by Leslie Meier
“Well, that’s one way of looking at it,” said Ted. “Though I don’t think Old Dan beheaded himself.”
“I didn’t say he did. I said he got himself beheaded,” said Phyllis. “He must have done something that got somebody awfully mad. He asked for it. Look around. Everybody else in town still has their head, neatly attached, exactly where it ought to be. Not that they all use their heads, I’ll give you that, but they’ve got them. All except Old Dan.”
“Point taken,” said Ted.
“They never did find his head, did they?” asked Lucy.
“It’s probably rolling around in the bottom of the cove,” said Ted.
“You’d think it would’ve turned up by now. Maybe the killer took it,” said Lucy.
“That’s sick,” said Phyllis.
“Where’d you get an idea like that?” asked Ted, managing to sound both shocked and curious.
Lucy shrugged. “I don’t know. It just came to me,” she said, a bit defensively. “It’s not so unusual, if you think about it. I remember visiting the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem with the kids years ago. Toby was around ten then and, boy, was he impressed by the shrunken heads.” She shuddered. “Gruesome, evil-looking little things, but I guess they were a popular souvenir with sea captains back in the eighteen hundreds. They brought back a lot of them.”
“Their wives probably made them donate them to the museum,” speculated Phyllis. “And who could blame them? Who’d want to have a nasty thing like that sitting on the mantel?”
“You know, you’ve got a point,” said Ted, leaning back in his chair. “The English used to display the heads of traitors. They hung them on London Bridge. Left them out for the birds to—”
“Or those terrorists in Iraq,” said Lucy. “They’re always kidnapping people and beheading them. Even making videotapes and putting them on the Internet.”
“Enough,” said Phyllis, looking squeamish.
“Oh, get this,” said Lucy, who had Googled the word beheading and turned up an interesting factoid. “Celtic warriors used to behead their enemies, and then they extracted the brains and mixed them with lime—”
“Stop!” yelled Phyllis, who was looking rather green.
“No, I want to hear this,” said Ted, grinning like a kid. “Why’d they do that?”
“To preserve them, I guess,” said Lucy as Phyllis covered her ears with her hands. “They made them into little balls, which they carried around with them for bragging rights. Like those shrunken heads at the museum, I guess. The more brain balls you had in your pocket, the braver you were.”
“People sure do weird things,” said Ted.
“Yeah,” agreed Phyllis, who was putting on her coat. “You ever read Ripley’s Believe It or Not!”
“Not for years,” said Ted. “Where are you going?”
“Out for some air,” said Phyllis, pushing the door open and making the bell jangle.
“You know, Ted, that’s a good idea,” said Lucy. “We could run our own strange-but-true column in the paper. Want me to write up the brain balls? Or maybe a sidebar on famous beheadings?”
Lucy knew that Ted was tempted, but in the end, he declined. “We’re supposed to be a family newspaper,” he said regretfully. “How’s that story about the prospectors coming along?”
“Not well,” said Lucy. “I could only find one prospector.”
“I’d like to run it this week.”
“I really don’t have enough material for a feature,” said Lucy. “And it’s not for lack of trying, either. I keep checking the beach, but I only see this one guy. I think the others all went to Florida, where it’s warmer and they might find a chest of gold doubloons buried by pirates.”
“Go talk to Fred Rumford, at the college,” said Ted. “I’m pretty sure one of those prospectors did turn up a gold coin or something a while ago. If I’m not mistaken, he identified it. He’ll remember.”
“Okay,” said Lucy, not displeased with this new assignment. She’d enjoy gossiping with Fred, who was playing Og, the leprechaun, in Finian’s Rainbow. And besides, the Winchester College Museum was bound to be a lot warmer than the beach.
Winchester College, a small private liberal arts college, was located on the outskirts of town. The campus had plenty of ivy-covered red brick, big old trees, and spacious lawns, but the school’s main claim to fame, at least to locals, was the museum, which contained a stuffed mountain lion and a genuine Egyptian mummy. Not that most people ever went there, except for school kids on their annual visit, but if asked to give a special attribute of their town, most Tinker’s Cove residents would mention the mummy. The nineteenth-century entrepreneur who had brought it back from a grand tour of Europe and Egypt had intended to experiment with using the linen wrappings to make paper but had been thwarted by an early college president, who also happened to be a Congregationalist minister. He had sermonized against the paper scheme, and the entrepreneur had been left with no option except to donate the mummy to the museum, where it had been sitting in a glass case for more than a hundred years.
Entering the museum, Lucy inhaled the musty scent—a mixture of disinfectant, dust, and overheated air—and paused for a moment to pay her respects to the mummy, as she always did. After all, the mummy, whoever he or she was, had been a person like herself, with likes and dislikes, a family, a job, perhaps even a pet cat, and was a reminder that life ends for everyone and is too precious to be wasted.
“I thought that must be you,” said Fred Rumford, popping out of his office. He was the very picture of a college professor, with round tortoise shell eyeglasses, a pale blue oxford cloth shirt, jaunty bow tie, and tweed jacket.
“You don’t get too many visitors?” asked Lucy.
“Not this time of year,” said Fred. “And you called, so I was expecting you. What can I do for you?”
“I’m doing a feature story about those prospectors with metal detectors….”
He nodded.
“Ted remembers one of them finding an old coin or something a few years ago, which you identified.”
“I remember it well. In fact, it’s right over here,” he said, leading her to a display on the side wall. There she found a surprisingly small gold coin lying in the center of a case, surrounded with photo enlargements and explanations. “It’s a British sovereign, dated 1776. We think it must have been dropped by a British soldier. We know troops were marched through Tinker’s Cove on their way to fight the rebels in Boston.”
Lucy bent down to examine the portrait of George III on the coin, a full-faced gentleman with long, flowing hair. “Was it worth a lot then?”
“A goodly amount, but it’s worth a lot more today.”
“Who found it?”
“An old fellow named Elmer Howell. That’s his picture there.” Fred smiled. “He was a neat old guy. He was very proud of the coin.”
“Is he still around?” asked Lucy, hoping to interview him.
“Sorry. He died last year. Fortunately for us, he willed the coin to the museum.”
“Darn,” said Lucy. “Do you mind if I take a picture of the coin?”
“Come on to my office. I have a photo and a fact sheet you can use.”
“Great,” said Lucy, following him through the door and sitting down in the comfortable armchair he kept for visitors. She looked around his office, which was filled with a fascinating miscellany of objects, ranging from a slab of rock with a dinosaur’s footprint to a Navajo rug to a collection of primitive spears, shields, and masks.
Fred opened a file drawer and began flipping through the folders.
“So what do you think of the show? Are you enjoying rehearsals?” asked Lucy.
“I love performing,” he said, his fingers pausing on the file tabs. “I’ve been in every show at the church since they started putting them on fifteen years ago. But this one is different from any of the others I’ve been in.”
“How so?”
“The others were all purely amateur
affairs. Everybody was just out to have a good time. But with Dylan being a professional, it’s more high-pressured.” He started flipping through the file tabs again. “It’s not as much fun.”
“Og is a great part,” said Lucy.
“A leprechaun who gives up immortality for love,” he said, handing her the file. “Pretty improbable, but then the whole story is pretty wild.”
“It all works out in the end,” said Lucy. “Og gets Susan, Woody gets Sharon, and Finian goes back home to Ireland.”
“The script has a happy ending, but I’m not sure this production is going to,” said Fred, leaning back in his chair. “Frank and Dylan are always arguing, Moira can’t seem to learn her lines, the rehearsals go on forever because they waste so much time, and everybody gets tired. And we only have three more rehearsals before opening night. I can’t believe real professional actors and directors behave like this.”
“You don’t think Dylan is who he says he is?” asked Lucy, encouraged to hear someone else voicing doubts.
“I did in the beginning, but now I’m beginning to wonder,” said Fred.
“I’m not even sure he’s really Old Dan’s brother,” said Lucy. “There’s no family resemblance that I can see.”
“He is quite a bit younger than Old Dan, but that happens. They could even be half brothers.”
“Or they might not even be related,” said Lucy. “We only have Dylan’s word that he was a co-owner of the Bilge, based on papers he produced.”
Fred raised an eyebrow. “You think he had some scheme going?”
“I have my suspicions,” admitted Lucy.
Fred shrugged. “I dunno. But I’ll tell you one thing. I think he, and his wife, too, are both full of blarney, and I’m not the only one who thinks so.”
“I think you’re right,” said Lucy, tucking the file in her bag and standing up. Leaving the museum, she gave the mummy’s glass case a little tap, as she always did, for luck. Shamrocks might be lucky, but they were hard to come by in Maine.
Chapter Thirteen
Fred was right, thought Lucy when she arrived at the church hall on Sunday night for rehearsal and found Dylan and Frank embroiled in yet another argument. She was beginning to wonder why she gave up so much of her precious weekend, even missing Sunday dinner, only to sit on an uncomfortable folding chair, waiting for Dylan and Frank to resolve whatever issue they were at odds over and to resume the rehearsal.
Tonight, Pam told her in a whispered voice, it was Og’s entrance.
“He should pop out from under the bridge,” said Dylan. “That’s where leprechauns live, you know, under bridges.”
“I think that’s trolls,” said Frank. “He doesn’t have time to get under the bridge. It would work better for him to pop out from behind a tree.”
“He’s not a bloody jack-in-the-box,” declared Dylan in ringing tones. “He’s a leprechaun, and everybody knows leprechauns live under bridges.”
“Maybe everybody knows that in Ireland, but here in Maine, I don’t think they’ll care. We’ve only got a bar and a half of music to get him on stage, and if we play around with a spotlight for a bit, it will build suspense….”
“Ah, but if there’s only a bar and a half of music, which leaves no time for him to hide, why would we have time to mess around with a spotlight, can you tell me that?”
“That’s why we need the spotlight,” said Frank, sighing. “It solves a bunch of problems. It gives Og some extra time to get in place, and it will heighten the dramatic effect of his entrance. The audience will love it.”
Hearing this, Dylan’s eyebrows shot up, and he glared at Frank. “Ah, so you say it will heighten the dramatic effect, do you? Since when exactly did you become the drama expert here? Do you know who you’re talking to? I think I can claim to have more dramatic experience than you, having performed on stages throughout the British Isles, including the Old Vic and Dublin’s own Abbey Theatre.”
“Yeah, well, I checked these so-called credits of yours and discovered you were a spear-carrier in a show the Daily Mail called ‘Shakespearean in title only’ and ‘a muddled mishmash that would make the Bard blush.’”
Hearing this, Lucy pricked up her ears and listened intently as Frank continued in a scathing tone. “And your turn at the Abbey Theatre was as narrator for a children’s puppet show. You read your lines offstage. And, as for that TV series, you were in one episode, and you got killed in the first two minutes.”
“I was featured throughout—”
“As a corpse,” sneered Frank. “All you had to do was remember not to sneeze.”
Lucy wasn’t the only one paying attention; most of the cast members were following the exchange.
“Spite,” said Dylan, spitting out the word. “Spite and jealousy. That’s what motivates you, and it’s a sad thing to see.”
“I’ve had just about enough of this,” said Fred, who had been waiting to take direction. “We’re wasting time. I say I go behind the tree, because, to tell the truth, I’m six two and I just had knee surgery and I don’t think I can get under that bridge without tearing my meniscus all over again.”
“Good enough,” said Frank, striding to the piano and hitting a chord. “Places everyone.”
“Don’t ever do that again,” hissed Dylan. “I’m the director, and I tell the cast when to take their places.”
“Well, then, do it,” snarled Frank. “These people have jobs. A lot of them work on weekends, you know. They can’t sleep all morning, like some people.”
“Directing is exhausting work,” said Moira, taking her place center stage as Og slipped behind the plywood tree trunk and the chorus members drifted onstage. “Dylan needs the recuperative benefits of at least ten hours of sleep, as do I.”
“Ten hours of sleep,” murmured Lucy to Pam as they joined the others onstage. “Now I really hate her.”
Pam chuckled. “Somewhere along the line we went wrong. We should have structured our lives differently.”
“You said it,” agreed Lucy. “Starting tomorrow, the girls can make their own breakfast and get themselves off to school, Bill can make his own lunch, and the dog can let herself out. I’m going to catch up on my sleep.”
“Right,” said Pam, clearly not believing a word of it.
“You’ll see,” insisted Lucy. “Tell Ted I’ll be in around noon.”
“You tell him yourself,” said Pam. “I’m not going—”
“Ladies! Do you mind?” snapped Frank, fixing his eyes on them. “We’ll start with ‘Something Sort of Grandish’ with Og and Sharon, and then we’ll segue right into ‘Necessity.’” He raised his voice. “Sharon. We need you.”
Moira, who had drifted backstage, ignored him, deeply engrossed in conversation with Dave Reilly.
“Moira!” Frank called again. “You need the practice, dear, and since Og is doing ‘Something Sort of Grandish,’ you might as well sing along, too.”
Moira shrugged and turned slowly, swiveling her hips. “If you say so, Frank.” All eyes were on her as she walked across the stage, right into the path of Tatiana, who was practicing turns. The collision was inevitable.
“Bitch! You did that on purpose!” shrieked Moira, shoving Tatiana, who landed awkwardly on her bottom.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you, really,” said the dancer, scrambling to her feet and dusting herself off.
“Liar!” said Moira. “Face it, you can’t stand the fact that Dave likes me better than you. You’d do anything to get me out of the way.”
“Face it yourself, Moira. Dave doesn’t like you at all. He’s just being polite,” said the dance teacher, coolly. “You’re the last person I would be jealous of, believe me.”
“Well, if you’re not jealous, why do you always have it out for me?”
“Look who’s talking! I’ve been working on this combination for at least fifteen minutes, right here. You walked right into my path.”
“You went out of your way to knock into me,�
�� said Moira. “Ask anyone.”
The chorus members cast their eyes in a dozen different directions, all avoiding eye contact with Moira. In Pam’s case, it didn’t work.
“You saw, didn’t you, Pam?” said Moira. “She changed direction and ran right into me.”
“Don’t ask me,” said Pam. “I didn’t actually see what happened.”
“Well, what about you, Harry?” demanded Moira, selecting the harbormaster to press her point.
Harry shrugged and rolled his eyes. “Can we get on with the rehearsal?” he asked. “I’ve got to get up at four tomorrow to catch a plane.”
“Right,” said Frank, banging out a chord. “From the top.”
Relieved to finally be doing something, the chorus members put their hearts into their singing, winning approving nods and smiles from Frank, until Moira missed her cue.
“Moira, dear,” he hissed, “you’re supposed to come in here.” He pounded out the chord on the piano.
“Oh, right,” she said, singing the wrong lyrics in the wrong key.
Frank slammed down the lid on the keyboard. “Enough! I’ve had it!” he yelled at Dylan. “What is the point? She won’t learn the words; she won’t practice the songs; she doesn’t even pay attention!”
Dylan, who had been sitting along the side of the room, with his knees crossed, studying the script, slowly got up. He nodded slowly, a benign smile on his face, and spoke slowly, as if speaking to an idiot. “True talent like Moira’s needs nurturing. It needs tender care, respect, and admiration in order to blossom.”
“How about some respect for me? For everyone here?” demanded Frank.
“I think it would be best if we called it a night,” said Dylan, with a shrug. “Everyone’s tired.”
“Call it a night! We haven’t even got through the second act, and there’s only two more rehearsals before opening night!” said Frank.
