Read It and Weep (A Library Lover's Mystery) (5 page)

A
crash sounded from backstage, and Lindsey jumped out of the closet to make sure Brian hadn’t done anything so stupid as to harm Robbie.

She saw a door slam at the end of the stage and a curtain swirled nearby. The men appeared to have stormed off, for which she was grateful, given that she didn’t want to face either of them.

Sully was standing near the closet, looking at a piece of set that appeared to have toppled over.

“Oops,” he said.

“Breaking up some tension?” she asked.

He shrugged.

“So,” he said.

“So,” she replied.

They were both quiet. Sully looked like he wanted to say something, but naturally he didn’t. Lindsey refused to be the one who breached the chasm between them. As far as she was concerned, he had done the breaking up, so it was his responsibility to do the making up.

“Did you find what you need?”

“I did.” Awkward would be an understatement for the tension between them. Lindsey gestured to the piece of scenery, “Need a hand?”

“That would be great. Thanks,” he said.

They moved so they were on opposite sides of the canvas framed on the wood. Together they hefted it up and propped it against the wall. Lindsey wiped her hands on her jeans.

“Lindsey, listen,” Sully said.

She glanced at him and felt her chest tighten. Was he finally going to admit that breaking up was a bad idea? What should she do if he did? She wanted to throw herself at him, but figured it would be better to try to keep cool at least a little. It was really hard, though, with his brilliant-blue eyes looking at her as if . . . as if . . . hmm. As if he was about to say something she wasn’t going to like.

“What is it?” she asked.

“You should probably steer clear of Robbie Vine,” he said.

“And why’s that?” she asked. Even to her own ears, her voice sounded so frosty she was surprised snowflakes didn’t fly out of her mouth when she spoke.

“He’s married, for starters,” Sully said.

“I know.”

“And he has a girlfriend,” Sully continued.

“I know that, too.”

“And you’re okay with that?” He looked as outraged as if she’d just taken up spitting in public.

“I don’t think it’s any of my business,” she said. “Or yours either, for that matter.”

Sully clapped both of his hands to his head as if he was trying to keep his hair on. In all the time Lindsey had known him, she’d never seen him lose his cool. She realized it was sort of nice to see the Captain feeling an excess of emotion.

“Was that all?” she asked.

He goggled at her as if he couldn’t believe his ears.

“Yes,” he said.

“I’ll see you around then.” She turned and headed back into the closet to retrieve her materials.

“No, wait!” His voice was reluctant as if the words were being forced out of him at gunpoint.

“Yes?”

“I really think you shouldn’t get involved with him, Lindsey,” he said.

She wasn’t sure what made her do it. Maybe it was just a frustrated need to get through his thick emotional skin. But she turned and stepped toward him until they were just inches apart.

She raised one eyebrow in what she hoped was a challenging expression and asked, “Why not?”

Sully seemed rendered speechless by her nearness, and she took a certain amount of comfort in knowing that he felt the attraction snapping between them just as strongly as she did.

Lindsey stared at the handsome face so close to hers. She loved that face. Not because it was handsome, although it was, but because it was such an honest face, so full of humor, intelligence and kindness. She had missed that face terribly over the past few months. And now, if his full lips could just form the words telling her how he felt then maybe, maybe, they would stand a chance.

He reached out and tucked a long strand of hair back behind her ear. The gesture was tender, and Lindsey felt her insides melt.

“Because he isn’t good enough for you and you’ll just get hurt,” Sully said.

Lindsey blew out a breath and stepped back. She felt as if she’d been doused with a bucket of cold water. Was it really that hard for him to tell her how he felt? Maybe he didn’t really feel the same way she felt. Maybe he was over their brief relationship and he was really just looking out for her as a friend. The thought was depressing.

“Don’t worry about me,” she said as she turned away. “I’ve been hurt before and I always bounce back.”

Sully didn’t come after her.

• • •

T
he donkey head was proving to be more difficult than Lindsey had anticipated. It did not help that she was not the craftiest person in the world. She had decided to make the donkey’s head like a visor that Brian could wear on top of his head and then she would paint it gray and attach a matching cloth that could hang from the back of the mask as if it was the donkey’s neck.

She was working at a table in the back of the theater while the actors rehearsed onstage. Mary and Nancy had brought two sewing machines, and they were zipping away at the costumes while Lindsey’s fingers were covered in clumps of cold paste and soggy strips of newspaper. Bits of newspaper and paste coated the table and her clothes and, she suspected that there were clumps of it in her hair.

“Ah!” She tried to shake a particularly tenacious bit of newspaper off of her hand. It clung like a burr. She tried to use her other hand to pull it off, but all she managed to get were little bits of newsprint. It was maddening.

She muttered a few colorful curses under her breath and tried to wipe the paper off, but it just adhered to her other hand.

“Blech; I hate this stuff!” she said. She scraped her hands on the edge of the table, feeling at her wits’ end.

“Are you all right, Ms. Norris?” Dylan asked as he stopped on his way past the table.

Lindsey noted he was standing a safe four feet away. Smart kid.

“Papier-mâché does not like me,” she said. “Which is fine, because I don’t like it, either.”

Dylan smiled and gestured to the woman beside him. “My mom is a whiz with that stuff; maybe she can help you.”

Lindsey glanced at the woman beside him. “Hi, Joanie, how are you?”

“Fine,” Joanie Peet said, barely sparing Lindsey a glance.

Lindsey thought Robbie Vine might have been onto something when he said if a woman says she’s fine, she is anything but. Dylan gave his mother a concerned glance, and sent Lindsey an apologetic look.

“Can we go now, Dylan?” Joanie asked. She sounded irritated. “I am very disappointed that I had to go backstage to find you. You know you are only here to rehearse and then leave. There is to be no lingering or loitering.”

Lindsey frowned. She’d gotten to know Joanie Peet when she hired Dylan as a page. Joanie was usually quick with a smile, a kind word or a helping hand. She was always first on the list for the newest Debbie Macomber books, and she doted on Dylan, who was her only child.

Maybe she was a little too involved in Dylan’s life, but Lindsey knew it was because Dylan was frequently ill and she needed to monitor his health very carefully. Lindsey could only imagine how stressful that was for Joanie and her husband, Tim.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Dylan said. “But don’t you want to stay and watch awhile?”

“No. I told you how I felt about your participation in this play,” Joanie said. “The late hours, the stress, it just can’t be good for you. I don’t know why you had to go against my wishes. If you get sick, you have no one to blame but yourself.”

“Mom, it’s my senior year of high school, and I’m graduating at the top of my class. I just wanted to do something fun for a change,” he said.

“But that woman, Violet La Rue, have you heard what they say about her?” Joanie asked. She didn’t even bother to keep her voice down. “She had all sorts of tawdry affairs, and even has a child out of wedlock.”

Dylan rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know. Charlene La Rue is her daughter, and she happens to be a very successful television newscaster in her own right.”

Lindsey could feel her teeth clenching hard as Joanie criticized her friends.

“That’s not the point,” Joanie said. “She wasn’t married when she had a child. There’s no excuse for that sort of irresponsibility. And don’t even get me started on that Robbie Vine. You are not allowed to go anywhere near him. He’s completely amoral, with a wife and a girlfriend at the same time, and he probably does drugs.”

“He’s not that bad,” Dylan said. “He’s actually very nice.”

Joanie’s eyes looked like they were going to pop out of her head. “You’ve spoken to him?” she asked.

“Just to say hello,” Dylan said. “You did raise me to be polite.”

“Fine, but nothing more than hello,” she said. “I mean it. I won’t have you mixing with these sordid people.”

Lindsey had never suspected that Joanie Peet could be such a judgmental shrew. She was boggled that the woman who had raised Dylan, one of the nicest kids she’d ever had work at the library, could be so awful.

Dylan looked miserable, but he nodded his head. Lindsey watched the two of them leave. She wondered if she should have leapt to her friends’ defense. But then, she sort of suspected Joanie was right about Robbie. The comments about Violet, however, really chapped her.

“Lindsey, how goes the mask?”

“Huh, what?” she asked. Lindsey turned and found Beth standing beside her. Beth was looking at her with concern.

“I think your hands are going to harden into claws,” Beth said.

Lindsey looked down at the mixture on her hands. Then she glanced at the chicken wire she had been trying to wrap with the soggy newspaper strips.

“I think we can safely conclude that papier-mâché is not my forte.”

Beth lifted up the chicken wire, which Lindsey had molded into the shape of a donkey head.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I think you’ve almost got it.”

Lindsey watched while Beth deftly dampened a few dry strips in the bowl of paste and smoothed them over the frame. She carefully folded a few more strips around the ears and managed to fill in the sad gaps that Lindsey had missed.

“There,” she said. “When this dries and you paint it, it will be fabulous.”

“I’d hug you, but we’d probably get stuck together forever,” Lindsey said.

Beth grinned. “Come on, let’s go wash up.”

The bathrooms for the cast and crew were at the back of the theater near the dressing rooms. They could hear Violet’s voice directing the cast on stage mingling with the set builders, who were pounding nails on the loading dock out back.

Lindsey wondered if Sully was here tonight. She hadn’t seen him earlier—not that she was looking for him she reminded herself, refusing to acknowledge any disappointment.

Trying not to touch anything, they walked through the theater with their hands up in the air like surgeons. Beth pushed through the swinging door that led to the ladies’ room with her hip, holding it open for Lindsey. The bathroom was empty, and they each took a sink.

Lindsey had just gotten the last of the goop off of her hands and was reaching for a paper towel when a crash sounded from the stage followed by several shouts. She and Beth exchanged surprised glances and hurried toward the sound of the commotion.

When they managed to push through the curtains at the side of the stage, Lindsey’s heart caught in her throat when she saw Robbie sprawled on the ground with a large tree, saved from a previous play to be used in this show, lying across him.

His left leg was trapped and he was grimacing in pain. Lindsey and Beth hurried forward and knelt beside him while Sully and Ian tried to lift the round tree trunk off of him. As soon as they lifted it, she and Beth tugged Robbie out from underneath it.

Robbie grunted as they pulled. Violet hurried across the stage to join them as Beth and Lindsey gently helped him stand on the wooden stage.

“Robbie, are you all right? What happened?” Violet asked.

“Bloody hell! I was leaning against the tree just like we blocked it, and the next thing I knew it was falling on top of me.”

Sully was kneeling by the base of the tree, checking the bottom of it. When he glanced at Robbie, he frowned.

“The base of this has been damaged,” he said. “Any pressure on it and it was going to fall.”

“Well, how did that happen?” Violet asked. “We used it last night and it was fine.”

“It could have been damaged when it was moved earlier,” Ian said. He was frowning like Sully, and Lindsey got the feeling he wasn’t happy with the idea that the pieces of the set could be damaged so easily.

“Robbie!” a voice shrieked from the side of the stage. A buxom brunette came running across the stage and flung herself against Robbie who had just lowered himself into a seated position.

“Easy, Lola,” he said. “You hit harder than the tree.”

“Sorry,” she said and sat back on her heels. “It’s just—when I saw—are you all right?”

Robbie carefully moved his leg. He cringed as he bent his knee and put his foot flat on the floor.

“I think I’ll live,” he said.

“Ah!” The woman called Lola clapped a hand over her mouth and turned to scan the crowd. With a shaking hand, she pointed into the crowd that had gathered and said, “You did this!”

Lindsey glanced over to see Kitty, the same woman who had warned her away from Robbie, standing at the edge of the crowd with her arms crossed over her chest and a sour look on her face.

“Please,” she said. “If I wanted to hurt Robbie, I’d get him in his wallet. After all, I’m still his wife while you’re just his ex-girlfriend.”

Lola narrowed her eyes and growled, “Only because you won’t sign the divorce papers.”

“Are you that desperate to have my sloppy seconds, Lola?” Kitty asked. “How pathetic.”

Lola snarled and launched herself at the other woman. Before she reached her, Sully jumped forward and snatched her up around the waist while Ian blocked Kitty from engaging.

“Enough! Take them outside to cool off,” Violet ordered.

“I don’t need to—” Kitty began, but Violet gave her a menacing look that made her close her mouth in midsentence.

“Go,” Violet said.

Everyone watched as Sully took Lola out toward the back door and Ian led Kitty out the front.