A Midsummer Eve's Nightmare (16 page)

Richard turned to her. “What do you make of that?”

Elizabeth stood up and turned back toward the carpet. “I’m more worried about what to make of this. I think I broke something.”

With Richard’s help she drug the heavy roll into better light and unrolled it. “I
thought
it sounded like glass eggs breaking. “Oh dear, what’s this going to do to Trevor’s budget?” She held up the remains of a shattered, high-intensity light bulb. She had plopped down on a box of twelve of them. None had survived.

“That’s too bad,” Richard said. “I suppose we should offer to pay for them—these are expensive little things. But—” he paused, “I wonder what they were doing wrapped in that carpet? Seems like they should be locked in a supply room or something.”

“Well, let’s clean this up.” Fortunately the boxed bulbs were in a paper sack, so there were no stray shards of glass to worry about. “I’ll confess as soon as I see Trevor.”

Elizabeth plunked the bag in a garbage barrel while Richard shoved the carpet back into place. “But now I think we ought to go see how Erin is. I hope she isn’t having any delayed traumas from yesterday. Maybe we should have insisted she see a doctor, but I didn’t want to argue and upset her more.”

Richard agreed. “I think she needed a good night of sleep more than anything. What is it health-food types take for that? Valium root or something?”

Elizabeth laughed. “You’d never make it in Granolas Anonymous. It’s Valerian root. With a cup of chamomile tea, I think.”

And, indeed, she was right. That was exactly what Tori and Erin were drinking when Richard and Elizabeth arrived at their apartment. Thompkins had snuck back in and the grey cat was lying curled in a spot of sunshine on the old, leaf-patterned, grey carpet.

Both young women looked as if they had freshly emerged from the shower and were a little dazed, as if they hadn’t been up very long. Already Erin’s scratches looked less red and angry, although the bruise on her cheek where she had fallen while running downhill was just flowering to its full shade of purple and vermilion. “Thank goodness for greasepaint.” Erin touched her cheek gingerly and winced.

“Will you be all right for the show tonight?” Elizabeth asked. Except for Erin’s scrapes, the scene looked so peaceful Elizabeth hesitated to refer to their troubles.

But Erin appeared amazingly untroubled as she tossed her still-damp blond hair. “Oh, yes. I’ll have a few sore muscles, but working them out is the best thing. There’s a sauna and therapy room up at SOSC for their athletic department. I’m heading up there in a few minutes. A hot whirlpool and a good massage—I’ll dance my very best for you tonight.”

“Want a ride over to the college?” Richard offered. “The car’s just parked a couple of blocks down the street.”

“No, thanks. I’ll ask that cute little policeman sitting across the street for a ride. Sergeant Carson, so they call him Kit, of course. If I go he has to go anyway, so we might as well save gas.” Richard walked out with her, leaving Tori and Elizabeth still chatting on the sofa, Thompkins having moved from his sunny spot to Elizabeth’s lap. Since Erin was never far from their minds the conversation soon turned to her. “She certainly seems to be handling yesterday’s trauma well,” Elizabeth said.

“I think she is. Although it’s not always easy to tell. Sometimes she seems so distant. She slept with me last night, at my invitation. I was afraid she would toss and turn all night, maybe even cry out. If she did, I slept through it, too.”

“I suppose having such a happy, secure childhood helps her handle things like this.”

Tori looked doubtful. “I guess so. She always says how perfect everything was, and most of the time she does seem really happy. . .”

“But?”

“Sometimes I wonder. If her home life was so perfect, why is her attitude to her father so erratic?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it seems like she wants so much to please him—she sends him all her reviews, pictures, everything that shows how successful she is. Then she’ll refuse to talk to him or do something just to make him mad, like dating Dirk.”

“What about a mother?”

Tori shook her head. “No idea. She never mentions her. Dead, divorced, distracted. I don’t know.”

A sound at the front door made them both look up. Richard and Dirk walked into the room. “Guess I just missed Erin,” Dirk said. “How is she today? I brought these.” He held out a handful of lavender, pink and white asters wrapped in florist’s paper.

“She’s fine, really.” Tori got up to put the flowers in water. “She’s much better than I would be after such an ordeal, I can tell you.”

“She does seem remarkably resilient,” Dirk agreed.

“Sit down,” Elizabeth invited. “We were just discussing whether Erin’s happy, secure childhood makes it easier for her to handle a trauma like she had yesterday. What do you think?”

Dirk frowned. “Happy, secure childhood? Erin?”

“That’s what she always says. Like a storybook: floor-to-ceiling trees at Christmas, colored eggs and chocolate bunnies at Easter, family vacations at the beach. . .”

“Exactly like a storybook, I’d say. She got all that from the storybooks she read while she hid in her room and listened to her parents yell at each other.”

“She told you that?” Tori reentered with the asters in a vase and set them on the coffee table.

“I don’t think she ever would have, but my sister and I had a lot of counseling to help us recover from our parents’ divorce. So I talked to Erin pretty openly about my rotten childhood. I guess that’s what got her to open up because one night she really got going on it. Poor kid. That’s why I—” He stopped abruptly.

“What?” Elizabeth prodded.

He shrugged. “Why I wanted her to be happy,” he finished vaguely.

“Yes!” Elizabeth agreed with such enthusiasm even Thompkins looked up momentarily. “That’s what we all want. This is awful. It makes it so much worse—everything she’s going through now—to think of that poor, frightened little girl being hounded now by someone who wants to hurt her—or worse.”

Chapter 21

HER NEW PICTURE OF Erin as a tortured child and a troubled woman stayed with Elizabeth like a dark cloud even through the usually joyful process of dressing for dinner and a play on the last night of their honeymoon. She put on the red suit trimmed with crisp white piping she had been saving for this special occasion and chose a chunky gold necklace to match its brass buttons.

“Allow me.” Richard took the necklace from her hands, clipped it on, then bent and kissed her on the back of the neck.

“Ooooh,” she squealed and reveled in the delicious shivers back-of-the-neck kisses never failed to give her. “The other side, too.” She tipped her head to the right, and he obeyed. The dark cloud dispersed.

Her arm through his, Elizabeth walked down the street in the golden early evening sunshine striped with long shadows, her feet barely touching the sidewalk all the way to The Greengrocer’s. The restaurant they had chosen for their last night in Ashland was a combination of an old English inn and a natural foods grocery. They walked past artistically arranged wooden crates of colorful fresh fruits and vegetables and shelves looking like a page from a museum catalog with their rows of tins of imported foods. Hanging racks of gourmet cooking utensils led the way on into the back of the shop where a waitress in a mob cap and laced vest showed them to a well-scrubbed wooden table set with pewter ware.

Richard ordered for them from a carved, wooden plank the waitress held in both hands for them to read. Then their attention was taken by the bell-like crystalline tones of a musical instrument being played in the far corner of the room. A young woman with long hair, wearing a white dress, sat before a low table holding a wooden, stringed instrument which looked something like an autoharp.

When the song was over they walked over to the musician. “That was lovely. I’ve never heard anything like it. What is it?” Elizabeth asked.

The girl smiled. “A hammered dulcimer,” she answered in a lovely Irish lilt. “It’s something akin to a harp, but you see,” she held a pair of tiny, wooden hammers, “when you strike the strings rather than plucking them they give an especially clear sound.”

“It’s wonderful!”

“Thank you. Would you like me to play something special for you?” “Greensleeves?” Elizabeth asked.

“Oh, sure. And that’s my favorite, too.”

Elizabeth and Richard returned to their table, and sat smiling at each other through the song. Elizabeth turned to the musician to say thank you, but another couple, both grey-haired and nicely dressed, probably in their early seventies, had stopped to talk to the dulcimer player now, so Elizabeth gave her full attention to piercing the flaky crust to let the steam escape from the veal and mushroom pie the waitress set in front of her.

The couple returned to their table right across from Richard and Elizabeth. The musician played a selection of folk songs: “Danny Boy,” “All Through the Night,” and “Bring a Torch, Jeannette Isabella.” Elizabeth smiled at Richard between delectable bites. Until her attention was distracted by the woman next to her pointing insistently toward the grocery. The husband turned and hurried in the direction she pointed. To her surprise, Elizabeth saw that he had gone to meet the ubiquitous Larry Bohanon. Larry held out a little white packet. The man reached for his billfold.

“Richard,” Elizabeth whispered urgently and pointed.

Richard jerked around, took one look at the scene and jumped to his feet. In his haste to reach the men in the grocery he bumped into a beautifully displayed basket of Sungold oranges, sending the flame-colored balls in every direction like a well-aimed billiards break.

Jumping back in alarm at the havoc he had created, Richard cannoned into the tweed-jacketed man, knocking the envelope from his hand. Larry stooped to snatch it, but Richard was too quick for him.

Seeing her husband’s Abbott and Costello act from the next room, Elizabeth’s impulse had been to hide her face in her hands, but she forced herself to watch. What was in the packet? Drugs? Payoff money? A threatening letter? Had Larry kidnapped someone else and now delivered the ransom demand?

Was Richard in danger? Would Larry get violent?

The scene seemed frozen as Richard slowly opened the envelope. He pulled out two long, rectangular strips of card stock. Tickets for that evening’s performance of
The Tempest
.

Richard gave a smile of abject apology, handed the tickets to their owner, and turned to help the grocer retrieve his scattered oranges. In his typical way, Larry disappeared.

When Richard returned to the dining room he stopped at the neighboring table and presented the couple with two oranges he had bought from the grocer. “I don’t know how I could have been so awkward. I do hope I didn’t hurt you.”

The man introduced himself and his wife as George and Velda Vail from Olympia, Washington, and assured Richard that he was entirely unhurt. Velda, whose back had been turned to the door and whose attention had been on the music the whole time, was delighted with the oranges. “Everyone’s been so kind here. It’s my birthday, and George brought me to see the play as a special treat. I’ve always wanted to come to the festival, but somehow we never got around to it. And with the birthdays seeming to come faster and faster now. . .well, I mean we never know how long we have, do we?”

She paused to smile at her husband. “And then it was almost spoiled because we didn’t realize you have to order your tickets ahead. We were so happy when the man at the hotel said he thought he knew someone who could help us. And that nice young man we called said he’d bring them right to us. So sad about his aunt’s getting sick and not being able to come. But lucky for us.”

“Yes, very lucky,” Richard managed to get in when Velda paused for breath.

“Of course, he asked for a bit extra for his trouble—quite a bit extra, really—but I was glad to oblige. Nothing’s too good for my Velda.” George beamed, and Velda blushed like a schoolgirl.

Richard stepped aside for a word with the dulcimer player, then returned to Elizabeth. Velda clapped her hands and cried out in delight as “Happy Birthday to You” chimed through the room.

“So Larry’s scalping tickets,” Elizabeth said under the music.

“So it would seem. Wonder how many relatives he’s bought tickets for this season that then suddenly fell ill.”

“Pity, he seems like a healthy chap to come from such sickly stock. Do you think it’s Larry’s fiddle or the man in the hotel’s?”

“Most likely a cooperative effort. Mr. Hotel probably has a bunch of people who live here or are connected with the festival in a minor way to keep him supplied. I imagine he gets a cut of the profit on the tickets and it all keeps his guests happy—which means better tips.”

“You know, I’ve been thinking about something else. I knew something bothered me about seeing Larry this morning—oh, that looks wonderful. Thank you.” She interrupted herself as the waitress set pewter dishes of raspberry trifle in front of them. “Mmm.” She savored her first bite.

“Well, as I was saying, I knew something looked wrong when I saw Larry in the window reflection, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. Now I realize. It was odd that he carried a box into the hardware store, not out of it.”

“Maybe he took something in to be repaired.”

“Sure. Or exchanged. There are a lot of logical possibilities. But then when I found those light bulbs hidden away backstage, and Trevor said something about pilfering being a problem for some companies—well, I wonder if it all adds up.”

Richard nodded. “I think there’s a very good chance that two plus two will make twenty-seven anywhere our Larry is involved.”

“Oh, and I saw Larry slip a pair of pliers in his pocket backstage, too. Of course, he might just have been keeping them handy for the next job, but he did go out then.”

“Yeah. Hard stuff to prove, but it makes sense.”

“So do you think Sally found out about all this? Maybe Erin, too? And he silenced Sally and is trying to scare Erin to keep her quiet?”

Richard considered that over a spoonful of custard and cream. “I don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be any doubt Larry has his hand in the till, but it’s penny-ante stuff. Not the sort of thing you’d kill to keep hushed up, surely.”