Peachy Scream

by Anna Gerard

  He shrugged and added, “Of course, I didn’t have to go through all that red tape myself. I told Tessa I was available, and she overnighted me my membership card that same day.”

  Of course, she did. Heck, Tessa probably sent him his own personal red carpet while she was at it. But all I said was, “Obviously, Chris made the cut. How long has he been in the troupe?

  “Close to five months, I think.”

  Which meant that either Chris was really good to have landed a role in the traveling troupe, or else no one else in the main group wanted to perform Hamlet in Cymbeline in the dead of summer. I suspected it might have been the latter.

  But before I could make a reply, Harry went on, “You’re not going to confront Chris on this whole gender identity thing, are you? It could really blow up in your face, and I’m not sure it has any bearing on the Len situation, either.”

  “I think it does, Harry. I won’t say anything yet, but I want to check into Chris’s background. Do you think you could get his … her … application package from Tessa so I can do some research online? You know, see if there are any social media pages that might prove if Chris and Christine are the same person?”

  I didn’t want to ask Chris that question directly. He’d likely deny whatever I said, and that would be an end to it. But if I could somehow get him to admit the truth about his identity on his own—as in, being confronted with incontestable evidence as to who he really was—then I would. Because even if Harry didn’t agree, I still felt in my gut that this deception, deliberate or not, somehow was tied to everything happening within the troupe, including Len’s death.

  Harry hesitated, then finally sighed and nodded.

  “Let it go on the record that this is against my better judgment, but I’ll see what I can manage. In the meantime, I need you to swear that everything we’ve talked about is Secret Squirrel, Top Secret, Scooby-doo-y—”

  “Hey, Spielberg … Number Nine!” Marvin bellowed from the porch, cutting Harry short. “Y’all want to get in here? Emo Boy ain’t looking so hot.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  I scrambled out of the lawn chair and hurried to the house, Mattie bounding after me. Harry followed more slowly, having to juggle a sword along with his binder. Once inside, I saw that the dining room door was open and the troupe gathered within.

  It was apparent the minute I walked into the room that something was going on. A deli platter of mixed sandwiches, along with two quarts each of potato salad and coleslaw and a bunch of little plastic condiment containers took up the center of the table. Plates sat at the usual spots, though for the moment they sported half-eaten sandwiches and dollops of sides. Everyone had left their chairs to gather around Chris.

  The youth was still seated at the table but had pushed away his plate, which held what was left of a turkey and Swiss on rye. He rested his upper body upon the now empty spot, head pillowed face-down on his skinny arms. The rest of the troupe stood a respectful few steps back, but were staring at him in concern. Susie was there too, I saw in surprise, apparently having ended her embargo with the arrival of lunch.

  My first fleeting thought was that this might be some sort of trick on Chris’s part. He was, after all, an actor. But the concern on the faces of the rest of the troupe definitely appeared to be genuine.

  I hurried over to the youth. For rehearsals, he’d removed the omnipresent knit cap, so his black hair flopped untidily around his skull.

  “Chris, are you okay?’

  “G’way,” came the muffled groan as I lightly touched his shoulder. “M’fine.”

  “You don’t sound fine to me.” I glanced over at Radney, who was closest to him. “What happened?”

  Radney frowned. “We were just sitting here eating when the kid suddenly said he didn’t feel good. A couple of minutes later, he does this.”

  “Probably heat exhaustion,” Marvin opined. “Get him something to drink, put a wet rag on the back of his neck, and he’ll be fine in a couple of minutes.”

  I nodded. “I’ve got a couple of sports drinks in the refrigerator. Can you get those, and some ice water and a towel?”

  “On it,” the man replied and headed to the kitchen.

  “I’ll help,” Susie echoed and followed after him.

  By now, Harry had made his way inside. He took one look at Chris and said to me, “Why don’t we get him into the parlor. He can stretch out there.”

  “Good idea,” I agreed. To Chris, I said, “If Harry helps you stand, do you think you can make it into the other room?”

  “Try,” he mumbled, raising his head.

  By now, Marvin was back with the sports drinks, while Susie had brought a bowl with the ice and towel. Between Radney and Harry, they pretty well carried the youth into the parlor, with everyone following after. I had hurried ahead and spread a blanket over the threadbare light-blue velvet of one sofa so they could settle Chris there. Tessa grabbed a throw pillow and tucked it beneath his head while Bill moved one of the side tables closer to hold the drinks and bowl. Once the youth was as comfortable as we could make him, with a wet rag on his forehead, I turned to the others.

  “Thanks, everyone. Now, why don’t you go back into the dining room and finish your lunch. I’ll stay with Chris and make sure he’s okay.”

  I expected a protest or two, or even a volunteer to be official Chris watcher, but the troupe dispersed as quickly as they’d come. Apparently, in the acting world lunch trumped any crisis. Only Harry stayed with me.

  “He doesn’t look good,” the latter murmured as he eyed the moaning youth. “You think we should get him to the ER?”

  I hesitated, staring at Chris with equal concern. If he was acting, he deserved an award, especially if he could fake that pallor and the sweat that was dripping onto the throw pillow.

  “Let me try to cool him down with the ice pack and the sports drink. If he doesn’t bounce back in a few minutes, we’ll put in him the Mini and take him to the emergency clinic.”

  Harry nodded. “All right. I’m going back to the dining room to make sure no one else is on the verge of collapse. Yell if you need help.”

  “Will do.”

  While Harry left to ride herd on his rapidly dwindling troupe, I wrung out the cold towel again in the bowl of icy water and replaced the cloth on Chris’s forehead.

  “This will help cool you down,” I told him, earning a nod and another groan. I let him stay settled like that for a couple of minutes, keeping an eye on his breathing. Then, picking up the bottle of neon-blue sports drink, I went on, “If I prop you up a little higher, do you think you can manage a few swallows of this? We need to get some electrolytes back into you.”

  “I’ll … try,” he choked, and scooted up a bit while I added another throw pillow behind him. He grabbed hold of the plastic bottle and took a few small swallows.

  “Slow down,” I warned as I re-soaked the towel and draped it over the back of his neck. “Chug it down too fast and it will come right back up again.”

  He nodded and handed me back the bottle. “I–I don’t know why … I feel so bad,” he moaned. “We were in the shade … the whole time. I drank … plenty of water.”

  “Sometimes that heat just sneaks up on you,” I reminded him, though my attention was more on his appearance than his words. By now he should have started to come round, but he still looked like something Mattie had dragged out of a ditch. If he didn’t perk up in the next few minutes, we’d be making a run to the ER.

  He managed to drink a bit more, then handed me back the bottle. “I–I’m not sure this is helping,” he whimpered. “I feel pretty sick.”

  And then he clamped a hand over his mouth.

  “Wastebasket!” I exclaimed and leaped up, running to snatch the metal can tucked under the desk in the corner.

  I made it back to him in time to thrust the receptacle into his hands just before he began throwing up a bright-blue stream of liquid.

  “You okay?” I gingerly asked a few mome
nts later once he’d quit coughing and gagging.

  He nodded and set down the can, then used the wet towel to scrub his face. Looking up at me again, he said, “Yeah, I feel, like, a hundred percent better.”

  And, indeed, his voice sounded quite a bit stronger. Sighing in relief, I carried the trash can at arm’s length to the porch door and left it outside to be dealt with later. I came back to find Chris sitting up and drinking the rest of the sport drink.

  “Uh, you think you should be chugging that stuff down after what just happened?”

  He managed a wan grin. “Seriously, I’m, you know, really good now. That was weird. I don’t know why I felt so bad all of a sudden, but now that I’ve thrown up I feel a lot better.”

  I shook my head. “No one else got sick from rehearsing outside, so maybe it was the deli food that didn’t agree with you. Maybe there’s a spice or something in it that you’re allergic to.”

  Then I hesitated as another though hit. Or maybe someone put something in his food to make him ill.

  Surely not, I protested to myself. Chris’s getting sick was too much like the Len situation to be believed. “It had to be the food,” I persisted aloud. “Maybe we can narrow it down. Do you remember what you ate?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, turkey on rye. I think there was roast beef too, but I didn’t eat that. Bill was making a big deal about everything though.”

  If I’d been Mattie, my ears would have pricked up. “Really? How?”

  “Oh, you know, giving everyone a job. I mean, it was just a stupid lunch, but he and Susie had to take everyone’s orders and serve them, and Radney had to pour all the drinks. I got to put out the silverware, yay,” he added with a mocking wave of his fingers.

  “What about Marvin?”

  “I think he just sat around. Oh wait, no. He had to give everyone a serving of potato salad and coleslaw. I hate potato salad, so I didn’t eat any.”

  “But the sandwich tasted okay?” I prompted.

  He shrugged again, looking a little puzzled now at my continued questioning. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, it had some sort of funky spicy mayo stuff on it that wasn’t the best, but the turkey and cheese were fine.”

  Funky spicy mayo stuff. Maybe funky and spicy enough to hide the taste of some sort of meds?

  So that could explain how only Chris’s food had been tainted. Someone could have added something to one of those individual condiment containers and then spread it on just his sandwich. Though there was another possibility.

  Maybe Chris was trying to deflect suspicion from himself and had deliberately made himself sick.

  Harry would say I was going into Secret Squirrel territory with that theory, but somehow it almost seemed the more logical explanation. I couldn’t think of a reason why any of the troupe members would target Chris—not when he was the one running around with a bottle of Pazaxa in his luggage. He might have a whole pharmacopeia in that pink box for all I knew. And if he was guilty of tampering with Len’s drink, no matter his actual intent, how better to throw off any suspicion than to taint his own food?

  A smart kid could go online and do a search for some substance that would make him temporarily sick but wouldn’t actually hurt him. Heck, there were probably YouTube videos out there that told exactly how to do it. Would Dr. Bishop analyze the uneaten half of a turkey sandwich, I wondered?

  But all I said aloud was, “How about I fix you some plain buttered toast until you’re sure you can keep anything heavier down?”

  “Seriously, I’m fine. You don’t have to treat me like a kid,” he replied, sounding more like his whiny self again. Dropping the towel in the bowl, he got to his feet. “Thanks for looking out for me, but I think I’ll go back with the troupe now.”

  “If you’re really sure you’re up to it. The toast is no trouble.”

  “I don’t want toast. I’m fine. Really,” was his impatient response.

  I nodded. There was still the matter of the name on the pharmacy bottle label. And while Harry was right that I couldn’t just come out and ask him, a scene from an old World War II movie that I’d watched with my dad had flashed through my mind while I was thinking about disguises. The tactic had worked for the movie’s bad guys.

  Still, I found myself hesitating. What I was about to do could go wrong in a very different way if Chris really was transitioning. Calling out his female birthname—deadnaming, it was called— could be hurtful, at best, and seen as threatening, at worst. No way did I want to do either to him. But a man had been murdered on my property, and discovering who’d killed him was equally important.

  And so, sending the youth a mental apology in advance, I waited until he was almost to the door to call, “Hey, Christina!”

  “Now what?” he replied with a long-suffering sigh and turned to face me.

  Abruptly, his—her!—eyes widened in horror. Sputtering, he cried, “What’s wrong with you? That’s not my name.”

  I was about to point out that he’d just answered to it, but seeing the youth’s expression begin to crumple, I hurriedly tempered my tone and added, “Don’t worry, no one else knows you’re really Christina.”

  Well, except for Harry. And since he hadn’t believed me, he didn’t count.

  “I didn’t answer to anything,” Chris shot back, seeming to rally. “I wasn’t paying attention, that’s all. I don’t know any Christina. My name is Chris, period.”

  What about the prescription label with Christina’s name on it? I wanted to say, but that would reveal that I’d snooped. Instead, I replied, “I won’t say a word to anyone about how you identify until you give the all-clear. But I think you’d be happier if you got all of this out in the open.”

  Chris gave me baleful look. “Seriously, this is so not cool. You’d better quit making up stuff about me or I’m going to tell Harry.”

  I raised my hands in mock surrender. “Fine, consider the subject dropped. But if you change your mind, I’m a good listener.”

  The offer earned me a rude gesture before the youth stalked a bit unsteadily from the room. I sighed, knowing I deserved that. I was 99.99 percent sure that I was correct, but without a confession or DNA test it was my word against his … hers. The problem was that if I kept pushing the matter, things could get unpleasant for all of us. So my only option right now was to sit tight until I had something more to go on.

  In the meantime, I’d be keeping an eye on Chris as I still hadn’t eliminated her … him … as the anonymous jokester. But I’d also be watching out for him too. If someone else in the troupe was the prankster, another of the actors might fall ill, or worse. And as far as I was concerned, three strikes would be it for whoever was responsible. If necessary, I’d lock the whole darned lot of them in the parlor and make them watch the Gilligan’s Island version of Hamlet on a continuing loop until someone confessed.

  More fired up than I wanted to be, I returned to the dining room to find that the rest of the troupe was about finished with lunch. Fortunately, none of the other players were sprawled out on the table as Chris had been. But they all seemed glad to see him (I decided for now to use male pronouns) relatively healthy and back with them again.

  Except for Susie. While the others greeted him as if he’d been gone for days instead of minutes, I saw her glance Harry’s way. The actor give her a nod in return.

  I frowned as I served myself a sandwich, careful to avoid the funky spicy mayo stuff. What had the pair been scheming about in the short time that I’d been gone? I found out quickly enough, however, when everyone had resumed their seats and Harry tapped his water glass for order.

  “We’re happy that our youngest troupe member appears to have recovered from his illness. But we don’t want to take chances with anyone’s health, particularly this close to opening night. So for the rest of today, Chris is sidelined. Susie will resume the role of Ophelia.”

  So much for Harry taking a hard stance with Susie.

  I heard a few murmurs from the others, but m
ostly it was heads nodding in agreement at the casting change. Even Chris didn’t pipe up with a protest, so apparently he had the good sense to realize he still wasn’t fully recovered from whatever had made him ill.

  Harry, meanwhile, went on: “Chris, if you’re up to it, you can hang out and act as my assistant director today. Nina, can you still read Chris’s original lines this afternoon?”

  “Sure,” I mumbled through a bite of turkey on rye. At least that way, I could keep an eye on everyone all in one place. “But can I talk to you about that before we go back out again?”

  Harry gave a regal nod. “Certainly. As for everyone else, if you’ve finished your lunch, you have another ten minutes before we assemble again under the magnolia.”

  He remained kicked back in his chair, idly drumming his fingers atop Yorick. As for the troupe, they gathered their binders and notes and started moving in the direction of the door. I’d finished my sandwich by now, and as the others left I began gathering the dirty lunch dishes … careful to keep the plate with Chris’s half-eaten sandwich on top of my growing stack.

  Not that I was going to go crazy and run it over to Dr. Bishop demanding that he test it, too. But, just in case, I’d toss what was left into a plastic bag and stick it in the freezer. That way, if something else happened later that pointed to tampering, I could bring out the sandwich as Exhibit B.

  I carried the dishes into the kitchen and set them next to the sink, then returned to the dining room. By now, everyone except Harry had already left. Still, for good measure, I slid the pocket door between the dining room and hallway shut in case someone wandered back in our direction.

  Harry waited until we were closeted away and then gave me a sideways look. “Don’t tell me, you have a Secret Squirrel report to file already, don’t you?”

  “Actually, I do,” I admitted, “but I can’t share it. At least not yet. I promised someone I’d keep my mouth shut.”