End Me a Tenor (34 page)

“I think there’s a good chance the person who killed David Richard and Bill Walters is here in the theater with us.”

Chessie’s eyes widened, and she clamped her hand over her mouth. Eric swallowed hard, laced his fingers through Chessie’s free hand, and said, “Tell us what you want us to do.”

His calm demeanor was impressive. Maybe law enforcement was the right choice for Eric after all.

“There’s an exit on the other side of the stage,” I explained while I tried to remember the exact layout of the theater. “We’re going to cross behind the risers and check that door. If it’s locked, we’ll go down the escape stairs to the doors in the lobby. As long as we stay together, we’ll be just fine.”

I hoped.

I walked behind one of the black velvet curtain legs designed to obstruct the audience’s view off stage and peered out into the theater. No one was seated in the house. The lighting booth looked empty. I fingered the gun in my pocket and looked back at the faces of the two kids trusting me to get them to safety. Taking several deep breaths, I stepped onto the stage.

The lights were bright as we hurried across to the stage left wings. No Jenny. I let out the breath I was holding and pushed the bar on the exit door.

It didn’t budge. Crap. Could one door get frozen shut? Sure. But two? No way in hell.

“We’re going to the lobby,” I whispered as I stepped back onto the stage. Still no one in the theater. Taking that as a good sign, I started to lead Eric and Chessie toward the escape stairs.

We got halfway there and the lights in the theater went black.

Chessie screamed. I froze.

Someone had turned off the lights.

With no windows to the outside, the theater was pitch-black. Somewhere in front of me was the orchestra pit and the edge of the stage. Behind us were the risers and chairs. Moving forward, we’d risk falling either the four feet off the front of the stage or the ten feet into the fully lowered orchestra pit. Backing into the risers or a folding chair could injure us or, worse, make noise. Any sound would give away our position. And even if we could make it to the wings, there was no place for us to run. The doors were locked. In short, we were screwed.

Chessie’s screams turned to whimpers. I could hear Eric whispering that everything would be fine even though I seriously doubted he believed that.

Adrenaline pumping, I gulped for air and willed myself to stay calm. I was the adult—the teacher. Chessie and Eric needed me to get them through this.

Wrapping my fingers around Millie’s gun, I whispered, “Keep quiet and get down on the floor. You’ll be safer there.”

If not from Jenny, then from me. I didn’t want them in the line of fire if I was forced to start shooting.

I heard scuffling to my right as Eric and Chessie followed instructions. Taking slow, deep breaths, I pictured my exact location on the stage before the lights had been turned out. If I remembered correctly, the escape stairs were ten feet in front of my position. The pit was a couple of feet downstage and to the left.

Hoping my memory was intact, I took several steps to my left to put some distance between me and my students. Then, lifting my chin, I yelled into the darkness, “Jenny, I know you’re there. You might as well give up. Everyone is going to be here soon for tonight’s rehearsal. They’re going to wonder why they can’t get into the building and call the police.”

No point in telling her the police had already been called. I hoped she’d find that out soon enough.

A loud
click
echoed through the empty theater. A moment later, a pool of white light appeared center stage. Someone had turned on the follow spot. I shoved my gun back into my pocket in an attempt to keep the element of surprise and watched the small pool of light shift to the left. When it reached the wings, it panned to the right, finally coming to a stop—right on me.

Squinting into the balcony, I could make out the outline of Jenny’s small frame. I glanced down to my right, where Eric and Chessie were huddled on the floor. The blurred edge of the light was too close to them for my comfort. If by some miracle Jenny didn’t know they were here with me, I wanted to keep it that way.

I took several more steps to my right. The tightly focused, four-foot patch of light followed me. The orchestra pit with its chairs, music stands, and timpani was three feet in front of my position.

“That’s your mark,” Jenny yelled. “If you move off your mark, you’ll be sorry.”

Sorry? I was already sorry.

“No one else is coming here tonight.” Jenny’s voice echoed in the theater. “As soon as you got here, I sent out a message canceling rehearsal because of the storm. You know, you should have stayed away tonight, Paige. I gave you a chance. I tried to warn you. If you’d stayed away, I was going to let you go. But you just couldn’t resist the chance to be a star, could you?”

Jenny’s voice sounded closer. I squinted into the light, trying to see whether she was still behind the follow spot. “What do you mean, you tried to warn me? I didn’t get anything warning me not to come tonight.”

“I sent you a Christmas gift warning you that you’d be next.”

Jenny wasn’t behind the spotlight. She must have locked the fixture in place before moving. Her voice was coming from somewhere farther to the right.

I took a step in that direction, trying to get a better look, and jumped as a
crack
filled the air. Chessie whimpered as something thudded into the stage at my feet. A bullet. Holy crap. Jenny had a gun.

“I told you not to leave your mark, Paige.” Jenny’s voice had relocated again. To the left? It was hard to tell.

“I wanted you to realize your life was more important than this show. But you’re just like him. He loved the spotlight. He didn’t have room for anything else.”

Panic poured through me, making it hard to focus on Jenny’s words. But I needed to. I had to find a way to give Mike and the Evanston PD cavalry a chance to get here while Eric, Chessie, and I were still in one piece. Talking seemed like the best option. Taking a shot in the dark, I asked, “Like you?”

I waited for her to answer, but there was only silence. I shielded my eyes from the light, trying to see beyond the orchestra pit and into the balcony. Where was she?

“Jenny?”

“You want to know what he said?” She’d moved. Her voice was no longer coming from the balcony. She was on the theater’s main floor. “He told me I was a mistake. Just an impulse. A moment in time that wasn’t supposed to go any further.”

The tears in Jenny’s voice would have elicited my sympathy if not for the threatening-me-with-a-gun thing. Remembering Vanessa’s story, I said, “It isn’t your fault. David seduced a lot of smart women.”

“You think I slept with him?” Jenny shrieked. Her voice was closer. “Are you crazy? I wouldn’t have slept with him.” There was another crack and a clang far to my left.

Okay, Jenny was coming unhinged, and I was totally confused. This really wasn’t good. I forced myself to breathe. To sound calm. “I want to understand what David did to you, Jenny. Please. Tell me.”

Something shuffled on the stage floor. Another shot echoed through the theater. “Tell the kids to stay where they are or I’ll fire again.”

I peered at the dimly lit side of the stage and watched Eric pull Chessie back to the ground. “They won’t move again. They promise. Right, guys?”

“Right.” Only Eric responded, making me think Chessie was too scared to talk.

I could empathize. I was scared out of my wits. But I knew I had to keep talking. “They aren’t moving anymore. So tell me—what did David do to you? Why did you kill him?”

For several seconds, the only sounds were Chessie’s soft sobs and the pounding of my heart. I slid my right hand into my pocket and wrapped my fingers tight around the hilt of the gun. How long would it take for me to get Millie’s gun out of my pocket and fire
if
I located Jenny. Five seconds? Ten? An eternity, considering Jenny had her gun in hand and her finger on the trigger. I needed Mike, and I needed him now.

I was about to call out to Jenny again when she said, “You were right about David seducing lots of women. I didn’t want to believe those stories. I thought that the media were exaggerating to sell papers and that he let them because getting press was good for his career.”

“I didn’t know you were such a big fan of David’s,” I said, trying to find Jenny in the dark.

“I’m not a fan, Paige.”

The sound of feet climbing the stairs had me turning to my left. Jenny was coming onto the stage. Moments later, I spotted her in the dimness past the edges of my patch of light. It was too dark to see her expression, but there was more than enough light to make out the gun in her hand. She stopped walking and said, “I’m David Richard’s daughter.”

Yowzah. I’d considered a lot of motives for David Richard’s murder, but death by daughter wasn’t one of them. Probably because his bio said he didn’t have any children. Either the bio was wrong or Jenny was, and since she was the one holding the gun, I was more than willing to hear her side of the story.

“You killed your father?”

“I didn’t want to, but he left me no choice. I thought he’d be happy to know he had a daughter. My mother was in a show with him. As soon as the show ended, David left without saying good-bye or leaving his phone number or anything. She never told him about me.”

“So you did.”

“When I heard he was coming to Northwestern, I took it as a sign. I declared a music minor and registered for voice lessons with him. Every week I waited for him to notice how we have the same eyes. Since he couldn’t make a lot of the lessons because he was so busy with his own career, I had to come up with another way to spend time with him.”

“So, you convinced Bill to let you assistant stage manage this show.”

She nodded. “Bill and my mom go way back. He said no at first because of my lack of experience. I’ve only stage managed student-directed shows here on campus. But I wasn’t about to take no for an answer. I told him David was my father. That’s why he gave me the job.”

“And why you had to kill him.”

“I didn’t have any choice.” The gun lowered a fraction of an inch. “We were supposed to meet at the theater to go over a few things, but Bill called and told me to come to his house instead. When I got there, Bill said he was going to explain my relationship with David to the police. He thought it would be better for me to have that information out in the open. That innocent secrets like mine and Magdalena’s would make us look guilty if we hid them.”

“He didn’t realize you’d murdered David?” Wow, did that suck.

Jenny shook her head. “Not at first. It wasn’t until he spotted the glass photograph Mom and I’d bought him for his birthday. He thought the photograph was made with potassium cyanide, but it wasn’t. I mean, my mom and I got it when I was looking into the poison, but the photograph was made with something else. Only I couldn’t tell him that without making him more suspicious. I knew he’d call the police the first chance he got. He didn’t understand.”

I didn’t, either, and I was having it explained to me.

Jenny took a step closer. The gun in her hand trembled. “David was going to have me fired from this show, and threatened to go to the dean and have me expelled from Northwestern. He said I was stalking him, but I wasn’t. I just wanted to be his daughter, and he wanted to ruin my life.”

Sure, Jenny had the right to be upset. Having a father who didn’t want to understand you and basically bowed out of your life was hard. I had firsthand experience with looking out into the audience only to find an empty seat where my father was supposed to be. But call me crazy—adding a body count to the mix didn’t make things better. Too bad the girl didn’t understand that.

“So now what?” I asked.

Jenny bit her lip. “I don’t know. I thought framing Bill would fix everything. Do you know how much work it is to stage a hanging?”

Um. No. And I hoped I never had to learn.

“Bill is heavier than he looked. Between getting him up on the table and then having to lift him while tying the rope . . .” Jenny sighed. “After all that work the cops didn’t believe the suicide note. And Professor Krauss is starting to ask too many questions, just like you did.”