LITMIR.BIZ

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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.”

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