Speak Now

by Margaret Dumas

  “I think you know who I am.”

  Jack’s gaze flicked over her. “Miller’s whore?”

  She was motionless. When she spoke it was in a fierce whisper. “He loved me. I loved him. You can’t cheapen what we had.”

  “Maybe not, but I think you cheapened it when you and your associates killed him.”

  “Them, not me!” She leapt towards Jack, bringing the gun level with his face. “They didn’t trust him. They didn’t believe me when I said he was one of us. He would never have talked. He cared about us, and he cared about—”

  “Money?” I interrupted. I’ve never been a fan of monologues. Or of guns pointed at my husband.

  Lisa gave me a look of pure venom. “You think everything is about money.”

  “If it wasn’t about the money, why didn’t you two just disappear?” Jack asked. “You knew Miller’s wife had found out about you.”

  Lisa’s face twisted. “We were going to go. As soon as we’d made that last deal. And then she had to ruin everything. And you had to ruin everything.”

  “You could hardly have expected either of us to turn a blind eye,” Jack said mildly.

  Lisa put the gun to his face again. “You made her talk. You used her and then you let her pay the price. You may as well have drowned her yourself.”

  But he hadn’t, apparently. And hearing that, something in my chest untied itself. “Dave killed her,” I said.

  “You don’t know anything about him,” she accused me. “He didn’t kill her, they did, just like they killed him.”

  Jack gave Lisa a curious look. “You expect me to believe you weren’t involved in Miller’s death?”

  Her eyes clouded over as she moved away from us. “I thought I’d convinced them,” she said hollowly. “I thought they believed me when I told them Dave would never sell us out. But they killed him anyway. And when they told me about it afterwards, I left.”

  “You left?” Jack said skeptically. “I don’t think so. I don’t think you can just resign from your line of work.”

  “Nor you from yours.”

  They stared at each other. She had a point.

  “How did you get away from them?” I asked. Not that I knew who “they” were, specifically.

  Lisa leaned forward over the table. “I’d been in contact with Dave all along. He’d been able to set everything up from prison. He’d targeted your family and your business, and he’d hired Brian to tell us what was going on inside the theater.”

  “And Brian gave you the names of the actors to use for Cece and Nancy,” I prodded.

  “And Miller arranged for the house in Mill Valley where Cece was taken, and the hired thugs who took her,” Jack went on. “But you? What were you doing all this time?”

  “I was in LA,” she said. “They’d sent me there on some—” She stopped for a moment before continuing. “I was there when I found out what they’d done to Dave.” She turned away, her face twisted in pain.

  I didn’t press her. I didn’t know if Jack had a plan for our escape, but he seemed just as interested in getting Lisa’s story out of her as I was. Eventually, he spoke. “So you left them and you came here.”

  Lisa answered with her back to us. “Brian had told us about the woman from LA who was being hired into the Rep. I took her place.”

  With the help of a bus. I knew that much already.

  “I needed a new identity,” she told us. “So I took one. And they didn’t know anything about what Dave and I had been planning, so I was safe here.” She looked around the room. “Safe.”

  Maybe I should have left well enough alone, but I couldn’t. “Why?” I asked. “Why did you target me anyway? When Dave started asking Brian questions and hiring God-knows-who, I’d barely even met Jack. Why on earth would you two think I was the best way to get to him?”

  Lisa got a warm gleam in her eye. “Because Jack is completely predictable,” she said. “And Dave knew him.” She looked at Jack. “You showed your hand early in the game, Jack. You showed your hand the minute you sent Gordon to check up on Charley’s background.” She turned to me. “You should be flattered.”

  Stunned was more like it. I turned to Jack. “I’ve always known nothing good would come of having me spied on.”

  He flashed me a quick look. “Sorry, Pumpkin.”

  I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to kiss him or kill him, but circumstances prevented me from doing either.

  Jack looked over at Lisa. “So what now?”

  “Why? Are you in a hurry?”

  Jack shrugged. “My wife’s play begins in a little over an hour. I don’t want to miss it.”

  She checked her watch. “I think you will.” She put the gun down, reached under the table, and brought out a metal briefcase I hadn’t noticed before. It looked like the sort of thing that would carry a bomb in one of those Bruce Willis movies. “Do you recognize this?”

  Jack cleared his throat. For the first time in this whole episode he began to look uneasy—which didn’t fill me with confidence.

  “Jack, what is it?” I asked.

  He kept his eyes on Lisa. “An explosive device. Mike and Miller developed it.”

  Not good news.

  “This is what it was all about, isn’t it, Jack?” Lisa said. “If you’d just let us trade a few dozen of these for the gold shipment, everything would have worked out fine.”

  Gold shipment? A few dozen bombs? Jack was going to have quite a story to tell me some day. If we lived through this.

  I licked my lips. “All right, Lisa, why don’t you just tell us what you want?”

  “I want Dave back!” She brought her fist down onto the table with enough force to make the briefcase jump. Probably not a good thing.

  She drew a ragged breath, then turned to face Jack. “Tell her what I want, Jack. Tell her why I’m here.”

  “Because you’re a sick and bitter woman?”

  Lisa moved suddenly, striking Jack’s face with the barrel of the gun so quickly it was over before I even realized what was happening. Jack barely acknowledged the blow that sent blood spilling from his lip.

  “What, Lisa? What do you want?” I spoke quickly, wanting to get her talking again. As long as she was talking she wasn’t hitting and she wasn’t doing anything with the bomb on the table.

  “Never mind, Charley,” Jack said steadily. “Whatever she wants, she’s not going to get it this way.”

  Lisa brought the gun up to hit him again but I yelled “Wait!”

  Her arm still raised, she looked over at me—which would have been great if I could think of something to say. The three of us stayed frozen for a moment.

  Jack broke the spell. “What are you planning to do now?”

  Lisa slowly lowered her arm. She turned and picked up the suitcase. “What do you think?”

  “You can’t!” I yelped. “Lisa, you can’t blow up the building. The doors will open any minute! We’re sold out! You—”

  She set the bomb down with a thud. I jumped and shut up. “You’re right,” she said. “I can’t blow up the building. This was designed for maximum effect in a small area, like a coffee shop or classroom.” She stopped to take a breath and suddenly I saw a shred of the calm-in-any-crisis stage manager again, competently summarizing the facts. “But it will destroy this room, and probably the costume shop. Fire will spread across the hall—lots of flammable material in the design workshop, as you know—and of course…” She looked up. “The stage is just above us.”

  “The stage?” I whispered.

  She nodded. “And maybe the first two or three rows of the audience. Who will be in those seats, I wonder? Your family? Your friends? The poor grieving sister of the murdered playwright?”

  “Stop it,” Jack ordered. He leaned forward. “What are you really after?”

  Lisa looked surprised. “This,” she said. “Just this.” She gestured to the bomb. “And in a way, I have to thank you. You’ve helped me make an important decision. I’ve been st
ruggling over whether it would be worse for you to die or to live on without your wife, knowing that you’d caused her death and the deaths of so many. I did think letting you live would be a fair exchange—your wife for my Dave—but in the end—” she looked at me— “Charley made the decision for me.”

  I swallowed. “What were you planning to do—go for a break in the second act and watch from outside as the bomb went off?”

  “Actually, I thought I’d wait for the curtain calls,” she said. “That way I’d be sure you’d be on stage. But now you’ve messed up all the cues… And despite what you think, I’m not going to be outside when…” Her voice cracked and she stopped. And suddenly I understood. Dave Miller might not have committed suicide, but Lisa was going to.

  She turned to the briefcase and opened it. I half expected to see a big digital clock, counting the minutes we had left to live. “Well, it’s been great working with you, Charley, but I’ve really got to be going now. They need me upstairs, and—”

  In one quick motion Jack twisted his body and somehow freed himself. Before I realized what had happened, he was holding a thin blade at Lisa’s throat with one hand and keeping the gun she had grabbed pointed away with the other.

  “No!” Lisa shouted. A line of blood appeared on her neck. “No!” she cried again as Jack succeeded in taking the gun from her.

  He took one step back, keeping the gun and his eyes on her, and sliced through the cord that bound me to the sofa. Then he held the knife out to me. I hesitated, not wanting to touch Lisa’s blood, then took it with both hands. I cut my feet loose first, because it was easier, then awkwardly turned it to saw through the tape at my wrists.

  Lisa was leaning against the wall of monitors, staring at the gun Jack held on her and moaning a low, rhythmic incantation. “No, no, no, Dave, no…”

  “Lisa,” Jack said sharply.

  She looked up without seeming to focus. “How did you do that?”

  “I’m a professional. And didn’t you just tell me I was completely predictable?”

  I stood behind Jack. “What are you going to do?”

  At this Lisa seemed to pull herself together. “Yeah, Jack,” she repeated. “It’s your move now. What are you going to do?”

  Both of them were breathing heavily after their short struggle. Jack didn’t answer.

  Suddenly, horribly, a knowing smile appeared on Lisa’s face. She looked from the gun to Jack, wiping the blood from her neck. “You can’t. You are predictable. You’d never shoot a woman.” She took a step back.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Jack said. “The theater is full of police. What do you think Flank has been doing all this time?”

  Lisa’s back had been to the monitors, but now she spun to look at them. Uniformed police were swarming all over backstage, in the seats, in the lobby. The only place I didn’t see them was downstairs in the workshops. “You won’t get away,” Jack said.

  “Of course I will.” Lisa took another step back. “Look at me. I’m one of the guys. I work here. Everybody knows me. Hell, they’re probably going crazy without me.” She moved slowly toward the door, walking backwards. “And you and I both know,” she said, turning, “that you wouldn’t shoot a woman, especially in the back.”

  She reached for the handle.

  “Oh, really,” I said, my hand moving to the small of my back. “I would.” I pulled out the Walther, popped the safety, and shot her in the ass.

  Chapter 30

  As it turned out, shooting Lisa wasn’t really necessary. Because as it turned out, Flank and Inspector Yahata were waiting in the closet.

  “Pumpkin,” Jack asked, taking the gun out of my shaking hands, “do you really think I’d have let her get away?”

  I looked at him. My ears were ringing. “What?”

  “Why do you think I took out the camera at the closet door?”

  “Oh.”

  Lisa was screaming and swearing and bleeding all over Flank. Jack looked at her dispassionately. “Although, if you had to shoot someone…” Flank snarled something and dragged her out to the costume shop.

  Inspector Yahata asked for the gun.

  “Am I going to jail?” I asked him.

  I felt the heat of his eyes on me, but his voice remained cool and clipped. “Not tonight, I think. But I will want your statement.”

  That was going to be tricky, but I was saved by a policeman shouting “Jesus Christ—It’s a bomb!” Then Inspector Yahata’s cell phone rang and gave us all a collective heart attack. Mike popped his head into the room. “A bomb? I learned a little about bombs in the Navy. Do you want me to check it out?” The detective waved him in and answered his phone.

  We watched Mike tinker with the wires for a few minutes. It occurred to me that there was no reason to stay in the room, but before I could suggest anything to Jack, Mike looked up with a smug expression on his face. “All done.”

  Inspector Yahata ended his call. “Mrs. Fairfax, Mr. Fairfax,” he said, “I…” He looked like he was about to say something, but he just gave us a fleeting frown. He tried again. “I don’t suppose you know why this woman was so hostile to you and your family.”

  No way in hell was I touching that question. Jack answered smoothly, “I have no idea.”

  The detective studied my husband for a minute, and a quick flash of…something…crossed his face. Then he snapped his notebook shut. “Come down to the station tomorrow to make a full statement. And,” he paused, “come up with a story by then.”

  As he left the room, Mike spoke softly. “I think we can guess who was on the phone.” He and Jack exchanged a look. Something told me they knew someone with even more clout than Harry. I allowed myself three seconds to feel bad for Inspector Yahata. Then I realized Jack had probably told him a lot more than he’d ever told me—off the official police record.

  I might have collapsed right about then if Simon hadn’t yelled from somewhere outside the door. Under normal circumstances a person might have called something like “Are you all right?” But this was, remarkably, still opening night. Simon shouted “Charley! Half hour to curtain!”

  ***

  I grabbed Jack’s hand and made for the door. The costume shop was a madhouse of police, Flank’s security people, and crew members straining to see what was going on. Simon was getting ready to yell again. “Char— Good Lord!” He recoiled when he saw me. “What happened? Are you all right?”

  I’d forgotten my scalp wound and the blood all over my face. “Get me a damp cloth and tell me what’s going on upstairs,” I ordered him.

  “And maybe a hat or something,” Jack suggested, pulling the silk handkerchief from his breast pocket.

  Jack cleaned the worst of the blood off my face and hands while Simon wound a piece of fabric around my head like a scarf, babbling all the time. “There, very Isadora Duncan, darling. Now all you have to do is get upstairs and give the cast their final instructions before you collapse. Everyone’s convinced you’ve found another body down here, and some of them saw Lisa being carried out to the ambulance. Victor said he heard a gunshot, but nobody believes him. Of course I’m dying to know what the hell you’ve been up to, but that can wait until you’ve stopped the actors from rioting. Are you ready?”

  I was still bleeding a little and shaking a lot. I’d been conked on the head and nearly blown up. I’d just shot someone and lied to the police.

  “Of course I’m ready.”

  Chip had gathered everyone together for a last-minute pep talk. Which he’d pretty thoroughly lost control of, given the fact that there was a steady stream of police and assorted official-looking technicians rushing from the stage door to the basement stairs and back again.

  Olivia saw me first. “Charley! I demand to know—”

  I stopped her before she got up a head of steam. “All right, everybody. Half hour! Now I know you’re all going to do your best tonight, and you’re going to give the performances of your lives—”

  “Charley, what the
hell is going on?” Victor bellowed.

  “Um…” I suppose I couldn’t ask them just to ignore the police, but maybe I could distract them. “Um, I don’t think everyone here knows my husband, Jack.”

  Jack looked startled as twenty people turned their curious eyes on him, but he recovered quickly and gave a little yes-I’m-her-husband wave.

  “Jack,” I continued, “isn’t like us. He isn’t from the theatre, and doesn’t know all our traditions. So earlier this evening he accidentally said the name of the Scottish play.”

  Murmurs, some of disgust and some of alarm, ran through the crowd.

  “Did he know what to do?” Sally asked. “I know what to do because my mother told me. You have to turn around three times—”

  “Yes,” I interrupted, “but he didn’t know that.” I addressed the group. “He was with Lisa downstairs in the costume shop at the time, and she was so surprised when she heard…the M word…that she stabbed herself in the leg with a dagger.” I tried to assess how well it was going over. “She’d taken it from one of the costumes in the wardrobe closet and…well, these things happen.”

  I saw the wigmaster about to point out any number of things fishy about the story, but Martha, bless her, gave him a fierce glare accompanied by an elbow to the ribs. He didn’t speak.

  “What are we going to do for a stage manager?” Chip asked, unhelpfully.

  “Well…” I looked to Jack for inspiration but received none.

  “Can you do it?” Simon demanded from behind me.

  Chip looked dazed. Then he took a deep breath. “I guess I have to.”

  Amazingly, the cast and crew burst into applause. There’s nothing like backstage drama to get theatrical blood really pumping. I tuned it all out as I sagged against Jack. He spoke to Simon. “Think we can get her out of here now?”

  ***

  While we were busy telling outrageous lies, Mike had gone out to the lobby to intercept Harry, Brenda, and Eileen when they arrived. Everyone was waiting for us in the office.

  “Goddammit!” Harry shouted when he saw me. “Where is he? What did he do to you? What in the holy hell went on here tonight?” He pulled a gun from a shoulder holster and started waving it around. “I’ll kill the sonofabitch! I’ll—”