MURDER TUNED IN (Allie Griffin Mysteries Book 4)

by Leslie Leigh

  Allie looked over at the opposite side of the stage and saw Tad Mills emerge from the shadows.

  A dancer approached him with a question and he dismissed her quickly.

  And Allie shuffled in her spot in the wings as nervousness jittered in her knees. She looked at her watch: 3:48.

  She kept one eye on Angus, watching for any sign of his excusing himself, or reaching for his phone.

  No, he couldn’t be that stupid as to make the call here. Any minute now, he'll leave the theater. He'll check his watch, see that it's almost 3:49...

  Tad waited on the opposite side of the stage. He checked his watch too. Then looked up at Allie and nodded.

  It was 3:49.

  Tad took his phone out of his front pocket. Allie glanced at Angus.

  Angus was riffling the pages of a bound notebook; he was interrupted and yelled at someone Allie guessed was probably the set designer. His hands were nowhere near his phone, nor had they been this whole time.

  Tad put down his phone. Nodded at Allie.

  And then someone screamed.

  6.

  It wasn't a scream like you hear in the movies. This was a half-worded, shaking sob that quickly grew in intensity.

  One of the dancers, a tiny-framed girl in a leotard who was fresh out of high school but looked fresh out of elementary, ran out onto the stage, her hands over her mouth. Ben Sokol caught her mid-run and she collapsed into his arms, sobbing. Half-choked words came out of her throat.

  She's dead.

  That's all Allie could hear. And then

  Sally...

  Ben handed the girl off to a male dancer and started off backstage. Allie followed right behind him.

  They got to Sally Kane's dressing room and found her slumped in her makeup chair.

  Allie got in close. The woman had obviously been strangled to death. She looked around. The makeup table was filled, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. Makeup, combs, brushes, and the assorted paraphernalia of a well-stocked actor's toolkit. A row of four Styrofoam heads, each sporting a different-colored wig, stood like a line of guards at the gate. On the corner of the table closest to the door was the glass of champagne Sally had been holding when she came over and introduced herself to Allie not more than an hour before.

  She reached into her pockets and pulled out her gloves. With gloved hands, she lifted the dead woman's head carefully. The neck was badly bruised, and red welts had risen on it.

  Strangled.

  She looked around. Nowhere was there a sign of any rope. There were, however, plenty of scarves, nylons, and boas; plenty of things that could be used to strangle someone.

  Allie turned to Ben. "I think maybe..."

  "I'll call them," said Ben, reading her mind.

  She bent down, trying not to disturb any part of the scene as Ben frantically dialed 911.

  "Rope," she said to herself. She noticed that on the dead woman's neck there were tiny dark fibers stuck there. She reached into her handbag and pulled out a set of tweezers.

  Don’t disturb anything, she could hear Sgt. Beauchenne telling her in that paternal voice of his. Don’t touch anything, don’t disturb anything, don’t even look closely.

  But anyone giving Allie Griffin this kind of direction didn’t know Allie Griffin. Or maybe they knew her too well, for she was now holding the tweezers with a surgeon's stillness and precision. She grabbed one of the fibers and yanked it off the woman's neck. She opened up her bag, carefully holding the tweezers and their precious bit of evidence pinched between the prongs, and fished out her compact. She dropped the bit of fiber into the compact and clapped it shut. As she stood up, her elbow brushed against one of the Styrofoam wig stands, knocking it over. She picked it up and put it back on the table. The wig was frizzed and unkempt. She tried to straighten it but failed.

  Dismissing the wig, she walked around to the front of the body in order to examine the marks on the neck more closely. Del crept up behind her.

  "Oh my God," Del said, her voice all tremble and no tone. "She was garroted," said Allie, not looking up. "What's more, there are no signs of a struggle. I don’t see any impressions on the skin that could have been made by fingernails. You would expect her to have tried to insert her hands in the rope as it tightened. Also, nothing in this room appears to have been knocked over. Look here. There's a metal garbage pail within kicking distance of her left foot. If she had struggled, that would have been the first thing to get knocked over."

  Del made a sickly sound. "What was that word you used again?"

  "What word?"

  "What you said happened to her."

  "Garroted? It's when someone ties something around the neck—a rope or a scarf—and then uses some instrument like a stick inserted into the knot and uses it like a crank to twist the knot tighter and tighter."

  Del tried in vain to moisten her dry mouth. "How do you know that happened to her?"

  "If the killer stood over her, he would have had to pull the rope upward. That would leave marks on the underside of her jaw. She only has marks on her neck, below the jawline. Anyone strangling her from behind would either have to have been both very short and very strong, or would’ve had to have used a garrote."

  Allie stood up and looked around the room.

  "What if they were both standing?" said Del.

  "Look at the dress," said Allie, walking over to the wardrobe and surveying the hangers. "If she was strangled while standing up and then placed in the chair, the back of her dress would have been bunched up. Her dress is neatly pulled behind her, as if she did so before sitting. I say it's a pretty good sign she was killed in the chair. It takes strength to strangle someone. I think we have a male killer on our hands. And no man would think to straighten the back of a dress before sitting her down. Men don’t have to deal with the problems of sitting down in dresses like that."

  Allie looked down at the floor beneath the row of costumes. All along the tiles was a thin coat of grayish-colored grit. "What is this stuff?"

  Del walked over and looked. "That must be from the work they were doing in here. The ceiling tiles needed replacing after one of the water pipes sprung a leak. That's probably residue from the tiles. Can we get out of here?"

  Allie ran her foot across it and winced at the sandy sound. Then she began riffling through the clothes.

  "Del, have a look." She picked up a blue taffeta ball gown and held it away from its hanger.

  Del sidestepped the dead body with eyes scrunched shut. "What am I looking at?" she said through clenched teeth.

  "This dress has a coating of that stuff on it. Like it was dropped on the floor and then picked up hastily without being brushed off. See that? Which means that this..." She removed the hanger from the rack and held it up. "This could be our murder weapon. The metal hook could be inserted into a knot and twisted easily with the leverage of the hanger arms."

  Del made the same sickly sound in her throat and looked over at the dead girl. "I have to get out of here." She padded past the body and left the room quickly.

  Allie looked at Sally Kane. A feeling of shame came over her. Here she was callously indulging in a game of deductive logic, while not three feet away from her was a woman who'd had the life viciously choked out of her. She replaced the dress on the hanger, hung it back up, and started to leave.

  She paused at the threshold and turned around.

  She leaned in, putting her face close to the dead girl's lips, and she ran her pinky across the cold lips.

  Hesitantly, she sniffed. Coconut lip gloss. She'd used it herself in the past.

  She picked up the champagne flute from the makeup table and held it up to the light. Crystal clear. Yet the glass was empty. If this girl had put her lips on it, there was certainly no trace of a glossy smudge on the rim.

  She heard a commotion from outside. The cops had arrived.

  Allie's mind shifted into overdrive.

  No stain on the glass. The glass was empty, save for a spit's
worth of champagne at the bottom. The killer made some effort to hide his tracks. That was obvious from the return of the hanger to its place in the wardrobe. If that was the case, then there was a reason he would disguise the fact that she drank from this glass. The drink was spiked. That would account for her not struggling. And then the glasses were switched in order to hide the evidence. There were shades from her first case here that made her spine tingle.

  Think, Allie, think.

  Several of the cast and crew sported flutes made of glass. Somewhere in the theater was another glass just like this one that had been spiked.

  This one, she thought, was a prop.

  But a familiar voice came from outside.

  The absolute last one she wanted to hear right now.

  7.

  "We're going to need statements from every one of these people."

  Oh God, thought Allie. Tomlin.

  Ever since Allie Griffin's investigation into the Honey Reilly affair blew the doors off a conspiracy operating within the upper echelon of the Verdenier police force, the hardworking cops of Verdenier had their hands fuller than usual. Everything had devolved into a semi-chaotic mess for a time. Crime went up in the town, for the criminal element knew about the unrest and took every advantage of a tiny police force thrown into disarray. But it wasn't for long, thanks to the machinations of Sgt. Frank Beauchenne and his men, who made every effort to keep things as smooth as they could be kept.

  However, one thing had not changed.

  Detective Harry Tomlin was still there. Not only that, but he and a small faction of cops who had previously thrived under the disgraced Chief Dupond now despised Allie Griffin with all their being. She was the cause of every bad thing that had befallen the force. Never mind the fact that their chief had been a crook. They were forced to work overtime, and that was a sin that Allie Griffin would pay for.

  She made her way toward the stage.

  "Anyone on two legs who was in here when the croaked girl was found needs to give a statement."

  Ah, Tomlin. The king of tact.

  The detective sauntered up onto the stage, his expansive gut threatening to banish his belt to the underworld. His neck didn’t move. Instead, he chose to keep his head steady and swivel around, pivoting like a basketball player.

  "Alright, where is she?" he said. And then he caught Allie's eye and squinted as his face screwed up in befuddlement. Once recognition took hold, his shoulders dropped.

  "Griffin," he snarled quietly.

  Allie smiled coyly and waved like a princess.

  "I should've known I'd see you here. Why is it that every time there's a murder in this godforsaken town, I find you in the thick of it? Tell me, Griffin, why is that?"

  "You tell me. You're the detective."

  It wasn't the best line she'd ever delivered to the man, but it would have to suffice.

  "Well then, Ms. Griffin, we're gonna need a full statement from you. You should know the drill by now."

  As Tomlin spoke, Sgt. Frank Beauchenne crept up behind him. The sergeant bugged out his eyes, crossed them, stuck out his tongue, and puffed his cheeks. Tomlin swiveled around and the face vanished.

  Allie bit her tongue.

  "I'll handle this," said Beauchenne.

  "I bet you will," said Tomlin. "Get her statement. No funny business."

  Beauchenne watched the detective walk away and shook his head. "I'm sorry about that. I tried to keep an eye on him."

  "No worries, handsome."

  "Easy with that talk."

  "I don’t like him."

  "I know. Not too many people do. Even the people that like him don’t like him."

  Allie watched the detective squat down to inspect a mark on the stage floor. "Yeah, but I really don’t like him. No doubt he thinks I had something to do with this."

  "Alright," shouted Tomlin. "Let's take a look at the dead girl."

  Beauchenne shook his head again. "Allie Griffin, would you like to give me your statement?"

  "Over dinner?"

  "Very funny. No, right here will do just fine."

  "She was garroted while in a sitting position, probably with the hanger that has the blue taffeta on it. The killer used a rope that had dark blue or black fibers. There's no rope in there, so they don’t have to bother looking. The killer was careful to cover his tracks. She didn’t struggle and that was because her glass of champagne was poisoned. There's a glass in there, but it's not hers, so you'd better tell forensics to run a toxicology report. Chances are they'll know what she's eaten and what she drank. Slim chance they'll look for poison, the cause of death obviously being asphyxiation and all. Anything else?"

  Beauchenne looked into her eyes and a tiny smirk jittered around his lips. "We're going to start over, and this time you're going on the record. Just tell me what you saw and heard. As far as I'm concerned, you didn’t spend any time in that room. Understand?"

  Feeling chastised and frustrated, she looked in his eyes and answered him bluntly. "Ten-four."

  She told him exactly what she'd seen and heard, leaving out everything having to do with Tad Mills and the mysterious phone call. When she was finished, she said, "Off the record now."

  Beauchenne looked up from his pad.

  "Sara's Bridge," she said. "Eight o'clock."

  He nodded.

  With Beauchenne off taking statements from others on the scene, Allie figured she was done and went to say goodbye to Ben and Del, who were chatting in the orchestra pit.

  "I'm going home."

  "Hell of a day," said Ben.

  "You ain't kidding."

  Ben and Del exchanged looks.

  "What?" Allie said.

  Ben gave her a sympathetic look. "Tomlin is the last person in the world we would support on any issue; we just want you to know that."

  "Yeah? And?"

  "And we want you to know that we support you, because we love you and, well, that's what friends do for each other."

  Allie looked at Del, who was busy gnawing at her pinky nail and looking down at her feet.

  "That's touching. What else?"

  Ben hesitated for a moment, then said, "You have to admit that it's a little strange how you're always around when someone..."

  Allie couldn’t believe her ears. "What are you saying? You’re really going to side with that—"

  "It's ok. We believe you. We don’t think you had anything to do with this, or any of the others."

  Allie still couldn’t hide her frustration. "Well that's a relief."

  "Allie," said Del, "we're just saying that we're worried about you. That's all. This can really make you look...bad. Just be careful, that's all."

  "Still hanging around?"

  It was Tomlin. Not one of them had seen the man approach.

  "Still hanging around. Just consorting with my fellow murderers here."

  With her peripheral vision, Allie saw Del put her head in her hands.

  "Listen, all I was saying is that either you're here and a murder follows, or the murder comes first and then you follow. Either way, a casual observer would get the suspicion that there's some sort of correlation here."

  "Correlation does not equal causation."

  The detective shook with a snorting chuckle. "What is that? Philosophy 101?"

  "Uh, yeah, as a matter of fact, it is Philosophy 101. Just because two things happen close together doesn’t mean one caused the other. I'm here, yes. And yes, there was a murder. Have I seen other murders? Yes. Three to be exact, and I've managed to solve every one of them before the police got their thumbs out of their—"

  "Alright, time out," said Ben. "Allie, you can let the nice detective go back to his work. Detective, I'm sure you can find it in your heart to forgive Allie for her loose tongue and go about your business here."

  Tomlin scowled at her. "You better hope no flags get raised by your statement." He started to walk away.

  "I'll have plenty of time to hide the evidence," Allie yelled.<
br />
  "Allie," said Ben in a warning tone.

  The stocky detective ignored her.

  "Haven’t you got enough to worry about, Detective?"

  "Pardon?" said Tomlin.

  "Allie, cut it out." Ben whispered in harsh tones.

  "Your fingers," Allie said to Tomlin. "You've chewed your nails down to the nub. Dupond's resignation throw you for a loop? Changes in the hierarchy? The devil you know gone home, replaced by a total stranger? You no longer have the place wired like you used to and it's stressing you out. You're also the type who eats when he's stressed, I can tell."

  The detective's face flushed a shade of red that Allie had never seen before on anyone. He breathed heavily through his nose. He looked like steam was either going to come shooting out of his ears, or he was just going to blow up on the spot.

  Ben grabbed Allie by the arm. "Ok, girlie. Easy does it."

  Allie glared at Tomlin.

  Ben pulled her gently away by the arm. "Come on, now. Let's all let our armpits cool off, shall we?"

  Tomlin turned around and went back to abusing his underlings.

  Ben walked around in front of Allie. "Are you kidding me?"

  "What?" Allie said, compressing her rage into a tiny ball of sweet indifference.

  "What? That! Talking that way to a cop. You're crazy."

  "I hate that man," she said. "I don’t really hate anyone, but I hate that man with all my being."

  "Really?" said Ben. "Gee, I never would have guessed. Can you do us all a favor and stop being Allie Griffin for two minutes? You got Tomlin in a lousy mood now. I know that's not hard to do, but when he's feeling lousy, we're all feeling lousy. Just take some deep breaths and calm down."

  "I'm leaving," said Allie. "I need a drink. Oh and thanks for sticking up for me, by the way. Both of you."

  She left the theater, feeling more rotten than she had in a long, long time.

  8.

  Dougie's Bar & grill was definitely on the itinerary. She had come to love this place on the outskirts of town, right before you hit the quarry. It was a little, out-of-the-way place, honest in its ugliness, but cozy and warm and full of genuine people. And then there was Dougie himself. Douglas, to Allie, and she was the only one allowed to call him that. Good old, jovial Douglas. Always a smile. Always a twinkle in his eye. She needed this now.