A Midsummer Night's Scream (9 page)

"It depends. If the perpetrator was strong and accurate, it could have happened."

"What else could it be?"

"Something like a pendulum. Not so heavy, but delivered with a swing of a rope or chain. Almost anyone could do that."

"I assume all such items have been looked for in the Dumpster outside?"

"The whole thing has been searched, of course. No sign of rope, chain, or a bottle of anything, just empty plastic cups and plates and empty water bottles. They've all been taken in to be tested for contents and fingerprints. Nothing that looks like an oblong weight."

"Wait a minute, Mel. How is the word 'oblong' being used?"

"What do you mean?"

"I once ordered a long rectangular tableclothfrom a catalog, and when the package arrived it was labeled as being 'oblong.' Before I even opened it," Jane said, "I called the place where I ordered it and said that it looked rectangular in the picture. I was told that 'oblong' meant rectangular."

"I thought 'oblong' was a thing that was longer than it is wide, and curved into circles at the end," Mel said.

"So did I," Jane said. "Another perfectly good word trampled. 'Rectangular' is apparently not politically correct. Or maybe the people at the catalog thought they were synonymous — and maybe they are."

Mel was silent for a moment, then asked, "Who would have thought a murder could cross over into grammar? I'll ask the pathologist exactly what 'oblong' means to him. There is a weight missing."

"What kind of weight?"

"Something to do with raising and lowering the background scenery that goes up or down depending on the scene. Of course, there hasn't been a play there for a long time, and it could have been missing for years. Or only days. The young men who are painting the background of the room this play takes place in were looking for the rope and counterweight and couldn't find it."

"Would the missing weight be the oblong object?"

"Maybe. But if it had been there for a long time, there probably would have been signs of dust or rust in the wound."

"Was it a sandbag, maybe? Didn't old theaters use those?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," Mel said.

"Neither do I," Jane admitted. "It was just a fleeting thought. Probably because I saw some black-and-white movie that was set in a theater and a sandbag was dropped on somebody to kill them. Or maybe it was some mystery novel I read."

"Not through the ceiling of a dressing room, Jane." He said this with a hint of a yawn. "I'll ask about the definition of 'oblong' in the morning."

"Wait a minute. There are two things you haven't mentioned. Who found Denny and when?"

"The janitor from the college. He apparently comes in late at night or very early in the morning to replace toilet paper and paper towels, sweep the floors, and clean makeup off the counters in the dressing rooms before anyone's using the place. Around six o'clock in the morning, he said."

"How long had Denny been dead? Could the pathologist tell?"

"At least since midnight. Maybe earlier. Why do you ask?"

"Just because I didn't know, I suppose. Does everybody connected to this play have a good alibi?"

"We're still questioning everyone. So far, almost everyone involved in any manner claims they do. Except you and Shelley. I've crossed both of you off my list of suspects," he said with a laugh. "But I'm always more inclined to believe the ones who admit that they simply went home and fell asleep in front of the television. Good night, Janey. Wish you were here with me. It's a nice cool evening for a change."

"Me too," she said with what she meant to sound like a kissing noise but ended sounding more like slobbering.

Jane went back to her book and found herself thinking about the murder weapon. It could be her definition of "oblong," but also rounded. So it could be a bottle. But a glass bottle would be sure to shatter if it were swung with a hard enough blow to break bones, wouldn't it? And a plastic water container would have burst. Surely the police would have noticed broken glass right away or puddles on the dressing table. Same for a sandbag. It would surely have lost some of the sand and the floor would have been gritty. She'd glanced into some of the dressing rooms early on and none were carpeted.

Not my problem, she kept telling herself, and

went back to wondering about what the sharp double-pronged object that had killed someone in the book she was reading might have been.

She herself had a set of double-pronged sharp forks to lift a big turkey out of her deep roasting pan. But the book she was reading was set in Yorkshire, England, and there had been no mention of anyone cooking a huge turkey or an enormous roast beef.

She finally gave up on both the real murder weapon and the one in the book and turned the light off. An hour or so later, she rose again and turned on the attic fan while she was roaming around. The heat wave had finally broken.

Saturday morning, Jane stayed in bed late to finish the book she'd been reading, and found out what the weapon had been in the book. The clue had been well buried. She hoped she could bury her own clues that well. She went back to typing up a few other ideas for the book she herself was writing. None involved the weapon in the mystery she'd read.

When she'd put her new ideas into the outline and finished another half chapter, she cleaned up the mess the kids had made of the kitchen table, then succumbed to the lure of her needlepoint project. It took her a full hour to replace the triangle that had been such a failure before. And thecanvas had lost some of its stiffness, so she had to be very careful not to let it stretch or sag.

There was another rehearsal already planned for Saturday. This time they wouldn't cater, because Shelley said most of the students didn't have late Saturday classes and could find their own dinners. She was only providing bottled water, a few sodas, a large carafe of coffee, and would bring along some chips or store-bought cookies.

But Imry threw another wrench into the mix. "Since we missed one rehearsal," he announced as they assembled, "I'm rescheduling for Sunday afternoon from one to four."

"I'm sorry, but we're not available then. I'm spending Sunday with our daughter and grandchildren," Ms. Bunting said quite firmly. "I've promised to take them to lunch and the zoo since it's cooled down a little."

"And I'm committed to taking a group of schoolchildren on a walking trip along the lakeshore," Jake said. "They're inner-city kids I volunteer to take somewhere every Sunday afternoon."

Denny's replacement, Norman Engel, had other plans as well. He had his parents visiting from Indiana for a family wedding. Joani also claimed she was busy, declining to explain what the appointment was.

"Then we'll do it Sunday night. You can provide catering, can't you, Ms. Nowack?"

"Not on such short notice," she replied. "And the rest of the group will probably still be busy. Afternoon weddings go on forever. And anyone who takes on a mob of kids for a whole afternoon is entitled to rest later. I myself have other commitments as well. A bake sale at our church."

Jane looked surprised, then realized this was simply Shelley's way of thwarting Imry.

"Then we'll just have to meet earlier Monday, and work later," Imry said.

This raised another storm of protest. Most of the college volunteers were enrolled in the intensive summer-school session, in which classes started early and went on until at least five-thirty to qualify for the credits for a full semester.

Imry was forced to give up — slightly. "Then we'll just add an extra half hour to each evening's work."

Apparently the people who had objected to Sunday had no good reason to object as strenuously to a half hour here or there for a few days.

"A bake sale?" Jane said as she and Shelley left the theater later.

"I thought it was an honorable excuse."

"I don't imagine anyone believed it," Jane said, eating the last two chocolate chip cookies that were left. "Didn't you see Tazz and Ms. Bunting exchange smiles?"

"I'm sure you're mistaken," Shelley huffed. "Probably neither of them has ever been to a church bake sale."

"But we've done our share of them," Jane said, tossing the paper plate into the trash.

Mel came over Sunday morning to
have a
big breakfast with Jane and her kids. She'd really gone all out. It was what she called "a dining room meal." Not something to crowd around the kitchen table to eat.

There were homemade corn muffins, an egg casserole with scallions in a cheese sauce, sliced ham with a thick black-cherry sauce, and crispy baked new potatoes with rosemary, as well as orange juice for the kids and mimosas for the two adults.

Everyone was impressed and all the food was quickly gone. "That was wonderful, Mom. A long way from dorm breakfasts. You must have been down early to get all this done," Mike said.

"Nope. Most of it was made yesterday and just put in the oven at the right times to come out at the same time, fresh and hot.",

Mike had to leave right after they ate. He was working again this summer at the garden center,and Sunday was their biggest sale day of the week. Katie was going to the town pool. She'd passed her lifesaving course and was actually being paid to sit around and get a good tan. Jane didn't really approve of tans anymore.

"You must
slather
yourself with sunscreen," Jane said. "I'll drop in later and see if you're good and greasy."

"Oh, Mom," Katie objected, patting her mother's hand in a patronizing way.

Todd had arranged for two of his friends to come over and play games on the living room television.

"I should load the dishwasher," Jane said, "but it's such a nice day, let's finish off the mimosas on the patio."

"Are you going to use sunscreen?" Mel joked.

"No. We'll be shaded by an umbrella."

"I see that you've actually done some real gardening this summer. What kind of tree is that spindly one in the middle of the yard?" Mel asked, propping his feet on an extra chair.

"It's a bing cherry."

"I don't see any cherries on it."

"Mel, it's a baby tree. It probably won't get cherries for a couple of years. My grandmother had two of them when I was a kid. I'd visit her most summers. One time they produced so many cherries that she had to beg neighbors to come take most of them off her hands. The one require-

ment was that the cherries had to be bagged and weighed before the neighbors left. She actually gave away seventy-eight pounds of them. And kept ten pounds for her own pies."

"Eighty-eight pounds of cherries? I've never heard of such of thing."

"Neither had she. When she realized how many flowers the trees had, she hired two neighbor boys to net them so the birds wouldn't eat the fruit. I've never had a better pie in my life than she made."

She went on, "It did get two flowers this spring, but no cherries. So, how is your investigation of Denny's death coming along?"

"So-so. Not much information has come back on Denny himself. And I still can't manage to leave a message on his parents' phone. I've asked a cop in their town to go see if they're home. They're not. And none of the neighbors know when they're coming home.

"Tazz has an excellent alibi," he went on. "She was providing costumes for a private party. It was a reunion of a bunch of former hippies. Those who could still fit in their old clothes and had kept some, wore their own," he said. "Tazz dressed the rest of them who had wisely thrown all the tie-dyed stuff away."

"Was she there all evening?"

"Only after the rehearsal. She and her assistant dropped off the clothes some of them needed earlier in the afternoon, and went back after she was through at the theater to pick them up, examine them for food stains or sweat stains, and take them back to the warehouse well after midnight. Does she really make people who rent her clothes wear those underarm things?"

"She does."

"What if it's a sleeveless dress?"

Jane said, "I didn't think to ask. What about the others? John Bunting, for example? Was he alibied by his wife?"

"No. He'd been out to a late dinner after the rehearsal with a bunch of his old Chicago pals. They were finally asked to leave at midnight when the place closed."

"Did you interview all of them?"

"Yes, all but one of them, who is out of town. Are they ever a bunch of old coots. One has to carry his oxygen with him. Another is in a wheelchair and has a young man who accompanies him with his medicines. They're all successful old men. They either started companies here in Chicago or inherited companies from their fathers."

He went on, "One is called Bootsie. His father made expensive leather shoes and kept the shoe forms in storage, carefully itemized, until the client died. He claimed he always offered them to the bereaved family as a gift after the funeral. He's still in business. And he's the healthiest of all

of them. Now he has fifty employees and they still keep the shoe forms. I'll bet each shoe brings in a fabulous profit. Handmade, hand-sewn, fitting perfectly and guaranteed to last at least fifteen years. Lots of his clients bring the shoes in after the fifteen years and want the exact duplicate.

"Another, 'The Pill,' inherited a pharmacy his father started in 1890 in the heart of the Loop. He showed me pictures of the original shop, with all the big bottles filled with colored water. At least I assume it was colored. It was a black-and-white picture."

"And the rest?" Jane asked, smiling.

"One, of course, is a lawyer. He didn't seem to have a nickname. He's retired and turned it over to his son and grandsons, but goes in every day to check out what they're doing. If I were a son or grandson of his, I'd have run away and become a cowboy or a plumber. He's the one who is out of town.