Offed Stage Left

by Joanne Sydney Lessner

  “That went well,” he commented.

  “She looks beautiful,” Isobel said.

  Sunil sighed. “Tell me about it.”

  The scene segued into “Song of the Sea” in its revised solo version. Although Isobel had enjoyed singing her part, she recognized the scene was tighter this way. And then she was back on.

  “Oh, Jennie, you’ve made me the happiest man on earth!” Chris exclaimed. He reached for Isobel, who pulled away demurely. “Please? Not just a tiny kiss?”

  On impulse, Isobel reached out to stroke Chris’s cheek, a tender gesture that surprised both of them. She could practically see Jethro making a note, “Too forward!”

  She snatched her hand away. “Not until we’re married.”

  The band began “The Washington Post,” and Chris spread his arms wide, singing:

  I’ll probably die if you don’t kiss me,

  Yes, that’s what I most want you to do,

  You simply have got to see it through!

  He pulled Isobel onto his knee, and she smiled sweetly at him as he continued to sing.

  But suddenly, in place of Chris’s face, perspiring under the lights, Isobel saw once more the image of Delphi’s sleek silhouette, and her smile froze. She glanced into the wings, where Sunil gave her a thumbs-up. Forgetting where she was and what she was doing, she shook her head frantically.

  Chris pulled Isobel to her feet and twirled her around, but she felt her body strain against his. He whirled her onto his knee again for the end of the song, and the lights dimmed as the orchestra struck up the gazouta. Isobel wrenched herself free, gathered her skirt, and ran into the wings, not caring that the audience could see her in the half light.

  She had to stop Delphi from sitting down, before it was too late.

  TWENTY-THREE

  DELPHI PEERED INTO the mirror offstage left and secured a stray curl. Her scenes had gone well, although she was more disappointed about the loss of the duet than she was letting on. She went along with her friends’ good-natured ribbing about her singing voice, but the comments stung. She wasn’t classically trained like Isobel, but she’d always loved to sing, and all through high school she had sung in chorus and been in the musicals, often in a leading role. In college, she’d faced fiercer competition and landed mostly character parts like Snookie in 110 in the Shade and Lily St. Regis in Annie. She’d always thought there would be a place for her in professional musical theater, but in the big leagues, even the actors with character voices sang better than she did.

  Still, she was secretly grateful for this opportunity. When she’d hopped on the train to Albany, she’d been seeking escape. Jumping into the show had provided an even better distraction from her personal travails. With everything else going on, Isobel hadn’t stopped to ask any difficult questions about what happened with Carlo, and Delphi was beginning to hope that when the time came, she would be able to relate the experience calmly, if not dispassionately.

  “Delphi, thank God!” Isobel shrieked in her ear.

  Delphi practically jumped out of her skin. “What the hell?”

  “Is that Arden’s bustle?”

  “Yes, but why—”

  Isobel yanked up Delphi’s skirt and bunched it around her waist. “Hold this.”

  “Let go! What are you—”

  “Just do it!” Isobel screeched.

  “Shhh!” Heather hissed.

  Flabbergasted, Delphi allowed Isobel to spin her around, and she felt Isobel’s hands untying the waistband.

  “Don’t take my bustle off!”

  Before she could protest further, Isobel had untied the wire frame and let it drop to the floor.

  “I can’t go onstage without it,” Delphi protested. “My skirt will be a mess.”

  Isobel picked up the bustle by the waistband and shoved it into a dark corner behind the rigging.

  “You’re crazy, you know that?” Delphi whispered.

  Isobel grabbed Delphi’s hand. “I may be crazy, but I’m pretty sure I just saved your life. Come on.”

  The next thing Delphi knew, she was onstage for the first-act finale. She went through the motions and her mouth moved along with the words she had only recently learned, while her mind raced to figure out what Isobel was talking about. For the polka at the end, she had to hike up her skirt, which was dragging on the floor without benefit of Arden’s bustle.

  The curtain came down, but when Delphi looked for Isobel to ask what the hell was going on, she was nowhere to be found. Sunil materialized at her side.

  “Your skirt looks like shit. Thomas is going to have a fit.”

  “Tell me about it. Come on.”

  Together they wound their way backstage to where Isobel had left Arden’s bustle, but neither was there. They found Isobel in her dressing room, carefully layering the contraption into her cloth laundry bag. Isobel looked up as they came in.

  “Shut the door,” she commanded.

  Delphi had never seen Isobel this agitated before.

  “What if Talia comes in?” Sunil asked. “Isn’t this her room?”

  Isobel ignored his question and returned a different one. “Remember during tech when Chris pulled Arden onto his knee and her bustle stabbed her? She made a holy fuss about it, right?”

  “Right,” Sunil said.

  “Chris had just pulled Arden onto his knee when she collapsed onstage,” Delphi said, picking up Isobel’s train of thought. She looked at the laundry bag in Isobel’s hand. “You don’t think…”

  Isobel’s expression was somber. “Concentrated nicotine. If someone dipped the exposed wire of Arden’s bustle in it, and she sat down the way she did during rehearsal and it stabbed her, the poison would have gone right into her bloodstream.”

  “But Thomas fixed the wire,” Sunil said. “And I don’t remember her having a problem during dress rehearsal.”

  “Somebody unfixed it,” Isobel said. “Anybody who saw what happened during tech could have gotten the idea and pulled it apart again.”

  Sunil rubbed his hands together uncertainly. “If you’re right, then each successive person who wore the bustle could have been poisoned at the same time in the show, every night.”

  “Maybe that’s what Roman Fried was promised,” Isobel said, her voice trembling. “A body a night.”

  Delphi felt the room closing in on her. “I have to sit.”

  “Now you can. Put your head between your knees,” Isobel instructed her. “How did you even come to have Arden’s bustle in the first place? When I left you before the show, Thomas was fitting your roll.”

  “Heather came by with it right before places. The police brought Arden’s costume back from the hospital,” Delphi said, her head still down.

  There was a loud knock at the door. “Is Delphi in there?”

  Delphi sat up too quickly, making her head swim. “It’s Thomas,” she whispered. “He’s going to want to know why I took off my bustle. We can’t tell him! What if he’s the one who poisoned it?”

  “Put it on the shelf over the table. Carefully!” Isobel handed Sunil the laundry bag. “And push those wig heads in front of it.” She knelt by Delphi. “Tell him you were feeling queasy, and the bustle was rubbing you funny—or something. Tell him you had to take it off and you dropped it offstage left by the rigging. He’ll go looking for it, and that will buy me time to run it to Dillon. He’s in the house tonight. I’ll get one of the wardrobe girls to get a message to him to meet me upstairs.”

  Delphi nodded.

  Isobel crossed the small room and flung open the door. “Yeah, she’s here.”

  Thomas was through in an instant. “Girl! What happened to your bustle?”

  Delphi felt herself slip effortlessly into performance mode, and in her most regretful voice said, “The tie around the waist snapped right before the finale. I didn’t have time to try and fix it, so I took it off.”

  “Hmmm. In that case, I suppose I can’t blame you for making me look bad.” Thomas gave a t
heatrical sigh and held out his hand.

  “Oh!” Delphi feigned surprise. “It’s not here. I dropped it backstage.”

  “And you didn’t retrieve it? Who taught you to take care of your costumes? Were you raised by monkeys?”

  “Give her a break,” Sunil cut in. “It’s only her second performance, and everyone’s on edge after the police interviews.”

  Thomas clucked at them. “You all change for act two. I’ll get it.”

  He flounced away. Sunil retrieved the bundle and handed it to Isobel, who ran out of the room without another word. He started after her, but Delphi stopped him.

  “Can you stay for a minute?”

  “Of course. Still shaky?”

  “Just wondering what I’ve gotten myself into.”

  “Join the club.” They stared at each other in silence for a moment. “It does seem like Isobel has a knack for getting mixed up in stuff like this,” Sunil said.

  “Thomas will be back in a few minutes when he doesn’t find the bustle. He’ll be furious.”

  “Stick to your claim that you left it there. He can only blame you for being careless.”

  She sat up a bit straighter. “It’ll be interesting to clock his reaction.” The last of her queasiness drained away as her thoughts crystallized. “If he’s the one who poisoned the wire, he’ll freak when he realizes the bustle is missing. Let’s see what he says when he comes back.”

  But Thomas didn’t come back. When Kelly called places, and neither he nor Isobel had reappeared, Delphi retrieved the fake bustle roll from her dressing room and asked Sunil to pin it under her skirt. To her surprise, she wasn’t embarrassed by the intimacy. On the contrary, she found herself hoping the task would take longer than it did.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “GIVE ME A SECOND. I’ll find it.” Isobel leaned across the desk in Felicity’s office, where the bustle was laid out before Detective Dillon and Sergeant Pemberthy. The policewoman’s strong arm pulled her back.

  “We’ll examine it,” Dillon said curtly. “I don’t want you accidentally nicking yourself.”

  Pemberthy released her grip on Isobel. “If you’re right, your friend was very lucky.”

  Isobel watched while Dillon, wearing rubber gloves, carefully turned over every inch of the contraption.

  “No sharp edges that I can see,” he said.

  “Look again. There have to be.”

  Dillon waved his hand over the bustle. “There’s nothing sticking out.”

  “There is. I’m sure of it. You have to look”—she turned her head sideways and tried to envision where it would have hit the back of Arden’s thigh—“in this area here.”

  Dillon straightened and shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “Then the person bent it back in place,” Isobel said.

  “When would anyone have had time to do that? Surely somebody would have noticed a person fussing under Arden’s skirt in the moments after she collapsed.”

  “Tonight, when you returned her costume. The bustle was handled by multiple people.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “Heather and Thomas for sure, also probably Kelly, maybe even Felicity. Any of them could have seized the opportunity when nobody was looking. If you knew exactly where the wire was, it wouldn’t take more than a few seconds to bend it back into place.”

  “It’s pretty far-fetched,” Pemberthy said.

  Isobel gestured emphatically. “You can’t figure out how the nicotine got into Arden’s system, and I’m telling you: everybody saw her sit on an exposed wire during tech, and she collapsed onstage in the same spot opening night.”

  Dillon held Isobel’s gaze for a moment, then gestured to Pemberthy. “Get this thing tested for traces of nicotine. Tell them to take apart all the wires and run every inch of it.”

  As the policewoman carefully bundled the bustle into an evidence bag, there was a frantic knock on the door, and Kelly burst in.

  “There you are,” Kelly panted. “It’s places, and you’re not changed.”

  “I know. I’m sorry—this was important. I’m coming now.”

  The bustle caught Kelly’s eye, and Isobel saw her brows knit in confusion, but the exigency of the second-act curtain took precedence. Isobel let Kelly hurry her down the hall.

  “You’ll have to wear that for the opening of act two,” Kelly said. “Thomas is already having a fit over Delphi’s skirt in the finale. It’s not his night, is it?”

  They reached the stage door, and Kelly left to go up to the booth, where she called the show. Isobel took her place onstage in the gazebo next to Chris.

  “Where were you?” he asked.

  “The cops wanted to see me again,” she said.

  “In the middle of the show?”

  “Their priorities are different from ours.”

  After the opening scene, Isobel changed into her emerald gown and returned to the wings to watch the seaside concert scene. While Talia sang her Traviata aria, Isobel caught sight of Delphi, whose skirt was once again draped awkwardly over the fake bustle roll. She was dying to know what Thomas had said when he couldn’t find the bustle, but she knew she wouldn’t have a chance to chat with Delphi until after the show. She did, however, find herself face-to-face with Sunil in the wings before her last entrance.

  “What did Thomas say when he came back?” she whispered, first making sure nobody could hear them.

  “He didn’t.”

  “He didn’t say anything?”

  “No, he didn’t come back. I thought that was weird.”

  “You know what else is weird?”

  “What?”

  “Kelly came to get me and saw the cops bagging the bustle, but she didn’t ask Dillon why.”

  “Not everyone’s as nosy as you,” Sunil said.

  “She didn’t ask me, either, when we were alone.”

  “Maybe she thought you’d been caught red-handed?”

  Isobel grabbed Sunil’s arm. “I think either Kelly put the nicotine on the wire or she knows who did. And get this—the wire was bent back in place. So whoever did it got their hands on it tonight and tried to cover their tracks.”

  “Or you’re totally wrong and the wire is in place because nobody ever undid it again after Thomas fixed it.”

  “Wait, if Thomas didn’t come back, who arranged Delphi’s bustle roll?”

  “I did,” Sunil said proudly.

  “You finally got up her skirt? Score! Ooh—gotta go.”

  Isobel made her entrance for the finale, and finally the show was over. After taking a moment to accept compliments from two of the chorus women, she raced back to her dressing room. She paused in the doorway, trying to figure out what was different. Delphi came up behind her and pushed past her into the room.

  “We’re switching,” Delphi said.

  “What?”

  “Talia and I are switching dressing rooms. We started moving stuff during your long scene with Chris in act two. It was her idea. She said she could tell I was going to be in here all the time, and this would make things easier.”

  Isobel unbuttoned her bodice. “Did you check with stage management?”

  “I asked Heather during intermission and she okayed it. I couldn’t find Kelly.”

  “She was with me.” Isobel filled Delphi in on what happened with the bustle. “Sunil said Thomas never came back?”

  “Nope.” Delphi braced herself against the dressing table and gestured with a makeup-removal wipe. “Do you think he figured out that we figured it out and made a run for it?”

  “I don’t know.” Isobel looked down at her own bustle hanging around her waist. “Help me get out of this thing. It terrifies me.”

  Delphi untied it. “He’s the costume designer. Nobody has better access than he does. And he must have flipped when he saw I took it off. I don’t think he bought my story. Do you?”

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  There was a knock on the door. “Are you decent?” Sunil called.

&n
bsp; “One sec,” Isobel responded. They hastily finished undressing and threw on their street clothes. “Okay, come in.”

  He came in, closed the door, and leaned against it. “I have to tell you guys something.”

  “About Thomas?” Isobel asked.

  “No, Chris.”

  “Chris?”

  Sunil nodded. “Opening night before the show, I went outside to the alley in back of the theater to take a moment for myself. It’s something I always do. Say a little prayer. We all have our rituals, right?”

  “I take off my school ring, kiss it, turn it over three time in my palm, and then safety pin it to my underwear. Which is always purple,” Isobel added.

  “Um, that may have been TMI,” Delphi said.

  “Anyway,” Sunil continued, “Chris was out there, too. I didn’t see him at first because he was standing behind the dumpster. But then I saw a tiny flame, and I thought something was on fire. Chris claimed he’d been saying the rosary and was using a lighter to see. But there was enough low light that he could have seen well enough without it.”

  “Not to mention the difficulty of juggling a lighter and a rosary. Plus he has an iPhone with a flashlight,” Isobel pointed out. “But go on.”

  “When Chris suggested we go back inside, I said I needed another moment. He looked like he didn’t want me out there by myself poking around, but I didn’t leave him much choice. And of course, that’s what I did, the second I was alone.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “A charred photo of Arden.”

  Delphi gasped.

  “You’re only telling us now?” Isobel cried.

  “I didn’t want your imagination running amok now that you’re playing opposite him, but between the note going missing and now this bustle thing, I think we need to tell someone.”

  “What did you do with the photo?” Isobel asked.

  “I left it on the ground. If Chris went back and it was gone, he’d know I took it, and I didn’t want to tip my hand. And besides, this was all before Arden was killed.”