Murder of a Royal Pain

floor.

Carefully she squatted to retrieve it, blindly patting the linoleum until her fingers touched the cold metal. Grasping the cylindrical base, she felt for the switch and thumbed it to the ON position. Nothing. She shook it and it came on briefly, only to sputter out. She tried again, hitting it against her thigh, and this time it didn’t even flicker.

Shit! That would teach her to buy cheap stuff at the dollar store. If she got out of here alive, she was putting a police-quality Maglite on her birthday wish list, and she was buying Energizer batteries, not the low-priced generic ones she usually opted for. The bunny would never let her down.

Unhappily, that didn’t help her now. But on the upside, while she had been trying to figure out what to do next, her eyes had adjusted to the darkness. The narrow area between the hall entrance and the door in the false wall was empty. Maybe the screaming hadn’t come from there after all. Yes, that must be it. She could still hear faint whimpers but they came from a little farther away, beyond the next partition.

Skye told herself she had to put on her big-girl panties and do what had to be done. Still, as she slipped inside the small space, she left the outer door open for a quick getaway.

She could no longer hear the footsteps or moans. Had the ghost moved on to scare someone else? Or maybe the whole thing had been a part of the haunted-house act of which Skye wasn’t aware. With that optimistic thought, she noticed that the door located in the false wall was ajar. She placed her palm against it, but before she could push, a hand wrapped around the edge. Without thinking she yanked the door shut.

A wail of pain rang through the cheap plywood.

Great. She had just pissed off a ghost. No, wait a minute; a ghost wouldn’t have felt anything. Gripping her stun gun, she flung open the door. As she burst into the passageway, her head slammed into something solid and unyielding. Her vision blurred and she crumpled to the floor.

For an instant everything went black and she couldn’t move. What had happened? Damn! Someone must have hit her. Was he or she standing over her right now, ready to plunge a knife through her heart?

Skye’s eyelids flew open. She could dimly make out a sprawled body in front of her, and she realized what had happened. They both must have tried to go through the door at the same time and hit their heads. As Skye’s vision cleared, she could see that the other person was dressed in a long, cobwebby black gown, wearing stark white makeup and fangs. Who was playing Countess Dracula? Skye searched her memory, but came up blank.

The woman sat up slowly, reached for the flashlight that had rolled a few inches from her hand, and flicked it on. She stared at Skye. Fear, stark and vivid, glittered in the woman’s eyes, and her mouth formed a large circle. Screaming, she struggled to her feet and, keeping her gaze on Skye, backed through the door, then turned and ran.

Clearly Skye wasn’t the only one spooked by the haunted house. She eased to her feet, her head still swimming. Why had the countess run away like that?

Warily, Skye stepped farther into the passageway. The door had swung shut, as it was designed to do, and it was even darker here than in the outer hallway. Skye took a moment to get her bearings, then reached out and felt along the wall. Somewhere nearby was a panic button that would turn on an emergency light in the passageway, as well as a signal in the control room indicating that there was a problem. And a freaked-out Mrs. Dracula was definitely a problem.

She knew the button was at shoulder level and the size of a doorbell. Shuffling forward, she inched down the narrow corridor while trailing her hand against the rough plywood. If she went too fast, she might overlook the switch.

Where was the blasted thing? Had she somehow gotten turned around? Was she going the wrong way? Or had she missed it? As she took another step, her right foot slid into what felt like a large pile of clothes. Still unable to see in the darkness, Skye crouched. Tentatively, she reached out and touched the mound, then ran her fingers down its length.

Yikes! She yanked her hand back. It wasn’t someone’s abandoned laundry. It was a person.

Hesitantly, she grabbed what she hoped was the shoulder and shook it. “Hey, get up. Are you all right?”

Skye tried again, but there was no response. She needed help. Jumping to her feet, she continued her search for the light. Her breath was coming in shallow, quick gasps, and by the time her fingers stumbled onto the switch, her chest felt as if it would burst.

She pushed the plastic button and light flooded the passageway. Blinded from the sudden glare, Skye instinctively closed her eyes as she swung around and stepped back to the person on the floor.

When she opened her eyes, she recoiled, then stood frozen in shock. A woman was lying on the floor in front of her, unmoving and corpselike. And she was a dead ringer for Skye herself!

CHAPTER 9

It Might Be You

Sheer black fright swept through Skye. Her mind reeled with confusion. Was she going insane? The situation was jarringly reminiscent of her recurring nightmare—the one in which she was attending a funeral, went up to pay her respects, and instead of finding the deceased in the casket, she saw herself.

Panic, unlike anything she’d ever experienced before, welled up in her throat. Her breath whistling rapidly in and out and her heart pounding like a jackhammer, she sank to the floor. Huddled against the wall, Skye gripped the stun gun and stared at her doppelganger, trying to make sense of what was in front of her. Several minutes ticked by, but her brain refused to function and she remained paralyzed.

The sound of running footsteps roused her from her stupor. As the initial shock began to wear off, she calmed down. Regaining a fragment of self-control, she realized that the person sprawled a few feet from her was one of the other two witches. During the rehearsals they had discovered that all three of them looked nearly identical once they were in costume and makeup. Only the strange light and her already agitated state of mind had kept her from immediately comprehending the woman’s true identity.

Once Skye understood what she was seeing, she crawled over to her double and pressed her fingertips to the woman’s carotid artery, feeling for a pulse. There was none that Skye could detect, but she did note a line across her look-alike’s throat where the green makeup had been rubbed away. As Skye took the woman’s wrist to check for a pulse there, she saw a long rope with green stains clutched in the witch’s right hand.

Unable to detect a heartbeat, Skye used the bottom of her skirt to wipe off the makeup from around the woman’s mouth. Her skin had a bluish tinge and she didn’t appear to be breathing. How long had she been lying there?

While debating whether to remove the woman’s prosthetic nose and chin in order to identify her, Skye heard a male voice from outside the door shout, “The signal came from this section.”

“Stop. Don’t come in here.” Skye struggled to her feet and blocked the entrance. Raising her voice, she ordered, “Go back and call nine-one-one. Someone’s been attacked and is badly hurt.”

The men argued, but after explaining what she had found and asserting her position as a police consultant, Skye dissuaded them from attempting to enter the passageway. She instructed them to post guards at all the outer doors and make sure no one left the building. While one of the men went to phone for help, the other ran off to round up the rest of the security detail to stand watch.

Skye was surprised at how quickly Roy Quirk arrived. According to her Timex, it had taken him less than three minutes. With the chief out of town, and as Wally’s second in command, Officer Quirk was in charge. Roy was in his early thirties, and still looked like the football player he’d been in high school.

He nodded to Skye as he stepped inside the passageway, then quickly assessed the scene. Ten minutes later two paramedics burst through the door. Quirk moved aside, giving them access to the woman. From where Skye stood pressed against the wall, she couldn’t see what the paramedics were doing, but after only a minute or two they got to their feet, murmured a few words to Quirk, and left.

Quirk flipped open his cell phone and barked out several orders, then turned to Skye. “We need to keep people out of this area. Please move into the exterior hallway.”

Skye frowned. She wasn’t exactly “people.” She was the psychological consultant to the Scumble River Police