Page 48

For the first time since Thursday night, I almost had the shape of an ordinary operating shift in front of me.

Almost.

My phone began vibrating against the worktable.

Sheriff O’Shea’s name filled the screen.

I set down my fork and answered. “Please tell me nobody found another problem before I finished eating.”

“I can’t help you with dinner,” he said. “But the ticket appeal got a response.”

The little bit of appetite I had left disappeared.

Damien looked up from the route sheet. I tapped the speaker button and set the phone between us, careful not to cover the notes we’d made in the margin.

O’Shea continued. “The woman agreed to talk while I had you both available. She says she was near the staff entrance Thursday evening. I’m putting her on.”

A second line clicked into place.

“Hello?” a woman said.

Her voice sounded nervous rather than dramatic, which somehow made my stomach tighten more. I couldn’t hear any excitement about being part of the story spreading through Woodbridge Falls. She sounded like someone who had realized, two days late, that an ordinary wrong turn mattered.

O’Shea told her I was on the line and asked her to repeat what she had already told him.

“I was at Hollowfield Thursday night with two friends. I got separated from them near the end because I thought they’d gone toward the restrooms, and I followed the wrong light. I didn’t realize I’d wandered out of the guest area until I saw one of the STAFF ONLY signs.”

The noises outside the workroom kept moving around us. Somebody called for more zip ties. A costume rack squeaked past the door. Hollowfield was preparing to admit hundreds of people while a stranger calmly described the mistake that had helped put me in a holding cell.

“What were you wearing?” O’Shea asked.

“A dark jacket. Black, I think. Maybe dark green. My hair was down.”

“What color is your hair?”

“Brown. Kind of reddish brown.”

That was chestnut enough under bad lighting.

I looked at Damien. He said nothing, but his attention sharpened.

The guest continued. “I saw somebody working back there. A man told me I needed to go around to the public side.”

“Do you know who he was?” I asked.

“I didn’t then. But when the sheriff started asking about people who’d worked there before, I remembered seeing him last year. I’d heard people call him Grant Bellamy.”

The workroom seemed to contract around the phone.

I stared at last year’s plan lying open beside Saturday’s route sheet.

“You’re sure?” O’Shea asked.

“I remember him from last year. I came twice with friends. I don’t know what his job was, but I’d seen him around the attraction.”

“When you spoke to him Thursday, did you see anyone else?”

“No.”