Али Брэндон - Double Booked For Death

“It’s a trick . . . a trap,” Hillary weakly protested. “You can see how he can pretend to be someone else. He, he imitated my voice.”

Darla, meanwhile, was giving Jake a pointed look. It was the latter’s turn now to shrug as she pulled her cell phone from her purse and powered it on. “Oops. Guess we did it the hard way. Remind me next time to check the voice mail, kid.”

Addressing Morris again, she said, “If you and Darla will keep an eye on Hillary, I’m going to go upstairs and call for some official backup. I can’t seem to get a signal down here.”

While Jake made her way back through the maze of props, Darla joined Morris where he stood looking at the agent, still huddled on the sofa and now loudly weeping. Tentatively, she touched his arm.

“I am so sorry about your sister, Morris.”

He flinched a little but did not pull away. Staring down at Hillary, he softly said, “She could have done anything she wanted to me, and it wouldn’t have mattered. But to take my sister from me . . . she’s cut me in two, and I’m afraid I won’t survive it.”

“You will survive it, Morris, I promise,” Darla rushed to assure him, emotion clogging her throat. “You’ll be scarred, but you’ll carry on. Wouldn’t you want Valerie to do the same if your positions were reversed?”

“I suppose so.”

Tears trickled down his face, sluicing trails in the white face paint that he wore. Then he raised his head and gazed around him, as if seeing the place for the first time. His words were little more than a sigh as he said, “Welcome to life beyond the Janitor’s closet.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

JAKE’S PHONE CALL BROUGHT TWO POLICE CRUISERS WITH lights flashing, though since the immediate emergency was long over with, they had refrained from turning on their sirens. One of the four cops who rushed in through the theater’s front doors turned out to be Officer Hallonquist, the same patrolman who had cited Darla at the coffee shop a few days earlier. He shook his head a little at recognizing her, but made no comment as he and his partner hustled the handcuffed agent outside and loaded her in their car for the trip to jail.

Reese had shown up right after the uniformed officers. “Yo, Fiorello,” one of the younger cops had called with a grin and a wave at the detective.

Reese gave the rookie the old finger-across-the-throat gesture, but it was too late. Darla had overheard. With a delighted grin of her own, she stared at him and said, “Wow. Fiorello is your first name?”

“Yeah,” the rookie interjected, poking his forefinger to his cheek to form a dimple. In a simpering voice, he added, “It means ‘little flower.’”

“Correction,” Reese snarled back. “It means ‘he who kicks ass.’ So shaddup already, if you don’t want your butt handed to you.”

The rookie snickered but obligingly shut up. Then Reese turned to Darla. “Yeah, so sue me. My dad was German and my mother was Italian. I got his looks, and she won the baby-naming contest. But we don’t use that name, got it?”

“How about this?” Darla replied, trying to keep a straight face but failing miserably. “If you don’t call me ‘Red,’ I won’t call you ‘Flower.’ Deal?”

“Deal. Now, forget about me. What the hell is going on here?” he demanded with a stern look at both her and Jake.

Quickly stepping back into serious mode, Darla waited quietly by and let Jake explain what they’d been doing at the theater in the first place. Then Darla gave Reese a quick rundown of the private conversation she’d had with Morris in the basement after Jake left, and before the police arrived.

Morris told her he had followed Hillary and his sister down the sidewalk that fateful night, and so had witnessed Valerie’s death. He had been the caped figure who had rushed into the street to help her, and who Reese had pushed aside. Realizing there was nothing to be done for his sister, Morris’s next thought had been to pursue Hillary, who had already melted back into the crowd.

He’d had little doubt that Hillary’s actions were deliberate. Despite his grief, however, he’d also realized that, under the circumstances, it would be his word against hers should he accuse her of a crime. And so, he had made the difficult choice to pretend that he’d seen nothing. Instead, he had returned to the store, determined to find some way to later pry a confession from the agent. Hillary had not been content with murdering Valerie, however. A day later, she had contacted Morris with another blackmail threat, and that was when he’d had the inspiration for staging the ghostly intervention.

In the time it took for Darla to make her explanations, Morris had changed back into his street clothes and commandeered the theater’s offices for further interviews. Darla wondered how a lowly makeup artist had managed such a feat, until Morris explained with a wry smile, “I don’t think they’ll mind, considering that I own the place.”

Once the statements had all been given—according to Reese, Morris’s official account had squared with what he had told Darla—Reese rejoined Darla and Jake in the lobby. The play had ended, and most of the theatergoers had already departed, leaving behind a handful of curious employees to finish closing up the place. Morris reappeared as well. He gave a few whispered instructions to the same tuxedoed female usher who’d politely demanded Darla’s ticket. The girl nodded and made hasty work of rushing the other employees out the door.

By then, the remaining patrol officers had driven off, leaving the three of them alone with Morris. He gave Darla and Jake a tired smile.

“Detective Reese was asking about the ghost illusion,” he said. “Perhaps all of you would care to see how it was created?”

At their eager nods, he led them back down to the basement. There, he demonstrated how he had conjured Valerie’s ghostly appearance.

“It’s an old theater trick called Pepper’s Ghost Illusion,” he explained as they stood in the lounge area where the phantom Valerie had confronted Hillary. “If you’ve ever been to Disney’s Haunted Mansion, or even one of the professional haunted houses that spring up each year for Halloween, you might have seen this effect before. We use it here at the theater on occasion. I had some of the stage crew set this up for me a few days ago.”

He showed them how the space beyond the lounge area actually formed an equilateral L, with the lower portion of the L blocked from their view by a wall of shelving. A sheet of glass sat across the elbow of the L at a forty-five degree angle, with the red velvet chairs positioned behind it. The unseen portion of the L had been where Morris in his ghostly disguise had been hidden. That area was curtained in black fabric that formed a backdrop on all three sides and was empty, save for what appeared to be a set of freestanding steps that were also draped in black. Like a good host, he gestured them to sit on those stairs.

“When the lights are dim here and bright there,” he said, pointing toward the chairs, “all the audience sees from the outside is exactly what’s in that space.”

With his remote control, he adjusted the lights so that a cheery beam illuminated the red velvet chairs, while the light in their half of the L dimmed.

“But if you lower the lights there”—he again indicated the chairs and turned down the illumination—“and raise the lights on this side, whatever’s here reflects on the glass and looks like a ghost on the side to the audience that’s watching.”

As he spoke, a light came on overhead. Now, the four of them were reflected with almost mirrorlike precision in the glass, their transparent images seeming to hover over the chairs, just as Valerie’s ghost had done.