Sinister Stage: A Ghost Story Romance and Mystery (Wicks Hollow Book 5)

by Colleen Gleason

  “That was before or after I saw you in the parking lot?”

  “I had just come out after the, uh, event. When I came back in, after we talked, the ‘GO OR DIE’ was gone.”

  “And we know how that happened. Whoever it was dragged it up like a backdrop when you went outside.”

  “No one was here,” she told him firmly. “I didn’t sense or hear any other presence.”

  It was his turn to shrug. “You ran out quickly—that would have given the perp enough time to roll up the sign and get out before you came back inside. He probably used one of the back doors.”

  “Maybe.” Oh God. She couldn’t keep from rubbing her prickling upper arms as she thought about being surveilled when she was alone in the theater. “But why didn’t he take away the backdrop? They just left it, and now I’ve seen it, and I know it’s not— Well, I know someone’s doing this.”

  “Maybe they didn’t have time—or maybe they didn’t think you’d see it. It was pretty far up there, camouflaged by the others. In fact, we probably wouldn’t have seen it if we hadn’t been up there on the catwalk. Maybe they were trying to make certain of it by sabotaging the walkway.” His face was grim and set.

  Vivien shivered again and tried not to think about how sick she felt. “I’ll have all the locks changed tomorrow.”

  “We should take a closer look up there,” he said, pointing to the recesses above the stage. “See if we can tell how they did it.”

  “All right.”

  Vivien didn’t mention the weird, eerie shadow.

  She didn’t know whether it was connected to these obviously human-related events—but if it wasn’t, she didn’t think she wanted to know otherwise. At least at the moment.

  Jake clambered up the ladder on the side where the catwalk had fallen. “We should check out all of those other backdrops,” he said when she joined him at the top. “Make sure they’re secure and not going to accidentally-on-purpose fall down. And the rows of spotlights, too.”

  Vivien bit back a “what’s this we business?” and nodded. At this point, disengaging Jake DeRiccio was like trying to stop a bad video clip from going viral by making an official statement—too little, too late, and just drew more attention to the situation.

  But when he started to walk out onto the intact section of catwalk, she grabbed his arm. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said. “What if…whoever…sabotaged that piece too. Just now.”

  He muttered a curse. “Good point.”

  “There is some scaffolding in the back,” she told him. “It’s behind a bunch of old set pieces. I can dig it out and wheel it onstage tomorrow and take a close look at everything.”

  “You have scaffolding?”

  “Sure. It’s a common enough piece of equipment in a theater—not only to reach the tops of high set pieces, but for repairs to the lights, catwalk, flies, and even sometimes it acts as a moveable set piece itself. Haven’t you ever seen Newsies? That entire set was basically built around a huge piece of scaffolding.”

  “Right. Never thought about that.” He looked back out over the top of the stage, where tattered backdrops hung in rows several yards from where they stood. “I see a filmy red something back there, behind the GO OR DIE piece. I guess we know what it is.”

  “I didn’t notice it earlier today. Did you?” she said.

  “I didn’t look all that carefully. But now I wish I had,” he replied grimly. “Would be nice to know whether it was installed, so to speak, in the last few hours or not.”

  Vivien definitely couldn’t control a shiver at that unpleasant thought. It was bad enough that someone was spying on her, but to have been in here while all the teens and old ladies were as well? And setting up something so ugly?

  “I need a shower,” she said, suddenly done for the day. All this—the warnings, the eerie chill, the creepy shadow, the possibility that someone was watching her—was just a little too much. She felt sticky, hot, hungry, and utterly defeated.

  Vivien was self-aware enough—meaning she’d been in therapy enough—that she knew the best way for her to combat feelings of anxiety and defeat was to remove herself from the situation and take some time to reboot. A shower, then a good cocktail while she put her feet up and checked out the social media on her clients, hopefully with some good news from Gab-Wear about the proposal from Louise London.

  It was too bad Wicks Hollow was short on carry-out and delivery options. She’d probably have to settle for pizza.

  “My house is really close,” Jake said. “You can shower there—although I don’t have much you could change into except a pair of sweats my sister left once—”

  “Oh, no, that’s all right,” she said quickly. Not a good idea to spend that much time with Jake. At his place. Showering.

  Not a good idea.

  He seemed genuinely disappointed. “That’s too bad, because I have a really excellent Pinot gris that’s been waiting for an excuse to be opened,” he said. “Seems like all this is as good a reason as any.”

  She gave a short laugh. “Oh, thanks, Jake. Really. It’s better if I just head on back to my place. I’ve got some work to do. Besides, I think I’m going to need something s-stronger than a glass of w-wine.” She couldn’t quite keep the quaver from her voice there at the end, dammit, and she turned away before he could see her blinking rapidly.

  “All right, then.” His tone was studiously noncommittal.

  But Jake stuck with her as she locked up, then they walked outside together, with him carrying the Nutcracker headpiece for her.

  “I could give you a ride home,” she offered, feeling a little churlish over having rejected his invitation.

  But what had he expected, anyway? Just because they’d shared that icky theatrical display didn’t mean that she’d forgiven and forgotten what happened eleven years ago.

  “I can walk,” he said in a cool tone. “Thanks—”

  Their feet crunched and skidded to a sharp halt on the gravel-strewn concrete when they saw her car.

  “Nooo!” Vivien cried, staring at the smashed windshield and the spread of glass shards glittering among the gravel in the afternoon sun. She stared in horrified silence at the destruction—which wasn’t only the windshield, but also two broken headlights.

  “Geez, Viv,” said Jake, sliding a comforting, protective arm around her waist as he let the Nutcracker head slide to the ground. “I’m so sorry. Whoever the asshole is who’s messing with you…”

  He trailed off and simply hugged her closer as she dug the phone out of her pocket, fighting tears of fury.

  Despite her initial reluctance, Vivien ended up at Jake’s house anyway. Since she couldn’t drive anywhere, she capitulated when he again offered his place.

  “You might even settle for a glass of wine instead of a cocktail at this point,” he said with a wry grin. “Although I might have something stronger.”

  Instead of getting a ride from the attending police officer (not Helga, who was out on another call), Vivien and Jake decided to wait until after the tow truck came to pick up her poor, battered Accord, then walk to his house.

  “I just bought that car,” she muttered as they started out of the parking lot on foot. “I never had one in New York. Didn’t need it.” Then she shook her head as if to clear it and hiked up the duffel bag she’d retrieved from her trunk. She’d taken to keeping a change of clothes and toiletries in there in case she made it to the gym or a yoga class after a day at the theater.

  She looked down the road. “Where’s your place?”

  “Up there,” he said, and pointed to the small bluff just behind and beyond the cul-de-sac at the end of the road. “The sort of Brady Bunch-meets-Frank Lloyd Wright-looking place.”

  “That’s your house?” Vivien stumbled to a halt and looked at him in astonishment. “It’s… Wow.”

  She knew the house, of course. She’d noticed it every time she drove by because though it looked pretty dated—all angles with its flat, hal
f-pitched roof that was higher in the front than the back and the huge 1960s-style windows—she knew it had to have an amazing view of the big lake.

  “Yeah,” he said with a bashful smile. “I got really lucky. The owner had to sell quickly, and it was the dead of January in the middle of a blizzard.”

  “Is the view as amazing as it seems?”

  “You’ll soon be able to see for yourself.” He gave her a warm smile, and she was annoyed when her heart gave a little thump.

  This is not happening. You’re not going to let this happen again, Vivien Leigh.

  “This way,” he said, pointing to a narrow walkway. “Through this little park here, then it’s just a little climb up a path over the rise over there. A lot shorter than taking the road, which goes out of its way to get up there.”

  She didn’t say much as they walked, although she couldn’t wait to see the inside of the house. He carried the Nutcracker headpiece the whole way while she toted her duffel, and though it took extra effort to walk up the small path (calling it a “little” climb was a bit of an understatement), it was short enough that she wasn’t out of breath. Much, anyway. Though her calves might be feeling it tomorrow.

  She was used to walking on flat surfaces all over the city—not climbing small mountains.

  “That’s why I like to take this route when I run,” he said once they got to the top. “It’s a nice trail, and I have to work a little harder than on the treadmill or just running through a neighborhood.”

  Someone had done some work to the outside of the single-story house since its original construction in the 1960s. You couldn’t do much about the roof, which not only rose to a steeper pitch in the front, bluff side, but it also canted up higher on the right, giving the front an almost triangular facade.

  Instead of the brown siding and orange brick Vivien imagined had been the original, the exterior was covered in slender shale-brown bricks and fieldstone. They all had different depths, giving the wall a pleasing, uneven texture instead of a flat face. The trim was cream, and the front door—which faced the road, not the lake—was ocean blue.

  “I didn’t pick it,” Jake said when she commented on the color of the door.

  “I love it,” she replied as he unlocked it and gestured her into the house. “It’s unusual and gives what could be a drab-looking house a nice— Oh, wow…”

  She dropped her duffel bag and stepped into the living room with its twenty-foot, slanted ceiling, then walked toward the large windows on one wall. They covered most of the west-facing side of the living room and the wall on the right. Lake Michigan—with all of her striations of cerulean, sapphire, cobalt, navy, and mint—was below and beyond, and the vast basin rippled and undulated as far as the eye could see. The Great Lake met the pale blue sky somewhere miles away, and nearly a hundred miles beyond that were the shores of Wisconsin. Layers of long clouds lined the sky, echoing the horizon: some puffy on top, some slender like a brush stroke, swathed above the line of the lake.

  The house was situated so that the land and its surrounding throng of trees seemed to cup it protectively, holding the structure out over the water. But it was just an illusion from the inside, for there was at least a half mile of land between the base of the bluff and the shore, and the house was fully supported by the land. It was the clever design of the windows that made it seem as if the front of the house was suspended in midair over the lake.

  “Go on out there.” Jake pointed to the side wall, which wasn’t only windows, as she’d thought, but a large sliding door. “You’re going to love that.”

  Feeling a sort of tightness in her chest that she couldn’t identify, Vivien did as he suggested and found herself on a flagstone patio with its own breathtaking view. Located on the side of the house, it was protected by a tangle of trees and bushes on two sides, which, despite the chaos, offered some shade. A third side was the sliding door and wall of the house. And the fourth direction offered its own unobstructed view of the lake.

  “Wow. Mike and Carol certainly did well for themselves,” she murmured, drawing in a deep breath of fresh air coming in from the lake.

  “Mike and Carol— Oh, ha. The Bradys. Got it.” Jake folded his arms as he stood next to her. “It needs a lot of work and some updating, but this was the no-brainer selling point.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “I’ve got a ton to do with the landscaping,” he said, gesturing to the overgrown, encroaching trees. “I don’t think those vines are supposed to be there, and they look like they’re choking everything out. The arborvitae is way out of control—I think that’s what that is.” He shrugged. “Or maybe it’s boxwood. I can’t remember what the realtor called it.”

  Vivien gave a little laugh. “City girl here. I haven’t faintest idea. The closest I ever got to a garden was walking through Central Park and trying to grow a tomato plant on my teeny balcony. It died.”

  “I had a condo in Baltimore, so I didn’t do much there. I should probably just hire someone who knows what they’re doing.”

  “Well, don’t do what Trib did and put in a pergola—I think that’s what it’s called—with vines growing on it,” she said with a little giggle that sounded nervous to her ears. Why am I so nervous? “He’s all freaked out because the birds perch all up in it and crap all over the tables below.”

  He laughed. “Ouch. Well, nothing I do could be any worse than the tree that was growing in the middle of the living room when I moved in.”

  She looked at him, squinting a little in the afternoon sun. “A tree? Like, in a pot? Or something that had taken root and took over the house?”

  He shook his head. “Neither. The previous owners—who built the place back in the sixties—deliberately planted a tree in the middle of the living room. It was over eighteen feet tall with a branch span of about the same.”

  She stared at him. “A real tree? Planted?”

  “Yes. They had a huge, sunken area in the center of the room that had low walls around it like a raised garden sort of thing. It was filled with dirt—and the roots of the tree.” He shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe it. “They had built-in seating around it—wooden benches. It was very…ah…different.”

  “What kind of tree was it?” Vivien asked, still trying to picture such a thing.

  “I have no idea. It wasn’t a pine tree; it had leaves—small leaves—and the damned things fell off. They were scattered all over the dirt bed and the floor. It’s bad enough that you’ve got to rake your yard, but to rake—or sweep—leaves inside your house? Forget that.”

  She was laughing by now. “Agreed. And, oh, so that’s what you meant by it being Brady Bunch-meets-Frank Lloyd Wright. Didn’t he put a tree in one of his houses too?”

  “Yes—I think he built around a tree or something. Anyway, I had it taken out the day I got the keys.”

  “So you moved in here—when? Last winter?”

  He nodded. “Yes—well, technically, I’ve been in Wicks Hollow permanently since early December. Settled on the house early February, moved in a week later.

  “After my mother died, my siblings and I decided Pop should have at least one of us around. Since I was the only unmarried one and I can work from anywhere for the most part, I volunteered. Pop and Mom had moved here from Grand Rapids about seven years ago when he actually retired for good.”

  “I was wondering how you ended up here.”

  “I, uh, didn’t realize this was the town you were from until the other day. I guess I thought it sounded familiar, but I didn’t make the connection.” The way he said it almost implied it would have made a difference to him if he had. But she wasn’t sure in what way.

  He went on, a little more quickly. “I tried living with Pop for about two weeks, and when I realized that was not going to work for either of us, I started putting out feelers for my own place. And like I said, this one came on the market suddenly and I snagged it—for a little more than I wanted to spend, but…” He spread his hands t
o encompass the beauty of the scene. “Despite the interior tree, it was a no-brainer.”

  “It’s beyond amazing,” she said with a heartfelt sigh. “I could stare out at the lake for hours—especially on a day like this.” Then, suddenly feeling a little awkward—he was, after all, her ex, and for some reason this felt far too intimate and easy, considering the fact that she hated him—she said, “Mind if I get that shower now?”

  “Not at all.” He opened the slider, and she preceded him back inside. “Uh…only one of the bathrooms is in working order. The master.” Now he looked a little awkward, but he went on, “I’m having the other one redone, and we’re waiting on the tile for the shower. So…it’s back here.”

  Vivien was absolutely not going to feel strange about walking into her former boyfriend’s master bedroom. Even though she immediately noticed and could hardly pull her attention from the king-sized bed. It had a massive headboard upholstered in black leather and a tumble of decorative pillows on top of a gray and blue duvet made of linen that looked very expensive. The rest of the furnishings were just as heavy and masculine, and were done in dark, washed gray.

  She’d never known a man to do the decorative pillow thing on a bed—Jake definitely hadn’t done that when she knew him. Obviously, he’d changed a lot in eleven years.

  “It was cleaning lady day, so the bathroom should be immaculate,” he said, leading the way into the master bath.

  Ah, that explained the pillows—at least, why they were arranged so prettily on the bed. It didn’t explain the actual presence of the pillows, however…

  “You must have redone this one first,” she said, walking into a very not Brady Bunch-era master bath. The tile was all muted, earthy greens and blues, with a healthy bit of cappuccino and cream thrown in to keep it from being too “Under the Sea.”