“You guys want to come and meet the cast?” I asked AJ and Landon.
They looked at each other and shrugged. “Cool, man,” Landon responded.
We all filed downstairs and made our way through the exiting crowds to the front of the auditorium. This took some time, as we were stopped a couple of times along the way by various people we had met in the past eight months. Finally, we made it to the security checkpoint, where they handed us backstage passes on lanyards.
We slipped through the secure area, and a golf cart met us and took us through a concrete hallway. We reached the backstage area, where Marvin, and a few crew members stood around talking. The going conversation seemed to be the green paint spill on the ground that a janitor was cleaning up.
“Hey, Henry,” he greeted me warmly, “And Vicki, good to see you guys again.”
“Hey, Marvin. Thanks again for the invite. This is AJ,” I said, “And Landon.”
They shook hands with Marvin, and Landon’s face was white like he would pass out.
“Let me let you meet the cast, follow me,” Marvin said. We followed him through a hall. Landon turned to me and whispered. “That’s Marvin Iakova!”
I smiled and winked.
“Holy shit,” he whispered and clasped his hands over his head in shock, and he even stepped backwards a few steps. AJ snickered, and he looked at her wide eyed.
“When did--” he stammered. “Okay, it’s all good. It’s all good.”
We all laughed out loud, and Marvin turned and looked at us quizzically.
“So, Landon’s in art school in Chicago,” I told Marvin.
Marvin smiled and nodded approvingly at Landon. “Is that right?”
“Well, just, uh, yeah, graphic design,” Landon stammered.
“Good for you,” Marvin told him. “What do you want to do with that when you get out?”
“I freelanced for a while,” he said. “Thought I’d find somewhere with steady work after graduation.”
Marvin nodded. “Well, we definitely have need of good graphic designers at Starbright. When you’re ready for an internship, let Henry know. I’ll see what we’ve got open.”
Landon’s eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his head. “Absolutely,” he said.
Marvin smiled and continued to duck his head in doorways looking for the cast. Meanwhile, Landon turned to AJ and whispered, “This is it. This is my invitation into the Illuminati.”
I just rolled my eyes. Landon was home.
We reached the green room where the dancers were supposed to be congregating. Only one of them sat at a table, browsing her phone. I recognized her face, and I was glad to see she was fully clothed--but two hours of nakedness can’t be unseen.
“Have you seen Beowulf?” Marvin rapped on the open door frame, and she turned to look.
Beowulf? Seriously? Was that the guy’s name?
She frowned. “No, I haven’t. I don’t know where he might be.”
That was when we heard the scream. It was a high-pitched female scream, and it was coming from the other side of the hall. The woman in the green room and our group all rushed in the direction of the disturbance. Just outside a dressing room, a dancer collapsed into a corner and looked like she would be sick.
“Beowulf,” she said. “I can’t-I can’t--”
She slid to the floor and couldn’t continue the sentence
“Someone get her some water!” Vicki barked as she knelt beside the woman and tried to snap her out of her near catatonic state. Landon and AJ rushed to the task.
Marvin and I popped into the dressing room, and it didn’t take long for me to find out what was wrong with Beowulf.
“Oh, my god,” I said as I felt bile rise up in my throat.
In the months I had been back in Sedona, I had been around quite a bit, and I thought nothing could shock me now. I had had a tiger attack a vehicle I was in and then shot it with a tranq gun. I had been an unarmed man staring down a posse of cattle rustlers with guns and still came out on top. I had gotten into a car chase with Russian mobsters. I had been in a face off with a deranged drug dealer that had just shot up an outdoor event. But, this, this I wasn’t ready for.
Marvin got on the phone, and I just stared in shock. There it was. Beowulf laid on the floor, dead eyed and white, with a bloody dagger sticking straight up from his stomach.
Chapter 3
Within minutes, backstage at the PAH turned into a circus. Most of the city officials were still in the building after the performance, and everyone that was anyone in town had a stake in the murder scene, or at least they thought they did.
The police chief and his wife were the first to arrive, with an ambulance and several officers hot on their heels. Then I spotted Matt Chelmi from The Herald working to impress security with a press badge. It took him a while, but he finally got in. The mayor showed up with her husband, and half the city council with spouses and significant others. The whole Performance Arts League was already there.
Then there was a handful of Starbright people who ran around like crazy chickens as if somehow they could try hard enough and write a press release so great that it would bring Beowulf back to life, and exonerate the whole company from the messy scandal. Marvin was largely to blame for this.
“We’ve got the most talented media people in the state!” he roared at the group of cowering professionals standing in a crowd in a hallway. “I expect you to do more than figure it out! I expect you to make this fucking magic!”
The Sedona police chief, Hal Durant, was the only one that seemed
