“Come in,” I called out. “I’ve been expecting you, Lily.”
“Have you?” she asked. She was wearing a black hooded raincoat that did a perfect job of concealing her identity.
“I thought it would have to be Sly or Art Brunner, because your show started at eight. But then I remembered you have a forty-five-minute opening act and an intermission before you take the stage, and Sly told me you like to be absolutely alone before each performance. It wouldn’t have been too difficult leaving by the stage door and walking the two blocks to this office to shoot Rich Santillo.”
“You don’t know a thing,” she told me.
“I know you mentioned Santillo’s office was right next to mine, even though you claimed never to have heard of him.” I opened the file on my desk. “And I finally figured out who you really are, with a little help from Santillo’s research. I know why you had to kill him.” I saw her hand move inside the raincoat pocket. “Don’t shoot me through the pocket. The powder burn might be noticed when you hurry back to the Melrose for your concert.”
Her hand came out, holding the little pistol. “I’m sorry about this,” she said as she raised the weapon. “I didn’t want to kill him but he would have ruined my career, everything I’d worked for.”
“There’ll be somebody else after me. You can’t kill them all to hide your secret.”
“I can try,” she said, and that was when Stacy Cline came up behind her and hit her with a bookend.
“We may have to hire you after all,” I told Stacy later, when Lily Lake had been taken under guard to the hospital and Sergeant Ramous was waiting for an explanation.
“We’ve got the pistol,” he said, “and it’s probably the murder weapon. But we still need a motive.”
I glanced over at Mike Trapper. “I’m sorry, Mike. This story might have made tabloid history, but every paper in the country will have it by morning.” I spread out the clippings and documents from Santillo’s file. “She had no time to search for these, especially when she realized I was in the next office. You see, she stole the identity of a dead child to become a seventeen-year-old entrant on a TV reality show. She did better than she could have dreamed, winning first prize and going on to concert tours and gold records.”
“You really think an identity theft would have ruined her career?” Mike asked.
“Not that alone, but Santillo was able to trace her real identity. Her name was Naomi Crawford and she’d been living in New Zealand for several years. No one in America knew her. She was without a past, except for the one she invented.”
“And?”
“And what would her millions of teenage fans have done when they discovered their nineteen-year-old idol was a thirty-one-year-old woman?”
Crash Tackle
by Keith Miles
Copyright © 2007 by Keith Miles
Keith Miles worked in theater, radio, and television while pursuing his career as a novelist and short-story writer. The prolific author has some forty crime novels in print; the latest one in the U.S., under his popular pseudonym Edward Marston, is The Princess of Denmark: An Elizabethan Theater Mystery Featuring Nicholas Bracewell. (St. Martin’s Press; 8/06).
The crime did not come to light until Tuesday evening when they arrived for the training session. As soon as they stepped inside the clubhouse, they were met by an overwhelming stink of beer.
“What the hell is going on?” demanded Neil Woodville, leading the way swiftly to the bar. He felt something moist underfoot and came to a halt. “Jesus!”
A string of expletives followed and even Peter Rayment, normally so restrained, gave vent to some foul language. The whole of the bar was awash with beer. Someone had opened the taps on every barrel and the alcohol had poured out in a series of small rivulets. Not only was the bar in an appalling state — its carpet sodden, the legs of its furniture inch-deep in brown sludge — but there would be no draught beer for those coming to Shelton Rugby Football Club that evening. It was nothing short of disaster. Training sessions were extremely hard. Players worked up a healthy thirst.
“I blame Doug for this,” decided Woodville.
“That’s ridiculous.”
“He forgot to check the taps last thing on Saturday.”
“Doug would never do that,” said Rayment, defensively. “You blame him for everything, Neil, and it’s not fair. He does his job well.”
“Not in my book.”
“You tried to stop us hiring him in the first place.”
“And now you can see why,” said Woodville with a gesture that took in the whole of the room. “Look around — he’s ruined the place with his incompetence.”
“This is not a case of incompetence — it’s sabotage.”
“Then you can bet that Doug Lomas is behind it.”
Neil Woodville was a chunky man in his forties, a former prop whose weight had gone up dramatically since he stopped playing. A sly punch off the ball had left him with a broken nose that gave his face a sort of crumpled dignity. Peter Rayment, by contrast, was a tall, thin, bespectacled man in his late thirties with a diffident manner. As club secretary, he was a tireless workhorse, handling all the paperwork and doing a dozen other important jobs behind the scenes. By profession, Rayment was an accountant. Woodville, the waddling vice-chairman of the club, ran his own scrap-metal business.
“I’ll call the police,” said Woodville, taking out his mobile phone.
“Wait for Martin.”
“Why?”
“It’s his decision,” warned Rayment.
“Well, I’m taking it instead of him. This is a crime scene. We need to report the fact straightaway. Wait for Martin!” he said with contempt. “What bloody use will he be in an emergency like this? The last thing we need right now is a man in a wheelchair. Besides,” he added, his lip curling, “it was Martin who foisted Doug Lomas onto us. Our chairman has a lot to answer for.”
Martin Hewlett knew at once that there was something wrong. When the clubhouse came in sight, he could see no players out on the pitch. Instead of going through their routines, they were clustered in the car park. None of them had even changed into his kit.
“What’s the matter?” he said, peering through the windscreen.
“Perhaps they can’t get in,” suggested his wife, Rosie, at the steering wheel. “Maybe Neil hasn’t turned up with the key.”
“Neil always turns up with the key. It’s an act of faith with him. In any case, I can see his BMW. We’ve got problems, Rosie.”
“Then let someone else sort them out for a change.”
“But I’m the chairman.”
It was a matter of great pride to Martin Hewlett that he was chairman of a successful rugby club that ran three regular teams and a youth side. Every Saturday, sixty players took the field, wearing the colors of Shelton RFC, and they maintained the high standard of play that their many supporters had come to expect. Hewlett had been an outstanding captain of the First XV until a crash tackle had brought his playing career to a sudden end and left him paralyzed from the waist down. Others might have been disillusioned with the game as a result but Hewlett’s love of rugby seemed to increase. Unable to play, he threw himself wholeheartedly into the running of the club.
He was a big, broad-shouldered man with a ready smile and an unforced geniality. Hewlett was also very popular. When his car came to a halt, a number of players immediately came across to him. While they were helping him into his motorized wheelchair, they gave him varying accounts of what had happened. Neil Woodville pushed through the knot of players to give the newcomers a nod of welcome.