Murder in the Wings

19

“What a way to spend your birthday,” Donna said an hour later.

“What?” I’d alternated my time between reading the sports page (the Cubs had lost again) and looking at the playbills we’d taken from the cabin, the one featuring Stephen Wade, Sylvia Bridges Ashton, and David Ashton, the other featuring Ashton alone.

We were sitting in Denny’s. We’d just finished the breakfast of eggs and hash browns that Donna liked so much. There was a drunk guy sitting at the counter. I was going to feel a little safer when he got back on the road.

“I was just thinking of Evelyn,” Donna said. “Today is her birthday. I mean, given everything that’s going on, what a lousy birthday.”

“Yeah.”

“You look like you’re trying to levitate those playbills,” she said.

I smiled. “Yeah.”

“Why do you keep staring at them?”

“I suppose because I’m trying to learn something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

She raised one eyebrow — she knows how to do such things. “You wouldn’t be holding out on me, would you, Dwyer?”

“I wish I was.”

“You look sort of cute, with your hair all frizzy from the rain, I mean.”

“Thanks.”

“Hold that thought. I’ll be right back.” She leaned across to whisper to me. “I’m down to my last Tampax. We’ll have to stop at a Seven-Eleven.”

“Hell, we’ll just go to your place.”

“If we do, we’ll be tempted to sleep, and I can tell from the way you’re acting that you don’t want to sleep.”

“No, I guess I don’t.”

“What’re we going to do, then?”

“See what Evelyn is up to now.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

Evelyn’s car wasn’t in back of the theater, so we drove over by the halfway house. Traffic was thinning. The rain had become a fine mist. Evelyn’s car was parked in front of the halfway house, and Evelyn and Keech were sitting in it. We went down the street and parked at the far end where we could see Evelyn but she wouldn’t notice us.

“He was a spooky guy, when you think of it,” Donna said as we sat there.

“Who?”

“Michael Reeves.”

“Yeah, he was.”

“He even got to Sylvia Ashton. You would think he would have been scared of pushing her over the edge.”

“He thought he was on to something.”

“Like what?”

“I’m not sure. But I don’t think he would have toyed with Sylvia unless he thought he could get something very specific and useful from her.”

For a time we said nothing. We sat and watched the black trees shine with rain.

There was a moment of light as Keech opened the car door and got out. He waved good-bye to Evelyn and went inside the halfway house. Evelyn pulled away. I waited half a minute and went after her.

“You have any idea where she’s going?”

“No,” I said.

“Good,” Donna said, “it’s more fun that way.”

Five minutes later Evelyn pulled up next to a car phone stand. She dropped in her coins, waited for a response, and then began to talk in very animated style. At one point she made a fist and banged the side of her car. Then she calmed down and kept on talking; something seemed to have been resolved. We sat half a block away, in the parking lot of a closed Hardee’s, watching. Then she hung up and pulled away, and we went after her.

She led us through the downtown section, along the river where the most interesting part of the city, the old brick buildings of the original settlement, had given way to tall office buildings that stood half-empty thanks to poor planning.

At first I had no idea where she was going, but then she started hanging sharp lefts and sharp rights, and gradually I realized that she was taking a circuitous route back to the theater.

The place was dark and looked almost as if it had been shuttered permanently. Rain made the surface of the parking lot gleam. Evelyn pulled around the corner of the rear entrance and sat there. That surprised me — I had expected her to park and go upstairs. She lived here.

“Maybe she’s going someplace else,” Donna said.

I shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know what’s going on.”

We sat there five more minutes. The jazz station was doing a mini-Brubeck concert. I hadn’t heard Brubeck in years. It was like rediscovering Marc Chagall.

A figure in a dark coat ran from the shadows of the theater to Evelyn’s car and got in very quickly. Then we were off again.

“Who was it?”

“I’m not sure,” I said.

Ten minutes later I knew where we were going. The city street gave way to a two-lane highway. All I could see were brown cornfields flashing in the glare of my headlights.

Evelyn and her passenger were headed for the country, and probably to the cabin where we’d been the day before.