Christmas Ghosts - Fiction River (21 page)

“Unless they’re Bill and Melinda Gates, I really don’t care,” Erika said. “And even then, it might be hard to make me care.”

She nodded at Markovich who looked upset at being forced to stay in (when she claimed she wanted nothing more just five hours ago).

“When did you last see Hannah?” Erika asked the girl.

“Oh, in the theater. We sat next to each other. She has a thing for Jaime.”

All of the girls had a thing for Jaime. They chose the plays by vote before they left, choosing, apparently based on the fame of the lead star, rather than the quality of the production.

Not that Erika could complain about the quality of
A Christmas Carol
starring Jamison Roth McKendrick. The man was classically trained, and unbelievably talented. He’d been unbelievably talented when he was a kid. He had learned his craft since.

“Do we call the police?” Miss Sargent asked tremulously.

“Not yet,” Erika said.

Teenage girls were nothing if not resourceful, especially when it came to pursuing a crush. Erika was going back to the theater—alone—first, to see if she could find Hannah. And if she couldn’t…well, she didn’t want to think about what came next.

***

When Roth got out of the shower, he wrapped a towel around himself and prayed that his father’s ghost wouldn’t be waiting for him in the dressing room. The ghost stayed out of the bathroom, much to his relief, and almost never showed up when Roth was unclothed. His father was more courteous in death than he had ever been in life.

The ghost had joined him some time in the last ten years, maybe before. He’d slowly become visible, first out of the corner of Roth’s eye, and then as an actual presence that few besides Roth could see. Lately, his father’s ghost actually seemed solid, like a hired assistant who had no idea he was supposed to appear only when summoned.

Roth stepped into the dressing room, and there was the ghost, sitting on the pile of coats. The old man—who wasn’t that old; fifty-five when he put the gun in his mouth—had his arms crossed and his fully intact face glaring.

“Angels and ministers of grace defend me,” Roth muttered, misquoting
Hamlet
.

The ghost rolled his eyes. He’d actually expressed an opinion about Roth quoting
Hamlet
around him, saying it was rude. Roth said it wasn’t pertinent, since the ghost had murdered himself rather than let an incestuous uncle do it.

Still, Roth preferred quoting plays to the ghost rather than actually engaging him in a real conversation.

Roth dressed, knowing that his father had faded out for the naked part. If Roth went naked for the rest of his life, he would never see his father again, but that wasn’t really viable. Even though he had enough money to do so, he wasn’t the Howard Hughes type. He didn’t believe in locking himself away from the world forever.

Roth had lied to himself when he came here. Or to be correct, he’d suffered from a glimmer of hope. He’d hoped that a theater as old as the Mary Martin would have its own rather territorial ghost, and that ghost would chase his father off. But apparently ghosts, like their human counterparts, believed in taking a winter break. The theater’s resident ghost took one look at dear old Dad and gave up the ghosting, at least for the duration of Roth’s one-man play.

Mercifully, his father didn’t reappear after Roth put on his street clothes. Maybe the ghost found someone else to torment. Roth grabbed the coat that he had worn to the theater off the back of the door rather than dust off the coats in the pile. His father’s ghost didn’t leave goo, but one couldn’t be too careful.

Roth wrapped a scarf around his mouth and nose, and plopped a hat on his head. It was too dark to wear sunglasses. Besides, this was New York. No one cared about the famous here, except for the handful of groupies who hung out at the stage door. With luck, he’d stayed here long enough to avoid them as well.

He knew he wasn’t alone in the theater. The house manager, Louise Zheng, remained until the last of the crew left. He felt bad keeping her here for an extra half hour, but at least she didn’t have to return tonight.

He’d actually apologized when he met her for doing a show over the holiday. She had grinned, and told him point blank that no one who worked this show celebrated Christmas. The crew was composed of Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists and others who found the holiday season damn near unbearable.

In LA, everyone celebrated Christmas, whether they were Christian or not. They used it as a secular suck-up party, ranking the gifts given according to where the recipient stood on the what-can-you-do-for-me-right-now ladder. Since he’d climbed to the top of that ladder, he got all kinds of marvelous, unnecessary stuff.

He supposed it was piling up at his house in Bel Air right now, like the coats had piled in his dressing room.

He decided to walk through the theater, so that he could let Louise know he was going home. As he reached the back of the house, he heard her voice. She sounded exasperated.

“I’m sure we would know if there was a child here. It’s impossible for a child to hide here.”

“Oh, come on, Louise,” said a second voice, also female, and so familiar that it sent a shiver through him. “This is a theater. We both know that someone could
die
in here, and no one would know.”

“Honey, the entire community knows whenever someone dies on stage.” Louise chuckled at her own pun.

“This is not a laughing matter,” said the owner of the other voice. “This girl—who is seventeen—is missing, and I’m responsible for her. You want me to call the police and let them search this place top to bottom?”

Seventeen? That tall, too-thin girl was seventeen? Roth shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. Something about her seemed younger. Maybe because she hadn’t come on to him the way that seventeen-year-olds usually did.

He pushed open the double doors and stepped into the lobby. Louise dominated his vision, but Louise always dominated someone’s vision. She was heavyset and prone to wearing flowing clothing, even in the dead of winter. It was hard to see past her.

“There’s a missing girl?” he said. “I think I saw her.”

Louise turned, and her plucked eyebrows went up at the sight of him. He would have smiled at her reassuringly, if it weren’t for the woman who just stepped out of Louise’s shadow.

Barely five feet tall, she should have disappeared, but of course she didn’t. She never had.

His breath caught. “Erika?”

“Roth,” she said flatly, as if she were mad at him. She had no cause to be mad at him, did she? He hadn’t seen her in fifteen years—damn near as long as the missing girl had been alive.

“You guys know each other?” Louise asked.

Erika stuck her hands in the pockets of her black coat and raised one eyebrow, a Spock-like move she had trained herself to do at the age of ten. Back then it had been funny. Now it was sexy.

Hell, it had been sexy fifteen years ago.

He wanted to run to her, gather her in his arms, and pull her close. Instead, he mirrored her by putting his hands in his own pockets.

Erika was waiting for him to answer Louise’s question.

“We know each other,” Roth said.

“I could have given you preferred seats, if you’d told me that,” Louise said to Erika. “Jeez, you made those kids sit in the very back, and they could have—”

“Louise.” Erika still had the ability to shut someone up and make them feel stupid with one word. “The missing girl?”

Roth took another step closer. His heart was pounding as if he were stepping in front of cameras without knowing his lines. Forty years old and light-headed, like a twenty-year-old boy facing the most beautiful woman in the world.

Erika wasn’t beautiful. She never had been. When they were kids, she had been almost homely. Her strong features belonged on a face much older, and kids teased her for it. In high school, Roth had realized that a camera took Erika’s mismatched face and glued it together. In photographs, she had been arresting, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that she would be arresting on film as well.

He had brought her to New York. And, after their early success, he had accompanied her to Los Angeles.

And there it had gone all wrong.

Somehow, he hadn’t expected her to come back here.

The face had come together, just like he had thought it would. She was stunning. Just stunning.

And she was staring at him.

“You saw her?” Erika asked him.

It took him a moment to gather his thoughts. He’d been lost in her, lost in their past, lost in regrets.

God, he hated regrets. He tried to ignore them, like he tried to ignore everything else.

“Somehow she snuck backstage.” Roth addressed this to Louise, because he couldn’t quite talk to Erika. Not yet. “I sent that assistant you hired for me—”

“Cody?” she asked. No wonder Roth couldn’t remember the name. It didn’t suit the kid at all.

“Yeah, him,” Roth said. “I sent him to find the stage manager and say that a civilian had gotten in.”

“Rex left before the end of the show,” Louise said, as if the fact that the stage manager left early was Roth’s fault.

“Well, I also told the assistant to find someone in charge. I guess he didn’t find you, did he? And he’s gone now?”

“Kid’s gonna get himself fired,” Louise muttered. “Where did you see this girl?”

Roth’s gaze met Erika’s. Her black eyes were flat. She had a trick that he had forgotten until this moment, a trick that could make her seem like she felt no emotions at all. She only used it in times of high stress.

“First, let’s make sure we have the right girl,” Roth said. “She’s tall? Too thin? Irons her jeans?”

Louise chuckled at that last detail, but Erika didn’t.

“That’s her,” she said.

Roth sighed. “She got into my dressing room somehow. I thought she was a groupie. When I summoned Cody, she bolted. I didn’t think much of it—”

“Because you’re the famous Jaime, and all the girls fall at your feet?” Erika wasn’t as in control as she pretended. Was that jealousy he heard beneath the sarcasm? And if so, what was she jealous of? His success? Or the fact that there had been other women?

A lot of other women. Too many, none of them Erika.

“It’s not unusual,” he said. “It’s more unusual if the fans don’t find me.”

“We have the backstage area protected,” Louise said to Erika. “We’re aware of this problem. Roth’s not the first to deal with it. You should have seen it when Hugh Jackman—”

“What do I need to do to impress upon you that time is of the essence here?” Erika snapped at her.

Louise took a step backwards. “I’m sorry. I—do you think she’s still here?”

“It’s a place to start.” Erika stepped around Louise as if Louise were no longer important. She stopped in front of Roth. He caught a faint scent of rose water and the spice that was Erika, and he shivered in recognition. Those scents sometimes haunted his dreams. “What did she want with you?”

“She asked me to help her,” he said. “She said she didn’t want to go home.”

Erika cursed. He hadn’t heard that particular combination of words in more than a decade.

“Why would she think you could help her?” Louise asked.

“How the hell should I know?” Roth had had enough. “I didn’t say a word to her. Why don’t you just call her cell?”

“Because,” Erika said, “I’m so practical I made the kids leave their phones at the hotel so that I wouldn’t have to police them in the theater.”

He was finally beginning to hear some of the other words she was using.
Kids. Tour.

“Are you a teacher?” he asked, unable to imagine it. The Erika he had known didn’t have the patience for or the interest in handling a group of children all day.

“No,” she said. “I run theatrical tours of Manhattan.”

He blinked, frowned, trying to control his face as well as she had controlled hers. The most gifted actress he had ever known running tours? In Manhattan?

He glanced at Louise, who shrugged. Apparently Louise and Erika knew each other.

“It doesn’t matter what I do,” Erika said. “I have to find this girl. She could be in trouble.”

A door banged behind them. Roth turned. The girl stood near the wall, hands behind her, eyes wide. She was trying very hard not to look at Roth, although her gaze kept darting toward him.

“It’s okay, Ms. Brandis,” the girl said. “I’m sorry if I caused you trouble. I didn’t mean to.”

Erika frowned. “What’s this all about? You asked Ro—Jaime—for help. Were you—are you—in trouble?”

The girl glanced at Roth. The color rose on her cheeks as she spoke to him. “Your friend, he followed me. He said that—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be here, and I made a mistake.”

Roth’s stomach twisted. “My friend?” he asked, hoping against hope she meant Cody, the assistant.

“The old man in your dressing room? He was in the corner? He said…” she paused, seemed to reconsider her reluctance to speak.