Али Брэндон - Double Booked For Death

She did, however, turn her attention to the stage at the second scene of Act I long enough to discover the reason why Mrs. Gleason enjoyed her Tuesday night cop show so much. DeWayne Jones, the actor portraying Othello, had been costumed to show off his muscular chest and arms to advantage. Darla hadn’t paid enough attention to judge how good an actor the man was, but she could honestly report back that he looked damn good on stage.

Act I became Act II, and Hillary still remained in her seat. Darla shifted impatiently in her own chair and gave Jake an anxious look.

What’s taking so long? she mouthed, getting a headshake back in return. By now, Iago had begun his soliloquy that would conclude the first scene of the second act. Despite herself, Darla kept one ear cocked toward the spoken lines, for she knew this portion of the play. Here, Iago revealed his perfidy, though his motives were still hazy, even in his own mind.

‘Tis here, but yet confused: Knavery’s plain face is never seen till used.

She wondered if that was how it was with Morris, and if that meant that she and Jake still might be able to stop whatever plan would be carried out this night.

As she pondered this, Iago’s final words died away, replaced by the sound of polite applause as he exited the stage . . . which was when Hillary Gables abruptly rose from her seat and started toward the back of the theater.

TWENTY-SEVEN

JAKE’S TOUCH ON DARLA’S ARM MEANT THAT SHE HAD also noticed Hillary get to her feet as the scene ended. “That must have been her cue,” the ex-cop murmured. “Sit tight a little longer, let her get out the door, and then we’ll follow.”

Darla nodded, trying to keep an eye on the agent while not appearing to do so. Though the woman had been seated several rows down and house left of them, she would be passing just a few feet from Jake and Darla as she exited the double doors to the lobby. And while the houselights were still down, enough illumination came from the stage that, should she glance their way, Hillary might well recognize them.

On the other hand, she had smacked right into Darla there in the lobby and never made the connection.

A faint squeak of hinges behind them told them that Hillary had left the theater. “Let me take a look first,” Jake softly cautioned as they reached the double doors. Inching one of them open, she gestured Darla to join her. Through that gap, she could see that Hillary was headed for the alcove near the empty ticket booth.

“Morris must have told her which way to go,” Darla whispered back. “Did you get to see what’s in there?”

“Besides a couple of offices, there’s a stairway that heads down to the basement. That’s probably how the cast and crew get to the dressing rooms and backstage without going through the theater. I didn’t get very far, though. A couple of stagehands caught me, and I had to pretend I was looking for the ladies’.”

She waited until Hillary’s pink pantsuit had vanished around the corner of the alcove, and then whispered, “C’mon!”

Glancing over at the bar to make sure they were not being observed—the crew that earlier had been pouring drinks was apparently on break until intermission, leaving only a doorman gazing forlornly out into the street—they made their swift way to the alcove. Just as Jake had said, two doors marked “Private” were visible from the lobby. It was only after they’d ducked inside that arched recess that Darla saw the dimly lit entry to her left opening onto a narrow wooden staircase.

Hillary’s pink pantsuit flashed like a reluctant beacon at the bottom of the stairs.

Jake started down the steps after her, moving with pantherlike silence despite her boots. Darla tried to emulate her, but her pumps were not designed for stealth. After her first couple of steps, which resulted in hammerlike blows against the wooden treads, Jake swung about and wildly gestured for her to stop.

“Lose the shoes,” she hissed.

Darla swiftly pulled off her heels. Clutching them in one hand and the handrail in the other, she negotiated the remaining steps silently—and, of necessity, slowly. While several bare bulbs were strung from the electrical wiring above her, only one was lit, and most of its yellow light was absorbed by the rust-colored brick walls.

Major OSHA violation , she told herself, wondering how many actors and stagehands had taken a header down those poorly lit steps before.

Fortunately, she managed to avoid such a fate. Reaching the bottom unscathed, Darla took a moment to glance about her, squinting a little in the dimness as she tried to form a mental floor plan of where they were beneath the theater.

Jake was waiting for her in what appeared, at first glance, to be a corridor. A second look showed it to be nothing more than a narrow stretch of open basement between the outermost wall and the first in a series of rows of brick support columns that ran parallel to it. The electrical wire continued on its path like a sagging tightrope above them, its few lit bulbs reminding her of fallen high-wire walkers clinging to it for dear life. The remainder of the basement was thrown into the sort of shadow that would have required Jake’s official police flashlight to pierce. Someone had taken a roll of black and yellow floor-striping tape and made the open passage a formal walkway with the built-in caution not to step outside its bounds—not that anyone would want to deviate off that path on purpose.

For what surrounded them was the original nineteenth-century brick building, untouched by any trendy attempts at renovation or camouflage. A mazelike collection of rusty iron girders intersected the thick brick columns and formed a secondary skeleton that supported the four stories above. The mortar that once had held the outer walls together with crisp precision was crumbling in some places and missing altogether in others, while the years had rounded the bricks’ sharp edges so that they more closely resembled oversized cobblestones. The ceiling here was so low that, had Jake’s boots been a bit taller, the top of her frizzy head would have brushed the subflooring over them.

To her left, Darla could hear the periodic clang and hiss of steam over the distant sounds of speech and applause from the theater above. This section of the basement was strictly functional, serving as combination boiler room and storage space. Beyond the boiler, she could see barrels and crates piled high, along with what appeared to be fixtures from the old club, and random machinery likely left over from the days when the place had been some sort of factory. For all she could tell, Jimmy Hoffa might have been stuffed in some far corner, too.

The floor was cold beneath her stockinged feet, but she didn’t dare pull on her pumps again lest the echo of her footfalls against the rough stone signal their presence. Feeling the nylon beneath one foot snag on an uneven spot in the flooring, she accepted the fact that her twenty-dollar pair of pantyhose was not going to survive the night.

Of course, all that mattered was that Hillary did.

Jake, meanwhile, put a finger to her lips and pointed up toward the stage above them. Perhaps thirty feet directly ahead was a second entryway, its interior faintly glowing against the shadows that crept from beyond the boiler and other forgotten equipment.

“She went in there. C’mon.”

Darla barely could hear Jake’s low whisper, but the swift jabbing of her finger in that direction got the point across. She fell into quiet step behind her friend, grateful for Jake’s unflappable presence and feeling unwilling admiration for Hillary, who had traversed the basement alone. An uneasy air clung to the place; the brick columns that revealed the building’s mechanical underbelly also served to conceal. Perhaps that black and yellow caution tape on the floor was there for reasons other than mere workplace safety. Maybe the theater workers knew that something worse than an OSHA breach lurked beyond the stripes.