Page 41 of The Girl He Crowned

If it had justbeen that, it wouldn’t have been a problem, but there was another side to theday’s performance that Paige hadn’t factored in. It seemed that for a nineteenthcentury opera, people had gone for a nineteenth century look, complete withopera cloaks and masks. They’d turned what should have been a simple culturalevent into a costume party.

That was going tomake it even harder than it would otherwise be to pick out Saul Bennett fromthe rest of the crowd, but Paige was determined to find him.

“We need to headinside,” Christopher said. “Split up, and shout if you see any sign of Bennett.”

Paige nodded. Shedidn’t like having to split up, but to find one man in the middle of an operahouse, it was going to take both of them. They were going to have to split upto cover as much ground as possible. It was their only chance to find Bennettbefore he had a chance to run.

They headed intothe auditorium, and it seemed that the architect who had designed the operahouse had done a good job, because the power of the orchestra and the beauty ofthe singers sounded as loud and clear as if Paige had been standing right nextto the stage.

She was alsoalarmingly aware of just how much she and Christopher stood out right then intheir standard issue suits. Everyone else there was dressed far moreexpensively and stylishly, so much so that Paige actually felt a littleembarrassed to be stepping into the rows and rows of suavely dressed men andelegantly dressed women.

Christophergestured for her to go left while he set off to the right. Paige nodded andtried to cover her half of the auditorium, ignoring the looks she got fromthose audience members whose eyes weren’t fixed on the stage. There were quitea few of those; it seemed that looking around to see who else was there at theopera was a common practice for the audience.

The problem wastrying to find one particular audience member among the crowd, particularlywith the house lights low. From where she was standing in one of the aisles, itwas practically impossible to make out the faces of the audience members. Paigeneeded a better vantage point.

Looking up, shetook in the VIP boxes. One of those would let her survey the audience muchbetter than her current position, so Paige ran out from the auditorium, lookingfor stairs leading upwards. She was hurrying now, because any moment when shedidn’t have eyes on the room was a moment when Saul Bennett might be able toslip away. Paige couldn’t allow that.

The usher frombefore was approaching Paige now, along with a serious looking older man in asuit, wearing a lanyard that proclaimed him to be the house manager. He didn’tlook happy.

“That’s her,” theusher said, pointing.

The house managerstepped forward. “Do you want to tell me exactly what the FBI is doing runningaround in my opera house, disturbing our patrons?”

He said it in atone that seemed to imply that opera somehow stood outside of the normal lawsof the world.

“I’m sorry, Mr…”

“Wells. YancyWells. I am the house manager here, in charge of the smooth running of thoseaspects of the opera house not under the creative control of the director orthe conductor.”

Meaning that hedealt with anything that wasn’t on the creative side.

“Mr. Wells,” Paigesaid. “My partner and I have reason to believe that a suspect in the recentmurders in Eddis may be attending this opera. We don’t know where he will goafterwards, or what he might do. There’s a chance that he could use theopportunity to hurt someone else, which means that we have to take thisopportunity to locate him.”

Paige saw thehouse manager’s stern expression grow pale at that. He obviously wasn’texpecting the situation to be quite that serious. Paige could only assume thatthe usher hadn’t explained things to him, or that he hadn’t given the manenough time to explain.

“Even so, we can’tdisturb the performance,” Mr. Wells said. “We cannot just stop things andevacuate.”

Now Paigeknewthat he hadn’t given the usher a chance to explain things.

“That’s not whatmy partner and I are doing,” she said. “But if you don’t want a potentialmurderer sitting there in your audience, you need to help me.”

“How?” Mr. Wellsasked.

“Come with me, andwhen I tell you to, I want you to bring up the house lights.”

“Bring up thelights? In the middle of a performance?”

“It will only befor a few seconds,” Paige assured him.

He didn’t lookhappy about it, but he nodded, then followed as Paige led the way to a VIP box,where an older couple were sitting, obviously enjoying the show. They stared atPaige in surprise as she walked to the front of their box, looking out over theaudience.

“What’s themeaning of this?” the man asked.

Paige ignored him,turning to Mr. Wells. “Do it now.”

“Now? But-”

“Now,” Paigeinsisted.

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