2

PRESENT DAY

“The old deep and … what?” said Cordelia, tossing her rinestone-encrusted reading glasses on the restored Chippendale card table she used as a desk. A giant woman and a giant desk, one with huge claw feet, were meant for each other. At least, that’s how the antique dealer had sold it to her. As the part-owner and artistic director of the newest theater in Minneapolis—the Thorn Lester Playhouse—Cordelia required an office that reflected her personality and status. Gilded Age, while not a reflection of her bank account, seemed the perfect fit. It was also the general era in which the theater—originally an opera house—had been built.

Across from her sat the University of Minnesota’s preeminent Minnesota historian, Archibald Van Arnam, a friend and avid theatergoer. He had, on his own time and at his own expense, offered to look into the history of the theater for her. He’d come to her office at the crack of dawn this morning—nearly ten A.M.—to give her his initial findings.

“Yes, yes,” he said eagerly. “That’s what they used to call this place. The Old Deep and Dark. Fascinating, isn’t it? Fascinating.”

Archibald, when excited, tended to repeat himself. He was a naturally pedantic man, used to speaking in front of large crowds of disinterested college kids, and thus primed to talk more loudly than was strictly necessary. He was in his early fifties, with the face of an embittered Roman emperor—or a hired thug—the body of a wrestler gone to seed, and a comb-over that was so pathetic, Cordelia couldn’t imagine how he could look at himself in the mirror every morning and not dissolve in a fit of hysterics. His eyes were sharp, covered by dark-rimmed glasses, and his crooked teeth were stained from years of too much coffee and too many cigarettes. She’d known him socially as a younger man and figured that some women—at the very least, his three wives—had once found him attractive. He was an inveterate gossip and a natural raconteur—the last a skill that Cordelia felt was becoming endangered in today’s Internet culture. In her opinion, Archibald was the perfect dinner guest, always arriving with several bottles of excellent wine, ever willing to entertain.

“Yes, it’s interesting,” she said, picking up her reading glasses and settling them back on her nose, “but even you have to admit, it’s not exactly good news. ‘Let’s get tickets to the Old Deep and Dark for a show tonight, sweetums.’ Virtually every staff meeting I’ve had this week has devolved into a conversation about branding and positioning our new theater. Do we really want to be the Old Deep and Dark?”

“Don’t you want to know why it’s called that?”

“I don’t know,” she said, one eyebrow arching. “Do I?”

“The original owner, Elijah Samuelson, the man who built the place in 1903, sold it in 1923. The new owners, Gilbert and Hilda King, intended to turn it into a vaudeville stage, but because of mismanagement, and some say Gilbert’s gambling problems, they couldn’t make a go of it. Remember, this was right around the beginning of Prohibition. Apparently, as the theater was on its way toward insolvency, Gilbert got involved with some unsavory types.”

“Gangsters?”

“Bootleggers, though you’re probably right. They were likely connected. Lots of mob activity in the Twin Cities back then, you know. Anyway, Gilbert King—he started calling himself King Gilbert—only ran shows on weekends and spent the rest of his time developing a speakeasy. That’s what kept him and Hilda afloat until the early thirties.”

“Where was the speakeasy?”

“In the basement. People came in through a door along Fifth. They were hustled down a narrow back stairs.”

The comment jogged Cordelia’s memory. The basement of the theater was essentially unexplored territory. She’d been down there a few times with her sister to check out the rooms, many of them stuffed with old theater paraphernalia. Beyond heating, cooling, plumbing, and electrical concerns, and because extra storage space wasn’t needed at the moment, she’d decreed that the basement renovation could wait until the upper floors had been completed. As she thought about it, she did recall seeing a rather beautiful Art Deco bar somewhere in the bowels of the building, but had assumed it was a shell, a prop created in a scene shop for a specific play.

The proscenium stage was located on the third floor of the main building. The costume shop, scene shop, electrical shop, and prop and costume storage rooms fit reasonably well on second. The main floor served as a small lobby, with elevators at the edges, and a ticket booth out front under a large marquee. A two-story addition had been added on to the east side of the building during the late forties. The first level contained two rental spaces, already taken by an independent general bookstore and an Italian deli. Theater offices were on the second.

“Where exactly was the speakeasy?” asked Cordelia, removing a nail file from her sack purse.

“The southwest corner of the main building. King Gilbert had it walled off from the rest of the basement. That is, except for a small door, which, at the moment, is unlocked.”

“You’ve been down there?”

“I’ve been searching for old theater records. I assume you don’t mind.”

She waved the comment away. “And thus, because of the illegal nature of the speakeasy, the theater became known as the Old Deep and Dark?”

“No, the building wasn’t called that until Gilbert and Hilda were murdered.”

Her eyes widened. “Murdered?”

“It was 1933, the year Prohibition ended. Supposedly, King Gilbert got in over his head with the wrong guys. Those guys cornered him and Hilda behind the bar one night and blew them away. It was a fairly typical gangland shooting. One goon stood upstairs outside the door on Fifth, while two more crept down the stairs and opened fire with Thompson submachine guns. A couple of bystanders were wounded. Thankfully, both survived.”

“Wonderful. Just … exactly what I wanted to hear.”

“I believe Gilbert was hit with at least fifteen rounds. Seven slugs passed through Hilda. What was left of them was buried at Lakewood a few days later.” He adjusted his bifocals. “I’m afraid there’s more.”

“Of course there is.”

“The building’s haunted. For the past eighty years, folks have seen faint images of Gilbert and Hilda on the stairs, in the elevators, onstage during shows. They’ve heard voices and footsteps, creaking floorboards when nobody is around. Windows in the offices are found open in the middle of winter.” Leaning closer to her, he dropped his voice. “Apparently, they don’t get along.”

“Excuse me?”

“There’s a lot of bickering. You’ve got a ghost light on the stage, right?”

“Of course. It’s an actor’s equity thing, a safety feature. It’s not supposed to work for actual ghosts.”

“Why are you smiling?” asked Archibald.

“Every theater should have a ghost,” declared Cordelia. “It’s tradition.”

“Yes, well,” he said, clearing his throat. “If you believe in that sort of thing.”

“You don’t?”

“I believe in the romance of any given theater being haunted, but no, I don’t believe in actual ghosts.” Flipping past a couple of pages, he continued. “To move on with our mini-history tutorial. After Gilbert and Hilda died, the theater sat empty for many years. It was the Great Depression and nobody had the money to restart it. Eventually, two Chicago-based entrepreneurs bought the property for a song and turned it into a movie theater. They slapped a neon marquee on the front, added elevators in the front lobby, built the addition, and operated it until 1964, calling it the Downtowner. It was sold again in 1967. The third-floor movie theater was dismantled and the space was used as a general auditorium. It continued to deteriorate. A couple of theater groups rented it after that. One from 1975 to 1987. One from 1998 to 2006. It sat empty for the rest of the time.”

“And then my sister and I bought it,” said Cordelia, trying to hurry him along. She had another meeting scheduled for eleven and wanted to get some breakfast before it began.

“Speaking of your sister, where is Octavia?” asked Archibald, closing the folder. “I was hoping she might sit in on our discussion this morning.”

“Italy,” said Cordelia, repositioning her turquoise necklace across her impressive décolletage. She knew the necklace was gaudy, which was why she liked it. “She’s trying to disentangle herself from husband number fifteen.”

“Fifteen?” he repeated, looking shocked. “So many?”

“Well, eight? Twelve? I can’t keep track. This one’s a real bloodsucker, that’s all I know.”

“When will she be back?”

“Next month. Next week. Tomorrow. She is a will-o’-the-wisp until we start rehearsals.”

“With a name like hers—so famous on the New York stage, in movies—”

“She obviously has the lead in our first production.”

“And you’ll direct.”

It gave Cordelia a bad case of indigestion to even think about directing her sister. Not only was Octavia a black hole when it came to emotional hand-holding, she didn’t take direction well. Since the renovations and the need to get the theater organization on firm footing had run into a few snags, the opening production couldn’t be mounted until spring.

Archibald moved to the edge of his chair. “I’ve heard some scuttlebutt.”

“About what?”

“You’re thinking of offering one of the starring roles to Kit Deere.”

Cordelia generally hated leaks, though in this case, since she’d been the one who’d leaked the story, she hoped the rumors would work in her favor by putting a little pressure on Kit to take the part. She was reasonably well known in the national theater community. Locally, however, she was nothing short of theatrical royalty. That and the fact she was married to country music singer Jordan Deere made her box office gold. “Have you heard from Kit or Jordan recently?”

“I hear from them all the time.”

Another one of Archibald’s more annoying traits was his tendency to collect people who fascinated him for one reason or another. On the other hand, since Cordelia was one of “the fascinating” he’d collected, she gave him points for taste. He’d started out his career as a Roman history scholar, but had realized in his midforties that there was more bang for his career buck if he switched his interests to Minnesota. He’d written the definitive volume on Minnesota theater history, devoting an entire chapter to Cordelia—and one to Kit.

“I’ve also heard you want to hire Booker Deere as the head set designer,” said Archibald. “Any truth in that?”

“My lips are sealed,” said Cordelia, rising from her chair, hoping Archibald would get the message and do the same.

“Am I being dismissed?”

In high heels, at nearly six foot three, she towered over him, though she wasn’t interested in intimidation—at least, not this morning.

“One more question before I go,” he said, shuffling papers back into the folder. “You’re giving me full access to all areas of the building, right?”

She saw no reason to deny the request. “Everything but our current office space.”

He smiled, tucked the folder under his arm. “I’d like to continue our little meetings, just to keep you abreast of what I’m learning.”

Cordelia walked him to the door. “Just so that we’re clear. You intend to write the text for the pamphlet that we’ll use for publicity purposes, yes?”

“As long or short as you’d like.”

“You’ll need to talk with our marketing director, Marcus Yeboah.”

“I have a meeting scheduled with him later today.”

“Good man. I owe you.”

His smile broadened. “I’m easily bought off with comps.”

“Consider that a given.”