Never Thwart a Thespian: Volume 8 (Leigh Koslow Mystery Series) by Edie Claire Page A

time. I need the following. Are you ready?”
    The Pack looked up at her eagerly. Allison grabbed a pad and pencil (items which she always, mysteriously, seemed to have close at hand) and Mathias drew up to his full height. “Ready!” he answered.
    “We need to make the stage look like a church sanctuary that’s seen better days,” Bess announced. “So first off, we’ll need to bring in that old wooden lectern, the candelabras, and that hall table I said could pass as an altar. Then I’d like some buckets and mops to scatter about. Maybe a dusty drop cloth. We need to put some silk flowers and anything else that could be used as a wedding decoration in a cardboard box. And if they get to Act Two, we’ll have to find something that looks like an acolyte’s candle lighter…”
    Leigh rose. “Are you kidding me?” she said incredulously. “You spent all this time turning a decrepit sanctuary into a nice looking auditorium just so you could turn it back into a decrepit sanctuary again?”
    Bess blinked back at her. “Well, that’s the genius of it, don’t you see? I knew we’d be in a time crunch, so for our first production I picked a play that’s already set in an old church. No need to put up flats, or even a curtain. How perfect is that?”
    Leigh bit back a retort as the Pack divvied up the tasks and began to scatter. She had been trying hard not to let herself dwell on the building’s grisly history. The sanctuary looked so different since it had been cleaned and repainted, she had almost succeeded. And now the Pack had been charged with turning the stage back into an eerie looking chancel all over again?
    She needed another enchilada.
    Unfortunately, there weren’t any left.
    “Come with me, kiddo,” Bess urged, tugging her niece toward the door to the hallway. “I need you to be there when I let Camille in.”
    Leigh’s eyebrows lifted. “Why?”
    “Because I’ve been wanting to strangle the woman for at least a decade,” Bess answered matter-of-factly. “And today really has been quite trying already. Would you mind?”

Chapter 7
    “I was rather hoping the audience could sit in wooden pews,” the figure on the stage said wistfully. “They would do so much to set the mood!”
    “Yes, well,” Bess responded tightly. “The original pews were all stripped out ages ago, along with the organ pipes and the stained glass.”
    Camille Capone’s large gray eyes blinked vacuously. She appeared to be older than Bess, but was still a very striking woman, with long silvery blond hair and a tall, lithe figure that seemed to float rather than move. “Well, let’s look around for them, then. I’d like to put them back.”
    The muscles molding Bess’s face into an artificially pleasant expression began to twitch. “Although I can’t say I’ve searched for any of those things specifically, Camille,” she replied with strain, “one does not generally find several tons’ worth of wooden furniture and metal piping hidden behind a dust pan.”
    Camille appeared to consider the information. “No, I suppose not. But perhaps we could rent—”
    “No,” Bess said firmly. “You’ve seen the budget. We’re lucky to have found enough folding chairs. Now, will these props do for the chancel?”
    Camille frowned at the narrow hall table that was currently serving as an altar. “Some colorful altar cloths would be nice.”
    “Linda is already checking to see if Greenstone will lend us some of their old ones.”
    “Purple, I think,” Camille mused. “With piping in canary yellow. And as for the embroidery—”
    “We’ll take whatever they offer,” Bess declared. “Anything else you need for tonight?”
    Camille rotated her head slowly around the room, taking in the furnishings the Pack had moved onto the chancel, the assorted personal props in a pile beside the stage, and the small grouping of folding chairs provided for the cast. Her gaze then moved upward, sweeping across the ceiling. With