“Maybe he’s flown the coop,” I said. “Maybe he’s just taking his own sweet time getting back from lunch.”
“Any idea where he went for lunch?” Vern asked Michael.
“No idea,” Michael said. “The chief confiscated his rental car, so the Rabid Fan was going to drive him somewhere. Sorry—I don’t actually know her real name.”
“Melisande Flanders,” I said, to Vern. “She’s staying at Niva’s bed-and-breakfast.”
“She hasn’t come back, either,” the actress playing Mrs. Cratchit said. I noticed that I wasn’t the only one to glance at the aisle seat on the back row where Melisande had been sitting.
“Any chance one of the other deputies already picked him up?” I asked Vern.
“Unlikely.” He shook his head. “Chief didn’t put out a BOLO, just called to tell me to pick him up and keep it discreet.”
“Good riddance, I say,” Bob Cratchit muttered.
“Well, when he’s on his game, he’s pretty damned good,” the Ghost of Christmas Past said.
“But when was the last time he was on his game instead of on the sauce?” Bob Cratchit replied.
“Okay, folks,” Michael said, cutting through these and similar murmurs elsewhere in the crowd. “Let’s get on with the run-through. Vern, you’re welcome to stay and wait for Haver. Or we could call you when we see him.”
“I’ll check and see what the chief says.” Vern went out through the doors to the lobby. I followed.
“Am I correct in assuming that once you find him it’s unlikely we’ll get Haver back today?” I asked.
“I’d say unlikely you’ll get him back, period,” Vern said. “I haven’t heard what Horace found over in his room at the Inn, but it’s got the chief all fired up.”
“Damn,” I said. “I was hoping—”
“Meg?”
I turned to see Melisande appearing from behind one of the tinsel-laden potted evergreens that dotted the lobby.
“You’re back,” I said. “Great! Where’s Mr. Haver?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know,” I repeated.
“I know, I know,” she said. “I thought it would be such fun to take him out for lunch, plus I could keep an eye on him and make sure he didn’t … overindulge in anything that would hurt his ability to rehearse when he got back.”
“Your willingness to serve as a volunteer sober companion is duly noted,” I said. “But—”
“And Malcolm was good as gold!” she exclaimed. “He directed me to this barbecue place he’d heard about—just a little hole in the wall, it even called itself ‘The Pit’—and it was so rough-looking I’m not sure I’d have dared go inside by myself.”
“I know the place,” I said. Rocky, The Pit’s owner, was well-known for offering free food to anyone who was down on his luck, and Clarence’s biker friends tended to hang out there in between charity rides, playing pool while keeping a weather eye out for drunks, druggies, homeless people, runaways, stray kittens—anyone who might wander in needing rescue or rehabilitation. Later on, maybe, I’d tell her how very safe she had been in The Pit. For now, I put on my stern face. “So where is he now?”
“We were back here, and about to go into the auditorium with our carryout bags, when he realized he’d left his script in my car,” she said. “And I said I’d run down and get it, and he said nonsense, he wouldn’t think of inconveniencing me because of his absentmindedness. So I gave him my keys and he hasn’t come back. And I went down to look and my car isn’t in the parking lot.”
“He stole your car.”
“He may have borrowed it.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Um … fifteen minutes? Maybe half an hour?”
Vern, who had been eavesdropping nearby, stepped forward.
“Ma’am, can you give me the make, model, and license number of your car?”
“Why? He didn’t steal it!” Melisande yelped. “He absolutely has my permission to drive it!”
“Yes, ma’am, I understand that.” Vern had adopted his best “aw, shucks, ma’am” manner. “But we urgently need to talk to Mr. Haver and—”
“I won’t help you persecute him! He didn’t do anything!”
Melisande turned and fled through the glass front doors of the lobby, nearly bowling over a pair of tourists headed for the ticket office.
“I don’t know the license number,” I said. “But it’s a bright red Ford Focus. I’ve seen it in the parking lot often enough.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Shouldn’t take too long to get the license number from the DMV, but the guy already has a head start on us. Got a name on her?”
“Melisande Flanders.”
While Vern made phone calls—first to the chief, to report on what Haver was up to, and then to The Pit to see if Rocky remembered what time the pair had left—I kept an eye out for Melisande. The temperature was only in the teens and she’d taken off without her coat. If she didn’t come back soon, we’d need to send someone out to look for her. Possibly with an ambulance.
But about the time Vern was finishing up his second phone call, she slipped back in through one of the glass front doors—the one farthest from where Vern and I were standing. I gathered she was hoping to escape our notice.
“If you want to have another go at Melisande, there she is.” I nodded toward where Melisande was darting from one potted evergreen to another, trying to make her way unseen to the door that led to the backstage area.
“You think she’s likely to tell me anything?” Vern’s expression showed how unimpressed he was with Melisande’s attempts at stealth.
I looked over to Melisande’s current hiding place, behind the finch cage. She seemed not to realize that its mesh sides provided very little cover. She peered out, saw that I was looking in her general direction, and ducked back behind the cage.
“No.” I shook my head. “I think if she saw Malcolm Haver commit murder in cold blood, it wouldn’t take her more than an hour or two to convince herself that he’d been acting out of self-defense. If she thinks you’re going to arrest him, there’s no way she’ll help to find him.”
“Then we’ll rely on your information till the DMV comes through,” he said. “I’d better get out there and help look for him.”
He strode back out to his car. As he exited, a tall, muscular young man in his twenties came in. What I could see of his face between the knit hat and the scarf wrapped around his nose and chin was cheerful, freckled, and vaguely familiar. His eyes lit up when he saw me.
“Meg!” He hurried over with an outstretched hand. “I recognize you from the family reunions.”
“And you must be Maximilian.” He had a good handshake and a nice smile.
“Just Max,” he said. “Only our mothers call me Maximilian. So where’s my charge?”
It took me a while to convince Max that it wasn’t his fault Haver had fled before he arrived. And I didn’t try to talk him out of going in search of the red Ford Focus. In fact, once Max had departed, I called Stanley Denton to ask if he could join in the search.
Then I slipped quietly back into the house and sat in the back row of seats. They’d resumed the run-through while I’d been gone, and had reached the scene where Scrooge was buying the enormous Christmas goose to send to the Cratchit family.
Do you know the Poulter’s in the next street but one, at the corner?
I should hope I did.
An intelligent boy! A remarkable boy! Do you know whether they’ve sold the prize turkey that was hanging up there? Not the little prize turkey,—the big one?
What, the one as big as me?
What a delightful boy! It’s a pleasure to talk to him. Yes, my buck!
It’s hanging there now.
Is it? Go and buy it.
Pull the other one.
No, no, I am in earnest. Go and buy it, and tell ’em to bring it here, that I may give them the direction where to take it. Come back with the man, and I’ll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than five minutes, and I’ll give you half a crown!
Not for the first time, I found myself imagining the mixed feelings the goose must have inspired in Mrs. Cratchit. Yes, of course, she would have been delighted to have so much food to feed a family that probably survived all too often on lean rations. But on the other hand, what kind of an idiot sends an enormous raw bird to a woman who’s just about to serve her much more modest but already fully cooked goose and needs to turn her attention to the complicated job of cooking the plum pudding?
Just then my phone buzzed—buzzed, rather than rang, because it had become second nature to turn off the sound when I walked into the theater.
Robyn. I decided I should probably take it, so I stepped outside into the lobby.
“Just so you know, I’m having second thoughts about whether hosting Weaseltide is a good idea,” I said. “Since the organizer thereof is currently aiding and abetting Malcolm Haver’s flight from the law.”
“Oh, dear. Well, I always put everything on the calendar in pencil. If you decide it’s a bad idea, I can suddenly remember that we have a meeting of the Ladies of Saint Clotilda that afternoon. Actually, I was calling about something else. Could you possibly bring Mrs. Frost to Trinity tonight for the potluck supper?”
“I’m not coming, remember? I’ll be at the theater. Dress rehearsal.”
“Oh, I know—and you’ll be terribly busy! But you’re one of the few people Mrs. Frost actually knows, so it would be much easier if you could coax her into coming—”
Should I tell Robyn exactly how little I cared whether Mrs. Frost came to the potluck dinner?
“And also, we’ve packed up a feast for the cast and crew—Michael told me how many people there would be—and if you drop by with Mrs. Frost, we can load it all into your car.”
I suddenly felt like a jerk.
“Okay—for a bribe like that I’ll do it,” I said. “But I warn you, I can’t guarantee that I can talk her into coming if she balks.”
“Well, if she turns up her nose at us, you can still come by for your food. The supper starts at six, but if you need to drop her off a little earlier, we have plenty of people here to take care of her, and the food for the theater’s all ready.”
I glanced at my watch. Four thirty. It would be nice to get this over with.
“I could bring her now,” I said.
“Splendid.”
So I dashed down to my car and headed for the Caerphilly Inn.