Broken Strings
Page 27
Friday, October 12
“Jealousy, that’s what I make of it,” Sergeant Nova said on the phone when he offered a motive for Ishtar’s killing Gloria. “Like you said, Fay, Ishtar was the birth mother. She couldn’t stand that Gloria called herself Mother. The thought festered till Ishtar couldn’t stand it any longer. So she slipped into Gloria’s room at Green Pastures, and strangled her with one of her scarves. Ishtar had pancreatic cancer. It’s the kind that takes you quick, like a couple of months. Nothing to lose, then, either of them – to the black woman’s mind anyway, I suppose. What do I know?”
Fay thanked him for calling and said goodbye. She couldn’t process all this now. What did anyone know about the tangled strings of the mind? For now, the Valentini troupe was on its way to Rutland. Glenna, Fay, Chance, Beets and Apple, Ethan, Willard and Billy, who was out on bail, all crammed into Fay’s new second-hand van. She’d traded in the beat-up pickup. They needed the extra space for puppets and people. She might have Willard paint Valentini Marionettes on the side of the van.
Skull Man, though, was still at large. He’d taken a Tuesday morning plane to Boston, presumably to meet Sammy there. And there was Sammy with a concussion, broken ribs, and lord knows what else. “When the trial comes up, she’ll limp in, try to brown nose the jury,” Fay said. “You wait and see.”
“So that skull person gets away scot free?” Glenna asked. “That’s not right.” Glenna was squashed in the front seat between Fay and a boxful of puppets. She refused to wear a seat belt. It hurt her belly, she said. She didn’t care about any “damn law.”
No one could answer that question, but it was intriguing. “It’s an international affair at this point,” Fay said. “We’ll have to leave it up to the police. Let Britain have the ugly fellow. For now let’s concentrate on today’s show. Ethan, you need to do more with the sound in the second act, when the prince fights the monster. Make them shiver in their seats.”
Ethan grunted. “We’ll stop for pizza after the show,” Fay said to placate her grandson. “That’s your reward. You’ve an afternoon off school, so enjoy it.”
Ethan groaned.
Fay pulled into the parking lot of the senior center. The killers were caught – well, all but Marion’s. The cops had let Cedric go for lack of tangible proof. But she vowed he’d get his comeuppance – somehow. So on with the show as Marion would have wanted, with the wise Ganesha puppet announcing the scenes. The audience would love his elephantine nose.
The first two acts went smoothly. They’d been rehearsing intensely. She hoped they’d be able to keep Billy. The police couldn’t prove that he wouldn’t have torched Cedric’s house if Ishtar hadn’t come along – and Billy himself didn’t seem to know what he’d have done. “I didn’t want to, that’s all I knew,” he’d told Chance. And then there was the full can of gasoline in his bike basket. Fay noticed, though, that Chance hadn’t spent as much time with him since the fire. She was down at the craft center Thursday after school, working on her goat puppets.
And here in Act 3 was Chance’s Beauty, waking a hundred years later, a wrinkled, white haired Beauty, the same marionette Marion had created for an earlier ending. Wrinkled, yes, but the carved face still fine-boned and beautiful. There was an audible gasp from the audience. They could relate, all those seniors out there with their apple doll faces and saggy bellies. Fay recalled an ancient aunt in a nursing home, telling her she was “in love” with another patient. He turned out to be eighty-nine; she was ninety-two. You were never too old for love.
But how would the prince react to this centenarian? Marion had kept her prince a smooth-cheeked fellow with lustrous hair, athletic arms, and shapely fingers to stroke a princess with. In one of Marion’s versions he’d wakened Beauty in shock – himself unchanged in one hundred years – then turned away into the arms of a nubile girlfriend. And the females in the audience hated it, this harsh realism.
Not so with Fay’s new ending. For here was the prince, as creased and arthritic as his elderly princess, laying aside his cane and leaning over the lavender satin sheets. “A rose by any other name,” the lover said in Billy’s thrilling baritone and Fay’s misquoted Shakespeare, “could not smell so sweet as this lovely lady.”
There was a moment’s silence as though the audience didn’t know what to do with this unorthodox ending. Then the sound of one person clapping, then two, then everyone applauding, white-haired elders and a sprinkle of grandchildren, on their feet. Suddenly, Willard’s cheek was against hers, sponging up her tears.
“Fay. A rose by any other name,” he said “Or however it goes…”
“I like your version,” she said. “However it goes. Shall we try it? Tonight? I mean, who has a hundred years to wait?” She didn’t dare look at Willard. She wiped her brow. Had somebody turned up the heat in this room?
* * *
“So who gets the Valentini money now?” Chance asked after all the hoopla and the adulation and the clean-up – and they climbed into the van for the ride home to Branbury.
“Well,” Fay said. “Valentini puppets should be in the running. I mean, the troupe is supposed to get a small percentage, according to Marion’s scribbled will. But if we can’t pin Cedric, he won’t give us a penny.”
“Uh oh,” Glenna said. “I forgot to tell you. There was a call from that lawyer, the Donahue woman?”
“And?” Fay said.
“She’s found a third cousin, living in New Zealand. She just heard about the murders, and wants to claim the estate.”
A hand reached out to squeeze Fay’s shoulder. “It’s all right,” Willard said. “We can make it on our own. Chance’s papier mâché goats, you know? They’re really good. I can help her with them. You can write the show.”
“I’ve already written it,” Chance said with a sly smile.
“Well, anyway,” Willard said, and gave Fay’s shoulder another squeeze.
“That relative’s probably a fraud,” Ethan said. “They’ll get her DNA and prove it. She’s an aborigine who got a high school diploma on the internet. It happens all the time. Then you can let me have a handout for this summer. Me and Jimmy are thinking of biking across the country.”
“Ask your mother. I want no part of it,” Fay told her grandson. Then she got laughing at the absurdity of life – she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t stop. Her body was aching with the laughter. She was dripping fat tears – she could hardly see to drive. There was far too much for one mind to process: the murders, the plays, the family, the manipulations, the hopes, the fears, the jealousies, and the losses. The gains, she thought, the wins.
“There’s Rosie’s,” Ethan said. “You promised to stop for something to eat, and anyway, Beets and I got something to show you.”
“Why the heck not?” Fay agreed, and careened into the parking lot.
“So what have you got to show me?” she asked the two boys after everyone had ordered.
“Watch,” Ethan said, as Beets pulled out his cell phone and they watched a brief scene play itself out on the small hand-held screen. “September nineteen,” Ethan announced, and there was the wicked Nightshade, held by Cedric, hurling a second live rose at Beauty, but throwing high! And Marion’s quick hand snatching the poisoned rose, letting it drop into the puppet’s lap. And then the puppeteer sucking her finger where the thorn had pricked her flesh – and put her to sleep for one hundred years. And beyond.
Oh my God. Tangible evidence! Fay thought. And everyone cheered and slapped Beets on the back.
“So you couldn’t have told us about this earlier?” Fay said to her grandson.
“Well, we didn’t realize till now, did we, Beets?” Ethan said, and Fay had to smile.
“And so the play comes to life,” Fay said. “Cedric can’t talk his way out of this. Good for you, Beets! You’re headed for district attorney or something big. We don’t need Stormy Moon to tell us that.”
She got out of her seat to hug the grinning boy, and his face turne
d the color of his name.
Author’s Note
Protagonist Fay Hubbard, along with a few other secondary characters, also appears in three of the five mysteries in the author’s Ruth Willmarth series (St. Martin’s Press). The fictional town of Branbury, based on her hometowns of Cornwall and Middlebury, Vermont, is the setting for her children’s books as well, both mainstream and mystery.
Dedication:
In loving memory of family puppeteers Grace Means Arnold and Lanelle Rice.
Acknowledgments
I’m grateful to my spouse, Llyn Rice, for not only reading this manuscript with a critical eye, but for filling our house with his mother’s puppets and marionettes, and making them speak and dance for us. Special thanks to my son Donald’s Very Merry Theatre for bringing to life scenes from this book, and for delighting thousands of children with his onstage magic. I’m indebted to Carol Washington, who has lovingly mothered a family of foster children—an inspiration for this book. And to Hannah Sessions for an instructive afternoon on her Blueledge goat farm; and to Luci Zahray, the celebrated Poison Lady, for recommending just the right poison for my hapless puppeteer. A bouquet of thanks to my publisher Kitty Bullard for her diligence and enthusiasm for my work, and to my insightful editor, Lisanne Cooper, for pointing out errors and calming my excesses. And as always, deep appreciation to my entire loving family for their longtime support of my writing habits, and for sometimes serving as “models” for my offbeat characters. (Never the bad guys, though!)
Copyright © 2013 by Nancy Means Wright
Originally published by Enigma/GMTA Publishing [9780615743554]
Electronically published in 2015 by Belgrave House
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No portion of this book may be reprinted in whole or in part, by printing, faxing, E-mail, copying electronically or by any other means without permission of the publisher. For more information, contact Belgrave House, 190 Belgrave Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94117-4228
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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.