His response was a single horrified-eyed emoji that had her laughing as she descended into the pit.
She’d brought a flashlight to help illuminate the way and shined it around even though two bulbs were now working down here.
The trunk was just where they’d left it—closed and silent—but something else had changed.
There on the floor, in a puddle of spangled silk and glittery tulle, was a sequined white ballerina costume that could only belong toThe Nutcracker’sSugarplum Fairy.
It was lying next to the military coat that had belonged to the Nutcracker himself.
Her palms suddenly slick, the hair on the back of her neck standing on end, Vivien walked slowly over to the pair of costumes as something Iva or Juanita had said rang in her memory:
I heard the Sugarplum Fairy ran off with the Nutcracker…
It couldn’t be a coincidence that those two costumes had been left here and arranged like this. As she bent to pick up the ballerina costume, a cool breeze buffeted the back of her bare neck and shoulders, raising goosebumps.
“All right,” she said calmly, holding up the costume to look at it. “What do you want me to know about— Oh my God…”
The skimpy little leotard had rents in the back of it, and there were huge, ugly brown stains all over.
Like rust…or blood.
Chapter Twenty
Vivien was huffingand puffing by the time she made it back to Jake’s house—which wasn’t a shock, considering that she’d practically run up the hill from the road where the theater was while she was carrying the Nutcracker’s coat and headpiece, as well as the Sugarplum Fairy’s tutu and the cast show photo.
She could have texted him to come and get her, but she didn’t know what time he got done with his shift, and besides, she was a liberated woman and could handle a big-little hill just fine.
Because she didn’t know whether he was still working, she let herself in as quietly as possible, then dumped her burdens on the living room sofa.
He glanced over, raised his brows at the costumes, and said, “I should be done in about fifteen minutes—I just have to finish this patient and write up my notes.”
“That’s okay, I want to look at this,” she said, picking up the headpiece.
She’d waited to examine it closely until she got back to Jake’s house—better light, and no touchy ghosts, she reasoned, who could have a tantrum at the drop of a hat. Humming “Masquerade” (which, in her opinion, was a perfectly creepy song to accompany this task) and with her skin prickling with excitement and nerves, she took the headpiece over to the kitchen counter, where the light was the brightest.
Just as she’d noted before, the back was caved in, but it didn’t look as if something heavy had crushed it in the trunk. The damage looked more like someone had whacked the headpiece with one blow or punch, for the deep indentation was a single, circular area.
Vivien examined the sharp break in the back of the papier-mâché, then tilted the mask to look up inside its white interior.
It was easy to see the dark stain inside. Right where the piece had been crunched inward in a violent indent…and below it. As if something had smeared or trickled down.
Vivien’s breath caught, and she flipped the mask the other way so she could look down into it with the kitchen light shining inside, but what she saw only supported her theory: that it was a bloodstain inside the headpiece, and that the blood was from whoever had been wearing it when they were hit on the head from behind.
So the actor had been hit on the head.
Maybe he’d been killed too, because she was pretty certain the Sugarplum Fairy had been stabbed to death. The bloodstains were pretty big.
And maybe that was why the headpiece had been hidden in the bottom of a trunk, pushed away under the stage in the orchestra pit and locked up tight where no one would find it.
She was so intent that she didn’t hear Jake close his laptop and come up behind her.
“What’s all this?” he said, eyeing the headpiece.
“Take a good look at this,” she said, gesturing to the mask. “Tell me what you think.”
While he did that, she retrieved the Sugarplum Fairy’s costume and the military coat from where she’d left them on the sofa.
“So?” she said when Jake put the mask aside. “Thoughts?”
