Chapter 32

“Nora! Duck!”

I reacted without thinking, dropping and dodging as something went whooshing past my ear and slammed into the table with a deafening crack. I turned and saw Todd Randall wielding an iron bar like a club and looking at me like a killer.

“Nora!” Trixie shouted again.

“Todd!” I backed away from him, realizing that he stood between me and the door. I was trapped.

He smiled. At least, he probably thought it was a smile. “Nora. I guess I should thank you.” He nodded toward the poster on the table. “I was getting damn sick of this place.”

“How did you get in?” Which maybe wasn’t the most urgent question, but it’s the one that came tumbling out of my mouth as I looked frantically around the room for an escape. Or a weapon.

“I bought a ticket,” he said. “I’ve been here since the second show yesterday.”

So much for relying on grainy pictures of him to warn the staff.

“I guess I owe you,” he said, his eyes flicking past me. He was probably also looking for anything I could use as a weapon. “I had no clue how Ellie hid all that money.” His eyes returned to mine. “But I figured a clever bitch like you would figure it out. I just had to wait.”

“Nora,” Trixie shimmered into view behind Todd. “I can’t hurt him. I wish I could but I can’t.” She swiped a fist through his torso.

“I know,” I said.

“You know what?” Todd looked at me narrowly.

“I know you’re Kate’s husband.”

I hadn’t known that, not until he’d just called her Ellie. But now, watching the stunned look on his face, I absolutely knew him to be the violent predator Kate had run from. Run for her life.

“How did you find her?” I asked. I’d surprised him. Maybe I could use that to keep him off guard.

He made a guttural sound, low in his throat. “Something you should know about hunting,” he said. “The trick is knowing how to wait.”

While he spoke I took a step to my right. He did the same, unconsciously mirroring me, and I felt a surge of hope. If I could move slowly around the room, keeping him across from me, eventually I’d have my back to the door. And then I’d just have to run.

“That’s what separates the good from the great,” Todd said. “Waiting. Keeping a sharp eye out. Holding for your moment.”

Trixie appeared at my side, facing him with me. “I’m going to get help,” she said. “I don’t know how, but I promise I’m going to. Please just keep him talking. Just don’t let him near you until I get you help.”

I nodded and she vanished. Where she would get help at dawn in an empty theater was something I didn’t want to think about. I just hoped she could do something.

“So you found Kate,” I said. “And then what? Why the whole lie about ‘Todd Randall’ and a film festival? Why not just come for her? And what’s your real name, anyway?” Another step to my right.

He moved forward. Damn. “You ever see a cat with a mouse?” His eyes glinted. “That cat never has more fun than when the mouse realizes how stupid she is.” He weighed the iron bar in his hand. “That space between when she knows she’s going to die and when the final swipe of the claw comes…” He sliced the bar through the air. “That’s the magic time.”

I swallowed. “What about the money?” I asked. “How did you find out about it? And what about Raul?”

“Oh, is this the part where I confess everything?” His lips twisted.

“I’ll tell you what I think.” I stepped to the right again. This time he followed. “I think you made a date to finally meet Kate in person. I’ve seen the emails. You were going to meet at the café across the street.” Another step. “But you didn’t stick to that. You came a day early. Why?”

“You just keep going, honey. You’re doing fine.” He took another step.

I now had the door on my right, but I’d have to navigate around the poster cabinet and table to get to it. Todd would have a clear path. I had to keep him moving.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “The fact is you showed up at the theater a day early. Kate wasn’t expecting you. Was Raul already there?”

A flash of annoyance crossed his face. Or was it jealousy?

“Is that why you didn’t stick to the plan? Did you come a day early to watch Kate without her knowing it? Did you see her meet Raul in the lobby and go up to the office? Did you think there was something between them?”

Definitely jealousy. And now matched with rage.

He struck out with the iron bar, shattering one of the glass lamps I’d moved.

“That bitch!” he seethed. “Throwing herself at me over email and all the while she was spreading her legs for that—” Whatever derogatory term he used to describe Raul was lost in another smash of the bar.

“So you followed them up to the office,” I said. “While Random Harvest was playing and everyone else was busy.” I took another step. “Then what did you do? Hit Raul from behind? That seems to be your—”

The bar shot out, smashing a mirror.

“She had no right!” he shouted. “She was my wife!”

“So you knocked Raul unconscious,” I said.

This seemed to take him by surprise.

“Didn’t you know? You didn’t kill him. When you put him in the ice machine he was still alive.”

Todd recovered quickly. “He’s dead now, isn’t he?”

“What happened?” I asked. “How did Kate wind up with a broken neck?”

“It was her own damn fault,” he said. “I wasn’t going to kill her. Not before I made her pay for everything she put me through.”

“Oh,” I said without thinking. “What she put you through.”

The bar came crashing down again, this time on the table. On the Dracula poster.

“That slut thought she could buy me off,” he snarled. “Once she saw I meant business she couldn’t wait to tell me about all the money she had. She’d give it to me, she said, if I’d just go away.” His voice took on an ugly, mocking tone. “She wouldn’t tell anybody what I’d done. She’d give me the money if I’d just leave her alone. Yeah, right.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “But I played along. I let her think she could win.”

There was nothing I could lay my hands on that would stand up to that heavy iron bar. I had to run. It was probably about fifteen steps to the door, then through the dark hallways to the back door and escape. If I didn’t take a wrong turn.

“She told me I could use the back stairs and hide the body in the ice machine down here.” Todd said “She wouldn’t tell anyone. It could be months before it was found, and I’d be long gone by then, with all that money in my pocket.”

I could imagine this conversation, Kate pleading for her life, trying desperately to figure a way out, to find her chance to run.

“I made her drag him from her office to the stairs,” Todd went on. “But then she got stupid and made a run for it.” He held his head up, pointing the bar at me. “I did not kill her. The bitch tripped. Fell down all those stairs and broke her damn neck.”

My stomach turned. Kate had died on the hard concrete stairs. Running from him, as I was about to.

“So you hid Raul’s body, like you’d planned,” I said, fighting to keep my voice even. “And then what? The ice machine wasn’t big enough for both of their bodies?”

“I went looking for some other place to put her,” he said. “And instead I found a wheelchair.”

I made a small, strangled sound of understanding. Albert had told me the wheelchair had gone missing from the prop room.

“Why the park?” I asked. “Why did you take her to—”

He laughed, an ugly, rasping sound. “She’d broken her neck,” he said. “I thought I could make it look like an accident. If she wasn’t found here, nobody would look around for clues here, and nobody would find the other guy until I was long gone. And San Francisco is supposed to be full of hills, isn’t it? So I checked the map on my phone for the nearest one.”

“That’s so…” stupid, I thought. Then I got a vivid mental image of him pushing her up to the top of the hill and throwing her over the side. It wasn’t stupid. It was cold-bloodedly horrific.

My mouth had gone dry. “And you’ve been looking for the money ever since.”

He twisted his lips into a smile. “And now there’s nothing left to do, is there, sweetheart? Except for one last little thing.” A light glinted in his eye.

I ran. It was pure instinct. I didn’t even think.

I was halfway across the room before he grabbed me from behind.