“Peters,” he said, “I’m not staying around to get myself killed or spend the remainder of my life behind steel bars. I’ve spent my life playing everything from minstrel shows to third-rate opera. It’s kept me alive, and that’s the way I want to stay. I signed on for this role, but the play’s getting too serious for me.”
“Cherokee, Texas,” I said.
“You’ve got all the pieces,” Raymond said.
I took a couple of unsteady steps toward him when the door at the back of the auditorium started to open. Instead of crossing the stage, I rolled behind the fallen curtain and duck-walked to the wings. I looked back to see Preston, Sunset, and a pair of uniformed cops moving down the aisle toward the stage, I got up, took off my shoes, and ran into the darkness.
Vera’s dressing room was close by. I went for it. The door was open. The lights were out. I left them that way and felt along the wall for the curtained-off closet to the right. I pushed back the curtain, went in, closed the curtain, and sat on the floor behind hanging clothes. I felt around on the floor and found a plaster head with a wig on it. I moved the head carefully, took off Charles’s frayed jacket, put it on the floor under my head, and with a groan curled into an aching ball.
I fell asleep. I don’t remember the dream very well. Koko was there. So was Winston Churchill. Raymond was dressed as a Japanese cowboy. That I remember. Then the sound of voices awoke me and then the light went on.
It wasn’t exactly bright in the closet, but I could see Raymond clearly. He sat in the corner about three feet away, looking at a spot just above my head, his suitcase in his lap. He was definitely dead. I could tell that even without the sword sticking out of his stomach.
“… so Osa Johnson said,” a woman’s voice came as I tried to quietly sit up, doing my best to ignore or overcome the pain. “She said, ‘I’ll bet the cannibal natives are wondering why we’re killing so many Japs. They know we can’t possibly eat all of them.’”
I made it to something resembling a sitting position.
“That’s very funny, Gwen,” Vera said.
“Actually,” answered Gwen, “I thought it was when I read it, but it just seems a bit stupid now.”
I could see the out lines of the two women against the cloth curtains draping the closet. Vera appeared to be sitting at her dressing table.
“It’s all right,” said Vera. “I appreciate your helping me. I … we’d better get ready. My first-act costume and wig are in the closet.”
I was propped in one corner, the dead Raymond in the other when Gwen threw back the curtain and pushed the clothes back to reveal us.
“You know what time it is?” I asked.
Gwen looked at us and gasped. Vera heard her, turned in her chair, saw me and the sword sticking out of Raymond, and screamed.
A knock at the dressing room door. Vera jumped from her chair, closed the closet curtain, and said, “Come in.”
The door opened and I heard Sunset’s voice.
“You all right?”
“I was rehearsing,” said Vera. She went up and down the scales to prove her point.
“You’re all right?” Sunset repeated.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ve got to get made up and dressed. Mr. Butler, could you stay and give Gwen a hand with my costume?”
“I’ll be outside,” said Sunset.
The door closed. Footsteps. The cloth curtain was pulled back and I looked up at Vera, Jeremy, and Gwen.
“I did not do it,” I said, nodding at Raymond. “I came in here to hide and fell asleep. When I woke up, there he was.”
Jeremy helped me up.
“I believe you,” said Vera. “Can we … I’d rather not look.…”
I stepped out of the closet and Gwen closed the curtain.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Just before six,” Gwen said, looking at her wristwatch. “Dress rehearsal is at eight.”
“We can’t leave him in there,” Vera said, pointing at the closet.
“Call the cops and I’ll be up for two murders, and spending the night with Detective Sunset, who would probably use my head for batting practice,” I said.
“I’m afraid you can’t get out of here, Toby,” Jeremy said.
I looked around the room. There wasn’t much to see.
“Dress rehearsal is at eight,” said Gwen again, looking at the closed curtain.
“Maestro Stokowski is not pleased with the compromise of using John Lundeen as Pinkerton,” said Jeremy.
“It looks as if Martin Passacaglia will be all right for opening night,” said Vera, taking Gwen’s hand. “If not, the Maestro found a tenor in Los Angeles who can be down here in a day.”
“Wouldn’t the new guy have to rehearse, block, whatever?” I asked.
“It helps,” said Vera, “but featured singers sometimes come in the afternoon of a performance, go through simple blocking, and then do it. It’s not the best way, but it’s done.”
“Looks like I’m done, too,” I said.
“No,” said Vera, touching my cheek. “I think I have an idea. Gwen, we need makeup, costumes, wigs, and men.”
“That’s always been my philosophy,” Gwen agreed.
Vera explained her plan. I’d heard better, but it wasn’t bad.
“Jeremy,” I said. “Gunther and Shelly are in Lundeen’s office. Can you get them down here?”
Jeremy nodded and moved to the door. Gwen went with him. I went back behind the curtains while they opened the door and went out. When I heard Vera lock it, I came out.
Vera’s hands were folded. She was looking at Raymond. I closed the curtains.
“That sword,” she said. “It’s the one I’m supposed to use in the last act to commit hari-kari.”
“They’ll have a backup,” I said, moving to her side and putting an arm around her.
“The police,” she said. “Maybe they’ll think I killed …”
“We’ll get Raymond out of here,” I assured her.
“I think this Erik is really going to try to kill me,” she said with a shiver that went through us both.
“You want to have Stokowski call the whole thing off?”
She went rigid. Her back went straight.
“No,” she said. “If I quit, if there is no performance, no opera, then Lorna and that poor man will have died for nothing.”
“Sounds like the war,” I said.
“Perhaps it is,” she agreed, moving to her dressing table and sitting.
I leaned over and kissed her.
“Did he bleed on my wig?”
“No.”
“Why … who killed that poor man?”
“The why I know,” I said. “He knew who killed Lorna and who’s been playing Phantom. He wasn’t a harmless old bat. He was an actor hired, blackmailed, or bribed into helping our Erik, but he didn’t count on killing.”
“Now he’s dead,” she said. “These are very trying circumstances in which to give a performance.”
“I’ll give you that,” I said, grimacing as I leaned against the dressing table.
“You’re in pain?” She touched my cheek.
“Maybe just a little,” I admitted.
It was hard to carry on a tender conversation with a skewered corpse in the closet and the police outside the door looking for me. Luckily, Gwen came knocking within fifteen minutes.
“It’s me,” she said. “Are you decent? The policeman is being kind enough to help me with the costumes.”
I knew a hint when I heard one. I went back in with Raymond. He was still dead. The door opened and Gwen said. “Right over there.”
“Sure,” said Sunset. Then he left and the door was closed and locked.
When I came out this time, Gwen was piling wigs and a big leather box on the dressing table. A stack of silly-looking costumes was on the floor.
Another knock at the door. This time it was Jeremy, Shelly, and Gunther. When the door was locked, Gunther moved to Gwen’s side and patted her hand. S
helly looked at the room in confusion; Jeremy leaned back against the door, arms folded.
“What’s going on?” Shelly inquired, adjusting his glasses.
I moved to the closet and pushed open the curtain.
“I think he’s dead, Toby,” Shelly said seriously.
“I think so, Shel,” I agreed.
“I don’t care to be around dead people,” said Shelly, beads of sweat now clear on his forehead. “Especially ones with big knives in them.”
“None of us do,” I said, closing the curtain.
“Why couldn’t we meet upstairs where there aren’t any dead people?” Shelly asked. “This place looks like the stateroom scene in A Night at the Opera.”
“That’s just what it is, Shel,” I said.
Vera explained her plan. We were all going to get dressed as Japanese, complete with wigs and makeup. Even Raymond. Then at curtain time we’d all come streaming out and sweep right past. Sunset and his cavalry.
“I don’t like it,” said Shelly, “I don’t look Japanese.”
“You will when Gwen and I finish with you,” said Vera. “We haven’t much time.”
Finding costumes for Shelly, me, and Raymond proved easy. Jeremy and Gunther were the big problems. Gwen managed a transformation of Gunther, but Jeremy proved too great a task. They gave up.
While we dressed, I got the information that would make sense out of most of what was going on.
Shelly had found Snick Farkas in front of the Opera after looking around the neighborhood for hours. Farkas had camped on the steps, five-dollar bill in hand, watching Souvaine’s troops while he waited for someone to tell him how to buy a ticket. Shelly had told him there were no tickets for the dress rehearsal but he could get him in. Farkas had been more than happy to come.
“He’s sitting in the back row,” said Shelly, shifting his cigar stub so Gwen could apply makeup to his cheeks.
Gunther’s information was even more valuable and came in a rectangular envelope he handed to me.
“You will find in the envelope the playbill for the performance of La Fanciulla del West on March 15, 1936,” said Gunther. “However, the event never came to pass. I called the office of the newspaper in Cherokee, Texas, which I got from the information operator. A woman named Esther Trosow, who serves as editor, read to me the news item of that day. It seems there was an unfortunate incident. A person who played a bartender in the production was killed. The company was gone before the sheriff, a man named Pyle, could investigate fully. Citizens were upset that they did not get their money back.”
“How’d you get this?” I asked, opening the envelope and trying not to wrinkle the rubber bald pate Vera had placed on my head.
“Miss Trosow informed me that a gentleman from Cherokee who had been manager with the Wild Bill Hickok Opera House had moved to Santa Rosa and that he might have more information. With Miss Trosow’s help, I located the man, who informed me that he had kept both the clippings and the playbill for the event because it marked the end of any attempt to bring opera to Cherokee, Texas.”
“Did you look at this?” I asked Gunther, who was adjusting the sleeves on his tiny costume.
“I did,” he said.
“What?” cried Shelly, turning his head and dropping a clump of ashes on his costume.
“For starters,” I said. “The part of Minnie was sung by …”
“Supposed to be sung by,” Gunther corrected.
“Supposed to be sung by,” I amended, “Lorna Bartlett.”
“Lorna Bartholomew?” Shelly asked.
I didn’t answer.
“A man named Roger Griffith was supposed to play three parts in the opera,” I went on. We all looked at the dead Raymond, who, propped in the corner, sword now removed from his chest and placed neatly in his sash, looked like John Carradine as a transvestite.
A knock at the door and a voice. “Ten minutes to dress rehearsal.”
“Thank you,” called Vera, who no longer looked like Vera but a white-faced Japanese with a pile of dark hair.
“What else?” asked Shelly, admiring himself in the mirror. He looked like an Oriental version of Fiorello La Guardia.
“There’s a picture here,” I said. “Not a good one, but a picture from the Cherokee Daily Indian, a picture of guy who was supposed to sing the lead in La Fanciulla del West.”
I passed the picture around. No one said a word. I dropped it back in the envelope and stuffed the package in my purple kimono.
Another knock and the voice. “On stage.”
“Let’s do it,” I said.
Jeremy lifted Raymond Griffith’s body with one hand and I moved behind him. Gwen, not in costume, was at the rear of the parade. Vera led us out the door. We all pretended to exercise our voices.
People, some in costume, some carrying instruments, were scurrying around. Sunset, Preston, and uniformed police were standing off to the side examining faces. Preston looked directly at me. I opened my mouth and let out a falsetto “Fa, Fa, Fa,” and kept in the middle of the crowd.
We moved onto the stage. The curtain was down. There was a thronelike chair in one corner of the Japanese home set. Jeremy and I placed the dead Raymond in the chair, and I asked Jeremy to find Farkas and sit with him. Jeremy nodded and left the stage. Gwen squeezed Gunther’s hand and moved off.
“The first scene,” Vera said to me, “is supposed to be between Pinkerton and Cio-cio-san’s maid. There’s a garden set in front of the curtain. Goro would normally come out a bit later, but Maestro Stokowski has taken some creative liberties with the story, so …”
“Got it,” I said. “You going to be okay?”
“Yes.” Vera nodded.
And she was off. Members of the chorus, all dressed as Japanese, quietly found places on the set. Some of them looked at Gunther, Shelly, and me as if we were extras lost from a road show of The Mikado.
Through the curtain, the overture began. It sounded loud, strong, sure to me. Gunther pulled me down to him to whisper, “He’s improvising. Stokowski is improvising with Puccini.”
“Sounds okay to me,” I said.
“But,” posed Gunther, adjusting his kimono, “is the proper role of the musician to render the composer’s work faithfully or to use it as a point of departure for his own creativity?”
“Beats hell out of me, Gunther,” I admitted, trying to work out how I was going to unmask a killer and get the police off my back.
“It is a conundrum,” said Gunther.
I moved to the curtain and parted it just enough to see Stokowski, eyes closed in concentration, whipping his hands frantically. Behind him I could see an audience of about a hundred for the dress rehearsal. I couldn’t see Jeremy and Farkas in the rear, but I was counting on them being there.
The overture stopped and Vera began to sing.
She sounded light, happy, a Japanese song bird singing in Italian. Lundeen came in. He didn’t sound bad either, but I had the feeling he wasn’t hitting the upper end of the role.
When the curtain came up for the wedding party, the chorus sang, Gunther and I mouthed, and Raymond sat dead. No problems. Lundeen strolled the stage, smiling in a tight blue, ersatz navy uniform with brass buttons. He was sweating. As he passed without recognizing me, I whispered, “Ever play Samson?”
The smile fell from his face and he stopped walking and looked at me.
“How about Johnson in La Fanciulla del West?” I tried pulling the envelope out of my kimono to remove the newspaper photograph of Lundeen, looking thirty pounds thinner and two to four murders lighter. I held it up for the baritone to see. He turned into a tower of sweat and missed his cue.
There was a long pause. The orchestra stopped playing. Vera resang her line. Someone coughed.
“Giancarlo,” Stokowski’s voice came. “This is a dress rehearsal. You have just been given a cue. There is an audience waiting, an orchestra waiting.”
“I …” Lundeen began, turning to the audience.
&
nbsp; “Snick,” I shouted. “You ever see this man before?”
From the back of the auditorium came the wavering voice of Snick Farkas. “Samson et Dalila, City of the Angels in 1938, ’39, something like that.”
“Mr. Peters,” Stokowski said above the sudden hum and rising of the crowd.
“Anyplace else?” I asked, stepping to the front of the stage.
“Yesterday,” came Farkas’ voice. “Going into that building you hit me in front of with the car. Just before you went in.”
“Mr. Peters,” Stokowski repeated. “Am I to understand that you are about to eliminate my second Pinkerton of the day?”
“Looks that way, Maestro,” I said.
“And we are to understand,” Stokowski said, playing his role perfectly, “that Mr. Lundeen killed Miss Bartholomew?”
“Right,” I said.
I could feel rather than see Preston and Sunset coming out of the wings in my direction.
“He also killed Raymond Griffith,” I said, pointing to the corpse on the throne.
That stopped Preston and Sunset, who looked at the dead man.
“And Mr. Peters,” Stokowski said, arms folded, lifting his chin at me, playing the perfect straight man. “Why did Giancarlo do these things?”
“My guess is he wants this opera to fail,” I said. “He pulled this scam on a smaller level back in Texas seven years ago. Combination of insurance scam and overselling to backers. I think someone objected to it then and got killed.”
“Madness,” cried Lundeen, arms out, walking around the stage, asking the audience for sympathy.
“Nope,” I said, pulling the bald pate off my head and scratching where it itched. “You were in it with Lorna and Griffith. I think she changed her mind when she decided maybe you weren’t just faking attacks on her. Gunther and I went over all the information on where people said they were when Wyler the plasterer died, when I was attacked, and when Lorna was attacked twice. You, Lorna, and Griffith always covered for each other. But you overcovered. All three of you said you saw a guy with a cape climbing up the scaffolding before the carpenter died. But you were seen inside the auditorium just before the death of the plasterer. I’ll bet the poor guy just fell and you made up the Phantom story.”
“But Lorna …” Lundeen pleaded.
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