After breakfast I dropped Mom off at the Stratton and made my way to the library. There was more than half an hour before we opened, so I sat at my desk, turned on my laptop and started researching Hugh Davis’s history as a director. Mom had said he hadn’t done much of significance in the previous eighteen months, so I went back a year and a half and started from there.
What I very quickly found out was that there were just too many productions with too many actors for me to figure out who the two women were that Hugh had bullied. I leaned back in my chair and swung around to look out the window. There had to be a better way.
Chloe Miller came in just after ten with the book of poetry she’d borrowed. She walked over to the desk and held out the book. “Thank you,” she said. “The poem was perfect.”
“You’re so welcome. How are rehearsals going?”
“They’re going well. I met your mom, by the way. I like her.” She smiled. “Everything’s coming together.”
“That’s good to hear.”
Every time I’d seen Chloe she was alone. It struck me that the polished, put-together actress was a little shy. I remembered I’d heard that she’d sat down in the middle of the seniors’ reading group and answered their questions when she’d been in the building the other day. “Susan told me you spent half an hour the other morning getting peppered with questions when you were here. Thank you.”
“I didn’t mind,” she said, playing with a hammered-gold ring on her left middle finger. “They were fun. They asked some great questions about staging a production.”
“Chloe, are you free around one o’clock?” I asked. “I’d love to take you to lunch.”
“For taking a couple of minutes to talk to a few senior citizens?” She shook her head. “It’s not necessary, Kathleen.”
“It wasn’t just a couple of minutes or just a few senior citizens. But if you don’t have time, I understand.”
“I do have time,” she said. She smiled. “It would be fun to have lunch. How about I meet you here at one o’clock?”
“Perfect,” I said.
Around eleven thirty Susan poked her head around my office door. I was deep into the budget and started when she said my name. “Sorry,” she said. “Andrew’s here with some kind of panel thing that’s supposed to go in the gazebo. I thought we should check with you first.”
“I better take a look at this,” I said. “I’ll come down.”
Abigail and Andrew were in the parking lot with Burtis Chapman’s truck. There was a large latticework panel tied down in the bed of the truck.
“Hey, Kathleen,” Andrew said. “This is supposed to go at the back of the gazebo. Is that going to be a problem?”
Abigail came around the side of the truck. “Ben wants to use it as a backdrop,” she said. “If that’s okay.”
“How are you planning on keeping it in place?” I asked. The wooden panel was long and wide and I didn’t want the gazebo damaged in any way.
“Bungee cords,” Andrew said. “It’s actually two pieces, hinged. It stands up by itself. The cords are just for added stability.”
I leaned over the side of the truck bed. The backdrop looked sturdy enough. “How are you going to keep someone from just walking off with it in the middle of the night?” I said to Andrew.
He grinned at me. “You mean not everyone in Mayville Heights is a law-abiding citizen? I’m shocked.”
“Oh, people who live here are honest and law-abiding,” Abigail said. “It’s just that sometimes we get some ‘undesirables’ from out of town.” She said the whole thing with a completely straight face.
Andrew looked at her a little uncertainly. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll unload this and we can see if it’s going to work.”
Abigail caught my eye and winked.
He’d brought a wheeled dolly with him and with a little help he got the backdrop on it and around the building to the gazebo. It took only a few minutes to set it in place.
“What do you think?” Andrew said to Abigail.
“I’m just going to see how it looks from each side,” she said, heading across the grass.
He came to stand beside me and look at his handiwork.
“It looks fine to me,” I said. “But you didn’t answer my question. What are you going to do at night?”
“Oren says there a basement and it’s dry.”
I nodded. “That would work.”
“I saw your mother,” Andrew said. He brushed some sawdust off his denim shirt.
“And?”
“She told me to go home. She told me I was a year and a half too late. And she called me a dipwad in Hungarian. At least I think it was Hungarian. And dipwad.”
I couldn’t help smiling at him. He was trying so hard to fix things between us. Once again I caught myself wondering if I was crazy not to give him a chance. He was funny and handsome, and unlike Marcus, he didn’t make a secret of how he felt about me.
He glanced over at Abigail, still studying the backdrop. “Have lunch with me, Kath. Take the afternoon off and we’ll play hooky and drive into Minneapolis.”
I shook my head. “I can’t play hooky. I have budget numbers to go over.”
“Then at least have lunch with me.”
I stuffed my hands in my pockets and took several steps away from him on the pretext of looking at the gazebo from another angle. “I can’t do that, either. I’m having lunch with Chloe Miller.”
“The actress from the festival?” he asked, running the palm of his hand over the stubble on his chin.
“Uh-huh.”
“Did you notice she has a bit of a limp?”
“I did,” I said. “I’m kind of surprised that you did, though. It’s not the kind of thing you used to pick up on.”
“You’re not the only person who’s changed, Kathleen,” he said.
I raised my eyebrows. “Touché.”
He smiled. “Okay, so I didn’t actually notice the limp; Abigail did. But I did notice Chloe had scars on her arm. She was helping to waterproof the backdrop. I asked her what happened and she said she was in a car accident. She spent weeks in the hospital.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said.
“Didn’t know what?” Abigail asked, coming back across the grass toward us. She glanced at Andrew. “That’s fine, by the way, but I think Ben should take a look just to be sure.”
“Andrew said Chloe Miller was in an accident. I wondered why I hadn’t seen her in anything for so long.”
Abigail nodded. “Ben told me that about two years ago she just seemed to drop out of sight. For months no one knew where she was.” She rolled her eyes. “You know the kind of stories that start going around. People said she had a drug problem. They said she was in rehab.”
Andrew gestured toward the gazebo. “I’m just going to double-check those bungee cords. I’ll be right back.”
Abigail and I started toward the parking lot.
“So Chloe was in a car accident?” I said.
“She was visiting family in Florida, driving to the beach in a convertible with the top down. A glass-repair truck ran the light and hit the car broadside. There was a lot of broken glass and Chloe was cut all over.” Abigail shook her head. “Ben said it was a miracle her face was okay.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Remember when we were talking about how some people think Yesterday’s Child is jinxed?”
I nodded.
She gave me a grim smile. “Chloe was in a production of Yesterday’s Child right before her accident.”
“C’mon, don’t tell me you’re starting to believe in the jinx?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Really?” I said.
“Originally Yesterday’s Child was going to be part of the festival lineup.” Abigail held out both hands. “There was a fire at the theater in Red Wing and now Hugh’s dead.”