"Look at me, Stretch."
I hadn"t realized that I wasn"t, until he said so. I met his gaze. "What?"
He leaned toward me and whispered, "When you get a compliment, try saying "Thank you," and nothing else. For instance, when I tell you that your naked shoulders could start a major world religion-"
"Aaron!"
"No, not "Aaron," just "Thank you." You"ll get the hang of it." He leaned back and rapped the table with his knuckles. "Now, listen, I just heard something interesting about Lester Foy from my source at the SPD. They"ve been backtracking his movements lately."
My mental gears were grinding. "Foy? He"s the killer after all, isn"t he?"
"Not. Sorry, Stretch, your little friend Zack is still the prime suspect. On the night of the Aquarium party, Lester Foy was up in Blaine, making an unsuccessful attempt to cross the Canadian border."
"Are you sure?"
Aaron nodded, and a lock of black hair flopped across his forehead. "Positive ID from the customs guys. When they asked him to pull over for a spot search, he took off and they lost him. Blaine"s a two-hour drive from here. Whoever Dracula was, he wasn"t Lester Foy."
"Oh." I took a minute to digest this news. "But that still doesn"t prove that it was Zack who killed Mercedes. Dracula could have been..." Who? I couldn"t think straight. "OK, I"m not sure about Dracula. But I know Zack wasn"t the murderer. I just know it."
"Come on, Mrs. Robinson, give it up. Zack fooled all of us, not just you. Admit it, and try to forget the whole thing."
"I can"t forget it. I"m sure I"m right, and once I get some sleep I"m going to figure it all out, you wait and see."
"More power to you, Sherlock." Aaron stood up and straightened his bow tie. "Want to come up to the Sound Lab and jam with me? I"ll play "Wipe Out" for you."
I smiled. "Maybe later. I have to get back to work."
"Kharrnegie!" A vast and crumpled tuxedo front was hovering over me like a Slavic storm cloud. "I have found you!"
"So you have. Aaron, this is Boris Nevsky. Boris, Aaron Gold, a good friend of mine."
"And so, a good friend of mine also!" Boris enveloped Aaron in one of his patented Russian bear hugs, then set him down and extended one huge paw to me. "You prromised to dance! Come!"
"I did not promise! Boris, I"m in no condition-"
"Yes, I know, you were in car smash. I will hold you gently, like flower. Come!"
"Oh, all right." If I didn"t keep moving, I"d probably stiffen to a complete halt. So I picked up my purse and followed Boris up to the main floor, leaving Aaron to arrange his tie all over again.
Chapter Thirty-Four.
"BORIS, YOUR FLOWERS ARE WONDERFUL!" I HAD TO SHOUT HAD TO SHOUT to be heard. High over our heads in the Sky Church, Travis Cook, an elfish fellow with long lank hair and the best sound technician on the West Coast, made magic at his control panels on the balcony. Like a latter-day wizard, he was conjuring up waves of music and dazzling, shifting video projections, filling the vast s.p.a.ce with a pulsing phantasmagoria that throbbed through our bones as we stood at the edge of the crowded dance floor. "Corinne loved her bouquet! Did she tell you?" to be heard. High over our heads in the Sky Church, Travis Cook, an elfish fellow with long lank hair and the best sound technician on the West Coast, made magic at his control panels on the balcony. Like a latter-day wizard, he was conjuring up waves of music and dazzling, shifting video projections, filling the vast s.p.a.ce with a pulsing phantasmagoria that throbbed through our bones as we stood at the edge of the crowded dance floor. "Corinne loved her bouquet! Did she tell you?"
The Mad Russian didn"t answer, but instead scooped me delicately into his arms for an impromptu tango. We angled across the floor, with smiling guests parting before us, then reversed course and thrust back into the throng.
Most of the faces that swam past were unfamiliar, but I saw Chloe and Howard dancing together, equally oblivious of their sunburns and the beat. Also Valerie Duncan, partnered with Paul"s brother Scott but gazing wistfully over his shoulder at someone else. Who? Ah, Roger Talbot, resplendent in white tie. He looked like a head of state at the very least.
Roger was squiring Monica Lamott, as requested, but smirking over her shoulder at a gorgeous young thing I recognized from the Sentinel"s art department. Another conquest so soon? He was incorrigible. I returned my attention to the path ahead and jerked my partner to a halt just before we clipped the metal struts of one of the light towers.
"Boris, slow down, please! Now tell me, did you talk with Corinne? I thought maybe after your divorce-"
"Corinne! Why always do you talk of Corinne?" He blew out a gusty breath, like an exasperated horse. "Corinne is no more fun since she stopped to drink."
"Corinne stopped drinking?" Corinne had pa.s.sed on the tequila shooters back at the bridesmaids" luncheon, but I remembered all too vividly how sick she was in the Aquarium ladies" room. "I don"t think so, Boris."
"Da! She stops to drinking, she cries, she gets fat, she vants to get merried. Please, no more Corinne."
"Sorry..."
He kept on talking, but I had ceased to listen. No alcohol... weeping... nausea... As soon as I could, I extricated myself from Boris and made my way to the edge of the dance floor. Corinne? I grabbed a gla.s.s of sparkling water from a pa.s.sing waiter. I had to think, though the pounding music and strobing lights made it nearly impossible. Perrier, Aaron said she was drinking Perrier....
"Great party, Carnegie!" Burt Lamott patted my bruised shoulder heartily and jostled my water gla.s.s so that it spilled on my dress. Filling out her dress... eating like a horse... What was it Valerie said? "Roger"s terribly discreet with all his women." The memories were connecting so fast I could hardly follow them. All his women... and she was in the ladies" room when Mercedes told me...
I left the Sky Church in a daze, feeling feverish, as if an electrical charge was flickering through my brain. Venus had long red fingernails... I pushed rudely through the milling guests... but when she came out of the water her fingers were cold and blunt, no long nails. What did that mean?
Valerie Duncan walked past, and I stopped her, fumbling to formulate my question, stumbling over the words. "At the, the cemetery, the funeral, Angela talked to Corinne about something, it seemed to make her angry. Just before they got in your car. Do you know what they were talking about?"
"Not really." Valerie was in party mode, and did not look pleased at the reminder of recent events. "Something about a necklace. I didn"t pay much attention."
"No, of course not... Sorry."
A necklace. A necklace, or a ring on a gold chain? And the man in a black cloak... I stopped dead. What if the man in the black cloak never existed?
"Isn"t this great?" Paul Wheeler, buoyant and beaming, stepped back from the guitar sculpture and stood before me, blocking my way.
I clutched his arm. "Have you seen Tommy?"
"It"s like a, a super wedding. Elizabeth"s a super girl. And you"re a super-"
"Paul, where is Tommy?"
He frowned, blinking his glazed-over eyes. "I think they went upstairs. Why?"
" "They?" He"s with his daughter?"
"No, with Corinne." The bridegroom smiled at me rea.s.suringly. "Don"t worry. She"ll take care of Tommy."
The next few minutes were the stuff of nightmare: surrealistic lights and ominous sounds, seemingly infinite obstacles, an overwhelming sense of urgency and dread. I rushed past Paul and up the stairs to the mezzanine, fighting the crowd all the way, then stopped to catch my breath at the railing that ran around the atrium and the wide, glittering head of the tornado of guitars.
Across the atrium were the Milestones galleries, behind me the Sound Lab, and off to my right a gla.s.s wall that overlooked the Sky Church and formed the rear of the technical balcony where Travis was working. And everywhere were wedding guests by the dozen, blocking my view and confusing me further. Where would she take him? Was he beginning to remember? And, most critical of all, did Corinne have her gun with her tonight?
My first thought had been to contact the EMP security guards on my walkie-talkie, and have them apprehend Corinne even if they had to clear the building to find her. If I was wrong, well, better safe than sorry. But then I held off. If I was right, Corinne would be armed, and a challenge from a guard could easily spook her into harming the already fragile old sportswriter.
Because, whether Tommy remembered it or not, I was certain that I knew who smashed that jagged stone into Mercedes Montoya"s skull, as she lay helpless in the water where Zack had pushed her. Corinne Campbell, one of Roger Talbot"s many mistresses, who seemed "so ordinary and tedious" by comparison with the haughty Mexican beauty. Corinne, who by some evil chance had overheard her rival gloating about the engagement ring, the ring she coveted for herself.
Corinne, who was carrying Roger Talbot"s child.
I stepped back from the railing, collided jarringly with someone who moved away with a laugh, and reeled against a small window that looked into one of the soundproof practice rooms. Aaron was inside, alone, with his eyes closed and his bow tie pulled loose, flailing away on a drum kit for all he was worth. I banged on the window, but he couldn"t hear me, just as I couldn"t hear his drums.
I had begun to turn away when I saw his hands blurring with the speed of a silent crescendo. He whacked the high-hat cymbal one last time and opened his eyes, grinning like a boy. I gestured wildly, and ten seconds later he was out the door, through the Sound Lab, and at my side.
"What"s happening? You look-"
"Aaron, it was Corinne!" I glanced around to see if anyone was listening, but the party noise was roaring over us like surf. "She killed Mercedes and invented the attack on herself to cover it up. There was never any man in a black cloak."
"What?"
"Please, there"s no time to explain, we have to find her before she hurts Tommy. She owns a gun!"
"Hang on, Stretch." He put his hands on either side of my waist. His palms felt warm through the thin satin. "You really think Corinne is the murderer?"
"I"m sure of it. She"s pregnant by Roger Talbot, that"s why she suddenly wanted Boris to marry her, to be a father for her baby and-"
He was shaking his head. "Even if Corinne did kill Mercedes, how would she know that Tommy was a witness?"
"Because I told her. G.o.d help me, I told her and Paul after we visited Tommy in the hospital. And now she"s off with him somewhere and if I tell the guards to stop her she"ll panic!"
Aaron"s eyes were fixed and intent; I could almost see him thinking, faster and more clearly than I could after the day I"d been through. Was that crash in Vanna only this afternoon? My sense of time was distorted, and the roar of sound around us felt like a suffocating physical pressure, mounting by the minute and battering at my senses.
"All right," said Aaron. "Tell the guards to find Tommy, not Corinne. Tell them to say his daughter"s looking for him, he needs to take some medicine or something. That shouldn"t tip her off. Meanwhile we"ll tell other people the same thing. I"ll search the main floor galleries and you do the ones up here. We"re bound to find them soon."
But it wasn"t soon. I called the guards, and we all worked the crowd, but it was a harrowing, endless half hour later before I got a response. It came when I related our little fiction to one of the Sentinel"s receptionists in the Milestones gallery.
"Oh, poor Tommy!" she said absently, absorbed in a display on hip-hop artists. "He looked kinda sick, so I wondered why Corinne was taking him into that Lab place-"
I was gone before she finished, racing around the atrium and into the Sound Lab. It was full of guests, mostly younger ones in a state of inebriated hilarity, pounding on the huge electronic drum in the center of the s.p.a.ce and moving in and out of the various practice rooms. The lights were low, and I had to peer into faces and haul open the heavy door of each room to make sure I wasn"t overlooking my quarry.
But it seemed that they must have gone elsewhere. In the booth where Aaron had been, two hulking fellows were savaging the drums and singing along to an indecipherable tune. A larger chamber, with drums, guitar and keyboard, held five young women who were squealing with laughter while making pa.s.sable music. And in the microphone room, Boris Nevsky was belting out the Russian national anthem to a stunned-looking audience of three who were probably afraid to walk out on him.
"Boris, come help me!"
He looked affronted. "I am not finished!"
"You are now." I towed him out by the elbow and cupped my hand to his ear to make myself heard in the din. "I have to find Tommy Barry. Have you seen him?"
"Who is that?"
"The best man, the old guy with the shaved head? Help me look for him, Boris, please."
He shrugged affably. "I forget second verse anyway."
We searched the rest of the rooms, to no avail, and then Boris gestured at some steps in a far, dim corner. They led up to two more practice booths, but a chain was draped between the railings to keep tonight"s crowd off the Lab"s upper level. I remembered the barrier across the sh.o.r.ebird exhibit at the Aquarium, and groaned aloud.
"Tommy-"
Boris, sensing my urgency at last, forged ahead of me through the crowd like an icebreaker and flung the chain aside. We mounted the steps and checked the first room: empty. But the second room was dark, and when we pulled open the door, the shifting light from the party below faintly illuminated an overturned chair, a guitar dangling by its cord over the edge of an electronic keyboard-and the body of Tommy Barry.
He was sprawled facedown, halfway under the keyboard stand. His outflung hands were still, and between his shoulder blades, just barely discernible as a dim gleam against the matte black of his tuxedo jacket, was a patch of blood spreading darkly outwards from a large, ragged wound. The exit wound from a bullet.
Boris lifted the guitar away so I could crouch down and feel Tommy"s throat for a pulse. "I think...yes! He"s still alive. I"ll call-"
But I couldn"t call Rhonda, or the guards, because the walkie-talkie was in my purse and my stupid G.o.dd.a.m.n b.l.o.o.d.y purse was lost in the shuffle somewhere. "Boris, stay here. Try and stop the bleeding, and don"t let Corinne anywhere near him. I expect she"s left the building by now but-"
"Corinne did this?" His eyes were round. "Did she vant to merry him, too?"
But I was already halfway down the steps, and shouting out the request that no event planner ever, ever wants to utter: "Is there a doctor here? Anybody know if there"s a doctor here?"
The only response was alarm and perplexed confusion, so I pushed through the crowd and out to the atrium, heading for the little gla.s.s-walled balcony that hung over the Sky Church. Surely Travis would be able to communicate with Rhonda, and she could find a doctor and mobilize the guards and the police. I could see him in the gaps between the milling people, apparently giving a couple of guests a private tour of his electronic marvels.
As I toiled through the crowd and got closer, the two guests were revealed as Roger Talbot and the girl from the art department. Irrelevantly, some part of my mind groped for her name: Ruby? Jewel? Crystal, that was it. Crystal was a pocket Venus, five-one or so with short, feathery white-blonde hair, and she was gazing up at Roger with a different kind of high voltage in mind. The publisher, forgetting for the moment that the wall behind them was made of gla.s.s, had let one hand slip from Crystal"s waist down to her velvet-clad derriere. They jumped apart when I pushed open the door, calling out as I went.
"Travis, we need the police!" He looked at me-or was it past me?-with blank dismay. "Call Rhonda and-"
A scream, an anguished shriek of pain and outrage, froze me in my tracks. Roger and Crystal were staring past me at the person who had screamed. Slowly, with a dreamlike dread and yet certainty about who I would see, I turned around.
Corinne Campbell, with her lush figure straining against her rose satin gown, and a demented light shining in her aquamarine eyes, was pointing a wavering pistol at Roger Talbot"s head.
Chapter Thirty-Five.
MY FEET HURT. I"D BEEN RUNNING AROUND ALL EVENING IN rose-pink dyed-silk stilettos instead of my usual comfy flats, and now I couldn"t sit down because I was stuck on a tiny balcony overhanging a fifty-foot drop with three other terrified people and a crazy lady with a gun, smack in the middle of somebody else"s love triangle, except one side of the triangle was already dead. Or would it be one angle? rose-pink dyed-silk stilettos instead of my usual comfy flats, and now I couldn"t sit down because I was stuck on a tiny balcony overhanging a fifty-foot drop with three other terrified people and a crazy lady with a gun, smack in the middle of somebody else"s love triangle, except one side of the triangle was already dead. Or would it be one angle?
This must be what hysteria feels like, I mused, as my thoughts rear-ended each other like cars in a freeway pileup.
Interesting.
"You said you loved me!" Corinne whimpered-the old, trite, unbearably painful plea of the spurned woman. And in this case, in these circ.u.mstances, tantamount to a confession of murder. After the secret killings, and all the clever deceptions to maintain her innocence, she had cracked and revealed herself at the sight of her lover with another woman. A woman he had only just met.
Corinne stood just inside the balcony door, her back to the atrium. Although a few heads had lifted when she screamed, most of the crowd outside had shrugged it off as mere high spirits, and went on with their party. But then Roger tried to speak, and an upsurge in the music erased his words.
"Stop the noise!" said Corinne, desperate, but still- barely-in command of herself. The ugly blind eye of the gun swung toward Travis. "Make it stop!"
The sound man gulped and nodded, his long locks brushing at the shoulders of his EMP T-shirt. He moved his hands slowly, slowly to one of his consoles, and as if he had lifted the needle from some gigantic record, the music instantaneously ceased.
The abrupt and utter silence in that great s.p.a.ce was shocking, and somehow beautiful. But it was quickly sullied by a rising drone of voices, like the buzz of baffled and then angry bees, as hundreds of dancers and diners and general merrymakers questioned and then protested this break in the action.
"Hey, wha.s.sup?" An amiably drunk young man with a girl in each arm marched across the atrium to our gla.s.s wall.