Page 87 of Script Swap
Okay, not great.And it didn’t seem like a good idea to break my promise to Bobby especially after we’d so recently patched things up.
But, said a little voice inside me, what if whoever I’d seen in the lobby was doing something nefarious?What if they were destroying evidence?What if it was Nora, and this was my chance to bust her?
I stepped inside and had to stop as my eyes adjusted to the gloom.For several seconds, I was blind.I strained to hear something—some familiar sound.Someone cleaning.Sweeping the stage maybe.The rhythm of a hammer as someone fixed one of the sets.A human voice as one of the remaining actors rehearsed a line.
Nothing.
Nothing except a staticky hiss that got louder and louder in the darkness.
Slowly, the shadows resolved themselves into shapes, and I started moving down one of the cast-and-crew hallways.My sneakers scuffed the high-traffic carpet squares as I passed framed posters from previous years—I still have no idea whatDames at Seais about, but the amount of cleavage was PG-13at least.Lit by emergency lights and an EXIT sign, the hallway seemed to exist only in patches—solid and real and here, and then dissolving into shadow until I reached the next light.It was hard to believe it was a bright summer day outside, and although I’d wanted somewhere cool, I found myself shivering in the theater’s air—too damp, too chill.
The whispery sound of my steps.The clank of the crash bar as I pressed through a pair of fire doors.The metallic rattle as the door fell shut behind me.
God help me, if someonewassneaking around in here, waiting for an innocent little gay boy to do something incredibly stupid, I was making their job way too easy for them.
When I got to the lobby, I paused.Daylight filtered in from the street, pushing back the shadows, and the air still held the faintest scent of popcorn.
Then the squeak of hinges, and a soft noise that was definitely human—somewhere between a grunt and a mutter—came from the box office.
The box office itself was empty, with shutters lowered over the service windows, the air gray and dusty and too warm.But the door to the back room was open, and someone was crouched in front of the safe.A woman, although it was hard to be sure because she was wearing a black trench coat, with a black scarf tied over her head.There was a hint of Audrey Hepburn.
Smart, sane, sensible Dash froze.And then that same smart, sane, sensible Dash tried to take a step back.
But I must have made some kind of noise, because she glanced over her shoulder.
Tinny scowled.Then, twisting at the waist, she produced a small gun and pointed it at me.“You!”
I couldn’t help sounding a bit stunned as I echoed, “You.”
“What are you doing here?”The dreamy mystic who had seen a shadow on the glass—or whatever she’d been blathering about—was gone, and now she sounded like she was working her way up the scales, trying to get to Weeping Heroine, when she added, “Why do you have to ruin everything?”
“I’m not here,” I said.(Don’t judge me; I was in full panic mode.) “I’m a figment of your imagination.I’m going to dissolve back into the ether—”
“Oh no you don’t,” Tinny snapped.She made a peremptory gesture with the gun.“Get in here.”
I might be able to outrun her.
But I might not.
Fox was coming, I told myself.And Bobby knew I was here.(A fat lot of good that would do me if she decided to shoot, although Bobby would undoubtedly avenge me in the most responsible way possible.)
I slunk into the inner office.
As I did, Tinny got to her feet, careful to keep the gun trained on me.She wore disposable gloves, and in her other hand, she held a sanitizing wipe; bleach vapors stung my nose.The safe stood open behind her, its shelves empty.And the office itself appeared to have been ransacked: the TV that had hung in one corner was gone, and the desk’s drawers were open, and papers spilled out of the filing cabinets.Part of the paneling on the rear wall had been peeled back to expose what looked like an ancient pine veneer, and around the base of the safe, skirting had been pulled back to reveal matted orange shag carpeting underneath—original presumably, and never removed because of the safe.
Something moved at the back of my brain.
“I can’t believe this,” Tinny said.“This is so unfair.I’m almost done and thenyoushow up.Why does everything have to go wrong for me?”
She directed a watery look at me, so apparently this was a real question.I said, “You stole the cash from the box office opening night.”
In answer, Tinny made a disgusted, scoffing sound that sounded like a guilty teenager’s attempt not to give themselves away.
“Okay,” I said.That something, whatever it was, was still moving around in the back of my skull.“You stole the money.That changes things.You knew where the key was.Terrence would have told you, or you found out on your own.You were free to go wherever you wanted in the theater; it wouldn’t have been difficult for you to figure out that security was basically nonexistent.You had access to the control booth, so you could program the lights to go out.”I could hear myself talking, but the sensation was like I kept running into the same dead end over and over again.“I don’t understand.Why did you kill Kyson?”
Her mouth made a perfect O.“I didn’t!”
“You didn’t?”
