A Baked Ham (26 page)

The wrong people were
running.
 

Sheriff Croft was wasting his
time and manpower chasing after Sandra and Marcus.

Fred was the one he should be
talking to.

I flipped open my phone, but I
couldn’t get reception from where I was standing in the hallway.
 
Walking out onto the dim stage, I finally
managed to get one bar of reception, and I started to dial the sheriff’s number
to tell him what I’d discovered.

I never got the chance, though.

“Put that down,” Fred said from
the wings as he stepped out onto the stage.
 

Ordinarily I would have ignored
him and finished my call, but he was holding something in his hand that might
just be a prop, but it looked very real to me.
 

It was a sword from one of the
pirate plays, and he was wielding it as though he meant business.

“You couldn’t let it go, could
you?” Fred asked me as he took a step forward.
 
“Throw your phone down on the stage.”

I hit redial as I complied with
his order, even though I wasn’t sure who I’d called last on it.
 
Whoever it was, I hoped that they’d hear what
Fred was about to do to me.
 
I didn’t
want to die, but going unavenged would be the worst thing I could imagine.
 
If something did happen to me, I wanted my
husband and my family to know who was responsible.
 
The only weapon I had at my disposal was the
Jasper Award, but I wasn’t sure how I could use it to my best advantage.

“Would you like me to throw this
down, too?” I asked.

“Don’t you dare,” he said in a
petulant voice.
 
“You shouldn’t even be
holding it.”

This guy had clearly
snapped.
 
I looked around the stage
wildly for something that might help me, and I noticed that there was a darkened
square on the floor off to the side.
 
What was that, a trapdoor?
 
Maybe
I could use it to my advantage, but first I had to lure Fred Hitchings over to
it close enough to help me.

As my telephone clattered to the stage,
Fred said, “I can’t believe you came up with that in that crowded prop
room.
 
I couldn’t get rid of that blasted
trophy until everyone else was gone.
 
Victoria, I was two minutes from getting away with it, and you had to
keep nosing around until you found it.
 
I
thought my note would scare you off, but clearly that didn’t work.
 
When I got the clumsy one you left yourself,
I panicked at first until I overheard Marcus telling Sandra about the duplicate
message he got himself, so I figured you were bluffing.”

“Why did you kill Benny,
Fred?
 
Was playing his role that
important to you?”

“It should have been mine, but
that’s not why I did it.
 
It all started
out as a joke.
 
I planned to swap Benny’s
Jasper with a prop, but he caught me in the act in his dressing room, and he
accused me of being a hack actor, a ham with nothing to offer.
 
You should have heard him.
 
It made my blood boil!
 
When the fool turned his back on me, I don’t
know what happened to me.
 
Something just
snapped!
 
I had the prop in my hand, and
I swung it at his head as hard as I could.
 
I wanted to knock him out; I never meant to kill him.”

“You killed him with the fake
award, so you had to leave it by the body.”

“It had his hair and blood on it,
you see,” Fred said in a calm, rational voice.
 
“I thought about hitting him again with the real trophy, but the police
are too clever with their science and all these days.”

“What I don’t get is why you
didn’t just throw the real Jasper away somewhere else,” I said.
 
“It’s the only thing tying you to the
murder.”

“I couldn’t exactly sneak it out
under my coat, now could I?
 
Besides, I
couldn’t stand the thought of destroying it.
 
I was going to take it home and clean it up.”

“That was pretty foolish of you,
Fred,” I said.

His hand tightened on the sword
grip, and he took a step toward me.
 
“Don’t talk to me that way, Victoria.
 
I won’t stand for it, do you hear me?”

“Sorry.
 
Take it easy, Fred,” I said.
 
“We can work something out here.”

“I’m afraid that we can’t,
actually,” Fred said.
 
“It’s unfortunate,
but you’ve left me no choice.
 
You have
to go.”

He took another step
forward.
 
If I let him get close enough
with that blade, I was dead, and I knew it.
 
I thought about using the Jasper in my hand to block his attack, but I didn’t
have that much confidence in my ability to fight off an armed man with an
acting trophy.
 
Instead, I threw it at
him as hard as I could, and then I turned and started to run offstage.

I hit his shoulder, but I missed
his face, which was my original target.
 
I’d been hoping to break his nose with it.
 
Worse yet, it wasn’t even the side that held
the sword.
 
He rubbed his shoulder
lightly as he hurried toward me and shouted, “Stop right there.”

I felt the arc of the blade
coming toward me, and I turned to face him.
 
Fred Hitchings might very well kill me where I stood, but he wasn’t
going to hit me from behind like he had Benny.
 
I was going to make the man look into my eyes before he skewered me with
that blade.

“I don’t want to do this, but I
really don’t have any choice,” Fred said as he cut the air in front of him with
the sword.
 
“Good bye, Victoria.”

I braced myself for the stab, and
the pain that was sure to follow, but suddenly, a light from the back burst out
onto the stage in a tight spotlight.
 
Fred was turning exactly the wrong way when the concentrated beam of
light hit him and he was blinded by it, but I’d been facing the other way.
 

I knew if I ran, he’d have a
chance of catching me.

It was time to fight back one
last time.

Taking three steps toward him, I
ducked, got behind him, and then I shoved him as hard as I could.

The next instant, Fred fell
through the trap door as the sword itself clattered to the stage.

“Victoria, are you okay?” Peter
asked me as he ran through the aisle and up onto the stage.

“I’m fine, thanks to you.
 
That was perfect timing, by the way.”

“I told you that I’d be back,” he
said with a grin.
 
“I was going to try to
tackle him when I saw what was going on, but I was afraid that you might get
hurt if he saw that I was rushing him.
 
I
told you that I’ve worked the spotlight on more than one show.
 
That was brilliant of you shoving him down
the trapdoor.”

“I couldn’t have done it if you
hadn’t blinded him for me.”
 
I looked
down through the opening, but I couldn’t see much of anything.
 
“Do you think he’s dead?”

“Hang on a second.”
 
Peter disappeared backstage, and suddenly the
lights all came to life.
 
I peered over
the edge, dreading the thought that Fred had escaped and was even now plotting
to get us.

As soon as I saw him lying there,
that worry vanished instantly.
 

“Should we go down there and
check for a pulse?”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Peter
said.
 
He disappeared once more, and then
he reappeared an instant later, holding a pitcher of water.
 
“Sandra insists on a pitcher of water before
every performance.”
 
He dumped the water
down on Fred, who moaned when it hit him.

“My leg.
 
It’s broken.
 
Get me out of here.”

“Soon enough,” I said as I looked
down on him.
 
“Peter, grab my phone, will
you?
 
I need to call the police.”

“There’s no need,” Sheriff Croft
said as he came through the back of the theater.
 
“That was smart thinking calling me like
that.
 
I heard everything.”

“I’m just glad that you made it,”
I said.

“I’m not sure why.
 
It seems that you and Peter have everything
under control here.”

“We make a good team,” I
said.
 
“What happened with Sandra and
Marcus?
 
They didn’t kill Benny, so why
did they run?”

“Your note spooked them,” the
sheriff explained.
 
“They didn’t want the
murder pinned on them, and both of them have overactive imaginations.
 
We caught up with them at the county line,
but it was pretty clear that they didn’t kill Benny.
 
Boy, as soon as we caught up with them,
Marcus started telling us that Sandra must have killed him, and she returned
the favor just as fast.
 
I’ve got a hunch
that particular relationship is over after the things they said to each
other.”
 
He touched my shoulder lightly
as he added, “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Are you kidding?
 
I’m an emotional mess,” I said.

“But she was brave when it
counted,” Peter said.
 
“You should have
seen her in action.”

“I look forward to hearing all
about it.”
 
Three of the sheriff’s men
came into the theater, and he directed them, “Fred Hitchings killed Benny
Booth.
 
Call the paramedics
after
you handcuff him.”
 
He stared down into the pit, and asked, “How
are they supposed to get down there?”

“I’ll show them,” Peter said as
he hurried off the stage to join them.

“You did good work on this one,”
the sheriff said after we were alone.

“Come on.
 
I got lucky, and we both know it.
 
If I hadn’t stumbled across that trophy, I
wouldn’t have known a thing, and Fred would have gotten away with murder.”

“I don’t call that luck,” the
sheriff said.
 
“You knew from one glimpse
of a crime scene photo that the award used to kill Benny wasn’t genuine, and
that’s more than I can say.
 
I stared at
the blasted thing for hours and I didn’t see it.”

“That’s because you weren’t
exposed to the real trophies like I was,” I said.

There was a sudden clamoring from
the lobby door, and one of the deputies said, “Sheriff, there’s a group of
people here who insist on seeing your witness.”
 

I could hear my family’s voices
growing louder by the second.
 
“You’d
better let them in, or you’re going to have a riot on your hands, and you know
it.”

The sheriff nodded in agreement
as he waved to the deputy.
 
“Let them
in.”

The whole gang, all three
generations, was there, and I was quickly enveloped in the heart of my
family.
 

After I went over what had
happened with them, I found myself nearly having the breath hugged out of
me.
 

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for
you,” Moose said.

“There was no reason for you to
be,” I said.
 
“I didn’t know what I would
find until I stumbled across it in the prop room.”

The sheriff had faded back into
the scenery as we had our little reunion.
 

Martha finally looked over and
spotted him standing to one side.
 
“Do
you need Victoria any more tonight, Sheriff?”

“I’ll need a statement in the
morning, but she’s free to go right now,” he said.

“Then, may I suggest that we get
out of here, family?
 
I believe we should
reconvene at the diner to finish our celebration,” Martha said.

There were no disagreements, so
we all left the theater together.
 

I wasn’t sure that I’d ever be
back, actually.

I myself had seen enough
performances there to last a lifetime, and I didn’t think that there was a soul
in all of Jasper Fork who could blame me.

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