by Cindy Brown
“Fagin and Nancy, at your service,” Timothy said as we halted in front of the trio. Up close, the tall man looked vaguely familiar, the slender twenty-something blonde looked like a supermodel, and our director looked like his tie was slowly cutting off his air supply.
Jonas smiled formally and said, “I’d like to introduce you both to my stepfather and—” He sniffed the air, then pulled me aside. “Why do you smell like gin?” he whispered.
“Authenticity?” I said hopefully.
My new director set his jaw and said, “Please go.” He pulled out his phone and checked the time. “Don’t bother coming back to the party. Just be ready for rehearsal at ten.”
“Ten o’clock tonight?” I knew this wasn’t a union gig, but still.
“Tonight.” He turned back to the group.
I slunk out of the party and back to my room. I got out of my stinking costume and dropped it on the floor. The discarded gown and petticoats took up most of the available floor space, but Harley was still at the party, so I had the place to myself. Or so I thought.
Then I opened my closet.
CHAPTER 5
Under Very Suspicious and Disreputable Circumstances
“I thought we were dealing with thieves, not murderers,” I whispered fiercely into my phone.
“What happened?” said my uncle.
“Harley is dead, to begin with.”
“What? Dead?” he said again, over loud music and laughter.
I really didn’t want to shout about the corpse in my room, so instead I yelled, “Go someplace where you can hear me.”
“Gotcha.” He hung up.
I glanced at my closet. My roommate was not at the party. She was in there. Or at least I thought it was Harley. I had slammed the door before I saw much more than a contorted body dressed in Victorian clothes. As a regular person who felt squeamish about dead things and sad about people dying, I didn’t want to open the closet door again. As an investigator, I knew I had to.
I eased the door open a crack. The young woman just fit inside, so she was small like my roommate. She was also a brunette, but missing the Madame Defarge mobcap Harley had put on right before leaving. A shawl covered most of the clothes that I could see, but her skirt was rusty red. It was almost certainly Harley. I leaned in to get a better view of her face. Her face…
I shut the door again, and leaned against it, breathing hard. There was nothing wrong with Harley’s face, except that it was pretty and young and it reminded me that she was recently a living breathing person who might have eventually been my friend and—
My cell rang. Uncle Bob.
I picked up. “There’s a dead body in my closet.”
“I thought you said ‘dead.’ Anyone else in the room? Could you be in danger?”
No one in the bedroom for sure, but I looked inside the minuscule bathroom and pulled aside the shower curtain, just in case. “No.”
“Then why are you whispering?”
“I don’t know. Respect for the dead?”
“Do you know who it is?”
“I think it’s my roommate, Harley.”
“Are you sure she’s dead?”
I thought of Harley’s contorted body and her still pale face. “I’m sure.”
“Okay. Gimme your room number and I’ll be there in a minute. In the meantime, find out as much as you can without disturbing the scene. You pack your gloves?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Wear ’em. And don’t open the door to anyone but me.”
“Got it.” I hung up. Uncle Bob had taught me to always carry a few tricks of the PI trade, including latex gloves to avoid messing up other fingerprints. I grabbed them out of my bag, along with a short robe so I’d be semi-decent when Uncle Bob arrived. I put on the robe and gloves, turned on the recorder app on my phone, and went into the bathroom. “Makeup on the counter, drugstore variety,” I said into my phone. “Shampoo and conditioner for curly hair in the shower.” I opened the medicine cabinet. Lotions and potions and serums, all for “the first signs of aging.” As I catalogued them into the recorder, I upped my estimation of Harley’s age from early twenties to somewhere around thirty and filed a mental note about her skincare line for future use.
I may have been in my twenties, but I did live in Arizona, an environment not conducive to great skin.
Besides the skincare products, there was a hair pick, a brush and toothpaste, a couple bottles of cologne, a collection of Band-Aids, some gauze and medical tape, a packet of birth control pills, and two prescription bottles: one for Amoxicillin, half full, and one for Keppra, empty. Amoxicillin was an antibiotic. “What is Keppra?” I said into my phone—a note for later.
Back in the bedroom, I began with the small desk built into the far end of the cabin. Nothing on the desktop that wasn’t there earlier. A shelf above the desk held a few travel books, a dog-eared romance, and a copy of Great Expectations. I riffled the pages. Nothing but a bookmark in Great Expectations. Harley had highlighted a passage on the bookmarked page: “In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.” Huh. Did that mean something to her for personal reasons or professional actor reasons?
I put the book back on the shelf and opened the top desk drawer. “Harley’s personal papers include her Get Lit! contract,” I said, flipping through the standard-looking contract. No mention of a guaranteed private room. I sorted through a short stack of papers. “Written prescriptions for Keppra and birth control pills, and a letter signed,” my throat swelled up, but I croaked out the last words, “‘Love, Mom.’” Soon, a mother would know she didn’t have a daughter anymore.
Swallowing hard, I put myself back to the task at hand. I opened the second drawer, which was filled with undies and socks. The bottom drawer held t-shirts and shorts. “Clothes, nothing unusual,” I said.
A knock. “It’s me, Bob.”
I let him in, shutting the door quickly before anyone could see, since we weren’t supposed to know each other.
“Find anything?”
“No clues, and no jewelry or anything that looked like stolen goods.”
“Look like anyone else went through her stuff?”
“Not unless they were really neat when they put it all back in place.”
Uncle Bob pulled his own pair of gloves out of a pocket inside his suit coat. “Which closet?”
I pointed.
“You got your tape recorder on?”
I nodded and he opened the closet door.
Whoa. The ship rolled and we both nearly pitched into Harley. Uncle Bob braced his hands on the edges of the wardrobe. I stood next to him.
If I was going to learn to be a PI, I’d better learn to look at things objectively. Even dead roommates.
“No marks as far as I can see.” Uncle Bob peered at Harley’s face. “No bruising, no blood. Eyes beginning to film over. I can only see her right hand.” It was crossed over her chest, like she was saying the pledge of allegiance. “But no defense wounds or scratches.”
“Wait, what’s that?” I reached above my uncle and grabbed a lone book from a shelf at the top of the closet. “Positively Powerful by Theo Pushwright,” I read out loud. “Why isn’t this book with the others?” I turned it over. The black-haired man at the Set Sail party gazed at me from the book’s back cover photo. “I knew I recognized him at the party earlier. He’s that positive thinking guy. He’s on all the talk shows.” I flipped through it. “Hey, he signed the book: ‘To my dear Harley. You are positively perfect. Theo.’”
A knock. “Ship security.”
My uncle and I looked at each other. “I didn’t call,” I whispered.
“Me neither.” He shut the closet door.
Ano
ther knock, more insistent. “Ship security. Open up. I have a report of a disturbance.”
The security officer let himself in just as the ship rolled again, throwing me firmly into Uncle Bob’s arms.
“What’s going on here?” said the security guy. We hurriedly separated. “Ahh.” He smiled lasciviously. “Into that, are you?”
“Into what?” I said, then followed his glance. Oh. I still wore just a robe, and both of us had on our latex gloves. Ick.
He smirked. “You theater people.”
“Nothing’s going on,” said Uncle Bob. “I…heard a scream, so I came in to see if everything was all right.”
“Must have been some scream.” The guy sounded like he was talking about a porn film.
I raised my chin. “Yes. I found a dead body in my closet and I screamed.”
“A dead body. Right. Well,” the security guy leered at me, “you just keep your screams to a dull roar, and everybody will be happy.” He winked at Uncle Bob.
He also pushed one of my buttons. Actually, two of them: the “since-you’re-an-actress-you-must-be-a-slut” button, and the “since-you’re-a-cute-blonde-I-don’t-take-you-seriously” button. I especially hated the second. Being dismissed pissed me off royally.
So I flung open the closet door in a grand dramatic gesture just as the ship hit a big wave. “See for yourself!” I said, and dead Harley tumbled out of the closet and into my arms.
CHAPTER 6
Surprises, Like Misfortunes, Seldom Come Alone
After the stunned security officer got Harley off of me, and after Uncle Bob asked me if Olive/Ivy/Nancy was okay (blowing our cover if anyone had been listening), and after a more serious-acting security guy came and asked us a bunch of questions, they let us go with a promise not to say anything to anyone.
Harley’s death had to be connected to the crimes onboard—too coincidental otherwise. And she was an actor. Did that mean theater people were part of the theft ring? I needed to be careful. I scrambled to get ready for rehearsal, raced up to the Pickwick Promenade, and yanked open the door to The Royal Victoria Theater just as a Big Ben-sounding clock struck ten.
Jonas stood between the front row and the stage, talking to a redhead with a gymnast’s body. I trotted down the aisle to join them. “Pee-yew,” Red said in a five-hundred-seat-theater voice. “What’s that smell?”
Harley’s body hadn’t smelled at all, since she hadn’t been dead very long. I, on the other hand, stank. After the security detail left my cabin, I realized I had five minutes to get to rehearsal. No time to shower off the fear sweat, so I spritzed myself with something Harley had in the bathroom, only to realize as I ran to the theater that it was men’s cologne.
In my rushed state, I’d covered it up with the coconut perfume that had been rolling around in the bottom of my bag. I now smelled like an old man on a Hawaiian vacation. Who hadn’t bathed in three days.
Jonas wrinkled his nose. “I liked the gin better.” Then, in a quieter voice, “By the way, I’m sorry if I was a little harsh earlier. My stepfather—the man I was with—was stressing me out.”
Up close I saw that Jonas’s eyes were a deep blue, almost indigo.
He continued, “And when I realized he might be able to smell liquor on you, I panicked.”
Harley’s eyes had been blue too. I could see them—open, staring, beginning to cloud over…
“Ivy,” said Jonas. “Are you with me?”
I pushed the image of Harley’s face out of my head. I couldn’t tell him what had happened. The security guys had sworn us to secrecy until they’d notified her family. Plus, Jonas might be a suspect. The redhead too.
“Sorry about the smell,” I said. “And I’m sorry about earlier tonight too. With Theo.”
“You know my stepfather?”
The redhead tittered. “C’mon, everyone knows Theo. The real question is: who’s the blonde with him?”
“Madalina is helping him write his memoir.” Jonas’s square jaw somehow got squarer. Was that a clue? Harley had that signed book from Theo. Maybe she and Theo and Madalina had a love triangle. Maybe Theo tried to dump Harley and she fought him. Maybe I’d been watching too many telenovelas.
“Ada, why don’t you prep the stage?” Jonas said to the redhead. “I need a few minutes with Ivy.”
Ada muttered something under her breath and hopped onstage.
Jonas sat and patted the seat next to him. I sat, glad for a moment to take in my surroundings.
The Royal Victoria Theater looked like the photos I’d seen of European opera houses: shaped like a U with ornately carved wooden boxes on either side. Tasseled gold velvet drapes framed the boxes and swaths of burgundy velvet cloaked the proscenium. Dark green walls bore a faint gilt pattern that caught the light.
Ahh. The theater. My shoulders relaxed, the sight of Harley’s dead eyes faded away, and I sighed with relief. I loved theaters in general—the plush seats and high ceilings and sense of expectation they all held. This one was all that on steroids.
“Let’s start over.” Jonas smiled at me with teeth that looked like they belonged in a toothpaste commercial. “I’m Jonas, your director. Glad to have you on board, so to speak.” He looked at me more closely and his smile faltered. “Uh, your hair…”
“I’ve been told it’s sexy hair.”
“It’s something. We’ll get it fixed first thing in the morning. Right now we need to get you up to speed. It’s going to be crazy. That’s the other thing stressing me out. I’ve never known anyone to…never mind.” He ran a hand through his blonde hair, which was long on the top and short on the sides. “You got the script I emailed?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Oliver! At Sea! was a reworked, condensed version of the famous musical Oliver! Wasn’t sure if the new title was a wink at the original’s strangely upbeat title or if Get Lit! just liked exclamation marks. Our show followed the musical’s basic plot line, with song lyrics revised to emulate life onboard the S.S. David Copperfield (and probably to avoid copyright issues). As Nancy, I didn’t have many lines, but I did have a great death scene and two songs: a bouncy number with Oliver and the Dodger called “Consider Yourself Onboard” and a mash-up ballad “Where is Food?/As Long as He Feeds Me.”
“Great script,” I lied.
Onstage, the redhead tugged on a rope, and a length of red fabric fell in a waterfall to the stage floor.
“I’ve memorized all my lines and songs,” I said. “I rehearsed the dances too, as much as I could.” Two of the show’s numbers had dance breaks, which I saw via links to YouTube videos.
“Good. Timothy said you’re a strong dancer. You’ll need to be.”
Huh. The dances didn’t look that difficult. Ada released another red cloth from where it was looped up in the fly space. She was about my age, with the strong back and shoulder muscles of a swimmer.
“Tonight we’re going to rehearse Fagin’s Magic Handkerchief.”
I nodded. That explained the lack of cast members. My contract did mention this magic act, though I didn’t get a script for it. I hoped the show’s benign-sounding name meant I wouldn’t be sawn in half. Didn’t want to put myself in harm’s way any more than necessary, especially now I knew there was a murderer onboard.
“Ada’s our choreographer.” Jonas nodded at the red-haired woman hauling a mat onto the stage from one of the wings. “Let’s get going.” He jumped onstage. “I wish we didn’t have to work this late, but you’ll need every bit of rehearsal you can get. Be extra careful tonight. I know you’re probably tired, but at least you can learn the silk basics.”
“The what basics?” I followed him onstage.
“The silks. The aerial silks?” Jonas motioned to the two lengths of red cloth suspended from the catwalk forty feet above our heads. “You’re going
to be an aerial dancer during the magic show. Didn’t they tell you anything?”
“Umm.” Another thing left off my contract. A pretty important thing.
“Please tell me you’re not afraid of heights,” said Jonas.
“I’m not.”
It wasn’t a lie. I wasn’t afraid of heights. I was afraid of dangling forty feet above a hard wooden stage with only a piece of cloth for support. I was afraid of whoever shoved Harley in my closet. I was afraid of the fathoms of water underneath us too.
Ada hauled herself up one of the silks, like she was climbing a rope but way more elegantly. She wound the fabric around one leg, pulled herself up with her arms, then put her other foot on the silk and pushed herself into a standing position.
“See that?” said Jonas. “Ada’s using her legs so it’s not just her arms supporting her.”
She’s using magic and muscles I don’t have, is what I thought. I watched her climb all the way to the edge of the proscenium, where she somehow wound the fabric around her, then turned and did the splits, hands-free. Upside down.
Never, never would I be able to do that.
“Ada? Let’s get going.” The miracle dancer shimmied down the silk and landed lightly on the stage. “Your silk is the one with the mat,” Jonas said to me. I walked over and stood on the mat. No way this little bit of padding would break any fall.
“Of course, you won’t have a mat during performance,” said Ada.
Great.
I grasped the silk fabric, which wasn’t actually silk, but some kind of slightly stretchy cloth. I pulled on it and it gave a few inches.
“It’s Lycra,” Jonas said as I tested the fabric. “It has a bit of stretch so it’s not so hard on your body. Okay, then.” He smiled encouragingly. “We’ll begin by teaching you to climb.”
He should have said, “by trying to teach you to climb.” After fifteen minutes I’d managed to climb just two steps. Now I knew how Ada got her figure. Climbing a silk took an enormous amount of upper body strength. I had strong dancer’s legs, but my arms…Let’s just say the experience was humbling.
