was just Daddy and me, and so then we had a special secret. Didn’t we, Daddy?”
Vivien chanced a look out into the audience. Mr. Carlson sat in the front row. Their eyes met, and for a moment, she saw clarity, lucidity, and malevolence in his gaze. The anger and evil there was so shocking and clear and unexpected that she missed a rung and nearly fell.
“She was sleeping with him,” came the low, grating voice from the front row. It was surprisingly strong and precise. “The bitch. They were going to run off together. I couldn’t have that.”
Even Melody seemed surprised by the speech, for she stilled on the ladder below Vivien. “Daddy.”
“And then you hid their costumes—why? Why bother?” Vivien asked.
Mr. Carlson shifted in his seat, seeming to grow into his lucidity, to straighten and expand and mature into a stronger, more upright figure as he spoke.
“If they were found here, or if their costumes were found, who would they look at? Me. Had to move them far away, made it look like they were killed way after they left here. I took them to Indiana—made it look like a carjacking.” He smiled, and it was a cold, thin, evil smile in his age-spotted face. “She wanted to run away from me…so that’s what happened. That’s what everyone thought happened, anyway.” He laughed, ugly and low.
It was then that Vivien felt (finally!) the air begin to stir. “So you killed your wife and her lover and hid their costumes so no one would connect you—or the theater—to their deaths.”
“That’s right. Melody and I left for the holidays in Florida. Everyone assumed my wife came with us. It was only later that I told people she’d run off.” He laughed again, that horrible, grating laugh, and Vivien felt the air moving a little more sharply. “The police suspected me, of course. When they found her in Indiana with her lover. They watched me—oh, they watched me. But they couldn’t pin it on me.”
“But why did you leave the costumes here, all these years? Knowing they could be found?” Vivien asked.
“Couldn’t come back and get them—they were watching me, suspected me from the beginning. Damned mask was too big to carry around—someone might see me. And besides…who would find them, hidden away in this old, abandoned place?”
She looked up, wondering what would happen if she climbed up really fast and took off through the catwalk and left Melody behind. She might be able to get away by climbing along the light cans before Melody got down. It would certainly be harder for her captor to get off a good shot if Vivien was moving among the warren of catwalks and Melody was either below or trying to follow her along the rickety walkway. They always taught in self-defense classes to run if possible for that reason.
But before she had the chance to put her plan into action, Melody jammed the muzzle of the gun into the back of Vivien’s calf hard enough to bruise.
“Stop talking and climb. Now. I don’t like it in here, Daddy, and I want to go.” Her voice sounded very girlish, and that creeped out Vivien even more.
But she climbed. She was more than halfway to the top of the thirty-foot ladder.
“What are you going to do?” she asked, figuring the more she knew, the better she could plan. And why weren’t the stupid ghosts acting up now—now that their murderer and his accomplice were here?
Wasn’t this what the unsettled spirits had been awaiting for twenty-five years? A chance to have revenge?
“You’re going to have a little fall,” said Melody. “A terrible accident. Everyone knows the catwalk up there nearly fell down the other day. Unfortunately, there’s another section that’s still a bit loose…and apparently you didn’t realize it before you stepped onto it. Oopsie.”
Clever. Vivien had to hand that to her. No one would ever think it was more than an unfortunate accident. And Melody would have the perfect alibi—she was with her father, returning him to his assisted living home at the time the murder happened.
“All right, then, up you go, Vivien Leigh Savage,” spat Melody. “Stop dawdling. This place gives me the creeps.” The little-girl voice was gone, replaced by a hard-as-nails avenger. “Go.”
“Is that why you didn’t just come and take the costumes away?” Vivien asked, even as she began to climb. “Melody?”
“I couldn’t find them—Daddy couldn’t remember—and this place is horrible. Horrible things happened here…lights, wind, noises… I…don’t like it here… So