EXCERPT FROM

The Washoe Dinner Theater by daylight was a dreary, two-story barn-like building with a corrugated tin roof and ancient thready redwood siding. It looked a lot like Dorothy’s barn, after the tornado. The parking lot was gravel, which crunched under my tires as I parked my car in the very first unmarked space.

The inside smelled like a thick roux of musk, cleaning fluid, and garlic. As I walked in the front door, I could see the dining area, a raised platform ringing a twenty by twenty stage on all four sides.

Down a short hall, I heard a typewriter clacking away, maybe twenty words a minute.

“Hello?” I called out.

A feminine voice said, “Right with you!”

The typing went on for a moment though, before stopping abruptly. Seconds later, the door at the end of the hall swung open. A young woman walked my way.

She was twenty, maybe, dressed in a rock band tee shirt and jeans. She was just to the healthy side of slender, and her breasts bounced around unfettered under the rock band logo as she walked my way. Her nipples poked at me as she spoke.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“My name’s Eamon Gold,” I said, handing her my card. “I’ve driven up from San Francisco looking for a kid named Ty Cannon.”

She glanced at my card, and then at my face. She bit her lower lip, as if deciding whether to jump my bones right there.

Or maybe that was just my imagination.

“Come on back,” she said.

I followed her to her office. It was little more than a large closet, with the desk jammed into one back corner. There were posters lining the wall, announcing shows dating back as much as ten years or more.

She sat at the desk, and offered me the only other chair in the room, one of the dinner chairs from out in the theater.

“A private eye, huh?” she asked.

I nodded.

“That is so cool.”

“It’s why I became one.”

“Huh?”

“The cool factor. Ty Cannon?”

I pulled a picture of Cannon from my pocket and handed it to her.

“Asshole,” she said.

“Beg pardon?”

“This guy’s on my shit list.”

“Why’s that?”

She seemed to collect herself, and offered her hand.

“Shelley Proulx,” she said, introducing herself. I shook her hand, as I’d already told her who I was. “I’m the managing director here.”

“You direct the shows?”

“No, that’s Brad Zukowski. He’s the artistic director. My boyfriend.”

“A real Mom and Pop operation,” I said.

“Oh, puh-lease,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Brad directs the shows, I run everything else – reservations, hiring the kitchen and wait help, managing the house on show nights. It’s like being a crisis counselor.”

“And Ty Cannon was a crisis?”

“Big time. Brad cast him to play Reverend Chasuble in the show that’s running now. Have you seen it?”

“Only the non-musical version. I know who Reverend Chasuble is.”

“Well, Brad offered it to this guy Ty Cannon. Cannon accepted the part, but he never showed up when we started rehearsals. I tried for two days to reach him, but he never answered the phone or his messages. We had to call five other guys before we could find someone who had time to take the role. Between you and me, he isn’t as good as Ty, but what can you do?”

“What indeed? So you never heard from Cannon?”

“Not a peep. We figured he’d taken another job, maybe a movie or something, and didn’t have the balls to call and cancel out on us. Creep.”

“When was he supposed to start work?”

She pulled a day planner from her top desk drawer and riffled through it.

“Umm, rehearsals started two weeks ago today. We open tomorrow night.”

Two weeks. The same time Ty was last seen by Tom Schuyler.

The same time, roughly, that Asa Corona had made his first payment on the blackmail. Maybe Ty had taken another gig – one that paid a lot more money.

“Do you still have Cannon’s address and phone number?” I asked.

She turned and opened a side drawer on the desk. It turned out to be a file cabinet.

“Somewhere… here it is. We file stuff here by shows, and I haven’t started cleaning out the file yet. I’ll get you a copy.”

She disappeared back down the hall for a moment, and then reappeared. She handed me a sheet of paper.

The picture was Ty Cannon. He was better arranged and more professionally photographed than in the one I was carrying. It was a headshot, the kind actors tote around by the ream to hand out at auditions. On the back, he’d listed his address, telephone number, email address, and his acting credits. I noted the Soilite commercial among them.

“Can I keep this?” I asked.

“Sure. He’ll never work in this theatre again.”

She smiled at her turn on the showbiz phrase.

I smiled back, mostly being polite.

“How did he seem when you met him?” I asked.

“Very high-strung. That was why Brad wanted him for Reverend Chasuble. Brad wanted the character to be nervous, fidgety. Cannon was like that. Nice guy, though, at least at the audition. What an asshole…”

I thanked her for the picture and the information, and started to stand.

“A detective, huh?” she said again.

I smiled at her.

“Got a gun?”

“Not on me. In the glove compartment. I don’t have much call to use it.”

“You kill anyone?”

“Not in the last month. You want me to plug Ty Cannon for you when I find him?”

“Please do,” she said. “And send me a picture. We’ll use it as a warning for other actors.”