by Sarah Dreher
It was the kind of day, Stoner thought, when nothing much got accomplished, everyone made wrong decisions, and people got into arguments over things they didn't even care about.
Like whether Sherry Dodder was a Princess, or the pea under the mattress.
Actually, even Sherry was in a serious mood, though she had dressed in a bright yellow swirly rayon blouse and tropical print shorts. Clearly, she intended to counteract the day's gloominess if at all possible. At the moment, though, she was taking a break from her role as Cottage cheer leader and all-around good time girl to discuss the fine points of the Hikers' bill with their treasurer. Smiles all around. Everything was apparently agreeable.
The honeymooners hadn't even bothered to come downstairs. In fact, in the three days they'd been there, Stoner had barely laid eyes on them. Their friends were probably complaining about how women acted when they became couples, joined at the hip. Give them six months, she thought. They'll revert to human beings again.
Gwen was packing away a breakfast that would have satisfied a trucker, giving no indication that she'd consumed one and a half pickle and pimento loaf with mayonnaise on white bread sandwiches only a few hours ago. Omelet de jour, with cheese, herbs, tomatoes, peppers, wild mushrooms, and something that looked like fiddlehead ferns but couldn't be since fiddlehead season was long past and Sherry certainly wouldn't sink to frozen or canned products.
Stoner searched her heart to see if there had been something unduly sarcastic or nasty in that last thought. If there was, she couldn't find it. Actually, she admired the choices Sherry made about the food she served her guests. It was healthy, unusual, and delicious. She never took the easy way, when it certainly must be tempting. And there was the daily array of assorted goodies on hand at all times in the lobby. Considering the rather odd personal relationship Sherry seemed to have with eating, the time and effort she took for other people was surprising—and, Stoner had to admit, admirable.
She chewed on her English muffin and sipped her coffee and contemplated the nature of inn keeping. As a career, it had a lot in common with being a travel agent. Lots of details, lots of people to satisfy, lots of things to go wrong. In the travel business you didn't have to worry about menu planning, an activity she found almost impossible to imagine without losing her sanity. On the other hand, Sherry probably didn't have to worry much about lost luggage.
Someone had said something about Sherry once having had a partner in running the Cottage. She wondered about that, and what had happened. Had they been business partners only, or friends or lovers? Had the separation been amicable or nasty? Had Sherry wanted to keep the inn, or had it become hers by default?
Could the current goings-on be an ex-lover's revenge?
"Penny for your thoughts," Gwen said.
"I was just wondering about the partner Sherry had."
"She talked a little about that. She said the other woman had wanted to go back to graduate school—chemistry or mathematics or physics or some other intimidating field—and Sherry bought her out. Marge wouldn't have had the money for school otherwise."
"That was her name? Marge?"
Gwen nodded.
"How long ago was it?"
"I'm not sure. Three, maybe four years ago. Why?"
"Just curious. It must have taken a pile of money."
"Sherry's grandparents had left her their house. She sold it and invested the money right away."
That made sense. Avoiding taxes was always a good idea, especially when you could do it legally. Doing it illegally was a little scary, even when you disapproved of what the Government was doing with it. It had been more than a decade since she'd been able to really get behind a Government program, but she still hadn't gotten up the nerve to become a tax resistor.
"Sounds reasonable," Stoner said.
"But there was something else." Gwen put down her muffin and leaned across the table to lower her voice. "Apparently they were lovers, and Marge..." A guilty look crossed her face. "Oh. I promised her I wouldn't tell."
Interesting. It seemed Sherry had more than one secret.
“Why?" Stoner asked.
“Well, it kind of slipped out while she was talking, and she didn't think it was the kind of thing she ought to spread around. And I think she was embarrassed about it."
“Was it the eating thing?"
Gwen looked at her quizzically. "Eating thing?"
''Yeah, she told me about an eating problem she has, but she didn't want me to tell you." She wanted to add, "It kind of slipped out, too," but didn't.
"No, it wasn't about eating." Gwen stirred her coffee.
Silence fell between them. Stoner didn't like it. This felt odd, not being allowed to talk freely. Especially when they hadn't made the rules themselves.
"Listen," Gwen said, "I'll tell you if you'll tell me, but we won't tell Sherry we told."
Stoner contemplated. "Is that fair?"
“Well, who would we tell? Besides, it doesn't feel right this way. We'd be talking around it all the time, and sidling up to it, and feeling guilty, and end up telling, anyway. So why not save ourselves all that agony?"
"Good point."
Gwen lowered her voice again. "She didn't actually say it, but she did imply that Marge was kind of abusive."
"Physically?"
"And emotionally."
"That's too bad," Stoner said. She wondered what was behind that. These things were usually complicated. She didn't want to blame the victim, but Sherry had already aroused feelings in her that she didn't ordinarily have and which she wasn't proud of. Before she was ready to condemn the unknown Marge, she realized, she'd have to have more evidence.
And Sherry? she asked herself. You seem willing to cast suspicion on Sherry for a variety of things, and you have no evidence that she's not what she appears to be.
And what's that?
For starters, one of the most bewildering, complicated human beings she'd ever met.
Clara and Esther came into the dining room. Clara aimed her wheel chair at their table, Esther in hot pursuit. "Here's your weapon," Clara announced as she dropped a small brown paper bag in Stoner's lap. "It's clean. I'd guess the perp wore gloves and wiped it off."
Well, it was about what she'd expected. In this world of television crime, and DNA testing and endless discussions of efficacies and legalities and constitutionalities, anyone who left finger prints anywhere had to be incredibly stupid or just escaped from a monastery.
Clara held out her hand. "Give me your room keys. Both of them."
Gwen wanted to know what for.
"I'm not going to go through your things. I'll fix the keys so you're secure. Seems there's enough free-wheeling coming and going in that room, if you want my opinion."
Stoner allowed as how it was her opinion, too, and they handed over the keys.
"Anything else I should know?" Clara asked efficiently as she secreted the keys in her pocket.
Stoner shook her head. "I'm floundering. Everyone seems to have the means and the opportunity for everything that's happened."
Clara cocked her head to one side. "In that case," she said, "I'd go for motive."
"I'm coming up blank there, too. There doesn't seem to be any point to it. I mean, why would anyone want to go around scaring people and making trouble for the theater group? Where would it get you? It doesn't make sense."
"She doesn't believe people go in for senseless trouble-making," Gwen explained. "She doesn't know many teen-agers."
Esther and Clara laughed appreciatively.
"Here's what I'd do," Clara said, lowering her voice. "I'd try to see if these incidents are focusing in on anyone or two people, and look for any connections from there."
"I'm trying to do that, but these women have long, complicated histories with one another. It'd take forever to sort it all out."
"It'll take forever if all you do is sit on your duff and feel sorry for yourself," Clara announced briskly. "You're two young, healthy, and
—I assume —fairly intelligent women. Split up, each of you take half and get to know them. Put your heads together. But, for God's sake, stop with the 'can't, can't, can't' and the 'don't know.' Drives me crazy." She turned her chair sharply and wheeled off toward their usual table.
Esther leaned toward them. "She's just as bewildered and frustrated as you are. But she's right. When you can't think of anything to do, that's the time you should do something."
"When in danger or in doubt,''' Gwen quoted, "'run in circles, yell and shout.'''
"Exactly." Esther gave Gwen's shoulder a complimentary tap. "Meanwhile, we're keeping on with our stake-out. And figuring." She rolled her eyes. "Lord, how we're thinking!"
"I hate to have you using up your vacation with our problems," Stoner said.
"Don't be silly. This is the best time we've had in years. It's sort of like old times, don't you know?" She leaned closer. "If you need a decoy, I'm at your service. Had plenty of experience. I've played just about every role in the books—street walker, gun moll, drug dealer. They used to call me The Woman of a Thousand Faces. Of course, things were different then. They didn't have these automatic weapons. Clara'd have a screaming fit if 1 even thought of going under cover nowadays." She smiled. "To tell you the truth, I'd have a screaming fit if she went back to the job, too. She gave her legs to the fair city of Boston. I want the rest of my honey in one piece."
Clara was shaking out her napkin with an impatient flapping sound that carried clear across the dining room.
"She's impossible when she's working," Esther said. 'We'll catch up with you later and exchange what we know. Remember, even if you don't know where you're going, you have to keep moving ahead."
Stoner watched her go. "I love older women," she said.
They decided Clara was right. If each of them spent some time with each of the theater women, alone, they might be able to put some things together. But they couldn't do it during rehearsals. It seemed the serious work of putting the play together was beginning, and that meant complete run-throughs, and working with scenery and props.
It was amazing to Stoner, and perfectly understandable, that a scene that had gone as smoothly as cream the day before could fall apart completely simply because the actors had to deal with glasses of water. Suddenly they didn't have enough hands—even though they'd had so many they didn't know what to do with them yesterday. They'd put a glass down and forget where they'd put it. Or just hold it and forget to drink, which drove Rebecca wild. Not as wild as actors who were supposed to be pouring coffee and would dribble a little in the bottom of a cup. "Nobody drinks a quarter inch of coffee," she said repeatedly. "Even if they ask for 'just a drop,' they expect a half cup at least."
But holding the glass and not drinking was the second deadly sin. "It distracts the audience. They keep waiting for you to do something with it."
Under her breath, she explained to Stoner that grabbing the audience's attention like that was known as "upstaging," and that if she really wanted to learn how to do it well, she should watch Marcy.
That gave Stoner an idea. Marcy was the general understudy. If someone—Roseann, for instance—had to drop out, Marcy would take her place. Giving Marcy the lead.
Uh-huh. Definitely something to check out. It didn't explain the attacks—if you could call them attacks—on Sherry, or the broken ladder. But maybe she shouldn't try to tie everything together. Maybe she should focus on one thing/person at a time.
The trouble was, she suspected she wasn't exactly on Marcy's list of favorite people, not after she'd put Marcy in her place at yesterday's rehearsal. But Gwen hadn't had any interaction, good or bad, with her. Gwen could try to get to know her.
Which meant Stoner should probably try to get close to Rita. Rita would be hard to pin down, but once she gained her confidence, Stoner had the feeling Rita would have quite a bit to say about everything and everyone.
She realized she was assuming Rita was innocent. Why? Because she seemed too disorganized and psychologically rumpled to plot and carry out this kind of mischief? A dangerous assumption, and not altogether fair. Just because Rita was flaky, it didn't necessarily preclude her being as evil as the next person. In fact, when you looked at it, Rita's flakiness could be a perfect cover.
Motive?
As yet unknown.
And, she reminded herself, "as yet unknown" does not necessarily mean "non-existent."
Rita it was, and as they broke for lunch Stoner grabbed Gwen, hurriedly filled her in on what she'd come up with, and arranged to meet her in their room after lunch.
Now all she had to do was find a reason to talk to Rita.
As it turned out, she didn't have to look for a reason. All she had to do was loiter about the living room before lunch. She'd wondered how to draw Rita away from the rest of the Demeter's, but the cast and crew came through without her. Odd, Stoner thought, but maybe she'd had to go to her room for some reason like a change of clothes or a headache. So she decided to leaf through Architectural Digest one last time before she gave up.
She felt Rita's arrival even before she saw her, a swirling and spiking of the air. Electric energy, and the smell of ozone. Then dead silence, like the moment before a thunder clap.
A yellow-haired hurricane, Rita exploded into the room. Her face flamed. Her eyes flashed knives. Her lips were red as blood. She was Demeter personified. She was Medea. She was Cerridwen, and dragons. She was storms at sea that drowned ships and left sailors' bones to litter the ocean floor. She was War, and Fire. Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Gettysburg and Iwo Jima.
Rita was Rage.
"I'll kill the fucking bitch!" she declared to the universe, and headed for the dining room door.
Stoner pulled herself out of her temporary paralysis. "Rita!" She made a dive for her.
Rita flicked her to the side.
"Damn it," Stoner shouted. "Listen to me!" She grabbed the woman's wrist and dug her nails into the soft skin.
"Jesus!" Startled, Rita turned to her. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Keeping you from doing something you'll regret, I hope." She gave her a shove toward the nearest piece of furniture.
Caught off balance, Rita fell onto the sofa and wallowed, struggling to get up.
Stoner put her hands on the woman's shoulders and held her there. "I don't know what you're doing, or why," she said, "but from here it looks like a really bad idea."
Rita pushed her hands away.
Stoner figured the woman outweighed her by about seventy-five pounds, and had the strength of anger on her side. So she did the only thing she could think of. She sat in Rita's lap.
"For God's sake," the woman said, "are you some kind of nut ball?"
"Its been rumored," Stoner replied firmly. "I'll let you up if you'll tell me what's going on."
"She's gone too far," Rita said.
"Who has?"
"Marcy." She looked as if she might cry. "She wants to ruin everything I love, and I don't know why."
"Yeah," Stoner said, getting up. "I heard about her and your lover."
"Of course you heard about it. Everybody in the whole fucking world heard about it. Everybody in the whole fucking world feels sorry for me to my face, and laughs at me behind my back."
"I don't think so..."
Rita started to heave herself out of the sofa.
"Don't make me sit on you again," Stoner said. "It's rude."
"They made me look like a fool," Rita muttered as she settled back. "Jesus, don't I already look enough like a fool?"
Stoner studied her. "Actually, you look like a Leo."
“Well, I am a Leo. So what?"
"So... there you are," Stoner said. "Rita, what's going on?"
The woman hesitated, then dug down into the front of her dress and brought out Seabrook. The frog's head had been ripped nearly off. Sawdust trickled from behind a cotton ball Rita had stuffed into the wound.
"She killed him," she said, and began to sob.
C
hapter Nine
Stoner didn't know what to say. If this was someone's idea of a prank, there was nothing funny about it. It was cruel and petty.
On the other hand, it might not be a prank at all. It might be part of the pattern of accidents and intimidation.
Sitting down beside Rita, she took Seabrook into her hands gently. "He can be fixed," she said, and felt inadequate in the face of Rita's grief. "Look. It'd be easy."
The big woman wiped her eyes with a sodden, balled-up tissue. "That's not the point," she said. "She knew I'd react the way I did, and make a scene, and then I'd be so humiliated I'd have to quit the show."
"She?"
"Marcy."
"If it was Marcy, I guess she didn't fIgure on me stopping you before you hit the dining room," Stoner said. "Big surprise on her, ha-ha."
Rita smiled a little. She had a lovely, genuine smile. "Ha-ha on her."
She slipped an arm around Rita's shoulders. "How do you feel?"
"Shaky, but getting there."
"You're certain it was Marcy?"
Rita didn't seem to know quite what to do with Stoner's arm around her. She half leaned into her, then straightened up, not enough to lose contact but enough not to lean. "I hope nobody else hates me that much."
“Why does Marcy hate you?"
Rita thought it over. "I don't know. It's not as if I stole anything from her. She just thinks I'm shit. I mean, we had our problems, but she won, didn't she? It's not my fault it didn't work out."
Stoner hesitated. She didn't want to say too much. But, on the other hand, she couldn't let Rita think this was personal if it wasn't. It wouldn't be fair. "The thing is," she explained, "I'm not convinced Marcy did this, and I'm not certain it was only directed at you."
Rita looked at her.
''You've noticed the things that have been happening here. The problems with Roseann's script, the ladder, maybe even the flashlights. And maybe even before that. Remember the wet paint? It looked like a mistake at the time, but what if it wasn't? I could be wrong, but wouldn't it seem to you as if someone's trying to sabotage the show?"
"It occurred to me," Rita said. "But I figured I was just being crazy again. I've been crazy, you know. Locked up crazy. Sometimes I still get that way a little, if I'm around Marcy too much." She held up one hand. "I know what you're going to say. I should stay away from her if she makes me crazy. But these people are my friends. I'm not going to let her run me off, even if it is sick to stay around."
