The Phantom of Oz Read online

  I didn’t want to, either, but I did. People might need help.

  Emergency lights had turned on, shining through the dust as through a fog, and illuminating what looked like a bombed-out theater from World War II. Above us, where the chandelier had been, a jagged hole yawned black against the painted blue sky, its edges scorched, as if by lightning. Hanging wires snapped and sparked, and smoke curled toward the balcony. Smoke? There wasn’t any fire. And that smoke…it almost looked alive…

  “Hey!” Several black-shirted techies jumped off the stage and ran toward us. People covered in white dust rose like ghosts from the wreckage, their eyes streaked with black from stage makeup and tears. The auditioning munchkins and their mothers stood in a tight group center stage, the moms trying to keep their kids from looking too closely.

  The chandelier had fallen directly over our little group. The Tin Man gingerly lifted his head from where he lay embraced by a ring of the chandelier. “I always hated this costume,” he said, banging a fist on the metal robot costume that ensconced and probably saved him. “Until now. I think I’m okay.”

  “Everyone else okay?” I said. The stage manager stood frozen in the nearby aisle. I’d never seen a stage manager unnerved before. Unflappability was one of the hallmarks of their trade. “Maybe we should take a roll call or something?” I said to her.

  “Yeah. Good. Good idea. Thanks. Say ‘here’ when I call your name,” she said loudly. “Dorothy?”

  “Here.” The actress stood up shakily. She brushed white powder from her hair; it floated around her head like a mist.

  “Scarecrow?”

  “Here.”

  Cast members stood one by one, and felt themselves, as if making sure all their limbs were intact. Everyone seemed to be okay until...

  “Wicked Witch of the East?”

  Nothing.

  “Normina, Wicked Witch of the East?”

  No reply, just a pair of red and white striped socks sticking out from under the remains of the chandelier. We carefully pulled the chandelier off the witch. She didn’t move.

  Then, a groan.

  “She’s alive!” someone said.

  “I called 911 as soon as it happened,” the stage manager said. “Help should be here soon.”

  “It looks like part of the chandelier is underneath her,” a techie said. “Should we do something, maybe move her off it?”

  “I don’t think we should move anything else,” I said. Amazingly, except for a twisted leg, the witch didn’t have any obvious injuries. “In case there are internal injuries.”

  Behind me, a little girl began to cry. Another child joined her. Then another. For a moment the only sound in the theater was crying.

  Then a voice. A small voice. “You know what happened, don’t you?” said Madison. “You’ve all seen The Phantom of the Opera. It was the Lady in White who did this. The ghost tried to kill us.”

  A flash, and we all cringed, looking up at the wires dangling from the ceiling. Another flash. And another. They didn’t come from what was left of the chandelier.

  Babette stood amongst the glass and splintered seats, taking flash pictures. Then she held out her cellphone at arm’s length, made a horrified face at the camera, and took a selfie.

  Chapter 5

  The Singular, But Veracious Story of the Ghost

  “Olive-y!” My brother opened the door to his group home before I’d even rung the bell. “I can’t believe you were at that theater last night. Are you okay? I was so...” His eyes filled with tears. “So afraid.”

  “I’m fine.” I hugged Cody tight. I’d called him last night after the accident, even though it was late. I told him I was okay then, but he wanted to see me this morning, probably just to make sure. My sweet baby brother.

  I let him go and stepped into the house, carrying a white paper bag that smelled wonderfully yeasty. Stu, Cody’s best friend, was glued to the TV in the front room, where Babette’s now-viral selfie was front and center. I held up my bag. “Ba-gels,” I said in a sing-song voice.

  Stu jumped up. Don’t know it if was me or my breakfast-scented bag. Stu liked me, but he loved bagels. “Olive-y!” It was Cody who’d christened me with the combo of Olive and Ivy, but all the guys at his group home called me that. “And bagels! Enough for me?”

  “Of course.” I took the bag into the kitchen and set it on the table. One of the guys who worked there came in, probably lured by the smell. “Okay for everyone to have one?” I asked.

  “Sure, but just one apiece.” He looked at Stu, who had that chubby figure you see on a lot of folks with Down syndrome. Cody sat down at the table next to Stu. His disability wasn’t obvious to the casual observer: brain injury didn’t always show on the outside.

  “Did you see the chandelier fall?” asked Stu.

  “Yeah.” I told them what happened, keeping any emotions under check so I wouldn’t upset Cody. A couple other guys who lived there wandered in while I was telling the story, so it took awhile since I had to keep circling back.

  “Did you see the Lady in White?” Excitement replaced Cody’s fear. “Do you think she tried to kill you?”

  “How do you know about her?” I asked.

  “From that Ghost Hunt show.”

  “Did you guys get cable?” I looked at the group home employee, who shook his head.

  “I watched it at Uncle Bob’s,” Cody said.

  That surprised me even more than the possibility of cable TV at the notoriously underfunded group home. Uncle Bob usually steered clear of the spiritual realm, plus he had a pet peeve about reality TV shows. Probably just being nice to Cody.

  But that didn’t mean I’d let him off the hook. “I hear you’re quite the reality TV fan now,” I said at Duda Detectives’ office, an hour and two bagels later.

  “No way,” Uncle Bob mumbled, his mouth full of the onion bagel I’d saved for him.

  “So you don’t watch Ghost Hunt?” I sat down at my “desk,” a wooden TV tray under the office’s one window.

  “Um...well...Bette likes it.” Bette was my uncle’s long-distance girlfriend, and an investigative journalist. At the moment she was in Nogales, Mexico covering border issues.

  “Huh. Cody didn’t say anything about Bette being there.”

  “Sometimes I watch it even when she’s not around. Just so we can talk about it. You know.” Uncle Bob’s cheeks flushed pink. Not sure if he blushed because he was admitting he watched a reality TV show about ghosts or because of the mention of Bette, but it was damn cute.

  My phone buzzed—a text. I looked at it and dashed off an answer. “So what can you tell me about the Lady in White?” I asked my uncle.

  “Are you pulling my chain?”

  “No.” I’d already looked up the Lady on the internet, but the information I found was meant to be creepy, not informational. “I’m serious. Everyone’s talking about how she might be involved in last night’s accident.”

  Uncle Bob swallowed. “Yeah. About that...I...Are you...”

  Like most members of my family, Uncle Bob had a tough time dealing with anything emotional. It didn’t mean he didn’t love me.

  “It was scary, but I’m fine.” Another text came in. I gave it the same answer. “The only one who was hurt was the Wicked Witch of the East. She’s got a pretty bad concussion and a broken leg. It’s really a miracle no one was killed. Maybe the ghost was looking out for us. You know, that one you’re going to tell me about.”

  “I think I created a monster.”

  “What?”

  “You weren’t this obnoxious before getting into the PI biz.”

  “Yes, I was. Don’t you remember how I got that first camp counselor job?” When I was sixteen, my mom and dad put me onboard a bus after I told them I had a summer job at an arts camp. I didn’t, at least not until I showed up on the camp
director’s doorstep with my school and community theater acting résumé and two months’ worth of luggage. “And you can’t distract me right now. The Lady in White’s story, please.”

  “All right.” Uncle Bob brushed the bagel crumbs off the sea turtles swimming across his Hawaiian shirt, and settled back in his chair. “It’s some story. People have seen her ghost at that theater for almost a hundred years. She wears—”

  “White?”

  “You wanna hear the story, or you wanna be a wiseass?”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “She wears a white—”

  I snickered.

  Uncle Bob ignored me. “—evening gown, like the one she died in.”

  “Did she die in the theater? Was she an actor?”

  “Do you interrupt Matt all the time like this?”

  “No. Well, sometimes.” Matt was not just a wonderful boyfriend but a very very patient man. “Go on. Please.”

  “She died wearing this white dress. Drowned herself one night in the well in the bottom of the theater.”

  “What?”

  “See, you listen, you learn something, Ms. Smarty Pants.”

  “Okay, you got me. There’s a well in the bottom of the theater?”

  “Yep. Guess the place was built over some spring. They even used the water to air-cool the theater in the old days. They had a photo of the well on the show. It’s still there, in some room that looks like a big closet from the outside.”

  “Wouldn’t it be tough to drown yourself in something so small?”

  “It’s bigger than you’d think. Almost like a small swimming pool. Plus the Lady tied rocks into her dress.”

  “Seems like you’d have to be pretty determined.”

  “I guess she was.”

  “Why?”

  “She was an actress. Estelle de Chagny.” My uncle had an amazing memory. Part of what made him such a good PI. “She was about to be married to some European duke who fell in love with her after seeing her onstage. But during some fancy party at the hotel next door...”

  “The Hotel La Fuente.”

  “Yeah. Fuente means ‘spring’ by the way.”

  “It also means ‘fountain.’” My phone buzzed a third time. I started to answer it.

  “Do you know how hard it is to tell you a story?”

  “Sorry.” I put my phone face down on my desk.

  “So, during that party at the hotel, she wore a white evening dress...”

  “The one the ghost wears now.”

  “Yeah, and a long flowy white scarf. It caught on fire. Some people said she walked too close to a candelabra. Others said a rival made sure the scarf caught in the flame.”

  “She was hurt?”

  Uncle Bob nodded. “Burned her neck. They had pictures on the show. She didn’t look too bad, really. The damage was all below her chin, but the duke ‘couldn’t love a monster.’”

  “He said that to her?”

  “No. Supposedly her rival did, when she visited her in the hospital. But him, the royal asshole, he broke up with her by letter, then married the woman who probably caused the whole thing. The marriage was a done deal by the time the Lady was well enough to go home. When she found out about it, she put on her white dress, went to the basement of the theater, and drowned herself.”

  “How did they ever find her?”

  “I guess she used to go down to the spring room before shows. There’s a little bench beside the well. She told people that looking at the water calmed her, helped her to...” he made air quotes with his fingers, “‘let go of the everyday world and glimpse eternity.’” Uncle Bob shook his head. “I hope eternity looked good to her that last night.”

  My phone vibrated. Again. It had been going off nearly nonstop during the Lady in White’s story. I picked it up.

  “What’s up?” Uncle Bob asked.

  “The theater accident has gone viral.” The texts were all from concerned friends, except one from Candy that said, “Check out the Huff Post. We’re famous!” I pulled up the news site. “Hey. Look at this.” Uncle Bob padded to my desk while I texted Candy back: “Cool. Meet me for lunch?”

  “Falling Chandelier Nearly Kills Babette Firman,” Uncle Bob read out loud as he looked over my shoulder. “Is there a new Phantom of the Opera?” He shook his head at the photos posted online: the shattered chandelier, the dust-covered cast members, and of course, Babette’s dramatically terrified face. “Something that massive dropping and not killing anybody? Maybe that ghost was looking out for you.”

  I looked up at my uncle’s stubbly chins (there were three or so). He was not a guy who said these sort of things. He blushed again and went back to his desk. I waited, but that was it.

  I scanned the Huffington Post article. “Babette sure made the most of it. Makes it sound as if someone actually targeted her. Like there weren’t another dozen people around. Oh, she does finally mention the Wicked Witch of the East, not by name, mind you...and she does talk about Arrestadt. He is famous, so she pretty much would have to say something about him, and...Huh.” A particular sentence in the article jumped out at me: “Not only was I afraid for my life,” said Babette. “But I was this close to losing my newest find. In fact, I wonder if maybe the ghost was after her.” Her newest find? She didn’t seem that impressed with any of the munchkins when I was there. A flutter in my chest. Maybe she did notice me.

  “Wow.” Uncle Bob stared at his computer. “That chandelier was something.” He must have pulled up the photos. “They say it was made of ten thousand pieces of glass and crystal and weighed more than two thousand pounds. No word on why it fell though.”

  “Not that anyone is saying. Pretty crazy. You’d think when they renovated the theater they would have been extra careful with that. I mean, imagine if it had happened during the show, fell on a bunch of audience members.”

  “Yeah.” My uncle still stared at his computer. “Some accident. And some miracle. Thank God you and Candy are all right.”

  I didn’t say anything, but Uncle Bob must have heard something in my silence. He tore his attention away from his screen and looked at me. “You are both okay, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know. You should see Candy. She weighs about ninety pounds and her hair and teeth are straight and gray.”

  “Her hair is gray?”

  “No, her hair is straight. Her teeth are gray.”

  “That’s worse.”

  “I know. And she’s just not herself. She’s...blah and hyper at the same time. And she hasn’t been keeping in touch. I didn’t even know she had this gig until she called me yesterday. And...” I checked my phone. “She didn’t text me back about lunch.”

  “Olive.” My uncle put a big hand on my back. “People change. Friendships change.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to let go of my friend. I wanted the old Candy back.

  Chapter 6

  Am I Supposed to Have an Infectious Disease?

  “Meet me for lunch?” said the text from Matt.

  I wanted to. Near-death experiences make you want to pull everyone you love close. I was grateful I’d been able to spend some time with my brother and Uncle Bob but really wished I could see Matt too. I’d had a long talk on the phone with him last night, but that wasn’t the same as being with him in person.

  But I couldn’t do it right now. “I need to try to see Candy,” I texted back. I told him last night that I was worried about her. The conversation had been awkward. I loved them both, but I didn’t like to think about them dating.

  “Okay,” came Matt’s reply. “XOXO.”

  I texted Candy. Again. “I have an hour for lunch. Sound good?”

  This time the reply came right away. “Sorry. Can’t make it.”

  “Dinner before my show?”

  “Sorry.”

/>   “See my show tonight? I could get you a ticket.”

  “Sorry. I—”

  I didn’t wait to read the rest of the reply but rang Candy right then. She didn’t pick up. “Candy, you just texted me. I know you’re there,” I said to her voicemail. “Call me. I’ll be waiting.”

  Candy did call—an hour later, safely after any lunch break I might’ve had. “I’ve been running all over hell’s half acre and back,” she said by way of an excuse. Southern expressions are meant to be drawled, but Candy spoke incredibly fast, like those people at the end of radio commercials. It sounded weird. “And I am so sorry we can’t get together later.”

  I waited for an explanation. She didn’t give me one. “Why not?” I said. “You don’t have rehearsal or a show.”

  “I do have a rehearsal. They’re letting us use Center Stage at the Berger this afternoon. We still have to finish a run-through with our new scarecrow. I guess the rest of the munchkins are going to audition there too.”

  “Why aren’t you having rehearsal at your next tour stop? Seems way less complicated.”

  “The show goes back up on Saturday. Here.”

  “What? Where?”

  “We’re going to be at The Grand Phoenician. The show is sold out. Everyone wants to see the place where the ghost made the chandelier fall.” Candy laughed, but it didn’t sound real.

  “But how?”

  “Guess the damage isn’t as bad as all that. They have to repair the ceiling, but they’re not going to hang another chandelier. Other than that, they just have to take out a few damaged seats and bring in some temporary seating. They’re even letting us rehearse onstage tomorrow afternoon.”

  That seemed way too soon. Someone with money must be greasing the wheels. “But you have tonight off, right?”

  “I promised I’d help with munchkin auditions, since I’m the kid wrangler.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “The Good Witch and the kiddie corraller, that’s me. Sorry I didn’t get a chance to tell you. Not a lot of time to talk yesterday, what with the disaster and all.” She laughed that forced laugh again. It made my heart ache. What had happened to my friend?