Better Off Dead in Deadwood (45 page)

Something slammed into the double doors behind me at the top of the pool room stairs, rattling them in their frame. My heart nearly shot out through my nose.

Christ! Had she knocked herself out?

The doors shook again. Damn, no such luck.

I raced into the open doorway and closed the door behind me. I felt for a lock, found one on the knob, locked the door, and leaned my head against the cool wood.

My breath came in shallow bursts. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I noticed a red light over my head. I looked up at an Exit sign, blinking away tears I hadn’t realized had escaped. I closed my eyes and the image of Helen Tarragon’s blood-covered face appeared, so I opened them again.

Why? Why would Caly … how could she …

The door knob moved in my hand. I gasped and stepped back.

Something banged outside in the hall.

What the hell was that? Not like a gunshot, more like a battering ram.

Bang!

Then it hit me—Caly was trying to bust through the double doors. Had I somehow managed to lock them? And if Caly was still behind those doors, who was turning the door knob? One of the cast members?

I looked down at the blade of glass in my hand. It wasn’t going to be enough. I needed a freaking baseball bat—better yet, Cooper’s gun. Or some help.

Where in the hell was Cornelius? He needed to tame his crazy-ass girlfriend. I gasped. Oh, no, what if Caly had killed Cornelius, too. Had he been trapped by her when he called me for help?

Bang!

God, that tiny bitch was relentless. Surely somebody in the play had to hear that, even clear up in the theatre. Where in the hell was everyone?

I needed somewhere to hide before she huffed and puffed and blew down all of the doors between us.

On a long table to my right, I could just make out a bunch of clubs scattered around, some long, some short. A club would do some damage. Or not, I thought, remembering Helen’s knife attempt.

As I reached for one of the clubs, my brain caught up with my eyes. I reeled back, covering my mouth. That was no club. It was an arm!

My gaze swooped over the rest of the table, my knees nearly giving way at the sight of too many body parts to count—legs, more arms, a stack of hands, and several heads. “Holy fuck,” I whispered.

Bang!

This time, the bang sounded different, more hollow. A crashing noise followed.

Had she just busted through …

Bang!

She rammed the single oak door left between us. I jerked in surprise, bumping the table of body parts. The arm closest to me rolled onto its side. A price tag hung off the sleeve.

A price tag. I nudged the arm, which rolled back too easily to be flesh and bone.

It was fake. Jesus, it was all fake.

The play! Zombie pieces. Of course.

Bang!

I stepped back, my legs feeling like they were weighted down with bricks. How long would the door hold under Caly’s blows?

I had to hide or I was going to end up like Helen. I ignored the voice in my head that reminded me Helen had been trying to hide when she’d joined me in the bathroom.

There were stacks of boxes two and three high, sitting on pallets on the other side of the table. Through a trail between the boxes, I saw a railing. I made my way to it and found a set of stairs leading down into the shadows.

As my foot hit the bottom step, I hesitated at the closed door in front of me. I put my hand on it—cold steel. I’d like to see Caly kick through this sucker.

What was on the other side? Could it be any worse than the crazed pixie coming to kill me? I reached into my pocket, comforted by the shard of glass.

Bang!

Something clattered to the floor above me. A piece of the jamb?

I was out of time. Tugging the heavy steel door open enough to slip through, I stared into total blackness. If Cornelius and I made it out of this mess alive, I was going to beat the living daylights out of him for luring me to this blasted place tonight.

As I pulled the door quietly closed behind me, another
bang
followed by a loud crack of splintering wood.

I felt along the cold steel for a lock or deadbolt, but there was no lock on this door.

Damn. Now what? I couldn’t just stand here by the door waiting for Caly to come through it. Holding my hands out in front of me, I took several steps into the darkness. The cool, dry air was still around me, no airflow at all, smelling of musty concrete.

I felt my way along with my feet. Keeping one hand in front of me, I moved my left hand out to my side, feeling for a wall. If I touched anything fleshy at all, my brain was going to burst from an overload of panic.

My fingers brushed over something soft, cottony. I reached over with both hands and touched the edge of what felt like a sheet. I made a left turn and followed the sheet, which seemed to be hanging from the ceiling. The sheet ended perpendicular to a concrete wall, then another sheet was there. I felt my way along the second one, not brave enough to reach behind it.

Ahead on my right, a light flashed. I stopped and stared into the darkness, wondering if I were seeing things. Extreme stress had been known to inspire UFO sightings. After my elevator trip with Helen, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a full-scale alien bumbling around down here.

The white light flashed again, in the shape of a big circle, leaving an imprint on my eyes. I felt my way closer along the wall of sheets until I was sure I stood across from where the light had flashed.

Someone sneezed in the dark. It wasn’t me. Did killer aliens have allergies?

I tiptoed toward the direction of the sneeze.

The light flashed again, this time right in front of me, from a big hole in the concrete wall. My shoe hit something. Metal clanged onto the floor before I could catch it.

The light went out.

For several seconds the only sound was breathing—mine and that coming through the hole.

“Whoever’s out there, are you alive or dead?” said a familiar voice from the other side.

I held onto the rough wall to keep from crumpling in relief. “Cornelius,” I whispered, “I can’t believe I found you.”

“Violet,” he said, turning on his light. He looked out at me. “What took you so long to get here? What day is it?”

I resisted the urge to scramble up the wall and smack him upside the noggin. “Shine your light through the hole.”

He stuck his phone through, the light from the screen helping me find the stool and right it.

I crawled up on it, peering through the circle at him. “What are you doing down here?”

“Getting my hat back. That little tyrant hid it from me the last time I came down to make contact.”

“What little tyrant?” Was he talking about his psycho girlfriend?

“The ghost of the boy.”

Oh, yeah, I’d forgotten about that ghost after all the hubbub with Prudence. So this was what Cornelius had meant by “under the pool.” That still didn’t explain why he was on the other side of a hole in the wall. “But why are you in there?”

“The little shit tossed my hat in here, so I crawled through to get it. But when I tried to get back out, the stool on this side broke.”

My jaw tightened. “Are you telling me I’m standing in a sub-basement of the opera house while a sadistic bitch covered in spikes hunts me down all because of a stupid-ass hat?”

“By definition, I’m not sure this is structurally considered a sub-basement.”

As soon as Caly came busting through that door, I’d be feeding Cornelius to her first.

“And I’ll have you know, Violet, this hat has been in my family for generations.”

If Cooper didn’t come to save the day, it was going to be the end of the line for Cornelius and me. He could stuff that in his damned hat.

Wait a second. He had a cell phone. “Give me your phone,” I said.

“It’s not holding a signal long enough to call anyone.”

“How’d you call me?”

“I had two bars for a while. Now it’s down to one that comes and goes.” He stood on his toes, leaning closer, and whispered, “I think that boy is affecting the electromagnetic waves.”

I didn’t care about the damned ghost at the moment. I had more actual worries about tyrants who still had flesh. “So this hole is the only way out for you?”

“There’s a door at the other end of this crawlspace,” he said, “but it’s locked from the other side.”

“Shit.”

“I’ve had time to consider several possible escape plans while you took your time getting here.”

Silly me, I shouldn’t have stopped to pee and watch Helen get killed. “It’s one hole in one wall,” I said dryly. “How many escape possibilities can there be?”

“You’d be surprised. Now push that stool through the hole to me.”

I stepped down and lifted the stool. It got stuck partway through the hole, the legs flaring a little too wide at the bottom.

“Buggers,” he said. “Why don’t you run upstairs and see if there is a skinnier stool somewhere.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Someone up there is trying to kill me.”

He was quiet for a moment then said, “I don’t get the joke.”

“There is no joke.”

He shined his phone through the stool legs at my face, as if it were his third eye. “Is there an unhappy ghost up there?” he asked.

“Probably,” I said, thinking of Helen. “But I’m talking about your girlfriend.”

“My girl—”

The metal door I’d entered through crashed open.

I grabbed Cornelius’s phone to hide the light, my pulse returning to warp speed. She’d found me.

“Here, kitty, kitty,” Caly called, I could see her flashlight beam swinging around.

Clack, clack, clack.

Where I’d turned left along the line of sheets in the darkness, she walked straight, seeming to pass through a wall.

I made a very quiet “shhh” sound to Cornelius then moved over to the line of sheets, making my way toward the door. If I could just get back upstairs while Caly was down here looking for me, I could run up the street to the police station and get help.

From my vantage point, I could see glimpses of Caly’s flashlight beam through what looked like a large rectangle cut out of the wall.

I tiptoed closer to the steel door, listening to the sound of her heels clacking around on the other side of the wall.

“Come out and play, my little kitten,” she called in a young girl voice, hitting a nine-point-nine on my heebie-jeebie scale.

I slinked along the sheets. With just two to go to reach the stairs, I heard footfalls coming down the steps.

Cooper! For once, I felt like hugging him instead of kicking him in the shin.

“Where is she?” Dominick Masterson said as he stepped through the door holding a lantern-style flashlight.

The sight of the up-and-coming mayor of Lead shocked me so much that I couldn’t breathe enough to squeak. I sank back behind a sheet, into what looked like a concrete shower stall. His lantern cast soft light through the white sheet, which had a skull and crossbones spray painted on it, along with several bloody handprints and the word
Beware
.

Nice. As if I needed a visual reminder of how far up shit creek I was at the moment.

“She’s down here somewhere,” Caly called out from the other side of the wall. “I can smell her fear.”

Smell my fear? Who talked like that?

“Why are you using a light?” Dominick asked her.

“These contacts you insist I wear interfere with my vision.”

The light coming through the sheet dimmed as he walked straight past my stall and moved to join Caly.

I glanced out from behind the sheet. His shoulders filled the rectangle opening. Maybe I could slip out behind him without anyone noticing.

“We need to find her immediately,” Dominick said, “before we have an even bigger fiasco than the one from your last tantrum.”

Bigger fiasco? I hesitated, still hiding behind the sheet. Bigger than what?

“There will be no problem this time. Trust me.” Caly’s cold, hard tone gave me the willies. How could someone so tiny have so much strength? She must be part ant or spider.

“What do you call what I just found in the elevator?” Dominick asked. “You would have destroyed all I’ve worked to build if anyone else had found it here.”

“Poor, poor Masterson,” Caly said his name funny, dragging out that last
S
like a snake hiss. “Shackled by your need to feel civilized.”

“Do not talk that way to me, fool.”

“You are the fool. You demand obedience without any reward and then complain when I take what I deserve.” She sighed in an overly dramatic way. “In the old days, you used to let me have more fun.”

“Times have changed. We need to change as well.”

Caly scoffed. “They are all beneath us, and you know it. They should be our pets. I’ll start by making this one mine, as soon as I find her.”

“No.” His tone left no room for discussion.

“Why not? She’s seen too much, just like the other two.”

What other two? Helen and … Jane? Had Jane witnessed something after play rehearsals? Had Helen, too? Is that why they were both dead?

“You should have left Jane for me,” he said.

For him to kill?

“And Helen, too,” he added. “I could have changed their minds.”

“Now there is no need to bother with either. I disposed of both.”

Caly had killed Jane. Cooper’s case board had had it wrong. So had I.

“You’re too messy,” Dominick said.

“Fine. Let me have this pet and I won’t spill a drop.”

“No.”

“It’s that or death,” Caly said.

I carefully pulled the chunk of mirror from my pocket, gripping it in my satin-wrapped palm. I wasn’t going to be anyone’s “pet,” nor was I going down without a fight. God, I wished I had listened to Harvey and brought Bessie along with me tonight.

“You’ve wreaked havoc in
my
territory, usurping my authority,” Dominick said, his voice tight with what sounded like anger. “I decide the measures, not you.”

“Your solution with the first did not go well. Your peers whisper behind your back. They laugh about the blatant rejection from the Duzarx.”