by Sarah Rubin
He held the door until we were inside and made a show of locking it behind us. Then he stalked off without waiting to see if we would follow. I guess he assumed we would.
‘Wow, I don’t know who’s worse, him or the Seven–Eleven guy,’ Kevin said. ‘What’s the meeting about?’
‘Probably something about the blackout,’ I guessed.
My stomach growled. Kevin’s meatball marinara was making my mouth water, but if Linda said everyone needed to be there, then that meant me and Kevin too. I sighed. At least I hadn’t gotten a hot sandwich. Theatre meetings could take a while. Every announcement was its own three-act play. And there’s nothing worse than cold marinara.
‘Come on, Mom and Della are probably already there,’ I added.
‘Wait . . . we’re going now?’ Kevin looked at me incredulously.
‘Yep.’
‘How about I eat my sandwich and meet you later.’
‘Nice try,’ I said, linking my arm through his elbow so he couldn’t get away. ‘We’re a team now, remember?’
Kevin and I were the last to arrive. Linda stood on the stage, her phone pressed to her ear. She was probably giving another interview. She waved us forward to where the rest of the cast and crew sat in the front rows of the audience. Mom and Della sat in the front row. Frank sat on the other side of the aisle with Matthew and Vivian. I craned my neck. Jarvis scowled at me from a few rows back. I couldn’t see Pete anywhere.
I slid down the aisle and took a seat next to my sister. Kevin sat next to me, and I let him get his sub out of the bag before I passed the other two sandwiches to Mom and Della and started to unwrap mine. Della opened her eyes wide and flicked them at the brand-new theatre seat beneath me. I wrapped the sandwich back up and sat it on my lap with a sigh. Della leant over me and smacked Kevin on the arm as he took an enormous bite.
‘What?’ he asked, his mouth full of meatball.
‘The seats,’ Della hissed. Kevin looked around. Every eye in the room was on him, all of them disapproving. Maybe Della had done me a favour. Kevin’s face turned about thirty per cent more red. He swallowed hard and carefully put the wrapper back on his sandwich, and then put the hot sandwich back in the brown paper bag.
‘Well, that looks like everyone,’ Linda said as she pocketed the phone. She looked up to the light booth. ‘Pete, are you up there?’
The stage lights dimmed and brightened like the nod of a head.
Linda nodded, satisfied. She stood centre stage and brushed the dust from her hands. ‘Thank you all for coming. I know this is your lunch break. I know how hard all of you are working and I just wanted to say, keep up the good work. Apologies for the lights failure earlier – we blew a fuse wiring in the gorgeous chandelier from our angel Irinke. Luckily, Pete was on hand and fixed it right away.’ She applauded in the direction of the lighting booth and Pete took another virtual bow making the lights of the chandelier dance and sparkle overhead. I arched an I told you so eyebrow at my sister, which she expertly ignored.
Linda continued. ‘I’m also pleased to report that we have sold out for opening night.’
A small murmur of approval rose and then fell again as Linda held up her hand.
‘Irinke has been spreading the word about The Curse of the Casterfields to all her friends, and I’ve been doing my part as well. Of course, we all know having the very fine Matthew Strange in the cast has helped enormously.’
Matthew held up his hands as if to protest, slipping his right hand out of the sling to do so, but he didn’t seem to mind all the extra applause one bit.
‘But,’ Linda continued once Matthew had taken his second bow, ‘we can’t get complacent now.’
Linda droned on about the importance of the Beryl to the city and the history of the theatre. It was warm and I stifled a yawn. I started calculating the number of seats in the theatre, glancing around to see if I was the only one who was bored. I was. The rest of the cast and crew were completely absorbed in Linda’s speech. And Kevin was looking across the aisle at Matthew Strange with stars in his eyes.
It was the first time I’d seen everyone who had access to the Beryl together in one place. My stomach twisted as the germ of suspicion Kevin had planted took root. The person responsible for the trouble at the Beryl was probably sitting in this very room.
‘It isn’t enough for us to sell out opening night,’ Linda said, her eyes glowing with passion. ‘We need to dazzle our audience. We need to show them the magic of the Beryl.’
I tipped my neck to the side, pretending to stretch, and tried to get a good look at everyone’s face, as if their guilt might be written there. But it was no use. I was in a room full of actors. Everyone nodded and applauded in all the right places. It could be any one of them. The germ of suspicion started to multiply and I squashed it down. Guessing based on looks was sloppy. All I needed was to figure out the facts – those never lied.
Kevin nudged my shoulder and gave me a questioning look.
I shook my head. So far, no one knew I was looking into the disturbances. I didn’t want to blow my cover by speculating out loud.
He nudged me again and I realized Linda was staring at me.
‘Alice?’
I stood up and tried not to look startled.
‘Yes?’
‘I was just telling everyone about the lobby display you’re working on.’ She frowned at me and then turned to the rest of the group. ‘If anyone has any ideas for the lobby, be sure to let Alice know. Thank you, Alice.’
I waved once and sat down, feeling my face go hot as my mom led the crowd in a round of polite applause. I’ve never understood how Della could enjoy people clapping for her.
‘And Pete has worked wonders reproducing the original set.’
Everyone clapped again. And the lights above the stage danced through a rainbow of colours in a visual salute.
‘And despite his best efforts to interfere, Rex Cragthorne has been reprimanded by the County Clerk for wasting the court’s time filing frivolous injunctions.’
Injunctions? It was no secret media mogul Rex Cragthorne wanted the Beryl to fail. He’d been furious when the city decided to give Save the Beryl another chance to make the theatre a success instead of letting him turn it into a cinema complex. But this was the first time I’d heard about him taking legal action to try to stop the show. I wondered how far Cragthorne would go to get his own way.
‘But,’ Linda continued, raising her hands for quiet, ‘we are not out of the woods yet. The Clerk won’t accept any more claims from Mr Cragthorne until after the first run of the show. If we haven’t proved ourselves by then, he will be free to start making complaints again. I’m sure you all understand just how important this show is. We only have four more days until opening night, and I know we can pull together and give the audience something amazing. And I want everyone to be extra-vigilant. Rex Cragthorne is a despicable man. Who knows how low he’ll stoop?’
‘Hear hear,’ Frank shouted from his seat.
My mind drifted to Della’s list of things going wrong. Scaring the cast and crew into quitting would be one way to ruin the show.
Della elbowed me hard in the ribs. When I turned both she and Kevin were staring at me with wide eyes. I guess they had the same idea about Cragthorne as I had. I put my fingers to my lips. Dreaming up theories was easy, but even if we were right, we didn’t have any proof. Besides, if Cragthorne was behind it all, that meant someone at the Beryl was working for him. If they realized anyone was suspicious of them, they might start doing a better job covering their tracks.
I mouthed the words not here. And Della nodded sagely.
Linda smiled down at us from the stage, coming to the grand finale of her speech.
‘Remember, no matter what happens, we are a family, bound together by our love of the stage. We will never forget that one truth we all live by: The Show Must Go On!’
We ate lunch in the workshop, everyone except for Matthew. He needed time to meditate.<
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Linda ordered celebratory cheesesteak sandwiches and everyone helped themselves. The hot cheese and grilled onions made my mouth water. And my roast beef sub with slightly soggy bread didn’t look quite as mouth-watering as it had before. Kevin finished the last bite of his meatball marinara and helped himself to a cheesesteak as well.
‘What?’ he said, looking at me. ‘I’m hungry.’
I looked at him hard for a moment, and then shrugged and took a cheesesteak too. Who could say no to Philly’s favourite sandwich?
After lunch, Linda wanted to see what progress we’d made in the storage room, so she followed me and Kevin as we made our way back to the gas house, taking deep breaths and reminding us to smell the history. I’d smelt enough history for a lifetime – it smelt like soot.
‘Ashley? What are you doing down here?’ Linda asked as we came around the corner and saw Irinke’s rabbit-faced nephew. ‘We were just having lunch. If I’d known you were still in the building I would have come and found you.’ Linda looked around quickly. ‘Is Irinke here too?’
Ashley pulled his hand away from the door handle and there was something about the way he stuck his hands in his pockets that made me glad I’d locked the door. Maybe Ashley was Cragthorne’s man on the inside.
‘No, Auntie Irinke went with the Ziegers for lunch, but she said she wanted to see the treasures you’ve dug up, so I thought I might come back and investigate.’ He looked around nervously, like a small child caught stealing candy.
I shook my head. Ashley’s body language read guilty even when he was just standing still, but no, I didn’t think he was the culprit. He was basically Irinke’s shadow. If he really wanted to hurt the Beryl, all he had to do was talk her into ending her patronage.
‘Well, we are very glad she’s taken an interest in the Beryl. The new chandelier is stunning.’
Linda turned to look at me, opening her eyes wide to tell me to hurry up. Ashley Barscay and his aunt were minor royalty, literally, and were not to be kept waiting. I took the key from round my neck and unlocked the door, ignoring the eyes on my back.
Two steps inside the door I tugged the light cord. Everything was just the way we’d left it before we’d gone to see Della, but for some reason I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that I was missing something.
‘We haven’t found much yet,’ I said with an apologetic shrug. ‘There’s a lot to go through. But I put anything that looked interesting on the table over here.’
Linda picked her way across the room, carefully avoiding the larger dust piles and cobwebs that clung to the edges of the room. Ashley followed behind her. He looked more comfortable that way.
I showed Linda what we’d found. She wasn’t that interested in the sandbag or the papers. When I told her about the limelight she perked up a little bit, but it wasn’t until I showed her the costumes that she got really excited.
‘Oh, these stoles are lovely, Alice. I’ll get your mom to clean them right away, but this dress. Here,’ she handed it to me. ‘Hold it up.’
I lifted the blue ballgown I’d found by the shoulders and held it up until the hem just brushed the gas-house floor. It was decorated with rows of frothy white lace and a navy blue sash and was surprisingly heavy.
‘It’s perfect,’ she whispered, a fanatic gleam in her eye. She looked inside the dress until she found a small silk tag that had been hand-embroidered with the words Kittie Grace Act II. I could see a scheme forming as her eyes flicked over the dress.
‘Take that to your mother. She’s still finishing Vivian’s ballgown, but using one of the original costumes would be so authentic. Virginia is going to go crazy when she sees this. Hold it up a little higher. I want to tweet this to our supporters.’
My mom would go crazy all right, she loved original costumes. But I didn’t think Vivian would be excited at all – she was already convinced the ghost of Kittie Grace was out to get her. Before I had a chance to protest, Linda lifted her phone and snapped a picture. The flash went off, making my eyes dazzle. My face felt hot. But Linda didn’t notice.
‘Oh, this is so exciting.’ She clapped her hands together and looked around. She looked at the boxes and licked her lips. ‘Shall I open one?’
‘Knock yourself out,’ I said, rubbing my eyes. Small rainbow flashes danced behind my lids. I was pretty sure I could hear Kevin laughing under his breath. I scowled in his general direction. The laughter stopped.
Linda took her time choosing a box, like a kid spending their last dollar in the sweet shop. She finally decided on a small black case tucked in the corner of the room.
‘Let’s see what we’ve got.’
I crossed my arms and waited for disappointment to fill her face, but it never came. Linda gaped. Her eyes bulged behind her designer spectacles and her mouth dropped open.
‘What did you find?’ Kevin asked, crowding around her to get a better look.
His mouth dropped open too.
‘Oh my,’ Linda said. It came out in a breathless little whisper.
‘Is that what I think it is?’ Kevin asked.
I blinked furiously to clear my vision and hurried around to look inside the box.
It sparkled. Gems and jewels of every size, shape and colour gleamed out at me. It looked like the inside of a pirate’s treasure chest. My heart rate kicked into high gear as Linda reached into the box and pulled out a large, crescent-shaped necklace of diamonds and silver. The Midnight Star.
‘No way,’ I said. It wasn’t possible. How could it have just been sitting in a box for all those years? Franklin Oswald would have to have found it in a heartbeat. The necklace sparkled in the light of the bare bulb.
Kevin looked at the necklace and then back into the box. ‘What the—’ he said, reaching in with one hand and pulling out a second necklace, exactly like the first. And then a third. ‘How many of these things are there?’
Ashley Barscay snatched the necklace out of his hands.
‘Hey!’ Kevin shouted.
I blinked. I hadn’t heard Ashley move from the doorway.
He took a sheet of newsprint from the table and held it behind the necklace, peering through the enormous stone. Then he touched it to his lips.
‘It’s fake,’ he said after a moment.
Linda turned to him without a word, unable to speak. He took the necklace from her hand and tested that one as well.
‘What do you mean fake?’ I asked.
‘They’re paste.’ He rolled the word ‘paste’ out of his mouth like a rotten grape. ‘Look, you can read the paper through the stone, and when you touch it to your lip it stays cold.’
I nodded slowly. Diamonds have a high refraction index: they bend light, a lot. It’s what makes them sparkle, but it would also make it impossible to read anything through them – the words would be too distorted. Diamonds are also excellent heat conductors, which is why they are used in a lot of electronic equipment. A real diamond would soak up the heat from your skin and get hot right away, a fake one wouldn’t. They were two quick and dirty tests, but I got the feeling Ashley knew what he was talking about. With an aunt like Irinke, he’d probably seen more real diamonds in an afternoon than I’d see in a lifetime.
Linda looked from the necklace to Ashley and then back again. ‘All of them?’ she asked quietly.
Ashley smiled, it was the first time I’d seen him do that. It made him look almost normal. ‘I’ll check,’ he said, but he didn’t sound very hopeful.
There were five Midnight Stars in total and all of them were fake. So were the rest of the necklaces, bracelets, earrings and brooches in the box. They were all paste.
‘Very good paste,’ Ashley assured us. ‘But paste nonetheless.’
‘What’s the point of having five fake necklaces?’ Kevin asked. He glared at the box.
‘They only borrowed the real necklace for opening night,’ I said. ‘They must have had replicas made for the rest of the performances. And it would have made sense to get more than one
replica.’
Linda gave a heavy sigh and let the necklace slide through her fingers back into the box.
‘I should have known it was too good to be true,’ Kevin said.
‘Hmm . . . maybe, but it isn’t a total loss,’ Linda said, drumming her fingers along her arm. I could actually see her forming a plan. ‘I’d been thinking about having a silent auction during intermission on opening night. A chance for our patrons to take home a piece of Beryl history.’
‘You’re going to auction them off?’ I asked.
‘Not all of them. We’ll use one in the show. Ashley, maybe your aunt would wear one to one of her parties this week. I know they aren’t real diamonds, but in a way they’re even better than a boring old diamond necklace bought from a store. These replicas have history.’
Linda was the queen of spin.
Ashley looked at Linda and then at the necklace. Something cold and calculating flashed across his eyes. I wondered if asking a Barscay to wear a paste necklace was an insult. But then he smiled and took the necklace.
‘I’m sure my Aunt Irinke would be thrilled. She does so love the Beryl.’
‘Alice, I want you to have one too. For the lobby display. I want it right in the centre of the room where everyone can see it. And I’ll make up some little auction cards for you to put by the things we’re selling.’
I could see the wheels spinning now as Linda thought of a whole new campaign strategy to fill seats and make The Curse of the Casterfields the biggest show Philadelphia had seen for a decade.
‘Ashley, if you’d be so kind, I’d love to interview you about diamonds. For the Beryl blog. You know so much. And Alice, take that dress to your mom. She’ll need to do a fitting for Vivian right away to get it ready in time for opening night.’
Linda took Ashley by the arm. He hesitated slightly, then followed her out of the room. Or he tried to. Linda stopped suddenly in the doorway.
‘Alice,’ she said, turning around with an apologetic smile. ‘I’m sorry, it slipped my mind in the confusion, but when I was coming back from picking up lunch I noticed we’d had another visit from our artistic friend . . .’
