Bridget gasped. “That scuzzball!” she exclaimed. “Oh, Marnie! Not kill you—he was trying to rape you.”
“What?” Marnie said. What? He’d drugged her...not trying to murder her? But if he had managed to get something in her tea...he could have managed to kill her if he had tried!
“I’m sorry. Really sorry,” Detective Vining said. “There were traces of a drug in your tea. Someone else could have done it, but I sure as hell don’t know how.”
Marnie gasped. “No, no, I made the tea! Angela was on the porch. Bridget was in the guest room. So...it had to have been David. But...Jeremy is dead. And David Neal was nowhere near Jeremy yesterday. He couldn’t have seen Jeremy, unless... Cops were watching Jeremy! David couldn’t have gotten to him unless...”
She trailed off.
“Unless a cop was bad—or lazy as hell. That’s not the case, Marnie,” Detective Vining assured her. “I handpicked people on this.”
“I guess I do want to go home,” she said. “David is a bastard, but not a killer.”
What could his plan have been? She hadn’t been alone. Angela and Bridget had both been there. Or had he thought that he could make her pliable, and that when she was doing anything that he said, he might have gotten her away with him somewhere.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe somehow he is a bastard and a killer. I want a drink!”
“Marnie, you don’t drink,” Bridget said.
“I’m going to take it up!”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Bryan promised her. He had her by the shoulders; she felt him trying to convey what he felt, which he clearly didn’t have words to express. “As soon as I can,” he repeated.
She met his eyes and nodded.
“You’ll be fine. Angela and Jackson will be with you.”
“And Bridget—”
“Bridget will have Sean Cameron, a really crack agent, and Madison with her.”
Marnie nodded.
They split up, escorted by their protection.
Marnie looked back as they started to move away. She could see Vining talking to Bryan; he was in full professional mode.
She wanted Bryan with her. Just as soon as he and Sophie found David Neal.
*
Bryan headed back into the building. He pulled his phone out and called Sophie Manning.
“Any luck?”
“Luck?” she repeated. “Bryan, I’m pinching every mannequin I pass. Some of them are so real—the eyes! It’s amazing. I started from the far rear, one of the main delivery entrances. I’ve gone through the maze, the Egyptian garden, where I was sure an Egyptian pharaoh was real, and now I’m in a section called The Gardens of Transylvania. I have been searching for Neal, and I have the convention staff looking, too.”
“Thanks, Sophie,” he said. “I’ll take the front, row by row, and we’ll meet in the middle.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
They hung up. Bryan did exactly as he said, moving quickly—but not too quickly. He passed incredible displays and found out he had to do much the same thing as Sophie—pinch mannequins.
It was frustrating. He went by a large double booth. A character in a lizard suit was reading while his makeup was being done.
Nice to see that monsters used their makeup time to read.
One section was dedicated to very, very creepy dolls.
He’d walked the breadth of the convention. It was time to turn and take in the next row. Even with him and Sophie both looking, David Neal could turn a corner at any time, and they could miss him. But Sophie was a local cop, and she had asked for help. Hopefully that meant that convention security was really helping out, as well.
“Fantastic things!” he murmured to himself.
There was a spectacular homage to Psycho, Norman Bates and the Bates Motel. The house, of course, wasn’t life-size, but it was big. Along with the motel part of the movie set, it covered the space of a number of booths.
Every once in a while, a high-pitched scream emitted from the house.
From there, he moved on to alien creatures.
Swamp creatures.
Giant insects from a faraway planet.
More makeup, another booth, vying for attention.
Sophie called him.
“Any luck?”
“No. I’d forgotten there are panels going on, as well.”
“Yes, there are panels.” She sighed. “We need more manpower to cover this place. Vining was going to check in with the ME on Jeremy Highsmith.”
“Yeah, we need to know what happened there.”
“Indeed,” Sophie said drily. “Rather a convenient thing, a heart attack in the middle of all this. But I have to say, I don’t understand. If Marnie was the intended victim all along, as we’d thought, one might understand the motive, no matter how sick. She was the holdout—the one who might not want to do a remake of Dark Harbor.”
“But what if,” Bryan said, “we only think Marnie was the intended victim? We could be wrong, especially since Cara is dead. What if Cara was killed because she wanted the show so very much—and someone out there doesn’t want the show to go on?”
“I guess that’s possible.” Sophie inhaled on the other end of the line. “I don’t know who that would be. Of the people we’ve been looking at, anyway. Even Malcolm seems to be happy with the prospect of being Marnie’s—Scarlet’s—love interest, should there be a show.”
“Jeremy wanted specials, not a full series reboot.”
“Still, he was on board,” Sophie said.
“David Neal... He wouldn’t want the show. He wants to be Marnie’s stage manager.”
“Not a chance in hell of that happening now.”
“Nope,” Bryan said. “But let’s find the bastard, huh?”
“I’m calling Vining. We’ll get more help out here.”
Bryan thanked her and rang off.
He passed Louisiana swamp monsters, Bigfoot, more.
He paused, not sure why, by a tableau that held a real antique stagecoach and what appeared to be spirit monsters, American Indians and giant buffalo.
Nightmares on the Plain! a sign by the tableau read.
He realized that it was a scene from a horror movie due to open in a month.
Something just hadn’t seemed right when he’d looked at it.
And then he realized what.
One of the giant buffalo... Its tail moved awkwardly.
He walked around. There was no man inside the giant buffalo—no one in costume.
There was, however, a man hiding behind the giant buffalo.
“Get your slimy ass out here, Mr. Neal!” he snapped, reaching for the man, catching his shirt at his nape and dragging him out.
Neal didn’t like Bryan—that much was obvious.
He was also obviously afraid of him.
But he was going to bluster.
“You can’t do anything to me—or with me. You’re not a cop. You’re not FBI. You’re just a private investigator, and this isn’t even your state. You have no right to touch me. In fact, keep it up! I’ll see that you’re arrested for assault!”
“You’re going in,” Bryan said.
“Because of you? What, he-man? You going to throw me over your shoulder and drag me to a car? And why? I didn’t do a damn thing to you. I didn’t do a damn thing to anyone. You have no rights at all over me. I will sue you, you asshole. You can’t take me in!”
In a way, the man was right.
But it didn’t matter.
Because Sophie Manning was jogging up right behind him. She had a pair of cuffs out.
“He can’t arrest you. But I can. And did I hear you use the word asshole? Rude, sir, very rude. Can’t arrest you for rudeness,” she announced. “Mr. Neal, you are under arrest for assault.”
*
Angela made tea. Bridget tried to talk, to tell Marnie that whatever decisions she chose to make regarding Grayson and Jeremy and the horror convention were fine.