Macdeath (An Ivy Meadows Mystery Book 1) (7 page)

CHAPTER 13

The Heat-Oppressed Brain

After an hour at Uncle Bob’s office, I was done. Not as in “done with my work,” or even “done with this job,” but done as in “stick a fork in me, I’m done.” Cooked. I was used to the heat (keeping your apartment at ninety degrees will do that for you), but boy oh boy.

Uncle Bob’s office was on the second floor of an old converted warehouse overlooking the jail. He had furnished it himself with a couple of plaid easy chairs, a metal government-issue desk and filing cabinet, a brown carpet remnant whose original color may have been white, and a non-functioning swamp cooler. I guess it had broken a few days before I started work. Uncle Bob was probably the nicest man on earth, but he was also a proud penny pincher. “Since cool weather’s coming,” he told me, “I figured I’d wait to fix it.” He went on to explain that he usually got a coupon in the mail around April.

April. It was October. The temperature today had already climbed to 100. Yeah, it’d cool down sometime this month, but today the office was suffocating. I couldn’t even open the window because the swamp cooler was jammed into it.

I sat in my office chair and closed my eyes. The sweat beaded on my upper lip. Instead of fighting it, I imagined myself in a tropical paradise. I could feel myself relaxing. I added to my waking dream—bird calls, chattering monkeys, and Jason. Shirtless.

My imagination rescued me. I spent the day sweating and working and pretending a dip in the sea and a tropical drink were waiting for me. Then I got into my hot little car, grabbed a burrito from Filiberto’s drive-through window, and headed to the theater. Upon arriving, the air conditioning I’d been complaining about for weeks almost made me swoon with delight.

I headed straight for the theater shower, set in the hall in the midst of all the dressing rooms. I rinsed off, threw on a big T-shirt and panties from my duffle bag, and dashed across the hall to our dressing room. Candy was in costume and headed out the door on her way to the greenroom where she would probably flirt outrageously with one of the soldier actors. I undressed again, did my hair and makeup, pulled on my footless tights and reached for the paper bag my uncle had given me before breakfast that morning. “Your leotard,” he said. “When you came here from the theater that night it was...kind of a mess. I washed it for you.” He was a big sweetie, I thought as I pulled my leotard out of the bag.

Oh no.

He was a big sweetie who didn’t know that you didn’t put leotards in the dryer. I stared at my Barbie-sized costume. Okay, I’m exaggerating; it was more of a baby doll size. Maybe an American Girl doll size. Just not Ivy-sized anymore.

It was also my only costume. But leotards stretch, right? I stepped into the leotard and pulled it up over my hips—so far, so good—and then tugged to get it up onto on my shoulders, the way you do when you’re trying to get a tight fitted sheet on a bed. There. I looked in the mirror. Not too bad. Squashed me a bit, but I still looked like a sexy serpent, the emerald stripes running from my breasts right down to...

Oh shit. I checked again, hoping against hope. Nope, there it was. A camel toe. I tugged at my leotard, hoping it would stretch back into a more modest shape, but no. It was there to stay, and was nicely accentuated by a big green splotch right near my crotch. Great, an iridescent camel toe.

“Places.” Linda’s voice came over the small speaker mounted in the corner of the dressing room.

I clasped my hands in front of my crotch and ran backstage. I tried to tell myself that maybe no one would notice the unfortunate fit of my leotard. After all, the green really did make my eyes pop, just like Simon said.

Simon. I had hoped the day’s work would get my mind off his death. But even in my imaginary world of tropical drinks and half-naked Jason, the thought had surfaced from time to time. Working at Uncle Bob’s reminded me that the world was not all rosy, and that people—at least some of them—were cruel. It wasn’t just the air conditioning at the theater that was a relief. After a day of filing bad photographs of bad people doing bad things, I was glad to sink into the world of
Macbeth
—where not-so-bad people did unspeakable things.

Huh. I hadn’t thought of it that way before.

I stopped to ponder this idea when Candy ran into the back of me. Probably because I had literally stopped to think in the middle of clambering into the cauldron.

“Darlin’, the curtain is going up shortly and I don’t want my ass hangin’ out of this cauldron in front of God and everyone,” said Candy.

“Sorry. I was thinking. I can’t really move and think at the same time,” I said, shifting gears back to the present moment. “Except when I dance, which makes me wonder if, when I dance, maybe I kind of turn off my brain or something.”

Tyler sniggered as he pushed past me into the cauldron. I would have socked him, except I opened myself up for that one. I let it pass.

Candy climbed into the cauldron ahead of me and pulled me in.

“Maybe it’s like really good sex,” she said.

Tyler stopped sniggering.

“You know, how during it your mind goes away? You become all body and no mind?”

I nodded, though I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever had really good sex.

The techies, using a set of pulleys and strong ropes, hauled the cauldron into the fly space. As always, I felt slightly queasy, huddling with two other sweaty bodies in the swaying darkness. I wondered if a fall from this height would kill me or just maim me. I wondered if I should try to jump clear of the cauldron if it fell. I wondered if that thing about jumping up and down in a falling elevator was really true. I wondered...

“Oh! Did you see the article in
The Republic
?” Candy said.

“No,” I said.

“Shhh!” Tyler said.

“I guess Simon was Jewish.”

“Oh. And?”

“Would you two shut up?”

“No funeral.”

“Why? That’s not a Jewish—”

“For God’s sake, the show’s about to start—”

“And he was married.”

Tyler didn’t have to shush me anymore. I was speechless.

CHAPTER 14

Guardian of His Bones

At intermission, perched on the ratty old greenroom couch, I perused the profile of Simon on the front page of the Arts and Entertainment section of
The Arizona Republic
. The article explored his theater and film background, noted that he was born to a Jewish mother in Manchester, England, and said he was survived by his wife Nuala Col
mekill of Galway, Ireland, whom he had married in 1986.

“But why didn’t he get divorced?” I thought out loud, in case any of the actors gathered around had an idea.

“Turn the page,” said Candy, at the same moment Riley grabbed the paper out of my hands. I shrugged.

“The paper said they got married in Ireland.” Candy paused, waiting for me to take the bait.

I bit. “And?”

“And it was illegal to get divorced in Ireland ’til the mid-nineties. Even after that, it was pretty tough to undo an Irish marriage, especially a Catholic one.”

Jason sat down on the couch next to me. I nearly purred.

“Sounds kind of like Spencer Tracy,” he said.

“Does not,” said Candy.

“Sure,” he said. “You know he was married the whole time he was with Katherine Hepburn. Stayed with his wife out of Irish-Catholic guilt.”

“That’s the part that doesn’t sound like Simon,” said Candy. “The guilt part.”

“So instead of divorcing his wife,” I said. “He just carries on publicly with other women? Nice.”

“Are we talking about Simon or Spencer?” said Candy.

“Both,” I said.

“Come on, isn’t it kind of romantic?” said Jason. “The whole star-crossed lovers thing.” He slid closer to me.

“Ha! Star-crossed lovers.” Bill Boxer’s breath announced his presence behind the couch. That and his hand on my shoulder. “That’s Shakespeare, right?”

Bill’s first performance had been cringe-worthy. He skipped several lines, welcomed Macbeth “thither” (there) instead of “hither” (here), and sounded as if he were reading off a teleprompter that scrolled across the inside of his forehead. Though he did wear the hat. A new one that fit his big head.

Linda’s voice floated across the room, “Places in ten.”

Everyone started to disperse.

“Wait,” I said. “I’m still confused. Why doesn’t Simon get a funeral? And why did you just say ‘a Catholic marriage?’ I thought Simon was Jewish.”

“He converted in order to get married,” said Riley, who was moving his lips slightly as he read the paper. “But his wife decided Simon should be buried early according to Jewish custom. No Catholic services will be held.”

“Thus increasing his chances of being damned to hell for all eternity,” said Jason.

Both Candy and I looked at him.

He shrugged. “I’m Catholic, too. Was. Lapsed.”

A sense of outrage bubbled up in me. Simon had turned his life around. He deserved better. I stood up and said in my loudest actor voice. “Excuse me, all. I have an announcement.” A few cast members turned around. When they saw it was just me, they resumed their trek toward backstage. Ouch. I sat back down.

“What did you want to say, Ivy?” asked Jason.

“I think we should have a memorial service for Simon.”

Jason considered it, nodded slowly, and rose to his feet.

“Everyone!” he said. The whole cast turned. They waited. The power of his role, I guess. “Wednesday, after the show, we’ll have a brief memorial service for Simon.” He turned to me, “Would you like to add anything?”

I stood. “I’ll be taking up a memorial contribution. Please make the checks out to Alcoholics Anonymous.”

I nearly sat down, until I noticed the expectant looks on the actors’ faces. “And like any good memorial service,” I continued, “there will be food.” That was the ticket. A buzz went around the room.

“Can you bake?” I whispered to Candy.

“Girl, I’m Southern. I was born with a wooden spoon in my hand.”

“I’ll make banana bread,” said Jason.

He baked. Wow. He seemed almost too good to be true.

CHAPTER 15

Show’d Some Truth

I was at the computer in Uncle Bob’s still-sweltering office when I heard him coming down the outer hallway, whistling something someone else might have called a tune. Needing to get off the webpage I was visiting, I quickly clicked on the little house icon at the top of the screen. The screen now displayed Uncle Bob’s home page, a trivia site. Just in time, too. My uncle opened the door and walked in as I perused the page. He wore his typical cargo shorts and Hawaiian shirt. This particular shirt featured drinks with pink umbrellas in them.

“Good afternoon,” I said. “Hey, did you know you can make dynamite out of peanuts?”

“Yep,” he said, tossing his keys on top of the file cabinet. “George Washington Carver discovered you could make nitroglycerin out of them. Also figured out how to make peanut paint, tuberculosis medicine, and just about everything you can imagine, except peanut butter. Aztecs beat to him to that.”

I’d learned that Uncle Bob used trivia in his work, said it got people talking. I wondered where a conversation about peanuts might fit in. Bob came over to the desk we shared and peered over my shoulder at the computer monitor. “Are you hard at work or hardly working?”

Uncle Bob had given me a bunch of internet research to do. I liked it. I like checking the different databases, following little clues, trailing people in cyberspace. I felt like a spy.

“Got it all done,” I said. “Want the dirt on William Nottingham?”

One of my uncle’s big clients, Franko, Hricko, and
Maionchi,
was a law firm that specialized in family law—divorces, wills, pre-nups. The daughter of a wealthy aging socialite had requested a background check on her mother’s considerably younger fiancé, the aforementioned Willy. The law firm had obtained the basic info and passed the case on to Uncle Bob.

It seems the mother and daughter had met William at a country club where they played doubles regularly. He showed up one day from Palm Beach and swept the older woman off her feet. “An abominable tennis player,” she’d admitted to her daughter, “but so adorable in his tennis whites.” His abominable tennis playing had raised the daughter’s antennae. He’d told her he’d been a member of the Palm Country Country Club for years. The horrible redundancy of the club name, she said, was another clue that something was dirty beneath those tennis whites.

“So,” said Uncle Bob, “is there a Palm Country Country Club in Palm Beach?”

“Nope,” I said. “There is a Palm Beach Country Club, a North Palm Beach Country Club, a Palm Beach Polo and Country Club, and a
Palm Beach
National Golf and
Country Club. I called them all, asking for him, just in case he misspoke. No William Nottingham.”

“Good,” said my uncle.

“
Why do people lie about things that are so easy to check out?” I asked.

“Don’t know.” He shrugged. “But it happens all the time and it keeps us in business. Had a guy once say he’d been mayor of Why, Arizona. But Why’s never had a mayor. It’s not incorporated. Want to know why?”

I nodded.

“Then you gotta live there for awhile.” He chuckled. “Get it? To know Why, you gotta live there
.
”

I shook my head. Didn’t want to encourage him.

“What else you got?” he asked.

“Aliases,” I said with a grin. “A ton of them. His real name is not William Nottingham, it’s Billy Bob Nuttin. He has been Bill Nettham, B. McNaughton, and Will Nott. He was billed as ‘Naughty Willy’ in a racy British film and had a brief career as a hip hop singer by the name of B.B. Nuthin.”

“Never heard of him.”

“He had a single that got a bit of airplay, ‘Nuthin’s Good Enough for You.’”

“Are you making this shit up?”

I crossed my heart. “Swear to God.”

“Nice work,” said my uncle, patting me on the head. I really wished he wouldn’t do that. “Ready to lock up?” he asked.

“Almost,” I said. “Just need to finish up a few things. See you in the morning?” I was learning that my uncle often spent most of the day out of the office doing PI-type stuff like surveillance.

“Yep,” said my uncle, picking up his keys. “See you later, alligator.”

“In a while, crocodile.”

Uncle Bob left, whistling whatever tune he’d begun earlier. Once it had faded away down the hall, I quickly went back to the web page I’d been looking at before he came in.

“Alcohol poisoning,” read the medical info page I’d pulled up, “can be deadly.” I quickly scanned the information. Most people who die of alcohol poisoning, it said, either lapse into a coma and stop breathing or pass out and aspirate on their own vomit. When I found him, Simon was definitely unconscious and he had certainly thrown up. But did he really die from drinking one bottle of brandy? I kept reading until I found what I was hoping for—the information that convinced me Simon did not die from alcohol poisoning.