I muttered to myself as my beeper went off. My double shift was almost over and I was drinking my sixth cup of coffee at the all night coffee shop down the street from the station to try and to stay awake. My beeper going off meant one thing and one thing only; someone had been killed and I was needed. Normally, one of the other detectives would have gotten the call, but with a name like Maria Honduras, I was the only non-Irish detective on the small force here in Gallaway, MA. All of the other detectives were off duty, happily celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. I picked up my cell phone and called the station to get the details. Nancy Zinkham had been found murdered in her dressing room at the theatre that evening. I was off at once.
Nancy was a huge celebrity comic who came from Gallaway before making it big on TV. However, in keeping with her small town roots, she loved to come back to perform one week a year here in Gallaway, doing a great one person stand up routine for charity. Solving the murder was going to a big deal. It was not just a make or break case, but Nancy had also been my best friend growing up. This was now personal and staying awake was no longer going to be a problem.
Quickly, I got to the small theatre and talked to the uniformed policeman standing outside the door to the dressing rooms. “Hi Tom, what have we got?” I asked the patrolman I had known for many years. “Hello gorgeous.” Tom has had a crush on me since grade school. “As usual, Nancy spent the entire day in her dressing room alone. She arrived about 7 am this morning with her yoga mat, her organic salad and 2 bottles of water. Her instructions are pretty simple. No one bothers her for any reason prior to the show. She just spends the entire day in her dressing room doing yoga and meditating to get ready for the show. However, when she did not appear for the opening act, one of the stage hands went to check on her and found her dead in her dressing room.” “Who was back there in the dressing rooms today?” I asked. “No one is really sure” was the unfortunate reply.
Prior to inspecting the dressing rooms, I talked to the theatre manager, Dan Gallagher. Dan told me that there were three dressing rooms in the back. All were about the same size, though usually the star got one and the other two were used for the remaining actors and actresses. Each dressing room had a bathroom, a small refrigerator and a sink. That explained how Nancy was able to spend all day in her dressing room. I asked Dan who might have been in the dressing rooms that day. He told me there was no real way to know as lots of people were back there throughout the day. That was when I noticed the video camera above the doorway to the dressing rooms. I asked Dan about it and he told me that yes, there was video of the hallway that we could check. I sent Dan and Tom to get the video. I told Tom to watch the video on fast-forward from early this morning till now to see who went through that door. Meanwhile, I was going to inspect the scene of the crime. By this point, I was really regretting that sixth cup of coffee. I certainly did not need the caffeine to stay away and my bladder was well past full.
The first two dressing rooms yielded nothing unusual, which did not surprise me. After all, there was no one using them all day. There were however, bagels in the refrigerator of the second dressing room. Given the late hour, I was tempted to taste test them for freshness, but decided against it in deference to my figure. Now it was time to check out Nancy’s dressing room. Walking into her dressing room, I saw her lying on the floor with a knife in her back. Someone was going to pay for this. I spent about 15 minutes carefully inspecting her dressing room. Everything was as I expected to find it. There was a yoga mat on the floor, numerous empty water bottles and empty salad containers in the trash and another bottle half empty on the table. The coroner would determine the time of death, but based upon her arrival at 7 am, I was guessing a late afternoon demise. By now, the coffee got the best of me. I quickly went into the bathroom, put down the seat and felt relief. It was time to go see who had been back here.
By now, Tom and Dan were done looking at the video. Tom told me that there were four people who were in the dressing area the entire day: Kevin Doyle, the owner of the theatre, two actresses appearing in the next show and a cleaning lady. Each of them went in separately and came out less than ten minutes later. Unfortunately for me, all of them had been carrying something large enough to hide a knife, so they were all suspects. None of them seemed like obvious choices, so I told Tom to round them all up and have them meet me in the station the next morning. At that point, the Coroner had arrived and I gave him the lay of the land. He promised me he would have some initial results to me in time to interview the suspects in the morning.
Before facing the four suspects, one of whom had killed an old friend of mine, I called the Coroner to see if he had anything for me. He confirmed that Nancy was killed with a knife and that the time of death was late in the afternoon. Other than that, he had nothing as of now. There were no fingerprints on the scene and no other clues of a note.
It was time to face the suspects in the order they appeared on the video. First, I talked to the two actresses, Joanne Driscoll and Helen Smith. The two of them were co-staring in the next performance, a comedy, which was starting in two days. “What were you doing in the dressing area yesterday?” I asked them. They suddenly looked nervous. “We were rehearsing with the rest of the cast all morning. The director had brought the best bagels along with a great selection of spreads,” stammered Joanne. “Yes,” Helen added. “I did not want them to go to waste.So, when rehearsal broke for lunch around noon, I took the leftovers to the refrigerator in the actress’s dressing room.” “Did you happen to talk with Nancy” I asked her pointedly. “No way.” “Joanne, what were you doing in the dressing room?” “I got tied up going over some new lines with the director. Since the lunch break was only half an hour, I did not have time to go out for lunch, so I ran to grab one of the leftover bagels. And no, I did not talk to Nancy.”
Next it was Kevin’s turn. Any particular reason you would be in the dressing area yesterday, I asked calmly. “Of course there is. As the theatre owner, I make rounds several times a day of the entire theatre. Among other things, I check to make sure that Tina the cleaning lady is doing her job. Before you ask, no, I did not happen to talk with Nancy at all yesterday. On top of that, no, I did not have any reason to wish her ill will. Every year she came back and packed the theatre every night for a week with her charity routine. Every penny from the sale of the tickets goes to charity and her shows are the only ones all year that fill the house.”
Muttering under my breath that I was running out of possible suspects, it was time to talk to the cleaning lady, Sarah Jones. She was the last one in the dressing area. I asked her about why there were no fingerprints anywhere. “My job is to make sure that everything is clean throughout the theatre. I dust, vacuum and empty the trash. I do my job well, though I never clean Nancy’s dressing room while she is there. She is always in it and does not want to be disturbed. I just clean it well before she arrives and I clean it again when she leaves at the end of the week. No one goes in the dressing room but her.” Something told me I needed to keep questioning the cleaning lady, so I kept after her for another half an hour. Finally, one of the other detectives stuck his head in the room and asked if I wanted a cup of coffee. I snapped at him and told him no, I did not want a cup of coffee; I was solving a murder investigation. Then it hit me. I knew who did it.
Monday, December 12, 2011
MYSTERY: "Death In Theatre"
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