“Or, maybe the roses really are from your boyfriend, now that he knows he has competition in the area.”
“Ooh. I like that theory. Let’s just go with that, shall we?” She grinned at me, but only for a moment. “Please tell me that there’s no such thing as a poison that can be made from rose stems.”
“No such thing a rose-stem poison.”
“Good. All of which reminds me, I’ve been meaning to thank you both for sticking it out and helping us on the play. I think if I was in your shoes, I’d have packed up and left town when things started getting so ugly.”
“No need to thank me,” Baxter said. “Allie’s the one who’s been doing all the work.”
“It’s mostly just because of my devotion to dogs. I’ve wanted to make sure John wasn’t abusing Flint or anything.” I glanced at Baxter to see if he was offended on his friend’s account, but his expression hadn’t changed. “And he isn’t, right?”
“Right.” Karen said. “Jeez. I still have to grab my lemon water. We’re doing a preshow “Talk” about Good Dog, Blue, and I’m filling in for John now.”
“I’ll come with you,” I said. “Flint is panting slightly and can use some water himself.”
“I’ll get your headset and Flint’s earbud ready,” Baxter said. “I’ll leave it on your chair.”
“Okay, thanks, sweetie.” I patted my thigh, and Flint fell into step beside me.
“You know, Allie,” Karen said quietly as we walked side by side, “I can’t stop thinking about this whole tragic mess. It seems to me, someone involved had to either have set up John, or the authorities are right and John did it.”
“I came to the same conclusion.”
“It makes me realize when I’m on stage, one of these actors might have actually taken another person’s life. It’s creepy. I’ve tried to picture each one of them in turn, whacking Sam with a rock and shoving him over the edge. Yet it could only be Greg or Hammie. I don’t think Sally’s physically capable of it. She’s such a skinny little thing. I think that’s part of her allure to men. They see her as somebody to protect, as a delicate flower.”
“Felicity must have had to make complete duplicate wardrobes for her and her understudy.”
Karen chuckled. “Sally’s understudy is Felicity herself or Valerie. Felicity told me Sally is petite, it was like making matching mother-daughter costumes.”
I emptied the water bowl and refilled it with fresh water. Karen opened the refrigerator, grabbing her lemon water.
I set the bowl down, and Flint started lapping water. It popped into my head that one of the actors could have overheard John giving fake cues to Blue, and maybe that was somehow tied in with Sam’s murder. Greg had already told me at the beginning he suspected as much.
“Have you ever been standing beside John, awaiting your entrance, when Flint went off the rails?” I asked.
She paused, considering my question. “I think I’ve always been on stage with Flint whenever he forgets his training.”
“Do you think that’s true for all four of you?”
She flipped open her sipper top and took a big swig. Although she managed to swallow first, she made horrible grimace. “Oh, good God!” She coughed a couple of times. “This tastes terrible!”
“Too much lemon juice?” I asked.
“Maybe. If the juice has turned rancid.”
She set the bottle down and grabbed a green plastic bottle of lemon juice. Holding it up to the light, she said, “I did wind up leaving my lemon juice out yesterday. I always try to mix it up the night before so it’s nice and cold when I arrive. It looks okay, though. Usually it gets little lumps in the bottle if it’s starting to turn.”
“Since lemon water is so tart when it’s ripe, does it start to get sweet when it’s spoiled?” I teased.
“Not according to the way my water tastes.” She started unscrewing the lid. “My tongue even feels weird,” she muttered.
I gasped, mostly due to my own cluelessness. Karen started to dump out the water.
“Don’t!” I cried.
She straightened the bottle, having only sloshed a little into the sink.
“What’s wrong with your tongue?” I asked.
“I don’t know. It’s a little...tingly. Along with my lips.” She eyed her bottle.
“Don’t take another sip,” I said. “Give it to me.”
“You’re not thinking it’s been poisoned, are you?”
“That’s precisely what I’m thinking,” I said. “Someone could have ground up some leaves and stems. Aconite is really acrid. The flavor could be masked by lemon juice. I don’t know how potent it is, but a woman was poisoned not that long ago when she bought what she thought was tea and drank a full cup of infused aconite.”
“Oh, crap. I might have ingested poison?”
I nodded. “We need to get your lemon water tested. And you should get yourself tested in the hospital.”
“I only took one sip,” Karen said. She started running out of the room and called over her shoulder, “I’m going to force myself to puke.”
Flint had finished his drink of water and was watching the commotion with interest. I knelt and stroked his fur, saying, “It’s all right, boy,” although I was really only reassuring myself. I tightened the screw-lid onto her bottle and looked around for something I could hide it in so I could get it out of the building unseen. I found an old, soiled T-shirt under the sink and draped it over Karen’s indigo-blue bottle. I then went in search of Baxter, with Flint trotting behind me. Baxter was standing near my pseudo-director’s chair, chatting with a couple of stage crew members.
“Got a minute?” I asked him.
“Sure,” he said, and excused himself. I put Flint into a sit-stay, and Baxter followed me out the rear entrance.
“Karen’s water may have been poisoned,” I said in a low voice. “She might need a ride to a hospital. And we’ve got to get this into Sheriff Caulfield’s hands to be tested.” I handed him her bottle, and the T-shirt as well.
“Should I wait here or—”
“I’m going to ask her what she wants to do now. I’ll let you know.”
He nodded. “I’ll go get the car and bring it around back. Is Karen okay?”
“I think so. She said her tongue and lips were tingling. I’ll meet you at the back exit in a couple of minutes.”
Baxter left. I went back inside, entered the women’s room, and locked the door behind me. Karen was just leaving the stall. She was dabbing at her brow with a tissue. “Is your tongue still tingling?”
“It’s already fading. The sensation I mean.” She closed her eyes and took a calming breath. “I’m fine. I’m mad as hell, but I’m fine.”
“You should probably go to the hospital just in—”
She was already shaking her head. “I’m going on stage. We need to force whoever did this to show us their hand.”
“I just wish we had an identical water bottle,” I said. “We could aim a nanny camera at the refrigerator overnight and maybe catch the killer red-handed.”
“I bought it at the General Goods store across the street. They had a couple more there.”
“Perfect! I gave your bottle to Baxter. He’s awaiting my word. We’ll have him buy a duplicate bottle. We already have a tiny camera with us. I thought it might come in useful during Flint’s training.”
“But then what? How do we get the person behind this to reveal themselves?”
“You’ll make a show out of knocking over your water bottle and needing another chilled bottle. Then we can hope that the guilty person poisons it again.”
“Simple enough. During my talk to the audience, I’ll knock the bottle over on stage. And I’ll tell the cast and crew all about it.”
“Perfect. Baxter will buy a duplicate at the store now, and take the poisoned one to the sheriff.”
“It’s a plan,” Karen said. “Tell Baxter that I’m going on stage and pretending to have forgotten my water bottle. I
’ll ask him to grab it for me. It’s an informal chat that we do. It will look like a perfectly casual, harmless exchange.”
“And he’ll hand you the bottle with a loose lid,” I said.
“Precisely.”
We spontaneously gave each other a hug. It felt great to have a comrade.
Flint was waiting patiently for me outside the women’s restroom. I let him come with me as I filled Baxter in on the plan outside the theater. He was confident he could quickly rig up the camera.
I hugged him, then Flint. “We’re going to catch the killer! Just...be sure and tell Sheriff Caulfield about this. Obviously he needs to be the one who arrests the person, once we’ve got a video of him or her poisoning the water bottle.”
***
As nervous as I’d been before and during the performances of the play, my heart felt like it was pounding loud enough for the audience to hear as I watched Karen. Greg and Hammond were flanking her. Baxter appeared beside me, and Karen spotted him and cleared her throat, then asked if he’d “be a dear...” Baxter brought her the safe water bottle a minute or so later. She pulled off a masterful intentional accidental spill of all the contents, mostly in her own lap, followed by her jumping out of the chair in surprise. She asked a stage hand to notify Felicity to see if she could help her dry out her costume, and also notify Valerie, in case the start time needed to be delayed. She apologized to her fellow actors and joked with the audience not to take any of her remarks about the play seriously, because she was “all wet.”
Curtain time was indeed five minutes late. The first couple of acts went fine, although I was operating on autopilot, concentrating on my cuing so hard that I was paying attention to nothing else.
After the second intermission, I had settled down and was able to enjoy the show even while working. The final act went so well that it lifted the entire performance. Flint had been perfect throughout. Remarkably, there were no incidents of any kind. Afterward, Baxter congratulated me. He gave me a hug and a kiss.
“Even the roses were delivered perfectly,” Baxter said. “No hot sauce on their stems.”
“Plus Flint got a huge standing ovation,” I added. “I’m surprised John didn’t come to watch.”
“He called me right before the performance began. He wanted to know which dog was Blue. He wasn’t pleased when I told him. He said he wants Flint to be fresh for the five Friday-through-Sunday performances.”
I clicked my tongue. “Herding dogs are happy to be on duty ten hours a day, seven days a week.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much what I told him.”
Baxter was looking over my shoulder and said, “Hi, Valerie.”
“Baxter,” she said with a nod, then shifted her gaze to me. “Good show. You’ve certainly made a big difference in Flint’s behavior in front of audiences. You’d be doing the theater a great service by training Pippa in the part.”
“I already am. I’m working with Felicity. Pippa has been responding really well to the training.”
“I’m going to take Flint outside for a couple minutes,” Baxter said. He and Flint left so quickly that I wondered if he was worried that Valerie and I were about to talk about the romantic couples again.
“We’ve been using Pippa periodically in the Boomtown show,” Valerie told me, “so I’m not surprised she was a good student.”
“Neither am I.” I paused. Nobody was within earshot. This was the perfect opportunity to check John’s story with Valerie. “I saw Pippa perform last night. She was excellent. In fact, that made it pretty clear to me that she could have done a passable job as Blue. I didn’t realize until then that she was also given all the wrong cues when she subbed for Flint.”
For just a moment, Valerie’s features had a flicker of alarm. “Wrong cues?” she repeated.
“Did you truly approve of John’s plan to give the wrong cues to Flint to garner extra publicity?”
She crossed her arms. Our gazes locked. I realized then that she had indeed greenlighted John’s plan. The only question was whether or not she would tell me the truth. “Our idea to garner publicity worked beautifully,” she replied. “I’m sure you’re familiar with the old saw that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. This theater’s future is always hanging by a thread. The money we make from selling tickets only covers a portion of the annual costs to bring live theatre to our stage.”
“You and John set me up with phony bickering when Baxter and I first arrived.”
“Yes, because we needed you to work with Flint, so we could explain his transformation. We’re giving you a salary that’s more than fair.”
“It is fair. It’s just been wasting the theater’s funds, considering my services weren’t even needed. At least John’s play is bringing in donations, in addition to the dog’s supposed hijinks are filling the seats.”
Valerie furrowed her brow. “What are you saying?”
“I heard how you auctioned off the right to have a Poodle star as Blue in a performance in October.
“Yes,” Valerie said. “That’s part of the reason John convinced me to hire a combination dog trainer, stagehand. Sam fit the bill nicely. Or he would have, if poisoning John hadn’t been an item on his personal agenda. Truth be told, I don’t have a whole lot of sympathy for the death of someone who’d recently tried to murder a friend of mine. Seems to me, Sam got what he deserved.”
“But you’re only assuming he was guilty of the attempt on John’s life.”
She spread her arms. “Who else could have done such a thing?”
“Whoever murdered Sam,” I said, stating the obvious, to my mind.
“Which the police arrested John for!” She paused and stared into my eyes. Her expression grew sad. “I’m sorry, Allie. My mistake,” she said. “You’re a friend of John’s, too. You don’t want to admit to yourself that he’s guilty.”
I held my tongue. An upsetting thought had crept into my head, however. The cast and crew all knew by now that Karen had dumped the lemon water that, presumably, someone believed they had poisoned. But one suspect had been absent, and wouldn’t know anything about our setup. John. He had keys to the theater and could easily have done the deed last night.
Chapter 23
Karen emerged from the dressing room, back in her civilian clothes. She gestured with her chin that I should follow her. “That performance went better than I expected,” she said as we were passing Valerie’s office, “especially compared to my klutziness during the talk.”
We entered the women’s room, and we checked to make sure they were empty.
“You were right, Allie,” Karen told me. “Sheriff Caulfield left a message for me, and I called him back. He said that there was a high dose of aconite in my water, so it’s lucky I only had one sip...and threw up immediately afterward. I’m going to go to the stationhouse tonight. After they have me get a blood test.”
“Are you still feeling okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Is the camera focused on the refrigerator in the green room?”
“I haven’t had the chance to check that yet, but I assume so.” I studied her features. She certainly looked fine. “Did the sheriff say anything about your needing to take it easy? You didn’t drink enough to have lingering effects or anything, did you?”
“Well, he said I should have gotten a charcoal treatment instead of vomiting. But I would have had to drink six ounces or so to put myself in bad shape. Which is rather chilling. I easily could have swallowed that much water in a few gulps, if I hadn’t picked up on its terrible taste. And I don’t get why someone would want to poison me. I’m probably the most isolated member of the cast. I’m completely unconnected to John or Sam.”
“Maybe we’re all in jeopardy. None of us should eat or drink anything that’s been left unattended in the refrigerator.”
“Which means we’re not able to warn all of the innocent people until the killer tries to strike again,” Karen said.
“We’d better clear out everythi
ng in the fridge that isn’t sealed, just to be sure. If we don’t catch anyone in the act by tomorrow afternoon, we should tell everyone the truth about why you spilled your water today.”
“If the sheriff doesn’t shut us down by then,” Karen said. “It was all I could do to stop him from coming straight here to ‘make sure we weren’t taking our lives into our own stupid hands’ was the way he put it,” she added, using air quotes.
Karen left, and I headed to the green room. Baxter was tossing the contents of the refrigerator into a bag, replacing them with new, unopened items. Both Pavlov and Flint were watching him. “We’re on the same page, once again,” I said.
“Notice how nicely Pavlov fits under the table.”
I was certain he was saying this so he could surreptitiously show me the hidden camera. I looked down and immediately spotted the tiny camera that had been fastened onto the black table leg just below the ledge. I knew to look for it, however, and felt confident nobody else would find it unless they happened to drop something underneath the table.
Karen’s water was in the bottom shelf in the door, per usual. It would be hard to miss that the refrigerator contents had been changed, which would make the killer suspicious. My spirits sank. I hadn’t thought this through. We likely had next to zero chance of recording the poisoner in action.
“Hey, guys,” John said, striding into the room just then. “Thanks for taking such good care of Flint for me. Are you sticking around for your full week?”
“Yeah,” Baxter answered quickly. “Planning on going back on Monday. So is everything all right? Your lawyer is still keeping in touch with you, and vice versa?”
He plopped into a chair, called Flint over, and started petting him. “For someone who charges two hundred dollars a second, my lawyer’s surprisingly willing to chat at length.”
I chuckled in spite of myself.
“Anything turning up here?” he asked. “Suspicious activity?”
“Nothing,” I replied. “The only thing that caused a bit of problem was that Karen spilled her entire bottle of lemon water on stage, during the talk with the audience.”
Dog Drama Page 19