Read Online Blood Will Have Blood by Linda Barnes - Free Book Online Page A

session, preoccupied. Even though the joker hadn’t disrupted the day’s rehearsal, Spraggue was just about ready to go along with the handwriting on Eddie’s wall: cancel the show. At least until he’d traced every actor’s performing history vis-à-vis Macbeth . Karen was waiting, clearly impatient. She wore the same dark slacks and T-shirt she’d had on all day. He wondered if she ever took a break, if she’d eaten lunch or dinner.
    â€œSorry,” he said, taking the six steps up from the auditorium to the stage in two bounds.
    â€œI didn’t have anything better to do,” she answered drily, setting aside her clipboard and getting to her feet.
    â€œI know how busy you must be—” Spraggue added apologetically.
    â€œAnd that’s why you’re late,” she finished for him.
    Spraggue shrugged. He wasn’t about to grovel twice for a few lousy minutes. The stage manager had a glint in her dark eyes, but whether it signified suppressed humor or anger he couldn’t tell. The woman’s impassive face gave little away.
    She pushed him through his scenes like a football coach bent on impressing a raw recruit. She was no actress, but she gave his cues intelligently in a warm, low voice. She knew her stuff; she had crosses and counters timed to the second, especially those that coincided with technical effects.
    After an hour and a half, she granted him a five-minute break, adding a grudging “Not bad” and a thin secretive smile that Spraggue decided he’d like to see more of.
    He glanced sorrowfully at the straight-backed prop chairs and stretched out on the hard stage floor, regretting the line-memorization binge that had cost him most of the previous night’s sleep. Karen kept on working. Spraggue listened to her footsteps off in the wings, counted the clicks and bangs as she moved things about. She mumbled to herself and checked off items on her ever-present clipboard.
    Spraggue stared up at the roof of the stage some three stories overhead. The sensation was of lying in a fireplace, gazing up the shaft of the chimney. A vast chimney: sixty, seventy feet wide, thirty feet long. At the very top, he could barely see the crisscrossed metal of the gridiron. The space just below the grid was crowded; lighting bars crammed with instruments and cables alternated with chunks of scenery. Eight suspension battens divided the space, each batten a long iron pipe running the width of the stage. Tied to each pipe, faintly rustling in the air currents, a part of the set hung down. Spraggue identified a rocky tower from Castle Dracula, a glimmering chandelier from Dr. Seward’s sitting room.
    â€œWatch out!” Spraggue gasped, and sat up even as he spoke. The crystal chandelier had descended a good five feet before stopping with a jerk that set its beads jangling.
    â€œSorry.” Karen’s voice was muffled by the yards of drapery that separated the wings from the stage. “Just checking the counterweights.”
    â€œIsn’t there some customary warning cry before you dump the lamp on my body? ‘Fore’ or something?”
    Karen’s laugh floated through the curtains. “We say ‘Heads’ in the theater. Short for ‘Heads up.’ Remember?”
    â€œYeah,” Spraggue said. “Good posture is so important right before you get smacked in the face.”
    â€œI wouldn’t worry about it. If one of these ropes breaks, you won’t even have a chance to yell.”
    â€œComforting.”
    â€œDon’t fret.” Karen emerged from the wings and sprawled next to Spraggue on the floor. “The rope is two-thousand-pound test-weight stuff. Not cheap. This theater has one of the best counterweight systems I’ve ever seen.”
    â€œThen why did the chandelier slip?”
    â€œImproperly weighted. I released the rope clamp. If the weight on the carriage—”
    â€œThe