Murder in the Past Tense (Miss Prentice Cozy Mystery Series Book 3) Read online

  I was so involved in the story; I almost forgot to say my one lonely line. It took a nudge from Lily and some pointed stares from the rest of the company.

  “A tragedy, that’s what it is. A real shame,” I blurted, forgetting to use the Irish accent I had decided would lend credence to my part.

  The read-through continued.

  The sunrise lends a glow to the scene (Terence told us to imagine this) and the chorus sings “I’m Doing This for You” as Max’s body is carried off and the curtain falls.

  ~~~

  “You’ve got to admit,” Gil said over our TV dinners that night as we continued our remembering, “those were the sappiest lyrics ever written. And that soap opera of a plot! I couldn’t ever figure out how all of you could do it with a straight face.” He speared the square of microwaved meat loaf that he’d carved and popped it in his mouth.

  I leaned forward with my napkin. “You’ve got a spot of gravy on your shirt.”

  He grinned. “Nice way to change the subject.” But he sat patiently as I dabbed at him. “Finished?”

  I nodded and returned to my own favorite, turkey and dressing. “For your information, it’s a true classic, based on a short story by O. Henry.”

  Gil nodded and spooned gravy into the little mashed potato section of his plastic plate. “I know, I know, the guy who wrote ‘The Gift of the Magi.’ Didn’t we have to read it in English class? That’s another sappy one. She sells her hair to buy him a watch fob, and he sells his watch to buy her a comb or something. It’s enough to give you cavities.” He stirred the gravy-potato mixture and polished it all off in three bites

  “A set of combs.” I took a sip of milk. “All right, neither one is a sophisticated story, but there’s real sentiment, real heart in them.” Infuriatingly, I could feel tears start to form yet again. “Want more milk?”

  I rose and turned my back so he couldn’t see me. I hated how pregnancy made me so emotional at the oddest times, but the story of the last leaf had always touched me.

  ~~~

  Back then I also had tears in my eyes as the final chords of The Last Leaf faded on the big piano. I didn’t look around but somehow sensed that I wasn’t the only one.

  “That was neat!” said Elm DeWitt gruffly into the quiet that followed. “Real neat.”

  Neat? How naive, I thought, remembering another high school vocabulary word as I blew my nose into a tissue from my pocket.

  We were dismissed for a dinner break and told to be back by seven. “Just a short meeting of the tech crews,” Terence informed us. “We’ll be through before dark tonight.” Which meant we’d finish before nine.

  “I’m glad we’re ending early,” I told Lily as we filed out of the theatre.

  “Why? You tired already?”

  I might as well tell her, she’ll find out soon enough. “No. It’s just that if I have to leave here after dark, I’m supposed to call home so my father can walk me back.”

  Lily’s reaction was predictable. “You’re kidding! That’s terrible! He’s treating you like a baby! You’ve got to put your foot down. Just tell him what’s what!”

  “Easier said than done,” I murmured sadly.

  She was right, though. There was absolutely no defense for my father’s attitude.

  “Take it or leave it, Peanut,” he’d told me. “If you want to be in summer theatre, them’s the rules.”

  Papa liked to pretend to be folksy, but it in no way indicated indecisiveness on his part. In fact, the cornier he got, the more stubborn he could be.

  My reaction had sounded shrill, even to myself, “Papa, I’m fifteen! Practically a grownup! How can you do this to me?”

  “With difficulty,” he’d said, and put the evening newspaper between us.

  Lily was unusually sympathetic during the walk to my house. She changed the subject and speculated about the identity of the girl in the yellow dress. I didn’t respond. I was pretty sure Terence wouldn’t want me to.

  Everybody else was telling me what to do. When would it be my turn? My petulant sense of injustice followed me all the way home. Once there, I trudged sullenly and silently upstairs to my room to wait for supper.

  Barbara was in tonight, so now I didn’t even have Jim Croche to comfort me.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The next morning, Lily and I were looking at three large utility tables and two ironing boards in the forlorn storage room behind the unused projectionist’s booth, high upstairs in the old theatre. There were several shoeboxes filled with well-used patterns and an old Singer sewing machine that had definitely seen better days.

  “This is the costume department,” said Pat Gerard with a broad gesture. Her other arm was carrying a bale of light beige material.

  An eye-catching arrangement of boards and half-driven nails on one wall provided storage for dozens of spools of thread and several pairs of scissors, while one of the tables was laden with stacks of folded cotton material in a dizzying array of plaids, florals, polka dots, and solids. An ironing board occupied one corner, and there was a semi-circle of four old theatre seats in another. Off to the side was a screen, presumably for changing clothes.

  “It smells like our basement up here,” said Lily, grimacing. “Clorox.”

  “True,” Pat admitted, waving her free hand in front of her face and looking up. “There’s a leak in the roof. You’ve got no idea how hard we had to work to get it smelling even this good.” She directed a cerise index fingernail downward to indicate an empty metal bucket standing at an odd spot on the cracked linoleum. “Please, nobody move that, especially when it rains. We’ve got to keep the mildew out of here.” She unloaded her fabric burden on one of the tables.

  “What’s this for?” I asked, fingering the material. It was unbleached muslin.

  “These are rehearsal skirts. I ran ’em up last night, one for every woman in the company.” She held one up by the waistband. “The waist is stretchy, see?”

  “Rehearsal skirts?” I was still puzzled.

  Lily murmured, “We wear them during rehearsal so we’ll be accustomed to the length as we move. No use wearing out our costumes, which aren’t even finished yet, anyway.”

  It’ll make every one of us look like a sack of potatoes, I thought. Well, anyway, at least the costumes are going to be wonderful, if they turn out like the sketches on the bulletin board.

  In particular, there was a drawing of a gorgeous periwinkle blue creation featuring leg-o-mutton sleeves, a striped skirt with a bustle, and white trim, which I mentally claimed as mine. In the sketch, it even had a hat with a saucy little feather and a half-veil.

  “Did you design these?” I asked Pat.

  “I design all the costumes in the troupe.”

  “Wow!”

  I stepped forward to examine the picture more closely and nearly bumped into someone carrying a needle and thread, who shouldered past me and took one of the theatre seats. It was the new girl, again in the yellow dress. Pointedly ignoring me, she turned her attention to making stitches in the colorful garment she’d placed in her lap.

  “Oh, sorry,” I said.

  “This is, um—” Pat said, “Janey Johnson.”

  The girl stared at her work.

  “Hi.”

  The girl looked up for a second. She had strange eyes; no, it was her eyebrows. Most women I knew plucked their eyebrows to a thin line. Janey’s were thick and dark, unusual in a blonde, and arched as though she was in on some amusing secret. After glancing at us and giving a hesitant smile, she returned to her hand work.

  I pointed to a large, battered-looking trunk in the corner. “What’s this?”

  Suddenly Pat seemed to glow. I hadn’t seen her smile before, and I could now see why her husband had called her lovely. Her eyes crinkled, her well-shaped mouth revealed an even row of very white teeth, and a dimple peeked in and out of her right cheek.

  “That,” she said softly, proudly, “is my memory box. Want me to show you?”

 
So this was the trunk Lily had mentioned before. Of course we did.

  The blonde girl continued to ignore us and sew diligently. Her long, straight hair formed a kind of curtain, so that I couldn’t see her expression.

  Fine, I thought, be that way.

  We three knelt around the trunk as Pat separated a key from the assortment on her key ring, turned it in the keyhole and carefully lifted the lid. Sitting atop a motley assortment of items was an overloaded scrapbook with the edges of paper sticking out on every page level. Pat opened it gently.

  “This used to belong to Terence’s mother. She saved everything. Isn’t this adorable?”

  There was an professional color picture of Terence, approximately age fourteen, looking a little incongruous in a bright green leprechaun suit and hat, a tall spangle-costumed adolescent standing next to—and towering over—similarly-dressed children.

  “That was at the dance school,” I blurted and pointed to a green spangled folded garment. “That must be the costume there.”

  Pat nodded. “Um hum. But look at this.”

  She turned a dozen heavily-pasted scrapbook pages that crackled their objection to being moved all at once to reveal an 8 x 10 glossy black-and-white picture of Terence in a leather jacket, sneering like Elvis, with his hair slicked back and a cigarette hanging from his twisted lip.

  “The Rockets, his first actual Broadway show.” Pat turned the page the reveal another photograph. “This is my favorite, though.”

  I leaned forward. “Oh my goodness, is that a moustache? He looks like that Theodore Roosevelt character in Arsenic and Old Lace. You know, he was always running up the stairs, yelling, ‘Charge!’ Is that padding around his middle?”

  Pat chuckled. “Yes. Terence has always been lean. He was playing Theodore Roosevelt, but this wasn’t Arsenic. It was a different play, San Juan Hill, about Teddy’s early years and leading up the Spanish -American War.”

  Lily reached into the trunk. “And check this out, Amelia.”

  She pulled out a glasses case. Inside were some funny-looking spectacles without the side hooks hanging from a narrow black grosgrain ribbon. She held them up.

  “He wore this in San Juan Hill. It’s a pince-nez. Look.”

  She opened the scrapbook to a page with a picture of Terence standing at attention in full old-fashioned uniform, looking just like a young Theodore Roosevelt, thin when compared with later photos of the president.

  “Be careful with that,” Pat cautioned. “Yes, that’s from the Roosevelt play and so is this.” She reached deep into the box, pulling back folded costumes and other odds and ends until she reached the bottom. “Here it is.”

  She held up a triangular, zippered leather case. “He bought this from the producer when the show was over. It’s real, but it’s never been actually used, at least not as long as we’ve had it.” She unzipped it and pulled out a long-barreled gun. A silver plate on the handle bore the initials “T. R.”

  “You say it’s real?” I asked. Even for a prop, it looked menacing. “Will it really shoot?”

  She nodded. “It’s supposed to. Don’t worry, it’s not loaded. It never was loaded in the play, either. It’s an antique, the same kind that Teddy Roosevelt really owned. Terence had the initials put on it.” She fished a small white cardboard jewelry box from a corner of the trunk and opened it. Three bullets rolled across the cotton. “These came with it.”

  She quickly replaced the lid and returned it to the depths of the memorabilia. “San Juan Hill was his first spoken role, you know. I was in the play too. That’s where we met. I played his niece, Eleanor Roosevelt.”

  I’d seen photos of Eleanor Roosevelt. She didn’t look anything like Pat. She must be a better actress than I thought. Or she had really good makeup.

  Pat replaced the gun in its pouch and began repacking the mementoes. She retrieved the key and re-locked the trunk. “I keep it here because it’s safer. Needless to say, it’s off limits when I’m not here.”

  We helped her push the heavy trunk back under the wide trestle table. “That was so cool, Pat.” I said, remembering my manners. “Thank you for showing it to us.”

  She rewarded me with another lovely smile and looked around. “Oo-kay, back to work. I’ve already started some of the costumes.” She gestured to several shapeless, sleeveless cotton garments hanging on a rolling garment rack. “We’ll alter them to fit. Now, which of you has sewing experience?”

  As a result of my dogged honesty, I was given ironing board duty instead of sewing. It could have been worse. I was to stand at the ready to press paper patterns, steam open seams and iron hems as it became necessary.

  We began work right away. “There’s no time to waste,” Pat pointed out. “We have to have more than thirty outfits ready to wear by dress rehearsal. That’s a week and a half.”

  Lily was put to work stitching seams by hand. “This is ridiculous,” she muttered to me through a mouthful of pins. “I should just take these all home and do ’em on Mom’s machine.”

  “Ask Pat about that.” I narrowly missed ironing my thumb. “I bet she wouldn’t mind.”

  She didn’t. “And if you can loan us a machine, please let me know,” she added hopefully. She glanced at her watch. “Well, gotta dash. Don’t forget, dance tryouts right after lunch. You girls keep up the good work.”

  We heard her wedge sandals clattering down the steps. There was a period of silence as we worked, but it didn’t last very long. We were young girls, after all.

  “So, Janey, are you from New York City like everybody else?” Lily asked.

  The girl stopped sewing, stared at the hand work in her lap for a few seconds, then looked up at us, her dark, expressive eyebrows arched. She gave a kind of shrug-nod combination and seemed to shrink into the theatre seat.

  “Are you in the chorus too?” I ventured.

  Another half-shrug, half nod. She resumed her stitching.

  Not one to waste time or effort on a lost cause, Lily slid an exasperated glance my way and turned the conversation back to our favorite subjects. “So, which one do you think is the cutest: Danny, Neil, or Elm?”

  “Oh, definitely Danny.”

  Lily acted shocked. “How can you say that when Neil is so. . . ”

  We proceeded to pretend Janey wasn’t there.

  The girl was a fast worker, if a silent one. She hemmed four skirts that morning, all without exchanging a word with us. Her perfect, even stitches looked like a machine had made them.

  “What a snob,” grumbled Lily later that day at lunch, as we sat at the counter at Vickery’s. She took a gargantuan bite of her egg-salad sandwich. “All those New York City girls are.”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full. It’s gross. And I don’t think Janey’s a snob. She’s just shy.”

  I took the pickle chip from Lily’s plate and ate it. She hated pickles.

  “Not so shy with him.”

  Lily nodded in the direction of the entrance, where Chris Gold was holding the door open for Janey. With a little grin, she stopped and beckoned to him to bend down so she could whisper something in his ear. He nodded and broke into a smile, stroking his beard.

  Janey smiled back at him and imitated the gesture on her own chin. Chris’s guffaw filled the store.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I dreaded the dance tryouts. Terence would be there and would probably chew me out for spying on him at Mason’s tire department. Which I hadn’t, I reminded myself as Lily and I consumed sandwiches at Vickery’s lunch counter. Not really. Okay, I was curious, but wouldn’t anybody have been? I mean, all that sobbing and pleading and everything.

  I longed to tell Lily all about it, but restrained myself.

  Terence didn’t wait for the tryouts to speak to me. When Lily and I pushed through the outer door into the lobby, he was there, standing by the ticket window.

  He uncrossed his arms and walked towards us. “Amelia, I need a word with you.”

  Lily’s eyes widened. Sh
e whispered, “Maybe he’s going to give you a bigger part! Good luck!” She patted my shoulder and hurried into the auditorium.

  “Come in the office.”

  He led the way. It was pretty Spartan, compared to the office my dad had out at the lumberyard. Just a large desk topped by a manual typewriter, three chairs, a telephone, and a filing cabinet, but the walls were covered with at least a dozen huge black-and-white photos of members of the cast in other plays.

  Every one of the professional performers was represented. There was even a larger version of what I thought of as Terence’s Elvis picture from The Rockets.

  At this moment his face didn’t look much friendlier than Elvis’. His rusty eyebrows were dipped in a deep frown and his dancer’s posture was hunched a bit, as if he was either sad or about to spring.

  “Sit down,” he ordered, taking the chair behind the desk.

  I sat. “Look, Mr. Jamison, I’m sorry about—”

  He held up his hand and shook his head. “I’m Terence, remember?” His tone of voice sounded friendlier, so I relaxed a little. “I wanted to personally ask you for a favor.”

  This wasn’t so terrible. I took a deep, relieved breath. “Anything.” I immediately regretted saying it.

  Anything, dummy? What if he’s one of those lecher people you hear about who prey on young girls? Could Lily’s mother be correct in her suspicions?

  I was suddenly grateful that the thick, sturdy desk stood between us and mentally calculated the distance to the door.

  “Let me explain, Amelia. It’s about what you overheard at Mason’s. No, no, wait!” Once again he interrupted my eager apology. “I know you meant no harm, but I must ask you, implore you, to keep whatever you heard strictly confidential.”

  I could do that. I nodded.

  “Okay.”

  “Would you mind telling me what it was you did hear?”

  “Sure, um, you met some girl at the tire department. She was scared, I could tell that.” I counted off what else I remembered on my fingers. “You said she was in danger and she should have stayed where she was, and . . . and . . . you were going to have to speak to Pat, and her name was Eileen. The girl’s, I mean, not Pat’s.”