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  The supervisor grimaced. “Edward Vanderveer. He’s done it for a community players group before. I gather he’s pretty good at ordering stage hands to get the right lights pointed in the right directions.”

  Theaters with decent budgets now have all that computerized. Merit County? We’re back in the Stone Age. We do everything by hand—and with volunteers, not professionals.

  Although I’d been to see several concerts and plays that various groups had put on here, I’d never had reason to come backstage before and I found it fascinating. Everything seemed a tangle of hanging ropes and backdrops and wires, though I knew there must be order to all this madness. Behind the stage was a long hallway. Several dressing rooms stood along one of its walls opposite two long storage rooms for costumes and props. A door at the far end led to a stairway and the basement that housed anything not currently considered useful. I begged Pete to unlock the door and let me look—hey, I’m incurably curious.

  “You can do that later,” Janowski objected.

  He was right of course. Right now I needed to arrange everything so we could deal with our “amateur night” performers in as simple a manner as possible.

  “We only have today and tomorrow to organize both the show and the parade,” he went on irritably. “Then it’ll be the Fourth of July and all hell will break loose.”

  I could only hope he was speaking figuratively.

  While Pete and Theresa tripped over dogs and dragged the requested tables into position, I made a dash for my car and my laptop and briefcase. I had a sneaking suspicion it would be my only chance. I’d also hoped to get at least a glimpse of Sarkisian but he wasn’t anywhere in sight. Can’t win them all, I guess. At least I now had all my notes. I returned to the auditorium with no more than my usual sense of foreboding that accompanied the launch of every event.

  As I neared the door I could hear the sound of two men engaged in a low-voiced argument. I hurried up the few steps, hoping to smooth things over and was almost run over by Pete Norton as he sauntered out. Apparently smoothing wouldn’t be needed after all. Or else I was too late. As I reached the top step I saw Ivan Janowski just inside, leaning against the wall, looking positively ill.

  “Are you all right?” I asked, concerned.

  He looked up. “What? Yes. Fine. Why shouldn’t I be?” He straightened and strode off toward the stage.

  Odd. But I didn’t have time to wonder what this latest disagreement had been about though I could probably guess. The entry here was in a mess. Pete had managed to arrange the tables so they seemed to direct people toward the basement instead of the stage. Folding chairs blocked most of the doorway and little doglets ran everywhere, tripping people and knocking over anything in their way.

  Yup, chaos. My aunt accuses me of thriving on it. She might be right. At least I felt at home with it.

  “Come on, Theresa,” yelled Janowski. “You aren’t normally this scattered.”

  Theresa looked up from a pile of papers knocked over by one of the dogs. “What do you expect?” she demanded. “He’s been murdered.”

  “That happened—” the supervisor began, only apparently thought better of what he was about to say.

  I didn’t blame him. Everyone stared at him.

  He cleared his throat. “All right, let’s talk about it and get it out of our systems. In light of his turning up dead, that means a lot of our suppositions from last year had to be wrong. What do we actually know? What are the facts?”

  Lizzie scooped up the whining Mazda. “Are you trying to play detective? I’m sure the sheriff will want to hear all this.”

  Knowing Sarkisian, he’d probably already recalled all the facts. Even though he’d been away on one of his “mysterious trips” that I now knew were stints at the university catching up on class work he had to miss because of his job, the department would have kept him informed. And the man has a disconcertingly accurate memory. He’s caught me out more than once when I’ve tried to hedge about something.

  “Fill me in,” I invited. Sarkisian would do that later—if he had time—but it might be interesting to hear these people’s perspective on the disappearance of Lee Wessex. After all, they were the most involved. I cleared enough chairs to let myself inside.

  “The facts,” said a clipped tenor voice from just behind me in the doorway, “aren’t that many.”

  I turned to see Edward Vanderveer had arrived at last. Although he was of no more than medium height, his very expensive-looking designer suit drew one’s attention to him at once. He appeared perfectly styled, from the top of his graying brown hair to the toes of his wing-tipped leather shoes. His piercing green eyes seemed to take us all in and file us for later consideration.

  Theresa gasped. Her hand, still holding her steno pad and pen, fluttered to her chest.

  “You all right?” Lizzie asked her.

  Theresa took a shuddering breath. “He-he just startled me. Hello, Mr. Vanderveer.”

  “Theresa.” The man inclined his head toward her.

  What was that all about, I wondered?

  “Fact one,” Edward Vanderveer said in precise tones. “All of the fund-raising money disappeared on the night of the Fourth last year.”

  “Was stolen, Ed,” Lizzie corrected. An undercurrent of dislike touched her words.

  Vanderveer held up a manicured hand. “Disappeared, for now, Lizzie. Fact two. Our company’s money vanished the day before, although I didn’t know about it until the banks reopened on the fifth. And no one but Lee and I could withdraw funds from our business’s account. You are still, as you were then, Theresa, in the clear.”

  I found his precise tones irritating. I suppose precision was what a person would want in their financial advisor but coming into contact with him on a daily basis would have driven me crazy. With the sinking sensation his recitation was going to take awhile, I looked around, spotted a stool and settled onto it. At once the three-legged Mazda tried to scramble into my lap. I’m a sucker for fur of any species so I scooped the hefty armload up and let him settle. As if that were a signal, three of the poodles joined us, though Roomba continued her nonstop circling of the floorboards with several of the other poodles following her.

  “Fact three,” Vanderveer continued. “The joint account belonging to both Wessex and his wife was also emptied. Fact four, a suitcase was missing from Wessex’s house along with a number of his clothes and personal items, his passport and all his wife’s jewelry. Fact five. Wessex’s car was found in the long-term parking lot at the airport.”

  Theresa sniffed audibly and tears started in her eyes. “I still can’t believe he’d do such a thing.”

  “No more facts?” asked Janowski in a dry tone.

  “Those are, I believe, the major ones. Have I missed any?”

  “That you’re a pompous ass?” muttered Janowski.

  “So everything pointed to Lee Wessex stealing everything he could get his hands on and running for it,” Lizzie summed up. “Until now.”

  “No one else could have stolen the money from our investment firm,” Vanderveer repeated.

  Janowski fixed him with a challenging stare. “No one?”

  Vanderveer straightened. “Are you daring to suggest that I—I—would do such a thing? Our clients’ funds are sacred.”

  “Mr. Wessex must have stolen everything,” Theresa said softly. She sounded broken. “Then someone stole it all from him. He should never have done such a terrible thing.”

  For once we were all silent.

  “A murder of opportunity,” Janowski said at last. “Someone probably saw him take off with the charity funds and killed him for them then found they’d really hit the jackpot.”

  “An interesting theory,” said Sarkisian from just behind me. He laid a hand on my shoulder, which was the only thing that kept me from jumping a foot off the stool and scattering dogs. The man moves as silently as a proverbial cat. Not a specific cat, mind you. They tend to be clumsy little beasts and make an incred
ible racket for their size.

  Connie Wessex, all aging sultry allure, strolled in from the direction of the stage, her stiletto heels clicking on the wood floor. Pete must have let them in the main entrance. “Hello, Edward. Are you telling everyone what happened?”

  He looked down the length of his classically straight nose. “I was merely stating the facts.”

  Connie’s eyes flashed and she opened her mouth but Sarkisian intervened smoothly before she could utter whatever scathing remark occurred to her. “I’d like each of you to remember what you can about that night. When you last saw Mr. Wessex, what he was doing, what you were doing. That sort of thing.”

  “That,” stated Edward Vanderveer, “was a long time ago.”

  “True. But considering what happened and the uproar that followed the next day I imagine you can all remember a great deal. Would you like to begin, Mr. Vanderveer?”

  The man hesitated. “I left early,” he said at last. “I never liked fireworks, they’re much too loud.”

  Sarkisian nodded. “So where did you go?”

  Again Vanderveer hesitated. “Home and straight to bed, I’m afraid. I wanted to get up early to call clients on the east coast.”

  “Unprovable alibi,” muttered Lizzie just a touch too loudly.

  Sarkisian turned to her and smiled. “And you, Ms. Mobley?”

  Lizzie colored. “I skipped the fireworks,” she said shortly. “Poor Mazda had been badly hurt—as you can see—so I spent most of the time at the emergency vet clinic waiting for his surgery to be completed. By the time I got back here, that—” She broke off. “The ticket booth told me that weasel Wessex had collected all the money about half an hour before. At the time I was just glad someone had it safe. I didn’t know he intended to make off with it.”

  Sarkisian’s gaze moved around the room. “Ms. delGuardia?”

  Theresa tilted up her chin as if facing an unpleasant duty. “I saw him take his place in the stands with the other committee members. But then all the lights were turned off for the fireworks and when they came back on again he’d gone. Then I discovered I’d lost my keys so I called for a taxi and went to meet it at the Main Gate.”

  The sheriff turned to Janowski. “And you?”

  “My wife and I had to sit with him during the show. He made some excuse about halfway through and left. Didn’t see him again but I wasn’t exactly looking for him. Then my wife and I went home.”

  Sarkisian’s gaze shifted to Brian Quantrell and he raised his eyebrows.

  “Me?” Quantrell grinned. “Let’s see. I wasn’t on duty but I was helping out. Keeping an eye on the fireworks, that sort of thing. Then afterward I was supervising the clean-up in case there were any accidents or burns. I left right about the same time as the ambulance.”

  The sheriff nodded. “And Ms. Wessex?” He turned to her at last.

  She’d remained silent since her initial acrimonious greeting of Vanderveer but that was hardly surprising. It couldn’t be pleasant to know her husband had stolen everything he could get his hands on including her jewelry, planned to run out on her, then gotten himself killed. Though come to think of it, that sounded like a damn good motive for her to have been the one who killed him.

  She reached out to stroke Mazda’s head. The little hound retreated, sinking lower into my lap. “I didn’t feel like sitting with the organizers—it was Lee’s project, not mine—so I strolled around a bit, watched the fireworks, talked to a few people—no, no one I actually knew, just people I bumped into—then went home before it was over. We’d brought separate cars, you see. So I guess the last time I saw him was when he made his way to the stands and I went to see if I could find anyone interesting to talk to.”

  So it didn’t sound as if any of these people had a definite alibi for the time Lee Wessex picked up the money and checks and headed to his car—and was murdered.

  “How was he killed?” Vanderveer asked.

  Sarkisian studied him. “We won’t know for certain until after the autopsy.”

  “Then there wasn’t any outward sign? No bullet holes or knife wounds or his head bashed in?”

  “You sound like you’d like it if there was,” Sarkisian said mildly.

  The man flushed. “It would make it simpler, wouldn’t it? And even though I had no reason to be mad at him at the time, I’ve since found out he destroyed our business and our reputations as investors. So yes, as shocking as it might sound, the idea of him being battered a little doesn’t bother me in the least. I’m sorry, Connie. But I imagine you’ve felt the same.”

  Connie Wessex drew a shuddering breath. “I admit the shock of his disappearance faded a bit under the shock of realizing why he’d disappeared. That he could steal everything like that and just leave me behind—” She broke off.

  Her story had changed, I noted. Earlier she’d said her husband must have been forced, that he’d never have left or stayed away from her on purpose. Interesting.

  Pete Norton stuck his head in the doorway. “There are people arriving. Thought you’d want to know. We’ve put up arrow signs directing them around to this side.”

  “Right.” Gathering up Mazda and dislodging the poodle that had been sitting on my feet, I stood. “If we don’t want a riot on our hands we’d better get set up.” That’s what we should have been doing all this time but I suppose we could be forgiven for getting sidetracked. I wondered how much curiosity we were going to get from the hopeful amateurs and drill teams. They’d be bound to notice the crime scene tape. It has such a jaunty way of catching the eye.

  First things first though. With the help of Theresa and Lizzie I repositioned the tables. As planned, I placed the applications for the talent show and the parade at either end of the first table and left Edward Vanderveer sitting behind it, looking important, promising him it was only until our volunteer reinforcements showed up. I scattered a few pens on the second table then left Lizzie Mobley behind the third, ready to accept the completed forms and make sure they went into the right stack. Ivan Janowski, with Theresa delGuardia at his elbow, headed toward the seats to await the first audition. Brian Quantrell and Connie Wessex, I noticed, had faded into the background while I was passing out assignments but they both trailed after Janowski and Theresa. That left me free to run interference in case of problems—and try to sneak a few minutes with Sarkisian.

  Fat chance of that. There’s nothing like the lure of an amateur performance to bring people—talented and untalented—out of the woodwork. One middle-aged woman gushingly told me she hadn’t played her clarinet since high school band but when she heard about this wonderful opportunity she got on the internet and looked up a number of her former bandmates and they’d gotten six of them together to play a selection of old marching favorites. Well, you never know. They might have practiced.

  At any rate I enjoyed the excitement of the crowd as the people waited their turns to hand in their applications and be given an audition time—which would start in about twenty minutes. An all too familiar plunging sensation in my stomach accompanied that realization. At least Edward Vanderveer, our light and sound specialist, was here. As soon as our volunteers showed up, I could chase Lizzie out front with the other committee members and Vanderveer into the lighting loft.

  I was a bit surprised the volunteers hadn’t arrived yet. I’d rallied the assistance of a few old friends, members of the SCOURGEs—that’s the Service Club of Upper River Gulch Environs, the tiny town where I live with my aunt. That group tends to live up to their acronym but they mean well. And they do turn out en masse when needed. I’d told them to report to Janowski though—a diplomatic move I now regretted. I should have kept control of the volunteers myself. Worried, I peered over the heads of the growing number of people, trying to catch a glimpse of a familiar head. What time had he told them to get here?

  Someone grabbed my arm and the next thing I knew Sarkisian had propelled me behind one of the stage curtains and kissed me soundly. It was great having him b
ack, even if I was working an event and he was working a case. At least we could catch glimpses of each other—and occasional moments like this together—because the damn things overlapped. Again. Not that it happens often. I mean, I’ve staged numerous events since the fiasco last Halloween. There’d been a Thanksgiving pageant, a Christmas extravaganza, a New Year’s Eve gala, a Valentine’s Day bash, an Easter festival, a May Day revelry, even a summer solstice bonfire, not to mention the normal weddings, anniversaries and other assorted parties, all without so much as a spoon going missing or someone stubbing a toe. And now I had to stumble into a year-old murder.

  Hell, I hadn’t had anything to do with last year’s Fourth of July parade and fireworks. Of course, with the addition of my services, the celebration had grown a little this year. Now it included not only the talent show but a picnic at the fairgrounds where various county restaurants and service groups would serve up food—for the support of Merit County First’s charities. There would also be competitions, with both professional and amateur categories, for ice cream flavors and cotton candy sculpting. I’d also dreamed up a host of other events last month when the county supervisors, as represented by Ivan Janowski, had first approached me. I’m great at kicking out spur-of-the-moment ideas to impress a potential client. The problem is, the client all too frequently loves the ideas, which leaves me stuck with carrying out even some of the more ridiculous ones.

  Sarkisian kissed me again and turned to go back on duty.

  I caught his arm. “When are we getting married?” No point in being subtle with this man. I was determined to bring him around to my point of view—and the altar—before he went back to his classes.

  He touched my cheek. “As soon as I’m not living in two places all the time.”

  “To hell with that. I’m not getting any younger.” It’s a bit of an issue—with me, not with him—that I’m six years his senior. I turned forty last November and the biological clock was ticking away to an ever-increasing beat. “And if you dare quote Gilbert and Sullivan at me—”

  He kissed me again—sometimes the only way to shut me up. “Dinner tonight,” he promised. “We’ll talk about it. Right now I have to get back to work. Mind spelling the people at the tables so I can talk to them? One at a time?”