by Linda Barnes
Nothing. He could find nothing in the room. Five minutes to seven. Nothing! Spraggue closed his eyes, leaned back against the shelf.
What was he looking for? Something different, something unusual. He pressed his gloved fingers hard against his temples. Two days ago, three days ago, he’d been in that very dressing room. Was anything different now? He played it as an acting exercise. Start with yourself: what had he been wearing? Yes. He felt the nubby tweed of the jacket against his wrists, the smooth cotton of the cream-colored shirt. What sounds had he heard? Faint hammering from the wood shop. Yes. Caroline in blue, a silky royal-blue dress, belted, and precariously high heels. Smells: her cloying perfume and—
Spraggue opened startled eyes, flashed his beam of light into all the corners of the room, clicked it off. Faint sunlight trickled through the one high slit of a window. The orchids were gone.
Orchids in a vase. Orchids in Caroline’s hair. Orchids stolen. Orchids delivered daily. Spraggue touched his bare knuckles to the inside of the vase. Dry. No box, either. No square white florist’s box lying under the counter.…
But he’d seen a box, seen it just moments ago, a sudden shape in a cone of light. Where? Langford’s room? Eddie’s? The office? No. The room next to Darien’s office; the one with the connecting door. There, on the desk—
A sudden noise overhead shattered Spraggue’s reflections. Footsteps thumped across the ceiling. Too late.
“Looks okay,” came a distant voice, “but check it out real careful. I don’t like that car parked back there.”
“Right, Captain.”
Spraggue didn’t need the rank to recognize the voice: Menlo.
More steps. They went up, to the second-floor offices. Flat feet marched in the corridor: Menlo, patrolling the only path from the basement to the main floor.
Just get from a basement dressing room to a second-floor office and then out of the building without being spotted. Sure thing, Spraggue. While you’re at it, walk on water.
Spraggue traced the plan of the theater in his mind. One staircase from basement to first floor. Another staircase, twenty feet away down a straight corridor, from the first floor to the second. No other way up.
Menlo couldn’t stay all day, wouldn’t waste a man on stakeout. He could hide until the police were satisfied, wait them out.
He looked around. Not in Caroline’s dressing room. Menlo’s boots plodded overhead. Quickly, smoothly, Spraggue crept down the corridor, holding his breath as he passed the staircase. Destination: the wood shop. Full of machinery, piles of lumber, roomy closets: a far better locale for a game of hide-and-seek.
He recognized the trapdoor lift, passed it on the right, without thinking. Then he stood absolutely still, a faint smile twisting the corners of his mouth.
The lift was completely silent; it had to be. Several times no music covered its ascent during the show. The lift could get him up to the main level. After that? Who could say?
He abandoned the borrowed flashlight on a workbench. It was light enough now to do without. How did the lift operate? Surely not from the distant lighting booth; communication would be too difficult. Not from backstage. The elevator platform was bare of switches or levers. That would be too simple. But there, eight feet to the left, clamped to the wall: a power box. Yes. Dracula would assume his position on the platform. A stagehand would hit the button, propel the vampire magically upward.
Could he do it alone? Press the button, jump onto the platform, taking care to leave no dangling limbs behind. If the main power switch was on. He got ready—right hand back, extended toward the button, knees flexed, prepared to run.
The platform responded faster than he’d imagined. No startup drone, no gathering speed. It took off. By the time he threw himself aboard, it was shoulder-height.
Thank God the wooden platform was uneven. He got a good grip on a raised board, swung his right foot up. The ceiling came closer, the open square allotted to the lift a mere postage stamp. Spraggue’s left leg inched upward. His knee found solid ground. As the lift joined the stage floor, Spraggue lay thankfully huddled center stage.
With no windows, no lights, the stage was darker than sin. Spraggue cursed softly, regretted the lost flashlight. Intuition and instinct. Instinct had better get ready to take charge.
The staircase was temptingly close, just outside the double doors, but it might as well have been on some South Sea Island while Menlo’s boots beat drum messages on the floor.
Was there a direct route between the stage and the second-floor offices? The stage house went up three floors, catwalk at the top. Too high. The side boxes; those were about the right height. The theater plans flashed back into Spraggue’s head. The stage-left box. If there was any doorway, any window, it would be there.
A steel spiral staircase, little better than a fireman’s pole, was the only path to the box. Spraggue groped his way up the narrow flight on hands and knees, tiny pencil flash clenched between his teeth.
The box was hung with heavy velvet curtains, a six-by-twelve room perched over the stage. The back wall should be the closest point to the offices, even a common wall. But was there a way through?
The velvet hangings were loose tapestries, covering bare walls. Choking with dust, Spraggue investigated beneath them, patting the walls with his hands in the impenetrable dark.
The voices were so muffled, Spraggue wasn’t sure they were real. But as he straightened up and moved to the right-hand corner of the box, they got clearer, louder, until he could make out sentences, distinguish tones.
“Nothing up here.” Menlo’s assistant.
“We’ll check out the basement.” The captain himself.
Just over his head, Spraggue could see a faint grillwork of light. No doors, no windows, just an innocent heating vent. Maybe three feet by two. Big enough, once the cops went below.
Holding his breath, he waited for the sound of the slamming door and the footsteps on the stairs, then reached up and began prodding the screen. One corner was loose. He pulled it back, leaving a five-inch open triangle. He’d need more room than that.
With a stepladder, full light, pliers, and a screwdriver, the job might have taken three minutes. Working in the dark, half-smothered by velvet curtains, arms stretched uncomfortably over his head, fumbling at the screw heads with a dime, Spraggue lost all sense of time. One screw dropped to the floor, muffled by carpeting. Two. Three. Another loose one gave way with no effort. Sweat dripped down his face. He wiped his hands on his pants. One more. Then he’d bend the screen back, find out exactly what was on the other side.
Done! Spraggue listened carefully, then thrust his hands through the opening. The wall was maybe six inches thick. His fingers could grab the other side. He pulled himself up, spreading his elbows to take his weight, resting on the sill.
It was an office, one he hadn’t seen before, empty except for a few sticks of furniture. He took a deep breath, hoisted himself up and through the narrow opening. Halfway, he rolled over, painfully. The vent was close enough to the ceiling to allow him a grip on the molding. Surprisingly, it took his weight. His hand found a water pipe, perfectly located. He chinned up on it. His legs scraped through the hole and he dropped silently to the floor.
This office, like the others, had connecting doors. He wouldn’t have to risk the corridor. He went through another deserted office, then found the one he wanted. He froze, listening. Footsteps, yes, but far away. The police were still in the basement. He was almost afraid to look around. What if that momentary image of a white florist’s box had been just that, an image only, a memory suggested by a square of white paper on a desk?
The box was there. Spraggue scooped it up, tucked it under his arm. Police in the basement; then this was his chance. He walked out of the office, took the steps in a reckless dive, and was out the employees’ entrance before he’d really weighed the risks of an escape.
Once outside, the path was clear. 2412 Westland Avenue. With a jaunty step, he heade
d toward Karen Snow’s apartment.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Karen’s place was exactly what he’d expected from the address, one of the crummier student apartments huddled near Symphony Hall. Dirty gold brick with seven crumbling concrete steps up to a front door complete with cracked glass panes. He pressed the doorbell under the printed card: K. SNOW. The buzzer went off almost immediately.
He hadn’t expected her to answer the door with such an expectant grin. But as she stared at him, the smile died on her pale face.
“Not all dressed up for me, are you?” he said ruefully, pushing past her unresisting body.
“I’m not—” she stammered. “You can’t—”
“Come in here? I’m already in.”
“Michael.” She steadied herself on the doorjamb. “Please leave.”
“Nope. Now that we’ve bypassed the formalities.… You’re waiting for Eddie, right?”
“Gene,” she corrected faintly. “I told him I was alone. I promised not to tell anyone—”
“Nice place,” Spraggue said. He took a few steps down the hall, turned left into the living room, set the white box down carefully on the coffee table. One of its legs—about an inch shorter than the other three—rested on an ashtray.
“Furnished and cheap,” Karen said, following him into the room. “Hot and cold running roaches. Will you leave?”
He studied the string wrapped around the white box. “Do you have a sharp knife?”
“Not sharp enough,” she said through clenched teeth.
“I don’t even think that’s funny.” He took out a pocketknife, selected a blade. “Do you have any eggs?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll make you breakfast after I open this. Scrambled with cream cheese and fresh chives. Orange juice.”
“If there’re any chives in my refrigerator, they’re growing out of moldy oranges.”
“Rain check. Butter?”
“Margarine. Maybe.”
Spraggue wrinkled his nose.
“What’s in the box?” Karen sighed and sat in a faded wing chair.
“You’ve given up on tossing me out? What’s in the box is trivial, just life or death.”
“Looks like one of Lady Caroline’s.”
“It is.”
Karen giggled, raised a quick hand to her mouth. “And you’re going to violate it?”
“You sound pleased.”
“I can’t remember the last time I laughed. The cops kept me until almost four.”
“You must have been one of the last. Did it sound like they were making progress?”
Karen ran a hand through her hair. “How should I know?”
“What did they ask?”
“Questions under two general headings: knives and gossip.”
“Well, you were the one assigned to check that knife. Did you?”
Karen’s voice took on the drone of schoolgirl recitation. “When I heard that the prop mistress wouldn’t be in, I glanced at the table to make sure everything was there; I didn’t have time to go through and work every prop—make sure the damned fans opened and the—”
“What time was the table ready?”
“Six. And before that the props were in a locked case backstage. And,” she continued before Spraggue had time to frame the next question, “the knife in the case was definitely the trick knife. Some stagehand tried it out while setting up.”
Spraggue frowned. “So the switch was pulled after six. Langford didn’t even get back to the theater until after seven—”
“Whoa!” Karen interrupted him quickly. “I saw Langford at a quarter to six. First one there after dinner. Bright and cheerful. Smiled at me and told me how nice I looked. I practically fell on the floor. I remember thinking how great it was that even an old-timer like John could get so high about a preview.”
“Karen, at seven o’clock Langford came down to his dressing room, in his street clothes, no makeup. He slammed doors, cut the director’s pep talk—”
“His performance was off,” said Karen thoughtfully.
“So,” said Spraggue, “what upset Langford between five forty-five and seven? Do the police know?”
“If they do, they didn’t share the information.”
“Maybe Eddie knows. Gene. He’s on his way here?”
“He’s got nobody to turn to. I thought he might call—”
“And he did?”
“Yeah.”
Spraggue leaned over, took her hand. “There’s no place he can hide, Karen.”
She nodded briefly.
“Now I want you to watch me open this box. Closely. So if any police officer should ask you about it—”
She rubbed her eyes, folded one leg under her, and sank back into the chair. “Okay.”
“You know how the orchids get to the theater, Karen?”
“Some messenger service. I think they’re flown in from Colombia to Florida, from Florida to Logan. On De Renza’s own planes, no less. A delivery company picks them up at the airport and whisks them off to Our Lady. What the whole setup costs—”
“You’d think he’d send them from a local florist.”
“Orchids are one of De Renza’s well-publicized hobbies. You couldn’t duplicate his flowers anywhere in this country.”
“Shall we see what kind of blooms the lady is missing today?” The sides of the plain white box were taped to the bottom. Carefully, Spraggue slit the tape with his pocketknife and lifted the lid. Creamy white tissue overlaid the inner box. He shook it out and placed it to the side. A layer of clear cellophane was stretched taut over the flowers, a half-dozen delicate white blooms with blushing violet centers. They lay on a bed of crimson tissue, held in place by long pins camouflaged in background greenery.
“If you slit the cellophane, Caroline will have a fit.”
“Good idea.” Using the knife, Spraggue neatly removed the thin plastic from the edges of the box and added the square to the pile of tissue.
“Do they smell?” Karen asked.
“Hardly.”
She got up, leaned over the box, inhaled deeply, and sneezed.
“Bless you,” Spraggue said automatically, a corner of his mouth twitching with a repressed grin.
“It tickled!”
Spraggue rummaged in his pocket. A tiny magnifying lens appeared. He examined the flowers, peered closely at the red tissue backing, the greenery. He removed the pins, then the orchids, one by one. He lifted the tissue.
“Here’s what made you sneeze,” he said. “In the bottom of the box. Just a few grains of powder.”
“Why take it apart so completely?”
Spraggue moistened his finger, dabbed it around the edges of the box, licked it. “The rest must actually be in the box. Stuffed in those little corrugated ridges.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What’s Colombia’s major export crop, Karen? Coke.”
Her eyes widened. “Cocaine? In the orchids?”
“We just found the secret backer. An absolutely regular supply. Christ, De Renza’s like a saint over there. Nobody would question his private plane—”
“Then he and Caroline …?”
“I don’t know. Could be him, could be someone who works for him,” Spraggue said.
“Caroline never unpacks the flowers herself, Michael.”
“Yeah.”
“Did you expect to find drugs?” Karen had to strain to hear Spraggue’s muffled response.
“Hurley warned me. When I first took this job, he said to watch out for cocaine.…”
“Hurley?”
Spraggue looked up, realized that he’d been thinking aloud. “Lieutenant Hurley. A good cop. If he plays his cards right, he’ll make captain over this uproar.”
“Michael, how much is there?”
“In this box? Probably not more than a couple of ounces. But if it’s pure, you can double that. Cut it with milk sugar. Street coke’s never more than fifty-percent pure.
Twenty-eight grams to the ounce. Maybe $100 a gram. Fresh shipments coming in every day—”
“In other words,” Karen said bluntly, “a hell of a motive for murder—”
The soft knock on the front door interrupted her. Karen’s hand jumped to her mouth. “Michael, he’s so scared. If he sees you, he’ll run.”
“He’s doing okay. He must have waited until somebody else came in. No buzzer. At least he’s still thinking.”
“Go into the kitchen, Michael.”
Spraggue grabbed her by the arm, spoke softly in her ear. “Remember, Karen, there’s no place else he’d be safe. Don’t get any ideas about slipping him five hundred dollars for a quick flight to Mexico. The cops are watching the airport, watching the bus stations. They could be watching this place.”
“But I didn’t tell them anything about Gene. The cop who questioned me was such a—”
“Menlo?” She nodded. “Say no more. But even if the police aren’t on to him, the killer could be. I figured he’d turn up here. Everyone in the company knows you’re close to Eddie. Answer the door.”
“Michael? Can he get out of this? Do you see any way—”
“If he can help me nail Langford’s killer, that should go over big with the cops.”
“It’ll be dangerous,” she protested.
The knock came again, more urgent this time.
“For Christ’s sake, Karen! Let him in! We’ve got a lot to do.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
“For Christ’s sake,” Hurley echoed some eighteen hours later. “Stay the hell out of sight! If he’s early—”
Spraggue plunked an aged and enormous Irish walking hat over his slicked-back hair. “Would you recognize me?”
Hurley curled his lip in disgust. “Where’d you find that suit?”
Spraggue tugged at a greasy lapel. “Want one for Christmas? I could probably arrange it since you’ve been so cooperative.…” He sneezed; the jacket was redolent of ancient cigar smoke and modern mothballs.
Hurley gazed at him severely. “Just be back in this van no later than one-thirty. Otherwise, I pack up the road show and wheel it back to headquarters.”