Being Sage McCormick was fun.
Jane had never thought of herself as an extrovert, but she did enjoy being in this costume, and she enjoyed seeing the children so excited. Thanks to the cast of the dinner theater, she was quickly at ease answering all manner of questions, telling kids and adults alike the history of the theater and how she had disappeared one night. “I was suspected of all kinds of terrible things,” she told them, emoting more than she’d realized she could, “but now people know—I was murdered right in the theater and buried under the floorboards!”
Posing for pictures and playing the part of Sage was good; it distracted her from worrying about Sloan.
It was a foolish thing to do, she reminded herself. He’d signed on the line that he was willing to give his life for his work; she had done the same.
She loved her job. She had to go where her work took her and her real home was Arlington, Virginia, where the Krewe units had their offices and where she’d found the town house she loved. Okay, so she could leave a home. But she was an important part of her Krewe, and they solved cases when others couldn’t.
Not that Sloan had asked her to do anything, or vice versa; they’d slept together once. She didn’t regret it.
No, she really wanted to do it again....
But whatever their involvement, it didn’t matter; she’d be worried about anyone investigating a murder. Law enforcement officers everywhere signed up for this, and it didn’t stop those who cared about them from worrying about it.
“Hey, time for the old shoot-out,” Cy said, nudging Brian.
“The shoot-out.” Brian grinned at Jane. “I love this part of the show!”
“Well, of course he loves it—he gets to be fastest on the draw,” Valerie said.
“The things we’ll do for art!” Cy said. “Yeah, sadly, I’m Mean Bill Jenkins and Brian gets to play Savage Sam Osterly. And Osterly outdrew Jenkins.”
Henri Coque was back at his podium. “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, make way, if you please! Not long after the lynching of Aaron Munson, the streets of Lily grew even wilder! Sheriff Fogerty struggled to hold on to a deputy, but men were afraid in Lily. He did his best to protect the law, and he turned a blind eye to the men who fought in the streets. On January 17, 1873, two of the meanest, most vicious outlaws ever to come to town met on Main Street, right here, ready to duel it out. They say it was over a chorus girl from the saloon.”
As he spoke, Cy walked out onto the street and waved to the crowd.
For a moment, Jane was distracted. She turned to look back at the Gilded Lily.
There was definitely someone at her bedroom window.
“Mean Bill Jenkins fought on the Union side during the war. He was something of a hero when he was with his Indiana unit at Gettysburg, or so the history books tell us,” Henri said.
Jane turned back to watch the action.
Cy raised his hat, smiled proudly and bowed to the audience—among them, many admiring women.
“But,” Henri announced, “when the war was over, he took up with a group of Kentucky Rebels and Yanks—and they weren’t the kind who robbed banks nicely and kept from killing people. Not like our dashing Trey Hardy!”
Cy paused midsmile and frowned at Henri.
“Sorry,” Henri said as an aside, bringing a rise of laughter from the crowd. “Mean Bill Jenkins was as mean as they got! Oh, yeah, mean and vicious, through and through.”
The temptation to look back was strong. Jane did so. The ghost of Sage McCormick remained. She was staring at Jane. She shook her head; her ghostly hand slammed against the window.
What the hell was she trying to say?
“Yes,” Henri Coque repeated, “mean and vicious, through and through.”
Cy shrugged, and made fists of his hands.
“So,” Henri continued, “on this day, late in the afternoon, after both men were liquored up, Mean Bill challenged Savage Sam to a duel!”
Behind Henri, Valerie raised a sign that told the audience to say “Oooh!”
The audience complied.
“Now Savage Sam...” Henri paused as Brian stepped out onto the road, “was a man who kowtowed to no government!”
Brian stood straight and accepted the cheers of the crowd.
“No, he was just a vicious killer.”
It was Brian’s turn to stare at Henri.
“Hey, that’s history!” Henri told him.
Brian sighed and his shoulders slumped, but then he, too, straightened and twisted his lips in a sneer.
“Yes, friends, it was over the love of a woman!”
“Me! Me!” Valerie said, rushing forward.
“No, it would be over me!” Alice argued, pushing her way into view.
“Sorry, the identity of the woman was never written down in the history books. She was just one of many bawdy-house women plying their trade in Lily,” Henri said.
“Oh, let’s see—bawdy woman. That would be you!” Valerie said sweetly to Alice. Alice drew back her arm as if she was going to throw a punch. Mike Addison slipped quickly between them. “Hey, the duel was between the men!”
“No, let’s have a catfight!” someone yelled from the crowd.
There was a lot of laughter at that. When it calmed down, Henri said, “The men asked Sheriff Fogerty himself to call the duel. Oh, wait, that’s me!” He walked down from the podium and stood between the men on the street. “Twenty paces, men.”
The duel progressed. As it did, the amusement Jane had been feeling began to fade.
They were actors, she reminded herself. Playing with blanks.
“Twenty paces!” Henri called again.
Brian and Cy made faces at each other and turned to walk their paces.
“And now...” Henri said.
Both men stood still, forty feet from each other.
“Ready!” Henri called.
They swung around.
Jane looked back at the window. Sage remained there, shaking her head.
She wanted the duel stopped. Why? Did she know something?
Jane was terrified that if the duel went through, someone was really going to die.
“Aim!” Henri shouted.
It was quite possibly one of the stupidest things she’d ever done, but she couldn’t stop the abject fear that swept through her.
She burst out into the middle of the road between the men, arriving a split second before Henri could call, “Fire!”
“Wait! Wait!” she shouted. She had no idea where’d go from there, but she started speaking, saying whatever came to mind. “People died back then because they weren’t smart enough just to have a conversation. Now we’re living in a new time, a new day—and I’m sure you gentlemen are smart enough to have a conversation and work it all out!”
She looked back and forth between Cy and Brian; they stared at her blankly and then looked at Henri. Henri frowned at Jane, then shrugged.
“Hey, come on, shoot it out!” someone cried from the audience.
“No! Enough violence. We’ve already had a lynching,” Jane said. “Think how cool it would be if Congress actually talked with one another.”
She was grateful that those words brought more laughter; she was swaying the crowd. “Now you guys...neither of you is really mean and vicious. You just need a hug, right?”
She smiled at the laughter she received.
“All in favor of a peaceful discussion, raise your hands!”
She was still afraid she was going to lose. She might be entertaining the crowd, but they’d come to see a duel.
To her astonishment, she got help from an unexpected source. Valerie came bursting onto the scene. “No shooting, gentlemen! How will the play go on tonight if we lose one of you?”
Not to be upstaged, Alice Horton, vamping it up, ran out, as well. “And we all know that a good bad girl loves a bad boy with a story—the strong but silent type, you know?”
“Talk it out, talk it out, talk it out!”
Jane was grateful when the crowd took up the chant.
“Give me your weapons, boys!”
They handed them over. She didn’t dare take a chance on looking at them then; she had to make sure her improvised charade went on.
“Now say you’re sorry for flying off the handle, Mean Bill Jenkins!” she told Cy.
His blue eyes touched hers with curiosity and a surprised admiration. She smiled at him, silently thanking him for playing his part.
“Oh, all right! I’m sorry, Savage Sam. I think you got you a fittin’ girl now, and I’m going to get me one, too.”
“Oh, yes!” Valerie said, running to throw herself into Cy’s arms.
“Well, there you go!” Henri said. “The gunfight that wasn’t. Damned good thing we’re not at the O.K. Corral! Hey, everyone, take a gander at all the activities out back. Kids, you can mine sand for silver. Ladies, you can buy some great jewelry. And don’t forget that while you’re in town, you can catch these fine folks performing for you every night at the Gilded Lily!”
Jane stood still in the street for a moment, feeling grateful on the one hand, ridiculous on the other.
A little boy walked by saying, “I thought there was going to be a gunfight!”
He wasn’t happy.
But a cluster of twenty-something young people walked by and the tallest among them was talking excitedly, “See, I told you. It’s great to come out here. They’re not stupid, they keep changing it up!”
“Who would’ve figured?” Henri Coque said, walking up to her. He shook his head. “Never saw you as a drama queen, much less someone who’d be so quick with improv.”
“Seemed like a fun thing to try. As a law enforcement officer in the twenty-first century, of course,” she said.
“And it was good!” Valerie said enthusiastically, coming up beside her. “Jennie still hasn’t shown up. She usually screams and cries and falls down in tears, saying she’s Jenkins’s mother.”
“There’s something wrong if Jennie isn’t here,” Henri said, frowning. “Valerie, will you run in there and see if she’s in her room?”
“I’m not going in the Gilded Lily by myself!” Valerie said. “Even our staff is all out on the street now. I can’t go in there alone.”
“I’ll go,” Jane said. “Which room is Jennie’s?”
“She’s next to Brian and Brian is next to you,” Henri explained. “You don’t mind? Thank you! I hope she’s okay.” His voice was worried.
Jane nodded and hurried into the Gilded Lily. It did seem strange to be in the theater when it was so silent. The main doors behind the old Western slatted doors were open; apparently, Henri wasn’t worried about break-ins, but then it was true that everyone who belonged in the theater was pretty much right in front of it.
Jane ran up the stairs and realized she was still clutching the antique guns Cy and Brian had been about to use for the duel reenactment. Before going to Jennie’s room, she went to her own and inspected the guns. They were replica Colt 45s, also known as Peacemakers, each with a cylinder that held six metallic cartridges. She opened the cylinders, and the cartridges fell out. The bullets from the one gun were obviously blanks.
From the other...
She had learned to shoot; she knew the action of her own gun. She also knew the most important thing about any gun—when loaded and in the wrong hands, it beat brawn every time.
She wasn’t sure about the cartridges. She left both guns, emptied, on her bed, and stashed the blanks and the questionable cartridges in tissues and then in one of her shoes.
Then she ran down the hall and knocked on Jennie’s door. There was no answer. She called the woman’s name. Still no answer. She tried the door—which was open. Hesitantly walking in, she continued to call the woman’s name.
Jennie wasn’t in the bathroom or anywhere in the room. Jane felt a growing sense of unease and even checked under the bed. Again, no sign of her.
Coming out of the room, she saw Sage McCormick. The ghost was waiting for her on the second landing by the stairs, and as Jane approached her, Sage drifted down the stairs. She walked around to the bar and behind it.
Puzzled, Jane followed her.
Sage went through the door at the far end of the stage. Jane opened the door to a set of stairs that led to the basement, now the costume storage area.
Where Sage’s skull had been found.
Jane carefully went down the stairs. It was broad daylight outside, she reminded herself, and when she tried the switch on the wall, the basement flooded with light.
Sage kept moving.
The basement seemed to run the entire length of the theater. From the stairway, Jane could see the rows of wigs that now sat on mannequin heads, old and new. Most of them had faces either carved into them or drawn on them; they were supposed to be artistic, Jane supposed. Mostly, they were grotesque.
She was, however, glad to see no skulls among them.
She walked around the center of the main room.
There were racks hung with costumes, most of them now conserved in cases. There were shoes, canes, stage guns, props and boxes everywhere. She saw no sign of Jennie.
“Jennie?” Jane called out.
No one answered her.
She realized there were three rooms that led off the main section of the basement; they were separated by foundation walls. There were no doors, just arched separations with handsome wood carved designs as if someone, long ago, had determined that a theater must be beautiful—even in the storage areas.
Jane made her way through crates and boxes to the first of the rooms.
It contained more crates and boxes.
Irritated, she shook her head.
“Where are you?” she whispered aloud.
The ghost had gone through the door—and then disappeared. But Sage had brought her here for a reason.
And then disappeared.
“You could be more helpful,” she said. But then again, if she was right and the ammo in the one Peacemaker was live, the ghost had been a great deal of help; she’d saved a man from dying.
But if it was live...
Then someone here was setting people up to die.
The thought chilled her, and she walked into the last room, the one closest to the Old Jail Bed and Breakfast. In fact, it almost seemed as if she was under the Old Jail.
This room was different. The light from the main room didn’t seem to reach far enough and she couldn’t find another switch. The one bulb down here illuminated the main room and stretched as far as the second room. By the third room...
The third room was filled with shadows. As she walked toward it, she stopped for a minute.
It was creepy, mostly shadowed—and crowded with mannequins. Some of them were poor, barely more than two-dimensional, and held theatrical billboards. Some of them were excellently crafted and wearing costumes or cloaks from the many decades the theater had been in existence. Some were old movie props, collected fifty-plus years ago.
Some were headless.
And some had heads with faces that offered very real expressions of anger, fear, hope, happiness—and evil. Some were lined up. Some were falling over on one another.
“Ah, Sage, where are you?” she asked.
At first, there was nothing. Her little pencil flashlight was back in her room; she hadn’t thought to stuff that in a pocket with her cell phone.
She wondered if it was better to see—or not see—the mannequins. Coming close to one, she saw that it was a mannequin of a Victorian woman, carved from wood.
The eyes were huge, made of blue glass. The mouth was a circle, as if the woman had witnessed the greatest terror on earth.
A placard hung from the wrist. Jane stooped to read it. Come One, Come All. Come Scream! The Gilded Lily Brings You The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde!
Turning from the mannequin, Jane bumped right into a mannequin of Mr. Hyde.
She almost screamed but managed to swallow down the sound.
Federal agents don’t scream at the sight of mannequins! she chastised herself.
Something swung toward her—an arm. A gasp escaped her and then she laughed softly. Backing away from Mr. Hyde, she’d pushed a replica of King Lear.
“Sage!” she whispered.
She was stunned when, in response, she heard a groan.
So far, Sage McCormick’s voice had been silent; it was unlikely that the ghost had suddenly decided to groan.
“Jennie! Jennie, is that you? Are you down here? Are you hurt?”
She began to squeeze her way through the mannequins. In the eerie light, some seemed real, as if they could come to life. Among them were chorus girls and cancan dancers, fan dancers, handsome men in tuxes. And wolf men and grisly zombies and vampires....
She heard the groan again.
That wasn’t the ghost, she was sure of it—and definitely not the mannequins.
A deranged-looking figure in a straitjacket held a cleaver high. The cleaver was plastic, although the mannequin was creepy. Out on the street it had probably drawn many to the theater; by day it would be a come-on to those who wanted to be a little scared by their entertainment.
Ignore the mannequins. They aren’t real.
“Jennie?” she called again. The mannequins might not be real, but they made it very hard to find someone who was.
“Go ahead. Try to scare me. I am ignoring you,” Jane said aloud. She laughed at herself and admitted that the mannequins scared the hell out of her. She determinedly wound her way around some shrieking harpy and a man with a fly’s head.
Again, it seemed that one of them, a man in a turn-of-the-century tux, swung around to touch her and knock her in the arm. She almost cried out in surprise, but realized she’d pushed another mannequin into it and the thing had moved.
She heard the groan again.
Another mannequin with a wide-open circular mouth was in front of her, holding up a book. She scooted by it and at last found the flesh-and-blood woman she sought.
Jennie was crumpled on the floor, lying on her back. Her eyes were closed and a trickle of blood had dried on her forehead.
“Oh, Jennie,” Jane cried, digging in the pocket of her skirt for her cell phone as she knelt down by the woman, clasping her wrist to test the strength of her pulse.
It was weak.
“Jennie, stay with me. I’m getting help right away,” she said.
Even as she spoke, she felt as if there was a tap on her shoulder. She looked up. Sage McCormick was with her again, in front of her, between Jennie’s crumpled body and a row of frontier schoolboys.
She had a look of terror on her face and she waved an arm frantically.
It was a warning to turn around.
Jane started to do so. She felt a whoosh of air and briefly saw the twisted face of a madman wearing a pork pie hat, lips pulled back over teeth that were bared and yellow.
It seemed to be coming at her.
She felt the slam of something hard and heavy against her head.
She crashed down on Jennie’s prone body.
* * *
Jane didn’t answer her cell phone when Sloan called. That worried him instantly; someone like Jane would always have her phone handy, ready for any emergency. He called Chet, who was working Main Street, and asked him to find her.
“I don’t see her right now,” Chet said, “but, boy, did I see her earlier! She got into the action on the street. She was great! She was funny, and she switched the whole scene. They didn’t have the shoot-out. She turned it into a totally different scene, with the girls from the show and the guys hamming it up. She’s a natural!”
“Chet, I’m glad to hear that, but I need to speak with her now.”
“Sure. I’ll look for her. Want me to call you back?”
“No, I want you to stay on the line until you find her.”
Sloan sat on a chunk of rock that had fallen to the floor when they’d caved in the shaft entrance. He glanced over at the body beneath the tarp, his mind racing. He’d already called Liam Newsome; he and his crime team and the medical examiner were on their way. Sloan rued the fact that there were no real roads back here and nothing was easy once you were this far into the desert.
“What’s happening now?” Johnny asked him as time ticked by.
“Chet asked Henri Coque where Jane went. Henri said she’s looking for Jennie and he hasn’t seen either of them since.”
Sloan turned his attention back to Chet. “Where’s she looking?”
“In the theater.”
“Well, get in there and find her!” Sloan said.
He waited; Chet eventually came back on the line. “I’ve been to her room, I’ve been in the theater, behind the stage, back of the bar, in the kitchen. She’s not here, Sloan.”
Sloan cursed and stood. “I’m on my way in,” he said. “Get everyone looking for her, Chet. I mean everyone. Tear the town apart.”
“We’re needed here,” Chet argued. “We’ve got a town full of people and some of them are getting drunk and a little rowdy—”
“Find her,” he broke in. “Everyone on it. We’ve just come across another victim.”
“Who—”
“Just find her, Chet. Now,” Sloan ordered.
He hung up, feeling so frantic he was ready to crash through the rock walls.
“I will deal with Newsome,” Johnny said. “I will tell him that the boulder was loose, and that you suspected there might be mischief going on in here, like you said when you called him.”
“Thanks.” Sloan had already pocketed his bug.
He cursed himself. He had known there was illicit activity in the mine, and he’d wanted to catch someone doing something.
He hadn’t expected this.
He paused, glancing down at the body they’d discovered. It was that of Caleb Hough, the big-shot, bigmouthed rancher who thought his son should get away with everything. Sloan hadn’t liked the man. But he wasn’t happy to see him come to this.
He lay in a pool of blood. He hadn’t been shot execution-style. It appeared that he’d taken a knife wound to the gut, and when he’d doubled over, stunned by the attack, a second person had gotten him from behind, slashing his throat with such force that he’d almost been decapitated.
“Go,” Johnny told him.
Sloan nodded, backing out the way he’d come in. He whistled and Roo trotted over; he told Kanga that she had to wait for Johnny. People said horses didn’t really understand commands, that they responded to a tone of voice, but Sloan thought that his animals did understand him. Kanga whinnied and stayed as he had commanded. She went back to eating grass and, for a moment, Sloan wished he was a horse.
The trail back seemed long, even though he kept up a mental argument with himself—would it be faster to ride to Main Street or get his patrol car?
He opted for the car.
When he reached the theater, he found that whether Chet agreed with his command or not, he’d carried it out. The cast, crew, waiters, waitresses and everyone involved with the theater seemed to be combing it inch by inch. He’d met up with one of the county men outside who’d assured him that his people were searching the campsites, settler tents, saloon and stores.
Sloan went back to Jane’s room, trying to discern if she’d been there recently and if she’d left anything that might give him a clue as to her whereabouts.
Her room was empty. Nothing seemed to indicate that she’d been there since her stint as Sage, standing by the window.
He left the room and went down the stairs, almost crashing into Henri. “You checked all the dressing rooms, the stage—”
“Everywhere,” Henri swore. “As you know, Jane volunteered to come in and search for Jennie, since we haven’t seen her all day. The last time I saw Jane, she was walking into the theater. But she could’ve come back out. We could’ve been distracted. There’s a lot going on.”
“The basement—you looked in the basement?”
“Of course.” Henri nodded. “I’ve been down there. So have Cy and Brian.”
“I’ll try again, anyway. That place is a mass of crates and boxes and clothing. Anyone who was hurt down there might not be easily seen,” Sloan said.
“I went down there,” Henri repeated. “But...I’ll go down again with you.”
“I’ll go. Keep looking around up here,” Sloan told him.
He headed through the door and down to the basement. As Henri had said, when he reached the landing and the main room, he didn’t see a thing. He shoved aside boxes and crates, costumes, even the wig stands. Frustrated, he moved into the first room, then the second, and finally he went into the third. Mannequins stood and stared at him from the shadows. They looked like an army of the ridiculous, assembled to protect the interior of the room.
He almost jumped when his cell phone rang. He was surprised that he had service in the basement. The shadows were so deep that he couldn’t read caller ID. He answered quickly. “Sheriff Trent.”
“Sloan,” a voice said. For a moment it sounded as if his name was being spoken by the killer in a slasher movie, the tone was so distorted.
“Yes, it’s Sloan Trent. Who the hell is this?”
“Jane. It’s Jane.”
There seemed to be an echo, and he realized it was because he was hearing her speak in the room at the same time as he heard her speak over the phone.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Probably about fifteen feet in front of you, since I heard your phone ring,” she said “I’m getting up.”
He started, jumping back, as theatrically clad mannequins began to topple over and fall against one another.
“Jane!”
He slid the phone in his pocket and began to crawl over the mannequins. One seemed to rise before him; seconds later, he saw that it was Jane.
“What the hell?” he demanded as he reached her.
In the dim light, she might truly have been part of the theater’s history. Her hair was coming loose from the chignon she’d been wearing and she seemed very pale in her blue period dress. She wavered as she stood, and he pushed past the creature in the pork pie hat to steady her.
She brought her hand to her head. “Something...someone knocked me out,” she told him. “I’m all right, but Jennie...” She stepped back, and he saw Jennie lying on the floor, and his heart leaped to his throat.
“She’s alive, unconscious,” Jane said. “I don’t think anything’s broken. Can you get her out of here? I don’t have the strength right now.”
“It’s not ideal to move an injured person but I’ll definitely get Jennie out. Help can’t even reach her in here.” He paused long enough to hit speed dial and tell Chet to call for paramedics immediately.
He ducked down and lifted the slender woman in his arms.
“You’re sure you can manage?” he asked Jane gruffly. He was frightened, and his fear was making him angry, but he wanted to get Jennie to a hospital and have Jane checked out before he let emotion rule his actions.
“Yes,” she told him. “And I don’t believe Jennie has any broken bones. Someone knocked her on the head, too. Her pulse is decent.”
“Go up the stairs ahead of me.”
He heard activity at the door to the basement.
“I can hear them! He’s found her!” Henri Coque shouted to someone at the top of the stairs.
Sloan was heedless of what he knocked over as he carefully made his way back to the main room and toward the stairs, following Jane. Her first steps were clumsy, but she recovered her balance, and Henri was there to help her up the stairs. When Sloan got to the landing, he saw a group awaiting them, all wide-eyed and worried. He noticed Henri first, and then Valerie, Alice, Cy and two of the night restaurant staff.
“Back off, please,” Sloan said. “Let’s make sure she has air!”
“Oh, Jennie!” Valerie Mystro cried in dismay.
They moved back, a stricken expression on every face.
“What happened?” Henri asked, sounding lost.
Yes, what the hell had happened? Sloan wondered. As he walked slowly through the bar to the center of the restaurant, Liz, the waitress, rushed ahead, clearing one of the longer dinner tables. Sloan came forward to lay Jennie down. As he did, the swinging doors to the Gilded Lily swung open, and Chet hurried through, leading two paramedics in uniform and bearing black medical bags. They immediately began to work over the prone Jennie, while asking questions regarding her injury.
Sloan listened while Jane replied that no one had known where Jennie was, so she’d gone down to the basement and heard her groaning and finally found her, only to be knocked on the head herself.
“Knocked on the head?” Henri burst out. “But...”
“Those stupid mannequins!” Valerie said.
“A mannequin did not knock her on the head,” Alice protested, “but those old bastards can hurt you. One of them fell on me when I first came to the theater and went to look at them, thinking they were so cool.”
“They’re evil, Henri! We should get them out of here,” Valerie said.
The paramedics started an IV on Jennie. One of them talked on his radio, and a minute later, two other emergency workers joined them, bearing a stretcher. The oldest of the group turned to Jane. “You come to the hospital, too. Head injuries can be dangerous.”
“I’m fine, really. I—”
“You need a scan. You could have a concussion,” Sloan said harshly. He took her by the arm. “We’re going to the hospital.”
“Sloan!”
“The hospital!”
“But...we don’t know what happened!” Henri said.
“All I know is that I found Jennie on the floor. I got my cell phone out to call for help, and the next thing I knew...I was waking up on the floor myself,” Jane told him.
Sloan was torn; he didn’t want Jane going to the hospital without him and he didn’t want anyone crawling around in the basement until he’d done the initial investigation himself.
“Chet,” he barked, calling his deputy.
“Yes, sir?”
“Stand at that door. No one goes in or out until I’m back.”
“Yes, sir!”
“If anyone comes out of that basement, arrest him!”
“Hey!” Henri frowned. “I need to get down there and see what kind of damage has been done. These two might have knocked over mannequins and been knocked out by them. Sloan, this doesn’t mean there’s some kind of a diabolical plot—”
“Henri, you started all this because you wanted to know who put the skull on the wig stand. By God, I’m going to finish it.”
The paramedics had already taken Jennie out. One of them was standing at the door impatiently, waiting for him and Jane. The hospital wasn’t quite two miles away; he could easily be back soon.
He narrowed his eyes. “We don’t know what’s going on in this town. The one thing we do know is that it involves more than the theater. I just found Caleb Hough dead in an abandoned mine. We’ve had two murders. You listen to me. No one goes down in that basement!”
Valerie gasped and the others stared at him in stunned silence.
He turned. Jane was staring at him, too. He grabbed her arm, leading her to the door.
“Sloan—”
“X-ray or CAT scan—or whatever they do!” His words were a growl; he was acting like a macho jerk. But he was the sheriff—and it was going to be done his way.
They went out to the street as the paramedics and county cops cleared a path to the ambulance.
The sirens blared and they drove to the hospital.
* * *
Jane wished she’d come to long before Sloan had gotten to the basement.
She was poked and prodded, scanned, put into a hospital gown and given an IV and then a serious warning from a young doctor who said she did have a minor concussion, and that she needed to be watchful because of it. “You should be able to resume normal activity—but nothing strenuous. You were unconscious for a while. This could have been severe.” He paused. “You were fortunate.”
“Can I leave now?” Jane asked him.
“Yes, I’ll discharge you.” He looked over at Sloan, who’d been at her side throughout, except when medical procedure had dictated he wait outside. He’d taken that time, he’d told her, to talk to Detective Liam Newsome with county, and that conversation hadn’t improved his mood any.
“Yes, just take care.”
“She will.” Sloan leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest.
Ten minutes later, they were both seated in the back of a county patrol car, being driven to Lily.
The ride was silent. Uncomfortably silent. But apparently, Sloan didn’t want to talk in front of anyone else, so she didn’t try.
When they returned to the theater, it was open for business, with the restaurant and bar in full swing. Liz came hurrying to the door to meet them. “Jane, you’re all right?” she asked anxiously.
“I’m fine,” Jane assured her.
“And Jennie?”
“Jennie’s still unconscious, but she’s being given the best possible care,” Sloan said. “Where’s Henri?”
“Backstage, setting up for this evening’s show. He’s getting the cast to help him with everything Jennie usually did,” Liz said. “Your deputy’s been standing guard at the basement door since you left.”
“Thanks, Liz.” Sloan waited until she’d hurried off, then turned to Jane. “You should lie down for a while.”
“I don’t want to lie down.”
“I’ll take you upstairs,” he said.
“Listen to me. I’m fine. If there’s something to be found in the basement, you’ll find it faster with two people looking,” she said.
“Jane—”
“Sloan.”
He swore under his breath. “Come with me, then. But when we’re finished, you have to go to bed.”
“We’ll search the basement first,” she said stubbornly.
“I need to know exactly what happened down there,” he said, winding his way through groups of people, one hand on Jane’s back.
The crowd in the bar was rowdier and more cheerful—and much drunker. Sloan’s mood was like a thundercloud, and Jennie had difficulty disentangling herself from the people trying to stop her as she walked toward the door. Most wanted pictures, and she promised to pose with them later. Each time she did, Sloan, scowling fiercely, would step between her and the tourists, and they’d back off.
“I haven’t moved, Sloan,” Chet said when they reached the door. “Liz made coffee and brought it to me. No one’s been down there.” He started to smile at Jane, but cleared his throat and shifted awkwardly away from the door.
Sloan managed a brief, “Thank you, Chet.”
He walked down the stairs, not turning back as she followed him. He paused to pull a giant flashlight from his belt, using it as he went straight to the third section of the room—the place she’d forever think of as the mannequin’s lair.
With the light playing over the mannequins, they seemed far less real.
“So, relive every second of what happened,” Sloan said.
“I looked for Jennie upstairs. She wasn’t there.” Jennie hesitated. “I saw Sage McCormick. She led me to the basement door and then disappeared. I checked every room until I reached this part—the mannequin room—and then I heard a groan. I pushed over a few of the dummies and found Jennie.” She stopped for a moment, shivering. “When I went to take out my phone, I saw Sage again. She was warning me to look behind me and...and then something whacked me and I went down.”
“So someone was in here with you.”
“Yes.”
“One of the mannequins didn’t just fall?”
“I think it’s a little unlikely that a mannequin would fall and hit Jennie so hard that she’s still unconscious—and then fall on me, too. Don’t you?”
“Of course I do. I’m just asking you. Because, apparently, no one saw anyone come down here. Or leave.”
“No one was in the building when I came in. Well, except for Jennie.”
“Obviously, someone else was in the building—and in the basement.”
Sloan trained the light over the entire area. Now half the mannequins were on the floor.
“What are you looking for?” she asked him.
He pointed suddenly.
She stared in that direction and saw what seemed to be a partial footprint on the dusty floor.
“It could be anyone’s, Sloan.”
“Not really. Too big to be either yours or Jennie’s, and I’m not wearing work shoes. Walk around it. I’m going to get the crime-scene unit in here. See if you can find anything else.”
She tried to search without touching while he went meticulously through the room.
“Found it,” Sloan said.
“What?”
“The weapon.” He pulled gloves from his pocket and reached into the fallen pile of mannequins near the spot where she’d discovered Jennie.
He carefully lifted something out.
It was a cane, a Victorian walking cane with a snarling wolf for a handle.
“Grab the light,” he told her.
She did, shining it on the cane. On the handle, almost as if the snarling wolf had just bitten flesh, was a bloodstain.
“I imagine that’s going to be Jennie’s blood,” he said tersely. “You could have been hit a hell of a lot harder.”
“Yes, and like the doctor said, I’m very lucky I wasn’t.” She sighed impatiently. “Are you going to get that to a lab?”
He took out his cell. He spoke briefly but she could tell that he was speaking to Liam Newsome. “Yeah, I’ll be here until you send someone,” he said, and hung up.
“Newsome isn’t coming himself?” she asked.
“Newsome is still at the morgue with the body we found this morning,” he told her.
She felt dizzy and fought the sensation. Concussion. She had to be careful.
“You found someone—in the mine shaft?”
“Yes. I didn’t want to talk about it earlier. Not until we knew you were okay. You didn’t need anything else to worry about.”
“Who...who was it?”
“Caleb Hough, the rancher. His throat had been slit.”
Jane stood watching him. “Sloan, can all of this be related? A skull here, the bones...Jennie and me being knocked out in the theater? These may be entirely separate. No one was killed here.”
“Jennie is in a coma, still unconscious. Maybe one or both of you was meant to die.”
She was almost afraid to tell him about the guns. She had to, she knew. “Sloan, I stopped the duel today—”
“Yes, yes, I heard about it,” he said. “I’m told you gave the day a whole new meaning.”
“I stopped it because of Sage McCormick—and I stopped it because I was afraid someone had tampered with one of the guns. Which, as far as I can tell, turned out to be true.”
He stiffened and scowled. She hadn’t thought he could look any more like a powder keg about to blow, but he managed it.
“You know this? You found cartridges that weren’t blank?”
She felt her cheeks burn. “I’m not a hundred percent sure, but the cartridges in the two guns were different.”
“Where are the guns now?”
“On my bed.”
“No, they’re not.”
“I left them on my bed!”
“I went into your room when I arrived, when I was looking for you,” he said. “There are no guns on your bed.”
Lock your door. Jennie had told her to do that.
And she hadn’t.
“I still have the bullets,” she told him.
“You do?”
“Unless someone ransacked my whole room. They’re in the toe of one of my boots.”
He still looked as if he could bite those bullets in half.
“I know you’re worried about me, but you’ll have a heart attack if you don’t control your temper,” she said mildly.
He stared at her, incredulous, but he didn’t have a chance to respond. Chet called down the stairs. “Sloan? You okay?”
“Fine, Chet. Stay there, will you? I’m waiting for the county crime-scene people.”
“Yes, sir.”
But behind Chet, Henri had a different opinion on the matter. He came running downstairs. “Sloan, what are you doing? This is one of our two biggest nights of the year! You’re going to have crime-scene people in the theater now?”
“Henri, someone viciously smashed in the head of your stage manager with a cane—and then used it on a federal agent. On Jane. You’re damned right I’m having crime-scene people down here!” Sloan informed him.
Henri was at the foot of the stairs now. He shook his head. “What are you talking about? This place is a mess! Jennie must’ve fallen—the mannequins, look at them! They’ve all fallen over. Nothing evil was done here, it’s just—” He paused, turning to Jane. “Oh, Jane, I’m so glad you’re okay. I don’t mean to sound as if I don’t care, I’m just running around like a crazy man. And now...you’re saying this was done on purpose?” he asked.
“Yes, Henri, someone purposely bashed Jennie and then Jane. So crime-scene people will be coming down here. You’re lucky I don’t close the whole theater. But while we’re on the subject... No more duels, no hangings, nothing violent—even as playacting.”
“But the outlaws were supposed to come riding into town tomorrow, shooting it all up!” Henri protested.
“Think of something else. No guns, no knives, no ropes, nothing.”
“I’m the mayor, Sloan. I can fire you!”
“Fire me, but the county is coming in, and the county can trump you, Henri, and you know it,” Sloan said. “Henri, did you hear me? Jennie is really hurt. She’s in the hospital, in a coma.”
Henri went silent and hung his head.
“And there’s been another murder, Henri. This one, a townsman. Caleb Hough.”
Henri looked up. “Sloan, I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry. But he was a bigmouth and a bastard, and I’m not surprised he got into trouble. But—”
“He was murdered in the mine shaft.”
“It can’t have anything to do with the theater!”
“The crime-scene investigators will come down here, and you’ll get to keep your theater open. For now. Something is going on, and I’d think you’d want to make sure a body doesn’t suddenly fall on your stage in the middle of a show.”
Henri glowered at him. “Hah! Now that’s being overly dramatic, Sloan.”
“Henri, get back upstairs. We’re coming, too.”
“What’s that?” Henri demanded, pointed at the cane.
“It’s the weapon that bashed people’s heads, and it’s going to the crime lab,” Sloan said.
Henri let out a groan of frustration and marched up the stairs. Sloan turned to Jane. “Go up to your room and get those bullets. See if the guns fell somewhere, although I doubt it. When the county crime-scene unit arrives, I’ll be up. And then, tonight, you’ll stay at my house.”
She moved closer to him. “Sloan, if something’s happening, I should be here.”
“So you can get your head bashed in again?” he asked. “You have a concussion. You’re off for the night. Either do it my way, or you’re uninvited,” he said bluntly.
Jane straightened her shoulders. She was tempted to tell him to take his whole haunted town and shove it.
But now she’d seen Sage McCormick—a ghost trying to communicate.
And people were dying.
“Fine,” she snapped, and left. Chet tried to pretend that he hadn’t heard everything as she walked by him. “Jane,” he said, nodding politely.
“Chet,” she said in return, and kept going.
As she passed through the bar area, she was accosted by many people in the crowd again. She posed for pictures. Too bad if Sloan didn’t like it.
While she worried about poor Jennie, Jane could also understand Henri’s position. She couldn’t begin to calculate the amount of money the theater would be making that night.
When she saw the crime-scene techs walk in, she quickly begged off doing more pictures. She heard people whispering, wondering why the officers were heading for the basement.
She didn’t see anyone running out in fear.
But the forensics people were there; Sloan would be along any minute. She excused herself and ran up to her room.
In front of the mirror, she studied her reflection—no one had acted as if she looked strange. She gingerly touched the top of her head. She had a knot there, but she felt all right.
It could have been worse. But she hadn’t done anything stupid, not then. Rushing out to stop the gunfight when she was afraid there might be live ammunition—now, that had been stupid.
As Sloan had said, the guns weren’t where she’d left them. Neither were they on the floor—or anywhere she could find.
She moved quickly, packing a small overnight bag and digging the cartridges out of the toe of her boot. When Sloan came to her room, she was ready.
He stepped inside for a moment and closed the door behind him.
“The bullets?” he asked.
She handed them over. All twelve were there. He glanced at them and then at her.
“Do you know which of the actors was holding the gun with the live ammunition?”
She shook her head. “I just took them—fast.”
She thought he’d accuse her of being the worst law enforcement officer ever; to her surprise, he didn’t.
“You saved someone’s life, that’s for sure,” he said. He didn’t look fierce anymore; he looked tired and worn.
“Let’s go,” he said dully. “I have two county men staying through the night. Whatever’s going on, I know damned well that the theater’s involved. I should close the damned thing down.”
“If you do, you’ll never know.”
He shrugged. “Let’s pray the county guys are as good as you are.” He took her bag. “Come on,” he said. “I’m tired enough to drop and we’ve got a stop to make before we get to my house.”
“Where?”
“I have to go to the Hough ranch. Tell his wife and boy Caleb’s dead.”
“Okay, then you’d better give me a hand getting out of this Victorian get-up,” Jane told him.
He looked at her helplessly, and she sighed.
“Just unlace the bodice at the back,” she said. “I’ll need a few minutes to change and we’ll be on our way.”