“Him and every other man in the room. What’s up with that?” I teased. “Darla better have some alcohol ready in our dressing room, too.”
Darla didn’t disappoint us. In the Breakwater room, a table had been set with bottles of wine on ice, glasses, and chocolate-covered strawberries. The women gathered around the table, filling glasses before they found their costumes. Amy and I found our bags labeled with our names together near the end of the room.
“I haven’t changed in front of this many women since high school P.E.,” Amy grumbled.
The woman changing next to us eyed my thin friend. “And you still look like you did back then. Slender and gorgeous. I don’t know what you’re complaining about.” She patted her stomach. “You’re about to see what happens to real women as they age.”
“You look fine,” I assured her. Although I’d been thinking the same thing. I guess it’s human nature to question the state of your body, especially undressed in front of a group. “I do have this nightmare every once in a while.”
“Standing in front of Mr. Higgins’s sophomore English class doing a book report in your underwear?” She grinned. “Rotating nightmare number 434.”
Amy laughed. “It’s Algebra II for me. Although for some reason, the entire football team is in the class. Which I know isn’t true since they took Consumer Math.”
Darla called time and we hurried out to the stage to stand in order of our appearance in the play. Henry Montgomery checked us off against his list of cast members, then Esmeralda and Darla ran through the costume check. When she reached Greg and me, she paused.
“These are perfect. You did good, Jill.” Esmeralda touched the red fringe that layered my short dress. “Even the shoes are perfect for the time period.”
I’d gotten lucky and found a pair of ankle-strapped heels at a thrift store in Bakerstown last Monday when I’d gone shopping. I was about to tell her where I’d found them when she spoke again.
“You must take caution this time. You can either be the key or the clue.” Esmeralda had frozen in front of me.
I looked into her face and saw the blank stare. She’d gone all vision-glassy-eyed, right in the middle of the rehearsal. Although I didn’t really believe she could talk to the dead, I had seen her fall into this trance state more than once. And her predictions, although strangely worded at times, made complete sense later. I shivered and stepped closer to Greg.
He slipped his arm around me while trying to get Esmeralda’s attention. “What did you say?”
Her eyes cleared and she smiled. “Jill did very well with both of your costumes. Now, don’t try to tell me you dressed yourself, Greg King.” She nodded to Darla, who checked off our names before moving on to the next person in line. Darla’s eyes were wide and she looked like I felt—scared to talk about what had just happened.
I sighed, letting my shoulders sag a little bit. “I hate it when she singles me out like that. It’s never a good sign.”
Greg squeezed me and walked me back to our table, where we’d wait for our turn on stage. “She has to keep her image up even with the town folk. I’ll talk to her tomorrow and ask her to stop playing with you if it freaks you out.”
“It’s no big deal.” I tried to shrug it off, but the fortune-teller’s words kept ringing in my head. Quickly, the costume check was over and it was time to start the rehearsal. Greg and I didn’t come on until the second act, so I settled in to watch the fun.
“Act One, Amy and Justin, enter stage left,” Darla called out. As the curtain opened, I saw Amy, but she wasn’t in the middle of the stage. Justin was there, leaning over the body. I frowned. “Someone got their directions mixed up. We don’t have a body until scene two.”
I watched Justin stand and scan the room. His gaze stopped at Greg, who was already moving toward the stage.
“It’s Kent Paine,” Justin stammered. “He’s really dead.”
CHAPTER 4
By the time Greg had secured the scene and talked to the entire cast and crew of Dying for Trouble, a name that had seemed cute when we made the playbills, it was long after midnight. After changing out of my costume, I rode home with Amy and a still visibly shaken Justin.
“I’ve never seen a dead body before, much less touched one,” he murmured under his breath. Darla had opened the bar in the back of the winery, and after Greg questioned each person, they were directed there to wait until he let everyone leave. Justin had taken full advantage of his waiting time, and now, he was drunk off his butt.
“He gets weepy when he’s drunk?” I turned and stared at the crumpled man in the backseat.
Amy glanced up at the rearview mirror. “Never before. I think seeing Kent threw him over the edge.”
Justin moaned and laid his head back. “There’s no going back from dead.”