“What guy? What did he look like?”
“Tall, good-looking. Too old to be a student.” He tapped the keyboard, working magic on the screen for his spectators.
Dixie stepped away from the booth and studied the schedule. Everything seemed to be happening right here in the Media Center or in off-campus theaters. Nothing else looked promising, except a student cafeteria. Eating was one of Sarina’s favorite pastimes.
But after dragging her heavy cast halfway across the campus, she found Sarina was not at the cafeteria. The cashier recalled seeing a girl with reddish-blond hair, though.
“Came in with a guy—” He looked at his watch. “About thirty-five, forty minutes ago. Bought a cranberry muffin.”
Scuffling, whimpering noises came from behind a sofa. An animal?
Sarina didn’t know, but it was part of whatever bad was going to happen, not in any shocker film, but real-life bad, feel it, touch it,
smell
it bad.
Mouth, wrists, and ankles taped, she couldn’t stop shaking.
Uncool. Totally uncool. Even tied up in the dark, didn’t the heroine always figure a way out? She should
do
something.
The door opened. He came in again, with another silk tree. What was the deal with all the fake plants? He’d lugged in five—from the theater prop room, Sarina figured. Trees, shrubs, flowers. Grouped around a bench in a corner.
He caught her staring and smiled. When he smiled, it was hard to believe this was all for real. Except for tying her up, he’d been nice, really, really nice. Apologized for taping her
mouth. “Can’t risk any noise,” he’d said, “when the other guest arrives.”
What other guest?
Think! Why was she here? Was this a joke? College kids harassing the out-of-town dweeb?
“Hey, pretty lady.” He knelt beside her. Stroked her cheek.
He had a good voice, a good,
kind
voice, and a soft touch. Whatever he was up to, it couldn’t be anything really bad. A gag to get a producer’s attention, maybe. Actors pulled all kinds of crazy stunts to get producers to notice them. Screenwriters, too. If he’d just
asked
, she could’ve told him she had connections. Producers, directors—her mother was
Joanna Francis
, her father
John Page
—
“How do you like the decor?”
He meant the bench and trees. A baseball bat leaned against a potted shrub. Looked like a day in the park.
Sarina tried to answer, tried to tell him about her righteous connections.
“Amazing what can be thrown together in a pinch. But it’s … not quite right … yet.” He stood, pondering the scene he’d created. “Lighting. Yes, we need the proper mood, before your friend arrives.”
Friend?
Did he mean Dixie? She was her only friend in Houston. Except Duncan, but who would know about Duncan, unless they’d been followed—
Oh! Oh, no. This guy couldn’t be the stalker. Mother’s stalkers were never really dangerous. Never.
Was that the deal? Was he using her as bait to trick her mother into coming?
He went out, but this time he left the door open a crack. If she could crawl to the door, hide before he returned—
She scooted her hips and feet, hip-walking, inching like a worm as fast as she could across the floor—and made it. Turning sideways to the door, she elbowed it open and scooted through, squirming backward now, and down the
hall—which way, dammit? Right! Opposite the way they came in. Inching, inching, inching—
yards
to go and she could only get there in pissy little inches—
“darlin’, is this how you repay my hospitality?”
He caught a handful of her collar.
Sarina screamed behind the tape. She wriggled and kicked the wall with both feet.
Yanking her away from the wall, he set down the lamp he was carrying, then dragged her back into the room. She yelped and shrieked, straining to pull free.
“You disappoint me, Sarina.” He shoved her against the wall. She fell on her side, and he grabbed her hair to jerk her erect. Slapped her.
She cried out with the pain. Her eyes filled with tears. She shrank away from him, whimpering behind the tape.
“Sorry, pretty lady. Can’t have you wandering off before the show starts.”
He kissed her face where he’d struck her.
“Don’t make me hurt you.” With a thumb, he stroked a tear off her cheek. “Rest up, darlin’. You’re the star player today.”
Sarina shivered.
Star player? What did that mean?
He brought the lamp in, an old-fashioned street lamp, white globes on a wrought-iron base, like in that old Gene Kelly movie. He positioned it near the bench, turned it on, then turned off the overhead light. Only his “stage” was lit now, the rest of the room dark.
Someone would come. The building had been wide open. They’d walked right in. Drama classes, rehearsals, something had to be going on today, or why leave the doors unlocked?
She had to stop this silly crying. It clogged her nose so she couldn’t breathe.
Dixie would come.
Dixie would know exactly where she’d gone this morning,
probably was already on campus, headed to Hamman Hall right now.
Sarina wished her shoe had a James Bond razor built into it. Or a
Star Voyager
laser blaster. The real thing, not f/x.
She wished she could stop shaking.
She wished she knew what was making that scuffling noise.
“I saw her, sure. Noticed her hair. Wouldn’t mind having mine done simple like that, with those cute highlights. That’s why I noticed.”
The young woman seemed familiar with the campus, willowy body, asymmetrical sandy hair, a complexion nearly the same hue. She carried a red book bag stuffed with software manuals and was the twentieth person Dixie had shown the photograph to.
“Could you tell where she was headed?”
“Toward Hamman. That direction, anyway. I have an audition there later today, for a part in
Tiny Alice.
That’s why I noticed. Wondered if auditions had already started. But I’m sure they’re later, way later, like four o’clock. Thought I’d check the schedule, just to be sure. But I’d remember. I’m perfect for this role, wouldn’t want to miss out—being late, you know, for tryouts—and somebody else get the part,
my part
, just because I was late. Huh-uh. I know they’re at four.”
Dixie prayed for patience. “Anything happening at Hamman Hall to do with the film festival?”
“No, you want the Media Center. Nothing’s at Hamman today except, like I said, tryouts at four o’clock.”
“But you saw this girl—headed toward Hamman Hall?”
“Yeah. Nice-looking man with her.”
Maybe Sarina had met another “soul mate” like Alroy Duncan, and they’d gone for a walk. Or had she developed an interest in special effects for live theater? “What else is around that area that might be part of the festival?”
“Nothing. Natural Science: Geology Lab.” She hefted her load in preparation for moving on. “Bet that cast itches. Say, how do you think I’d look with red highlights?”
Jaundiced.
But Dixie’s cast hadn’t itched, until now. “Go for it.”
Nice-looking man with her.
As Dixie walked, the cast itching like crazy, a single raindrop fell on her cheek. She frowned at the threatening cloud bank, quickened her pace, and dialed Belle’s number. What the devil would’ve taken Sarina so far from the Illusions hubbub? Something felt wrong about it.
“Are you certain Hap Eggert got on that plane last night?” The cell phone worked fine after she’d replaced the battery and twisted a rubber band around the plastic piece that held it in.
“Yes. Why?”
“Probably nothing. Sarina was already gone when I arrived at the hotel, so I assumed she went to this festival she’s been yammering about. So far I haven’t located her. Maybe I just haven’t walked enough yet.” Dixie disconnected, wishing now that she’d brought the car. Hamman Hall hadn’t looked nearly as far on the map.
To take her mind off her aching foot, she dialed Ben Rashly. “Anything new?”
“The Thomases and Foxworths are coming in for interviews. But our killer beat us to Regan Salles.”
Dixie stopped walking. “Regan’s dead?” She pictured the woman’s eager face as she’d realized Sarina might be her ticket to a Hollywood hair salon. “How?”
“Strangled with a scarf, same as your friend.”
“Rash, I saw Regan yesterday afternoon. How long—?”
“Dead twelve to eighteen hours. We know she left the salon about three.”
Right after she’d finished Sarina’s hair.
“Looked like she was packing for a trip,” Rashly continued. “We found another mask in her apartment, like the one at Benson’s. This one with a blond wig.”
“Neither Coombs nor Carlson described their assailants as masked, did they?”
“No…”
He hesitated, and Dixie knew he was debating whether to disclose a piece of information. Pushing him wouldn’t help. She could hear the draw of air through his pipe.
“We found another body,” he said, finally. “Sexual assault. This one looks a whole lot like the work of Lawrence Coombs, except this time he used a knife. Went all the way.”
Oh, God, not Gail Benson.
“White woman,” Rashly continued. “Thirty-five. ID’d as Dottie Anderson.”
Not Gail. Not Julie or Clarissa Thomas or Grace Foxworth. Didn’t make the death any less terrible, but less personal.
“How?” Dixie asked.
“Bled to death. Sometime Wednesday night. Another interesting item—Marianne Coombs died early this morning. Stroke. Her son, who makes up his own come-and-go privileges at the nursing home, had been sitting with his mother for an hour when it happened.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel sorry for him? Why the fuck didn’t we lock the bastard away when we had the chance?”
“We, Flannigan?
We
at Homicide slam the bastards in jail. It’s you lawyers who let ’em out.” He banged the phone down.
Dixie didn’t blame him for being mad. The body count was mounting, and his clues led nowhere. She wondered if Dottie Anderson was the vivacious brunette Coombs had danced with at the Parrot Lounge the night he’d broken her foot. Seemed like an eternity ago. Virtually every woman in the club that night was envious. How would they feel now? And how the hell could a man be so charming one moment and so malevolently savage the next?
By the time she reached Hamman Hall, leaning heavily on the cane, storm clouds had turned the sky that mottled purple that warned of heavy rain. The air felt fresh with ozone. Dixie’s clothes and hair were damp. She hobbled up the steps as the first cloud opened.
Wide brick steps swept from the sidewalk, through glass panels, into the lobby. Dixie saw no one around. The place was lighted and the doors were unlocked. But the building felt deserted, the way an office building feels in the dead of night, with only the mechanical hum of a heating unit, fluorescent lighting, and computer equipment to fill the silence.
Outside, the rain had dropped a curtain around the building, blurring the landscape into a watery mosaic. At least ducking in here had kept her from getting drenched.
A flyer tacked beside the ticket window announced try-outs for Tiny
Alice
at four o’clock. Double doors led to the auditorium. Two more doors appeared to be office entrances. To the right of the auditorium, a tiled ramp angled downward, another angled upward. The lobby’s architecture was designed for longevity, efficiency, and handicap access. Dixie definitely could use the latter.
In the auditorium a steep semicircular bank of red chairs led down to the empty stage. Heavy brown curtains flanked the walls, absorbing sound and softening the light. Not a soul visible, not a sound to indicate anyone backstage. Perhaps there were discussion rooms downstairs, handling overflow from the Media Center. The acoustics probably dampened any sound from below.
Dixie spied an exit door to the right of the stage. The
ramp from the lobby likely led to the same area, but she decided to cut through the auditorium, in case something was happening directly behind the curtain—a tour, perhaps, that she couldn’t hear from fifty feet away.
Halfway down the stairs, the silence became oppressive. Dixie could no longer hear the rain pelting the brick walkway outside. The building felt as if it were wrapped in dense blankets. Obviously, the acoustics were well designed to amplify from the stage upward and dampen any noise coming from outside or elsewhere in the building. Beyond the exit door, there might be dozens of people.
But when she opened the door, more silence greeted her. Only the hum from the furnace seemed louder.
The area had been roughly sectioned off into smaller rooms, all painted white. This was the work area, behind the scenes, the guts of the building. Most of the lights were off, probably to conserve energy until the building was in use, which meant it was not in use now. Nothing going on, so why would Sarina and her friend have come here? Perhaps the young woman Dixie stopped had been mistaken.
While she was here, though, might as well check the remaining rooms. The first door she opened was a closet. Mops, brooms, and a rolling cart with cleaning fluids blocked the passage to a row of cluttered shelves on the back wall. The next door opened to an empty room.
Around a corner, Dixie saw a faint light under a door marked
REHEARSAL ROOM A
.
Sissy lay cramped in the dark.
Trapped.
The stench of her own sweat and blood and urine invaded her nostrils. Her head throbbed. Pain seared her lungs with each breath.
Where was she?
Panic gripped her as she tried to move. Hands tied. Aching from constriction. Darkness wrapped her completely.
Sweat dampened her skin. Her clothes felt soaked with it.
Ankles tied, knees drawn painfully against her chest. She lay on her side, hardness beneath her.
Where was she?
She remembered going to Brenda’s. Pleading with her to complete the task God had given them. To walk the path God had lighted.
Regan was a mistake.
Sissy told her.
Regan was weak, and God had called her home, but Brenda
—