The performance was electrifying. Jasmine Day danced and sang, her voice swelling over the sixteen-piece band that backed her. Each song was accompanied by sets that, through Alan Dale’s technical wizardry, flowed on and off stage without a pause or hitch.
The first act was pure pleasure for me. Unfortunately, pleasure isn’t my business. When the curtain came down for intermission, it was time for me to go to work.
I headed backstage. A security guard stopped me before I even made it to the top of the steps.
“No one’s allowed back here.”
I was attempting to talk my way around him when Dan Osgood appeared behind the security guard’s shoulder.
“It’s all right,” Osgood said. “You can let him through.”
Grudgingly, the guard let me pass.
“Thanks,” I said to Osgood.
I had spotted Alan Dale and several other people near the band shell. As I started in that direction, Osgood fell into step beside me.
“Enjoying the show?” he asked. I nodded. “She’s something else, isn’t she?” he continued. “Better than I expected.”
Osgood was still congratulating himself on his good taste when we reached the turntable. The band shell sat like a gigantic wedding cake, balanced on what seemed to be a single metal leg that disappeared into the raised wooden platform beneath it. Alan Dale was walking around the turntable checking the bolts underneath, followed by a slightly built, balding man. I recognized Ed Waverly from his picture in the program.
“You’re sure it’ll work?” Waverly asked.
Alan Dale stopped and turned on him, looking as though he wanted to bash Waverly over the head with his wrench.
“Look, Ed,” Dale said with an air of forced tolerance. “I told you it would work, and it will. This’ll do for tonight and tomorrow. The clutch will be waiting for us when we get to Vancouver. We can fix it when we do the load-in there. Meantime, we’re leaving the safety plate off so if something does go wrong with the track, it won’t be so hard to fix it.”
I turned to Osgood. “That’s Ed Waverly, right?”
Osgood nodded. I turned back, intending to introduce myself to the road-show manager, but he was already halfway across the stage. Instead I caught Alan Dale’s eyes. “Can you talk to me now?”
“How about tomorrow morning?” he asked. “Say ten-thirty or so at the Mayflower?”
There was no point in alienating him. “Sure,” I said and went looking for Waverly. I was too late. He’d already gone back out front, where there were people waiting for him. Frustrated, I decided to try talking to Jasmine Day herself.
To my surprise, I discovered that once I was backstage, no one questioned my presence or my reason for being there. I wandered off toward the dressing rooms. There was a small common area where the musicians were already lounging. I made my way through the crush to a door with a removable plastic nameplate that said, in an elegant script, Jasmine Day. I knocked.
“Who is it?”
I opened the door. Inside, Jasmine Day had changed from the blue dress into a black silk jumpsuit. She was standing with one foot on the seat of a chair, lacing up a high-topped boot that ended just below her knee. She glanced at me over her shoulder and returned to the boot.
“If it isn’t Sleeping Beauty,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?” Thinking she must be speaking over my shoulder to someone else, I glanced behind me. No one was there.
She finished lacing the second boot and turned toward me, tying and smoothing a heavy gold belt around her waist.
“Call it morbid curiosity,” she said, sauntering past me. She walked up to a light-studded dressing-room mirror, wiped a smudge of mascara from her cheek, and applied a fresh coat of lipstick.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Oh?” she replied, checking the line of lipstick. “You’re sitting in the road manager’s comps, front-row center. Divine right of kings and all that. I always check during PeeWee’s act to see what I’m going to be stuck with after the show. I checked on you, just before I went on. You were sawing logs.”
An embarrassed flush crept up my ears. She saw it and laughed.
“You’re blushing. This the first time you’ve been caught sleeping in a theater?”
Before I could answer, there was a knock on the door behind me. It swung open, narrowly missing me. I moved out of the way. A stagehand stuck his head into the dressing room. “Five minutes, Miss Day,” he said.
She nodded and turned back to me. “So who are you?” she asked. “An old crony of Ed Waverly’s?”
I had been reaching for one of my cards. I dropped it, letting it fall back into my jacket pocket.