“Tell me what’s going on,” he said, and when she stiffened, preparing another runaround, he added, “Look, it’s obviously new—so someone put it there recently. What’s the deal? I have a right to know, since my father’s going to be coming here regularly.” The last bit he threw in there as a Hail Mary play, but it seemed to work.
She wilted a little more, but responded firmly, “All right, you’ve got a point, but there’s no reason to think anyone’s in any sort of danger. It’s just—I don’t know, some sort of practical joke, I guess.”
“That piece of bridge fell—”
“Catwalk.”
“Catwalk, then, fine—it fell, and if someone had been walking on it, that might have been a tragedy—”
“No one would have been walking on it without testing it out first, like I did,” she said flatly. “If you’re suggesting that it was sabotaged—”
“I don’t know whether it was—or at least I didn’t even think it might have been sabotaged until I sawthatover there.” He jerked his thumb toward the GO OR DIE backdrop. “But that sort of puts things into a whole different light, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” She shook her head and rubbed her temples with one hand—a strikingly familiar gesture of frustration and likely an encroaching headache.
“I want to examine it to see whether it was, well, sabotaged,” he said.
“So, what, you’re a detective now, Dr. DeRiccio? Wasn’t med school enough of a career for you?”
Caught by surprise at her use of his title, he couldn’t hold back a grin. “You know how much I liked to watchCriminal MindsandCSI.”
She folded her arms over her middle, which happened to draw his eyes to the pair of very fine breasts that he remembered far too well. “That doesn’t make you qualified to examine anything.”
His heart bumped a little when he noticed the tiniest tug at the corner of her mouth, like she was almost going to smile. That was the first time she’d looked at him with anything other than contempt or dislike.
“Still. I’d like to take a gander, all right? Look, Vivien, obviously something’s going on here, and it’s not pleasant. Even aside from the fact that my pop’s going to be here—along with a slew of other people—it worries me because…well, I mean, it’s you—your thing.”
That little tug at her mouth disappeared. “If only you’d cared that much about me and mythingeleven years ago.”
“That’s not fair,” he said, his voice tight. “You know that’s not fair. I did care about you—”
She snorted. “Yeah, until you decided you wanted to bang Lissa Kirkland. How’s she doing, by the way?”
He gritted his teeth. Of course she would go there. “I have no idea.”
Before he could formulate any more words, there was a shout from below. “Miss Savage? Miss Savage! Could you take a look at something?”
“That’s my cue,” she said, and pushed past him to the ladder. “I’ll be right there. Stay off the stage, please,” she called down.
As she went down the ladder, just as her eyes were about to disappear, she looked up at him. “Please go away, Jake. It’ll be a lot easier for both of us if you just leave me alone.”
Itwouldbe a lot easier if he did.
He just wasn’t sure he could.
* * *
Vivien hadn’t meantto leave the Tuesday Ladies to their own devices back in the area where all the dressing rooms were, but catching Jake poking around up in the catwalk area had been distracting and delayed her from returning to them.
He simply didn’t have any business poking around here. Stubborn jerk. She could handle things herself. She just wished he would stopbeinghere. Didn’t he have a job?
Ricky DeRiccio had taken it upon himself to pass out some of the scones, sandwiches, and bottles of water brought from Orbra’s Tea House, and a small cluster of teens surrounded him in the first three rows of seats in the house. There would be crumbs galore, but that was no worse than the current situation of dust and debris, so Vivien hardly winced when she noticed.
She answered several questions from a couple of the teams of volunteers (whether she wanted to save any of the old playbills—no—and where to find more garbage bags and a broom). Vivien was just about to head backstage and search out the Tuesday Ladies when her realtor showed up, walking down the main aisle.
Bella Pohlson was wearing a huge, congratulatory smile and a smart powder-blue summer suit. Her hands flashed with a large diamond, and her wrists were decorated with a glittering diamond bracelet and several thick silver bangles, and she looked far slicker and more put together than Vivien felt at the moment. Which was to be expected.
Bella wasn’t alone, for Melody Carlson and another woman who looked vaguely familiar—both of whom were also dressed professionally—were with her.They look like ladies who lunch,Vivien thought, and that observation made her think of “Pick-A-Little, Talk-A-Little”—neither of which were accurate or even fair, but she didn’t control what she thought of as her mental “casting hat.”
