But Wiggins jumped in. "We were actually wondering if you had ever seen this woman around the theater." He held out his phone, displaying the photo of Jane Doe. "We think she might have been a friend of Tara's."

  Rossi blinked at the photo, his frown deepening again. "Is she dead? It looks like she's in a casket?"

  "Um, yes, unfortunately she is deceased." I looked from Wiggins to Irene. It would have been so much easier to gauge a natural reaction to the photo if it hadn't been taken in the Platinum Slumber.

  "What does she have to do with Rebecca's death?" Rossi asked.

  "That's what we're trying to find out," Irene said. "Have you ever seen her around? Maybe with Tara?"

  Rossi shook his head. "No, I'm sorry. I don't recognize her. But it's not like I know all of my casts' friends. We're on a tight schedule here. There hasn't been a lot of time for socializing."

  "Would you mind if we ask some of the other cast and crew if they might've seen her?" Irene pressed.

  Rossi blew out a deep sigh and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, smacking them against his palm. "We really can't afford any more delays. My backer is concerned enough about the production as it is."

  "We completely understand," I assured him. "We'll be very quick and very discreet."

  Irene and I both flashed him our biggest smiles. Wiggins attempted one as well, but as usual came off a little too cocky.

  Rossi shook his head and looked upward, as if trying to draw some help from above. "Fine. Ask around, but please don't interrupt the rehearsal. We don't have time for any more setbacks." He shoved an unlit cigarette into his mouth and walked away, waving his hands in the air and gesturing to the orchestra to begin again.

  "That guy's tightly wound," Wiggins said as we made our way down the aisle and around the stage toward the dressing rooms.

  "If I had to deal with Tara on a daily basis, I might be too," I admitted.

  "Looks like Tara's going to be a while," Irene said, gesturing to the stage where Rossi was trying to soothe the savage diva into singing her song.

  "Let's start with the crew," Wiggins suggested, gesturing to the buzz of activity behind the scenes. "Maybe someone has seen them together."

  We did, showing the photo to one crew member after another and getting much the same response. Shock that we had a picture of the dead woman on our phone, questions about why she was in a casket, and absolutely no recognition from anyone. No one seemed to have seen her with Tara or Rebecca. One of the makeup artists said she might have been a delivery girl she'd seen bringing in sandwiches to the theater last month. Diana Rossi said she resembled one of her favorite soap opera actresses. And the bassoon player from the orchestra said she looked a lot like his second ex-wife, only he would've paid good money to see the ex-wife in a casket. I chose to believe that wasn't an actual threat, but no one seemed to have any real information about who Jane Doe was.

  I was about to call this the wild goose chase that it was, when I spotted Tara stomping toward her dressing room. I gestured to Irene and Wiggins to follow. However, when we got to her door, I paused. Tara wasn't alone. A male voice came from the other side of the door. A male voice that was raised and not very happy.

  I held up a finger to my lips to signal my companions to be quiet as I strained to hear the conversation.

  "…that detective…what did you tell her…gonna make someone pay!"

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up as I recognized the voice. Bryan Steele.

  He's in there, I mouthed to Irene.

  "Who?" Wiggins asked.

  "Shhh!" I admonished.

  Who? he mouthed.

  "The boyfriend," I whispered.

  "The cop?"

  Irene and I nodded.

  "What's he saying?" Wiggins asked in a hushed tone.

  "He's saying—"

  Only I didn't get to finish that thought, as the door suddenly flew open and said boyfriend filled the frame. His brows hunkered down over flashing eyes, and every vein in his neck stood at attention. His gaze shot from me to Wiggins to Irene, all hunched over and whispering.

  "Uh, hi." I straightened up and did a little one-finger wave at the Hulk.

  His eyes narrowed at me. "What are you doing out here?"

  "Uh…us?" I squeaked out, my voice an octave higher than normal.

  "We wanted to know if you've ever seen this woman," Wiggins said, stepping forward to show Steele his phone. If he had any trepidation about taking on the bodybuilder/violent cop/possible murderer, he didn't show it.

  Steele's eyes narrowed even further as he looked at the photo. "She's dead."

  I rolled my eyes. "Yes, we're aware. Do you know who she is?"

  His shoulders bobbed up and down in a shrug. "Beats me."

  I had to admit, I had no idea if he was telling the truth or not. Though I noticed he had barely looked at the picture, his eyes flickering to it just once. Either he had an aversion to the image of people in caskets, or he was purposely avoiding making an identification.

  "Who's out there?" I heard Tara ask from the room beyond. "What's going on?" She shoved Bryan Steele away from the door, taking in our trio. I wasn't sure who she had been hoping to see, but her face registered disappointment at seeing us.

  "Oh. You again."

  If everyone seemed so happy to see me, I was going to get a complex soon.

  "Here to apologize for threatening me the other day?" Tara asked me, crossing her arms over her ample chest. I was impressed she could even get them to touch.

  "Threatening her?" Wiggins asked me, raising his eyebrows in a question as that smirk tugged at the corner of his lips.

  I could see his story brewing behind his eyes, and I quickly nipped it in the bud.

  "Hardly. Do you know this woman?" I asked Tara, grabbing Wiggins' phone and showing it to her.

  Tara's nose scrunched up in disgust. "Ugh. She's dead."

  "But do you recognize her?" Irene jumped in.

  Tara rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Do I look like the kind of person who hangs out with dead people?"

  "We think she might have been a friend of…Rebecca's," I prompted. I didn't add or yours. "Maybe she was at one of Rebecca's performances? Or a rehearsal?"

  "Well, if she was a friend of Rebecca's, then I definitely don't know her."

  Wiggins narrowed his eyes at her. "Are you sure?"

  Tara's head snapped up to meet his gaze. "Yes, I'm sure. What, are you calling me a liar?"

  Wiggins held both hands up in a surrender gesture. "No, I just noticed you didn't really look at the picture very long."

  "Yeah, well, I'm not really into looking at dead people, okay?"

  "Tara?" a voice called behind us.

  I turned to see Diana Rossi standing in the hall. "PS is ready for you on stage again," she told the redhead.

  Though I noticed her eyes were on Wiggins and the phone.

  "Great. We were done here anyway," Tara said, sending a pointed look our way. She followed Diana in the direction of the stage.

  Bryan Steele ducked back into Tara's dressing room and slammed the door shut so hard I felt a breeze ruffle my hair.

  "Well, that was a bust," Irene said as we made our way back outside. "Apparently whoever Jane Doe is, she didn't hang out with the theater crowd."

  "I don't know if it was a total bust," Wiggins said, shoving his phone back into his pocket. "Tara barely glanced at the picture. It's possible she was lying about not knowing the woman. She certainly didn't want to talk to us about it very much, did she?"

  "Bryan didn't look at it very hard either." I turned to face him. "You think maybe they were both lying?"

  "Or they're both telling the truth, and they just don't like us very much," Irene reasoned.

  Which was just as plausible.

  We stepped outside into the struggling sunshine, and Wiggins paused, his gaze going up and down the street. While it wasn't the heart of the theater district, the Bayside was popular enough that a smattering of restaurants and small businesses catering to tourists lined the sidewalks.

  "Maybe I'll take the photo around to some of these places," Wiggins said, nodding toward the coffee shop across the street. "It's possible maybe one of them saw Tara with Jane Doe."

  Irene nodded. "Good idea. Send me a copy of the photo, and we'll take the right side of the street. You can take the left."

  "Actually…" I looked down at my phone, noting the time. "I have an appointment."

  Irene shot me a sly look. "This wouldn't happen to be an appointment with a certain doctor, would it?"

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Wiggins' head snap up.

  "No," I said honestly. "My electrician."

  "Oh." Irene looked visibly disappointed. "Right. The estimate."

  Wiggins, on the other hand, registered a different emotion. One that I couldn't quite put my finger on, before he quickly turned his head away.

  "I could cancel," I offered.

  But Irene shook her head. "I'll text you if we find anything. Good luck. I'll think low thoughts for you."

  "Thanks. I'm going to need all the good thoughts I can get." If only good thoughts could pay for new electrical.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  "My guys can finish up the rewiring by the end of next week."

  I was back at the house, standing in the foyer with the electrical contractor, Delvecchio, studying his final estimate. His multi-paged final estimate, full of big plans and bigger numbers. I knew full well the work had to be done, but the prospect of laying out thousands of dollars at once was more than daunting. It was terrifying. Especially now that my payday was precarious.

  As if on cue, a knock sounded at my front door. A loud, insistent one. I excused myself from Delvecchio to answer, still holding the estimate, and opened the door.

  Barbara Lowery Bristol barged in, jaw clenched with anger. She zeroed in on me, her eyes narrowing. "How dare you!"

  Her fury left me taken aback.

  "Excuse me?"

  "You called that police detective!"

  Oh. That. Well, I hadn't expected her to be exactly pleased about us interfering in her plans. Then again, I'd barely expected our interfering to work. Usually it didn't.

  "I know you had something to do with this," she practically shouted. "You knew I wanted to bury my sister. You deliberately went against my wishes."

  "I'll just…uh…" Delvecchio edged out of the room, leaving us alone.

  "Please let me explain," I said, trying to keep my tone calm, hopefully even reassuring.

  It didn't work.

  "You had no right to push for an autopsy," she snapped. "That's not your decision to make. I told you I just wanted to lay Rebecca to rest and go home. Our business was done. Yet for some reason, you saw the need to keep nosing in!"

  Nosing in? "You hired us to find her," I reminded her.

  "Your job was done." Her lips compressed into a bloodless slash. "Thanks to you, we almost had to cancel the burial."

  "Wait—almost?" I felt that sinking feeling in my stomach again.

  She narrowed her eyes at me. "Rebecca was already embalmed at Gordon's. A full autopsy is useless now. Which, if you had asked me instead of running off to the police, you would have known."

  The sinking turned into a full-on hollow pit. We were too late. Of course Dominic Gordon would have embalmed her. He wouldn't have just had her sitting in his freezer as a ticking time bomb to point the proverbial finger at her murderer—he would have done anything possible to eradicate evidence of a crime from her body. And with us running all over The City looking for her, he'd had plenty of time to do it too. Whatever secrets Rebecca's body might have held were gone now. And tomorrow her sister would be burying her…and the truth along with her.

  "Don't you care how your sister died?" I asked, shaking my head in disbelief. "Don't you want to know why someone took her?"

  "What I want to do is lay my sister to rest."

  I opened my mouth to speak, but she ran right over me.

  "And you can tell Mr. Holmes that I'm canceling the check!"

  I stared at her, blinking, letting that unsettling implication set in as she turned on her sensible heels and marched out of the Victorian. I was still staring when I faintly heard a voice behind me.

  "Uh, ma'am?"

  I turned to see Delvecchio standing on the second-floor landing, clutching his clipboard. His pained expression and the nervous shifting of his feet suggested he'd overheard our conversation.

  "Did you want me to come back later?"

  Warmth suffused my cheeks. He was worried about being paid, and he was right to be. I had no way to pay anyone without Barbara's check. That meant no new electrical system, no roof, no hot water heater. Nothing.

  "Uh, yeah. I mean, no. Maybe…another day…" I trailed off as despair coiled deep in my belly. This was all Sherlock Holmes's fault. If he hadn't come along, I'd be putting in extra shifts at work and saving for the repairs like a normal person. I wouldn't be breaking into funeral homes and hiding in caskets and buying drugs in questionable delis and holding up someone's burial. Normal law-abiding citizens didn't do things like that. But I was a criminal now, thanks to Sherlock Holmes.

  I should have cut it off at the knees, just refused to go along with Irene when she'd conjured up the great detective. I'd only wanted to get information about my great-aunt; I'd never intended for it to go this far. It had been a bad idea from the start, and it hadn't gotten any better. Let Lestrade take over, do what needed to be done, arrest who needed to be arrested. That was his job. Wiggins could out Sherlock Holmes and stop following me. I was done. And Watson…well, Watson would probably never speak to me again. That stung the most, turning that sinking pit into a gnawing ache that made me yearn for chocolate and chick flicks starring Renée Zellweger. But, since I had neither, I headed for the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water, gulping it down while staring out into the tiny backyard that I'd never be able to afford to landscape. It belonged to the weeds now.

  My cell phone buzzed, alerting me to a text. I pulled it out, glaring down at the screen. It was from Tara Tarnowski.

  I know who the girl in the picture is. Meet at Bayside 8p. Use stage door n come alone.

  Yeah, right. I let the phone clatter to the counter, annoyed that she'd assume I was gullible enough to accept her invitation. I still had the lump on my head from my foray into Lampley Park. No way was I falling for that again. I might be delusional, thinking I could solve this case, but I wasn't stupid.

  I glanced down at the phone. But I was curious. I mean, did Tara really know who Jane Doe was? This didn't feel like a confession text. But maybe Bryan had recognized the woman and let something slip.

  I glanced at my phone. As much as I wanted to pretend I didn't care, the truth was a little part of me felt guilty if I didn't at least check it out. I mean, what if Bryan had done something to Rebecca…and what if he did it again to Tara? While I didn't harbor any thoughts of becoming besties with the singer, I didn't want her to end up dead. Especially if it was because I didn't do something as simple as answer a text.

  I picked up the phone, I closed my eyes, and I let my conscience war with my better judgment. But I shouldn't have bothered. When had my better judgment ever won?

  I'll be there, I texted her back.

  I stared at the words for a few second, wondering what I was getting myself into now.

  Then I sent Irene a quick text. Busy tonight?

  I pulled in a deep breath, staring out into my backyard. Done. I'd meet Tara, but I wouldn't meet her alone.

  My phone chimed. Free as a bird. What's up?

  Meeting Tara at Bayside. 8pm. She knows Jane Doe.

  Great. We'll be there.

  I paused. We? I texted back.

  Wiggins and me.

  Oh boy. Whatever I was getting myself into just got that much stickier.

  * * *

  "How come Sherlock Holmes has you two doing the legwork all the time?" Wiggins asked. "Does the great and powerful Oz just sit behind the curtain doing data analysis or something?"

  "He's out of the country," Irene said, easing her car to the curb in front of the Bayside. Because the stage was dark on Mondays and the rehearsals long over, the neighborhood was quiet. The theater loomed over the sidewalk, silent and dark. I noticed the marquee had removed Rebecca's name and now reflected Tara Tarnowski's promotion to prima donna.

  I shivered, glad I'd trusted my instincts to bring along company. Even if Wiggins was part of the company. As irritating as having a reporter along was, something about the extra muscle was a little comforting. And it didn't hurt that his hoodie was tight enough on his biceps to show off said muscles. I'd even caught Irene giving him an appreciative stare or two in the car.

  When Irene had shut off the engine, I turned to face them before we got out. "Here's the thing. Tara is expecting me to come alone. You two should hide somewhere close enough to hear everything, but let me meet with her alone, okay? At least until I know what she has to say."

  "Sure thing." Wiggins winked at me. "You won't even know we're there."

  It didn't matter what I knew. I just needed him to fool Tara.

  "She said to use the stage door," I told them when we'd gotten out of the car. I pointed. "I think that's it there."

  The door was unlocked, and we let ourselves into the theater, Irene and Wiggins slipping into the shadows out of sight while I went in the opposite direction, through the parted stage curtain, down the stage stairs, and into the seating bowl, which was empty. Safety lighting on the risers stretched fingers of faint light up the two aisles but left the stage itself draped in shadows. Twin Exit lights glowed an eerie red above the doors leading to the lobby. The oppressive silence was nearly noise unto itself, almost a sensory overload.

  Until I heard a muffled thump and faint giggling. Wiggins or Irene must have walked into something in the dark and had promptly forgotten about the need for stealth. I rolled my eyes, thinking this whole thing was a bad idea.

  I texted to Irene shhhh

  Nothing back. But I didn't hear anything else either, which I took as a good sign. In fact the entire place was eerily quiet. And dark. As bumbling as my two hidden cohorts were, I was glad not to be alone. The creepy factor here put Lampley Park to shame.