Act V (3 page)

“
Sissy, how’s it going?”
Glynnis hugged her friend who seemed to be the centerpiece in a
growing pile of pastel paper and ribbons.

“
I’m great! The wedding is
only a few weeks away. The calligrapher has finished the
invitations and mailed them, but we haven’t hired the band for the
reception or made a final decision about whether to have
bacon-wrapped scallops or shrimp canapés. Other than that, peachy!”
She and Glynnis both laughed. Sissy had always been the queen of
last-minute. She never knew her lines until the last possible day,
and yet she always pulled off a great performance, leaving their
drama coach, Mrs. Cartee, and more recently, Glynnis herself with a
few extra frayed nerves. “Hey, do me a favor,” she leaned in and
whispered to Glynnis. “I’m starving but I can’t leave until all the
presents are opened and duly recorded. Mama would die at the
rudeness.” She rolled her sparkling, brown eyes and pantomimed
fanning herself with a lace fan like a real southern bell. “Would
you please go get Terrence away from the boys club over there and
tell him I need food? Why did we invite them anyway? They’re
useless.”

“
I’ll do better than that,”
Glynnis told her with a pat on the hand, “I’ll get it myself. Is
there anything special you want?”

Sissy considered that. “I’ve got to fit
into a white gown soon, so keep it light. Maybe just a few nuts, a
couple of carrot sticks.” She hesitated then added…and a huge chunk
of that strawberry cake with the pink icing…lots of
icing.”

“
Got it.” Glynnis went
toward the food table, a woman on a mission. Sissy had always been
one of those girls who could eat anything and look like a runway
model with curves. Not fair.

She reached the table and pushed her
way through the mob of ill-at-ease men to take a plate from the
stack. Every shower she’d ever attended used plates like these,
glass with a vine or flowers etched into the border. She began
piling the etched-glass dish with nuts, carrots, chicken strips,
and a large chunk of pink cake. Then she reached for a punch cup
and promptly dropped the plate onto the perfectly glossy, hardwood
floor, not even noticing as it broke into pieces and scattered pink
goo and nuts everywhere. Glynnis stood there wearing the same
expression as every possum she’d ever seen dead on the road while
several women tried to help her by cleaning up the mess on the
floor at her feet. Glynnis failed to respond to the hands shaking
her, or questions like, “Honey, are you okay?” and “What’s wrong
darlin’?” The best she could do was stare. There was a pretty good
reason for her bewilderment, but not one she cared to talk about to
the women asking all the questions. She knew the man she was
gawking at. Unfortunately, last time she’d seen him, he’d been
slumped in a wingback chair with a sword through his middle. This
probably wasn’t good.

Chapter 2

He looked healthy enough, black and
silver hair shining, eyes bright, cake crumbs on his lapels,
nothing to indicate that he’d been stabbed in the stomach with a
medieval weapon. Glynnis, on the other hand, wasn’t feeling well at
all. Her hands were clammy, her deodorant had failed, leaving a
sour odor, and three elderly society ladies were swarming around
her feet picking up food and glass. One of them kept wiping Glynn’s
shirt tail with a damp cloth. Apparently, she was wearing some of
the pink icing. Face flushed, she shook her head to clear it. “I’m
so sorry!” was the first thing she could blurt out, followed by,
“I’m always dropping things….I don’t think I feel well.” And before
another elderly gossip could ask another question, she fled for the
restroom.

Glynnis leaned over the
lavatory, trying to breathe deeply. She splashed her face with cold
water, not caring that her makeup was ruined. Staring back at her
in the mirror was a frightened, shell-shocked, ghostly looking,
thirty-year-old woman with brown curls. The foremost curl held a
dollop of veggie dip. Surely she didn’t look as awful as she
thought. She dabbed her face with a dry paper towel, wiped off the
dip, and looked again, better, but still not human.
Who is he? More importantly, what can I possibly
do about it?

The door flew open and Sissy walked in,
obviously flustered, but smiling. “Boy Glynn, I send you to get
food and you start smashing plates.” A worried grimace replaced the
smile. She took a paper towel, wet it in the sink and started
dabbing Glynn’s forehead. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“
Okay, I think.” Glynnis
groaned with embarrassment. “Oh Sissy, I didn’t mean to ruin your
shower.”

“
Ruin it?” She laughed. “I
was about to fall asleep. At least you gave the gossips something
to do besides give me marital advice. Did you know I’m supposed to
give birth to one kid for every ribbon I break? I’m up to about
twenty-seven now.”

Glynnis smiled. Few people knew about
her dreams and how they had a penchant for actually happening in
real life. This had been going on since she was very young. The
first time Glynnis recalled it happening had been when she was
around five or six. She had a recurring dream of walking down a
church aisle, dropping yellow and pink rose petals at her cousin
Elaine’s wedding. When she reached the end of the aisle, Elaine was
walking toward her in her lacy white gown, but before the bride
could reach the front of the church she dropped her bouquet and
clutched the front of her white gown, doubling over, her face
scrunched up in a grimace that reminded Glynnis of a really bad
stomach-ache she’d once had. That was where the dream had ended.
The first time she had woken up, sweating and crying. Her mother
told her she was only worried about being in the wedding and that
everything would be okay. But she had dreamed the same dream with
only small differences twice more in the next few weeks. It was
just nervousness, her parents had told her and she shouldn’t worry.
When the wedding day came, Glynnis had put on the fancy pink dress
and the white patent leather shoes they gave her and tossed petals,
just like her mother told her. She was the only person in the
church who wasn’t shocked when cousin, Elaine had to be hauled off
in an ambulance. Appendicitis, her mother had told her later.
Elaine had been married in a small service a few weeks after her
recovery. Mama had pretended the dream had never occurred. Glynnis
knew better.

As she grew older, she realized that
there was a pattern. The dreams, when they were prophetic, took on
a different quality than regular dreams. They were more detailed,
more realistic, and yet she could only recall bits and pieces when
she awoke. She would recall more of each dream on the second and
third time around. Without exception, the dream would become
reality after the third time, and there was always a third time.
They weren’t always scary; some were actually hopeful or funny,
like the time she’d dreamed of her brother Jeremy winning the
hurdles race at the school track meet and then tripping over his
own shoestring when he went to accept the medal. She’d had her
camera ready when it happened.

She had tried a few times,
early on, to stop the dreams from happening by warning those
concerned, but she’d never been successful. She had told Jody
Corbitt, her seventeen year old babysitter, that she would run her
car into a yellow sign and the car would be a big, crunched up
mess. Jody had looked at her with raised eyebrows, then patted her
head and told Glynnis she was so cute. A week later Jody totaled
her car when she hit a directional sign on an off-ramp. Jody
escaped the whole thing with only a broken arm, but she never
babysat for Glynnis again. Glynn’s mother had only said that it was
no surprise that Jody would drive her car into a sign
when she drives like a bat out of Hades all the
time anyway.

The dreams always came true, and those
she tried to warn treated her like the poor little girl who wasn’t
quite right in the head. They would look at her with pity and
whisper when she was near. She learned pretty quickly to keep her
mouth shut and let fate take its turn.

But this one was different. Glynnis
knew she’d witnessed a murder and she just couldn’t let it go,
especially now that she had seen the victim, alive and eating pink
cake. She took the quickly disintegrating paper towel out of
Sissy’s hand and tossed it away. “Thanks for being so sweet about
this, Sissy. You’re supposed to be the one everybody’s watching
tonight, not me.”

Sissy hugged her and grabbed her arm.
“You’re looking better. Why don’t we go back out there?”

“
You go ahead, I think I’ll
call it a night.” Before Sissy could object, she added. “It’s been
a tough day already and I didn’t sleep much last night, but could
you tell me something before I go?”

“
Sure, Glynn. What is
it?”

“
The tall man with the black
hair that was standing near me…the one in the gray pinstriped
business suit…he looks familiar. Do you know him?”

Sissy thought for a moment and then her
face lit up. “Oh, you mean Gloria’s new husband, Dan.” Sissy was
not only the high school drama queen, but the bearer of all gossip
worth knowing, a title she would probably never relinquish. “That’s
a really cool story, very romantic. I know because Gloria is one of
Mama’s oldest friends. Dan and Gloria were high school sweethearts,
but they both ended up marrying other people. He went on to be the
vice-president of Janico, that factory that makes computer parts
out on the highway. He and his wife divorced a few years ago after
a couple of kids. The kids ended up with the ex-wife.”

Glynn was beginning to be sorry she’d
asked, but she had to find out what she could. Sissy went on.
“Anyway, in the meantime, Gloria married Hamilton Danning, who
eventually became president and CEO of Janico, and they had two
kids, but Hamilton died after Dan’s divorce and then Dan and Gloria
eventually got together again. They were married a couple of months
ago. The blue-haired ladies can’t get enough of the scandal.
They’ll talk about it over bridge and coffee for years.”

Glynnis was dumbfounded. “I don’t get
it. What’s so scandalous about marrying your high school sweetheart
as a second marriage? I’ll grant you, it’s a little unusual,
but…”

“
Oh, I didn’t explain that
part did I?”

Glynnis shook her head, still
bemused.

“
See, Dan is a nickname. His
real name is Claude Danning.” She waited for understanding in
Glynn’s eyes and when it didn’t happen she added, “He’s Hamilton
Danning’s younger brother. He not only took over the company, but
also married his brother’s widow, and only a year or so after
Hamilton died. The mean-natured among us have said that he just
took up his brother’s life when Hamilton passed on. There are a few
that hint he might have had a hand in his brother’s death, but
there was never any reason to believe that.” Sissy patted a loose
hair back into place. “They’re a nice couple as far as I can
tell.”

In her mind, Glynnis heard
the haunting dream voice.
“Well, then, I
guess you’ll be joining your brother now, won’t you. I hope you’ll
give him my best.”

*****

Preparations had to be made. It was
imperative that this be handled without a glitch or he would be
discovered, and that wouldn’t do. There were no illusions of
superiority here. He knew that even the smallest mistake would lead
to his downfall and therefore, he had been meticulous in his
planning. He thought about Danning and his ingratiating smile, how
he’d always been better than everybody else. Then he’d gone and
married Gloria Danning, his sister-in-law, an incestuous act if
ever there was one. Something must be done, and he was just the guy
to handle it. The press and the police would proclaim him to be an
avenging angel.

The sword gleamed at him in the hum of
the fluorescent bulbs. No daylight was allowed into this room to
dull and damage his collection. Weapons of all sorts sat out in
display cases: knives, antique revolvers, even a mace. But he was
fond of the long sword, definitely one of his favorites. It bore
filigreed engravings of curling flames on the blade. The hilt had
the shape of a dragon with its mouth open, breathing the flames
onto the blade. The dragon’s spread wings made up the guard and its
tail, the handle. He admired the piece and felt saddened to lose
it, but perhaps that wouldn’t be necessary. He might retrieve it if
he was very cautious. It was a collector’s item after all, an item
that had cost him quite a bit both in money and in the time it took
to track it down and restore it. He caressed the blade and felt a
cool shiver.

Yes, careful preparations had to be
made. He reached for his baseball equipment bag.

*****

Addison was typing up the last arrest
report of the day, a breaking and entering charge on Landy Bishop,
one of their regulars, when the leggy woman with shoulder length,
honey brown hair walked in the door. She stopped at the front desk
and Addison saw the desk officer point his way. After a moment, she
turned and walked toward him. Addison groaned. It was almost time
for shift change. Why’d the desk officer have to send her to
him?

“
Detective
Paddix?”

She was good-looking, this one, with a
nice build and auburn hair. None of that skinny as a pen-knife
crap. This girl had some curves like his Laney. Paddix stood like
his daddy taught him to do when a lady entered the room. “Yes,
ma’am. How may I help you?”