Murder on Cue by Jane Dentinger

Author:Jane Dentinger [Dentinger, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-3687-9
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-06-28T16:20:00+00:00

CHAPTER 22

SHE WAS HAVING THIS lovely dream but someone or something was trying to intrude on it. There was a beautiful expanse of pearly gray sky, shot through with twinkling lights and the sound of chiming voices. She felt a little cold but was willing to bear that rather than face the pain which she knew would come with awakening. Yet there was still something nagging at her, something that she felt it was important to grasp, and it was right in front of her; she could see the vague outlines of it before her but they wouldn’t come into focus. Someone was dangling something before her eyes; she thought it was Harvey Samuels but she couldn’t make out the object that he was holding in his hands. Now her reverie was definitely being disturbed by a new element, some acrid smell invading her nostrils and making her eyes blink, and there was this insistent pressure on her arm. Reluctantly she gave herself up to consciousness.

When she first opened her eyes, she wasn’t sure where she was, but she saw that there were about twenty other people in the room with her. Gradually the twenty came into sharper focus and narrowed themselves down to ten: Phillip Gerrard, his constant shadow Tommy Zito, Kevin, Charlie, Austin (where had he come from?), Peter Morrance, John Baron and Paul, Ernie Bates and a cop in uniform. The terrible smell, she soon realized, was coming from an ancient bottle of smelling salts beneath her nose that was usually stored in the backstage first-aid kit. The sensation of cold was due to the ice pack tucked behind her head and the pressure she was feeling in her lower arm was caused by—wonder of wonders—Phillip Gerrard’s tight grasp on her left hand. She had no idea why she found this comforting. By degrees, Jocelyn became aware of the fact that she was lying on the cot in her dressing room and that all these people were looking at her anxiously. Once her eyes were fully opened, the loathsome bottle of smelling salts was withdrawn and she heard Detective Gerrard’s voice speaking, as if from a distance.

“Miss O’Roarke … Jocelyn, can you hear me now?”

Groggily, she said, “Of course I can hear you … I’m not deaf.”

“How do you feel?”

“I feel lousy, Mr. Gerrard, what the hell do you expect? … Did you get it?”

“Get what?”

In a fit of supreme irritation Jocelyn tried to sit upright, but the throbbing pain above her right temple convinced her to lie down again.

“The box, you ninny! The box that was between those flats—and the glasses underneath, those aviator glasses. I didn’t make them up. And there was sand on them! I felt it on my hands! I touched them.”

There was a long pause, and the room seemed to vibrate with the throbbing cadence in her head. When she heard Phillip Gerrard’s voice again, it seemed filled with an infinite weariness.

“We didn’t find anything, Miss O’Roarke. Just you lying against the left wall of the storage room.

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