Criminal Case: Grimsborough

Chapter 22: To Die or Not to Die-Part 3

After seeing Ramirez walk by their desks wearing a tuxedo and top hat and Marie asking him why he's dressed like that, Ramirez replied, "To the Grimsborough Theater of course! Mr. Fine offered tickets to tonight's performance to the entire station! Didn't you get yours Marie?"

Jones squinted his eyes and said, "Ramirez, in case you hadn't noticed, we're in the middle of investigating the lead actor's murder! So there's no need to be proud of your free tickets cause there's not gonna be a performance!"

Ramirez smiled and said, "That's what I thought too, so I called the theater to check on them and they told me everything was going down as the scheduled. It's seems that Mr. Fine is going to step in as lead."

"You mean they're gonna play on our crime scene?! David, we have to stop them before they destroy any of our evidence," Marie said and headed towards the station exit with Jones following behind her.

As soon as they got to the theater, Marie and Jones held up their badges to let everyone in the cast know who they are and Jones announced, "Everyone stop what you're doing right now! No one is going to perform anything until we find out who killed Jacob Dawks."

Phineas stomped up to them wearing the same king's costume that their victim wore and he said to them, "Are you insane?! You're gonna destroy my life's work! This performance has been sold out and that's never happened before!"

Shiela then barged right next to him looking twice as angry and shouted to them, "Jacob's dead so who cares who killed him? You two are the only things getting between me and the stage and I really want to go on stage!"

Nellie then walked up next to Shiela and asked, "I know you're trying to help officers, but can't it wait until after the show?"

Marie put her badge away and shouted, "I'm sorry but the answer is no! No one's getting on that stage until we have finished investigating! Now everyone break it off!" And Marie brushed past the three actors with Jones following her.

As soon as Marie started to investigate, she notice one of the pulleys above her with a one of the ropes cut. Once she called Jones and showed him, they took the rope off of the pulley and bagged it for Grace to analyze. After they did that. Jones suggested, "We still have the divas to talk to. Let's interrogate Phineas and Shield cause I have a feeling they're still holding some things from us." And Marie agreed with her partner so they decided to talk to their suspects first before examining the rope.

The first person they decided to talk to was Shiela. When they approached her, she was reciting some lines from the play but Jones got confused about what she was doing and the woman shouted, "I'm trying to stay in character you moron and you're not helping one bit! Now what do you want? I already told you everything I know! Couldn't this day get any worse? First Nellie finishes off my anti-aging cream, then Jacob goes and gets himself killed and now this ignoramus female officer is keeping me from the stage!"

Marie glared at her and said, "I see you have your priorities straightened out already. Have a nice day ma'am."

After they were finished with Shiela, Jones and Marie decided to talk to Phineas and see if he had anything useful to say. When they got to the man's dressing room, they found him slumped in a chair with a half-finished glass of wine and when he saw them come in he said, "What do you want?! Can't you people let a man drink himself to death?"

"The faster you help us Mr. Fine the faster you're on stage. So tell us anything you saw that might help us in our investigation," Marie said with a glare.

Phineas sat up straight in his seat and said, "You want to know what I see? I see refunds being returned by the dozen. I see a talented playwright directing elementary school plays for the rest of his life! I see a disrespectful man who wouldn't even bother coming to rehearsals. I see a self-centered ass who thought he could do my job better than me! Well, it seems we'll never know about that, but we're gonna find out if the opposite is true. Now where's my anti aging cream? I can't go on stage with this many wrinkles." And soon he stood up from his seat and started to search around for his cream.