Act V (25 page)

“
I’m becoming very
impatient, Sandra.” He touched the knife to her cheek. “Not too
many television personalities have scarred faces.”

“
It’s Glynnis Nuckolls.
That’s her name. I swear.”

He was silent for a moment,
then spoke with what sounded to Sandra like an almost cheerful
tone. “Oh, then it
is
the one Gearhart’s sleeping with.” He laughed. “I thought so.
Here, Sandra, you’ve been such a good girl that I’m going to give
you another beer.”

He held the can to her lips. “One more
thing and you can go home.” He touched the back of his hand to her
cheek, smooth and wet from tears. “Did you tell the police about
our little phone conversation?”

If she said
yes
, he’d be angry again
and he might kill her, but at least he’d know that the police were
aware of his call. If she said
no
, then he might think she was
willing to cooperate and let her go. She hesitated just a little
too long, “No, of course not.”

He doused a cloth with chloroform and
held it to her mouth and nose. “Sandra, Sandra, Sandra. When will
you learn to stop lying to me?”

Chapter 21

Glynnis dreamed that night, but it
wasn’t a premonition, only a dream. It was frightening and very
mixed up, as dreams often are. Dorsey was at her house calling her
name. “Glynn, I wanted you to meet my girlfriend, Gabrielle. He
shoved the girl toward her, dressed in a Catholic school plaid
skirt and knee socks. She looked like Brittney Spears in that old
video. A sexy, sixteen-year-old. “She’s young and healthy!” he told
her with a smile.

Glynnis, not in control of her own
dream, reached out to slap the girl. Just as quickly, the girl’s
skin turned sallow and a gaping slit flowing with blood appeared on
her white blouse.

“
Aw, man! Look at that.”
Dorsey said, dropping the girl’s body to the floor and stepping
over it. “You broke her, now she’s no good to anyone.” He turned
and kicked the girl’s body then looked back at Glynnis. “You wanna
get back together?”

She turned her back on him but then
reeled back around, planning to shove him out the door, when she
saw that it wasn’t Dorsey, but Aaron. “Sweetheart, you are just too
tense,” he told Glynnis. “Now my sister-in-law here, she knows how
to relax.” He reached down and pulled her into his arms, getting
blood all over his hands. “Too bad Kenny got to her first. I could
have really enjoyed a sweet thing like her.” Then he kissed the
dead girl with a lover’s kiss. When he looked back up, his face was
Claude Danning’s, now dark and bloated with decay.

She woke up screaming. “No! No!
No!”

Beside her, Brice jumped from the bed,
grabbing his gun from the nightstand and, wide awake now, searched
the room for the invader. When he saw noone, he slipped into his
shorts and whispered, “I’ll check the rest of the
house.”

Glynn’s heart was beating like a race
horse’s on the last lap. She reached for him. “Brice, don’t.
There’s no need; I was dreaming.”

His face eased and he sat the gun back
on the nightstand and pulling off his shorts, slid into bed beside
her. He gently pushed her back into a prone position and pulled her
into the crook of his arm while wrapping his leg over hers. He
began to stroke her hair. “You okay? Must have been
bad.”

She nodded and got up, ignoring the
fact that she was wearing nothing at all, and ran out of the room,
coming back with a cereal bar for each of them. She shoved one
toward Brice. “Take a bite.”

“
Huh?”

She bit down into a bar. “Just humor
me.”

He took a bite, chewed and swallowed.
“Okay?”

She sat the rest of her bar down on the
dresser and smiled at Brice. “My mama always told me never to tell
a bad dream before breakfast or it’ll come true.”

“
And you believed
her?”

“
Listen, the way my dreams
work, I’m not taking chances.”

He pulled her back to him again. When
her head was resting against his shoulder, he whispered, “Tell
me.”

“
It was just a dream,” she
began. “It wasn’t the real thing, not a premonition, just an awful
dream.” Then she tried to recall what had happened. As she told it,
she realized that it was so scattered and nonsensical that it could
only be her anxiety kicking into her subconscious. Still, it felt
better to tell him, allowing some of the terror to fade as she
shared it with Brice.

“
Better?” he
asked.

“
Better. But I don’t feel
like going back to sleep.”

He climbed from the bed and strode into
the bathroom. “Don’t go anywhere,” he told her. She heard the
toilet flush, then the shower running for only a minute or so. When
Brice walked back into the room, still naked and drying off his
hair, she could see they wouldn’t be going back to sleep anytime
soon.

*****

On Sunday afternoon, Glynnis and Brice
attended Kenneth Shultz’ funeral together. Glynnis had planned to
go out of respect for Aaron anyway. Addy had agreed to cover
Gabriella’s. The funerals were being done separately since the
families attended separate churches and couldn’t agree on a unified
plan. Again, they searched for loners and anyone acting strangely.
Brice took note of a handful of funeral attendees that seemed
familiar, thinking that they might have attended the Danning
funeral. Other than that, they came up empty.

*****

Colton Maris hated Mondays. Since he’d
hit sixth grade and started middle school, he just hated Mondays
like he hated a toothache. He had five different teachers to deal
with and all of them hated him. He could tell. Dang it, he had been
the one that made straight A’s in elementary school, the one whose
teachers couldn’t say enough gooey, happy stuff about him. But now,
in middle school it was all different. The teachers were mean, the
subjects were harder and the girls were downright insane, even his
former best friend, Ashley Heinz. All the girls, Ashley included,
spent all day talking about one boy or another and comparing
hairstyles and girly stuff. That, and Bennet Trebble, the eighth
grade boy who looked like he was thirty. Why would they want an old
man anyway? Not one of them liked to fish anymore or play football.
Sixth grade sucked the big one.

For the last two weeks, he and
everybody else in school had suffered through state testing; hours
and hours of bubbling in and writing. He was ready for a break.
Yes, today was Monday, and he was supposed to be in school, but it
was the last week. Who cared anyway? Everybody knew that the
teachers had already put preliminary grades into the computers and
were only waiting for final exams to finish up. He wasn’t even sure
they counted those final exams because the teachers had to have
final grades in so fast after the exams, he didn’t know how they
could get them graded fast enough.

He had decided yesterday after church
that he was going to the lake today. Screw school. He was taking a
day for himself. He could fish, swim, lay on the bank and sleep.
He’d worry about excuses later. This was his day. He’d slipped away
from the bus stop early this morning and made his way to the lake.
Colton had a bucket of crickets and his fishing pole. He lazily
wandered out to the banks of what everybody around here called
Stone Lake. It was really a duck pond, only about fifteen feet deep
at the middle. You could see all the shores from any given point,
so it wasn’t like the lakes he’d been to near Clemson, where the
water went on forever, but it would do.

He reached into the bucket and pulled
out a squirming cricket, getting ready to impale the hard cuff on
its back with the hook, when he saw something gleaming in the
water. He dropped the cricket back into the bucket and waded in.
When the water was almost at his neck, he stopped. Ten feet away, a
car sat at the bottom of Stone Lake. It was some kind of
feminine-looking sports car thing that only a woman would drive. He
couldn’t tell for sure about the color, blue or black maybe. He
could see one thing for sure. There was somebody inside, and they’d
been there for a while too. “Holy crap!” he exclaimed and ran for
the shore to get his cell phone. He had to call the cops, skipping
school or not, this was important. He couldn’t wait for school
tomorrow. Everybody would want to hear his story, even Ashley and
Bennet Trebble.

*****

He was waiting, waiting for the right
opportunity, waiting for them to find her body, waiting until after
opening night. Timing was everything and the public had to be led
like silly sheep to the wrong conclusions. He knew who, where and
how. The only thing left was the when, and that was coming
soon.

Of course, there was still Glynnis to
deal with. Should he get rid of her before or after his big night?
If he waited until after, she might pose a problem, alert police,
but she hadn’t been able to help them yet, had she? If he waited,
he might be able to use her, and he could make her the finale. He
could do her too if he was careful not to leave evidence. He could
take his time and enjoy it. Maybe she’d enjoy it too. She was
sleeping with a cop. How good could he be? He hadn’t taken his
darling Juliet/Gabrielle, or the lovely, Sandra Fitchwell, even
though he had wanted to more than anything. The timing was wrong.
He couldn’t afford to abandon the plan even for immense pleasure,
until his main objective was taken care of. He was a man of
discipline. Pleasure could wait a little longer. It wouldn’t do to
reveal himself now when the plan was almost complete.

His phone rang. “I’m on the way. Tell
him I’ll be right there.”

*****

“
Okay guys, this is the
first dress rehearsal.” Glynnis had the whole cast and crew sitting
on stage. Some were kneeling, others on the false parapet. All were
listening intently. They were professionals, every one. “We have
one more tomorrow, and then we open on Wednesday. You are without a
doubt the best cast and crew in the state but we’re only as good as
our worst performance. That’s the one everyone will remember. Give
me your best today so that we can work out any kinks by Wednesday.
Don’t forget to stay for notes when we’re done.” They started to
take their places. “Oh, one more, no, two more things. Don’t forget
that tomorrow’s rehearsal will be in real time, so plan to sleep
late and get here by 5p.m., in costume and places by six. The other
thing is, I’m a little drowsy from that huge lunch I just finished.
Don’t put me to sleep.” They all groaned and took their
places.

Act One began and Glynnis walked from
place to place listening for dead spots and watching to make sure
the players were playing to the entire audience and not just front
and center. She then wandered back to where Aaron stood. He’d been
checking every aspect of the tech work, sets, lights, sound. He
looked like he’d been through it, and in truth, he had.

“
You okay?” she asked
him.

“
Sure, you?”

“
I’m fine, but I’m worried
about you. Did you sleep over the weekend?”

“
Some. Don’t worry about me,
sweet thing.”

“
Can’t help it Aaron. How’s
your family? Are they holding up okay?”

“
They’re fine. It’s just
tough on Mama especially. But we have to get on with our lives.
Kenny wouldn’t have wanted us sitting around moping. Well, maybe he
would have,” Aaron’s mouth lifted on one side, “but not for
long.”

“
I know you said everything
went okay with the police, but if you just want to talk, let me
know.”

He put on his most lecherous leer, “Do
you offer any other kinds of therapy, sweet thing?”

*****

Brice and Addison trudged along the
bank of Stone Lake. Life in Clearview was getting more interesting
by the minute. There was a group of looky-loos standing by the bank
smoking and waiting for the car to come all the way to the shore.
Wherever there were car accidents there would be vicarious
thrill-seekers, people who did nothing to help but frequently got
in the way of the police and rescue teams.

One middle-aged woman kept walking to
the police tape and peering over to where the crew was pulling up
the car saying, “Oh dear, I hope it’s not somebody we know. It
almost seemed to Brice that what she really hoped was to see
somebody she knew pulled out of the car so that she’d have
something to talk about.

Brice looked around for the usual
press. They were gathered close to the tape on the side of the
shore where the car was coming up. Brice looked for the normally
aggressive Sandra Fitchwell but didn’t see her. “Notice somebody
missing?” he asked Addy.

“
Yeah, you think she took a
few days off because of the Bard thing?”

“
I would have.”

Calls came from the media
crowd.

“
Do you know who’s in the
car yet?”

“
Do you suspect foul
play?”

“
Is there any connection to
the Bard murders?”

Brice pushed through with Addison
behind him. “We don’t know anything yet guys. We’ll pass along what
we can, when we can.”

They moved closer to the shore as the
wench pulled the car inland. The crowd drew as close to the tape as
possible without spilling over. Water flooded out of the blue Mazda
hundreds of gallons at a time, revealing the bloated body inside.
Even with the decomposition brought on by time underwater, Brice
thought he recognized the blonde, Barbie Doll head that emerged.
Apparently, so did the crowd which began to vibrate, some with
outrage, others with excitement. Addison grabbed his arm. “Blast it
all,” he breathed the words so that only Brice could hear, “what’s
that crazy bastard gone and done now?”