Midsummer Murder (12 page)

“Well—” He stopped suddenly and Lindy pulled up short behind him. His head lifted and he searched the surrounding cliffs.

He pointed to a tiny break in the trees above them. “That’s where they found the body. You can’t see the bottom from here, but it’s a 73

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pretty nasty area.” He shook his head. “They mainly just wanted to know if we saw or heard anything that night. Of course we didn’t; we’re like the Neanderthals, to bed with the sun, up with the sun.” He touched his cheek. “Most nights anyway.”

“I don’t see why that would get you in Dr. Van Zandt’s bad graces.”

“Oh, that didn’t. It was what I said about the Jeep.”

“What Jeep? Your Jeep?”

“Nah, not that heap of junk. A big, black four-wheel-drive number. We’ve seen it several times during the last few weeks.

The old man thinks it’s spies, but I told him it could be some pervert—

there are a lot of kids up at the camp.” He grimaced. “I thought the cops should know.”

“And?” prompted Lindy.

“So, I told ’em about it, and that sheriff made some snide remark about the kinds of people up at the house, and the old man took offense. Now I’m the one typing field notes every night.”

Lindy laughed sympathetically.

“I don’t mind. He thinks it’s a big punishment, but I know he doesn’t trust anybody else to do them, and his eyesight isn’t getting any better. So it’s okay.” He came to a stop at the edge of a graveled path.

“How did we get back here so fast?” asked Lindy. “I was running for over an hour.”

“There’s a huge network of paths and subsidiary paths, some still used and some overgrown. You just have to know where you’re going.

See ya around.” Donald turned his back to her and loped off through the woods.

* * *

Lindy passed several small cabins and another building that she thought must be the student dorm. Groups of dancers hurried down the path. Another group appeared on the porch letting the screen door slam behind them. They waved to Lindy as she passed. She waved back.

At least she hadn’t missed rehearsal. A quick cleanup and she would be ready to face the afternoon. She felt exhilarated by her jog, fascinated by the people she had met, and a little apprehensive of what was to come.

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She walked around the back of the annex to take the service entrance. There was a back stairway for the help, and she didn’t want to track mud and leaves into the main house. She held the door for a delivery boy, grunting under a load of cardboard vegetable boxes, then followed him inside.

The sounds of activity surrounded her as she made her way down the hallway. Clanging of pots, and doors slamming, a vacuum cleaner, two vacuum cleaners, maids pushing trolleys of cleaning supplies and stacks of fresh white towels. Through the entrance of the dining room, she could see girls placing vases on white tablecloths, hear the clatter of silverware being poured into stainless steel containers.

She passed the bar where a freckled boy looked up from the glass he was polishing and smiled at her. Another boy hefted a crate filled with lemons and limes onto the counter.

The annex was as busy as any theater on opening night. And throughout the commotion, Chi-Chi’s voice burst like exclamation points—directing, encouraging, making suggestions—choreography in a different sphere.

A salutary reminder, thought Lindy, of her own responsibilities. She took the stairs two at a time, splashed water on her face, grabbed her dance bag, and was at the theater in less than ten minutes.

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Seven

The theater was in a state of barely controlled chaos. Several girls sat on trunks in the wardrobe room. Piles of chiffon slid across their laps as they attacked the fabric with needles and thread as if poking pins into voodoo dolls. Rose bent over another girl at the sewing machine. One of her braids had come loose from the Heidi coil and swung in the air like the ear of a demented rabbit.

In the girls’ dressing room, Andrea and Kate were helping the less experienced dancers with their makeup. Other young dancers hurried up and down the stairs, retrieving forgotten shoes or calling for a dancer needed on stage.

On stage, the
corps de ballet
walked from one formation to another, marking their spacing. Their white tunics and pink tights were tinged with a murky blue.

“Hold it,” Peter commanded from where he was sitting in the house, surrounded by the student crew. He pulled the headset off the boy sitting behind the makeshift manager’s board. Putting it on his head, he turned to look back at the booth, and began speaking into the mouthpiece.

The dancers continued to move through their positions. The light changed from blue to mauve; the tunics turned a dirty gray. “Are you in the correct cue?” Lindy could hear his voice rise even though he was still talking into the headset. He wasn’t at his best in crowds even on a good day, and this didn’t appear to be one of those.

The stage changed from mauve to amber then suddenly went black.

“Freeze!” yelled Peter. There was no light in the house except for the small lamp on the board and an eerie glow from the lighting booth at the back of the house. The stage lights popped back on. Mauve again.

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The dancers who had frozen midmovement, relaxed and stared out into the house. Peter pulled off the headset and walked up the aisle to the booth. He rolled his eyes as he passed Lindy.

A few seconds later the stage was washed in a soft blue that molded the white of the tunics into voluptuous folds. Peter returned down the aisle. “We’re a little behind.” He squeezed past the row of seats and sat next to the boy who was calling the cues.

“Not your fault,” he said.

Robert and Jeremy were standing down front looking toward Peter.

They turned back to the stage. The piece continued in silence. It was a spacing rehearsal: marking the steps while learning stage positions, deciding which wings to use for entrances and exits. It was a necessary process in transferring a piece from the studio to the stage. Even the most professional dancers took a tech day for setting lighting cues and spacing. They were long and boring even on the most efficient days.

Lindy gritted her teeth. She hated tech days. Everybody did. And this was a tech and run, which meant after each piece was spaced they would dance it full out, in costume, with the music—a combination tech and dress rehearsal. It was only 2:30, but at this rate, they would be in the theater all night.

Her eyes scanned the house. Silhouettes of dancers appeared, stretched out in the aisles or in the audience seats. Should she tell them they weren’t supposed to sit in their costumes? No, she would leave it to Rose. She would be more effective. Being yelled at by Rose was an instant education. Lindy remembered her own first summer stock experience. She hadn’t known what a prop table was. She had left something—what was it, a cup?—sitting on one of the frames of scenery. In the middle of the next scene, the cup had come flying onto the stage, breaking into several pieces that scattered across the floor.

“There’s a prop table, goddamn it,” thundered the stage manager’s voice from the wing. Lindy never forgot to return her props to the table after that. Sometimes, drama held a more lasting impression than polite entreaty. She smiled; Rose would deal with it.

Feeling at loose ends, she strolled to the back of the house. In the farthest corner seat sat Biddy, legs thrown over the seat in front of her. There was no mistaking the shape of Biddy’s hair even in the darkness.

“What’s up?” asked Lindy walking up behind her.

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“Bedlam everywhere you look.”

“Think we should help out?”

“Not me. Until Jeremy’s back to normal, I’m determined to keep a low profile.”

“I wish they would.” Lindy motioned down to four dancers sitting halfway to the stage. Rebo’s arm was draped across the back of Juan’s seat. His fingers played with a lock of Juan’s hair. The stage lights made it a perfect dumb show. Next to Rebo was Eric, head to head with . . . Paul? Lindy looked more closely. Of course not, Paul was as straight as they came. This silhouette wasn’t familiar. Oh shit, it must be a student, and if Grappel made an appearance . . . That’s all they needed. She walked down the aisle and slipped into the row of seats behind them.

“Don’t you guys have something to do?” she asked.

Rebo tilted his head backward over the seat until he was looking up at her. “We’re doing it.” His eyes widened and he made choking noises.

“We’re dying of boredom.”

“Don’t be a wuss,” said Eric. “No one ever dies of boredom, they just fade . . .” He began slipping down in his seat. “Fade.” The word was muffled. He dropped to the floor. The seat bottom flipped up.

“Awaay.”

The boy laughed. He was wearing a silk shirt and pants from the Holberg Suite, and they were wrinkled.

“What about this one?” Lindy indicated the boy with her head as she directed the question to Rebo.

“We’re the last piece,” volunteered the boy. “I’ve already warmed up twice and we probably won’t even get to it today.”

She was getting a headache. She went directly to Rose, who was now backstage, adjusting the drapes of the tunics as dancers made their exits.

Moments later, she heard Rose’s voice reverberate through the house. In a few minutes every dancer was standing backstage, wrinkles and all.

* * *

Lindy went back out front. She passed Robert who had shifted his position to check the sight lines for stage right. She smiled even 78

Midsummer Murder

though he didn’t seem to notice her. He shouted a correction. His voice had the raspy quality of someone coming down with a cold. A line of eight dancers shifted a step to the left. “Good.” Robert returned to the center aisle.

She couldn’t just keep wandering around the theater all day; it would drive her crazy. And Biddy was no help. “I feel just like that rat in his cage,” she sang under her breath as she walked back up the aisle. It was a song that Cliff had listened to on one of his long weekends home. It played constantly on the radio and he had bought the CD. Even though Lindy knew she had heard the song at least a hundred times that weekend, the only lyrics she had been able to identify were the rat in the cage part.

She pushed open the padded swinging doors to the lobby and walked through. It was sunny. She blinked a few times until her pupils adjusted.

Beyond the glass front all was quiet. The theater’s parking lot was covered with drying puddles. Across the drive, the main house looked cleansed by the night’s storm. Even the annex, that ran behind a copse of trees, looked deserted, though Lindy knew there was plenty of activity inside.

She turned her back on the scene and read the words of a plaque that ran along the back wall of the lobby. 50 YEARS OF EASTON

STUMIDSUMMER MURDER
85
DENTS. Beneath it, rows of photographs stretched from the corner to the ticket office.

She passed along the line of pictures until she reached the beginning of the display. Two rows of healthy, plump young men and women were dressed in dreadful black knit tights or gym shorts gathered at the waist and white, cap-sleeved shirts that buttoned up the front.

Below it hung two individual pictures of the scholarship students for that year. She moved along the line, stopping here and there as she recognized names of dancers who had made it, and wondering what had happened to the ones who hadn’t.

About two thirds of the way down, she saw a familiar face. Jeremy at fourteen, blond hair curling over his ears, scrawny and spindle-legged, with a devilish smile on his face. In the next frame, a serious young woman, already buxom, dark hair pulled severely back in a bun. Esmerelda Lanterna. Puberty would not be kind to that figure, thought Lindy.

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A few pictures later, another shot of Jeremy, looking stronger and more mature. And in the third—he must have been about sixteen when the photo was taken—tall with muscles that had filled out during the preceding year, and incredibly handsome. He was standing next to Marguerite, who looked as grand as she did today, only younger and dressed in a beaded gown. She looked up at him as he smiled at the camera.

The pictures that followed captured the changing standards for dancers. Sleeker bodies. Shorter torsos. Longer legs. Flat-chested girls and high-arched boys. And each year, getting thinner and thinner.

She stopped suddenly, her breath catching. Before her was the picture of this year’s scholarship student, Lawrence Cleveland. She forced herself to look at the boy who until now had been faceless to her. Blue eyes, high cheekbones, a smile that held the slightest hint of malice, a wave of blond hair swept across his forehead. Her throat tightened. She had expected him to be darker, she didn’t know why. And more muscular. But this boy was tall and lanky with a special grace that had been captured superbly by the photographer.

She looked at the group shot above it, her eye going immediately to the figure of Larry, the focal point of the group, looking smug and at ease, surrounded by sixty other dancers. She ran her finger over the names printed below the photo until she came to Connover Phillips, then transferred her finger to the corresponding face.

Connie, in the back row, head tilted down, eyes looking shyly out from beneath dark curls, lips pursed as if he could barely manage a smile for the camera.

She was still gazing at the picture, her hand resting on the wall next to it, when she heard the front door open behind her. She glanced over her shoulder. Ellis held the door for a policeman that Lindy didn’t recognize. At least it wasn’t Sheriff Grappel, but what on earth could he want?

He walked across the lobby, nodded “ma’am” and went into the house. Darting an unhappy look at Lindy, Ellis followed him. Lindy slipped through the door behind them before it had a chance to close.

The two men stood in front of her, getting their bearings in the dark.

Then Ellis pointed in the direction of the stage where Jeremy and Robert stood talking. The policeman strode forward, bracing his feet against the rake of the auditorium.