A Chorus Lineup (A Glee Club Mystery) (10 page)

I laughed. “Thanks. That’s exactly what a girl wants to hear.”

Devlyn grinned. “You’re always beautiful, but I’ve looked into those blue eyes enough to know when they’re tired. Are you sure you’re okay?”

A door opened down the hall, and Devlyn stepped back. Sigh. “I’m fine. Honest. But Larry might change that if we don’t make it to the bus on time.”

“You’re right,” Devlyn said as an older couple walked past. “Let’s go.”

The atmosphere in the theater’s lobby was subdued. Gone was the high energy of yesterday. Kids stood in groups. Some were talking in hushed tones. Others were crying. News of LuAnn Freeman’s death had spread. Larry, Devlyn, and I herded our kids through the red-carpeted space toward the doors that led to our staging room.

“Ms. Marshall.” Christine McCann waved and hurried over on tan heels that made her stand four inches taller than my five-foot-seven. “Do you have a minute? I’d like to have a word.”

I had no idea what she wanted to talk about, but the steely look in her eyes said she wasn’t about to take no for an answer. After sending Devlyn and Larry off to supervise the team and give them the room assignments for the master classes, I followed the head of the competition back through the lobby. She led me to the theater and asked me to take a seat.

After sliding into the one next to me, she turned toward me and said, “The competition is in trouble.”

Whatever I expected her to say—that wasn’t it. “Trouble? Did the police rule LuAnn’s death a murder? Are the students in danger?”

The idea of my kids being at risk made my pulse spike.

“The last I heard, the police are still leaning toward accidental causes.”

For some reason that didn’t make me feel any better.

“The thing is . . .” Christine shifted in her chair. “I have some doubts about whether or not LuAnn’s death was truly an accident. LuAnn was a forceful personality. She helped me keep this competition afloat when I first took the helm. But while her tactics were successful, they often rubbed people the wrong way.”

“I got that impression.”

“Yes.” Christine looked toward the empty stage. The risers and piano must have been moved to the wings while the techs and police looked for the reason the lights fell. “I hope LuAnn’s behavior yesterday won’t deter you from helping me now. She took issue with the publicity angle I pitched to the press. She thought the attention you might receive could give your team an unfair advantage in the preliminary round.”

I could see why that would set LuAnn and the leaders of the other teams on edge. After all, the story wouldn’t exactly be a story if my team didn’t make it past the first phase.

“It’s due to what I learned while researching the publicity angle that we’re having this conversation.” Christine turned away from the stage and focused her attention on me. “Our biggest sponsors have learned about the damaged costumes, the lighting mishap, and LuAnn’s death. Several are talking about pulling their sponsorship. They don’t want to be associated with a program that is unsafe for the participants. Which is where you come in.”

“Me? You want me to talk to the sponsors?” If I was the opera star I hoped one day to be, that might make some kind of sense. But something told me the moneymen wouldn’t be impressed by a woman who currently taught kids how to do jazz squares.

“Of course not.”

Oh good.

“I want you to track down the person who’s behind the destroyed costumes and turn them in to the authorities. Once you do, the sponsors will have no concerns about safety, and the financial future of the competition will be saved.”

Wait. I must have just hallucinated. Because Christine couldn’t possibly have said what I’d thought I’d heard.

“I’m not a private investigator.” Or an investigator of any kind. My foray into murder investigations was a fluke and, despite Devlyn’s concern, not something I wanted to do again anytime soon. “If you want to find the person behind the damaged costumes and lights, you should hire a professional.” Someone who had a clue what they were doing might be a good place to start.

Christine shook her head. “A stranger asking questions could cause a panic. You, however, belong here. And since everyone knows you helped the police catch Greg Lucas’s murderer, they won’t be surprised when you ask questions about the costumes or LuAnn’s death now.”

“But I have a master class to teach and students to supervise. I don’t have time—”

“Donna Hilty was able to return sooner than expected. She’ll be teaching the master class with Scott as was originally planned. Which gives you time to help me get to the bottom of this.” Christine stood, smoothed down her gray skirt, and started up the aisle toward the exit. “The directors of the team LuAnn’s daughter belongs to are in their staging room right now. I’d suggest you talk to them first.”

“Wait.” I jumped up and hurried after Christine. “I can’t do this.”

Christine stopped, turned, and gave me an unfriendly smile. “Unless you want the judges to send your team home after the first round, I strongly suggest you find a way that you can.”

What the hell had just happened?

I watched the theater doors close and shook my head. Had the head of the National Show Choir Championships just blackmailed me? I wanted to believe I’d misunderstood, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t. If I didn’t discover the person or persons behind the damaged costumes and instruments and turn them in to Christine or the authorities, my team was going to get cut in the first round.

Yep. This officially sucked.

And while I was pretty sure what she was doing was wrong, there was very little I could do about it. If I told anyone about this conversation, it would be Christine’s word against mine. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who people would believe.

Well, the joke was on Christine, because I had no idea how to go about finding the identity of the saboteur. Despite what the papers had written about my involvement in the murders I’d had the misfortune to be involved with, I didn’t have an innate skill for pointing to a killer. Hell, my lack of understanding as to who the killer was had actually gotten me a bullet in the arm. I had the scar and the wound to my ego to prove it.

The one difference between those cases and this one was that I had some idea of who the players were. None of the teachers or the students here was familiar to me. It would be almost impossible to pinpoint the perpetrator before tomorrow when my team took the stage for the preliminary round. Which meant my team was going to get eliminated through no fault of their own.

This wasn’t fair.

In a small corner of my mind, I realized that though this scenario totally gypped my team, it could potentially solve one of my problems. If Music in Motion was eliminated in the first round, I could go back to Chicago for my audition without worrying that my departure would hurt my students’ chances in the final round. Yet, while that was true, I wasn’t willing to let my team take a hit just so I didn’t have to feel bad for focusing on my career. They deserved the chance to perform and be judged based on the same criteria as everyone else. If after that they didn’t make it to the final round, well, that was the way it was meant to be. Performing didn’t always reward the ones you thought were the most talented or prepared. Personal taste and vision had a lot to do with who got cast and who didn’t. As did who you knew and what you’d done in the past. Which was probably why LuAnn had felt threatened by Christine’s push for publicity using my story.

I knew it was wrong to think ill of the dead, but when the woman was alive she’d been a menace. Between her reaction to the ripped costumes and her anger at me before the light beam fell, one would think those things had happened just so she could draw negative attention to me and my team.

That was crazy. Right?

Or maybe not. Eliminating the competition was a tried and true method of coming out on top. LuAnn’s first reaction after finding the costumes was to call for my team’s ejection. She’d reinforced that sentiment when she’d yelled at me in the theater. And LuAnn now might get what she had been campaigning for. Unless, of course, I found a way to track down enough evidence to convince the sponsors not to bail.

The idea that LuAnn might be behind those events at least gave me a place to start asking questions. Even though the thought of doing so made me a little queasy. I might not have liked LuAnn, but hadn’t she already been through enough? She was dead. The only factor that made me feel better about attempting to prove LuAnn was behind the incidents was the possibility that her demise wasn’t an accident. If that was the case, there was a murderer on the loose and the students, including LuAnn’s daughter, could be in danger. Asking questions could be a good way to help them avoid potential danger.

Rationalization complete, I headed for the exit, looking for people who would talk to me about LuAnn Freeman. Christine had suggested I start with people from LuAnn’s school. Logical, but not something with which I felt comfortable. At least, not now. Though they were the ones who knew LuAnn the best, they’d also be mourning her loss the hardest. I wasn’t going to go to their staging room and ask them a bunch of questions. For now, I’d take another tack and hope it would give me the answers I needed.

I checked my watch. Twenty minutes until master classes were scheduled to begin. Teams were still arriving. The lobby and staging room hallways were filled with activity. Which was why I headed downstairs, hoping to chat up my former master class partner and longtime show choir coach, Scott Paris.

Taking a shot that Scott liked to be prompt to his teaching engagements, I headed to the greenroom. The sounds of “Don’t Stop Believing” accompanied my descent down the stairs, telling me someone was early enough to be playing the piano. When I turned the corner, I was surprised to see a woman with bright red hair seated at the baby grand. Scott was nowhere in sight. Bummer.

I was about to head upstairs when the woman looked up from the piano keys. “You wouldn’t be Paige Marshall, would you?”

I wouldn’t? Smiling, I said, “As a matter of fact, I am.”

The woman’s expression went from happy to horrified in less than a second. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. Christine told me that she’d let you know I’d returned in time to run this class with Scott. She promised you’d be okay with changing back to the original schedule. Knowing you came to teach and found me here just breaks my heart.”

Ah. This must be Donna Hilty—Nashville singing sensation turned show choir coach. “Christine and I talked a little while ago. I’m just glad that the emergency that would have prevented you from teaching wasn’t as bad as you anticipated. The kids will be thrilled to have the opportunity to work with you.”

“So, you’re really not upset?” Donna stepped around the piano. For the first time I had a clear view of her outfit. Between the ruffled white skirt and the fringe-lined baby blue shirt, Donna Hilty looked like a country-style china doll.

“I’m really not,” I assured her. Since Donna could be a good source of information, I added, “In a way, I’m relieved. After what happened last night, the kids need to be around people who knew LuAnn. I just met her yesterday. And being the one that found her after she was hit by that car—”

“Oh my gosh, honey.” Donna walked over, put her hand on my arm, and gave it a squeeze. “You found her? I can’t imagine what that was like. I would have taken one look at LuAnn and fainted dead away.”

Something told me Donna was made of sterner stuff. Especially when you considered that I no longer had any circulation in the arm that she was holding. Yeouch. Donna might look small, but she had one hell of a grip.

I tugged on my arm. Donna held fast as she lamented the death of one of show choir’s biggest supporters. “I honestly don’t know what we’ll do without her enthusiasm. Bless her heart.”

Donna started to sniffle. Tears leaked from her eyes and streamed down her face, sending a trail of mascara down with it.

Okay, maybe it was insensitive of me, but the emotional outburst was a relief. The tears gave me the excuse to yank my arm away so I could grab a Kleenex out of my purse. Any longer and my arm would have gone numb.

Donna took the tissue with a nod of thanks and dabbed at her eyes. The more she wiped, the more tears appeared. And the sound of feet on the stairs and chatter coming down the hall told me that kids were on their way.

This was bad. The worst thing a teacher could do was demonstrate lack of control. It was a lot like working with dogs. You had to show you were the alpha in order to earn respect and get them to pay attention. At the first sign of weakness, all bets were off. Clearly, I hadn’t learned this lesson before dealing with Killer. This was why I lost my bacon. The last thing I wanted was for Donna to lose hers.

Handing her another tissue, I whispered, “I think some of the kids are early for class. If you want a minute to go to the bathroom or get a drink, I’m happy to supervise until you return.”

Donna snuffled, eked out a thank-you in between sobs, and raced into one of the dressing rooms to the right. Just in time. The door closed behind Donna, and several girls walked in. I told them to take a seat and watched as more kids filtered in. Chessie, Breanna, and Megan arrived along with several of the Music in Motion boys. When they spotted me, they walked over to say hello. I let them know about the change in instructors and asked Megan how her throat was feeling. The way her cheeks flushed when she answered told me she wasn’t as fabulous as she claimed. I warned against singing or speaking during the class and then sent the group to find their seats. Meanwhile, I watched the dressing room door for signs that Donna had recovered from her crying jag.

“I didn’t expect to see you down here.” Scott’s warm baritone voice rose over the teenage chatter. I turned to find him standing behind me, wearing a shiny silver dress shirt and a wide smile. “Did Donna get called away? It wouldn’t be the first time her manager pulled her from a commitment. Teaching is important, but she has a bigger career to think about. You understand all about that, right?”

“Donna’s here,” I said, pointing toward the bathroom. “She just needed a minute to pull herself together. She’s taking LuAnn’s death pretty hard.”

“I doubt it.” Scott stepped closer and lowered his voice. “Donna didn’t much like LuAnn.”

“LuAnn and Donna didn’t get along?”

“Not in this lifetime.” Scott chuckled. “Just last month they ran into each other at the Louisville Invitational. The show onstage was nothing compared to the one the two of them put on in the back. I was working with my team in our staging room so I didn’t see it. But the way Donna tells it, she went toe-to-toe with LuAnn about having her removed from her position with this competition, and LuAnn tossed out the cliché that it would only happen over her dead body.”

The door to the dressing room opened, and Donna walked out looking as if she’d never shed a tear. When she spotted Scott, she waved. Scott gave her a warm smile and whispered to me, “Seems like Donna got her wish. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. When it comes to winning, Donna always does.”