Читать книгу Cue the Dead Guy - H. Mel Malton - Страница 11

WOODSMAN: The job is hard, the days are long / but forest work will make you strong.

-The Glass Flute, Scene vii

We all went to look, thundering down the stairs like a bunch of kids let out of school.

It was Jason’s leather vest, all right, tangled in rope and floating at the edge of the black square of frigid water. Without Jason in it, it was just a piece of clothing, but the implication was horrible, nonetheless. It was like seeing Jason’s persona, drowned.

“Jesus,” Rico said.

“You think he’s down there?” Amber whispered. A rush of blood rocketed to my head, which made my battered nose throb. One thump like a drumbeat. I’d seen a dead body before—two, actually—and I wasn’t keen on seeing another one. We all stared at the water in silence, expecting to see a dim, pale shape bobbing just below the surface.

Nobody ran forward to fish around. After all, it was just a vest, but there was an uncomfortable, final sort of feeling in the air. Meredith crouched at the edge and reached down to untangle the garment from its tether. She laid the sodden vest on the shop floor, where it oozed water like a dead seal. It’s just a vest, I kept telling myself. It doesn’t mean anything.

“I suppose he could have, you know, taken it off down here and it fell in, and he just didn’t bother to pull it out,” Tobin said, doubtfully.

“He never took it off,” Amber said.

“Except to shower,” Shane said and snickered. There was a nasty little pause and we all stared at Shane, shocked. “Sorry. Joking,” he said, lifting his hands in a gesture of apology.

“Even if he did take it off, and it fell in somehow, he’d rather have died than lose it,” Amber said. We all let that one hang in the air.

“Did Jason know how to swim?” someone asked. Amber burst into tears.

Kim and Juliet went upstairs to call the cops, and the rest of us just stood there until someone noticed that Amber was making the transition from tears to hysterics. Shane put his arm around her and led her up the stairs.

“Let’s go to the lobby, kid,” he said. “You don’t need to be here. It’s nice and warm up there. C’mon, you’ll be okay.”

“Hope he doesn’t try to jump her,” I heard Meredith mutter.

Ruth was gazing intently at the mass of black cord that had prevented Jason’s vest, if not his body, from disappearing into the icy, swiftly running depths of the Kuskawa river. The spring run-off was at its peak, and the edges of the pool foamed with the movement underneath. One end of the rope had somehow caught on one of the old brass mooring cleats and the tip flashed silver. “Those are my missing amp cables,” she said. Not rope. Audio cable. Weird. “They’ll have my fingerprints all over them. They’ll think I did it.”

“Did what?” Bradley said. “Killed him? It was obviously an accident, Ruth.”

“What kind of accident?” I said.

“Well, he probably fell down those treacherous stairs, like your friend did last night,” Bradley said, pointing at Rico, who cringed.

“Yeah, that’s possible, I guess,” Ruth said, thoughtfully. “He fell down the stairs with his arms full of amp cables and went straight into the water. Bumped his head, maybe, going down.”

“What would he be doing coming down here with amp cables at four-thirty in the morning?” Tobin said. “That’s when I locked up. He wasn’t here then.”

“He was obsessive,” Bradley said. “You know he was setting up the rehearsal space last night. Didn’t you check upstairs?”

“Sure I did. Like always. Lights were off. Nobody home.”

“Maybe he was in the bathroom.”

“You don’t turn the lights off in the room you’re working in if you’re just stepping out to go to the can,” Tobin said.

“So maybe he was conserving energy.”

“Anyway, he wouldn’t come down here if he was setting up sound equipment. That’s all stored upstairs,” Tobin said.

“Polly,” Rico said.

“What?”

“I want to go home.”

“I know, Rico. Me too, but we’ll have to stay. The police, eh? Oh, man. I bet they send Becker.”

Rico shot me a look that was pure sympathy.

“Look, guys,” I said, “we can’t do much good down here, and the more people that hang around, the more mess we’ll make of the scene, whether it was an accident or not. We probably shouldn’t have pulled the vest out of the water. Tampering with the evidence, you know?”

“Well, excuse me for living,” Meredith said.

“I didn’t mean you did it on purpose or anything,” I said, but Meredith was already making her exit.

“Come on, Bradley,” she said. “Let’s leave Nancy Drew to collect clues.” She stomped up the stairs, and Brad followed meekly behind.

“Oops,” I said.

“Touchy,” Ruth said.

“You did sound kind of bossy,” Tobin said. I stuck my tongue out at him. “You guys can go up, but I’ll stay down here,” he said. “Someone should, in case, you know, the killer comes back or something. They’ll want to talk to me first, anyway. I was the last person here last night, and I found Jason’s vest.”

“The killer? You don’t think it was an accident?” Ruth said.

“Look at the cables,” Tobin said. “That’s not an accidental tangle. Someone’s wrapped the cable around the cleat like they were mooring a boat.” We looked. It was true. The nautical knot at the end of the cable couldn’t possibly have happened by chance.

“Yikes,” Ruth said. “You haven’t handled the amp cables, have you, Tobin? You two get along okay?”

“Just go upstairs.”

The cast wasn’t in the lobby. There was only Kim Lee, working calmly at her computer, wearing that blank, expert-keyboard-person expression which meant that her brain was directly connected to her fingers.

“Where is everybody?” I said.

“They’re upstairs. Juliet said they might as well get started with the video, instead of sitting around worrying.”

“How sensitive,” Rico said. Kim smiled slightly and kept on typing.

“No sing-through?” I said. “Meredith’ll be pleased.”

“Juliet wanted one, but Ruth said her amp cables are otherwise occupied, so there’s no sound system.” Oh yeah. Tobin would have to go out and buy new ones. Usually, it was the stage-manager’s job to purchase tech supplies, but Jason was “otherwise occupied”, too.

“Are the cops on the way?” I asked.

“They said they’d send somebody over,” Kim said, “but they didn’t seem overly concerned. They said Jason’s vest didn’t sound like enough to warrant a river search. Usually they wait for twenty-four hours in the case of a missing person.”

“Typical,” I said. “Kuskawa’s finest, responding with speed and alacrity. Jason’s body’ll be washed out to Port Mortimer by the time they decide the missing person is missing for good.”

“Well, that’s what they told us,” Kim said and shrugged. “Anyway, they did say someone would come, but it didn’t sound like they’d drop everything and scream in here with the flashers on. Juliet told me to wait for them.”

“What about our AIDS benefit meeting?” Rico said.

“We could have it now, I guess,” she said. “Polly, you should go on up to the rehearsal space. Juliet’s not in the best of moods.” Rico told me he would find his own way home after the meeting.

I went. The cops would send Becker, I knew they would, and I’d rather sit though the Flute video for the thousandth time than have to deal with him.

The Glass Flute is a simple, lovely story, extolling the virtues of bravery, self-sacrifice and love, all of the things currently lacking in children’s television programming, which is why the show is such a hit. While the production itself is reasonably hi-tech, with ultraviolet light, glow-in-the-dark effects and several actual explosions, the story is not set in cyber-space.

The plot revolves around a young boy called Kevin (played by Shane). Kevin’s mother (Meredith) is in bed, wasting away from a romantic, fatal disease that makes her weak and soft-voiced but doesn’t have any visible nasty stuff. (Rico once said that the Flute would be more timely if the Mother puppet was actually covered in purple sores. He can be bitter sometimes.) The only thing that can save Mother is to have a bite of the Fruit of Life, which grows on a tree at the top of the mountain nearby. Mother is, of course, a widow, and therefore the only answer is for Kevin to go get it himself.

Brave little Kevin decides he’s up to the job, in spite of the fact that the mountain is full of evil characters.

“Take this for protection,” Mother says and gives him a glass flute, which has been in the family for generations. Kevin is gently derisive, saying he’d rather have a gun, but takes it, dutifully. We all know the flute is magic, because whenever it’s taken out of its leather sheath, weird unearthly music comes from nowhere.

Kevin’s adventure begins. On the way up the mountain, he meets a Cat (Meredith again) who tries to convince him that his quest is futile, and that lying around all day is much more sensible. He meets a Princess (Amber) who needs rescuing, a Woodsman (Bradley) who does the father-figure thing, and a serpent (Amber) who does Biblical temptation-acting. The flute helps Kevin make the right decisions, the Dragon (Bradley) defending the fruit is vanquished, the apple is plucked and Mother is saved. The Woodsman and Mother end up completing the requisite nuclear family, much to the delight of the Christian schools that book the show.

The Flute may sound mawkish and sentimental, but it was written by Juliet—a master. If Juliet can get reviews like “Heartwarming, a tear-jerker” out of her 1973 hit Barmaids on Parade, then a show like the Flute is, well, child’s play.

When I got upstairs, the lights were dimmed and the cast huddled on the floor like kids watching Saturday morning cartoons. They were paired off, Shane with his arm around Amber, and Bradley and Meredith snuggled together like conspirators. The blue light from the TV screen, set up in front of the “black box” of the portable stage, cast an eerie glow over their faces, which were intent and serious. Amber’s face was tear-streaked, which may have been the effects of Juliet’s script, but was more likely due to the Jason-thing. Juliet sat at the SM’s/director’s table at the back of the hall with Ruth, going over some notes.

“Police here yet?” Juliet asked quietly, as I tiptoed over and pulled up a chair.

“Nope. Tobin’s down there keeping an eye on the evidence until they get here.”

“Evidence? Polly, dear, you are too Grand Guignol for words. If the kid has drowned, it’s a tragedy, but let’s not jump to conclusions.”

“Amber said he never takes that vest off,” I whispered back. “What’s your explanation?”

Juliet made a significant grimace towards Shane and Amber.

“I’d say there was some history with those two and young Jason couldn’t handle it,” she said. “I think he threw his little SM’s vest in the water as some sort of defiant gesture and made tracks. Which,” she added, “leaves us with no stage manager.” She fixed me with a stare that made the hair on the back of my neck stand straight up.

“You’ve kept up your Equity membership, haven’t you, dear?”

I shivered. What had I said to Rico the night before? Touring is murder. There’s no way I’d ever do it again. Still, I blush when I lie, and Juliet knows it.

“Ummm . . . yeah. I’m still in good standing.”

“Puppet business booming, is it?”

“Not as such.”

“You’ll get two months at production stage manager rates, with a per diem and use of the Steamboat van. Now, let’s talk about the rehearsal schedule,” she said, pushing Jason’s prompt script binder towards me.

I sighed. PSMs make big bucks. The cast would hate me for taking Jason’s job when his body wasn’t even a body yet, and anyway, I hate stage management. But I had a dependent now. A mutt called Lug-Nut whose vet bills were climbing (a recent run-in with a porcupine) and whose per-month food bill was more than I get for a marionette commission.

“Write it into my contract,” I said. “My dog comes with us on tour, and I get my own room.”

“Whatever, dear,” Juliet said. “Now, perhaps you’ll go out and pick up some amp cables so we can do a sing-through this afternoon. Keys are in the van.”