ONE

 

 “That’s a wrap, folks,” Angie Deacon called. “Great job. Checkmate: Love will be the biggest thing that’s ever hit the Lakes Region!” Overhead, the bright lights faded and then died out, officially marking the end of the final dress rehearsal.

Tyson Goodwell closed his script. “Nice job, everyone. Go relax a few hours. Back at five.”

The actors filed past, their faces wearing various levels of an-xiety. Angie and Tyson patted each shoulder and muttered words of encouragement. When the last person disappeared backstage, Angie tossed the script on the bed and collapsed beside it. “I am exhausted.” Even though she spoke softly, her words carried to the furthest corners of the warehouse-turned-theater.

Tyson stepped to the vanity table and clicked off the lights around the mirror. He fell into an overstuffed chair much the same way she’d dropped on the bed. “You’ll feel better after tonight. I think they—” he inclined his head toward backstage— “are holding up amazingly well. Most of them have never been in front of an audience.”

She raised her head to peer at him in the dim light. “You were nervous as anything this morning. What caused the mood reversal?”

He laughed. “I was being supportive. Actually I’m scared to death. We’ve invested everything into tonight. I’ve been center stage, but it’s nothing when put against owning the whole thing. Seriously, after the first performance the pressure will be off. You’ll see, everything will be smoooooth sailing.”

Angie believed him, but the flurry of caterpillars in her nether regions didn’t. “Can you believe the caliber of talent we found right here in the area?”

“They are pretty great.” Pride oozed in Tyson’s voice.

They had a darned great cast. Especially one man, cop by day, actor by night. Detective Colby Jarvis so surprised them with his ability they’d regretted not giving him the starring role. Not that he intended to try out for any role at all. He’d arrived to pick up Angie and tried out on a bet by his fellow officers.

“What a magnificent theater!”

At the unfamiliar and slightly accented voice, Angie lifted her head. Then she sat up. Tyson swiveled on the chair. A man stood silhouetted in the doorway leading to the lobby. He was tall and lean and holding a cane whose gold tip glittered in the house lights. He strode down the aisle, walking with an elegance that had to be contrived. He wore a long coat and a fedora like the one Bogie wore in Casablanca. His face was obscured beneath the tipped-down brim of the hat. An actor. Had to be. Come to audition for something.

The stranger stopped at the end of the first row and took off his hat. He was maybe seventy with classic Slavic features: high cheekbones, a finely chiseled nose, and brilliant blue eyes. He ran a gloved hand through fashionably styled white hair that immediately lay back in place. The hand moved to stroke the precisely trimmed beard. “I never would’ve guessed.” Angie could tell now, the accent was Canadian. She stood and crossed the stage. She had to have this man in their next show. In passing, she threw Tyson a look that said this.

The man breathed deep and let it out before repeating, “I never would’ve guessed…that a splendid place like this existed inside such an unremarkable building.”

He laid it on a bit thick—lowering her estimation of him.

Tyson joined Angie at the head of the stage. He gestured for her to precede him down the trio of steps into the auditorium. The man shot long lean fingers toward Tyson, and then her. “My name is Carson Dodge.” He smiled. And waited.

Should she know him? Her brain scurried for recognition of either the face or the name. He had hold of her fingers now. He brought her limp appendage up and grazed his beard across the back of her hand. Sheesh. “I’m very sorry, do I know you?” Angie asked.

“No need to apologize. I thought my son might’ve advised you of my arrival.”

“Son?”

“Colby Jarvis.”

Gulp. “But I thought—” Mr. Dodge didn’t ask what she thought, and she didn’t elaborate. “You’ve just missed him. I imagine you can reach him at the station, or at home.”

“I’ll do that. I’m sorry to have troubled you.” Dodge settled his hat on his head and gave a tiny bow in Angie’s direction. He shook Tyson’s hand again, turned and caned his way up the aisle.

Part of her wanted to beg him to come back and read for a role right then. Another part of her said to let him go, they had to get through tonight’s show first. After all, if tonight flopped, there might not be another performance. Besides, she could always reach him through Jarvis. Funny thing, she would’ve sworn Jarvis said his father was dead.

Behind her, a pair of stagehands clomped across the gleaming hardwood and began exchanging bedroom for living room furniture for the night’s opening scene. Angie watched them roll that oh-so-inviting bed into the wings. Her eyes roamed back to the street door. She mentally compared Mr. Dodge and his son: different as, well, different as all those dumb clichés. Whether feigned or not, Carson Dodge was rich with culture. Jarvis was down-home all the way: hunter, fisherman, homebody. She squeezed her thighs tight and distracted herself by watching the stagehands move the bedroom wall panels and replace them with the fireplaced living room scene.

Tyson drifted to the first row of velveteen-covered chairs, all two hundred salvaged from a defunct movie theater in Detroit eight months ago. He and Angie had driven a rental truck thirteen hours and loaded each seat themselves. During the trip, they worked on the script, a concept Tyson had already spent two years nagging his Broadway contacts to produce. Failing that, he’d proposed a partnership in a neighborhood theater and Angie jumped at the idea. What else would she do with her life? Her long-time marriage had fizzled. Her ER job lacked stimulation. Two friends had betrayed her. Okay, screwed her royally, if truth be known. Things like that could really suck the pizzazz out of a person.

“I wish John had been here for rehearsal,” Tyson said.

“You did a nice job standing in for him.”

“It felt good acting again, even if it was unofficial. Are you concerned about him showing up tonight?”

“No. Yes. A little. I’m worried he’ll get so busy in his lab he’ll forget to come. I can’t help thinking we made a mistake giving a part to a scientist. He missed so many rehearsals—”

“But he’s a great actor,” Tyson said. “He told me he recites his lines to his plants.”

“I wonder if they applaud when he’s through.” She pushed a stray hair off her face, realizing her fingers were frigid with nervous anticipation. She rubbed her palms together, then folded her fingers into fists. “I am concerned that he hasn’t brought the plants over yet.”

Tyson picked lint from one of the chairs and dropped it in his breast pocket beside an ever-present array of highlighters he used to mark individual lines of dialogue. “I’m going home for a shower and something to eat. Want me to bring something back for you?”

“No thanks. I’m going home. What did you think of that guy?”

“Guy? Oh, you mean Jarvis’s father? I wonder why they don’t have the same name.”

She shrugged. “There’s a lot of that going around these days.”

“By the way, I know you were thinking of asking him to read. Get a grip. We need to survive this show first.” He ran a doting palm over another chair then removed his coat from the back of the seat behind it. “I’ll call John and jerk his chain.”

Soft spoken John Bloom was the essence of tall, dark and handsome, and knew it. He wore the near-black hair a little on the shaggy side, probably not by design, but because he was so busy. John not only ran a wholesale nursery, he also bred irises in a laboratory attached to one of his rambling greenhouses. He spoke proudly of his work in iris genetics; he’d recently discovered something—Angie couldn’t quite remember what it was.

That disheveled look meshed perfectly in the mild mannered, and somewhat flirty, leading man in Checkmate: Love, though. Not that she’d responded to the flirting. Not even once, but she couldn’t help enjoying the attention. Another, tinier part relished the jealousy it inspired in Jarvis. As an actor John was a great find, and a total fluke. He’d come to see what sort of plants and trees were needed for the sets and ended up with the lead in the play. If he ‘forgot’ to come tonight…

“Angelina!”

Angie cringed. Her feet made two running steps toward backstage before she could stop them. Tyson’s lips twitched in a restrained smile. He slung the coat over his arm, wiggled four fingers in the air, and whispered “good luck.”

“Coward,” she whispered.

He strode up the aisle; his wispy male form soon replaced by a feminine one in the doorway. A blast of icy air pushed toward Angie. Tiny hairs all over her body sprang to attention.

Gloria Farnsworth was still trim and shapely at the age of seventy-five. Her once-blonde hair had faded to platinum but neither physique nor hair color belied the woman’s feistiness. Tyson stopped long enough to give her a hug and a peck on the cheek. He hurried out into the lobby without stopping to put on his coat. Angie remained standing in the orchestra pit—though there would be no ensemble for this performance.

“Angelina?”

Angie met her mother at the first row of seats.

“I thought I’d find you here.”

“It’s where I work, Mother.”

Gloria bundled her coat tighter around herself and gave an elaborate shiver. “God, how can you stand living in this godforsaken part of the country?”

Angie jammed her fists in her jean pockets, managing not to offer a lift to the airport.

“When are you coming back to the apartment?”

“Probably some time after midnight. In case you’ve missed the perpetual string of ads and announcements, our play opens tonight. Putting on a show requires—”

“I know, I know, many man-hours and total dedication.” Gloria repeated words Angie said many times over the past ten days.

“Mom, we’ve been over this.”

Gloria heaved a sigh that must’ve emptied her one remaining lung. “I come to town once in ten years and you can’t even spare a little time for me.”

Angie didn’t bother mentioning that the past two nights they’d stayed up all night talking. She was so sleep deprived she could barely hold her head up. God, when had her mother gotten so needy? All Angie’s life, Mom held things together. When Dad went on his binges, Mom protected Angie and her brother. When Dad died, Mom got a job, a major feat for a woman whose only duty had been as housewife and mother for fifteen years. When Mom won the lottery three years ago, she took herself on a world tour—alone. Suddenly now, she breezed into town, needing every ounce of Angie’s attention. A horrible thought eclipsed the annoyance. Her health. There was something wrong.

She smoothed a hand over her hair and took two steps: one forward and one back.

“Don’t run away from me, Angelina. You’ve always done that. Haven’t you changed at all?”

Angie wiped sweat from her palms onto her slacks. Yes, she’d changed, especially over the past year. She took her mother’s arm just above the elbow and changed the subject. “What are you wearing tonight, that lovely teal sheath you bought the other day?”

Gloria’s frown grew into a smile. “Yes. I think it would be perfect, don’t you?”

“If you’re not too busy, there’s something you could do to help out. John couldn’t make it to rehearsal, which means he hasn’t brought the plants. Perhaps you could go get them?”

Gloria bent forward and kissed Angie on the cheek. “Happy to, darling. Back in a flash.”

“Could you also remind him to be here at five? Don’t let him make any excuses.”

“Don’t you worry, he’ll be here if I have to drag him bodily.”

Angie refrained from reminding her mother that John probably went one-seventy-five to her hundred pounds because if anyone could get him out of his laboratory, it was Gloria Farnsworth.

The door hadn’t swooshed all the way shut when soft footsteps marched across the stage. She turned to see Colby Jarvis, a solemn grin on his almost-handsome face. He still wore the Harry Temple costume: blue jeans, black leather jacket and black baseball cap. A fifty-year old version of The Fonz. Three months ago, when Tyson suggested Jarvis for this role Angie fell into gales of hilarity. What a hoot, the local constabulary playing a burglar. The idea still amused her.

“I didn’t know you were still here.”

“Everybody stayed a few minutes to talk about tonight.”

“You all right?”

“Just fine, ma’am.” He leaped off the stage and swept her into his arms.

Her hormones fluttered. Angie stepped back to disburse the heat.

“Are you busy right now?” he asked. “Can I run through a line or two with you? I don’t feel comfortable with the confrontation scene. To tell the truth, my stomach feels like I swallowed a handful of Mexican jumping beans.”

“Just—”

“If you try telling me to imagine the audience is naked…”

She shook her head. “Imagine I’m the only one in the room.”

He made a strangled sound in his throat. Together they ascended the steps to the stage—now decked out as a living room—the furniture all borrowed from the leading lady’s house. A Danish style sofa sat perpendicular to the right of the fireplace. Two chairs faced it with a small cherry end table between them. A Danish column lamp sat on the table. Jarvis took his place near the fireplace. He drew a cloth bag from his left pocket and a gun from his right. Angie stood near the bedroom door to the far left, prepared to take the role of Roman Richards, the part John would play later that evening.

“Okay,” Angie said, “I walk into the room with my daughter and spot you putting my valuables into your bag. I ask what the hell you’re doing in my house. You take out a gun, aim it at me, and say…”

He wiggled the barrel of the gun toward the couch. “Git over there.” His low, guttural voice made Angie shiver.

“I push my daughter behind me and walk toward the couch, but I stop halfway and ask, ‘What do you want?’ Then you say…”

“Kind of stupid question since I’m loading your stuff in this bag, dontcha think?” Jarvis shook the sack at her.

“Take what you want and go away.” Angie waved a hand to encompass the room. “Now, my wife calls from the other room and I take a step in that direction.”

Jarvis aimed the gun at her. “That’s far enough!”

“I push my daughter down behind the sofa. ‘Look, my wife is an invalid. She’s fallen out of her wheelchair. She might be hurt.’”

“If she was hurt she woulda said so.”

“I’m going to her. Shoot me if you want.”

“I mean it—stop where you are.”

Angie kept walking. Jarvis ran up behind her and pretended to knock her above the left ear with the butt of the gun. She went to her knees then sprang back up. “Now we scuffle.” They reached for each other but rather than scuffling he pulled her into a deep, impassioned kiss that sent flare-guns blasting into all corners of her being. They parted. Without skipping a beat, she said, “Then the gun goes off and I fall on the floor.”

“I run for the door, leaving the sack on the chair.”

“I get up and as the door slams behind you, I race in to help my wife and daughter.”

Jarvis replaced the purloined crystal on the mantle, rolled up the sack and put it in his left pocket. The gun went into the right.

“So, what part of that has you nervous? You did great.”

He shrugged, took hold of Angie’s arm and spun her toward the stairs. She didn’t ask the question again. In the past weeks she’d learned that actors’ egos needed constant bolstering. Apparently Jarvis was no different.

“You look tired,” he said. “I bet you’ve been here since daybreak.”

Almost. She’d left home at seven to escape her mother, whom she heard stirring in the spare bedroom. She had the books updated and the bills paid by the time Tyson zipped into the office at eight bearing croissants and coffee freshly made by his parents’ housekeeper. After eating, which they did in the lighting booth, gazing down on the stage—their stage—Tyson climbed up and checked the rigging for the fly system that held the lighting. Then he went off to find a prop they needed for one of the sets. Angie put last minute touches on a costume and repaired a tear in the main drape that they’d gotten from a high school drama society who’d bought a new one. As owners of the low-budget theater, they each did some of everything.

“Come on, I’ll change my clothes and take you to dinner,” Jarvis said.

“Nice scuffling, by the way,” she said as they headed backstage. “You don’t plan on doing that with John, do you?”