The chief detective took a phone call. Then he was back with Dance, though only for the briefest of times. And with the briefest of smiles—just as phony as Edwin’s, she reflected. “Appreciate you stopping by. We’ll give CBI a call if there’s anything we need.”
Dance looked over the stage, the misty air above the pit.
Gonzalez offered, “So long now.”
Despite the double-barreled good-bye, Dance didn’t feel like leaving just yet. “How did the light fall on him?”
The sheriff said, “Maybe tugged it after him when he fell. The cord, you know.”
“Was it a strip light?” Dance asked.
Madigan muttered, “Dunno what that is. Take a look.” The last sentence was delivered with a bit of challenge.
Dance did. It was indeed a hard thing to see: the scorched body. And, yes, the unit was a four-lamp strip.
“That might’ve been the one that fell yesterday.”
“Tye mentioned that,” Madigan said. “We’re looking into it.” He was clearly growing weary of her. “Well, all righty then.” He began to turn away.
“How did it come undone?”
“Wing nuts worked loose?” He nodded up to the scaffolding.
Dance said, “And I wonder why Bobby fell. Not like it isn’t marked.” Yellow warning tape clearly indicated the edge of the stage.
Over his shoulder Madigan offered a dismissive, “Lot of questions, you betcha.”
Then a woman’s loud, haunting voice from the back of the hall: “No … no, no!” The last time that word was repeated it became a scream. Despite the hot, dank atmosphere of the hall Dance felt a stinging chill slither down her back.
Kayleigh Towne sprinted down the aisle to the stage where her friend had so horribly died.
Chapter 10
DANCE HAD SEEN the young singer a half dozen times and she’d always been carefully, if not perfectly, assembled.
But today she was the most disheveled Dance had ever seen. No makeup, long hair askew, eyes puffy from crying, not lack of sleep (there’s a difference, Dance knew). Instead of her ubiquitous contact lenses, she wore thin black-framed glasses. She was breathless.
Detective P. K. Madigan instantly became a different person. His fake smile of irritation at Dance became a frown of genuine sympathy for Kayleigh. He stepped down the stairs and intercepted the young woman on the floor before she could get to the stage. “Kayleigh, dear. No, no, you shouldn’t be here. There’s no reason for you to be.”
“Bobby?”
“I’m afraid it is.”
“They told me … but I was praying it was a mistake.”
Then Sheriff Gonzalez joined them on the main floor and put her arm around the girl’s shoulders. Dance wondered if all friends and next of kin got this treatment, or only celebrities, and then decided the cynical thought was unkind. Kayleigh Towne was the city’s star, yes, but she was at the moment a woman in terrible distress.
“I’m sorry, Kayleigh,” Gonzalez said. “I’m so sorry.”
“It was him! Edwin. I know it! Go arrest him. He’s parked in front of my house. Right now!”
“He’s what?” Madigan asked.
“He’s parked in the lot of the nature preserve across the street. He’s just sitting there in that goddamn red car of his.”
Frowning, Madigan made a call and told a deputy to check it out.
“Arrest him!”
“We’ll have to see, Kayleigh. May not be as easy as that.”
Dance noticed Darthur Morgan standing, arms crossed, in the back of the theater, looking around carefully.
“The hell’s that?” Madigan grumbled, catching sight of the man.
“My bodyguard,” Kayleigh said, gasping from the crying.
“Oh.”
Dance returned to the edge of the stage and looked down. The nausea rose again from the smell, here concentrated, but she ignored it and studied the scene carefully: the strip light, six feet long or so, lay atop the scorched remains of Bobby Prescott. Dance knew the messages the body gave off—in life and in death. She now assessed the broken bones, the claw shape of the hands, partly due to the typical fire victim’s contractions, the pugilistic attitude, but also because he’d been trying to drag his broken body out from underneath the edge of the stage. He was headed away from the stairs—not the logical direction one would crawl if he was just seeking help.
“He fell first,” Dance said to the deputy standing next to her, softly, so Kayleigh would not hear. “A few minutes before the lamp hit him.”
“What’s that, ma’am?” The man, in his midthirties, of rectangular build, with a luxurious black mustache, stepped closer. He too was tanned, like Madigan, though perhaps he also had a naturally dark complexion. His tag said DET. D. HARUTYUN.
She nodded down into the hole as the crime scene men, or women, in jumpsuits, moved the light away and began processing the body. She said, “His legs, the way they’re angled, his hands. He fell first. He tried to get out of the way. Then the light fell.”
The deputy examined the scene silently. Then: “The light teetered and fell. He knew it was coming ’cause he tugged on the cord.”
But the wire was plugged into an outlet on the stage, not in the pit. Both she and the detective noticed this simultaneously. Bobby couldn’t have pulled it down on himself. She asked, “And why’s it plugged into the wall there? A light like that’s mounted on the rigging above the stage. That’s where the power is…. And why’s it plugged in at all? That’d be worth mentioning too.”
“I’ll do that.”
Which he now did, walking down the stairs, offering some words to Kayleigh and then pulling Madigan aside, whispering to him. The detective nodded. His face folded into a frown. “Okay,” he called, “we’re treating the stage as a crime scene. And the scaffolding where the light fell from yesterday. Clear everybody off. And get Charlie’s folks searching there. Hell, we’ve already contaminated the damn place bad enough.”