Felix and Addison stared up at the imposing white facade of the Regency Center as they waited to cross the street. Addison didn’t ever want to show her face there again, but it was the best way to wrap her head around the events of the cocktail mixer. That night had left her too rattled to even begin to ask the important questions at the time. Right now, she wanted to know how the dogs disappeared. If they could figure out the how, maybe it would lead to the who.
“What are we doing here?” Felix asked. “Want to relive your big moment on stage?”
She glared at him over her sunglasses. “So not funny.” Hitting the crosswalk button, she waited for the light to change. “We’re here to do a little crime scene investigation. It might give us more insight before we start pointing fingers.”
“What do you expect to find that the police didn’t?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I just hope to figure out whatever they did. They probably uncovered everything they could find, but it’s not like they’re going to tell us about it, are they?”
“So you just hope to find something to help our own investigation.” Felix nodded while giving her an astonished look, like he’d just seen a miracle performed. “That’s pretty clever.”
Addison swatted him on the arm. “You don’t have to say it like that.”
The light turned and their pedestrian symbol lit up. They crossed the street and headed up the stairs to the Regency Center entrance. Felix held the door open for her, but she paused just outside to remove one of her crystal earrings.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “The earrings don’t match your shoes?”
Addison gave him a smug look. “You’ll see.”
Placing the earring in her dress pocket, she slipped inside. The doors closed behind them, muffling the traffic noises. It was like stepping back in time to 1909 when the center was built and the loudest things out on the street were the clip-clop of horse and buggies or the odd trolley car rolling by.
Men and women lingered in the lobby dressed in suits and sensible pencil skirts. A few heads turned their way, but after they gave them the once-over and realized Addison and Felix weren’t part of their event, they returned to their conversations.
Addison scanned the room, searching for someone in charge. It didn’t take long before the center’s event organizer from the night of the cocktail mixer approached them.
Darcy’s warm customer-service smile faltered when he spotted Addison. “Good afternoon,” he said, with a dubious squint to his eye. “How can I help you?”
Felix turned expectantly to Addison for a cue, but she was already prepared.
“Hi. I’m so sorry to bother you. I’m not sure if you remember me, but—”
“Oh, I remember you.” His face tightened as he battled to keep the smile in place. She wondered if he’d ever had an event go so wrong.
“Well, I think I lost an earring while working on the stage that night,” she told him. “I was wondering if I could have a look for it.” It was a simple enough fib. Which was a good thing, since Addison was a terrible liar.
Darcy hesitated, glancing back at the guests in the lobby. They were filtering through a set of doors, and he looked ready to follow.
“Please,” Addison begged. “It will only take a few minutes. They were my grandmother’s earrings, and she was very special to me.” She tilted her head to the side to show the one lone earring left in her lobe.
Darcy considered the now-empty lobby one more time before giving her a brief nod. “Okay. But it will have to be quick. They are about to start a presentation that I need to introduce.” He curled an impatient finger. “This way, please.”
He led Addison and Felix through the lobby and into the ballroom. It was less romantic than she remembered without the candles, dimmed lights, and, of course, Phillip. However, with the lights turned up and the room cleared of guests and furniture, she could appreciate just how rich and detailed a setting it truly was, from the intricate ceiling moldings to the pattern in the hardwood floor.
“I’m sure our cleaning staff would have found it,” Darcy said, as he climbed the stage stairs. “Or else it might have gotten thrown out with the trash.”
Addison gasped, as though afraid her heirloom was lost forever and couldn’t possibly be replaced at any cheap jewelry store. Which was exactly where she’d bought it.
He may not have been pleased with her but he at least looked abashed at his comment. “Don’t worry,” he added quickly. “I’m sure we’ll find it.”
Felix assessed her with a shrewd look. Either he judged her for being such a schemer, or he was impressed. She suspected it was the latter.
Strolling to the center of the stage, Darcy spun on his oxford heel. “Here we are,” he said, as if Addison might have missed it.
“Thank you so much,” she said.
Darcy nodded, but remained fixed to the spot, as though waiting for her to begin her search. She suddenly realized he wasn’t going to leave them alone.
Crap. That was about as far as her plan went.
Awkwardly, she bent over and began scouring the stage. She hemmed and hawed. “I remember being over here.”
Felix began looking for the nonexistent earring too while Darcy scrutinized them. He didn’t help them look, of course, but stood there watching like he didn’t trust them. For good reason, she thought, but it still annoyed her. It wasn’t like they could take a good look around the place with him standing right there.
Addison continued to mumble things while throwing covert looks around the stage, however she was too nervous with him around. After a few minutes of fake searching and Darcy clicking his tongue impatiently every so often, a young redhead interrupted them.
“Excuse me, Darcy.” She hovered at the base of the stage. “The Covington party says they can’t get the projector to work.”
“What?” Darcy practically leapt to attention. He descended the steps two at a time, waving over his shoulder as he walk-sprinted. “I’ll be right back.” It almost sounded like a threat to Addison’s ears.
Once the redhead was gone. Addison began to look in earnest. But for what, she wasn’t sure.
Felix crossed over to her. “Nicely done on the earring story. So what are we looking for?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“What do you mean? This was your idea.”
Addison positioned herself in the middle of the stage, staring out to an invisible audience. But when the cocktail mixer came rushing back to her, and an image of the angry crowd flashed through her mind, it didn’t feel so invisible.
The room seemed to swell around her, the floor beneath her feet shaking—or maybe that was her legs. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, clearing the memory. After a moment, she opened them again to find Felix staring at her curiously.
She ignored the look. “Well, we know the dogs couldn’t have left the stage through the curtains. There were hundreds of people here that night. Someone would have seen them.” Turning, she faced the glowing EXIT sign off to the side of the stage, hanging above the door to the back alley. “And we know they didn’t leave through the alley because Melody would have seen them.”
“That’s if she wasn’t the one who took them,” he said.
“Well, let’s just say she didn’t. How else could they have gotten out of here?”
Felix grew quiet as he considered this. He rubbed the scruff of his five-o’clock shadow, and it scraped beneath his hands. It brought back memories of the night at Joe’s Dive and she could almost feel the rough hair brushing against the skin of her neck again.
She shivered, in a good way—which was bad, very bad—and mentally slapped herself. Phillip was going to call any time now to ask her out again. She was sure of it.
Addison tried to put herself in the shoes of a criminal mastermind. She tilted her head back to glance at the rafters above, the spotlights, and the curtain tracks. Could the dogs have been hoisted up in a cage somehow? Which was maybe slid out of a window using a complicated system of pulleys and cables, and then deposited in a garbage truck making a late-night run? Then she remembered this wasn’t Ocean’s Eleven and continued to brainstorm.
Felix was skirting the open area, running his hands over walls, flipping back curtains, and opening and closing the alley door.
The backstage was simplistic, bare bones. No place to hide, no mysterious doors, no windows, no props or equipment. Addison could feel the clock ticking. Darcy would be back any minute, and they were no further ahead. She wanted to prove Melody’s innocence. Or at least have a reason not to suspect her anymore.
“Ugh. I’d hoped there’d be something here.” She stomped her foot like a five-year-old.
Felix spun to face her, giving her the strangest look. She blushed at her childishness. “Sorry.”
Then he stomped his foot.
For a second, Addison thought he was making fun of her. But then he did it again, and she heard the difference. She could hear the wood beneath his feet, but there was a hollow sound to it. Like an echo of an empty room. A room beneath them.
Their eyes dropped to the floor at the same time, searching for something, anything that stood out among the black paint. Addison spotted something. A notch cut out between the wooden floor panels, just large enough to slip her fingers into.
Checking over her shoulder to make sure Darcy wasn’t coming, she reached down and pulled on the panel. The entire thing lifted right up, revealing a trap room below. She set the panel aside and squatted by the hole in the floor. Squinting down into the darkness, Addison had a fleeting vision of all the things lurking down there.
Felix took out his phone and shone the light inside. He moved it around, highlighting the framework beneath. It was a five-foot drop into the black pit.
Addison bit her lip. “I suppose one of us should go down.”
“I’ll go.” Felix held his phone out to her. “Here, hold this.”
Addison fought her instincts that told her there were all sorts of scary things down there, or maybe that was all the horror movies talking.
“No. I’ll go. I’m smaller and lighter, so you can help me back up.”
She sat down and dangled her legs over the edge. The cold floor made her bare legs tighten with goose bumps beneath her fifties-style dress. She wiggled her way forward, wondering what the best way to land was when Felix grabbed her hands and extended her arms above her head.
“Hold on,” he told her. Bracing himself on either side of her, he lowered her into the black pit beneath the stage.
Even when her feet were firmly on the ground, she didn’t want to let go of Felix. But as his hands slipped from hers, she felt the darkness envelop her and could sense all the zombies and vampires lurking around her.
She took a step back and brushed against something. She spun around. A scream built inside her lungs just as Felix’s phone shone down on her and her mysterious attacker.
It wasn’t Freddy Krueger. It was just a wooden post. Addison grunted, clutching her chest in relief.
“See anything?” Felix asked, passing her his phone so she could see better.
“Not yet.” She couldn’t mask the shake in her voice.
Addison knew she didn’t have much time. She needed to do this. For the sake of the missing dogs, for her dad, for her passion, and maybe a little for Felix, she supposed. So swallowing her fear, she took the phone and shone it around the space.
The stage was held up with a series of crisscrossed beams and posts with enough space left between them for performers to move freely. She assumed it was so they could pass things up through the trap doors or pop up during a certain moment in a play or concert.
Shining the light at her feet, she weaved in and out of the wooden framework beneath the stage. All she could see was a thick layer of dust coating the floor. Overhead, cracks of light shone down on her face from more trap doors. Felix’s footsteps shifted above her head, echoing through the hollow space around her.
Addison took another hesitant step forward and felt a crunch beneath her shoe. She pulled her foot back and held the phone over the spot, half-expecting to see human bones. It glistened as the light hit it, sparkling bright among the thick, gray dust. Whatever it was, it obviously hadn’t been there long.
Her fear momentarily forgotten, she bent down and picked it up. She recognized it right away—the handcrafted details, the careful color choices. It was a tiara that she’d outfitted a Chow Chow with at the cocktail mixer.
She glanced up. The accessory wouldn’t have fallen through the cracks around the hidden trap doors. They were too small. So small that she hadn’t even noticed the doors were there in the first place. And by the lack of footprints in the settled dust, neither had the cops. Paw prints, however, were a different story.
Addison hadn’t noticed the prints before, but now she saw them everywhere. Big ones, little ones, scattered haphazardly around the floor. Or at least they appeared that way until she followed them with the light and saw that they all headed in the same general direction. She was tempted to follow them, but if the cops hadn’t been down there to investigate, then they’d want to see all the evidence intact.
She put the tiara back on the ground where she found it and carefully retraced her steps. She didn’t want to disrupt the crime scene any more than she already had.
As she made her way back, her fears began to creep up again, tickling her scalp like a thousand bugs crawling over her skin. By the time she stood beneath the opening in the stage floor and Felix’s face hovered above her, she’d never thought she could be so happy to see him.
Darcy’s face appeared next to Felix’s. He on the other hand, didn’t look particularly happy to see her. However, she didn’t exactly care at the moment. The monsters were converging again, the dusty floor pulling her under. With shaking hands, she reached up to Felix.
His strong hands gripped hers. Grunting, he hoisted her out of the pit of doom. She stumbled against him and her fingers curled automatically around his shirt, allowing his solid presence to soothe her frantic heartbeat, grounding her from the inexplicable terror that had consumed her down below.
“Are you all right?” Felix asked, his eyes scanning her face.
She wasn’t sure what expression she wore, but it made that crease form between his brows.
She nodded, but still hadn’t let go of his shirt. “Yeah. I found it.”
Felix inhaled sharply, indicating that he understood more than she was saying. Handing him back his phone, she reached into her pocket and pulled out the “missing” earring.
“Good. You found it.” Darcy clapped his hands. “So you’ll be on your way now.” He waved toward the stage stairs, in a polite “get the heck out” way.
Addison stayed put, her hand still gripping Felix’s shirt. “Is there any way out from under that stage? Does it go anywhere?”
Darcy frowned, clearly anxious to be rid of them. “Yes. It leads to a side entrance. Why?”
Addison let out the breath she was holding. “Bingo.” When Felix gave her a strange look, she made a mental note to come up with a better “aha” word. “Call the police. They’ll want to see what’s down there.”
“I’ve had just about enough police for one week,” Darcy said. “They’ve already completed their investigation.”
Felix ignored him. “What’s going on?”
“That’s how the dogs got out of the building. From underneath the stage. I found evidence down there.”
Without any more explanation, Felix pulled out his phone again and dialed. Addison managed to pry her hand free of him to replace her “found” earring.
Darcy’s face had turned red since she last looked at him. He glanced at his watch. “I have an event booked in this room in four hours. This was the last thing I needed today.”
Addison scowled. “I’m sure losing their beloved pets was the last thing the cocktail mixer guests needed too, but this might help them get the dogs back. So suck it up.”
Felix was half-listening to their conversation. His eyebrows rose at her lecture. She shrugged at him and he stifled a chuckle.
Darcy shut his trap, thankfully. But now that the subject had been broached and he was a bit sheepish, Addison decided to take advantage.
“Are there any cameras in this room?” she asked, scanning the corners.
“Only at the exits,” he said. “And before you ask, there isn’t one at the exit for beneath the stage. Only ones that guests would normally use.”
But Addison wasn’t thinking only about the dogs. She was thinking about her assistant. “Do you have access to the video footage from the cocktail mixer? Of the back alley exit?”
“Yes. But the police have that now.” He stiffened a little with self-importance. “Not that I would be able to show anyone if we did have them.”
Addison figured he’d say something like that.
“I can tell you that if it hadn’t been for your assistant neglecting the dogs for a cigarette, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“She didn’t neglect the dogs. She took a break.” She crossed her arms. “Maybe your facilities are to blame.” Then it dawned on her what he’d said. She paused. “How did you know she went out for a smoke?”
“Because the camera caught her heading outside holding a lighter and a pack of cigarettes. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out what she was doing.”
Felix covered the mouthpiece on the phone. “The police are on their way.”
Addison nodded in response. She was surprised at how well their investigation was going already, considering the only experience she had solving crimes was watching Sherlock Holmes. Even then, the context was a bit outdated.
The new evidence was good and bad. She was happy it supported Melody’s innocence. It didn’t completely absolve her, though, since she could have had a smoke while helping load up the dogs into a truck or something, but it certainly looked a whole lot better for her. However, with the discovery of the real escape route for the dogs, it opened up all new possibilities. Now the dognapper could have been almost anyone at the party.
Addison suddenly realized how much work they had ahead of them.