Do they think I am stupid??

I got a call today at 3pm asking if I could work in Coventry tonight. It was only 25  miles away so there was plenty of time to get there

They had been let down by another drag act

So, I arrived, as stated, at 9pm ready to be onstage at 10.15 or thereabouts

Everyone was saying they didn't think many would turn up so I waited in my dressing room (a storage cupboard) downstairs in the club

Three people turned up so the management asked me to take half my fee and go home.

By this time I was fully made up and ready to go onstage so I said no, I had arrived on time, I was ready to perform therefore I was going to keep the full fee.

Fortunately my Agent had insisted that I was paid on arrival. I had secreted the cash in my locked car. This proved fortuitous.

The performance was moved upstairs and into the bar where there were a few people and the area was much smaller.

Eventually, at 11.30pm, I went on. The act I had prepared involved me having to dash back to the dressing room towards the end for a quick change. As I was so far from the room I had to get extra music played to cover my absence.

Running down the stairs in my high heels I noticed a member of staff suddenly pop out of the doorway from my dressing room/storage cupboard. He had no reason to be down there

I thought no more about it until, having finished my act, I was getting dressed and noticed that my car keys were in the back pocket of my jeans instead of the front pocket.

Someone had gone through my pockets, obviously to try and find where I had stashed my cash. The mistake they had made was to put my car keys back in the wrong pocket. Otherwise I wouldn't have noticed.

The other thing that occurred to me was that perhaps they had used my car keys to go through my car looking for the cash

As soon as I was loaded up and ready to drive away I checked the money where I had hidden it. It was all there.

The postscript to this was that on the morning after the venue contacted the agent and expressed their thanks for my performance and would be happy to book me again!
As I told the agent, over my dead body!