“Roger Marin,” he said. “The lady next door heard them talking, but she couldn’t tell what they said. Then she heard him leave. She peeked out then too. She was nosy. Back then all the rumors were that Lisette had never stopped loving Roger Marin. It was a big deal that they were performing together. That woman had actually been to the play. So she couldn’t help herself when she recognized the voices. Her name was Melissa Wells and she had come all the way from New York City to see the performance.”
“So Roger Marin visited Lisette at the hotel,” I said. “The very night she died.”
“Yup.”
“But there was no evidence of foul play.”
“Right,” Leo said.
“But maybe Roger Marin literally broke her heart. I mean, she did die of a heart attack.”
“Right again,” Leo said.
“Why don’t you include any of this information on the tour?” I asked.
“The superfans know all of this already,” Leo said. “And they’ve got their own theories about her death. And if they get talking, they could go on for hours. Trust me. We don’t want that.”
“How did you get a copy of the police report?”
“It’s public information,” Leo said. “Anyone can ask for it. Plus it was printed in the newspapers back when she died. That’s where I found it. Do you want to see?”
“Not really,” I said. And I think Leo could tell from my voice that I meant Absolutely not. I knew there was a police report written up about the accident with Dad and Ben. I had never read it. And I never would. I knew the bits and pieces my mom told me back when it happened and that was more than enough.
“Yeah,” Leo said. “We don’t have to talk about it. I wasn’t thinking.” He sounded awkward and I could tell he had remembered about my family. He reached for the remote to start up the play again but I stopped him.
“What did Roger Marin say about that night?” I asked. “Was that in the police report too?” I didn’t want to read it. But I wanted to know more.
“He said that Lisette hadn’t been feeling great after the performance so he came over to check on her,” Leo said. “And that she seemed fine when he left. She was going to go to sleep.”
“Can we talk to Roger Marin?” I asked.
Leo shook his head. “He died two years ago. In Las Vegas. He worked in a show there for a long time after he stopped doing the plays at Summerlost.”
The play started up again. We watched for a while. “She doesn’t have a very big part,” I said. “Considering it’s her final performance.”
“She didn’t know it was her final performance,” Leo said.
“Right.”
“I guess that during the last few years she liked having smaller parts so she didn’t have to memorize too much,” Leo said. “Since she was only coming for one night.”
The camera zoomed closer on Lisette, so you could see only her. I looked at that dress again, at the way they’d done her hair, loose and wavy and beautiful. And then I noticed something else.
“That’s weird,” I said.
“What is?” Leo asked.
“Pause it,” I said.
Leo did.
“Lisette’s character, Miranda, isn’t married,” I said. “But she’s wearing a wedding ring.” I pointed at her hand, which she’d lifted up. Her mouth was frozen in a funny position, like she was yowling.
“How on earth did you notice that?” Leo asked.
“I guess because of the labels,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” Leo leaned in so that his face was comically close to the screen. “I don’t see any labels.”
“I’m talking about the labels I made in the costume shop,” I said. “For the different boxes. The people in costume design pay attention to every little thing. They care about all the details. Look at this Miranda costume. It’s perfect. I mean, you sort of take it for granted because it’s so good, but it’s exactly what Miranda would be wearing. And I know they wouldn’t have given her a wedding ring to wear if her character wasn’t married.”
“So it’s probably Lisette’s own ring,” Leo said.
“But Lisette wasn’t married then. Right?”
“Right.”
We both stared at the screen.
“So why is she wearing the ring?” Leo asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
It was hard to see on the screen, but we could make out that it was a gold ring with three pale stones.
“It’s the same ring she’s wearing in the portrait,” I said. “I’m sure of it. It’s on her left hand.”
“That’s her wedding ring from Roger Marin,” Leo said. “It’s in tons of the paparazzi photographs from when she was married to him. She wore it all the time.”
“Was that painting done when she was married to Roger?”
“Yeah,” Leo said. “I know from the costume she’s wearing in the painting. It’s from the year she played Desdemona in Othello. But it makes sense for her to have a wedding ring on in that picture, because Desdemona is married from the beginning of the play. So they must have let her leave it on for the painting because it fits the character. And it was an old ring, the biography said. Vintage. She and Roger found it in an antiques shop in Italy when they were on vacation.”
Leo really did know almost everything about Lisette Chamberlain.
“Maybe she wanted Roger to see her wearing it that last night,” I said. “Maybe she did still care about him. Or something.”
“Her character sort of gets married later in The Tempest,” Leo said. “But she’s definitely not married yet.”