MURDER TUNED IN (Allie Griffin Mysteries Book 4) (11 page)

              She'd texted Del and asked where she could find Angus MacFetridge. Del had texted back that he could be anywhere, but he was probably in the theater now helping to clean up.

             
Small town show biz
, thought Allie,
gotta love it
. And with that, she headed out to the Verdenier Opera House to find the director.

              Driving to the theater was a miserable excursion. The rain beat down in torrents. The fast speed wipers on her car were all but ineffective. Driving at five miles an hour was a nightmare. Her heart thumped in her throat, in her temples, and her breathing was fast. All the energy went right down to her fingertips, which jittered and drummed on the wheel.

              "
I drove her crazy, literally.
"

              "Angus, you are clever," she said to her windshield.

#

              She was drenched running from her car to the theater entrance. Shivering from more than just the cold, she went in to find Angus.

              Things happened to Allie Griffin. They were things that most people would try to find significance in. What normal people didn’t realize, and what Allie Griffin did, was that sometimes strange things happen. Sometimes the timing of the world is off by a few seconds, or minutes, or days. And sometimes it's on. Perfectly, spot on.

              This was one of those times when coincidence could only be laughed at. Eventually. But now, coincidence horrified her, for all the lights in the house had gone out just as she made her way to the stairs that led to the seating, and all was pitch black around her.

              She scrambled for her cell phone.

              And then she said the
word
.

              She left her
word
ing phone back at her
word
ing house
.

              Her heartbeat rose to a fever pitch.
Calm down
, she thought.
This is a theater. They have to have a—

              An eerie orange glow illuminated the area.

             
Backup generator
.

              The orange light was of little help, for it only served to keep one from tripping over things and bumping into walls. It did nothing for anyone who was here to confront a murderer.

              And that's when the reality hit her.

              Allie Griffin's biggest problem had always been Allie Griffin. She always thought so long and hard about these mysteries that she saw very little of the inevitable, which was that sooner or later it would lead to the capture of a killer. It was the same now. How could she be so stupid as to wander in here without any protection? Not even her
word
ing cell phone!

              Adding insult to injury, it was a Saturday. All the offices in the other parts of the building were closed.

              The rain attacked the roof of the theater with a ferocity that portended disaster. She'd leave now. Go to the cops. Go and get Frank Beauchenne.

              "Allie? Is that you?"

              Angus MacFetridge stood waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. He moved away so she could come the rest of the way down.

              "I—"

              "What is it? And what are you doing here?" He didn’t sound threatening in the least. And perhaps that's the thing that terrified her most about this man. He could turn on the charm, sound sweet and paternal, and then turn vicious at the drop of a hat. And he was a killer.

              "I...just came in to get dry," she said.

              "Well, it's dry in here. Come on in. We have a lot of stuff in wardrobe if you need to change. If you don’t mind going home dressed as a 1920s flapper."             

              She got to the bottom of the stairs. "I'm ok."

              He turned and started to walk toward the stage. "Alright, but you really should change. They say you can't catch a cold from walking in the rain, but I never believed that. My mother always told me to get dry after you come in, and change your clothes. That's how she said it.
Change your clothes, Angus! You smell like a wet dog!
"

              "Haldol in the champagne," Allie said, trickles of rainwater edging their way into her eyes.

              Angus stopped and turned. "Excuse me?"

              "Haldol. They use it to treat the emotionally disturbed. I bet you have a lot of that stuff around the house. With your mother and all."

              He glared at her as she wiped her face with her hands. "Is there some other reason you're here, Allie?"

              "You tapped an empty glass with your fingernail and you said 'right, in the key of D.'I was there. I saw you do it. You were probably thinking of your own glass, the one back in Sally's dressing room. I'm guessing you either forgot you switched them or got a little flustered. I guess death will do that to you. I myself almost missed it altogether. You were holding a different glass the first time around when you had that little musical guessing game with Tad. That glass was full of champagne. Putting liquid in a glass lowers the resonant frequency. I don’t know how it sounded when it was empty, but it resonated at a perfect D natural when it was full. Sally's glass, the poisoned glass, resonated at D when it was
empty
. That was the glass you were holding when you came out of her dressing room, having just strangled her with a hanger and a piece of stagehand's rope."

              "This is absurd. I won’t stand here and be accused like this." He turned and walked toward the orchestra pit.

              "A union member. Clever. But not a theatrical director's union. You're a member of the Alliance of Theatrical Employees; a former stage technician. It's where you learned how to tie a square knot for rigging, using different colored tape on the ends."

              He stopped and turned again. And he was cold and reserved as he began walking toward her slowly. "I am going to give you three seconds to start walking toward that exit."

              Allie's nerves steeled up from the rush of having the upper hand. "You know, Angus, it was bugging me. The left-handed thing. It didn’t add up. All the pieces of evidence seemed to point to you, except that one. And then I remembered:
Catholic school
. They hit you with a ruler, not to improve your penmanship, they never used to hit students for that, but they did hit them for using their left hands to write with. Then I remembered that you held the glass in your right hand and flicked it with your left finger. You then switched hands and drank with your left. All that implies the use of your left as the dominant hand. And to think that I almost missed that too."

              Angus flashed a mean, toothy grin. "They've got Tad Mills in custody I hear. And from what I hear, they’ve got enough evidence to throw him away for the rest of his life."

              "You wanted those calls to be interrupted once Sally was killed so that the cops could have a link between Tad and her. You were behind them. You paid a hacker to send them through her IP address."

              Angus looked unfazed. "Proximity, motive, access to the weapon. Sounds like we've got all three. Isn’t that how the cops talk? Isn’t your boyfriend a cop, Allie Griffin?"

              "First of all, he's not my boyfriend. Second of all, Tad Mills may have had motive and access, but he didn’t have proximity. He was out to lunch with me when Sally was killed."

              "Oh, mere minutes you're playing around with there. It won’t stand."

              "True, it may not. But there's one other thing. I lied when I said all the pieces of evidence pointed to you except one. There was one other piece of evidence that didn’t point to you, and that was motive."

              Angus opened his arms and chuckled. "Exactly. So why are you here again?"

              "Because you were the only one
without
a motive
.
By the way, you can thank a little old bartender on the outskirts of town for putting this idea in my head. Everyone had a reason to want to kill Sally. Everyone but you. I knew that's nothing to base a whole murder case on, but then I got to thinking. Everyone had a motive to want to kill, but everyone also had a motive
not
to kill. Except for you."

              "You're talking nonsense. Excuse me, I'm going to call the police."

              "Go ahead and call them. Nobody would dare kill Sally, because doing so would also kill the show. In light of the visit from Sir Ivor? Cancelling the show would crush the dreams of these young impressionable artists. They wouldn’t dream of doing so. Some things are stronger than hate, and revenge, and jealousy. Hope, for instance. You, Angus MacFetridge, you were the only one who didn’t care whether the show was off or on. You said it yourself over lunch: '
I'm too old for Broadway
.'"

              "Get out of here," Angus said, a vicious snarl in his voice.

              "Non-union stuff, that crazy fringe group she belonged to, none of it mattered to you. But she didn’t want a relationship with you. That mattered. It must have gotten tiring. The stress of dealing with your mother. The realization that you'll probably be stuck here for the rest of your life. And then that one special someone who once gave you enough attention and arm candy to validate your existence suddenly wants nothing to do with you. That, as they say, has gotta hurt."

              Angus threw down his phone and lunged at her.

              Allie threw up her arms and moved in closely so that Angus extended his own reach. Then she reached up and poked him in both eyes. Not hard. Not enough to blind him; just enough for a comical, Three Stooges-style yelp, and to send him reeling back, almost falling into the orchestra pit.

              "Everything ok down there, Ms. Griffin?"

              It was Ernie the stagehand peering out from behind the curtain.

              "Not really," said Allie, panting and trying to regain her composure. "This vile sociopath here killed Sally Kane. You can help me keep an eye on him while I call the police."

              She thought for a moment, and then rolled her eyes.

              She walked over to the director, who was sitting on the floor before the orchestra pit, his head in his hands.

              "Angus, can I use your phone?"

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