The Marsh Madness

Not so for Lance. He was born for the stage. These days his performances were reserved for his permanent audience in the reference department or in a presentation to the library board for funding or service enhancements. Still, he’d been a big hit in some Harrison Falls Theater Guild’s performances. People were still talking about his Stanley Kowalski.

“Some of those friends will break your heart. Until you end up happily ever after.” She laughed and pointed upstairs where Doug was thundering about.

I said, “Only one of them broke my heart. He also cleaned out my bank account and maxed out my credit cards.”

“Ouch. Hope you’re over him.”

“Yup. With lots of help.” Lance and Tiff and a raft of redheaded Kellys. And we move on, as my uncles had taught me early and well.

“I’m so glad to hear it.” She beamed at me, and I knew where I’d seen her before.

“I just realized why you look familiar. Are you part of Harrison Falls Theater Guild? I saw you in Steel Magnolias. You were an awesome Truvy! That was one of our college productions. We could have used you.”

“You should come and try out. I can let you know when there are auditions. Give me your number.”

“Sure thing.” I headed out with the box and thought about her offer. I loved the idea of auditioning for one of HFTG’s productions too, but I always seemed to be knee-deep in murder when the call went out.

When I came back for the second box, Larraine was still in a mood to chat. “I think Marsh is brilliant. You’d better run before I change my mind.”

From up the stairs a bellow from Doug: “Since we’re getting rid of some of my books, who needs seventy-five pairs of shoes?”

Larraine chuckled. “I can’t wait to get back to normal. Doug has already taken the TVs and radios to the new place. He claims they’re too distracting here. I’ll need a week of theater to get me back to normal. Oh, and by the way, I try to catch everything I can on and off Broadway. And off-off-off. As you could probably tell, Doug’s not so keen on it. I often meet up with old friends to go. But I like you too. Maybe you and I could attend a couple of performances together.”

“That would be great.” I was still grinning as I drove away. It would be nice to stay in touch with her. But I realized that I’d paid cash and forgotten to give her my name or my number, even though we’d talked about getting together. And I didn’t know where she was moving. Oh well. I could probably track her down through the Harrison Falls Theater Guild. An occasional trip to catch a live performance in the city sounded wonderful.

I took a couple of minutes to drop the long white florist’s box (still containing the offending dead roses), with a note, at Tyler’s neat little brick home. It was easier than chasing him around town on his shift, and I did have a key.

Now, I had a lot of reading to catch up on.


*

AT HOME, I lugged the boxes up to the third floor and set out the books on my Lucite coffee table. With their bright colors and similar styles, my new finds brought some extra life to the space. Of course, there wasn’t much time to read before our lunch tomorrow at Summerlea, but I wanted to use what I had. I chose A Man Lay Dead, partly because it was the first and partly because it took place in a stately home. How much fun was that? Inspector Alleyn was a suave and elegant upper-class character. He practically reeked dignity and elegance, but right from the beginning he managed to avoid being stuffy or arrogant.