"Carlo? Yeah. Most of the time, anyway. He was working on the set. He's the best carpenter in the company. And he does great voices. He can sound like anybody."
"Okay."
"He's a tough guy," she added. "Hard. Like his face."
"But he was here?"
"Well, nobody was taking names. But yeah. Around."
"Okay." Lucas followed her down the hall, watching her back and shoulders in the dim light. She looked delicate, like most slender redheads, but there was nothing fragile about her, he realized. "You're a lifter, right?" he said.
"Yeah, some," she said, half turning. "I don't compete or anything. Do you lift?"
"No. I've got some weights in my basement and I've got a routine I do in the morning. Nothing serious."
"Gotta stay in shape," Cassie said, slapping her stomach. They stepped into the lobby, and Cassie stopped suddenly and caught Lucas' arm: "Oh, no," she groaned.
"What?"
"Deep shit," she said.
A man stood over the garbage on the rug. He was dressed all in black, from his knee boots to his beret, and his shoulder-length auburn hair was tied in a stubby ponytail. His hands were planted on his hips, and one foot was tapping in anger. Cassie hurried toward him and he looked up when he heard her coming.
"Cassie," he said. He had a goatee, and his teeth were a brilliant white against the beard. "Did you do this? One of the ticket women said you were looking through the garbage…"
"Uh…"
"I did it," Lucas said, his voice curt. Cassie flashed him a grateful look. "Police business. I was looking for information involving the Armistead killing last night."
"Well, are you going to clean it up?" the man asked, nudging a wet ball of paper with the toe of a boot.
"Who are you?" Lucas asked, stepping closer.
"Uh, this is Davis Westfall," Cassie said from behind him. She still sounded nervous. "He is… was… the co-artistic director with Elizabeth. Davis, this is Lieutenant Davenport of the Minneapolis police. I was showing him around."
"She's been a help," Lucas said to Westfall, nodding at Cassie. "Mr. Westfall… Miss Armistead's death would put you in sole charge of this theater, would it not? I mean, in one sense, you'd be a… beneficiary?"
"Why… that would be up to the board," Westfall sputtered. He glanced at Cassie for support, and she nodded. "But we're a nonsexist theater, so I imagine they'll appoint another female to take Elizabeth's place."
"Hmp," Lucas said. He studied Westfall for another moment, skepticism on his face. "No major disagreements on management?" he asked, keeping Westfall pinned.
"No. Not at all," Westfall said. Now he was nervous.
"But you'll be around?"
"Well, yes…"
"Good. And don't move this garbage right away. Our crime lab might want to look at it. If they're not here by…"-Lucas glanced at his watch-"six o'clock, you can have somebody pick it up."
"Anything we can do…" Westfall said, thoroughly deflated.
Lucas nodded and turned to leave. "I'll show him to the door," Cassie said. "I'll make sure it's locked."
"Thank you," Lucas said formally.
At the front door, Cassie whispered, "Thanks. Davis can be an asshole. I'm at the bottom of the heap here."
"No problem," Lucas said, grinning. "And I appreciate the tip on the guest list. It really could turn into something."
"You gonna ask me out?" she asked.
She'd surprised him again. "Mmm. Maybe," he said, smiling. "But why…"
"Well, if you're going to, don't wait too goddamned long, okay? I can't stand the suspense."
Lucas laughed. "All right," he said. As he stepped out on the sidewalk, the door clicked shut behind him. He took another step away, toward the car, when he heard a rapping on the door glass. He turned around and Cassie lifted the front of her T-shirt, just for an instant, just a flash.
Long enough: She looked very nice, he thought. Very nice, pink and pale…
And she was gone.
CHAPTER 11
Bekker walked in circles on the Heriz carpet, orbiting the Rococo revival sofa, watching cuts from the press conference on the noon news. He'd heard shorter cuts on his car radio on the way to the hospital, and had gone back home to see it on television. Most of the press conference was nonsense: the police had nothing at all. But the appeal to Stephanie's lover could be dangerous.
"We believe the man who called nine-one-one is telling the truth. We believe that he is innocent of the murder of Mrs. Bekker, especially in light of this second murder," the cop, Lester, was saying into the microphones. He was sweating under the lights, patting his forehead with a folded white handkerchief. "After discussions with the county attorney, we have agreed that should Mrs. Bekker's friend come forward, Hennepin County would be willing to discuss a guarantee of immunity from prosecution in return for testimony, provided that he was not involved in the crime…"
Lester went on, but Bekker wasn't listening anymore. He paced, gnawing on a thumbnail, spitting the pieces onto the carpet.
The police were all over the neighborhood. They weren't hiding. They were, in fact, deliberately provocative. Stephanie's idiot cop cousin, the doper, had been going door to door around the neighborhood, soliciting information. That angered him, but his anger was for another time. He had other problems now.
"Loverboy," they called him on TV. Who was it? Who was the lover? It had to be somebody in their circle. Somebody with easy access to Stephanie. He had exhausted himself, tearing at the problem.
Fuckin' Druze, he thought. Couldn't find the face. The face had to be there, somewhere, in the photographs. Stephanie took photographs of everybody, could never leave anybody alone, always had that fuckin' camera in somebody's face, taking snapshots. She had boxes, cartons, baskets full of photos, all those beefy blond Scandinavian males…
Could Druze be wrong? It was possible, but, Bekker admitted to himself uncomfortably, he probably wasn't. He didn't seem unsure of himself. He didn't equivocate. He'd looked at the photos, studied them and said no.
"Bitch," Bekker said aloud to Stephanie's house. "Who were you fucking?"
He looked back at the television, at Lester yammering at the cameras. Anger surged in him: it was unfair, they had twenty men, a hundred, and he had only himself and Druze. And Druze couldn't really look, because if he was seen first…
"Bitch," he said again, and gripped by the anger, he pounded out of the parlor, up the stairs, into the bedroom. The cigarette case was with his keys and a pile of change, and he snapped it open, popped two amphetamines and a sliver of windowpane, and closed his eyes, waiting for Beauty.
There. The bed moved for him, melted, the closet opened like a mouth, a cave, a warm place to huddle. His clothes: they gripped him, and he fought the panic. He had felt it before, the shirt tightening around his throat, the sleeves gripping his arms like sandpaper, tightening… He fought the panic and stripped off the constricting shirt, slipped out of his pants and underwear, and threw them out into the room. The closet called, and he dropped to his knees and crawled inside. Warm and safe, with the musty smell of the shoes… comfortable.
He sat for a minute, for five minutes, letting the speed run through his veins and the acid through his brain. Fire, he thought. He needed fire. The realization came on him suddenly and he bolted from the cave, still on his hands and knees, suddenly afraid. He crawled to the dresser and reached over it, groping, found the book of matches and scuttled back to the closet, his eyes cranked wide, not handsome now, something else… In the semi-dark of the closet, he struck a match and stared into the flame…