Act V (27 page)

*****

The evening was calm and Glynnis could
almost convince herself that life had returned to normal. She and
Brice fell asleep in front of his TV and she woke to Brice tugging
at her to go to bed. Surprisingly, she had no difficulty
sleeping.

*****

“
Still the king? Still the
big man?” he was saying. Fury edged his words. “Not so big now are
you?” The shadowy figure was speaking to a disembodied head impaled
on a wooden pike.

*****

She couldn’t even speak. It was too
horrible to say out loud. Glynnis climbed out of the bed and almost
fell over her own feet in the unfamiliar room. She ran outside and
stood for a moment, praying she was wrong.

Brice was beside her.
“Again?”

“
Yes.”

He rubbed her shoulders. “It’s going to
be okay.”

“
No, it’s not.” She reeled
on him. “It’s not okay. He’s going to decapitate this one, just
like Macbeth.”

*****

By 6p.m. there were blankets
and lawn chairs all over the park. All of them were directed toward
the stage. A concession area sold Cokes, water, popcorn and candy.
There was also a t-shirt stand. The t-shirts came in several bright
colors. On the left front there was a small logo proclaiming the
Clearview Shakespeare Festival. The back had a Scottish plaid and
sword with the word
Macbeth
emblazoned across it. Aaron had suggested the
shirts display the bloody, disembodied head of Macbeth but he’d
been voted down.

Glynnis circulated through the picnic
baskets and lawn chairs handing out playbills. She recognized about
half the faces in the crowd but couldn’t put a name to them. They
were the regulars. They’d been showing up every summer for as long
as she could remember. Most called her Glynnis though she couldn’t
return the favor. There were families whose kids had gone from
toddler to teen since she’d been directing. “Glynnis, break a leg!”
one young boy shouted. She waved to him. Last year she’d had to
explain that you never wish a theatre person good luck because it
is considered bad luck to do so. He had remembered.

Others spoke, shook her hand, told her
how much they were looking forward to the new season. It was very
familiar and comforting until Glynnis remembered what the message
had said. He was a fan of hers. She looked around her. Was he here
tonight? Was he one of the regulars? One of the new faces? She had
never really liked being on stage, but she’d never had true stage
fright either. Now she wasn’t sure she could step up and welcome
the audience, but there was no other choice.

At 7:06 she took the stage passing by
Aaron who squeezed her arm on the way. “Break a leg, Sweet Thing,”
he whispered. What normally would have been a reassuring touch felt
like a threat. She stared at Aaron, for only a second, and a chill
ran through her. Then she felt a flash of anger. The Bard, that
evil, manipulating man, was making her doubt the people she’d cared
about for years. She hated him for it. She vowed to recapture her
life.

Smiling out at the audience,
she saw Brice sitting in the back on the right. The lawn chair
beside him was waiting for her. He grinned and she felt a touch of
comfort. Her mother and father were there too, even after Mama had
implied she wouldn’t be coming. Glynnis wondered how her mother
would react if she knew what was going on. Had she associated the
news reports with her own daughter? No, if she had, Glynnis would
be locked in a bedroom under protective custody by now. Sitting
beside her mother, wearing his best
jackass
eating briars
smile, was Dorsey. Oh, this
was going to be a lovely night.

She welcomed the audience to the first
performance of the summer season and asked them to turn off cell
phones and smoke only on the hill at the other side of the park.
Then she cleared the stage to allow the actors to begin. Glynnis
took the chair beside Brice and tried to relax and enjoy the show.
Any other time she would have been tense, but for a different
reason. She and Brice had decided after much debate last night that
there was no good reason to cancel the performance. The killer
would do what he had planned, whether they performed or not. This
would give Brice the opportunity to observe the audience and pick
out anyone who might be a bit too friendly. Glynnis could see his
eyes sweeping the group from time to time.

*****

Brice surveyed the audience as well as
keeping his eye on Timmons and Shultz. Shultz stayed busy with tech
stuff near the back of the audience and Timmons was trying hard to
impress Glynn’s parents. Brice felt a twinge of anger run through
him every time he looked at Timmons. Really, maybe he should call
it what it really was, jealousy. That jerk had dumped Glynnis and
she still cared what happened to him.

The other members of the audience were
covered with hats, or hid behind sunglasses. There wasn’t a whole
lot to identify, so he decided to watch for behavior instead and
began to look for anyone who might become overly agitated,
especially during the scene where Macbeth dies in his battle with
Macduff. But that wouldn’t happen for another hour and a
half.

As plays went, Brice was impressed.
He’d never been a huge theatre-goer, so he didn’t have much of a
basis for comparison, but the cast and crew seemed to do a good
job. Macbeth was misguided, influenced by a woman, then just plain
power hungry. Lady Macbeth went insane before his eyes. Then the
final act approached.

*****

He watched from the hill
using an unlit cigarette as his excuse to be there. He thought
smoking was a nasty habit, but it gave him the escape he needed.
The fifth act was coming! Shakespeare’s best deaths always happened
in the fifth act. Macbeth would battle Macduff. Macduff would clear
him of all illusions brought on by the witches’ prophecy
about
no man of woman
born
. Then Macduff would slice off the
greedy villain’s head and parade it around on a pike. Too bad this
was theatre and not the real thing. That would be entertaining.
Still, it didn’t matter. The real thing would happen soon enough.
The press would call him
The Bard
once again and perhaps even draw the parallel
between the real thing and the Shakespeare Festival’s production of
Macbeth. With a carefully planted seed, some reporter might even
suggest that this mania was brought on by seeing the play acted
out. Wouldn’t that make Glynnis’ day! Wouldn’t she love seeing her
troupe associated with a murderer.

She was sitting in the back
with her cop boyfriend. The two were holding hands. Soon,
he
would be the one
holding her. He knew he’d become obsessed with her, knew it wasn’t
a healthy thing. But there didn’t seem to be anything he could do
to stop it. He had to see his main objective through but then he’d
take her. First he would make her beg for him, then she would beg
for her life. Then the headlines would read, BARD MURDERS DIRECTOR!
How poetic.

*****

The reviews were excellent.
They called Glynnis innovative, the actors, brilliant. Their Lady
Macbeth was being compared to
Vivien Leigh
and Vanessa Redgrave, in her portrayal. Both women had played the
part on Broadway. Glynnis couldn’t have asked for more and the cast
and crew were ecstatic. This would be a great run and earn her
troupe the recognition it deserved. She was happy, but couldn’t be
too excited. She’d had the dream twice now. She knew The Bard would
soon claim another victim and as always, she was helpless to stop
it.

*****

“
How was the play?” Addy
asked Thursday morning.

“
Terrific. But I didn’t spot
anybody acting abnormally. I’ll go again tonight.”

“
Maybe I’ll go too and bring
Laney. She’s been bugging me to see it. I just don’t like all that
Victorian talk. It’s like another language, but Laney is crazy
about that stuff.”

“
You get used to it when
it’s being acted out.”

“
Hawkins left us a note,”
Addison told him. “He finally got a hit on that dragon sword. We’re
in luck. It’s a one of a kind collector’s item. It sold at auction
a few years ago, but the buyer’s name isn’t listed. Seems he went
through an agent and went to a lot of trouble to keep his name
anonymous.”

“
Can we track it?” Brice had
given up on finding it on the internet and handed it over to
Hawkins who was a great history buff and knew how to research that
sort of thing.

“
Maybe, but it’ll take some
time.”

“
What about police services?
Anything new?”

“
Not yet. And the press is
having a great time mourning the loss of one of their own. They’re
calling Fitchwell’s death a set up and suggesting she was killed
because of her investigative work.”

“
Good, maybe that’ll get
police services off their butts and force them to look for more
evidence.”

*****

The time was now. He waited until
Graham Itzen was alone in his office. It was after eleven p.m..
Everyone else had gone home except for the workaholic. Of course
there were people in the restaurant, but they would be leaving
soon, and nobody would think to check this end of the building. The
delivery disguise would be useless this time in the Itza Pizza
office. It didn’t matter anyway. There was never a guard. He lifted
his athletic supply bag and knocked.

“
Come in.”

He did.

“
What are you doing here?”
The look on Itzen’s face was perfect.

“
You
didn’t expect
me
here tonight, did you?”

“
No, but sit down if it’s
important.” Itzen said dismissively. “I can talk to you after I’ve
finished up what I was working on.”

“
It’s important. I want to
talk now. That can wait.” He reached inside his bag and retrieved
the taser, zapping him in one quick motion so that he jerked and
then fell over onto his desk, his body letting out little spasms.
The Bard, (he’d actually started thinking of himself by that name,
as ridiculous as it was), quickly strapped Itzen’s hands onto the
arms of his desk chair with duct tape. He waited now until the man
could focus his eyes. That would take a while, so he sat back and
relaxed. No one would disturb them here.

*****

The second night’s performance had gone
almost as well as the first. Second nights tended to slump a bit
because the excitement of opening was over. But Glynnis and her
crew had kept it professional and had given the audience a great
show. Brice and Addy had continued to watch the crowd, but saw
noone unusual or abnormally fixated on the battle at the end. When
it was over, Brice and Glynnis had gone for ice cream with Laney
and Addison, then back to Brice’s house where he still insisted she
stay for the time being. All in all it had been a fairly normal
evening.

*****

When Itzen’s eyes began to focus, he
took in his surroundings and began to struggle against the tape.
“Sit still, it won’t help to squirm.” He stopped for the moment,
knowing his assailant was right. “I have a story to tell you. If
some of this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s about one of the
most successful businessmen in the upstate…you. Do you recall a few
years ago there was another local pizza delivery place? It was
quite popular for a while. They called it Pizza King, stupid name,
but great pizza. It was probably your biggest local
competitor.”

Itzen nodded sluggishly and grunted
through his duct tape gag.

“
I thought you might
remember. Do you recall mounting a campaign to sell pizzas at such
a low price that Pizza King couldn’t compete? They kept to their
quality while you went the other route; mass production, cheap
ingredients, cheaper employees. Didn’t take you long to run Pizza
King out of business. The owner declared bankruptcy and then
suffered from a massive stroke brought on by high blood pressure
and stress six months later. It was as good as killing the king
with your own hands.” He removed the broadsword from its scabbard,
carefully allowing the heavy blade to glint in the
light.

Itzen’s eyes widened and he began to
struggle again.

“
Ah, now you’re beginning to
understand why I’m here. Give it up. You’re going to hear this and
then I’ll do what I came to do. You became pizza royalty around
here after only a couple of years. You could afford to raise your
prices again with no local competition and now you’re just as good
as the big boys. Right?” He waited for a reaction, and when Itzen
acknowledged his crimes with a fearful nod, he zapped him again and
allowed his head to slump over and rest on the top of his desk,
leaving the neck exposed. He reached into his bag and pulled out a
clear rain poncho, sliding over his clothes. “Ever heard of The
Bard?” he asked as he lifted the sword.

*****

Glynnis jerked up out of bed, coughing
and holding her throat. The third dream.

Act IV

Sweet soul, take
heed,

Take heed of perjury; thou
art on thy deathbed.