The next morning Lee took the subway back up to the theatre to observe rehearsal. The Noble Fools had decided not to cancel the production, and Mindy’s understudy was apparently more than willing to step in. Davillia had dramatically quoted the famous dictum that “the show must go on,” though Lee suspected she was more driven by monetary considerations. The landlord had been paid in advance, and a cancelled production would leave a huge gap in the company’s finances. Lee had agreed to keep an eye on things at the theatre while Butts and Sergeant McKinney interviewed Mindy’s friends and family.
As the Seventh Avenue line rattled uptown, Lee thought about the phone conversation of the night before. He had not told Chloe that Laura was missing, but that she was dead. Of course he didn’t know that for certain, but he had long believed it. His training and experience told him the chances of her being alive were remote, but it was more than that. Hope was too alluring and easily dashed-he couldn’t afford that particular emotion. It was easier to expect the worst. Hope involved wanting, which meant opening up to the possibility of more pain.
Rehearsal was already in progress when he arrived, so he slid into a seat at the back of the auditorium. They were running the scene with Antipholus of Syracuse and his twin brother’s wife, portrayed by Sara Wittier. She was actually quite good, not playing it for laughs, taking her character’s dilemma seriously. Antipholus was played by Keith Wilson, the leaner of the two dark-haired twins, and they made a good-looking couple onstage. Lee noticed that Keith wore a long navy blue cloak-part of his costume, perhaps? He remembered the blue fiber found on Caroline’s body and made a mental note to tell Butts.
Davillia watched from her director’s chair, sipping from a metal thermos and picking at a bran muffin. She stopped the actors from time to time, suggesting stage movement or alternate line readings. She was surprisingly sensitive and thoughtful, given her larger-than-life persona. They were in the middle of a scene in which Sara’s character, Adriana, confronts Antipholus of Syracuse, who she thinks is her husband. He is actually her husband’s twin brother, and of course has never seen her before. Also onstage was Ryan Atkins, playing Antipholus’s servant, Dromio of Syracuse.
Davillia put down her thermos and approached the stage, her bracelets jingling. She wore an emerald-green kimono with a long string of multicolored beads. Lee imagined her bedroom closet full of dozens of various colored kimonos.
“Sara, darling, start that speech again, will you?” she cooed in her affected accent. “But this time really let your emotional reaction to his strange behavior fuel your entrance more-all right, lovey?”
Sara nodded and they went back to the beginning of the scene. Davillia returned to her chair and her coffee, delicately plucking off pieces of muffin, using her fingers with their long, brightly painted nails. Sara entered from the wings and stopped abruptly when she saw Antipholus and his servant. Glaring at them, she flung her arms out angrily. Her face reddened as she sputtered her lines furiously.
Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange and frown: Some other mistress hath thy sweet aspects; I am not Adriana nor thy wife.
When Sara had finished the entire speech, Davillia leapt to her feet, clapping her hands like a child.
“Yes, yes-that’s it! Brava-see what I mean?”
“Yes,” Sara said, blushing and looking pleased with herself.
Lee studied the other actors onstage. Mindy’s understudy, the young woman playing Luciana, looked on with shy appreciation, and Keith Wilson was smiling broadly. Ryan Atkins stared at Sara with an expression of entranced adoration on his freckled face. His pale blue eyes brimmed with emotion.
Lee spotted Ryan’s brother, Danny, watching from the wings. The look on his face was very different-his features were frozen in a mask of intense disapproval. Without changing his expression, he wheeled about and disappeared backstage.