“We’re going to wait until we’re good and sure that everyone is sound asleep for the night, and then we’re going to take a little ride.”
The phone rang in Annabelle’s room.
“Hello,” she answered groggily.
“It’s me. Caroline. I need your help.”
Annabelle sat up and turned on the light. “What’s wrong?”
“I think Victoria Sterling might have had something to do with Belinda’s disappearance. It’s too long to go into now, but can you please get over to Meg’s dorm and see if she’s there? Bang on the doors and wake the whole place up if you have to. I’m going back to the theater to see if I can find Meg there.”
Caroline shook the handles, desperate to get inside. The front doors of the theater were locked. She banged on the glass, but no one came.
She looked around for help. The grounds were completely deserted. Trying to think clearly, she decided to try the back doors. As she came around the corner, her worst fears were realized when she saw the two figures coming out of the rear of the building.
Meg felt the point of the scissors pressed against her back as she was escorted down the ramp that sloped from the rear of the theater to the entrance of the parking deck.
“Meg!”
She had never been happier to hear a voice in her whole life. Meg turned to see Caroline running toward her. Victoria turned to look as well.
In that instant, Meg broke away, running just three or four feet before Victoria realized what was happening. The older woman propelled herself forward and lunged at Meg, pinning her to the ground. Victoria poised the scissors at Meg’s neck, the sharp points pressed against her jugular. Victoria struggled to her feet, forcing Meg to stand up with her.
“Get over here,” Victoria called to Caroline, “or I’ll slice her throat right now. And don’t try anything funny, because you’ll be amazed how fast I can move.”
“Like you did with that poor librarian.” Caroline felt her pulse pounding.
“What happened to her was her fault. She should have minded her own business.”
“I guess those poor kids deserved what they got, too?” asked Caroline, stalling for time as she tried to figure out what to do.
“Again. Their fault, not mine. They shot themselves in the foot with technology, taking a picture that could have made me look bad,” said Victoria. “How would it look to the Pulitzer Prize committee? When you’re aiming at a world-class award, you don’t need any adverse publicity.”
Caroline was stunned at the lack of emotion in Victoria’s voice. It was as if she was attaching no value to her victims’ lives. “It must be nice when nothing is ever your fault,” she said. “When you’re able to justify anything you do, even murder. How does it feel, never having to worry about right and wrong?”
“Quit stalling and get over here,” commanded Victoria, pressing the scissors more tightly against Meg’s neck. “Don’t think I’m kidding.”
Seeing the stricken look on Meg’s face, and with no other choice, Caroline did as she was told.
Annabelle jogged from the dorm to the theater. She hoped that Caroline had found Meg, because the young woman wasn’t in her room.
As she ran up the path that led to the main entrance of the Playhouse, she noticed a Volvo pull out of the driveway from the parking deck.
C H A P T E R
135
Inside the car trunk, Caroline and Meg were pressed together, barely able to move. Caroline could hear her stepdaughter whimpering in the darkness.
“Meg,” she whispered, “try to get ahold of yourself, honey, please. There must be a way we can get out of this.”
“How?” Meg cried. “When we get to wherever she’s taking us, she’s going to kill us. Maybe she’ll get a gun…. Maybe she’ll just leave us in here to suffocate.”
“Stop it, Meg,” hissed Caroline. “Stop it right now. We’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do to get away from her.”
The car took a curve in the road. Caroline and Meg were pushed closer together. It was then that Caroline spotted the thing that could lead them to safety.
First Caroline Enright, the girl’s stepmother; then Nick McGregor, the girl’s father; and now Annabelle Murphy, a producer for KEY News. That made three callers worried about Meg McGregor, a Warrenstown Summer Playhouse apprentice. Nick McGregor and the KEY News producer both claimed that Victoria Sterling might have something to do with the girl’s disappearance, as well as Belinda Winthrop’s. That was enough to convince the night officer to call Chief Stanley at home.
“When the car stops, we should be able to hear her walking around to the trunk. Just as she gets here, we’ll surprise her.”
“What if she doesn’t come back here?” whispered Meg. “What if she goes off to get something better than a pair of scissors to kill us with?”
“Sooner or later, she’ll come to us,” Caroline whispered with more conviction than she felt.
With one hand on the steering wheel, Victoria leaned over and unlocked the glove box, fumbling through its contents. Underneath the driver’s manual she’d never bothered to read, she felt the cool metal handle of her gun.
When you had two troublemakers to deal with, a pair of scissors just wouldn’t do it.
They could hear the difference in sound as the car turned off the smooth macadam of the roadway onto the crushed stone.
“I think she’s taken us to Curtains Up. We’re on the driveway,” whispered Caroline. She told Meg her plan and then insisted, “Now, no matter what happens, Meg, I want you to stay here in the trunk.”
The Volvo pulled to a stop. The driver’s door opened and then closed.
Caroline’s hand gripped the fluorescent safety release handle on the inside of the trunk lid.
Chief Stanley listened to his night officer’s report.
“Only time will tell if that kid is really missing,” Stanley concluded, “but if Victoria Sterling has had something to do with Belinda Winthrop’s disappearance, we can’t afford to wait until morning.”
The sound of the footsteps stopped outside the trunk.
“Now,” whispered Caroline. She pushed upward on the trunk lid with the only arm she could move, while Meg was able use her foot to kick outward. It was enough to catch Victoria off guard, and she fell back, hitting her head on the ground.
Caroline and Meg struggled to untangle themselves while Victoria faltered, trying to clear her head. As she came to a sitting position, Caroline spotted the gun still clutched in Victoria’s hand.
There was no answer on either Caroline’s cell or hotel room phone, and Annabelle was worried.
Maybe the cops were going to follow up on her call and maybe they weren’t, but Annabelle wasn’t going to wait around any longer.
Still, she didn’t want to go to Curtains Up by herself. She called Lamar and Boomer, waking them up, and told them to get dressed.
Caroline’s struggle to get her balance as she climbed out of the trunk gave Victoria enough time to get to her own feet. The two women found themselves standing face-to-face, just a few yards apart. Victoria took aim at Caroline.
“You can shoot if you want, but that would be awfully stupid of you,” Caroline shouted. “I’ve already told KEY News about my suspicions that you had something to do with Belinda’s disappearance.”
Victoria shook her head. “Suspicions aren’t proof. Nobody was ever convicted on suspicions.”
“The police will be interested, Victoria, when KEY News tells them I thought you were linked to Belinda—and a witness tells them that he saw you walking up from the road in the middle of the night that your husband died—at the time you said you were sleeping alone in your bed.”
“I don’t believe you. If there was a witness, why didn’t he come forward then? Who’s this witness of yours?”
Caroline was conscious that Meg could hear her. She wanted to shield her stepdaughter, but no matter what happened tonight, it was all going to come out eve
ntually. Nick would go to the police, and people would learn that he’d been unfaithful to his wife. There would be nasty gossip about it, but ultimately, only Caroline and Meg would be truly hurt. They’d only be hurt, though, if they survived. If the information might help save them, then it had to be used.
“Nick saw you.”
“Nick McGregor?”
“Yes,” said Caroline. “You killed your husband that night. It wasn’t an accident, was it?”
Victoria shifted her weight from one foot to the other before she spoke. “I was tired of sharing the limelight, tired of everyone thinking that he was the talent and I was just hanging on. Once I read the play that he’d been working on alone, I knew I wanted it to be mine.”
“So you killed him.”
“Some might view it that way.” Victoria shrugged. “But Daniel hadn’t been taking care of himself all summer. He wasn’t getting enough rest or eating the right things, and he was drinking way too much. He couldn’t get away with that because of his diabetes. After the party that night, he felt very weak, and when he went to get his insulin, there wasn’t any left. He hadn’t been keeping track.”
“I would think you would have. An observant wife would have,” said Caroline.
“Actually, I did know he was running low. I’d been waiting for just that opportunity.” A smile came to Victoria’s face. “It takes a while to die from insulin shock, though, and time was the one thing I didn’t have. Someone could have come to Daniel’s rescue. So I…” She seemed to relish the next words. “So I just helped things along.”
Despite the danger she was in, Caroline found herself fascinated as Victoria matter-of-factly recounted her story, showing no sorrow whatsoever.
“I told him I’d drive him to the hospital, and along the way, he got drowsy and then fell asleep. When we got to a nice, dark, deserted stretch of road, it was so easy to pull over and quietly open the car door. Once outside, all I had to do was reach in, put the car back in drive, and shove it over the edge.”
“But it looked like Daniel had been the driver when they found him, didn’t it?” Caroline coaxed.
“Yes, and that was the beauty of it. I climbed down into the gully to make sure he was dead and try to drag him over to the driver’s side of the front seat, but the car had toppled in such a way that Daniel’s body had shifted and he was already behind the steering wheel. After that, all I had to do was get home without anyone seeing me,” Victoria stated with pride.
Dr. Margo Gonzalez’s KTA segment flashed into Caroline’s mind. Victoria had shown no emotion as she described destroying four lives. She was taking an enormous risk recounting what she had done, but she did so, defiantly. She’d lied, manipulated, stolen, and murdered. Still, Victoria stood before her, bragging about it all, showing absolutely no remorse.
Victoria Sterling was a sociopath. She had no conscience.
The realization terrified Caroline, but she used all her determination not to show it. “So, it was as easy as that,” she said mockingly.
Victoria’s finger tightened on the trigger. “You are too smart for your own good, Caroline. Just like Belinda was. I still don’t know where the script that gave me away came from.”
“Belinda got it from Remington Peters.”
Victoria seemed to be digesting the information. “Daniel must have given Remington an early version,” she said.
And Remington was working off that, thought Caroline as she recalled the murderous expression on the face of his painting of Belinda’s Valerie.
“Where is she, Victoria?” asked Caroline. “What did you do to Belinda?”
Victoria didn’t answer. She had turned her head in the direction of the sound coming from the distance. Sirens were growing closer.
Caroline took advantage of the distraction. She lunged for the gun, grabbing it by the barrel with both hands and forcing Victoria’s arm into the air. As the two women wrestled for control of the weapon, Victoria pulled the trigger, and Meg screamed from inside the trunk when the bullet hit the back window of the Volvo.
With the sirens wailing louder and louder, Caroline forced Victoria to loosen her grip on the gun. It flew wildly out of Victoria’s hand, skittering across the gray stones and settling beneath the car.
Knowing there wasn’t enough time to retrieve it, Victoria pushed Caroline to the ground.
“Get out, Meg. Now!” screamed Caroline as she landed hard on the sharp stones.
Meg scrambled out of the trunk, tumbling onto the ground just as Victoria ran to the front of the Volvo, got in, and sped down the driveway.
SUNDAY
—— AUGUST 6 ——
C H A P T E R
136
Caroline and Annabelle stood by while the satellite truck operator fed the video to New York.
“Great stuff, great stuff,” Linus roared with enthusiasm from the Broadcast Center as he watched the images of red lights flashing against the night sky, milling law enforcement officers, and a late-model Volvo nose-down in a ditch, having been forced off the road by pursuing police cars. Victoria Sterling was seen being taken from the car and, able to walk on her own, being escorted to the backseat of a police vehicle.
“Nice work,” said the executive producer. “Do we know if she’s told the police anything about Belinda Winthrop?”
“If she has, the cops aren’t telling us,” said Annabelle. “But why would Victoria Sterling incriminate herself? Maybe her lawyer will swap information on the whereabouts of Belinda’s body for a plea bargain or something, but at this point Victoria wouldn’t be acknowledging her participation in anything.”
“All right,” said Linus. “But keep on top of it with the police.”
“Of course,” said Annabelle. “And, Linus, I think Caroline should be the one on air to report this story.”
“No go,” Linus answered. “Constance is up there. It’s got to be hers. But let’s use Caroline as an eyewitness.”
Police searched Victoria Sterling’s bedroom at Curtains Up. A computer owned by Meg McGregor was found at the back of the closet.
Chief Stanley waited while the German shepherd’s handler prepared the dog, making her familiar with Belinda’s scent.
“How that dog is gonna be able to home in on Belinda Winthrop is a mystery to me,” said the chief. “People have been all over this property.”
“Sure. It definitely would have been better if you’d had Daisy in here first,” replied the handler. “But she’s a busy lady, and she can’t be in two places at one time. She found a little boy who’d wandered away from home in Lenox yesterday.”
“Let’s hope she can find Belinda Winthrop today,” said Chief Stanley as he bent down to pet the tracking dog. “If she’s out there, we have to find her, and if she’s alive, she’ll need medical attention.”
“Sir, if there’s a chance in hell a dog can find her, Daisy will.”
The Sunday morning edition of KEY to America opened with an exclusive KEY News shot of Victoria Sterling in handcuffs as she was ushered into the Warrenstown Police Station, while Constance Young’s voice narrated.
“Is Belinda Winthrop alive? And will this woman reveal where the actress is? Police are trying to find out this morning, Sunday, August sixth.”
Lamar’s camera transmitted the images to the satellite truck, which in turn sent them to the Broadcast Center and on to viewers all around the world. Constance stood in front of the Warrenstown theater. Reporters from the other news networks and syndicated entertainment shows were scattered in various positions on the lawn. Most of them had already approached Annabelle to see if KEY News would share the video shot by Lamar and Boomer the night before, video the others had missed. The answer was a firm no. KEY to America was keeping the exclusive for itself.
While Constance recapped the events of the last days, Caroline waited for her cue to join the cohost.
“With us this morning is KEY News film and theater critic Caroline Enright, who has been up here this wee
k covering the Warrenstown Summer Playhouse, where her stepdaughter is apprenticing this summer. Caroline, you found yourself right in the middle of this thing. Tell us about it.”
Caroline summarized the pertinent points.
“So, Victoria Sterling admitted to you that she killed her husband two years ago, ran those two apprentices off the road, murdered the town librarian, and was responsible for Belinda Winthrop’s disappearance?” Constance asked.
Caroline nodded. “Of course, everyone is innocent until proven otherwise, but yes, Victoria Sterling admitted all that to me. My stepdaughter heard it as well.”
“And what was her reason?” asked Constance. “What could her motive have been?”
“I’d say ego and greed,” said Caroline. “She wanted to take credit for writing Devil in the Details, the play her husband had actually written. She wanted the praise, attention, and money that writing a Pulitzer Prize-winning play warrants. Nothing was going to get in her way.”
As soon as Caroline walked out of camera range, her cell phone sounded.
“Hi, Sunshine.”
“Hi, Nick.”
“You did a great job just now.”
“Thanks. Almost as good a performance as you and Belinda Winthrop in her dressing room and at her party the other night. No one would ever have suspected a thing.”
“Caroline, I want to explain.”
“It’s not something I really want to talk about on the phone,” said Caroline. “This should be done face-to-face.”
“I’m wrapping it up out here,” said Nick. “I think I can be back in New York tomorrow morning.”
“You know, Nick, even though what happened was before we were together, I’m scared. I’m afraid I won’t be able to trust you. If you were unfaithful to Maggie, you could be unfaithful to me.” She carefully considered her next words. “Yet, if you hadn’t come clean, if you hadn’t spoken up about Victoria when you did…” Her voice trailed off.
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