26. Fast Car
Fast Car
Charlotte
October 24th, 1998
R ochelle perches on the large work island in the costume shop, one leg tucked beneath her petite, curvy body and passes me a bolt of muslin. Early rehearsals for A Christmas Carol have started on stage and voices carry into the room.
Bronnie runs straight for the white basement door and grabs the antique glass knob.
“Absolutely not, young lady. Are you allowed to go down there?” I ask.
She turns, wide-eyed, as though it only now occurred to her. “No, Mommy.”
“Tell me why.”
“It’s not safe. But I like dirt.”
Ever since she heard one of the stage crew complaining about the dirt-floor basement, it’s become a temptation. She wants to play in it. Heaven, help us all.
I shudder when I remember the last time Bronnie was down there. “We don’t play in the yucky, dangerous basement. There are big backdrops and things that could fall on you.”
Our stage manager, Jen, brown hair in a ponytail, blue eyes bright behind her glasses, and cheeks flushed from exertion, hefts a side table over her shoulder. She’s on her way through the costume shop to backstage, but she pauses to give Bronnie a little attention. “Don’t go down there, kiddo. It’s where the spirit of the theater lives.”
Rochelle and I both go wide-eyed, then shoot her matching scowls, but Bronnie stares up at her in delight. “What’s a spiwit?”
Jen winks. “A ghost. Wooooo! Every theater’s got one. Ours likes to do stupid shit like steal perfectly good backdrops so we have to paint them twice.”
“Holy shit,” Rochelle breathes, her face ashen.
“Would you two stop swearing in front of my four-year-old?” I demand.
“Then you stop taking the Lord’s name in vain.” Maureen winks at me from the doorway to the scene shop. Curly auburn hair tucked under a green handkerchief, she walks past me with the second side table in her arms. “That shit’ll send you to hell.”
“That’s definitely the part that’s damning me to the pit of fire,” I mutter.
“Shitshitshit. Woooooo!” Bronnie says.
“Let’s use nicer words. And Miss Jen is teasing about ghosts, Bronnie. They’re not real.” I force a laugh and make sure it’s at exactly the right pitch.
Maureen mutters, “Well, someone made the Victorian shop scene disappear. Who else would want it?”
No one had used that crappy backdrop in years. It was big enough that we could lay it out, roll Polford’s dead body in it and use it to drag him down the stairs without having to see or touch him any more than necessary. He’s buried in it now.
It took four years for someone to even notice it was missing, but the sheer amount of interference I’ve had to run guarding his body is insane.
We should have been able to bury him and forget about it. First, RealFreedom wanted to dig into the foundation to make the ceilings higher and pour a concrete floor. Then the pipes froze last winter, broke, and flooded down there when they thawed, turning the dirt floor to mud, once more igniting the debate about updating the basement floor. Not to mention my terror that all that water would somehow make Polford’s body rise to the surface.
Then Greg Wilson and his cronies became relentless in their quest to install a hydraulic lift down there. Every time I think I’ve convinced them to let it go, he’s back at it, coming from another angle.
It never ends. I live with constant fear of discovery every single day.
We should have tossed him in the river. The theater was not the “safe” choice I’d hoped it would be.
Rochelle waves her hand. “Wasn’t the paint on that backdrop all cracked and ruined anyway? It was garbage. Someone probably tossed it in the dumpster years ago.”
Jen straightens, her eyebrows coming down hard in her “Scary Stage Manager” look. “Nobody throws away a backdrop without talking to me, first.”
I look down at the fabric and pretend to be absorbed in positioning the selvage.
Maureen and Jen continue out the door, still muttering about the missing canvas.
Bronnie heaves her shoulders, then wanders back to peer over the top of the green laminate island. When she reaches for a tomato-shaped pincushion, I move it farther back. “Why don’t you draw on the chalkboard?”
She squeals with joy, then darts across the room to the green board on the wall.
I shoot Rochelle a stressed glance. “Should we be worried?”
“People have claimed this place was haunted for as long as the building has existed. You heard her. Every theater has one.”
“You looked freaked out,” I say.
“Momentary loss of common sense.” Rochelle’s lips twitch before she turns serious. “You know Arden is right. You don’t have to stay here. Besides, you have to show Phyllis,” she sneers the woman’s name, “that she’s full of it.”
I pause in the act of pinning a Victorian nightshirt pattern to the ivory cotton and shoot her a frustrated look. “I have to stay and act as liaison with RealFreedom.”
“I’ll keep an eye on the theater.” Rochelle widens her eyes. “If anything happens that I need you for, I’ll call you.”
“If Arden and I were together, the press would poke around because the chick who lives in the single-wide trailer is dating a McRae.” I stab a pin into the paper and fabric to secure it. “They’ll start out calling it a feel-good piece, then, before you know it, I’m either ‘pathetic’ or a ‘gold-digger.’”
“Who cares what they say?” she asks.
Another pin slides into place. “After they interview people in town about me, they’ll plaster the old news about the assault all over the national news. Every job I ever have, every person I meet”—another pin—“will view me through that lens, just like the townies. When the reporters realize the guy who did it has been missing for more than four years”—pin—“they’ll dig even deeper trying to come up with a connection.”
Rochelle’s brow furrows in sympathy. “Reporters suck. It’d be hard for a while, but you don’t have to read the papers or turn on the TV. And it was five years between what he did and when he disappeared. The press won’t find anything suspicious, and they’ll move on because they’ll decide”—she shrugs—“it was a crazy coincidence .”
“If I hadn’t been here to act as a go-between for the theater and RealFreedom, Greg would have gotten his way and installed that stupid hydraulic lift. Why can’t RealFreedom be terrible landlords who neglect this building? It’s practically a full-time job to stay ahead of their generosity.”
Rochelle rips at another seam in the old blazer we’re going to repurpose into a Tiny Tim costume. “You could see if I could take over as the liaison. Then you can go on your way, and I’ll be here to keep an eye on things.”
I accidentally poke myself in the thumb with a straight pin and suck away the sting. “What if the members decide to vote on it, and you don’t win?”
“Let’s sneak in the switch and announce it as a done-deal.”
This conversation is dangerous. “It wouldn’t be too much for you?”
Rochelle scoffs. “It doesn’t make sense for you to be the one carrying this load. You're the one with a hot guy waiting in the wings out of state. I’m not going anywhere. It may as well be me.”
I want to believe I could walk away so badly it hurts. “I don’t know.”
“Or”—Rochelle raises her eyebrows—“we could go with Plan B.”
I shake my head. “Nonononono. Plan B is a bad idea.”
“Plan B would mean we could stop worrying all the time,” she says.
“Plan B is disgusting, and it could end up causing more problems than it solves.”
“It is pretty gross.” Her mouth turns down in an expression of disgust.
I grunt in agreement.
“I'll take over as liaison, then. Less messy.” She hesitates. “What would Arden do if you told him?”
I place the last pin and sit back on my stool. “Arden is very . . . I guess upright is the word. You should have seen his reaction when I asked if Steve did anything illegal.”
She cringes. “So much for hoping for a little morally gray mixed into that white hat,” she says.
I shake my head. “He’s complicated. When he thinks something needs to happen, he finds ways that are technically legal but kind of sneaky. Like manipulating Calvin Marsh into voluntarily serving time in Alaska.”
She closes her eyes and sighs. “I could have kissed him for that.”
“But he also told me once that if someone cared about me, they wouldn’t drag me into their mess. So the reverse stands to reason.”
“Ouch.”
“He’d support self-defense, if he believed us, but everything we did after that . . .” I shake my head. “It would be bad,” I say.
“Are you going to go to the masquerade?” Rochelle asks.
I tip my head back to look at the white ceiling tiles. “Is it a bad idea?”
“No, and if you haven’t decided, we should make the dress. Leave your options open.” She reaches behind her, then brandishes the latest edition of Vogue . “We can pull it off.”
“Would you want to be with someone who kept such a big secret from you?” I ask.
“You could look at it as being similar to him not discussing cases. It’s not a lie. It’s ‘confidentiality.’” Rochelle makes finger quotes.
”Seems like a stretch,” I say.
“Well, you can’t tell him. So the only thing you can do is decide whether to feel guilty about it or not,” Rochelle says.
“I can’t turn off guilt like it’s a light switch,” I say in exasperation.
“In this case, you should. Besides, if you told him, you’d be betraying my trust. Think of it as receiving confession.”
We both stare at each other for a beat.
“You’re my priest,” she clarifies.
I snort.
She curls her lips under her teeth and fakes an innocent expression.
“This . . . isn’t funny.” I collapse, laying my head on my arms and laughing.
Rochelle cackles. “I know. It’s . . . f-freaking terrible.”
I laugh harder.
One of the guys in the cast wanders into the room and smiles at the two of us. “I’m not even going to ask.”
Rochelle nods. “You’re a wise man, Perry.”
Perry tugs gently on Bronnie’s pigtail as he passes her on his way to the fridge in the corner. “Just grabbing some water. Rehearsals under those lights are murder.”
Rochelle and I laugh until we cry.