The Scottie Barked At Midnight (18 page)

“We should probably go in now,” Iris said. “It's almost time for dress rehearsal.”

“I guess we'd better.” Liss glanced at her watch. It was scheduled to start in less than an hour and she still had to pick up her costume. She also needed to find some way to show her gratitude for Iris's rescue of Dandy. At the very least, she'd send her a bouquet of flowers.

 

In the ballroom, areas had once again been taped off for practice. This time, Liss's outfit was a lovely ball gown in shades of rose and pale pink. They weren't colors she'd have chosen for herself, but the effect was pleasing.

“What, no neckline cut down to the belly button?” she'd asked Mel when she'd gotten her first good look at herself in the costume designer's full-length mirror.

“That's tomorrow,” Mel had said with a straight face.

Liss wished she could be certain the other woman was joking.

There were taps on the shoes that went with the outfit. Tentatively, she tried out a few of the steps she'd been taught in a long-ago tap-dance class. The result didn't sound too awful. All things considered, Liss supposed she'd make a better showing today than she had as a kid. She had a photo somewhere, taken by her proud father, of a line of little girls in matching costumes—white satin, or more likely a fabric meant to look like satin, with high hats to match. She couldn't remember much about that recital beyond her opinion that the whole production was silly . . . unlike Scottish dancing, which had already become her passion.

Liss got a kick out of taking Dandy and Dondi through the next routine in Deidre's notebook. She was relieved when they caught on quickly. Her pleasure in their response was as much of a surprise to her as her newfound delight in wearing tap shoes. Was she really starting to feel as if she belonged in this competition?

Bemused, she tried to analyze her feelings. She would be disappointed if they didn't win. Not devastated, and not desperate enough to try to eliminate any of the other remaining contestants, but sad. Definitely sad.

“Huh,” she said aloud, addressing the two dogs. “Go figure.”

They cocked their heads, as if considering her comment.

“Okay, guys. One more time.”

She was reaching for the
PLAY
button to start their music when a scream rent the air.

Liss froze. After a startled second of immobility, she raced toward the windows. The sound had come from outside.

A still, dark form lay half on the snow and half in the driveway below the windows.

Liss pointed to the production assistant. “Call 9-1-1.” Then she was hoisting up her long skirt and running toward the nearest stairwell, the one that led straight down to the exit to the parking lot.

She was the first to arrive on the scene. Dropping to her knees, heedless of Mel's handiwork but careful not to jar the injured man, Liss leaned over his still form, reaching for the pulse point in his neck. Her fingers found bare skin and beneath it the faint flutter that told her he was still alive.

“Thank God,” she whispered.

Only then did she take a closer look at his face. A gasp escaped her as she recognized him as Troy Barrigan, the television news reporter. His features were bruised and bloody but unmistakable.

When his lips moved. Liss bent closer, straining to hear. The whisper was so faint that she almost missed it. He said only one word.

“Pushed.”

Chapter Eleven

“O
h my God,” a woman shrieked. Judging by her maroon skirt and white blouse, she was one of the hotel employees. She stood less than a foot away, a cell phone pressed to her ear. “He must have fallen from a balcony.”

Liss looked up. Her gaze stopped at the ballroom windows. Noses were all but pressed to the glass as the cast and crew of
Variety Live
watched a real-life drama play out before their eyes. Liss squinted, trying to make out their identities. Everyone seemed to be there. At least no one was conspicuously absent.

Other people had joined her at the side of the injured man. Liss recognized the security guard who had been involved in the incident with Eudora. He was checking Barrigan's vital signs and looked worried. Liss was pretty sure the reporter had lapsed into unconsciousness.

The wail of a siren reassured her. The EMTs were on the way. They'd need the police, too, but Liss hesitated to make that public just yet. It wasn't as if she knew
who
had pushed Troy Barrigan.

From a balcony? For the second time, she looked up at the building. On this side, the rooms on the fourth floor all had small balconies. One of them—her own—wrapped around the corner of the building. The other two were appended to the suites belonging to Oscar Yates and Roy Eastmont.

“Pushed,” Barrigan had whispered.

From a balcony? Or from the roof? What was on the roof? How did someone get up there? More to the point, why would Barrigan have gone up there? And who could have followed him to push him off?

Valentine had been following him when Liss last saw him. Not Valentine, she told herself. Someone else. But who?

She had no answers, only questions. There was no one to ask, and when the paramedics arrived on the scene, they had their hands full with their patient. From their actions, Liss judged that Troy Barrigan was still breathing but in bad shape. She watched as they took precautions in case his neck or back was broken. When they'd done all they could to prevent further injury, they lifted him into the waiting ambulance to transport to the hospital in Fallstown, nearly an hour away by road.

“You're shivering, miss,” the security guard said, touching her on the forearm. “You should go back inside.”

His words brought her to her senses. She was doing no one any good standing out in the cold without a coat on. Worse, the longer she stayed here, the longer Dandy and Dondi were without her protection. Anything could have happened to them while she'd been distracted.

Common sense told her that a man had not been pushed from the fourth floor or the roof just to give someone an opportunity to harm the two Scotties, but she ran up the stairs as fast as she'd run down them. When the dogs were the first to greet her return to the ballroom, she was so relieved that she sank to the floor to gather Dandy and Dondi onto her lap.

Roy Eastmont, face pale and hands trembling, came up beside her. “Who was it?”

“That reporter. Troy Barrigan.”

“Is he dead?”

Liss shook her head as she hugged Dandy. Dondi licked her cheek.

Turning away, Eastmont cleared his throat. “All right, everyone. Show's over. Back to work.”

With varying degrees of reluctance, they returned to their designated rehearsal areas.

“Are you okay?” Mo Heedles knelt beside Liss, placing one cold hand on her forearm, bare below the three-quarter-length sleeves.

“Fine. I'll be fine.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

Liss shook her head and buried her face in Dandy's neck.

She heard the rustle of fabric as Mo stood up and, in the background, the Great Umberto's low voice as he went into the patter that accompanied his magic act. A few minutes later, Mo's signature music started up.

Slowly, reluctantly, Liss got to her feet and returned to her own space, but she didn't turn on the upbeat tune for their number. It seemed disrespectful when a man was fighting for his life.

“That was the TV news guy?” Valentine joined Liss on the pretext of snapping more pictures of Dandy and Dondi.

Once again, Liss lowered herself to the floor, sitting cross-legged and gathering the Scotties to her. Belatedly, she saw that there were blood and mud stains on the long skirt of her rose-colored gown.

“Yes,” she whispered.

She had to get hold of the police. She had to tell them what she knew. Unfortunately, she couldn't seem to summon up enough energy to stand, let alone to leave the ballroom in search of privacy to make a call.

After taking a photograph of the three of them from a few feet away, Valentine braced one knee on the floor and snapped a close-up. “Was everyone here when he . . . fell?”

“I don't know. I was busy rehearsing.” She started to confirm Valentine's obvious assumption that he'd been pushed but stopped herself in time. Better to keep quiet until she'd talked to the police. She didn't know for certain where
Valentine
had been when Barrigan took his nosedive.

“I'm not sure it matters.” Valentine shoved her glasses up her nose, her brow creased in thought. “It wouldn't take long for someone to get from the roof to the ballroom. The emergency stairs go all the way up. It's waiting for this hotel's snail-paced elevators that makes people think everything is so far apart.”

Liss read the look in Valentine's green eyes as easily as she saw the threads twine together in her own mind. What had happened to Barrigan had to be connected to the dirty tricks. Veteran television reporters were not pushed off buildings for no reason.

Abruptly, Valentine stood up. “Where's his cameraman?”

She didn't wait for an answer. Abandoning Liss, she headed for the exit.

Encumbered by her canine companions, Liss didn't try to go after her. She heaved herself slowly to her feet, hearing her bad knee pop as she did so. She'd kept up with her exercises, the ones she'd done daily ever since her surgery, but racing up and down stairs was not part of her regimen. She gave her leg a couple of experimental shakes before she put weight on it and was relieved to feel no pain. She coaxed the two dogs into their carriers and then followed Valentine's route toward the foyer.

“I'm done rehearsing,” she told the production assistant standing just inside the exit.

“Please be back by one,” the young woman said. “We're going to record the show and then the results show with only a fifteen-minute break in between.”

Liss nodded in acknowledgment and took a few more steps before she stopped and turned. For the first time, she took a good look at Roy Eastmont's assistant. She was somewhere in her midtwenties, dark haired, with mild blue eyes, a pert nose, and a perpetually serious expression on her face.

“Do you have a name?” Liss asked.

The question surprised the PA into a laugh. “Of course I have a name, but nobody ever remembers what it is, not even Mr. Eastmont.”

“Tell me. I'll remember.”

“It's Jane. Jane Smith.” When Liss's eyebrows shot up, Jane laughed again. “Really.”

“Your parents must have had some sense of humor.”

“You don't know the half of it. Still, it's better than Jane Doe, and I guarantee you that I absolutely never forget anyone else's name.”

Intrigued, Liss took a step closer, her gaze settling on the clipboard Jane held. “And you keep track of who's where when, right?”

Jane nodded. “Sure. That's part of my job.”

“Who was here . . . no, make that who
wasn't
in the ballroom when that man fell?”

Eyes widening as she took in the implications, Jane swallowed hard before letting her gaze drop to the top sheet on the clipboard. “The magic act hadn't set up yet. And Mr. Eastmont was running late. I think everyone else was here. Oh, no. Wait. The photographer hadn't come in yet, either.”

“Valentine?” Liss's heart sank. So much for thinking Valentine Veilleux was the one person she could safely rely upon.

“I saw her exit the elevator just a second before I heard that horrifying scream,” Jane added.

With heartfelt thanks, both to Jane and the powers that be, Liss left the ballroom with the dogs and returned to her suite. She was there when Valentine came looking for her a few minutes later.

“No camera crew,” she reported. “Barrigan came back to the hotel alone.”

“And nobody saw anything?”

“Not until he tried to fly.”

“Did you catch up with him earlier?”

Valentine shook her head. “He'd done a better job of disappearing than our resident magician.”

Liss reached for the phone.

“Who are you calling?” Valentine asked.

“An old friend.”

She listened as the ringing stopped and voice mail picked up. Waiting for the beep, she took a deep breath, then plunged into her speech as soon as it sounded.

“Gordon, it's Liss,” she said. “I'm not interfering, but I think you ought to know that Troy Barrigan, the TV news guy, is on his way to the hospital in Fallstown from Five Mountains. He was not injured by accident. I was the first one to get to him. He managed to gasp out one word—‘pushed.' ” She hesitated. “This may have something to do with Deidre Amendole's death.”

She wondered briefly whether to say more. Perhaps she'd already said too much. She rattled off her cell-phone number, hung up, and turned to face Valentine.

The photographer was sitting on the floor, playing with the dogs. She glanced Liss's way with a questioning look.

“That message was for Gordon Tandy. He's a state police detective.”

“I thought you said he was a friend.”

“That, too.”

“Handy,” Valentine said, and went back to tossing a well-chewed tennis ball for Dandy to fetch.

 

Liss heard nothing from Gordon before it was time for the next episode of
Variety Live
to be recorded. Leaving Valentine to watch the Scotties, she paid a visit to Mel, the wardrobe mistress, who made emergency repairs to her gown by hacking off the damaged section. That left it short enough to show Liss's scar, but she was past caring about such trivial details. A pair of opaque panty hose covered up the worst of it.

After Valentine left, Liss ordered lunch from room service, fed the dogs, set out fresh pee pads, and tried to concentrate on the performance to come. It was a crucial one in the competition. It would determine which act would be the last to be eliminated before the finals. Tomorrow, Thursday, they'd record that show, in which the three remaining contestants would each have to perform twice. That meant two separate dances, and Liss had yet to go through Deidre's notes and learn the choreography.

The true finale, the final results show, was scheduled to be recorded on Friday.

Did Roy Eastmont already know who would win the champion of champions title? Liss felt certain that he
thought
he did, but until the last minute it was always possible that something would happen to change the results.

Much as she tried to concentrate on the show, Liss's mind kept circling back to Troy Barrigan. Was he fighting for his life in the hospital, or had he already lost that battle? Did anyone besides the person who had pushed him know why he'd been sneaking around the hotel? What had he suspected?
Who
had he suspected? What had led to such extreme measures to keep him from reporting what he'd discovered?

She had a splitting headache by the time she returned to the ballroom to perform. No single suspect stood out in her mind. She was missing something, but what?

At the end of the second session of the day, the “live” results show, it was Hal Quarles who was eliminated. The three finalists were Deidre and her Dancing Doggies, the Great Umberto, and Mo Heedles.

While the requisite farewells and departure scenes were being shot, Liss tried to figure out how this lineup changed things. She watched Mo and Oscar Yates chat on the sidelines. As he seemed to in the presence of anyone, male or female, Yates laid on the charm. Some would call it flirting, Liss supposed. Whatever it was, Mo didn't seem to mind having his attention focused on her.

Liss looked around for Iris, expecting to find her glaring at Mo, eyes shooting daggers at the other woman, but Iris hadn't noticed the byplay between magician and juggler. She was commiserating with Hal Quarles for the benefit of the camera.

Hal was out. Mo was still in. Liss frowned, remembering that Valentine had said, early in their acquaintance, that Mo could be ruled out as a suspect because it was unlikely she would win even if Deidre did drop out of the competition. Yet here she was, in the finals.

She'd been a victim of the dirty trickster. The destruction of her props had been particularly vicious. But was that really enough to exonerate her? She could have done all that damage herself. She would have known she could get replacements for her equipment.

Something else was nagging at the back of Liss's mind. It was only as she was putting Dandy and Dondi back into their carriers that she realized what it was. When Mo had come over to her, right after Liss had come back inside after trying to help Troy Barrigan, she'd stood right next to the Scotties for several minutes . . . and she hadn't sneezed once. Had the so-called allergy been a ploy? Had she pretended she had to keep her distance to convince Liss that she couldn't have been the one who'd stolen Dandy from Deidre's condo?

Deliberately, she dragged the carriers over to where Yates and Mo stood close together, big smiles on both their faces. A quick glance at Iris told Liss she was still blissfully unaware that she might have acquired a rival for the magician's affections.