came to belting.
“‘Agony,’ from Into the Woods. What else?”
She burst into laughter as he grinned and checked his phone as another alert came in.
“Well done, grasshopper,” she said.
“Hey, I’ve got to take care of this—can you feed Carmella?” he said, distracted again.
“Feed who…what?” She looked around. She didn’t see an aquarium or even a goldfish bowl, and she knew he didn’t have a cat or a dog.
“Carmella—over there on the counter. The Mason jar,” he said as he turned his attention to the computer with a whole bunch of complicated-looking programs on it. “One and a half cups water, one and a half cups of flour, stir it all together, pour it in. Oh, but pour off the icky gray stuff first.”
Huh?
She looked around and, sure enough, saw a Mason jar on the counter. Was that Carmella…or was that what she was supposed to feed Carmella—whoever or whatever Carmella was—with?
“Uh, Jake, some help here. Who’s Carmella?”
“In the Mason jar. My sourdough mother.” He flapped his hand in her general direction. He must have seen the bewildered look on her face. “It’s the mother of my sourdough starter—fermenting there in the Mason jar on the counter. Feed her, but pour the yucky gray liquid off the top first.”
That seemed straightforward enough, and she picked up the Mason jar. Yep, there was some cloudy grayish liquid floating at the top. Humming the obvious song from Little Shop of Horrors, she took off the top of the jar and carefully poured the ick down the sink.
What remained was something that looked like waffle batter—sort of—and the only reason she knew exactly what waffle batter looked like was because she’d had to pour her own at a Hampton Inn once when she stayed overnight and ate their free breakfast in the morning and had to make her own waffles in the idiot-proof waffle maker thing.
“Where’s the flour?” she stage-whispered to him while he was tapping away on his laptop, and he gestured vaguely again toward what turned out to be a pantry.
She managed to find the flour and follow the rest of his directions, and therefore successfully fed Carmella.
Then she popped over and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek—he was still distracted by looking at some complicated images on the screen, his glasses forgotten—and slipped outside.
Perfect—she didn’t have to tell him she was going to the theater and worry the poor guy.
It was going to be a hot day—perfect for the tourism industry in Wicks Hollow, but a little less exciting for someone who had labor-intensive work in a building that had non-functioning air conditioning. Still, Vivien had work to do if she was going to open the show on time, and she couldn’t allow herself to be waylaid or distracted by ghosts or vandals.
She arrived at the theater and, with some trepidation, let herself in.
“All right, everyone just keep calm,” she called out, feeling a little foolish but determined nonetheless. “I’m here, I know you want me to figure out what’s going on, and I’m going to go down into the pit in a few minutes and try to do so, all right? So just…don’t get all worked up.”
To her relief, nothing happened except that she felt the air all around her move, sort of shudder, as if the building was taking in a deep breath and then exhaling it.
The scaffolding was still on the stage, but it was at the very edge where it had obviously somehow stopped before going over to the floor after the ghost shoved it at her and Iva yesterday. The only illumination was the lights she was turning on—some in the house, many more in the backstage area. The dented Nutcracker headpiece sat, ugly as usual, where Jake had put it yesterday, casting an eerie shadow. But at least she knew what caused it this time.
Nothing seemed out of place, and there was no indication that someone had broken in and set up any other surprises for her. Maybe whoever it was had decided it wasn’t worth the trouble, since Vivien was clearly not about to be chased away from her business.
Or maybe…
She smiled to herself as she pushed the scaffolding back upstage. Maybe the Nutcracker-loving ghost had scared the bejeezus out of whoever it was and chased them off.
“I’ll bet that’s what happened,” she said, walking across toward the right wings.
She stopped in the wide-open center of the stage and looked out over the empty seats. Tried to imagine what it would be like