I glanced through one of the French doors leading out onto the terrace. Damn. O’Malley had taken his crew out there, and the creative exercise was in full swing.
Although the party had shrunk to only seven participants, all blindfolded with dinner napkins. Most of them were humming. One or two of them were cooing or singing wordlessly. One was making remarkably loud clicking noises with his tongue. Some held their arms outstretched before them like cartoon sleepwalkers. Others flailed around like non-swimmers who’d been flung into the water and had begun to panic. The flailers occasionally whacked other participants, eliciting yelps from the victims and sometimes mutters of “Sorry!” or at least “Sor—!” from the whackers.
“No words! No words!” O’Malley shouted after one such apology.
The participants would have been less apt to collide if they’d spread out a bit—the terrace ran the full length of the main building—but they were all shuffling around in a tight-knit cluster near the center of the space. And close to the wall of the building. I’m sure most of them had marveled at least once at the terrace’s breathtaking view down the steep, wooded side of Biscuit Mountain. And as a result now they had all-too-vivid memories of the two-story drop waiting for them if they crashed through or flipped over the white wooden rail.
“You’re all too timid!” O’Malley shouted. “Bolder! More joyful!”
He wasn’t doing the exercise, of course. He was seated on one of the white wooden end tables, tapping his shins with a riding crop. I didn’t remember that as part of the original Henry VIII outfit. If memory served, bluff King Hal carried a glove in one hand and a dagger in the other in the Holbein portrait. O’Malley wasn’t wearing a dagger. I wondered if he’d attempted to add one to the outfit and been thwarted. That would account for his current rather petulant expression. Although the rather lukewarm way in which everyone was carrying out his creativity exercise could also account for it. And he did have the riding crop to play with.
The Bonny Blade carried a riding crop just like that—and sold a decent number of them every weekend. Mostly to men who carried them around the rest of the day, tucking them under their arms like an officer’s swagger stick, and tapping their boots. The Bonny Blade’s whips were cheaply made and looked as if they’d fall apart if you did much more than that with them. We hadn’t put whips on the prohibited weapons list, on the theory that you’d need a reasonable amount of skill to inflict more than minor damage with one. Maybe we should rethink that policy.
“This brings back memories.”
I started, since I hadn’t noticed Michael coming up behind me.
“Not, I gather, pleasant ones.”
“You gather right.” He put his arm around my waist and we watched the show outside for a few moments. Then I pulled out my phone and glanced at it.
“They’ve been doing that for at least twenty minutes,” I said. “Hasn’t it occurred to O’Malley that those people have work to do? I should break this up.”
“Don’t worry,” Michael said. “I already did. Sent all our people back to their jobs. Well, except for Dianne, who seems to be angling for an audition, and after yesterday she deserves a break. The rest are all tourists I recruited to take their places. O’Malley will never know the difference.”
“I feel sorry for the tourists,” I said. “But if it keeps O’Malley out of our hair…”
“The tourists are happy,” Michael said. “I gave them all free passes for next weekend.”
A smart move. Cordelia was generous with the free passes because she calculated that the food, drink, and souvenirs people bought more than covered the cost.
“Let’s change up the exercise,” O’Malley called out. “Everyone lie down. On your bellies. You’re snakes. No, don’t take off the napkins. You’re blind snakes. Hiss! Writhe! Slither!”
Soon things were going better. People were hissing, writhing, and slithering with a great deal more enthusiasm. They didn’t seem to be enjoying themselves, but at least they didn’t have to worry as much about falling off the terrace. And now that I knew O’Malley wasn’t distracting our staff from their busy day, I could actually laugh at his antics.
Michael sighed and shook his head.
“So, question about O’Malley,” I said.
“Shoot.” Michael’s expression grew, if anything, more glum.
“Do you think there’s the slightest chance that he actually ever worked with Maggie Smith?”
Michael guffawed, and his expression lightened.
“Not a chance in hell,” he said. “Remember, he didn’t say it reminded him of when he worked with her.”
“So, name-dropping poseur.” I nodded. “Check. And I gather you’re not a fan of his acting exercises.”
By way of an answer he rolled his eyes and shuddered.
“Enlighten me,” I said. “Because, no offense, what they’re doing out there doesn’t seem a whole lot different from some of the things I’ve seen you do with your classes.”
“Some of it’s exactly what I do with my classes,” he said. “Mainly my Acting 101 classes. They’re exercises to help beginners develop their confidence. Get over their inhibitions. But none of my troupe here are beginners. They’re seasoned professionals. If they need to warm up before they go on, they know what physical and vocal exercises work for them, and can be relied on to do them before we start. They don’t need that kind of exercise, and I’m not going to make attending whatever else O’Malley has planned obligatory because I doubt any of them has the slightest interest in going.”
“He suggested that?”
“Yes.” Michael nodded. “And I vetoed it. Everyone seems to think I’m a fool for passing up the chance to audition for O’Malley’s Hamlet production, but even if I desperately needed a job, I’d have passed on working with him again. I bet he’s going to torture his cast all winter, putting them through every off-the-wall acting exercise he’s ever heard of, with a side of New Age mysticism thrown in for good measure. Like that. The whole thing comes very close to my personal definition of hell on Earth.”
“Could be worse,” I said. “If someone hadn’t bumped off Terence we’d be putting up with both of them.”
We both laughed more than my joke deserved.
“Of the two, I think I’d rather have Terence underfoot,” Michael said when we’d stopped chuckling.
“Knowing we could fire him if he went too far tended to keep him in line,” I said.
“And how are we going to get rid of O’Malley if he gets completely out of line?” Michael’s tone was gloomy again. “What if he decides he likes it here at the Ren Faire? And enjoys the Game a little too much? What if he decides Biscuit Mountain is the perfect venue for the first phase of his rehearsals and tries to enlist the entire troupe as his repertory company for Hamlet? He did that once to another director I know—showed up to watch a rehearsal and took over. Before my friend knew it, O’Malley had lured away two thirds of his cast and pretty much wrecked the first Equity show he got to direct. If O’Malley tries that here…”
“If you want him gone, say the word,” I said. “Cordelia and I will take care of it. And if things get busy and we need any help, we’ll enlist Mother.”
Michael looked at me, blinked, and burst into laughter.
Chapter 29
“Yes,” Michael said when he’d finally stopped laughing. “I rather think you could handle O’Malley. Any one of you, and the three of you together? Suddenly the idea of having him linger doesn’t sound so bad. Seeing the three of you cut him down to size might turn out to be fun.” His face grew serious again. “What puzzles me is why Arena’s having anything to do with him. I’d have thought that meltdown he had last year at the Oscars would have done it for him.”
“Meltdown at the Oscars? Was he nominated for anything?”
“Good heavens, no.” Michael chuckled. “No, he just showed up for the ceremony with what turned out to be a counterfeit ticket and pitched a major fit when they turned
him away. Then went back to his hotel, shot out all windows in his suite, and started throwing furniture off the balcony. I’m amazed a place as legit as the Arena would have anything to do with him after that.”
“Ah, but it was last year,” I said. “And I bet he went through the whole rehab and public apology ritual.”
“Probably.”
Out on the terrace O’Malley’s followers were still pretending to be snakes, although with less enthusiasm than at the start. Apparently they’d figured out that if they slithered with the kind of wild abandon O’Malley was calling for, they were prone to picking up rather nasty splinters from the weathered wooden floor. Most of them had given up slithering and were trying to writhe and hiss in place.
“So I assume you won’t be too upset that the chief has O’Malley on her suspect list,” Michael went on.
“Really? She never mentioned it. Did he come down from Washington that early this morning?”
“He came down last night.” Michael sounded a good bit more cheerful. “The chief was asking if we were expecting him or had seen him around, and I told her exactly how astonished we were to see him. Apparently he stayed in a bed-and-breakfast in town. Den Lille Hytta, as a matter of fact—you remember the place, just off Main Street.”
“The one with all the gnomes in the yard?”
“Yes. Looks like the witch’s cottage out of Hansel and Gretel. I suppose Den Lille Hytta is Norwegian for ‘Castle of the Gnomes’ or something.”
“Actually, it’s Norwegian for ‘The Little Cottage,’” I said. “Mrs. Larsen—the owner—is actually a very nice old lady. Pushing ninety and stone deaf, though.”
“So not much of an alibi.”
“She just gives her guests a key and tells them don’t worry about waking her up, a cannon couldn’t do it.”
“Strange place for O’Malley to pick,” Michael said. “I mean, if it’s the place I’m thinking of, it’s a little kitschy, isn’t it?”
“A little kitschy?” I chuckled at the idea. “It’s completely gonzo kitschy. And if you think the outside’s bad, you should see inside. A couple of weeks ago Mrs. Larsen was getting over a cold and Cordelia had me take her some chicken soup. She’s a lovely lady, but she never met a china ornament she didn’t like, and she has enough crocheted doilies to carpet a football field. But if you happened to be looking for a place in Riverton where you can come and go without being seen, Den Lille Hytta is the place.”
“Ah—but how would O’Malley know that?” Michael looked triumphant.
“It’s all over the Yelp reviews,” I said. “After I saw what it was like inside, I looked to see what her guests thought. Between people complaining about the deaf old lady who can’t hear them knock when they lost the key, and the people praising how wonderfully quiet and private the place is, it would be easy to figure out about Mrs. Larsen. There aren’t that many places to stay in Riverton, so it wouldn’t take O’Malley much work to figure out that Den Lille Hytta is the best bet if you’re up to something furtive.”
“Maybe the chief already has him fitted up nicely for the murder, then,” Michael said. “If it were anyone other than O’Malley, I’d be feeling sorry for him by now.”
“Of course, it would be nice if we could think of a single reason why O’Malley would want to kill Terence,” I said.
“Maybe he’s feeling guilty about taking the part away from Nigel and giving it to Terence.” Michael’s face showed he realized how unconvincing this sounded. “No, that won’t fly. He could fire Terence without turning a hair.”
“Maybe he did try to fire Terence, and Terence pulled a cheap dagger on him, and he took it away and … no, there’s the whole stabbing in the back thing. Would Terence turn his back on O’Malley under those circumstances?”
“Not really an obstacle,” Michael said. “If Terence thought it was what his character would do … that the scene called for it … I can see him doing it.”
“Except it wasn’t a scene,” I said. “It was real life.”
“Terence was always a little confused about the difference.”
Outside O’Malley clapped his hands, and everyone stopped hissing and slithering, with expressions of relief.
“Okay, let’s do something different. Go into savasana.”
Two of the participants immediately flopped down on their backs. The rest watched for a minute and then imitated them—well, except for one guy who decided to make a break for it and sprinted for the door.
“What’s O’Malley after?” I said. “That’s what I want to know.”
“He’s a strange bird,” Michael said. “”Maybe he’s just slumming. Enjoying the novelty. Maybe he’ll get tired by the end of the day and go home. If you ask me, he’s already tired of not being able to run everything.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But I think he’s after something.”
“I should go,” he said. “The Game is afoot.”
I nodded. I was getting impatient to get back to the real business of the day myself.
“Do you have any idea where Grandfather is?” I asked.
“He napped all morning, and now he’s hanging out with the falcons.” Michael chuckled. “He seems to think it annoys your grandmother.”
“What could have given him that idea?”
“I did,” he said. “And I worked very hard yesterday to convince him of it. Cordelia drops by periodically and grouses a bit, just to reinforce the idea. I think she likes knowing exactly where he is. Laters.”
He gave me a quick kiss and strode across the Great Room.
I was torn between following his example and keeping an eye on O’Malley. I didn’t much like the idea of someone with a history of trashing hotel rooms running around loose at the Faire.
As I watched, O’Malley reached in his pocket, took out his cell phone, and tapped on it. He sat for a few moments, running his eyes over the supine yoga participants. Then he tapped his phone again and put it back in his pocket.
I was wondering what that was all about when Nigel strolled over to stand beside me and peered out the window.
“Look at them,” he muttered. “Sucking up to the great man.”
Should I tell him O’Malley’s current victims were all tourists? Maybe not.
“I thought you were a fan,” I said aloud.
He grimaced and continued staring out.
“My eyes have been opened,” he said finally. “You know, he really did tell me I had the part. Everyone thinks I imagined it. Took a few meaningless words of encouragement too seriously. I didn’t. ‘You’re my Polonius.’ He said that. I didn’t imagine it.”
I nodded. I wasn’t sure Nigel saw, but I didn’t want to interrupt him and risk shutting him down.
“Now he’s dodging me,” he went on. “I asked him point blank if I still had the part and he pretended to be distracted by something. I just want a straight answer—do I have the part or not?”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I could remind him of what Michael had said about how he never wanted to work with O’Malley again. But Michael didn’t need a job. He already had a job. A job—and a life—he loved. Michael wasn’t still trying to climb the slippery ladder to fame, or even earn his living as an actor.
“It’s Terence’s fault,” Nigel said. “If he were still around, he’d probably say ‘tough luck, old bean—I did the better audition.’ I’m not buying that. He poisoned the well. Slandered me. Told O’Malley about my drinking problem and convinced him that I couldn’t be trusted. Terence did it.”
I was startled at the sheer venom in his tone.
“So no, in case you were about to ask, I’m not going to go out there and abase myself. He can play his idiotic games. He’s overrated anyway.”
“Sounds as if you’re giving up,” I said.
“Facing reality,” Nigel said. “Terence ruined it. Even now that he’s gone, O’Malley won’t come back to me for the part. Maybe he’ll give it to George. He’s better at sucking up than I ever wa
s. I’m over it.”
He turned and strode away.
I watched him go, uneasy. I hoped he wasn’t talking like that in front of anyone else. Especially not the chief. She’d move him to the top of her suspect list.
And would she be wrong? Was I hearing only the anger and resentment of an actor who’d won and then lost a part? Or of an actor so desperate to hang on to a part that he’d taken a human life—and was now finding out it had all been in vain?
“Not Nigel,” I murmured. “I can’t see it being him.”
I hoped I was right.
Jacks and the chief appeared from the studio wing. Jacks glanced quickly at me and then hurried toward the front door. The chief came over to stand beside me and gaze out the window.
“Is that Ms. Willowbrook out there?” she asked.
“Willowdale,” I corrected. “Yes.”
She continued to gaze out for a few more moments.
“I hate to interrupt,” the chief said. “But do you have any idea when the yoga class is supposed to end?”
“Not a clue,” I said. “It’s not a scheduled yoga class—just O’Malley doing his freelance acting exercise thing. Could go on for hours. Days. Feel free to interrupt them.”
“It might be less disruptive if you could ask her to come inside,” the chief said. “If you don’t mind.”
“No problem.” Actually, the idea of doing something to annoy O’Malley appealed to me.
I opened the French door closest to where Dianne was lying and stepped out onto the deck. O’Malley saw me immediately. He scowled and gestured at me to go away.
I ignored him. I walked quietly over to where Dianne was lying, squatted down, and tapped her on the shoulder.
Her eyes flew open and she gasped slightly. She relaxed when she realized it was me—but why was she so on edge? And in a yoga class. Clearly O’Malley was a flop as a yogi.
“May I talk to you inside for a sec?” I whispered.
She nodded, got up, and headed for the open French door. I glanced over at O’Malley again. He’d grown red in the face and his scowl had given way to a sort of twitching grimace, as if his rage were so great he could barely keep from bellowing at me.
The Falcon Always Wings Twice Page 20
