by Julie Miller
Trent’s nostrils flared with a deep, quiet breath as the cop in him took over once more. He was here to keep Katie and Tyler as safe as they’d let him and to put a name to any threat that might mean them harm. Whether that threat was a frightened intruder; a cast or crewmate with some kind of bitter feelings or obsession toward Katie or Tyler; a convicted killer who might be using a mob boss and his connections to take revenge on the family who’d put him away for life; or even the mob boss himself, who was taking advantage of the inside knowledge he could gain on Katie in some bizarre plan to thwart the cold case squad’s investigation into him and his activities—he couldn’t leave the family alone and unguarded. No matter how awkward things got between him and Katie, no matter how angry she got at his interference—no matter how painful it was for him to be close and not have what he’d once wanted—he wasn’t going anywhere.
The Rinaldis and finding answers to this complicated mix of unsolved cases were his number-one assignment now.
Trent carefully returned the letter to the pocket of Katie’s coat and smoothed everything back into place. Then, while the Spirit of Christmas Future and Ebenezer Scrooge resumed their journey through the bleak future that awaited a man who refused to change his miserly ways, Trent pulled out his phone and sent a couple of queries to the KCPD database, checking to see whether Doug Price or Francis Sergel had any kind of criminal record or had been listed as a person of interest in any ongoing cases.
Interesting. Francis Sergel’s name didn’t show up anywhere until about ten years ago on a DMV app, and the guy had to be in his late forties or fifties. That most likely meant a legal name change for any number of reasons, from annoying enough people in his previous life and needing a fresh start to entering witness protection or something more nefarious. A man with only a recent past also meant a search through databases that Katie would have to access for him. But who would change his name to Francis? Or Sergel? Unless there was some kind of personal significance to the name. That was something else Katie could find quick answers to if he put her on the hunt.
And then there was Douglas Price. His fingerprints were in the system because he used to be a public school teacher. But there was nothing more than a few speeding tickets in his history.
Scrooge was dancing a jig with his nephew’s wife and celebrating Christmas when a shadow fell over Trent.
“Don’t get on my case about working when I’m off the clock if you’re going to do it, too.” Katie plopped down in the seat beside him, hugging her bulky canvas carryall bag in her arms. “Did something come up?”
Trent brushed his finger over his phone to darken the screen. “I was doing a little background check on a couple of your friends here.” The dent between her delicate eyebrows instantly appeared. But he wasn’t going to lie to her about his concerns. “Did you know Francis doesn’t show up in the system until around ten years ago?” He nodded toward her bright green-and-blue bag. “You got something in that magic computer of yours that can tell me why he changed his name and who he used to be? Or at least give me an idea why he’d pick that name?”
“Francis?” She opened the flap of her bag and pulled out her laptop. “You think he’s suspicious?”
“I’m a cop, Katie. I’m suspicious of everyone until I have an explanation that makes sense.” He clipped his phone back onto his belt and rested his forearm on the chair between them. “I just want to make sure we’ve got nothing to worry about from any of the people around you.”
“I told you last night I probably got in the way of an intruder.”
“Then why mess with the lights? Why go to the extra effort to threaten you?”
“You think someone here... That Francis would...?” She pulled out a smaller remote gadget, turned it on and set it on the chair beside her. Then she dropped her bag to the floor and set her laptop on her knees. “Okay. What do you want me to look up? Legal cases? Witness relocation? Criminal profiling reports?” She reached over and tapped the back of his hand as she turned her open laptop toward him, urging him to look at the display screen. “Trent?”
“Son of a bitch.” Trent felt his temperature go up, even as her fingers chilled against his skin.
There was a message scrawled in lipstick across the screen.
Stop what you’re doing.
“That message last night was meant for me.”
CHAPTER SIX
Max Krolikowski strode onstage to join Katie, Tyler and the other members of the production company Trent had gathered to ask a few questions. Max dangled a plastic bag with a tube of lipstick inside. “I found this in the makeup supplies in the dressing rooms. The tip’s worn flat and it looks like a match to the color on Katie’s laptop. The case has been polished up, though.” He glanced down at Katie, sitting in one of the dining table chairs on the set. “Either you guys are fanatics about cleaning up, or somebody’s wiped it for prints.”
She appreciated Trent’s partner answering the call as soon as Trent had phoned and requested backup—“Somebody got to Katie again.”
But right now she was wishing Max wasn’t such a good cop and that the evidence relating to that disturbing message hadn’t been so easy to find. Katie shook her head, not liking the implication. “We’re not fanatics.”
There was no longer a plausible option to dismiss the weird things that had happened to her at the theater. Someone was watching her. Someone was taking advantage of the opportunity to frighten her. And he was succeeding. She’d made a life for herself behind the scenes now—at work, at the theater—putting her son first. Being thrust into the spotlight by an anonymous stalker didn’t feel so good.
Trent thanked the mother who’d been taking pictures with her phone and dismissed her and her daughter. “Let’s take the tube, anyway. Maybe the lab can get a latent or DNA off it or the laptop.” His big shoulders lifted with a shrug that Katie didn’t find very reassuring. “So far, everybody’s been cooperative, but no one saw anyone or anything that seemed out of place backstage. That makes me suspect someone here, whose presence wouldn’t be questioned. Someone who’s better at lying than I am at detecting it. I’m not sure where to take this next.”
“You’ll figure it out, junior. We just keep asking questions,” Max advised, dropping the lipstick into the paper sack where her computer had already been tagged and bagged as evidence. He rolled up the top of the sack, then paused when he saw Katie watching him. “You’re okay if I do this, kiddo? Will you need this for work tomorrow? I know you and your computer are attached at the hip.”
Attached at the hip, hmm? Apparently, not closely enough.
“It’s okay, Max,” she assured him. “I ran a quick diagnostic myself. It doesn’t look as though anyone messed with any of the files or programs, and I have everything backed up on a portable hard drive. Plus, I have a desk computer at home and at work.”
Katie rubbed her hands up and down her arms, trying to erase the chill beneath her cardigan and blouse. She couldn’t help but let her gaze scan the faces of the remaining cast and crew sitting onstage or in the audience seats. Had the makeup kit from the dressing rooms merely been an item of opportunity for an outsider? Or was someone involved with the play a better actor than anyone suspected? And what did any of this have to do with her?
Trent’s cool gray eyes passed over her, winking a silent version of hang in there before he turned to Doug Price and repeated the question he’d already asked. “Did you see anything that looked out of place earlier this evening? Anyone you didn’t recognize?”
Doug’s grayish-blond eyebrow arched up with disdain. “Besides you?”
Max folded his arms over his sturdy chest. “Answer the question.”
Perhaps thinking better of crossing the detectives who’d taken over his rehearsal, Doug eased his taut features into an imitation of a smile. “Look, I’m as concerned about Katie’s safety�
�about the safety of everyone here—as you are, Detective. The entire cast and crew were here tonight. In fact, I think it’s the first time since we started rehearsing that no one’s been absent because of illness or a conflict. The kids all have a parent or guardian who comes to rehearsals with them, too. I won’t allow any of the little minions to be unsupervised.”
“So you’re saying there were more people than usual here tonight,” Trent clarified. “And you knew all of them?”
Doug considered his answer for a moment before crossing to the edge of the stage and pointing to the back corner of the auditorium. “There was a man here filming the scenes with the children. I’d never seen him before. I assumed he was a father who’d come instead of the moms who are usually here.”
“Oh, my God.” Katie’s stomach twisted into a knot. There’d been a strange man filming Tyler and the other children? She instantly sought out her son, playing a card game with Wyatt on the stairs leading down to the seats. He must have felt her concern because he looked up at her and frowned. Damn it. She was worrying him again. Better than most, she knew what it was like to be afraid for a mother’s safety. She shouldn’t be scaring him.
A large hand closed over her shoulder. She glanced up at the sudden infusion of warmth and support. But Trent was asking her for information as much as calming her fears. “Did you recognize this man?”
Her gaze drifted out of focus, trying to visualize the man she’d only glanced at in passing. “I didn’t know him. But I assumed the same thing—that he was someone’s dad.”
“Can you describe him?”
“The camera was in front of his face when I saw him. Brown hair. Brown wool coat. Um, dress shoes instead of snow boots.” She blinked her eyes back into focus. “His camera was a digital Canon with a mini zoom lens. Black woven strap around his neck. Sorry, that still doesn’t give you a name or face.”
Trent grinned. “Leave it to you to notice the tech. And don’t apologize. This is a lot more than I knew a second ago.” Even as he jotted down the limited description, she saw him checking the people remaining in the theater. Katie didn’t see anyone who matched her vague description, either.
“Trent?”
A tug on Trent’s sleeve turned him away from her. Katie watched her son’s eyes tip up to the man who towered above him.
“What is it, buddy?” Trent dropped to one knee, putting himself closer to eye level with Tyler. “Do you know the man I’m asking about?”
Tyler shook his head. “There wasn’t any dad here except for Kayla’s. She gets to stay with him this month, and it was his turn to watch us backstage. He doesn’t have much hair at all.”
Trent nodded at the matter-of-fact explanation. “What’s Kayla’s dad’s name?”
“Mr. Hudnall.”
When Trent glanced back at Katie, she filled in the blank for him. “Willie Hudnall. We all signed up to take different nights to supervise the children backstage. He was in the greenroom with the kids when I went back to fix Francis’s mask.”
“So he was there when your laptop was unprotected. He could have written that message there.”
She hated to think the man she’d been grateful to for checking on Tyler twenty-four hours ago might now be a suspect. “My point is, I would have recognized him if he’d been the man in the audience. We all would have. Plus, Mr. Hudnall was wearing hiking boots, not dress shoes.”
Max nodded to Trent and pulled out his phone. “I’ll give the description we have to campus security. Find out if they’ve seen anyone like that.”
While Max took a few steps away and made the call, Katie gestured to the others remaining for this official Q and A. “There are more than two dozen people backstage at any given time. More if you count the crew. Any one of them could have...” She pulled Tyler onto her lap and hugged her arms around him. She looked again. Looked closer. Maybe the enemy was right here. A friend in disguise. One of the people she trusted—one of the people she trusted with her son.
Trent rose in front of her, reading her distress. “Any one of them could have left you that message.”
“But why? What am I doing that’s such a threat to anyone? I’d rather think it was that stranger. I know these people. I’ve been hanging out with them almost every evening for weeks now. Some of them have become friends.” She shoved her fingers through her bangs, willing some sort of clarity to reveal the truth. “What does it mean? What am I doing that I have to stop?”
A noisy harrumph from the front row drew Trent’s attention. “You got something to say, Mr. Sergel?”
Francis might have cleaned off his makeup, but wearing street clothes as black as the costume he wore in the play, and taking the stairs two at a time on his long, spidery legs, he still bore an ominous look that would keep Katie from ever trusting the man. “Just that Ms. Rinaldi keeps flirting with our director.”
“Excuse me?” What was wrong with this guy to give him such a petulant mean streak? “I don’t flirt with anybody.”
Although he spoke to Trent, his beady, dark eyes were focused squarely on Katie. “Maybe someone resents that she’s drawing attention to herself and trying to make her or Tyler Doug’s favorite.”
Katie shot to her feet, holding on to Tyler’s shoulders to keep him from tumbling to the floor. “Are you kidding me? I haven’t done anything to make Doug think—”
“Doug’s the one who keeps hitting on Mom,” Tyler piped up.
The director’s head swung around, as if he’d dozed off during the part of the conversation that didn’t concern him. “I beg your pardon?” He took a step closer. “I was simply being friendly. You keep to yourself so much, I wanted you to feel included.”
“My mom doesn’t even like you, and you’re too old to be a dad,” Tyler argued. “You should leave her alone.”
“Tyler!” More shocked by her son’s choice of defense than by Doug lying about his interest in her, Katie turned him to face her. “What do you know about men hitting on women?”
“Mo-om.” Tyler rolled his eyes. “I watch TV. I know stuff. And I watch you, too. Doug’s always asking you to go somewhere after rehearsal.”
“And I always say no.”
Trent stopped the mother-son conversation with a hand on her arm and turned their attention back to Francis. “Are you jealous, Sergel?”
“I only have the best interests of this production in mind.”
“If the boss is paying more attention to the pretty lady than to the show onstage, that bothers you?”
“Well, of course it does. I think it bothers all of us.”
“So you have a problem with Katie and Mr. Price being friends,” Trent reasoned. “Would you like her to stop doing that?”
Francis lifted his pointy chin. “I am not answering any more questions without my attorney present.”
“Have you done something to make you think you need an attorney?” Francis was tall. But Trent was taller. And bigger. He forced Francis to take a step back just by leaning toward him. “Did you deface Katie’s computer? Maybe wanted to teach her a lesson? Remind her of her place? You were backstage for most of the play.”
“Stop twisting my words around.”
But Trent Dixon didn’t back down. “I saw you snap at more than one person tonight, including Tyler and Katie. Maybe you’re the one who wants to be the director’s favorite.”
“I refuse to answer any of your accusations. I only want the best show possible, and these two amateurs—”
“We’re all amateurs, Francis.” Doug Price pulled Francis back beside him. “Stop talking before you say something you’ll regret.” He turned to the others watching from the audience. “Everyone, please. Detective Dixon, there are children here and it’s late. May I send them home? This is all very upsetting and counterproductive to putting on a successful play, and opening
night is Friday. I don’t think you’ll find out anything more tonight. You can get everyone’s contact information from Katie’s cast-and-crew list if you have more questions. No one knows who this man with the camera was, but I promise you, if he shows his face again, I’ll demand he identify himself.”
“I want to know what he took pictures of, too.”
“Of course.” Doug clapped his hands, ensuring that everyone was following his directions and moving toward the backstage exit. “Shall we? I’m sure campus security is waiting to lock up after us.”
Trent nodded. “Tell them to go ahead. We’ll be right out. Thank you to everyone for your cooperation.” Although his smile included the cast, crew and parents filing past them, he had nothing but I’m watching you in his eyes for Francis, who didn’t move until Doug gave him a nudge and a warning glare.
Doug himself was the last one of the interview group to leave the stage, but he paused and brushed his fingers against Katie’s elbow. When she flinched, his grip tightened in a paternal squeeze, and she looked up into light brown eyes that seemed genuinely concerned. “I’m sorry this is happening to you, dear. I hope you’ll do whatever is necessary to stay safe.”
“Thank you, Doug.”
He released her to give Tyler’s chin a playful pinch. “Be sure to keep our Tiny Tim safe, too.”
“I will.”
Trent urged the director to follow the rest of the cast and crew. “Good night, Mr. Price.”
Doug’s cajoling smile disappeared. “Good night, Detective.”
As soon as Doug had disappeared offstage with the others, Tyler rubbed his knuckles back and forth across his chin. “I hate when he does that. He treats me like I’m a little kid.”
Salty tears stung Katie’s eyes as her little kid showed yet another sign of growing up too fast. Despite his token grumble, she pressed a kiss to the crown of his hair and ruffled the dark curls before nudging him to the stairs. “Get your coat on and gather your things. Don’t forget your library book for school.”