Midsummer Murder by Shelley Freydont

away. “Bring your lunch.”
    “Holy Moly.” She sank onto a closed trunk and unclipped a barrette from the top of her head. Two long plaits fell down on either side of her ears, ending just at her bustline. “That took forever.
    They had a million questions. I don’t think one of them had ever 64

    Midsummer Murder
    seen a needle and thread before, except maybe in a museum.” She sighed a martyr’s sigh.
    “Better you than me,” said Lindy.
    “Ask not for whom the bells . . .” She finished the quote by tilting her head side to side. The ends of the braids swung back and forth in an arc across her shirt front. “They toll . . .” the braids swung again, “
    for me. What do you need?”
    “Nothing. Just wondering . . . how things are going.”
    “Well, you saw for yourself. Slow but energetic. I don’t know how much they learned about costuming, but I got an earful of camp gossip.”
    Rose stretched her mouth into an Emmett Kelly frown. “Whose calves are too big, who should never wear a unitard, who’s a binge eater, who sneaks off into the woods to ‘do it.’ Their words not mine. God, were we ever that young?”
    Never, they agreed.
    “I also got the lowdown on Larry Cleveland and the kid that threw up in rehearsal yesterday. It’s the morsel of the week.”
    Lindy swallowed. This was not a good topic on a stomach whose only contents were coffee.
    “I guess this Larry kid was a piece of work. Gorgeous on the outside but a conniving little bastard on the inside. It seems he used them in more ways than one. He passed around a lot of favors, but they had to pay.”
    “How so?”
    “Money, gifts, stuff like that. He even made one girl do his laundry. His death has the camp split down the middle. Those who loved him, and those who would be glad he’s dead if they were old enough to realize it.”
    “A pretty elaborate setup for someone only seventeen.”
    “Yeah, well everything else happens sooner these days, why not that? I got the distinct impression that he liked girls as well as boys, to tell by the blushes that the mention of the autopsy report brought on.
    My guess is there will be a lot of ballerinas running for AIDS tests as soon as they leave camp.”
    “How did you get them to tell you all of this?” asked Lindy. “My kids clam up whenever I try to bring up the subject of sex. They think anyone over forty doesn’t have a clue.”
    Rose shrugged. “Give ’em twenty years.” She heaved herself off the trunk. “Costume fittings are like a crowded bar with me as the bartender. I don’t think they even realized what they were saying.”
    65

    Shelley Freydont

    * * *
Jeremy was giving company class on stage. He looked a little haggard, but he seemed more like himself.
    Lindy left the theater and checked in on Andrea’s ballet class.
    Things were fine there, too.
    Well, she thought, there’s nothing for me to do but . . . enjoy my surroundings. A hike would be perfect exercise before an afternoon in a dark theater with the students. Though, between Robert and Jeremy and the rest of the teachers, she probably wouldn’t be needed there, either.
    Behind the theater, she climbed down a set of stairs that had been carved out of the rock. The day was cool. The leaves of the trees were still wet and dripping from the night’s deluge. The smell of wet earth and moldy leaves invigorated her. Her sneakers made crunching noises in the gravel as she broke into a jog.
    The path ran downward in an easy slope, then veered off to the right. She picked up her pace as the path left the trees and followed the edge of the mountain. A guardrail prevented inattentive hikers from pitching down to the path that snaked its way below her.
    She pulled her sweatshirt over her head and tied it around her waist without breaking her stride. Several yards later she slowed to a walk. A man was standing at the curve of the path where the shape of the land made a natural lookout point. His hands rested lightly on the