back up when the little show was over. And then, in the meantime, whoever it was dropped that friendly little sign into place right over here.”
“Distraction and misdirection. Oldest trick in the book,” Vivien said. “There must be some sort of black light shining on the scrim to make the letters glow like that.”
“Scrim?”
“That’s what that is—a nearly transparent piece of fabric that you can shine light on or through for scenery or to create shadows or various other effects. It’s a common theatrical technique.”
“So whoever is doing this has a familiarity with the theater.”
Whoever is doing this.
The words shook her…but they were true.
He was right—someone was doing it. Purposely. What a horrific, terrible realization.
“I suppose you could draw that conclusion—that whoever has a background in theatrics. But it’s not like these techniques can’t be looked up on the internet.”
“Right.” His face was shadowed and stark in the bright cone of light from her phone. “Well, we should probably try to get the lights on so we can look around to see whether there’s any sign of who did this.”
“All right, Detective DeRiccio,” she replied dryly. It was easier to cling to a bit of humor, and then to focus on things to do, than to dwell on the reality that someone was trying to drive her away from her theater. “The fuse box is back here. He—or she, or they—probably just flipped the main.”
“They probably thought you were here alone—just like the last time,” he said as she opened the door to the fuse box.
Sure enough—the main breaker was off, and when Vivien flipped it back into place, the lights came back up.
“Either they have some sort of nanny-cam here or they’re watching the parking lot and saw only your car,” he went on. “Or watched everyone else leave.”
“What about your car?” she replied. The idea of any sort of surveillance—via camera or live eyeball—on her and the theater made her feel sick. She was going to have to call the police and make a report. Helga was going to be very upset.
“I walked. I only live up that way,” he said, gesturing vaguely to the west. Then he gave her a knowing look. “So are you going to tell me what happened the last time or not?”
She pursed her lips then shrugged. “Fine. It was basically the same sort of thing as happened today. Different color lights—bluish—but in the same basic location on the stage, and last time it was just lights, not the gyrating cloth sort of thing. I don’t know, maybe this time he—she—whoever—was trying to evoke a ghost or something with the fluttery fabric. And there was a different warning the first time, but you already know that. When it happened before, I, uh, left in a hurry, and when I came back in—”
“That was before or after I saw you in the parking lot?”
“I had just come out after the, uh, event. When I came back in, after we talked, the ‘GO OR DIE’ was gone.”
“And we know how that happened. Whoever it was dragged it up like a backdrop when you went outside.”
“No one was here,” she told him firmly. “I didn’t sense or hear any other presence.”
It was his turn to shrug. “You ran out quickly—that would have given the perp enough time to roll up the sign and get out before you came back inside. He probably used one of the back doors.”
“Maybe.” Oh God. She couldn’t keep from rubbing her prickling upper arms as she thought about being surveilled when she was alone in the theater. “But why didn’t he take away the backdrop? They just left it, and now I’ve seen it, and I know it’s not— Well, I know someone’s doing this.”
“Maybe they didn’t have time—or maybe they didn’t think you’d see it. It was pretty far up there, camouflaged by the others. In fact, we probably wouldn’t have seen it if we hadn’t been up there on the catwalk. Maybe they were trying to make certain of it by sabotaging the walkway.” His face was grim and set.
Vivien shivered again and tried not to think about how sick she felt. “I’ll have all the locks changed tomorrow.”
“We should take a closer look up there,” he said, pointing to the recesses above the stage. “See if we can tell how they did it.”
“All right.”
Vivien didn’t mention the weird, eerie shadow.
She didn’t know whether it was connected to these obviously human-related events—but if it wasn’t, she didn’t think she