Meet Your Baker (17 page)

Thirty minutes was too long. Plus, the house manager flashes the lights with five, two, and one minute to spare. This typically results in patrons at the bar knocking down the remainder of their drinks and making a mad dash back to their seats.

Something must be amiss.

A murmur rose from the crowd. People stood and peered up to the stage. We weren’t the only ones getting restless.

Lance stepped on stage as the houselights flashed and the first warning bell chimed. Neither was necessary. Almost everyone was already back in their seats.

He cleared his throat. “Ladies and gentlemen, if I could have your attention.”

Murmurs and rustling continued, followed by loud “sshing” and people waving for others to sit down.

Lance coughed and waited for silence. His body commanded respect. He folded his hands in front of him as if he was about to lead us all in prayer. The audience fell silent.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that there’s been an accident. Caroline Hart will not be returning for the second half. She’ll be replaced by her understudy, the very talented Georgina Squires.”

A wave of gasps and cries sounded in the outdoor theater. I wondered if they echoed out onto Ashland’s sleepy streets.

I thought the woman next to me was about to pass out. Her husband fanned her frantically with his playbill.

My mind raced. It had to be serious. Replacing a cast member at intermission was unheard of.

Sirens sounded in the distance.

I hope Caroline isn’t seriously hurt.

Excusing myself from the couple, I left my seat and hurried toward the actors’ dressing rooms. I knew the way. The sirens sounded close.

As I weaved my way through the narrow passage between the theater and backstage, emergency lights illuminated the sky. It reminded me of the morning I’d found Nancy.

Chaos erupted behind the stage. EMS workers knelt next to Caroline, who lay motionless on a white blanket on the grass. Lance paced nearby, barking out orders to actors gathered around. “Get back on stage. This show is going on!”

Actors scurried, adjusting wigs and lifting heavy skirts as they returned to the stage.

All of a sudden someone flashed by me. I rubbed my eyes. They must be deceiving me. The figure wore all black and a hoodie. What was Sterling doing here?

I started to run after him but was blocked by EMS workers running in with a stretcher. They effortlessly moved Caroline’s body from the grass onto the stretcher and jogged to the waiting ambulance.

Lance bellowed at two stagehands, shouting in a forceful whisper that was sure to get his message across without interrupting the actors on stage. He pointed to the catwalk above him.

The catwalk is used by the lighting crew. An extensive lighting grid lines the ceiling. The crew has to crawl along the catwalk in order to change out the colored gels before each show. Not a job I’d want.

I couldn’t hear what they were saying in response, but could tell from their body language that they were actively denying whatever Lance was accusing them of.

With a final command, he sent them scurrying for tools and turned his attention back to the stage.

He noticed me standing in the grass, smoothed his suit and walked my way.

“What’s going on?” I wrapped my arms around myself and rubbed my shoulders.

“Caroline.” Lance threw his hand to his heart. “There was an accident.”

“I know, I heard. What happened?” His over-the-top dramatic act grated on my nerves.

Lance thumped his hand on his chest as if he was trying to keep his heart beating. “A sandbag fell.”

“Is Caroline okay?”

“It’s too soon to know. It knocked her out, that’s for sure, but she’s breathing, so that’s a good sign.” He took his black-rimmed glasses off and tucked them on top of his head.

He rubbed his temples. “In all my years in the theater I’ve never had something like this happen. Never.”

“How did it happen?”

“I can’t figure it out. Why would Caroline be in the fly space?”

The fly space is an area where the fly crew organizes the actors on trapezes and swings. It’s not a space to linger. Stuff literally goes flying at breakneck speeds.

Lance fiddled with his gold cuff link. “Something went wrong up in the booth. The stage manager’s headset went out. We had to whistle commands.” He craned his neck toward the sky. “Maybe the smoke is interrupting the wireless signal?”

Theater folks are a suspicious bunch. You never whistle on or behind stage. The backstage of a major production, like those at OSF, is a carefully orchestrated and choreographed event.

Every costume change, light sequence, prop placement, is meticulously timed—literally down to the second. Run lists with color-coded tasks for each crew member and actor make the choreography onstage look like a preschool pageant.

There’s little space to work behind the scenes, which means that the assistant stage manager who stands left stage has to run a tight ship. Actors, stagehands, wardrobe assistants each have their positions marked and timed.

Costume changes happen in the blink of an eye. The audience is none the wiser to the frenzy that occurs between scenes backstage. Quick changes are complicated by the fact that actors have to get in and out of their costume elements in total darkness. Wardrobe assistants with flashlights between their teeth help actors rip off their Velcro-attached costumes and pull on new ones in twelve seconds. The next thing the audience sees is the actor stepping back onto the stage, projecting his next line.

Really, it’s a thing of magic. Backstage is the heartbeat of the show. For every one person you see on the stage there are four to five more behind the scenes making it look flawless.

The “booth” that Lance was referring to is a windowed booth at the rear of the theater where the stage manager calls the show cue by cue. Today, stage managers and the lighting and sound technicians run the show from the booth with headsets, like the offensive and defensive coordinators for a football team. The light board operator only flashes a spotlight on the stage manager’s “go.”

Before this technology, they used to have to whistle commands backstage, so that the audience couldn’t hear. An errant whistle could send a sandbag swinging at the wrong moment—exactly what happened to Caroline tonight.

“Do you think someone whistled on purpose?”

Lance tucked his glasses behind his ears. “What are you saying, that someone tried to hurt Caroline? Impossible.”

“I don’t know. With everything that’s happened the last few days, it isn’t so impossible, is it?”

Considering me for a moment, Lance shook his head and put his glasses on. “Darling, this is the theater. We create fictional drama, not
drama
.”

“Well.” I stopped when the sky lit up again, and a police car pulled into the gravel parking lot.

Thomas jumped out of the driver’s seat and sprinted in our direction.

“Jules? What are you doing here?”

“Caroline invited me to the show.”

Thomas looked like he didn’t believe me. “You look like you’re freezing. Hang on.” He raced back to his squad car and returned with a sweatshirt. “Put this on.”

I thanked him and tugged the sweatshirt on. It smelled like him—the musky scent of his cologne mixed with flowers. Helping at his parents’ flower shop always left him smelling slightly like lilies and gardenias. I smiled.

“Now, I need to know exactly what happened here.” Thomas whipped out his iPad and focused his gaze on Lance.

Lance touched his injured hand and pointed to the catwalk above. “I’ll tell you what I know.”

He proceeded to explain that Caroline had exited the stage at the end of the second act for a costume change. The costume design assistant helped her into a hooped skirt and sent Caroline back to side stage to wait for her next cue.

“The booth experienced difficulty with their wireless headsets.” Lance looked up at the lighting above him. “We had to resort to old tactics—whistling. Someone whistled at the wrong moment and sent a sandbag swinging right at poor Caroline. And that’s when we called 911,” Lance said to Thomas.

Thomas typed notes in his iPad, making eye contact with Lance the entire time. Impressive.

“I’m going to need to take a closer look,” Thomas said as he flipped the case on his iPad shut.

“Now?” Lance’s eyes darted from the stage to the wooden structure.

“Yes, now.” Thomas started to move forward.

Lance jumped in front of him, blocking his way. “You can’t. Not now.”

Thomas hardened his eyes. “Is there something you need to tell me? Because if there is, spill it now, otherwise get out of my way.”

“No, no.” Lance waved his arms wildly. “It’s not what you think. It’s the show. The show. If you get up there you might disrupt the show.”

Thomas gave me an exasperated look and stepped around Lance. “Show or no show, I have a victim en route to the hospital. It’s not up for debate.”

Lance began pacing back and forth—darting his eyes up to the catwalk and back to the stage.

Was he really worried about the performance? Or was Lance hiding something else?

Watching him pace, I had another thought. Could he have tried to kill Caroline?

I held my breath as Thomas climbed up into the rafters.

Please don’t fall.
I willed him to stay safe. One more tragedy might just put me over the edge.

He crawled on his knees between light fixtures.

Even in the dark I could see that Lance’s face was aflame. What was he worried about?

Thomas slipped. I gasped. I clutched my hands together. He regained his balance, inspected something above his head, and then scooted down from the structure.

Returning to me and Lance, he said, “You both wait here. I need to call the Professor.”

Chapter Twenty-six

Had someone tried to injure or—worse—kill Caroline? I racked my brain to try and remember everything she and I discussed.

Then there was Sterling. I swear it was him I saw running off the stage. I had to find out what he and Caroline had been talking about at Torte. That picture she’d given him was still puzzling me.

Applause erupted from the seats. Another act had finished.

I stood there for a second, lost in my thoughts. I’d forgotten the play was still going on. How surreal.

Thomas tugged me toward him. “Help me, Jules.” He handed me a roll of caution tape. “I want to seal off this area so no one else gets hurt.”

Right as we finished securing the area where the sandbag hit Caroline, mayhem broke out backstage. Actors raced to pull off elaborate costumes, makeup artists ran after them brushing powder on their cheeks and touching up their hair, stagehands moved sets with the kind of strength I’d expect to see at a hardcore gym.

The entire time Lance shouted out orders and placed actors on their marks. Everyone took notice of the roped-off site of Caroline’s accident, but no one asked a single question or commented aloud. Having their leading lady injured on set had left the entire crew on edge, but they carried on as if nothing had happened. Actors have an amazing ability to compartmentalize things. It’s a skill I used to excel in too. Lately not so much.

With new costumes and fresh makeup, the actors reentered the stage and silence returned backstage.

The Professor arrived. He and Thomas conferred. Thomas kept pointing above and taking photos of the lighting and catwalk with his iPad.

It was clear now that this wasn’t an accident.

I made up an excuse about needing to use the bathroom and took the opportunity to sneak off to Caroline’s dressing room. Maybe she had a copy of the photo she’d given Sterling. I knew it was important.

A corridor under the stage connects with the other theater in the complex and leads to the dressing rooms. I hurried along the dimly lit narrow passage, checking name plates on doors until I found Caroline’s. Most actors in the company share communal dressing rooms with walls of mirrors and rows of chairs. However, a few select senior members of the company have individual dressing rooms.

Caroline fell into this category. I turned the handle to her dressing room and the door creaked open. The small boxlike room was dark. I flipped on the lights and pulled the door shut behind me.

Every square inch of wall space was covered with headshots, photos of Caroline with sleek, long auburn hair in modern-day productions, and sporting white wigs and heavy jewels in Shakespearean productions.

A makeup table took up most of the space in front of a six-foot mirror and row of bulb lights. The space was cluttered with lipstick tubes, powder, tissue, antiaging creams, tweezers, and a cup with toothbrushes, which many actors used to apply their eyebrow makeup. It made the eyebrows “pop,” apparently.

The mirror was adorned with notes from fans and cutouts of reviews from newspapers along the West Coast.

Aside from the makeup table there was a small wardrobe and bookshelf.

Where to start?

I wasn’t sure, but I knew I needed to hurry. Thomas would be expecting me back from the bathroom any minute, and I was pretty sure he or the Professor would want to take a look at Caroline’s dressing room too.

A wave of worry hit me. What if I was right and Caroline’s being hit wasn’t an accident? Maybe whoever did it had been in here and I was ruining the evidence or their fingerprints.

Okay, don’t touch anything.
I tugged a tissue from the box and wrapped it around Caroline’s tweezers.

I used them to look through a stack of papers at the side of the makeup table. They appeared to be notes on her lines, scripts, and glossy headshots with her autograph.

Returning the tweezers to their spot, I kept the tissue in my hand and twisted open the handle on the wardrobe.

Geez, Caroline was a slob. Her wardrobe was stuffed with costumes, street clothes, shoes, tights, and even a pile of underwear on the floor.

I picked through Caroline’s clothes, but nothing seemed out of place, and unless I knew exactly what I was looking for, the odds of finding anything that might shed light on Nancy’s killer were slim.