Lights Out Tonight (32 page)

“I was with a friend,” Meg answered dully, pulling herself from Caroline’s embrace.

“But you didn’t show up for your job tonight, Meg.”

“That’s not the end of the world,” said Meg.

“That’s not how Langley sees it. She’s pretty irate.”

“That’s not the end of the world, either,” said Meg.

Caroline studied Meg’s face. Something wasn’t right. Was she stoned? “Langley thinks you might have been getting high.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You don’t want to ruin your apprenticeship, Meg.”

“I know, Caroline. I know.” Meg sighed with exasperation. “I’m tired now. Just give me my bag and I’ll talk to you tomorrow, all right?”

As she handed over the tote bag, Caroline felt hurt and disappointed by Meg’s attitude. They were right back where they’d started from.

“Well, will you please call your father and let him know you’re okay?” she asked.

“I’ll call Dad later, Caroline. When I get back to my room.”

“I’ll walk you back,” Caroline offered.

“No, thanks. I’m going to see if I can at least clean up the dressing room before I leave.”

“All right, Meg, if that’s the way you want it.” Caroline began to walk away. She stopped and turned at the door. “Oh, did you realize your bracelet was missing again? Langley found it lying in the hallway outside the dressing room.”

“No big deal,” said Meg. “It’s just a bracelet.”

Caroline walked out, shaking her head.

The cell phone rang in Caroline’s room at the inn, finally switching to voice mail.

“Hi. It’s me. Maybe it’s better I’m not getting you, so you can listen to this message and have some time to digest what I’m going to tell you, Sunshine. I might be making a big mistake telling you this, because the mistake I made was two years ago. I’m not proud of it, and I’ve kept quiet about it for many reasons.”

Nick’s voice trembled. “But if Meg could be in danger, I have to tell you what I know, what I saw.

“You’ve been asking me about the party the night that Daniel Sterling died. I’ve evaded your questions, telling you it was because I didn’t want to be reminded of the summer before Maggie died. That was true. But there was more to it, Sunshine. I knew more than I ever told the police. I never told them because I didn’t want to hurt anyone—not Maggie, then; or you or Meg, now.”

His voice broke.

“The night Daniel Sterling died, I was at Curtains Up, not just at the party but later, after everyone went to bed. I was
leaving in the middle of the night when I saw Victoria walking up from the road, back to the house. Obviously, she hadn’t been in bed all night, alone, while Daniel went for that ride to cool off that she told the police about.

“I’ve always suspected that she had something to do with Daniel’s death, but I couldn’t say anything because then I would have had to explain what I was doing leaving Belinda’s in the middle of the night.

“I know it’s a lot to digest, Caroline. And I promise I’ll try to explain it to you.

“But now, with all that’s been happening, I just can’t keep this to myself anymore, especially if Victoria Sterling could have something to do with Belinda’s disappearance and now that you tell me Meg is missing, too.”

Nick hung up the phone, knowing there was no going back now. In a way, it was a relief, unburdening himself of the shameful secret he had lived with for the past two years.

He’d held himself back from confessing to Maggie before she died, knowing that, while it might have made him feel lighter, he’d only have been hurting her. He’d strayed. Just once. But the effect of that one night was far-reaching.

He could have explained that he’d been celebrating how well the reading of his screenplay had gone, that he’d ended up drinking too much, how radiant Belinda was that night. But Maggie didn’t need to hear all that. She was already experiencing
searing physical pain and dealing with the knowledge that she wasn’t going to get better. How could he add the emotional pain of betrayal and infidelity to that?

As he went to his computer to check airline schedules for a possible flight back to the East Coast, Nick was well aware he had made a mistake. He wished he could take it back, but he couldn’t change what had happened with Belinda. Still, if having been at Belinda’s that night, and having seen Victoria, enabled him to save his daughter tonight, maybe some good would have come out of something bad.

He prayed that would be the case, and that his future with Caroline wouldn’t be ruined by his past.

 C H A P T E R 
134

It was eleven o’clock when Caroline walked back into the lobby of the Warrenstown Inn. With disappointment, she saw Constance Young standing at the front desk.
Well, that takes care of that,
thought Caroline. She knew she was losing her chance to report the story—her story—now that Constance was here.

“How was your ride up?” asked Caroline.

“I’m exhausted.” Constance frowned. “I should have been in bed, asleep, three hours ago.”

Caroline waited while Constance finished signing in and then walked with the
KEY to America
cohost to the elevator.

“So what’s going on up here?” Constance asked. “Any news on Belinda Winthrop?”

Caroline shook her head. “They still haven’t found her, but I heard they’re bringing in a canine unit tomorrow.”

Belinda strained to read the luminescent numbers on the face of her watch. Was it eleven o’clock in the morning or night?

It must be night,
she thought. The mother bobcat was still scratching somewhere above her.

Caroline took her cell phone from the charger to call Meg again. She didn’t care if her stepdaughter was going to be exasperated with her. She just wanted to know that Meg was safely in her dorm room.

As she glanced at the tiny screen, Caroline could see that she had a message waiting. She called her voice mail and played it back, concerned at first, as she listened to the upset in Nick’s voice. Then, as she digested what his words meant, she closed her eyes as if that would shut out the pain as they played back in her mind.

“The mistake I made was two years ago….

“I’ve evaded your questions….

“I couldn’t say anything because then I would have had to explain what I was doing leaving Belinda’s in the middle of the night.”

Caroline thought back to two nights before, and Nick’s crestfallen look when Belinda had said she hadn’t connected Meg as his daughter despite the McGregor name. Later, at the party, Belinda had been momentarily flustered when Nick had commented that he was having almost as much fun as the last time he’d been at Curtains Up—two years before.

The night he’d slept with Belinda Winthrop.

Caroline sat on the edge of the bed, trying to focus her thoughts. Nick had been unfaithful to Maggie. He could be unfaithful to her. He had lied to his first wife. He could be lying to her. But even as disillusionment, hurt, and anger gripped her, Caroline knew this wasn’t the time to analyze their relationship or even begin to decide what she was going to do with this gut-wrenching information. Unless Nick actually wanted to try to destroy their marriage, he would have no reason to make up this story about Victoria Sterling.

Nick had seen Victoria walking up the driveway at Curtains Up on the night Daniel Sterling was thought to have been by himself when he suffered a fatal accident. Victoria had lied to the police about that.

The two apprentices had died in another car accident. At least, it
looked
like an accident. What if it wasn’t?

Could Victoria Sterling actually have had something to do with that? She was a renowned playwright at the top of her game. She was a likely candidate for a Pulitzer Prize.

Caroline’s thoughts turned to the script she’d been looking at in the costume shop just a little while ago. Everything had been reversed. Valerie’s lines were marked for Davis, Davis’s lines for Valerie. Caroline had written the confusion off to typographical errors. But what if it wasn’t? What if there had been another version of
Devil in the Details?
What if the play that was being acted out on the Warrenstown Summer Playhouse stage was not the one that had been written originally?

Caroline’s mind sped back to the night of the party at Curtains Up, when Belinda had asked Meg to take the script from her. She had just come from Remington’s carriage house. Was that why Remington’s portrait of Belinda was so disturbing and so different from the role she seemed to be playing on the stage? Had he worked from the wrong copy of the play? An earlier version perhaps, a version in which the wife was the sociopath and the husband the victim? A version that Victoria Sterling had not written?

If Belinda had figured out that there was another version of the play, would Victoria have felt she had to get rid of her?

And why would Meg have just said that losing her bracelet was no big deal? She treasured that bracelet. Was she saying something so outrageous as a way of signaling something was wrong?

Suddenly, it was crucial that she get in touch with Meg. Caroline pushed the buttons, but no one answered Meg’s cell phone.

Her mouth was cotton dry; the gag pushed against the back of her throat. As she tried not to cough, Meg wished she had shouted out in the costume shop. She should have called to Caroline. They could have taken their chances against the deranged, chain-smoking woman who stared at her now. Meg could feel a bead of perspiration dripping down her side as she listened to the latest declaration.