Lethally Blond (26 page)

CHAPTER 20

H
elp me up, will you?” I pleaded. “Don’t make things any worse for yourself.”

“You know what?” Blythe said. “You are
absolutely
right. What was I thinking?”

And then she hoisted her big purse above her head and brought it down as hard as she could on my hands.

My knuckles stung from the blow, but I didn’t open my hands. From sheer terror, they remained glued to the metal. But I knew Blythe wasn’t going to stop at one measly swipe from her handbag.

I glanced down to the stage floor again. There was a chance, if I let myself drop straight down, feet first, like someone jumping from a diving board, that I might only break an ankle or a leg, but the thought of just letting go was terrifying. As Blythe brought up her purse again, ready for another strike, I glanced to the left. Hanging from the light grid was a long, thick rope, some kind of pulley, it seemed, connected to the lights. I mentally measured the distance to it. If I could scoot across the chain, I might be able to swing my legs out and grab hold of the rope with them. But I couldn’t let on to Blythe what I was up to.

The second blow was even more forceful, and I had to fight the urge to both scream and unclench my hands from the chain. As Blythe stepped back, plotting her next move, I inched my hands quickly down the chain. There was a groan from the door frame as the screw on the right side protested the strain. Blythe might not even
need
a next move. There was a chance that the chain would just be ripped from the door, and I would end up hurtling to the stage below.

“Now, now, be careful,” Blythe admonished as she heard the sound. She couldn’t keep the delight off her face.

I was within reach of the rope finally—or at least my legs were. There was no way I would be able to use my arms in the process, so I was going to have to grip as tightly as possible with my thighs. But first I needed to find momentum. I looked up toward Blythe, my neck aching from the angle I was holding my head.

“The cops are coming,” I told her, trying to shift her attention. “They’re going to meet me here.”

“That’s not true, and you know it, Bailey,” she said in an exaggerated chiding tone. “You’re trying to tell me a
really
big lie—and I don’t like that.”

“Do you think I’d come here alone? Of course I called the cops. I told them to meet me at the theater because you were going to be here. They know all about you.”

She made a
tsk-tsk
sound. “Do you think any woman who has her apartment decorated in shabby chic style like you do—that is
soooo
nineties, Bailey—would be smart enough to call the police? I know you didn’t. I’ve seen you—and you like doing things all by your little self.”

She straightened up and flicked her head back and forth in a maniacal gesture of disagreement. The door frame groaned again, louder this time. My arms were starting to quiver. If I was going to move, I was going to have to do it now.

I slung my eyes to the left. In one swift move, I thrust my left leg and then my right one over and coiled them around the rope, and then as I did so, I drew the rope closer to my body. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Blythe pull back, startled, unsure of what was going on. Reaching as far as I could, I grabbed the rope with my left hand and pulled myself over there. As I let go of the chain, I heard it snap from the door frame. Two seconds later it reached the stage floor with a loud thwack.

I was now hanging perilously from the rope by just my left side, like some Cirque du Soleil performer. “You little bitch!” Blythe screamed at me. With the help of some muscle memory from a gym class fifteen years ago, I managed to lift my torso fully toward the rope, clenching it with my other hand.

For a few short seconds, I just hugged the rope. My body was nearly trembling with fatigue, and my legs stung from rope burn. I needed to keep moving, though. I’d outsmarted Blythe for one brief moment, but if she reached the stage before me, it wouldn’t do me any good.

Loosening my grip slightly, I began to slide down the rope, trying to ignore the burning sensation on the insides of my arms. I craned my head to the right to see what Blythe was up to. She was on the landing, watching me, but as soon as our eyes met, she spun around, and I could hear her clattering down the stairs I’d come up earlier. I loosened my grip to increase my speed downward toward the stage floor.

Without warning, the light grid, which was attached to the rope, rammed against the ceiling. I hadn’t realized that the rope was a pulley to raise and lower the grid. The rope jerked in my hands, and before I knew what was happening, I had lost my grip. I hit the floor hard, collapsing in a heap, and in the same instant, my right ankle made a popping sound. Pain shot through my foot like a loud scream.

I lay on the ground long enough to gather my strength and then struggled up to a standing position. I wasn’t sure if I’d broken or sprained my ankle, but it hurt like hell. I looked all around me. At any second, Blythe was going to come charging through the door at stage left. The best escape route for me would be stage right, but even then she could easily catch up to me. I swept the stage with my eyes, looking for a makeshift weapon. Leaning against the dresser by the fake wall at the back was a field hockey stick. I limped across the scuffed stage floor and grabbed it.

Something was weird, though. Blythe should have been down the stairs by now. Was she going to try to ambush me somewhere else in the theater as I tried to escape? All I knew was that I had to get out of there.

I staggered across the small stage, toward the door that I knew led to the corridor lined with makeup and dressing rooms. Suddenly Blythe appeared in the doorway, ten feet ahead of me, her hands behind her back as if she were about to present me with a fun birthday surprise. She’d obviously gone down the stairs and circled around to the other side of the theater.

“Ahh, I should have known you played field hockey, Bailey,” she said, her eyes wide in mock fascination. “Even with all those hip little clothes of yours, I could sense you were a preppy at heart. By the way, I hope you don’t mind—I took a few of your tops when I was over at your place the other day.”

“Blythe,” I said, trying to sound calm, “why don’t you stop this now and make it better for yourself.”

“Oh, you want me to believe that not killing you will make it
better
for me? Bailey, I keep getting the feeling you don’t think I’m very smart.”

“Oh, I think you’re
very
smart. And very talented. You totally fooled my doorman, you know.”

“Please, that hardly deserves an Oscar. Sure, I imitated your voice, but that doorman of yours has a brain the size of a lichee nut.”

“How’d you nail my voice?”

She smiled coyly. “I heard you at the Half King. I was standing right by you at the bar the whole time.”

The pack of girls next to me. There had been one hanging off to the side, and that must have been Blythe.

“So you put the drug in my beer—and texted Chris?”

“If you say so.”

“What have you got against me, anyway?”

“You got all snoopy, Bailey. Coming around my apartment, leaving me all those messages, bugging poor Terry.”

“Where’s the real Terry, anyway?”

“She said she was going away on a long trip. You know, the health insurance business is
hopelessly
boring.”

I wondered if Blythe had killed her, too—weeks ago.

“Tell me about Tom, will you?”

“Bailey, if I’m not mistaken, you’re doing that stalling-for-time thing. I really don’t have the patience for that.”

“I want to hear your side of the story—really. You drove up to Andes to see him?”

“Do you know, Tom never told me he had a place there? Maybe he secretly wanted to surprise me when he got it all fixed up. But I’d been doing a little research on Tom, and I found out about the house. Needless to say, I was very,
very
disappointed to see he was there with another woman, someone who was not only beneath him, but a very bad actress as well. And did you
see
that woman’s lips? She looked like a hippo.”

“So you killed Tom out of jealousy?”

She snickered. “No, Bailey,” she said firmly. “I broke
up
with Tom that day. And I could see by his reaction that if he couldn’t be with me, he didn’t want to live. He pleaded with me to put him out of his misery. Thank God I’d found that axe out by the barn.”

“Why the fire? Was Tom dead by then?”

“I’m not
cruel,
Bailey. Of course he was dead. I just couldn’t look at his face anymore. FYI, paint thinner is an excellent accelerant.”

“And then you went back to your place—not Miami?”

“If you say so. If you must know, one night I even stayed at Tom’s for old time’s sake. I promised him I would.” That explained the light left burning.

“What—”

“Who do you think you are—Oprah? I’m getting really tired of answering all your questions.”

“Just tell me about Locket,” I said. I was trying to keep my voice easy, casual, despite my fear and the blinding pain in my ankle. “Why her? She wasn’t a threat anymore now that Tom was dead.”

“Locket was another snoopy dog, just like you. I could tell she knew something—she was talking to you about it.”

“You—you were the girl in the visor?” I said, stammering. “The one who asked about Locket’s dog at the Boathouse?” It had to be, I suddenly realized. The girl had seemed so intrusive.

“Oh, Bailey, you think you know all my tricks, but you don’t.”

With that, she pulled her right hand out from behind her. It clutched a black-handled butcher knife with a glistening blade about eight inches long. My body felt leaden with fear.

“Don’t you know the police will figure this out?” I told her. “They’ll know you were here today.”

She laughed too loudly. “But you see, Bailey, I have my own private key to the place, and no one knew I was coming except you.” She laughed again. “And Terry, of course. But like I said, she’s not available for comment these days.”

I tightened my grip on the hockey stick, sensing that she was done talking and was going to take some kind of action now. Turning my head slightly, I calculated how long it would take her to catch up with me if I made a mad dash toward the door on stage left. Only seconds because of my ankle. As I turned my head back in Blythe’s direction, she made her move, lunging toward me with the knife.

I raised the hockey stick and whipped it across her body as hard as I could. I had hoped to dislodge the knife from her hand, which didn’t happen, but she reeled back in pain from the blow.

“You little bitch!” she screamed. “How dare you do that to me?”

She shifted her grasp on the knife and raised it above her head in a stabbing position. And then she lunged once more.

I swung the hockey stick at her again. But just before contact, Blythe raised her free arm and managed to grab the stick. She jerked her arm to the right, and the stick went sailing out into the theater. It bounced and clanged over the backs of several seats.

“Oops,” Blythe said, and formed her face into an expression of grossly exaggerated glee.

I shot a glance to the set on my right. There was nothing else there that could help me, just the beds and dressers and pink shag rug. I started to back up, careful not to edge too close to the end of the stage, my ankle hurting so much that I could barely think over the pain. On my fourth step back, I bumped into the ghost light, just behind me and to my left. It rocked slightly and then steadied itself.

Blythe puffed up her chest, ready for another strike. And then she charged. Taking one more step backward, I grabbed the lamp with both hands. It was sturdy but lighter than it looked, probably made of hollow metal. Like a little kid holding a light saber, I swung it as hard as I possibly could. Suddenly the lightbulb went out as the cord was yanked from the socket; a moment later, in total darkness, I felt the lamp make full contact with Blythe’s body.

There was a thud and a burst of air from her lungs. I could hear the scuffing sound of her shoes as she staggered on the stage. Then, suddenly, I realized she was airborne. A second later, I heard her crash hard into the seats below the stage.

I squinted, trying to see. A little bit of light was coming from the corridor off stage left, the one with the stairs I’d taken. I dropped the lamp, and with my hands out in front of me, I staggered off the stage in that direction.

Once I was in the corridor, I could finally see again—there were wall sconces burning along the way. Dragging my right leg, I made my way as fast as I could down the corridor, retracing the steps I’d taken earlier. Approaching the lobby, I heard movement out there. My heart stopped as I wondered if Blythe had quickly managed to right herself and hurry up the main aisle of the theater.

But as I peered out into the lobby, I could barely believe my eyes. Detective Windgate was standing out there, along with a small man of Asian descent.

I limped into the lobby, and Windgate pulled his head back in surprise.

“What in God’s name is going on?” he demanded. Both men glanced down at my bum leg, searching for the injury.

“Blythe Hammell is in there,” I blurted out. “She tried to kill me with a knife, and I knocked her over, into the seats. She must be hurt—but I don’t know how badly.”

Windgate shot his partner a look of exasperation and turned back to me.

“You stay right here, do you hear me? If I find out you moved a muscle, I’m going to arrest you.”

“Okay,” I said meekly.

“Which is the best way to get there?” he asked brusquely.

“I’d go right through there,” I said, pointing to the double doors that opened into the theater.

As I collapsed into one of the saggy old armchairs, they stepped across the lobby and with guns raised swung open the doors cautiously. The light from the lobby poured into the theater. It was still fairly dim in there, but they would be able to see where they were going,

“She’s probably in one of the front two rows,” I called out in a loud whisper. I watched as they made their way down the aisle.