Cue the Dead Guy. H. Mel Malton
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and headed for the basement. “Anyone needs me, I’ll be in my office,” he said. I knew he was going down for a last minute smoke, and I wondered if I had time to join him.
“A sing-through? Is she crazy?” Meredith said loudly. Her voice was hoarse. Everyone’s voice was hoarse, come to that. “You don’t do a sing-through the night after a party when everybody’s been whooping it up. Does she want to damage us for life?”
“Easy, girl,” Bradley said. “She won’t be able to stand the noise, anyway. She’ll call it off as soon as we’re halfway through the opening number.”
“Well, I should damn well hope so,” Meredith said. “I’m not straining my chords just so Juliet bloody Keating can sit back on the first day of rehearsal and do dick-all.”
Outside, a very large car purred up to the front of the building. We all stared through the glass doors of the entrance, mesmerized by the sheer luxury of the automobile. None of us drove anything like that. We heard a door slam with an expensive clunk, and Amber Thackeray and Shane Pacey made an entrance.
“I can’t believe you said that,” Amber was saying, almost in tears. “You are such an ignorant pig, Shane.”
“I was joking, for Chrissakes, Amber. It’s not my fault that wimp you call your fiancé is too stupid to take a joke, is it?”
“That was not a joke. It was an insult to me and to Jason. Why can’t you just let bygones be bygones?”
“Amber, he’s an idiot. You know it and I know it and I don’t understand why you . . .” They both stopped and stared at the group gathered in the lobby. We stared back. A pause.
“Top o’ the mornin’ to yez,” Shane said, with a fake Irish accent, lifting an imaginary hat. He smiled radiantly, a beautiful smile. He really was a most disturbingly gorgeous man, in spite of being an obvious dink. Amber emitted a peep and scurried over to the coffee, avoiding the eyes of the group. We all muttered hellos and let the moment pass.
Shane came straight up to me and put a hand on my arm.
“You’re Polly Deacon, right?” I nodded. “Listen, Polly, I’m really, really sorry about last night. I had way too much to drink and acted like a complete asshole. I’m sorry about your nose. You okay?” His charm was unnerving. I responded immediately, against all logic, gazing deeply into his dark-lashed, makeup free eyes. Something stirred deep inside me. An octopus, aroused.
“I’m fine, Shane,” I said. “Thanks for asking.” He squeezed my arm once, warmly, then let go. Then he turned to Rico. I could feel my friend stiffen beside me.
“You’re the person I should really apologize to,” Shane said, quietly. “I don’t remember a lot of it, but Amber filled me in. I’m not supposed to drink. Shit happens when I do. Can you forgive me?” Rico was flabbergasted. So was I.
“Well, yeah, I guess,” Rico stammered. “It was, you know, a . . . misunderstanding, I guess.”
“Sure was,” Shane said, bathing us both in that impossible smile. “You make a terrific woman, eh? Just warn me next time.” Then he turned away and made a beeline for the coffee. Rico looked at me.
“Close your mouth, Rico,” I whispered.
“Is he real?” Rico whispered back.
“Hey, where’s Jason?” Ruth said, hurrying down the stairs. “He’s been messing around with my keyboard and the amp cables are gone.”
“Haven’t seen him,” I said.
“He wasn’t around when we got here,” Rico added.
Juliet’s door opened and she stepped out, followed by Kim, who had an armload of scripts. “Well, kiddies, shall we go up?” Juliet said. “Where’s that little stage manager?”
We heard heavy, running footsteps on the basement stairs and Tobin burst into the lobby. His face was so pale it was grey.
“Jason’s vest is floating in the workshop pool,” he said.
Seven
WOODSMAN: The job is hard, the days are long / but forest work will make you strong.
-The Glass Flute, Scene vii
We all went to look, thundering down the stairs like a bunch of kids let out of school.
It was Jason’s leather vest, all right, tangled in rope and floating at the edge of the black square of frigid water. Without Jason in it, it was just a piece of clothing, but the implication was horrible, nonetheless. It was like seeing Jason’s persona, drowned.
“Jesus,” Rico said.
“You think he’s down there?” Amber whispered. A rush of blood rocketed to my head, which made my battered nose throb. One thump like a drumbeat. I’d seen a dead body before—two, actually—and I wasn’t keen on seeing another one. We all stared at the water in silence, expecting to see a dim, pale shape bobbing just below the surface.
Nobody ran forward to fish around. After all, it was just a vest, but there was an uncomfortable, final sort of feeling in the air. Meredith crouched at the edge and reached down to untangle the garment from its tether. She laid the sodden vest on the shop floor, where it oozed water like a dead seal. It’s just a vest, I kept telling myself. It doesn’t mean anything.
“I suppose he could have, you know, taken it off down here and it fell in, and he just didn’t bother to pull it out,” Tobin said, doubtfully.
“He never took it off,” Amber said.
“Except to shower,” Shane said and snickered. There was a nasty little pause and we all stared at Shane, shocked. “Sorry. Joking,” he said, lifting his hands in a gesture of apology.
“Even if he did take it off, and it fell in somehow, he’d rather have died than lose it,” Amber said. We all let that one hang in the air.
“Did Jason know how to swim?” someone asked. Amber burst into tears.
Kim and Juliet went upstairs to call the cops, and the rest of us just stood there until someone noticed that Amber was making the transition from tears to hysterics. Shane put his arm around her and led her up the stairs.
“Let’s go to the lobby, kid,” he said. “You don’t need to be here. It’s nice and warm up there. C’mon, you’ll be okay.”
“Hope he doesn’t try to jump her,” I heard Meredith mutter.
Ruth was gazing intently at the mass of black cord that had prevented Jason’s vest, if not his body, from disappearing into the icy, swiftly running depths of the Kuskawa river. The spring run-off was at its peak, and the edges of the pool foamed with the movement underneath. One end of the rope had somehow caught on one of the old brass mooring cleats and the tip flashed silver. “Those are my missing amp cables,” she said. Not rope. Audio cable. Weird. “They’ll have my fingerprints all over them. They’ll think I did it.”
“Did what?” Bradley said. “Killed him? It was obviously an accident, Ruth.”
“What kind of accident?” I said.
“Well, he probably fell down those treacherous stairs, like your friend did last night,” Bradley said, pointing at Rico, who cringed.
“Yeah, that’s possible, I guess,” Ruth said, thoughtfully. “He fell down the stairs with his arms full of amp cables and went straight into the water. Bumped his head, maybe, going down.”
“What would he be doing coming down here with amp cables at four-thirty in the morning?” Tobin said. “That’s when I locked up. He wasn’t here then.”
“He was obsessive,” Bradley said. “You know he was setting up the rehearsal space last night. Didn’t you check upstairs?”
“Sure