Desdemona started forward. “Juliet? Aunt Bess? What in the world are you doing here at this hour?”
A soft rasp of sound just off to her left brought Desdemona to a halt. Her office door had opened.
She whirled around.
A tall, shambling figure of a man loomed in the doorway. There was something terribly wrong with his face. It seemed contorted into an inhuman shape. A dirty cap was pulled down low over his eyes.
He had a gun in one hand.
Desdemona tried to scream and could not get the sound out of her throat. Terror paralyzed her. She saw the gun come up, point at her, saw the bizarre face twist.
Something glinted on the edge of Desdemona's horrified vision. It was light from the open alley door reflecting on a heavy steel soup kettle stored on a nearby shelf.
The bright steel broke Desdemona's trance. She grabbed the kettle with both hands and hurled it at the man with the gun.
He dodged instinctively and simultaneously pulled the trigger. The shot went wild. It struck the kettle, knocking it to the side.
Desdemona cast one helpless look at the alley door and abandoned any thought of escape in that direction. The gunman stood between her and the exit.
She turned and ran toward the walk-in freezer. The steel door was thick and well insulated. With any luck it would stop a bullet.
The gloom of the darkened kitchens provided her with some protection. She darted around the end of the long, stainless-steel work counter and rushed toward the freezer.
A second shot exploded behind her. It thudded into the old brick wall.
She heard footsteps, but she did not look back. She reached the freezer, hurtled into the small, icy chamber, whirled around, and pulled the thick door shut behind herself. It seemed to take forever to close.
Footsteps pounded on the tiles.
The door finally sealed itself with a soft sigh. Desdemona slammed the emergency exit handle downward, locking herself inside the freezer. Then she went down on her knees, facing the door, and hung on to the handle with both hands.
She could only pray that her weight pulling downward on the locking lever would be sufficient to prevent the intruder from unlocking the door on the opposite side. To open the door, he would have to shove the outside lever upward against her full body weight.
A chilling silence descended. A very chilling silence.
Desdemona squeezed her eyes shut and waited for a bullet to come through the thick steel door. She knew nothing about weapons. She had no idea of what kind of gun the intruder possessed, let alone whether it was powerful enough to shoot through a freezer door.
Nothing happened. No bullets tore through steel. There was no violent upward thrust on the door lever.
There was a muffled scraping sound and then a jolting crash of steel on the other side of the freezer door. The vibration of the impact reached into the cold room. It took Desdemona a few seconds to realize that the gunman had toppled a large, heavy object directly in front of the door.
Another silence descended.
Desdemona sensed that the kitchens were empty.
After what seemed forever she opened her eyes and got slowly to her feet. She was trembling from head to foot. Cautiously she stood on tiptoe and peered out the tiny thickpaned viewing window in the center of the heavy door.
From her vantage point she could see most of the interior of the Right Touch kitchens. The gunman was gone.
Desdemona leaned her head against the chilled door, breathing quickly. When she had caught her breath, she tried to open the freezer door.
It did not budge. Whatever it was that the gunman had dragged in front of the freezer now blocked the lever from opening. Desdemona was trapped inside the walk-in freezer.
Trapped inside a space that was smaller than a closed elevator
.
Trapped in a room that seemed as small as the trunk of a car
.
The old, choking fear welled up inside her. It blossomed into full-blown horror when she suddenly realized that she was not alone in the freezer.
With a dreadful sense of premonition, Desdemona turned slowly around to survey the small compartment. The blood in her veins became ice when she saw Vernon Tate's lifeless body propped in the corner.
There was a terrible red stain on the front of his shirt, and one of his beautifully sculpted ice swans lay at his feet.
S
he was trapped with a dead man in a room smaller than an elevator.
The claustrophobic fear nearly paralyzed Desdemona. For an instant she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was going to go mad.
This was worse than any elevator. It was as bad as being locked in the trunk of George Northstreet's car when she was five years old.
The black bat-wings of her childhood terror assailed her, turning her into a shivering creature whose legs would no longer sustain her weight. The sense of doom was a crushing force.
Desdemona pressed her back against the icy steel door. Her knees gave way. Unable to take her eyes off Vernon Tate's body, she slid slowly downward.
Tony would not rescue her this time. It would be hours before anyone came in to work. Even if she survived the cold, Desdemona did not know if she could survive the awful claustrophobia and the presence of Tate's body. She wondered if it was possible to die of a panic attack.
Panic attack
. That's all this was. The shallow breaths, the sense of terror, the rapid heartbeat. A panic attack. Desdemona hugged herself as she sank into a feral crouch.
She had survived being trapped in the car trunk all those years ago, and she could survive this. Poor Vernon was no threat to her. The only threat was the cold.
It was the
cold
, not the walls that seemed to be closing in on her.
The cold. Desdemona forced herself to focus on that element of the situation.
She was wearing jeans, a yellow pullover, and her red jacket. The jacket wasn't exactly a down parka; it was early summer, not midwinter, after all. But the lightweight coat was lined with a cozy fleece. It would hold her for a while. She would not freeze to death immediately.
If necessary, she could borrow Vernon's clothes. He certainly did not need them.
The thought made Desdemona so ill she was afraid she might be sick to her stomach.
The nausea passed when she promised herself that she would not strip Vernon's body unless it became absolutely necessary. It wasn't necessary yet.
There was time to think. Time to act.
The most important thing to remember was that she was no longer five years old. She was not a helpless child trapped in the clutches of an insane man.
And she was no closer to Vernon Tate's body than she had been three minutes ago. The walls were
not
closing in on her.
She considered the possibility of hammering on the steel walls with one of the stainless steel freezer trays. She might be able to generate enough noise to attract someone's attention.
The flaw in that scheme was that it was highly unlikely that any of the neighboring shopkeepers had come in to work this early.
She needed another way to communicate.
She slid all the way down into a crouching position. Desdemona hugged her knees and tried to wrench her gaze away from Vernon Tate's body.
The slight movement caused the edge of her red jacket to shift. There was a small
clunk
as the object inside the right pocket brushed against the freezer wall.
Desdemona belatedly remembered her beautiful PDA X-1000. She had stuck it into her jacket this morning, just as she always did before she left for work.
Some men gave a woman flowers. Some gave perfume. But some, a rare few, no doubt, had an instinct for giving a woman the perfect gift.
Stark got Desdemona's e-mail message as soon as he switched on his computer.
Stark read the short message twice. It crossed his mind that Desdemona might be playing a joke on him. He picked up the telephone and dialed her apartment number.
There was no answer.
He dialed the Right Touch number. Again no response.
An unpleasant sensation gripped him. Desdemona was not comfortable enough yet with computers to play games on them.
He took a few seconds to type out a reply.
He surged to his feet and headed for the door.
Maud looked up in alarm as he went past her desk. “Mr. Stark, is something wrong?”
“Something's come up. Tell Dane he'll have to handle the Connelly Manufacturing people by himself. If they don't like the fact that I'm not at the meeting, reschedule. You can reach me on my PDA.”
“Yes, Mr. Stark.” Maud straightened her shoulders. “Trust me, sir. I'll handle everything here. Flexibility is the hallmark of a successful secretary. We must learn to adapt to life's constantly changing winds. The branch that cannot bend will surely break.”
Stark didn't have time to think of an adequate response.
He took the elevator to the street floor of the high-rise building and ran most of the six blocks to Pioneer Square. It was faster than getting the car out of the garage or trying to catch a cab.
He reached Right Touch a few minutes later. He went down the alley and found the rear door open. When he stepped inside, he immediately saw the heavy steel shelving that blocked the freezer door.
It did not take him long to move it.
He jerked open the freezer door.
“
Stark
.” Desdemona exploded out of the freezer and into his arms. She clutched her PDA X-1000 in one hand. She pushed her face into his chest and clung to him. “I got your message. I got it. I was going crazy, and then I got your message. I knew you'd come.”
“What the hell happened here?” Stark hugged her fiercely.
Then he saw Vernon Tate's body in the corner of the freezer.
Hours later, after the police had finally left, Emote Espresso was overrun by Wainwrights.
They were everywhere, and they were all doing Shock and Horror. Stark decided that he had never really seen shock and horror done until now when he witnessed a whole family of theater people doing it.
Henry and Kirsten slumped elegantly on counter stools, espresso cups in hand. Bess and Augustus were draped languidly over a tiny table. They stirred their lattes with slow, desultory motions. Juliet, still somewhat ashen, sat at another table and toyed with a cup of cappuccino. Even Macbeth was there. He had Jason and Kyle with him.
Stark noted that Tony was the only one who was missing. Apparently he had not yet gotten the word.
Desdemona was center stage, seated at a small table. There was a cup of tea in front of her. Stark sat across from her.
“I still can't believe that poor Vernon is dead,” Desdemona said for the hundredth time. “He was such a pleasant man. Such a quiet person. So reliable. An artist without an ego.”
“A very rare individual,” Augustus murmured. “Bland but rare.”
“Tell me the whole story again,” Stark ordered. “From the beginning.”
“I've already gone over it a zillion times for the police.”
“Do it one more time for me.”
Desdemona sighed, wadded up a hankie, and stuffed it into the pocket of her jeans. “I went to Right Touch after you left this morning. The back door was open. I could see that the freezer door was open, too. I assumed someone had come to work early. Apparently that's just what happened. Poor Vernon must have got the morning schedule mixed up. He showed up early and surprised the burglar.”
“Who shot him and stuffed his body in the freezer,” Henry added in a strained voice. “And then the son-of-a-bitch tried to kill Desdemona.”
“Oh, my God,” Bess wailed. “I still can't believe it. Desdemona could have been killed.”
“Now, now, my dear.” Augustus patted her shoulder. “She's safe. It's all over.”
Stark realized that he was gripping the edge of the small table so tightly the plastic threatened to crack beneath his fingers. He made himself loosen his grip.
Desdemona could have been killed.
Chaos filled his insides. He fought to cram the nightmarish feeling back into the cauldron where it belonged.
“You're sure you didn't recognize him?” he made himself ask.
She shook her head. “No. His features were all sort of twisted up. The police said it sounded as if he were wearing a nylon stocking over his face. He was tall and thin. His clothes were filthy.”
“Some street person desperate for money to buy drugs,” Kirsten whispered.
“That's what the cops think,” Macbeth said.
“Why break into Right Touch?” Kirsten asked. “Desdemona doesn't keep cash on hand.”
Desdemona dabbed at her eyes with a napkin. “The police said he was probably hoping to find something he could sell.”
“He was in your office when you arrived?” Stark asked.
“Yes. He came out with the gun in his hand. I threw the soup kettle at him. He shot at it, but I think he must have been rattled. The shot went wild. So did the second one.”
“Jesus,” Henry said softly. “Two shots. Thank God you made it to the freezer.”
“Vernon Tate wasn't so lucky,” Desdemona said sadly. “The killer must have surprised him just as he was putting his ice swan into the freezer.”
“The killer might have shot him and then put him in the freezer to complicate the investigation,” Augustus said thoughtfully. “I recall a similar situation in a play I did a few years back. Dinner theater production down in California. A mystery called
Freeze Dried
. Had the lead. Remember, Bess?”
“I remember,” Bess said. “You were brilliant, dear.”
“Thank you. Role was that of the police investigator,” Augustus continued. “Body was frozen in the snow. Had to deduce the actual time of death with some mighty clever sleuthing. Wasn't easy, I can tell you.”
“I'm sure modern police techniques have come a long way since you did that play, Dad,” Macbeth said.
“I've called my clients and cancelled everything through the weekend,” Desdemona said. “Fortunately, all I had on the schedule was a small reunion brunch for a group of sorority sisters and a couple of luncheons. I transferred the business to another caterer.”
“When can you get back into Right Touch?” Stark asked.
“The police told me they'd be finished in there sometime tomorrow,” Desdemona said. “But it's going to take a couple of days to clean up.”
Stark glanced around the room. “Where's Tony?”
Bess looked up from her latte. “Didn't you hear? Tony left a message on my answering machine sometime during the night. He said he was taking an early-morning flight back to Hollywood. Apparently he got a call from his friend down there. The soap is going into production after all.”
“The Hollywood people bought him a ticket,” Augustus explained. “Told him it would be waiting for him at the airport.”
“Is that a fact,” Stark said very softly.
“Wish that lad would stop pinning his dreams on a soap opera career,” Augustus muttered. “Hollywood is no place for a Wainwright.”
Shortly after noon the following day Desdemona sat down behind her office desk. She surveyed the chaos that surrounded her with a sense of dispirited gloom.
The police had finally finished their work. She knew from what one of the officers had said that they had found nothing that altered their original conclusion. Vernon had apparently been killed because he'd had the bad luck to interrupt an armed burglar at work.
It happened all the time.
Desdemona shuffled through the jumbled pile of papers that littered her desk, her mind on Stark.
Something she had seen in his eyes yesterday when Tony's name had been mentioned had alarmed her. She was not certain just what was brewing in Stark's razor-sharp mind, but it made her very uneasy.
The phone warbled. Desdemona was so wrapped up in her dismal thoughts that the sound made her jump. For no good reason her pulse started to pound. She took a deep breath to quiet it and reached for the receiver.
“Right Touch. This is Desdemona.”
“You the lady who bought the ice sculptures from Vernon Tate?” The voice was that of a man. He sounded anxious.
Desdemona squeezed the receiver so tightly she wondered that it didn't crack. “Yes. Yes, I am. Who are you?”
“Heard on the news that he was dead. That true?”
“Yes, I'm afraid it is. Did you know him?”
“Hell, yes. I'm the one who did those ice carvings for him. He owes me fifty bucks for the swan.”
“You did the carvings?”
“Yeah. And I really need to get paid, ma'am. He promised he'd give me the cash on Monday.”
“I don't understand. I thought Vernon was an ice sculptor himself.”
“Tate was no ice artist. He said he needed that job with your company real bad, so he lied. We made a deal. I supplied him with the carvings, and he paid me the extra that you paid him for them.”