Crowning the Slug Queen (A Callie Stone Mystery Book 1) (13 page)

Kit was speaking into the microphone, so his voice projected easily, but Callie had to yell up from the front row. "How about a top hat and cane? I think I saw one in the storeroom downstairs. Can I get it for you after practice?"

"That would be perfect."

The remaining slug queens performed their routines, but Callie had thought some of the heart had gone out of them. Molluska had not only been a good performer, but her level of competitiveness had made them all bring their A game. For today, they only seemed to be going through the motions.

When Slimerita had made her final flamenco stomp, Callie walked up the aisle to the sound booth. "How was that? Were there any sound issues? I'd like to make sure everyone knows how to successfully use the microphones, not just for the talent portion, but for the question and answer session."

Wade nodded. "I think they've all got the basic idea down and all the audio levels were good. We've got a bunch of strong voices here." They talked more specifics about the event for a few minutes, then Callie remembered her promise to Kit.

"Wade, do you have key to the storage room? Kit would like me to get him a prop."

Wade took a key off his ring. "This opens the padlock on the front of the door. The light switch isn't by the door, but on the left side of the room about three feet in."

Callie walked back to the stage and to the stairs. Several of the slug queens were no longer on the stage and she thought they must be back in the dressing room packing things up. Kit was heading back towards the dressing rooms, chatting with Bella Oozonia, who was still in her camouflage bikini.

For some reason the camouflage made Callie stop for a second, but whatever thought flitted across her mind was elusive. She felt it had something to do with Wade's computer, but she couldn't make the connection in her mind. She hoped it would come to her later.

Callie took the stairs down. As she reached the door, she saw the lock was open and hanging on its hasp. She wondered what was so important that Wade or one of the other theater staff had forgotten to lock the door. She pushed the door open. As he said, the light wasn't on and she felt her way with her hand down the left side of the wall until she felt the switch. She flicked it up, but there was no light. She'd have to let Wade know the bulb was burnt out. Grabbing her cell phone from her pocket, she used the light from the screen to guide her to where the costume area was. Callie moved towards the back where she remembered seeing the top hat and cane on a shelf with other hats. The air seemed to have a strong musty odor to it.

Suddenly, behind her, the door to the storeroom slammed shut. She turned and ran towards the door, but tripped and fell. By the time she had gotten up and reached the door, she couldn't hear anyone in the hallway. "Hey, someone's in here!" she yelled. Maybe someone had returned remembering they had forgotten to lock the door earlier? She beat the wood. "Open the door!" Then she realized the musty smell was actually smoke. She tried her cell phone, but there was no reception this deep in the building.

She moved towards the back of the large room, weaving through the high shelves and using her cell phone for light, but as the smoke started to become thicker, she was unsuccessful in finding where it was coming from. It seemed to be centered behind a shelf piled high with a variety of scarves and gloves. She couldn't see flames or a source of fire, but there was definitely heat and a lot of smoke. She began to cough. There would be more air by the door, she thought.

As she moved towards the front of the room, she saw a round wooden ball, maybe something from a croquet set that might work to beat on the door instead of using her hand. It would certainly make more noise.

She sat down with her back to the door and began tapping rhythmically in the hopes someone would hear her and realize it wasn't random.

After a few minutes the smoke was noticeably thicker by the door. She realized the smoke was probably being drawn there as the only source of a draft in the room was from the crack under the door. She stopped banging with the croquet ball and crawled over to the nearest costume rack where she found a long piece of cloth. Wrapping that around her mouth and nose, she hoped to filter out some of the smoke.

She resumed her knocking. Certainly someone upstairs would miss her and come looking for her? At least she could be assured Wade would, as he'd want his key back. She just hoped it wasn't too late when he did.

The smoke thickened enough that she actually laid down and held her face close to the crack under the door where she could get gasps of fresh air. She thought she heard the door at the end of the hallway open and knocked more frantically.

"Hey," she began but started coughing so much she couldn't get another word out.

"Who's that? Callie? Is that you?" It was Scott.

"Scooter, I mean Scott, I'm locked in the storeroom and there's a fire or something," she said coughing more.

"Where's the key? Is it upstairs?" She could feel him shaking the door trying to get it open.

"No, I've got one." Thank goodness she hadn't left it in the lock. She slid it under the door and heard Scott unhooking the hasp.

The door opened suddenly and she practically rolled out of the room.

"Callie, are you all right?" Scott knelt by her on the floor and helped her sit up against the wall opposite from the door.

She shook her head yes as she took in great shuddering gasps of air and her eyes watered. "Are you ok?" he said. When she nodded yes, still coughing, he grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall and ran into the room. With the door open, the smoke in the room had already cleared somewhat. Scott moved to the back of the room and pulled the shelf away from the wall, then spraying behind it with the fire extinguisher.

He pulled out his cell phone. She wondered why he could get reception and she couldn't. "Hey, Carter. Can you have the fire department send a truck to the Newsome Center? It's not an emergency. Looks like a faulty heater set off some scarves. The fire's out now, but I'd like them to come and double check for me."

Still on the phone he knelt in front of her, his hand on her shoulder. "How about some EMT's for you?" he asked, looking at her with concern in his gray blue eyes.

"No--just water," she said. She held in her breath until he one of the dressing rooms to get water and then indulged herself in a good coughing fit. She had herself back under control when he returned with a cup of water.

She drank it gratefully. "Thank you. That's much better."

He took off his coat jacket and put it around her shoulders. Then he sat down next to her, shoulder to shoulder. "Let's just take it easy for a few minutes to make sure. How did you get locked in?" he asked. "That must have been pretty tough to accomplish when you had the key with you inside the room."

"When I went in, it was dark and the light switch didn't work. I was using my phone for light and was in the back when someone shut the door and locked me in."

"Could it have been an accident?" he asked.

"I mean, that's what it must have been, although it's odd they couldn't hear me yelling to be let out. They must have went up the stairs almost immediately," she said coughing slightly.

“Do you really think this was an accident? I'm not sure I shouldn't shut down this pageant right now."

"No, you can't do that. If it was an accident, there's no reason to shut it down; And if it wasn't, this ups our chance of catching the person who did this." she said.

"While I'm relieved to know you think you're Nancy Drew, I don't see any proof here that gets us closer to the person who killed Alex. Who knew you were coming down here?"

"Everybody at practice," she said. "And that's how we've narrowed things down."

"How so?" he asked.

"Before this you could probably still consider the idea that Molluska was killed by an outsider. I think we can say with a little more certainty it had to be someone here for the practice. No one else would have known I was going to the storage room." She didn't want him to dwell on that. "What are you doing here anyway? I thought you left right after we started," she said.

He looked down at his hands. "I thought maybe I was a bit rude to you earlier and I came back to apologize. It's none of my business who you talk to or socialize with."

"What are you talking about?" she asked, giving him a puzzled look.

"Kit Carson is popular in town. He's got a reputation as a real ladies man," he said.

"I guess he's nice if you like shoe polish hair and a tan that came from a can, but there's no accounting for some people's tastes," she said.

He looked relieved. "Really? I guess I thought because he was from New York, you might have a lot in common. He's not like people from Skinner. He wears a suit." he said.

"You know I worked for a veteran's organization when I was in New York, but that doesn't mean I'm going to date every former soldier I meet. And just to make the point, you also wear a suit," she said more acerbically than usual for her. She thought maybe she was still a little light headed from the smoke.

He seemed to brighten at the thought. "I do, don't I? Of course, you're right. That's sort of silly isn't it?" But she thought he looked relieved when he said it. She realized she wanted him to be relieved. Then another thought struck her. How would she ever tell Audrey she liked Scooter McMillan?

"When I came downstairs he was working his wiles on Bella Oozonia," she said.

"She's the one in the camouflage outfit, right?"

The idea of the camouflage, tied something together in Callie's mind. "Scott, you said you still have Wade's computer at the station, right?" she asked.

"Yes, he can probably have it back next week."

The door upstairs opened and Wade came rushing down followed by two firemen. "Callie, what happened? These guys said there was a fire!"

Scott stood up and gave a hand down to help Callie up. "Well, it was more of a smolder than a full-fledged fire. I just thought it would be a good idea to have these guys check it out. It was the heater behind the costume rack in the back."

"There's not supposed to be a heater in the back," said Wade. "We don't ever even plug them in down here. They're just stored here during the summer and we use them in the upstairs dressing room. I wonder if one of them roadies who was here from the last show put it in the wrong place?"

Callie looked at Scott as if to say, "See?" but didn't say anything else to him.

“Did you leave the door unlocked?” she asked Wade. “It was open when I came down.”

He shook his head. “I haven’t been in here since yesterday. I don’t have the only key though. There’s one upstairs in the key box in the control room.” Wade went into the room with the firemen.

Callie looked at Scott. "I'm not sure how busy you are, but can we go take a look at Wade's computer? I think I have an idea of what Molluska was trying to do.”

Callie was sorry to lose his jacket, but was sure it would cause comment if she walked through half of downtown wearing it, so she shrugged it off her shoulders and returned it to him. "Are you sure it's not the smoke going to your head?" he asked.

"If it is, then you'll just have to humor me. But I think it will be worth it."

They left the theater and headed towards the police building. A few minutes later, Callie sat in front of Wade's computer outside of the evidence room at the police station. The computer booted up.

"Can you bring up for me the file that was open when Molluska died?" she asked.

"Sure. There wasn't anything there we could find though," he said leaning over her and typing in some keystrokes.

The file came up and the cursor was blinking on the screen. Callie let out a relieved sigh. "That's what I was hoping for."

"What?" he asked. "I still see a blank screen."

"Yes, but where is the cursor? It's not located in the top left home position, but down a few lines. As if there was some text we can't see. May I?" she said looking up at him and reaching for the mouse.

"Be my guest. Just don't save or anything."

Using the mouse, she moved the cursor up and highlighted the lines above where it had been. A single line of text appeared. "What's that?" asked Scott excitedly.

Callie scrolled to the top toolbar and changed the color of the font. "The text had been colored white. On a background of white, that made it invisible."

There wasn't a lot of text. It read, 'Dear Steven...'

She shook her head. "There's got to be more." However, when she tried to highlight other portions of the document, nothing happened.

"I think that's it." Scott looked at her crestfallen face. "Well, it was a good suggestion. How did you know there was something there?"

"Thinking of Bella's camouflage, while sitting next to you reminded me of how Audrey and I used to do this to send secret messages. Especially when she was on the outs with you. We'd type something totally innocuous in a black font and then write our real message below it in white. Just one of those intuition things again."

"Molluska must have been sending an email to Steven and then must have just fallen forward on the keyboard when she got knocked on the head."