“I noticed that too,” said Ray. “Interesting that Malcolm encouraged her to read for the play. I wonder what his motives were. He also got Pepper Markley to take a role. She told me they were having trouble finding someone of the right age and gender, and he coaxed her to participate.”
“So he lets his concierge participate in amateur theater while she’s on the clock?”
“Some kind of weird work arrangement was going on there,” noted Ray. “Pepper said Wudbine wanted his people available around-the-clock.”
“Can we go back to Verity for a minute. She had means, motive, and opportunity. And she was certainly dropping information bombs that would move you in several directions.”
“Yes, but can you see her delivering the fatal thrust?” asked Ray. “Their marriage was over decades ago. She appears to have gotten on with her life. I don’t see her as the….”
“Maybe not as the killer,” said Sue. “But if we’re thinking about a couple of people. She certainly would be able to flip a switch.”
“But why? I don’t see it. By all reports they were quite civil.”
“I don’t know. Maybe old wounds that have been festering for years.”
“Verity did suggest that Wudbine had been working their son too hard. Again, probably not enough to motivate a homicide. We need to know more about Elliott and his relationship with his father,” added Ray.
“What’s Elliott like?” asked Sue.
“Intense, ill at ease. Hard to tell if that’s his normal demeanor or a reaction to the murder. He’s a smoker. A bit unusual, given his age and who he is. Could hardly wait to get out the door to light up. I asked him about who would gain financially from his father’s death. He said most of Wudbine’s fortune would go to the foundation, and that a trust was in place to provide for his stepmother. Elliott also indicated that he was already a wealthy man.
“So, as you can see,” continued Ray, “two family members, Verity and Jill, would have easy access to Wudbine, as would one of his employees, Pepper Markley. At the back of the theater you have Elliott and Alyson Mickels. They could have slipped in without being noticed. In addition, there’s Grubbs and the other actors and crew. And then there are the colony members, and the list goes on and on. Did you come up with any prints?”
“I’ve got a partial off the master switch. It’s probably David Johnson.”
“We should talk to him again today. I’d like to get him back up in the booth, switch off the power and time how long it takes for him to get to the rear of the building and turn it back on. Maybe we can jar his memory a bit. I also want to look at places where an assailant could hide offstage. Let’s do some timing there. How many seconds would it take to move onstage and out the door, or back into the green room.”
“And Brenda Wudbine?”
“They’re really protecting her. Lots of comments about her alcoholism. We need to find a way to isolate her. I want to talk to her without anyone protecting her, and I’ve got a sense that Jill Wudbine and the people she oversees will do their best to prevent us from doing that.”
“Why? What’s their motive?”
“I don’t know,” answered Ray. “Are they just trying to prevent her making an embarrassment of herself? Given the level of her alleged addiction, I can’t imagine that she’s enormously aware of what’s going on around her. But we do need to find out if she has anything that might help us.”
“How are you going to pull that one off?”
“Just keep our eyes open. Be ready when the opportunity presents itself.” Ray paused for a moment, then added, “I’ve put all the audio files in their own folder in the case file. You can access them if there’s anything you want listen to. I’ve asked Jan to convert them into text files.”
“So where do we start today?”
“Let me do some paperwork so people get paid on Friday. See if you can have David Johnson meet us at the auditorium at 9:00. Bring a stopwatch. Then we will look for possible hiding places and escape routes for the assailant. Next, we need you to go to Gull House and interview the cook, handyman, and maid while I start talking to the remaining members of the cast and crew. Talk to Grubbs, see if he can get the play people lined up for me. And see if Pepper Markley can line up the Gull House staff. That’s certainly something a concierge should be able to do. Let’s leave a little after 8:00.”
“One or two cars?”
“One. You drive. We can talk on the way.”
27
David Johnson answered their calls as Ray and Sue came into the backstage area. He was already up in the light booth.
“Can we join you up there?” Ray asked.
“Sure. It’s a bit tight with three, but perfectly safe. We won’t all come crashing to the ground. Be careful, I’m sure this doesn’t meet OSHA standards.”
Sue grabbed hold of the ladder that was permanently mounted six inches off the wall and climbed up to the booth. Ray followed.
“Like I said, there’s not a lot of room up here,” Johnson explained once Ray had joined them in the booth, a decked rectangle with the dimmers on the wall side. Three sets of steel pipes, secured at corner posts, ran horizontally on the other sides to provide a safe enclosure. “I think it was probably designed for two people, max,” said Johnson.
“Walk us through what happened on Saturday evening,” said Ray.
“Where do you want me to start? I went through this with you yesterday.”
“But now I’m up here, and I can see what you were referring to. As I remember it, you told me you arrived early and got the set lit for the first scene. Once you established that everything was working, you went off to the green room to visit for….”
“About ten minutes.”
“Then you came back here.”
“That’s correct.”
“So let’s start from the point when you climbed back up. Tell us exactly what you did from that point forward.”
“The board is still set up the way it was on Saturday. Do you want me to power things up and walk you through it?”
“That would be perfect,” answered Ray.
“Okay, starting on the right-hand side, this rheostat controls the house lights. I should say dimmer, it’s a rheostat dimmer. Don’t want to confuse things with our lingo. So this switch would be thrown, and this dimmer would be all the way up, just like it is now. Let me power up the rest of the dimmers. I had to make a change in the lighting between the first and second scene to reflect the time of day. Okay, lights are on and the work lights above the stage are off. Like I think I told you, these old rheostats are 60 or more years. They are inefficient, hot, and have been known to cause fires. The new boards are all electronic. And the new, high-end stage lights use LEDs, you can control the colors from the board. Not that I could, but it can be done.”
“And why couldn’t you?” asked Sue.
“I had a stroke a dozen or so years ago. I’ve recovered, but I’ve been color blind ever since.”
“How did that affect you professionally?”
“I closed my practice and did some teaching at the medical school before I fully retired.”
Ray and Sue looked down on the brightly lit stage.
“It’s magical, isn’t it?” said Johnson. “The lights make it somehow all real.”
Ray carefully scanned the area enclosed by the set and the backstage area from the booth to the back wall.
“So you can see what’s happening onstage and on this side of the backstage area. The set completely blocks your view of the other side.”