The Tapestry in the Attic (14 page)

14

Since the snowstorm hadn’t yet abated, and no one seemed to know when the roads would be clear, or when the cast and crew of
King Lemuel’s Treasure
would be able to get home, Saturday became an all-day rehearsal. The code white was lifted, but only authorized vehicles were allowed on the highways until the main highways were cleared. Ian said he hoped that Main Street would be cleared by noon, but he didn’t sound certain it could be done.

Professor Howell relaxed his rule about allowing cellphones to be used during rehearsals, so occasionally, Annie would hear some different ringtone as family and friends contacted each other to make sure they were safe. Kate called Vanessa again to make sure she was still all right, and Peggy talked to Wally and Emily, who wanted her mother to come home so they could go outside and build a snowman and make snow angels.

Stella didn’t have a cellphone; she said she refused to get one on principle. Annie had heard her say more than once that she didn’t see why people thought they needed to “jabber away all the time,” and she wished they’d be a little more discreet about what they said in public places. She had used a landline phone inside the building to call Jason the previous evening to let him know she was all right and to check that he was home safe, but she didn’t see any reason to call him again the next day. “He’ll get here when he’s able to,” she said.

Mary Beth called Annie to check on all of her friends from the Hook and Needle Club, and Annie assured her that they were all OK.

“I’m just glad the storm began on Friday after I got home,” said Mary Beth, “so it didn’t interfere with my visit to the radiologist. I hope the roads are clear by Monday.”

“I hope the roads are cleared today!” said Annie. “Boots is home alone, and she’s going to get mighty hungry if I don’t get there soon.”

“I forgot about Boots!” said Mary Beth.

“I’m going to try to call Gwen later to see if I can get a report about the conditions on Ocean Drive,” said Annie. “If it’s too bad, I may call Jeremy, the boy who clears the snow from my driveway. He has a snowmobile, and I know he’d be willing to go to the house to feed Boots.”

“Well, I’m not even going to try to get out,” said Mary Beth. “Even if the roads are cleared somewhat, I can’t imagine there will be anybody beating on the door to get into A Stitch in Time on a day like this.”

Annie advised Mary Beth to curl up with a good book or to put on a DVD and just relax for the rest of the weekend. She added that she would see her Tuesday at the Hook and Needle Club meeting.

Professor Howell started rehearsal about eight o’clock that morning, and it was almost ten when he called for a break. The snow seemed to have let up some, though the wind was still strong with sudden gusts that would send the snow that had already fallen into white swirls that spun in the air like white tornadoes. Several people took the opportunity to bundle up in their winter gear to walk over to The Cup & Saucer or go out to the parking area behind the Walker Building to see what it was going to take to dig their cars out of the snow. Most decided it would be better to wait to see if Main Street was going to be cleared before attempting to move the massive amount of snow that had piled up between the cars.

Annie and Alice had ridden over together in Annie’s car, so they agreed that they would wait until later before they tried to go out. Without anything to change into, they didn’t want to end up having to wear wet clothing all day.

It was Peggy who rounded up the other ladies of the Hook and Needle Club for a private conference in the seating area of the theater. Most of the people who remained in the building were in the lobby getting another cup of coffee or eating one of the few muffins that had been left over from breakfast, but the house seats and the stage appeared to be empty.

“What is it, Peggy?” asked Stella.

“I just wanted to report that I’ve been talking up our ‘lead’ for the missing tapestry,” said Peggy.

“What lead?” asked Annie.

Peggy looked at her incredulously and said, “Hel-lo! Earth to Annie! Don’t you remember? It was
your
idea. We planned that we would tell everyone that we had a lead about who might have stolen the tapestry, and that you were going to be checking out some information at the college next week. … Does that ring a bell?”

“I didn’t even think it was all that good of an idea,” said Alice, “but I told a couple of people too. I can’t believe you forgot,” she said teasingly to Annie. “Is that Ian Butler distracting you again? Do you want me to have a talk with him?”

Annie gave her friend a fake grimace. “No, Ian Butler is not distracting me, and no, I do not want you to have a talk with him. I was just thinking about other things.”

“Yeah,” said Alice, “and that ‘thing’ is about six-foot-two with chocolate brown eyes and is crazy about you. I saw you guys talking. There was some definite chemistry going on there.”

Kate tried to stifle a laugh, but was not really succeeding. “Now, Alice, you leave Annie alone. She can’t help it if our illustrious mayor can’t keep his eyes off of her.”

“Oh, forevermore, would y’all stop it?” said Annie.

“I guess we’d better stop,” said Alice, still with a mischievous gleam in her eye. “When the Southern accent comes on strong, that’s when you know that you’re really getting to her.”

“Yes,” said Stella in a no-nonsense tone. “Stop teasing her. This is serious business. I mentioned ‘the lead’ this morning, too, at the table I was sitting at for breakfast. Though, I can’t imagine that any of the people I was sitting with had anything to do with it, since it was Professor Howell and the Fortescues, but I think my voice was loud enough that people at the other end of the table might have heard, or maybe even the table next to us. That’s the advantage of being an old woman; if you talk a little loud sometimes, they just think you’re losing your hearing.”

Annie laughed inwardly; she didn’t think Stella would appreciate it if she laughed out loud. It was one thing if Stella made a comment about her age; it was entirely different if someone else did.

“I talked about ‘the lead’ too,” said Kate, “with some of the people backstage when I was doing some hand-basting on a couple of costumes that had to be taken up. If everyone in the company hasn’t heard about it by the end of the day, well, I’ll be surprised.”

“So, now what do we do?” asked Peggy.

“Just watch for people who act suspicious, I guess,” said Annie.

“In what way?” asked Peggy.

“Well, maybe next week, if someone starts asking a lot of questions about what we’ve learned, that might be someone to watch,” said Annie.

“Do we even have a motive as to why someone would want to steal it?” asked Alice. “We don’t even have a suspects list yet, do we?”

“Not really,” said Annie. “I tried to think about all the people who knew about it—and that’s just about everyone in Stony Point, everyone at the college who is connected with the play, and whoever Cyril contacted in the antique and auction businesses.”

“Hey—maybe it’s an international art thief,” said Peggy, not all that seriously.

“In Stony Point?” said Kate. “Have you seen anyone who looks like Cary Grant or Pierce Brosnan loitering around A Stitch in Time? I haven’t. In the movies, international art thieves are always rakishly handsome, but they usually hang out in Monte Carlo and Paris. You never see a movie about an international art thief who looks like balding Mr. Kendall from over at the bank, lurking around in a scenic little town waiting for some lost da Vinci portrait to be discovered.”

“Well,” said Alice, “if a priceless treasure ever was to be discovered in Stony Point, I’d bet you dollars to doughnuts it would be in Annie’s attic.”

****

After the morning break, the company rehearsed until noon. Stella and Ian had once again arranged the meal with the help of a few of the backstage people who weren’t immediately involved in what was going on the stage. The table that had held the baked goods that morning now held two large trays of sandwiches and an extra-large slow cooker full of hot chowder from The Cup & Saucer.

This time, Annie found an empty seat next to Stacy Lewis, the actor playing the title character of the play. Though she had met him briefly at Grey Gables, and had said a few words to him at the theater on occasion, she knew very little about him. She had been impressed by his talent as she watched him interact with Cyril and Dolores onstage. Annie thought that the Fortescues seemed favorably impressed with the young man too.

“Have you always wanted to be an actor?” asked Annie.

Stacy smiled. Annie remembered her earlier comments to Alice about how handsome he was. If she’d been a teenage girl, or maybe a little older than that, she would have definitely been smitten. “No, not always. Let’s see … when I was twelve, I wanted to be a baseball pitcher, and when I was thirteen, I wanted to be a paleontologist and study dinosaurs, and when I was fourteen, I wanted to be a football player, and when I was fifteen, I wanted to be a rock star, and when I was sixteen, I wanted to be … hmm … I can’t remember what I wanted to be when I was sixteen. The point is, that by the time I graduated from high school, I had thought that I wanted to be everything from an astronaut to a zookeeper.

“I was taking general courses my first year at Longfellow while I tried to decide on my major,” Stacy continued. “Just as a fluke, I decided to take a class—Intro to Acting—that Professor Howell taught. I was hooked. I tried out for a play that the theater department was putting on, and I got a part. It was a small role, but I haven’t looked back since. I guess being an actor gives me an opportunity to be, at least for a few hours, a lot of those things I dreamed of being when I was a kid.”

“I never thought of it that way,” said Annie, smiling. “Are you from around here?”

“No,” said Stacy, “I’m from Ohio, but my father graduated from Longfellow, and he wanted me to go there too. The tuition is a little steep since it’s a private college, but my mom and dad have done all right, and they saved so they could afford to send me to college. I like it. It’s a small school, but it has a beautiful campus, and the faculty is top-notch. Have you been there?”

“Not yet,” said Annie. “I’m planning to go next week though, to do a little research about the tapestry that was stolen.”

“Well, I hope you can learn something that helps recover it. Cyril showed me some of the photos he took of it on his phone. It would have really added atmosphere to the stage set. I wonder what they’ll do now.”

Annie wondered that too after Stacy mentioned it. She hadn’t even thought about how not having the tapestry would leave a huge gap in Alice’s set design, and Alice hadn’t said what her back-up plan was, or if she even had one.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sure Alice will come up with something wonderful.”

“She’s a nice lady—and she’s got a lot of style,” said Stacy. “She looks a lot like my mom actually.”

Ouch!
thought Annie,
I hope he doesn’t say that to Alice
. “How did your parents feel about you becoming an actor?” asked Annie.

“At first they weren’t too crazy about it, but now, I think they’re proud of me. They’ve come up here to see the other plays I’ve been in, and they’ll be coming up for this one too. They’ve already booked rooms for that weekend at Maplehurst Inn. My parents are really excited that I’m working with actors the caliber of the Fortescues. They saw them in a Broadway show back in the nineties. I’ll graduate this spring, and it will look great on my résumé to be able to say I was in a play with Dolores and Cyril Fortescue.”

****

After lunch, Annie made her way back to her “little box” under the stage—that’s what she had come to call the prompter’s box. In order to get there, she had to pass through the cluttered backstage area, watching out for stagehands busily moving scenery and props to set up for the next scene. She wended her way through the labyrinth of props, walking past a large clothes rack full of costumes until she was almost to the staircase that went down to the storage area under the stage.

Annie stopped a moment and glanced up at the “grid”— the structural support for the machinery that was used to raise and lower scenery, lights, and any other design elements required for the play. The grid was located just below the ceiling of the stage and spanned the entire stage area, including the backstage. Before rehearsal had begun that morning, Annie had seen Trent Bodkin and one of the student lighting technicians adjusting the focus of some of the lights in the grid. Now the tall stepladder they had been using sat in front of the stairs. Annie wasn’t superstitious, but she didn’t especially want to walk under the ladder, so she scooted it over to one side so she could get around it. Then she descended the stairs that took her under the stage.

Since the theater was new, there were very few things actually stored below the stage. Still, the space had a claustrophobic affect on Annie. The lighting was dull, and the corners were dark; in that respect, it was a little bit like the attic at Grey Gables before she had the new track lighting installed. She was always glad when she reached the narrow set of steps that took her up to her “little box” where she could sit on her padded seat and stick her head up, just above the level of the stage. There was a slanted desk area where she laid her script and a couple of pencils; there was also a little light over the desk she could click on and off. Annie had learned to bring along a bottle of water in case she got thirsty and a small pack of tissues in case the story she was watching unfold got to her once again.

The stage was ready and the rehearsal began. From her place in the prompter’s box she could see the entire stage and into the wings on each side. She really thought she had the best seat in the theater.

The company had worked on the first act in the morning, and now, in the afternoon, they began working on the second act. No matter how many times she had seen it, it affected her. At this phase of rehearsals, the actors were still learning about their characters and experimenting with how to deliver their lines for the best effect. Sometimes, it was hard for Annie not to give in to the emotion of the scene, but she knew she had a job to do, and so she watched carefully, trying to be detached from the storyline, but engaged with the particulars of the play.