The Falcon Always Wings Twice

by Donna Andrews

  I trudged back to the jewelry studio and nibbled at my dinner while getting our camping-lite site ready. I inflated our air mattresses and arranged the sleeping bags on them, just inside the entrance door. And then I realized that if we slept there, every time we got out of our sleeping bags we’d step on the incredibly loud squeaking floorboard, so I moved them over by the windows. More privacy there anyway. I dragged the table Tad had been using close to the sleeping bags, so it could serve as a combination dresser, desk, and dining table. I arranged our few belongings on it. I texted the boys to let them know where I was, and where their dad was. Then I sat down on one of the folding chairs to finish my meal.

  “As good as it’s going to get.” I don’t talk aloud to myself that often, but there was something a little creepy about the empty, echoing studio. “And considerably better than being in a tent if the weather forecasters are right about the coming thunderstorm.”

  I glanced over at the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows. In the daytime they’d have shown the beautiful view down the steep, wooded slope. Now all I could see was my reflection in the glass.

  Peaceful now, but it would rain before morning. I made sure the windows were closed. And then, remembering how much light those acres of glass let in during the daylight hours, I lowered the window shades. No getting up early for me. If Grandfather or anyone else wanted to go owling in the rain, they could do it without me. I planned to sleep in. And no doubt Michael would as well.

  I thought of calling him, and decided to save it as a treat. A reward for finishing whatever useful things I could accomplish by bedtime. If nothing else, I had to make Cordelia’s rounds. I finished my meal, except for the brownie I’d save for a delayed dessert. Then I set out.

  I trudged to the other end of the building and began by checking that all the windows were closed in the Great Hall, the dining room, the library—all the public areas. I made sure that all the burners, ovens, faucets, lights, and appliances were off in the kitchen. That all the trash had been taken out, and cinder blocks placed on the lids of the cans to discourage the raccoons. That the back door was locked. And the side doors.

  We didn’t worry so much about locking the French doors out to the terrace, on the theory that any burglar determined enough to climb up the side of the building like a human gecko would just break a pane to get inside if he found the doors locked. But I made sure they were closed, after checking that no one had left anything out on the terrace that could be ruined by the rain.

  From the terrace, I could hear strains of music from the other side of the house. Nearly everyone was down by the campfire, toasting marshmallows, making s’mores, drinking mead and mulled wine and cider. Maybe I should go back and join them. See if the camaraderie lifted my mood.

  Maybe later. I still had the craft studios to check.

  Maybe I should be doing this every night for Cordelia. She was no spring chicken.

  But if I offered, she’d say nonsense—the exercise kept her fit.

  I was relieved when I finally reached the last part of my rounds and was back where I had started, in the lower floor of the studio wing. Forget going out to the campfire. When I finished, I was going to crawl into my sleeping bag and call it a day.

  The storage room door was locked. When I rattled the door of Cordelia’s office to make sure it was also locked, I remembered the phone. It should be charged enough to turn on by now. It would almost certainly be password protected, but with luck the user would have something on their home screen to give me a clue to their identity. And if not, I could email my nephew Kevin to ask if he had any suggestions on finding the owner.

  The screen came on, revealing a picture of the comedy and tragedy masks.

  “Okay, so you belong to an actor,” I said to the phone. “That doesn’t help me much. We have quite a few of those around.”

  Although it occurred to me that the contact list in my phone probably contained cell phone numbers for most of the actors in the Game. I could call them all in turn, and if the phone rang I could return it to its owner. I took out my own phone and started scrolling through my contact list.

  And the first actor’s name I came across was Terence Cox.

  “It couldn’t be,” I said aloud. Wouldn’t the chief have mentioned if Terence had been found phoneless? Unless she was trying to keep that detail quiet for some reason.

  Yeah, like making sure the killer didn’t find the phone before she did.

  I clicked Terence’s number to dial it.

  The phone on the desk began to ring.

  I quickly ended the call and sat for a moment staring at the phone.

  Terence’s phone.

  Chapter 39

  I checked the time and decided that it was still early enough to call Mother.

  “Hello, dear,” she said. “I do hope you’re enjoying the party.”

  “Getting up to go owling this morning has done me in.” Well, that plus everything else that had happened today. “I’m back at the house, vegging. I have a question—was there a particular reason you gave me that phone just now?”

  “Because we found it in the pocket of one of the costumes,” she said. “So I figured it belonged to someone on staff.”

  “Any idea which costume?”

  “That moss-green and gold robe with the slashed sleeves and the fake ermine collar,” she said. “The one with that lovely subtle pattern of pineapples in the gold jacquard.”

  Okay, obviously a correct answer, and a detailed one to boot, but not one that helped me out all that much. It sounded familiar, but I’d long since learned to leave costuming to the costumers.

  “Any idea who was wearing it?” I asked.

  “Nigel, of course.” She sounded as if surprised that I had to ask. “It’s one of his two regular outfits—the one he wore today.”

  “Ah,” I said. “I can see it now.” And yeah, I could. “Thanks.”

  “But I asked him and he had his phone and didn’t remember picking one up,” she said. “So I figured maybe it fell down from someone else’s costume and whoever picked it up put it in Nigel’s costume by mistake. I do hope you can find the owner—these days people find it so stressful to be without their phones.”

  Should I tell her it belonged to Terence, who wasn’t in any shape to miss it? No. She sounded relaxed and cheerful. Why remind her of the murder?

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll take care of it. How’s the foot?”

  A heavy sigh.

  “Your father keeps saying it should heal fine,” she said. “But what if he’s just trying to make me feel better?”

  Oops. Maybe I should have stuck with talking about the murder.

  “I wouldn’t worry,” I said aloud. “You know how he loves to fret about rare conditions and dire complications—but look how blasé he’s been about your foot. I’m sure that means it’s healing in a boringly normal way. If it was anyone but you he’d probably have lost all interest in it.”

  “I hope you’re right, dear.” She sounded a little more cheerful.

  “I’m sure of it,” I said in my heartiest tones. “Goodnight—and say goodnight to Cordelia.”

  I hung up and stared again at Terence’s phone. Damn. Michael had gone down to see about getting Nigel out on bail and finding him a lawyer. If I told the chief about this, it wouldn’t help Nigel.

  But I couldn’t not tell her.

  Maybe there was a reason the chief hadn’t mentioned that Terence’s phone was missing. Maybe she already suspected that one of the actors was the killer. And maybe she knew that if the phone were found under circumstances that implicated one of our tight-knit little band, the finder’s first impulse would be to protect their friend. As mine was now.

  Or maybe she hadn’t mentioned the missing phone because she’d been so busy. She might not even realize that she hadn’t mentioned it.

  And really, if Nigel had been in possession of the phone, surely he could have found a better place to stash it than in the
pocket of his own costume. This looked less like incriminating evidence than planted evidence.

  Would the chief see it that way?

  No telling. But I couldn’t not tell her about the phone.

  I picked up my phone, took a deep breath, and called.

  “Meg? What’s up?”

  “So am I correct in thinking that you might be looking for Terence’s phone?”

  “We are. Of course, I’m hoping he was smart enough to back up everything on it to the cloud, which would mean that eventually we can get his carrier to cough up all the data on it. But it might save time if we could find the phone itself. Dare I hope that’s why you’re calling?”

  “We had one turned in to the lost-and-found.” I explained about having to charge the phone before I could figure out whose it was, and then having it answer to Terence’s number.

  “Who found it?”

  “One of the costume crew. She found it in the pocket of one of the costumes and gave it to Mother, who gave it to me.”

  “Any idea who was wearing that particular costume today?”

  I took another deep breath.

  “Nigel,” I said.

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Of course, pretty much anyone around here would know that it’s Nigel’s costume,” I pointed out. “And would have access to it.”

  “Access to it how?” I could almost see the slight frown that no doubt accompanied her realization that I was about to introduce a complication.

  “We all turn our costumes in at the end of the day for laundering,” I explained. “That’s the reason for those big rolling racks in the hallway outside Cordelia’s office. Plus the muted washing and drying noises you could probably still hear even with her door closed.”

  “I’d assumed those were for the costumes you rent to the tourists,” she said.

  “That’s probably the biggest part of the laundry workload,” I said. “That and the costumes for all the rank-and-file participants—the food vendors and servers, the staff who run the games, the ticket sellers—all the people who just need a basic period costume. But there’s a special rack for the Game players—a lot of those costumes need hand-washing or dry cleaning. And anyone who knew the system could figure out that Nigel’s costume would be there shortly after closing time.”

  A brief silence.

  “Well, at least that does narrow things down a bit,” she said. “Either the phone was in Mr. Howe’s possession, or it was planted in his pocket by someone with after-hours access to the craft center.”

  “Or someone who had a chance to slip the phone in his pocket while he wasn’t paying attention.”

  “Either way it narrows down the field.”

  I nodded, then realized she couldn’t hear that.

  “Agreed,” I said. “Of course, it only narrows the field down to about two hundred people. Do you want me to bring you the phone? Or maybe arrange for someone else to bring it—I’m pretty beat.”

  “Lock it up in Cordelia’s office for tonight,” she said. “The state police have a cell phone forensics specialist, and I’ve had her on call in case we found Terence’s phone, but I doubt if she can get here tonight. I’ll email her to let her know we found it. And I still have a key to the office, so in the unlikely event that the forensic specialist is so gung ho that she decides to drive up here from Richmond this late, I can send someone out to fetch it for her.”

  “Will do,” I said.

  “Thanks.”

  We hung up, and I reached for Terence’s phone, ready to lock it in the drawer. But then I remembered how many times I’d seen Terence pull it out and rapidly enter the passcode. I had a vivid mental picture of him doing it—the quick, efficient way he’d tap the face of the phone. Most people used a single finger, but curiously he used three: index finger, middle finger, ring finger, all in a row, and then back to the index finger. And their motion was all sideways, not up and down.

  I pushed the power button and looked at the screen. If I was remembering the motion correctly, the password was most likely 1231, 4564, or 7897. Always possible that the fourth number went to the row below or above the first three. But even if that were the case, it would still give a very limited number of possible passcodes. If I was calculating it right, only seven. Could I type six wrong numbers into the iPhone without messing things up for the forensic phone tech?

  “I shouldn’t even try,” I said aloud. “I should just lock this thing up.”

  I remembered what my cyber-savvy nephew Kevin was fond of saying: if you were trying to figure out someone’s password, the first thing was to search their desk, to see if they’d written it down someplace. Not possible with Terence. But the second thing was to figure out if they’d used a number that held some personal significance.

  The last four digits of his phone number? Even Terence probably wouldn’t be that clueless. His birthdate? A lot of people used that.

  I opened the drawer that contained the Faire’s personnel records and pulled out Terence’s file. And there it was on the first page—his birthday. December 31. 1231.

  I tapped the phone again to wake it up, and typed in 1231.

  The phone unlocked.

  I should have just turned it off, locked it up, and texted the chief the passcode. But the idea of snooping was so tempting.

  And I’ve never been good at resisting temptation.

  I started with his email inbox. Not a whole lot in it—maybe he was uncharacteristically efficient and deleted emails when he was through with them. Or maybe he just didn’t get that many. It was interesting to see that he was already angling to get an audition with O’Malley when Nigel had gone up to do his callback. And apparently O’Malley hadn’t been lying about giving him the part.

  It was in the outgoing mail that I struck pay dirt. I found an email he’d sent to O’Malley a few days ago that said “Thought you might like to see this. Let’s get together and I’ll show you the rest.”

  I opened the attachment and nearly dropped the phone. It was a picture of O’Malley and a woman. She was tall and shapely, dressed in a skin-tight black leather dominatrix outfit, and judging by the expression in her eyes—the only part of her face visible through her mask—she found their photo shoot supremely boring and possibly even slightly distasteful. O’Malley was stark naked, which allowed me to notice that he seemed to be a great deal more enthusiastic about what was going on.

  “Holy cow,” I muttered. Holy cow didn’t even begin to cover the situation, but I was pleased that even this rather startling situation hadn’t tricked me into reverting to words I didn’t want the boys to learn from me.

  I didn’t see any other emails with attachments. But when I switched over to Terence’s photo collection I found several dozen more shots that seemed to have been taken on the same occasion. A second dominatrix appeared, slightly shorter and bustier than the first, but equally bored with what was going on. And—holy cow again—Zack Glass, in the same state of undress as O’Malley. Middle age had definitely not been kind to the former teen heartthrob.

  I scrolled through the pictures. O’Malley and Glass posing with one or the other of the dominatrixes—or should that be dominatrices? I’d look it up later. The two women never appeared in the same photo, which suggested they’d taken turns as photographer and no fifth wheel had been present. And raised the question of how Terence had gotten hold of the photos.

  “I think I’m going to wish I could unsee these,” I muttered. O’Malley’s nude body draped languorously on the glass top of a large desk, in much the same pose as Ingres’s La Grande Odalisque—but viewed, alas, from the front. O’Malley and Glass snorting lines of white powder on the same glass desktop. I could see two-thirds of a brass-and-wood nameplate at one side of the picture, and I suspected if I typed those letters into a search engine I’d come up with the name of somebody on the Arena Stage staff—and not a particularly low-ranking somebody, if the size and elegance of the office was anything to go by.


  And to top it all off, a series of shots showing O’Malley and Glass, with or without one of the sullen leather-clad women, striking rude poses in the middle of what even I recognized as a stage set—and not just any set, but the strikingly beautiful and much-photographed set of one of Arena’s recent productions—the set that had recently won a well-deserved Helen Hayes Award—D.C.’s equivalent of the Tonys. Knowing theater people, I rather suspected the Arena’s management would find the pictures taken in someone’s office a venial sin compared with the mortal sin of desecrating that remarkably distinctive set.

  I snooped through the rest of his pictures. Nothing much but selfies of himself, with or without other people, including a couple with people I recognized—a well-known actress and a celebrity chef, both of them wearing expressions that shouted “Who the hell is this jackass taking a selfie with me?” Nothing else incriminating.

  For the grand finale, I checked the calls, outgoing and incoming. No voicemails. Not a whole lot of phone calls made or received in the couple of days leading up to his death.

  But thirty-two missed calls today, all from the same phone number. Not, alas, a familiar phone number—though it was one that had called Terence three times in the week before he was killed. I could have called it to see who answered, but I decided maybe I’d taken my illicit snooping far enough.

  I picked up my own phone and took a picture of a screen that showed the number of Terence’s persistent posthumous caller. Maybe I’d figure out later who it belonged to. Then I texted the chief.

  “I realized I knew Terence’s password,” I said. “Sending you something I found on his phone.”

  Then I grabbed Terence’s phone again and forwarded her the email with the picture attached. Then I texted her some of the more offensive pictures. Six of them. That should be enough.

  I sat and stared at the phone. At both of the phones, mine and Terence’s. In a few minutes, the chief texted back to my phone. No rebuke, thank goodness.