Curtains for Romeo Read online

  CURTAINS FOR ROMEO

  Coastal Playhouse Mystery #1

  Jessa Archer

  Archer Mysteries

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sneak Peek: Arsenic and Olé (Coastal Playhouse Mysteries #2)

  More Cozies from Jessa Archer

  About the Author

  CURTAINS FOR ROMEO

  ROMEO, ROMEO, WHEREFORE ART THOU?

  Acting jobs are scarce now for former TV teen detective Antigone Alden. So when a teaching position opens up at Southern Coastal University, Tig packs up her teenage daughter and heads home to the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

  The house she inherited from her mother isn't entirely empty, however. Her mom seems stuck between this life and the next, and now Tig is a local reporter's prime suspect in the murder of the former theater professor. Given his reputation as ladies' man, there are plenty of people with a motive.

  Tig isn't a detective. She just played one on TV. Will that be enough to help her find the killer?

  Don’t let Jessa’s next release be a mystery to you. Sign up for Jessa Archer new release alerts (via email newsletter or Amazon) on JessaArcher.com.

  Chapter One

  I’m not the type of person who is habitually late. In fact, I truly loathe being late. I’ll get up an hour before I really need to in order to be sure I’m on time. Maybe even early.

  But on important days, those days when I’m trying to make a good impression or look like a real professional? On those days, something invariably happens.

  The first thing that happened was falling asleep on the couch without setting my alarm after fifteen consecutive hours of driving. Luckily, my daughter, Paige, had set an alarm. It was for an hour later than I’d have liked, but it still had us out the door with a few minutes to spare.

  The second thing that happened was the little yapper that belonged to my new neighbor. He trotted through the hedge between our properties and left a housewarming present on the welcome mat. Because I was carrying a large box of books, I didn’t see his little gift. It was only after I placed the box of books in the trunk and was about to crank the engine that I caught a whiff of something incredibly foul.

  “Ewww!” Paige, who was already in the car, barreled out at light speed.

  I yanked off my shoe and hobbled to the edge of the driveway. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

  “Because I didn’t see it! I came out through the garage.”

  I like dogs. Actually, I love dogs. If not for Attila, the large gray cat I recently inherited from my mother, Paige and I would already be hunting for something floppy-eared and adorable now that we have a place with a fenced-in backyard. Attila earned his name in battle against many foes, most of them canine. He hates dogs.

  In particular, Attila hates the dog next door, an obnoxious creature named Leo, whose equally obnoxious owner keeps him mostly shaved, except for a poofy lion’s mane around his tiny face. And as I scraped the little lion’s leavings from the bottom of my shoe, I felt a new sense of kinship with Attila. The next time I saw the horrid little creature, I’d probably hiss, too.

  Paige stood off to the side, holding her nose. “This isn’t going to make us late, is it? Because it would really suck to be late on my very first day.”

  I was tempted to note that it was also my very first day, but I held my tongue. As nervous as I was about my new job as theater professor at Southern Coastal University—a job for which I felt deeply unqualified—I knew that my daughter was facing an even worse ordeal. Paige was starting a new high school in a new town on the opposite side of the country. In some ways, on the opposite side of the world. Both schools were reasonably close to the ocean, but aside from that, Caratoke was barely in the same universe as Burbank. This was a fact to which I could speak with a certain degree of authority since I made the same move in reverse, from North Carolina to California, twenty-three years before.

  Paige had taken the news that we were relocating quite well, even though it was the middle of the school year. Even though we’d had less than a week to say our goodbyes, pack our belongings, and drive cross-country in order to arrive by the beginning of spring semester. She told me it was a relief, in some ways. That she’d never really fit in with the Burbank crowd.

  I didn’t believe a word of it. Paige was happy in California. She certainly never lacked for friends. That said, her best friend, Delaney Foster, had moved to New York with her mother the past summer, which meant they rarely saw each other in person anyway. They still spend tons of time together. Delaney is at our place in virtual form while Paige gets ready for school, eats breakfast, does homework, or whatever. The fact that living in North Carolina once again puts Paige in the same time zone as Delaney was almost certainly a factor in favor of the move.

  I suspect Paige also picked up on the fact that I had reasons—reasons I’m still not ready to share with her—for taking a job nearly three thousand miles away. She’s a smart girl. She can tell when her mom is stressed.

  But I was under no illusions. The single most important factor in Paige being so cooperative about the move was a seventeen-year-old boy named Nathan.

  I still hadn’t met Nathan, but my mom, Caroline, said she knew the boy’s family, so I wasn’t worried. The romance kindled over the previous summer, when Paige was in Caratoke. Paige and Nathan began texting regularly when she returned from vacation. It quickly progressed to FaceTime and enough hours on the phone that I was glad our family plan had unlimited minutes.

  “You can still make it on time if you give me a hand.” I tossed the mostly depoopified shoes onto the lawn next to the realtor sign I’d yanked out of the ground last night when we arrived. “Find the disinfectant wipes and take care of the floorboard while I dig out another pair of shoes.”

  Paige wrinkled her nose but went to search for the Clorox wipes.

  And search was definitely the operative word. The U-Haul trailer we’d towed from California was still in the garage, and we were very much in the maybe-it’s-in-that-box stage of unpacking.

  I located one of the mystery boxes in the living room and began rummaging through in search of shoes that might halfway match what I was wearing. “I’m tempted to introduce Leo to Attila.”

  “Good plan,” Paige said. “Attila outweighs the little creep by at least five pounds.”

  “Maybe Attila could teach him a lesson about manners. And boundaries. Too bad we don’t have time to track the nasty little rodent down.”

  “He’s already back inside,” Paige said, after finally locating the wipes. “I heard Mrs. Whitley calling him as I headed out to the car.”

  “Wonderful,” I replied. “He drops his little jewel right in my path and dashes back to Mommy.”

  “And Mommy wuvs her wittle Weo vewy, vewy much,” Paige said with a snort as she headed outside to deal with the mess.

  Even though I’d not yet had the pleasure of meeting our new neighbor, I had heard plenty of stories about Rebecca Whitley from my mother and from Paige, who’d spent a good part of the summer here since she was in elementary school. The house is walking distance from the beach, and unlike me, my mom had the summer months off and could spend time with Paige building sand castles and hunting for shells.

  Mrs. Whitley was a relatively new arrival to Cara
toke, showing up two years ago when her youngest son, Andrew, enrolled at the university. According to Caroline, Whitley had followed her son to each of the three colleges he’d managed to get kicked out of. Every day, she dropped him off in front of the campus bell tower with his backpack and a sack lunch. And she doted on her silly-looking dog even more than she doted on Andrew.

  I shoved the first box aside and began digging through a second. Just as I was about to give up on that one too, a voice startled me so badly that I dropped the box, spilling its contents onto the carpet.

  “Get a pair from that box in my closet, Tig. The one marked for Goodwill. Your feet are narrower, but they should fit well enough.”

  I’d thought I was alone, but my mother was now sitting on the window seat, sharing a patch of early morning sunshine with a peacefully snoozing Attila. Two cross-country car trips in three months hadn’t been easy on him, and he was clearly glad to be home. Did he even know Caroline was there?

  I visually scanned the stuff from the spilled box, but it was mostly linens. Mom was right. At least there was only one box to go through in the bedroom closet. I ran upstairs and, after a brief search, found a pair almost identical to the navy pumps I’d been wearing.

  I turned to thank her for the suggestion before dashing out to the car, but Caroline was gone. The window seat held only Attila, still asleep.

  Of course she’s gone, I thought. Because she was never there in the first place. You need to get a grip.

  Paige had already tossed the soiled floor mat onto the lawn and was just finishing cleaning the brake pedal. The car now reeked almost equally of disinfecting wipes and dog poop. We rolled down the windows, braving the slight January chill to keep from gagging, and pulled into the circular drive at Caratoke High with four minutes to spare. Paige’s hair was a bit mussed from the wind, but at least she wasn’t late.

  I wasn’t as lucky. By the time I found a parking spot near the theater, it was already nine minutes after eight. I didn’t even have a chance to locate my new office and drop off my things. Instead, I shoved open the side entrance to the main auditorium with my shoulder, still lugging the box, and nearly collided with two students who had obviously decided they’d waited long enough for the new professor. They turned back around to join the others, grumbling under their breath. I couldn’t really blame them, though. They were so close to a clean getaway.

  I said good morning, and apologized for keeping them waiting. They stashed their phones back into their bags and slumped down into their seats.

  “For future reference, do you have a PhD?” This question came from a guy wearing a sky-blue baseball cap emblazoned with the SCU logo and a black frat T-shirt—one of the guys who’d been making his escape.

  “No,” I answered. “But this building is on the west side of campus. You have to add an extra minute to the standard ten for that. Plus, I’m a legacy—my mother taught here—so add another two minutes. If you total all that up, you’ll see I’m allowed a full thirteen minutes before you can leave class without it counting against you.”

  A few students chuckled at my response, including Baseball Cap, so they must have picked up on the snark. Everything I’d just told them was total garbage, but it played into the long-standing urban legend that there’s a complicated calculus involved in determining the official grace period for a late professor.

  There was no standard rule on tardy professors at SCU. If such rules actually existed elsewhere, the students in that room probably knew better than I did, since they had more notches etched into their collegiate belts. Not in terms of degrees earned, but in the sheer number of institutions they’d attended. Statistically speaking, the average student at Southern Coastal has been kicked out of at least two other schools. The running joke in town was that the letters SC in the university’s name actually stood for Second Chance. My mom’s description had been even more pointed—she’d said it should be called Last Chance University. Screw up here, and you’ll have to run Daddy’s corporation without the benefit of a college degree.

  “Not that potential tardiness will be an issue in the future,” I assured them, handing a clipboard with the attendance list and a stack of printed syllabi to two students seated closest to the aisle. “I’ll be assigning each of you a week to lead the class in theater warm-up exercises. So as soon as the bell rings, you can get started, even if I’m held up for some reason.”

  That elicited a general groan, which I considered a very good sign. Any group of students who actually enjoy theater warm-ups is a group of potential sociopaths who should be watched carefully. No one in his or her right mind likes pretending to be a tree. It’s simply a rite of passage. Theater professors all suffered through it as students, and by the Bard, so will the next generation.

  I looked around for the portable whiteboard I had requested, but there was no sign of it. No chalkboard, either, so I’d just have to rely on everyone reading along on the syllabus. And I would definitely need to get someone to clean this auditorium. The place had an odd, slightly pungent odor, possibly from being closed up over the holidays.

  “This is Theater and Society, also known as Drama 231. I’m Antigone Alden, the new assistant drama professor. Actually, the only drama professor for most of the semester, since Dr. Peele will be leaving shortly to supervise the spring semester abroad.”

  Several of the students exchanged looks. “I thought they left last Thursday,” one girl said. “I decided not to do the Italy semester because my family already had tickets for a cruise over the holidays and I couldn’t do both.”

  “There was another transit strike,” I said. “From what I’ve heard, they’ve had a difficult time rebooking flights for a group of fourteen.”

  The girl huffed. “Great. I could have spent spring in Rome.”

  I gave her a sympathetic smile and continued. “My office hours, website, and other information are listed on the syllabus. Feel free to call me Professor Alden or Antigone or just plain Tig.”

  As a kid, I truly loathed my first name. Classmates and even teachers had an unfortunate tendency to pronounce it as Auntie Gone instead of Ann-Tig-Oh-Nee. When I landed my first real acting gig, I presented my agent with a shopping list of much better stage names, or what my twelve-year-old self considered better. But he went with my nickname instead. He said that Tig was memorable, and it evoked the image of a baby tiger. That wasn’t what I’d been going for, even at age twelve, but I accepted the compromise.

  A blonde girl leaned forward in her seat and asked, “Are you the same Tig Alden who was on Charlie’s Angels?”

  I smiled, hoping that it hid my clenched teeth. “Right actress, wrong show.”

  What I was thinking, however, was, No, I was not on Charlie’s Angels, you little twerp. I’m thirty-eight, not seventy.

  Although I guess it’s possible that the girl’s question was an honest mistake and not a dig at my age. To anyone under twenty, a show that ran in the late 1990s and a show that ran in the 1970s are probably both ancient history.

  Private Eye High enjoyed a five-year run on The WB, and to be fair to the blonde cheer-goddess who’d asked the question, the producers clearly were trying for an Angels vibe. Three girl detectives, frequently in disguise, with a shadowy boss who gave them a new mystery to solve each week. I’m quite certain their pitch to sell the series had been something along the lines of Charlie’s Angels meets Nancy Drew.

  I played the nerd—editor of the school newspaper and capable of hacking into highly advanced computer systems faster than most people could type in their AOL passwords. They’d glammed me up occasionally to go undercover, and to exploit that age-old trope where the plain girl is suddenly gorgeous when you yank off the glasses and add lipstick. But most weeks, Addy Thorne was in jeans and a sweater, and that was perfectly okay with me. I usually got more lines and more screen time than the perky cheerleader—who had actually looked a bit like the impertinent student who had just asked about Charlie’s Angels—or the wealthy d
ebutante on the team, because Addy was almost always the one who put the pieces together and solved the mystery.

  “If you’re interested,” I told the class, “the details of my acting career are online. Aside from my five years as Adeline Thorne on Private Eye High, my personal favorite role was Yoga Girl (uncredited) in a Harrison Ford film. It really allowed me to stretch my talents.”

  That earned me another groan. I flashed them a sorry-not-sorry grin, and was about to move on, but the girl wasn’t done.

  “So then…why are you here and not acting?” She tossed her blonde hair expertly over one shoulder, and continued in a sly voice that perfectly matched her serpentine smile. “I mean, we’ve all heard the saying. Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. You could still act on stage, right? Isn’t that what older actresses usually do?”

  “Whoa, Bethany.” Baseball-Cap Guy shook his head, and then said in a lower voice. “You really don’t have a filter, do you?”

  Bethany rolled her eyes. “She knows what I meant, John.”

  And yes, I knew exactly what the girl meant, which was why it was harder to keep my expression pleasant this time. I wanted to tell her that “older” actresses do a lot of things. They write. They direct and produce. They manage community theaters, like I’d done for the past five years. They even continue to act. But truthfully, they also wait tables, work as telephone solicitors, and drive taxis when the money runs out.

  In my case, the money ran out wicked fast because ninety percent of it had been pilfered ten years back by the manager I refer to only as She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, who is probably living happily on her own private island somewhere in the Caribbean. My dad lost even more than I did, but James Alden rose from the financial ashes, brushed off one of the impeccably tailored suits that hadn’t been taken when he declared bankruptcy, and went on to win four Emmys in six years for his portrayal of Vincent Coletti on The Sands of Time, one of the few surviving daytime dramas. He was almost out of debt now.