Everything swirled inside my head:Madama Butterfly.MissSaigon. Raymond Darke’s framed print. Cherry’s story of meeting Daniel’s father while she was auditioning forMiss Saigonat 5th Avenue Theatre—I pictured myself living in his big mansion that overlooked the city.
My heart raced wildly. I didn’t want to jump to conclusions. It could all be a coincidence.
It had to be... right?
Then where was Daniel now?
I glanced upstairs, where he said he’d be looking—which also happened to be where the private opera boxes were located....
Hiking up the hem of my gown, I raced up the staircase and glanced around the mezzanine, where patrons clustered around a cocktail bar, drinking and chatting. No Daniel.
I spotted a side hall. An usher stood outside, but when she turned her back to help someone, I slipped past her and immediately found myself in one of the curving halls at the rear of the private boxes.
Red doors lining the hall. The performance hadn’t yet started, but most of the patrons seemed to either be drinking at the bar outside or already in their seats. A lone woman was walking toward me, and as she approached, I recognized her face.
The interior designer, Darke’s wife.
Her head was down as she strode past me, talking rapidly on her phone in a hard-to-place accent. She didn’t even spare me a glance. I rounded the corner and peered through the open door of the first private box, seeing down into the theater below. An expansive curtained stage sat in front of an empty orchestra pit. The seats in front of it were buzzing with people, standing and talking, coming and going. The atmosphere on the floor was much livelier than it was up here. But because the private hall was so quiet, it made it easy to spot the only person standing in front of the door to the next booth. And easy to spot the only man strolling out of it.
I came to a stop a few strides away from Daniel and whispered, “Wait!” But he didn’t even notice me. His gaze was squarely fixed on Raymond Darke, who stilled in the opera box’s doorway, hands on the lapel of his tuxedo.
Darke looked at Daniel. Looked at me. And then he sputtered, “You’re the goddamn kids who went through my trash!”
Words... I didn’t have them.
Darke pointed an accusatory finger at Daniel. “Yeah, that’s right. I’ve got you on video, you little delinquent. Perfect shots of both your faces looking straight into the window of my house.”
Cameras were inside the house? Why had we been so reckless?
I was going to have a stroke.
“That’s trespassing,” Darke said. “What are you doing here now? Trying to rob me?”
“I don’t want a damn thing you’ve got, old man,” Daniel said.
No, no, no!Why was Daniel confronting him? We should run now, while we could get lost in the crowds and escape. THIS WAS NOT PART OF OUR PLAN.
“Call the cops, then,” Daniel said, defiant. “I’d expect nothing less from you, hiding in your big house, paying other people to take care of all your problems. Pretending to be someone else. Do you even write your own books, or do you hire someone to do that, too?”
A low-level panic prickled the back of my neck. I’d never seen Daniel act like this. He was inordinately aggressive, and Darke was teetering on fury, and I was on the outside of it all, overflowing with information that I could barely comprehend.
“Daniel,” I pleaded, but he ignored me.
“Should I call you Bill or Raymond?” Daniel said to the man. “Or maybe you have another name you prefer?”
The author’s neck and shoulders visibly stiffened. He waited until an extravagantly dressed couple passed, nodding politely when they greeted him. When they stepped into another box, he squinted at Daniel. “Do I know you?”
Daniel snorted. “Do you?”
“I’ve seen you before,” the author said, his brow a ledge that shadowed his eyes. “Where?”
“Take a good, hard look, motherfucker,” Daniel challenged. “Strain that memory. Strain it all the way back, twenty years ago, to the face of the girl you knocked up.”
“I just know that any time I undertake a case, I’m apt to run into some kind of a trap.”
—Nancy Drew,The Clue of the Broken Locket(1934)
30
