The Old Deep and Dark (6 page)

“Hey, honey,” he said, his rich baritone sounding more than a little harried. “What's up?”

She put Kit's request to him.

“Kit Deere? My Lord. Haven't seen her in years.”

“I didn't realize you knew her.”

“She's suggesting we meet this afternoon?” He hesitated. “Well, I suppose I could make it happen. Give me a time and a place.”

Jane relayed the question to Cordelia. After explaining it to Kit and listening to her response, Cordelia said, “Can't be any earlier than four-ish. She has some stops to make this afternoon.”

“Where does she want to meet?”

“My house?”

“You mean Octavia's house.”

“No need to split hairs, Janey.”

After Cordelia's loft in downtown Minneapolis had suffered a severe bedbug infestation last spring, Octavia, who'd been staying with Cordelia at the time, went out and bought a grand mansion on Mount Curve in Minneapolis, not far from the theater. She invited Cordelia, Hattie, and Hattie's Nanny, Bolger Aspenwall III, to move in with her. To Jane's amazement, Cordelia and company had accepted and so far, seemed to be making no effort to leave. It was an odd arrangement because Cordelia and Octavia were the original oil-and-water sisters—occasionally oil and nitroglycerine.

Jane gave her father the details.

“If I can't make it,” he said, “I'll call you, but let's proceed on the assumption that I can. Do you know anything about Kit's difficulties?”

“Nothing,” said Jane.

“Will you be coming with them?”

She hoped she'd be back at her restaurant long before four o'clock. “Not sure. But let's get together soon for dinner. Maybe a movie.”

“I'd love that.”

After saying good-bye, Jane nodded the go-ahead.

“It's a go, Kit,” said Cordelia into her cell. “We're all set.” She repeated her new address. “When you and Beverly get to my house, ring the bell. The house man is usually around.” In case he wasn't, she explained where they could find the hidden front door key. “Go in and make yourselves comfortable. We'll be there as soon as we can.”

Jane assumed Cordelia was using the royal “we.”

Listening a moment more, Cordelia said, “Yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing you, too. We have a lot to catch up on. Kiss, kiss, darling.” After cutting the line, she stood for a moment looking down at the phone in her hand. “Wonder what's going on. She sounded upset. No, that's not quite right. More … irate. This will definitely not be the time to ask her to consider taking a role in our first production.”

They continued down the narrow corridor. The basement was a warren of rooms, some big, some smaller, most relatively empty, though several were stuffed to the gills with old theater props. A few of the doors were closed and bolted. Every ten feet or so along the hallway, a bare bulb gave off its weak, cobweb-encrusted light. Not enough to read by, but enough to cause the small hairs on Jane's arms to prickle.

At last, Cordelia stopped in front of an oversized door with a rusted padlock hasp—sans padlock.

“I've actually been in here once before,” she said, her silver bracelets tinkling as she pulled the heavy door all the way open. “I thought the bar was a theater prop.” She felt along the wall, saying, “I think there's a wall switch.”

A second later, several wrought-iron chandeliers flickered to life over their heads.

“Wow, that is one big bar,” said Jane. It must have been twenty feet long, covered in the dust of decades, but with the Deco design features still visible in the carved oak.

“Look at that,” said Cordelia, pointing to a row of bullet holes that began at the far end and moved toward them. Her high heels clicked against the black and white floor tiles as she moved behind the bar and pointed to the shattered mirrored shelving that, once upon a time, had probably held the liquor bottles. “More bullet holes.”

Jane counted them. Fifteen along the front of the bar, in one long wavy row. At least eight into the glass at the back. “Can you move that poster away?” she asked, sitting down on a rickety wood bar stool. It seemed that someone had decided to store an extra-large 1970s promotional poster against the back wall, one that advertised the play
Enter Laughing.

“Yuck, but I hate spiderwebs,” said Cordelia, pushing the poster only a few feet before she shuddered and backed away.

“What's that?” asked Jane. She'd expected the wall—and the bullet holes—to continue. Instead, the lath and plaster stopped, replaced by a bricked-up section that looked far newer.

“Strange,” said Cordelia, hands rising to her hips. “Why would someone cut a hole in the wall and then brick it up?”

From behind them, a soft voice asked, “Can I help you, ladies?”

Jane turned to find a red-haired man in a dapper Harris tweed suit, white shirt, and yellow silk tie standing in the doorway. The look on his face was friendly, open, even curious.

“Oh, Ms. Thorn,” he said, breaking into a grin, revealing a gap in his front teeth. “Didn't recognize you.”

Cordelia's hand shot to her chest. “Heavens. You scared me. What are you doing here?” she asked, wiping the sticky cobwebs off the front of her navy-blue wool blazer. “I thought you weren't coming in until next week.”

Moving farther into the room, the man stuck out his hand to Jane. “Phil Clemens,” he said. “My friends call me Red.” He pointed to his hair.

“Jane Lawless.”

“Red's signed on to be our senior maintenance manager,” said Cordelia.

“Janitor,” he said with a wink. “I've worked in this building, at one job or another, since I was a teenager. When I saw that the place had been bought and was being rehabbed, I came in and offered my services. Nobody knows this place better than I do. I was telling Ms. Thorn here that I'm the unauthorized great-great-grandson of Samuel Clemens.” He grinned again, looking from face to face to catch their reactions.

“Unauthorized?” repeated Jane.

“So what do we have here?” he asked, nodding toward the bricked-up wall. “That's an odd one. Don't remember seeing it before. Guess maybe that poster was hiding it.”

“Why don't we take a closer look?” said Jane.

“You want me to break through the wall?” asked Red.

“Why not?”

“Give me a sec.”

After he'd left the room, Jane crooked her finger at Cordelia, drawing her in. “You think that guy's got, you know, all his oars in the water?”

“Oh, for sure. I had him checked out. He's worked as a janitor for every theater group that's been in this building since the beginning of recorded time. Received high marks from everyone.”

“What about the unauthorized grandson thing?”

Cordelia waved it away. “Everyone's allowed a few eccentricities.” She returned her attention to the brick wall. “What do you think's behind there?”

“A dead body,” Jane deadpanned, folding her arms and wondering when she could— politely—take off.

Red returned carrying a sledgehammer. “The right tool for the right job,” he announced, moving back behind the bar and motioning for Cordelia to step away. After taking off his suit coat and removing his wire-rimmed glasses, he took a couple steps back, planted his feet and then whacked at the bricks until the middle section crumbled inward. Peeking inside, waving the brick dust away from his face, he said, “Anybody got a flashlight?”

Jane continued to sit at the bar as Cordelia edged in front of him, shining a beam into the darkness. “I'm not sure what I'm seeing. Looks like a heap of crumbled bricks and mortar on top of a ripped black plastic bag.”

Red took a couple more whacks, filling the air with even more dust.

Cordelia squinted back into the hole. “Is that—” She worked the light until her entire body froze. “Someone better call 911.”

“Why?” asked Jane.

“The police will want to see this.”

“See what?”

“A skull.”

“A
what
?”

“If I'm not mistaken, there's a nice round hole smack in the center of the forehead. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the body count around this place appears to be rising.”

*   *   *

Up on the third floor, in the lobby outside the theater, Booker stood in front of the great arched window and looked down at the street, watching two uniformed police officers emerge from a squad car and enter the building under the marquee. His natural instinct when seeing a cop was to walk—swiftly—in the opposite direction. It was a habit from his youth, one that didn't serve him particularly well as an adult.

Because he'd stayed up most of the night reading his father's so-called novel, he was tired. Thus the idea of doing anything quickly didn't appeal. The book was so poorly written, so amateurish and overwrought, that if it hadn't been for the periodic revelations, he would have tossed it in the wastebasket.

Booker was aware that his sister wanted to discuss the book with him, though what he wanted, from the moment he'd stepped out of the shower until he'd jumped in his rental car, was to get away from Frenchman's Bay. He needed a beer, or maybe a joint—something to undo himself a little. Without any real plan, he'd simply driven into town and ended up here. He'd been thinking that he should take a look at the theater before he met with her highness, the Empress Cordelia. Her shiplike physical size and persona had a way of dominating conversations. He wanted to form his own conclusions about the place before she could tell him what he was supposed to think.

Booker had known Cordelia since he was a kid. As a teenager, he had thought she was weird, though in a generally good way, always flouncing around in outrageous costumes, the center of every summer party his parents had ever given. In his late teens, he'd come to respect her achievements, even found that he liked her. She was the one who'd suggested he check into Boston University. He'd been thinking about pursuing a degree in stage design and dithering about which college would best suit his needs. Cordelia explained that BU was where she'd worked on her graduate degree, that it had one of the best theater programs in the country, and that, as a bonus, he'd be living in one of the most culturally progressive cities in the nation. She knew how sick to death he was of Nashville.

In the end, Booker had taken her advice. After receiving his BFA in theater studies, instead of entering the graduate program as his mother had wanted, he'd moved to New York and worked his way through every grunt position he could find, getting the hands-on theater experience he needed. During that time, he began to grow up.

Turning at the sound of footsteps, Booker came face to face with a woman he hadn't seen in fifteen years, not since she'd graduated from the arts high school in Nashville, the same one he'd attended. He'd known he might run into her at some point during his visit because it was her play that the Thorn sisters had chosen to produce for their initial offering. He wished he'd worn something other than a pair of frayed jeans, an untucked cotton shirt, and a navy-blue hoodie.

Surprisingly, Erin O'Brian hadn't changed all that much. She still had the same strawberry-blond hair, the same light spray of freckles across her nose and cheeks. The glasses had been replaced by contacts. Like him, she'd never run with the popular crowd, though she'd been pretty enough to be included. She'd been one of Chloe's friends, two years older than him. While he rarely paid attention to the people his sister brought home, he had noticed Erin. In fact, even before he bumped into her at the house, he'd begun a quiet campaign of scoping her out at school.

Booker understood that some might have found this behavior unacceptable, even obsessive, though he didn't see it that way. Whatever the truth was, he had enough smarts to keep his feelings to himself. He saw no point in expressing himself only to get shot down by Erin—or be shuffled off to a therapist, his parents' favorite child-rearing practice. Booker had never expected to see Erin again after high school, though memories of her had grooved themselves deeply into his brain.

When she smiled at him now, approaching him somewhat hesitantly, he felt the same frisson of sexual tension he used to feel when spying her in the school lunchroom or eavesdropping on her and Chloe studying together down in the basement family room. The only time they'd ever had a real conversation was sitting in the bleachers one late spring afternoon, watching the school track team practice. It was a surprisingly intimate conversation right from the start, as if they didn't need to make the usual smalltalk before they said what was on their minds. He couldn't remember now what they'd talked about, just that she had a way with words and a way of approaching life that completely fascinated him. And she had dreams. Wild, fierce, risky dreams for her future. He'd been deeply affected by that. He gave himself extra points because he was as taken by her mind as he was by her looks. It made him feel better about himself for about fifteen minutes.

“Do you remember me?” she asked, stepping up to the window but keeping her distance.

“Erin O'Brian,” he said, returning her smile. “Of course I remember you.”

She played with a button at the top of her sweater. “I hear you may help stage my play. Feels like a small world sometimes, doesn't it?”

“I haven't taken the job yet.”

“No? Because?”

He shrugged, returned his attention to the park across the street. “I love New York. It's my home. If I accept the position, I'd have to move here.”

“The Twin Cities not cosmopolitan enough for you?”

He didn't want to tell her the real reason, the fact that moving to Minneapolis would put him closer to his parents for part of each year, something he absolutely did not want. “Just … a lot of things to weigh.” When he looked at her again, he saw that she was preoccupied, only half listening. “I've followed your career,” he said, marveling that she wasn't a girl anymore. “I saw your first play when it was produced in Houston.”