Who's Kitten Who? (32 page)

The inside of the small house looked pretty much the same way I remembered it from my other visits. What did you expect? I asked myself. A copy of
How to Murder Your Best Friend
lying open on the floor? Blood-soaked weapons? A half-written confession letter sitting on the coffee table?

“Difficult clients are definitely the hardest part of being in business for yourself,” I said, trying to make conversation. Or, more accurately, trying to lead the conversation around to the topic I realized I had to broach. “But the appreciative clients make it all worthwhile. Fortunately, there are some I’ve had for nearly a decade, ever since I started practicing medicine.”

Before he had a chance to make a comment that would steer the conversation off in a different direction, I continued, “Speaking of people we’ve known for a long time, a funny thing happened to me the other day. I ran into someone from your past.”

“Really?” Ian asked, his English accent making the word sound more like
Rally?
“Who was that?”

I took a deep breath. “A professor from Brookside University. Someone in the theater department. I treated his, uh, his cat.”

“What’s his name?”

“Professor Hendricks. I think his first name is Garvin.” I studied his face, searching for signs of confusion.

Instead, he said, “Garth, not Garvin. Garth Hendricks. And of course I know him. Quite well, in fact. At least I used to, back in my college days.”

“Did you take any courses with him?” I probed.

“Yes. Several. I was in a number of his productions as well. That was a requirement in all his acting classes.”

I was trying to think of a response when Ian retreated to the kitchen. A few seconds later, Monty came bounding into the house, leaping around and wagging his tail and barking gleefully.

“Here’s our boy,” Ian exclaimed, sounding as happy as the Weimaraner. As soon as he ruffled his ears, Monty lay down on his back, no doubt looking for a good tummy-scratching.

“Come here, you funny goofus,” Ian said in a deep, throaty voice—without even a trace of an English accent. “Moofus, woofus. Moofus, goofus…”

I froze. I recognized those words. Even more, I recognized the voice.

It belonged to Kyle, not Ian.

And it didn’t have even a trace of an English accent.

A chill ran through me as, in a blinding flash, I understood what I was seeing.

Kyle and Ian were the same person.

Even though my head was buzzing, I could hear Professor Hendricks’s words in my head, as if someone was playing a tape of something I’d heard before. He had said that Kyle was particularly good at playing character parts.

In other words, Kyle was a first-rate actor.

Something else he’d said suddenly stood out most in my mind.

I remember him doing a fabulous job as Alfred Doolittle, Eliza Doolittle’s humorously tipsy father, in
My Fair Lady, Kyle’s former theater professor had commented.
He was quite convincing
.

My Fair Lady
was set in London—and Alfred Doolittle had a strong Cockney accent.

Which meant Kyle was good at imitating accents. Especially English accents.

Like Ian’s.

As I studied Ian more closely, watching him cavort with Monty on the floor, I realized why his hair looked strange, not to mention slightly off balance.

It was a wig.

I looked past the beard and past the glasses and realized that the features on that face belonged to Kyle Carlson. And while the last time I’d met Ian, on a scheduled visit, his eyes had been dark, this time they were blue. Like Kyle’s. As if he hadn’t had time to put in his tinted contact lenses.

My stomach was suddenly lurching as if I was a passenger on the
Titanic.

Is it really possible? I wondered, questioning the words I was hearing and the image I was seeing. Could Ian Norman really be no more than somebody Kyle created, playing the role of his fictitious roommate in the same way he played a character onstage?

Except this character was designed to do more than entertain. He had been created to provide Kyle Carlson with an alibi for the night of the murder.

As this unbelievable truth came into clearer and clearer focus, something else kept nagging at me. After a few seconds, the fog cleared and I knew what it was.

That
it
began with Lieutenant Falcone—and his New York accent. The way he dropped his
R
s at the end of most words. I remembered thinking,
Somewhere out there, there’s a tremendous warehouse filled with all the
R
s that people living in the New York area have discarded.

Kyle’s “roommate” was named Ian Michael Norman. If someone pronounced his last name without the
R
, it became
no man.

I thought about his first two names, remembering the way he’d made a point of telling me his middle name. Ian Michael. Which meant his initials were
I. M.

Put them all together and you ended up with
I Am No Man
.

I felt as if a jolt of electricity had just gone through me. He had me fooled.
All
of us, in fact, including Lieutenant Falcone.

There was no such person as Ian Norman. Kyle’s “roommate” was really Kyle, wearing a wig and a fake beard and using the English accent he’d already mastered by the time he went to college.

Which means Kyle must have killed Simon, I concluded, my mind racing. Why else would he have gone to all the trouble of inventing a fake roommate to provide him with an alibi?

I thought fast, trying to remember all the other pieces of the investigation that suddenly made sense.

When the Port Players first learned that Simon was dead, Kyle was one of the few who insisted the production should come to a halt. Then it suddenly seemed as if he’d changed his mind. But in the eleventh hour, someone destroyed the theater, making it seemingly impossible for
She’s Flying High
to open after all.

Kyle had also insisted all along that Lacey was the killer. He’d been the only person aside from Aziza who claimed that Lacey had been stalking Simon during the last weeks he was alive. And that had been only with my prompting. He could easily have made up the story about finding one of Lacey’s threatening letters in Simon’s backpack—and he could have reconstructed the type of letter we had talked about, then sent it to me anonymously.

He could have followed me to the Brookside University campus the night I went there to find Professor Hendricks too. Perhaps he had even guessed that sooner or later my snooping would lead me there. He could have also set me up at Theater One by leaving me an anonymous message to meet him there, then sending me a warning by sneaking around in the dark and leaving the trapdoor open on a dark stage. He certainly knew his way around the theater well enough.

Which meant he would have known about the props closet and the eclectic assortment of items stored inside—including a ceramic Buddha that was heavy enough to kill a man with a single blow. And he possessed the physical strength to drag his victim over to a trunk and push him into it.

It all made perfect sense. For the moment, however, I knew I had to concentrate on getting myself out of there without letting on that I’d finally seen through Kyle’s charade—despite his skill as an actor.

“I can see from here that Monty’s wounds look great,” I said, hoping that whatever I’d learned about acting over the past two weeks was helping me sound the way I usually did. “Here, let me get a better look.”

I crouched down and saw that his cuts were, indeed, practically healed.

“Monty’s in great shape,” I announced with an air of finality as I stood up. “Ian, would you do me a favor and tell Kyle to continue with the antibiotics I gave him until they’re all gone?”

Usually I would have explained how important it was to complete the entire course in order to keep the bacteria from building up resistance and over time reducing their efficacy. But I just didn’t have the heart.

Not when I knew the next thing I had to do was contact Lieutenant Falcone and tell him that Kyle Carlson had murdered Simon Wainwright—even though a major piece of the puzzle was missing, and that was
why.

I wasn’t surprised that I couldn’t get Lieutenant Falcone on the phone, since after five o’clock on a Friday evening wasn’t exactly prime time for communicating with anyone. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t frustrated.

I left him a message on his voice mail, begging him to call me back as soon as possible. Then, after thinking about it for about eight seconds, I called back and left him a second message. This time I told him the reason it was really important that he call me back right away was that I’d figured out who had killed Simon Wainwright.

I dashed home to let Max and Lou out, feed my entire menagerie, and take a quick shower. By that point, it was close enough to cast call that I figured I might as well go over to the theater. After all, I wasn’t about to find anything productive to do with the little time I had left. Especially since I was already feeling pretty jittery.

I was about to knock on Betty’s door when I remembered that she’d spent the whole day at Theater One, helping reconstruct scenery and throw together costumes. So I drove to Port Townsend in my red VW by myself, aware that more and more butterflies were gathering in my stomach with each passing mile.

As I walked into the theater, I expected to find it throbbing with activity. Instead, it was deserted.

But I was astonished by how far it had come in the past twenty-four hours. New scenery replaced the fake trees and hand-painted backdrops that had been destroyed. Even though the substitutes were much simpler, they certainly did the job. The torn seats had been repaired with duct tape, and the cables that had been hanging from the ceiling were nowhere in sight. I noticed a new lighting board and a new sound board, both slightly different models than what I remembered seeing before. And a rack of costumes stood on the stage. They weren’t nearly as elaborate as the ones Lacey had spent weeks making. But they would do.

When I heard someone clear his throat behind me, I turned and saw Corey wrapping a length of cable around one arm.

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

“Dinner break,” he replied. “In fact, I’m off to meet the rest of the group. Want to come along?”

“No, thanks.” By that point, my stomach was in such turmoil I couldn’t imagine putting even a single morsel of food into it.

Instead, I figured I’d spend my time getting used to the idea that in only a couple of hours, this empty theater would be filled with a living, breathing audience.

I decided that one of the best ways to do that was by getting into costume. As soon as I said good-bye to Corey, I rummaged through the rack of costumes until I found the one that duplicated my aviator suit. Actually, it was nothing more than a white blouse and a pair of khaki-colored Dockers that had been shortened to capri length, with elastic sewn into each hem. But at least my goggles and my leather helmet, both looped onto the hanger, had survived the heartbreaking assault on Theater One.

I’d just brought the outfit into the women’s dressing room when I heard a door slam.

“Corey?” I called, surprised that I wasn’t alone after all.

But no one answered.

I realized immediately that it couldn’t be Corey. The door I’d heard bang shut was close by. In fact, it had to have been the door to the men’s dressing room.

“Hello?” I called, wondering who else besides me had stayed behind. “Who’s there?”

Once again, there was no response.

“Derek?”

Nothing but silence.

“Doug?” I tried again, this time using the names of other male members of the cast and crew. “Brent? Robert?”

In a choking voice, I added, “Kyle?”

I let out a little scream when somebody suddenly leaped into the doorway of the women’s dressing room.

But it wasn’t Derek or anyone else from the Port Players. Instead, the man standing just a few feet away from me was Ian Michael Norman, complete with his curly reddish-brown wig, fake beard, wire-rimmed glasses, and tinted contact lenses, just like all the other times I’d been in his company.

This time, however, there was one thing about Ian that was distinctively different. He was clutching a knife the size of a machete.

Chapter 18

“All of the animals excepting man know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.”

—Samuel Butler

I
an!” I cried, my mind racing as I tried to come up with the right thing to say to someone who was brandishing a knife. “How nice to see you. Are you, uh, here for the show?”

Desperate to pretend that absolutely nothing out of the ordinary was happening, I turned toward the mirror and picked up a tube of lipstick. I only hoped he was far enough away that he couldn’t see how badly my hands were shaking.

I even dared to wonder, just for a second, if perhaps the knife in his hand was just a prop. But when he grabbed me roughly from behind and held it against my throat, I knew from the sharpness of the blade that this was no fake. This was the real thing.

I could see in the mirror that thanks to his jolting movements, his wig had been pushed askew, revealing a large patch of Kyle Carlson’s sandy-colored hair. He might have looked humorous if it wasn’t for the fury burning in his eyes.

“The whole cast will be back any minute now!” I cried. “Ian, why don’t you just go into the theater and—”

I stopped talking when he pressed the blade more closely against my flesh. In the mirror, I saw that a tiny red line had appeared just above the blade.

“You figured the whole thing out, didn’t you?” he hissed in my ear. “I could see it in your eyes today when you were at the house.
My
house. The house I live in alone.”

“But Ian!” I tried again.

Once again, he used his knife to make his point. “Stop pretending!” he demanded.

I was hardly in a position to argue. “You’re right,” I admitted breathlessly. “I know that Ian isn’t real. He’s someone you invented to prove what a terrific actor you are.”

“I think you know the real reason,” he shot back.

“No, I—”

He drove home his sense of urgency with the stainless steel blade, cutting a second red line into my flesh.

“All right!” I gasped. “I do know the real reason. You made up Ian to give yourself an alibi.”

“Aren’t you smart,” Kyle snarled. By this point, the wig had slipped off his head completely. I also noticed that his fake beard was coming loose on one side of his face. “The problem is, you’re a little too smart. Unfortunately, it’s going to cost you.”

“But why?” I asked in a shrill voice. “Why did you kill Simon?”

“Because he stole it!” he yelled into my ear.

I instinctively lurched forward. As I did, I felt the terrifyingly sharp blade push even deeper into my skin.

“
She’s Flying High
was
my
play, not Simon’s!” he cried. “I came up with the idea of writing a musical based on Amelia Earhart’s life back when we were just out of college. I’m the one who wrote it, not him! And I finally got tired of listening to everybody talk about how great he was. What a
genius
he was.

“
I’m
the genius!” he exclaimed. “
I’m
the one who stayed up until two or three, night after night, perfecting the script.
I’m
the one who came up with the clever lyrics!
She’s Flying High
is
my
creation!”

“Why didn’t you just tell everyone the truth?” By that point, my words came out as wheezing sounds. “Derek and the Stones and…and everyone else who was involved with the production?”

“Because I had no way of proving it. Ten years ago, right after I finished it, I showed it to Simon. I was actually trembling as I handed him a copy. His opinion meant so much to me. I hoped he’d read it and tell me it was great. Instead, his reaction devastated me. He told me he thought that parts of it showed promise, but that overall it just wasn’t good enough.

“And I
believed
him! In fact, I burned every copy I had. I was devastated, of course, but I trusted him so much I didn’t question him. It never even occurred to me that he’d squirrel his copy away and that, when the time was right, he’d put
his
name on it!”

“But that’s exactly what he did,” I said, doing my best to sound sympathetic. If there had ever been a time I wanted to convince someone I was on his side, this was it. “Simon betrayed you! And you thought he was your friend. I don’t blame you for being angry!”

“It was the first time I’d ever seen him do anything that selfish,” Kyle continued. I had the feeling he was talking to himself, not to me. “That evil, conniving bastard. I confronted him, of course. As soon as I realized what he’d done, I demanded that he come clean.

“But Simon could be very persuasive once he turned on the charm. He insisted he was simply paving the way. At that point, he already had Derek and everyone else in the company under his spell. He’d also caught the attention of the Stones. See, he was great at crashing parties and making contacts and networking, things I’ve never been good at. He kept saying that since he was the one who was pitching it to the people who really mattered, he couldn’t very well let on that someone else had written it. He assured me that once things were firmly under way, he’d tell everyone the truth.

“I waited and waited, but that moment never came. Finally, when we were only two weeks away from opening night, I confronted Simon again, this time at the theater. I knew he’d show up here that Friday evening, even though there was no rehearsal. He liked to run through his lines on his own, and he preferred to do it on the same stage where he’d be performing. He told me he’d arranged to meet Aziza here so they could rehearse together.

“But by the time I got here, she was long gone. He told me he’d just broken up with her, and naturally they had a huge fight. She stormed out of the theater, but he stayed to rehearse, the way he planned. He acted as if nothing was out of the ordinary. He could be like that—so determined to get what he wanted that nothing else mattered.

“I was glad I’d gotten him alone, since I figured that without Aziza and Lacey and the rest of his entourage crowding him, I’d have a chance to talk some sense into him. Instead, when I demanded that once and for all he give me credit for the musical
I’d
written, he started giving me the same old story about how the timing wasn’t right. And standing there in the dressing room with him, I suddenly realized that the timing would
never
be right. I finally saw Simon Wainwright for what he really was.”

“No wonder you were devastated!” I exclaimed.

“I saw red,” Kyle agreed coldly. “The more he tried to explain why it made sense for him to take credit for my creation, the more enraged I became. Finally, I lost it. Simon turned his back on me, as if our discussion was over and he was going to walk out.

“Before I even knew what I was doing, I grabbed the first heavy thing I saw, a statue of Buddha, and smacked him in the head with it. I didn’t even think about the repercussions. It was an instinctive reaction. So I was astonished when I looked down and saw him lying on the floor. I knelt by his side and called his name, over and over. Then I started to cry. Even though I was furious with him, he’d been one of my closest friends for years. We studied together, we auditioned together, we even lived together. Simon and I shared the same dream, and we supported each other as we both went after it. I loved him like a brother.

“I couldn’t believe I’d killed him.” By now Kyle was practically whispering. It was as if he was reliving the entire scene. “I panicked, then instinctively tried to hide what I’d done. I noticed the dusty old trunk in the corner of the dressing room, and I dragged it out and stuffed Simon inside it. Then I did my best to wipe the fingerprints off everything I could remember touching, especially the trunk and the Buddha. And I was careful to put the Buddha back into the props closet. I figured whoever had taken it out would just assume that the cleaning lady had put it back where it belonged. And then I ran like hell.

“As I drove home, I was shaking. I’m amazed that I didn’t have an accident. But as upset as I was, I knew I needed an alibi. That was when I came up with the idea of Ian. I knew I had the acting ability to pull it off. All I had to do was create a roommate and construct a solid story to go with it. I thought it was the cleverest idea I’d ever come up with. I even chose a name that would honor my creation: I. M. Norman.
I am no man.
”

This didn’t seem like the best time to mention that I’d already figured that one out—and that he wasn’t nearly as clever as he seemed to think he was. The last thing I wanted to do was provoke him.

“When the police called me down to the station as Kyle,” he continued, “I was pretty nervous. But when they called me in as Ian, I was frantic. I knew this was going to be the biggest acting challenge of my life. Not only did I have to convince the cops that Ian was a real person, I had to convince them that he was telling the truth.

“Somehow, I did it. I must say, I was flying pretty high myself when I came out of there. I’d actually made them believe I had an airtight alibi for the time Simon was killed. But then I realized I had to keep Ian alive, at least for a little while. Sure, I’d pulled him from out of thin air. But now that I was done with him, I couldn’t just have him vanish
back
into thin air.

“That’s where you came in. I wanted to let you get to know Ian, and Monty was the perfect excuse. As soon as you told me you were a veterinarian who made house calls, I knew I’d found the ideal way to keep Ian going. See, I hardly ever have anybody over to the house. I’m too much of a loner for that. But I knew you’d come over for only a short time, and I figured you weren’t likely to ask too many questions.

“But I was wrong. You kept coming around to check on Monty. I was also wrong about you not asking questions. You asked plenty. I wasn’t sure what you were up to, but I thought I’d be safe as long as you believed Ian was real. And if I could convince you and everybody else that Lacey was the killer, I’d get off scot-free. She certainly had the motive. And Aziza’s claim that Lacey had been stalking Simon before he was murdered was the perfect way to make her look guilty. So when you told me about it, I jumped right on it.

“I also realized pretty quickly that instead of leaving the production, I’d be better off sticking with the show,” he went on. “That way, I’d have a better chance of sabotaging it. The last thing I wanted was for the show Simon stole from me to be produced on a real stage without anyone knowing that I was really the one who deserved all the credit.

“My entire plan went fine until this afternoon. I could see from the look on your face that you’d realized that Ian and Kyle were one and the same. And you’re smart enough to figure out why I’d go to the trouble of creating a fake person—one who just happened to provide me with an alibi.”

“I guess I’m not a very good actor, after all,” I commented weakly.

“Actually, you’re not half bad. But the moment I started talking to Monty in that silly voice I use only with him, I realized what I’d done. It was the first mistake I made. Still, I didn’t let on. I didn’t want you to know I realized the charade was over.

“And now,” he concluded, tightening his grip on me, “there’s only one thing for me to do. I have to get rid of you. Otherwise, you’ll go to the police and tell them everything.”

I was about to swear up and down that I had absolutely no intention of doing that when I heard a female voice call, “Hello? Anybody here?”

We both froze.

Thank goodness! I thought. Someone’s here!

I opened my mouth to scream. But Kyle covered my mouth with his forearm, still clutching the knife in his hand.

“Great,” he muttered. “Now what I am going to—I know.”

“Hello!” we heard once again. “Where the heck is everybody?”

Sunny, I thought, recognizing her voice.

But figuring out who had come into the theater didn’t do much to help me—or to prevent Kyle from dragging me down the short hallway I knew led to the props closet. I thought of trying to break out of his grasp, but I could feel how strong he was. Besides, there was that tiny problem of a sharp stainless steel blade that happened to be situated dangerously close to my windpipe.

As we neared the props closet, I began to panic. Not only was the closet a small, dark space guaranteed to make anyone who was kept in there long enough claustrophobic. It was also the perfect place for Kyle to use his knife on me, leave me inside, and then slip out of the theater before anyone knew what had happened.

So when we reached the closet door, I couldn’t help whimpering. It was the same sound Max made when he was standing at the window, watching a squirrel he knew he couldn’t get to.

“Quiet!” Kyle hissed in my ear.

He dragged me into the closet without loosening his grip. It was pretty tight once the two of us were stuffed inside. And it was fairly dark, with the only illumination coming from the thin strip of light underneath the door.

“Don’t make a sound,” he warned. As if wanting to remind me how serious he was, he pushed the knife harder against my throat.

“Hello?” Sunny called again. “Derek, are you here?”

The sound of her voice enabled me to keep track of where she was. And from what I could tell, she was coming closer.

In fact, I could hear her walking around in the hallway, probably no more than fifteen feet away from where Kyle was holding me at knifepoint.

“Don’t make a peep,” Kyle whispered, his breath hot against my ear.

Come on, Sunny, I thought. Open the door. Please,
please
think of some reason you need to check inside.

“Hello?” I heard Sunny call once again. “Anybody here?”

By this point, she was standing directly in front of the door.

“If you let her know we’re in here,” Kyle said so quietly I could barely make out the words, “I’ll kill you before she has a chance to open the door.”

As he spoke, he yanked me more tightly against him. The sudden movement caused me to lose my balance, and my foot struck something hard.

I immediately realized what it was. The fog machine.

I suddenly had an idea. Even though I wasn’t sure I could pull it off, I maneuvered my foot around the edge, trying to find the switch Sunny had told me she’d flipped accidentally. That meant it couldn’t be that difficult to turn on….