He ducked down and lifted the slender woman in his arms.
“You’re sure you can manage?” he asked Jane gruffly. He was frightened, and his fear was making him angry, but he wanted to get Jennie to a hospital and have Jane checked out before he let emotion rule his actions.
“Yes,” she told him. “And I don’t believe Jennie has any broken bones. Someone knocked her on the head, too. Her pulse is decent.”
“Go up the stairs ahead of me.”
He heard activity at the door to the basement.
“I can hear them! He’s found her!” Henri Coque shouted to someone at the top of the stairs.
Sloan was heedless of what he knocked over as he carefully made his way back to the main room and toward the stairs, following Jane. Her first steps were clumsy, but she recovered her balance, and Henri was there to help her up the stairs. When Sloan got to the landing, he saw a group awaiting them, all wide-eyed and worried. He noticed Henri first, and then Valerie, Alice, Cy and two of the night restaurant staff.
“Back off, please,” Sloan said. “Let’s make sure she has air!”
“Oh, Jennie!” Valerie Mystro cried in dismay.
They moved back, a stricken expression on every face.
“What happened?” Henri asked, sounding lost.
Yes, what the hell had happened? Sloan wondered. As he walked slowly through the bar to the center of the restaurant, Liz, the waitress, rushed ahead, clearing one of the longer dinner tables. Sloan came forward to lay Jennie down. As he did, the swinging doors to the Gilded Lily swung open, and Chet hurried through, leading two paramedics in uniform and bearing black medical bags. They immediately began to work over the prone Jennie, while asking questions regarding her injury.
Sloan listened while Jane replied that no one had known where Jennie was, so she’d gone down to the basement and heard her groaning and finally found her, only to be knocked on the head herself.
“Knocked on the head?” Henri burst out. “But...”
“Those stupid mannequins!” Valerie said.
“A mannequin did not knock her on the head,” Alice protested, “but those old bastards can hurt you. One of them fell on me when I first came to the theater and went to look at them, thinking they were so cool.”
“They’re evil, Henri! We should get them out of here,” Valerie said.
The paramedics started an IV on Jennie. One of them talked on his radio, and a minute later, two other emergency workers joined them, bearing a stretcher. The oldest of the group turned to Jane. “You come to the hospital, too. Head injuries can be dangerous.”
“I’m fine, really. I—”
“You need a scan. You could have a concussion,” Sloan said harshly. He took her by the arm. “We’re going to the hospital.”
“Sloan!”
“The hospital!”
“But...we don’t know what happened!” Henri said.
“All I know is that I found Jennie on the floor. I got my cell phone out to call for help, and the next thing I knew...I was waking up on the floor myself,” Jane told him.
Sloan was torn; he didn’t want Jane going to the hospital without him and he didn’t want anyone crawling around in the basement until he’d done the initial investigation himself.
“Chet,” he barked, calling his deputy.
“Yes, sir?”
“Stand at that door. No one goes in or out until I’m back.”
“Yes, sir!”
“If anyone comes out of that basement, arrest him!”
“Hey!” Henri frowned. “I need to get down there and see what kind of damage has been done. These two might have knocked over mannequins and been knocked out by them. Sloan, this doesn’t mean there’s some kind of a diabolical plot—”
“Henri, you started all this because you wanted to know who put the skull on the wig stand. By God, I’m going to finish it.”
The paramedics had already taken Jennie out. One of them was standing at the door impatiently, waiting for him and Jane. The hospital wasn’t quite two miles away; he could easily be back soon.
He narrowed his eyes. “We don’t know what’s going on in this town. The one thing we do know is that it involves more than the theater. I just found Caleb Hough dead in an abandoned mine. We’ve had two murders. You listen to me. No one goes down in that basement!”
Valerie gasped and the others stared at him in stunned silence.
He turned. Jane was staring at him, too. He grabbed her arm, leading her to the door.
“Sloan—”
“X-ray or CAT scan—or whatever they do!” His words were a growl; he was acting like a macho jerk. But he was the sheriff—and it was going to be done his way.
They went out to the street as the paramedics and county cops cleared a path to the ambulance.
The sirens blared and they drove to the hospital.
*