Never Thwart a Thespian: Volume 8 (Leigh Koslow Mystery Series) (28 page)

Chaz blinked at her a moment. Then he put his hardhat back on. “I’ll stick with this dude,” he announced, sidling closer to the security guard.

The guard didn’t move, but as he looked down at Chaz, his lip curled ever so slightly up on one side.

Chaz stepped away again.

“Mr. Jenkins will go with me,” Bess declared. “Why don’t we start on the second floor of the annex? You two take one side of the hallway and we’ll take the other.”

The teams began their search in earnest, checking one room at a time and meeting in the hallway after to compare notes. The upstairs classrooms were full of props and other theater gear, cluttered throughout and with their closets full to bursting. Leigh’s heart pounded even as she tried to appear calm to Chaz, who responded to anxiety the same way he responded to excitement — by prattling nonstop.

By the time they had moved downstairs and reached the “blessing room,” Leigh found herself considering the judicious use of duct tape. She was surprised when, three steps into the room, Chaz stopped short. The assembly of cute and fuzzy animals had done what nothing else could do — it had rendered him momentarily speechless.

“Wow,” he said finally, his blue eyes bugged. “This is
so
unbelievably twisted.”

Leigh arched an eyebrow. The man had been practically gleeful when talking about the scorched corpse in “the execution room,” but stuffed animals and chocolate roses were twisted? “How do you figure?” she demanded.

Tiny drops of moisture beaded up on the narrow strip of brow visible below Chaz’s hard hat. “Grandma kept saying it must be devil worship!”

Leigh resisted giving the man a shake. “This isn’t devil worship! It’s a nice older woman trying to create a peaceful environment for the cast to relax in, to calm their nerves.”
Or some crazy thing like that,
she added wordlessly. “How do you get ‘devil worship’ out of a bunch of cute animals and one lousy candle?”

Chaz swallowed. “You say cute, I say creepy. Look at that giraffe! He’s no innocent. He’s
thinking
things.”

Leigh tried mentally to count to ten, but being an impatient person, she only got to four. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she chastised, looking quickly around the room for any potentially hidden spots. Camille wasn’t there. “This room is clean. Let’s move on.” She started out the door.

“Grandma says that the janitor’s wife was the head of it, you know.”

Leigh’s feet stopped moving. “The head of what?”

“The coven, of course,” Chaz explained. “She was married to the janitor, but she had the hots for this other guy, so she got the coven to sacrifice her husband on the altar. They were all in on it, see—”

“Because getting the entire congregation of an otherwise respectable church to agree to cover up a cold-blooded murder was
so
much easier than getting a divorce?” Leigh challenged.

Chaz frowned. “Well, maybe they needed a human sacrifice, and he was convenient, you know?”

Leigh’s patience was lost. “There were never any devil worshippers here!” she scolded, wincing even as she spoke. God help her, she sounded exactly like her mother.

“If you say so,” Chaz said sulkily.

Leigh attempted to regroup. “Did your grandmother actually know the janitor or his wife?”

Chaz considered a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to tell with Grandma. She says she hitchhiked to Cleveland in 1955 to see Elvis in a jamboree before he was really famous and that she did it with him in his car after but my mom says no way would Grandma ever have hitchhiked all the way to Cleveland because she gets really carsick and besides her brother my great uncle always said she made it up and that she had a thing about pretending she knew celebrities and that she used to say she’d petted the real Lassie too back when—”

“Chaz!” Leigh interrupted. “Can we focus, please?”

“Sorry,” he offered. “But, like, those animals are seriously creeping me out, you know? Can I go watch the show now?”

“As soon as we find Camille,” Leigh assured, following Chaz out into the hall and closing the door behind them. “She must be around here somewhere.”

“Unless she got bonked on the head,” Chaz muttered, adjusting his hard hat.

“Nothing in either of the dressing rooms,” Bess reported as they convened in the hall. “Why don’t you two check the restrooms, and we’ll do the office and then start on the hallway behind the stage?”

“Then what?” Chaz asked nervously.

“Then we’ll check the upstairs curved hall, the attic, and the basement,” Bess replied, her worry lines deepening again. “I don’t know where else she could be. The guards insist she isn’t outside.”

“We’ll find her, Aunt Bess,” Leigh assured, despite the pit of fear that was digging ever deeper in her gut.

Bess nodded, and she and the guard headed off in the direction of the sanctuary.

“Have a look around the men’s room, will you?” Leigh directed, opening the door to the women’s. “Make sure no one is in the stalls.”

Chaz didn’t move. “What if Camille doesn’t
want
to be found?” he blurted, fidgeting with his hardhat again. “What if she’s waiting somewhere with a sledge hammer to bonk all of
us
on the head? Huh?”

“Then you alone will survive,” Leigh quipped, showing a bravado she didn’t feel. “Just check out the bathroom, will you? Weren’t you just in there a few minutes ago?”

“Well, yeah, but… Okay, fine!” he said anxiously.

Chaz slipped inside the door to the men’s room and Leigh did the same with the women’s. “Hello?” she called. It was possible that a patron could be inside, despite the plea in the program that any necessary exits during the show take place at the rear of the theater and make use of the basement bathroom. Chaz obviously hadn’t read it; others might not either.

Leigh heard no response. She opened the stall doors and looked around the entirety of the small space. It was empty.

She returned to the hall and waited for Chaz. With Bess and the guard gone, the annex had become eerily silent. She couldn’t help repeating Chaz’s question to herself. What if Camille didn’t want to be found?

And if not… why not?

The discomfort in her stomach had graduated to a full-blown ache. Chaz was taking too long. “Chaz?” she called, knocking on the men’s room door.

He didn’t answer. Leigh looked nervously up and down the hall. Then she kicked the door open a bit with her foot. “Chaz? Is anyone else in there?”

Silence. She took a breath and swung the door open fully. It met no resistance. One glance from the doorway showed her there was no one at the urinals or sinks. She reached out and pushed quickly against the one and only stall door, then jumped back out of the way.

The door swung in and banged against the corner of the toilet. She could see enough of the space inside to answer her question. There was no one in the bathroom, including Chaz.

Gutless wimp had given her the slip.

Leigh moved back out into the hallway and heard the door to the parking lot swing open and shut. Heavy footsteps headed her way.

Calm down!
she ordered herself. There were over two hundred people inside the building right now, with guards outside the doors. What could happen?

She stood still in the center of the hall, waiting for the person in question to round the corner. But she had never been very good at waiting.

“Who’s there?” she called out, embarrassed at the fear in her voice.

A man appeared. He smiled at her tentatively and moved forward. “It’s just me. Are you okay?”

Leigh stared at Gerardo blankly, her response to him cycling rapidly from relief to wariness and back again. “I’m fine. What… why are you here?” she stammered.

“Mr. Applegate sent me,” he replied evenly. “He said Bess was upset about Camille going missing. Have you found her yet?”

Leigh tried to calm her frayed nerves with a deep breath. His claim was perfectly plausible. “No, we haven’t,” she answered. “But we haven’t finished searching yet.”

Gerardo squared his shoulders. “All right. Where would you like me to look?”

Leigh considered, long and hard. She did not trust Gerardo any more than she trusted Chaz, and she was not at all sure that wandering around the building with either of them was any safer than searching on her own. But it hardly mattered, because she had no intention of doing either anymore.

“Let’s ask Bess,” she deferred, slipping past him and heading toward the hallway behind the stage. She had not walked six feet before she collided with Ned coming the opposite direction up the basement stairs.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Leigh!” He apologized nervously. Despite the relatively nicer clothes, his hair was wilder than usual and his pale skin was beaded with sweat. “Are you okay? Chaz said it wasn’t safe in here, that you and Ms. Bess both were gonna get conked on the head!”

Before Leigh could answer, Bess appeared around the corner. “What’s this?” she asked, looking from Ned to Gerardo. “Why aren’t you watching the show, Ned? And where’s Chaz?”

“Chaz bailed on me,” Leigh tried to explain. “He’s scared. He told Ned—”

“Nobody’s going to bonk you on the head, Ms. Bess!” Ned declared, pulling himself to his full height and making a lame attempt to suck in his substantial gut. “Not in my building! I won’t let ’em, no way!”

Bess smiled sweetly at him, and Leigh wondered for a moment if the Pack wasn’t onto something with their Ned-in-love theory. He certainly wouldn’t be her first victim.

“I know you wouldn’t, Ned,” Bess said soothingly. “Thank you. But I assure you I’m in no danger. Why don’t you go back on in and watch the show? And if you see Chaz again, tell him to do the same.” She threw a calculating glance at Gerardo. “I’m sure everything here is perfectly under control.”

Ned looked from Gerardo to the guard for a long moment, distrust written plainly across his pasty face. But with a single nod toward Bess, he turned around and went back the way he had come.

“Mr. Jenkins has agreed to carry the ladder for me,” Bess explained to Leigh. “Camille isn’t anywhere behind the stage, and she’s not out in the audience, either. She also isn’t in the basement, at least not in the main part of it. Hank and Ralph have both made that loop getting to their entrances at the back of the house, and Hank said she wasn’t in the bathroom down there, either. There’s simply nowhere else to look besides—”

Leigh groaned inwardly. She knew what was coming before the words left her aunt’s mouth.

“The attic and the boiler room.”

Chapter 20

“I don’t see how anyone could have gotten up into the attic space in the last hour without someone seeing the ladder,” Bess admitted, talking more to herself than anyone else. “But I simply won’t forgive myself if we don’t look everywhere.”

“You want me to check the boiler room?” Gerardo offered.

Bess threw him a sharp look. “My, you’ve learned English quickly, young man.”

Gerardo smiled back at her, unabashed. “I was always good with languages.”

“Be my guest,” Bess answered his original question, her tone still wary. “But don’t think I won’t have a look myself, as well.”

Gerardo gave a nod and headed down the stairs.

Bess started toward the office and motioned for the guard to follow her. “The ladder’s in here.”

“Aunt Bess,” Leigh began soberly, following them both. “I think it’s time to call Detective Stroth. We’ve checked all the understandable places Camille could have gone, but there is no good reason for her to be in either the attic or the boiler room! Let’s let him decide if the police should come out.”

Bess paused in the office doorway, pointed the guard toward the ladder, and nibbled a fingernail. “I suppose you’re right, kiddo. She’s an adult with a mind of her own, certainly, but under the circumstances…”

“Exactly!” Leigh finished awkwardly.

“Hang on a minute, Jenkins,” Bess said as he bent over to pick up the ladder. “I have a call to make first.”

Leigh listened in as Bess got herself patched straight through to the detective. Bess explained the situation, then returned the phone to her pocket and looked mildly ill. “He’s sending somebody out,” she said weakly. “He didn’t say who. But they’ll come to the parking lot entrance without sirens or anything.”

“You’ve done the right thing, Aunt Bess,” Leigh praised. “I’m sure if we don’t find Camille, they will.”

“Let’s go, Jenkins,” Bess ordered, moving toward the steps to the upstairs hallway. “Thanks for helping me search, kiddo,” she said to Leigh. “But the men and I can take it from here. Why don’t you go sneak in the back and join the family? I’m sorry you missed so much of the show already. You will come back and see the next one, won’t you?”

Leigh felt an unexpected pang. She was being dismissed. She need have no more personal involvement in the evening’s mayhem. How great was that?

“Of course I want to see it,” she mumbled. As they moved closer to the stage doors, the sound of rumbling laughter met their ears. The audience was indeed loving it.

If they only knew…

“I’m not sure I can enjoy the rest of the show tonight, though,” Leigh said honestly. “Not until we know that Camille’s all right.”

“And if I know your husband,” Bess said wryly, “he won’t be able to enjoy the show either until he knows that
you’re
all right.”

Leigh bit her lip. “Good point.”

“Go on in, kiddo,” Bess said with a smile. “You can still catch part of the second act. I insist.”

Leigh debated. A large part of her did not want to let her aunt out of her sight. But she also knew that as a bodyguard, her own worth was negligible. “All right,” she said finally. “But will you at least stay where there are” — she avoided eye contact with the guard — “several other people? Stay backstage with the cast. Let the boiler room wait until the police come.”

Bess waved her away. “Fine, fine. Now
go.
Enjoy.”

Leigh turned and headed for the stairs down to the basement. Second thoughts pummeled her conscience with every step. Maybe she
should
stay with Bess, at least until the police came. Then again, as long as Bess didn’t allow herself to be alone in a secluded place with anyone —
including
Gordon’s hires — she really should be fine. The building was, after all, full of people.