Chapter 38 - Nadia

We walked back from the park hand-in-hand while Andy swung the basket in his other hand. It would have been a romantic walk if not for the text we’d gotten from Ryan.
“He won’t explain anything over the phone,” Andy was saying. “He’s paranoid about the government listening in on his conversations.”
“Sounds like he reads too many comic books.”
Andy looked at me funny. “That’s exactly what I have been telling him.”
“Ghosts, superstitions, and now government monitoring. Is there anything he doesn’t believe in?”
“If there is, I don’t know about it,” he said. “We should make a checklist and test him.”
“My money’s on leprechauns. Surely those are too far-fetched for him.”
Andy smiled sideways at me. “We’ll see.”
It was mid-afternoon by the time we reached the theater. The half-finished set was still on stage: a bedroom scene on the left, with a cut-out window in the wood and grey paint on the fake wall, with a real bed in front of it.
I heard a whistle, and craned my neck. Ryan waved from the catwalks.
“Up here.”
“What is it?” Andy asked.
“Why the fuck would I tell you when I can show you?” Ryan shot back.
We climbed up and then walked over to where Ryan stood, somewhere near the middle. “What was tampered with?” Andy asked, checking each light along the way like a worried hen. “Is it the new spotlight over there?”
Ryan slowly shook his head. “It wasn’t our lights they touched.”
He pointed out above the stage. There were various sections of rope holding things in place, and bundles of cables for the lights, sound, and other electrical equipment. Nothing stuck out to me.
But Andy sucked in his breath. “That’s new.”
“Yep,” Ryan replied simply. “Wasn’t here during rehearsal last night. Whoever installed it did so after everyone left.”
“Or this morning,” Andy said.
“Had to be last night,” Ryan replied. “Place was locked when I got here. Someone stayed after rehearsal, waited for the place to be locked up, and then installed it. The door locks from the inside, so they could leave and keep it locked.”
“Or it was someone with a key.”
Ryan blinked. “Could’ve been.”
“Sorry to interrupt, but what am I supposed to be looking at?” I asked.
Ryan put one hand on my back and pointed with the other. “That bundle of sandbags hanging from the rope.”
Even once I saw what he was talking about, I failed to recognize what was noteworthy. There were dozens of sandbags hanging from the ceiling rafters. They were used as counterweights for the curtain and other parts of the set. Why were these special?
Then Andy came closer and Ryan pointed at the catwalk railing. The rope to those sandbags connects here.”
Andy reached out, then stopped himself before his fingers touched it. “An electronic frog carabiner?”
“Yep. Can be triggered from anywhere.” Ryan turned to me. “This is a wireless release device. When triggered, it releases the rope.”
“Causing the sandbags to fall onto the stage.”
“Uh huh.”
A chill ran through my body. This was direct evidence of the saboteur.
“How did they connect it out there?” Andy wondered out loud.
“Must’ve climbed,” Ryan said.
“Awfully dangerous.”
“Sure is.” He glanced at me. “Someone nimble could do that. Like a dancer.” He punctuated it with a wink.
I held up both hands. “Being good at dancing doesn’t make someone a good climber.”
As Andy took out a flashlight to get a better look, I imagined climbing up into the ceiling rafters to connect the rope and sandbags. Just the thought of it paralyzed me with fear. Falling from that height would probably be fatal. No thank you.
“Should we call the police?” I asked.
Ryan gave me a condescending look. “You saw how the last detective acted. He’ll claim one of us did it since we had access.”
“You think we should trigger it?” Andy asked Ryan.
“Was waiting for you to get here before I did.”
Andy pulled out his phone and began recording. “Do it.”
Ryan pulled on a work glove then squeezed the carabiner in the middle.
There was a loud snap of metal on metal, and then the rope hissed away from us. The bundle of sandbags dropped like a cartoon anvil to the stage.
BANG.
The sound of them slamming into the stage was a lot louder than I expected. It kicked up a cloud of dust and sand particles. The three of us stared in silence, then climbed down to take a closer look.
Four ten-pound sandbags lay on the stage, with the rope strewn across the floor. They weren’t as heavy as the spotlight; the stage appeared undamaged. But if those had hit a person…
“Don’t touch,” Ryan said as I reached for one. He held up his gloved hand. “I may have been teasing you about a dancer being nimble enough to set this, but if they find your fingerprints on the bags then you will become a suspect.”
Andy was walking around the stage, but instead of staring at the bags he was looking up at the ceiling. “It’s off-center,” he said softly. “Compared to the spotlight.”
He was right: the discolored section of repaired stage where the spotlight had smashed was over to the left. The sandbags were farther right, and deeper into the stage.
“Got a theory as to why?” Ryan asked.
“No. But it’s interesting.”
A light bulb went off in my head. “Which songs are we rehearsing tonight? More Than Money, and Through The Window, right?”
“Director Atkins had me prep the lighting routine for More Than Money,” Andy confirmed.
I walked across to the prop bed, looking for the marking tape on the stage. I stood there, trying to visualize how things went…”
“Play the song,” I said. “The full music.”
Andy seemed to realize what I was hinting at. He jumped off stage and jogged back to the lighting booth at the back of the theater. His tall frame appeared behind the booth glass, and he bent to the electronics I couldn’t see. Ryan watched me curiously.
Suddenly there was a flare of instrumental music for the beginning of the song. I sat on the edge of the bed with my feet on the marked tape, waiting for the chorus to kick in.
Braden’s character will be on the other side of the stage, with the backups in the back…
The musical The Proposition had a gloomy second half. As the character Jane continued juggling her relationship with her husband and her affair with her neighbor, she grew more paranoid and obsessed with being caught. The song More Than Money was Jane’s solo, a gut-wrenching ballad from a woman whose sanity was slowly unraveling. It had a tempo and beat similar to Yesterday by The Beatles, which picked up pace near the end until she was practically screaming her notes. It was one of the few gems of the entire musical.
I rose from the bed at the right time in the song, then began mumbling the words to myself. “There’s more than just money to the world…” While singing, I focused intensely on my track around the stage. A few steps toward the center as I got into the beginning of the song, then a rapid skip over to stage right. I’d been practicing the song when I was alone and studying the track, and it felt natural to be combining them together on the stage.
I moved back and forth through the song, singing a little louder with each step. Ryan watched from the edge, muscular arms crossed over his chest and a curious look in his eyes that seemed like admiration, but surely couldn’t have been. A minute into the song and I was singing at full theater volume, belting the note out from my diaphragm as if the seats were filled with paying customers hanging on my every word.
“There’s moooooore than just money, to our liiiiiiiiiiiiiiives! As there’s more than just honey, to the hiiiiiiiiiiive!”
I strode around stage with confidence and purpose. A pause here, a twist there. I stretched the notes and made them more ragged as I neared the end of the song, channeling my own frustration and confusion about my personal life into the words. It wasn’t hard—it came naturally as I glanced at Ryan on the side of the stage and Andy in the back, and imagined Braden and Dorian watching from the seats.
I reached the climactic verse, setting my feet on the right side of the stage close to the bed. I squared my feet and hit the final note, holding it long while walking toward the front of the stage…
And right before reaching the final standing point, I bumped into the sandbags.
The music cut off, leaving just my voice belting out the climactic note in the empty theater. I let it trail off, savoring the acoustics in that moment.
I kicked one of the sandbags gently and shared a look with Ryan. “It’s official. Those were meant for Tatiana.”