Who's Kitten Who?

by Cynthia Baxter

  “Did you suggest that he go to the police?” I asked.

  “Of course I did. Ian thought that was what Simon should do too. I remember the three of us sitting around this very table late into the night, with me and Ian working on Simon. We kept trying to convince him to take action. But he was such a nice guy he couldn’t imagine anyone having even an ounce of evil in them. Especially someone he used to care about.”

  His voice broke as he added, “Unfortunately, he had to find out the hard way.”

  As I said good-bye to Kyle and fondled Monty’s smooth silver-gray ears one last time, I was as convinced as Kyle was that Lacey had killed Simon Wainwright. It was hard not to be, when I just heard him verify what Aziza had told me about Lacey stalking Simon in the weeks that preceded his murder.

  And if Derek had been telling the truth—if Simon really had broken up with Aziza in his last days—Lacey wouldn’t necessarily have known about it. Besides, just because Simon’s relationship with Aziza was over, that didn’t mean he had a place in his life for Lacey again. Lacey being the killer made perfect sense.

  But as I climbed into my van, a thought that had been nagging at me from somewhere in the back of my mind stubbornly pushed its way to the surface.

  Had Kyle really verified Aziza’s claim that Lacey was stalking Simon? I wondered. Or had I completely misread what just transpired between him and me?

  Sitting in the driver’s seat, I struggled to reconstruct our conversation. As I replayed it in my head, I tried to figure out whether Kyle had actually volunteered any information about Lacey and the letters she’d purportedly sent Simon—or if he’d simply agreed with what I’d told him, then proceeded to embellish. I was frustrated over my inability to recall every single word that I’d said and every word he’d said.

  One thing he’d said stood out in my mind: his story about peeking into Simon’s backpack and reading his mail, stumbling upon a letter that happened to fit the description of the letter I was talking about exactly. At the time it had certainly sounded convincing.

  Then again, Kyle was trained as an actor.

  The problem was that almost everybody I was dealing with who’d had anything to do with Simon Wainwright had a background in the theater. And given his circle of acquaintances’ dedication to mastering the art of deception, how was I supposed to know who I could believe?

  All the world’s a stage, William Shakespeare said. Yet it wasn’t until the past couple of weeks that I’d come to realize just how right he was.

  Even though I did my darnedest to get to Theater One on time, it was ten minutes after one by the time I pulled my van into the parking lot. I hurried inside, knowing that Derek hated his cast members to be late, even though in this particular instance he’d given me ridiculously short notice.

  The outer doors of the theater were unlocked, as they usually were during the day. I passed through the lobby, expecting to find Derek or Jill sitting in the front row or onstage, waiting for me—I hoped not too impatiently. Instead, the theater was dark except for the dim light that filtered through the open doors that led to the lobby. I patted the wall just inside the entrance, looking for a switch. No luck. The glowing exit signs helped, but not much.

  That’s strange, I thought, wondering if somehow I’d gotten the time wrong. Frowning, I checked my watch again. But it was too dark to see.

  I slid one hand along the edges of the seats as I gingerly made my way up the aisle in the semidarkness. I exercised the same wariness as I climbed the stairs to the stage.

  No signs of life here either.

  I poked my head into the wings, figuring that was the next most likely place to find whoever was expecting me. It was dark there too.

  I’d just returned to the stage when I heard a creak that sounded like a footstep on an old wooden floor.

  “Hello?” I called, my voice echoing through the empty theater. “Is someone here?”

  Silence.

  I decided that what I was hearing was nothing more than the shifting and creaking of an old building. In fact, I told myself to stop making such a big deal over being alone in an empty theater. In the middle of the day, no less.

  When I heard a door slam, I froze.

  Okay, I thought. Enough.

  I walked across the stage, determined to find out who had come in. There was something unsettling about finding yourself alone in a building except for one other person when you didn’t know who that one other person was.

  “Derek? Is that you?” I called into the darkness as I crept down the stairs. The pounding of my heart made it difficult for me to hear. “Jill?” I tried, my voice breaking.

  Again, silence.

  And then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a shadow pass by in the doorway that opened onto the lobby.

  I was right, I thought. Somebody is here in the building. But for some reason, that person is acting as if he or she doesn’t want me to know it.

  But another voice in my head, a much saner one, interceded. Don’t be ridiculous, it said. Someone arranged to meet you here, remember? Why would that person be hiding? Any minute now Derek or Jill or maybe someone else from the cast is going to pop out with a big smile and an apology for being late and suggest that we run some lines or work on my dance moves.

  In fact, there was no reason to wait. Deciding it was time to be more proactive, I strode down the aisle with a confidence that I frankly didn’t feel. I really was getting better at this acting thing.

  When I reached the doors to the lobby, I burst through them. I immediately glanced from side to side like a member of a SWAT team, blinking in the bright light that was such a sharp contrast to the darkness of the theater.

  I was alone.

  Unless, of course, someone really was trying to hide.

  I looked around a bit more, checking inside the box office and even outside the theater. Not a soul. I finally decided I was blowing this way out of proportion. A creaky old theater with doors that slammed shut by themselves, a passing car that cast a shadow—under normal circumstances I wouldn’t even have noticed such common occurrences.

  I forced myself to turn around and go back inside.

  The theater seemed much darker than before, now that my eyes had readjusted to the light. It suddenly occurred to me that the electrical switches were probably in the wings. I made my way up the aisle slowly, then felt each step with my feet as I went up the stairs cautiously. I even took special care not to trip as I walked across the stage.

  It wasn’t until I suddenly stepped into nothingness and felt myself in a terrifying state of free fall that I realized one of the trapdoors had been left open.

  Even though I could have sworn that, minutes earlier when I’d crossed the stage, they’d all been closed.

  But I didn’t have time to dwell on how surprised I was.

  “Oomph!” I cried, all the air violently pushed out of my lungs as I made contact with something hard. But at least it wasn’t as hard as I expected. Although I’d tumbled down a distance of a full story, from the stage to the basement floor, something had cushioned my fall.

  I grabbed a chunk of whatever it was, peering at it in the dim light. But I didn’t need to see it. The squishy feeling and the distinctive smell told me it was foam rubber. Large misshapen chunks of the stuff, probably the leftovers from the fake bushes and trees the construction crew had sculpted for the outdoor scenes.

  As soon as I caught my breath, I did a quick body check to see if anything was broken, twisted, or sprained. As far as I could tell, I’d suffered nothing but a few bruises.

  The next step was to get myself the heck out of there.

  I staggered to the door that I knew led to the back room of the basement, the section with the stairs up to the backstage area. No harm done, I insisted to myself. I’ll just get myself out of this dark creepy space, and—

  By that point, I’d grasped the doorknob. And discovered that it wouldn’t budge more than a quarter turn.

  It was
locked.

  My head buzzed as I put the pieces together. The creaking floor and the shadow and the slamming door had all been signs that someone was in the building. And I’d been right that that person didn’t want to be seen. It had to have been the same person who’d lured me here with that anonymous phone call to the TV station.

  The person who’d captured me in a cellar by opening the trapdoor on a very dark stage.

  I have to get out of here, I thought. Frantically, I rummaged through my purse, relieved when my fingers finally curled around my cell phone.

  I whipped it out and dialed 911. Its unresponsiveness prompted me to check the screen. CALL FAILED, it announced. Snapping it shut, I saw that I wasn’t getting a signal.

  What did you expect, I thought morosely, trying to make a phone call from a basement?

  A feeling of panic swept over me as I realized I was a sitting duck. I tossed my useless cell phone back into my purse and lowered myself onto the cold, hard concrete floor, resting my chin on my bent knees. And then I waited, listening to the blood throb in my temples. Anything could happen, I thought, and there’s not much I can do about it.

  Yet with each minute that passed, my panic lessened. Whoever had deliberately opened the trapdoor, hoping to ensnare me, had to have realized by now that he or she had been successful. In that case, where was he?

  By the time twenty minutes or so had gone by, I realized that it was unlikely anything else was going to happen to me, at least here and now. I figured the person who’d arranged for me to tumble down the rabbit hole had no plans for a face-to-face and was probably long gone. From the looks of things, this was just a warning. A very obvious warning, granted, but a message designed to let me know that someone was becoming very annoyed about my involvement in the investigation of Simon Wainwright’s murder.

  The murderer, no doubt.

  The longer I sat there, the more my butt hurt—and the angrier I became. Okay, you, you…coldhearted killer, I thought. If you think you can scare me away with some cheap trick like sending me plummeting into a locked basement, you clearly don’t know me very well. I’m a lot more determined than that. And a lot tougher than you think.

  It was then that I heard the scratching.

  It wasn’t a human sound. It was the haphazard movement of an animal.

  Nobody loves animals more than I do. But I had a feeling that any animal that lived in the basement of a hundred-year-old theater wasn’t likely to be the cute, cuddly kind.

  When something gray, furry and four-legged sprinted by less than three feet in front of where I was sitting, I let out a shriek. I’m not exactly the Betty Boop type, jumping onto a chair and screeching “E-e-ek!” at the drop of a hat. But there’s something about a rat that brings out the worst in just about everybody.

  I froze at the sound of footsteps above me. Not sneaky-sounding ones, but loud, assertive ones heading across the stage toward the trapdoor.

  I jerked my head upward, trying to brace myself for the sight of just about anything. But I wasn’t at all prepared for what I actually saw.

  “Forrester?” I croaked, blinking.

  “Jessie?” Even though it was dark, I could see that the expression on his face was one of total confusion. “What are you doing down there?”

  “Surprisingly, I’m not here by choice,” I replied, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “And if you’d be so kind as to help me find a way out, I’d be extremely grateful.”

  “Uh, sure.” He glanced around, then disappeared for a few seconds. When he returned, he was dragging a ladder with him.

  “Thank goodness!” I exclaimed. As soon as he lowered it, I scrambled up the rungs. I was so glad to be out of that dungeon that I ignored the fact that Forrester had positioned himself at the top. He was primarily standing there to hold it in place. But it also put him in a primo spot to catch me in his arms.

  “Gotcha!” he cried gleefully, clutching me tightly against him.

  Fortunately, so much adrenaline was shooting through my veins that I was stronger than he was. Probably stronger than a bear, in fact. But it turned out that not that much muscle power was required.

  “How did you know you’d find me here at the theater?” I asked once I’d squirmed out of his grasp.

  “Just a lucky guess. That, and spotting your van parked outside as I drove by. I was hoping I’d get lucky and catch that cleaning lady with the weird name. But finding you here was even better.

  “Of course,” he added, grinning, “I didn’t anticipate that you’d be trying so hard to hide from me that you’d hurl yourself into a dank and dusty old basement.”

  “I told you, I wasn’t down there on pur—oh, forget it. Thanks for getting me out.”

  “Glad to be of service.” He hesitated for a moment before asking, “But, honestly, what were you doing down there?”

  “I fell in,” I snapped, brushing nonexistent cobwebs off my clothes. “Or to be more accurate, somebody arranged for me to fall in by opening the trapdoor in a dark theater.”

  “‘Somebody’?” Forrester frowned. “Like maybe Simon Wainwright’s murderer?”

  “Seems like the most obvious candidate,” I replied. “It’s not the first time he tried to scare me away. I wasn’t going to mention this, but a few days ago he or she tried to scare me away from investigating Simon’s murder with a threatening phone call—”

  Before I had a chance to go into detail, he interrupted, “Jess, does Falcone know about all this? I really think you should let him know what’s going on.”

  “Right,” I said disdainfully. “As if I have something to gain by listening to another lecture.”

  “Falling through a trapdoor that’s, well, a trap that somebody set for you is pretty serious.”

  I shot him a wary look. “Falcone may not be the sharpest tack on the bulletin board, but I’m sure even he knows that the person we’re dealing with isn’t exactly up for Time magazine’s Person of the Year.”

  “Suit yourself,” Forrester said with a shrug. “By the way,” he added, softening his tone, “did you get the roses I sent?”

  “Yes, I did.” I swallowed hard. “Thank you, Forrester. They’re beautiful, but you shouldn’t have.”

  He shrugged. “It was nothing.”

  “No, really. You shouldn’t have. I hate to be blunt, Forrester, but there’s no future in this relationship. Even though Nick and I are no longer together, that doesn’t mean that you and I—”

  “I understand exactly how you feel,” he interrupted.

  His spirit of cooperation took me completely off guard. “You do?”

  “Yes. And I don’t blame you one bit.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Of course not. After all, we didn’t really get a chance to get to know each other Saturday night,” he continued. “Too much noise and too many interruptions. I demand a rematch, Jessie. I want another chance.”

  Forrester sashayed over to a wooden chair that I hadn’t even noticed in the dim light. He draped his jacket over the back, as if he was planning on staying awhile. I noticed then how quiet the theater was. But instead of being relieved that the cat in the cat-and-mouse game that had landed me in the basement was probably gone, I felt uneasy over being here all alone with Forrester. And it had nothing to do with my personal safety.

  “Let me take you out for dinner again, Jessie,” he said, strolling back toward me. “This time, we’ll go to a quiet, casual place where we can really talk. In fact,” he went on, his voice softening, “we can do some talking right now.”

  “But we talk all the time!” I protested. “About Simon and Lieutenant Falcone and…and current events that are in the news…”

  “That’s not what I want to talk about,” he replied, his voice as soft and sweet as a melting marshmallow. “At least not at the moment.”

  “Forrester, this really isn’t the best time to—”

  He ignored my protests. In fact, he leaned in a little closer. Even though we were surr
ounded by near-darkness, I could see a distinctive gleam in his gray-blue eyes. A gleam I definitely did not like.

  In a soft, seductive voice, he said, “Y’know, Popper, I’ve been thinking.”

  “Thinking is good,” I said, nodding. “I do some of that myself every now and then.”

  He laughed. “Don’t try to change the subject.”

  “I didn’t know there was a subject. That you and I were discussing, I mean. I thought we were just making conversation.”

  “We were talking about us. At least I was.”

  “But there’s no such thing as us!” I cried.

  “I know there’s not, and that’s the point. I really want there to be an us, Jessie. As strange as our date last Saturday night was, I had a good time. There’s something about you, kiddo. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I like it. Maybe it’s your spirit, maybe it’s your intelligence, but whatever it is, I can’t stop thinking about you.”

  “I’m not that intelligent,” I insisted, my voice high-pitched. “And what you call ‘spirit’ is really just nervous energy. You see, whenever I—”

  “I shouldn’t have given up so quickly last weekend,” he went on. His eyes had now taken on a new intensity, and his voice had gotten deep. Oddly husky too. “It’s obvious that you still have feelings for Nick, but from what you’ve told me, that’s over. Sooner or later you’re going to accept that all that’s in the past. And I want to make sure that I’m in the picture whenever you come to that realization. It’s time for you to start looking ahead to the future.” He gently clasped my shoulders. “I really want to be part of that future, Jessie.”

  He leaned forward to kiss me.

  I could feel the panic rising inside me. I knew I had to stop him.

  Then suddenly I heard, “Ohmygosh, I’m so sorry!”

  The sound of something so unexpected caused Forrester to step backward, nearly tripping over his own two feet.

  I looked down, even though I knew that the person who had saved me was Sunny McGee.

  “Honest, Jessie, I didn’t mean to interrupt you!” she cried. She was standing at the foot of the stage, no more than five feet away. Even in the dim light I could see that her face was flushed. “I had no idea you were here with your boyfriend!”