“Your mamá,” Tío said, coming up from behind, “is suffering, also. She expresses herself sometimes in a different way, but her corazón always beats for you.”
“Gracias, Tío,” I said, as he refilled my mug with more steaming tea. “You always know what to say to make me feel better. And I’m so glad you’re feeling better.”
“Si, the worst is passed,” he said. “I would have come up to San Francisco to get you, but Victoria and I wait here as Frank instructed. You have had a bad night, sobrina.” His eyes were sympathetic as they looked into mine.
“Well, it’s not every day your niece sees someone’s head chopped off.” I tried to smile, then bit my lower lip. ”Forgive me. That sounded glib. I’m feeling anything but glib.” I guzzled the tea down, then went to the table and poured myself another mugful.
“I saw it from the wings, Lee,” my brother said. “It’s something I’ll never forget.” He involuntarily shivered. Vicki wrapped her arms around him but said nothing.
Tío gave me another one of his bear hugs. “We will talk about all of this tomorrow,” he said. “Now you must finish your tea and go to bed.”
Vicki stared at me. “You look exhausted, Lee.” Then she turned to Richard. “You, too. Let’s go home. I should have gotten a babysitter for Steffi. I should have been with you.”
Richard leaned toward her and kissed her forehead. “Given all that’s happened, I’m glad you weren’t. Where is our little angel?” Richard asked, taking her hand.
Trying to lighten the tension in the room, Vicki put on a bright smile. “You wouldn’t be calling her that if you’d seen the tantrum she threw earlier tonight about having to go to bed. The terrible-twos have descended. Right now, she’s asleep in the family room. I’ll go get her.”
A minute or two later, Vicki rolled the stroller out containing my sleeping niece, the most gorgeous two-year-old in the world, not that I’m prejudiced or anything. Then Vicki shuttled Richard and Steffi into their car and drove him home.
After kissing Tío good night and pouring myself yet another cup of rum-ladened tea, I left the kitchen, exiting into and through the back garden. Once at the garage, I climbed the stairs to my husband’s and my apartment, my body screaming with each step I took. Then it occurred to me. I’d have to feed the cats before I did anything else, even took a shower. They hadn’t had their dinner yet, and it was nearly morning.
I opened the door expecting to see two half-crazed, hungry cats who had been alone for nearly eight straight hours. Instead, Tugger and Baba were asleep on the sofa curled up together in a yin-yang position.
“Of course,” I said aloud after looking into the kitchen and noticing their half-full cereal bowls. “Tío was here and took care of them.” I took a sniff of the air. “And he brought me chicken soup.”
Without disturbing the cats, I went into the bathroom and stripped, throwing the borrowed coat on the laundry hamper and what was left of the torn and ripped costume into the trash can in the corner.
I felt bad about the destruction of the costume. Billie Evans, the theater’s wardrobe supervisor, had scrounged it up for me out of stock at the last minute, fitted it to me, and then spent much of the day making alterations. I hadn’t even gotten it until five minutes before I went onstage. The silver spangle and beaded costume had grabbed at me here and there but was a credit to Billie’s sewing skills. I’d have to buy her a bouquet of flowers the next time I saw her. I looked in the trash bin. Maybe a flower shop.
I rinsed most of the gunk off in the shower, then filled the bathtub with hot water laced with scented bath oil and stepped into the warmth. Submerging myself underwater for a few seconds, I came up for air. I fought back tears of exhaustion and sadness as I assessed the scratches covering most of my body. Superficial. Time and Neosporin would take care of them. But nothing could change the fact that a man was dead. True, he was a nasty man—by all accounts, a despicable man—but he was now a headless man. And someone used me to kill him. Anger bubbled up from my gut, overtaking the sadness.
I took a deep breath, forced myself to relax, and rested my head against the tub while I reached out for my cell phone in its usual spot by the tub. It wasn’t there. I sat up so abruptly, water sloshed over the top of the tub and splashed onto the travertine flooring.
Realization hit me. My phone was still in the dressing room, along with my clothes, purse, and keys. After the ghastly climax to the act, running after the person I believed to be the culprit, and being arrested, I never went back to the dressing room to retrieve my things. Clawing your way out of a collapsed tunnel tends to make you forget the small stuff.
Wait a minute, I thought, trying to focus my frazzled brain. My car! Where was my car? Oh, that’s right. Downstairs in the garage. It was lucky Richard and I had driven up with Mom in her Jag. Otherwise, it would have been my car that had been impounded. How did I get in? Oh, yes. The door was unlocked. Tío must have done that. That’s right. He did mention he’d left the door open for me.
“I’m sure you’re in shock, Liana,” he’d whispered in his thick Spanish accent. “Seeing a man die like that is very shocking. I left your door unlocked and soup on the stove. Have some, mi sobrina, before you go to bed.”
And I will as soon as I soak away some of the stiffness, I thought. I settled back and tried to relax. Again. After soaking until the water had turned lukewarm, I took a shower and washed my hair. Wrapped in a terrycloth robe, long hair bound up in a towel, I felt near human as I headed for the kitchen. Not hungry, I put the chicken soup in the fridge and microwaved the remainder of the tea. The kitchen clock said 4:30 a.m. That meant it was 7:30 back East. I should call Gurn. I didn’t want him to hear this from the news or somebody else. Fenner’s words about the press having a field day with this bounced around inside my head. I picked up the landline and called his cell. He answered on the first ring.
“Hi, darling,” I said, trying to keep the tremble out of my voice.
“Sweetheart! Something’s wrong. What is it?” he asked. “It’s four thirty in the morning there.”
“I’m all right. I want you to know that up front. I’m all right.”
“When you start out with that, something bad has happened. Is your mother okay? Rich? Vicki and the baby?”
“Sorry, darling, everybody’s fine. Physically. Well, not everybody. There’s a magician, Marvin the Magnificent, who’s not all right. In fact, he was beheaded.”
“Did I hear you right? Someone was beheaded?”
“You could say I was the instrument of his demise.”
“What? Are you all right? What happened?”
“I’m shaken, to be honest, but I’m all right. As to what happened, I’m not really sure. One minute Marvin was barking orders at me to—”
“Why was he barking orders to you?”
“That’s right. You don’t know any of this. Day before yesterday I became his assistant. All undercover for this job I was doing. And then after the head of cabbage had been cut in half, he… then it happened to him, too.” I rushed on before Gurn could say anything. “Even though the lever was to the right and pushed in, just like he told me it should be, and he checked it before I hit my pose, too. And then after I lowered the pillory over his neck—”
“Slow down. What’s a pillory?“
“It’s a wooden framework with a hole for the head. It’s in two pieces, top and bottom.”
“Okay, so you lowered the pillory over his neck,” Gurn prompted.
“After locking it in place, I dropped the guillotine, and turned to face the audience. There was this sound behind me, like a thump, and then…”
My voice strangled in my throat. I stopped speaking and without warning, drew in a half sob, half breath. I paused and tried to pull it together.
“Honey, I should come home. You don’t sound like you should be alone.”
“No, I guess I shouldn’t. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. The audience started screaming even before I came out of my pose, so I turned around and looked at where his head should be, and it wasn’t. It was in the basket on the floor. And there was blood everywhere. They think I killed him on purpose.”
“I’ll be on the next plane home,” Gurn said. “We’ll sort this out. Even from what little you’ve told me, it sounds like an accident, nothing deliberate. There’s an aircraft cargo plane leaving for San Francisco in forty minutes. If I hurry, I can be on it.”
“What about your Sunday afternoon meeting? That’s why you’re there, to talk about your team’s experiences in Afghanistan to the top brass. Learn by the Past, that’s your lecture.” The spiked tea hit me like a sledgehammer. “People are counting on you,” I managed to say.
Gurn is a lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve and a former SEAL. Navy SEALs are named after the environment in which they operate, the sea, air, and land, and are the foundation of Naval Special Warfare combat forces. His experiences on the ground and in the air during the last days of the US Central Command of warfare in Afghanistan made him invaluable to the Pentagon. Hands-on experience wins the day.
“I’ll think of something,” he said, as I felt myself drifting off. “Try to get some sleep. I should be home by the time you wake up.”
I rallied. “Absolutely not, Gurn. They called this special meeting on a Sunday because that’s the only time all of them could be there to hear you. You told me with the current crisis, time is of the essence. You have to stay. One more day won’t make that much of a difference for me.”
I lied. I had three days to clear myself, or it was off to the clink for me. Every minute counted.
“Besides, I’ve got Frank and the whole family to help me sort this out.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“All right, then. I’ll stay. I’ll catch the red-eye and be back Monday morning.”
“Thank you, darling.” I let out a hiccup. “Excuse me. Tío made me chamomile tea with a shot of rum in it. I’m feeling a little woozy right now.”
“How many cups have you had?”
“Three. Maybe four.”
“Good. Go snuggle up with the cats. Get some sleep. Things will look better in the morning.”
“It is the morning. And things don’t look so good.”
“Then later this morning.”
“Mom and Richard shouldn’t have followed me down to the basement,” I said, my words becoming slow and slurred. “Thank God they didn’t follow me into the tunnel. It collapsed when I was in there, but I got out.”
“A tunnel collapsed on you?” I could feel his anxiety through the phone.
“Rats. I didn’t mean to mention that yet. We can talk about that when you get home. Jeesh, we’d still be in jail, but Frank pulled a few strings as did Bill Fenner. You remember him? He, Dad, and Frank went to the police academy together. Anyway, between the two of them, they got the charges against Mom and Richard dropped, and I’ve been released into Frank’s recon… reconna… recarceration, or something like that.”
“Reconnaissance.”
“Yeah.” I felt myself nodding off but got with it enough to add, “You know, darling, I don’t understand. The lever was right where it was supposed to be, and yet forensics said it had been tampered with. And I am the only likely candidate. I don’t understand.”
“Go to sleep, honey. I’ll talk to you when you wake up. And I’ll see you Monday morning. I love you.”
“Even if I go to prison?”
“Even if you go to prison.”
