The Old Deep and Dark (2 page)

“Don't you want to know why it's called that?”

“I don't know,” she said, one eyebrow arching. “Do I?”

“The original owner, Elijah Samuelson, the man who built the place in 1903, sold it in 1923. The new owners, Gilbert and Hilda King, intended to turn it into a vaudeville stage, but because of mismanagement, and some say Gilbert's gambling problems, they couldn't make a go of it. Remember, this was right around the beginning of Prohibition. Apparently, as the theater was on its way toward insolvency, Gilbert got involved with some unsavory types.”

“Gangsters?”

“Bootleggers, though you're probably right. They were likely connected. Lots of mob activity in the Twin Cities back then, you know. Anyway, Gilbert King—he started calling himself King Gilbert—only ran shows on weekends and spent the rest of his time developing a speakeasy. That's what kept him and Hilda afloat until the early thirties.”

“Where was the speakeasy?”

“In the basement. People came in through a door along Fifth. They were hustled down a narrow back stairs.”

The comment jogged Cordelia's memory. The basement of the theater was essentially unexplored territory. She'd been down there a few times with her sister to check out the rooms, many of them stuffed with old theater paraphernalia. Beyond heating, cooling, plumbing, and electrical concerns, and because extra storage space wasn't needed at the moment, she'd decreed that the basement renovation could wait until the upper floors had been completed. As she thought about it, she did recall seeing a rather beautiful Art Deco bar somewhere in the bowels of the building, but had assumed it was a shell, a prop created in a scene shop for a specific play.

The proscenium stage was located on the third floor of the main building. The costume shop, scene shop, electrical shop, and prop and costume storage rooms fit reasonably well on second. The main floor served as a small lobby, with elevators at the edges, and a ticket booth out front under a large marquee. A two-story addition had been added on to the east side of the building during the late forties. The first level contained two rental spaces, already taken by an independent general bookstore and an Italian deli. Theater offices were on the second.

“Where exactly was the speakeasy?” asked Cordelia, removing a nail file from her sack purse.

“The southwest corner of the main building. King Gilbert had it walled off from the rest of the basement. That is, except for a small door, which, at the moment, is unlocked.”

“You've been down there?”

“I've been searching for old theater records. I assume you don't mind.”

She waved the comment away. “And thus, because of the illegal nature of the speakeasy, the theater became known as the Old Deep and Dark?”

“No, the building wasn't called that until Gilbert and Hilda were murdered.”

Her eyes widened. “Murdered?”

“It was 1933, the year Prohibition ended. Supposedly, King Gilbert got in over his head with the wrong guys. Those guys cornered him and Hilda behind the bar one night and blew them away. It was a fairly typical gangland shooting. One goon stood upstairs outside the door on Fifth, while two more crept down the stairs and opened fire with Thompson submachine guns. A couple of bystanders were wounded. Thankfully, both survived.”

“Wonderful. Just … exactly what I wanted to hear.”

“I believe Gilbert was hit with at least fifteen rounds. Seven slugs passed through Hilda. What was left of them was buried at Lakewood a few days later.” He adjusted his bifocals. “I'm afraid there's more.”

“Of course there is.”

“The building's haunted. For the past eighty years, folks have seen faint images of Gilbert and Hilda on the stairs, in the elevators, onstage during shows. They've heard voices and footsteps, creaking floorboards when nobody is around. Windows in the offices are found open in the middle of winter.” Leaning closer to her, he dropped his voice. “Apparently, they don't get along.”

“Excuse me?”

“There's a lot of bickering. You've got a ghost light on the stage, right?”

“Of course. It's an actor's equity thing, a safety feature. It's not supposed to work for actual ghosts.”

“Why are you smiling?” asked Archibald.

“Every theater should have a ghost,” declared Cordelia. “It's tradition.”

“Yes, well,” he said, clearing his throat. “If you believe in that sort of thing.”

“You don't?”

“I believe in the romance of any given theater being haunted, but no, I don't believe in actual ghosts.” Flipping past a couple of pages, he continued. “To move on with our mini-history tutorial. After Gilbert and Hilda died, the theater sat empty for many years. It was the Great Depression and nobody had the money to restart it. Eventually, two Chicago-based entrepreneurs bought the property for a song and turned it into a movie theater. They slapped a neon marquee on the front, added elevators in the front lobby, built the addition, and operated it until 1964, calling it the Downtowner. It was sold again in 1967. The third-floor movie theater was dismantled and the space was used as a general auditorium. It continued to deteriorate. A couple of theater groups rented it after that. One from 1975 to 1987. One from 1998 to 2006. It sat empty for the rest of the time.”

“And then my sister and I bought it,” said Cordelia, trying to hurry him along. She had another meeting scheduled for eleven and wanted to get some breakfast before it began.

“Speaking of your sister, where is Octavia?” asked Archibald, closing the folder. “I was hoping she might sit in on our discussion this morning.”

“Italy,” said Cordelia, repositioning her turquoise necklace across her impressive décolletage. She knew the necklace was gaudy, which was why she liked it. “She's trying to disentangle herself from husband number fifteen.”

“Fifteen?” he repeated, looking shocked. “So many?”

“Well, eight? Twelve? I can't keep track. This one's a real bloodsucker, that's all I know.”

“When will she be back?”

“Next month. Next week. Tomorrow. She is a will-o'-the-wisp until we start rehearsals.”

“With a name like hers—so famous on the New York stage, in movies—”

“She obviously has the lead in our first production.”

“And you'll direct.”

It gave Cordelia a bad case of indigestion to even think about directing her sister. Not only was Octavia a black hole when it came to emotional hand-holding, she didn't take direction well. Since the renovations and the need to get the theater organization on firm footing had run into a few snags, the opening production couldn't be mounted until spring.

Archibald moved to the edge of his chair. “I've heard some scuttlebutt.”

“About what?”

“You're thinking of offering one of the starring roles to Kit Deere.”

Cordelia generally hated leaks, though in this case, since she'd been the one who'd leaked the story, she hoped the rumors would work in her favor by putting a little pressure on Kit to take the part. She was reasonably well known in the national theater community. Locally, however, she was nothing short of theatrical royalty. That and the fact she was married to country music singer Jordan Deere made her box office gold. “Have you heard from Kit or Jordan recently?”

“I hear from them all the time.”

Another one of Archibald's more annoying traits was his tendency to collect people who fascinated him for one reason or another. On the other hand, since Cordelia was one of “the fascinating” he'd collected, she gave him points for taste. He'd started out his career as a Roman history scholar, but had realized in his midforties that there was more bang for his career buck if he switched his interests to Minnesota. He'd written the definitive volume on Minnesota theater history, devoting an entire chapter to Cordelia—and one to Kit.

“I've also heard you want to hire Booker Deere as the head set designer,” said Archibald. “Any truth in that?”

“My lips are sealed,” said Cordelia, rising from her chair, hoping Archibald would get the message and do the same.

“Am I being dismissed?”

In high heels, at nearly six foot three, she towered over him, though she wasn't interested in intimidation—at least, not this morning.

“One more question before I go,” he said, shuffling papers back into the folder. “You're giving me full access to all areas of the building, right?”

She saw no reason to deny the request. “Everything but our current office space.”

He smiled, tucked the folder under his arm. “I'd like to continue our little meetings, just to keep you abreast of what I'm learning.”

Cordelia walked him to the door. “Just so that we're clear. You intend to write the text for the pamphlet that we'll use for publicity purposes, yes?”

“As long or short as you'd like.”

“You'll need to talk with our marketing director, Marcus Yeboah.”

“I have a meeting scheduled with him later today.”

“Good man. I owe you.”

His smile broadened. “I'm easily bought off with comps.”

“Consider that a given.”

 

3

The late autumn air was sweet with the smell of wood smoke as Booker made his way from the back veranda of his parents' summerhouse on Frenchman's Bay down to the flagstone patio closer to the beach. He'd arrived on a flight from New York shortly after seven, and had just finished stowing his bag in one of the upstairs bedrooms when he looked out the window and noticed his sister, Chloe, standing down by the fire pit. He hadn't seen her in almost a year, though they texted and phoned occasionally. The next few days were supposed to be a family reunion of sorts. His father had been the instigator, writing in his e-mail that it had been too long since they'd all been together. Since Booker had another reason for visiting the Twin Cities, he'd e-mailed and said he would be able to make it.

Nothing was ever simple when it came to his mom and dad, so he assumed that the stated reason was only a part of the story. He doubted his parents were getting a divorce. They were too content with their lives to shake up their worlds so radically. His mother was fifty-seven, which meant it wasn't a baby announcement. Chloe could be pregnant, of course, though that would require nothing more than a text from someone in the family and maybe a phone call from Chloe. His mother was flying up from New Orleans tomorrow, where she'd been starring in a play for the last couple of months. His father had been staying at the Lake Minnetonka house all summer—Booker wasn't sure why. That piece of information was what had heightened his sense that something was up. His dad's life was generally too peripatetic for him to remain in one place for such a long stretch. His career, even at fifty-nine, was still going strong. Booker couldn't see any end in sight—for either of his parents. Unless it was a physical ailment. Cancer. Alzheimer's. Tooth decay might have the most devastating immediate effect on their careers, since their bright, broad, icy white smiles were fundamental parts of their home-and-apple-pie images.

Booker loved his parents, he supposed. It wasn't something he thought about much anymore. They didn't really know him, partly because they hadn't had the time or inclination to ask leading questions, and partly because he tried hard not to present them with any obvious problems that would take them away from their more immediate interests: themselves. Mostly, though, they couldn't possibly know him because he'd purposely stayed under the radar. He'd seen what their attention had wrought in his sister's life—she was three years his senior—and he wanted no part of it. “Mom and Dad don't understand me” might be a familiar refrain, which didn't make it any less true. In Booker's case, it had been his goal.

Booker and Chloe had been two kids swimming—drowning?—in a sea of seeming perfection, expected to live up to standards that were nothing more than chimeras. In many ways, they were still those kids, still fighting their way to a safe shore. Jordan and Kit Deere weren't bad people. Far from it. They could be generous, good-natured, occasionally even kind. They weren't big on consistency, however. Booker was never quite sure, when he came out of his bedroom in the morning, what mood he'd find them in. They had many. Often, when they were gone, Booker felt more at ease because he didn't need to check which way the wind was blowing every few minutes. In Booker's opinion, his parents' failings all stemmed from an inability to perform even the rudiments of introspection—of self-examination. They saw no further than the adoring reflections of themselves in other people's eyes. They were cursed by mistaking those reflections for reality.

Coming down the steps to the patio, Booker saw that Chloe had a thick stack of typing paper wedged against her stomach. She'd built a fire and was tossing pages in, one by one. Wearing a baggy sweater, black leggings, and a pair of wedge sandals, she looked about as angry as he'd ever seen her. On a bench by the edge of the flagstones was a bottle of red wine and a half-filled wineglass. “Hey,” he said, holding open his arms as he walked toward her. “Remember me?”

She brightened instantly. “Booker,” she said, rushing to him. “God, I'm so glad you're here.” She squeezed him tight with one arm, holding on for almost a minute. “You're the only thing that's going to make the next few days bearable.”

“That bad?” he said, kissing her hair. Hugging her felt like hugging a sparrow. He could easily feel every bone in her back. She maintained to everyone in the family that she was in great shape. He knew she got a lot of praise for her slimness, the last thing she needed.

She tilted her lovely, heart-shaped face up at him, looking so much like their mother that it was almost uncanny. “Why do we live on opposite ends of the country? Sometimes I miss you so much it's like … like I'm missing a limb.”