Sugar Plums for Dry Creek & At Home in Dry Creek

by Janet Tronstad

  “Madame Aprele?” Edna said as she wrote the name in her book. “That’s an interesting name. She’s not in the wit ness protection pro gram or any thing, is she? I hear they let you make up your own name. We had a rancher some years ago down by Forsyth that turned out to be in the wit ness protection program. He never wanted to be in the paper, either. We weren’t even sure if we should put his obituary in the paper when he died. We did, of course, but we wondered.”

  “I don’t know if that’s her real name,” Lizette said as she tried to steer the re viewer to ward the folding chairs she had set up earlier around the stage area. “I’ve al ways called her that, and I’ve known her for more than fifteen years.”

  Edna let her self be led.

  “I’m sorry it’s not warmer in here,” Lizette said. “Linda’s going to bring some coffee and a cookie over for you shortly.”

  “I heard she’s been serving cookies lately. When the guys in the news room found out I was coming out here, they all told me to bring back cookies if I could. I hear she’s got a baker making cookies for her.”

  “That’s me,” Lizette said. “I bake a little in my spare time.”

  “Now that’s the hook for my story,” Edna said as she settled her self into a folding chair next to the chair Lizette had been sitting in when she was diagramming the stage kiss. “Baker Turns to Ballet for—” Edna paused. “Why would you say you turned to ballet from baking? For inspiration? For profit?”

  “It’s been my dream,” Lizette said as she tried to figure out a way to get her kissing diagram back be fore Edna noticed it sitting on the chair next to her.

  Maybe the best approach was the most direct, Lizette thought as she reached over to pick up the diagram. “Let me just get this out of your way. It’s nothing—just some stage directions.”

  Lizette willed her self to stop. She al ways talked too much when she was nervous. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

  “I had no idea you had stage directions in a ballet,” Edna said as she looked up from her note book and frowned. “I told the guys in the news room that I didn’t know enough to cover this story.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Lizette said. “I can tell you any thing you want to know.”

  “They only sent me here because I’m a woman.”

  “Well, I’m glad you came any way,” Lizette said as she sat down be side Edna. “Just ask me any questions you want. I can tell you everything you need.”

  Edna’s face brightened. “That’s kind of you. Not every one takes the time to explain things. First, tell me about these stage directions. What were you mapping out? The battle with the mice?”

  Lizette wished she could lie, but she couldn’t. “The kiss.”

  Edna’s face brightened even more. “Who’s kissing who?”

  “The Nutcracker kisses Clara.”

  Edna frowned. “Isn’t the Nutcracker, well, a nutcracker? And isn’t Clara a little girl? I did some re search on the Internet just to get the basic plot. I only got the start of the ballet, but—”

  “When Clara kills the Mouse King, she turns into a young lady and the Nutcracker turns into a prince. That’s when they kiss.”

  “My, how romantic!” Edna said as she wrote in her note book. “People around here love a romance. So, tell me, who plays the Nutcracker again?”

  “Judd Bowman.”

  “He’s the guy out on the old Jenkins place, isn’t he?”

  Lizette nodded.

  “So the stage directions are for him? On how to kiss?”

  “Well, sort of. You see a stage kiss is different than a real kiss—”

  Lizette heard an other set of tires in the distance. Now, that should be the sound of one of her dancers coming.

  The door opened and Linda came in side along with a gust of snowy wind. “There’s a regular convention out there.”

  “Is it Pete or Judd?”

  “Neither,” Linda said as she brought the thermos of coffee over to Edna. “It’s a taxi.”

  “But there are no taxis here,” Lizette said, even as she began to wonder if—

  There was the sound of a honking horn and the slamming of a car door out side. Lizette walked to the window. The heat had been on long enough that a small corner of the window was now clear of frost. It was a large enough piece of window that Lizette could see a woman, covered from head to toe in black wool and black scarves. The only color any where was a lavender feather boa that the woman had flung around her shoulders.

  Madame Aprele was out side.

  Lizette hurried to the door even though she wanted to hurry in the other direction and find a place to hide. She opened the door. “Madame. What a surprise! A pleas ant surprise!”

  “Oh, Lizette.” Madame Aprele turned to ward Lizette with relief in her voice. Then she started unwinding all of the black scarves and walking to ward the open door. “I’m glad I found you. This man was trying to tell me that this barn is the town’s performance center. What kind of an old fool does he take me for? I’m so glad you’re here so you can show me the way to where you’re doing your dress rehearsal for that re viewer. I came to lend my moral support. Newspaper people can be so difficult.”

  By the time Madame Aprele stopped talking, she had un wound all of the scarves from her head and was fully in side the barn.

  “Dear me,” was all she said as she looked around.

  “Madame Aprele,” Lizette said as she held out her arm for the many scarves. “I’m touched that you came all of the way from Seattle. If you’d like me to take your scarves, I can.”

  Madame Aprele gave Lizette the black scarves. “You’re rehearsing here?”

  Lizette nodded as she held out her elbow for Madame Aprele to take. “Yes, and I’ll take you down for a front-row seat right next to Edna Best, the woman who is going to re view us.”

  “You’re rehearsing in a barn?” Madame Aprele asked. “When do you move it to the performance center?”

  “The barn is the performance center,” Lizette said as she started walking Madame Aprele down to the chairs next to the stage.

  “But what about the cows?” Madame Aprele said as she sat down in the chair next to Edna Best.

  “You have cows in the ballet, too?” Edna asked as she wrote something in her note book.

  “No, there are no cows,” Lizette said as she stood be side the two seated women. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get my dancers ready. Madame Aprele, let me introduce you to Edna Best, who’s going to re view our performance today. Maybe you could answer any questions she has?”

  Both women nodded to her and then to each other.

  Well, Lizette thought as she stepped away, she’d done all she could. Even if one of her dancers didn’t show up, she could deal with it now. All of the things in her night mare could happen and it wouldn’t even faze her now. Madame Aprele had come and seen that she was a fraud.

  Her mother’s old enemy and her new friend had seen that all of the things Lizette had said about her little dance school were nothing more than the longing in her heart that it be so. The performance center was a barn. Her dance students were over at a table eating a mixture of dried plums and sugar. None of them were in costume. And the only reason any of them were even her students was because they wanted to wear those costumes. The re viewer who was going to write about the ballet, al though she was kind, had never even seen a ballet performance be fore.

  There was no way for it to be worse than it was.

  Lizette squared her shoulders. She had absolutely nothing to fear now. Let the ballet begin.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Judd Bowman wished silk had never been in vented. Or women. Or both of them. If he hadn’t decided to track down some white silk cloth for Lizette be fore he stopped at the jail to check about Neal Strong, the kids’ father, he wouldn’t have wasted two hours of valuable time that he could have spent out looking for the escaped prisoner along side the sheriff’s department.

  Neal had escaped yeste
rday afternoon.

  Someone had decided that there was room in the Billings jail for Neal and had gone to Miles City to get him in a patrol car. On the way there, Neal complained that he needed to use a rest room. Unfortunately, no one checked to be sure Neal’s hand cuffs were se cure be fore they escorted him to the rest room. When a backup patrol car came to investigate why there was no response to a radio message, the officers found one of their own un conscious on the floor of the rest room, and Neal, along with the officer’s gun, no where to be found.

  Judd demanded to know why no one had called him last night with the news, only to be told that they were trying to reach Sheriff Wall in Colorado to in form him of what had happened.

  Judd pressed the gas pedal on his pickup a little farther down. The police in Billings thought Neal was more likely to head for a drug dealer or the border than his children, but Judd wasn’t so sure. He wasn’t going to take any chances.

  Judd relaxed a little when he saw Pete’s pickup in front of the barn where the ballet rehearsal was going to happen. The cow boy would see to the kids’ safety if their father was around.

  Judd looked at the clock on his dash board. Speaking of the ballet, he was late. He hoped the extra yards of white silk he’d bought would be enough to make Lizette for give him.

  It hadn’t been easy to find silk in Miles City. Judd had had to buy it from a secondhand store owner who called some one he knew who had some white silk left from an old customer who had been using the stuff to make par a chutes—or maybe it was bags for par a chutes. Neither store owner could remember. They did remember it had been extra-strong silk, guar an teed to hold a hundred pounds, or maybe it was two hundred pounds. They couldn’t remember how much.

  Judd assured them the silk only had to be strong enough to hold a punch cup, and that he would take it as soon as the other man could get it there. He only hoped it wasn’t nylon in stead of silk. No one was really sure on that point, either.

  Lizette was still waiting to begin the performance. Linda and Mrs. Hargrove had helped clean the faces of her younger dancers and slipped their costumes over their heads. Charley had fussed about his missing bathrobe so much that Lizette had given him a big towel to wrap around his shoulders. Then Pete had walked in a few minutes ago with a bruise on his cheek, muttering something about a stub born cow. Lizette had asked him what happened, but he shrugged and said he’d tell her later.

  “The show must go on,” Pete said with a grin as he took his Mouse King costume off the chair where Lizette had laid it and started to ward the stair way leading up to the hay loft. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Oh, you can change down here,” Lizette said. She hadn’t wanted to send the children up to the cold hay loft to change, so she and Charley had hung a blanket in a corner of the barn.

  But Pete was al ready half way up the stairs with his tail dragging be hind him.

  Lizette her self was in her ballet slippers and her yellow dress.

  “I can fill in for the Nutcracker,” Mrs. Hargrove offered. The older woman had changed into her billowing Snow Queen costume and was chat ting with Madame Aprele and Edna Best. “I think I have his lines memorized from watching him practice with you.”

  Charley was sitting in his rocking chair next to the Christmas tree. “The whole thing?”

  Mrs. Hargrove nodded.

  “So you’d do the Nutcracker kiss?” Edna Best asked as she pulled her note book back out of her purse.

  “Oh, no,” Mrs. Hargrove said, and then chuckled. “I see you’re still looking for that head line.”

  Edna smiled and shrugged. “Nothing ever happens around here. I was hoping maybe I could get a news story in the regular part of the paper as well as a re view in the Dry Creek Tidbits section.”

  “Surely it’s news that a ballet is going to take place in a barn,” Madame Aprele offered helpfully. The older woman no longer seemed as shocked about everything and was actually giving Edna some valuable pointers on how to re view the ballet. “In Seattle, that would be a head line.”

  “Barns are not news around here,” Edna said. “We have so many of them.”

  “Well, you’ll have to wait for Judd to get here to stage the kiss,” Mrs. Hargrove said. “Although I must say, he seems to have a mind of his own about how a kiss should go on.”

  “That’s why I drew him a diagram,” Lizette said. “He just needs to see how to do it.”

  Charley snorted. “Whoever heard of a diagram for a kiss?”

  There was a thud up in the hayloft that sounded as if Pete was taking off his boots.

  Edna was writing notes. “Could you tell me more about what’s lacking in the way the Nutcracker kisses?”

  “Oh, I didn’t say any thing was lacking,” Lizette said. She hoped the boot thud meant that Pete was al most in his costume. “And I don’t really think you should be quoting me on this. I mean, I’m not an expert on kissing or any thing. It’s just for the ballet scene.”

  Lizette decided there was really no need to wait for the Nutcracker to arrive be fore they began the production. “Charley can just read the Nutcracker’s lines.”

  “I can do the Nutcracker’s kissing, too,” Charley said firmly. “In my day and age, we didn’t do any of this stage-kissing stuff. That’s just for Hollywood types.”

  “How do you know? You’ve never kissed a Hollywood type,” Mrs. Hargrove said.

  “Now, how do you know who I’ve kissed and who I haven’t kissed?” Charley said with his chin in the air.

  “Well, I’ve known you all your life.”

  “That doesn’t mean you know all about me. I could still surprise you yet.”

  “Don’t think I couldn’t surprise you, too,” Mrs. Hargrove retorted.

  My good ness, Lizette thought, what was wrong with the two of them?

  Someone cleared his throat loudly from the sidelines. It must be Pete coming down the stairs, Lizette thought as she looked up.

  “Speaking of surprises,” Pete said calmly as he stood very still.

  Pete hadn’t changed into his costume, al though he did have an other bruise on his face. Still wearing his work jeans and a flannel shirt, he was standing at the top of the stairs with his arms in the air. There were shadows, but there was enough light to see the gun that was being held to the back of Pete’s head as well as the man be hind him holding the gun.

  There was silence for a moment.

  “There’s my bath robe,” Charley finally said.

  Lizette felt two pairs of little arms circle around her legs.

  “That’s my dad,” Bobby whispered as he tightened his grip on Lizette’s legs.

  “You’ve been hiding up there all day?” Lizette said. She tried to make her voice sound normal and conversational. She didn’t want the children terrified any more than they al ready were. “No wonder the door to the barn was un locked. After all that time, you must be hungry.”

  “I’m not hungry. I have a head ache. I’ve been trying to sleep, except you have that awful music playing and it’s making my eyes cross.”

  The man did look pale, even in the shadows.

  “That’s Tchaikovsky!” Madame Aprele pro tested. “He’s famous. He’s never given any one a headache!”

  “I prefer a fiddle,” the man said. “Something with some spirit.”

  Madame Aprele opened her mouth to say something and then thought better of it and closed it again.

  Lizette agreed there was no reason to argue music with a man holding a gun. “I’ll be happy to turn the music off, and then maybe you can go back and lie down and have a good rest.”

  The man snorted. “Nice try, but I think I’ll stay right here where I can see everybody. Like you, old man.” He pointed at Charley. “I see you reaching in side your coat pocket for something. You got a gun in there?”

  Charley held up his open hands. “No gun. I was reaching for an ant acid. Stress is killing me.”

  “Well, you keep your hands out of your pockets.” T
he man nudged Pete to start walking down the stairs. “You all keep your hands where I can see them. We have a situation here.”

  “We don’t need to have a situation,” Lizette said as she put her own hands out in full view. “If you just put the gun down, no one needs to get hurt.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You al ways were looking out for your self first,” the man said. “I remember you from the gas station. No room for a poor man like me to ride with you when any one could see you had enough room. Someone like you thinks they’re better than me. Well, you’re not better than me now. Not when I’ve got the gun.”

  “I don’t think I’m better than any one,” Lizette said. “I just want every one to be safe.”

  There was an awkward silence as every one thought about being safe.

  “You must be Neal Strong,” Edna finally said. She had her hands out in front of her, as well. “I’ve heard about you. Something about a wrongful arrest.”

  “You bet it was wrongful!”

  “Well, maybe you’d like to put down the gun and tell me about it. I’m a re porter with the newspaper. If we work at get ting your story out there, maybe there’s a chance for you.”

  “The only chance for me is this,” Neal said as he nodded to ward the gun he held in his hand.

  Pete and Neal had reached the bottom of the stairs, but no one started to breathe normally.

  Even with no breath left in their lungs, they all gasped when the door to the barn started to open.

  Judd held him self perfectly still. He’d come up to the door earlier and heard some of what was happening in side. He’d run over to the café and asked Linda to call the police in Billings and tell them their man was armed and in the big barn in Dry Creek. Then he’d run back to the barn door.

  “I know I’m late,” Judd said as he stepped into the main area of the barn. He had the white silk under one arm. “I had a hard time finding the silk and—”

  Judd broke off his words, hoping he sounded genuinely surprised. “Well, who’s this?”

  Judd al ready knew who the man was, but he didn’t want to give Neal any reason to be suspicious that Judd had notified the authorities.