Lucky and the Banged-up Ballerina

by Emmy Grace

  I step back as Mayor Dunning claps Trenton on the back and reaches for the doorknob with his free hand. “Think of how this would’ve gone if none of this would’ve happened. All the things you’d have said, all the smiles you’d have had.” Trenton nods. The mayor nods. “Let’s go.”

  Let the games begin.

  4

  Mayor Dunning opens the door quickly. He and Trenton scoot through sideways and then I pull it shut. No one would’ve been able to see inside.

  I turn and lean back against the door. Now I’m alone. With a dead body. And not just any dead body. Serena Flowers’ dead body.

  Since I was a child, I dreamed of seeing Serena perform and maybe one day getting to meet her. Well, I got my face-to-face with her, all right, but when I’d imagined it as a kid, she’d always been alive.

  I know nothing is perfect, but come on! This is ridiculous.

  Rather than focusing on the lifeless body of one of the most talented ballerinas of our time, I take out my phone again and dial 911. The other number I have for Chief Sheriff Clive Sally is to his office, and he won’t be working at this time of night.

  Clive is both the chief of police and the county sheriff, hence the combo title. He’s beloved by all, which is why he’s held the position for the last thousand years. He’s bound to be circling the eighty mark, though, and just isn’t as quick as he once was, which is why Mayor Dunning asked me to look into this, too. But as slow as he talks and walks and moves in general, once Ruthie, the 911 operator and his niece, notifies him, he’ll be here in a flash. What Clive can’t do with his feet, he makes up for with the wheels of his cruiser. The man burns up the pavement everywhere he goes.

  I try not to sigh into the phone when Ruthie answers. “Hi, Ruthie. It’s Lucky.”

  “Again?”

  I sigh. I can’t help it. “Yeah, again. Can you get ahold of Clive and have him come over to the theater? It’s important.”

  “What’s the problem this time?”

  “Uh, I can’t really say over the phone, but the mayor asked me to call, so you’d better have him hightail it over here. Tell him Liam will meet him out front.”

  “Liam? Boy, you two sure are gettin’ close, aren’t you?”

  I can practically hear her wagging her eyebrows at me. All that’s missing is the bow chicka wow wow.

  “We’re friends. That’s all.” I need to take out an ad in the Salty Springs Sentinel and officially announce that Liam and I are not a couple. The residents of this tiny little town just can’t seem to get that through their heads. Apparently, since Liam is their most eligible bachelor and I’m the new girl, they assume that sparks will fly and we’ll be having a shotgun wedding any day now.

  “Sure you are.” I feel like she’s probably winking right now, even though I can’t actually see her.

  “Call him now, k? Tell him to get right over here.”

  “I know, I know. Hold your horses. He’ll be there in a few.”

  With that, she hangs up, but not before I hear her on her walkie talkie thing, hailing the chief sheriff. I guess Clive has one in his house, too. That or he sleeps in his cruiser and I just don’t know about it. It might behoove me to invest in one of those devices at some point. Get my hacker contact, Felonious, to find out what channel they use. It would be a lot easier if I had Clive on the antique version of speed dial.

  I text Liam and ask him to meet Clive outside and then bring him back. I startle when a loud thump sounds on the door at my back. That’s Liam-code for LET ME IN.

  I crack the door again, peeking out enough to ensure that the green room is clear. When I see that it appears to be, I open the door enough to let him in.

  He stops beside me. “I know I’ve said it before, but trou—”

  “Don’t you dare say it, Liam Dunning. Don’t you dare.”

  He was going to say that trouble follows me. It sure does seem that’s the case since I arrived in Salty Springs, but he need not remind me of it every time something happens.

  At least he respects my wishes on this matter and keeps his commentary to himself.

  “Tell me what you know.”

  Being an ex-FBI agent, his mind works a lot like mine does, only his is well trained. Mine is just full of instinct and luck. Lucky gut, lucky charm, lucky tingle—it’s quite the lucky package. The only thing I’m not lucky in—that I know of—is love. Thus far, the men who have taken a liking to me that I’ve liked back have gone off the deep end. That’s why I steer clear of amorous entanglements. For me to kiss a man is the romantic equivalent of Mount St. Helen’s erupting. It gets hot and ugly and destructive fast. And it doesn’t cool off anytime soon.

  “After her performance, she came back here. To change, by the looks of it. When we arrived, your father brought us back to the green room. He chatted with Trenton Gibb, the owner and producer of the troupe, for a minute before Trenton knocked on Serena’s door. She didn’t answer, of course, so he poked his head in. We found her this way.”

  Liam starts toward the body, but I grab his arm. “There’s broken glass on the floor. Don’t get too close. Gibb already trampled the crap out of it. It’s probably turned back to sand by now.”

  “So he was over here?” Liam is stepping carefully, skirting the body and taking in the scene from different angles.

  “Yep. In fact, he touched her. We were all so stunned, I couldn’t stop him fast enough. But—” I stop myself before I start spouting off my half-baked theories. Liam is more of a facts kind of guy. He seems to enjoy poking holes in my conjecture.

  “But what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Not nothing. What?” When I don’t answer, he looks up at me, his hazel-gray eyes boring into mine, like he’s willing me to speak. I think he thinks that he can perform FBI mind tricks.

  So far, I’m not so sure he can’t.

  “I don’t know. Just something about the way Trenton Gibb responded. It seemed… I don’t know. Just a little off somehow. He appeared upset enough at first, but he calmed down awfully fast and started talking about keeping this quiet. Struck me as odd that he’d be worried about something like that at a time like this. I mean, there was a dead body a few feet away from him.”

  “We think that’s strange, but some of these famous types are cold and callous. It’s all about appearances for them.”

  “I guess.”

  I walk over to where Liam is circling the body from a safe distance, and I survey the scene a bit more thoroughly than I did the first time. Now that I’m prepared for the sight of seeing her dead…

  Well, sort of.

  As prepared as anyone can be to have to look at something like this.

  “Was anyone else back here with her?”

  “Not that I know of. Everyone else was out in the green room.”

  Liam straightens and starts to look around the room, his eyes clicking from point to point around the perimeter. I see them pause and then flicker back a notch. They narrow as he stares hard at something just over my shoulder.

  I turn to see what caught his attention.

  There’s a small private bathroom for the occupants of this room, but the light is off inside it, plunging the nook into darkness. But in that darkness, there is a thin seam of light visible around the full-length mirror that graces one wall.

  I’m right on Liam’s heels as he starts toward it. He flips on the light and walks to the mirror. He feels along the edge of it, running his fingers from top to bottom. As he moves, the gleam of the ceiling light shifts and moves over the smooth surface of the mirror. The spotless shine is only interrupted by a single smudge about waist-high, right at the border between the mirror and the wall. It looks to me like a bunch of fingerprints.

  While Liam squats down to check the bottom of the mirror, I take a tissue from my purse. I’m not really the type to get hysterical over meeting a celebrity, but many of my earliest memories of Serena Flowers are indelibly connected to my mother. I was afraid I’d get a little e
motional, and the last thing I would’ve wanted was to meet the ballerina and snot all over her.

  Hence the tissues.

  I wrap one over the tip of my finger and reach forward to touch the spot. I don’t feel anything, but why would there be fingerprints here and only here? And such a density of them, too. It looks like a lot of fingertips have touched this one spot.

  I push gently and hear a click. The mirror pops open about a quarter of an inch.

  I glance down at Liam at the same time he looks up at me.

  Slowly, he stands, holding his hand palm up and wiggling his fingers. He doesn’t have to tell me what he wants. Like his knock and his various growls and grumbles, I’m becoming very fluent in Liam-ese.

  I hand him the tissue, which he uses to grip the edge of the mirror and pull. It opens with a soft whoosh to reveal a recessed door. Using the tissue again, he twists the knob and pushes it open.

  He steps through the doorway and I peek through after him. It leads into the alley behind the theater.

  “It’s a secret door,” I whisper.

  How very cloak and dagger. This really is like the movies.

  “Yeah,” a voice sounds from behind me, startling me. I suck in a quick breath and whirl to find Clive leaning over my shoulder, looking out at the alley, too. “They put this in years ago when Salty Springs hosted productions like this on a reg’lar basis.” He nods once and then grins at me as he pats my shoulder. “How ya doin’, Lucky lady?”

  “I’ve had better nights, Clive. How about you?”

  “Well, I guess I’d be all right if nobody else got killed ’round here, but…” He shrugs his scrawny shoulders. “Doesn’t look like that’s about to happen tonight, does it?”

  “Nope. Sure doesn’t.” I follow Clive back through the bathroom and into the main dressing area. “Who all knows about that door, Chief Sheriff?”

  “Hard to say. It wasn’t protected information or anything,” he says, holding his mouth funny. I realize he’s got a chunk of snuff behind his lower lip. I hope to God he doesn’t spit in here. I might have to use the toilet to barf in. Just the thought of a stream of brown, frothy juice…

  I feel a little queasy all of a sudden. Regina would probably find it laughable that I’m fine to stare at a dead body, but get green around the gills when I think about Clive’s spit. I’ll admit, it’s a tad weird, but spit’s just gross. And when it’s brown and smells like a mixture of old man and Ben Gay ointment?

  Nope.

  Just can’t do it.

  “So, in other words, anyone could’ve known or found out that this door was here.”

  He bobs his head like a turtle. “With a little bit ‘o diggin’… sure.”

  Our pool of suspects just got fatter than a hillbilly on pie-eating day.

  5

  Petey arrives a few minutes after Clive, and shortly after that, Mayor Dunning and Trenton return.

  “Clive, I’d like you to meet Trenton Gibb. He’s the owner of Haysman Troupe. Trenton, this is Clive Sally, the chief of police and sheriff for Salty Springs and York County.”

  The two men shake hands.

  “Pleasure, Mr. Gibb.”

  “Clive, did Ms. Boucher fill you in?”

  “She did at that, Bill.”

  “Good, good. Did she tell you that Trenton has requested that we keep this as quiet as possible?”

  Clive’s heavily creased brow furrows further. Watching it is a lot like watching a Shar-Pei’s wrinkles get deeper. Some of them are small trenches. They’d probably hold a pencil in a pinch. Maybe Clive doesn’t even need pockets. He might be able to store his valuables in his folds. Pencil, wedding ring, house key, a rolled-up twenty. They’d fit. I’m sure of it.

  “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with what you’re asking there, Mayor.”

  Mayor Dunning immediately goes into placating mode. “I’m not asking you to do anything illegal or unethical, Clive. I’m just asking you to keep what happened tonight quiet as long as possible. We don’t want to create a panic with folks around here, and I’m sure you don’t want this investigation to turn into a circus. That’s exactly what will happen if this thing gets the wrong kind of attention. Like from the state or federal boys, or from the media.”

  “And just how do you propose to keep it quiet? She was a celebrity.” He annunciates every syllable of celebrity—cel-eb-ri-ty—making it extra crisp, which is amusing coming from Clive. Makes it sound like he was trying to pronounce a complicated French or German word. Of course, around here, a celebrity is probably just as foreign. It’s not like Salty Springs is listed on any cultural maps or ranks as a tourist hot spot.

  “Trenton can make an announcement that she got sick and that they’ll have to postpone her next performance.”

  “What about her family or her loved ones? What if one of them tries to contact her?”

  “Trenton can take care of all that. He’s been a part of her life for years. He knows her better than anybody.”

  And yet he doesn’t seem too broken up about her death. Interesting.

  Clive nods once. “I’ll do what I can.”

  The mayor claps him on the shoulder. Clive actually gives a little with the weight of it. Makes me want to slap Slick Willie’s hand away and threaten him if he breaks Clive. I doubt it would be too hard to do. In fact, I might need to find a way to pad Clive’s uniform with bubble wrap to keep his frail bones safe.

  Just the thought of skinny old Clive walking down Main Street in brown bubble wrap shirt and pants, like a tall Stay Puft turd, makes me smother a laugh.

  “I appreciate that, Clive. Uh, one more thing. I’ve asked Ms. Boucher to lend a hand. You know, to get this tied up as quickly as possible. I thought you might appreciate some help.”

  “That’d be fine. Don’t want this place to become a spectacle. That’s not the kind of limelight I want for the good folk of this town.”

  Or himself, I imagine.

  “I couldn’t agree more. So you’ll give her access to evidence that’s collected, reports, things like that?”

  “Yeah. Don’t see no problem with that. She seems to have a good nose for this sorta thing. And yer son, too. Between the two of ’em, I think we oughta get this figured out pretty quick.”

  Wow! Didn’t this take a turn for the flattering?

  “Excellent.”

  “I’ll need to get statements from both of you right quick.” Clive pats his chest and his hips. “Thought I had me a pen here somewhere.”

  I’m not sure Clive will ever be fully prepared for crimes like these.

  “I can find you something, Clive. I’ll be right b—”

  Before I can finish my sentence, the bang of one solid object meeting another reverberates through the room. A man pushes Clive out of the way, which isn’t very hard, lunges into the room, and throws himself at Serena’s feet before anyone can stop him. When I get a look at him, even from the side, I know exactly who it is.

  Hunkiest Man Alive and Spanish actor extraordinaire, Cruz DiSpirito. Aka Serena Flowers’ sometimes boyfriend.

  He started out in soap operas, but quickly gained popularity after he got a roll starring beside one of the hottest actresses in all of Hollywood. His rise was meteoric for about a minute, but then he followed with three not-so-great career choices and his trajectory more or less flatlined.

  “No! Oh my God, no! Serenaaaaa!”

  He’s clearly hysterical, kneeling in her blood, holding her hand, stroking her face. Turns out, Latin heat can be quite effective as Latin sorrow. If cameras were rolling, he’d be getting an Oscar nomination stat.

  Liam’s voice splits the air like a pickaxe. “Sir, step away from that body. Right. Now.”

  Cruz completely ignores Liam and just keeps petting the quickly cooling corpse of Serena Flowers like she’s his favorite stuffed animal.

  “Oh, mi corazon, please come back to me.”

  “Sir, I’m asking you once more to step away from her. If you don’t, I’
ll remove you myself.”

  That gets Cruz’s attention. He doesn’t know Liam, but he must be astute enough to recognize a legit threat when he hears it. Liam’s tone says he’s not only comfortable with getting physical, but that he’s confident of his victory, too.

  Cruz is Hollywood buff.

  Liam is farm guy buff.

  I’d put my money on Liam any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

  Cruz stills and slowly lifts his hands. It’s like he thinks someone has a gun pointed at the back of his head. I wonder if he’s this dramatic all the time.

  Actors!

  He pivots slowly toward Liam. I hear the crunch of glass and I know it must be digging into the flesh of his knees. Now his blood will be mixed in with the evidence. What’s a little more contamination to an already hot-mess-of-a-crime-scene?

  “I’m sorry. I…I don’t know what came over me,” he confesses, raising his eyes to Liam. When he slides them over to me, I think he looks contrite enough, and probably a little grief-stricken, too, if I’m being honest. Then again, Cruz is simply gorgeous with his jet-black hair and eyes to match, so my assessment might not be the most accurate.

  Despite the fact that his on-again, off-again girlfriend is lying behind him, stabbed to death, I see the spark of interest in his gaze. I’ve never tested it before, but I think it’s safe to say that my Lucky charm works even in the worst kind of circumstances.

  That or this guy isn’t the least bit torn up about Serena’s death either, and he’s just acting. I mean, that’s what he does for a living. Can we really believe anything he does or says?

  “Take a seat,” Liam says, motioning toward the short L-shaped sectional that crouches in one corner of the room.

  Cruz rises gracefully to his feet and does as instructed. When he starts to sit, Liam barks, “Don’t touch anything.”

  The actor sits and rests his hands, palm up, on his bloody knees. “Wh-what happened?”