I could a tale unfold - 21

"Tell us what happened the night you were killed," Kirk said, holding out the notepad.

With a deep breath, Otis took it, leaning on the cutting table to write. Kirk shifted so that he could watch as he did, and Ross came up to Otis's other side to do the same.

Otis paused, frowning, then wrote, "It was opening night. I was playing Laertes. Hamlet was him."

Kirk shot Ross a look of surprise even as he said to Otis, "The bastard?"

Otis nodded, continuing to write. "Was strange night because Charles' father was there. In the audience." He shivered. "We reached the fight scene. I got stabbed." He looked at Kirk who nodded, and then wrote. "It was real, not play."

"You actually got cut?" Ross asked, knowing what the answer would be.

Otis gave a sharp nod in reply. "I was shocked, but not scared. It was just an accident. I thought. We finished. It was later. When I was in the dressing room. I felt sick. Weak. I thought it was just nerves and sadness because Charles' father had swooped him up. Taken him away."

"You were poisoned, and any one of our suspects could have done that. I gather you died in the dressing room, without anyone knowing."

"Yes," Otis wrote. "Everyone was gone to party."

"Well someone stuck around long enough to move your body," Kirk pointed out. "Or came back later."

Ross tapped his chin thoughtfully. "I wonder if that party made the gossip columns of the day, if there were such things. It would be interesting to see who attended, and who didn't or made a fashionably late entrance."

"Excellent idea. Now we just have to find the time to get online and do a search. And that will not be tonight, Ross," Kirk added sternly when his lover turned towards his desk. "Tomorrow is going to be as bad as today and it's not going to ease up until our opening night is history."

"But we promised Otis we'd help him," Ross protested.

Otis held up a hand to stop the impending argument. Grabbing the notepad again he wrote in big letters, "I waited this long. Can wait a bit longer."

"But."

"He's right, Ross. For him, a couple of weeks more are nothing in the grand scheme of things." Kirk turned to say something to Otis and realized he'd vanished. "That's still weird," he muttered as he put one hand at the small of Ross' back, urging him towards the door.

"I'm going, I'm going," Ross said with a small laugh. "But the second we open, we're going back to work on finding Otis' killer."

"Absolutely," Kirk agreed as he flipped off the lights.