The Phantom of Oz

by Cindy Brown

  “Why didn’t the skeleton cross the road?” asked a munchkin boy.

  I sipped from my plastic tumbler. “I don’t know. Why?”

  “Because he didn’t have the guts!”

  I was beginning to think the same thing about Candy, who was the only cast member who hadn’t appeared. Had she heard I was there and was avoiding me?

  My stomach growled, interrupting my train of thought. I’d already sampled all the cheese, so I surveyed the other offerings. There were crudités and mini spring rolls and little quiches, but it was as if a filmmaker in my brain had decided there was only one thing in the room worth focusing on: the petit-fours glowed as if under a spotlight, their pastel colors winking at me. Oh. Someone else was winking at me too; a silver-haired gent who stood near the sweets, maybe mistaking my petit-four longing for something else. I gave him a little “I see you, but I’m not interested” wave. He looked old enough to have been a babe in arms at the Grand Phoenician’s original opening. That would’ve been something. I could almost see the crowd as it would have looked in 1925: the men in tailcoats, the women in beaded gowns, standing underneath the stained glass windows, next to the drinking fountains shaped like seashells, some of them laughing as they wandered up the gilded spiral stairway that led to the balcony, or drinking champagne beneath the enormous 1920s-era portrait of a dashing fellow wearing an eyepatch, a patron of the theater, I guessed. I could even see the Lady in White drifting through the crowd, her gauzy scarf...wait, was that the Lady? I blinked. No one there.

  A tug on my sleeve. Madison. “What’s the ratio of a pumpkin’s circumference to its diameter?” she asked.

  “Is this a joke or a math question?” a girl munchkin asked in a snotty voice.

  “It’s Pumpkin Pi,” said Madison. “Get it?”

  “Pumpkin Pi!” I laughed loudly to make up for the other quietly confused munchkins. A few of the polite ones laughed too.

  “By the way,” Madison said quietly to me, “I know that you’re really Candy’s friend. She was talking about you today.”

  “She was?”

  “Yeah. She’s really mad at you.”

  Desirée must’ve heard her daughter’s voice because she pushed into the crowd of munchkins, grabbed Madison by the arm, and towed her toward Babette.

  “Candace is probably crazy mad because she’s doing meth,” the snotty girl munchkin said to me, loudly enough that a few partygoers perked up their ears.

  Great. Candy probably thought I started that rumor too.

  I scanned the crowd again. Candy still wasn’t there, but those petit-fours were. I could almost hear their come-hither voices: “I’m the most delicious cake ever. I’m moist and sweet. And I’m free.” It was the last line that did it. We actors are suckers for free food. I waited until Babette was distracted by the entrance of Desirée and Madison into her inner ring. Then I made a dash for the table, feeling like the Baker in Into the Woods, sneaking into the witch’s garden to steal her beans. I grabbed a couple of napkins (the better to hide petit-fours, my dear) and had just taken a delicious-looking white one with a pink rose on top when...

  “Oh my God.” Babette made a show of pointing at me. “You’re actually going to eat that? Aren’t you happy with two chins?”

  Normally I would have stuck out my tongue, put the petit-four on it, and made a big showing of eating it (with my single-chinned mouth, thank you very much). Instead I dropped my treat into a nearby wastebasket. Why did Babette make me act this way? Did I want to be famous that badly? What sort of hold did she have on me? Whatever her evil spell, everyone seemed to fall under it.

  Everyone except for Eden. Not only had she seemed remarkably unaffected by Babette’s mean remarks about her weight during rehearsal, now she sauntered over to the dessert table. “Ooh, you mean these little cakes could make my hips even bigger?” She bit into one, licking her lips with relish. “So the men will line up to walk behind me and watch the swing in my backyard?” She popped the rest of the petit-four into her mouth and picked up another. “I think I’ll have several.” She put three more on a plate. “Yum, yum, yum. These are delicious, and so am I. Listen up, ladies,” she said in a louder voice. “You all know happiness is the root of true beauty. Drink champagne. Eat cake. Allow yourselves some pleasure and see how beautifully you’ll shine.”

  The women in the room, especially the stick-thin ones surrounding Babette, looked at Eden and the cakes with a hunger that startled me. A few even stepped toward the table, until the sound of slow applause cut through the air. “Very nice,” said Babette, clapping. “I didn’t know hippos could talk. Get it?” she said to her coterie. “Hippos? I mean, look at her, she’s—”

  “Beautiful.” Madison walked over to Eden, who appeared completely unfazed. “And so am I.” Madison popped a cake into her mouth.

  “Madison!” her mom hissed.

  “It won’t make any difference,” said Babette. “That one’s going to have to beat them off with a stick.”

  Desirée beamed at Babette, whose smile held more than a hint of cruelty.

  “Beat off the flies, I mean. The kind that circle piles of shit.”

  “That’s enough, Babette.” My voice rang out in the lobby. Years of voice work, you know. “Looks like the real Wicked Witch is right here in our midst.” I picked up a pitcher full of water and marched over to Babette. “And she’s about to get melted.” I tossed the entire contents of the pitcher at her. So much for my career aspirations.

  “Aaah!” yelled Babette, water streaming off her hair and down her face. Darn, she hadn’t worn waterproof mascara.

  “Yay, Ivy!” shouted Madison. I turned to high-five her when the back of my neck caught fire, or at least felt like it. “What the...?”

  Babette stood behind me with a carafe of hot coffee, pouring the last of it down my back.

  “Ow! Hey. Stop it. That’s hot.” I flung my hands ineffectively at the hot liquid.

  “You want a fight, you got a fight,” Babette said. Then a petit-four hit her on the nose.

  “Bullseye!” said Eden. “I hit a ‘bully bullseye.’”

  “Food fight!” cried the munchkins, and suddenly cheese and crackers and little cakes were flying everywhere. I ran to the dessert table and grabbed a few petit fours, shoving one in my mouth (it was SO good) when someone screamed. Two someones. Candy, still dressed in her Glinda costume, had finally appeared, near the top of the spiral staircase. It would have been a grand entrance, even if she hadn’t been screaming. “Oh my God!” She pointed at the other screamer.

  Babette stood shrieking, her face covered in blood. Oh no. Did someone throw something sharp during the food fight?

  I rushed toward her. I was the only one; everyone else was backing away. Several of them pointed at the portrait behind Babette. Blood streamed from the painted gentleman’s eyepatch, a sticky red trail dripping down his face and onto the floor. But wait. Babette was a good three feet away from the painting.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked Babette, who was gulping air like a dying fish. “Let me see your face.” I carefully wiped off the blood with a paper napkin. “No cuts or scratches that I can see.” Babette was speechless, maybe for the first time in her life.

  I walked over to the portrait to examine it more closely. Blood ran down the man’s face, like those miraculous statues of the Virgin Mary I’d read about. “Aah!” Something wet on my forehead. Muffled footsteps beat a hasty retreat.

  People screamed. Was I bleeding? A sticky warmth covered my face. Not the metallic tang of blood, though, something sweeter. I swiped at my face, and my hands came away covered in red gore. I lifted a finger to my lips and tasted. “Stage blood,” I said to the whimpering crowd.

  Remembering the footsteps, I knocked on the wall behind the portrait. Hollow. Definitely a space behind the wall. “Someone was hiding behind the painting.”

&
nbsp; “The Lady in White,” someone said.

  “Ghosts don’t have to hide.” I shook my head. “This was a real person. Someone who knows the old blood-in-a-syringe trick.”

  “What?” asked Madison.

  I’d seen the stagecraft used once in a production of The Mystery of Irma Vep, which featured a bleeding painting. “You make a tiny hole in the painting...” Yep, there it was, right beneath the gent’s eye patch. “Then you put a piece of tape over the back side of it, to create resistance. Then you plunge the syringe through the hole and when it breaks through the tape blood squirts everywhere.”

  “But why?” someone asked.

  “Maybe we should ask Babette,” I said. She shook her head, her blonde hair matted with the fake blood.

  “I still think it was the Lady,” said Madison.

  “Pretty sure I heard footsteps inside the wall right after I was...shot,” I said.

  “Squirted,” said Desirée.

  Dang, I’d been hoping to get away with that bit of dramatic license. “Did anyone else hear anything? Maybe you, Candy, since you were near that wall too?” I looked up at my friend.

  Or looked for her. Because Candy had disappeared.

  Chapter 18

  Do You Think We’ve Eaten Her?

  I do mean disappeared.

  I wasn’t worried at first. After all, something pretty scary had just happened, and whatever was up with Candy, she seemed jittery and easily spooked. I thought she’d probably gone back to her dressing room and maybe whatever was making her feel better these days.

  But she wasn’t there. Her street clothes were draped across the back of a chair, though, so I was sure she hadn’t left the theater.

  I texted her while roaming the hallways. No reply. I checked the green room (the actors’ break room). Nope. The costume shop. No. I made the rounds backstage, even peering in between flats in case she’d holed up there. No Candy.

  A black-clad techie came up the stairs from the house, carrying a paper plate laden with goodies from the reception. “Have you seen Candace Moon?” I asked. He shook his head and kept going, out a door far upstage right. I followed him. The door led outside to the loading dock, where all the crew went to smoke. Maybe Candy was hanging out there. For all I knew she’d started smoking. I’d heard it helped you stay less hungry.

  I stepped outside. No Candy, but a clutch of techies were there, smoking and scarfing down the remains of the free food. I started to wave away the cloud of smoke that enveloped me, then stopped. Didn’t think it’d be polite. “Anyone seen Candy?”

  The group stared at me, mouths open.

  “You know, she plays Glinda?” I said.

  “Are…are you okay?” stuttered a girl with a blonde buzz cut.

  “Yeah.”

  “Your face,” she said. “It’s…”

  “You’re, like, all bloody,” said a shaggy guy with an almost beard.

  I touched my face. Sticky. “Oh.” I could see reddish brown clumps in my hair too. “Stage blood,” I said.

  “Thank God,” said the girl. “After all the accidents lately.”

  The door opened behind me. “Wow,” said a familiar voice. Logan checked me out as he joined us on the loading dock. “Nice. Can I get a picture?” He didn’t wait for me to say yes, just took a photo with his phone. “The Lady in White strikes again,” he said as he tapped on his phone, probably Tweeting.

  “Pretty sure it wasn’t her,” I said. “So have any of you seen Candy?”

  “Not since the show,” said the girl.

  “Huh. I can’t find her.”

  “Probably just taking care of business,” said a tall baby-faced guy.

  “That’s the second time someone has said that. What do you mean?”

  “Well, since Candy’s been here we’ve been going through lot of air freshener,” he said.

  “Still not getting it.” Of course, I had my suspicions, but I needed to be sure.

  “In the bathroom,” said Babyface.

  “That’s usually where people use air freshener.”

  “No, we use it a lot in the light booth.” The girl with the buzz cut looked pointedly at the shaggy fellow, who wore a not-so-clean t-shirt.

  “Anyway,” I said.

  “Come on, do we have to spell it out for you?” said Logan. “Candy uses the bathroom. A lot. After every meal.”

  “She barfs up her food,” said the shaggy dude.

  I nodded briskly, like I already knew it, but my heart sank.

  “But you know,” said the girl, “I haven’t smelled it lately.”

  “The barf or the air freshener?” said Shaggy.

  “Maybe she’s getting better,” said the girl.

  “Maybe it was just a stomach bug,” I said, though I wasn’t fooling anyone. “So now that we have that out of the way, any ideas where she might be?”

  “I wouldn’t do this for Babette’s minion.” Logan opened the door to the theater and held it for me. “But I’ll do it for you. Come on, Ivy. We’ll find Candy.”

  But we didn’t. We scoured the theater, top to bottom, but no Candy. I texted her a bunch more times too, with no result. The simple explanation was that she was more pissed at me than I’d thought, and had taken off so she wouldn’t have to face me or my questions.

  I checked her dressing room again. Her street clothes were still there. So was her duffel bag. I looked at it sitting on the counter, then I looked at Logan, who was still with me.

  “If you’re going to go through the personal belongings of an actor who’s working at this theater...” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “You need to tell me so I can turn my head.”

  “Turn, boyo.”

  He did, even humming a tune, so he couldn’t hear me. Quite the professional.

  I took everything out of Candy’s duffel. Makeup. An extra pair of tights. A spare pair of underwear (not too surprising—she once told me she always carried them. I didn’t want to know why). Brushes. Breath mints, real ones. I dug deeper. Oh no.

  Her wallet. Her cell phone. No wonder she hadn’t texted me back.

  Worry hit me like a fist. No matter how mad she was, Candy would not have left those behind.

  Chapter 19

  The First Investigations After the Disappearance

  “I’m investigating the disappearance of Candace Moon. I’m a PI.” I flashed a card at the front-desk guy at the Courtyard Marriot. My ID wasn’t real. I was still working on getting my license. I’d stopped by Duda Detectives’ office on the way to Candy’s hotel and created the card from stuff I found on the internet. My uncle would be furious if he knew. “So if the manager could just let me into her room—”

  “Nice.” The clerk went back to his computer, his brown shaved head gleaming under the overhead lights.

  “Nice?”

  “As in nice try, no dice. You know how many of you journalists have tried to get into Ms. Moon’s room? If I weren’t a good guy, I could be rich by now.”

  “So I guess that means you’re not taking...tips, right?”

  “That’s right.” He straightened his tie. “And I’d give up the PI ruse if I were you. You obviously don’t have what it takes.”

  I ignored the dig. Like a real PI would when she was on the case. “Would you let the police in?” Maybe I could call Pink—Detective Pinkstaff, as he was better known in the Phoenix PD.

  “Not unless they have a warrant or probable cause.”

  “Candy has disappeared,” I said. “That seems like probable cause.”

  “Wouldn’t you disappear if all these scumbags were hounding you?” He waved at the hotel lobby. I’d taken the crowd for a busload of tourists, what with the cameras around their necks, but I should have known. Their faces weren’t relaxed with the prospect of a sunny win
ter vacation, but scrunched up with concentration as they studied their phones between glances at the hotel entrance. Paparazzi.

  I found a photo of Candy and me on my phone and held it out to the clerk. “Listen, I’m her best friend.”

  He arched an eyebrow.

  “And a PI. Really. I can’t find Candy and I’m worried about her.”

  He glanced at the phone, then took it from me, examining the photo. “When was this taken?”

  “August.”

  “This past August?”

  I nodded. The clerk handed my phone back to me. “You should be worried. I’d never have recognized her from that photo.”

  That didn’t make me feel any better. What to do now? I hung out in the lobby with the journalists, trying to figure out my next step. I pulled up the photo of Candy and me again. We were at Hussong’s in Ensenada, Mexico, surrounded by baskets of tortilla chips and empty margarita glasses. I looked pretty much the same, except then my hair was shorter and strawberry blonde (a fix after one of my hair dye accidents). Candy, though...in the photo, her brown curls sprung off her head like they were trying to escape into the sun that glinted through the cantina window. She was laughing, showing off white teeth, and bursting out of her yellow sundress in all the right places. She looked like the farmer’s daughter in those old jokes: a luscious, friendly sexpot.

  “Hey,” I heard from over my shoulder. “Aren’t you the one with the ghost photos?” The speaker was a hard-looking woman with dark lipstick. “Wait.” She grabbed at the phone in my hand. “Is that Candace Moon? Wow, she looks—”

  “A lot like her sister, Mandy. Which is who this is.” I swiped the photo shut.

  “Yeah? Twins?”

  “No.” Twins sounded like news, like the press might try to find Candy’s nonexistent sister. “A year and a half apart.”

  “Definite resemblance. You know, if Mandy lost some weight, she’d be almost as good-looking as her sis—”