Текст книги "Foul Play"

Автор книги: Jeff Shelby

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

THIRTY TWO

I spent the rest of the morning finishing up the Snow White program. I wanted it done and off my plate so I wouldn’t have to worry about it any longer. My goal was to be free of everything tied to the play, other than watching my girls in the performance.

If I was allowed into the theater.

I finished it, called the printer and let them know I was emailing them the design. We went over the particulars again and the man on the phone assured me he could get the programs done on time and they’d look great. I gave him Joanne’s contact info and told him to let her know when they were done, that she’d arrange pickup and payment. He thanked me and I hung up and breathed a sigh of relief. Done.

With that finished, I headed to the grocery store. With six mouths to feed in our house, I spent nearly as much time at the store as I did in our own home. It didn’t matter if I found everything on my list and brought it all home. We always needed more of something or something different. I’d often joked to Jake that we’d be better served owning our own farm.

I was turning out of the baking aisle and heading for the cereal, staring at my list on my phone, when I bumped carts with another shopper.

I looked up.

Eleanor Bandersand was behind the other cart, frowning at me. Her hair was piled on top of her head and large gold hoop earring dangled from her ears. Her false eyelashes looked more blue than black today, their color eerily similar to the eyeshadow dusting her eyelids. A thick pearl choker encircled her neck and it looked to be a centimeter away from cutting off her circulation.

I didn’t think that would altogether be a bad thing.

“Good afternoon, Daisy,” she said, lifting her chin and gazing down at me.

“Eleanor,” I said. “Sorry. I was reading my list.”

“Yes, I see that,” she said, her frown deepening.

We stood there awkwardly for a moment and then I maneuvered the cart around her. “See you later.”

“Well, probably not,” she said with a chuckle, her red lips curving into a sardonic smile.

I froze. “What did you say?”

If possible, she tilted her chin even higher, her eyes even buggier than normal. “I think you heard me.”

My patience could only be extended so far. I could take being banned from the theater. I could take finishing the programs despite not being allowed near the theater. I could allow my daughters to continue to participate.

But I could in no way, shape or form take being taunted by a ridiculous pants wearing, obnoxious talking, power hungry wanna-be community theater director.

I pushed my cart past hers until I was right next to her.

Her chin stayed in the air and she eyes me with haughty indifference.

“You may not see me later at your little theater,” I said, lowering my voice. I glanced at the bags of chips and frozen dinners in her cart. “But at least I’m not going to bounce a check when I go to pay for my groceries.”

Her buggy eyes nearly burst out of her head. “Excuse me?”

“I’ve tried to excuse you, Eleanor, but you’ve made it nearly impossible,” I said. “I sent the program to the printer before I drove over here. Let him know if you need to post-date the check.”

Her hand flew to her chest and she gasped. “Why, you horrible woman!”

“I’m the horrible woman?” I said I set my hands on my hips. “Really? You kick me out of your little theater because your kid made something up about me and then you make some smart remark about it? After I finished my volunteer work, work that I didn’t have to do?” I leaned in closer and she took a step back. “Give me a break, lady. At least I’m not lying to everyone about my company when it’s really on the verge of bankruptcy.”

“Where did you hear such a thing?” she hissed at me. “That is patently untrue!”

“Big words and fancy phrases won’t make it untrue, Eleanor,” I told her. “But you reap what you sow.” I smiled at her. “I’m thinking I might just start my own theater group when yours goes under.”

She gasped. “You wouldn’t dare!”

“Wouldn’t I? Really?” I leaned in even closer. “And when people start asking for refunds this weekend because your show is a mess, I genuinely hope you have the money to give it back to them.”

“My show will not be a mess!” she cried, shaking her head.

“It’s not your show, Eleanor,” I told her. “It belongs to the kids. Remember? And from what I hear, it is going to be a mess. So good luck with that.”

Her hands were white on the handle of the cart. Her chin shook. Her nostrils flared at me. Her lips were clamped shut and if she’d had a bat, I had no doubt she would’ve swung it at me, given the anger burning in her eyes.

It wasn’t my finest moment. I shouldn’t have confronted her in the aisle of the grocery store. And it didn’t feel good to say those things to her; at least not as good as I’d thought it might. But she’d been rude and imperious to me from the moment I’d met her and I was done taking her garbage.

I stared her down, waiting for her to passive aggressively attack me or look down her nose at me again.

But then something changed in her eyes. It was like water on a fire. The anger died.

And was replaced by tears.

The shaking in her chin spread to the rest of her body and she bent over, leaning her head against the handle of her shopping cart. Loud, violent sobs exploded from her mouth, the sort of high-pitched wails that made me think of a sad sea lion.

People walked past us, eyeing her, then me before quickly moving away. I stood there, my hands moving from my hips to my cart. I knew better than to try to comfort her; I had no doubt a reassuring hand on her shoulder might lead to a direct punch to my stomach. It was disconcerting to see a grown woman cry halfway between the baking aisle and the cereal aisle at the grocery store. It was even more disconcerting to know that I was partly to blame.

Finally, Eleanor stood up, her eyes red and swollen. Rivers of blue eye shadow and black mascara ran down her cheeks, leaving dark trails on her powdered face. She fished around in her purse and pulled out a tissue, wiping her eyes with a practiced hand. She took a deep breath and her entire body vibrated.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” she said.

“That’s...okay.”

She pursed her lips and took a couple of deep breaths, clearly trying to regain her composure. She started to say something and her mouth hung open for a moment, then closed. She tried again and her mouth did the same thing. Open, then closed. She took another deep breath and hitched her pants up to just under her boobs.

“You’re right,” she finally said. “We are not in great shape. This could be our last production.”

Given that I’d just thrown all that in her face, I wasn’t sure what to say to her admission.

“We’ve bled money for the last year,” she said, staring at the package of frozen lasagna in her cart. “I’ve tried everything I could think of, but nothing has worked. I’ve never had to ask for any kind of assistance before and I guess I’ve waited too long now.” She paused, and I wasn’t sure if it was because she needed to catch her breath or if she was doing it for dramatic effect. “I just thought that if I changed things up this time around, it might also change our fortunes.”

“What did you change up this time around?”

She sniffed several times. “Have you been to any of our previous productions?”

I shook my head. “No.”

She sniffed again and steadied herself against the cart. “My daughter has had the lead role in every production we’ve done for the last three years. Now, mind you, she is a wonderfully talented actress and no matter what anyone thinks, she earned the right to play those roles. But there was a...redundancy...to seeing her onstage so often in the same company.”

I could see how that could be considered redundant. And annoying.

“I think people in the community tired of seeing her. It felt as if they were watching the same production.” She looked at me and tried to force a smile. “So I went with Amanda Pendleton as Snow White.”

I could feel my anger and animosity slipping away. She was doing something I didn’t think possible: Eleanor Bandersand was finding a way to make me sympathize with her. I was starting to feel like Bugs Bunny in that old cartoon where he morphs into a jackass.

“Let me clarify,” Eleanor continued, her voice a little stronger now.  “Amanda earned the role. She’s a very good, very capable young actress. So it’s not as if I just carelessly handed her the role. I just thought it was fortuitous that she tried out at the same time I was looking to...change the dynamic.” She paused. “I was optimistic then. I thought she might bring a few new people to our shows, spark some new enthusiasm in the community.”

I thought she might be overestimating the entire Moose River community’s interest in local theater, but I didn’t think she was wrong in what she’d hoped for.

“So I thought we might endure,” she said, taking another deep breath and then exhaling. “But then Amanda went and ran off or went wherever she went and I’m sure now people are looking at us as some kind of circus.”

Again, I thought she was attaching too much importance and significance to her tiny community theater company. Moose River was a town that supported local endeavors but it wasn’t as if theater dominated the extracurricular scene.

I cleared my throat. “Joanne says ticket sales have been good,” I offered.

She gave me a patronizing smile. “Ticket sales need to be exceptional for us to crawl out of the hole we are in, Ms. Savage.”

I frowned. “I think she thought most of the shows were close to sold out.”

How much more exceptional could ticket sales get?

“Perhaps,” she said. “But does that mean that they’ll still show up? Will they purchase concessions? Will they buy the little Star Grams for the actors? Season ticket passes for the remaining shows?” She raised her eyebrows. “All of those things add up and I’m afraid that given the circumstances surrounding Amanda’s leaving the show and the ensuing chaos, people will choose to remain at home rather than come to see our shows.”

If she was counting on the ancillary income from the shows, then the financial issues were bigger than even Joanne had alluded to. She probably should’ve quit while she was ahead and canceled the Snow White production before it even began. Because it sounded like now the best she could hope for was to make enough money to pay the bills that were already sitting and waiting.

Eleanor took another deep breath and set her hands firmly on the handle of her cart. “I need to be going. Goodbye, Daisy.”

Good thing I wasn’t expecting an apology. Or an un-banning.

But as I watched her waddle away, the waistband of her pants pulled up to the middle of her back, I was struck by one thing.

She’d wanted the production to be a success. She’d needed it to be a success. The production had been harmed by putting Madison in the lead role mid-way through rehearsals.

There was no possible way Eleanor could’ve been involved in Amanda’s disappearance.

THIRTY THREE

“Why are we going to watch cheerleading?” Will complained from the back seat of the minivan.

“Because our friends are in it and we are going to support them,” I told him.

“Yeah, but I thought you told Grace and Sophie the only way they could be cheerleaders was if you got stabbed and died and your ghost couldn’t find them to haunt them.”

I glanced in the rearview mirror. “I don’t think I said anything about getting stabbed.”

He rolled his eyes and moved his gaze to the window.

It was the evening of the regional cheerleading championships and I’d told Brenda we’d come to watch. I wasn’t particularly enamored with the idea of watching a couple hours of plastered-on smiles and young girls wearing clown-like makeup, but the girls were excited to watch Maddie and I had no doubt that they’d find it all exciting. Will was just a victim of my unwillingness to leave anyone at home that night. He’d tried to argue that Emily and Jake were getting to stay home, but I pointed out that Emily had homework and Jake had a conference call. They were staying home to work. When I’d offered up some chore options for him to complete rather than going with us – cleaning the bathroom and polishing the wooden stair banister – he’d sighed and dragged himself to the car.

“We can cheer if we want to,” Grace said behind me. “You always say we can do what we want.”

“Well, yeah,” I warily agreed.

“You just said that we had to think about whether we wanted to cheer for other people or whether we wanted people cheering for us,” Sophie said.

“That’s right,” I said, glad someone had paid attention to whatever rant I’d gone off on whenever I’d gone off on it. “Just depends on what you want.”

“I swear you talked about stabbings and ghosts,” Will muttered, shaking his head.

Ten minutes later we pulled into a very full parking lot at the Moose River Municipal Arena. Minivans like ours occupied half the spaces in the parking lot, and empty school buses were lined up in the fire lane. Families hustled across the lot, hurrying toward the entrance and many of the younger girls were dressed in miniature cheer outfits. And had their faces painted.

“It’s like Halloween out here,” Will observed.

“I love Halloween!” Sophie said.

This was true. Of all the kids, she was the one who most looked forward to Halloween. She had a notebook of costume ideas for the upcoming holiday and had mentally catalogued the best houses for trick-or-treating in the surrounding neighborhoods. I was pretty sure she had a countdown calendar, too.

Grace squealed. “I love candy! Is there gonna be candy?”

This was also true.

“No,” Will practically barked. “There won’t be candy and there won’t be any other costumes except stupid cheerleading costumes. And we’ll have to sit here and watch a bunch of girls do stupid dances and songs for teams that aren’t even here.”

I sighed. Maybe this wouldn’t be such a good idea after all.

I herded them out of the car and toward the arena. The wind was biting and I tucked my chin into my neck, urging the girls to move faster. We found Brenda at the top row of the small venue, waving and pointing to an empty spot next to her.

Derek, her youngest boy, saw us. “Bill! Bill!” he shrieked, mispronouncing Will’s name. He stood up and threw his entire bag of popcorn in the air in celebration. As popcorn rained down on everyone around them, Brenda grabbed him by the elbow and hissed something into his ear. By the time we reached the top of the seats, Derek was trying to scoot away from her, a pout on his face, his arms crossed against his chest in defiance.

I smiled at him and his pout deepened. “You sit here,” he said to Will, pointing to the empty space next to him.

Will smiled and sat down and, within seconds, was chatting with Derek about Spiderman and Minecraft. I wondered why he was so great with other kids and so awful with his own siblings.

Brenda shifted closer to Derek, juggling Mary in her lap. She was well past the age that she needed to be held, but Mary clung to her like a baby koala, especially in unfamiliar places… like the arena filled with mini cheerleaders and blaring dance music.

“That was quite the greeting,” I said, sliding into the seat next to her.

The girls sat down on the bench above us. Grace’s shoes pressed into my butt and Sophie shrugged out of her jacket, dropping it on my back.

“Wasn’t it?” Brenda said through gritted teeth. “I hope everyone enjoyed their free popcorn. In their ears.”

“No one seems terribly disturbed,” I said, glancing at the people in the rows below us. One woman with curly red hair still had some kernels on top of her head. “They’ve got kids. They understand.”

“They don’t have this kid,” she muttered, keeping an eye on him as he started pulling on Will’s arm.

“He’s fine,” I told her. “He’s exuberant.”

“I should’ve named him Exuberant.”

I chuckled. Derek was all boy, and then some. He was a cross between a tornado and a hurricane. Despite his destructive tendencies, he could also be incredibly sweet and kind. And he was probably one of the cutest preschoolers I’d ever seen.

“When does Maddie’s team perform?” I asked.

She checked the brochure in her hand. “They’re next to last. It’s going to be...interesting.”

“Why do you say it like that?”

She leaned back against the concrete wall behind us. “Well, her coach is...interesting.”

I chuckled. “That’s one word for her.”

Brenda looked at me. “You met her? When I put you on pick up duty?”

“Oh, we met, yes,” I said. Brenda held out her bag of popcorn and I took a handful. “I made the mistake of wearing a Moose River sweatshirt when I came the first time.”

Brenda’s eyes widened. “You didn’t.”

“I did.”

“Yeah, she doesn’t like that.”

“She made that very clear.”

“Well, I feel like she’s a good coach, in that she can teach dance and strength and tumbling,” Brenda said. Mary reached into the popcorn bag and pulled out one piece. She stuck it in Brenda’s mouth. “Thanks, sweetie,” she told her, planting a kiss on top of her head. She turned back to me. “But when it comes to choreography for the entire team?” She made a clicking sound with her tongue. “She has some kind of ‘out there’ ideas.”

“Out there?”

How could anything in cheerleading be considered ‘out there?’ They chanted and shook pom poms and formed pyramids.

“Let’s just say they’ll probably have the most unique routine you’ll see today,” she said. She leaned closer to me. “If Maddie actually cared about cheerleading, then we’d probably look for another team. But she doesn’t. She’s just looking to improve her skills to carry over to ballet. This is close, this is cheap and it is entertaining in it’s own way.”

“I think I’m actually excited to watch now.”

“The good news is Maddie is realistic about their chances,” she said. Mary shoved another piece in her mouth. She chewed and swallowed. “The bad news is that it will still probably not be good.”

I shifted on the bleacher. “I thought they had a shot at winning since Amanda Pendleton is missing.”

“Technically, yes, their chances are better,” Brenda said, an amused expression settling on her face. “But...well, I’ll just let you watch.”

“You’re a tease.”

She leaned across me. “Derek! Stop kicking him!”

I glanced over at him. He was methodically kicking Will in the shin, over and over, like a hammer on a nail. Will just laughed as Derek froze and leaned back in his seat.

“Do it again and…and…” Brenda stopped, trying to think of a punishment.

“And I won’t play Minecraft with you the next time I come over,” Will provided.

Derek’s face fell and his foot stilled. Brenda gave Will a grateful look.

“You’re like The Derek Whisperer,” she told him. “I might need you to come live with me for the next thirteen years.”

Will paled a little at the suggestion but still managed a smile in response.

Grace nudged me. “I want candy,” she whispered loudly.

“I don’t have any.”

“The concession stand does. I see people with M&Ms and Skittles. And Milky Ways. And hot dogs.”

“Did you bring money?” I asked.

She frowned. “No.”

“I did,” Sophie announced.

I turned around. She pulled a five-dollar bill out of her jeans pocket. “Can I go get something?” she asked.

“Sure,” I told her.

“Hey,” Grace said. “Will you buy me something? I’ll pay you back.”

Will’s eagle eyes zeroed in on Sophie’s money. He stood up. “Me, too. I’ll even pay you a penny interest.”

They scampered down the benches, negotiating interest rates and what Sophie was willing to accept in exchange for fronting them money.”

“Hey,” I said to Brenda. I glanced at the benches again. “You’re missing someone. Please don’t tell me Johnny is still lost in another corn maze.”

She giggled. “Pretty sure those are off-limits for all eternity now. No, Drew and Melissa had a birthday party to go to. He practically begged to take him, even though it’s at Chuck E. Cheese. Anything to get out of coming to this.”

Drew was Brenda’s oldest son, who was about as different from Derek as night and day, and Melissa was the same age as Grace, and one of her best friends – and also the complete opposite of Derek.

The music abruptly turned off and the lights flickered off and then back on. An emcee came out to the center of the arena, microphone in hand, and welcomed us all to the competition. She ran down the list of teams competing, introduced the judges and reminded us about good sportsmanship and cheering positively. The kids came back from the concession stand, each one clutching a piece of candy. They sat down just as the emcee finished speaking.

The first team came out, a hurricane of green and white outfits, bouncing around the gym like pinballs as a heavy bass thrummed through the walls of the arena. They launched right into their routine, screaming and dancing and tumbling. They punched the air and exploded with happiness when they finished their routine. A group of fans launched out of their seats, hooting and hollering. They were dressed in the same green and white, some with their faces painted with matching stripes.

Nothing says commitment like adults painting their faces.

“Were they good?” I asked Brenda. “They looked good to me.”

Brenda nodded. She had a board book in her hand and Mary was yanking on one of the paper lift-the-flaps. “They were pretty good, but they made some mistakes. Wait until Moose River Fusion comes out. You’ll see the difference, even without Amanda.”

Two groups later, Moose River charged out into the gym, clad in their red and black uniforms, making all of these weird hand gestures and air punches and jumps. But Brenda was right. When the music started, they were clearly better than everyone else. They jumped higher, they cheered louder and their tumbling passes were incredible. They looked more like Olympic gymnasts than kids from my town. There were no bobbles, no missteps, no trips. They were like a well-oiled machine.

“And I’m not kidding you when I tell you that Amanda Pendleton made them even better,” Brenda yelled into my ear when the crowd exploded with applause at their finish.

I couldn’t imagine what more she could bring to an already phenomenal team, but I took her word for it.

We watched six more teams go before Maddie and the Cheerlicious Cheetahs came sprinting out to the middle of the venue. At first, they seemed just like the other groups. Full of energy, big smiles, snazzy uniforms, jumping around like they had ants in their pants. But they seemed more nervous and their smiles tended to flicker as they looked for Greta Mathisen, who was perched down in the front row, sitting ramrod straight, her hands balled into fists on her thighs.

The lights dimmed and the music began. I recognized it immediately. Michael Jackson’s Thriller. They began their routine and that was when I realized what Brenda meant by...interesting.

It was a weird song choice. It didn’t have the same upbeat rhythms and cadences of the songs we’d already heard, and I didn’t think it really lended itself to creating lots of energy in the arena, energy for the cheerleaders to feed off of.

I wasn’t wrong.

The routine was this weird blend of dance and cheer, some girls doing tumbling passes while others did the famous zombie dance behind them. It was all out of sync and the audience wasn’t entirely sure how to take it. There was some clapping, some nervous laughter and some confusion. The girls were admirably trying to hold the routine together, but even they didn’t even seem sure as to what they were trying to accomplish.

Greta Mathisen was still rigid on the bleacher bench, but I could see her eyes were flitting around, gauging the reaction of everyone in the stands. I wasn’t an expert, but I knew she couldn’t have been pleased. The energy that had permeated the gym during the earlier performances had dissipated. Slowly, her plastered-on smile flattened out. Her lips clamped together as she realized that her team – and the routine she was responsible for – wasn’t going over the way she’d probably hoped.

The finale to their act was a basket toss – Brenda was helping me with the lingo – and when the girl in the basket got tossed, she did another zombie pose high up in the air. I’m sure at some point, Greta Mathisen thought it might look different or unique, but to me, all it looked like was that she’d lost her composure and was flailing in the air.

When the music stopped and the zombies froze, the gym was quiet for a moment. Painfully so. And then a few hands clapped together and the applause started. But the genuine screaming and hooting and hollering that I’d witnessed from the bleachers with the other teams was not there.

“Told you,” Brenda whispered in my ear. “Interesting.”

“Uh...yeah.”

I watched Greta Mathisen rise stiffly from the bleachers and follow her kids out of the gym. She may have been slightly off her rocker, but I was sure even she had felt what everyone else in the gym did.

The routine hadn’t worked.

And by the way she walked, her shoulders slumped, a look of resignation on her face, she’d probably known it coming into the competition. Despite her boasts and predictions about winning and finally taking home the trophy, there was no way she could have thought that routine was going to trump all of the others, even if Moose River had been weakened by Amanda’s absence.

As the last team came out to perform, decked out in purple and yellow cheer outfits, bouncing around on the gym floor, it occurred to me that I could eliminate another suspect from my list.

If Greta Mathisen knew her team genuinely had no shot, there was no way she would’ve risked taking Amanda Pendleton.