Sucker Punch (32 page)

Frowning thoughtfully, I stopped in front of the makeup display and studied the choices spread out in front of me. But my mind wasn’t on the makeup any longer. “If he scurried off in the night, that could mean that he’s the one who attacked us. And if not . . .”

“Then maybe he’s another victim.”

I didn’t want to think about that possibility, but Paisley had a point. I wanted to believe that Alexander was the one who’d attacked Colleen and me, and I wanted to believe that the attacks and the murder were related, but assuming anything might be a mistake. “Is that where his day planner is now? In his office?”

Paisley nodded. “Why? Do you want to look at it?”

“If I can. Is Vonetta there now?”

“She went home about an hour ago,” Paisley said, “but that’s okay. We can go anyway.” She pulled a key from her pocket and dangled it on her finger.

“Vonetta gave you a key?”

“I was part of the production team. I needed it for when she couldn’t be there, and I haven’t given it back yet. What do you say? Do you want to go?”

Forget the makeup. A chance to look through the theater without other people hovering was too good to pass up. I grabbed the ibuprofen from the cart and hurried to the cash register.

The wind had grown stronger in just the few minutes I’d been inside. We’d probably have snow by morning, but tonight bits of garbage and twigs blew down the streets and made it hard to see. I kept my head down and waited for a couple of cars to pass, then followed Paisley across the street to the Playhouse.

While she fumbled with the key in the lock, I stood on the sidewalk feeling a bit like a burglar. I didn’t know how Vonetta would react if she learned that we were here without her, but I didn’t have time to worry about that. Liberty would be back with Max any minute, so I promised myself that I’d look through Alexander’s office quickly and get back home.

I felt a bit uneasy going into the Playhouse after hours without Max, but if someone had helped Alexander disappear, his pictures and day planner might soon follow. If he had gone away on his own, they might hold a clue nobody had noticed yet. I didn’t want to miss this opportunity.

After what felt like forever, Paisley finally got the key to work and we stepped inside. “Lock it again,” I said when it looked as if she was going to walk away. “I don’t want anybody sneaking in behind us.”

Every building has its noises, and the Playhouse is no exception. But an unfamiliar building can sound downright freaky when it’s deserted. Especially one where there’s been a murder. Cutting through the auditorium or walking backstage would be the quickest routes to Alexander’s office, but I wasn’t in any hurry. I would have made myself get up on that stage for the play, but walking into the auditorium in the dark . . . it wasn’t going to happen.

I jerked my head toward the rehearsal hall, and Paisley trailed me down the long hall. Judging from the look on her face, she wasn’t any more eager to cut corners than I was. All around us boards creaked and walls popped as the building adjusted to the lowering temperature outside.

“This place is creepy when nobody’s around, isn’t it?” She spoke barely above a whisper, but her voice sounded unnaturally loud, and I realized that I was straining to hear anything out of the ordinary. A footstep. A hush of movement.

My heart hammered in my chest. Every groaning board, each gust of wind made me almost jump out of my skin. The attack had terrified me, and I was skittish as a result. And I sure wasn’t eager to repeat the experience.

Inside the rehearsal hall, I fumbled for the lights. When I finally found the switch, I flipped on all four panels to chase the shadows from every corner, but Paisley grabbed my arm and whispered, “Don’t turn them on. We don’t want anyone to know we’re in here snooping around.”

My stomach dropped and an icy finger traced a line up my spine. I really didn’t want to walk through the darkened Playhouse with only a few emergency lights to show me the way, but I wanted to alert the killer even less. Reluctantly, I turned off the lights again and took a couple of deep breaths to slow the pounding of my heart.

What if Alexander wasn’t the killer? What if the real killer was here, hiding somewhere, waiting for another chance to finish the job he’d started? And, by the way, what was I doing, prowling around a deserted theater with only Paisley for protection?

I’d completely ignored Wyatt’s warning, which is what I do, but I was putting Paisley in jeopardy. If I’d been thinking clearly, I never would have decided to sneak around like this. I blame the painkillers.

We inched through the shop area and finally reached the small room that had been serving as Alexander’s office. I motioned Paisley inside, shut the door, and turned on the overhead light. “Nobody will be able to see the light with the door closed,” I told her before she could protest.

Paisley was right, Alexander’s possessions were all over the room. The cluster of pictures and the day planner on the desk. A sweater on a hook near the door. A pair of boots below that. His copy of the script, beginning to show signs of use. A digital camera on a shelf.

“See what I mean?” Paisley asked, hands on hips as she gazed around the office.

I really hoped that he’d run after the attack, but I had to agree. “It
does
seem odd that he left so much behind.”

“Yeah. Wouldn’t you think he’d at least take the camera? And the sweater. He could have taken those without making anyone suspicious.”

But I was focused on something else. “If the boots are still here, that meant that he was wearing his street shoes when he left.”

“Does that mean something?”

A gust of wind blew something against the side of the building. I swallowed my nervousness and said, “Maybe. Doesn’t it seem odd? I mean, if you were going to hide between a couple of buildings in the middle of February waiting to attack somebody, wouldn’t you put on boots first?”

“I might.”

I shook my head quickly, ignoring the stab of pain in my neck. “You’d have to. Otherwise, the snow would make the bottoms of your shoes wet and you wouldn’t have any traction. That’s not a chance you’d take if you wanted to catch someone off guard and kill them, is it?”

“Maybe he didn’t want to kill you. Maybe he just wanted to frighten you.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” I sat in Alexander’s chair and opened his day planner, and Paisley’s thoughtful expression morphed into eagerness.

“What are we looking for?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Anything unusual.” I checked the front of the planner first and found more pictures of Alexander with minor celebrities—most of whom looked familiar, but none of whom I knew by name. I found several credit cards and a few receipts. Nothing suspicious in any of those, at least not that I could see, although it seemed really odd that Alexander would leave the credit cards behind.

I leafed quickly through pages in the day planner. I found a few notations, but nothing out of the ordinary. A couple of doctor’s appointments, some phone numbers, but that was about it. I didn’t expect to find a notation to “buy potassium cyanide,” but I was hoping for something that would tie the case up in a big red bow for me.

After a few minutes I sat the planner aside and moved on to the pictures on the desk. While Paisley rummaged through the desk drawers, I glanced at each photograph briefly, then removed the backs of the frames to see if there was anything incriminating there. It was a stretch, but since I had no idea what I was looking for, I might as well be thorough.

I was about halfway through the row when a face in one of the pictures caught my attention. Alexander stood in front of a group of people, proudly pointing toward the marquee. Laurence Nichols was in the picture with him, beaming at the camera with that charismatic smile that had captivated his fans. Between them stood two young women. I didn’t think either of them could have been older than twenty. Alexander had an arm slung around the shoulders of a pretty brunette. Laurence clutched a grinning blonde to him, one hand on her butt in a gesture that seemed both provocative and possessive. But it wasn’t any of those faces that caught my eye. It was a young man standing at the edge of a crowd behind them that made me look twice.

He couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen. A kid. But the look of hatred on his face froze everything inside me. “Look at this,” I said, holding out the frame to Paisley. “Is that kid in the back who I think it is?”

She took the photograph and studied it for a minute. When she found the kid, her eyes snapped up to meet mine. “Jason Dahl?”

“It’s him, isn’t it?”

“If it’s not, it’s his twin brother.” She handed the picture back to me. “I didn’t realize he knew Alexander and Laurence. He never mentioned it.”

“No, he didn’t, did he?” My mind was racing as bits and pieces of the past few days came back to me. Jason had been there immediately after the murder, and also after every attack. He was young and strong, and he had easy access to anything Vonetta had here in the theater.

Who was he looking at with such hatred in the photograph? Alexander or Laurence? Jason had been carrying around a bitter hatred of one of them for the past . . . what? Seven or eight years, I calculated.

Eight years.
What had Colleen said about the play she and Laurence worked on eight years earlier? One of the young women in the chorus had found out she was pregnant right before the play wrapped. Another had committed suicide a few months later.

I had a feeling I was looking at both of those young women right that minute.

My heart was thumping so loudly, I could hardly hear myself think. Of everyone involved in the play, Jason was the last person I would have suspected of killing Laurence. He’d seemed so innocent, so eager to please.

This was it. This was the connection. But how did Jason factor in? Colleen would be able to tell me.

“Where’s the nearest phone?” I asked as I shot to my feet.

“In the box office.”

“Good. I need you to do something for me. I don’t want to stay here much longer, but I need a photocopy of this picture. And can you find Colleen’s number? Call her and ask about the two young women in Breckenridge. Ask her what they looked like, and ask her which one got pregnant, and which one took her own life. Got that?”

Paisley bobbed her head. “Yeah. Okay. What about you?”

“I’ll finish going through the desk, just in case there’s something we’ve missed. We can meet up front in five minutes.” Liberty would be wondering where I was, and I didn’t want to make her worry, but I didn’t want to abandon the search now that we were here.

Keeping one eye on the passing time, I dug through desk drawers and checked two drawers of a file cabinet, but if there were any other clues in that room, I didn’t know what they were.

I was contemplating whether to move on to Laurence’s office or call it quits when I heard someone moving around outside the door. Probably just Paisley, I told myself, and returned a stack of folders to the filing cabinet.

From the corner of my eye, I saw the doorknob turn. I opened my mouth to tell Paisley that we needed to leave when it hit me that something was wrong. The doorknob
was
turning, but slowly. Too slowly. And I knew with a sudden, awful certainty that the person on the other side
wasn’t
Paisley.

My stomach lurched and I swear my heart stopped beating for a full minute. I looked around frantically for a place to hide, but I was too late. The door opened and Jason appeared in front of me, and I thought I might be sick.

When he saw me, he laughed with relief. “Abby? You scared me half to death! What are you doing here?” He seemed so boyish and innocent, I wondered if I’d only imagined the raw hatred in the picture.

“
I
scared
you
? You’re the one who was skulking around out there. Why didn’t you just open the door?”

“I thought you were Alexander.” He came into the room and closed the door behind him. “Paisley told me that he’s the one who attacked you, so when I saw the light under the door, I figured he’d come back. I didn’t want him to get away again.”

He looked almost embarrassed by the mistake, and my confusion deepened. Was I wrong?

“I appreciate the effort,” I said with a grateful smile. “Next time, though, it might be better for you to call the police.”

Jason tilted his head to one side and looked past me to the photographs on the desk. Would he notice that the one with him in it was gone?

He hitched his thumbs into his pockets and hung his head, but some of his boyishness faded. “Look at that. People are already starting to take Alexander’s stuff. I guess nothing’s safe, is it?”

My breath caught in my throat and my hand began to tremble, but I fought to control my physical reaction so he wouldn’t know that I suspected him. “Has Alexander really left town, then?”