Lethally Blond (27 page)

It didn’t take long for them to find her. I heard one of the cops talking, and then Blythe began ranting, though I couldn’t make out anything she was saying. At least I hadn’t killed her. That would have been a real mess.

I kept my word and didn’t move a muscle, which would have been difficult to do anyhow considering the sorry state of my ankle. Now that I had a chance to look, I could see that it was swollen up as if I had a tennis ball under my skin.

About five minutes later, Windgate came sprinting back up the aisle into the lobby. Just as he arrived, two cops in uniform rapped on the glass door to the lobby. Windgate motioned them in and told one of them to assist “Detective Kwong” and the other to search the premises.

“Do you know if there is anyone else on-site?” he asked me.

“No, but they’ve got a show tonight, so people should be arriving before long to set up. What made you come here, anyway?”

“You can thank the PR director for the show—Harper Aikins. She got a phone call from someone who claimed to be you but didn’t seem familiar with a conversation that the two of you had engaged in. She thought it might be this woman Blythe since you’d worked her into a frenzy on the subject. Miss Aikins called me and said you planned to come here to meet Blythe. You know, I made it very clear to you that you needed to watch your back.”

“But until tonight I just wasn’t really sure that Blythe was the killer.”

“How bad are you hurt?”

“It’s just my ankle. Hopefully it’s only a sprain.”

“I’ve got two ambulances coming. Until they arrive, we need to find a place to talk.”

I told him about the dressing rooms, and after I’d reassured him I could make it back there, he helped me hop to the closest one. I took a seat on a small bench while Windgate went into the kitchen for ice. He returned two minutes later with a chunk of cubes in an old dish towel, which I laid carefully against the swelling. Windgate dragged over a chair and sat next to me.

“I’m going to hold off on the questions for a minute,” he told me, his voice firm. “Why don’t you start with your version of events.”

“
My
version?” I said. “That sounds like you’re entertaining another one.”

“Miss Hammell claims you lured her here and tried to kill her.”

“You can’t possibly believe that,” I exclaimed. “She’s the one who lured
me
here and tried to kill
me
. And she’s the one who murdered Tom and Locket. She
admitted
it to me.”

Windgate eyed me skeptically, stroking his mustache methodically. I couldn’t tell if he was really suspicious of what I was saying or was just acting that way to scare the pants off me—and make sure I coughed up the entire story.

“Blythe also happens to be a very good actress who’s going to tell you a pack of lies,” I continued. “She’s the one who talked her way into my apartment after pretending to be me on the phone. She’s also been impersonating her roommate, Terry. For all I know, she killed Terry, too.”

I was talking too fast and sounding way too defensive, but I was suddenly overwhelmed by the idea that Blythe could manipulate this whole situation and possibly land me in trouble.

“Okay, relax,” Windgate said. “I want to know exactly what you’ve been up to since the last time we talked—when you promised me you’d be careful and behave yourself.”

Figuring he didn’t mean
everything,
I skipped any mention of ottoman sex and related how I’d come to the Chaps Theatre to follow up on the clue from
Taming of the Shrew,
how Blythe had tricked me into going through the doorway after obviously un-doing the bolt beforehand, and how I had been forced to defend myself with the lamp like a Jedi warrior after she’d tried to attack me with a knife.

“So you’re saying that you came to this brilliant conclusion about Blythe Hammell as the killer because of a line from Shakespeare?” Windgate asked doubtfully. He folded his arms against his brown tweed jacket and leaned back in his chair.

“It wasn’t any kind of brilliant instant conclusion,” I said. “I’d just always wondered if the quote from
Taming of the Shrew
meant anything, and I decided to check it out. When I saw Blythe’s name on the cast list for the play, I realized there was a chance that
she
had been the visitor in Andes that day. You’d prompted me to think about stalkers, and I suddenly saw that maybe Blythe had done more when Tom dumped her than send a bunch of silly cards. Maybe she’d become obsessed with him. But I really wasn’t sure of any of it. I thought if I talked to Blythe, I’d get a feel for what she was like. If something seemed off, I was going to call you immediately.”

“What do you mean, she’s been impersonating her room- mate?”

“She showed up here pretending to be her roommate, Terry, just as she had when I first went by her apartment. You’ve got to try to figure out where Terry is. Blythe may have killed her.”

“At what point did you realize ‘Terry’ was actually Blythe?”

I thought for a second.

“Unfortunately, not until I slipped off the ledge. But on a subconscious level, I think my brain had been figuring it out over the past few days.”

“You gonna tell me how?”

The cold from the makeshift ice bag was beginning to sting, so I lifted it off and set it onto the counter next to me. My ankle was not only obscenely huge, it now had turned several ugly shades of green and purple.

“One thing that kept nagging at me was how the person who was making the crank calls to me had managed to get hold of my cell phone number—and how he or she knew to call me so soon after I found Tom’s body last week. Once I started focusing on Blythe, I didn’t think she could have my number. But I’d given my cell phone number to
Terry
that day, after telling her I was going upstate to look for Tom. She told me she had no way to reach Blythe, so theoretically Blythe didn’t have it. But
Terry
did.

“And then there was Terry’s hair. It was this really weird color, and on some level I guess I realized it was a wig.”

He flicked at his mustache.

“How is she, anyway?” I asked.

“She may have a concussion and a broken bone or two. I’m not really sure at this point. But speaking of that, I’d better check on things. If I leave you here, are you going to be okay?”

“Yes, but while you’re gone, can you look for my purse? It came off my shoulder as I fell.”

He didn’t return with my purse, but a patrol cop did a few minutes later, and then shortly after that, before I had a chance to dig out my cell phone, two EMS workers arrived. The guy who examined me said he thought it was a sprain, not a break.

“Then I don’t really need to go to the ER, right? I could just nurse this at home.”

“Yes, you have to go to the ER,” said Windgate, sticking his head through the doorway. “It’s protocol. I will call you tomorrow morning at nine o’clock. Understood?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

I felt foolish being carried out on a stretcher. By now there was a crowd outside, rubbernecking. As the EMS workers loaded me into the back of the ambulance, I saw another stretcher being carried out of the theater. Blythe lay on it, motionless in her baggy Terry clothes. The wig had fallen off her head, and her long blond hair was matted tightly to her scalp. Just having her that close to me made my pulse race again.

After a short ride with no siren, the ambulance deposited me at St. Vincent’s, a hospital in the Village a few blocks west of my apartment. The last time I’d been in the ER had been to remove a pebble lodged in the corner of my eye, and I’d waited four hours to be put out of my misery. But catastrophes seemed on the light side tonight, and it wasn’t long before I was ushered into the examining room. A doctor ordered an X-ray of my ankle, and after that I found myself sitting on a bed in a curtained-off area, listening to a man on the other side of the droopy green fabric deal with a world-class phlegm problem. Nearby, a baby began to cry, and its mother gently tried to shush it. Even I, who had yet to experience any maternal yearnings, knew that repeating “Shhh” over and over again to a wailing baby was about as effective as reading it Dante’s
Inferno
.

Despite the noise, I needed to call Beau. I had resisted phoning him from the theater because I hadn’t wanted to make Windgate wonder what I was up to, but I was dying to share tonight’s awful saga with him. I yearned for a shoulder to cry on. Though I had come out of the confrontation with Blythe with just a sprained ankle, I felt badly shaken. When he didn’t pick up his cell phone, I tried his home number.

To my shock, a woman answered. I’d had Beau’s number on speed dial, so I knew there was no mistake.

“Is Beau there?” I asked hesitantly. I wondered if it could be a cleaning lady, except she sounded far too arrogant to wield a Swiffer.

“He’s not home yet,” she said. “May I take a message?” There was a trace of amusement in her voice, as if she’d detected my awkwardness and damn well liked it.

CHAPTER 21

G
reat. The night was going quickly from sucky and nightmarish to
Texas Chain Saw Massacre
caliber. I took a breath and reassured myself that there had to be a reasonable explanation for why a smug little chick was answering Beau’s phone. We’d been going steady for forty-eight hours, so he’d hardly be cheating already.

After torturing myself for a minute, I sat back up and called Nash. I dictated an update on the murder investigation for the Web site and told him I would report back when I knew more.

“Where are you, anyway?” he asked. “It sounds like a bus station.”

“Sort of,” I said. He’d know soon enough about my ankle when he saw me struggling with crutches tomorrow.

As I started to put my BlackBerry away, it rang in my hands.

“Bailey, are you okay?” It was Chris, rushing his words out before I’d barely said hello. “Harper called me all worried.”

“I’m okay, but I almost wasn’t. It was
Blythe
who killed Tom—and Locket. She tried to kill me, too, tonight—at the Chaps Theatre. I’m over at St. Vincent’s with a sprained ankle.”

“I’m coming there right now.”

“Chris, you don’t have to.”

“Look, I may not be a doctor, but I practically play one on TV. I’ll be there in ten minutes, fifteen tops.”

I didn’t fight him. It was going to be awkward with Chris and me, but he was entitled to know everything that had transpired with Blythe. And I felt so lousy, it would be great to have someone for support right now.

There wasn’t much time to think about it, anyway, because a few minutes later a different doctor parted the curtain and walked in. He was dressed in corduroy pants and a navy wool sports jacket—tall, sandy haired, and good-looking. A resident, I guessed.

“The good news? It’s only a second ligament sprain,” he said briskly. “That’s not super serious. The bad news is that you’re going to have to stay off it for about three weeks.”

He wrapped my ankle in an Ace bandage, gave me prescription ibuprofen for the swelling, and told me that I needed to follow the RICE strategy: rest, ice, compression, and elevation. The hospital would supply me with crutches.

Chris arrived just as I was trying out the crutches—and doing a pathetic job at it. He placed his hand on the back of my head and kissed my forehead.

“Are you ever going to forgive me for getting you into this?” he asked, his eyes worried.

“My book tour isn’t until November, and my volleyball career ended with college, so there’s no harm done.”

“Thank God for small favors.”

“Chris,” I said over the sound of the still-wailing baby, “in all honesty, I don’t regret any of this. Though I never met Tom, I
cared
about him. And I’m glad I found his killer.”

While I waited near the door of the hospital, Chris hunted down a cab. When we arrived at my apartment, there seemed to be no question that he was going to help me upstairs.

“Do you want a cup of tea or something?” he asked after he settled me on the couch with my leg elevated.

“Brandy,” I said. “Make it a double.”

“Is that going to mix okay with your pain medication?”

“I don’t care. I just want to pass out.”

Chris clearly decided to ignore that request because I heard him fill the teakettle. While he worked in the kitchen, I called the manager’s number at the Chaps Theatre on my cell. A woman answered who I thought might be the redhead I’d seen the night before in the lobby stuffing cookies into Tupperware containers.

“This is Bailey Weggins,” I told her. “I’m the woman who was attacked in the theater today. Do you have a minute?”

“Well, when we arrived at six, the cops told us they wouldn’t let us put on the play tonight, so basically I have all the time in the world.”

“There’s something I need to know. I fell through a door fifteen feet above the stage. Why in the world is that there?”

“Oh God, I heard,” she lamented. “I don’t know how that happened—we always keep it bolted.”

“But why is it there?” I repeated. “Does it have something to do with sets you use?”

“No, that’s not it. This was once an apartment building, years and years ago. That was a flight of stairs that went to the second floor—long before the stage was there.”

After I hung up, I leaned my head back against the couch, suddenly feeling close to tears. Chris emerged from the kitchen carrying two mugs of tea.

“To you, Bailey,” he said, raising his mug after handing me the other.

“Gosh, Chris, it was just last Tuesday that you called me. I can’t believe all that’s happened since then.”

“Thanks for what you said earlier. About not being sorry you did this.”

“I meant it.”

“So tell me what happened tonight from beginning to end, okay, including how you finally figured it all out.”

I’d provided highlights in the cab, but now I went through the whole awful saga in detail.

“How did you manage to think straight during all of it?” he asked. “If you hadn’t, you might be dead now.”

“From pure adrenaline, I guess. And the sheer desire not to want to go splat on the stage. Thank God I used to be decent on ropes during PE.”

“Is Blythe
sick
—I mean, crazy?” he asked.

“Screwed up, certainly. Crazy, maybe. In hindsight, did Tom ever say anything that pointed to the fact that her feelings for him had morphed into an obsession?”

“Well, like I told you in the beginning, I thought Blythe was a bit of a whack job, but Tom seemed to view her as more of a nuisance—he wasn’t the type to get all hot and bothered by it. And then all of a sudden she went off the grid. The calls stopped—and as we saw, the cards and letters stopped, too. She didn’t seem to be an issue anymore.”

I took a sip of the hot tea and thought for a moment.

“You know, I told the police that Blythe may have killed Terry, but now I’m not so sure. I’m wondering if Blythe actually
is
Terry.”

“What do you mean?”

“That maybe they’re one and the same person. Blythe could have created this alter ego for herself—to help her out of sticky situations. When people came looking for her because she owed them money or whatever, she could just trot out Terry. Or maybe she created her after she killed Tom—so that she could lay low but keep an eye on things at the same time.”

“God, that’s insane. What about Harper? And Deke? They’re in the clear?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure Deke never repaid the money he borrowed from Tom, but that may be the worst of his crimes. And Harper? She actually helped save my butt tonight. She told the cops where I was. The one guy I’m not fine with is Barish. It seems Tom had a falling-out with him, and I wonder if he could be up to something funny about the trust. I may call my family lawyer tomorrow and just see if there’s any way to check him out.”

The ice pack the hospital had given me was warm and Chris went off to the kitchen to empty an ice tray. After he’d positioned a plastic freezer bag of cubes on my ankle, he straightened up in front of me.

“Well, look, probably the best thing for you right now is to get to bed. Are you going to be okay on your own here?”

I didn’t want him asking to stay because that would be awkward as hell, but it also felt weird that he didn’t
want
to. My mixed emotions clearly registered on my face.

“I don’t know what’s going on with us, Bailey,” he said. “I thought you had a pretty good sense of me, yet you somehow thought I’d been a total dickhead to Tom.”

“I don’t think that anymore. I’m sorry I thought that.”

“Well, there’s still something off between us.”

“It’s nothing you did, Chris.” I said. I dreaded where the conversation was going, but I didn’t have any choice. “There was someone I was seeing before I reconnected with you, and I honestly thought it was over between him and me. But he came back to New York, and now I’m not so sure.”

He shook his head in frustration. “Is it the guy who was at Elaine’s?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Christ.”

“I’m sorry, Chris,” I said plaintively. “I’ve really felt so good about the time we’ve spent together—despite how it came about. But I—”

“You don’t have to explain it. I’m going to get out of here.”

“Chris—”

“There’s nothing more to say, Bailey.” His face set. “I appreciate all you did. I’m just sorry how it’s ending. I would have really liked to be with you.”

I couldn’t believe how sad it was to see him go out the door.

I laid my head back on the couch again. I was really close to blubbering, and I almost didn’t hear my cell phone go off. If my purse hadn’t been on the coffee table, I wouldn’t have caught it in time.

It was Beau on the other end—with restaurant sounds all around him.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “I thought you were going to give me an update.”

“I did try to call,” I said, sounding as pissy as I felt by this point. “Some girl answered your phone, so I didn’t bother with a message.”

“A girl? Oh damn, it was my friend Jason’s girlfriend.”

“What?”

“Remember I mentioned I had a friend from out of town visiting? He’s staying at my place with his girlfriend.”

“Why would she feel she had to answer your phone?” God, we’d been together two days, and I was turning into a nag and a shrew.

“Because she’s a troublemaker. I really like Jason, but I’d be thrilled if he dumped her. Tell me what’s going on. Have you talked to the cops about Blythe?”

I sighed, feeling weary. The explanation made sense, but even with Beau’s promise of commitment, I kept wondering about him.

“They arrested her.”

“Do they think she definitely did it?”

“Yes, she’s admitted as much.”

“Are you okay, Bailey?”

“Yeah, just tired.”

“I wish I didn’t have these plans tonight. Can we get together tomorrow?”

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s talk tomorrow.”

I couldn’t believe I hadn’t told him about the attack and my ankle and everything else. But the combination of pain in my ankle and his friend’s bitch of a girlfriend had left me too annoyed to want to talk.

I hobbled to the bathroom, wriggled out of my clothes, and splashed warm water on myself, just to feel cleansed of the whole experience tonight. As I raised my head from the basin, I flashed myself a little smile in the mirror. In spite of my sorry state, I felt pretty pleased with how I’d coped tonight. I’d rescued myself from a precipice and fought off a killer. Granted, I’d probably looked a little ridiculous swinging that lamp like Obi-Wan Kenobi, but what mattered was that I was alive—and that I’d found Tom’s killer.

Tom. The thought of him still made my heart swell with sadness. His easygoing nature, his willingness to trust, his susceptibility to any girl who wanted to mount his hot bod, had conspired against him, but in no way had he deserved his fate. I thought suddenly about his play. Maybe I could try to locate a copy and see if it could still be produced.

I pulled down an extra pillow from the closet and wedged it under my comforter toward the end of the bed. Bone tired, I crawled into bed, turned off the light, and elevated my ankle as best I could on the pillow.

It seemed like a joke that I was sleeping alone. If I’d swallowed my annoyance at Beau and confessed what had happened, he would have surely left his friends at his place and flown over here.

Yet for some reason I’d held back. Something about my encounter with Chris had made me hesitate.

What it came down to, I realized, was that I didn’t really know what I wanted. I was crazy about Beau. Yet I had hated seeing Chris walk out of my apartment tonight. I dug him, I really did. Okay, he was ten years younger and involved in a business in which guys not only were horribly self-absorbed but routinely fell in love with their fake-titted costars, and yet he seemed to love my company and making me laugh. Beau, who I’d pined for, had finally come round, but he always seemed so damn mysterious, so hard to read.

As I laid my head on my pillow, I realized I had no idea what I was going to do.

But there was one thing I could be grateful for. I was so freakin’ tired, nothing would keep me awake tonight.