by Misty Simon
Damn cell phones and their innate ability to make you available to any loon who has your number and wants to get in touch with you. A perfectly good moment had been ruined, all because I’d been waiting for a call from my father and so had brought the phone with me in the first place. Although, on the other hand, I much preferred being interrupted by Bella than my dad, who had always been able to tell when I was doing something he wouldn’t approve of. On the third hand, I was twenty-four and wandering hands were part and parcel of being a sexually active adult, which was what I eventually wanted to be with Ben.
“I don’t really need a keeper, Bella. I’m capable of handling myself.” I whispered the last part because Ben was taking an inordinate amount of interest in my conversation.
“Of course you need a keeper. Even from all the way across the room, I could see your eyes getting all dewy and droopy with that latent lust thing. I bet you would have been naked by now if you two had been in a room without all these people around.”
“That is so not true,” I said, a little louder than I meant to and had several heads turn my way. I lowered the volume of my voice. “Look, I know what I’m doing, and it’s not nearly getting naked.”
“Are you sure?” The words were whispered in my other ear. Ben, entering my conversation when he was least wanted, as always.
“Hey, what are you doing?” I backed away from Ben and his eternal, goose-bump-raising whispers.
“What do you mean, what am I doing? I told you, trying to save you from yourself. And why is Ben in your ear again? Did you put some kind of special perfume back there that he’s drawn to?”
I was not going to tell her that was precisely what I had done on one of my trips to the ladies’ room. I was not that stupid.
The distance separating Ben from me diminished when he grabbed my free hand and started kissing my knuckles. “I’m going now, Bella. Thanks for the Mom moment.” I hung up and endured Ben’s laughter while I tried to get the cell phone hooked back into its holder at my waist.
“Ha, ha, Ben. Shut up.” I yanked my hand out of his grasp and gave him my best “you’re a shit” look.
Once he composed himself and stopped acting like a snorting high school freshman, he apologized, but the mood was ruined. Bella had served her purpose. Dammit again. I guess I wasn’t doing so hot on the whole not-swearing thing.
I stalked off to the punch table and grabbed up a mini cauldron of steaming apple cider. Stupid men and their stupid laughing, I thought. Ben could take his sense of humor and...and... Well, I didn’t know, but when I came up with something suitably, appropriately horrible, I would let him know.
I started looking around for someone to talk to, since I was no longer talking to Ben and maybe not even Bella. I didn’t need a keeper and I didn’t need an idiot who thought he could take up where he left off after he embarrassed me. So I looked for Janice. She would be nice and not laugh at my expense. She wouldn’t check up on me like I was a child. And, hopefully, she would tolerate my out-of-whack foul mood until I settled down.
Asking other partygoers if they’d seen Janice was easier when people didn’t know who I was. The mask covered half my face, so I didn’t get the attitude I’d previously experienced in town. The last person I asked told me she’d seen Janice go behind the thick red velvet curtain obscuring the stage.
I pushed the curtain aside and slipped behind it. Immediately, I was hit by the musty smell of cardboard and dust. There was very little light back here, but I did see a faint glow coming from a corridor behind another curtain, this one black. Although it could have been orange, for all I knew, it was that dark back here.
The clack of my heels rang extremely loudly on the hard wooden stage. I didn’t realize how loudly until the noise stopped and I was left listening only to my own breathing. This was getting a little weird. The farther I moved into the stage area, the more muffled outside sound became.
I wove my way around big scene boards filled with trees and rolling hills, past boxes overflowing with props, and around a huge potted plant. One of the silky leaves brushed against my bare arm and it took me a moment to control my pounding heart. “Just a tree, just a tree,” I whispered to myself, since there didn’t seem to be any other living thing back here.
For some reason I started hearing the theme from Psycho ringing in my ears. On the surface there was nothing to be scared of back here, but something was making my skin crawl. A nebulous something. I laughed at the tension I felt and congratulated myself on another good word. Unfortunately, that wasn’t working either. Something was wrong. I could feel it down to the toes of my reinforced pantyhose.
More silence greeted me when I finally came to the door with the only light under it. I listened, my ear against the wood for a moment. I did not want to interrupt some assignation Janice had set up for herself, or barge into a meeting. Though why someone would set up a meeting back here in the dark was beyond me.
My cursory nod to appropriate behavior over, I knocked. No noise came from behind the closed door, so I tried again. “Hello?” I said. “Anybody in there?”
Again no answer came, so I thought about turning around and looking for Janice elsewhere. But a niggling little voice in my head kept telling me something was on the other side of that door. Combined with the lack of a response from said side of the door, my natural curiosity was aroused, and I tried again, this time jiggling the handle to the door.
“Hello? Anyone?” Should I break down the door? But that sounded ridiculous. I mean, anything could be going on inside the room. Who said there weren’t people in there who were ignoring me because they had no clothes on and were going at it like wild animals? Although wild animals usually made some kind of noise and I was still hearing nothing. I jiggled the doorknob again, and this time the door popped open.
Once my eyes adjusted to the light, after its absence in the backstage area, I barely held back a scream to rival that of Mr. James Brown. There on the floor, in a very unnatural position, was the one person I’d been looking for. The one I thought would tolerate me in my bad mood. The friend I had hoped to make and keep and add to my very small collection in a town that was not turning out to be the friendliest place for out-of-towners. And maybe not for towners, either, since Janice, in all her flapper glory, lay at the foot of a grape-colored sofa with blood crusted on the front of her sequined top.
Chapter Nine
It was like a slow-motion moment in a weird dream. My hand moved in minute increments to touch the skin at Janice’s throat. I’d watched enough television to know you checked for a pulse before you started screaming the house down.
Thoughts pinged through my head: maybe the blood was fake, maybe my fingers would register a thump, thump, thump that would tell me Janice had fainted or was taking a nap. Unlikely, as there was no thump, thump, thump under my fingertips, the rational part of my brain told me, but I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that Janice was really, really dead.
Dead. “Aaaaaahhhhhhh!”
Once my initial scream worked its way from the bottom of my uncomfortable shoes, through my chest, and out of my mouth, I started hyperventilating. The breath whooshed in and out of my lungs in great, gulping gasps. I stumbled away from Janice’s inert body, shaking and shivering, as I tried to back through the solid wall behind me. Since that was physically impossible, I folded my arms over my chest and felt my stomach roll dangerously.
What if the killer was somewhere in the area? I hadn’t even thought of that initially, and here I was standing alone in the backstage area of a barn I’d never been to before, in a town that hadn’t been very friendly to me, three thousand miles away from my friends and family.
My ears didn’t pick up any ringing footsteps in the hallway in front of the room, so I whipped out my cell phone and dialed the last number who called me.
“Bella,” I said as soon as the ringing stopped. I didn’t even give her a chance to say hello. “I need your help.”
“Sorry,”
she said, snide and pouty, “I’m not in the mood to give you another Mom moment. You’ll have to survive on your own.” And she hung up.
Holy shit. I so did not have the time for a pouty party. I speed-dialed this time and waited through seven rings before she answered again.
“What?” she said, her tone flat.
“Look, I don’t have time for this, Bella. I’m backstage and we have a serious problem. I think Janice is dead, and nobody can hear me screaming back here. Can you please, please, find the police chief or whoever and send them behind the curtain before I pass out or become the next victim.”
Bella gasped and then hung up on me again, but I hoped this time she took me seriously and was looking for the local fuzz. I really kicked up the hopeful wishing a notch when I heard footsteps pounding on the floor outside. Please, God, let that be the police and not the killer come back to kill another someone. Come back to kill me.
The footsteps sounded like a herd of shoppers at a Robinson’s May One-Day Sale. I stepped back from the door a split second before it was thrown open and a tall man charged in, dressed as a medieval knight.
He was not alone, which I knew from the stampede noises, but I was surprised at how many people filled the narrow doorway. Like some kind of human tidal wave, they streamed in behind the knight, and the small room felt overly crowded as people pushed and shoved their way forward to see the body. The whispering started immediately.
“Who is that?”
“What happened?”
“Is she dead?”
Until the knight stalked up to the body and cleared a wide circle merely by clearing his throat. Everyone else got the message. I guess the throat clearing was some kind of signal I, as a new resident, did not pick up on.
“Move it, move it,” he barked as he came closer and I still hadn’t moved. I found myself getting roughly pushed out of the way.
“Excuse me,” Sir Pushy said, sarcasm edging his voice. Clearly I was not moving fast enough or far enough. But really, where could I go with all these people in the room?
“Sorry.” I tried to stay pleasant even though I still shivered from being in the room so close to a dead Janice. Whoever this guy was, I was sure I didn’t want to piss him off.
“Ma’am, you’ll need to move over with the others.”
Ma’am? I wasn’t old enough to be a ma’am. But I tried to move anyway. The medieval knight exuded a kind of don’t-mess-with-me authority.
“All right, you people need to get the hell out of this room.” This man would never need a bullhorn. “But don’t leave the building until you’ve spoken to one of my officers.”
And everybody did just that, except one woman who had pushed to the front, as others were retreating, and promptly fainted at the feet of a pirate complete with a parrot on his shoulder. He’d picked that outfit from my costume shop, very classy get-up. Although why I was thinking of the costume shop at a time like this was beyond me.
****
I sat down hard on a chair festooned with fall-colored leaves and stared at the burnt-orange tablecloth. The raised swirling patterns on the cloth caught and held my attention as Bella sank into a chair to my left while Ben leaned on the edge of the table. He was probably looking sexy in his nonchalant way, but I couldn’t even process the scene I’d staggered away from ten minutes ago, much less appreciate Ben’s appeal.
My new friend was dead. The wonderful woman, the one I’d sold a flapper costume to and laughed over difficult clients with, was gone.
After Sir Pushy—who I found out was our police chief—had leaned down to check for a pulse and came up shaking his head, he’d ordered everyone back into the main hall and away from the backstage area. My last sight of Janice was right before a forest green blanket settled over her sequined sleeveless top and black wig. I couldn’t keep the image from flashing across my brain. Every time I closed my eyes, it was like a projector stuck on three seconds of film. Blanket whooshes open and drifts through the air, settling on Janice. And then it started all over again.
Someone was kind enough to hand me a glass of punch, and I cupped it, without drinking, as I worked my way through the scene a fifth time. I couldn’t believe vital, energetic, happy Janice was gone. About that time, I started to cry.
Gone.
Gone forever while I’d been thinking about taking a bite out of Ben and he’d been sliding his hands down my back on his way to my behind. What a horrible, horrible thing. I couldn’t get my mind around it. God, I couldn’t believe this was happening.
Bella grabbed my hand and sobbed, “What is the world coming to when Janice is dead? And dressed like some kind of showgirl, too?”
I snapped out of my stupor. “She was not a showgirl. She was a flapper, like me.” Young like me, too. I thought it, but didn’t say it out loud.
The police chief and two officers came around and interviewed everyone. After the questioning, people started trickling out through the massive double doors, headed home. Without a doubt, the grapevine was about to be set on fire.
Ben was nice enough to follow me the two miles home. Only briefly did I think about inviting him in to give release to the tumultuous feelings clamoring inside me after seeing death close up. But even my freshly shaved legs—and the feeling they were going to waste—couldn’t make me want to seriously contemplate being with anyone, much less intimately, right now. I wanted to put on sweatpants and a sweatshirt, get a hot cup of tea, find my cozy bed. And some time to grieve, even though I’d only known Janice for a matter of hours.
Of course, Ben insisted on coming in to check the house before he would let me lock him out. So I put on a kettle of water while Ben stalked his way through the kitchen. I waited for the water to boil as he checked out the rest of the house.
“All clear,” he said in a pretty good imitation of someone who actually knew what they were doing. Then again, I’d forgotten about the PI license he had via the Internet. Maybe they showed you, with a virtual walk-through, how to accomplish making sure a home was safe. I was getting punchy if I was back to picking on the PI license. To overcome the guilt of my petty thought, I put a lot of warmth into my tired voice when I said, “Thanks, Ben, for looking through the house for me. I feel better now.”
“Not a problem. This wasn’t exactly the ending I’d envisioned for this evening,” he said.
“Yeah, me neither.”
He traced a circular pattern on the back of my hand. The teakettle whistled and I jumped about a foot in the air. “Crap!” I yelled, my hand going to my racing heart. I apologized for the outburst in a more normal tone.
“No, it’s okay. I think we’re both a little jumpy right now. Will you be able to sleep tonight?”
Yes. No. Yes. No. I came out with, “Yea-no.”
He laughed a little. “Is that a maybe?”
I gave a little laugh of my own. “It’s a yeah. I’ll be fine, thanks for asking. I really appreciate you going out of your way to see me home.”
“Believe me, it wasn’t a hardship.”
“Well, thanks all the same.”
“So does my knight-in-shining-armor routine get me dinner with you?”
“How can you be a knight in shining armor when you’re dressed as Zorro?” I asked. All right, I was trying for coy and not doing a very good job, but I did get another chuckle out of him.
“Would you agree to savior in black shiny pants? How about protector in long flapping cape? Guardian in a great hat?”
“How about you stop before I kick you out for stupid jokes?”
He gave me a lopsided grin that reminded me of the puppy, Jackson, I’d had when I was about ten. He’d eat my best pair of shoes and then turn on the charm. It always worked because I was a sucker for bad boys in trouble. And this smile was seriously lethal, but I’d girded myself against lethal early this evening. Yes, Ben was sexy, and funny, and sexy, and charming. And don’t forget sexy. But was he really for me? Did I want to throw myself at the first eligible guy who c
rossed my path? Didn’t I have more self-worth than that? Didn’t I have scruples? What did I really know about Ben, other than surface information? Virtually nothing. And I was a little uncomfortable with the answer of virtually nothing.
But dinner? I could definitely go for dinner. I mean, what the heck? “I suppose I could pencil you into my busy schedule for a dinner sometime next week. What night?” Was that me who’d just been pro-active and forward? Woohoo! Go, me! I was proud of myself, until I realized Ben was still standing in front of me. Staring. “What?” I said. “Do I have something in my teeth? On my face?”
“No. I’m admiring the view.”
“Puh-lease.”
“Seriously. You look stunning.”
“Oh, ah, I, um.” I still wore the whole flapper costume but had removed the black satin and sequin mask.
“Ivy Morris, speechless? Impossible. I’m shocked.” With a smug smile growing on his face, he leaned against the corner of the square oak table and crossed his muscular arms over an impressive chest.
My mouth went dry, and it felt like my tongue swelled to outrageous proportions. The one good thing here was I couldn’t open my mouth to make some stupid remark that would only make me look bad. I spent a few seconds doing a poor imitation of a guppy without the water. And then, when I got the power of speech back, I came out with the most inane thing I’d probably ever uttered.
“Knock it off,” I said, cringing inside, because really, who did I think I was? I’d never been a straight-shooting, smart-talking chick. My personality leaned more toward mousy, quiet, introverted. Did I seriously think my whole personality would change because I was on the other side of the country?
A small part of my mind yelled at me for my ridiculous crap. I could be whoever I wanted to be. Regardless of the past, I was making my own future. No one had to know who I used to be, only who I wanted to be.
“Knock it off? Is that the best you can do? I expected better from you.” The full-fledged smile came out, but with a little more devilry in it. It made a previously unnoticed (and I thought I had catalogued his whole body) dimple pop out on his left cheek.
