Blood in the Wings Page 5

  “Don’t ask about things I don’t want to explain.” He spoke softly and was just about to distract me from asking more with another kiss when there was a noise in the hallway. We leapt apart just as Seth Borman surged through the kitchen door.

  “We’re leaving now!” he ordered.

  “What’s the hurry,” said Severn calmly, smiling at me as he did do.

  “We’re hungry,” Seth replied sharply, as if that was Severn’s fault.

  “So go eat.”

  “Don’t get smart!” Seth did not sound amused and I was very aware yet again that there was something really deep going on between them that I did not understand. “We are hungry, we are leaving and you are supplying the food,” he continued menacingly.

  “What if I’m not ready to leave,” Severn challenged.

  “Yeah,” I butted in. “Why does Severn have to run after you lot? Can’t you cook for yourselves?”

  Seth began to say something but Severn stepped between us, his back to Seth, his hands on my shoulders.

  “Stay out,” he said gently. Then he turned to Seth. “She does have a point though. Why can’t one of you...ah...shop for a change?”

  “It’s your job.” The coldness of Seth’s reply suggested no other reason was required.

  “So! That doesn’t mean David, or Aiden, couldn’t go for once.” I was quick to notice Severn’s use of the Reverend’s real name.

  “All right. Have it your way!” Seth pulled back his lips in a nasty little smile. “I’ll send the girls.”

  “No!” Severn’s reply was almost a shout. “No!” Then he seemed to give up. “Ok,” he shrugged. “Go home and I’ll meet you there. I’ll bring you breakfast in bed.” He delivered the last part with lots of sarcasm and I had a quick mental picture of Dylan Thomas’s play “Under Milkwood” where the husband brings his nagging wife a pot of arsenic tea and a weedkiller biscuit.

  “Don’t be long,” Seth snarled as he spun on his heel and left.

  Beside me, Severn sighed.

  “Looks like I’ll have to go,” he said sadly. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Then he planted a small kiss on my forehead and followed his boss out the door.

  By the time Mum and Grant had come through, I had the coffee made and some biscuits on a plate. I didn’t know if the fact that I had been kissing Severn showed. I hoped not.

  If it did they didn’t mention it, although Mum smiled as if she knew.

  Later, I lay in bed and thought about the evening. About Tasha, about Dilly Davenport and her drunken dancing and about Severn. I thought lots about Severn.

  It wasn’t like he was the first person I’d kissed. He was just the best.

  As I turned over to flick off my bedside light, I patted my huge stuffed white rabbit that used to go to bed with me when I was little and who now spent its time sitting on a pile of unwashed laundry beside the bed.

  “Tasha dipped out,” I told it smugly. “She didn’t get Jason Broderick, she didn’t get Severn. Oh dear. How sad. What a nice day.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Did Tasha know she’d been unsuccessful with both these men?” The woman policeman stepped forwards as she asked the question.

  I shrugged.

  “I don’t know about Jason, but she didn’t know about Severn. Not on Saturday anyway.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “I told you that already! She’d been carried off long before then, she got so drunk she passed out.”

  “Did she know Severn was at the party?”

  “No, she couldn’t have.” I thought carefully. “Like I said before, I didn’t know he was there until the computer broke down. If she’d seen him she would have been all over him, just to piss me off, and I think I would’ve noticed that.”

  “So you are reasonably certain that when Tasha left your house on Saturday night, or early Sunday morning, she did not know she was not wanted by either man?” the cop repeated.

  “As far as I know,” I answered truthfully.

  “And later on Sunday? Did she know then?”

  “I don’t know, she might have done.”

  “You didn’t tell her?”

  “No, why should I? “

  “Temptation, Miss Lowe,” the male cop butted in, his body leaning forwards threateningly over the desk towards me, his pen thrust menacingly into my face. “Temptation. You didn’t want to gloat, by any chance?”

  “No,” I said indignantly. “Well, not on Sunday anyway. I left that till Monday at school.”

  “But you did have a show on Sunday,” the cop phrased it as a statement, not a question.

  “Yes, a late matinee at four o’clock. It wasn’t very good though, most us were too tired or hung-over. The stage manager should have been cross with everyone, but she wasn’t any better herself.”

  “How was Tasha?”

  “Sick as a dog,” I laughed. “She had a rotten headache and was sick in the toilet at least twice.”

  “And Severn?”

  “He was okay. Well, sort of okay. I didn’t get to see him much, just for a couple of minutes at interval. I tried to see him before the show but Seth had him up in the fly tower re-rigging some cables and after the show Aiden dragged him away to do something. I thought he looked really tired.”

  “Tired? Is that all?”

  “Well,” I searched for the right words. He seemed really on edge. While we were talking at interval he kept fidgeting and looking over his shoulder as if he expected someone to come up behind him, and he wouldn’t go out into the alley. No, it was obvious the cop was leading somewhere I didn’t want to go and I wasn’t prepared to help him get there. Besides. I wanted to go home. “Yeah, tired, “ I nodded affirmatively. “He looked tired. We were all tired. In fact, I’m tired now, would you just tell me what this is all about so I can go home and sleep? I don’t think you can keep me here anyway.”

  The cop sat back in his chair and stretched. He looked tired too.

  “You’re right, Miss Lowe, I can’t keep you. However just one or two more questions?”

  “Shoot,” I shrugged, resigned.

  “I just want to go over Sunday again. You barely talked to Severn and you didn’t talk to Natasha?”

  “Correct”

  “Before the show?”

  “No, we were running a bit late. Grant had to help the neighbour catch her dog. It had got out and was running up and down the street.”

  “Not even on the telephone later that evening?”

  “No, why should I have? Look, like I said, we were all tired. We did the show and we left. Grant wanted to catch the news on tv to see if there was anything about that dead body you guys found on New Brighton beach, Mum wanted to do the laundry and visit the neighbour and I had a pile of homework to do.”

  “You said you kept your gloating till Monday at school,” the female cop broke in. “Could you tell us about that.”

  I shrugged. “Tasha was doing her usual, playing centre stage to anyone who would listen. She was raving on to the others about Jason, saying what a hunk he was and she kept calling him ‘my Jason’. ‘My Jason this, my Jason that’. I got to the point where I couldn’t stand it anymore so I pointed out that he didn’t look much like ‘her’ Jason when he was in the kitchen snogging Dilly. The others all laughed and Tasha stormed off in a huff. Then the others wanted to know what I had seen so I told them and added that Tasha wouldn’t know because she had already been carted off wasted.

  “So,” the cop tapped his pen again, “by Monday you felt you had exacted suitable revenge but Natasha now had reason to be angry with you for making her look like a fool in front of her peers.”

  “I guess so.”

  “And Severn? Did you see him on Monday?”

  “There was no show on Monday. Or Tuesday.” I knew I wasn’t answering the question but I didn’t want to have to explain.

  “That didn’t answer the question, Miss Lowe.”

  Damn!

  “I did not sp
eak to Severn on Monday, or Tuesday.” My answer was worded very carefully. It was correct. I hadn’t spoken to him. I had seen him but I didn’t want to tell them that because I hadn’t come to terms with it myself. There were two possible answers for what I saw, one sensible, one ridiculous, both of them bad for me. So I wasn’t going to tell the cops if I could help it.

  Yes, I had seen Severn on Monday evening. He hadn’t seen me. I had planned a quiet evening at home watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on tv but Anita had invited me to watch Buffy and a video at her place so I had gone over to her place after school. It was nice. We sat, watched tv, ate chips, gossiped and talked about Tasha behind her back. Anita does wicked impersonations of Tasha and Dilly so we had a truly joyous evening of bitching and backstabbing.

  I left for home just after ten o’clock. Anita lives on the other side of town to me so I needed to get a bus into the Square then another bus from the city centre to home and I didn’t want to miss the last bus and get stranded. The Square at night is not exactly the safest place to be, especially on your own. I guess that was the main reason I didn’t ride the bus all the way into the Square. I pulled the cord a couple of streets away and walked down the brightly lit nightclub strip towards the bus stop for the trip home. That was when I saw Severn.

  He was coming out of one of the clubs. It was definitely him. I recognised him instantly, even though he was all dressed up in a fancy pin-striped Italian business suit. Seth and Meredith were just behind him, similarly dressed up. Meredith was back in the dark green velvet dress I had seen her wearing on Saturday and Seth had a suit that looked from a distance as though it may have been black velvet. It was certainly old fashioned and just a bit too tight over his bulging muscles. They had their arms around each other. So did Severn. He had his arm comfortably around the waist of the person beside him, the person had their head resting on his shoulder. That was the problem. The other person was unquestionable male.

  I was stunned. This wasn’t happening. I was not seeing Severn with a man. No way! I needed to talk to him so I followed, thinking I could catch him up when they reached their van, which I could see parked in the next block, but before we reached it they turned off, into an alleyway. I approached carefully and peeked around the edge of the building. Seth and Meredith were standing, arm in arm, watching as Severn embraced the man. I saw his head dip down in what looked like the beginnings of a passionate move and I heard Seth laugh. I wanted to turn and run but I was stuck fast, held in place by a mixture of curiosity and revulsion. Seth put a hand on Severn’s shoulder, pulling him back.

  “My turn.” His deep voice echoed down the alley.

  Severn stepped aside, rubbing his hand across his mouth, and Seth took his place, bending his head to the obviously drunk male.

  I didn’t stay any longer. I ran and ran, past the bus stop and on to the next one, anything to get as far away as possible. Later, in bed, I dreamed, a violent mixture containing Severn, Seth, Buffy and lots of small, featherless, dead birds. I woke with a start, shivering with fear. All I could think of was the two possibilities - the logical or the ridiculous. Either Severn and Seth were kissing the guy, in which case they were gay, or at least into some alternate sort of lifestyle that I didn’t want to know about, or the ridiculous science fiction explanation – they weren’t kissing him, they were biting him. They were vampires. The guy I fancied either fancied other men, or he killed and ate them. Some choice! A sensible, logical but I-don’t-want-to-know-about–it answer, or a totally ridiculous, impossible, only-on-the-horror-movies answer. I lay there shivering, thinking it through till I came to a decision. After the delicious kiss I had shared at the party, I didn’t want to believe the sensible answer so I went with the other. Vampires I could handle.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Tuesday, Miss Lowe. Did you see either of them yesterday?” The cop’s insistent voice broke through my drifting thoughts. I pulled myself together quickly, rubbing my eyes and yawning to pretend I was just tired and not withholding information.

  “Tasha. I saw Tasha at school. I didn’t see Severn at all.”

  “What was Natasha like yesterday? Was she in a good mood?”

  “Yeah. She was her normal catty, show-off self.”

  “Did you talk about the show?”

  “No. Actually I didn’t really talk to her at all. Our group kind of split up in to two. Somebody mentioned Shortland Street and Tasha managed to turn that around to Jason and the role he had played on it. According to her he was going to make a return but it was all supposed to be a secret. She acted like she was so special because she knew. Anita and I couldn’t be bothered so we moved away and talked about Buffy instead and a couple of the others came with us.”

  “After school?”

  “I went home. I had made a deal with Mum that I would iron the clothes we would need for tonight’s show. Mum was washing some of the costumes so there was a bit of a pile to get through and Mum had offered me ten dollars to iron them for her.” I wasn’t going to tell him that I just wanted time on my own to think through what I had seen the night before and plan my tactics for when I next saw Severn.

  “Where were you on Tuesday evening, Miss Lowe?”

  “At home. Ironing clothes and watching tv.”

  “Who else was there?” The cop was starting to sound pretty insistent and I didn’t like the way the questions were heading, like he thought I was guilty of something.

  “Mum and Grant,” I answered. He wrote that down. “And the neighbour, Mrs Greenaway. She came over to talk to Mum. They sat in the kitchen, drank coffee and talked about her stupid dog. Can I go home now?”

  “Soon, Miss Lowe. Just tell me, what was Natasha like today?”

  “Sick. She wasn’t at school and she didn’t turn up to the show. Dilly said she had come down with some kind of a bug and might not be there for a couple of days?”

  “Were you told this at the theatre or at school?”

  “At the theatre. We noticed she wasn’t at school but we figured she was bunking. She did that often enough.”

  “So you weren’t concerned? You didn’t phone her house to ask?”

  “Nope.”

  “So the last time you saw Natasha was yesterday at school?’

  “Yep”

  “You are certain of that?”

  I sighed. “Yes.” Then I started to click. “Hang on, what exactly is going on here?”

  “You tell me, Miss Lowe. What do know about what happened at the theatre tonight?”

  I breathed deeply and sat back in the hard, wooden chair.

  “Everything was normal. We went to the theatre. I did my presets. No, before you ask, I didn’t see Severn but then, I must admit I was hoping to stay out of his road. I did what I had to do and then visited Mum in her dressing room till they called beginners.”

  “When did you realise Natasha was not there?” the cop butted in.

  “At the beginner’s call when she didn’t line up with the other dancers. I whispered to one of them to ask where she was and she told me what Dilly had said.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Nothing, at least for a while. Actually, I don’t know what happened. The final song in Act One is the one when they use the rain truck.”

  “Explain that to me,” the cop butted in again.

  “For that scene it has to rain on stage. The set builders created this thing that is basically a giant shower tray the size of the stage. There is scenery on it to make it look like the rest of the set, it has two huge water tanks hidden behind the scenery and the whole thing is on wheels. At the scene change we all push like crazy and shove it into position then the mechanist pushes the switch and the pumps start and it rains. Then Jason sings his song on it, gets soaking wet and dashes off to dry off in the interval.”

  “Your job in this?”

  “I help push it on and at the end of the scene I help push it back off again. All the crew do, it weighs about two tonnes when it’s full wi
th water.”

  “Who fills it?”

  “The mechanist. It’s part of his pre-set.”

  “How does he fill it? With a bucket? Does he pour the water in from the top?”

  “No, that would take forever,” I answered honestly. “It has a valve attached at the back. He’s got a garden hose snaked up from the laundry downstairs and he just attaches it and turns it on. Turns it off when it’s full.”

  “How does he know when it’s full?” the cop inquired.

  “There’s a gauge on the side that shows you how much water is in it.”

  “So no-one would have needed to look inside before the show?”

  “No.” I shook my head firmly. What was he getting at?

  “And tonight? Do you know what happened tonight?”

  “No, not really. I think someone put red dye in the water because Jason was furious when he came off stage. He finished the song like everything was normal but when he came off he was dripping red water and there was red water in the gutterings when we pushed the truck back.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “Nothing. I knew something was wrong because Seth climbed up to look in the tank then he, the stage manager and Grant went off into a corner to talk. Then the stage manager announced over the backstage system that there was a problem, however we had to do the second act and finish the show but we would all have to stay back afterwards. I tried to ask Grant what had happened but he just said he would tell me later then he rushed off somewhere. I asked Mum but she didn’t know either. So we finished the show, everybody got changed, we all came back on stage and found you guys there. And you know as much about the rest of it as I do. You separated us all into groups and I guess you are asking everyone the same dumb questions you’re asking me.”

  I paused and thought about that for a second or two.

  “No, you let most people go home. You brought me down here and asked me all sorts of things about Tasha and Severn. I think you had better tell me exactly what is going on here.”

  “Where is Severn?”