Never Thwart a Thespian: Volume 8 (Leigh Koslow Mystery Series)

by Edie Claire

  “You’ve got thirty seconds,” Warren called through the door, “and then I’m coming in!”

  Leigh guided Allison ahead of her and towards the door. “Anything else?”

  Allison shook her head. “Just that neither of the widows are still in West View. They lived here for a while after, but Grandma’s pretty sure they both got remarried and left later on. They could have come back, but if they did, they’d have different last names.”

  Leigh opened the door.

  “Let’s go!” Warren urged. He was smiling, but his voice was tense. He hated being late.

  The annex had emptied out; as they approached the stage doors to the theater, the only person they passed was one of the actresses, who stood in a quiet corner wearing earbuds and mumbling lines to herself. Most of the cast, Leigh knew, was hanging out in the “green room,” the old choir room off the upstairs curved hallway. The room wasn’t green, but it was the closest space to the stage entrances.

  “Ethan is saving our seats,” Warren explained, rushing them along. “At least I hope he is.”

  They reached the door to the sanctuary and Warren swung it open for Leigh and Allison to enter. Leigh’s mouth dropped open with surprise. The theoretical audience her Aunt Bess dreamed of had miraculously appeared. The house was packed. Almost every seat was occupied, and the ushers were scrambling to add extras in the back. A loud buzz of excited chatter filled the room, and the air was thick with anticipation. Leigh shut her mouth, smiled broadly, and began to move forward, but a hand restrained her.

  “Hang on, kiddo,” Bess whispered. “Can I talk to you a minute?”

  Leigh stepped back. She studied her aunt’s face and didn’t care for the unusual creases of worry around Bess’s ordinarily bright eyes. “You two go on in,” Leigh insisted, throwing an apologetic glance at Warren. “I’ll join you before curtain if I can; otherwise I’ll watch the first act from the back or something.”

  Both Warren and Allison returned disgruntled looks, albeit for different reasons. Warren because his flighty wife was forever standing him up at such events, and Allison because she wanted to stay and overhear the conversation. But they both walked on into the theater without her and without comment.

  “What’s wrong?” Leigh asked as soon as the door had closed behind them.

  Bess hesitated a moment, fidgeting with her hands. “Hopefully nothing,” she replied. “But I am getting just a teeny bit concerned. Have you seen Camille lately?”

  Leigh shook her head. “Not since I got back from Maura’s. Why?”

  “Well, she did that blessing nonsense on most of the cast, but when Chuck went in to see her, she wasn’t there. She left the candle burning, so he stuck around a while, but she didn’t come back. They all figured maybe she just ran out of time and was getting ready for her big moment — she always sings an aria for the cast right before she calls places — but it’s time now and she’s not up there.”

  Bess continued to wring her hands together. “I didn’t want to worry the cast, so I gave them a little pep talk myself and then I told them… well, I sort of implied that I had seen Camille and that she wasn’t feeling well.”

  “But you haven’t seen her and you have no idea where she is,” Leigh supplied.

  Bess shook her head slowly. “I wish I could tell you that it was perfectly in character for her to disappear before a show, but as loopy as the woman is, I truly can’t see her missing her own opening night. Why, she lives for this!”

  Leigh looked over Bess’s shoulder at the security guard, whose face remained as impassive as ever. “Who else have you told?” Leigh asked. “Have you looked for her? Is her car still in the parking lot?”

  “Nobody, a little, and yes,” Bess answered. “Her car’s still here, and she couldn’t drive off now if she tried. The parking attendants blocked in all the cast cars to make more room. I’ve looked around a little, but it’s a big building and I’ve had so many other things to do…”

  “Well, we’ll look now. Maybe she really is sick and just went to some quiet corner to rest,” Leigh suggested, not believing it for a minute. “Can the guards help us?”

  Bess scowled. “They absolutely refuse to leave the posts Gordon assigned them. And Gordon won’t tell them otherwise — he thinks guarding the doors is more important. I don’t even know where the man is — he was supposed to be here already, to watch the show!”

  Chaz tore around the corner and nearly ran into them. He stopped himself short and then, with a sheepish look, removed his hardhat. “Had to run to the bathroom,” he explained. “You can’t be too careful in this building, you know. I didn’t miss anything, did I? Has it started yet?”

  His question was answered by a chorus of chuckles drifting through the door.

  “Aw, no!” he said, disappointed. “Can I still go in this way?”

  “No, you may not,” Bess replied, turning him around. “You should have used the basement bathroom and come in through the back. As of now, this door is a stage entrance only!”

  As if to prove the point, one of the actresses walked down the stairs from the green room and planted herself by the door, obviously preparing for her entrance. She looked over the assembled group with a frown. “Is something wrong?”

  “Absolutely not,” Bess lied, pushing both Chaz and Leigh back toward the annex. “Break a leg,” she called to the actress. “The audience is loving it already!”

  Once they were out into the main hallway, Bess turned to Chaz. “You might as well put that hardhat back on,” she instructed. “I have a job for you.”

  Chaz’s face fell. “What? But I thought I’d get to see the show!”

  “You can watch it Saturday and Sunday both,” Bess responded. “I’ll get you a seat front-row center. But tonight we need your help. Don’t we, Leigh?”

  Leigh hesitated. Did they? Somebody needed to search for Camille, but the who part was tricky. She didn’t trust Chaz. She had no reason to trust any of the hired men, or any of Gordon’s guards, or even Gordon himself, for that matter. The only people she trusted were family, and they were all inside already watching the show, where she wanted them to stay.

  Her first instinct was to pull out her phone and call Maura, but what could the detective do besides send over some uniformed officers, which Leigh could just as easily call for herself? And was that drastic a step really warranted? Camille couldn’t have been missing for more than half an hour, and Bess hadn’t even checked all the rooms yet.

  “Let’s do this,” Leigh decided. “We’ll search in pairs, and move through the building top to bottom, checking in with each other as we go.”

  “Ooh!” Chaz enthused, his chagrin forgotten. “Sounds fun. What are we searching for?”

  “Camille,” Bess answered. “She seems to have not been feeling well; we need to make sure she hasn’t… passed out or something.”

  Chaz blinked at her a moment. Then he put his hardhat back on. “I’ll stick with this dude,” he announced, sidling closer to the security guard.

  The guard didn’t move, but as he looked down at Chaz, his lip curled ever so slightly up on one side.

  Chaz stepped away again.

  “Mr. Jenkins will go with me,” Bess declared. “Why don’t we start on the second floor of the annex? You two take one side of the hallway and we’ll take the other.”

  The teams began their search in earnest, checking one room at a time and meeting in the hallway after to compare notes. The upstairs classrooms were full of props and other theater gear, cluttered throughout and with their closets full to bursting. Leigh’s heart pounded even as she tried to appear calm to Chaz, who responded to anxiety the same way he responded to excitement — by prattling nonstop.

  By the time they had moved downstairs and reached the “blessing room,” Leigh found herself considering the judicious use of duct tape. She was surprised when, three steps into the room, Chaz stopped short. The assembly of cute and fuzzy animals had done what nothing else could
do — it had rendered him momentarily speechless.

  “Wow,” he said finally, his blue eyes bugged. “This is so unbelievably twisted.”

  Leigh arched an eyebrow. The man had been practically gleeful when talking about the scorched corpse in “the execution room,” but stuffed animals and chocolate roses were twisted? “How do you figure?” she demanded.

  Tiny drops of moisture beaded up on the narrow strip of brow visible below Chaz’s hard hat. “Grandma kept saying it must be devil worship!”

  Leigh resisted giving the man a shake. “This isn’t devil worship! It’s a nice older woman trying to create a peaceful environment for the cast to relax in, to calm their nerves.” Or some crazy thing like that, she added wordlessly. “How do you get ‘devil worship’ out of a bunch of cute animals and one lousy candle?”

  Chaz swallowed. “You say cute, I say creepy. Look at that giraffe! He’s no innocent. He’s thinking things.”

  Leigh tried mentally to count to ten, but being an impatient person, she only got to four. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she chastised, looking quickly around the room for any potentially hidden spots. Camille wasn’t there. “This room is clean. Let’s move on.” She started out the door.

  “Grandma says that the janitor’s wife was the head of it, you know.”

  Leigh’s feet stopped moving. “The head of what?”

  “The coven, of course,” Chaz explained. “She was married to the janitor, but she had the hots for this other guy, so she got the coven to sacrifice her husband on the altar. They were all in on it, see—”

  “Because getting the entire congregation of an otherwise respectable church to agree to cover up a cold-blooded murder was so much easier than getting a divorce?” Leigh challenged.

  Chaz frowned. “Well, maybe they needed a human sacrifice, and he was convenient, you know?”

  Leigh’s patience was lost. “There were never any devil worshippers here!” she scolded, wincing even as she spoke. God help her, she sounded exactly like her mother.

  “If you say so,” Chaz said sulkily.

  Leigh attempted to regroup. “Did your grandmother actually know the janitor or his wife?”

  Chaz considered a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to tell with Grandma. She says she hitchhiked to Cleveland in 1955 to see Elvis in a jamboree before he was really famous and that she did it with him in his car after but my mom says no way would Grandma ever have hitchhiked all the way to Cleveland because she gets really carsick and besides her brother my great uncle always said she made it up and that she had a thing about pretending she knew celebrities and that she used to say she’d petted the real Lassie too back when—”

  “Chaz!” Leigh interrupted. “Can we focus, please?”

  “Sorry,” he offered. “But, like, those animals are seriously creeping me out, you know? Can I go watch the show now?”

  “As soon as we find Camille,” Leigh assured, following Chaz out into the hall and closing the door behind them. “She must be around here somewhere.”

  “Unless she got bonked on the head,” Chaz muttered, adjusting his hard hat.

  “Nothing in either of the dressing rooms,” Bess reported as they convened in the hall. “Why don’t you two check the restrooms, and we’ll do the office and then start on the hallway behind the stage?”

  “Then what?” Chaz asked nervously.

  “Then we’ll check the upstairs curved hall, the attic, and the basement,” Bess replied, her worry lines deepening again. “I don’t know where else she could be. The guards insist she isn’t outside.”

  “We’ll find her, Aunt Bess,” Leigh assured, despite the pit of fear that was digging ever deeper in her gut.

  Bess nodded, and she and the guard headed off in the direction of the sanctuary.

  “Have a look around the men’s room, will you?” Leigh directed, opening the door to the women’s. “Make sure no one is in the stalls.”

  Chaz didn’t move. “What if Camille doesn’t want to be found?” he blurted, fidgeting with his hardhat again. “What if she’s waiting somewhere with a sledge hammer to bonk all of us on the head? Huh?”

  “Then you alone will survive,” Leigh quipped, showing a bravado she didn’t feel. “Just check out the bathroom, will you? Weren’t you just in there a few minutes ago?”

  “Well, yeah, but… Okay, fine!” he said anxiously.

  Chaz slipped inside the door to the men’s room and Leigh did the same with the women’s. “Hello?” she called. It was possible that a patron could be inside, despite the plea in the program that any necessary exits during the show take place at the rear of the theater and make use of the basement bathroom. Chaz obviously hadn’t read it; others might not either.

  Leigh heard no response. She opened the stall doors and looked around the entirety of the small space. It was empty.

  She returned to the hall and waited for Chaz. With Bess and the guard gone, the annex had become eerily silent. She couldn’t help repeating Chaz’s question to herself. What if Camille didn’t want to be found?

  And if not… why not?

  The discomfort in her stomach had graduated to a full-blown ache. Chaz was taking too long. “Chaz?” she called, knocking on the men’s room door.

  He didn’t answer. Leigh looked nervously up and down the hall. Then she kicked the door open a bit with her foot. “Chaz? Is anyone else in there?”

  Silence. She took a breath and swung the door open fully. It met no resistance. One glance from the doorway showed her there was no one at the urinals or sinks. She reached out and pushed quickly against the one and only stall door, then jumped back out of the way.

  The door swung in and banged against the corner of the toilet. She could see enough of the space inside to answer her question. There was no one in the bathroom, including Chaz.

  Gutless wimp had given her the slip.

  Leigh moved back out into the hallway and heard the door to the parking lot swing open and shut. Heavy footsteps headed her way.

  Calm down! she ordered herself. There were over two hundred people inside the building right now, with guards outside the doors. What could happen?

  She stood still in the center of the hall, waiting for the person in question to round the corner. But she had never been very good at waiting.

  “Who’s there?” she called out, embarrassed at the fear in her voice.

  A man appeared. He smiled at her tentatively and moved forward. “It’s just me. Are you okay?”

  Leigh stared at Gerardo blankly, her response to him cycling rapidly from relief to wariness and back again. “I’m fine. What… why are you here?” she stammered.

  “Mr. Applegate sent me,” he replied evenly. “He said Bess was upset about Camille going missing. Have you found her yet?”

  Leigh tried to calm her frayed nerves with a deep breath. His claim was perfectly plausible. “No, we haven’t,” she answered. “But we haven’t finished searching yet.”

  Gerardo squared his shoulders. “All right. Where would you like me to look?”

  Leigh considered, long and hard. She did not trust Gerardo any more than she trusted Chaz, and she was not at all sure that wandering around the building with either of them was any safer than searching on her own. But it hardly mattered, because she had no intention of doing either anymore.

  “Let’s ask Bess,” she deferred, slipping past him and heading toward the hallway behind the stage. She had not walked six feet before she collided with Ned coming the opposite direction up the basement stairs.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Leigh!” He apologized nervously. Despite the relatively nicer clothes, his hair was wilder than usual and his pale skin was beaded with sweat. “Are you okay? Chaz said it wasn’t safe in here, that you and Ms. Bess both were gonna get conked on the head!”

  Before Leigh could answer, Bess appeared around the corner. “What’s this?” she asked, looking from Ned to Gerardo. “Why aren’t you watching the show, Ned? And
where’s Chaz?”

  “Chaz bailed on me,” Leigh tried to explain. “He’s scared. He told Ned—”

  “Nobody’s going to bonk you on the head, Ms. Bess!” Ned declared, pulling himself to his full height and making a lame attempt to suck in his substantial gut. “Not in my building! I won’t let ’em, no way!”

  Bess smiled sweetly at him, and Leigh wondered for a moment if the Pack wasn’t onto something with their Ned-in-love theory. He certainly wouldn’t be her first victim.

  “I know you wouldn’t, Ned,” Bess said soothingly. “Thank you. But I assure you I’m in no danger. Why don’t you go back on in and watch the show? And if you see Chaz again, tell him to do the same.” She threw a calculating glance at Gerardo. “I’m sure everything here is perfectly under control.”

  Ned looked from Gerardo to the guard for a long moment, distrust written plainly across his pasty face. But with a single nod toward Bess, he turned around and went back the way he had come.

  “Mr. Jenkins has agreed to carry the ladder for me,” Bess explained to Leigh. “Camille isn’t anywhere behind the stage, and she’s not out in the audience, either. She also isn’t in the basement, at least not in the main part of it. Hank and Ralph have both made that loop getting to their entrances at the back of the house, and Hank said she wasn’t in the bathroom down there, either. There’s simply nowhere else to look besides—”

  Leigh groaned inwardly. She knew what was coming before the words left her aunt’s mouth.

  “The attic and the boiler room.”

  Chapter 20

  “I don’t see how anyone could have gotten up into the attic space in the last hour without someone seeing the ladder,” Bess admitted, talking more to herself than anyone else. “But I simply won’t forgive myself if we don’t look everywhere.”