something that didn't belong. A round, turned dowel, at least an inch and a half in diameter. Man-made and half burned.
She found a stick and used it to poke deeper into the ashes. Another dowel, and another. The last one was nearly intact, but shattered in the center. And, near the point of shattering, those hammer dents she'd seen on Boneset's ladder.
That explained how Sherry had managed to break the stage ladder rung so neatly. She'd been practicing, and this was what was left.
Things were beginning to fall together in a nice way. Feeling a little optimistic for the first time in days, she gathered up the broken rung and stuffed it into her knapsack.
The marijuana patch lay only a few yards farther along the path, in a spot by the water that was sunny, dry and protected by some knee-high laurel bushes. A small patch, only about four or five plants, hardly enough to catch the attention of the narcs—though considering the way they pounced on a single plant on a window sill these days, no one was really safe. They were lovely, healthy plants, the flowers just on the verge of bloom. Each plant probably worth about a thousand dollars on the street.
She found what she was looking for. Scars and branching where leaves had been plucked off. Taking out her knife, she harvested the plant with the most tell-tale marks, and left the rest to turn to bird seed.
No doubt about it, this was turning into a fruitful morning. Stoner lashed her knapsack shut as tightly as she could. If she ran into anyone before she reached her room, she didn't want any tell-tale distinctive odors giving her away.
As it was, she'd probably be high before she got back to the Cottage, just from being so close to the Devil's weed.
Taking a last careful look around, in case other clues were waiting to reveal themselves, she slipped her arms into the knapsack straps and walked forward along the path until she reached the stream. There was nothing new.
Stoner turned and trotted back to the inn.
She was just coming down the stairs, having left the evidence inside the closet, locked in her suitcase, as Sherry came through the French doors. "Where were you?" Sherry asked in a friendly, cheerful voice. “We missed you."
Stoner twisted her face into what she hoped was a wry smile. "Really?"
"Rebecca needed you on book."
She hoped Esther had finished up in her search for the missing room. She wished she'd thought of a way to secure their own room, because Sherry was here now, her alibi intact, and Stoner couldn't think of a single excuse not to go back to the rehearsal. She looked at her watch. It was a few minutes before eleven. "She'll have me for an hour before lunch. That should be enough."
Damn, damn, damn. She knew Sherry would be poking around their room the minute she was out of the building. That locked suitcase was a dead give-away, and wouldn't slow her down for a second.
"Sher!"
Stoner glanced up at the familiar voice.
It was Gwen, hot on Sherry's trail. She sidled up to Sherry and took her arm.
Stoner's stomach, not yet having processed the information that this was all an act, complete with affectionate nick names, turned over.
She brushed past them and out the door.
Clara and Esther were sitting on the patio, placidly drinking coffee and looking sun-sleepy and self-satisfied. From her lap, Clara flashed her a thumbs-up.
Esther had found the room. She'd found the boxes. It was all coming together.
And Gwen was hanging on Sherry's arm, making sure the only things Sherry could do for the next hour were the things she said she was doing.
As she walked across the lawn, Stoner wondered if Sherry had begun to be suspicious. She knew she would. But maybe Sherry was so impressed with her own brilliance she felt invulnerable. And so convinced of her own innate desirability she absolutely believed Gwen could fall in love with her overnight.