Toni L.P. Kelner - Laura Fleming 07 - Mad as the Dickens Read online

  “Do you think Richard will throw another tantrum?” she said hopefully.

  “It wasn’t that bad,” I said, defending him. “The cast is way behind where they should be. I don’t blame Richard a bit for getting hot under the collar.”

  “I don’t blame him either. I just wish it would happen again. If something doesn’t happen, I’m going to fall sound asleep.”

  “I hear that,” I said. “Maybe we should try to hunt down the practical joker.”

  “Hunt him down? I want to shake his hand. Those jokes and your husband’s tantrums are the only things getting me through the day.”

  I was tempted to sneak off and go shopping or visiting or something, but I was afraid I might be needed to calm down the director again.

  Back on stage, Richard stopped the action once more and ran his fingers through his already disheveled hair—a sign that agitation was building again. “David,” he said, “can you try to look a little more cheerful? You’re young Ebeneezer, Ebeneezer before he turns into a curmudgeon. It’s Christmas, and you’re having a wonderful time. You are not having root canal surgery!”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’m trying my best.” Other than his hair and bushy eyebrows still being reddish-brown, David Murdstone was the spitting image of his father, and his dual roles as Scrooge’s nephew and Young Scrooge took advantage of the resemblance. David usually had his daddy’s smile, too, but not right that minute.

  “Just think happy thoughts,” Richard said. “Florence, you make your entrance now.”

  Florence Easterly, in character as the young woman Ebeneezer was once in love with, floated onto the stage. Even as bored as I was, I could see David’s face light up when he saw her. Though the two of them were fifty years old if they were a day, they’d only been married a few months, and it showed.

  Richard must have seen the same thing I did, because he came up with a way to use it. “Here’s an idea. Florence, I want you to be on stage when the Spirit of Christmas Past and Scrooge arrive.”

  “That’s not in the book,” David objected.

  “If we were going to do exactly as the script says,” Richard said patiently, “you people wouldn’t need me. Just try it.”

  “Whatever you say, Richard,” Florence said.

  He said, “Let’s start with Fezziwig shaking Young Ebeneezer’s hand.” They ran through the last part of the scene again, and this time it worked beautifully. Young Ebeneezer glowed with Christmas joy, and so did Richard.

  Maybe he was going to pull it off after all. The players were still rough, but they’d improved so much already and they still had nearly a week before opening night. If Richard could just get Seth Murdstone to do a decent job with Scrooge, it might not be a total disaster.

  Richard called out, “Spirit of Christmas Past and Scrooge, let’s get you two into the picture.”

  Oliver Jarndyce, the round-faced man playing the first spirit to visit Scrooge, stepped out of the wings, but he was alone.

  “Where’s Scrooge?” Richard asked.

  “He said he wanted a cigarette,” Oliver said.

  For a second it looked as if Junior might see her wish for another tantrum granted, but Richard swallowed whatever it was he wanted to say and instead said, “Mrs. Gamp, do you think you could find Seth and get him back on stage?”

  “I sure will; Mrs. Harris probably knows just where he went,” the cheerful, birdlike stage manager said, and she scooted away. Unlike most of the cast, she managed to be right where she needed to be whenever Richard called her.

  Richard ran his fingers through his hair again. “While we’re waiting for Scrooge, let’s try something a little different.”

  My eyes glazed over at that, and I lost track of what was happening for the next few minutes. Then a scream rang out, and I jerked wide awake. Since when was there a scream in that scene?

  The folks on stage looked as surprised as I was. I turned to ask Junior what had happened, but her reflexes had taken her nearly up onstage by then, and I took off after her as fast as five months of pregnancy would allow.

  Richard saw me coming and helped hoist me up, and then we followed Junior as she chased a second scream. How she’d been able to judge the direction it was coming from in that cave of a building, I’ll never know. To me it seemed to echo everywhere.

  We went stage left and down the narrow, dimly lit corridor that led past the dressing rooms and ended at the back door. We found Mrs. Gamp about halfway down the hall, her fist pressed against her mouth as if to hold in any more screams.

  Lying on one side on the floor in front of her was Seth Murdstone, blood seeping from a swollen lump on his head. I could tell he was dead even before Junior knelt to touch his wrist.

  “As dead as a doornail,” Richard whispered, quoting from A Christmas Carol.

  All I could think of was that he’d promised a show that Byerly would never forget. It looked as if he’d succeeded even before the curtain went up.

  Chapter 3

  Junior barked, “All of y’all step back, and nobody touch anything!” We obeyed, and I looked away from Seth’s body. Mrs. Gamp had started sobbing, and I pulled her away, then let her hold on to me while she continued to cry. More members of the cast and crew came down the hall toward us, but Richard waved them away. I don’t know if they realized how serious it was or if they were afraid of another one of Richard’s tantrums, but they moved back without questioning him.

  Junior reached into her pocket, pulled out a cell phone, and dialed. “Hey, Mark. I’ve got something for you.”

  At first I was surprised Junior would hand over a murder to her deputy, but then I remembered that she was on vacation. Even though Junior was there on the scene, investigating Seth’s death was going to be Mark Pope’s job, not hers.

  “You’ve got yourself a situation at the recreation center,” Junior was saying. “The fatal kind. You know we’re rehearsing a play down here? One of our actors got himself killed… . Seth Murdstone … Of course, the scene is secured … I am going to let you handle it… . Yes, I touched something—how do you think I knew he was dead?” Junior’s sigh was loud enough for Mark to hear it. “I’ll be here when you get here.” Junior broke the connection and put the phone back in her pocket.

  The people down the hall started asking questions, and I realized that Junior, Mrs. Gamp, Richard, and I were blocking their view of Seth’s body. “Richard, we can’t let David and Jake see their father like this,” I whispered. Both of Seth’s sons were in the play.

  “We’re not going to let anybody see him like this,” Junior said firmly. “Not yet, anyway.” In a louder voice, she called out, “People, we’ve had an accident.”

  My Aunt Maggie yelled back, “What kind of accident? Who is it?”

  Junior ignored the questions. “Help is on the way, so y’all can go on back to the auditorium.” She added, “Richard, take Laurie Anne and Mrs. Gamp out, too, and make sure nobody leaves before Mark gets here.”

  “What do we tell them?” I asked.

  “Exactly what I just said, and not one word more.”

  “They’re going to figure out that Seth is missing,” I pointed out.

  “Probably, but it’ll take them a while. Mark should be here by then, and he can worry about it.”

  Mrs. Gamp still had her head buried on my shoulder, and as I was wondering how I was going to extricate her, Junior said, “Mrs. Gamp, I sure would appreciate you looking after my sisters’ children for me.”

  Once she had a job to do, Mrs. Gamp promptly dried her eyes, and said, “Don’t you worry. Mrs. Harris and I will take care of them.” She started marching down the hall, fluttering her hands to herd people in front of her. Richard followed, holding himself as wide as he could to block as much of the line of sight as possible.

  I stayed long enough to look around. The wall of the hall was lined with shiny off-white tiles up to eye level, and then with beige-painted concrete blocks the rest of the way to the ceiling. The flat ce
iling was painted a darker color and punctuated with ceiling fixtures. There were no new marks on the walls or elsewhere on the well-scuffed linoleum floor, and other than Seth’s body, there was nothing in the hall but Junior and me.

  “Junior, how did Seth hit his head?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Maybe he slipped and ran into …” I looked around, but there was nothing he could have run into. “Maybe he hit the floor … or the wall.”

  “Look at the shape of that knot on his head. He didn’t get that from a flat surface. I’m guessing it was something long and not too wide.”

  “But there’s nothing like that in here.”

  “That’s right. So unless whatever it was he hit himself on walked away afterward …”

  “Then somebody killed him,” I finished for her.

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “But who?” I knew that nice people get murdered as often as nasty ones, but I couldn’t imagine why anybody would have wanted Seth Murdstone dead. “Did the killer come in that way?” I asked, nodding at the door to the back parking lot. The smokers had been going out that way for cigarette breaks.

  “Whoever it was had to have come through one of these doors,” she said neutrally. “It’s too soon to say which one.”

  I’d really wanted her to say that the killer must have come from outside, meaning that it wasn’t somebody involved in the play.

  “Laurie Anne, are you all right?” Junior asked.

  “This isn’t my first dead body,” I reminded her.

  “I know, but you’ve never been pregnant before. Mark will never let me hear the end of it if I let you get sick all over his crime scene.”

  “I’ll have you know that I quit having morning sickness months ago.

  “In that case, do me a favor and wait outside for Mark to get here, and send him in my direction.”

  “All right.” Despite what I’d said to Junior, I was just as glad to get away from Seth’s body.

  Richard had everybody out of the hall by then, and I had to tap on the door at the end to get him out of the way so I could get through.

  “Junior wants me to go meet Mark,” I whispered to him.

  “I’ll hold the fort here.” He leaned down to give me a quick peck on the cheek. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I said firmly.

  My great-aunt pounced on me then. Nobody is quite sure how old Aunt Maggie is. Her hair had been salt-and-pepper for as long as I could remember, though maybe there was a bit more salt than there used to be. I didn’t know how Vasti had talked her into supplying props for the play, since she wasn’t known for her willingness to volunteer or for her Christmas spirit. Her sweatshirt said, “BAH! HUMBUG!” in bright green letters, and she’d owned it long before she started working on the play.

  She said, “Laurie Anne, what in the Sam Hill is going on? I heard Sarah Gamp scream like she’d seen a ghost, but all she’ll say is that I shouldn’t frighten the children.”

  I might have been tempted to tell Aunt Maggie the truth, just to ensure family peace, but there were too many people listening in. The entire cast and crew were clustered in the auditorium, and I could see Florence looking around as if trying to decide who was missing.

  “There’s been an accident,” I said, going toward the door to the parking lot. “Just like Junior said.”

  “What kind of accident?” Aunt Maggie asked, walking along beside me.

  “Help is on the way,” I said, still moving.

  “Laurie Anne …” Aunt Maggie said.

  I dropped my voice to a whisper. “Junior asked me not to say anything until Mark Pope gets here.”

  “Why did she call her deputy for an accident?”

  “Please, Aunt Maggie. Junior doesn’t want people getting worked up.”

  “They’re already getting worked up.”

  I just shrugged. She was right, but there wasn’t anything I could do other than what Junior had asked me to do.

  “All right,” Aunt Maggie said, “but I expect you to tell me the whole story later.”

  “I will,” I promised, and I finally made it out the door.

  I stood on the sidewalk in front of the building to wait, again rubbing my tummy. “Well, baby,” I said, “you’ve seen your first dead body. Okay, not seen, but been around. They do pop up now and again.” That was true enough, but it sounded too flippant for the circumstances. “Not that Mama and Daddy go looking for murder victims, mind you, but we have gotten mixed up with this kind of thing before.” That wasn’t much of an improvement. “Sometimes Mama and Daddy solve mysteries.” Great, the kid was going to think that her parents rode around in a van with a Great Dane named Scooby Doo.

  Before I could confuse my unborn child further, a blue-and-white police cruiser tore into the parking lot, siren blaring. The driver didn’t so much park as screech to a halt, blocking three parking places in the process. Then Mark Pope got out of the car.

  Mark Pope is one of the most forgettable-looking men I’ve ever met. Medium height and build, with medium brown eyes and hair. If his job had ever called for following somebody on foot, he’d have been great, because nobody would remember him ten minutes after seeing him. He strode over to me, his hand perched on the handle of the nightstick at his belt.

  “Where’s the alleged body?”

  I was tempted to tell him it was allegedly in the alleged recreation center, but I settled for, “Inside. Junior asked me to take you there.”

  “Good enough.” Then he stopped, and looked me over. “You’re one of the Burnettes.”

  “That’s right.” Actually, it was my mother who’d been a Burnette, but people around Byerly and Rocky Shoals tend to trace people back at least two generations in order to place them correctly. “I’m Laura Fleming.”

  “Right. Laurie Anne.”

  I winced, but I knew it wasn’t worth the trouble to correct him any more than I could correct my family.

  “You’re the one who keeps butting into police business.”

  “You might say that.” Richard and I had clashed with Mark after a flea market dealer was murdered. Mark had been on the wrong track entirely and hadn’t been pleased when we beat him to the killer.

  “Is that what you’re doing now?”

  “No, I’m here because my husband is directing the play.”

  He didn’t look convinced, but he said, “Let’s get on with it,” and started toward the door.

  “There’s something I should tell you. Mr. Murdstone’s sons are inside, and they don’t know he’s been—that he’s been hurt. I don’t know how you want to handle it, but—”

  “Well I know how I want to handle it.”

  “Whatever you say.” I hadn’t been trying to help him anyway—I’d only wanted to make things easier for David and Jake.

  All conversation stopped when I led Mark into the auditorium. He swiveled his head around like a spotlight, as if relishing the attention. David and Jake were standing together, with Florence’s hand in David’s, and I was sure that they’d realized Seth was missing. Everybody watched while I showed Mark the way, but it seemed to me that the Murdstones were watching us more closely than the rest.

  Richard was still guarding the door to the hall, but he stepped aside when he saw us coming.

  “Junior is down—” I started to say, but Mark cut me off.

  “I’ll take it from here.” He turned back to the people in the room and raised his voice much louder than was necessary. “I don’t want any of you people leaving the premises until we sort out the situation, and nobody is to come down this way unless I tell them to. Is that understood?”

  When nobody answered, he took that to mean that it was, and he went into the hall, shutting the door in our faces.

  Chapter 4

  “ ‘Secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster,’ ” Richard said.

  “That Shakespeare had something to say about everything, didn’t he?” Aunt Maggie
said, coming up to us.

  “Actually, that wasn’t the Bard. It was Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol. Stave One, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Aunt Maggie raised one eyebrow. “Since when do you quote Dickens?”

  “Since he decided to direct this play,” I explained. As a Shakespeare professor at Boston College, Richard didn’t know all the Bard’s work by heart, but he came close, and was usually more than willing to share that knowledge. “You see, it’s an old theater superstition that it’s bad luck to quote Mac—”

  “Don’t say it!” Richard nearly shouted.

  “Sorry. It’s bad luck to quote that Scottish play, or even to say its name.”

  “The Scottish play?” Aunt Maggie asked.

  Richard was still looking at me in alarm, and short of spelling it out, there wasn’t any way I could think of to tell Aunt Maggie that we weren’t supposed to say Macbeth. “I’ll tell you which one I mean later. Anyway, just to make sure he doesn’t accidentally quote from that play, he’s sworn off quoting Shakespeare for the duration.”

  “Hence the use of Dickens, in honor of our production,” Richard added.

  Aunt Maggie shook her head. “Richard, did you ever think of just saying things like normal people?”

  “Did you ever think of wearing shirts that don’t tell people what’s on your mind?”

  “Fat chance,” she said with a snort.

  “My sentiments exactly.”

  She looked as if she wanted to say more, but she must have decided it wouldn’t do any good, so she changed the subject. “Are you two going to tell me what’s going on around here? It’s Seth, isn’t it?”

  I hesitated, but decided it wasn’t going to be a secret much longer anyway. Keeping my voice low so that nobody else could hear, I said, “Yes, ma’am. He’s dead.”

  She nodded, her suspicions confirmed. “What happened? Florence says he had a bad heart. Was that it?”

  “I don’t think it was a heart attack,” I said, but before I could say more, Mark stepped out of the door from the hall. “Is Mr. Murdstone’s family here?” he said.