• eleven •

What crime was this, that lived incarnate in this sequestered mansion, and could neither be expelled nor subdued by the owner?—What mystery, that broke out, now in fire and now in blood, at the deadest hours of night?

—Jane Eyre

Luke’s brain had snapped into detective mode as soon as he saw the body. Katie’d become almost like a daughter to him over the last few months, but he had no time or brain-space to spare for the emotions that might have been stirred up by finding her like he did and hearing her Swiss-cheese story. “Just the facts, ma’am” had to be his motto now.

He strode through the hall and parlor, checking that no guests were lurking where they had no business to be, then entered the library and saw the back of a tropical tent topped by a porcupine pelt of bright fuchsia hair peering through the crack of the stairwell door. Just what he needed. Rita Spenser, aspiring paparazzi and scourge of Tillamook County. How had she gotten in here?

He cleared his throat and she jumped, sending shock waves through her muumuu. “Sheriff! You startled me, you naughty boy.” She wagged a sausagelike finger flirtatiously in his face. “What’s going on? The Wave reader wants to know.”

“The Wave reader will have to wait until I know something myself. Ms. Spenser, the public is not allowed in this room. This is a crime scene.” Swallowing his revulsion, he reached for her elbow to escort her out.

“Oh, but I’m not the public, I’m the press! You can’t throw me out.”

“Actually I can.” Legally he could; physically he wasn’t so sure. She must be twice his weight. He stepped around her and called through the crack of the doorway. “Pete? I need you out here.”

His deputy Pete hauled his six-foot-four frame and two-hundred-plus pounds of muscle out into the room. “What’s up, boss?”

“I need you to escort Ms. Spenser home. You can interview her on the way.”

Rita opened her mouth to protest, then took a good look at Pete’s handsome face, sleek blond hair, and impressive physique. Her protest gave way to a coquettish grin. “Well, fancy that, the interviewer being interviewed. I guess I can settle for that. For now.” She shot Luke a look that said “This isn’t over” and allowed Pete to lead her out.

Luke poked his head into the secret stairwell and saw the crime scene people already busy about the body. Rita must have snuck in on their heels.

He spoke to his other deputy, a petite redhead who looked like she ought to be teaching kindergarten instead of investigating a crime scene; but she knew her job, and Luke respected her for that. “Heather, I need you to take statements from the guests and the caterers—where they were when they heard the scream, whether they saw anyone in or near either end of these stairs or anyone who wasn’t where he was supposed to be. You know the drill. Pete’ll help you when he gets back. But leave the cast members to me.”

Luke took the main stairs two at a time. At the top landing he put on his loudspeaker voice.

“Folks, there’s been an accident. Jake Newhouse is dead.” The crowd broke into a buzz of shock and speculation. He held up his palm until they quieted down. “We’re looking into how it happened. I need you all to stay in the house, but stay out of that bedroom”—he pointed to Beatrice’s door—“and the library. I’ll get the caterers to put on more coffee in the dining room. My deputies will ask some of you to come talk to me in the library, and the rest of you they’ll interview themselves. As soon as you’ve been interviewed, you can go.”

He turned to Heather. “You set up in the back bedroom up here. Get the cast members to stay in easy call. Send Matthew Sweet down first, then I’ll want to see Cordelia Fitzgerald after that. When Pete gets back, he can start with the caterers, then help you with the guests.”

The library held the forlorn look of the aftermath of a party—the tables half cleared, dirty dishes piled on the side table, discarded napkins littering the floor. All the horror was hidden behind the curved bookcase door.

Luke caught one of the waiters in the hall and asked him to bring coffee. “We’ll need a pot in the library with a dozen or so cups. It’s going be a long night.”

Matthew appeared in the doorway, looking like a frightened sheep.

“Come on in, Matthew. I won’t bite.” Luke waved him to a chair and took out his phone to record the conversation, taking his own notes as a backup in case the battery died. He hated being out of his element like this, without his usual tools, but the advantages of interviewing people on the scene with no time lag, catching their reactions raw, outweighed the inconveniences.

The waiter brought in the coffee, and Luke gestured for him to pour two cups. He used his knuckles to push one of them toward the boy. “Have some coffee, you’re still white as a bleached shell.”

Matthew took a sip and made a face. Probably a soda drinker by choice. But he kept his hands wrapped around the cup. A half inch of pure white cuff showed below his coat sleeves. His starched shirtfront held a splotch of something, but it looked more like beef juice than human blood.

“Now tell me exactly what happened, from after you left the dining room till I met you in the stairwell.”

Matthew sat on the edge of his chair, his right foot jiggling. “I was the last to leave. I was supposed to be the ‘killer.’” He made air quotes around the word with shaking fingers. “Jake was supposed to go up first and wait for me in the secret stairwell. Then I was supposed to go up and ‘stab’ him with this.”

He stuck his hand in his trouser pocket and pulled out what looked like a jackknife. He pressed a button and a blade sprang out. “It’s plastic, see?” He positioned the blade against his opposite palm and pushed, and the blade slid back into the handle. “Completely harmless. Just enough pressure to burst the capsule of fake blood under his shirt.”

Luke held his hand out for the knife and ran his thumb over the point and edge. No way that prop could hurt anyone. He made a mental note to tell the ME to look out for fake blood mixed in with the real stuff.

“Gotcha. So that’s what was supposed to happen. What actually did happen?”

Matthew slumped back in his chair. “I went upstairs like I was supposed to. The kids that went before me were heading into different rooms like the script said. But this other guy was coming out of the main bedroom—some dude I’d never seen before.”

Luke sat up straighter. “Can you describe him?”

“Kinda short, dark, shaggy hair. Had on jeans and a rain poncho.”

“Young?”

“Maybe twenty or so? Older than me, but not old.”

That sounded like Roman. What business would he have on the second floor? “Did you speak to him?”

“No, he just pushed past me and headed for the attic stairs.”

“Okay, what then?”

“I went on into the bedroom. There was nobody there. Ms. Fitzgerald had shown me how to open the door to the secret stairs, but it was already open, just a crack. I went in there, thinking Jake would be waiting. But he wasn’t there.”

“Anyone else there?”

“I didn’t see anybody. It was dark, but I think I would’ve seen them if they were there.”

“Hear anything?”

Matthew shook his head.

“So then what did you do?”

“Nothing. I just waited there for Jake. Then I heard somebody scream. Made my hair stand on end. Couldn’t think. I just froze. Like you found me.”

Luke drummed his fingers against the table. “All right. Let’s back up. Did you know Jake apart from the play?”

“A little. Knew of him, that is. He was kind of a legend around school. But a few years ahead of me, so I didn’t run into him much. Since he graduated I haven’t seen him at all, till we started working on the play.”

“Any run-ins with him? Any conflict, say over a girl?”

Matthew barely shook his head, but his whole face and neck went as red as the tablecloth.

Luke put on his sympathetic-uncle voice. “I’d be surprised if there was a guy in this county who hadn’t run up against Jake over a girl.”

Matthew mumbled into his chest. “Well, there was this one girl I liked. But she liked Jake better.”

Luke sat back and waited. The boy needed to tell someone. It would come.

“It was a while ago.” Matthew bit at his thumbnail. “Last summer. I went to this party where I knew I’d see her. She did dance with me once, but then she went off for a Coke and started acting crazy. I mean, she was all over the place, not like herself at all. Later I saw her go upstairs. With Jake.” He looked up at Luke, his eyes suddenly fierce. “Jake was a real dick, if you want to know the truth. I didn’t kill him, but I’m not sorry he’s dead.”

Luke found himself believing the boy. “Just one more thing. Do you carry a pocketknife?”

“A pocketknife? Sure, who doesn’t?”

“May I see it?”

“It’s at home. I had that prop knife and I didn’t want to load down my pockets too much—it would look bad in this suit.” He spoke simply, naturally, his eyes steady on Luke’s.

Luke stood. “All right, Matthew, you can go. But I’m gonna need that shirt. You got something else to wear?”

“Yeah, we all came in our regular clothes and changed upstairs.”

“Leave the shirt with the officer at the door. Not planning to leave town anytime soon, are you?”

“No, sir.”

“Send Ms. Fitzgerald in before you go.”

As soon as Matthew was out of the room, Luke used a napkin to pick up the boy’s cup by the handle. He emptied the leftover coffee into a dirty cup and dropped Matthew’s into an evidence bag—one of several he’d snagged from the crime scene team. He labeled the bag, then poured coffee into a fresh cup and set it on the table in front of the empty chair.

Cordelia Fitzgerald posed in the doorway, one hand clinging to the jamb, the other at her forehead. Her dress, dark red trimmed in black, blended with the party hangings. “I am shattered, Lieutenant Richards. Absolutely shattered. Who could have dreamed my innocent little play would end so tragically? I blame myself entirely. How can I ever face that poor boy’s parents? So young, so charming, so talented. Such a dreadful loss.”

Luke raised one eyebrow. First time he’d heard Jake described that way. He’d have expected most who knew him to agree with Matthew’s “real dick.”

He waved toward the empty chair. “Sit down and have some coffee.” He looked her over, then picked up a bottle of brandy and gestured with it. “Maybe a drop of this?”

Cordelia floated toward the table, one hand at her tightly corseted side. “Thank you. A little reviver would be most welcome.” She sank gracefully into the chair, head back and arm dangling.

Luke tipped a tablespoon of brandy into her cup and sat down. “You blame yourself? Now why would that be?”

Cordelia sat up straight and gripped the edge of the table with both hands. “Why, because I cast him as the victim, of course. What else could you think I meant?”

“I think his role as the victim was probably just a coincidence, don’t you?”

“How can I know what to think?” She fluttered her hands, rings flashing. At some point she’d ditched the elbow-length black gloves she’d had on before dinner. “I don’t even know what happened. Only that he died in the secret stairway, where the stage murder was supposed to take place. Did he lose his way in the dark and fall down the stairs? Oh, I knew I should have arranged for more light in there! You see, it is my fault after all!”

Luke clenched his jaw. Give him a dead body over a drama queen any day. “No reason at all for you to count yourself responsible, ma’am. We’re just trying to nail down exactly what happened. Now, if you’ll tell me how the pretend murder was supposed to play out, we can start to figure out where it went wrong.”

“Very well.” Cordelia took her cup of spiked coffee daintily by the handle and drank deeply. “Everything went according to plan up through the actors leaving the table. You saw all that, I suppose?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Jake was supposed to go straight to the top of the secret stairway and wait there for Matthew. Matthew was to leave the table after the others and go directly to the stairway as well. Then he would pretend to stab Jake, go down the stairs, and leave by the library entrance. The guests would have been dismissed upstairs by then, so no one would see him. Jake, poor soul, would just have to lie there, quite still, until the game was solved.”

“He was supposed to stay at the top of the stairs?”

She nodded, dabbing her eyes again.

“All right.” That squared with Matthew’s account. “Now tell me what you did yourself.”

“Moi?” Her heavily made-up eyes widened till she looked like a porcelain doll. “Well, yes, all right. I arrived about three o’clock—”

“I don’t need the whole day, ma’am. Just from when you left the dinner table.”

“Oh! Oh, I see. Yes. I was seated in here—at that table, between my players and the hall door, so I could keep an eye on things. Give a little prompt if necessary. They are dear children, so enthusiastic, but when you’re improvising, you know, it’s easy for things to get a little off track now and then.”

Like her story. But she was the kind you had to let talk—up to a point, anyway.

“Everything went smoothly, I must say. I was quite proud of my little cast. Jake left at the perfect dramatic moment, and the others timed their exits appropriately. After Matthew left the room, I waited exactly ninety seconds. We had that part timed precisely.” She put her hand into her beaded handbag and pulled out a small watch of the type meant to be pinned to the chest. “I kept my watch in here to be inconspicuous. At any rate, ninety seconds, and then I went out into the hall and made my announcement to the different rooms. You heard that, I suppose?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then I went upstairs as planned. I checked on everyone’s position; all the actors were in the various bedrooms where they were supposed to be. I didn’t check on Matthew and Jake, though; guests were coming up behind me, it would have been too obvious.”

“Anyone supposed to be in the master bedroom besides Jake and Matthew?”

“No, only those two.”

“Did you see anyone upstairs besides the cast members? Before the guests began to arrive, that is?”

“Not another soul.”

Luke frowned. He didn’t much care for the way the field was narrowing down. “Exactly where were you when you heard the scream?”

“In the hall outside the master bedroom. I’d just opened the door—surreptitiously, you understand—so the guests could begin to investigate there.”

“Any of the guests behave suspiciously in any way?”

“Not that I could see. They all seemed excited, anticipating, just as they ought to be.” Cordelia drooped back in her chair, one hand to her forehead again. “If you’re finished with me, Lieutenant—I’m feeling a trifle faint. All this has been terribly upsetting. I’d like to go home.”

“One more thing. Did anyone other than the cast know exactly how the game would go?”

“Not a soul. At least, they didn’t hear it from me.”

“All right. I think we’re done here. Just leave me your contact info in case we need to clear anything up later.” He pushed his notebook and pen toward her across the table and noted that she wrote with her left hand. He hadn’t been able to tell from the wound which hand the killer had used, but the postmortem would no doubt reveal all.

“Oh, and I’ll need your gloves.”

“My gloves! Whatever for?”

“Just routine.” Whoever invented that phrase deserved a medal.

“Oh, very well.” She opened her handbag again and pulled out a folded pair of black gloves. “But I’ll need them back. They’re rented, like all the costumes.”

“Leave them with the officer at the door and he’ll give you a receipt. If they’re clean, you’ll get them back in a few days.” And if they weren’t—well, then he’d have his murderer. But he highly doubted it would be that simple.