Paula K. Perrin - Small Town Deadly

by Paula K. Perrin

  SMALL TOWN DEADLY

  Paula K Perrin

  Copyright © Paula K Perrin

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book may not be reproduced in whole, or in part, by any means, without the written consent of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are fictiously used. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Dedicated to Elizabeth Travis Sunyer

  such a good friend and a most excellent Mother-thing

  CHAPTER ONE

  Fran swept into the restroom with a burgundy garment bag hung over her arm. “Have you thrown up yet?” she demanded.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “Get it over with, Liz. Stick your finger down your throat.”

  “I’m going to kill you, you know.”

  She turned to hook the garment bag over a stall door. “Having you take over Annamaria’s role was the only logical thing to do when she got sick,” she said, shimmying out of her jeans. “Who else would know the lines?”

  I turned to face the mirror mounted on the cement wall. The sight of my sweaty, greenish face and flickering eyelids increased my nausea. I’d written the play, but that didn’t mean I knew the lines. “I’m going to make a total ass of myself,” I muttered.

  “It’s only dress rehearsal. How can you be so nervous when there’s not even an audience?” Her mirrored image pulled her red cashmere sweater over her head. The clip that had held her long blonde hair came loose and clattered to the floor. Her hair spilled over her shoulders. She tossed the sweatshirt at me.

  I turned and caught it, and feeling the warmth of it, draped it around my shoulders.

  Pared down to black lace panties and thigh-high black stockings, she unzipped the garment bag. “You’re the one who told me the whole point of recruiting local celebrities to act in the play was that audiences love to see them make fools of themselves.”

  “Yeah, but I only intended egomaniacs like you to be in the play.”

  “Hoist on your own petard,” she said, her long fingers working the tiny mother-of-pearl buttons on her blouse into their buttonholes.

  “Good grief, Fran, I can see right through that!”

  She bumped me aside with her hip so that we could both stare at her image in the mirror. “Isn’t it gorgeous? It’s lawn. Got it this afternoon at that antique clothing shop down in Portland.”

  Never mind the modest high neck and long sleeves. It revealed everything. “You’re supposed to wear corsets and petticoats and all kinds of things under that.”

  “Worry not, little one,” she said, stepping into a black velvet skirt, “there’s a jacket to go with this.” She grinned at me in the mirror and pulled me against her side with one long arm. “You may be shocked, but you’re not green any more. I knew you wouldn’t kill me,” she said as she began to pin up her hair.

  Half an hour later as I watched my fellow thespians strut and fret themselves into a frenzy in the fourth scene, I thought she shouldn’t have been so sure. While Fran took to the melodrama like a moth to a spotlight, my knees shook and my heart pounded. My stomach roiled and I held onto the cold Formica of the library checkout counter with sweaty fingers.

  I know my limitations. My role had been supposed to end when I delivered the script of the interactive mystery play to Alisz Cameron, the producer and director, who assured me I wouldn’t have to give the play another thought until opening night.

  Yet here I was in the Warfield High School library, the very library I’d visited almost daily as a student twenty-odd years ago. Alisz had transformed it into the pit of public-speaking hell.

  The cozy round tables had been removed. Orange plastic chairs formed a semi-circle facing the small stage built at the foot of six shallow steps. The steps led from the upper level where I quaked at the checkout counter down to the lower level where the bookshelves stood.

  On that stage, the local celebs-turned-actors waved their arms and delivered their lines with gusto, though with no regard to timing, while I dreaded my next cue.

  Realizing I’d lost my place, I scrabbled through the script. “Extroverts,” I snarled under my breath.

  “What?” Kirk whispered. Warfield’s young Episcopal priest had been recruited to play my character’s partner in our fictional ballroom dance team. He wore a revolting powder-blue tux to match my long satin gown. His blond hair was plastered down with some sweet-scented oily stuff.

  I smoothed my crumpled script with sweaty hands. “This isn’t going well, is it?” I whispered back.

  His boyish face creased as he smiled at me. “It was much worse a week ago. Besides, you know what they say, ‘bad dress rehearsal, great opening night.’”

  “I hope they’s right,” I said. “And I hope Annamaria recovers so she can go on tomorrow night.”

  “You’ll do fine.” He gave my arm a reassuring squeeze. “Besides, likely she’ll be fine tomorrow. She won’t let a touch of flu keep her out of the play.”

  “I hope so, though I’ve never seen anyone as miserable as Annamaria was this afternoon when I stopped by to pick up this dress.”

  A shrill voice carried from the stage, “Liz, you missed your cue. If you will not pay attention, how do you expect us to get this right?”

  My face hot, I whirled toward Alisz. “I’m doing my best.”

  Kirk’s voice was low, for my ears only. “Just let it go. Double duty as producer and actor is getting to her.”

  “But does she have to pick on me?” I whispered back.

  He shrugged. To Alisz he said, “I missed the cue, too. Sorry.”

  Alisz stalked to the edge of the stage where it was set against the shallow steps. She glared up at me, then took a deep breath. She tucked a strand of her short brown hair behind her ear. “It is your play. I would think you would want it to be a success.”

  “I do,” I mumbled, my face growing even hotter.

  The others on the stage studied their feet.

  Fran stepped to Alisz’s side. Her large green eyes filled with sympathy, she looked at me. She said, “We’ve all had weeks to rehearse. Liz is walking in cold. Go easy, okay?”

  Alisz glared at her. “So she makes fools of us all because she cannot concentrate?”

  My sweaty hands fisted. “For heaven’s sake, Alisz, it was one mistake.”

  Alisz’s eyes flashed, and a tide of red rose from her neck.

  Beside me, Kirk said, “It’s just jitters, Alisz. We’ve all got ‘em. Let’s go back a few pages, and this time we’ll nail it.”

  Alisz continued to stare at me. Fran laid a hand on her arm. Alisz shrugged her off, but she offered me a strained smile and said, “As you say, Liz, you have made a mistake.” She turned to the rest of the cast, “We will go on.”

  Soon the air crackled with the repartee that had seemed so witty when I’d written it.

  Kirk tensed and whispered, “Here it comes, Liz.”

  On the stage below us, Fran turned in a swirl of black velvet, pointed at Kirk, and delivered our cue, shrieking, “He’s to blame.”

  “He is innocent,” I screamed back.

  At the same moment, Kirk yelled, “How dare you accuse me?” and strode down the steps to the quarter-circle stage.

  I hurried the other way, down the long carpeted ramp to the glass-paneled door that separated the library from the classroom wing. Hot pink posters for our play in a huge, bold font were plastered over the glass.

  Final Checkout, an interactive mystery play

  Two nights only: April 21 & 22, 1995

  Come support your local librar
y!

  The hallway beyond was darker than it had been earlier when Fran and I had been in the restroom. Someone had gone overboard on atmosphere.

  My script, about competitors in a small-town talent contest, called for me to slip away to warn Andre, who played the murder victim, that the intermission was almost here. I was also to help him arrange himself on the floor of the janitor’s closet so the audience could view the “body” and look for clues.

  I stepped into the doorway of the dark closet. I could barely make out Andre on the floor, lying face-up, feet toward me. “Hey, don’t be shy, turn on the light,” I said and felt along the wall for the switch.

  When the spotlight blinked on, I gasped. Never in my 39 years had I seen anything so horrible: exposed white skull; bits of grey matter, supposedly bits of brain, spattered around; blood pooling in his ear before it dripped onto the floor.

  “Great make-up,” I said. “Did you do that yourself?”

  He lay still, not a muscle moving, eyes staring at the ceiling. Well, he’d said he was a better actor than anyone gave him credit for.

  “Andre?” I said, my voice wavering. “Quit fooling around! You’re scaring me.” I grasped his shoulder and shook him.

  My shake sent a ripple of movement down his body. His right hand opened and an ivory-colored tube rolled onto the floor. His head tilted toward me, his fixed eyes locked with mine, and he made a terrible sound starting low, going lower, ending as hushed as a satisfied lover’s. “Aahhh.”

  “Oh, sweet Jesus,” I whispered, and even my mother couldn’t have called it blasphemy.

  My stomach cramped. One hand pressed against my lips, I ran across the echoing hall, crashed through the orange door marked “GIRLS,” and made it to the first stall. When my stomach stopped heaving, I wiped my watering eyes and stumbled to the sinks where I rinsed my mouth. I stared into the mirror.

  I looked as pale as Andre.

  Thoughts dropped into my mind like ice cubes into a glass. Someone has killed Andre. This is going to ruin my play. I should get Gene.

  I opened the restroom door, not looking across the hall toward Andre, and started toward the library.

  My hand grasped the cold door handle just as my mind supplied a picture of the tube that had rolled out of Andre’s hand and onto the floor—my niece’s lipstick. I knew it was hers because of its distinctive faux carved-ivory case and because she’d lost it at rehearsal last Sunday and made such a fuss about it.

  I hesitated. Anyone who watches TV cop shows knows she shouldn’t disturb a crime scene.

  I hurried to Andre, not looking at his head. I couldn’t avoid seeing the spreading pool of blood, and my heart contracted. I wished I could cover him. He’d hate being seen in such a mess. He spent so much time on details, maintaining his hair color, picking his clothes. He worried so about his aging skin. A sob stuck in my throat.

  I snatched up Meg’s lipstick, telling myself she couldn’t have done anything wrong. She couldn’t.

  But Meg had been late for dress rehearsal tonight. We’d started without her. She’d arrived breathless and apologetic, wearing a different costume from the baggy black jumpsuit we’d bought. Why the change in clothing? Had she gotten spattered with—No! No, I wouldn’t even let the thought form.

  Where could I hide the lipstick? A trash can stood in the corner of the hall. I started for it but then realized the police would surely search everything. Flush it down the toilet? Yes. As I hurried toward the restroom, I saw movement through the glass door to the library. Kirk, Fran, and Meg marched down the ramp arm-in-arm.

  I thrust the lipstick down the bodice of my gown, into my bra. I ran to the door, pulled it open, and started up the ramp toward them. The heavy door thudded shut behind me.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Fran and Meg flanked Kirk and chanted, “We want the bo-dy, we want the bo-dy.”

  Meg’s shiny, mahogany-red hair, drawn up in a ponytail, swung in rhythm to her steps. Her brown eyes shone with an excitement I hadn’t seen in months.

  My heart thudded heavily as they continued toward me, grinning and chanting.

  I held my hand up like a traffic cop.

  They stopped.

  “Andre’s dead,” I said, my voice rasping.

  “We know that!” Fran said, disengaging her arm from Kirk’s. “We’re coming to see if he can act his way into a coffin the way he said he could.”

  My knees buckled and I sagged against the wall.

  “Aunt Liz, what’s wrong?” Meg said, her voice shrill.

  Kirk hurried to me. I’d started shaking and couldn’t stop.

  Fran’s voice seemed far away as she said, “She’s going to faint, put her head between her knees.”

  Obeying her, Kirk pressed down on my head, asking, “What happened?”

  I resisted the pressure, but my legs gave way, and I slumped to the floor.

  Meg said, “I’m going to see what’s wrong,” and started down the ramp for the door, the swirls of sequins sewn onto her net skirt flashing as she moved.

  “No!” It came out a squeak, but enough to stop her. I stared up at the three faces peering down at me. “Andre’s been murdered.”

  “Murdered?” Meg cried. “You mean—”

  “Shh,” Fran said to her, rubbing her shoulder. To me she said, “You’re not just testing your own acting abilities are you?”

  “No! It’s awful.”

  “I’ll get Gene,” Meg said and raced up the ramp and around the corner into the library.

  Fran slid down next to me, heedless of the consequences to the black velvet. She put her arm around me. “Are you sure he’s dead?”

  I nodded.

  “Oh, Liz, you poor thing.”

  My teeth chattered, and her sympathetic tone brought tears to my eyes.

  “How did he die? Could you tell?” Kirk asked.

  “His head—” and then I began to cry in earnest so that when Gene Cudworthy, Warfield’s Chief of Police, hurried down the ramp and stepped over our legs, he was just a tall, red-headed blur.

  The rest of the cast had followed him and huddled at the upper part of the ramp.

  Gene turned when he reached the door and said, “Don’t anybody leave. When my guys get here, send them down.”

  Exclaiming, asking questions, a few of them crying, the cast crowded past us to the door and watched Gene through the glass panel. Everyone but Kirk, who continued to stand next to me, and Fran, who suddenly jumped up saying, “I’ve got to call Max!” She ran into the library, nearly tripping over her long black skirt.

  Kirk and I looked at each other.

  I shrugged. “The newswoman instinct, I guess.”

  “No, a news reporter would have gone after Gene. Calling her reporter is a news publisher’s instinct,” he said. His hands went into his pockets. “Are you sure it was murder, Liz?”

  “Yes.” I wiped tears from my cheeks with my fingers.

  “My God,” he sighed.

  I struggled to stand, legs tangled in the unaccustomed long skirt. He reached down for my hand, easily pulling me to my feet. Dizzy, I clung to his muscular arm for a moment.

  I wished Fran hadn’t left to make her call. I needed her brisk, no-nonsense self to steer me past the questions I couldn’t help asking. Why had Meg shown up in a different costume than we’d planned? She wore a red leotard and tights not exactly concealed by a black net skirt decorated with beads and sequins in cabalistic designs.

  Since dropping out of college in February, Meg had dressed in old sweat suits when she’d bothered to get out of her nightgown at all. Tonight, in one of the abrupt mood changes she’d been exhibiting, she’d dressed in a costume sure to please men with lazy imaginations.

  I looked up the ramp toward the checkout counter where the phone was located. Fran wasn’t there.

  “Excuse me,” I murmured to Kirk and walked up the ramp on wobbly legs in time to see Fran through the windows on her way to the parking lot. I ran outside and yelled, “
Fran! What are you doing?”

  “Shh!” she hissed, turning and frowning at me. Six feet tall, descended from Vikings, for a moment Fran looked menacing. She hurried back to me. “Don’t make a fuss.” Her blonde hair, piled softly on her head, gleamed in the light that poured through the windows.

  “Where are you going? I thought you were just calling Max.”

  She put a hand on my shoulder. “Look, I have to take care of something, and I have to do it fast.”

  “But Gene said we had to stay—”

  “If anybody asks, say I felt sick and went looking for a bathroom.”

  “Nobody’s going to buy that.”

  “They’ll believe you. I’ve got to go.” She turned.

  I reached out to snag her, but she was already out of range. Uneasy, I retraced my steps to Kirk who had joined the murmuring group by the door. “Are you all right, Liz?” he asked.

  “I think so.”

  The rest of the cast surrounded us.

  His young, round face solemn, his blue eyes kind, Kirk said, “Is there anything I can do for you?” Though dressed in his blue tux for his role, there was no mistaking the minister in Kirk.

  “No, but thanks.”

  Outside, sirens howled.

  “I’ll go meet them,” Kirk said, striding up the ramp.

  People started talking all at once, peppering me with questions. Only one voice broke through my daze, Alisz saying, “You’ve gotten blood on Annamaria’s dress.”

  “I’m sorry.” I looked down at the large, maroon blotch of blood near the satin hem, and my skin crawled. I raced up the ramp’s turquoise carpet, turned left at the checkout counter and ran into the glass-walled computer room. A mound of everyday clothes lay between two terminals on a table, left there by the cast after they’d changed into their costumes.

  Hands shaking, I pulled at the zipper of Annamaria’s dress, pushed it down over my hips and stepped out of it, kicking off the high heels as well.

  I was pawing through the pile of clothes searching for my own when I felt eyes on me. I looked through the glass walls of the computer room to the lower level of the library.