Paula K. Perrin - Small Town Deadly (2 page)

Meg gripped my arm.  There were
whispers behind us.  Gene said, “Settle down, please.”

From his seat in the first row,
Victor intoned, “We’ve come to bury Andre, not to praise him.”  The
founder of the Warfield Community Theatre, he’d agreed to direct my play and
had seized the role of magician.  He was dressed in black pants, black satin
shirt, and a black cape lined with scarlet silk. 

Very thin, with dark hair and pale
skin, always intense and a little intimidating, tonight Victor looked more
vampire than magician.

I’d been anxious when Meg was cast
to play the magician’s assistant because Victor had quite a reputation, but
when I’d worked the conversation around to whether she found him attractive,
she’d shrugged and said, “He’s okay for an old guy.”  He was 32.

Gene pulled at the knot in his
tie, and frowned at Victor.  He started to say something, then stopped, his
blue eyes sweeping the room once, then again, until his gaze fixed on me. 
“Where’s Fran?” he demanded.

I cleared my throat.  “She
wasn’t feeling well and went looking for a restroom.”

Murmurs broke out behind me,
people who hadn’t realized Fran was gone, I supposed.

Gene turned and spoke to one of
his men who hurried off, then he said, “You let her wander off?  There’s
been a murder here!”

My heart skipped a beat.  I was so
used to Fran’s willful ways that I hadn’t considered she might be in danger.

Sybil Aynesworth, the director of
the community library system, stood to face Gene.  “We want to know what
happened,” she said.

“You know everything I can tell
you at the moment.”  He addressed us all, “I know it’s difficult, but don’t
talk about this while you’re waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”
Sybil demanded, stepping onto the stage near him.

“As soon as the lab people
get here, we’ll start asking you questions while events are still fresh in your
minds.”

“I want to go home.”

Obviously she’d never heard of the
legendary temper that went along with Gene’s red hair.  I waited for the
inevitable, glad it would not be directed at me.

“Nobody’s going home for
quite a while,” Gene said.

“I don’t believe you heard me
say—”

“You’re not going anywhere.”  When
she opened her mouth again, he growled, “Get used to it.”

Not many people were rude to
Sybil.  Although only in her forties, she was director of a three-county
library system.  The unwary took her at face value as an easy-going, new ager
because of the ash-brown hair hanging down her back and the jingle of the gold
bracelets, earrings, and necklaces she wore.  However, Fran had told me she had
a reputation for skewering her underlings on her sharp tongue and roasting them
slowly over her fiery temper.

But then, stories about Sybil
abounded.

Gene turned and walked up the
steps, leaving Sybil, her shoulders rigid with tension, alone on stage.

He stationed Lofty, the young cop
who’d stared at me, in front of the checkout counter.

Muttering, everyone stood up and
walked toward the stage.  Sybil continued to hold the high ground.  “Just
who does he think he is, anyway?” she asked when I joined her.

“The chief of police,” I
said.

“That’s no excuse to be
rude.”

“Can’t you give him a little
slack?  Warfield hasn’t had a murder since he’s been chief.  He’s in over his
head.”

Her lustrous brown eyes examined
me.  “I find it interesting that the way you wrote your play gave everyone an
opportunity to leave the stage during the early scenes and—”

Jared spoke from behind me, “That
was the whole point, to make everyone a suspect and to keep the audience
guessing.”

“It’s only a play,” I said.

Sybil turned to Laurel Strachan,
the librarian of the Warfield Community Library.  “Too bad your
fund-raising effort is ruined.”

“Can’t we still put it
on?” Laurel asked, her aquamarine eyes anxious.  “We’ve worked so
hard, and the tickets are completely sold out.  People are looking forward—”

“Our pretend victim was just
murdered!” Sybil said.

“But the show must go on. 
Isn’t that what they say, Victor?”  Laurel gazed earnestly at him.  She
looked like a teenager tonight with her strawberry-blonde hair fluffed into
curls on her shoulders.

He stared down at her, brown eyes
narrowed.

“You always hear—”  Laurel faltered to a stop.

“Count on you to apply a
theatrical cliché here,” Victor said.  Everyone shifted uncomfortably.

Tears welled in Laurel’s eyes, and
she blinked rapidly.

Kirk’s quiet voice cut through the
tension.  “One thing that surely cannot be out of place is a prayer.”

Victor’s sneer didn’t faze him. 

“Shall we join hands?” 
Kirk reached for Meg.

Sybil’s icy fingers closed around
mine.  Kirk stepped up onto the stage and took my other hand.  People joined
hands so we were in a rough circle.

Kirk said, “Let us
pray.”  Some minutes later he was finishing up, saying, ” … these
things we pray … ” when a loud voice demanded, “What the hell is going
on?”

We turned to see Gene, his face
brick red.

“We’re praying,” Kirk said.

“Well, save it for church.  Go sit
down.  I told you not to talk to each other.”  He glared at Lofty.

“Chief, the lab guys are
here,” a voice called from the ramp.

Gene pointed at the rows of
chairs.  “I want you all to sit there.  Silently.  At least two chairs
between you and the next person.”

“Don’t you think that’s
excessive?” Kirk asked, his voice mild.

“No,” through gritted
teeth.  “You people do not seem to realize there’s been a murder and that
someone in this room may have done it.”

We gazed at the walls, the carpet,
the magazine rack, anywhere except at each other.

Meg shivered and stepped close to
me.  I put my arm around her.

“Sit down and don’t talk,”
Gene said.

Sybil said, “Aren’t you going
to call in the state police to investigate?”

Laurel chimed in, “If anyone
took over the investigation, it would be the Sheriff’s Department.  Isn’t that
right?”

“Yes.  Your information is
correct.  If we needed help, we would call the Sheriff’s Office.”  Gene’s
hands clenched.  “However, though our department is small, we can do the
work required of us.”

“But you could be considered
just as much a suspect as any of us,” Sybil persisted.

His face went from brick to beet. 
“I want you to sit down,” he said, each consonant articulated.

Sybil’s mouth opened again.

“Now,” he bellowed.

We all hastened to chairs, sitting
two chairs apart from each other.

Gene glared at us, but when we
didn’t say a word, he rotated like a robot and left, taking Lofty with him. 
This time two cops appeared at the checkout desk.  One of them, whose name I
could never remember, had the reputation for being the toughest cop on the
Warfield force.

After a few minutes Alisz
retrieved her needlework bag from a bookcase where she’d stashed it.  She took
out an unfinished needlepoint of black-eyed susans.  The diamonds on her left
hand flashed as she stabbed her needle into the fabric.

Occasionally her hand rose from
her work to tuck her light brown hair behind her ears.  She’d always worn it in
a short pageboy, what in my mother’s day was called a Dutch boy, with the bangs
cut straight across.

Jared mounted the stage.  He got a
biology textbook out of his backpack and sat on the piano bench to read.

For awhile we all sat quietly, Meg
twisting a strand of her dark red hair around and around her index finger.

My mind spun like a pinwheel
wondering why Meg had been late tonight, why her lipstick had been in Andre’s
hand, why Fran had disappeared.

Five minutes later, Meg stood up. 
She approached the cops and spoke quietly.  They both shook their heads.  She
gave them the big-brown-eyes treatment.  When the tough one still shook his
head, she followed through with the Macrae dimple, and the older cop, Millay,
caved.  He and Meg came back to us.

“Want to play bridge?”
Meg asked, taking a small deck of cards from the little satin pouch she wore on
a gold belt around her waist.

“No thanks,” I said.

Meg and her attendant cop turned
to the others.  Victor and Sybil agreed to play, completing the fourth.  Kirk
and Laurel looked disappointed.  Victor suggested they play poker.  “Not
for money,” the cop said, “and we don’t talk about anything but the
cards.”  They sat around a table that had been pushed to the back of the
library.

I rubbed my cold hands together. 
I’d have given anything if I hadn’t written the stupid play.  I had written in
a murder, sure, but it was make-believe.  Who had made it real by hitting Andre
with such force that it shattered his skull?

I glanced over at the windows with
a shiver.  Surely it had happened by horrible chance, a madman from outside,
Andre in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I, too, was in the wrong place. 
By rights I should have been at home finishing my overdue book proposal.  I
wrapped my arms around myself and shifted restlessly.

The lipstick dug into my side. 
What was I going to do about that, anyway?  I got up and started for the
windows.

“Sit down,” said the
tough cop.

“Please.  Didn’t your mother
ever teach you the word?”

“Sit down,” he repeated,
his voice mild, his eyes empty.

I sat.  Why did we need a tough
cop anyway?  Warfield’s just a little town.  Where I’d just discovered the body
of a friend.

No, I argued with myself, not a
friend, not really.  A year and a half ago, when Meg left for her freshman year
of college and my life was empty, Andre had seduced me.  It had been fun, being
seduced by a Hollywood star, even if he was an ex-Hollywood star.  Later, when
I found seducing people was his hobby, it hadn’t been fun at all.  But I’d
gotten over that.  Celibacy wasn’t so bad.  Not really.

I’d needed something to fill my
time.  When I’d gone to Laurel with the idea of writing an interactive mystery
play to benefit the library, she’d said, “When I put on a successful
fund-raiser, I’ll show them I mean business!”

I wasn’t sure if “them”
was the library administration or the people of Warfield.  Maybe it was both. 
Fran said there was lots of gossip about Laurel.

“Why does everyone assume a
librarian is going to have flat feet and her hair in a bun?” I’d asked.

Fran patted me on the head and
said, “Innocence is really cute at your advanced stage of life.”

“What are you holding
back?” I demanded.

Fran wouldn’t tell.  As owner and
editor of
The Warfield Warbler
, she knew everything that went on, but
she had her own set of rules governing information.  Lots went into the paper,
of course.  Some things she held in confidence like a doctor or a priest, and
sometimes she gossiped just like anyone else.

I looked at my watch.  It was
almost nine.  If it hadn’t been for Annamaria coming down with stomach flu,
she’d have been the one to find Andre, the one sitting here with her behind
numb from the hard chair.

A heavy door clanged in the
distance and the sound of male voices approached.  Gene led Lofty and another
cop into the room.  He came down to the stage to stand next to Jared who still
sat on the piano bench.  His red hair rumpled, his tie askew, Gene looked every
one of his 41 years.  “We’ll take statements from each of you now.”

Sybil’s voice came from behind
me.  “I insist that you question me first so I can get out of here.”

“That’s fine,” Gene
said, “anybody else want to volunteer?”

“I’d like to get it over
with,” Victor said.  As he reached the edge of the stage, he looked back
at us.  “Shall it be the Retort Courteous?  The Quip Modest?  Or—”

I glanced at my cast mates.  No
one appeared to understand his theatrical allusions.

“Just make it the truth,” Gene
said, sending him into the work room with an officer.

Officer Millay took Jared into the
school librarian’s office.  Gene turned to Sybil and said, “You want to
come with me?”

Would Gene have us searched?  Ten
minutes later, I was still trying to figure out how to get rid of the lipstick.  
Officer Millay opened the office door.  Jared started to walk back toward us.

Millay stopped him.  “I’ll
need you to leave now.”

“I have to get a ride with
Mom.”

“I’ll take her next.  Mrs.
Cameron, will you come with me?”

Alisz packed her canvas, yarns,
and scissors.  All evening Alisz had looked strange to me, and now, as she
walked toward the office, I realized why.  For her role, she wore jeans and a
khaki shirt.  I hadn’t seen her wear pants in years—I wondered who’d talked her
into that costume.  She was so self-conscious about her bowlegs, she always
wore skirts at mid-calf length to conceal them.

Millay sent Jared out to wait in
the small glass lobby.

Gradually I became aware of voices
rising.  Through the glass walls of the computer room, I saw Sybil and Gene
standing almost nose-to-nose.  Gene shouted at her. Sybil yelled back.  Only
occasional phrases made it through the glass.  “Stupid oaf.” 
“—think you can get away with—”  “Don’t be ridiculous—”

Everyone was watching the drama,
including Lofty and Officer Tough.  Casually, I walked around a bookcase.  I
struggled to get my fingers into the pocket of the tight jeans.  They
encountered something smooth.  Paper.  Fran was always digging into her pockets
or her purse to retrieve notes.  I dug deeper and snagged the lipstick.  I
rubbed the lipstick case with my sweater before dropping it to the carpet. 
What a relief! 

Sybil pushed the door open, turned
to glare at Gene, then slammed the door shut behind her