Running Out of Time Page 4

  I stifled a laugh.

  Chrystal dashed to the stage to save her wardrobe as the actors ran to the dressing rooms to change.

  * * *

  “Only a few more minutes,” Lola said to the antsy assembly.

  She flicked a page to check notes. “Chrystal? Costumes?”

  Chrystal hauled herself to her feet and took notes on everything from boots that were the wrong size to wigs that popped off when the men removed their hats. The cast gathered their things while Lola encouraged them to get some sleep, the irony not lost on the exhausted actors.

  “Sally?” Chrystal called out.

  A few actors paused and looked around.

  “She had the wrong apron in Act One. Where is she?” Chrystal asked.

  There was a shrug here and there, a couple of “I don’t knows” and a frustrated exhalation from the costumer. I hadn’t seen her since the end of the play.

  “Chrystal,” I said, “I don’t think she was in the curtain call.”

  “You know, come to think of it, I didn’t see her there either,” Chrystal said.

  “Maybe she left early. Was she sick or something?”

  “Sick of this show,” Vernon groused at my back.

  “Oh, Vernon, bring it down a notch. You have the biggest role and the most lines. You should be happy.” Mildred thumped his back and gave him a shove toward the exit.

  I stifled a chuckle. “I guess Mildred’s taking no prisoners tonight.”

  “Everyone’s kind of fed up with the play,” Chrystal confided.

  “That’s nothing new at the ELT, from what I’ve seen during the last two years.”

  “This time it’s a little different.” She lowered her voice. “People are afraid the town won’t come to see it. Once everyone finds out how long it is. And how it’s…you know…”

  I hesitated. What was the right word? “Kind of mind-numbing?”

  Chrystal tittered and trundled off. “If you see Sally, tell her I’m gunning for her. No one’s supposed to leave without checking with me or Penny first.”

  Penny! I scanned the house that was fast emptying out. Lola, onstage, was twisting a length of hair and listening to Walter pontificate about a piece of stage business. He flopped on the ground to demonstrate his point. Behind them, Penny tapped her leg with the clipboard and pushed her glasses up her nose. I waited until Walter was flat on the ground, practically licking the floor, while Lola watched with her “Oh brother” expression, to walk to the front of the house and signal Penny.

  She walked importantly to the lip of the stage. “What’s up, O’Dell?”

  “Penny, have you seen Sally?” I asked.

  “Sally Oldfield? Third chair, second row of the graveyard?”

  “Yes.”

  “O’Dell, final dress is over. It’s after midnight. Where do you think she is?”

  Was this a quiz? “Home, right?” I said.

  “Duh!” Penny loved to stump me.

  “Okay but she wasn’t here for the curtain call and Chrystal was looking for her. No one seemed to know where she went. Did she check in with you—?”

  Penny smirked. “She was in the curtain call. Everybody’s in the curtain call.”

  “I didn’t see her.”

  “O’Dell, actors are not allowed to miss the curtain call. She had to be here.”

  “But Chrystal didn’t see her either,” I said.

  Penny’s eyes narrowed as she checked her clipboard. A note of alarm crept into her voice. “Actors gotta tell me if they leave early,” she blustered.

  “I know,” I said sympathetically. Obviously Penny had no idea where Sally Oldfield had gone. I couldn’t help thinking about Sally staring across Main Street at a strange man. And despite saying she thought he was someone else, Sally looked like she’d seen a ghost.

  4

  Opening night. I spent the morning prepping the Windjammer for the weekend crowd and reserved the late afternoon for setting up the mulled wine and hot apple cider. I figured I could work at the theater uninterrupted: JC had finished final touch-ups on the scenery this morning and Lola had an early afternoon appointment at Snippets to get her roots dyed before the curtain rose on Eton Town.

  I’d already combined the ingredients at the restaurant and allowed the mixture to boil for a few minutes. At four thirty I enlisted Enrico to help me haul the gallons of hot drinks to the theater—to simmer on the hotplate—along with twelve apple pies. The cast would be showing up in the next hour or so, and I wanted to have everything set before the organized chaos of actors and crew and Walter disturbed my serenity.

  I gave the mulled wine one last quick stir before I went to the women’s dressing room backstage. Reluctantly, I had agreed to don the same early American costume as the cast, one more way to tie the theme food to the play, Lola had said. Chrystal had laid out a black skirt, white bodice, and mob cap with a full crown and a ruffled edge. My great-aunt Maureen wore something like the cap to bed whenever she had a cold. I never knew why.

  I caught a glimpse of myself in the dressing room mirror, my wavy, auburn hair tucked up inside the mob cap. I had to admit, it wasn’t the most attractive get-up I’d ever worn. But I was taking one for the team.

  I walked into the hallway outside the dressing room and cut through the green room. Soon the lounge would be filled with the noise of actors getting into costume and makeup, rehearsing the hymns, and running through the wedding square dance. But now the backstage was deathly silent. I walked onstage and inhaled the sharp aroma of paint and sawdust and a hint of mold. Work lights cast a dim wash of illumination over the scenery, already set up with the Act One side of the turntable facing the house. On the opposite side of the platform, the crew had set up the seats for the graveyard scene. I gazed at the set, wondering what Walter and the rest of the cast would do if the rotating stage stopped rotating. They might have to—

  A gasp.

  I whirled to my right. “Hello?” Chills ran down my spine.

  There was no answer. I made a tiny move forward and listened. I could have sworn I heard someone panting. Must be the draftiness of the theater, air currents flowing into and out of the space.

  Scram, I told myself. No sense creating scary scenarios. I’d had several run-ins with the theater, chased and chasing. And nearly getting killed. I should have learned my lesson and stayed away when the theater was empty. But the fall skirmish with two murderers seemed like a lifetime ago.

  I hurried to the staircase that led from the lip of the stage to the front of the house and had one foot on the first step when I heard it again: sharp intakes of breath, as though someone were crying. I spun around. “Who’s there?”

  A shadow moved behind me and my blood ran cold.

  “Dodie,” a voice whispered.

  I squinted into the semi-dark. “Sally? Is that you?” Relief flooded my body, my heart moving out of my mouth, its rhythm slowing down. “You scared me. Where have you been? I know you missed the curtain call last night even though Penny swore that…”

  She slid out from the shadow of the front drape. And then I gasped. Her face was blotchy and tear-stained. She stared at her hands as if she didn’t recognize them. One palm was covered with dark streaks, the other hidden in a closed fist. My pulse quickened. “Sally? What’s wrong?”

  She looked up, her eyes darted wildly. As I ran toward her across the stage, my shoe caught in the hem of my skirt and I tripped, falling forward. I reached down to break my tumble and when I looked up again, she had disappeared. I yelled after her, “Sally, wait!” But she’d had a good head start. I hiked up my skirt and ran down the stairs into the house after her.

  Walter appeared from the green room. “What are you doing here?” he asked coldly.

  He hadn’t gotten over my digging into a murder last spring that revealed his playing fast and loose
with the box office till. If it wasn’t for Lola running the show now, I’d be banned from the ELT. “I was setting up the concession stand,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster.

  “In here?” Walter asked sarcastically.

  I dropped my skirt. “Never mind about me. Sally just ran out of here.”

  Walter looked puzzled. “Sally?”

  “Oldfield. One of your actors?” What had Penny said? “Third chair, second row of the graveyard.”

  “Oh. Her,” he said dismissively.

  Walter should think of Sally with a little more respect. She was one of the few cast members who didn’t mock him behind his back. He removed his overcoat.

  “Something’s wrong. She wasn’t in the curtain call last night and just now she was really in a state, it looked like her hands were—”

  “What do you mean she wasn’t in the curtain call? All actors are in the curtain call. No one is excused,” Walter said.

  It was Penny all over again. “I’m telling you she wasn’t and she—

  “Dodie? Walter? What’s going on?” Lola flipped on the house lights as Walter examined the placement of the furniture for Act One.

  “Sally Oldfield was here a few minutes ago. She’d been crying and then she ran out of here,” I said.

  “Why would she do that? Her call is in five minutes,” Walter said.

  I’d had it with Walter’s snarky attitude. I stomped onstage. “I hate to break the news, but Sally Oldfield is not going on tonight. She’s not even going to be in the theater. She’s on her way to who-knows-where.” I was practically roaring.

  “Dodie?” Lola, confused and worried, ran down the aisle. “What’s this about Sally?”

  “Something is wrong.” I whirled around, grabbing for the dividing wall on the turntable that separated Acts One and Two.

  Walter waved his hand. “I need to get into makeup.” He headed for the dressing room.

  The theater door opened, accompanied by an eruption of chatter. A handful of cast members entered the theater and proceeded through the house.

  “Lola, we’ve got to do something.” I stepped backward into the Act Two area, my foot grazing a large, immovable object. I looked down. Even in the dim light I could see it was a body lying in front of the first row of folding chairs. With a knife sticking out of its chest. Dressed in a camo jacket and trapper hat. Lola had bolted onstage and was standing behind me.

  “Don’t move,” I rasped, my heart in my throat.

  “Dodie, you sound awfully funny—”

  “Call 911.” My hand wobbled as I pointed downward.

  Lola looked where I was staring. “Oh my God! Oh no! Who is it…? How did—”

  “Now!” I screamed.

  * * *

  I sat in the last row of seats, taking deep breaths to keep my growing dread at arm’s length. Not again. Another ELT production and another murder. I watched the crime scene unit busily scouring the stage for evidence, upending the furniture, searching the nooks and crannies of the turntable. It rotated easily enough with the CSI techs pushing and pulling. My mind kept replaying the moment when Sally appeared from the shadows, panicked, saying my name as if it were a plea for help. There was no mistaking the fact that the deceased was the same man she and I had seen standing in front of the Craft Shoppe Sunday night. What was their connection? One thing was for certain: Whomever he was, Sally was as shocked to see him in Etonville as she was horrified to view her hands an hour ago. Though I knew what the dark stains were then, my mind refused to process the information. But now there was no mistake: Her hands, at least one, was covered in blood.

  Off to the side, Bill spoke softly to Officer Suki Shung, his second-in-command and a solid professional. I should know. Last fall we’d both been tied up and stuffed under the theater seats by a couple of jewel thieves. Bill made his way up the aisle. “Third time’s a charm,” he said grimly.

  Did he think this murder was somehow linked to the ELT? “He didn’t have any connection to the theater.” My chest still pounded, my palms were sweaty.

  Bill leaned in to me, scanning my face. “How do you know?”

  “He wasn’t an ELT member.” Did Bill realize Ralph had picked the victim up Sunday night?

  Bill fished a writing pad out of his pocket. “I gather you had a confrontation with one of the actors before the victim was discovered.”

  The skirmish was with Walter not Sally. “I had come out of the dressing room in my costume,” I said rapidly.

  Bill scrutinized my appearance—hair a mess from the mob cap, sneakers that clashed historically with my colonial skirt and blouse, the apron hanging off my shoulder. “Then what?” he asked.

  “I heard a noise—” I shivered spontaneously.

  His eyes narrowed. “What kind of noise?”

  “Like a…gasp.”

  “You heard a gasp?” he asked.

  “Right. Like someone breathing. Heavily.”

  “Breathing.”

  I sat up straighter, freaking out. “Are you going to repeat everything I say?”

  “Just trying to get the facts,” he said patiently. “And then what happened after you heard the breathing?”

  I exhaled. “Then I heard what sounded like someone crying and Sally, she’s one of the cast members, walked out of the shadows from the back of the turntable.” I stopped myself. Is that what she’d done? Come from the Act Two side of the platform? Where the dead man now lay? I hadn’t thought that through before this moment.

  Bill was studying me. “What?”

  “What what?”

  “I know that look. What did you realize?” His eyes narrowed.

  “Sally came from the area where the guy is lying.”

  “What did she do or say? How did she look?”

  I closed my eyes and saw her. Terrified. “She said ‘Dodie.’ She was in tears. Her face was all smudged. Then she ran off. I called her and tried to follow but got tangled up in my skirt.”

  Bill scribbled on his pad, then turned and surveyed the theater. “No one else was here at the time?”

  “Right. I was alone. Until Walter showed up. That was the confrontation.”

  “Oh?”

  “I told him about Sally and he blew me off. You know ever since Jerome’s death and that box office business—which he blames on me somehow—he and I haven’t really seen eye-to-eye,” I rambled on.

  “Really.” Bill couldn’t have cared less about my contretemps with the ELT director-who-would-be-playwright. “Let’s get back to Sally. The stuff on her hands. Was it blood?”

  “The light was dim and she was in a shadow, but yeah, I think it was probably blood.”

  Was this the time to tell him about Sunday night? “One other thing, after our baking session on Sunday, Sally and I left the Windjammer and across the street—”

  Walter burst into the house, with Lola on his heels. “Chief Thompson,” he called out, “We need to know how to proceed.”

  I wanted to say “proceed this,” but Lola looked so agitated I held my tongue.

  “Walter, we have a very fluid situation here. The CSI team is still collecting evidence and the theater is a crime scene,” Bill said.

  No kidding. Our Town had been murdered long before the strange man died on the set.

  “It’s nearly seven. What do we say to the actors? The audience will start to show up any minute,” he said.

  Bill stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I’m sorry to tell you, but there’s not going to be any performance tonight. I know that’s a disappointment, but the theater is off-limits indefinitely.”

  Walter flushed an intense shade of scarlet: rage at fate, no doubt. Then he turned his icy stare on me. “It had something to do with Sally Oldfield, didn’t it? I knew she would be trouble. An out-of-towner.”

  “Walt
er, please, Sally was a very sweet young woman,” Lola said.

  “She was a complete stranger,” Walter said.

  “Not to me. Sally was lovely. Responsible,” I said. And willing to play your silly warm-up games, I wanted to add, without laughing behind your back.

  “You all talk about her as if she has passed as well.” Bill looked at Lola, then Walter, and, finally, me.

  Silence.

  “I’ll need contact information on her and anything else you can tell me. Like when she arrived in Etonville and anything about her personal life.”

  “Of course, Penny can help you. Walter, let’s break the news to the cast. We’ll post some people in the lobby to intercept the audience,” Lola said, weary.

  “Good idea,” Bill smiled sympathetically.

  “Dodie, what do you want to do about the desserts and drinks?” Lola asked.

  The colonial food! I’d been so angsty, I hadn’t given any thought to the concession stand. I jumped to my feet. “I’ll take care of it.”

  The minute they were out the door, Bill touched my arm. “Still on for tomorrow night?” he asked quietly.

  Our redo-Valentine’s-Day dinner. My insides fluttered. “I’m in if you are.”

  5

  Georgette, who’d come to see the show, helped Carol distribute Swamp Yankee applesauce cake and pumpkin bread to a morose and frustrated cast and crew. Under the circumstances, they deserved a little free food to keep their spirits up. Not to mention the mulled wine. It disappeared like hotcakes. Lola had explained the situation and that they were free to go, but they were an ensemble, after all, and hanging around the theater was something they just did. Maybe they were hoping that Bill might walk through the lobby doors and announce a stay of execution for the production: There hadn’t been a murder after all and the show would go on. That was a fantasy. Besides, Penny was stationed by the entrance to the theater and had been announcing the cancellation, clipboard in hand. Word would no doubt go viral through Etonville, setting the gossip machine working overtime.

  “Dodie, did you see the dead man?” one of the Banger sisters asked.