Note of Peril

by Hannah Alexander

  As the doctor left the room, Kathryn buried her face in her hands. Michael put his arm around her. Oh, Lord, please protect Grace.

  Delight wanted to wake up from this awful nightmare. Poisoning? What if Grace really did die? This couldn’t be happening.

  “Well, what now?” Peter asked, getting to his feet. “Want me to go to the theater and search through her stuff?”

  Delight jumped to her feet. “If you do, I’m going with you.” The big, clumsy bozo wouldn’t know what to look for, and wouldn’t recognize it if it bit him.

  Mitzi stood. “I’ll drive to her condo if someone will give me a key.”

  “Wait.” Kathryn grabbed her purse and stood. “I should be the one to go to Grace’s place. I know where everything is. But I’m telling you, we won’t find a thing. We all know she’ll barely take an aspirin for a headache. Even with that blasted laryngitis, she’d barely use throat spray for fear it would mess up her voice.”

  “Maybe we’re missing an important point,” Peter said. “The doc said she was poisoned. Poisoning’s something that’s done to a person, right? Not something they do themselves.”

  “That’s just a medical term,” Michael said.

  Peter crossed his arms over his chest. “Okay, smarty, then are you going to tell me Grace really has been sending herself those gifts and threatening messages? Because to me, it just seems like there might be some danger involved there. Somebody who would threaten her might follow through on it.”

  The room grew silent as the two men locked gazes. Delight felt a niggle at the back of her mind. What was she missing?

  She glanced at Denton. Who was he, really? What lengths would he go to for his daughter if he really wanted to help her in her career? And what about Mitzi? Could she be that vindictive over a simple embarrassment weeks ago?

  Kathryn reached for Michael’s arm. “What if Peter’s right? Grace kept trying to dismiss those notes as some kind of prank or publicity stunt, but I’ve been worried about her ever since this whole mess began. Someone had access to her credit card. What else did they have access to?”

  “Somebody really could be poisoning her?” Blake asked.

  “That’s crazy,” Denton said. “Stop grasping for straws and find out what’s really going on.”

  “No, wait a minute, maybe someone’s been slippin’ something into her food, or…” Delight caught her breath and sat up straight. “Oh, her water! I saw Cassidy hauling an armload of water bottles to the stage tonight, and he replaced hers with the ones he was carrying. At the time I just thought he was being nice and replacing her used ones, but he did glance over his shoulder as if checking to see if anyone saw him doing it. What if—”

  “What if there’s something in that water.” Michael’s face suddenly lost some color. “Her doctor recommended she change brands, so she stopped drinking her own brand of bottled water a couple of weeks ago and started drinking from the community cooler until she could buy a different brand. When she drank from the cooler for a few days I didn’t hear her complain one time about her throat.”

  “Are you saying Cassidy Ryder might have poisoned Grace?” Denton asked, rising from his seat at last.

  “I’m sayin’ it’s a possibility we’d better not ignore.” Delight pushed her chair aside and joined Denton at the door.

  “Think about poor old Henry,” Peter said. “Everybody says he died of natural causes, but what if someone did him in, too?”

  “Think Cassidy could find something from the operating room to poison Grace?” Blake asked. “He’s a scrub tech, remember?”

  “And Cassidy resented Grace,” Delight said. “He’d said a few things about her manufacturing her own breaks and not playing fair.”

  “Cassidy Ryder, of course!” Mitzi said. “Michael, remember the day I told you and Grace about the fight I overheard between Henry and someone else? Later on, after they decided Henry died of natural causes, I remembered walking out into the parking lot that day and seeing a carload of teenagers nearly clip the front fender of Cassidy’s Escalade. That means he was in the theater somewhere at the time. He might’ve been the one Henry was fighting with.”

  “What were they fighting about?” Denton asked.

  “Something about nose jobs and recognizing faces and having a long memory,” Mitzi said. “I didn’t understand it.”

  “Henry mentioned something like that the night he chewed everybody out,” Blake said. “Remember? When he told Cassidy to straighten out his act, he said, ‘Ryder—or whatever you’re calling yourself these days.’ I remember it struck me odd, because we didn’t know Cassidy had a stage name.”

  Peter snorted. “You mean like Blake Montana?”

  “Hey,” Blake said, “I was born in Montana, okay? My agent suggested it.”

  “So what’s your real name?”

  “Could we get back to the subject?” Michael pulled his billfold from his pocket and took a card from it. He handed it to Kathryn. “You have a cell phone, don’t you?”

  She took the card and looked at it. “You want me to call the police?”

  “That’s the number of the detective who questioned me on Henry’s case. You stay here and wait to see Grace, but call this woman. Tell her what we suspect about the poisonings, and send her with a cavalry to the theater. I’m going to find out if Cassidy’s still there.” Since the hospital was so close to the theater, he had a chance to beat the police there.

  He suddenly remembered his conversation with Grace the same night that Henry had made the crack about Cassidy’s identity. Who was Cassidy Ryder? And if he was who Michael suspected he might be, why had he suddenly flipped out again after all these years?

  Michael pulled into the cast parking lot of the Classical Impressions Theater. The police had not yet arrived, but they would any moment. He couldn’t be sure he’d find Cassidy here, even though the guy’s SUV was parked in the far corner as usual, out of the high traffic area.

  Ladonna met Michael in the lobby. “What’s going on? Grace out of danger?”

  “She’s still in trouble,” Michael said. “Have you seen Cassidy?”

  “Sure. Last I saw him he was upstairs in Denton’s office.”

  “You mean Henry’s office.”

  Ladonna gave him a puzzled frown. “You know Denton’s taken it over so he can monitor the show and nag us every time we get—hey, where are you going?”

  Michael took the stairs two at a time. “I’m going to have a talk with Cassidy. Send the police up when they arrive.”

  When he reached the office he shoved the door open and burst into the room, where he found Cassidy sitting at the desk reading some sheet music.

  Cassidy glanced up. “How’s it going? Grace all right?”

  Rage shot through Michael with frightening power, and he barely resisted the urge to leap the desk and grab the jerk by the shirt collar. “I’d have expected a little more concern than that. Most of the other cast members are either already at the hospital or are headed in that direction. I can’t help wondering why you don’t seem to care.”

  Cassidy dropped the sheet he’d been reading. “What’s eating you?”

  “Does the name Wes Reinhold mean anything to you?”

  A flick of Cassidy’s lids betrayed him. He swallowed, hesitating a little too long. “Should it?”

  “Too bad we can’t ask Henry that question. I hear Wes threatened to kill him once, years ago. Looks like maybe Henry did something to make him mad again, and this time good old Wes got the job done.”

  Cassidy slowly stood up from the desk where he had no right to be sitting in the first place. “Are you having an emotional crisis, Michael?” he asked softly.

  “Not me. It’s possible Henry had an emotional crisis and threatened his old acquaintance, though. Perhaps even to blackball him from Branson again? Or to expose him and ruin his career? Wes obviously has a temper problem.”

  “You’re talking nonsense, Michael.” Cassidy’s voice was tight with te
nsion.

  Michael glanced at his watch. The police should be here any minute. “You know, it’s difficult to work with people so closely day after day and not get to know them pretty well. In this case a few of us in the cast did some calculating and ended up with an interesting total.”

  “For instance?”

  “You’ve had a special opportunity most of us general theater grunts don’t have. You work in a surgical suite, with access to all kinds of wonder drugs that the surgeon uses to control his patients’ bodily responses.”

  “So I’m special.” Cassidy slid his hands into his pockets and leaned against the desk, obviously attempting to look casual.

  “Special enough to think you have a right to poison a co-worker with one of those drugs?”

  “Why would you even say such a thing? No one has that kind of right.”

  “I called a friend of mine on my way here,” Michael said. “Ever heard of Nathan Trask? He’s the pharmacist in Hideaway. We’ve been good friends for a lot of years.”

  “Is that supposed to impress me?” Cassidy asked.

  “Maybe it should. Nathan told me about a drug that’s used in surgery called glycopyrrolate.” Michael watched Cassidy’s face closely as a muscle clenched in the man’s jaw. “It tends to dry the mucus membranes to keep a patient from salivating during surgery. It also tends to dry out the throat and can really mess up the voice of a singer, especially if that singer isn’t aware of what’s in her drinking water.”

  Some of the high color drained from Cassidy’s face.

  “It seems old Wes has been resurrected and wreaked some vengeance on some of his former foes,” Michael said. “At least two of them.”

  Cassidy straightened from the desk and paced slowly to the window overlooking the theater. “Speculation doesn’t catch a judge’s attention.”

  “No, but it makes for some interesting discoveries,” Michael said.

  The window was open, and for a moment Michael thought Cassidy might close it. He didn’t.

  “You sent that first music box to her, didn’t you?” Michael said. “What happened, Cassidy—did she beat you out of the contest Henry put on for amateurs all those years ago? So you threatened to expose her for cheating. But then you killed Henry. Exposing Grace could expose you. And then you decided to try to beat her out of the starring role by ruining her voice. Why didn’t you slip that drug into my water? I’m the one in your way here on this show, not Grace. I’m the male lead.”

  Cassidy sighed and turned away from the window. “If I were going to harm someone—which, of course, I would never do—then you wouldn’t be a good candidate. You’re leaving the show after this season is over.”

  “And you know that because…?”

  “I hear a lot when others aren’t listening. I heard you calling Kirksville and setting up classes for the spring semester. You’re going back to school.”

  Michael resisted the urge to yank Cassidy forward by the shirt collar and force further admission from him. “So you only meant to ruin her career, not kill her? Hurt her reputation with the bad publicity by telling Jolene about things you overheard here backstage? But it didn’t hurt Grace’s career.”

  Cassidy didn’t reply.

  “Then you realized the publicity was only helping Grace,” Michael said. “So you took it a step further, found her personal information and charged the Lladró to her, then made sure Jolene discovered that dirty little bit of information.”

  Cassidy’s gaze slid away from Michael. “Grace Brennan can do no wrong in this town.”

  “And you also poisoned her water with a drug you knew, from personal experience, would hurt her voice,” Michael continued, his own voice trembling with fury.

  “It never happened,” Cassidy said.

  “You were observed tampering with Grace’s bottled water tonight.” Michael took a step closer, forcing Cassidy to look at him. “Something you’ve obviously been doing for quite some time, injecting the drug into the bottles when she wasn’t around.” Michael wished he’d taken better notice the day Grace’s bottle leaked before she even broke the seal on the lid. “Funny thing about that drug—it makes a person thirsty, and even as they drink, they get thirstier, especially when the very water they’re drinking is laced with the stuff.”

  Cassidy smiled. “You’re pretty smart, for a med school dropout.” Before Michael realized what had happened, Cassidy stepped close. His hands came from his pockets, targeting Michael’s throat.

  Michael reached up to block him, but too late. He felt sharp pricks of pain on each side of his neck.

  “See what happens when you lose your temper?” Cassidy growled. “Those jugulars become mighty prominent.”

  The pain raced down Michael’s neck, and he choked and fell back. With the swiftness of flowing blood, weakness played havoc with his arms and legs. He glimpsed what Cassidy held in his hands—two yellow tubes that resembled portable epinephrine pens.

  He’d received a double dose of pure adrenaline directly into his veins.

  Cassidy grabbed Michael by the shirtsleeve and jerked him toward the window. Michael stumbled to a stop, but his responses weakened as his heart suddenly threatened to beat out of his chest.

  Cassidy shoved Michael’s head through the open window, giving him an unwanted glimpse of the catwalk a few yards down, and then farther, at the dangerous drop into the theater below.

  “I didn’t mean to risk Grace’s life,” Cassidy said. “I just wanted to see to it she didn’t get all the breaks.”

  Michael tried to struggle, but the drug stayed his movements as if someone had poured thick, fast-acting glue over his limbs. It was the exact opposite of the response he would have expected. The double dose of epinephrine had combined with his natural adrenaline to overtax his heart.

  “You could be tried for attempted murder,” Michael said through lips that felt stiff and thick. “And if Grace dies, you could get Murder One.”

  “How are you feeling now, Michael?” Cassidy asked softly. “Feel like a little bungee jumping?”

  Michael’s ears roared with sound as he reluctantly turned his head and gazed at the theater seats far below.

  Was this what Henry had faced? Cassidy and his epi pens. If he’d used the same thing on Henry, it could easily have caused heart failure. That was why the autopsy suggested he had died of natural causes. Since epinephrine was adrenaline, no tests would have picked up on the excess in Henry’s system.

  Michael’s own heart felt as if it would burst, breaking a few ribs in the process. He reached for the sill, but Cassidy grabbed his shoulders and shoved him hard through the window.

  Michael’s head whacked the top of the sill. He thrust his arms out to catch himself, but Cassidy shoved him again. Michael’s hand snagged the windowsill for a precious few seconds, then he tumbled backward into empty air.

  Before he could open his mouth to cry out, he landed on something solid. The breath burst from his lungs. The catwalk had stopped his fall.

  Seconds later Cassidy landed beside him with the agility of a panther, then reached for Michael’s shoulders. Michael scrambled backward. Cassidy followed and shoved again, this time harder.

  Michael fell against the railing, and heard a sickening sound of cracking wood as the rail weakened with the impact of his body. Cassidy came at him like a charging bull and shoved with all his might. The railing broke away. Michael felt himself falling and reached up to snag the edge of the catwalk.

  He caught a guide wire with his left hand, crying out as the wire tore into his flesh. Cassidy screamed as he went tumbling past Michael, his body arcing into the shadows.

  Cassidy landed with an awful thud on the theater floor.

  Grace grew aware of a tight stiffness in her throat, and of distant voices. She raised her hand to her throat and tried to call out, then gagged.

  Gentle hands grasped hers. “It’s okay, Grace. You’re at the hospital and we have you intubated, so you can’t talk, but it’s help
ing you breathe.”

  She opened her eyes with difficulty, then winced at the brightness of the room. A doctor in a white coat stood over her, smiling. She tried to smile back, and gagged again.

  “Relax for us, please. Everything’s going to be okay. Your heart is stabilizing. You gave us quite a scare for a while.”

  She heard the sound of a heart monitor somewhere nearby.

  “Grace, do you remember taking any kind of medication that might have given you this reaction?”

  She reached for her throat again. She couldn’t talk!

  “Just blink once for yes, twice for no,” the doctor said.

  She blinked twice, wondering if the tube in her throat would damage her voice.

  “It’s good to see you back among the living,” the doctor continued. “You’re doing better. We were concerned we might have lost you earlier tonight.”

  Grace shot the doctor a startled look. She could have died? Without ever forgiving her father? Without ever telling Michael she loved him? Without accomplishing the things in her life that she felt God intended her to accomplish?

  Oh, Lord, let me live. Let me make up for things I’ve left undone. Give me a chance to right some of my wrongs. She needed to tell the truth to her fans. Pride had kept her from it for so long. Time to come clean. Even if it meant nothing to anyone else, it meant something to her.

  A new voice joined in as a dark-haired male nurse stepped beside the bed. “Your mother’s about to break down the door to see you, and half your hometown and most of your fans have either descended on the waiting room or have the phone lines tied up. I hope you hurry up and recover, Ms. Brennan, because you’re a handful to keep around here.”

  Grace blinked once. She wanted out, too.

  Blake lay on his stomach and grasped Michael’s left hand with both of his own. “Let go of the wire, Michael. Peter’s here beside me. He’ll grab your other hand and we’ll get you up.”

  For a moment Michael hesitated, though he could see Peter lying on his stomach beside Blake, hands outstretched.

  Other footsteps echoed on the catwalk as Michael’s hand slid on the wire, slick with sweat and probably blood.