Backstage Stuff

by Sharon Fiffer

  In the front parlor, Claire was going through boxes of jewelry with a loupe, checking hallmarks and sorting the good from the better under a bright light Tim had rigged up for her. She, too, seemed content with her work and barely looked up when Jane peeked in.

  Tim was in the rear parlor—the stage set—going through a heavy oak cupboard, pulling out boxes of poker chips, old boxed games, cribbage and euchre scoreboards. “We’re in good shape, honey. Better than I thought. Claire is fast with that label gun and she got all the good vintage clothes upstairs priced. If we can get anyone to buy good furs in June or— Just in general, the closets will offer some cash. And as long as Margaret has something to do with her hands, like washing up, she’s okay,” said Tim.

  He was talking in that faraway rambling voice he slipped into when he was captivated by the stuff in front of him. Jane knew that the board games were something he no longer cared deeply about, but in the old days, when he and Jane used to hit all the Saturday-morning sales, vintage board games were one of their favorite finds. Tim would scoop up the good ones, the ones that had been barely touched, the corners of the boxes still strong and unbent, not mended with tape. Jane always chose the ones Tim rejected—a broken-down box with the Clue board and a lone surviving Mrs. Peacock, or an early Monopoly without the game tokens and missing the hotels and houses—that way she wouldn’t feel guilty about buying the game for a song and deconstructing it even further. She’d flip through the Chance and Community Chest cards and stack them on her desk at work. If someone on her creative team asked her a question, she’d instruct him or her to draw a card. Get Out of Jail Free was the best pick—if they flashed that one, Jane would say yes to whatever they asked.

  “Detective Oh?” Jane asked Tim.

  “In the library,” said Tim.

  “With the candlestick,” Jane muttered under her breath.

  Jane walked to the opposite end of the house where there was a small office and library set off from the rest of the first floor. A hallway and bathroom separated these rooms from the living space. Once one entered the library, it was easy to forget that there was a “rest of the house.”

  The bookshelves were floor to ceiling with sliding library ladders on both sides of the room. Earlier in the week, Jane had climbed the ladder and asked Tim for a push so she could play out the Marian the Librarian scene from The Music Man in her head.

  Get Out of Jail Free cards … Marian the Librarian? Jane wondered what exactly made Freddy any more outwardly nutty than anyone else.

  “Mrs. Wheel,” said Oh. He was carefully paging through what appeared to be a very old volume of Shakespeare. “Nice edition. Many good books here. Valuable, but perhaps not valuable enough to really help Margaret, I’m afraid.”

  “But there are a lot. The good news about this sale is that the sheer volume of stuff will, if we get enough people in here, really add up.”

  “Yes. I’ve been to these sales, though. With Claire, with you, and there is always so much left. At the end of the day, won’t you be asking people to fill up boxes and just take things? For very little money?”

  Oh was right. If every item in the house sold, it would be good news for Margaret and her brother. But with every sale, so much did not sell. Then things had to be boxed and bagged and hauled and driven and donated and dumped.

  “Mrs. Wheel, have you had a chance to reflect on the events? Do you think Mr. Marvin was murdered?” Oh closed the book and replaced it on the shelf.

  Jane had become so enmeshed in Freddy’s world of the play and the theater club and linking Nellie to the first production that she hadn’t really thought about Marvin since her visit to the cultural center property with Rita that morning. There was nothing that the scene in daylight had told her that differed from the scene at night. The boards were stacked neatly and safely against the tree, and if one came loose, it seemed highly unlikely that it was an accident. On the other hand, no one had seen anyone come in or out of the woods, although Nellie claimed that some shadowy figure had been over in Marvin’s work area—although couldn’t that have been Marvin himself? Moving around, beginning to cover his equipment for the night, and perhaps, just perhaps, replacing one of the beams because it was getting too dark to cut it and failing to secure it against the tree while he bent to tie the tarp? Nothing was stolen. No one came up with any reason someone would want to kill Marvin, a retired widowed stage carpenter who had returned to his hometown where he had a few cousins and old friends and who volunteered in the community theater. It certainly appeared to be nothing more than an accident.

  “Yes, I think he was murdered.”

  Oh almost smiled. “Should I ask why?”

  “Not yet,” said Jane.

  Jane walked to the opposite end of the room. A set of French doors at the rear of the library opened onto the back lawn. If Tim, Claire, Margaret, and Nellie were still working away where she last saw each of them, they could cut across the lawn and get to the coach house completely unnoticed. A big if, but worth the effort. Jane asked Oh if he wanted to visit Freddy’s writing studio with her, filling him in on what she had learned about Freddy’s theater club and some of its members.

  “Since Marvin was a member, it seems like a visit is in order,” said Jane.

  “Shall we ask your mother for her key?” asked Oh.

  “No need,” said Jane. “Mr. Bumbles is guarding others.”

  Jane and Oh opened the French doors, allowing a breeze to rifle a small stack of papers on the walnut partners desk regally placed at what Jane saw as the head of the room. She loved the fact that it was a manageable size, more manageable than her desk at home, but still, a double workspace. If one wanted to dream, one could sit and gaze out of the window, watching the birds swoop and dive through the gardens. If one had columns of figures to add and correspondence to attend to, one could sit facing the interior, all business. Jane allowed herself a personal moment, a want and a need. She would soon be divorced from Charley, maybe even by the end of this summer. If she sold her house and most of her things and moved to an apartment, perhaps Tim could find her a desk like this she could afford. She could sit on one side as Jane, the picker, toting up her purchases and writing her invoices for Miriam and Tim, and then, on days when she was Mrs. Wheel, sorting out clues with Oh, she could sit on the other side, studying the patterns of cardinals in flight. What was the price tag on this desk?

  “… isn’t that right, Mrs. Wheel?” said Oh, closing the French doors behind them.

  “Sorry. I was furnishing my new apartment with that desk in there,” Jane said. “Charley and I, you know, we’re…” Jane had to figure out her language on this. Were they splitting up? Splitsville? Would she be all slangy and flippant? No. At least not with Oh. “As you know, Charley and I are getting divorced,” said Jane. “It will be finalized soon. At the oddest moments, I am struck with something I need to do … or will need to do. Most of the time, I don’t think about it at all. Seeing that partners desk, it struck me how much I liked it, how it was better than the desk I already have that Charley might want anyway. I could build a home around that desk, but all the time I was married to Charley, I never thought of us needing pieces of furniture like that. So does that mean we were never partners?”

  Jane stopped abruptly and cleared her throat. She had not talked this out to anyone, not even Tim, so why was she babbling away to Oh? They were halfway across the lawn to the coach house when she allowed herself to glance at him. He was looking at her, waiting.

  “I’m sentimental about stuff, you know. Literally. About stuff. Things. But I don’t like to talk about myself … about my own—”

  “Yes, Mrs. Wheel. I understand. We are all our mothers’ children.”

  They had climbed the stairs and Jane opened the bench, hoping to see Oh flinch just a little when Mr. Bumbles was revealed, but she was the one who winced. Had he just implied she was like Nellie?

  “This Mr. Bumbles is a fellow who gets around,” said Oh. “This
is the third one, yes?”

  “Two in the house, one in a suit and one in dungarees and plaid shirt, and now this dusty fellow,” said Jane, nodding. She would have to disabuse Oh of the notion she was anything like Nellie, but it would have to wait until they were not in the middle of work. Jane chose Marvin’s key from the box and unlocked the coach house door. She slipped the chain around her neck and together, she and Oh entered the space.

  The wall of windows that faced the house allowed so much light into the room that at first they had to blink and adjust. Dust motes made for a kind of glaze and shimmer, but once they adjusted to the brightness, they saw an enormous space. The dimensions, after all, were that of the six-car garage below, so the undivided space was vast.

  Centered in front of the windows was a desk and chair facing the house. As Jane had learned from standing in the yard, Freddy wrote his play facing the house and describing exactly what he saw. Being on the second floor, he could see into the house much as one could view a dollhouse with a cutaway wall revealing the rooms and furnishings and people inside. This work area was defined by an intricate old Persian rug, the desk and chair, and a stuffed chair and ottoman with a side table. All that was missing was Freddy, the Noël Coward of Kankakee, dressed in a smoking jacket, pacing between desk and chair, composing lines of dialogue for those characters in his dollhouse across the lawn.

  This studio area comprised only a fraction of the space. It was a beautiful jewel-like workspace, made all the more elegant by being placed in the center of a pristine loft. A giant expanse of wood floor, bookshelves built into the side wall, and the ceiling hung with—Jane walked farther into the center of the room to get a closer look—track lights? No, the ceiling was a grid of pipes on which stage lights hung. Jane saw a box of gels pushed into the corner by the bookcase.

  “Why is there tape?” asked Oh, kneeling to touch the tan strips placed all over the floor in a seemingly random pattern.

  Jane stood by Freddy’s desk, facing Oh and the back wall.

  “It’s the set. It’s Freddy’s play. He’s taped off all of the walls and doors. See … that tape defines the couch and there’s the bar. This wasn’t just a clubhouse. It was a rehearsal space. Look,” said Jane, gesturing to the sides of the wall of windows, “those heavy draperies are blackout curtains. This space is actually outfitted to be a theater. With risers for chairs or with platforms for the stage area. This place is bigger and better equipped than half of the little black box theaters in Chicago.”

  When Jane first walked through the door, she thought she was seeing the entire space, undivided by any walls, but looking closer, she realized the space was divided … but lengthwise … into a front and back. The alley side of the coach house had a wall running the entire length of the room. It was one giant backstage area. Doors were located on either side. Jane walked over and flipped a switch before opening the door, since it appeared, with no windows, as if she’d be entering a giant closet.

  “Holy Moses,” said Jane, realizing that her promise to quit swearing, made years ago for Nick’s sake, had caused her to revert to the most archaic expressions imaginable. Wasn’t Nick old enough now to hear the real stuff? Could she remember the real stuff? “Jeezy Petes!” Maybe not.

  “What is it, Mrs. Wheel?” Oh walked over from where he had been studying the taped-out set, walking through the imaginary doors, gazing out the imaginary window.

  “Backstage stuff,” said Jane. “Tons of it.”

  Several racks of costumes stood in one corner. An open trunk had long skirts and a few hoops and crinolines sticking out of it. “Rehearsal skirts,” said Jane, pointing to the pile. “Before you have your costumes, you have to get used to walking and sitting and moving in whatever you’re going to be wearing for a period play.”

  Jane waved her arms in front of the roughed-in shelves, filled with candlesticks and serving trays, crystal stemware and vases. “These are all rehearsal props … and stuff to dress a set.”

  Freddy’s theater club, defunct, was probably better outfitted than most small theaters that were fully “funct” and producing shows every weekend. There was plenty of dust and cobwebs, but the place was well insulated and sealed, so everything was in good shape. Give a housekeeping crew a broom and a mop and a day or two—hell, give Nellie one good bar rag and a bucket—and they could open a show that night.

  “If Freddy died fifty years ago … who’s been here?” said Jane. “This is not fifty years of dust.”

  Oh looked up from the shelf where he was studying silver candlesticks, weighing them in his hand.

  “Who told you Freddy died fifty years ago?” asked Oh.

  “He collapsed before the opening night of the first production of Murder in the Eekaknak Valley. Tim told me he died under mysterious circumstances, but he was exaggerating, just trying to draw me in. But he did—”

  “My grandfather did not die under mysterious circumstances,” said Margaret.

  “Who the hell told you that?” said Nellie.

  “I never actually said Freddy died,” said Tim, “I said he—”

  “What in the world is everyone doing out here when we have a sale in one week?” said Claire. “And what’s all this talk about dear Freddy?”

  From the way they lined up, entering the coach house, each responding to the other, Jane pictured them, one by one, sneaking across the lawn on tiptoes, following Jane and Oh.

  Jane faced them, wishing desperately she were better at math. If Freddy was Margaret’s grandfather and she was a child when Nellie was in her twenties in the theater club, that would make him …

  “Freddy is alive?” Jane asked.

  “Of course not,” said Margaret.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Claire.

  “How old does she think anyone is?” asked Nellie.

  Tim shook his head. “I’m responsible. I told you Freddy collapsed before the play went on and he did. He had a mild heart attack and the play was canceled.”

  “So he didn’t die under mysterious circumstances?” asked Jane.

  “Of course not. He died in hospice care. I was with him. He … he died the same year as my father … a few months apart … my mother died around the same time as my father,” said Margaret. She began to get that same faraway look in her eye as she did when she studied the filmy crystal in the house earlier. Jane watched her wander over to Freddy’s desk and run her hand over the surface. She was once again thinking about dust.

  Claire walked over to her old friend and spoke quietly into her ear.

  “Was there a connection between Margaret’s father and Freddy’s death?” asked Jane.

  “Freddy was an old man,” said Nellie. “And from what I heard, he died a peaceful old man’s death.” Jane saw Nellie give both Tim and Oh a hard look, as if defying them to argue with her.

  Tim shrugged. He had used Freddy’s fifty-some-year-old heart attack to pique Jane’s interest about the play and the household, but he clearly didn’t know any more recent history. “I just know the estate’s been tied up for about four, five years and now Margaret and Rick have taken possession and they can sell stuff. That’s all I know.”

  “Damn right that’s all you know,” said Nellie, turning to look at Detective Oh. Jane could see that her mother was much more interested in what Oh knew about the family.

  “Your mother is correct. Freddy died of old age. He was like a father to Margaret … and perhaps like a mother, too. Margaret’s parents were fragile people. I met them once years ago and I think that’s the best way to describe them. Her father, as you know, lost the family money. Freddy had protected some assets and as long as he was alive, they were able to carry on. But once notes came due … Margaret’s father was … he tried to resign himself to it all being gone. And her mother … once there was no more money to spend … grew depressed.”

  “I told you rich people aren’t all there,” said Nellie.

  “Margaret’s father had not only lost his money, he had
advised acquaintances and distant relatives and his wife’s family to follow him down the same path, and when they knew everything was gone, everything except the property here and their house in Florida, which Rick got his mother to put into his name long ago, Fred confessed to his wife that their lives would have to change. They were broke and they were disgraced.”

  Oh stopped talking and looked at Nellie.

  She shrugged. “I only know what I read in the paper. The Journal said they both died of food poisoning.”

  “The last vestiges of what the memory of old money can buy. A certain amount of privacy and discretion,” said Oh.

  Jane looked over at Margaret. She was opening the drawers of Freddy’s desk, showing Claire folders and holding up a silver-handled, ivory paper knife.

  “Suicide?” Jane asked.

  “It appeared that Mrs. Kendell prepared a last meal. She poisoned her husband and herself. There was no real investigation, but ample evidence. Mrs. Kendell relied on her husband’s love for spicy food and served him a curry laced with rat poison. She tried to eat enough herself to follow him, but couldn’t manage it, so settled for a bottle of sleeping pills.”

  “And Margaret and her brother know what happened?”

  “Yes. There was no real police involvement to speak of, after the initial discovery, but there was an extensive insurance investigation. The substantial life insurance policies that Mrs. Kendell believed would go to her children were, of course, never paid.”

  “A suicide clause,” said Jane.

  Oh nodded.

  Nellie had wandered away to explore the taped-off set while Oh had quietly told the story. Jane had the feeling that Nellie had heard several versions before, despite claiming to know only what she read in the paper. Jane had witnessed her mother’s refusal to gossip at the EZ Way Inn. Nellie listened to the stories and ramblings of customers and whiskey salesmen, but never chimed in or repeated what she heard. It wasn’t that Nellie was above pronouncing her own judgments on all things, it’s just that they were exactly that—judgments, articles of faith, and hocus-pocus that had little to do with snarky speculation and everything to do with the world according to Nellie. Nellie might believe that the Kendells were a few bricks shy of a load—that was a tenet in the world of rich people according to Nellie—but what Mrs. Kendell did or didn’t put into her husband’s last curry remained the personal business of the Kendells.