Act V Read online

  “Hot date, Glynn?” That was Daren, her Macduff. “You gonna fill us in on the details tomorrow?” He lifted his eyebrows.

  “If I told you,” she winked, “you wouldn’t respect me in the morning.”

  Daren cackled out loud, joined by a few others.

  Glynnis went on. “I wanted to remind you of a couple of things. One, we open in three weeks. If you don’t already know your lines, eat, sleep, and dream them tonight. No more scripts as of tomorrow.” A few sheepish giggles went up from the group. Glynnis knew that some of these guys would be memorizing lines over their Froot Loops tomorrow, but they would know their lines. “I mean it! Secondly, we are the only professional theatre group in this town. We actually get paid to do what we’re doing. Yes, it’s Shakespeare in the Park and thus depends on donations rather than tickets, but people still expect more of us than the Little Theatre down the street. And we want the donations to be big! Starting tomorrow, I want to believe I’m living in sixteenth century Scotland.”

  Nods bobbed across the stage.

  “See you at 9a.m.”

  *****

  Addison Paddix stood up from his desk and stretched, rising to his full 5’ 8” and adding tiptoe height to that, reaching 5’ 10’. “It’s been a long, boring day, Bubba. I’m headed home. Laney has chicken baking and I’ve been warned not to let it get dried out.”

  Brice stared at his partner for a couple of seconds. “I thought Laney didn’t cook.”

  “Can’t and doesn’t are two different things. You know, her mama was a great cook. She could stew up squash, mash potatoes, and serve ‘em all with pot roast that would make you beg for more. I don’t know what happened to Laney.” He watched as Brice took out his notepad and jotted down something, keeping it hidden from Addison. “You writin’ down something important?”

  “Just quoting you on that bit about Laney in case I need it later.”

  “You ought’a be doin’ stand-up comedy.”

  “I could make a two-figure salary easy.”

  “Well just so you know…cookin’ ain’t everything. A woman who can cook is nice to have around, but I’d rather have somebody with a brain any day, and my Laney can outsmart the both of us, not to mention that she’s just plain nice to look at.”

  “And yet she married you. Must have been love.”

  “Yeah, that and my fine physique.”

  Brice didn’t bother to respond to that one. Addison, with his coffee-colored skin, stood six inches shorter than Brice and weighed fifteen pounds more. Add to that the fact that he had more hair on his lip than on his head, and you had one heck of a man. He reminded Brice of Mr. Potato Head. Still, you couldn’t have designed a better detective or partner. Brice would have chosen Addison to back him above anybody else if he’d been surrounded by street thugs, junkies or serial killers. He was one of the good guys and as reliable as heat in summer. “Go home to your lovely, but obviously blind, wife. I’m going to finish up here and head home. The Braves are playing tonight.”

  Addison grabbed his keys and wallet, then started for the door. “You know, it’s been a quiet week around here. The worse thing to happen was that B&E on Lee Street and that’s pretty common over there.”

  “Yeah,” Brice agreed, “it makes me wonder when the other shoe is gonna drop.”

  *****

  Glynnis brushed her teeth, touched up her hair and makeup, put on her new crepe pants and a low-cut, teal blouse with flowing fairy sleeves. The blouse made her feel airy and a little sexy. She would have worn a dress, but heels could be a problem these days, and she didn’t want to attract that kind of attention at the shower. “Okay Carl, how do I look?”

  Carl thumped his curled tail against the floor.

  “You’d say the same thing if I was wearing dirty sweats as long as I fed you and let you sleep on the bed.” She reached down to pet the dog. “I’ll see you in a couple of hours.” Carl looked forlorn. Glynnis had decided not long after she got the full-grown Basenji about a year ago, that he had separation issues. “Aw, come on Carl, you know they won’t let you in the country club. Dogs aren’t allowed. I’d rather be here with you anyway, but I have to make an appearance.”

  Carl whined, but waggled his hind-quarters when she tossed him a doggy treat.

  *****

  It took her ten minutes of roaming the parking lot to find a space and then it was a good block and a half away from the reception room where the party was being held. Glynnis snatched the white bag with white tissue paper, superimposed with white gardenias, out of her trunk. She locked the car with the clicker and started for the Magnolia Room at the Fairfield Country Club. The place was amazing, and huge! She had been here twice before but couldn’t imagine what it would cost to actually be a member—not that they’d let her if she could afford it. You almost had to be born into this place. Self-consciously, she peeked into the reception room and scanned the crowd until she found Sissy. She was all poise in the corner with a dazzling yellow sundress that only accentuated her dark coloring. They had never been best friends, but back in high school the two of them had gone through theatre classes together. Sissy naturally wanted to be on stage all the time. Being the center of everybody’s attention was what she did best. She landed the role of Marianne, the librarian in “Music Man” and Alice in “Through the Looking Glass” along with several other prime roles. And she was really a great actor. She’d even worked with Glynnis doing Shakespeare in the Park a couple of times in the last three or four years. She’d made a great Rosalind in “As You Like It”.

  Glynnis had never enjoyed being on stage. She was much more comfortable setting up scenery, working lights and imagining how the whole play should look and sound when it was finished. Putting the whole thing together was like watching a jigsaw puzzle take shape. It was a pure adrenaline rush on opening night. Glynnis and Sissy got along really well, probably because they never competed with each other for acting roles.

  Glynnis walked to the table where a mountain of white, pink, and yellow wrapped packages covered with ribbons and bows sat. She dropped off her small package, a salad plate, tea cup and saucer that cost enough to feed a family of four for a week, and went to congratulate Sissy. This place looked like a listing from the society page. Her friend was surrounded by women of all ages, some from the Junior League, some of them old classmates and many aunts and cousins. Glynnis recognized Sissy’s mother and a woman who looked like another version of Sissy, only 50 years older. Glynnis figured that had to be her grandmother. Conversely, there wasn’t a man standing anywhere near the gift opening area. All the guys, including Sissy’s fiancé Terrence, were crowded around the food table, most holding beer mugs, a few with wine or mixed drinks. There were a few women at the table, one Glynnis thought she recognized somehow—a local celebrity, like a news broadcaster maybe. Low, uncomfortable laughter echoed from the group. Well, what else would you expect besides discomfort when you bring men to a wedding shower? It went against every southern wedding tradition, but as Glynn’s daddy was fond of saying, “You either gotta run with the big dogs or stay on the porch”. That expression was a multi-purpose adage meant to apply to many situations, but in this case the implication was—change with the times or be left behind.

  “Sissy, how’s it going?” Glynnis hugged her friend who seemed to be the centerpiece in a growing pile of pastel paper and ribbons.

  “I’m great! The wedding is only a few weeks away. The calligrapher has finished the invitations and mailed them, but we haven’t hired the band for the reception or made a final decision about whether to have bacon-wrapped scallops or shrimp canapés. Other than that, peachy!” She and Glynnis both laughed. Sissy had always been the queen of last-minute. She never knew her lines until the last possible day, and yet she always pulled off a great performance, leaving their drama coach, Mrs. Cartee, and more recently, Glynnis herself with a few extra frayed nerves. “Hey, do me a favor,” she leaned in and whispered to Glynnis. “I’m starving but I can’t leave until all the presents are opened and duly recorded. Mama would die at the rudeness.” She rolled her sparkling, brown eyes and pantomimed fanning herself with a lace fan like a real southern bell. “Would you please go get Terrence away from the boys club over there and tell him I need food? Why did we invite them anyway? They’re useless.”

  “I’ll do better than that,” Glynnis told her with a pat on the hand, “I’ll get it myself. Is there anything special you want?”

  Sissy considered that. “I’ve got to fit into a white gown soon, so keep it light. Maybe just a few nuts, a couple of carrot sticks.” She hesitated then added…and a huge chunk of that strawberry cake with the pink icing…lots of icing.”

  “Got it.” Glynnis went toward the food table, a woman on a mission. Sissy had always been one of those girls who could eat anything and look like a runway model with curves. Not fair.

  She reached the table and pushed her way through the mob of ill-at-ease men to take a plate from the stack. Every shower she’d ever attended used plates like these, glass with a vine or flowers etched into the border. She began piling the etched-glass dish with nuts, carrots, chicken strips, and a large chunk of pink cake. Then she reached for a punch cup and promptly dropped the plate onto the perfectly glossy, hardwood floor, not even noticing as it broke into pieces and scattered pink goo and nuts everywhere. Glynnis stood there wearing the same expression as every possum she’d ever seen dead on the road while several women tried to help her by cleaning up the mess on the floor at her feet. Glynnis failed to respond to the hands shaking her, or questions like, “Honey, are you okay?” and “What’s wrong darlin’?” The best she could do was stare. There was a pretty good reason for her bewilderment, but not one she cared to talk about to the women asking all the qu
estions. She knew the man she was gawking at. Unfortunately, last time she’d seen him, he’d been slumped in a wingback chair with a sword through his middle. This probably wasn’t good.

  Chapter 2

  He looked healthy enough, black and silver hair shining, eyes bright, cake crumbs on his lapels, nothing to indicate that he’d been stabbed in the stomach with a medieval weapon. Glynnis, on the other hand, wasn’t feeling well at all. Her hands were clammy, her deodorant had failed, leaving a sour odor, and three elderly society ladies were swarming around her feet picking up food and glass. One of them kept wiping Glynn’s shirt tail with a damp cloth. Apparently, she was wearing some of the pink icing. Face flushed, she shook her head to clear it. “I’m so sorry!” was the first thing she could blurt out, followed by, “I’m always dropping things….I don’t think I feel well.” And before another elderly gossip could ask another question, she fled for the restroom.

  Glynnis leaned over the lavatory, trying to breathe deeply. She splashed her face with cold water, not caring that her makeup was ruined. Staring back at her in the mirror was a frightened, shell-shocked, ghostly looking, thirty-year-old woman with brown curls. The foremost curl held a dollop of veggie dip. Surely she didn’t look as awful as she thought. She dabbed her face with a dry paper towel, wiped off the dip, and looked again, better, but still not human. Who is he? More importantly, what can I possibly do about it?

  The door flew open and Sissy walked in, obviously flustered, but smiling. “Boy Glynn, I send you to get food and you start smashing plates.” A worried grimace replaced the smile. She took a paper towel, wet it in the sink and started dabbing Glynn’s forehead. “Are you okay? What happened?”

  “Okay, I think.” Glynnis groaned with embarrassment. “Oh Sissy, I didn’t mean to ruin your shower.”

  “Ruin it?” She laughed. “I was about to fall asleep. At least you gave the gossips something to do besides give me marital advice. Did you know I’m supposed to give birth to one kid for every ribbon I break? I’m up to about twenty-seven now.”

  Glynnis smiled. Few people knew about her dreams and how they had a penchant for actually happening in real life. This had been going on since she was very young. The first time Glynnis recalled it happening had been when she was around five or six. She had a recurring dream of walking down a church aisle, dropping yellow and pink rose petals at her cousin Elaine’s wedding. When she reached the end of the aisle, Elaine was walking toward her in her lacy white gown, but before the bride could reach the front of the church she dropped her bouquet and clutched the front of her white gown, doubling over, her face scrunched up in a grimace that reminded Glynnis of a really bad stomach-ache she’d once had. That was where the dream had ended. The first time she had woken up, sweating and crying. Her mother told her she was only worried about being in the wedding and that everything would be okay. But she had dreamed the same dream with only small differences twice more in the next few weeks. It was just nervousness, her parents had told her and she shouldn’t worry. When the wedding day came, Glynnis had put on the fancy pink dress and the white patent leather shoes they gave her and tossed petals, just like her mother told her. She was the only person in the church who wasn’t shocked when cousin, Elaine had to be hauled off in an ambulance. Appendicitis, her mother had told her later. Elaine had been married in a small service a few weeks after her recovery. Mama had pretended the dream had never occurred. Glynnis knew better.

  As she grew older, she realized that there was a pattern. The dreams, when they were prophetic, took on a different quality than regular dreams. They were more detailed, more realistic, and yet she could only recall bits and pieces when she awoke. She would recall more of each dream on the second and third time around. Without exception, the dream would become reality after the third time, and there was always a third time. They weren’t always scary; some were actually hopeful or funny, like the time she’d dreamed of her brother Jeremy winning the hurdles race at the school track meet and then tripping over his own shoestring when he went to accept the medal. She’d had her camera ready when it happened.

  She had tried a few times, early on, to stop the dreams from happening by warning those concerned, but she’d never been successful. She had told Jody Corbitt, her seventeen year old babysitter, that she would run her car into a yellow sign and the car would be a big, crunched up mess. Jody had looked at her with raised eyebrows, then patted her head and told Glynnis she was so cute. A week later Jody totaled her car when she hit a directional sign on an off-ramp. Jody escaped the whole thing with only a broken arm, but she never babysat for Glynnis again. Glynn’s mother had only said that it was no surprise that Jody would drive her car into a sign when she drives like a bat out of Hades all the time anyway.

  The dreams always came true, and those she tried to warn treated her like the poor little girl who wasn’t quite right in the head. They would look at her with pity and whisper when she was near. She learned pretty quickly to keep her mouth shut and let fate take its turn.

  But this one was different. Glynnis knew she’d witnessed a murder and she just couldn’t let it go, especially now that she had seen the victim, alive and eating pink cake. She took the quickly disintegrating paper towel out of Sissy’s hand and tossed it away. “Thanks for being so sweet about this, Sissy. You’re supposed to be the one everybody’s watching tonight, not me.”

  Sissy hugged her and grabbed her arm. “You’re looking better. Why don’t we go back out there?”

  “You go ahead, I think I’ll call it a night.” Before Sissy could object, she added. “It’s been a tough day already and I didn’t sleep much last night, but could you tell me something before I go?”

  “Sure, Glynn. What is it?”

  “The tall man with the black hair that was standing near me…the one in the gray pinstriped business suit…he looks familiar. Do you know him?”

  Sissy thought for a moment and then her face lit up. “Oh, you mean Gloria’s new husband, Dan.” Sissy was not only the high school drama queen, but the bearer of all gossip worth knowing, a title she would probably never relinquish. “That’s a really cool story, very romantic. I know because Gloria is one of Mama’s oldest friends. Dan and Gloria were high school sweethearts, but they both ended up marrying other people. He went on to be the vice-president of Janico, that factory that makes computer parts out on the highway. He and his wife divorced a few years ago after a couple of kids. The kids ended up with the ex-wife.”

  Glynn was beginning to be sorry she’d asked, but she had to find out what she could. Sissy went on. “Anyway, in the meantime, Gloria married Hamilton Danning, who eventually became president and CEO of Janico, and they had two kids, but Hamilton died after Dan’s divorce and then Dan and Gloria eventually got together again. They were married a couple of months ago. The blue-haired ladies can’t get enough of the scandal. They’ll talk about it over bridge and coffee for years.”

  Glynnis was dumbfounded. “I don’t get it. What’s so scandalous about marrying your high school sweetheart as a second marriage? I’ll grant you, it’s a little unusual, but…”

  “Oh, I didn’t explain that part did I?”

  Glynnis shook her head, still bemused.

  “See, Dan is a nickname. His real name is Claude Danning.” She waited for understanding in Glynn’s eyes and when it didn’t happen she added, “He’s Hamilton Danning’s younger brother. He not only took over the company, but also married his brother’s widow, and only a year or so after Hamilton died. The mean-natured among us have said that he just took up his brother’s life when Hamilton passed on. There are a few that hint he might have had a hand in his brother’s death, but there was never any reason to believe that.” Sissy patted a loose hair back into place. “They’re a nice couple as far as I can tell.”

  In her mind, Glynnis heard the haunting dream voice. “Well, then, I guess you’ll be joining your brother now, won’t you. I hope you’ll give him my best.”

  *****

  Preparations had to be made. It was imperative that this be handled without a glitch or he would be discovered, and that wouldn’t do. There were no illusions of superiority here. He knew that even the smallest mistake would lead to his downfall and therefore, he had been meticulous in his planning. He thought about Danning and his ingratiating smile, how he’d always been better than everybody else. Then he’d gone and married Gloria Danning, his sister-in-law, an incestuous act if ever there was one. Something must be done, and he was just the guy to handle it. The press and the police would proclaim him to be an avenging angel.