DRAGON: The legends about me? They’re all of them true / I’m grumpy and mean when there’s nothing to do.
-The Glass Flute, Scene ix
Hell happened for a little while. Brad, Meredith and Amber came roaring backstage, all of them shouting. Brad’s costume was smoking. The force of the mass exodus knocked the whole structure off-balance, and it fell with a creaking thump, tangling everybody in black velvet. Brad ripped off his hood (thank God everything was flame-proofed—he’d have been shish-kebab otherwise) and trampled on it, and we patted him down. Amber was emitting little, repetitive shrieks until Meredith, who had also ripped off her hood, grabbed her and hugged her hard to make her stop.
With the playbox in a state of collapse, we had a clear view of the audience. Someone had pulled the fire alarm and the clang was deafening. Out in the hallways, the thunder of evacuating students could be heard. Several peeked in the doors before being shooed away. Most of the Kosovar guests had fled, someone had turned on the lights in the auditorium, and Juliet and Tobin were making for the stage.
I grabbed a nearby extinguisher and aimed a cascade of white foamy stuff over the mass of black velvet curtains, some of which were smouldering. Ruth was onstage already.
We found him, half buried under the stage left curtains. He was lying on his belly, legs splayed awkwardly, the Kevin puppet still clutched in his hand. An audio cable was tied tightly round his neck, and he wasn’t breathing.
Ruth flipped him over, cut the cord with her Swiss Army knife and started CPR. Brad jumped in with artificial respiration, and I called 911 on my cellphone.
“How much powder did you put in that damn flashpot?” Tobin said. “Someone could have been seriously injured.” I glanced significantly towards the floor, where Ruth and Brad were hard at work on Shane. They didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.
“The show was going so well,” Juliet said. “Now it’s all ruined.”
“Is Shane going to be all right?” Amber said.
“Meredith, you didn’t by chance substitute gin for the water in Shane’s bottle, did you?” I said. “As a joke, I mean?”
“Why the hell would I want to do that?” Meredith said. “I’m not an idiot.”
“He’s allergic to alcohol,” Amber said.
“He had a beer last night,” Meredith pointed out.
“Anything more than beer and he gets really sick,” Amber said. “He wouldn’t drink gin on purpose.”
“It wasn’t gin that throttled him with an audio cable,” I said.
In spite of the fire alarm, some of the Kosovar audience members had come back into the auditorium and were milling around in groups, watching the stage area but haunting the rear exit. Many of the children appeared to be crying.
The mayor came up to the apron of the stage and told us that he’d ordered the school buses to pick them up at the front of the school as soon as possible.
“This has been traumatic,” Staples said severely. “We have to get them out of here.” Juliet hopped down to talk to him. I gathered this accident wasn’t going to do Steamboat Theatre much good, PR-wise. When the ambulance, fire department and police arrived, the Kosovars became very still and wary, like deer caught in the headlights, then most of them melted away. Someone finally turned off the alarm. The silence was deadly.
The ambulance people weren’t able to revive Shane either, though they commended Ruth and Brad on their prompt action.
“He died some time ago,” one of the paramedics said. “You guys didn’t have a chance.” Charming, I thought. Someone covered Shane with a blanket while Amber sobbed in Meredith’s arms. Brad’s left hand had been burned by the explosion and was tended to while Becker and Morrison (of course it would be them) asked questions. The firefighters, who had stormed in, wearing heavy gear and helmets, assessed the wet mass of curtains and foam and declared it safe, then tromped out again.
“Was Mr. Amato attending the performance?” Becker asked.
“No. He told me last night that your accusations had put him off theatre,” I said. “He was drinking a little. I doubt he’s anywhere now but in bed.”
“Did you notice anyone backstage who shouldn’t have been there?”
“Only one of the audience members. A child. She came back during the show, but her father came and took her back out front.”
“Do you know who it was?”
“You don’t think Shane was strangled by a Balkan baby, do you?”
“She may have seen something.” I gave him Ari’s name, then immediately regretted it as Rico’s words of the night before came floating back to me: “Be careful what you say to people who fraternize with policemen.” Still, I’d read enough whodunnits to know that withholding evidence never protects the people you’re trying to help. I just hoped it would be Morrison and not Becker asking the questions. Maybe Ari would summon the courage to tell them about his brother’s disappearance the week before.
“Wait,” I said aloud. “The week before—that’s when the weirdness started.”
“Huh?” Becker said. I told him briefly about Ari’s brother, Negjib, who had disappeared around the time that Jason had drowned at the Theatre. Not that I was happy suggesting that the horrors of the past week could be blamed on some poor youngster from Belgrade, but it was too much of a coincidence for there not to have been a connection.
“Where would I find this Harry character?” Becker said.
“Ari. No ‘H’. He’s one of our Kosovar refugees and he’s afraid of the police. If you talk to him, try to be nice, okay?”
“Don’t tell me how to do my job, Polly,” Becker said.
“If Rico wasn’t here, that lets him off, doesn’t it?” I said.
“Look, right now, we’ve got another death connected with your theatre company, and as far as I’m concerned you’re all under suspicion,” Becker said. The ambulance guys were taking Shane away on a stretcher and we all stood forlornly, not knowing what to do. Brad heard Becker’s remark.
“It couldn’t have been any of us. We were all onstage,” he said.
“Go over the sequence again for me,” Becker said. We explained as best we could. With the playbox in a heap on the stage floor, it was difficult to describe what it had been like back there—how dark it was and how busy we all were. If Shane was waiting in the wings stage left for his entrance, anyone could have come up behind him and strangled him, then slipped away. I told Becker as much.
“How long between Pacey’s last time on stage and the explosion?” Becker said.
“Not more than a minute or two,” I said.
“That’s not a very big window of opportunity,” he said. “The strangler must have had to know your show pretty well.” I agreed. “And everybody was on stage for that two minutes except you, Polly?”
“Brad was doing the Dragon, Amber was the Princess and Meredith . . .” What had Meredith been doing? I couldn’t remember.
“I was waiting with a black flag to make the flute disappear,” Meredith said. “I was in the box, too.”
That was weird, I thought. The flute disappearing was supposed to come after the Dragon fire. She hadn’t needed to be in the box at all. Brad, Amber and I all looked at her.
“You were early,” Amber said.
“I was nervous,” Meredith said. Becker, who had been taking notes, was scribbling furiously.
“I’ll need to take statements from everybody,” he said. “At the station, I think.”
“You’re taking us all in?” Brad said. His voice cracked like a teenager’s.
“Excuse me, officer. Can I interrupt for a moment?” Juliet was standing at the front of the stage, looking up. Becker went over to her. We closed ranks as if we were about to do our circle ritual.
“I didn’t do it,” Meredith hissed.
“We know you didn’t,” Brad said, but he didn’t sound sure.
“Who did, then?” Amber said. “And what about the gin?”
“I saved the bottle. It’s under the table in the cardboard box. I should give it to Becker, I guess.”
“Your fingerprints will be all over it,” Meredith said. The fact that one of us had just been murdered didn’t seem to have registered with any of us yet. The energy-level within our circle was peaking, as if we were still in the middle of the show.
Becker came back. “The school needs the stage,” he said. “You’ll have to clear out your stuff.”
“What? No yellow ‘Police Line Do Not Cross’ tape? No forensics?” I said.
“We don’t work like that,” Becker said. “There’s nothing we can do here that we can’t do at headquarters.”
“I can’t believe this. You’ve got the scene right here,” I said.
“I’ll make a sketch while you pack up,” Becker said. “We can reconstruct it all later.”
“What big, important thing is happening that the school needs the stage?” I said.
“Basketball tournament. Starts at three. Lots of teams coming in.”
“Oh, gosh. We can’t inconvenience the athletes, now, can we?”
“The mayor’s son is on the Laingford High team,” Becker said and walked away. My jaw hit my chest and stayed there for a moment. In small towns, sporting events rule, I guess.
It was the saddest strike and load-out I’ve ever experienced. Every little job that Shane used to do had to be done by somebody else. I tried to give the water bottle to Becker, but he wouldn’t take it, he just made a note in his little book.
“Don’t you want to analyze it?” I said. “Maybe there’s poison in there, too.”
“Pacey was strangled, not poisoned,” Becker said. I stashed the half-full bottle in my paperwork box. My show report, I thought, was going to be a doozy.
Detaching the soggy curtains from the collapsed playbox and folding them was a big pain. We didn’t find any clues hidden in the folds, though. Meredith and Brad stuffed them into their hockey bags as best they could and placed them at the foot of the stage, ready to haul back down to the van.
Under the table at the back of the stage, where the water bottles had been, I found the pyro box where I’d left it after setting the flashpots. The lock was gone, and most of the canisters were empty. Whoever had tampered with the Dragon flashpot had loaded it up in order to do damage, or at least to create a diversion. The question was, how did they know Brad would panic and trigger it early? Or was that just blind luck? I showed it to Tobin, who was standing against the stage right wall, his arms crossed, glowering at nothing.
“I told you to lock it every time,” he said.
“I did, Tobin. It was a flimsy lock.”
“Either that or someone else had a key.”
“When would anyone have had time to doctor the flashpot after you did preset?”
I told him I’d gone out for a smoke and watched the audience arrive.
“You should have stayed with the set,” he said.
“I could hardly have known what was coming,” I said.
“You screwed up, Polly. If you’d been there, nobody could have messed with the flashpot or put booze into Shane’s bottle.”
“How did you know about the booze?” I said. He hadn’t been in on our circle discussion of Shane’s alcohol allergy.
“Amber told me,” he said.
“When?”
“Just now. Look, Polly, don’t try to shift the blame. Remember the old SM’s answer to everything . . . ‘I’m sorry, it was my fault, it’ll never happen again.’ You could say that about now.”
“I don’t think it would help. And thanks for your support, Tobin.” I walked away from him, fighting back the angry tears that were gathering at the base of my throat.
The load-out went quickly, because our hockey team reappeared. They were dying for details, and I heard several cast members filling the boys in as we carried the equipment down the stairs.
“Oh yeah? Shane Pacey, eh? I heard about him. He was a fag, right?” one of the boys said.
“Yeah,” another boy said. “I heard he was screwing that drama teacher that died. Him and that other drama pussy. You know, the one that went crazy and had to go to North Bay?” I stopped listening. Ugly stuff. Obviously, the Incident lived on in the mythology of the school.
Becker showed up as we were packing away the last of the stuff. Kind of like when someone in your family grabs a dishtowel, just as you’re polishing the last of the cutlery. We were all there, the cast, Juliet, Tobin, Ruth and me. We’d sent the homophobic hockey players back to math class. There we stood at the back door of the van, looking at each other, not saying much. Less than two hours before, we’d been high on pre-show jitters. Now one of us—well, two, I guess—were dead, and the show was doomed. The worst of it was that I knew darn well we were all in mourning, not so much for Jason and Shane, but for a good gig. The Glass Flute was toast. No matter who ended up being nailed for Shane’s messy demise, and for Jason’s drowning, the fact was that we were all out of a job. The fact that one of us was a murderer wasn’t nearly as horrible.
“Well,” Juliet said.
“Yeah,” Tobin said.
“This is awful,” Amber said.
“Tell me about it,” Meredith said.
Brad grunted.
“I’m going to need to take statements,” Becker said. “Shane Pacey’s parents will have to be notified as well. Anyone know where they are?”
“They’re both deceased,” Juliet said. “I think he has an uncle in Toronto, though. I could check his file.”
“Do that,” Becker said. “But first, you will all have to come to the station, where we’ll interview each of you separately.”
“I want my lawyer present,” Meredith said.
“Me, too,” Brad said.
“And me,” Amber said, but I think she was just joining in. I’d never had a lawyer in my life, so I didn’t say anything.
“I’m not charging anybody,” Becker said. “I just want to get the details down.”
“You could have done that back up there at the scene of the crime, if you hadn’t been so eager to make way for the mayor’s son’s basketball game,” I said.
Becker exhaled, slowly.
“Where’s Morrison?” I asked.
“Interviewing that Kosovo guy and his kid,” Becker said. “Look, folks. This doesn’t need to be this bad. Just come on in to HQ and we’ll talk, okay?”
We piled into the van and spent the rest of the afternoon drinking bad police coffee and hanging out in the policeman’s version of the greenroom as Becker talked to us one by one. He took me last.
“So, Polly Deacon. Here we go again,” he said. He looked tired.
“Are you any closer to figuring this out?” I said.
“I think so. I’ve got a lot of background, now. And the rest of your crew were very helpful. Now explain how this show works again.” I did so, going over and over the Sunday night party, the rehearsal period and the first and last performance of The Glass Flute with a fine-toothed Mark Becker comb. It certainly didn’t add up to Rico any more. It didn’t add up to anybody, actually.
Finally, Becker closed his notebook, shut off the tape recorder and told me I was free to go.
“So . . . what? You going to make an arrest?” I said.
“Probably. Maybe tomorrow. A few details to iron out. Go home and get some rest, Polly.”
“Who, Mark?”
“Can’t say. But I have to tell you that all those weird things that happened at the theatre do make sense, once you’ve got the big picture.” I think he was talking through his hat. He had no more idea than I did.
“I can’t go home yet,” I said. “I have to pick up Luggy from the vet and unload the set.” I’d told him about the Lug-nut poisoning incident. He hadn’t even written it down. Insignificant, apparently.
“You have to unload it yourself?”
“Something tells me that the cast won’t be in the mood. Tobin will help, I expect.”
“Look, I’ll finish up here and come down when I’m done,” he said. “Don’t go lifting that stuff by yourself.”
“That’s not in your job description, is it?”
“Nope. But I’d like to help. If you don’t mind.”
“Mind? Of course not. I’ll see you there.”
It was a nice note on which to end a really lousy day. I was probably smiling when I came out of there, but there was nobody to see it. The cast had bailed.