“I see.” Ellie’s mind kept circling around an idea and then discarding it. And yet she continued to come back to it. “And is there a particular reason that you think you have the right to judge Kari Jo Mounds? Has her promiscuous behavior harmed you personally? Did she go out with a brother or a friend or a cousin or something? Did she dump that person and manage to personally offend you in the process?”
Margo’s face twisted as she looked up from her work. Her expression wasn’t decipherable. Not really. Ellie could tell the woman was pissed off, but nothing beyond that. What was going on? Ellie’s brain did that circle again.
“Wait just a second,” Ellie whispered. She pointed at Margo. “Did you go out with Kari Jo Mounds?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Margo snorted.
But that was it. It had to be. Ellie felt her eyes bug out of her head. “You did! You and Kari Jo Mounds were a couple. That’s why you have such a personal grudge against her. Admit it!”
Margo stood up so quickly that her chair flipped over backwards. Then she pushed her way around it and disappeared into the back room without another word to Ellie. She was running. That was it! Ellie had managed to somehow land on the thing that Margo didn’t think any of them would figure out.
There was no point in chasing Margo down, as that wasn’t important. Or rather, it was, but it was more important to find Adam and get some answers. Ellie ran for the door that would lead her to the backstage area. She hit the four button code to open the door, but the light stayed red.
What the hell?
Ellie hit the code again. She was pretty discombobulated. She’d probably hit the wrong numbers. This time she was extra careful, but nothing happened again. The light stayed red and she was locked out of the backstage area like some regular civilian.
Banging on the door, Ellie pulled out her phone and kept knocking with one hand while she texted Adam with the other hand. It seemed to take forever for him to make it to the door. The lock clicked. The keypad light went green. And then the door swung open.
“Oh my God, what took you so long?” Ellie practically fell through the doorway and nearly ran right into Adam’s arms.
His touch seemed to push all of the thoughts out of her head. He held her close to his chest and closed the door behind her. “Hey.”
She gazed up into his eyes and thought that her brain had melted into a puddle on the floor. She didn’t have the intelligence left to say anything. Finally, she mustered up one word. “Hey.”
He smiled down at her. The warmth of his dark eyes made her feel all melty and silly inside. Her stomach filled with butterflies and she felt them explode on contact. It was—well it felt good. But it was weird. Ellie had never experienced anything like it before.
“I feel like I need to do this,” he whispered.
Before she could say a word, he lowered his mouth to hers and brushed the lightest, sweetest kiss across her lips. It was over before Ellie could even register what was happening. And then she only knew she wanted another one.
“Again,” Ellie whispered. She reached up and kissed him back.
The kiss turned heated in a single second’s time. He wrapped his arms around her body and cupped the back of her head in his hand. She felt so feminine with him, like a real woman instead of just a hard ass. Maybe it was just that Ellie had been trying to be tough for so long that it felt good to be vulnerable again.
“You taste like sunshine,” he whispered against her lips.
Ellie actually giggled. She felt idiotic, but she could not stop. “Then I’m the only sunshine in town this morning. It’s gray and rainy today.”
“A good day to go home and snuggle on the couch.” Adam touched her cheeks with his fingertips. “Ellie, when this is all over, I want to date you. Will you please go out with me?”
Silly. Giddy. She felt it all. “What are we? Twelve? I would be happy to attend a social event or other planned outing with you.”
“Oh nice. This way we can make sure we’re acting perfectly mature and adult as befits our age.” He gave a wry chuckle.
Ellie realized she didn’t actually know all that much about him. She’d read his background check information, but she had glossed over some of the basic biological details. “I know that you were married before, Adam, but how old are you? I didn’t even think about that. I might be too old for you.”
“I actually don’t know whether or not to be insulted by that suggestion or not,” he joked. “I’m forty-two. It’s ancient. I know.”
“You’re slightly ahead of me,” she admitted. “I’m still trying to get through my thirties.”
“Honey, don’t be in such a rush to leave those years behind. They’re good years,” he teased. Then he sighed and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I’m sorry, I’ve distracted you. You were knocking as though you were in a hurry. I was just selfishly hoping this was because you were so eager to see me this morning.”
“Well, there was that,” Ellie began slowly. But then her mind played through what had happened with Margo in the front lobby and she nearly bounced up and down with excitement. “But what I really wanted to tell you was that Kari Jo and Margo had a fling.”
“What?” His eyes opened wide and he did not have to say it for Ellie to know he was having difficulty buying it.
Ellie nodded her head and started walking back toward Adam’s office. “It’s true. Or rather I’m ninety percent sure it’s true. Margo tried to deny it but couldn’t quite make herself believable. And it makes sense! Think about it. We already know that Margo enjoys women more than she does men. Or at least equally as much. She was with Hilary, right? She claims Hilary is a selfish and judgmental woman. I think it’s because Hilary didn’t approve of something that Margo was doing.” Ellie left that sentence hanging and began to roll her hand in a gesture that was supposed to get Adam moving in the right mental direction.
But Adam wasn’t biting. “No. No way. You’re saying that Hilary Allenwood didn’t approve of what? Of Margo’s sending those letters to Kari Jo?”
“Yes!” Ellie could not believe the answer had been right under their noses all the time.
Yet Adam still didn’t look convinced. “Ellie, you’re suggesting Margo murdered a man with a knife.”
Ellie felt everything in her mind pause. She followed along behind Adam as he walked and let her brain spin around and around as she tried to figure out how to fit the murder into this investigation. It wasn’t her murder. It wasn’t her case, and yet it totally was. It wasn’t like the locals were going to investigate after all. Were they?
A moment or two later, Ellie realized they weren’t heading for Adam’s office at all. “Hey. Where are we going?”
“To Kari Jo’s dressing room.” Adam exhaled a ragged sigh. “Lightman fired her last night.”
Ellie realized Margo had been telling her that until Ellie had gotten distracted by the possible connection between Margo and Kari Jo. “He fired her? How does that work?”
“Let’s just say that when you fire someone like Kari Jo Mounds, it doesn’t.” Adam sounded annoyed as he reached for the door to the dressing room still labeled KARI JO MOUNDS. He pushed it open to reveal a mess of junk half stuffed in boxes.
“Oh God,” Ellie whispered. “Is she helping?”
Adam shot Ellie a look of caustic disbelief. “Really? Do you think that she’s even capable of a task like this?”
“Uh. No.”
Ellie realized she needed to help him out with this. Maybe it would be the sort of busy work that would keep her brain chugging along in the background as she tried to figure out a way to make all of the players in this ridiculous melodrama fit together into one production that made sense.
Adam was already folding clothing and putting it into a box. Ellie started on the makeup table, which Adam had not yet touched. No doubt he was afraid of getting cosmetic cooties all over himself. She couldn’t blame him. The plethora of tiny compact cases, mascara bottles, and glitter could h
ave supplied every teenager at the local high school.
“I’ve never understood this stuff,” Ellie admitted to Adam after ten minutes had passed in companionable silence.
Adam glanced up from the pile of clothes he was still trying to fold and put into boxes in some semblance of order. “Makeup? It’s always seemed like the sort of thing women have to spend far too much time paying attention to. I often wonder where they find the time. It’s not like women aren’t busy people. Yet they can spend an hour and a half getting ready because they have to paint their entire face and don’t want a single square centimeter of their natural skin to show.”
Ellie laughed as she tossed the last few compacts and lotion bottles into the box and moved toward the stack of teddy bears, dead flowers, and other gifts that Kari Jo’s fans had dropped off. “I think after a while, you get good at putting the stuff on your face. But if you’re not that kind of woman, then you have to really work at it. It’s a skill actually. One that nobody thinks about.”
“A skill.” Adam shook his head and used a clear tape dispenser to close the bulging box of clothes.
Ellie might have said something back, something sassy and flirty about girls having mad skills. But at that moment, she realized she had just picked up an envelope with magazine letters on the front. Letters from a glossy tourism magazine that read KARI JO. Ellie stared at the envelope in shock.
“What’s wrong?” Adam frowned and moved toward her, stepping carefully through a minefield of mismatched pairs of shoes and other junk. “What did you find?”
“A letter!” Ellie gasped. She gazed at Adam. “We cleaned this stuff out. I know we did. We collected all of the suspicious letters and then we tossed the rest so there would be no chance of having missed one.”
“Right,” Adam confirmed. “And the staff has been doing that every single day since. Are you telling me that is a threatening letter?”
“Well, I don’t know what the contents are yet, but I know it wasn’t with the stuff on stage. That means it was added to an armful of junk on its way back here to the dressing room. There’s no other answer.”
“Then we’ve got them!” Adam said excitedly. “We can ask the stagehands. They’ll know who stopped them on the way back here.”
“Yes. We need to do that right away,” Ellie murmured. She was just afraid they weren’t actually looking for someone who had handed something to the stagehands. More like their culprit was a stagehand.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Adam was tired. Tired of his job. Tired of having to be at the beck and call of spoiled brats like Kari Jo Mounds who didn’t realize they needed to be damned grateful that anyone wanted to listen to their music or see their act at all. There were probably thousands of talented performers who never made it onto any stage, much less onto a show that paid them a real wage and offered the sort of stability that wasn’t guaranteed in a business like this.
He followed Ellie’s lead down the hallway past the green room to the area where the stagehands had their daily meeting. It was all part of the business. The art of what happened behind the scenes. The millions of details that went into producing and presenting a show like this to the general public night after night.
“The schedule has been posted,” the drone of the stage director’s voice drifted back toward Adam and Ellie. “If anyone has any requests for the rest of the summer, they need to be submitted by next week. I’m sure all of you heard about the drama last night…”
There was an audible snigger that rippled through the dozen or so male and female employees gathered in the conference room. Ellie and Adam walked right into that snigger and Adam wondered if he would ever stop feeling a certain sense of personal responsibility for the way that Kari Jo had behaved.
The room went silent when they realized they had visitors. Ellie gave a little wave. She seemed perfectly composed. She kept saying she wasn’t but Adam almost didn’t believe her. He wondered if they taught how to always be able to pretend you’ve got it all under control at “FBI school.”
“I’m so sorry to disturb all of you,” Ellie said graciously. She pivoted in place, turning back and forth so she could address the entire room and see every single face. Adam wondered why she seemed to be searching every face in the room. But she kept speaking as though she was just having a polite conversation. “I wanted to thank all of you for your hard work, especially on a night like last night when things didn’t go according to plan.”
“Hey!” Someone in the back piped up. A young woman not so much older than Kari Jo herself. “Why are you acting like you run this place? Who are you anyway?”
“My name is Ellie Pierce,” Ellie said pleasantly. “And you’re right. I don’t run this place. I work for Rock Wolf Investigations. I’m sure that some of you at least are familiar with our company. We have been retained by the theater in order to investigate the delivery of some threatening letters to Ms. Mounds.”
Adam held his breath. They hadn’t actually told anyone about the letters. And yet it was almost like every one of these employees knew exactly what Ellie was talking about. There was no confusion. Instead, several of them seemed to share a look of worry. What was that about?
“I don’t know how many, if any, of you are aware of this situation,” Ellie said loudly, “but what I want to know from you is whether or not any one of you have been asked to deliver a letter to Ms. Mounds along with the items that her fans leave for her on the edge of the stage after her show each evening.”
“You mean the tribute pile,” another worker shouted. This one was male. He exchanged smirks with his buddies. “It reminds us of how people leave flowers and crap on graves and at the places along the highway where their friends were killed. Don’t you think?”
Someone else laughed. “That’s right! Because it would be better if Kari Jo Mounds was under a pile of dirt where everyone could just toss their junk on top of her and be done with it.”
“Why?” another voice postulated. “Because they’ve all been on top of her anyway?”
A chorus of ooohs and ahhs filled the air. Raucous laughter and comments that had a very nasty undertone were added to the commotion. Adam knew he should put a stop to it but what good would that do? The girl had brought it on herself and there was absolutely nothing Adam could do to argue about their low opinions of Kari Jo Mounds.
“While I completely understand why you would all make fun of Ms. Mounds,” Ellie said loudly over the top of their catcalls and boos, “I hope you all realize it’s a serious crime to send anonymous threatening letters to anyone. And if you have participated in this crime for anyone, you need to come forward. We will discover who has been behind this. We’re very close to the perpetrator. We just need to put the last pieces of this puzzle together. And believe me,” Ellie’s gaze and her voice turned hard as stone, “you do not want to be left holding the bag when this goes down. You’ll be looking at fines and even possible jail time.”
Adam clenched his teeth and waited. That had made an impact. The entire room seemed to be holding its breath. What did they know? It was becoming rather obvious they did know something. Something pretty big too, if their behavior was to be believed.
Ellie looked at each person in the room. Adam could not help but admire the way she did it. There was no hostility, only conviction in her gaze. The knowledge that she was right, that she knew she would get to the bottom of the mystery, and the complete assurance to get the job done. That was what Ellie Pierce had going on. And was it ever attractive to a man like Adam Cathcart who had been living in a world populated with people who had nothing but fake self-confidence.
“Now,” Ellie continued. The room was dead silent. The stage manager was staring at his employees as though he was just as worried about being caught as they were. “I know for a fact there was a letter delivered to Ms. Mounds last night. The police are working with us because we believe the person who is ultimately responsible for these letters is also involved in a current murder in
vestigation.”
The room erupted into whispers and Adam thought for sure they had finally reached the point where they would get some answers. Nobody wanted to be touched by a murder investigation. That was just bad. You didn’t watch television these days and not pick up on that fun fact.
Ellie turned suddenly and pointed to a young woman that Adam knew only as Casey. Casey had been the one in the green room with them the previous evening. Ellie snapped her fingers and Casey stood up from her seat.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know your name,” Ellie told the young woman. “I do know that you were in the green room last night when Kari Jo made her notorious boo-boo.”
There was a smattering of nervous giggles at the use of the words boo-boo. Ellie ignored it.
“What I want to know is whether or not you decided a few weeks ago to get involved in some kind of plan to put Kari Jo Mounds in her place. You weren’t shy about how much you really dislike Ms. Mounds last night.” Ellie raised her eyebrows.
“Casey, ma’am.” The young woman shifted back and forth from foot to foot. “And I don’t like Kari Jo at all. She’s mean as hell. I’ve got a stepmother at home and Kari Jo is meaner than my stepmama.”
“Okay.” Ellie did not launch into an attack. She was doing this with a finesse that Adam deeply admired. “Let’s talk about what you would do to get back at Kari Jo for the way that she has obviously treated you. Did you participate in the letter campaign?”
What an interesting way to phrase that. Adam filed that twist away in his mind for future use. He could not help but wonder why Ellie didn’t go back to the FBI. She would have been an incredible field agent. He’d met more than a few during his years in California and Adam was pretty sure Ellie was far more competent than those agents had been.
Rock Wolf Investigations: Boxset Page 43
