Markham sat for a moment listening to the breeze, then asked, “Would you care for a stroll down by the river, madame?”
He rose to his feet and started off toward the water, when suddenly he felt his BlackBerry buzzing in his pocket. He stopped and checked it. An e-mail from Schaap.
Think this has anything to do with our boy?
was all it said, but a link had been inserted into the body of the message above the words Sent from my Verizon BlackBerry. Markham clicked it—an article from the
DURHAM—Somebody might have had their heart set on being a lion this year for Halloween, say Durham Police, who are currently investigating a break-in at Rowley’s Taxidermy Emporium.
According to Detective Charles Gray, chief investigator on the case, the robbery took place just after 3 a.m. this morning. “The thieves knew exactly what they were going for,” said Gray. “They entered at the rear of the establishment and used their vehicle to break down the door and tripped the silent alarm. Unfortunately, they made off with the lion’s head before we could get there.” Gray went on to say that no other items were reported missing, and that the owner’s safe, which was empty at the time of the robbery, remained untouched.
“That’s the worst part,” said Tom Rowley, owner of Rowley’s Taxidermy Emporium. “Of all the things in the store, what they could hope to gain by taking old Leo is beyond me.”
A family business owned and operated in the same location for over 50 years, Rowley’s Taxidermy Emporium is part taxidermy studio, part museum, and the animals inside have become old friends to both locals and curious tourists alike. Leo, a monstrous African lion’s head, had been a fixture on the wall behind Rowley’s counter since the early 1980s.
“It was one of my father’s most prized possessions,” Rowley said. “[Leo] had been in our house for years and was a gift from a friend who he served with in World War Two. It was shot on a safari back in the 1930s. These kinds of things are getting harder and harder to find, and to this day a lot of the kids used to come in here just to look at him.”
Durham Police Department spokeswoman Sh-eryl Parks said she does not believe the burglary to be related to the break-in at nearby Lynn’s Craft Store in mid-October, in which thieves made off with over $1,000 in cash. Parks, however, did advise business owners in the area to install loud alarms. “It is our experience that an audible alarm is a better deterrent than a silent alarm.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” said Tom Rowley. “It’s just sad that we live in a world where we have to worry about stuff like this.”
Markham was about to read the e-mail again when Michelle interrupted him.
Markham laughed, swallowed the tears that threatened to follow, and powered off his BlackBerry.
Then he took his wife’s hand and strolled with her down by the river.
Chapter 71
“Where the hell could he be?” George Kiernan muttered, glancing at his watch.
At first he’d been furious and started his note session chewing ass as planned. But soon his fury turned to panic when the minutes ticked by and Bradley Cox still didn’t show. The rest of his cast, including Cindy Smith, had gotten off light. He had bigger fish to fry now, and that son of a bitch Cox was going to get it. Kiernan would have him thrown out of the department unless he was dead, he told the rest of the cast, and sent a pair of assistant stage managers out looking for him.
But now, almost an hour later, the director was sorry he’d said that. Yeah, now George Kiernan was really worried about the kid. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes; he was sweating badly and could hardly keep the script in his hand from shaking as the costumer finished letting out the waistband on Bradley Cox’s pants.
At 1:40 he’d resigned himself that it was going to happen, but only at 1:50 did he actually begin to believe it.
But it
“There’s no one at his apartment,” the stage manager said, rushing into the dressing room out of breath. “The landlord got us in. There were some clothes on the bed, but his cell phone was gone and the dead bolt locks from the outside. His car is gone, too—looks like he just took off.”
“Christ almighty,” Kiernan muttered, his mind spinning.
“We called the police,” the stage manager continued. “Under the circumstances, they said there’s nothing they can do unless he’s gone for twenty-four hours. And then a family member has to—”
“All right, all right,” Kiernan said. “Tell the cast I’ll be going on for him script-in-hand—no, tell them all to meet me backstage left. I’ll break the news to them myself. Also, notify everybody on headset that I’ll be making a curtain speech before the show begins. When I’m clear, just call everything else as you normally do.”
The stage manager just stood there, frightened.
“Don’t worry,” Kiernan said, winking. “We’ll get through it.”
The stage manager nodded and was off.
Kiernan took another deep breath and asked the costumer if he could have a moment alone. She left, and the director sat down at the dressing table, thumbing absently through the script given to him by Cindy Smith. She’d already written down all of Cox’s blocking in the scenes with Lady Macbeth, and Kiernan figured he could remember the rest of it from his own promptbook, which was too thick, too heavy to carry around onstage.
He studied his face in the mirror—felt his breathing level off and his heart slow down. And when the announcement from the stage manager came over the intercom, the director calmly walked out of Bradley Cox’s dressing room and stood in the wings before his cast like a general.
Chapter 72
Cindy held Edmund Lambert’s hand as Kiernan laid out the battle plan for the matinee. With the absence of Cox, she’d grown nervous, but at the same time was beyond excited at being so close to Edmund—especially since he’d been waiting for her outside her dressing room when she arrived at the theater. They’d spoken to one another only briefly, but kissed long enough for her to know that everything was all right again.
