“Are you sure that’s why?”
He whirled to face her. “I have zero interest in pursuing an acting career, if that’s what you’re insinuating.”
She threw a pillow at him, sure he was being deliberately obtuse. “What I meant was, did it not occur to you that being in Webb’s inner circle for the next three weeks might be an incredible asset on the job? You’ll know his whereabouts at every point of the day, you’ll have access to his cell phone and office. You’ll be able to spend time with his blabbermouth daughter...”
He winced at that last one, but she knew he’d taken the point. “That’s all true,” he said slowly. “You think I should do it?”
“I absolutely do,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Particularly because of the cast and crew party, which is taking place at Webb’s town house next week.”
With no blueprints available for his residences, having the opportunity to be inside the house and scope out the layout and security would be invaluable intel for whenever they actually pulled the job.
“Another good point,” he conceded, lowering himself onto the bed next to her. “Ever tell you I dig your wits, Blondie?”
“Not often enough,” was her traditional response.
He pulled her to him, pressed his lips to her neck. She shivered.
“You’re right as usual,” he said, his voice muffled by her hair. She stroked the back of his head, waiting for his mouth to find its way to hers.
Instead, he sat up again, his brow furrowed. “But there’s a lot of exposure risk, Jess. Webb fired the last group, but he was already setting up a meeting with another broadcasting company this afternoon. If there’s a camera crew around all the time and this thing is even moderately successful, it could make a lot of our jobs harder in the future.”
She giggled. Man, she’d been waiting for this moment for hours. “Not going to be a problem.”
He pushed away, looking at her suspiciously. “What do you mean?”
She cleared her throat and held out her hand to shake. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Hale. My name is Margaret Fox and I own Theatre Anywhere, a premier webcasting company. Mr. Webb hired me this afternoon. I’ll be recording and creating webcasts of the Dial M for Murder’s rehearsals and publicity events as well as live webcasting the actual performance.”
“Jesus Fucking Christ.” Adam dropped his head in his hands.
Seriously? This was a brilliant idea. “Adam!” She shoved him. “Knock it off. I’ll be on the inside too. And since I’ll be the one recording, I can protect you. I won’t record you at all. It’s not like Webb will care if there’s no footage of the understudy.”
He glared at her. “You’re going to be around our mark every day for almost a month. What if you get caught?”
“Caught doing what?” she fired back. “My arrangement with him is totally legit. I am going to abide by our contract. I’ve set up a site for the webcasts already, and the Noble Theatre’s PR team is going to publicize them. The live streaming of the performance night won’t be a problem either.”
Adam’s mouth twitched. She loved this moment—when he was torn between wanting to praise her and wanting to throttle her. It always led to some spectacular evenings in bed.
“How did you even get him to hire you?” he asked.
“I offered to let him approve the webcasts before they’re posted. From your text earlier, I guessed that the other companies had got some unflattering footage and he didn’t want that shared—and they didn’t see the point if they couldn’t use the good stuff. Since I don’t care about ratings, I don’t care what he wants to post.”
She smiled a little, remembering her masterful performance on the call with Webb. “I also spent a lot of time telling him how webcasting is now The Thing for performances. The National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company webcast their productions to the US all the time. I convinced him that webcasting was so much classier than trying to do a reality show. And so much faster, which appealed to him a lot since his next movie comes out in just a few months.
“So.” She clapped her hands together gleefully. “We’ll both be on the inside now. The ring is practically ours already.”
Adam groaned. “You’re going to be the death of me, you know that?”
He met her eyes. “It was a terrific idea, but I hate when you jump in and do things like that without discussing it with me first. I don’t know whether to kiss you or spank you.”
She pressed him back against the mattress and climbed on top. “Let’s start with one and work our way to the other.”
Chapter Six
With only three weeks until Opening Night on New Year’s Eve, the rehearsals started immediately. For the actors, it meant twelve-hour days of learning lines, blocking scenes and getting fitted for costumes. Oh—and getting screamed at by Webb.
For Jess, it meant pretending she knew how to record a theatre production in progress and creating webcasts. The old “fake it `til you make it” adage was burned in her brain. In the two days before she was due at the theatre to meet Webb in person, she worked feverishly on preparations. She had a slew of black “Theatre Anywhere!” T-shirts created for herself and Jonno, who was going to pose as part of her “crew.” She bought professional grade video cameras, lights and a few add-ons to her video editing software.
For her Margaret Fox identity, she decided her look needed to be halfway professional and halfway artsy. Her uniform would be black leggings, her new T-shirt and a fitted black blazer. Knee high boots with a flat heel since she’d be on her feet all day. She bought a pair of funky black-rimmed glasses. And finally, she added pink streaks to her brunette hair before tossing it up in a thick bun secured by black chopsticks.
“How do I look?” she asked Adam.
“Distractingly good.” He gave her a teasing leer, then a more evaluative look. “It’s solid. The glasses and the pink hair and the all-black clothing divert attention from your face.” He winked. “I’m sure the real Margaret Fox would approve.”
Jess had followed Adam’s lead on covers and determined a theme for hers as well. Due to her IT experience/obsession, her covers were almost always technology related. Fittingly, she’d decided her covers would pay homage to IT women in history. The real Margaret Fox had been the Chief of the Office of Computer Information from 1966–1975.
On her first day, Jess toured the whole theatre with Webb and they decided upon a strategy. They would create at least three thirty-minute webcasts each of the two weeks prior to the production. She would record segments of the dress rehearsal for a special webcast just prior to the big event. Finally, on the night of the actual play, the entire performance would be recorded and live streamed. She would be allowed to record any part of the rehearsals during the day as well as testimonial-style interviews with the actors and crew. However, as Webb repeatedly reminded her, he would approve everything before it was posted online.
Jess set up her testimonial booth in an unused dressing room and let the actors know that Webb expected them to each come in once a day for at least a few minutes. Some of them grumbled, but most looked kind of excited. She wondered if their excitement would fade once she let them know that Webb had approval over what would actually be seen.
She set up her main camera facing the stage and a few other stationary cameras in public areas offstage where the actors and crew were likely to gather. Poor Jonno followed her around silently. She’d wanted him to come with her to the theatre for a look of authenticity. After all, Theatre Anywhere was supposed to be a whole company, not a one-woman shop. But Jonno was overwhelmed by the technology and had no idea what to do with a camera or the laptops the footage fed into. She could have used him as an interviewer, but Jonno’s idea of conversation generally ended at “How you doin’?”
After a day of mentally pulling her pink hair, she finally
just gave him a clipboard with the testimonial schedule. His task was to make sure each actor and understudy showed up in the room at their given time. Turned out to be a fairly simple task after the first day. He was a huge, slightly thuggish-looking guy and the actors got uneasy when he was hunting them down. So they started showing up early for their appointments on their own.
It took her just a few days to find a good rhythm. She started each day with Webb in his office. He was at his most civil then, after he’d had his coffee and before the actors started to annoy him. He’d tell her what he hoped to accomplish that day, which she recorded and which gave her the outline for that particular day’s webcast.
Then, she’d film rehearsal and offstage action for a few hours, making notes to herself on which aspects might be most interesting from a viewer’s perspective. While the acting was always a highlight, she also made sure to get footage of the set being built and the costumes being sewn. She visited the business office and learned about ticket sales and which charities would benefit from the performance. In the afternoons, she’d interview each actor and crew member in the testimonial booth to get their thoughts on the day and how things were going.
A few of the actors were disappointed that they couldn’t use the testimonial booth as a public bitching platform, but they recovered quickly. After all, they wanted as much screen time as possible on the webcasts. It was fun for Jess to watch the actors onstage, backstage and in the testimonial booth. Each actor was like three different people.
Katrina Webb, for example, was a vapid and uninteresting leading lady onstage. Offstage, she was either texting or complaining loudly about anything and everything. But in the testimonial booth, she was a grateful, starstruck young actress. “I’m just so grateful to be part of this,” she gushed into Jess’s camera. “My father is my hero and I think he’s a genius. The other actors are amazing and push me to be better, every single day.”
Olive Summers was quickly becoming Jess’s favorite person to record. Onstage, she kicked the role of Margot Wendice’s ass, every single scene. Offstage, she was kind to everyone but didn’t suppress her sharp sense of humor. In the testimonial booth, she provided Jess with her best one-liners and encapsulations of how the rehearsals were going. Midweek, she collapsed in front of the camera and grinned mischievously. “It’s a bit of a bloody mess right now, isn’t it?”
Tyler Ryan, the leading man, was the exception to the three-in-one actor scenario. As far as Jess could tell, he was exactly the same everywhere. He was kind of like a big, friendly golden retriever. Everyone loved him and he was extremely audience-friendly in the testimonials. Jess knew that his fans would love his wide eyes and earnest expression as he confessed, “I’m learning so much! Y’all need to watch this show. Everyone is working so hard!”
Unfortunately, the Tony Wendice character was the opposite of a golden retriever, and Ryan quickly became the target of most of Webb’s verbal abuse. Jess had taken to going for a coffee when she saw Webb getting riled up at him. Might as well take a break then since that particular footage would never be used.
When Jess went home for the night, however, her work was just beginning. With the city lights of London glowing through the window, she reviewed all the footage from the day and tried to collect/edit the best bits into a version of the day’s story. It took forever, especially the part where she needed to watch every interaction with Webb to make sure she cut anything negative.
She was usually done around 2:00 am at which point she’d email the collected footage to Webb and collapse into bed next to Adam, who was already snoring. Webb would email her back comments by 7:00 am and she’d make edits before returning to the theatre at 9:00 to start the whole process over again.
Before Adam made his splashy entrance into her life and changed her career trajectory, she’d been a workaholic, so this schedule didn’t faze her too much. But she did miss Adam. They barely saw each other out of character. He was working long hours too, and he was always acting—either onstage when Tyler Ryan needed a break, or offstage when he played the part of Nate Hale, understudy and upcoming actor. The constant need to perform had to be draining, but he hung in there.
Tony and Frank were the only ones without some sort of inside role in the theatre, so they decided to go up to the Cotswolds for a few days to scope out the exterior of Webb’s estate. Without blueprints, they’d have to rely solely on their recon for the entrances and exits and what kind of physical and electronic security the estate had in place. They still didn’t know if Webb kept the Blue there or at his place in Chelsea. Adam figured they could probably find out from Katrina, but didn’t want to ask her about the jewel randomly again at the theatre. A more natural opportunity would probably arise when everyone was dressed up for the cast and crew party over the weekend.
By the end of the first week, Webb had come to trust Jess since the clips she provided him were uniformly flattering. He didn’t even notice that she never included footage of Adam. Between Katrina’s acceptance of Adam as a fellow understudy and Webb’s approval of her professional performance, she figured they were well-positioned going into the party on Saturday night.
* * *
Jess had already left for Webb’s town house by the time Adam returned from a costume fitting on Saturday afternoon. Obviously, they couldn’t attend the party as a couple, but he still felt a little mopey. He’d barely been able to talk to her this week, and he fucking missed her.
He stepped into the shower and tried to wash off his bad mood. He was tired. Discombobulated. On one of his own jobs, he’d never enter a deep, intense cover like this without having a clear direction of what the actual plan for taking the jewel would be. But here he was, stuck at the goddamn theatre all day and night, and they still had no real direction for how to take the Blue. He washed his hair and forced himself to push aside the fatigue and lay out next steps:
Figure out if the Blue was at the Chelsea town house or the Cotswolds estate.
Get a handle on the security for whichever property held the Blue.
Decide on a date for the job. He and Jess would only be in Webb’s proximity for another couple of weeks.
Figure out who was doing what. (He firmly intended to do the B and E himself. Tony was too old to act quickly and despite what she might think, Jess was going nowhere near the actual theft.)
Stepping out of the shower, he yawned. How he’d fit these steps into his already-crazed daily schedule, he wasn’t sure. Give up sleep probably.
He had to give these full-time actors a lot of credit. They sure worked hard and took a lot of abuse. The best part of the last week had been observing their craft. He didn’t see the point of learning all of Wendice’s lines. There was zero chance he’d actually end up onstage. Webb needed Tyler Ryan’s box office draw to get the in-person and online crowd he wanted.
He’d learned the key scenes that were practiced over and over, but instead of learning the smaller bits, he’d tried to watch and learn from the other actors. The guys who played Swann, Halliday and the Inspector were an assortment of stage and screen actors from the US and UK, and Adam learned something new from each of them. New quirks and mannerisms that would be invaluable in his covers for years to come.
And Olive Summers was a marvel. She was able to add so much depth to the Margot character. With her onstage, Margot was still innocent, but she also showed remorse about her affair and as the scenes went on, she somehow embodied a creeping dread which reflected the growing questions in her mind about her husband.
Too bad all of it was lost on Tyler Ryan. God, he was a problem. He didn’t act as much as bring himself onstage. In his films, the main character was always supposed to be a handsome “aw shucks” kind of guy, which had worked fine in the silly romances or when fighting with comedic aliens. But every line he delivered as Wendice was just wrong.
Adam cringed, rememberi
ng the first time Ryan-as-Wendice tried to coerce Swann into murdering his wife. He spoke the dialogue so inappropriately that the scene made no sense. The audience would come away with the impression that he was telling an odd long joke. Webb had screamed at Ryan for a good ten minutes that day, his face a scary shade of purple. Ryan had spent the rest of the day with his chin on his chest.
He hadn’t improved. Earlier this morning, Ryan and Olive had been rehearsing one of Adam’s favorite scenes. It’s at the point of the play where Wendice has arranged Margot’s murder down to the minute. He’ll be at a stag party to establish his alibi. He’s left a key for Swann and instructed him to hide behind the long curtains next to a desk on which a telephone sits. At approximately 11:00 pm, he’ll call Margot so she’ll come out from the bedroom to answer the phone. At that point, Swann will emerge from the curtains and attack her.
However, as Wendice is about to leave for the stag party, Margot informs him that she doesn’t plan to stay home alone after all. Well, Wendice has to scramble here because his whole plan depends on her being where he told Swann she’ll be. So he lets loose a little verbal assault on Margot, persuading her to stay home with a barrage of guilt trips until she acquiesces.
This morning, Ryan bungled the scene over and over. As Webb grew angrier with each take, Ryan got so flustered he forgot lines. The tension in the room grew so high that even Olive made a rare mistake.
Finally, Webb lost it. “Get out of my theatre, you no-talent meathead,” he bellowed at Ryan. “Take a walk around the cold streets and try to scrape up some semblance of interesting behavior! You’re ruining the whole play!”
Ryan fled while the rest of the company pretended not to have heard anything. Jess, wisely, had disappeared at the beginning of the scene, returning only with her camera when Ryan was gone.
Wicked Stage Page 5
