Death at a Talent Show (Book 6 Molly Masters Mysteries) Read online

  “Still haven’t found your gloves, Molly?” Lauren asked, entering the room behind me.

  “They were right by the door in the other dressing room. Someone must have grabbed them thinking they were theirs.”

  “They’ll turn up. Let’s go ‘Send in the Clowns,’ shall we?” She wiggled her eyebrows at me. “One of us had to say it, right?”

  “And I’m glad it was you.” That joke had been parlayed about so often in rehearsals that it had become quite the groaner. We headed toward the stage. Or at least, I think that was the direction we were going. “It’s too bad you couldn’t convince Tommy to be in the show,” I said, referring to her husband.

  “He said he has no talents.” She grinned at me. “At least not G-rated ones.”

  Ignoring the innuendo, I said, “Too bad. It would have been nice to have a police sergeant on stage with us. Everyone is so on edge. Quite frankly, all this tension has me a bit spooked.”

  Lauren rubbed her eyes “Your voice is serious, but it sounds so strange when you’re dressed like that.”

  We passed a full-length mirror in the hallway and I caught sight of myself and saw what she meant. Strangely, I’d never felt less like clowning around than I did right at the moment.

  We found ourselves on the stage-right wing. Lauren squeezed my arm and whispered, “Actually, I think I’m going to watch from the front row. I’ll let you know what I think of the skit.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” Trouble was, though, it was already well after ten p.m. on Wednesday night. If this skit proved to be a disaster, it was too late to improve much before Friday night’s performance. I heard some murmurings behind me and rounded a curtain in search of double-gloved clowns.

  I stopped the first person in a clown suit I ran into and asked if she—or he, since there was no telling—had picked up my gloves by mistake.

  The clown held up red, fuzzy palms. “Not me. These are mine.” She pointed. “You might want to try stage left. Or is that right? I think I saw another clown over there.”

  “Thanks, Olivia.”

  “How’d you know it was me?” she said, playing with her already unmistakably high-pitched voice.

  I chuckled, glad that she seemed to be in a good mood despite her daughter’s “divorce.” Spotting another clown at the opposite side of the stage, I moved in that direction and called out, “Are those your gloves?”

  “Shush!” both Martin the Mediocre and Stephanie the Stuck-up simultaneously said.

  The other clown answered, “Yes, they’re mine,” and I recognized Nadine’s voice.

  “Hey! What are you doing back there?” Martin said, interrupting his act to shout at me. “I’m about to do my tour de force! I can’t have people wandering around behind me now!”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Martin,” I retorted, not appreciating being treated like an idiot, even if I did happen to be dressed like a clown. “I won’t be back here during the actual performance. I’m just trying to find my missing gloves for the rehearsal.”

  I looked at Corinne, sitting beside Lauren, expecting her to yell at me. She didn’t. Except for the two of them, the auditorium was empty. We hadn’t wanted any of the students to watch the final rehearsal in lieu of the paid event Friday night, so we’d deliberately scheduled this rehearsal well past any after-school activities. There had been a mass exodus of the show’s cast who weren’t in the last two acts. I only hoped the same thing didn’t occur during the real thing on Friday.

  “Use the passageway underneath the stage or behind the back curtains!” Martin snarled. Then changing his demeanor, he rubbed his hands together and once again transformed Martin the grouchy tax attorney into Martin the magician. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, I need a volunteer.” He turned to speak to our director. “This is the part where I would normally ask the audience for a volunteer.”

  To her credit, Corinne resisted saying “Duh” to Martin’s obvious explanation, and he continued, “Corinne, why don’t you stand in? Of course I’d never pick you as a volunteer. You and Stephanie look far too similar.”

  Corinne beamed. Stephanie’s face fell, and she said under her breath, “In her dreams, maybe.”

  With Martin too engrossed in his act to yell at me a second time, I crossed the stage and reached the other wing. There I saw another clown, leaning against the back wall. “Danielle?” I asked cautiously, merely guessing; the posture was that of someone who wanted to be left alone.

  “Yes. Molly?”

  “Could you have accidentally picked up my gloves from the table by the dressing room door?”

  “No, I keep mine in my pocket.”

  I nodded and tried to sort through the voices of clowns I’d spoken to already to see if I’d asked everyone. The only clowns I hadn’t asked were the male clowns. Or had I asked Elsbeth? I couldn’t recall.

  Not having seen this trick of Martin’s, and curious as to how it was done, I returned my attention to the stage. From someplace behind the curtains some woman cried, “Oh, no! The birds! They’re getting away!” Danielle immediately rushed back to help, but this was at least the third time Martin’s stupid doves had flown the coop, and I was not about to lend a helping hand. Especially not since discovering that the birds tended to bite anyone’s hand, except Martin’s.

  From the stage, Corinne called, “Forget about the damned birds! You’re all supposed to be behind the curtain by now, except for Chester. He should be at the wheel of the golf cart. All of the clowns! Line up behind the back curtain.” Corinne gestured wildly for us all to get into position.

  Still wanting to watch the act, I very slowly made my way to my position offstage. Martin closed Corinne into her black booth on my side of the stage. He had already closed Stephanie into hers. Martin said some magic words, then paused. Nothing happened.

  Switching from bad magician into bad ventriloquist, Martin maintained a wide smile, but said out of the corner of his mouth, “Come on, Stephanie! You know what you’re supposed to do. What seems to be the holdup?”

  “I’m stuck,” Stephanie said, banging on the booth. “Someone closed up the back flap.”

  “That’s impossible,” Martin snarled. “Let me see what’s going on.”

  A clown suddenly pushed past me, shoving me off balance. “Hey!” I cried, in indignant surprise. The clown, heading toward the stage, was reaching into a black plastic garbage bag. “Watch where you’re going. We’re supposed to be—”

  The clown turned slightly. I stared, unable to believe what I was seeing. A dark cylinder that looked just like the barrel of a gun poked through the plastic bag. I gasped and froze, suddenly unable even to scream out a warning.

  The clown marched onto the middle of the stage, where the magician’s back was turned as he worked on Stephanie’s booth. My brain screamed at me to do something, anything, but my body wouldn’t respond.

  Shots rang out. The clown fired at the booth that Martin had sealed Corinne Buldock into only moments before.

  Chapter 2

  A Confederacy of Clowns

  As the shots were fired, I instinctively dropped down flat on the floor. The gun came skittering toward my face across the smooth waxed surface of the stage.

  With the noise of the gun’s reports still resounding in my ears, I rose and watched the shooter fling the garbage bag away while crossing the stage and then disappearing behind the black-curtain backdrop. In the shooter’s wake was the handgun, the garbage bag, and the red cloth gloves, which I now saw had clear plastic over them.

  I got up and ran to the wooden booth, an upended coffin-shaped box, where Corinne Buldock had been trapped as the shooter targeted it.

  Praying against logic that magic had transpired and the box would be empty, I reached for the latch. It didn’t budge.

  “Martin! Help me open this,” I cried.

  Immobilized with fright, Martin was on the far side of the stage, flat on his stomach with his hands over his head. Beside him stood the second wooden box, where Stephanie
was apparently trapped.

  “Molly!” Stephanie demanded, pounding on her box.

  “Get me out of here! What in God’s name is going on?”

  I ignored her. Opening Corinne’s box was much more important than freeing Stephanie. I pressed harder on the latch.

  “Get me out!” Stephanie continued to yell. “What was that noise? It sounded like gunshots!”

  After squeezing with all my might, the latch finally clicked. I flung open the panel of the bullet-hole-riddled box. Corinne’s eyes were wide open but unseeing.

  Her bloodied, lifeless body toppled out of the box toward me. As I caught and struggled to support her, I saw several clowns, in my peripheral vision, approaching me. A loud noise resounded nearby as Stephanie kicked open her box and emerged, panting from the effort.

  All these visual images careened at me, as if seen under a strobe light. The horizon line rapidly shifted positions. Then everything went black.

  Lauren’s upside-down face loomed in front of mine as I opened my eyes. “What happened?” I asked, feeling groggy, disoriented.

  “You fainted. Don’t worry. The police are on the way. I reached Tommy’s cell phone.”

  In a rush, the events of the final few seconds came back to me, and I propped myself up on an elbow, hoping this had been a nightmare. But Corinne’s body lay beside me on the stage, close enough to touch. I turned my head. “Oh, my God, Lauren. This can’t be happening.”

  I sat up. The smell of gun smoke lingered in the air. I must have blacked out for only a few seconds. Surrounding Lauren and me on the stage were all the clowns, still in full makeup. I counted. There were six of them. I made number seven, I realized dully; we were all present. One of them was holding Corinne’s hand and caressing her hair. The others were murmuring among themselves about how hideous and heartbreaking this was. “She was so sweet,” one woman said. “Such a caring, dedicated teacher,” another replied.

  Martin and Stephanie also remained on the stage. Martin was as white as the rest of us, while Stephanie’s perfect tan apparently prevented her from ever allowing her face to pale.

  I looked again at the clown who’d been holding Corinne’s lifeless hand. He now scanned the faces of the other five clowns, who remained on their feet. “Who did this?” he cried. “Someone killed my Corinne!” His voice broke and he began to sob. “One of you did this! I’m not going to let you get away with it!”

  He yanked off his fake nose and wig. I could now tell by the dark curly hair that it was Dave Paxton, an art teacher at the high school. He was a divorced forty-something who had been dating Corinne, at one point at least, though according to my latest information the two of them had broken up some time ago.

  “Oh, my God,” one of the female clowns wailed. Olivia Garrett, I thought, judging by the high-pitched, almost childlike voice. “This is my fault.”

  Dave stiffened and stared at her. She looked to either side as if to verify that, indeed, everyone else was staring at her as well. Olivia wrapped her arms around her midsection. She started crying, the tears running down her grease-painted face. “I …I jammed the latches on the doors to the boxes. I just wanted to louse up the trick to embarrass Stephanie. But, oh my God. That might have saved Stephanie’s life and cost Corinne hers.” Olivia pulled off her wig and let her long reddish-blond hair tumble free.

  Stephanie gave her a long look. “Wouldn’t you have just loved that? Getting custody of your daughter back by killing me off? Only Corinne’s the victim instead.”

  “Don’t anyone accuse me,” Martin said, holding up his palms. “I’m completely innocent.”

  “Everyone knows that, Martin,” Lauren said. “Molly and I saw the whole thing. You had your back turned, and someone in a clown suit shot her.”

  He pursed his already thin lips below his handlebar mustache and raised an eyebrow. “Maybe so, but everyone always points their fingers at the magician.”

  Stephanie snorted. “Please, Martin. Don’t kid yourself. You’re not that good. The bunny rabbit is a likelier suspect.”

  Martin glared at her, hands on his hips. “How dare you! How dare you accuse me of…of being inept!” He glanced at poor Corinne, then looked away. David’s face remained scrunched in agony over his loss as he cradled Corinne’s hand in his lap.

  This was all too bizarre, surreal, even. Had I possibly smacked my head when I fainted, and was I now hallucinating? Clowns, standing around a murdered woman. A magician, insulted not to be a suspect. Meanwhile, someone we had all known lay dead, right beside me.

  “How could this have happened?” I said, surprised to discover that I was speaking out loud. “This was supposed to be a silly skit, a school fundraiser.”

  Lauren’s and my eyes met. She, too, was clearly horrified at this scene. “At least none of the students were here to see this,” she said quietly.

  I shivered at the image of any child having been here.

  That was, indeed, something to be grateful for, though despair and humiliation seeped into me. The murderer had brushed right past me. I could have prevented this. Could have screamed. Tackled the would-be killer. My one chance to save someone’s life. I’d frozen, and my inaction had cost Corinne her life. I felt woozy once again and clutched my knees to my chest, closing my eyes.

  A security guard rushed in. He eyed Corinne’s body, the gun, then scanned our faces and said, “That is ketchup, isn’t it? Right?”

  No one answered.

  He looked again. “Oh, my God! Somebody really did get shot. It wasn’t part of the act.” His forehead was already damp with perspiration. “I heard the shots, but I thought…” He surveyed the group of us on the stage, then held up a palm and said in a half shriek, “Stay where you are and don’t anyone touch that gun.”

  Sergeant Tommy Newton arrived then, and not a moment too soon. Lauren and I were on a stage with a dead body, the murder weapon, and a killer disguised to look identical to half a dozen of us witnesses. Tommy stopped and surveyed the scene, his eyes lingering on me. “That you, Molly?”

  I nodded.

  He glanced at his wife, still seated beside me. “Were you a witness?”

  “Yes. I was seated in the front row. It was one of the six clowns, other than Molly. One of the ones with their gloves on.”

  There was an immediate reaction on all of the clowns’parts; they simultaneously looked down at their own hands, then at the hands of the other clowns.

  “Uh-huh. Typical. Murder follows Molly like a cart behind a horse.”

  I clenched my teeth but said nothing. The remark was unwarranted, and I had to remind myself that we all make unfair remarks at times. He slowly scanned the stage. As I glared up at him, I spotted one of the doves on the railing that crisscrossed the stage area overhead.

  “‘Fraid I’m gonna have to separate y’all ‘n’ get your statements.”

  Tommy was not a Southerner; he had lived in this upper New York town all his life, but he lapsed into a folksy drawl as part of his policeman persona. Over the years, I’d come to accept this about him without undue annoyance.

  “Sergeant Newton, how long will this take?” I recognized Nadine’s authoritative tones. She’d used them on me, more than once, when I’d come to the office to chat with Lauren. “We’re all horribly shaken and upset, and I, for one, would like to get to the comfort of my own home as quickly as possible.”

  Tommy regarded her coolly, then rocked on his heels. “It’ll take as long as it takes. Couple of patrol officers will be here momentarily. We’ll get y’all into separate rooms.”

  “Can we take these costumes off first? Please?” This time it was Danielle, who had an especially melodic voice. She had acted so upset at Corinne back in the dressing room that Stephanie had reassured her Corinne was going to be suspended, possibly fired. “I really don’t want to wind up on the front page of the Times Union, photographed in this outfit.”

  “Sorry. Y’all have to stay in costume till we can get each one logged as evid
ence at the station house. Look at it this way,” Tommy intoned. “Now even your best friend wouldn’t recognize you.”

  At least two hours later—I’d lost track of time in the auditorium, where there was no clock—one of the officers responded to my request that I be allowed to make a phone call. He escorted me to the principal’s office, then waited on the other side of the door to let me call home in privacy. No answer. Jim, my husband, must not have returned from his business trip to Boston. He was supposed to have been back an hour or two earlier.

  Having anticipated this possibility, I’d arranged for Nathan and Karen to sleep at my parents’ house, which was in our immediate neighborhood. I glanced at the wall clock. It was dreadfully late now, nearly midnight, but my parents always turned the ringer off before they went to bed. By calling now, I could leave them and my children a reassuring message so they wouldn’t panic upon hearing the news on the radio or TV in the morning. Before the fourth ring, which was when the machine picked up, I heard the sound of the phone being lifted and my mother’s groggy, “Hello?”

  I winced. “Mom. I’m sorry to call at this hour. I was hoping you had the ringer turned off so I’d just get the machine.”

  “What’s happened?” She sounded fully awake and alert now. “Are you hurt? Is it Jim?”

  I rolled my eyes. I should have assumed that with my children sleeping there, Mom would adjust her habits and leave the ringer active. When, when, was I going to learn that my mother was a combination pessimist and alarmist? She would, of course, assume that a phone call at midnight meant that a loved one had died. “I’m fine. But there was a shooting at the school and I—”

  “Oh, my God! A shooting? Who shot whom?”