Ellen Hart Presents Malice Domestic 15: Mystery Most Theatrical. Karen Cantwell
county paper reprinted that old article about Buck’s rock band being “the best of our age.” Margie dug out recordings of Buck’s early songs to play at the funeral. The tunes were picked up by DJs across the country. Two of them stayed on the top-ten charts for the next month.
The local bank set up college funds for Buck’s children, and donations poured in from around the world.
The tavern was too damaged to be rebuilt. But with the insurance money, community donations, and a six-figure contribution from Alton Humphrey, plans quickly progressed for the new Buck Wheeler Community Center to be erected in its place. The tasteful brick building would house a theater, meeting rooms, and office space.
Buck became a national hero. The rock-star insurance guy. More famous now than he’d ever been when his band was touring the South.
Alton Humphrey went ahead with his development project, easily gaining approval from the Board of Supervisors now that Buck was no longer there to lead the opposition.
* * * *
Sallie Minnows watched the lights of St. Lucia fade away as the cruise ship sailed to its next port.
She was using this cruise as an opportunity to reinvent herself. She had cut off her long braid and dyed her hair a soft brown. Spent some serious hours in the spa trying to undo all those years of damage squinting at the sun. Shopped in the cruise boutiques for new outfits to wear to fancy dinners and shore excursions.
One thing she couldn’t give up was her steel-toed boots. They weren’t the best for travel. In the airport, she’d had to tug at them while bracing herself on the edge of the conveyor belt, so she could put them in that plastic bin and then walk through the metal detector in her sock feet. And they weren’t the easiest things to put back on, either. She couldn’t do it standing up. She had to find a bench to sit on, angling her foot to push her toes as far down as she could, then jamming her heel into the boot.
But they made her feel safe. After all, a woman on her own had to be able to protect herself, any way she could. Nobody would mess with her when she was wearing those steel-toed boots.
She felt bad about Buck Wheeler. But he’d been wrong when he said the folks in Foreman didn’t want change. She was tired of being land-rich and cash-poor, of getting up before dawn to finish her chores before the scorching sun made it too hot to stay outside. She’d done her part, kept the farm going for years after her husband died, raised her children. It was time for something new.
She glanced down at her boots again. They were old. The heels worn and scuffed. At least the bloody stain at the toe had finally darkened to brownish burgundy. She’d tried everything she could think of to get that stain out. Dish soap. Saddle soap. Baking soda. Even bleach. Nothing worked.
They did look a little ratty. Maybe she should get a new pair. Something a little more fashionable. After all, she wasn’t a poor old farm woman anymore. Now that she had sold the homestead to Alton Humphrey, she could buy anything she wanted.
PERFECTLY AWRY, by Anne Louise Bannon
While putting on a new play in a storefront theater in Los Angeles, Daria Barnes finds herself faced with more than just the usual financial and artistic challenges.
Work in the theater for any length of time and you are going to see some seriously crazy stuff. All those hyper-creative, emotional people? It just goes with the territory.
Take Bobby Mossman, for example. Those of us who worked with him thought his fascination with staging the Perfect Crime was a little weird. Nobody, but nobody, thought he’d actually do it. I mean, he didn’t give off any of those scary vibes, like he didn’t care about hurting people. If anything, it seemed like an intellectual exercise to him.
We were mounting our show in a cracker box theater on the unfashionable end of Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. I came into the office that afternoon, seriously annoyed. Bobby pulled a pack of cigarettes from the back of the rusty file cabinet. He was tall and slender, with long, thinning blond hair and sparkling blue eyes.
“Bobby, I just went to get the gels Jill asked for and the card was declined,” I told him. Gels are colored plastic sheets that go over stage lights.
“I’ll take care of it, Daria,” he said.
The rumble of the actors rehearsing on the stage suddenly burst into a roar.
“Lee, if you don’t learn your lines, I swear, I’m going to shoot you!” Tom screamed.
Tom Cimelli, our director, had also written the play about a soldier suffering from PTSD and holding bar patrons hostage. Lee was Lee Harmon, Bobby’s partner in life. Tom was workshopping the play with visions of Broadway. Bobby’s job was to raise the money to put it on so that Lee could keep acting. My job was to spend as little of the money Bobby raised as possible.
“Careful what you wish for,” Bobby said with an odd snigger. “Now, all I have to do—”
“Bobby, we don’t have time for the Perfect Crime right now,” I said, glaring at him.
“I’m not playing,” he said.
He was certainly in one of his moods. I deeply hoped that didn’t mean he and Lee were fighting again. I looked him over. He usually wore his hair loose, but that morning he’d brushed it into a ponytail. He’d shaved off the usual stubble on his chin, too.
Bobby coughed, then shook a cigarette from the pack. Instead of putting the pack back in the file cabinet, he put it in the pocket of his light blue dress shirt. He had on dark gray dress slacks, too. He looked like he was about to go fundraising, and with two weeks to go before opening, that meant only one thing. We were almost out of money.
“We need those gels,” I told Bobby. “If Jill doesn’t warm up the lighting, the stage is going to look like a morgue.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Bobby said again. He held up his cigarette. “I’m going for a smoke.”
There was no point in antagonizing him, so I didn’t follow him out to the alley behind the theater. But something was up. Usually when money ran short, Bobby told me about it and came up with a donation from one of his sources. I was also pretty darned sure we weren’t out of money. I’d checked the account the day before. I decided I’d better check again.
The office computer took its time booting, so I didn’t really pay attention to the bang I heard, loud as it was. Given the skanky neighborhood we were in on the eastern edge of Hollywood, I heard all kinds of bangs. Could have been a firecracker. Could have been a car backfiring. Could have been a gunshot. I hoped it wasn’t a gunshot. A homeless person had been killed nearby the week before by a random shot.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jill Levy, our lone tech person, running past the office to the front of the house.
Our theater, like many in L.A., was in a small storefront. Yes, there is a pretty vibrant theater scene here. After all, we have bazillions of actors. They have to do something besides wait tables while they try for their big break. The smart ones do plays to keep their skills sharp. That’s how I got into producing plays, which I discovered I liked a lot more than acting. I mean, I still go out on auditions and have a decent rep for learning my lines, hitting my mark, and showing up on time. But what I love doing is putting on plays. Even depressing scripts like Tom’s. I didn’t mind working for Bobby, either. He could be moody, but mostly he was decent and he was amazingly good at raising money.
I debated going after Jill, but then noticed I couldn’t get into the company bank account on the computer. I tried again. It said my sign-in was no longer valid. I called the bank.
“Sorry, but that account’s been closed,” said the person on the other end of the line.
“I’m a signatory on that account. I didn’t authorize that,” I said, really working hard to keep from yelling at the poor woman.
“Daria Barnes?” she asked.