Bagpipes, Brides and Homicides (Liss Maccrimmon Scottish Mysteries)

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

Instead, she ascended again and shone her light on the bare boards of the stage. Since she knew what she was looking for, she quickly found the outlines of a series of trapdoors. They, too, had once given access to the shop below, opening downward over a platform, or perhaps over moveable scaffolding. Unlike the exit she’d just examined, however, they no longer led anywhere. Once the offices had been built below, the trapdoors had ceased to function. Nowadays, if a production called for a ghost to appear, the actor would have to enter from the wings, rather than rising up from below.

  It was also a pity that the trapdoors didn’t open upward. There must be an open space a few inches in height between the floor of the stage and the new ceiling below. What a great place that would have been to conceal the murder weapon!

  Losing interest in the trapdoors, Liss turned in a slow circle. There were surprisingly few really good hiding places for something the size and shape of a hand-and-a-half broadsword. If she was right and the killer had left it somewhere in the theater for several hours, long enough for the police to finish with Palsgrave’s body and go away, then he had to have hidden it someplace where no one was likely to find it by accident.

  She stared out through the proscenium arch at the rows of seats, once again rejecting them as a hiding place, and then shifted her gaze upward to the control booth at the back of the auditorium. Could the sword have been secreted there? She didn’t see an entrance at the back of the auditorium, so the door to the stairs that led up to the booth was probably located just off the lobby. Still, stashing the sword up there would be just as problematic as slipping it under a row of seats—there was a good chance that some theater student would stumble over it. Liss had gathered that this theater was used, even during summer sessions, for student projects. Even for a rehearsal, someone would probably have gone up to man the light board in the control booth.

  Liss’s background had made her familiar with all sorts of theaters. She knew there had to be a way to get to the lights that hung between the booth and the stage—probably a walkway above the ceiling. When she looked directly overhead she found, as she’d expected, flies and a catwalk. She doubted that the sword had been flown like a piece of scenery or a curtain. Once again, that scenario presented too much risk that someone would glance up and spot it hanging there. Worse, the sword might have slipped loose and ended up impaling the stage floor. Aside from spoiling the killer’s plan to frame Liss’s father, that would have left a nasty gouge!

  The catwalks had the same argument against using them as a hiding place—they were too open to view. But as Liss’s gaze roved the space above her head, she belatedly remembered something Melly had said. There were storage rooms up there, just off the catwalk on stage right. She considered for a moment. Would the killer have taken the time to climb way up there? Maybe, she decided. A disused storage loft would make a good hiding place, and it could also have provided the killer with a place to change from his blood-spattered garments into clean clothes.

  Liss scrambled up a metal ladder and made her way carefully along the narrow walkway at the top. It passed in front of two closed doors labeled, appropriately, #1 and #2. She found scenery storage loft #1 unlocked and nearly empty. The floor was covered with a thick layer of dust, clearly undisturbed. No one had ventured inside the room for a very long time.

  Liss expected scenery storage loft #2 to be the twin of #1, but this door was locked. She fished Gabe’s key out of her pocket and let herself in. A quick survey by flashlight showed her a room filled with odd pieces of furniture and assorted props. It was also windowless. When she located a switch, she flipped it, blinking when bright overhead bulbs flickered to life.

  Intrigued by the contents of the room, Liss began to explore. She doubted that the storage loft had ever been arranged in any sort of order. Smaller items were piled in a haphazard fashion atop larger pieces. Behind a tall screen, liberally draped with discarded curtains and mismatched lengths of silk cord, she found a narrow cot topped with a thin mattress.

  Melly’s comments came back to her: I have particularly fond memories of scenery storage loft number two—the one with the bed.

  Apparently, some things never changed, not even in the modern world where students could visit each other’s dorm rooms without fear of expulsion.

  Liss started to turn away. Scenery storage loft #2 was not a place the killer could reach in a hurry, and surely he’d have been in a rush to get out of the building before the body was discovered. Besides, anyone who knew the theater well enough to be aware that this storage room existed would also know that some hot-blooded young couple looking for privacy might blunder in and discover the sword before he could come back for it.

  But even as she dismissed the possibility that the sword had been hidden in the storage room, Liss’s gaze returned to the cot. The mattress was a disreputable-looking thing, stained and ratty. What had once been blue ticking had long since faded to gray. But not all of the stains were old. She bent to take a closer look. Could that really be dried blood?

  Liss frowned. A small bloodstain on a mattress in scenery storage loft #2 shouldn’t surprise her. It was probably the result of another fine old college tradition—losing your virginity. But this particular bloodstain, if it was blood, seemed to her to have the distinctive shape of a sword blade.

  Liss’s heart began to beat a little faster. Had she really found the evidence she’d been looking for? At first she was certain her imagination was playing tricks on her, but the more she studied the suggestive stain, the more certain she became that she was right. She reached into her shoulder bag, hunting for her cell phone.

  If the sword had lain there, temporarily hidden until the killer could plant it in her father’s car, then this discovery would clear Mac of suspicion once and for all. The police could match the blood to the murder victim’s. Maybe they’d even find the killer’s fingerprints on the door handle or the light switch. She winced. That is, they might if she hadn’t obliterated them with her own. Even if she had, she knew for a certainty that no one would find her father’s fingerprints in this room. She doubted that he knew this place existed, but even if he had heard of it—in what context she didn’t care to speculate—he wouldn’t have been able to get in. Besides that, Angie could testify to the time he arrived home on the day of the murder. If the sword had been left here, it couldn’t possibly have gone straight into the trunk of his car.

  Calm down, Liss warned herself. She had to present the facts in a logical manner when she talked to Detective Franklin.

  Her hand closed around her phone. Another minute passed as she searched for Franklin’s card. She’d found it and entered the first three digits of his phone number when she heard the first ominous thumping noise from below. She froze. Someone was onstage. Heavy footsteps moved ponderously across the bare boards.

  Until that moment, being alone in a dark, deserted theater had not made Liss uneasy. She’d been far too accustomed to performing in strange houses to be spooked by shadowy shapes in the wings or imaginary watchers at the light ports in the auditorium ceiling. The possibility of encountering another person hadn’t worried her much either. At worst, her right to be in the building would have been challenged and she’d have been hauled into the campus security office to explain herself. That might have been embarrassing, but she’d have been in no physical danger.

  Liss glanced nervously toward the door she’d left open. No one had turned on the stage lights. That probably ruled out campus security as the source of the footsteps.

  She listened harder, all the while trying to tell herself that she was imagining things. At first she heard nothing more. Then came a sound that dashed her last hope of remaining undiscovered. The clang of leather against metal meant someone was climbing the stairs to the catwalk. They were coming up fast, and still without turning on any lights.

  Anyone with legitimate business in the theater would already have called out. That certainty sent shivers down Liss’s spine. Her gaze darted frantically
around the storage room, seeking a place to hide. There were plenty of things she could duck behind, but there was no way out except through that one door. She was well and truly trapped.

  Fighting full-blown panic, she ducked behind the screen. It would not conceal her presence for long. That the overhead lights were on was a dead giveaway that someone was in this room.

  Belatedly, she remembered the cell phone she still held in one hand, but before she could do more than tap in the next two digits of Detective Franklin’s number, she heard the approaching footsteps cross the catwalk and stop in the doorway.

  Through a narrow gap between the two sections of the screen, Liss had a limited view of the room beyond. With bated breath she waited for the intruder to walk into her line of sight. She still hoped to see a stranger, preferably one wearing the uniform of a campus cop. Instead, she recognized Gabe Treat, and he was very obviously searching for her.

  Even though she knew that he’d hear her the moment she spoke into the phone, Liss punched in the remaining numbers on Franklin’s card. Gabe rounded the screen just as the number started to ring.

  “Did you really think I’d let you get away with it?” His nostrils flared with anger and his eyes were hot.

  Liss winced and shrank back when he took another threatening step closer. She couldn’t move far. The bed was in the way.

  Very faintly, she heard Franklin’s voice as he answered her call. She drew breath to scream for help, but before she could make a single sound, Gabe grabbed her wrist and wrenched the cell phone out of her hand.

  “Sorry,” he said into the mouthpiece. “Wrong number.”

  He ended the call and tossed the phone onto the bed. Liss inched sideways, truly terrified now. His angry glare had been bad enough, but now it was reinforced by hands clenched into tight fists at his sides. Gabe Treat was big and powerful. Although Liss had acquired a few self-defense skills over the years, she knew she was no match for someone with his sheer brute strength.

  “Never surrender. Never give up,” she muttered, and had to tamp down hard on a bubble of hysterical laughter when she realized she was quoting dialog from Galaxy Quest. It didn’t matter where the words came from, though. When push came to shove, she was fully prepared to fight for her life.

  Chapter Sixteen

  For a moment, they faced off in total silence. Neither moved. Then the fury vanished from Gabe’s eyes as if it had never been and he cocked his head, studying her as if she were an interesting specimen in a zoo.

  “Are you planning to karate chop me or something?”

  Liss blinked and looked more closely at his face. The anger was gone, replaced by nothing more frightening than annoyance with a touch of exasperation . . . and a disconcerting hint of amusement.

  Embarrassment flooded through her. She straightened up, nervously wiping her palms on the sides of her jeans. Now that the moment of sheer panic had passed, she realized that he’d never intended to kill her. And that he was now just as uncertain what to say next as she was.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I was about to ask you the same question. Except that I pretty much figured out the answer when I realized that you’d stolen my key.”

  She fished it out of her pocket and tossed it to him. He caught it on the fly and took a moment to return it to his key ring. Liss could have escaped then, if she’d still been worried about his intentions.

  She wasn’t.

  “You gave me a scare,” she admitted.

  “I meant to. You had no business being in here on your own. You could have gotten hurt. There are all kinds of traps for the unwary lying around backstage.”

  He didn’t know she’d been a professional dancer, Liss realized. “Is that why you were so angry? I appreciate your concern, but I would have been fine. I’m very familiar with scenery, props, fly lines, ballast and the like. I wasn’t in any danger of catching my ankle on a rope and ending up suspended over the stage. Besides, I was just about to leave when you turned up.”

  He raked his fingers through his bright red hair and his face colored up to match. “I’ve got a temper. I apologize. But you stole from me. Why didn’t you just ask?” Hurt and bewilderment came through his words, as well as lingering irritation.

  “I apologize for that. But look at it from my point of view. I wasn’t sure I could trust you.”

  Gabe’s gaze shifted to the phone on the bed as it started to ring. “Who did you call?”

  “Detective Franklin.” She scooped it up, glanced at the screen, and repeated, “Detective Franklin.” Apparently she’d been connected long enough for him to capture her number and call back.

  While Gabe listened, she told the state police officer where she was and what she thought she’d found. She had to hold the phone away from her ear when he exploded. Predictably, he was not happy to hear that she’d been meddling. In the end, however, he told her to stay put and wait for him to arrive.

  “Are any of the outside doors unlocked?” Liss asked Gabe after she hung up.

  He was staring at the stain on the mattress.

  “Gabe?”

  “It’s like the memorial to the Westford Knight.” His awed whisper sounded loud in the quiet storage room. “Look at it—the outline of a hand-and-a-half broadsword, just like on that ledge of rock in Westford, Massachusetts.”

  “Yeah, okay. I’m sure that’s what the killer had in mind. Pay attention, Gabe. You need to go down and unlock one of the exit doors so the state police can get in.”

  “Yeah, okay,” he echoed, and went.

  It was some time later, after the state police forensics team had arrived to do their thing in scenery storage loft #2, that Liss found herself sitting next to Gabe at the back of the auditorium. Franklin had told them both to wait there until he gave them permission to leave. He’d already chewed Liss out for acting on her own and potentially destroying evidence. At the same time, he’d been skeptical that there was any evidence to destroy. Unlike Gabe, he did not immediately see the shape of a sword.

  “If you’d asked to borrow the key, I’d have loaned it to you,” Gabe grumbled, still belaboring that issue. “You didn’t need to sneak it off my key chain.”

  “Give it a rest, Gabe.”

  She wondered when he would twig to the fact that she’d considered him a suspect. That he hadn’t, she supposed, argued for his innocence, not that she needed any further proof. She was now convinced that Gabe Treat was exactly what he’d first appeared to be—a nice young man who was kind to his elderly grandfather and treated his girlfriend with respect.

  “What if I’d been the killer?” Gabe asked.

  “What?” She swiveled to stare at him.

  “You’d have been trapped up there if whoever killed Professor Palsgrave had seen you come into the theater and guessed what you were looking for.”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it again, deciding that, for once, she’d better think before she spoke. After a moment, she reached out to close her hand over his forearm. “You’re right. And I’m glad you showed up to protect me. Thank you for that. But I have to confess that, for just a minute there, I thought you might be planning to do me in.”

  As she’d hoped, he laughed at the very idea. Then he blushed again. “I’m sorry about grabbing your phone that way. I didn’t know you were calling the cops. I thought . . . well, I don’t know what I thought. I was just upset, because you’d taken my key, and I wanted to get things sorted out between us, you know?”

  “I think I do, yes. Don’t worry about it. And the upside is that the police have to listen to us now. They’ll test that blood and find out it’s Palsgrave’s and then they’ll know that my father couldn’t possibly have killed him.”

  That was all that mattered, Liss told herself. From now on the ball was in Detective Franklin’s court. It was up to him to find out who’d really murdered the nutty professor.

  A little more than an hour later, Detective Franklin allowed them to leave, bu
t not before he’d given Liss a lengthy lecture about interfering in police business. He flat out refused to speculate as to whether her discovery would free her father of suspicion. When she ran through the time frame she’d worked out, he just shook his head.

  “Your reasoning depends largely on a suspect’s wife and daughter as witnesses.”

  “And I suppose that means you assume that the said wife and daughter are lying to protect their husband/ father?”

  He shrugged. “Wouldn’t you, if you were in my shoes?”

  Liss was still steaming when she stepped outside. The first thing she saw was Jake Murch’s truck parked next to her car. Murch himself got out when he spotted her approaching. He waited for her, hip resting against the side of the truck bed, arms folded across his chest. He did not look happy.

  “Don’t start,” Liss warned him. “I’ve already had an earful from the state police.”

  She watched Gabe, who had parked on the other side of the lot, get into his pickup and drive off to check on his grandfather. She envied him. For all intents and purposes, he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “You want to fill me in?” Murch asked.

  Leaning against the trunk of her own car, Liss grudgingly did so. “How about you?” she asked when she’d brought him up to date. “Any useful discoveries?”

  “Only negatives, but we can rule out both Rowse and Jones as suspects. I located a couple of students who were sitting under a tree—studying, they said, but I suspect the guy was mostly studying the girl. Anyway, they had a good view of both the picket line and the front door of Lincoln Hall. They remembered Gabe Treat hanging around, and they say the only demonstrator who went inside the building was Amalfi, and that was well before your father showed up. Probably had to use the can.”

  “Whoever killed Palsgrave entered and exited by way of the art gallery. He left the sword in the storage room and went out the back way. Your witnesses were in the wrong place to catch a glimpse of him.”