“Jesus. Don’t even say it. I hate dentists and drills and…God, that’s just so twisted.”
“Maybe it’s how he gets off.”
“Then we’ve got to nail the bastard.”
“If he’s still around. A year’s a long time. Maybe he’s already slipped up and is serving time. The State Police are checking to see if there are any other cases, solved or unsolved, like this one.”
“Nothing’s like this one,” she said. “At least I hope not.”
“Me, too,” he agreed as she headed down the hall and he settled into his chair. He checked with Missing Persons again, and finished a report on the accident on the freeway while taking calls and keeping one eye on the window where snow was piling against the icy panes.
Jenna pulled her ski mask over the lower half of her face and walked the three blocks from the garage to the post office. According to Skip Uhrig, the owner of the garage, her Jeep would be ready within the next couple of hours. All that was wrong with her rig was a faulty alternator.
One problem down, a few thousand to go, she thought as she crossed the street and tried to avoid slipping on the icy pavement. Snow was slanting from the gray sky, thick enough that it was impossible to see the length of the street; both her kids were at home, as the schools had let out early because of the weather, and so far, none of the repairmen she’d called had shown up. “It’s still early,” she told herself as she pushed her way past the glass door into the post office, a yellow-brick building that had been erected before the turn of the last century.
There was counter space for four clerks, but only one person was helping customers. Not that it mattered. Only two people were waiting and one, a tall woman bundled in parka, scarf, and ski pants, kept looking over her shoulder to eye Jenna as she opened her post office box and withdrew a stack of mail. Jenna didn’t pay much attention. It happened all the time. Either people recognized her and were suddenly tongue-tied in the face of her celebrity, or they studied her surreptitiously, the wheels in their minds turning quickly to try and connect a face with a name. Those people didn’t expect to see her in a small town, running the same errands they were.
Since she had some hours to kill, she decided to walk the few blocks to the theater and see if Rinda wanted to go to a late lunch or grab a cup of coffee at the local café. Stuffing the mail into her purse, she shouldered open the door and hustled down the street. Few people were on the sidewalks and the usual slow traffic had dwindled.
Think of it as an adventure, she told herself, as she made her way down an alley where trash bins, parked cars, and garages were covered in four inches of snow. She hurried briskly through a parking lot to the old theater. Its steeply pitched roof was covered in white, its belltower knifing upward to the dark sky, its stained-glass windows glowing from the lights within. The once-upon-a-time church appeared bucolic and had a Currier and Ives nostalgia, until you looked more closely and noticed the blistered and peeled paint, some rot in the siding, crumbling mortar on the brick walkways, and a dark spire that seemed incomplete and somewhat sinister without a cross mounted at its highest point.
Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself, but had thought the old church was a little eerie, an odd choice for the theater, despite whatever tax breaks Rinda had received for restoring the historic building.
Rather than walk up the front steps, she cut around the back and stepped through a door that opened to a landing of a staircase. It wound up to the main part of the theater and curled down to the basement where the kitchen and dressing rooms were located in what had been Sunday-school classrooms fifty years earlier.
Voices echoed through the stairwell—one she recognized as Rinda’s, the other she couldn’t place other than it was male and, from the sounds of it, irritated.
“…I told you to talk to Winkle,” the man was saying.
“And I told you that would be a waste of time. He and I have a history.”
“I know, but that wouldn’t keep him from doing his job.”
“Look, Shane, I’ve got a problem here.”
“Because someone’s stealing trinkets that belonged to a celebrity?” he replied gruffly, and Jenna realized Rinda was talking to the sheriff. Great. Jenna melted back into the shadowy staircase as the man behind the badge ranted on. “Is that really a surprise? What do you expect, Rinda? It doesn’t matter if it’s Jenna Hughes or Jennifer Lopez or Drew Barrymore or anyone with a face and name that people recognize—people are going to try and get close to her, either by asking for her autograph, or befriending her, or taking a little something that was once hers. Celebrities ask for this kind of thing to happen. It comes with the territory. The price of fame.”
“That’s a pile of garbage, Shane, and you know it. Thievery is thievery. It doesn’t matter who you are.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“You could have sent one of the deputies.”
“Not today,” he shot back. “They’re too busy. I’m here on my lunch hour as a personal favor to you, okay? Now, I’ll look around, but you’ve already said there isn’t any evidence of forced entry, that the only things missing were donated by Jenna Hughes, and that you’ve searched the entire premises. Have you asked the people that work here?”
“Most of them.”
“Most?” he repeated, not hiding his sarcasm.
“Not everyone has been in since I discovered the dress
was missing, and I called those I could, but I haven’t reached a few.”
“Keep trying,” he advised. “And talk to Ms. Hughes. Maybe she decided she didn’t want to donate the things after all.”
Jenna bristled. Why would he think she’d take back her old costumes after giving them to the theater?
“She wouldn’t do that,” Rinda protested.