Chapter 67
Now or Never Was the Time to Turn My Knowledge to Account
By the time the last note of “The Phantom of the Opera” died away, I was waiting for my two so-called friends to come offstage. They both had to be in on the game.
Madison rushed up and hugged me around the waist. “Ivy, you were awesome!”
I turned to see Desirée, who had a sheepish grin on her face. “She snuck in. I just found her.”
“No way I was going to miss you and Logan,” said Madison.
“But it’s time to go home now, sweetie,” Desirée said. A brown-skinned beauty brushed past us, wearing a tiny bikini on her plus-sized body. “This show is for grown-ups.”
“But,” said a voice behind us, “it’s also an education in the various forms of beauty.”
“Eden!” Madison ran to Eden, whose face and arms were covered with white makeup. “You were so scary. And Logan,” she said as he walked up, “how did you do it?”
Patience is a virtue, patience is a virtue, I repeated silently to myself. Of course I’d heard the old adage growing up, but Uncle Bob had drummed it into my head.
“It’s an illusion called Pepper’s Ghost that involves projections and reflections,” Logan said.
I heard my uncle’s voice in my head: “When you’re trying to catch somebody up, you gotta play it just right. Like you’re making biscuits. You gotta add the ingredients one by one, mix them carefully, knead the whole thing, apply heat, and finally, bam!” He did that Emeril Lagassi thing. “Hot biscuits.”
“Pepper’s Ghost has been around since the early 1800s,” Logan said. “It’s what they use in Disney’s Haunted Mansion.”
I’d planned to confront Logan by himself, but this was even better. More witnesses, and protection in case he tried anything.
“The hardest part was figuring out how to dance with a reflection. But Eden was great.” He smiled at her. “We rehearsed a lot.”
Patience, patience...
“I love ballroom dance,” said Eden.
“Can you teach me how?” asked Madison.
“Sure.”
Okay, patience might be a virtue but…“I can’t wait for hot biscuits.” Oops, didn’t mean to say that aloud. “Logan, I need to talk to you.”
“You too,” he said. “I think I found a kimono for you. Red—scarlet, really—and only ten bucks on eBay.”
“Ooh, a kimono,” said Madison. “I want one too. It’d be cool to wear in the dressing room. Maybe we could make it magic too? Like our panties.”
“Logan,” I said more firmly.
“I love my magic panties,” Logan said to Eden.
“A magic kimono sounds awesome.” She smiled at him.
“This is not about kimonos,” I said. “This is about Babette.” I took a deep breath. “Logan, you were in league with her. I have proof. In Babette’s own writing.”
No one spoke for a moment.
“Well...um...I...” Logan looked at the floor, then at Eden.
“It’s okay,” she said. “It won’t change anything between us.”
Maybe not, but whatever he was doing with Candy probably would. I kept that quiet for now. First things first. “So,” I said, “you and Babette?”
Logan sighed. “Babette had heard about the Lady in White. It’s one of the reasons she came here to scout for talent. She knew she could spin the story for PR. And once she got here, she took one look at that chandelier and decided that would be a great story.”
“You rigged the chandelier to fall, right? You’re the only one with the technical skill—”
“Thank you.”
“Could you check your ego for a minute? You could have killed someone.”
“No.” Logan shook his head.
I barreled ahead. Definitely not waiting for biscuits. “And you know all the secret passageways in the theater.”
“Secret passageways?” said Madison. “Cool.”
“I’ll show you later,” said Logan.
“I don’t think—” began Desirée.
“People,” I nearly shouted, “I am trying to accuse Logan of a crime.”
That shut them up. Except for Logan. “No. I didn’t hurt anyone. Well, not intentionally.”
“Babette hired you to cause the accidents, right?” I said.
“Not exactly.” Logan screwed up his face in embarrassment. “I thought the whole thing was a souped-up theatrical publicity stunt, sort of like the missing filmmakers on the Blair Witch Project or when they hired singing vampires to roam the streets of New York to publicize Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory.”
“Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory?” I said. “Is that real or are you trying to distract me?”
“Both.” Logan sighed. “Babette said that the accidents would be harmless pranks, but she’d make sure they got huge media attention and that she’d introduce me as the mastermind behind the stunts. No one was supposed to get hurt, not even the chandelier. I rigged it to fall, but also to stop about ten feet from everyone’s head, like what happens in a production of The Phantom of the Opera. I don’t know what went wrong. Maybe the ceiling wasn’t as strong as I thought. I felt awful. I’m so glad no one was critically injured.”
I didn’t say anything about Normina, the Wicked Witch of the East. After all, he did say “critically.”
“Babette was pretty pissed—she had to fork out some big bucks to get the show back on its feet right away.”
“What about the other accidents?”
“The bloody painting and the runaway, those were me. Again, I planned them so that they wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
“That’s why you were so upset when that techie grabbed the rope,” I said. “But the bloody painting—Babette hired you to squirt blood in her face?” She had looked terrified.
Logan smiled. “She gave me free reign on that one. I may have taken it a little too far.”
“Nah.” Eden slung her arm through his. “It was awesome.”
“That’s really why I hid in the wardrobe in your dressing room that one time,” Logan said. “Babette was on the warpath.”
I took a deep breath. Time to turn up the heat. “I have to go to the police. Even if Babette’s death was an accident rather than murder—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop right there,” said Logan. “You think I murdered Babette?”
I thought it was Candy, but he was the one I had on the hook and I had to get him to admit he was hiding her. “I think you hated everything she stood for—conspicuous consumption, a fake ideal of beauty, fame without talent. I think you were close enough to Babette that she would have let you into her hotel room after we left.” The more I said, the more I wondered if it was Logan after all. “I think she was blackmailing you over the accidents. I think that whoever caused those accidents caused another one. With Botox.”
“No.” It didn’t come from just Logan. It came from all four of them.