Murder Takes A Bow - A Betty Crawford Mystery (The Betty Crawford Mysteries)

by Marvin, Liz

  Thump! went Betty’s head on the table. The table felt cool against her face, and Betty knew she must be red. She shifted so that her head rested on her crossed arms.

  “…Then they arrested Walter for giving false evidence and obstruction of justice,” Clarise continued. “It turns out that his testimony was the only real proof they had against me. So they let me go, and I’m free!”

  “Free to torture me,” Betty grumbled into her arms.

  “Yes, well…” Clarise said brightly, patting her arm. Betty looked up to glare at her. “You shouldn’t be quite so… valiant if you don’t want the credit.” Clarise turned back to the remainder of her rapt audience. “And then Sergeant Bundy here offered to drive me home and I asked to come here first, because, well, I couldn’t have gotten out without you Betty, so I wanted you to be the first to know.”

  “Well!” Betty’s mother said, clapping her hands. “This calls for a celebration! Who wants some cake?”

  Everyone else jumped at the chance. Mary Crawford’s cake was legendary.

  “Betty?”

  Betty refused to meet her eye. “No thanks,” she said. “I’m still full from dinner.”

  Clarise frowned at her over the table. After years of friendship, Betty clearly read: You didn’t tell them yet?

  Betty shook her head. No.

  Clarise raised a pointed eyebrow. Well, what are you waiting for?

  Betty shrugged, half smiling with one corner of her mouth. I don’t know. I’m nervous. Scared.

  Clarise rolled her eyes. Just get on with it.

  Betty’s father coughed. “Anything we should know girls?”

  “No,” Clarise said. “Just girl talk.”

  “What?” Sergeant Wes asked, looking from one to the other with confusion “How could you have girl talk? You didn’t even say anything!”

  Chet grabbed the last of the dinner dishes and clapped Wes on the shoulder on his way to the sink. “Sergeant, when you’ve been around women as long as I have, you’ll learn. They say things they don’t mean, and mean things they don’t say except in a secret language we men will never learn. “

  Mary Crawford hit her husband with a dishcloth. “See if I give you a piece of cake now!”

  Chet caught the dishtowel and used it pull her close before pecking her lips. “Now Mary, you know I love that cake almost as much as I love you,” he said seriously, looking into her eyes. “You wouldn’t be that cruel, would you?”

  Mary laughed and pushed him away. “Oh, you! Go make yourself useful and put the kettle on for tea!”

  Betty rolled her eyes at Clarise.

  “I saw that!” her father said from the sink.

  “You were supposed to,” she shot back.

  Sergeant Wes and Clarise didn’t stay much longer. Clarise wanted to get home to shower and sleep. Shortly after they left, Betty’s mother went out to a church meeting.

  That left Betty and her father alone. She was about to go up the stairs to her room when he called her.

  “Betty?” she turned towards him at the foot of the stairs. He was leaning back on the sofa, eyes closed.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “You did a good thing with Walter today.” Her father paused. Betty shifted, unsure of what to say. Compliments always had a way of putting her off balance, even when they weren’t effusive praise. She never knew how to react. you say thank you, or did that sound like you were agreeing with them and being prideful? Did you deny that you’d done anything of merit? Did you just continue on as normal, or was that rude? “You know,” her father continued, “if there’s anything you need to talk about just say the word.”

  Clarise was right. She really didn’t have any good reason to put off telling them about her diabetes.

  But the emotional upheavals of the day dragged at her eyelids, and her limbs were heavy with sleepiness. She was never at her best when she was tired, and an emotional conversation was the last thing she needed right before sleep.

  “Thanks, Dad.” She said. “But not tonight. Okay?”

  He nodded from the sofa, already half asleep himself.

  Upstairs, Betty checked her blood glucose level. She made a note that the reading was “after a meal,” and saved the number. She still wasn’t clear on what the numbers meant, but she figured that she should get into the habit of checking her levels after she ate.

  CHAPTER 20

  The next morning, Betty checked her e mail before even changing out of her pajamas. In her absence, Betty’s e mail had flooded. It never ceased to amaze her how many pieces of spam she received on a daily basis. Didn’t people understand that spam made her less likely to take their products seriously? She weeded through, flagging the e mails from actual clients and stores whose e mail lists she wanted to be on so she could find them easier.

  She responded to the clients first, making sure that there were no further problems. One of her replacement shipments had arrived with no problem, for which both she and her client were exceedingly grateful. The other one, to 3 Rings Organic Clothes a few towns away, had arrived with three extra pairs of jeans in the box.

  That was quite enough of that. Betty glared at the screen. It was blatantly clear that someone was tampering with her packages. How dare they? This was her business. She couldn’t afford to be unreliable. She’d have to start looking into this, today.

  Staples.com had sent her their latest flyer. Shipping supplies were on sale. Immediately, Betty went to their website and used her coupon code to order more boxes and packing tape. She was running low, and buying them last minute at the post office or shipping store always cut into her profit margin far more than ordering them ahead of time. She added legal pads and some more storage containers for good measure, and pasted the cost of the items to her “expenses paid” spreadsheet. She made a mental note to look into drop shipping at the local Staples copy center. It had to be easier than the post office and might save her some money compared to Whitt’s.

  A box had arrived for her at Whitt’s Copy and Shipping, and her copies were ready for her to pick up. Good. Those were the last costumes and extra scripts for the theater. If she hurried, she could swing by the store to pick them up before her afternoon meeting. It was also a good place to start investigating who was tampering with her products.

  Betty grabbed her glucose meter and put in her purse before heading out. The extra weight was barely noticeable, but her bag seemed to take extra effort to carry.

  ~

  Betty walked in to Whitt’s Copy and Shipping, only to have her prepared line of questioning entirely derailed by the sound of Henry Whitt performing a dramatic reading from behind the back counter. She made her way quietly to the back of the store. He was actually quite good. His voice had a deep tone, and his slightly snooty accent was perfect for the butler he was portraying. Once he came in sight, Betty could see that he was standing behind the counter, back ramrod straight and his chest puffed out, one hand pulled behind his back. Normally, Betty only saw Henry as a tall, gangly red head, still awkward and acne laden in his late teens. But the way he was standing made his gangly frame seem regal, and his normal awkwardness was replaced with an air of disdain. “Yes, Sir,” he said, bowing slightly to the air in front of him.

  Betty applauded, and Henry started, dropping the script. “Sorry, sorry,” he stammered, scrambling to pick up the papers that had scattered on the floor. “Sorry Miss Crawford, I won’t charge you for that one. I’m terribly sorry.”

  Betty smiled. There was the Henry she knew. “Don’t worry about it.” The transformation was amazing. He was at least as good an actor as Walter, if not better. In fact… “Actually, would you like to keep that copy? I’ll still pay for it, but if you can learn lines quickly, we do need an understudy for the Butler. As far as I’m concerned, you just passed the audition.”

  Henry’s ears and cheeks turned red. “Really Miss Crawford? I mean, I’d love to, but don’t you need to talk to the director?”

  Betty s
hrugged. “I’m on the board of directors for the theater, and the director is my best friend. Not to mention, I fill in as director whenever she can’t make it. We need an understudy. Why not come to the next practice?”

  “Well, if you’re sure it’s alright,” Henry said. His eyes shone, and his back straightened. Betty gave an inward cackle. She loved helping to infect people with the theater bug. She had a feeling that, after this one play, Henry would become a regular at the theater. Being on stage would do his confidence some good, and the theater would get a wonderful actor. Exactly as it should be.

  “Absolutely. You’re fantastic. Give me your e mail, and I’ll make sure you get the updates for practice times.”

  Once information had been exchanged, Betty picked up her packages and paid for her copies. The sight of boxes sharply recalled her to the second reason for her visit to the store.

  Briefly, she explained what had been going on to Henry. His expression darkened. “That’s terrible!” he exclaimed. “I don’t know who would do something like that!” His face was red again, but this time in anger, not embarrassment. “It’s… it’s… Oh Miss Crawford, I hope you know that no one here would ever do anything like that. Why, we’re family run. It’s only me and my Dad working here, and this business means too much to our family to ever do anything like that. I’d swear on the bible, or tell a judge, or whatever you want, just please believe me! We’d never “

  Betty held up her hand, forestalling the rest of his protest. “I didn’t say I thought you’d done it Henry,” she said kindly. “Understand?” He nodded. “But someone has been tampering with my business, and it’s only since I moved back here. Do you think you could keep your eyes open? Let me know if there are any other reports of shipping mistakes, and ask your father to do the same? Whoever is doing this has to be stopped.”

  “Of course!” Henry said. “I’d do that without you asking Miss Crawford. I’ll even send out a request to everyone on our e mail list, asking people to keep an eye out.”

  Betty shook her head. “You don’t want to do that—you might alert the person doing this, and then we’d never catch them. Just keep it quiet, and let me know if you hear anything.”

  Henry saluted her.

  “I’ll do that Miss Crawford. I’ll do that gladly.”

  CHAPTER 21

  The theater door slammed behind her as Betty jostled the boxes of props and scripts, leaving her in near total darkness. The only light came from the small windows above the door, filtering through moving specks of dust in the air. Betty suddenly became fully aware that a murder had taken place mere yards from where she was standing. The shadows took on an ominous bent. Betty’s footsteps echoed as she went to find the light switch to the hall. The switch clacked on, and the front hall of the theater flooded with light from the chandeliers overhead. Another clack, and all the lights in the nooks and crannies came on, chasing the last of the shadows away. Betty let out a gusty breath.

  “Hello?” she called.

  There was no answer. Of course there was no answer. It was early afternoon, and rehearsal didn’t even start until 6 PM. It was very unlikely that anyone else would come to the theater this early. Any edginess that she felt was probably due to the fact that she had been in the dark in a theater with at least one ghost (who knew if Jarvis had decided to stick around and keep old Myrtle Lofton company?), and no one was around to witness any acts of fear or bravado.

  She started to sing the first thing that came to mind to fill the silence, letting her steps match the sing song rhythm of her words.

  “Three blind mice, three blind mice!” There was no reason to feel nervous. “See how they run! See how they run! They all ran after the farmer’s wife, who cut off their tails with the carving knife! Did you ever see such a thing in your life, as three blind mice?”

  There was nothing like a little macabre Mother Goose at a murder scene to calm her down.

  Her skittishness chased away by her ridiculous song, Betty pushed open the door to the storage room and plopped her parcels down by the door. To the inexperienced theater observer, this room looked like chaos. There seemed to be no discernable organization to the costumes hanging on racks, boxes were piled high and a book shelf in the back of the room was stacked to toppling with old scripts and books This room represented the single greatest fire hazard in the whole theater.

  And yet, any regular member of the theater would walk in and immediately find any item they were looking for. The costumes were organized by intended time period and then size within each time period. The boxes were all clearly labeled “hats,” “scarves,” “fake blood,” “swords,” and any of the other odd groupings of items that one needed to stage a decent production. Items being used for the current play were all stacked in the front left corner, with the rest of the items stacked alphabetically. Even the bookcase was organized, if perilously close to collapsing.

  It hadn’t always been like this. When Betty had first starting working at the theater, the storage room had looked like a combination of flea market tables thrown into a pile on the floor. Mice had gotten into half the costumes, and the other half were wrinkled and torn from frantic searching through the pile. Betty had taken one look at the mess and marshaled her best organization skills. She always felt a small sense of accomplishment when she came here.

  No messy room would defy her.

  It took very little time for Betty to find where each costume and prop needed to be placed to properly fit within the system. In fact, the most difficult part was finding room on the bookshelf. She had to rearrange the items on a few shelves to find the necessary square foot or so for her new pile.

  While she was shuffling through books and stacks of papers, Betty noticed a book marked Inventory. It struck her as odd that it was in the storage room, since she knew Clarise kept all the theater books in her office. Although, Betty mused, it might be easier to keep your inventory list where the inventory was stored. Clarise could easily have left the book here while she was checking to make sure that the inventory list matched what was actually in the theater’s possession. It wasn’t uncommon for a costume or prop to get lost by mistake, or for Clarise to forget she had already ordered an item a few months or years prior.

  Still. It was little odd.

  Curious, Betty opened the book. She was immediately fascinated. It contained a list of everything the theater had ever owned or sold. Betty looked at the book in her hands with a newfound respect. If it was as old as the entries indicated, this book was over eighty years old! The pages were yellowed at the edges, the binding brittle.

  The handwriting at the beginning of the ledger looked like something out of a calligraphy class. It was hard to believe that penmanship had once been an art perfected by almost every adult. The loops and swirls of graceful cursive writing gave way to the sharp strokes of print writing around the 1980s. And, in later entries, there was Clarise’s writing, lying somewhere between art and utility. It wasn’t the flowery cursive of the first entries, but Clarise’s “y”s and “j”s had a distinctive and artistic flourish.

  The story the writing told fascinated Betty. In addition to the typical modern theater equipment, it looked like some of the older equipment had never been sold. Antique projectors, sound equipment, and even old lighting fixtures that Betty knew for sure weren’t being used. Some of this equipment would be worth hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, depending on the condition it was in. In the current economy, the arts were taking a serious hit in the funding department. Selling some of these items might help the theater keep its programs running.

  A hand on her arm jerked Betty out of her inventory induced fascination. She started back, a small cry escaping her lips as she threw her hands up to bat away at whoever was touching her. In the second it took for Betty to get her bearings, she berated herself for becoming so engrossed in the book. The murderer was still out there. She had to be careful!

  “Oh!” Melody Biels said, stepping back. “I’m so sor
ry. I thought you’d heard me.” Melody looked far from her normal, immaculate self. In fact, Betty thought, she looked downright haggard. Her clothes were wrinkled, she had huge bags under her eyes, and her normally clear eyes were streaked with red and watery. Betty started to reach out to comfort her, but Melody stepped away, shaking her head.

  “I’m fine.” Her voice was curt.

  Betty dropped her arm and stood, brushing dirt and dust from her pants. She carefully replaced the inventory book on the shelf, making sure she put it back just as she’d found it.

  “Okay,” she said slowly. Did Melody honestly think she’d believe that? The woman looked about as far from fine as it was possible to get.

  Melody’s eyes darted around. “I… well, that is I…” She wrung her hands. Betty watched her steadily, letting Melody work out the words in her own time. “Oh Betty, it’s so terrible!” Melody looked behind herself, as if checking to make sure no one was creeping up on her.

  Somehow, Betty didn’t think she’d get any coherent thought out of Melody while they were in the storage room. Betty tried to quell her own nervousness, reminded of Melody’s absolute certainty that Walter didn’t kill Jarvis. She might have information about the murder. Betty needed to get her to a place she felt comfortable enough to talk.

  “Alright,” Betty said, taking Melody’s elbow to steer her out of the room. Melody moved as if she were on automatic. “Why don’t we go sit somewhere a bit more comfortable, and you can start from the beginning?” She guided Melody to one of the comfortable nooks in the lobby. From there, you could easily see the entire front hall and know if anyone else was within earshot. “Let’s sit.”

  They stayed silent for a while, and Melody visibly tried to regain some sort of composure before starting to talk.

  “Take your time,” Betty said. “People won’t be arriving for practice for a few hours yet.”

  Which seemed to be the cue for people to start arriving. The door slammed open. Melody jumped and shook and Lawrence stormed towards their table.