A Christmas Peril

by J. A. Hennrikus

  “Why are we canceling?”

  When Dimitri didn’t answer, Connie jumped in. “Patrick is still having trouble with his lines. So we’re trying to have some of the other actors ready to step in when they’re needed. And to create opportunities for Patrick to go offstage so he can look at the script or pull himself together.”

  “Have you ever heard of such bullshit? Scrooge leaving the stage? The play is about Scrooge’s journey,” Dimitri snapped. “The whole point is that the audience sees the transformation. Okay, I was willing to create a moment here and there—during the Fezziwig scene, who’d miss him? But now he needs more time, more breaks. He’s having trouble with the fourth scene—the Ghost of Christmas Future. He needs prompts. The ghost doesn’t even speak, for the love of Mike, but he wants the kid to prompt him.”

  “Dimitri, we’ll figure this out.” I handed him a container. He lifted the corner of the lid, ascertained what it was, and grunted his gratitude. I handed Connie her pudding, pulled the spoons out of my pocket, and passed them out.

  Dimitri sat in the front row with his cobbler. Connie called a break, and then sat down beside him to eat. I leaned on the edge of the stage.

  “Stewart could take over Scrooge,” I said.

  “And who would play Marley?” Dimitri and Connie had obviously had this discussion before. They looked at me, expecting me to get them past the point where they’d gotten stuck.

  “You, Dimitri. You’ll play Marley.”

  Dimitri paled. His performance anxiety, onstage at least, was his Achilles’ heel. I’d always respected this issue as out of bounds, but not today. Not with this much at stake. “Yes, you. People will love to see you on stage, Dimitri. It might even convince some of them not to demand refunds. Which they can, you know, since Patrick King is above the title.” I reminded him of this fact mostly because I’d argued so hard about not putting Patrick’s name above the title. “We’re sold out for a four-week run. Three of those weeks are needed just to cover our expenses. The only reason we could sell that extra week, the week after Christmas, was because of Patrick’s name. And that’s our week of pure profit. Not a lot, not as much as I would have hoped, but there you go. So there will be a show. We aren’t canceling.”

  Neither one of them spoke. Dimitri put his spoon back in his cobbler, and then threw his head back and roared. Roared in frustration. I’d heard it before, but was still impressed. Connie didn’t stop eating, and I didn’t blink.

  “Where is Stewart?” I asked, changing the subject.

  “Over at the shop for a fitting. He should be back soon.”

  “Well, let’s see how the Stewart factor plays out before we do anything rash like recast the show, okay?”

  When I saw Patrick King I took him aside to talk, privately but in full view of the cast. Then I went back to sit next to Gus and watch the Christmas Past scene rehearsal. Harry was sitting near him, my deli sandwich on his lap, half of it gone. He handed me the rest as I sat down.

  “Everything okay?” Harry asked.

  I nodded while I took a big bite. “You couldn’t hear me, could you?”

  “No,” he assured me.

  “Good. Do you two know each other?”

  “No, we just met,” Harry said. “I wanted to thank him for helping Eric.”

  “Only doing my job,” Gus said. “Sully, that guy you were just threatening? Hasn’t he been on TV?”

  “I didn’t threaten him.”

  “Sully, I saw you. I saw him. You threatened him.”

  He was right, of course. I did threaten Patrick. I told him that this show might be a blip on the course of his career, but if he screwed it up, I would make it my life goal to make his life miserable. I would create an anonymous website that talked about what a hack Patrick King was, and I would email everyone I knew and have them hit on the website over and over until it was in the top ten Google searches under the name Patrick King. But I didn’t want to tell Gus I was strong-arming a TV star these days.

  “I think there might be something wrong with him,” Harry said. “He’s trying to remember his lines, but he can’t. I’ve been working with him, but they just don’t stick. It’s heartbreaking in a way, though a lot of it may have to do with the drinking.”

  “Gee, you think?” I said.

  “And the partying till all hours. And the womanizing.”

  “Harry, this isn’t funny.”

  “I know it isn’t, Sully. Sorry.”

  “He really can’t remember?”

  Harry shook his head. “I think he’s scared to death. He hasn’t had this big a stage role in years.”

  “Great.”

  “Maybe we should get a teleprompter. Or he could wear an earpiece and we could feed him his lines.” Frank Augustine had sat down behind us. I hadn’t heard him and was startled by the sound of his voice. Frank was our sound designer as well as the all-around tech director for our shows. Like a lot of people who found themselves out of step with society, Frank found his tribe in theater and was an institution at the Cliffside. His real job, of course, was as an IT tech, consulting with most of the businesses around town. I had no idea when he actually worked because he was always available when we needed him.

  “Damn, Frank. You scared me.”

  “Sorry.” He sounded bereft, and I felt instant guilt. I suspected he had a little crush on me. I turned around to face him and gave him a smile. I could never figure out how old he was. He had that generic computer-geek look that could put him anywhere between twenty-five and forty: stringy hair pulled back into a ponytail that enhanced a slightly receding hairline. Dirty jeans slung low on his hips, not by fashion but by an ill fit. An oversized, stretched-out, grayish-green crewneck sweater worn over a black T-shirt. The T-shirt probably had something with a skull on it. Frank wore a lot of skull T-shirts. White, or formerly white, athletic shoes completed the ensemble.

  Looking past the clothes, Frank had potential. He had clear blue eyes and a nice smile. If he trimmed his beard, cut his hair, and got a fashion makeover, he could be quite the package. And undoubtedly would be, with the right woman running the show. He probably wouldn’t put up much resistance to that. Me, I preferred my men to already have those skills. I wasn’t swift enough with my own wardrobe to give advice to others.

  “It’s okay,” I told him. “Let’s go out into the lobby so we can talk.”

  “I have to go backstage. Can I take the chips?” Harry asked.

  “Please do,” I said.

  “I’ll get the trash. You go talk to Frank,” Gus said. He shot me a look that said “find out what he knows about the Whitehall security system.” I was way ahead of him, but knew Frank well enough that jumping right into the conversation would scare him off.

  Once we were out in the lobby I turned to Frank. “What’s this about an earpiece?”

  “An idea—we could put an earpiece on him and feed him his lines off stage.”

  “Expensive?”

  “No, not at all. I can probably throw something together from stuff I’ve got back at the house.” Frank’s eyes wandered toward Gus as he joined us, looking for a trash can.

  “As long as it doesn’t take you too long, let’s give it a shot. Oh, and Frank, this is Gus Knight. Gus, Frank Augustine.”

  “Aren’t you Eric Whitehall’s lawyer?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “He’s a good guy. I can’t imagine he could kill his father. His dad was a good guy too. I still can’t believe I won’t see him again.”

  “You knew Peter Whitehall?” Gus asked casually. He was smooth.

  “I did some work for him, on and off. Setting up a home network. Keeping up with the security stuff. Plus he was testing out new camera systems, adding a backup system, looking at web browsers.”

  “Did everything the cameras recorded get saved?”

  �
��Not yet,” Frank said. “Like I said, he was testing out systems. He loved playing with new technology. It took him a long time to commit to changing over systems. He was moving toward a motion-activated system with infrared cameras.”

  “Did he need to be that worried about security?” Gus asked.

  “You wouldn’t think so, but lately he’d really stepped things up. He was moving fast.”

  “Had you switched the system over yet?”

  Frank paused, and then said, “No, not yet,” without looking either of us in the eye.

  He was lying. I knew it, but I didn’t think that Gus had caught on. I could call Frank out on it now, or talk to him privately later. I decided on later.

  “That’s a shame, Frank. Ah well, we all knew it wasn’t going to be that easy. I’ve got to run, but I’ll be on my cell. Let Connie know, will you?”

  “Sure thing. See you later.”

  Gus and I were bundling up for the walk to the car when I stopped for a minute.

  “Damn, I need to tell Connie that I’ve okay’d the earpiece Frank suggested.”

  “Can’t you call her later?”

  “I could, but by then Frank will have already told her and I’ll have to deal with her nose out of joint. It’s much better if I run it by her now. I’ll be there in a tic—maybe you can go get the car?” I tossed him my keys and gave him a grin.

  “You want me to warm up that box of yours for you.”

  “Well, there is that. But you’ve little room to be critical, since your car is conveniently at the shop. Seriously, I’ll only be a second.”

  Gus hesitated for a moment, but seemed satisfied about something. He tossed the keys in the air and grabbed them in his fist. “I’ll go get the car.”

  • Ten •

  I found Frank at the top of the center aisle, talking to Connie. They didn’t bother to stop their conversation when I approached, instead turning slightly toward me to include me in the discussion.

  “It won’t screw up any of the other frequencies?” Connie was asking. “Remember what happened last year?”

  Last year we’d had a few technical glitches the first weekend of the run. Well, more than a few. The Ghost of Christmas Present makes a grand entrance by flying in from the catwalk on an invisible wire, but he’d lost his balance a little while getting onto the swing. The arc from his readjustment had gotten progressively worse as he descended. By the time he was about twelve feet from the stage, he hit the side of the set. It was frightening.

  The other disaster had fallen into Frank’s purview, though it wasn’t his fault. Our regular sound board op wasn’t available, so we’d hired a substitute, thinking that his resume indicated a level of competence. We were wrong. He didn’t understand the channels and the sound design of the show, and he kept forgetting to turn the actor’s microphones off when they went off stage. A couple of times he left Connie’s mic on, and the audience was treated to her hissing as quietly as possible, “Cue the Cratchit kids, cue the Cratchit kids, CUE THE CRATCHIT KIDS” in a desperate manner. For most of last summer, “cue the Cratchit kids” was the “in” phrase at the theater, a kind of “where’s the beef” for the nonprofit set. Even though it wasn’t Frank’s doing, it was a technical foul-up, so he fell on his sword. He actually ended up running the sound board when Dimitri fired the sub after that show.

  “It won’t screw up—” Frank began.

  “Because this is bad enough, but if Patrick starts spouting off lighting cues—”

  “He won’t, I promise.”

  They both looked at me. If it turned out to be a disaster, I would be the one blamed. Connie wasn’t going there this year.

  “Connie, I think we should give it a shot. I’m sure Frank can figure this out.”

  “Okay,” she said, her look clearly indicating that my head was on the block. “Go ahead, Frank. Let’s get it ready and test it out ASAP. I’ll find one of the students to feed Patrick his lines.”

  “We can try it out tonight, after dinner break.”

  Connie walked down the aisle toward Dimitri, who was having a loud discussion with Cassandra Ryan, the costume designer, at the foot of the stage. Cassandra was the only person I knew who took up more space than Dimitri did. She was tall already, and wore perilously high-heeled boots. Her braided hair was piled on top of her head, giving her another few inches of height. It wasn’t only her physicality, it was her personality. I didn’t need to worry about Cassandra holding her own with Dimitri. I only had to worry if they decided to gang up on me.

  “Thanks for the backup, Sully,” Frank said. “Sometimes Connie doesn’t trust me … ”

  “Not true. She’s cautious. It’s her job to be the resident naysayer. That way she’s run it through the system so that any possible resistance will have been vetted. Are you sure you’ll have it ready by tonight? That’s pretty short notice.”

  “I thought of it a few days ago and started to rig it.”

  “Really?” I was impressed by Frank’s entrepreneurship. I hadn’t been giving him enough credit. I looked at my watch and realized that the praise would need to wait. “That’s great, Frank. I don’t know what we would do without you. I don’t want to think about what we’d do without you.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. I like helping out. My job can get pretty lonely … it’s nice to be around people, to be part of all this.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “It’s a crazy group, but it’s our crazy group.”

  Frank nodded and smiled.

  “I need to run, but I have a question,” I said. “It’s about Peter Whitehall’s house. How far were you on the setup? It’s okay, you can tell me.”

  “I know it’s weird, but he’d told me not to tell anyone and I feel like I owe it to him—”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t realize you were friends,” I said. “I don’t think that he had many of those.”

  “I wouldn’t say we were friends,” Frank said. “But he was good to me … ”

  “Frank, someone killed him. His son isn’t that someone, but I’m afraid that since everyone thinks Eric did it, people will stop looking. I haven’t stopped looking. In fact, I just started. Anything you can tell me that might help would be great.”

  Frank let that hang in the air for a moment. He looked around and moved closer, lowering his voice from its already quiet pitch. I had to lean in further to hear him.

  “I started to work on it, but I wasn’t completely finished.” Frank seemed to consider what he was saying. “Mr. Whitehall kept adding stuff to the system, and he hadn’t finished yet. He was putting some of the cameras up himself. They were infrared, so they didn’t need to be wired, just tracked for the software. He was going a little nuts. I don’t even know why he was doing it … he was, well, playing it pretty close to the vest. He didn’t want people to know where all the cameras were, so I had to do the software install when no one was home. Kinda made it tricky, but I have a pretty flexible schedule. And he made it worthwhile.”

  “Had you done the hallway camera yet?”

  “We’d tried, but we kept running into problems, some kind of interference. But the feed from there was available live on a website. All the cameras were. It would be easier for the guard to keep up that way.”

  “Did anything get recorded?”

  “I gave the police all the passwords. Mr. Whitehall was still playing with the system, so I’m not sure if anything was saved. I can try and find out if you’d like.”

  “That would be great. Call me if you find anything, okay?”

  “You can count on me.”

  I was leaving the high school as Stewart was chaining up his bike. He swept me up in a big hug and kissed me. The kiss lasted a few seconds longer than was strictly friendly, but I didn’t mind.

  “You look great, Stewart.”

  “Thanks, liar
.” He rubbed his hand over his stubbled chin and then through his helmet-crushed hair. “You look good.”

  Keenly aware of my lack of makeup and tired eyes, I laughed. “Okay, so we’re both full of crap. But it’s wonderful to see you. And that isn’t a lie. Now get in there before Connie has a fit.”

  With another quick kiss, Stewart hurried into the building. Turning toward the car, I saw Gus break his gaze and look quickly down at his phone. My social life had gotten complicated. But I kind of liked it.

  • Eleven •

  Gus and I drove to the Anchorage in the same car I owned when we were married. He had the good grace not to mention the ice puddle on the bottom of the passenger-side floor. I had an unknown and heretofore undetectable leak on the passenger side that had proved a considerable problem during rainstorms. If I didn’t mop up the puddle, it would freeze up until the heater kicked in. Fortunately, it didn’t smell, yet. But I would need to buy a new car in the spring. One more winter was all I asked.

  We spent the short ride discussing our strategy for talking to Terry. Gus didn’t mention Stewart—or our kiss—and I didn’t bring the subject up. Gus had said that Terry seemed willing to do whatever was necessary to help Eric. Of course, Gus also said that Terry seemed pathological in his ability to say whatever needed to be said in any given situation, so he couldn’t read him. We decided that he would take the lead, and I’d add to the conversation if needed. Actually, this was more Gus’s idea, but I concurred. For the time being.

  The guard at the gate waved us in. He must have then called the house, because Terry was waiting at the open front door. He shook Gus’s hand, turned to me, and took my hand in his. “Edwina, so good to see you again so soon.”

  “Sully, please.” I shook his hand.

  “But Mrs. Bridges refers to you as Edwina—”

  “Mrs. Bridges used to change my diapers, so she can call me whatever she wants.” I hoped that would put an end to the conversation. How much do I hate my first name? We had a momentary stare-down, and then he turned to lead us into the house.