Sucker Punch (11 page)

“I’m sure that finding Mr. Nichols was upsetting,” he said to Vonetta. “But why don’t you think about it for a bit? When you’re ready, start from the beginning and tell me everything that happened from the minute you walked into the theater until we arrived.”

“Why are you so concerned about what happened when I found him?” Vonetta asked. “It was an accident.”

“It sure appears to be,” he agreed. “But we’re just trying to make sure of our facts.”

Vonetta considered that for a long time. At least, it felt like a long time to me. Judging from the way Nate began to fidget in his chair, he was growing impatient, too. Just when I thought he might snap out of his unnatural rationality, she spoke.

“I was just leaving a meeting with Alexander and Colleen. We’d been talking about scenery for the production. Making plans. That sort of thing. I was in a hurry, so I cut through the auditorium and I found Laurence lying there. But it’s quite obvious what happened, isn’t it? That spotlight must have come loose and hit him.”

Nate shared another meaningful glance with his man by the door. “It would appear that way,” he said again. “Anybody else in the theater when you were having your meeting?”

“Not that I know of.” She glanced at me and added, “Obviously, Abby was here, and anyone might have wandered in and out, I suppose. I tried to keep an eye on the lobby, but I might have looked away.”

“You leave the door unlocked, then?”

“Most of the time,” Vonetta said. “We have cast and crew coming and going at all hours.”

I got the distinct impression that Nate was getting at something he didn’t want to voice aloud, and I had a gut feeling I knew what it was. “You don’t think Laurence’s death was an accident?”

“I didn’t say that.” His lips quirked upward again, but his smile seemed a trifle cooler than it had a minute ago. He turned again to Vonetta. “So you saw him lying there. Did you see anyone else?”

“No. No one.”

“No one leaving by one of the other doors as you came in?”

The question made me sit up straight. “What are you getting at, Nate? You think someone else was here?”

“I know someone else was here,” he said without looking at me. “I have an eyewitness who saw somebody leaving the theater just a few minutes before you folks raised the alarm about Nichols. According to my witness, he looked mad enough to kill. And according to my guys in there, that spotlight didn’t fall on its own. The safety cable was cut.”

Vonetta gasped in shock. “Cut? But that can’t be!”

“Oh, it can be,” Nate said, “and it is. We’ll run it through the lab just to be sure, but it looks to me like we might have a murder on our hands. At the very least, we’re looking at involuntary manslaughter.”

I wish I could say that Nate’s pronouncement made
me
gasp in shock, but it only made my stomach hurt. “Who is your eyewitness?” I asked. “Is it someone credible?”

“She’s credible, all right. It’s Molly Flanders from over to the post office.”

He was right. Molly ranked right up there on my list of people I’d believe. “And who does she say left the theater? Was it someone she recognized?”

Nate tucked his notebook into his pocket and sat back so he could look me in the eye. “It was. You sure you want me to tell you? I don’t think you’re going to like it much.”

Colleen. It had to be.
Besides Vonetta, no one else I cared about had been here at the time. I steeled myself for his answer and nodded. “You might as well tell me. I’m going to find out eventually anyway.”

“It was that funny fella you hang around with. Richie Bellieu.”

Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!
“Abby? Are you in there?”

Startled by the unexpected noise, I jumped about three feet and slammed the door to my microwave so hard it swung open again. What in the—?

The police had kept us all at the Playhouse for a couple of hours, asking the same questions over and over again before they’d finally let us leave. While we sat around waiting, my headache had grown steadily worse. Since I didn’t know whether the pain was caused by hunger, exhaustion, or tension, I was trying to treat all three. I had a frozen chicken dinner ready to nuke, a margarita-flavored wine cooler I’d found in the back of my fridge ready to drink, and a hot shower and bed waiting for me down the hall. I wasn’t sure which I wanted more, but I knew I didn’t want company.

Telling myself that whoever it was would leave if I ignored them, I shut the microwave and punched numbers on the keypad. I unscrewed the top on my cooler and chugged enough to kill the pain in my head.

Bam! Bam! Bam!
“Abby? It’s me, Dylan. I need to talk to you. It’s an emergency.”

Okay, so I didn’t want company, but for Dylan and Richie I’d make an exception. Abandoning my makeshift dinner, I hurried toward the front door of my apartment and flung it open just as Dylan raised his fist to bang again.

His hand dropped, and he stood in front of me looking like something the cat had dragged home after an all-night prowl. His dark hair spiked all over his head, his shirt looked as if he’d slept in it for two days, and the shadow of a beard darkened his cheeks and chin.

“They’re going to arrest Richie,” he said, fixing a pair of wounded eyes on me. “I don’t know what to do.”

Ignoring the rumble of my stomach, I pulled him inside and settled him on my ugly plaid couch. I curled up on the other end and put a bowl of Caramel Marshmallow Pillows in the space between us. They were good enough to solve almost any problem, and the sugar rush might help me stay awake. “Tell me what happened.”

“The police came to the inn,” Dylan said, hunching forward in a posture of abject misery. “They said that somebody saw Richie leaving the theater right before they discovered Laurence Nichols dead.”

“I heard about that,” I told him. At the stricken look on his face, I hurried to add, “Don’t worry. It’s not all over town yet. I was at the Playhouse when Laurence was found. Did they actually arrest Richie, or did they just question him?”

Dylan wagged his head back and forth a few times. “They questioned him, but you should have seen them, Abby. They think he murdered that man. Which is utterly ridiculous. You know as well as I do that Richie couldn’t hurt a fly.”

“What did Richie tell them?” I asked. “And where is he now?”

“He’s at home. Locked in the bedroom.” He plunged the fingers of both hands into his hair and stared at the floor. “He won’t let me in, and he won’t come out. He says his life is ruined.”

“Richie says that all the time,” I reminded him, trying to ease some of the tension. “He said that when he couldn’t find fresh cilantro for the salsa last month, remember?”

Dylan slid a glance at me. “Yeah, well this time he might be right.” His sour outlook was completely out of character.

“Why do you say that? You don’t really think he killed Laurence do you?”

Dylan shook his head. “No. Richie couldn’t have. It’s just not in him. But I think the police are satisfied with him as a suspect. You know what some of them are like. They’d love to put Richie away just for being Richie.”

Unfortunately, I believed he was right about Nate Svboda and some of the others. What a time for Jawarski to leave town. Unlike the members of the good ol’ boys’ network, Jawarski didn’t prejudge people for their lifestyle choices or the color of their skin. “Was Richie at the theater when Laurence was killed?”

Dylan nodded. “He was supposed to be picking up milk and eggs for tomorrow’s breakfast at the inn. Instead, he went to the Playhouse. I
warned
him to stay away from there, especially after—” He broke off suddenly and rubbed his face with his hands.

“After the argument he had with Laurence?”

Dylan gave a reluctant nod. “You know about that?”

“Paisley saw them.”

“Which means everybody knows about it by now.”

“They’re going to find out anyway,” I pointed out. “Laurence’s death is bound to bring reporters out in droves. Do you know what they argued about?”

Dylan looked sick at the idea of reporters coming to town. “It was no big deal,” he said. “He went there to invite Laurence to the inn for lunch. I told him not to, but he never listens to me.”

“I take it Laurence didn’t leap at the invitation?”

“I’m afraid not. He laughed and told Richie he didn’t swing that way.”

Ouch.
“How did Richie take that?”

“Not well. It pissed him off. He went there as a fan. He wasn’t trying to seduce Laurence or anything.”

“Did he tell Laurence that?”

“I think so. You’d have to ask him about it. He was too distressed when he came home to say much, but I knew he was upset.”

That didn’t bode well, but I kept my opinion to myself. Something about Laurence’s death was bothering me. There was something that didn’t add up, but I couldn’t figure out what it was and I was too tired to think straight.

With a heavy groan, Dylan covered his face again. “What are we going to do, Abby? We’ve put every penny we have into the inn; we don’t have the money for a lawyer. And you know as well as I do that Nate Svboda would be thrilled to get rid of us.”

“Some people in this town are seriously behind the times,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean they’ll let Richie be railroaded for a crime he didn’t commit. Try not to panic yet. The police have talked to him. They
had
to, since Molly Flanders says she saw him leaving the theater. But they haven’t arrested him, and there’s no reason to think that they will. I’m sure they’ll also be talking to everyone.” I unwrapped a Caramel Marshmallow Pillow and bit into it, barely resisting the urge to swoon at the sweet, buttery taste. “Did Richie say whether he even saw Laurence tonight at the theater?”

Dylan shook his head. “He says he didn’t. Laurence was in a meeting. Richie says he hung around for a while, hoping the meeting would end, but left when he finally realized how long he’d been gone from the inn.”

“What about Laurence’s manager, Geoffrey Manwaring? Did Richie mention seeing him at all?”

“Richie didn’t mention him at all, why?”

I shrugged. “No reason, really, except that Manwaring wasn’t at the theater when Laurence died. Jason Dahl said that he’d gone to the hotel to check on a package he was expecting, but I don’t know if that’s true or not.”

Dylan actually looked encouraged. “You think he might have killed Laurence?”

“It’s possible. The point is, there are plenty of people the police need to question, and I’m sure they’ll realize that Richie’s telling the truth.”

“You really think so?”

“Of course.” I nudged the bowl toward Dylan, mostly because I felt kind of guilty for pigging out on caramel marshmallow heaven while he was in such hell. “It’s all going to work out. You’ll see.”

Looking almost optimistic, Dylan plucked a Pillow from the bowl and unwrapped it slowly. “So is it true? Was Laurence really murdered?”

I nodded and popped the other half of my candy into my mouth. “It looks suspicious. We won’t know for sure until the lab finishes analyzing everything, but I’m almost certain the safety cable on that spotlight didn’t break on its own, and Nate said the same thing. I’m pretty sure someone cut it.”

“They’ll say that Richie did it,” Dylan predicted dourly. “He was alone in the theater for quite a while.”

“Maybe.” Aunt Grace’s Caramel Marshmallow Pillows worked their magic and the elusive piece of logic finally clicked into place. “But even if somebody cut the cable, how could they know when it would break and what it would do? If you ask me, it’s a pretty sloppy way to commit murder. It’s too uncertain.”

Hope flickered in Dylan’s eyes. “You’re right. Cutting the cable might make the light fall, but you wouldn’t be able to make it fall precisely where you wanted it to.”

“Exactly! Which means that Laurence’s death might have been caused by the person who cut through the cable, but I don’t think it was premeditated murder. And obviously, Richie had no reason to be crawling around in the fly system cutting safety cables anyway.”

Dylan let out a breath loaded with relief. “You’re right. What possible reason would he have had for doing that?”

“None, as far as I know.”

“That’s right. None. And the police will have to establish a motive, won’t they? And Richie doesn’t have a motive—for anything.”

“That’s right. Everything will be fine, you’ll see.” A little quiver of warning raced up my spine, but I ignored it. The idea of anyone—even Nate—seriously considering Richie a suspect was too ridiculous for words. The most aggressive thing I’d ever seen Richie do was overdecorate for a dinner party. He simply wasn’t a threat. To anyone.

“Why don’t you go home for now?” I said, doing my best to stifle a yawn. “I’m sure the whole situation will look better in the morning.”

Which only goes to show how wrong a person can be.