Peak Season for Murder Read online

  “How do you know that’s why I’m calling?” I said indignantly.

  “Well, isn’t it?”

  It was one of my reasons, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of being right. “Actually, I wanted to know if Ken Albright is a suspect.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Ken would never hurt Brownie.”

  “Let’s just say that the crime scene says otherwise. That’s all I can tell you. So don’t work too hard there, Leigh.”

  He hung up before I could ask him to elaborate. What hadn’t Ken told me? Why were the police calling it a crime scene?

  I glanced up at the office clock. It was almost eleven-thirty, and I still had to finish my piece on the Village of Egg Harbor’s unique distinction of having the most liquor licenses per capita in Wisconsin. I needed a quote from Jerry Lucas, the spokesperson for the Door County Visitor’s Bureau. Then I’d grab something to eat before heading to the BT’s one o’clock rehearsal. Driving to Marshalls Point to see Ken would have to wait.

  Before dialing the Visitor’s Bureau, I scanned my notes. Egg Harbor, population 201. Number of liquor licenses, 21. Comes to one license for every 21 residents.

  You can’t make this stuff up, I thought as I waited for Jerry to answer his phone.

  “Hi Jerry, it’s Leigh Girard. Do you have a minute?”

  “Sure, Leigh. What’s up?”

  “I’m writing an article for Friday’s paper on Egg Harbor having the most liquor licenses per capita in Wisconsin. What’s your take on it?”

  He chuckled. “No secret there. It’s tourism. We serve an estimated two million tourists a year. As for Egg Harbor, a lot happens in that village for only two hundred one people living there.”

  “You could say the same thing about the whole peninsula,” I answered.

  “You ought to know.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  After three hours in the stifling room watching the final run-through of The Merchant of Venice before tonight’s dress rehearsal, I was back to worrying about Ken Albright and why the police were treating Brownie’s death as a crime. Anything to distract myself from the tortuous rehearsal.

  Out of sheer boredom, I’d learned each actor by their scents, sometimes closing my eyes as they passed in front of me to test my olfactory acumen.

  Nina Cass, Ryan’s ex-wife, who was playing Nerissa, smelled like cigarettes and coffee, which probably accounted for her nervous, angular body and tightly curled black hair. She stood near me, tapping her foot, clearly annoyed as Julian Finch, the play’s Antonio—sandalwood soap, anise and faint BO—went up on his lines again.

  With a two-and-a-half week turnaround between plays, the actors were always rehearsing one play during the day and performing a completely different play at night. Though a mentally grueling schedule, I was still surprised that Finch was having problems remembering his lines. Not only was Finch a noted Shakespearean actor, who’d surely played this role before, but also, this was the final rehearsal before dress rehearsal, Monday being the only dark night for the BT. The play opened tomorrow.

  Earlier, when I’d asked Nina Cass how she kept the plays straight and remembered her lines, she said, “It’s like a muscle. The more you use it, the better it becomes.”

  Obviously, that muscle wasn’t working for Julian. And from the expressions on the other actors’ faces, they were as annoyed with him as Nina was. Secretly, I wished Shylock, aka Nate Ryan, would get his pound of flesh so the play would end and put everyone out of their misery.

  “For if the Jew doth cut deep enough,” Julian repeated, looking up into the rafters as if the lines were floating above him. “Line,” he said.

  I sighed inwardly. Marooned between Alex Webber, the play’s director, and Barbara Henry in an island of chairs beneath a bank of windows, I felt sweat running down the backs of my legs, under my arms and in my crotch. Every time I moved, my damp clothes clung to me. I knew I had a big wet stain on my bottom. I only hoped I didn’t smell.

  I looked with annoyance and envy at the three crewmembers who were huddled in front of the one wall air conditioner. Humming gently like background music for the play, it did little to relieve the vaporous heat that filled the large room. I felt like I was inhaling everyone’s exhale.

  Alex, who was following the lines with a small ruler, called out, “I’ll pay for it instantly with all my heart.” His garlicky breath was muted by the starchy scent of his shirt. He ran his hand through his wavy and thinning dun-colored hair—a gesture that seemed to calm him.

  “I’ll pay it instantly with all my heart,” Julian repeated.

  Julian was bound to a chair stage center, his bony chest thrust out, ready for a pound of flesh to be cut from him—nearest his heart. Beside him stood Bassanio, played by Matt Burke—spicy deodorant and spearmint. He had a commanding presence. At around six feet, four inches, he seemed out of proportion to the other actors. Matt was the only actor there, besides Nate Ryan, who’d done TV. He’d been the TV spokesperson for a national cell phone company a few years ago in which he was dressed as an urban cowboy and flipped his phone open as if it were a gun. He’d also done a stint as a murderous villain on a daytime soap titled Days of Our Children. He was good-looking in an average, nonthreatening kind of way.

  As Portia, played by Harper Kennedy—lavender and hair spray—drew Shylock into her clever web of words, I studied again the soft-looking Julian. I wondered how the audience would react not only to the liberal cuts Webber had taken with the play, eliminating Act V, but also to the blatant homosexuality that he’d infused into the play, having Bassanio kiss Antonio in early scenes on the mouth and for a little too long. As well as the less blatant homosexual overtones between Portia and Nerissa, once they’d donned men’s clothes.

  I wasn’t sure what Webber was trying to prove, but whatever it was, he certainly was going to prove something. With so many interpretations of the play over the years, I doubt if Shakespeare was rolling over in his grave, but he probably was scratching his head.

  “Most rightful judge!” Shylock brandished the long-bladed knife in front of Antonio, releasing his sweet scent that smelled like plums. In what could only be called anti-casting, Nate Ryan was playing Shylock to the hilt. His blond good looks were at odds with the part of the Jewish merchant. He’d barely acknowledged me when he’d entered the rehearsal room, looking briefly in my direction, smiling, and then joining the other actors.

  Maybe I was too much of a distraction? Yeah, right. More likely my questioning his sobriety was the distraction.

  Then there were Alex and Harper. I couldn’t dislodge the image of him kissing Harper’s hand last night at the bar and their raw, lustful looks. Throughout the rehearsal they’d been distant and professional, by far her best performance of the day.

  Portia answered. “And you must cut this flesh from off his breast. The law allows it, and the court awards.”

  “Most learned judge! A sentence! Come prepare!” Shylock flourished the knife once in the air, and then pressed its tip against Antonio’s chest. A single drop of blood appeared.

  “What the hell,” shouted Julian as he looked down at the blood on his chest.

  It took me a moment to realize that the blood was real and not some trick of the knife to give authenticity to the scene’s horror.

  Julian wrested his hands free of the ropes, jumped up from his chair and swiped at the blood drop.

  Nate held the knife out away from him as if he had no idea how it had gotten into his hand, let alone drawn blood.

  “This is too much, Ryan, even for you,” hissed Julian. “Maybe this play is a big joke to you, but the rest of us take the BT and our profession seriously.”

  Nate shrugged his shoulders at Julian. “The rest of us know our lines.”

  For a second the two men stared at each other as if deciding their next move. Julian’s right hand fisted and Nate’s chin thrust forward as if to say: go ahead and hit me. Then Julian stormed past Nate a
nd went outside, slamming the door behind him. If Nate was getting even for the fake chicken in his fridge, again I didn’t see the humor. A bloody chicken was harmless; drawing blood wasn’t.

  “Everybody calm down,” Alex said, getting up and taking the knife from Nate’s hand. He ran his finger over the blade. “Bob, how did this knife get here? Where’s the one with the blunt end?”

  Bob, a doughy-looking college student who was in charge of props, moved away from the air conditioner, red-faced.

  “Did you check the knife before rehearsal?” Alex demanded.

  “It wasn’t that knife,” Bob protested.

  “Okay, who’s the jokester?” Alex said, smiling at me as if I were in on the joke. Why wasn’t he asking Nate about the switched knife? I wondered, since Julian had accused him of planting a real knife.

  Barbara Henry, who was sitting on my right, leaned toward me. “Stage jitters,” she whispered. Again she was clad in a ruffled blouse and a florid midi-skirt. Did she buy them in bulk? I wondered.

  “Understandable,” I said. Not adding, “Especially considering he’d just been pricked with a real knife.”

  Since the start of rehearsal three hours ago, this was my first opportunity to ask her about the play. “Is Alex at all concerned about the audience’s reaction?”

  Barbara looked at me as if I were speaking in a foreign tongue.

  “The homosexuality?” I added.

  “You’ll have to ask Alex about that.” Barbara got up abruptly and went outside.

  “I want you to double-check all the props before you set them up—all of them. Got it?” Alex handed the knife to Bob.

  “I did check it. Honest,” he answered, his head down, the tips of his ears a fiery red.

  “Just make sure it doesn’t happen again.” Alex looked at his watch. “Okay, fifteen minutes, and then we’ll take the scene from the top.”

  The actors quickly made for the door. Nina already had a cigarette in her mouth. Harper and Matt were arm and arm, laughing. And Nate was chatting with Alex. I heard him say as they passed, “Maybe now he’ll remember his lines.”

  I got up and pulled at my damp khakis, standing for a moment until the circulation returned to my legs and feet. Bob was in the corner, rummaging around in the prop box. I walked over to him. The suspect knife was on the floor beside the box. It was a long-bladed kitchen knife, the kind you use to cut meat.

  “Hi. I’m Leigh Girard from the Door County Gazette.” Bending down, I held out my hand to him.

  He looked up at me, wiped his hand on his rumpled cargo shorts and then shook my hand. His cheeks were still flame red. “You’re not going to put this in the paper, are you?”

  “Why would I?” I sat down on the floor beside him. “Alex was kind of hard on you.”

  “He’s always like that the night before opening. Who he really wants to yell at is Finch. But he can’t. Finch being such a famous actor and all. So he takes it out on the intern.”

  “How did a real knife get in with the props?”

  He tilted his head at me. “Damned if I know.”

  I was being shut out again. “Cross my heart,” I said, making an imaginary cross on my chest. “Nothing you tell me is going in my article. I’m just curious. It’s an occupational hazard.”

  He looked around to see if anyone else was in the room. “This is my second season with the BT, you know. It’s not like I don’t know what I’m doing. And I’m real careful with the props, because if I screw up I don’t get credit for my internship. And I need the credit or I don’t graduate next spring. So do you think I wouldn’t check that knife before rehearsal? I checked it. Someone else switched knives.”

  “Do you remember what time you checked it?”

  “Right after lunch. Around noon. Then I put the box in here, where I always put it.”

  “So anyone could have come in here and switched knives.”

  We sat for a moment and listened to the rattling hum of the air conditioner. I could sense that Bob had something else he wanted to tell me, but he wasn’t sure yet if he could trust me.

  “That’s not the first time something’s gone wrong,” he began, “that Alex’s tried to pin on me.”

  He looked sideways at me. “The other day there was a dead rat in one of the caskets. You know the scene where Bassanio has to guess which casket is the right one: gold, silver or lead? You should have seen Burke, Mr. Cell Phone Cowboy, jump when he opened the lead one and a dead rat was in there. Then last night, you have to admit there were a lot of bats on stage. I mean I’ve never seen that many before. Then when Gwen tripped over those rigging ropes and broke her arm, guess who Alex blamed? Me. I didn’t leave those ropes out, honest. I don’t blame Gwen for leaving.”

  I didn’t blame her either. When I’d asked Alex how Gwen was doing, he’d told me she’d left last night for Chicago.

  “Bob, any idea who’s behind the practical jokes?” Why hadn’t Gwen told me about the dead rat in the casket? As Portia, she was present for that scene in the play. Weird vibe, indeed.

  “If I knew, don’t you think I’d tell Alex, so he’d get off my back?”

  “How about a guess?”

  “Nate Ryan, just like Finch said. It’s obvious he’s not into the play or the BT.”

  “What do you mean, not into the play or the BT?”

  “Half the time he looks bored. Like he wants to be someplace else. Other times he seems all agitated and hyped up. He’s just killing time here until Hollywood offers him another movie.” He put his hand over his mouth. “Don’t say I said that, okay? Or I’ll really be in trouble.”

  “This is strictly between us,” I reassured him.

  “You gonna put anything in your article about the curse?”

  “What curse?” This was the first I’d heard about a curse.

  “Well, I’m staying in the boathouse over on the bay with the rest of the techs. And one of them told me about the last time BT did MOV.”

  “MOV? You mean The Merchant ofVenice?”

  “Yeah. Well, anyway the last time they did that play, it was way back in the nineteen eighties sometime, you know when the Moyer family ran the BT. They’re the people who saved the theater when it was in financial trouble.”

  That I did know. The Moyers rescued the theater group from bankruptcy and built the present tented pavilion, replacing the huge canvas top that once draped over the audience and was a menace on stormy nights.

  “Anyway, opening night Danielle Moyer, who played Portia, disappeared after the play and was never seen again. She was the daughter. You been to the old cabin where they lived?”

  I shook my head no. I didn’t even know there was an old cabin.

  “Well, if you want, after rehearsal I can take you there. It’s all locked up. But you can look in the windows. It’s creepy.”

  Obviously, I’d been talking to the wrong people. Bob, the intern, was a fountain of information. Though how much was accurate, I wasn’t sure.

  “Okay, where should we meet?”

  “By the beer garden.” He smiled for the first time.

  Where else would a college student want to meet?

  With ten minutes left before rehearsal resumed, I walked over to the ticket office, wanting to talk to Alex and get his reaction to the knife incident. Barbara told me he was on a conference call and I could wait in the garden.

  I followed the stone path around the ticket office to the garden. It was empty except for Julian and Harper, who were seated on a wooden bench near the garden’s edge lost in conversation. As Harper stood, she patted Julian on the shoulder, then leaned over and kissed his cheek. After Harper left, I waited a moment before walking to the bench.

  “Mind if I join you?” I asked.

  “Come to see how the mighty have fallen?”

  I took that as a yes and sat down next to him. An open playbook was in his lap. His shirt was unbuttoned, and I could see the cut on his hairless chest. He pulled his shirt closed and crossed h
is long legs at his ankles.

  He had an imperial face, a profile fit for a coin—patrician nose, high forehead and graying hair that seemed unusually thick for a man in his fifties. His strong features were suited to a stage actor, easily seen from the back of the theater.

  “I’m a great admirer of yours,” I began. “I saw your Lear at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater a few years ago.”

  “Ah, yes. Lear, a man who loses everything because of his hubris. ‘We will be like two birds in a cage.’ Always loved that line. But then it’s already too late, isn’t it? Cordelia soon dies, and all hope is lost.”

  I was enthralled with his deep voice, like rich coffee.

  He picked up the playbook and leafed through it. “Do you know how many times I’ve done this play? Six. And one of those times was at the Globe Theater in London. I’ve played Antonio twice, Shylock three times.”

  Besides being a Shakespearean actor who’d played London and Chicago, Finch had made an independent film when he was in his twenties that had garnered him an Academy Award nomination. That had been the highlight of his acting career. Now it seemed as if he was on a slow downward slide. I felt sorry for him. Not only because he’d forgotten his lines, which was humiliating enough, but also because he’d been the victim of a cruel prank.

  He thrust the book at me. “Read a line from the trial scene.”

  “What?”

  “Anywhere in the scene. Read a line before Antonio’s.”

  I opened the book to Act IV. “You, merchant, have you anything to say?”

  “But little. I am armed and well prepared.” He continued, not missing a word, imbuing the speech with the pathos it merited. When he’d finished, he took the playbook from me.

  “So why were you going up on your lines in rehearsal?” I asked.

  “That’s what I’ve been sitting here asking myself. There’s a saying in the theater, ‘The worse the rehearsal, the better the opening night.’ But, of course, that refers to the dress rehearsal.”

  He put the playbook down, but I’d seen the tremor in his hand. And he’d seen that I’d seen it.