A Lie for a Lie (17 page)

“Want me to come?”

“It’s plenty busy back there. Nothing can go wrong.”

I knew Veronica had a list of people who needed to be thanked from the stage tonight, and she’d asked me to check it and make sure everyone had been included. I glanced at my watch, then made my way backstage as fast as I could.

I was halfway to Grady’s green room when a youngish, dark-haired man nearly ran me over. I jumped back. “Hey!”

He didn’t stop, and he didn’t look around. He wasn’t running, but his stride was long and determined. Before I could do anything, I saw Grady coming toward me, too.

“You come back here, and I’ll have my lawyers all over you!” Grady shouted.

The man stopped, and for the first time I got a good look at his face. It was just a touch familiar, but that was as close as I came to recognition.

“Yeah? You try it, Barber. I’d love to have this out in court. We still may, but at my instigation. And not every town will have a stake in protecting you!”

Grady started after him, but the stranger swatted a hand in his direction in dismissal, turned, and stalked out the stage door.

“Grady . . .” I jumped into Grady’s path to keep him from going out the door after the man. “Are you okay?”

This time the swatting hand—his—flew vaguely in my direction. He opened his mouth to say something, then seemed to think better of it. Maybe memories of Wednesday night intruded. Maybe his wrist still ached. He snapped his lips together and stood there, as rigid as a fence post.

“Do you want me to call security?” I asked.

He shook his head. Then, as if he knew that opening his mouth was going to lead to more trouble, he turned on one heel and disappeared down the hall. I guess he made it to the green room, because I heard a door close with a resounding thud.

Mistress of timing I’m not, but even I knew this wasn’t the best moment to ask Grady if he needed anything before the show. In truth I was afraid he needed to take a swing at somebody, and I wasn’t being paid enough for that. Oh, wait. I wasn’t being paid at all. If he wanted me, Grady would have to come and find me himself.

The next half hour flew by. Melanie and Sandy had baked cookies and brownies for the stage crew, and I helped pass them out. I found assistants to help the band carry in equipment and set up in the orchestra pit below the stage. We had ten instruments now, and all the contestants had been working with them for this final round. I tried to visit each of the contestants to see if they had everything they needed, but only Julia had arrived before I had to go out front again.

There was a problem with the curtain, another with the lights. I had no expertise, but I was good at telling people where more knowledgeable people had gone and what they were doing. They kept me busy.

Twenty minutes before the curtain was to go up, a reporter for the
Flow
, the Emerald Springs daily, begged me to take him backstage to ask Grady for a quote, but Grady ignored us when I knocked.

I apologized to the reporter, who was young enough that shaving was probably a biweekly event.

“Maybe afterwards,” he said cheerfully.

I hoped Grady would be in a better mood by then. Voting people offstage seemed to jack up his serotonin levels.

Ten minutes before the band started their prelude a harried Veronica found me in the ladies’ room backstage. She was beautifully dressed all in black, and not a hair was out of place, but worry creased her forehead.

“Aggie!”

I flushed the toilet, straightened my skirt, and opened the stall door. “This may be an all-time low. Whatever it is couldn’t wait thirty seconds?”

She followed me to the sink. With Veronica right beside me I couldn’t hum “Happy Birthday” to make sure I washed my hands long enough, but I did my best.

“Madison’s not here,” she announced.

I cut short the hand-washing ritual and grabbed for a paper towel. “Nobody’s heard from her?”

“No, and she’s supposed to be up first. I tried her home number, but nobody answered.”

I’d gotten a phone call from Madison that afternoon. She had apologized for the events at her house, and I’d assured her that I knew it wasn’t her fault. She’d told me that the young man who’d doctored the punch had confessed to the police. Tammy had agreed not to press charges if he spent the rest of the summer’s weekends working at our local food bank. Hopefully the parents of the kids at the party would go along with this.

But she hadn’t said a word about not coming tonight.

I faced Veronica. “Did you ask Grady? He’s been coaching her. Maybe something happened in one of their sessions.”

If she understood what I was hinting at, she gave no sign. “I haven’t seen him, either.”

I followed her outside. “I guess I’d better go and get him.”

Tonight she didn’t volunteer to do it for me. “Ask him about Madison, then. And be thinking where else she might be. We have to have three contestants or this whole thing will fall apart. I’ll change the order, but that’s the best I can do until I know.”

Now I had no choice but to wind my way back to the green room and pound on the door again. “Grady? Ten minutes until we start. And we have a problem with Madison. She hasn’t arrived yet. We need to talk to you.”

I waited, but there was no reply.

“Grady, I’m going to have to come in there and make sure you’re all right unless you at least answer me.” I figured that would work, since Grady regarded the green room as his own space, not to be defiled by underlings.

Still no answer. Now I had to make good on my threat. Dealing with Grady was like dealing with my girls. They got one warning, then I had to follow through or they’d never believe me again.

Sighing, I turned the knob and pushed the door open. I was surprised to find the room was lit only by an emergency flashlight plugged into a wall socket in the corner. The light was actually a nice touch. Every room backstage had one, in case the power went off. Even when the power was working they functioned like night-lights. I flipped on the overhead and did a quick inventory, wondering if maybe Grady and Madison had eloped together. I had no idea where he’d gone, but this was beginning to get spooky. Madison’s disappearance was bad enough, but if I didn’t find Grady and fast, the show couldn’t go on at all.

I turned to leave, then something made me stop. I hadn’t been in the room very often, but on the few occasions when I’d been allowed to step foot over the threshold, the room had been orderly, in keeping with Grady’s rampant perfectionism. Furniture had been neatly arranged along walls. Now the table at the far end was pulled out at an angle. Nothing remarkable, but definitely different.

Suddenly I didn’t want to know why the table had been moved. I had one of those hairs-lifting-at-the-nape, goose-bumps-rising-on-the-arms moments when I knew something was amiss. I thought about getting somebody else to investigate with me, but what would I say? Come in here a second and take two steps across the room with me? I have the strangest premonition?

Swallowing whatever was rising in my throat, I gingerly slid one foot, then the other to cross the room. Even at that pace, it took only seconds to see that my intuition had been correct. The table was askew for a reason. There was a body lying half under it. First I saw a shoe, then the cuff of a pair of beautifully tailored pants. The rest came into focus a piece at a time. Belt, shirttail, pale hand lying with fingers spread on the utilitarian speckled carpet.

My eyelids closed, but only for a moment. They flew open and I moved closer and knelt beside Grady, trying to make myself feel for a pulse in his neck. But there was no pulse to be found, because the gash in Grady’s neck was so wide and so wet, that there was no place where I could put my finger. And the knife that had made the gash, a bloody knife that looked as if it had been made for just this purpose, was lying not far away.

Grady’s eyes were open and staring blankly at nothing. I thought he looked surprised, then I realized I was wrong. Because Grady hadn’t died instantly, only stunned for seconds by his imminent demise. After the attack, he had lived long enough to manage, somehow, to crawl under this table and scrawl three letters on the wall behind it in blood.

Three lowercase letters.
n
. . .
o
. . .
r
.

I thought the
r
had probably been his dying declaration. There were no letters after it.

The Idyll would not take place tonight or any night in the future. Much, much worse, Grady Barber would be the ghost that forever haunted this room, this auditorium, and the imagination of every citizen of Emerald Springs.

Finding a murder victim doesn’t make for a good night’s sleep. I knew that from past experiences, so when I finally made it home, I took a long shower, then swallowed Junie’s cure for everything—warm milk and whiskey with honey. Finally I pulled the pillow over my head, so the nightmare monsters wouldn’t find me. Of course, nothing really helped. All through the long night, I relived discovering Grady’s body and the moments afterwards.

After the shock of finding him, I had gotten to my feet, backed away carefully so as not to disturb more of the crime scene, gone outside, and closed the door behind me. Then, as I stood guard, I called the police. After I told the dispatcher what had happened, I called Veronica’s cell.

People seem to react to this kind of tragedy in two ways. There are those who weep and wail, and those who put their emotions in deep freeze to take out a sliver at a time once they’re able. As I stood there, my own in cold storage, I saw both. The security guard, pale-faced and shaky, wanted to go inside, but I wouldn’t even let him open the door. He was young enough to join the
Flow
reporter for a night of hitting on college students, and I was fairly certain that his training, if he had any, had not extended to preserving evidence.

Although she was openly weeping, Veronica supported my blockade. The other committee members and the two female judges arrived, and the embracing and tears were quickly followed by debates on what to tell the audience. We needed to send them home without argument, but also without fear they might be the next victims, an assurance we couldn’t honestly give. Veronica was too upset to make an announcement, but Melanie’s show business experience propelled her to the stage, where she explained there would be a delay and an explanation very soon. Even from my post at the doorway, I could hear the rising tide of speculation from the auditorium.

Uniformed cops arrived first and relieved me of duty. I gave them my account of what had happened, and they told me a detective was on his way, so I should remain for questioning.

Emerald Springs has more than one detective, of course, but I knew who would show up for such a high-profile victim. Our best and brightest, Detective Kirkor Roussos. Roussos and I go back a few murders. He’s a dark-haired, dark-eyed Greek American hunk who would be my heart-throb of choice were I not happily married to Ed—which I am. So Roussos and I hold a different place in each other’s hearts. I make his life miserable by sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong, and he does everything he can to stop me.

I wasn’t wrong. Roussos arrived, went into the room with the medical examiner and another man, then returned about fifteen minutes later, when he noticed me. He took one look and lifted a brow. “Tell me you’re not involved in this,” he said.

“I was Grady’s assistant while he was here. Oh, and I found the body.”

“You’ve got to stop doing that. We had a nice break. I was hopeful.”

“Me, too.”

His gaze softened, or maybe it was just the light. “He’s a friend?”

“No, and I don’t think he had many.” I kept my voice low, because there were still people close by, and I didn’t want to be overheard. “If he had an endearing side, I never saw it.” I told him quickly about the accident on Wednesday, about the fight with Fred and Fred’s resignation, even about the incident at the welcoming party with the server. “That’s the way Grady treated almost everybody,” I finished.

“You, too?”

I chose my words carefully. I sure didn’t want to sound like a suspect. “We had our moments, but I stood up to him, and he backed down enough that we could keep working together. I can’t say I liked him, although I’m still sorry he’s dead.” I paused. “It’s awful.” And it was.

“So who do you think killed him?”

For a moment I thought Roussos had asked me for my opinion. I almost laughed, until I realized he actually had. “There was a stranger backstage tonight, and the two of them were arguing. I stepped right into the middle of it.”

“You’re good at that.”

“Tell me about it.” I explained what I had witnessed. “I had the idea I’d seen this guy before, but I can’t remember where or when. While I was waiting for you to arrive, I racked my brain. No luck.”

“Give it some thought tonight and let me know if you figure it out. You can give a description?”

“Tall, dark haired, in his forties somewhere. Thin, I think. Dressed casually, jeans, a polo shirt of some dark color like navy or forest green. Camille Beauregard spoke to him and sent him backstage. You might want to check with her.”

“Will do.”

“I knocked on Grady’s door about ten minutes before I finally went in. If I’d just gone in earlier . . .”

“Don’t beat yourself up. It wouldn’t have done any good. He was a dead man from the moment he was stabbed and his throat . . .” He stopped.

“He found time to scrawl letters on the wall.”

“Somebody scrawled them. But judging from where we found him, it does look as if he crawled to the wall to do just that.”

Roussos went back into the green room, and eventually I was sent home. In the meantime the police chief arrived and announced Grady’s death to the audience, although not the circumstances. He told people to leave quietly, and warned them there would be extra police in and around the parking lots and local streets to make certain everybody behaved. Of course, I knew that wasn’t the real reason for the extra police presence.