A Really Cute Corpse

by Joan Hess

  A flashlight clicked on, blinded me for a brief second, then glinted off the rifle before returning to the carpet near the doorway to the west corridor. “I came by to pick up some notes I left here earlier,” said Steve Stevenson as he came down the aisle and joined me in the middle of the stage. “What on earth are you doing here, Claire? Is that a gun you’re carrying?”

  I waited until my heart stopped pounding louder than a beatnik’s bongo drum. “Good grief,” I managed to say, steadiness having deserted me, “you almost gave me a heart attack. I had a vision of a giant rat with emphysema. This pageant has addled my brain.”

  “The entire thing has been a nightmare for all of us,” he said, politely not commenting on my alleged deterioration. “I’m truly sorry if I startled you. I must admit you rather startled me; I never dreamed anyone was in the theater. Would you like to sit down for a moment?” He glanced at the rifle and gave me a faint smile. “Or, if you prefer, we could creep downstairs and shoot rats. When I was a kid, I used to go out to the dump at night and take potshots at them. In a small town, one settles for small amusements.”

  “No, I …” My powers of glib invention had eloped with my nerves. I shrugged ruefully and held up the rifle. “I found this in the prop room, and I think it links Mac to the blank fired at the convertible. Initially he and Luanne were the only people who had keys to the theater; I have Luanne’s now, and—” I broke off to stare at him. “How’d you get in the theater, Steve?”

  “Through the door,” he said, dimpling at my silly question.

  “It was locked when I arrived, and I locked it after I came inside. Do you have a key?”

  “Why would I have a key?”

  I reminded myself that he was a politician, and probably had a dominant gene that required him to respond to questions with questions. “Let me see if I can answer that,” I said slowly. “Mac still has his key, unless he gave it to the police. I doubt he would loan it to you. I have Luanne’s key in my purse. Therefore, there must be another key. Mac is the logical person to have made a copy and given it to someone, but again not to you.”

  “And why not?” Steve said, dimpling madly.

  “I don’t think he likes politicians. I don’t think he liked Miss Thurberfest, either, but he did cooperate with her on several occasions. He might have given her a key so that she could work on the details of her scheme. Rehearsal is everything, you know.”

  “But that doesn’t place the key in my possession. My opponent has accused me of all sorts of skullduggery, but he hasn’t suggested I’m cursed with powers of mental teleportation. Surely you’re not that addled?”

  “Don’t rush me,” I said. I nibbled on my lip, wishing I had one of my innumerable lists in hand. “Let’s assume Cyndi had a key to the front door, given to her willingly or unwillingly by the theater owner. Let’s go further out on the hypothetical limb and assume she put it on a key ring with her dressing room key. Now, she had her keys earlier this afternoon, because she came to the theater and managed to get inside her dressing room. She couldn’t have counted on the front door being unlocked; she knew the rehearsal schedule and most likely waited until she felt the theater. would be empty.”

  “Astute analysis on her part.”

  “Oh, yes,” I agreed. “She was a clever girl, our Miss Thurberfest. She conceived of a plan to make the national tabloids, coerced an accomplice into aiding her, and almost pulled it off. When we overlooked a detail, she slyly drew attention to it. She even went so far as to insist the most gullible person in town come to the hospital and be persuaded that a maniac was stalking her with evil intent. The gullible person fell for it like a red-blooded, American chump. But let’s not waste our precious time complimenting Cyndi on her astuteness.”

  “Yes, the key. We’re up to early this afternoon when she came to the theater. Please continue, Claire.”

  “Cyndi said in the taped interview we saw on the five o’clock news that she was going to talk to someone before the pageant. It seems logical to presume she made an appointment to meet that person here in the theater, which would be empty from one until six.”

  “This is really impressive,” he said. “I don’t think I would have thought of that.”

  “Thank you,” I said modestly. “She let the person in and locked the door. They went down to the dressing room for a conversation. At some point she realized she hadn’t considered a vital detail of her scheme. Anyone who reads mystery novels knows it’s potentially fatal to have secluded conversations with blackmail victims, especially in dark little basement rooms in unoccupied buildings. It never turns out well for the blackmailer.”

  “I tend to read memorandums and task force reports, but I do have time for a novel every now and then,” he admitted with a round of particularly boyish dimples. “And you’re right, of course. Blackmail victims are always unhappy with the situation, and willing to do almost anything. Who on earth do you think she was blackmailing?”

  “The person who took her keys from the dressing room. That would be you, of course.”

  “Me? What damning evidence do you suppose she had on me?”

  “I don’t know, and for some reason, I don’t think you’re going to tell me.” I nibbled on my lip for a long while. In the middle of the nibbling, I checked my watch and discovered we’d been engaged in the queer discussion for more than ten minutes. I considered the wisdom of a secluded conversation in a dark building with a man I’d just accused of murder, but he did not frighten me. All those dimples.

  “Are you stuck?” he asked, interrupting my meanderings. “This is a large gap in your entertaining theory, Claire, and if I remember eighth-grade algebra, you have to progress through each and every step of the proof to arrive at an irrefutable conclusion. That’s about all I remember, since Miss Heinbecker was the best-looking woman I’d ever seen in my fourteen years of life, and I spent most of the classtime staring at her like a lovestruck calf, which I was.”

  I held up my hand to squelch further adolescent confessions. “I’ll get it in a minute.” I tapped the butt of the rifle on the stage while I tried to think of what Cyndi had on him. Maybe I was all wrong, I thought darkly. It seemed more likely that she knew some murky secret about her ex-lover, Warren. Warren could have done everything I’d accused Steve of, from visiting her dressing room after the parade to keeping the appointment that afternoon. Being an aide, he might have aided his boss by loaning him the key so he could return to pick up whatever notes he’d left.

  “What notes did you leave here?” I asked abruptly.

  “Nothing of any great value. Just a few papers that I intended to read tonight. Warren took the girls to see Snow White, and it’s incredibly peaceful in the suite. It’s difficult to concentrate when both ears are assailed.”

  “When did you leave them?” I persisted. “You weren’t carrying anything when you arrived this evening.”

  “Then I must have put them down yesterday, I suppose. As I said before, they’re not terribly important. I’ve been carrying them around for several days, hoping for an idle moment in which to glance over them. I wish I could remember exactly when I did take them out of my pocket; it would help me remember where I laid them.”

  I didn’t buy a word of it, but I doubted I was going to win the skirmish. Senators did not prowl around dark theaters to find missing papers. Aides existed for that sort of thing. Aides ran errands, baby-sat, carried briefcases, and covered minor lapses from grace. Suddenly I had it.

  “Warren and Cyndi had a torrid affair, right?” I said, hoping he hadn’t noticed the flicker of enlightenment that had flashed across my face. “Eunice was against it from the start, and eventually you tried to wrest apart the illfated lovers, right?” He nodded at each of my rhetorical questions, clearly intrigued now that we had started up again. “You insisted they have separate rooms in Hollywood,” I continued. “You even took the room between them. Did your room have an adjoining door to Cyndi’s room, by the way? Kids can tiptoe down
the hall on the way to steamy hotel-room trysts, but senators must be more discreet, especially those from conservative districts. In fact, a senator might use his aide to disguise the affair from the beginning. It would be so easy to allow everyone to think the two kids were carrying on like—like two kids. The aide could invite the girl to stay in his apartment for the weekend. Some people might cluck and mutter about today’s youth, but no one would be scandalized. Then the aide moves out and the senator moves in.”

  “What a novel idea,” he said wonderingly. “Is it from a novel?”

  “Warren wasn’t convincing,” I said. “Those of us who have been around the track, so to speak, know when a young man is not adequately heartbroken after an affair is ended so coldly. His acting skills do not rival his political ambitions.”

  “Do you think you can prove any of this?”

  “I think I might be able to. Warren may not have minded covering up for the affair, but he might balk at taking a murder rap for you. The police are awfully good at worming the truth out of people, and once they determine that you were the one having an affair with an eighteen-year-old girl, they’ll realize you had a good reason to silence her, particularly after her ominous remarks in the taped interview.”

  “You’re most likely right,” he murmured, nodding.

  “It looks quite bad for a senator, especially a married one with small children, to have an affair with a young girl. It was a dreadful error on my part. Warren tried his best to talk me out of it, but I was in one of those midlife crisis periods. Turning forty, married to the perfect wife and helpmate, facing a brilliant future, and lying awake nights wondering if I’d missed something along the way. Something dangerous, exhilarating, irresponsible, absolutely crazy. I was the solid, reliable college student, and an uninspired but passable law student. I took a position with Patti’s father the day after graduation from law school. He trained me so I could return to my district and win the senate seat. It was to be followed by four years as attorney general, the governorship, and then, of course, onward and upward.” He shook his head and sighed. “It was a good game plan, and it might have worked. I had the financial backing and the right connections with powerful people. My family is incredibly photogenic, and I seem to have a certain appeal to both women and upscale neoconservatives. And I threw it all away for a shrewd girl who was a good deal more ambitious than I.”

  “You were supporting her all this time, weren’t you?”

  “At first it was a small loan every now and then, but after a few months she began asking for a little bit on a regular basis. I really didn’t mind too much, but I did try to cut off the payments once I’d broken off the affair.”

  “Why’d you break it off?” I asked curiously.

  “I’d filed for the primary that day, and it finally occurred to me that this was not appropriate behavior for a would-be attorney general. When I pointed this out to Cyndi, she readily agreed to call the whole thing off—as long as I sent money every month. Then, yesterday after the luncheon, as we walked back to the theater, she told me she intended to leave for California within a few days. She wanted fifty thousand dollars. Well, that was impossible.”

  “So once the press had been sent out of the theater, you went down to her dressing room to talk to her?”

  He looked at me for a long time, his forehead creased as he considered what amounted to a full-fledged accusation. “Are you saying that she reiterated her demand and I tried to kill her? You must have an awfully low opinion of me, Claire.”

  Moi? Simply because I believed he was a coldblooded killer with a political conscience? I clucked sympathetically. “Yes, murder can certainly taint a reputation. But if you took her keys at that time, how did she plan to get into the theater this afternoon to hide?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, scratching his chin as he frowned at me. Suddenly the dimples popped back into view. “Maybe I called her at the hospital and suggested it. I told her I’d meet her at one-fifteen with the money, or at least as much as I could put together on a weekend. When she refused my counteroffer, I had to stop her from exposing me. I probably thought I might get away with it.”

  I resisted an impulse to pat him on the arm and cluck some more. “I doubt it, Steve. The police would have uncovered the truth about the affair by tomorrow, and then they would have come straight to you.”

  “But you’re so much more clever than the police. From the moment I met you I thought you’d make a great political aide. Once all this is cleared up, we’ll have a quiet dinner somewhere and I’ll use all my wiles to persuade you. But first I have to tell you about the key—”

  He stopped as spotlights came on with a loud snap. We were both blinded, caught in the glare as if we were deer on a dark country road. I tried to shield my eyes with the flashlight as I squinted into the auditorium, but I could see nothing. I heard a popping noise, and turned to see if Steve had heard it too. His hand was on his chest. As I stared, redness spread from beneath his fingers in a widening pool. He gave me a surprised look. Dimples appeared for a brief moment, then faded into smoothness. He crumpled to the floor of the stage.

  I dove for the darkest corner, gulping back a scream as I thudded into the bottom of the staircase. A second pop was followed by a ping from the wall above my head. A third bullet struck the wall a tad lower and a tad closer. The next ruled out any hope of scrambling toward the protection of the greenroom. I realized I was clutching the flashlight and hurled it toward the orchestra pit. It rolled unevenly past Steve’s body, with the arrhythmic noise of a faulty shopping cart, and fell into the orchestra pit.

  A pink spotlight began to sweep across the stage in a chillingly methodical pattern. Sucking in a deep breath, I crawled up the spiral staircase, wincing at the faint rattle of the loose bolts. The catwalk was high enough to be protected by the short curtain across the top of the proscenium. I didn’t have any really good ideas about what to do once I was thirty feet above the stage, but I could see that the stage offered no protection.

  The light caught the tip of one shoe as I scampered like a squirrel. As I moved around the spiral, I could almost feel the sting of a bullet in the back. The impact would throw me off the staircase. I probably wouldn’t be around to feel myself hit the floor.

  When I reached the top, I stayed on all fours and crawled down the catwalk. Perhaps, I thought in an hysterical voice, there would be a similar staircase at the end of the catwalk. I hadn’t seen one, of course. Then again, I couldn’t go back down and present a lovely target to the killer in the light booth. Who was … not Steve Stevenson, boy wonder of state politics, who no longer suffered from a midlife crisis.

  The spotlight moved up the staircase like a luminescent stalker. I scuttled to the end of the catwalk, which simply ended in midair, and lay down as flat as I could. While I waited to be picked off, I closed my eyes and tried to guess who was on the business end of the gun.

  “Claire? Where are you?”

  It was McWethy. I decided it would be less than wise to answer his question. I burrowed deeper into the metal runway. McWethy, the accomplice. McWethy, the possessor of the keys, the phantom of the playhouse. McWethy, a homey sort who as likely had a gun rack in his pickup and spent weeks every year attempting to kill Rudolph and his antlered friends. A deer caught in a spotlight freezes. Steve had frozen. Now he was dead.

  Suddenly the spotlight went out. Red and yellow fireworks filled my vision, then slowly shrank into nothingness. No longer feeling like Bambi, I lifted my head to look down over the edge of the catwalk. I might as well have peered into an ink bottle. Admittedly, it was preferable to being trapped by a spotlight, but it wasn’t exactly improving the situation in terms of getting out of the theater in a tidy, intact fashion.

  I was considering any potential advantage in creeping back to the top of the staircase when the houselights came on. After a moment wasted trying to figure out what the hell was going on now, I eased forward until I could see the stage below me. Mac stood
next to Steve’s sprawled, lifeless body. He held a rifle in his hand.

  I must have let out a small noise, for he looked up at me with a scowl. “What are you doing up there, woman? You seem to find something irresistible about that place.”

  I ducked back so that he couldn’t ( easily, anyway) put a bullet between my lovely green eyes. “You won’t get away with it,” I said with amazing coolness, not one degree of it heartfelt. “The police are on their way at this moment.”

  “Did you call them?” He sounded perplexed rather than alarmed.

  “No, I didn’t call them. But someone on the sidewalk must have heard the shots and called them. They’ll be here in less than a minute.”

  “You must have ridden the little yellow bus to school. How could anyone have heard a shot fired all the way in the back of the theater?”

  I was tired of logic games. “I told several people where I was going tonight, and I also told them that you were Cyndi’s accomplice. I don’t know why you killed Steve—maybe you were in love with the girl and lost your control when you heard him discussing the affair—but in any case, you won’t get away with it.”

  “I won’t get away with it? You won’t get away with it. I don’t even know what it is, but I damn well know I haven’t done anything. Now are you going to stay up there like a turkey buzzard in a dead tree, or shall I come up there and drag you down here?”

  “Don’t consider it, buddy. I have a gun.”

  “Is this rusty thing your so-called gun? This is from the prop room, and it isn’t capable of firing anything but blanks of wadded paper. I don’t know what you used to shoot the politico, but it wasn’t this.”

  I risked my future to look down at him. He was holding the rifle, which I’d dropped in panic—bullets always unnerve me. “I’ll tell you what,” I called, “I’ll stay right here while you call the ambulance and the police. I promise not to move. Okay?”