Speak Now (25 page)

I went into the closet. Was I crazy or was there a faint hum coming from the door? Electrical, no doubt. I put my hand on the handle and paused. The last time I’d gone into a deserted room in the theater I’d found Brian’s body in a refrigerator.

I shook my head. Ridiculous. I simply had a monumental case of pre-performance jitters. Lisa wasn’t a maniacal killer and there was nothing behind the door but a generator or furnace or something. To prove it, I pushed the door open.

The room was large and brightly lit. One wall seemed to be covered with stacks of video monitors and computer consoles. But that wasn’t what I noticed first. What I noticed first was Lisa. She was looking at me speculatively, and said, “Well, I guess this means it’s Plan B.”

That’s when I saw the gun.

Chapter 28

“It’s good to finally get things out in the open, Charley,” Lisa said, advancing towards me. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you, but the time just never seemed right. And there’s a lot to talk about. You. Me. Jack. Dave.” With each name she came a step closer.

My mind didn’t seem to be working at full capacity. “Dave?” I said stupidly.

“I’ll take your bag now.” She reached towards me.

Run. Scream. Too late, I tried to do both. I felt something pull me back through the doorway and for the second time that day I was lifted off my feet and thrown flat on my ass.

She didn’t let go of the messenger bag strap. She used it to drag me inside the room. I screamed. I yelled for Paris, hoping he’d hear me from his workshop across the hall. I kicked at the doorway and tried to hang on to it with my feet. I tried to reach behind to pull her arms away.

Then I heard a sharp crack and felt my head open. Or at least my scalp. It didn’t knock me out, but it disoriented me enough for her to get me in the room, kick the door closed, pull the messenger bag off me, and bind my hands and feet with silver tape.

“Yell as much as you want, Charley. Everybody’s upstairs pigging out on free food. Why do you think I brought in a buffet?”

She shoved me onto a leopard-print sofa that I recognized as one we’d used in
The Way of the World
three years ago, and used an electrical cord to tie me to its arm. I sat up, still woozy. I felt blood trickling down my face. Lisa stood at a table, another piece she’d apparently scavenged from the prop room. Behind her was the wall of monitors.

My brain felt fuzzy. Nothing made sense. “Who’s Dave?”

She dumped the contents of my bag onto the table. “Come on, Charley. Even you must be able to figure that one out. Didn’t Jack ever tell you his name? Dave Miller?”

Macbeth. Dave Miller was Macbeth. Which made Lisa…what? The criminal he’d had an affair with? The one who—according to Jack—had killed him? I shook my head and the pain brought a little focus. Whatever Lisa had been to Macbeth before his death, she was obviously the one who’d been carrying on with his plans since then.

She picked the cell phone and the Smith & Wesson out of the pile of my things on the table. “Everything I need to deal with Jack.” She turned to me. “It was obvious, you know, from the way you kept this bag with you, that you carried your gun in it.”

My head cleared a little more, probably from the surge of panic that hit me. “You’re not going to kill him.”

“I’m not?” She looked at me with raised eyebrows.

“He’s going to kill you,” I said.

“Really?” She paused. “I don’t see how.”

I suddenly felt completely insane. This could not be the same woman I’d been working alongside for the past six weeks.

“And trust me,” she went on. “I see everything.” She glanced at the monitors behind her and I realized what they were.

Video feeds. Of the inside of the theater, mostly. The hallway leading to the office. The stairs and halls of the basement. The costume shop. The closet. The stage and backstage areas from various angles. Then there was the hotel hallway with the door to our room. And Harry’s front door.

“You see,” she said, “I’ve been watching you.”

“All along,” I said, dazed. “Everything.”

“Call me the Phantom of the Rep.” She looked at the screens with her head tilted. “Whoops, we’ve got a visitor.”

I looked at the monitors. It took me a minute to figure out what she’d seen. It was Flank. In the costume shop. Looking worried.

“Poor guy. He’s about to become unemployed,” Lisa said.

“Don’t hurt him,” I said sharply.

She kept her eyes on the monitor. “I have no intention of causing a scene if he doesn’t.” Then, absently, “Not yet.”

“You won’t get away with this, you know. Jack’s going to be here any minute, if he isn’t here already. And the box office opens at six, and the doors open at seven. This building will be filled with people, and Jack and Flank will call the police, and Jack—”

“Yep,” she interrupted me. “Here’s our star now.” She tapped a screen with the barrel of the .38. The video showed the stage door, where Jack had just walked in. He spoke briefly with the security guy, who then said something into his sleeve. In the costume shop, I saw Flank respond. He headed for the stairs.

“Fun, isn’t it?” Lisa observed me watching.

“What are you going to do?”

Something flickered over her expression too quickly for me to read. “Anything I want.”

My hands were taped at the wrist, and tied to the sofa. Which was a shame, because I still had the Walther tucked into the back of my jeans. Apparently Lisa was so smug about figuring out I carried a gun in my bag she hadn’t felt a need to look for another. I just had to get my hands loose to get at it. I saw Flank talking with Jack. They moved from monitor to monitor, making their way to the office. They stopped outside the door when they saw I wasn’t there. Jack brought out his phone and punched a number.

I jumped when my phone rang. Lisa had left it on the table.

“What do you think?” she asked. “Do we let it ring and make him worry, or do you two kids want to talk?”

Second ring. Third ring. I knew after eight it would go to voice mail.

“I think we’ll just let him worry,” Lisa said.

“No!” I had an idea. “Let me answer it.”

Her eyebrows raised a fraction. “I thought you had more guts.” But she picked up the phone. “Fine. Tell him where you are. Let’s get this over with.”

She flipped the phone open and held it to my ear. “Jack!”

“Charley!” I heard his voice an instant before I saw his lips move on the monitor. “Where are you? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Jack, I went to the bar on the corner. Meet me—”

Lisa swore and snatched the phone away, snapping it shut. On the monitor, Jack said something to Flank, who shook his head violently. They retraced their path through the monitors to the stage door. The security guy also shook his head.

“They know you didn’t leave,” Lisa said, recovering her cool efficiency. “They would have seen you.”

We watched the screens. The security team was everywhere. Jack disappeared for a moment, then showed up on the lobby monitor. He banged on the box office door until Simon opened it. Then he went in.

“How long shall we give him?” Lisa asked. “How long shall we let him run around the theater, crazed with worry, until we tell him where you are?”

I hated that she could see every move Jack made. That she could follow him like a rat in a maze. I had to distract her. I had to let Jack do something, go somewhere unobserved.

“Were you Dave Miller’s lover?”

It worked. She turned away from the screens. “What do you know about it? What do you know about anything?”

Not enough, clearly. “I know he was selling secrets to someone,” I spoke quickly. “I know he was sleeping with someone who talked him into betraying Jack and the others, who used him to—”

“I never used him!” Her chin snapped up defiantly. “We were in love. Whatever he did, he did to help me.”

Something told me to back off from that touchy subject. I tried another approach. “Why did you kidnap Cece?”

Her expression mellowed a little. “That was Dave’s idea. It was brilliant. He knew Jack wouldn’t have told you anything about his past, so he set up a situation where Jack wouldn’t be able to resist playing the hero—where he’d have to show himself for what he really is.”

Oh. Well, I had to admit it had been effective. Jack’s actions on the night of Cece’s rescue had not been those of a meteorologist. “But why did you go to all that trouble? Hiring an actor and making Cece fall in love with him? Couldn’t you just have snatched her?”

Lisa looked impatiently at me. “We were making our plans as we went along. At first we just wanted to watch a few key people. Dave set things up so we’d be prepared to deal with anything—anyone—at a moment’s notice.”

“Like you dealt with Nancy Tyler?”

“Nancy Tyler?”

Good Lord, did no one ever remember her name? “The playwright,” I explained. “In the bathtub.”

“Oh, her.” Lisa left the monitors to come closer to me. “That was my idea. I wanted to have a little welcome home message for you and Jack.”

“You killed her just to warn us?” I squeaked.

“Warn you? What makes you think I’d want to warn you?” She squatted down to my eye level. “I just wanted to say—‘Look. Look how easy it’s going to be when I kill your wife the way you killed Dave’s.”

“What?” I stared at her.

“Oh, didn’t he tell you?” Lisa spoke softly. “I’ll bet there’s a lot he didn’t tell you.” She met my eyes for a moment, letting her accusation sink in. Then she must have seen the sick horror on my face, because she smiled, mission accomplished. She stood.

“Killing the playwright was easy. Once I had a maid’s uniform I was pretty much invisible. And it was so simple to just wear Nancy’s clothes out of the hotel and drop the uniform down the laundry chute when I was done.”

She seemed to expect me to congratulate her. I was too busy trying to blank out what she’d said about Jack. “Did you hire someone else to date my friend Eileen?” I tried to stay focused, tried not to let her see how badly I was shaken.

She gave me an appraising look. “I wasn’t sure you knew Eileen’s guy was one of mine. He messed everything up so early in the project.”

“I wasn’t sure. Why did you set her up?”

“Because she’s a bitch.” Lisa’s eyes flashed. “She came into the theater one day—it was the day she took the money from your old lover Rix—and she treated me like shit.”

My head was spinning, and not just from the whack Lisa had given it. “What? You set her up just because you didn’t like her? Were you going to kill her too?”

Lisa shrugged. “Probably not. I figured I’d have the guy frame her for some embezzlement or something, and ruin her financially. I hadn’t really worked it all out yet when he messed it up anyway.” She made a face. “You know, you can never believe what agents tell you about actors.”

“No shit,” I agreed. “But you must have known that. Because you must have had experience working in theaters before this.”

For the first time she showed a flicker of regret. “Some,” she said. “A long time ago.”

“You’re good,” I told her. I didn’t add “for a crazed psychopath.”

“Thanks,” she said. “It was fun. And not just the part where I planned how I’d watch you squirm.” She gave me a hard look, and I probably squirmed. “The job was fun too.”

“How did you get the job?” I asked. “Did Brian tell you Chip was looking for an assistant?

“He told me Chip had already hired someone, a woman from LA.”

“You?”

“Of course not. But I called Chip pretending to be the woman he hired and told him I’d found out I was pregnant and didn’t want to move anymore. Then I recommended someone else for the job.”

“Yourself.”

“Myself.” She inclined her head in a mock bow.

“What did you do with the woman he’d actually hired? Did you pay her off?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Lisa said dismissively. “I pushed her under a bus before I made the call to Chip.”

“You—” All the air left my lungs and the room took a half turn. I swallowed hard. “What about Brian? How did you and Dave control him? Just because he lied about his experience?”

“You make everything so complicated.” She shook her head in irritation. “We just paid him to tell us what was going on.”

Oh. That was much simpler. “Then you killed him when he lost his nerve for what you were doing.”

Lisa looked at me like I was an imbecile. “You really don’t understand anything, do you? He didn’t lose his nerve. He wanted more money. The little prick thought he could blackmail me about the playwright, what’s-her-name.”

“Nancy,” I said through gritted teeth. “Her name was Nancy.”

“Whatever. None of that matters now, does it?”

She looked at the monitors. Jack was back in the lobby with Simon and Flank.

“Wait a minute,” I said wildly. “What about Rix? Where does he fit in all of this?”

“Rix is an idiot,” Lisa said flatly. “What did you ever see in—”

“Never mind.” I was hardly going to take criticism about my love life from a psycho who’d been sleeping with a traitor. “Are you the one who bought all his gambling debts?”

She froze. “How did you know that?”

“He told Jack.” I probably shouldn’t have sounded quite so smug, but I couldn’t help it. It felt good to know something she didn’t know.

“When?” She looked at me sharply.

“Sunday. I suppose Regan is the one who told you all about Rix’ gambling in the first place?”

But suddenly Lisa wasn’t allowing me to stall her any more. “Let’s get moving.” She picked up my phone and punched a number. On a monitor, I saw Jack answer.

“Hi, Jack? This is Lisa? Charley’s stage manager?” she said, sounding for all the world like my hyper-efficient employee. “Charley says hi.”

Jack said something but she cut him off. “Oh, and Dave says hi too.”

Jack’s face froze. Lisa continued. “I know you have some friends with you, so I want you to pretend this is a normal call. Maybe it’s Harry inviting you to a game of golf, or Mike, asking you to a ball game, okay?”

I could see Jack utter one word.

“Good. Now I want you to get rid of your entourage and meet me on your own. If you let them know where you’re going, I’ll see it and I’ll kill her. If you do anything except what I tell you to, I’ll see it and I’ll kill her. But if you come down here like a good boy, I’ll only kill you. Is that clear?” This was all spoken in the same bright, capable voice that had reasoned Olivia into peace over her pot roast speech.

Once again I saw Jack’s mouth form one word.

“Good. Now make up some plausible story for your friends. Then lose them and come down to the costume shop. Alone. And open the closet door. Be here in three minutes or I’ll kill her.” She hung up. “Let’s watch.”

I watched. Jack hung up the phone and looked relieved. He said something to Simon, who ran his hands through his hair and dashed back into the box office. Then he said something to Flank. Flank’s back was towards me, but I didn’t see a release of tension in it. Whatever story Jack was telling him, I don’t think he bought it. But he tapped his earpiece and said something into his sleeve.