Something Wicked (10 page)

Why no problems for
The Mousetrap?

Was the ipecac in the punch a venomous attack on the Petrees?

Or was the object of spite the players or perhaps Burt or Sam individually?

She chewed thoughtfully on the end of her pencil (
BUY AMERICAN
), and added a final question:

What’s going to happen next?

Max waggled the computer printout at her. “Instant bios. Everything you ever wanted to know—and more—about your fellow thespians.”

“Terrific.” She took the sheets and gave a whoop when she saw
HENRIETTA HOLLIDAY BRAWLEY
was the first name.

“I’m not playing any favorites,” he remonstrated.

“Not Henny,” she objected. “I’ll bet her life’s an open book.”

“Actually, her life’s damned interesting. Did you know that she—”

“I know she’s a chameleon. But right now, I’m more interested in whether you traced a connection between our people and Harley.”

The Porsche gave a throaty purr and sprang forward. The sun was slipping behind the live oaks, and a pleasant mellow glow touched the marsh with enchantment, gilding the cord grass and the silvery sea myrtle. Annie welcomed the sweep of air through the open sunroof, but the breeze ruffled the sheets, so she slipped the printout into her woven wicker carryall.

“Give me the scoop,” she asked eagerly.

As Max turned the car onto the blacktop and they picked up speed, he asked, “Aren’t you going to read it?”

“Nope. You can play Archie to my Nero Wolfe.”

He hooted. “Thank God, I don’t see any real resemblance.”

“Mentally, dear, mentally. I am trenchant—”

“Trencher, did you say?”

The Porsche veered sharply toward the bank as she pulled his ear for that one.

But, as he summed up his afternoon’s work, Annie was just as pleased she hadn’t plowed through the pages.

“So you didn’t come up with any tie to Jenkins?”

“Nothing I can put my finger on. Oh, Burt leases his shop from him, of course, or from Halcyon Development, to be superaccurate. But I can’t discover that Jenkins is pressuring him in any way.” He frowned darkly. “Of course, they’d keep it pretty quiet, if he’s doing Harley’s dirty work.”

“But he’s president of the players!”

“What could be a better cover?” Max slowed to wave to the guard manning the checkpoint at the solitary entrance to the resort homes and condominiums. They drove two blocks and turned left into the parking lot of Broward’s Rock High School. Carla’s sporty yellow MG, the classic with the jaunty running boards, was slewed carelessly into a parking space just past the entrance to the auditorium, and, as they walked toward the doors, gray dirt spewed as Shane’s glistening black Mercedes wheeled in.

“The heartthrob of America,” Max observed slyly.

Annie would have snarled, but she was too fascinated by the appearance of Henny Brawley, a red blur on her ten-speed, coming up the road in hot pursuit of the Mercedes. Instead, she satisfied herself with giving Shane a cold glare as they climbed the steps.

In the foyer, Carla was perched on a stepladder by the entrance doors to the center aisle, struggling with a loose hinge. She looked up briefly to smile at Annie and Max. When she saw Shane, her mouth drew into a thin line. She bent back to her work.

Shane glared at her. “Hey, Carla, my car’s got a knock. You want to take a look at it?”

Carla reached jerkily for the screwdriver on the ladder tray, and it clattered to the floor.

For once, Max’s amiability deserted him. He grabbed Shane’s arm and hustled him down the aisle.

Shane’s irritated voice rose. “But she asks for it, doesn’t
she? And I’m sick of her looking at me like I’m some kind of maggot.”

Annie bent to pick up the tool. She handed it to Carla, appalled by the burning hatred in the set designer’s eyes.

“He’s a creep,” Annie offered briskly. “Don’t let him bug you. He’s just jealous he can’t do anything well. Your sets are fabulous.”

Carla swallowed painfully and tried to smile. “It’s all right. I’ve heard worse. But, God, he’s sickening.” The hand that accepted the screwdriver trembled, and the thin shoulders beneath the faded denim work shirt shook.

The auditorium door opened, and Henny charged in. “Hi, Carla. Hi, Annie. Hope I’m not late.” She paused beside the ladder. “Oh, Carla, how nice of you to fix that door. Really, you go above and beyond duty. Good work, my dear.” Henny took Annie’s arm. “Time for us to get to it.”

Annie surged down the aisle with Henny. Obviously, this was Henny, actress, not Henny, investigator.

Although Annie had expected a lousy rehearsal because of yesterday’s dramatics, including the
Macbeth
quote and Sam’s frenzy, everyone had it pretty well together this Monday evening. Janet was pale, which came as no surprise since she’d been unlucky enough—or careful enough?—to imbibe the doctored punch. Henny was marvelous, as always, her sense of timing superb. Only Shane was his usual wooden, ineffective self. If she were Shane, it would make her highly nervous to be on the receiving end of the glares from Hugo. But the magic of the play absorbed her, as it always did, and she stopped thinking about the various cast members and their rivalries.

They were nearing the marvelous scene when Mortimer lifts the window seat and finds the body, one of the most delicious moments in theater. Onstage, Max strode around the living room. Janet picked up her pail from the sideboard and her cape, hat, and gloves from the table and left for the kitchen. Alone, Max continued his search for his lost manuscript. Annie’s lips parted in an anticipatory smile.

Max lifted the lid of the window seat. The business called for him then to drop it, walk away, do a double take, and dash back. Instead, he remained in a half crouch, staring down.

Henny and Janet were just offstage, of course, ready to come on.

Max turned, his face grim.

Henny and Janet stepped onstage, puzzled, then hurried to him.

He reached out to bar them from the window seat. Janet craned to look past him, her hands flew to her throat, and her high, agonized scream rose in the musty air of the auditorium, then splintered into choking sobs.

“Freddy,” Janet wailed. Fat tears coursed down her face; her makeup was streaked and blurred. “Somebody killed my Freddy!” And she rocked back and forth, clutching the stiff, bloodstained carcass of a huge orange cat.

Her cries brought everyone running. Max reached out gingerly, offering to take the animal. Annie joined him and thrust some wilted tissues at the hysterical actress.

Hugo and Arthur rushed up from the subterranean dressing rooms. Backstage steps led down to the greenroom, the men’s and women’s dressing rooms, even two small cubicles with tarnished stars pasted on the doors, restrooms, and a labyrinth of partitioned-off areas, including the prop shop, wardrobe, storage, and a dimly lit boiler room. Hugo glared dourly at the dead animal, as if it were a personal affront, while Arthur wrung his hands, mute and miserable.

Vince Ellis jammed a hand through his flaming red hair. It wasn’t often that anything caught the
Gazette
owner off balance. Annie would bet at that moment he regretted trying out for the role of Officer Brophy.

Father Donaldson, present for his role as Dr. Harper in Act I, hurried from a wing. “Here, Janet,” he intoned in his deep, soothing voice, “let me have Freddy.” Somehow, he succeeded in lifting the cat from her arms. Max looked relieved. The Episcopal priest, who good-naturedly played clergy for the summer theater in everything from
The Importance of Being Earnest
to
Murder at the Vicarage,
continued to quietly reassure, his ruddy face grave. T.K. jerkily patted his wife’s heaving shoulders.

It was the Hortons’ cat. The information came out in choked fragments from a shocked Cindy, for once subdued.
Her father stood red-faced and silent. Freddy hadn’t come home this morning. They had worried a little, but he was a tom and occasionally roamed, although he usually stayed in their backyard. He liked to sun on the patio. Cindy last saw the cat before they left for the Sunday afternoon rehearsal. “He was asleep on the retaining wall.”

“Freddy was almost fifteen years old. We got him when Cindy was just a baby. Oh, how could anyone do it?” Janet moaned. Father Donaldson, with another reassuring word, carried the body offstage.

T.K. cleared his throat several times. “Come on, now, honey. It won’t help to cry. Freddy wouldn’t want you to cry. He’s not hurt now.”

If she were Freddy, Annie thought, that would hardly be her attitude, but T.K. was desperately trying to console a desolated Janet and might be forgiven a little latitude with the truth.

In the downstage right wing, Sam backed away from Father Donaldson. At the moment, he looked decidedly green and his eyes were scrupulously averted from the carcass. Ben Tippet, who ran Tippet’s Garage and was onstage for a few minutes in Act I as the prospective boarder who is saved from poisoned elderberry wine only by Mortimer’s frantic intervention, looked from the cat to Sam to Janet, then muttered, “I gotta go. A transmission to put in,” and scuttled offstage.

“This is beyond the pale,” Burt announced shrilly. “I want to make it clear that if I ever discover who perpetrated this outrage, that person will never in my lifetime take part in any production mounted by the players.”

To Burt, of course, that fate was far worse than being cast out into the wilderness.

Even Shane looked sickened. “This is shitty.”

Henny Brawley, lean as a whippet in bright crimson warmups, was staring at Shane, her face creased in a puzzled frown.

Eugene’s broad face puckered. “Who would do such a thing?”

And that was the question in every mind, Annie knew. How could anyone stalk a pet, murder it, then plant the bloodied corpse, and wait for its discovery?

She looked at the watching faces and wondered.

The freckles stood out starkly on Vince Ellis’s ruddy face.

Carla stood with her hands jammed into the pockets of her dungarees, her arms tight to her body, as if she were cold. Long, dark hair framed a sensitive face, frozen now into immobility. Her violet eyes kept glancing at Janet and then away. Once, she shook her head, as if irritated at her own inability to help. Annie admired her compassion, because she felt certain that Janet was the kind of dithery, male-dependent female Carla most abhorred.

Hugo’s silvery black eyebrows were bunched in a furious line. Annie wondered if he were angry at the disruption of the play, or if he liked cats. One thing she was sure of … he didn’t especially like Janet. Funny. She didn’t have an idea in the world what Hugo was thinking behind that brooding, saturnine face.

Sam held a hand to quivering lips. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

Burt shot him a look of unconcealed contempt. “For God’s sake, it’s not even your cat.”

“Blood,” Sam said faintly. “Can’t stand blood.”

“Don’t look.”

Janet’s face was beginning to puff from her weeping, and her hiccoughing sobs shook her plump shoulders. T.K. grabbed her elbow and glared at all of them impartially. “We’re leaving,” he said harshly and began to steer Janet toward the steps. He moved with lowered shoulders, ready to bull his way ahead, an ex-jock in uncharted seas.

Henny held up a hand. “Do wait a moment.”

“What for?” T.K. demanded gruffly.

“Someone brought Freddy here,” she said firmly. “Don’t you think we should try to find out who?” She scanned the waiting faces. “One of us, don’t you think?”

There was a moment of stiff, shocked silence, then voices erupted.

“That’s absurd!”

“Just a minute, Henny—”

“Not me!” Shane objected loudly. “I’m no nut case. But somebody damn sure is.”

Arthur tossed his head, flipping the dark hank of hair out of his eyes. “I would hate to think it of one of us.”

Sam seized on Shane’s response. “Jesus, the hunk put his
finger on it. We’ve got us a nut. Oh, God, that’s all I need now. A nut!” He clapped his hands to his head, moaning.

Eugene twirled his eyeglasses on their long black ribbon and looked like TR learning that his Bull Moose party had gone down in defeat.

“Cool it, everybody.” Max’s voice and demeanor were as pleasant as always, but the voices stilled. “Henny’s right, you know. Somebody brought Freddy in here and put him in the window seat. We have to find out who did it.”

T.K.’s bristly blond brows knitted in concentration, and his heavy head began to nod. “Yeah. Goddammit, yeah. One of us. Who the hell else?” He peered suspiciously from face to face.

“I don’t think so.” Carla’s voice was cool. She stared at Max thoughtfully. “I was the first to arrive tonight, and I didn’t see anyone carrying anything large enough to contain the cat.”

“Of course not,” Henny observed.

Burt shot her an irritated glance. “If nobody carried the cat in, how the hell did the cat get in the window seat?”

“The operative question is when, not how,” Henny retorted, “and the answer’s quite obvious. The deed occurred some time between rehearsal yesterday afternoon and Carla’s arrival tonight.” Henny’s bright dark eyes gleamed.

“I got here the same time as Annie and Darling.” Shane was, as usual, supremely self-centered. “I wasn’t clutching no bloody cat.”

“The thing to do is look around and see if the building’s been broken into,” Cindy offered. It was her first suggestion. Annie shot her a look of surprise and grudging respect. She’d always assumed Cindy was stupid as well as horny, but now the teenager’s sea green eyes were calculating and intelligent.

Max’s voice sliced through the chorus of assent. “All right—but we’ll look in pairs.”

“Do you figure it’s dangerous?” Eugene demanded.

Hugo smiled sourly. “I rather think Max would prefer no one do a solo survey and produce a conveniently broken window.”

They divided into pairs, with Annie and Eugene left to guard Freddy, who had been placed in an empty cardboard box by Carla. The box sat by the prop table. “I don’t want it
to disappear,” Max said briskly. “We can at least see whether the bullet that killed Freddy can be traced.”