Liz Jasper - Underdead 02

by Underdead in Denial

  He stepped back to get a read on how well the haunted house’s skeleton was progressing.

  “I think a first grader can make a better U-shape than that,” I said.

  “Agreed, but it’s not so bad for our purposes. Having it twist and turn unexpectedly adds to the confusion for the people going through. And if the whole thing’s snaky, you don’t notice the gaps we deliberately make for people to jump out of.”

  I took a closer look at the set we’d carried. “And the palm trees and fish?”

  “Adds to the confusion.”

  “Makes me feel like I should ditch my vampire costume and go home and get a snorkel and mask.”

  His grin widened and he leaned in. “So long as you wear a bikini with it, I won’t mind the switch.”

  I took a step back. “We’d better get moving. Lots more to unload.”

  “Okey dokey.” He flexed his biceps he-man style and led the way back to the trucks.

  In no mood to flirt, I stepped back and let one of the prop guys take the other end when Ian picked up the next set. My next partner was a Bayshore high school girl. A confirmed Dan groupie, she was one of the handful of students who’d been with the haunted house from the beginning. I remembered from the walk-through that she had a minor role running across a passage carrying a heavy axe and had high hopes for her as a partner in drudgery.

  The axe must have been hollow plastic. By the time she and I had dragged the set into place, I decided to let her get ahead too.

  The haunted house progressed surprisingly quickly. Most of the tall sets that formed the walls of the haunted house were in place, and people were already stringing black sheets across the tops to form the ceiling. As I walked along the outer curve, I could hear volunteers inside chatting away.

  I ignored the conversations, which were mostly on the order of “a little higher” and “pass the staple gun”, until I heard someone say, “I heard he died eating cookies. What a way to go.”

  I slowed to listen.

  “Best way…for him.” There was a sound of protest, which the speaker ignored. “For him it was like dying while having sex. I’ve never met anyone who liked dessert more than Tom. That redhead he was dating—”

  “Great,” I muttered.

  “She was totally right. You could be completely alone in the theater and then open a package of M&Ms and boom, a second later, Tom would be there with his hand in the bag.”

  I racked my brains. Did I recognize the voices? No. At least I didn’t think so.

  “We had someone in my dorm who would eat any junk food not nailed down, only they were sneakier about it. The midnight fridge raider.”

  “We had one of those. You’d put a pint of ice cream in the freezer, duct-taped shut, with your name plastered all over it, and the next day it would be empty.”

  “Exactly. Someone got so pissed once they made a tray of Ex-Lax brownies and left them as bait. Trust me, after that day in the bathroom, the midnight raider never raided again.”

  There was an indrawn gasp and a giggle. “Classic.”

  “Hey, can you pull that end taut?”

  I heard the sound of a staple gun being put to use. Feeling guilty about eavesdropping, I started to walk away.

  “I wonder if Dan did something like that,” one of the speakers mused.

  I stopped and silently walked back.

  “Dan wouldn’t poison his own cookies.”

  “Maybe not on purpose. But what if he didn’t realize it was poison? Isn’t he dating a chemistry teacher? If she’s anything like the ones I had in high school, she can’t tell Ex-Lax from arsenic.”

  Before I could do something stupid like scale the barrier and punch the speaker in the mouth, the conversation tapered off and I realized they were heading back to the supply trucks.

  I remained rooted to my spot on the other side of the plywood sets. They say eavesdroppers hear nothing good about themselves, but aside from confirmation that my public attempt to unlink myself from Tom hadn’t worked, it wasn’t my integrity that had been questioned, but Dan’s.

  My thoughts spiraled in unpleasant directions. I didn’t know of any reason why Dan might have wanted to kill Tom, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. How easy would it have been for him to poison the cookies? Dead easy. And if he’d “hidden” the cookies just as Tom walked by? I couldn’t think of a better way to lure Tom into taking some. Tom dies, Dan’s in the clear and all the females fawn over him in concern that he was the real target. It held up disappointingly well.

  I knew better than to say anything to Becky. That was a “kill the messenger” scenario if I ever saw one.

  It seemed I was going to do a little sleuthing, after all. Only my target was a little different than Becky’s. And speak of the devil—look who was crossing the parking lot in my direction.

  As he reached my side, Dan said, “Hey, Jo, I wondered if you could—” He jerked his head suddenly toward the tall set next to us. “What the—”

  There was a loud crash and darkness.

  Chapter Nine

  Somewhere in my world of pain and darkness, I smelled a faint, musky perfume. Something about it made me close my eyes tighter and try to blend into the pavement. I heard a groan nearby and was surprised to realize it wasn’t mine.

  There was a shout and a cacophony of footsteps ringing across pavement. The darkness lifted.

  “Are you okay?” I barely recognized Becky’s voice. It sounded funny. Harsh. “Dammit, say something!”

  “Ouch,” I said, squinting open my eyes and blinking against the floodlights.

  Next to me, Dan’s voice said, “Double ouch.”

  Becky let out a loud whoosh of air. “Oh thank God. I saw that set come down on you and…” She didn’t finish the sentence.

  I did a quick mental inventory of my body. Everything seemed to be intact. Moving slowly, in case I was wrong, I rolled to my side and started to get up. Hands reached down and gently helped me to my feet.

  Dan waved off assistance as he struggled to a standing position. He realized his right arm was scraped from elbow to wrist and dripping blood, and swore.

  “Move away, people. Give them room.” Marty pushed his way through the crowd. “You two all right?”

  Dan and I looked at each other and shrugged. “Guess so.”

  “You’re sure now? I don’t want to wake up tomorrow morning with a lawsuit on my desk.” He said it jokingly, but his gaze was intense.

  “I just got the wind knocked out of me,” Dan said, bristling at the idea that he’d sue his own theater.

  “Maybe you two should see a doctor, just in case,” Marty said, clearly hoping we wouldn’t.

  Ian regarded Marty sourly and said to me, “I can take you to the emergency room, if you like.”

  “That’s not a bad idea.” Becky’s face was stripped of color. Her eyes were huge and worried.

  “We’re fine,” I assured her.

  “You’re bleeding,” Becky said, unconvinced.

  Dan looked dismissively at his arm. “Eh. Nothing a little ointment can’t fix.”

  Becky pointed at the scrapes on my hands. Now that I noticed them, my hands started to sting like mad. But they were superficial scrapes.

  “Ointment,” I agreed.

  Becky raised her voice and called out sharply, “Does anyone have a first-aid kit?”

  “I’ve got one in my car,” one of the parent volunteers said, hurrying off to get it.

  “You sure you’re okay? Both of you?” Marty regarded Dan and me steadily for a moment and then turned away. “You!” he barked at a burly guy I recognized as a stagehand. “You guys are supposed to be double checking the volunteers’ work. What if this had happened to a customer? And the rest of you. What are you standing around for? Get back to work.” He clapped his hands together and herded everyone back to the supply trucks. Dan, Becky and I remained where we were.

  Dan turned me. “Don’t let him guilt you out of the care you need. If yo
u’re hurt, say so, even if you don’t realize it until you wake up tomorrow morning. And having said that, I strongly advise taking a couple of ibuprofen before you go to bed tonight or you’re going to wake up stiff as a board.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve no plans to be a martyr,” I assured him.

  There was a grunt and a clatter behind us as a couple of stagehands righted the set. Becky froze, staring at it.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  She raised a shaking hand and pointed at a jagged line of nails along the top where someone must have ripped away a board.

  Dan let out a low whistle. “Better fix that. I’ll get a hammer and bend those nails around.” He reached up a hand to finger the sharp nail ends and winced. “I think I landed a little hard on my shoulder.”

  Becky said, “If either of you had been a foot or two to the right…”

  “We weren’t. We’re fine,” Dan said.

  He reached out his other arm to draw Becky close, but she pulled impatiently away.

  “You don’t get it. That set didn’t just tip over on its own. And it wasn’t knocked over by accident or there would have been someone on the other side trying to catch it as it fell. There wasn’t anyone. I told you, I saw. Someone pushed it.”

  All three of us were silent for a long moment. Then Dan forced a laugh. “Maybe someone is trying to kill me after all. Not to detract from your importance, Jo, of course.”

  “Damn straight.” I hammed it up a little, for all our sakes. “I’m sure I’ve got a few students who wouldn’t mind seeing me out of the way before I grade their chemistry tests.”

  “I don’t know how you two can make cracks about this. It’s pure luck you weren’t maimed. Whoever’s trying to kill Dan is obviously going to keep trying until they get it right and they don’t care who they take with him. We can’t even protect ourselves because we don’t know who’s doing it.” She rounded on Dan. “And your solution is to pound the nails back in!”

  Dan threw his arms around her and hugged her tightly. “Shh. All right. We’ll call it a night. We’ve got enough people here that the haunted house will get finished in time, whether we’re here or not.”

  Becky pushed him away. “That’s it? Someone tries to kill you and you’re just going to go home?”

  “No,” Dan said, frowning at the mess that was his arm. “I’m going to clean this up and then I’m going to go have a drink. A big one.”

  *

  A half-hour later, Becky, Dan and I were huddled around a small table at the back of a bar in one of those neighborhood strip malls that crop up every few blocks throughout Long Beach. We had chosen the place because none of us had ever been there before, on the assumption that it was unlikely any of us would run into anyone we knew.

  A handful of regulars nursed drinks on stools around the bar and a couple of guys played a friendly game of pool as they worked their way through a pitcher of lager. A constant stream of Eighties songs crackled out through cheap speakers, keeping our conversation private.

  Dan took a long pull of lager. “Shit,” he said.

  “That about sums up my opinion,” I said, wondering how much I could drink and still drive home. My conclusion was, not nearly enough.

  I was suffering a little from delayed shock. Every time I blinked, I saw that sharp, jagged line of nails.

  Becky scowled at both of us. “I’ve heard of let-down after a shock, but you two are practically rolling over.” She pulled a small notebook out of her purse and clicked open a pen. “Let’s go through this methodically. First of all, who was at the haunted house the night Tom died?”

  “Was murdered,” Dan corrected. He took another gulp of his beer.

  Becky ignored the comment and began listing names. “The three of us. Marty, of course.”

  “Half of Long Beach was there, Becky,” Dan protested.

  Becky retorted, “I don’t care about the general public. I’m talking about people connected with the Milverne. People who know their way around the place well enough to have gotten back to the dressing room area unseen or at least unnoticed in the sense that anyone who might have seen them took it for granted that they had reason to be there. People who knew Tom. Who know you.”

  Exasperation flushed Dan’s handsome face at Becky’s insinuation that he was the real target. Becky stubbornly tilted up her chin, black eyes defiant.

  “Ian and Angelina were doing the tour-guide thing, along with Tom,” I said mildly. “Other than that, I didn’t really see anyone.” Except a couple of vampires. One of whom Jedi-mind-tricked her way into the haunted house, taking some guy with her.

  My words had their intended effect of cutting the tension, or least reminding them they weren’t alone and could argue later. Becky bent her attention back to her notebook and added Ian, Angelina and Tom to the list.

  In a softer voice that belied her underlying anxiety, she asked Dan, “All the Long Beach Player principals were there, weren’t they?”

  Dan regarded Becky in taut silence. Then, as if a knot untied inside him, his body relaxed. He blew out a breath. “Marty made sure of it. We all had roles in the haunted house. Joseph was the suicidal mummy, Shandra was the homicidal witch…”

  I had recognized the costumes, if not the people inhabiting them.

  “We had other volunteers too, right?” Becky’s pen scratched out more names. “Including your fan club.”

  “You have a fan club?” I asked Dan.

  He rubbed a weary hand across his jaw. “Yeah. Part of the blatant self-promotion we have to do.”

  “It’s not as if you set it up,” Becky grumbled. “You can’t help it if some people find you attractive.”

  Dan looked up from his beer and met her eyes. The look he gave her made her blush.

  I busied myself reading the names on Becky’s lists. “You’ve narrowed it down to…no one. Everyone who was working the haunted house the night Tom died was also there tonight.”

  Becky wrenched her gaze away from Dan. “We have to make sure we aren’t overlooking anything obvious.”

  “Such as the fact that we don’t know what we’re doing?” I muttered.

  Becky ignored the remark. “The next step is a little harder. For you, anyway,” she told Dan. “We need to make a list of all the people who might benefit from your death.”

  “Ah.” He dropped the level of his beer a little lower. “You mean all my friends and coworkers who might want to kill me.”

  “You’re too good an actor not to have inspired some jealousy along the way,” I said. “Which reminds me. Becky, you’d better add the entire Bayshore High School boy population to the list, since their girlfriends all had crushes on Dan.”

  “That’s only about a hundred jealous boyfriends. I was sure I cut a wider swath than that.” Dan’s smile collapsed almost immediately into a thoughtful frown. He put out a hand. “Give me the pen.”

  Becky handed it over and pushed the pad in his direction.

  “I’m not saying any of these people would have committed a felony over it, but I did come in as the lead in the company over other actors who’d been there longer,” Dan said.

  “Just make the list.” Becky took her first sip of beer.

  “Who was there when you came?” I asked.

  “Tom. Ian, though he still gets all the funny roles, which he likes. Another guy who left after Marty made the announcement.”

  “Don’t suppose you’ve seen this guy hanging around lately?”

  “Doubt it. He got Kinickie in a revival of Grease that is playing down in San Diego.”

  “Easy enough to check,” Becky said. “Anyone else?”

  Dan finished his beer. “Angelina and I dated briefly. Didn’t end well.”

  “You dated that Barbie doll?” Becky asked, incredulous.

  “You dated tattoo guy from the firehouse,” Dan replied.

  “You did?” I said to Becky.

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “Tell anyone and I’m resurr
ecting the pregnancy rumor.”

  Dan perked up interestedly, “What pregnancy?”

  Two of the guys at the bar had turned to look at us. “Maybe we should all spit on our hands and shake,” I suggested, dropping my voice to a harsh whisper.

  Dan laughed, but I could tell Becky wasn’t quite ready to let the “dating Angelina” tidbit go.

  “You mentioned a fan club. Any of them wacko?” I asked.

  “The president’s a little…” Becky spun a finger at her temple in a crazy sign.

  “Shelly Newman’s all right, she’s just a little… Okay, she’s wacko.” Dan wrote her name on the list and threw down the pen. “I really don’t see how this helps.”

  The little hairs on the back of my neck stood up and the outside door pushed open.

  The bartender glanced up and waved someone in. I turned and my mouth went dry as Will entered the room. From his leather boots to his long inky hair, he was a symphony in black, but his eyes glittered like hot sapphires. And they were fixed on me, as though no one else were in the room.

  Becky stared. Her mouth hung open a little, as if she’d forgotten to shut it. Even Dan couldn’t seem to look away.

  Will came to stand at our table.

  “Hello, beautiful.”

  “Will.” It came out as a squeak.

  Becky blinked, as if coming out of a trance. Her voice was so soft I barely heard the words. “Such a shame.”

  I got up so quickly my chair hovered a second on two legs before righting itself. How had Will found me? Vadar? My gaze flicked nervously around the room, assessing all the regulars. Had we stumbled on a vampire den of some sort? If only real life were like the movies, where the vampire’s faces abruptly took on an alien cast for convenient identification.

  I shook my thoughts back to the present. I needed to get Becky and Dan out of there right away, before anything happened to them. Father Stevens wasn’t exactly set up to forgive that sort of sin in the confessional.

  “How, er, nice run into you,” I told Will. “We were just leaving.”

  I kicked Becky sharply under the table. She got to her feet and, with a regretful glance at his unfinished beer, Dan followed suit. He slung an arm around Becky and headed out.