“No. It’s just about keeping the show going.” Olivia frowned. “What else would it be?”
“The theater.”
“The Moonrise?”
Duke jerked his chin in the direction of the sarcophagus down below. “You’ve got a prop down there from the very first magic show in this theater.”
“It was tucked into a storage room. I thought it would be an interesting tidbit.” She was sounding almost defensive.
Duke gave Olivia a look that should have told her to stop deflecting. “I’m an investigator, remember?”
“Well, of course I like the theater,” Olivia said suddenly, changing tactics. “The place is well-situated. It’s got a very friendly feel to it. And it’s not expensive because it’s older.”
“Which makes it more expensive to keep running,” Duke pointed out. “So, what makes you set on the Moonrise?”
She puffed out her cheeks and jammed her hands on her hips as though she were trying to decide if she really had to say something or not. Finally, she gave in. “I saw my first ballet here at the Moonrise. I was a little kid. My ballet teacher brought me with a group of other students at Christmastime to see The Nutcracker.”
“Ah. That makes more sense. Nostalgia is a powerful motivator.” Duke figured he probably saw more than she had been willing to share with him
Olivia was a woman who desperately wished she could be back on stage. Not just a stage, but this stage. What was her motivation in all of this though? Her real motivation? Did she honestly believe she could somehow recapture her youth and get back into the performing arts?
She gave him a droll stare. “Now, don’t paint me as one of those tragic heroines who believes she can somehow make it back onto the stage so she can perform her little heart out and be in the spotlight once again.”
“No?”
“I’m thirty-five. That’s positively ancient in the world of ballet.” She made a face as though she were mentally correcting herself. “Well, it’s not over the hill for someone who has been in active, dedicated training and performing the entire time. But for someone like me, who has only dabbled in the last decade or two, it’s like saying I want to become an astronaut tomorrow.”
Duke could not help it. He laughed out loud. “Sorry. I’m not laughing at you. It’s your analogy. I suppose it would be like saying you wanted to start astronaut training in the latter half of your life.”
“I just want to teach,” she admitted. “That’s what older dancers do. It keeps you in shape and flexible and it helps you stay in touch with dancing, but you’re passing it on.”
“Eww. To kids?” Duke shuddered. “You’d have those little snot-nosed beggars all over you all the time.”
It was Olivia’s turn to laugh. “You hate kids that much?”
“You have no idea how much I can hate on kids,” he told her with a stern nod. “They’re parasites.”
“Do you have any?”
“Hell no!” He considered this. He didn’t have any kids that he knew of and he’d been careful. This was not a new fear for him. “I have a few nieces and nephews. My dancing sister put her dance career behind her ages ago and started popping out babies all over the damned place and making my mother the happiest sewing nana on the planet.”
“Oh my!” Olivia’s eyebrows rose for a moment and then her face relaxed into the most beatific smile that Duke had ever seen. “That’s a very lovely picture you’ve painted there. At least in my opinion. A family where a mother sewed for her beloved daughter only to turn around and do the same for her cherished grandchildren. What could be warmer and fuzzier than that?”
Duke stood up and prepared to go back down to ground level. He was done with this conversation. It was taking a very bad turn. “A pair of fuzzy, bunny slippers,” he informed Olivia. “They are far warmer, far fuzzier, and way more useful.”
“Are you going to tell me what you recommend next?” she called after him.
“Huh?”
Duke’s mind was stuck on the kids and the sewing and the image of little girls in pink tutus and boys carrying baseball mitts that were too big for their hands and begging to drive the tractor around the farmyard. The whole mental picture was leaving a sour taste in his mouth.
“What do you mean?” Duke wanted to get down off this staircase. That’s what he wanted. Away from the thought of kids and ballet and whatever else was making him ill at the moment.
“I’m talking about the case,” Olivia told him with a frown. “Wasn’t that what we were discussing?”
“Before we got off topic about the Moonrise. Yes.” Duke gave himself a mental shake. He needed to pull it together. Now. “You’re right. I recommend bringing in another agent tomorrow night and having another look at the layout and having one of us up here before and after the show and another guy on the ground with an earpiece.”
“All right.” She was doing mental math to see how much that was going to cost her. Duke could tell. “Then you’ll come back tomorrow and we’ll get started with that?”
“Yes. That is my plan.”
“Then I’ll see you tomorrow.” She turned and nearly danced her way back across the catwalk to the other set of stairs that probably led down to a spot closer to her office. He watched her go, at the way she pointed her toes and seemed to glide along as though she weren’t really moving. She was floating. Just an angel and nothing more.
Chapter Nine
The Moonrise was absolutely empty. It was late, but Olivia didn’t care. She didn’t mind at all. This was the best time of every single day in her opinion. The stage was empty but for the bits and pieces of tape that Riley used to cue the animals on stage and the barre that Olivia had wheeled out from its hidden place amongst the junk in the left wing. The stage lights were on, but the audience lights were dark. The doors were locked and the place was utterly silent.
Olivia didn’t need sound. She could hear the music in her head. Dressed in a simple pale pink leotard and leggings, she lowered herself to the stage and began to stretch. There was nothing better than this moment in her day. Nothing that felt quite as good as the sensation of her muscles growing longer and suppler. She lifted her arms and bent until she was flat against her knees, her torso stretched until she was almost in half. The tightness in her lower back began to ease. The stress of the day bled out through her pores along with the sweat that began to dampen her skin.
Pushing off the floor, Olivia rolled backwards and onto her feet. She stretched her back, her worn ballet slippers whispering on the wood surface of the stage. Walking to the barre, she let her hand rest against the familiar contour of the wood and began her exercises. Her short, curly hair brushed her face and her cheeks. She imagined in her head what her old teacher would have had to say about her hair. The mess! The lack of discipline. With a smile on her face, Olivia made up conversations in her head for how that would go. What would she say to Madame Sophie? Now that she was an adult grown, what would she say to the woman who had once scared the whole class of little girls who had called her Sophie the Dragon in whispered conversations to one another.
Olivia didn’t know how long she had been working when she heard the noises. It wasn’t clear at first where they were coming from. Somewhere in the front of the house perhaps. The foyer? The retail shop? At first, she thought they were footsteps. Someone moving about. But that wasn’t clear anymore. The silence was disturbed and Olivia stopped to stand perfectly still in the center of the stage. Closing her eyes, she stopped to listen.
The sound, almost like there was a pony out there in the foyer clopping around, only Snooker wasn’t on the property. He went home with a caretaker each and every night in order to get some good pasture time before coming back to work for the noon show tomorrow. The only pony in the foyer was the one made from children’s building blocks.
Olivia left the stage for the wings. She reached for the light board and shut it all off. Standing in the utter blackness, she let the dark consume her until she cou
ld hear each and every whispered groan the old building made as it settled. Finally, Olivia heard it one more time. There was no doubt the sound was coming from the foyer. She just couldn’t quite tell what it was though. It still sounded as though Snooker had come back to vandalize the place after hours.
The darkness was absolute there in the wings, but there were emergency lights spread throughout the hallways and the foyer as well as a few scattered through the auditorium area in case the power went out during a show. It was that dull, yellowish glow that Olivia used to see her way to the door leading from stage left to the hallway that snaked around the entire building.
She was still wearing only her leotard and leggings. Sweat dried on her skin and sent a chill through her warm muscles thanks to the air conditioning still running full blast to keep the temperature from rising too high during the night. Olivia felt a chill slide down her spine as she tiptoed through the doorway in her ballet slippers.
She crept closer and closer to the foyer and wondered what it was she would find when she got there. Would the pickpocket be there? Except that was stupid. What was there for a pickpocket to do if there were no pockets it the building?
The spicy scent of cigar smoke made Olivia’s nose twitch. It was a familiar odor, but it wasn’t something she should be smelling at nearly midnight in a dark and deserted theater. As she rounded the last curve before the hallway opened up into the foyer, she spotted a sliver of light stretching across the faded industrial grade carpeting. Just a tiny bit of light coming from her office.
Now that Olivia knew the intruder was a rotund, bald little man with a snide twist to his lips, she tiptoed a lot faster. She danced around the sliver of light coming from the crack in her office doorway. Once on the other side, she moved as close to the wall as she dared and pressed her back to the textured plaster.
By turning her body just so, Olivia could see through the tiny crack in the doorway without blocking the shadow and letting Harvey Lightman know he was being observed. It didn’t take long to spot him. He had a letter opener in hand and was doing his level best to break into her desk drawer.
Olivia ground her teeth together. She could feel her face flushing red hot as she struggled to decide what to do. She wasn’t technically supposed to be dancing on the stage. There was no rule against it, but there wasn’t necessarily a reason for her to be there either. On the other hand, Harvey had just snapped her letter opener in half and was now cursing at her drawer. No doubt he wanted to see the books. He wanted to know what kind of money the show was really bringing in. There was no doubt in Olivia’s mind about that.
Taking a deep breath, she tried not to think about the fact that she was wearing a pink leotard and put her hand flat on the door. Shoving it open, she made it look as though she were just walking in.
“Oh!” Olivia exclaimed, leaping back a step or two and pressing her hand to her chest. “Harvey? What on earth are you doing in here? I thought I must have left my light on and was coming to turn it off.”
Harvey’s reaction was rather comical. He leaped back so violently that he nearly flipped her chair over backwards. Instead of tipping though, the chair rolled into the credenza behind her desk. A potted plant toppled over and fell right into Harvey’s lap, spilling dirt and muddy water everywhere. The poor little palm plant was the only thing she had managed to keep alive in years of attempting to grow a plant in her office. It was sad to see the slender green leaves falling around the rollers of the chair as Harvey squirmed and shrieked and basically flung dirt all over her office.
“You bitch!” Harvey shouted at the top of his lungs. At least that’s what it sounded like he was saying between four letter epithets and promises to hunt down and kill every member of the palm plant’s family. “You stupid little twit! What are you doing here this late at night? You’re not supposed to be here. You’re not!”
Olivia did not let his words affect her. After all, she wasn’t the one trying to break into someone else’s desk. She folded her arms over her chest and glared down at him. “Are you kidding me right now? You’re going to ask me what I’m doing here this time of night because I happened to be here when you decided to try to break into my office? That’s ludicrous! You’re just pissed because I caught you. Now, get out before I call the police.”
“It’s my theater!” Harvey protested hotly. He was already trying to stand up. Bits of dirt and plant fell from his khaki pants. “I can be wherever I want!”
“No. You can’t. You have an office at the other end of the hallway. And this space is mine by contract. You don’t get to be in our business office. That’s not how this works, Harvey. And you know it. That’s why you’re not going to want me to call the police. You know that I’m just going to have you arrested. And yeah. You’ll bail yourself out, but then my lawyer will be on your ass tomorrow. Do you understand me? I will shove legal brief after legal brief so far up there that your butt cheeks will be covered in paper!”
Of course, none of this was actually true. The part about the contract was true enough. But the bit about the cops was all a bluff. Olivia wouldn’t dare call the cops. She would be stuck calling Duke Dunbar and she wasn’t even sure she had his number.
Olivia held Harvey’s gaze. She did not flinch. He wanted to have a little stare down right here over her desk? Fine! She could do that. She could do better than that. She pushed forward a bit and reached over to pluck the broken letter opener out of his hand.
“Evidence,” she hissed at him.
Harvey bolted. Of course, the chair got in his way as he tried to get out from behind the desk without getting close enough for her to smack him. At least that was what she assumed when he smacked his gut against the chair, shoved it into the wall, and then managed to spray more dirt and plant bits over the rest of his office on his way out the door.
“This isn’t over, Olivia Houghton! You just wait until my lawyers get done with you and that loser uncle of yours!”
“If we’re such losers, why are you in here trying to steal our income statements so you can see what kind of money we’re actually making?” Olivia shouted after him. “That’s not a very convincing lie you’ve got going on there, Harvey!”
But her words were already too late. The little bastard was running out the front doors of the theater and leaving them unlocked. Sometimes Olivia worried she would come to work one morning and find the place in ashes on the ground. If that ever happened, she would be pointing the finger at Harvey Lightman.
Olivia gazed at the mess in her office and sighed. Her plant was crying on the floor. She knelt down and carefully gathered up the root ball and tried to scrape enough potting soil off the carpet and the desk to fill the little pot back up so the plant could go back on the shelf.
It was busywork, not exactly enough to keep her hectic brain from going over everything that had just happened. She had discounted the possibility that Harvey was desperate enough to be rid of the Riley Saunders Show that he could be behind the increased thefts. Now though? She was about to change her opinion.
Olivia pursed her lips and stared down at the desk drawer where the bank statements and other important papers were located. Perhaps it would be better to take them home with her. That way they could be put in a place where at least it would be much more difficult for someone like Harvey to get at them.
By the time Olivia had all of the papers gathered up in a banker’s box and ready to transport to her car, she was feeling very heavy-lidded and sleepy. It was close to two o’clock in the morning. It was far past the time to lock up and go home.
She hefted the box into her arms. After she shut the door to her office, she turned the locking mechanism and pulled the door closed. Then, she used her extra set of keys to lock the office since her car keys and other things were still back at the edge of the stage.
As she walked back to where she had left her things, Olivia realized she had a lot of habits that weren’t exactly safe. Perhaps they were safe for a person like she used
to be; a person who led a mundane life where nothing exciting happened and nobody cared what she did. This world was changing and she wasn’t entirely sure she liked it. This was a world of cell phones that must be carried at all times in case of an emergency and never going anywhere by herself in the dark like this.
The old theater was a friend. At least that was how Olivia thought of it. The place was falling down. It needed more repairs than you could list on a single sheet of lined paper. But that did not mean Olivia thought it needed to be razed to the ground.
She lifted the box above her head and did a heel-toe dance step into a series of twirls down the dark hallway. It was a dizzying sensation. Exhilarating! She felt a laugh bubbling up inside her and wondered if she would ever be able to do something outrageous in her life like buy this place. That was her pipe dream. Bit it would never happen. To purchase the Moonrise from Harvey Lightman and add a dance studio to the lineup during the day, with her uncle’s show at night, and perhaps some recitals on the big stage every once in a while for her students to really feel as though they were center stage, would be a dream come true.
“That will never happen,” Olivia whispered to herself. “I bet that old bastard would jack the price up ten times over what he would get from a developer just to be spiteful.”
And that was the truth.
Olivia gathered her things, locked up, and left. It was time to go home with her box of paperwork. She could get at least a few hours of sleep before she woke up in order to do it all over again. But at least tomorrow would have one thing different—Duke Dunbar would be part of her day tomorrow.
She didn’t know how, but for some reason she could not stop herself from feeling more than appropriately excited by that thought.
Chapter Ten
Rock Wolf Investigations: Boxset Page 7