Thirty minutes later, nearly done with her rounds of the dressing rooms, she was hanging clean wardrobe in the last closet when she heard Gil’s big feet slapping metal steps, climbing the catwalk ladder. The crew had arrived. Downstairs, the two wheelchairs were on the roll, lights flickering, the gopher running to and fro, and the stage manager shouted out the time. Now the place had a pulse. And the actors were coming, the stage door opening, again and again, air rushing in—breath and life.
Time for a smoke.
One hour before curtain, when no one was looking her way, Nan unlocked a door near the end of the row of dressing rooms. Passing the makeup table, home to a Styrofoam head that held her new blond wig, she went to the closet and picked through the pockets of her coat. It hung beside the clothing bag with her own stage wardrobe.
The pack of cigarettes was found. Now where did she hide that ashtray? She opened a drawer, and at her back, she heard Detective Mallory say, “A wardrobe lady . . . with a dressing room?”
Nan turned around with a smile for the cop. “You gotta love those union contracts.”
“Yeah, right.” Mallory reached out to touch the blond wig on the table. “I know the stagehands delivered drugs to your place the other night.”
“And now you’d like to search my apartment for dope? Fine.” Nan fished her keys from a pocket. “The place is all yours. Have a party. Try not to drink all my booze.”
“Waste of time,” said Mallory. “The drugs walked out with your wigmaker. You didn’t tell Adolpho about the security camera in the elevator. We have film of him snorting cocaine on the ride down. I hear he’s an old friend of yours from the Hollywood days.”
Nan’s pack of cigarettes fell to the floor. “So you took a hostage. Very smart. . . . Girl, what do you want from me?”
“The stagehands supply Alma Sutter, too. Somebody’s supporting her drug habit. Maybe you want her part so bad you’d—”
“I do keep tabs on her, okay? But I don’t pay for her drugs.”
The detective sat down in the corner armchair and stretched out her long legs, as if she planned to stay awhile, maybe all night. “Where else would Alma get that kind of money?”
“You mean—since Peter died?” Nan copied Mallory’s smile as she leaned down to retrieve her fallen pack of smokes. “Pretty women like her don’t need money in this town.”
“You know what that habit costs Alma. The stagehands would’ve told—”
“Okay, you got me for gossiping with teenagers.” Nan fired up a cigarette and blew a perfect smoke ring. “Book me or shoot me. I can’t stand the suspense.”
• • •
The looking glass above Axel Clayborne’s makeup table spanned a whole wall, and by the closet stood a full-length mirror with three panels, multiple views for the man who could not get enough of himself.
Riker watched him add ten pounds to his face, packing his cheeks with cotton wadding. “Your doorman says the stagehands come by a few times a week. They usually stay forty minutes to an hour. What do you guys talk about?”
“Rumors mostly.” The actor coated his face with makeup on a sponge. “I like to know what’s going on backstage. Movies or theater, I always make friends with the crew. They hear things, useful things.”
“So you’re a control freak.”
“Guilty.” Clayborne mussed his hair into flyaway strands on the top and the sides, then patted it down in the back, aiming for the flat pillow-head effect. “Where the hell is Nan? She’s—”
“You control Alma Sutter’s drug habit, too? Maybe you subsidize it? Somebody’s workin’ that girl like a pharmaceutical yo-yo.”
“I wouldn’t wish that on a cockroach.” The actor rose from his chair and reached out to a hook on the closet door. He pulled down the lower half of his fat suit and set it on the floor, where the thick pajama-clad legs assumed a crouching position. “Drugs killed my best friend. I’d never—”
“Well, now I’m confused,” said Riker. “Your new good buddies, the stagehands—they probably supplied your old friend Wyatt.”
“No, you’re wrong about that.” Clayborne dropped his robe to the rug. “When Dickie started getting high in rehearsals, that’s when I took a real interest in those kids. I’d chat them up for hours, always circling back to Dickie. They didn’t sell him any drugs. They never lied about that.”
But Riker was dubious. Men parading around in nothing but skivvies so seldom conveyed credibility. “How would you know? You got a polygraph machine?”
“I know because they’re kids.” The actor pulled on the pant section of foam. “They lie about lots of things, but not very well.” After donning the top half of the suit, he had gained at least four hundred fake pounds. “Garnet, the one with the pimples? He won’t look me in the eye when he talks about his prowess with women. And the other one does this silly double take to see if I bought his last lie. That’s how I know they spend all their money on women, getting them loaded on drinks and drugs. But they never get to take the ladies home.” Clayborne made a curt bow, then raised his eyebrows and spread both hands, as if to prompt another question.
Or was he expecting praise?
The detective was not impressed. It must have showed. The actor turned somber.
“So there you have it.” Clayborne buttoned his pajama top. “They can’t lie worth a damn. And that’s how I know they did not sell drugs to Dickie.”
Riker was not insulted to be taken for the kind of fool who might believe in this nonsense. He knew that Clayborne believed in it.
The actor, gargantuan now, admired his bulk in the mirror, and then turned a satisfied grin on the detective. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re wondering how I’ll fit through that door.” His hands dropped to his sides to easily compress the foam girth as he made a hasty escape from the dressing room.
And Riker’s actual thoughts?
He was only wondering if he should have the wizard of poker tells take a run at the stagehands. But not this evening. Charles Butler had declined a front-row seat to watch a woman get slammed in the teeth with a baseball bat one more time.
Live theater was not for everyone.
• • •
“You got a real fancy lighting booth,” said Detective Gonzales. “All the bells and whistles. Who’s got the key?”
“I do. But I don’t use the booth.” Gil Preston opened the large fuse box on the rear wall so the cop could examine rows of switches during this tutorial on lighting. “I work the stage lights from a panel up on the catwalk. Now for the blackout cues—” He pointed to a block of levers. “I have Bugsy switch off these fuses. They control the backstage lights, the lobby and—”
“Detective!” Cyril Buckner stepped between them and pointed to the wings, where a uniformed officer was standing behind an open scenery door. “That cop—will he be standing there all night?”
“You bet your sweet ass,” said Gonzales.
The gopher sped by, nervous and jumpy and checking a wristwatch. And the stage manager shouted, “Bugsy, where the hell have you been?”
The detective turned his back on them to hail a young officer guarding the alley door ten feet away. “Hey! Where’s your partner? He should be standin’ right here. Nobody goes near the fuse box tonight.”
“Hold it,” said Buckner. “We have to cut the backstage lights. The stagehands wear night-vision goggles. They’ll go blind if one bulb gets left on.”
“Then you should be real careful about turning them off . . . the regular way,” said the detective. “Nobody touches the damn fuse box!”
• • •
Riker had a better seat tonight, not dead center, but not near the wall, either. The sheriff sat in the aisle seat, constantly turning his head, looking back to the lobby doors.
The third survivor of the massacre had not yet arrived at the theater, though Nebraska State Troopers had loaded the twins’ older cousin onto a plane bound for Manhattan, and that airliner should have touched down by no
w.
“Don’t worry. Cousin Billy’s on the way.” Riker knew this was the last thing James Harper would want to hear.
“How did you find him? Your boss wouldn’t say.”
“Well, a search of old accident reports got us a few likely names, but we were runnin’ outta time.” Riker glanced at his watch. In thirty minutes, the play would begin. “Your deputies were no help at all. I don’t think they were holdin’ back. I didn’t get that vibe from them. I figured you were holdin’ out on your own people. . . . So I called your ex-wife.”
ROLLO: Too late. Those are the scariest words.
—The Brass Bed, Act III
No ordinary headache.
Needles of searing pain jabbed Alma Sutter behind her right eye, which pulsed like a beating heart in the socket.
This could not be happening, not tonight!
She had Oxycontin in her purse. Should she risk it? No, not with four lines of cocaine up her nose.
Best to tough it out?
Maybe just one tablet.
Alma was not in charge of her hands anymore. She watched her fingers work the leather bag’s clasp, as if someone else had told them what to do. What was—
The small, light purse dropped to the floor and landed at her feet with the loud whomp of a fallen sandbag. The volume control in her head was ramped up high, and plastic pill bottles spilled out across the floor, clattering like rolling hubcaps. Behind her, the knock on the door was a volley of cannonballs, and when Bugsy called out the time, she clamped her hands over her ears. Make it stop!
A conversation on the other side of the door ratcheted up to a roar. One eyeball throbbed to the rhythm of a marching band. And her brain was shot through with pain.
Panic time.
She walked toward the closet to fetch—what? The distance of four feet was too far. Off balance, she leaned against the wall for a moment, and then set out again on wooden legs, swing-out, jerk-and-drop puppet legs.
The roaring stopped. The world went silent. Alma stood still in the center of the room, calm and floaty. Her journey to the closet was forgotten.
Perfect peace.
She could feel the planet turning on its axis, moving through space. She looked down at her bare feet with a sense of awe. The boundary of skin fell away. Alma and the moon, the door and the floor, inside and outside, they were all one—the actress and the universe. She could not find her way across the room, yet everything in creation was known to her.
Euphoria.
Tingling now. The buzzing of flesh.
Flooding her breast in a strong wave, a million bee steps whooshed up her throat. She snapped back into the solid, dangerous world. Shock. Pain unending. Stabbing, stabbing. Alma folded down to the floor and fumbled with the fallen pill bottles. One would fly her up, and one would take her down. Which one would kill the pain? The labels were meaningless ciphers of squiggles and lines.
Pick one!
She held a pharmacy bottle in her hand, but she had no idea how to remove the cap. Her other hand was useless.
And outside the door, she heard Bugsy say, “Curtain in fifteen minutes.”
• • •
Axel Clayborne was about to walk onstage when he heard Cyril Buckner’s hoarse whisper of “Oh, shit!” And then, in an egregious breach of backstage etiquette that demanded quiet, Detective Mallory yelled, “Is that ambulance still parked outside?”
Axel stepped back into the wings and turned toward the staircase.
Oh, big trouble.
Bugsy was leading a wobbly Alma Sutter down the steps. She was barefoot, wearing only a robe and not a jot of makeup. One of the actress’s arms was draped around the gopher’s neck and the other one hung limp at her side.
Mallory stood at the bottom of the stairs, shouting commands to bring the ambulance down the alley. Now she called out to another detective, “Gonzales! Grab those stagehands!”
Gentle as a nanny, Bugsy settled Alma down on a trunk. She was trying to talk to him, but her mouth only worked on one side, and all her words were strangled gibberish.
The ambulance crew barreled through the alley door.
Axel turned to a clock on the back wall. Ten minutes to curtain.
One of the medic’s guided Alma to a gurney, while the other man in white talked to Mallory, raising his voice to ask, “What kind of drugs?”
“I’ll find out,” she said.
Ted Randal and Joe Garnet were dragged before her, and she pointed at the actress being strapped to the gurney. “She’s stroking out! Tell me what fried her brain! What did you give her?” And when she got no response, she said, “Gonzales! Cuffs!” And the man promptly twisted Garnet’s hands behind his back to put him in handcuffs. Another detective stepped in to do the honors for Randal.
“Follow the ambulance to the hospital,” said Mallory. “On the way, find out what they sold Alma tonight.”
Axel wondered if Cyril Buckner might blow out his teeth trying to hold back a scream. That reddening face was an early warning sign of—
Ah, here it comes. Kaboom!
The stage manager sprinted toward Mallory and made a game attempt to yell at her while whispering, “You’re insane! The stagehands can’t leave now!” He threw up both hands, as if to ask how this fact could possibly have eluded her. What was she thinking?
The young cop ignored him to watch the parade of medics, teenagers and cops filing off toward the alley door.
Buckner grabbed Bugsy’s arm, saying, “You’re working the props with me tonight.” Then he pointed up the stairs to the dressing rooms. “Get Nan down here.”
Seven minutes to curtain, the actor in the fat suit walked out onstage to take his place on the brass bed in the spotlight, where he arranged his blanket and waited for the curtains to part.
• • •
“Get out of our way, kid.” The whispering wardrobe lady sported a change of clothes and her new wig, the blond one. “We go onstage in five minutes.”
The Rinaldi twins hung back, their eyes on the detective, regarding her as if she might be a live bomb.
Mallory, feeling no urgency at all, stood in the wings, blocking the doorway in the scenery. “Very quick change.” She assessed the woman’s stage costume, an expensive improvement over what Alma had worn for the part. And the makeup was expertly applied—time consuming. “All this on a few minutes’ notice.”
“Yeah, I heard a rumor that Alma died. A little premature, but what the hell.”
The electronic squeak of a public address system was followed by Cyril Buckner’s voice announcing a replacement actress, Nanette Darby. The audience cheered and applauded this famous name from another era. There was no mention of the other actress, the one taken away by ambulance.
And good night, Alma.
Mallory casually reached out to touch the older woman’s cashmere lapel. “I like the blazer.”
“Thanks. I should’ve gotten the name of your tailor, but I guess it’ll do. Four minutes to curtain. You’re waiting for a heart attack? Wouldn’t it be quicker to stab me?” The blazer was opened, exposing her breast for a target.
Damn. Too much moxie. No show of nerves. Not yet.
The detective glanced back over one shoulder to see the stage manager standing in the doorway on the other side of the set. He lifted three fingers to her, signaling only three minutes to go. “Nan, you miscounted.” Mallory turned back to the actress—who was smiling.
She must fix that.
“Buckner thinks you’re me.” Nan Cooper raised both hands to frame her face in a check-me-out gesture. “Recognize yourself, kid?”
“No, I don’t see it.” Mallory dipped one hand inside her blazer and pulled out the revolver. “The gun makes all the difference.” With equal weight to every syllable, she said, “It changes the way you walk—the way you talk.” She had not expected fear from this woman, but there was jacked-up anxiety. Finally—something useful.
“You’re arresting me?” The woman’s spread ha
nds moved up and down like pump handles as she said, “What? What’s it gonna take?” She shot a look at the clock. “Two minutes to go.”
And Buckner would not hold the curtain. He believed that Nan was already in position—in the doorway—where the detective stood.
Nan, are you frantic yet?
Getting there.
Mallory raised her eyes to the dressing rooms above. She spoke in the slow and easy way of opining on the weather. “I can almost see you sitting up there, all dressed to go onstage . . . waiting for something to happen to Alma.” She smiled at the older woman. “Sort of like a spider.”
“Buckner’s idea. Alma’s been getting more screwed up every day. Tonight, he wanted me ready to step into the role.” Nan snapped her fingers. “That fast.” She turned to the clock. “We’re down to one minute!”
And now Mallory stood aside.
• • •
The houselights went out. Riker leaned toward the man from Nebraska. “Showtime, pal.”
The sheriff’s badge was pinned to his lapel, and it gleamed as the curtains were drawn to expose the brightly lit stage.
Before the actor on the brass bed could say his first line, he won a round of applause just for being famous. Then Nanette Darby made her entrance by a door in the scenery, walking backward to another round of applause and closely followed by the Rinaldi brothers, who were herding her onto the stage.
The impersonation of Mallory was spot-on tonight, and Sheriff Harper was startled.
Riker’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He checked the text on the small screen. The plane had arrived on time, but Janos and his passenger were stuck in traffic.
• • •
Onstage, Axel Clayborne shouted his line, “Find a chair for our guest!”
In the semidarkness of the wings, a pair of doors in the scenery opened onto the lights of the stage. One of the Rinaldi brothers reached in and rolled out the empty wheelchair.
When the other twin had closed the doors, the new stagehands, Bugsy and Cyril Buckner, watched the actors through the louvered slats. Each of them had a pair of night-vision goggles slung around their necks by straps. Behind them was the second wheelchair that held the mannikin, and behind that—a surprise.
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