Backstage Stuff

by Sharon Fiffer

  “Detective Oh,” Jane said. As comfortable as their relationship had grown, Jane couldn’t bring herself to say “Hi,” which, when directed toward Oh sounded even more frivolous and inconsequential than it normally would.

  Once, when she expressed a desire to curb her tendency to fill in empty space with chatter when questioning suspects, Oh had suggested she imagine that every word she spoke cost a dollar. Jane, frugal to her core since she had become a picker, found that the “dollar a word” game worked very well when she found herself surrounded by persons of interest. When she began a conversation with Oh, however, remembering the value of words often rendered her tongue-tied. Jane wondered if she needed to invent an entirely new language to use exclusively in conversation with Oh.

  “Mrs. Wheel, you left for your parents’ home in a hurry? I hope nothing is amiss.”

  Amiss was the perfect word. No murder, no mayhem, no provable crime and yet things were definitely amiss. A creepy ventriloquist’s dummy hanging from a chandelier, ominous notes, and a possibly arranged accident that sent Penny Kendell to the hospital were not exactly the great mystery of Jane Wheel’s career, and yet she felt that things were definitely off-kilter. The fact that Tim was directing a terrible play with Nellie in the cast, not to mention Nellie’s old boyfriend showing up, contributed to the “kilter” being off. Jane took a deep breath.

  “Tim has dragged me down here for two projects. I’m helping him prep for a huge sale and also helping him work on a play he’s directing for the community theater.”

  “Back to your theatrical roots, Mrs. Wheel?”

  When had she ever told Oh about majoring in theater? She must have been babbling about it when they were on a stakeout or driving to meet a client or …

  “You mentioned your dreams of a career on the stage when we were in California and you were being courted for the movies.”

  Oh was helping her save money for future words by reading her mind.

  “I’m a designer and tech person for Tim, which was not my strength or forte, but he needs me and there’s something interesting … amiss … going on here that I think I need to figure out before something even more serious happens, before someone—”

  Jane stopped because she could hear Oh’s wife talking loudly in the background and sensed a distraction on the other end.

  “I apologize, Mrs. Wheel, but Claire must leave the house and is asking to speak with you.”

  “Jane, is Tim doing the sale at Margie Kendell’s parents’ house? I won’t tell anyone how I found out, but I have to know. Please.”

  Had haughty Claire ever said “please” before? Tim hadn’t told her the Kendell sale was a secret and since the contract had already been signed, Jane saw no harm in filling her in.

  “I’m sitting in Margie Kendell’s bedroom right now,” said Jane.

  “I knew it! Just because he lives in that pathetic little town doesn’t mean he should have exclusive rights to those kinds of antiques, those furnishings. The art alone … why in the world didn’t she hire someone from the city, someone whom she had known for years, for heaven’s sake, I went to school with her. I found her mother all of the lighting for the parlor twenty-five years ago when I was starting out. I have receipts, provenance … I have paperwork!”

  “Claire, I don’t know how—”

  “Is she there? I haven’t been able to reach her for weeks! Did Lowry get her to change her number? Does he have her locked in a closet?”

  Jane could hear Bruce Oh murmuring in the background.

  “I will not be calm, not this time. She promised me this property years ago when her mother and father were gone, she’d have me in there to do a complete … wait a minute. It was Rick! Her lazy brother hired Lowry, didn’t he?”

  “Why don’t you call Tim, Claire. I’m sure he knows more than—”

  “Oh yes, I’ll talk to Lowry all right.”

  There was a pause, then Oh was back on the phone.

  “I am so sorry, Mrs. Wheel.”

  “I understand the frustration. This is quite a houseful of stuff—and if you knew about it and thought you were going to get it and didn’t, it would definitely be a blow.”

  “It’s more than that, Mrs. Wheel. Claire and Margaret Kendell were close friends in boarding school. I met Ms. Kendell when Claire was leading a group of collectors to London for a shopping trip. Margaret spent the night at our home before their flight the next morning. She was a lovely woman, very quiet, and she seemed to be a good and loyal friend of Claire’s. I believe that although my wife becomes passionate about the objects in question, this time she is more concerned about her friend’s broken promise,” Oh said. He paused before continuing. “I think Claire believes that with this sale, something is amiss.”

  Oh promised to call back after speaking with Claire. He said his wife was in need of some calming and a cup of tea, which he felt called upon to provide. Jane sat where she was, staring at the phone still in her hand. If Tim had made the ring tone for Bruce Oh a harp, what might she expect when other calls came in?

  How did Tim get this sale if Claire was such a buddy of Margie Kendell? Not that Claire did house sales; she was too much of a high-end dealer to actually prep a house, dig through boxes in a watery basement, or shake out moths from clothes stored in the dust and must of an attic. No, Claire would have come in and assessed the good stuff, shipped it off to auction as Tim had already done, then she would have probably hired someone like Tim to prep the house. But the key is she would have been in the house first, she would have pulled the strings.

  “Some lunch, dearie?” said a squeaky voice. Jane looked up and with some real effort, squelched a scream. Tim was dangling Mr. Bumbles in through the open door.

  Tim always packed great lunches on house prep days. He went to Pink’s and coaxed the cook there to make homemade potato chips that were to die for, although no one ever would have ordered them had Pink consented to put them on the menu. A small bag of commercially produced chips was good enough for the average Joe Kankakee, who wouldn’t have wanted the more expensive crispy and irregular homemades. Tim claimed that most of Pink’s customers were too timid to try anything the excellent cook could and did prepare for private customers like him.

  In the Kendell kitchen, Tim now warmed up two ham and cheese sandwiches on brioche rolls, dumped a large bag of the homemade chips into a bright green Pyrex bowl, the second largest size from the nesting primary color bowl set on which Tim would soon stick a price tag, and poured out tall glasses of peach iced tea. Jane felt cared for as soon as Tim put the plate of food in front of her. Afraid he might snatch it back if she began to question him too much about his dealings with Margie Kendell, she decided to eat her fill of chips before launching in. Instead, she suggested he make plans for tonight’s rehearsal.

  “After you all read through the play tonight, you should be prepared to give everyone a schedule for the week, you know … what scenes you’ll rehearse and when, so that not everyone is tied up for the entire night, every night. Have you broken down the play like that yet?”

  Tim shook his head.

  “Look at my script, Tim,” said Jane, fishing in the bag at her feet. “I’ve broken it down for props. You’ll see where I suggest the act break. You need to make notes—figure out how to maximize your time with everyone. Give them dates for memorization—you know, tell them they have to be off book in ten days or whatever. You don’t have all that much time.”

  Jane helped herself to more of the chips. “I’ll help you with the play, Tim. I promise. But you have to be straight with me. How did you get this sale? Claire Oh is fit to be tied, she’s an old friend of Margie Kendell’s—they went to school together and … Yikes!” said Jane, putting down her sandwich.

  Jane held up one finger and told Tim she’d be right back. When she came racing down the back stairs from the second floor, she was carrying Margie Kendell’s yearbook. She began paging though while telling Tim about Oh’s call and her conve
rsation with Claire.

  Either Tim was a better actor than Jane had suspected or the news about Claire and Margie was a complete surprise.

  “I have to tell you, she didn’t even say she was talking to anyone else. The only back-and-forth about this job was between her and her brother, Rick. Of course, it was Rick, pretty much, who hired me. She told me she never wants to be at the house at the same time he is. Each of them had to sign the contract … they faxed them to me. Neither of them tried to drive a hard bargain, they just sniped at each other whenever I talked to them on the phone.”

  “Here, this must be her.”

  Jane placed her finger under the picture of Claire Landow, who didn’t look that much different from the current Claire Oh. She wore her hair down to her shoulders, with a clip at the side, rather than pulled back in a tight bun. Other than that? Same tight smile, same unflinching stare. Under her senior picture, her quote was “Act like you’ve already won.”

  “Whoa,” said Tim. “No self-esteem issues there.”

  “Look at Margie,” said Jane. In the photos from the plays, Margie looked animated in that hokey high school drama way, larger than life in costumes slightly too big. And sitting with Mr. Bumbles on her knee, she looked happy and in control. In this, her individual picture, her eyes were vacant and she was unsmiling.

  “ ‘Make ’em laugh?’ That’s her quote?” said Tim. “She looks like the grim face of death. Who lets that be published as her class picture? They offer retakes for these things. I mean she’s no barrel of fun now, but she’s not tragic-looking.”

  “Yeah,” said Jane. “Maybe she was trying to be funny—you know, ironic. Making that face with the quote.”

  “Oh, honey, irony’s for college. High school is pure. This was one sad girl. Look up teenage angst in the dictionary and this is the picture.”

  “When was the last time you talked to her?”

  “A week or so ago,” said Tim, eating the last of the chips. “We e-mail back and forth, though. She’s only been here to meet with me twice. Took forever for her to make up her mind on the sale, and now she wants it done in two weeks. I got the impression she was under some pressure from her brother to get it all done.”

  “How many times has Rick been here?”

  “I never met him. Faxed me the prelim stuff, then left a final signed contract for me here. I couldn’t get here the day he came to the house and he couldn’t stay over. About two weeks ago, I think. He called and said he was taking some of the books and a painting from the library—nothing special—and said he’d try to get back here before the sale date. Told me Margie could deal with the details.”

  “What do you figure this sale will bring?”

  “Gross? Conservatively … upper five figures or…” Tim focused on something Jane could not see, seemed to be adding in his head. “You know, we could easily go six figures, give or take, even without the antiques and paintings I sent to auction—that’s where the big money is. There’s a motorcycle out in the garage—have to see if it’s worth anything—and I still have to check the garden sculpture. I’m trying to calculate numbers based on everything being just okay, nothing being stand-out. If everything turns out to be ordinary and we’re dealing with sheer quantity—for example, if all the hardcover books in this house are all two-dollar hardcovers—we’re talking fifty thousand and up with all the furniture and china and the quantity of…” Tim broke off again. His eyes almost rolled back in his head as he tried to concentrate on the items he would be pricing for sale. Jane thought she could almost see him teleporting himself to the various rooms and closets. He began again. “Like if you find a Hemingway first edition or if some of this pottery turns out to be special … the figures rise accordingly. Or if one of those guitars up in the playroom turns out to be a vintage Martin … I haven’t gone through all of the silver.…”

  Tim went on cataloging what would bring money and how much, interspersing every prediction with a mordant comment about the economy. No one knew how things, or what things, would sell at estate sales anymore because no one knew who had money left and who was willing to spend it. High-end antique and art dealers might survive the downturn if their high-end banker clients continued to collect their bonuses. Middle-of-the-road dealers like Tim and junkers like Jane, however, were fighting for every disposable dime and unnecessary nickel.

  “Margie and Rick are millionaires, right?” asked Jane.

  “Well,” said Tim, looking down at his phone, buzzing to tell him that he had a text. “Hmmm,” he said while pushing keys.

  “So they didn’t need to bicker over selling all of this stuff—they could have just donated everything to charity. Why go through the bother?” asked Jane.

  “You’ve been Dumpster diving too long, honey.” Tim said, clearing their lunch plates and rinsing their glasses. “Have you really looked around this house?”

  Tim threw open the kitchen cupboards and crossed over to a large pantry and opened it. Stacks of plates, glassware, serving pieces, measuring spoons stuck into colorful ceramic flowerpot holders, measuring cups, mixing bowls, vintage copper pans, kitchenalia of every kind was jammed into every possible corner of storage.

  “Every room is like this. They have so much stuff stuffed into this place. Don’t you see? If they decided to donate it, someone would still have to sift through, separate the wheat from the chaff, bag it, box it. They would have to trust someone to be on the premises and to take care of all the packing and getting it to a charity. The truth is, it’s an overwhelming amount of stuff—one local thrift store couldn’t handle it—they’d want someone to run a sale on premises, reduce the volume of stuff, and then benefit from the proceeds. Rick and Margie want to sell the house, so they need it cleaned out and spruced up—at least cleaned out—and who better to do that than someone who has a vested interest in getting all of the stuff sold for a profit. Then I’ll let them pay me to do a complete clean-out—or rather pay me to hire and supervise someone who can haul away everything that’s left.”

  Jane picked up the yearbook with the teenage Margie Kendell and Claire Oh so Tim could wipe the table. As Tim explained why he was hired and what he was doing, Jane’s mind raced ahead. If Tim was right and he was hired to sort through and find the good stuff, maybe there was some stuff that someone didn’t want him to find. Why try to creep someone out with Mr. Bumbles unless whoever the prankster was thought Tim would walk? And what about the warning notes in the scripts of Murder in the Eekaknak Valley?

  “Do Margie and Rick know you’re directing their grandfather’s play?”

  “Sure. I mean I told them I found the scripts and all,” said Tim.

  “But did you ask them if they minded if you put it on. I mean they own the scripts and it’s their family and—”

  “I told them I thought I might propose it to the community theater board and Rick didn’t say I shouldn’t.”

  “Do they know you’re putting on the play or not?”

  “I didn’t really talk it over with Margie, but I know she knows. I told Rick I was going to do it and he didn’t think it was a great idea,” said Tim.

  “So he doesn’t approve,” said Jane.

  “He said it was a bad idea because he thought something bad happened the last time the play was put on. What did he tell me? Let’s see…” Tim stopped rummaging through the cupboards and turned toward Jane. The usual confident Tim face had been replaced with a less familiar expression.

  “I didn’t even think about this before. I think he said the play was unlucky.”

  “And you’re just remembering this now?” said Jane. “Did you ask him why?”

  “It wasn’t a serious conversation.”

  Tim sat down to check the e-mail that had just buzzed in. He muttered something and looked up at Jane. “Trouble. Margie says the paintings and furniture that went to the auction house can’t be the right pieces. Estimates are too low. She says that … whoops, here’s an e-mail from Rick,” Tim paused. “Same th
ing. Rick said they expected bigger money from the auction items.”

  Tim left the kitchen. Jane heard him on the stairs and assumed he was headed back to the bedrooms. Apparently, their conversation, which Jane did consider serious, was over.

  “Why’s Tim being such a pill?” she asked aloud, directing the question toward Mr. Bumbles, whom Tim had propped up into a sitting position, his legs dangling over the counter.

  Jane brushed some sandwich crumbs off of Bumbles’s brown suit pants. She straightened his tie and adjusted the lapels on his jacket, smiling to herself.

  “Look at me sprucing up a creepy ventriloquist’s dummy. What’s next, Bumbles? I actually learn to throw my voice and sit you on my—” Jane broke off as she pulled the dummy’s pocket square into a sharp point.

  “Are you talking to me?” yelled Tim from the top of the stairs.

  “What was Bumbles wearing yesterday, Tim?”

  “What? Who?”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Jane said, looking directly into the carved glass eyes of Mr. Bumbles. “You were wearing a plaid shirt and dungarees. And today, you’re wearing a suit. How in the hell did you manage to change your clothes?”

  10

  There is an old theater adage that proclaims a bad dress rehearsal signals a good opening night. There are those who actually believe that the superstition works in a reverse proportional way—the worse a dress rehearsal, the better the show. If one wanted to take this old theater wives’ tale and push it to its extremes, one might say that the play’s entire success depended on the failure of the rehearsal process.

  And if this extrapolation had even a shred of truth in it, thought Jane Wheel, the Kankakee Community Theater production of Murder in the Eekaknak Valley was, after only a few weeks, destined for Broadway.

  The problems began the first night of rehearsal. Tim directed the cast to read through the play, but since he was busy getting into character himself as Detective Craven, he found it difficult to drop the quasi-British accent he had adopted as part of this character.