Wild Lady Part 15

"That's it?" Claudia looked up as Phillip finally came to the end of a long list of names. "Wasn't there anyone who was unaccounted for?"

"Well, there might have been someone. We're not quite sure. Jim says he caught sight of someone hurrying out through the door at about half past six."

Even from the other side of the room Mac felt her tense up. "A man or woman?" she asked, carefully.

"A woman. Quite tall with long blonde hair. He just saw the back of her and a.s.sumed it was one of the staff dashing out for something before the second performance. But he doesn't remember her coming back." He gave a small shrug. "That, of course, means nothing, Jim is about as reliable as a weather forecast, but there are quite a number of girls who could fit that description."

"Perhaps you could check with them, see if anyone went out about that time?" Mac suggested, impatiently, tossing the program to one side and giving a fair impression of a man tired of waiting for the woman in his life. "Or just call the police and leave it to them. It's their job after all." Mac expected Phillip to protest that calling the police would be bad for publicity. He didn't.

"I wanted to call the police, but Claudia won't hear of it. I imagine she thinks this attack is by someone she knows, someone who needs help rather than punishment. All very n.o.ble I'm sure, but that costume cost a fortune." He seemed to take the loss personally.

"It could just have been a dissatisfied customer," Mac offered, flippantly.

Phillip Redmond clearly didn't think that remark worthy of an answer. "I'll ask everyone to account for their movements," he told Claudia, just a little testily, making it clear that while Mac might be Claudia's personal champion, this wasn't any of his business. He had quite recovered his aplomb, Mac noticed. Beneath that lugubrious, faintly subservient manner, the man had an ego as big as the Eiffel Tower and that made him uneasy. He'd read somewhere that the one thing murderers had in common was an over-developed sense of their own importance. "But a lot of the staff won't be in until later."

"They're the front of house people," Claudia, intervened, in an effort to smooth things over. "Box office, usherettes, program sellers, bar staff. And on matinee days, like Sat.u.r.day, there are cleaners as well."

"Why on matinee days?"

"Think about it, darling. You wouldn't want to pay a fortune for a seat that was knee deep in someone else's ice cream cartons and chocolate wrappers, would you?" She turned on a mischievous little smile. "And we don't like to provide dissatisfied customers with the ammunition with which to demonstrate their feelings, eh, Phillip?" The man attempted a smile but it really didn't suit him and Claudia stood up, indicating the meeting was at an end. "I'll leave it with you, Phillip," she said. "Has the replacement costume arrived?"

"It's in the office, with Angela and Pam. I didn't want to leave it unattended. The spares will be here by the end of the week. There's quite a bit of post, too, maybe you could look at it." He glanced back at Mac. "If you can spare the time."

"No problem, I came in early for that very reason. Mac? Are you ready for that tour I promised you?"

"Sure," he said, noting the switch back to Mac. He'd have to remind her that they had moved on, but in his own good time. "There's no hurry if you have things to do. Why don't you look in at the office first in case there's anything urgent? Maybe Redmond could give you a hand."

The idea of spending any more time in Mac's company clearly didn't fill the man with enthusiasm. "Actually I'm needed up in the lighting gallery. There's some kind of problem with the new electronic board."

"Then we won't keep you. Claudia?"

"Well, I would like to check my costume." She slipped her arm through his. It was nice but Mac had the impression it was more for Redmond's benefit than for his. He caught her hand raised it to his lips. That was for Redmond's benefit too. He wanted to check the man's reaction. There was none. Maybe that was because Redmond had learned his lesson. Or maybe he'd got a tighter rein on his feelings. Or maybe, Mac thought, he wanted the villain to be Redmond so much that he was simply letting his imagination run away with him. Claudia retrieved her fingers and kept them lightly tucked under his arm until Redmond was out of sight. Then she pulled away. "I'm hoping to hear from Beau, too," she went on, with a determined brightness that didn't fool him. She was still upset about what Phillip had said.

And she wasn't quite sure about what happened before Phillip interrupted them. He liked that. He wasn't exactly certain what was going on, himself. "Your father?" he inquired. If she wanted to be businesslike he was happy to oblige.

"He's due back from the States any day and I promised to pick him up at the airport."

"If you tell me where and when I'll organize a car for you."

"Will you? I didn't think ferrying him about would come under the job description."

He glanced down at her, outwardly so in control, but beneath the surface he could plainly see the welter of uncertainty clouding her eyes. It hadn't been there before. Or maybe it had. Maybe because of his new insight into her character was he just seeing her more clearly. "Oh, I'll have to charge extra," he informed her, his face as straight as a stick.

"Oh, well, in for a penny," she said, carelessly. "Just put it on the bill. Or perhaps you'd prefer to have your pick of my mother's "fabulous" jewelry?" she added, in a clear reference to his observation that her safety would be ample compensation for parting with a piece. She gave him an oblique look. "I'm afraid none of my "couture frocks" will fit you." Then, as an afterthought, she added, "But don't take the diamond drops."

"Why? Are they a particular favorite?"

"No. They're fake."

He laughed. Her s.e.x appeal had never been in doubt, but she had a sly sense of humor, too. In fact he was in grave danger of seriously enjoying Claudia Beaumont's company. "Definitely not the diamond drops, then." She had known he was kidding and she was kidding him right back. It was like being hugged. "I'll remember."

The office was the domain of two middle-aged ladies, Pam and Angela, who kept the accounts and the correspondence of the production company running like oiled silk. Mac was introduced, offered coffee and cake and generally fussed over.

He accepted the coffee, refused the cake and watched while the replacement costume was taken from its box and shaken out. "It is so beautiful," Pam exclaimed. "The lace is just unbelievable."

"You wouldn't believe the price, either," Angela said, dryly. "You'd better try it on, Claudia. Just in case it needs adjustment. Five minutes before curtain up will be too late. Would you like me to give you hand with the b.u.t.tons?"

"Would you? Do you mind, Mac? It won't take a minute."

"Ask him nicely and I'm sure he'll give you hand with the b.u.t.tons himself, dear," Pam suggested with a giggle.

Mac backed away in apparent horror, knocking over the telephone as he did so. The next time he gave Claudia a hand with her clothing he wasn't planning to have an audience. He bent down, picked up the telephone, made a point of checking that it was still working and grinning at his own clumsiness he replaced it on the desk. Then, his listening device planted and his main purpose in encouraging Claudia to go to the office achieved, he made his excuses. He was quite happy to have Claudia safely occupied for a while. He didn't want her to know about the bugs, but if he went around knocking over telephones it wouldn't take her long to guess what he was up to.

"Take all the time you need, sweetheart," he said. "I'll go and get that security badge from Jim."

"I thought you were planning to stick to me like a tube of instant glue," she protested, mildly.

"You'll be safe enough here for a while. But don't go wandering off without me," he said, his voice teasingly light for the benefit of the ladies. His eyes issued a much sterner warning for her alone. "Not for any reason," he warned, as she accompanied him to the door.

"What shall I do if I need the loo?" she inquired, making her eyes large and innocent.

"Cross your legs." Then, because the office closely resembled the tropical house at Kew Gardens he added, "Of course, if you get really desperate you could use the nearest plant pot." He didn't wait for her answer, which he was fairly certain would be unprintable.

Jim, Mac discovered when he called at the stage door office, was not averse to a little gossip. "Phillip said you might have seen the woman who slashed Claudia's dress," he prompted, as he made an apparently ham-fisted business of fastening the badge to his shirt. He'd noticed that few people were surprised that a big man should be clumsy.

"I saw someone." Jim's shrug suggested there was more if he was interested enough to ask. But Mac didn't probe. Gossips just had to talk. Silence offended them. "Of course it could have been one of the cleaners," he added, after the pause went on too long. "They come and go at such a rate you can't keep up with them."

"You don't issue their Id's then?"

"I've got quite enough to do without that." Jim didn't appear busy, but Mac was too polite to say so. "The cleaning contractors issue IDs to their own staff."

"Oh, right." Mac glanced up as a light began to flash over the stage door and Jim lifted himself heavily out of his chair. "What's that?"

"Someone's at the door. It wouldn't do to have people ringing a great loud bell whenever they felt like it, would it?" He sniffed at the ignorance of outsiders and left the office. Mac, who had been expecting the interruption knew that the courier at the door would keep Jim thoroughly occupied for at least two minutes. Nevertheless he wasted no time in attaching a listening device to the telephone on the man's desk and when the doorkeeper returned bearing a package he was innocently contemplating an old framed poster of Elaine French and Edward Beaumont who had apparently appeared together at the theater twenty years earlier.

"It's a package for you, Mr. MacIntyre. You know most of those couriers can barely wait long enough for you to sign once," Jim grumbled, "but this one wanted me to sign more forms than the tax man." He waited, clearly expecting to be given chapter and verse of the contents, but Mac accepted the large padded envelope without comment. "You'd think he was handing over the blooming crown jewels," he prompted.

"Not quite the crown jewels, I'm afraid. Just something for Claudia." "Ah, well." Jim's face softened. "She deserves a treat after what happened on Sat.u.r.day night."

"I quite agree. But don't say anything, it's to be a surprise." Surprise was right. The package contained the small recorders he needed to pick up transmitter signals from his bugs. He very much doubted that she would approve of what he was doing which was why he wasn't telling her. He certainly didn't want her warning anyone, her half-sister for instance, not to make calls they wouldn't want overheard.

"Say anything?" Jim responded with scorn. "With women? When do you get the chance?"

Right now. "That was a nasty business with the dress," Mac dropped in casually, giving him a chance to vent his feelings. "I don't understand why Redmond didn't call in the police."

"The police?" Jim laughed, although not with much humor. "What would we want to bother them for? I'm sure Miss Claudia knows perfectly well who did it."

"You think so?" Mac didn't need to act surprised. He might have his own suspicions that Claudia knew more than she was saying but Jim's casual comment, added to Redmond's earlier suggestion that she suspected who the culprit might be was unexpected, to say the least.

"With these actresses it's all up one minute and down the next. The jealousy. You'd have to see it to believe it." He shook his head. "I've seen girls trying to scratch one another's eyes out over a walk-on part. And the men are worse if anything. No," he said, with the wisdom of someone who has seen pretty well everything in a long lifetime behind the scenes in the theater. "It's best to keep these things quiet. There's nothing to be gained from a lot of tacky publicity and it'll all blow over."

"Will it?"

"Sure to." Mac hoped the man was right, but he had a feeling that with the kind of media interest Claudia was generating at the moment, keeping it quiet would be easier said than done. He weighed the package in his hand, thoughtfully. If anyone in the Private Lives company decided to enrich themselves and enliven the nation's breakfast table with the story, they'd better not use any of the telephones in the theater or they'd have to answer to him. "Are you going out, Mr. MacIntyre?" he asked as Mac made a move towards the door.

"Just to the car."

"Then you'll need the code for the keypad to open the door." Mac gave an inward sigh. He considered asking how often the number was changed, but he didn't. It wouldn't make any difference. A day after it had been changed it would be in the possession of an unquantifiable numbers of spouses, partners, friends and quite possibly chalked up somewhere in half the local fast food delivery services in the area. He hated door codes.

He collected a briefcase from the landcruiser and then back inside asked Jim for directions to Phillip Redmond's office.

"Just down the corridor on the right," he said. Then as an after thought called after him, "But Philip's up in the lighting gallery at the moment."

Five minutes later he was back in Claudia's dressing room, having placed his tiny transmitters on all the backstage telephones. He wasn't sure what he would pick up; probably nothing more exciting than orders called into the nearest pizza parlor on the coin operated telephone in the Green Room. Angela and Pam's calls would prove to be a mixture of business and homely personal calls. Melanie was an unknown quant.i.ty, he hadn't met the girl and as for Redmond ... personal dislike was probably accounting for his hopes in that direction.

But in truth he was unlikely to discover anything of world shattering excitement. Claudia's c.o.c.kroach hadn't yet stooped to using the telephone; he or she was probably only too aware of how vulnerable the system was to eavesdroppers. But it was wise to cover all options. And covering all options was what he planned to do. But he still felt decidedly seedy as he attached one to Claudia's dressing room telephone. Telling himself that it was for her own safety didn't make him feel any better about it.

The package that had been delivered contained a number of small voice-activated recorders each no bigger than a personal stereo and having tuned them in he placed them back in the envelope and out of sight on top of the wardrobe. Judging by the amount of dust up there, it seemed there was little likelihood of them being disturbed.

Then he opened the briefcase he had brought in from the Landcruiser. It was packed with state of the art listening equipment to pick up the mobile phones. The recordings might overlap, but an expert could unravel them. And he was an expert.

"What are you doing?"

He had heard the door open and closing the brief case without obvious haste he turned to face her, holding out a small device for her inspection. Claudia was in the doorway holding her costume over her arm and staring at him, her face rather pale.

"I fetched this from the car for you. It's a panic alarm."

She came closer to look at the small tube. "Like a mace spray?"

"Carrying mace is illegal, Claudia." And so is bugging telephones his conscience reminded him. He ignored it. "This just makes a dreadful noise when you push it. Don't!" he said, quickly, as she took it from him. "Don't press it unless you mean it. But keep it handy." Then, "I thought I told you to stay put."

"For how long? And anyway there was a message from Dad on the fax asking me to ring him. I didn't want to use the office telephone."

He crossed to her, took her by the shoulders and gave her a very small shake. "You know, Claudia, it might not have been me in here."

"I know." She looked down suddenly. "Actually, you did give me a bit of a start."

"Good," he said. "You deserved it. Now I'll leave you to talk to your father in private if you promise to stay here until I get back."

"Where are you going?"

"Not far. Promise me, Claudia."

She looked up at him with those huge eyes. "Or you'll make me take my clothes off again?"

"You've got to take this seriously."

"I do. I am." She shook her head. "Then it all just seems so silly that I can't believe there's any real danger."

"I know it's hard. You don't want to believe it and I can understand that." He released her, took the costume from her and held it up. "But when you feel tempted to think all the precautions are rather silly consider what happened to your costume, Claudia. Consider the possibility of that happening to you."

"You can't really believe that." But her dismissive laugh was uncertain. "It's so ... so melodramatic; like something out of Maria Marten and Red Barn Mystery."

"Maria Marten was a real girl, Claudia. And she was murdered." He waited for a moment until he was sure the unspoken threat at sunk in. "Now promise me you'll do as I say or I'll make sure this theater doesn't open tonight, or for the foreseeable future."

"You wouldn't," she declared. Then, less certainly, "You couldn't."

"You could put me to the test," he invited. "I almost wish you would, then I could take you to a quiet place in the country where keeping you safe would be a whole lot easier."

"You mean that don't you?"

"Yes." In fact, the more he thought about it, the more certain he was that she was in very real danger. The trouble was, he thought, personal feelings were beginning to intrude, confusing concern with anxiety. But he wasn't prepared to take the chance. "I've never been more serious in my life."

Her shoulders slumped. "I'm sorry, Mac. I'll do everything you say, I promise." She looked so down that he put his arms around her and pulled her against his chest.

"Gabriel," he murmured.

"What?"

"It's my name."

She looked up at him, her fears momentarily forgotten. "I know, but, everyone calls you Mac. You said so."

"Maybe they do. But you are not everyone." He paused long enough for her to digest this information. "And you promised you'd do everything I say?" He touched her lips, very lightly, with the tip of his finger. "Gabriel," he insisted.

"Gabriel," she repeated, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Good, I'm glad we've settled that. Now I'll leave you to call your father," he said, straightening. For a moment she looked confused. She had thought he was going to kiss her again. She was waiting for him to kiss her and something dead inside him re-ignited with the power charge from that knowledge.

He would kiss her. He would most certainly kiss her. But not yet. Certainly not here. Not, if he had any sense, until this nightmare was over.

He opened the door and looked back. She was standing where he had left her in the center of the room, looking a little bemused, as if not quite certain where she was and what had happened to her, a million miles from the a.s.sured and confident star who'd invited him to play musical cars just a couple of days ago. Or perhaps not. "Tell me, Claudia," he inquired, from the doorway. "Are you familiar with The Taming of the Shrew?"

He didn't wait for her answer, but as he closed the door behind him, something hit it with great force before clattering to the floor. His laughter was drowned out by a sound so terrible that the entire backstage crew came at the run.

He beat them to it. Twisting the tube sharply to switch off the sound.

Claudia removed her hands from her ears and shrugged. "I was just testing it," she said.

CHAPTER TEN.

SOMETHING woke Gabriel MacIntyre and for the smallest fraction of time he froze sorting out the messages bombarding his brain. Strange bed. Strange room. Claudia! Then he was out of bed, on his feet, his body on automatic as he tackled the intruder, his mind racing away to the other room where Claudia was sleeping...