Paula K. Perrin - Small Town Deadly

SMALL
TOWN DEADLY

Paula
K Perrin

Copyright © Paula K Perrin

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  This book may not be reproduced in
whole, or in part, by any means, without the written consent of the author.

This book is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places
and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are fictiously
used.  Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead is
entirely coincidental.

Dedicated
to Elizabeth Travis Sunyer

such
a good friend and a most excellent Mother-thing

Fran swept into the restroom with
a burgundy garment bag hung over her arm.  “Have you thrown up yet?”
she demanded.

“Not yet,” I said.

“Get it over with, Liz. 
Stick your finger down your throat.”

“I’m going to kill you, you
know.”

She turned to hook the garment bag
over a stall door.  “Having you take over Annamaria’s role was the only
logical thing to do when she got sick,” she said, shimmying out of her
jeans.  “Who else would know the lines?”

I turned to face the mirror
mounted on the cement wall.  The sight of my sweaty, greenish face and
flickering eyelids increased my nausea.  I’d written the play, but that didn’t
mean I knew the lines.  “I’m going to make a total ass of myself,” I
muttered.

“It’s only dress rehearsal. 
How can you be so nervous when there’s not even an audience?”  Her
mirrored image pulled her red cashmere sweater over her head.  The clip that
had held her long blonde hair came loose and clattered to the floor.  Her hair
spilled over her shoulders.  She tossed the sweatshirt at me.

I turned and caught it, and
feeling the warmth of it, draped it around my shoulders.

Pared down to black lace panties
and thigh-high black stockings, she unzipped the garment bag.  “You’re the
one who told me the whole point of recruiting local celebrities to act in the
play was that audiences love to see them make fools of themselves.”

“Yeah, but I only intended
egomaniacs like you to be in the play.”

“Hoist on your own
petard,” she said, her long fingers working the tiny mother-of-pearl buttons
on her blouse into their buttonholes.

“Good grief, Fran, I can see
right through that!”

She bumped me aside with her hip
so that we could both stare at her image in the mirror.  “Isn’t it
gorgeous?  It’s lawn.  Got it this afternoon at that antique clothing shop down
in Portland.” 

Never mind the modest high neck
and long sleeves.  It revealed everything.  “You’re supposed to wear
corsets and petticoats and all kinds of things under that.”

“Worry not, little one,”
she said, stepping into a black velvet skirt, “there’s a jacket to go with
this.”  She grinned at me in the mirror and pulled me against her side
with one long arm.  “You may be shocked, but you’re not green any more.  I
knew you wouldn’t kill me,” she said as she began to pin up her hair.

Half an hour later as I watched my
fellow thespians strut and fret themselves into a frenzy in the fourth scene, I
thought she shouldn’t have been so sure.  While Fran took to the melodrama like
a moth to a spotlight, my knees shook and my heart pounded.  My stomach roiled
and I held onto the cold Formica of the library checkout counter with sweaty
fingers.

I know my limitations.  My role
had been supposed to end when I delivered the script of the interactive mystery
play to Alisz Cameron, the producer and director, who assured me I wouldn’t
have to give the play another thought until opening night. 

Yet here I was in the Warfield High School library, the very library I’d visited almost daily as a student
twenty-odd years ago.  Alisz had transformed it into the pit of public-speaking
hell.

The cozy round tables had been
removed.  Orange plastic chairs formed a semi-circle facing the small stage
built at the foot of six shallow steps.  The steps led from the upper level
where I quaked at the checkout counter down to the lower level where the
bookshelves stood.

On that stage, the local
celebs-turned-actors waved their arms and delivered their lines with gusto,
though with no regard to timing, while I dreaded my next cue.

Realizing I’d lost my place, I
scrabbled through the script.  “Extroverts,” I snarled under my breath.

“What?” Kirk whispered. 
Warfield’s young Episcopal priest had been recruited to play my character’s
partner in our fictional ballroom dance team.  He wore a revolting powder-blue
tux to match my long satin gown.  His blond hair was plastered down with some
sweet-scented oily stuff.

I smoothed my crumpled script with
sweaty hands.  “This isn’t going well, is it?” I whispered back.

His boyish face creased as he
smiled at me.  “It was much worse a week ago.  Besides, you know what they say,
‘bad dress rehearsal, great opening night.’”

“I hope
they’s
right,” I
said.  “And I hope Annamaria recovers so she can go on tomorrow night.”

“You’ll do fine.”  He gave my arm
a reassuring squeeze.  “Besides, likely she’ll be fine tomorrow.  She
won’t let a touch of flu keep her out of the play.”

“I hope so, though I’ve never seen
anyone as miserable as Annamaria was this afternoon when I stopped by to pick
up this dress.”

A shrill voice carried from the
stage, “Liz, you missed your cue.  If you will not pay attention, how do you
expect us to get this right?”

My face hot, I whirled toward
Alisz.  “I’m doing my best.”

Kirk’s voice was low, for my ears
only.  “Just let it go. Double duty as producer and actor is getting to her.”

“But does she have to pick on me?”
I whispered back.

He shrugged.  To Alisz he said,
“I missed the cue, too.  Sorry.”

Alisz stalked to the edge of the
stage where it was set against the shallow steps.  She glared up at me, then
took a deep breath.  She tucked a strand of her short brown hair behind her
ear.  “It is your play.  I would think you would want it to be a success.”

“I do,” I mumbled, my face growing
even hotter.

The others on the stage studied
their feet. 

Fran stepped to Alisz’s side.  Her
large green eyes filled with sympathy, she looked at me.  She said, “We’ve all
had weeks to rehearse.  Liz is walking in cold.  Go easy, okay?”

Alisz glared at her.  “So she
makes fools of us all because she cannot concentrate?”

My sweaty hands fisted.  “For
heaven’s sake, Alisz, it was one mistake.”

Alisz’s eyes flashed, and a tide
of red rose from her neck.

Beside me, Kirk said, “It’s just
jitters, Alisz.  We’ve all got ‘em.  Let’s go back a few pages, and this time
we’ll nail it.”

Alisz continued to stare at me. 
Fran laid a hand on her arm.  Alisz shrugged her off, but she offered me a
strained smile and said, “As you say, Liz, you have made a mistake.” 
She turned to the rest of the cast, “We will go on.”

Soon the air crackled with the
repartee that had seemed so witty when I’d written it.

Kirk tensed and whispered, “Here
it comes, Liz.”

On the stage below us, Fran turned
in a swirl of black velvet, pointed at Kirk, and delivered our cue, shrieking,
“He’s to blame.”

“He is innocent,” I
screamed back.

At the same moment, Kirk yelled,
“How dare you accuse me?” and strode down the steps to the quarter-circle
stage.

I hurried the other way, down the
long carpeted ramp to the glass-paneled door that separated the library from
the classroom wing.  Hot pink posters for our play in a huge, bold font were
plastered over the glass.

Final
Checkout, an interactive mystery play

Two
nights only:  April 21 & 22, 1995

Come
support your local library!

The hallway beyond was darker than
it had been earlier when Fran and I had been in the restroom.  Someone had gone
overboard on atmosphere.

My script, about competitors in a
small-town talent contest, called for me to slip away to warn Andre, who played
the murder victim, that the intermission was almost here.  I was also to help
him arrange himself on the floor of the janitor’s closet so the audience could
view the “body” and look for clues.

I stepped into the doorway of the
dark closet.  I could barely make out Andre on the floor, lying face-up, feet
toward me.  “Hey, don’t be shy, turn on the light,” I said and felt along the
wall for the switch.

When the spotlight blinked on, I
gasped.  Never in my 39 years had I seen anything so horrible:  exposed white
skull; bits of grey matter, supposedly bits of brain, spattered around; blood
pooling in his ear before it dripped onto the floor. 

“Great make-up,” I said.  “Did you
do that yourself?”

He lay still, not a muscle moving,
eyes staring at the ceiling.  Well, he’d said he was a better actor than anyone
gave him credit for.

“Andre?” I said, my
voice wavering.  “Quit fooling around!  You’re scaring me.”  I
grasped his shoulder and shook him.

My shake sent a ripple of movement
down his body.  His right hand opened and an ivory-colored tube rolled onto the
floor.  His head tilted toward me, his fixed eyes locked with mine, and he made
a terrible sound starting low, going lower, ending as hushed as a satisfied
lover’s.  “Aahhh.”

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” I
whispered, and even my mother couldn’t have called it blasphemy.

My stomach cramped.  One hand
pressed against my lips, I ran across the echoing hall, crashed through the
orange door marked “GIRLS,” and made it to the first stall.  When my
stomach stopped heaving, I wiped my watering eyes and stumbled to the sinks
where I rinsed my mouth.  I stared into the mirror.

I looked as pale as Andre.

Thoughts dropped into my mind like
ice cubes into a glass.  Someone has killed Andre.  This is going to ruin my
play.  I should get Gene.

I opened the restroom door, not
looking across the hall toward Andre, and started toward the library.

My hand grasped the cold door
handle just as my mind supplied a picture of the tube that had rolled out of
Andre’s hand and onto the floor—my niece’s lipstick.  I knew it was hers
because of its distinctive faux carved-ivory case and because she’d lost it at
rehearsal last Sunday and made such a fuss about it.

I hesitated.  Anyone who watches
TV cop shows knows she shouldn’t disturb a crime scene.

I hurried to Andre, not looking at
his head.  I couldn’t avoid seeing the spreading pool of blood, and my heart
contracted.  I wished I could cover him.  He’d hate being seen in such a mess. 
He spent so much time on details, maintaining his hair color, picking his clothes. 
He worried so about his aging skin.  A sob stuck in my throat.

I snatched up Meg’s lipstick,
telling myself she couldn’t have done anything wrong.  She couldn’t.

But Meg had been late for dress
rehearsal tonight.  We’d started without her.  She’d arrived breathless and
apologetic, wearing a different costume from the baggy black jumpsuit we’d
bought.  Why the change in clothing?  Had she gotten spattered with—No!  No, I
wouldn’t even let the thought form.

Where could I hide the lipstick? 
A trash can stood in the corner of the hall.  I started for it but then
realized the police would surely search everything.  Flush it down the toilet? 
Yes.  As I hurried toward the restroom, I saw movement through the glass door
to the library.  Kirk, Fran, and Meg marched down the ramp arm-in-arm.

I thrust the lipstick down the
bodice of my gown, into my bra.  I ran to the door, pulled it open, and started
up the ramp toward them.  The heavy door thudded shut behind me.

Fran and Meg flanked Kirk and
chanted, “We want the bo-dy, we want the bo-dy.”

Meg’s shiny, mahogany-red hair,
drawn up in a ponytail, swung in rhythm to her steps.  Her brown eyes shone
with an excitement I hadn’t seen in months.

My heart thudded heavily as they
continued toward me, grinning and chanting.

I held my hand up like a traffic
cop.

They stopped.

“Andre’s dead,” I said,
my voice rasping.

“We know that!” Fran said,
disengaging her arm from Kirk’s.  “We’re coming to see if he can act his way
into a coffin the way he said he could.”

My knees buckled and I sagged
against the wall.

“Aunt Liz, what’s
wrong?” Meg said, her voice shrill.

Kirk hurried to me.  I’d started
shaking and couldn’t stop.

Fran’s voice seemed far away as
she said, “She’s going to faint, put her head between her knees.”

Obeying her, Kirk pressed down on
my head, asking, “What happened?”

I resisted the pressure, but my
legs gave way, and I slumped to the floor.

Meg said, “I’m going to see
what’s wrong,” and started down the ramp for the door, the swirls of
sequins sewn onto her net skirt flashing as she moved.

“No!”  It came out a
squeak, but enough to stop her.  I stared up at the three faces peering down at
me.  “Andre’s been murdered.”

“Murdered?” Meg cried.  “You
mean—”

“Shh,” Fran said to her, rubbing
her shoulder.  To me she said, “You’re not just testing your own acting
abilities are you?”

“No!  It’s awful.”

“I’ll get Gene,” Meg
said and raced up the ramp and around the corner into the library.

Fran slid down next to me,
heedless of the consequences to the black velvet.  She put her arm around me. 
“Are you sure he’s dead?”

I nodded.

“Oh, Liz, you poor thing.”

My teeth chattered, and her
sympathetic tone brought tears to my eyes.

“How did he die?  Could you
tell?”  Kirk asked.

“His head—” and then I
began to cry in earnest so that when Gene Cudworthy, Warfield’s Chief of
Police, hurried down the ramp and stepped over our legs, he was just a tall,
red-headed blur.

The rest of the cast had followed
him and huddled at the upper part of the ramp.

Gene turned when he reached the
door and said, “Don’t anybody leave.  When my guys get here, send them
down.”

Exclaiming, asking questions, a
few of them crying, the cast crowded past us to the door and watched Gene
through the glass panel.  Everyone but Kirk, who continued to stand next to me,
and Fran, who suddenly jumped up saying, “I’ve got to call Max!”  She
ran into the library, nearly tripping over her long black skirt.

Kirk and I looked at each other.

I shrugged.  “The newswoman
instinct, I guess.”

“No, a news reporter would
have gone after Gene.  Calling her reporter is a news publisher’s
instinct,” he said.  His hands went into his pockets.  “Are you sure it
was murder, Liz?”

“Yes.” I wiped tears from my
cheeks with my fingers.

“My God,” he sighed.

I struggled to stand, legs tangled
in the unaccustomed long skirt.  He reached down for my hand, easily pulling me
to my feet.  Dizzy, I clung to his muscular arm for a moment.

I wished Fran hadn’t left to make
her call.  I needed her brisk, no-nonsense self to steer me past the questions
I couldn’t help asking.  Why had Meg shown up in a different costume than we’d
planned?  She wore a red leotard and tights not exactly concealed by a black
net skirt decorated with beads and sequins in cabalistic designs.

Since dropping out of college in
February, Meg had dressed in old sweat suits when she’d bothered to get out of
her nightgown at all.  Tonight, in one of the abrupt mood changes she’d been
exhibiting, she’d dressed in a costume sure to please men with lazy
imaginations.

I looked up the ramp toward the
checkout counter where the phone was located.  Fran wasn’t there.

“Excuse me,” I murmured to Kirk
and walked up the ramp on wobbly legs in time to see Fran through the windows
on her way to the parking lot.  I ran outside and yelled, “Fran!  What are you
doing?”

“Shh!” she hissed, turning and
frowning at me.  Six feet tall, descended from Vikings, for a moment Fran
looked menacing.  She hurried back to me. “Don’t make a fuss.”  Her blonde
hair, piled softly on her head, gleamed in the light that poured through the
windows.

“Where are you going?  I thought
you were just calling Max.”

She put a hand on my shoulder. 
“Look, I have to take care of something, and I have to do it fast.”

“But Gene said we had to stay—”

“If anybody asks, say I felt sick
and went looking for a bathroom.”

“Nobody’s going to buy that.”

“They’ll believe you.  I’ve got to
go.”  She turned.

I reached out to snag her, but she
was already out of range.  Uneasy, I retraced my steps to Kirk who had joined
the murmuring group by the door.  “Are you all right, Liz?” he asked.

“I think so.”

The rest of the cast surrounded
us.

His young, round face solemn, his
blue eyes kind, Kirk said, “Is there anything I can do for you?” 
Though dressed in his blue tux for his role, there was no mistaking the
minister in Kirk.

“No, but thanks.”

Outside, sirens howled.

“I’ll go meet them,”
Kirk said, striding up the ramp.

People started talking all at
once, peppering me with questions.  Only one voice broke through my daze, Alisz
saying, “You’ve gotten blood on Annamaria’s dress.”

“I’m sorry.”  I looked
down at the large, maroon blotch of blood near the satin hem, and my skin
crawled.  I raced up the ramp’s turquoise carpet, turned left at the checkout
counter and ran into the glass-walled computer room.  A mound of everyday
clothes lay between two terminals on a table, left there by the cast after
they’d changed into their costumes.

Hands shaking, I pulled at the
zipper of Annamaria’s dress, pushed it down over my hips and stepped out of it,
kicking off the high heels as well.

I was pawing through the pile of
clothes searching for my own when I felt eyes on me.  I looked through the
glass walls of the computer room to the lower level of the library.

There, in the second row of
chairs, Meg sat huddled in the protective embrace of Jared Cameron.  Both of
them stared at me.

A blush rose from my toes.  I’d
only been thinking of getting out of the bloody dress, not that there might be
people around.  Hastily I turned my back to them and searched frantically until
I found my blue sweater.  As I tugged it over my head, Kirk came through the
library door leading several uniformed cops.  A tall young cop known as Lofty
stared in at me, stumbled, then hurried to catch up with Kirk.

I grabbed a pair of jeans and
pulled them on, struggling to zip them.  I leaned over, looking for my shoes,
and the lipstick fell out of my bra and caught in the sweater.

Kirk’s voice came from the doorway,
“Anything I can do to help?”

I froze.

“The cops won’t let you
leave, you know.”

“Would you mind excusing me
for just a minute?” I said, my tone frosty.

“Sure.”

I didn’t see my purse anywhere. 
As he moved away, I crouched, pretending to look for my shoes, my back to Meg
and Jared.  I extracted the lipstick from the folds of my sweater and thrust it
into the pocket of the jeans, then reached for my loafers.  Carrying them, I
walked out of the computer room and down the shallow steps. 

Kirk had joined Jared and Meg who
had been crying.

Jared still had his arm around Meg
and would probably keep it there until she noticed and moved away.  Quiet,
medium-sized, with medium-brown hair, he usually faded into the background. 
Tonight, costumed as a country singer in fancy western duds, he couldn’t be
overlooked.  Despite his reddened eyes, he smirked and said, “You do
realize this isn’t a strip club?”

“A gentleman wouldn’t have
looked,” I said.

Jared and Kirk exchanged glances. 
“Riiight,” Jared said.

“Why on earth were you
changing clothes in front of God and everyone anyway?” Meg asked.

“I thought everyone was in
the hall.  Why didn’t you warn me?”

“We didn’t realize what you
were doing till it was too late,” Meg said, her brown eyes wide.

I bit my lip.  Meg’s innocent act
in the face of my humiliation was so typical of her behavior these days.

Kirk cleared his throat. 
“Those aren’t your jeans, you know.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” Jared said,
“they’re too long.”

“And tight,” Meg added.

I’d been so embarrassed and
distracted, I hadn’t paid attention.  Now I realized just how tight they were. 
The lipstick dug into my side.  I pulled my sweater down.

Kirk said, “They must be
Fran’s.”

“You’d better go find your
own,” Meg said.

“At the moment there’s no place
that offers privacy.”

Jared asked, “Why were you in
such a rush to change?”

“There was blood on the
dress.  I couldn’t stand it.”

“Oh, Aunt Liz,” Meg
said, squeezing between two chairs to reach me.  “What an awful shock.”

I put my arm around her and pulled
her close.

“How did he die?” Jared
asked, a strange, tense note in his voice.  The pre-med student in him, I
thought.

A man’s voice interrupted,
“Where’s the action?”  It was Max, Fran’s reporter.

So whatever else Fran was up to,
she’d called him.

Kirk pointed and said, “Down
the ramp, in the janitor’s closet.  But the police won’t let you in.”

He grinned, “We have our
ways.”  He went back out the front door of the building, presumably on his
way to the side door near the restrooms.

Moments later Gene herded all the
play’s subdued participants back into the library, some of them crying and
clinging to each other.

Gene wore brown slacks, a white
shirt and a light blue-and-beige striped tie.  Alisz had wanted him to wear his
uniform for his role, but Gene felt that was improper.  He’d compromised by
wearing his shoulder holster and gun.  Now he had his badge case tucked into
his belt.

Gene said, “Go on and sit
down now, all of you.”

Meg and I sat together.

Gene remained standing on the
stage.  He crossed his arms over his broad chest and said, “There’s not
much I can tell you at this point except that Andre’s been murdered.  Looks
like it was a blow to the head that did it.”

“But who killed him?  How
could they have done it when we were all here?” Kirk asked.

Gene leveled a look at him, and
the room went absolutely still.  That’s when I realized he thought one of us
had done it.