The Night Is Watching

“Oh, all right! I’m sorry, Savage Sam. I think you got you a fittin’ girl now, and I’m going to get me one, too.”



“Oh, yes!” Valerie said, running to throw herself into Cy’s arms.



“Well, there you go!” Henri said. “The gunfight that wasn’t. Damned good thing we’re not at the O.K. Corral! Hey, everyone, take a gander at all the activities out back. Kids, you can mine sand for silver. Ladies, you can buy some great jewelry. And don’t forget that while you’re in town, you can catch these fine folks performing for you every night at the Gilded Lily!”



Jane stood still in the street for a moment, feeling grateful on the one hand, ridiculous on the other.



A little boy walked by saying, “I thought there was going to be a gunfight!”



He wasn’t happy.



But a cluster of twenty-something young people walked by and the tallest among them was talking excitedly, “See, I told you. It’s great to come out here. They’re not stupid, they keep changing it up!”



“Who would’ve figured?” Henri Coque said, walking up to her. He shook his head. “Never saw you as a drama queen, much less someone who’d be so quick with improv.”



“Seemed like a fun thing to try. As a law enforcement officer in the twenty-first century, of course,” she said.



“And it was good!” Valerie said enthusiastically, coming up beside her. “Jennie still hasn’t shown up. She usually screams and cries and falls down in tears, saying she’s Jenkins’s mother.”



“There’s something wrong if Jennie isn’t here,” Henri said, frowning. “Valerie, will you run in there and see if she’s in her room?”



“I’m not going in the Gilded Lily by myself!” Valerie said. “Even our staff is all out on the street now. I can’t go in there alone.”



“I’ll go,” Jane said. “Which room is Jennie’s?”



“She’s next to Brian and Brian is next to you,” Henri explained. “You don’t mind? Thank you! I hope she’s okay.” His voice was worried.



Jane nodded and hurried into the Gilded Lily. It did seem strange to be in the theater when it was so silent. The main doors behind the old Western slatted doors were open; apparently, Henri wasn’t worried about break-ins, but then it was true that everyone who belonged in the theater was pretty much right in front of it.



Jane ran up the stairs and realized she was still clutching the antique guns Cy and Brian had been about to use for the duel reenactment. Before going to Jennie’s room, she went to her own and inspected the guns. They were replica Colt 45s, also known as Peacemakers, each with a cylinder that held six metallic cartridges. She opened the cylinders, and the cartridges fell out. The bullets from the one gun were obviously blanks.



From the other...



She had learned to shoot; she knew the action of her own gun. She also knew the most important thing about any gun—when loaded and in the wrong hands, it beat brawn every time.



She wasn’t sure about the cartridges. She left both guns, emptied, on her bed, and stashed the blanks and the questionable cartridges in tissues and then in one of her shoes.



Then she ran down the hall and knocked on Jennie’s door. There was no answer. She called the woman’s name. Still no answer. She tried the door—which was open. Hesitantly walking in, she continued to call the woman’s name.



Jennie wasn’t in the bathroom or anywhere in the room. Jane felt a growing sense of unease and even checked under the bed. Again, no sign of her.



Coming out of the room, she saw Sage McCormick. The ghost was waiting for her on the second landing by the stairs, and as Jane approached her, Sage drifted down the stairs. She walked around to the bar and behind it.



Puzzled, Jane followed her.



Sage went through the door at the far end of the stage. Jane opened the door to a set of stairs that led to the basement, now the costume storage area.



Where Sage’s skull had been found.



Jane carefully went down the stairs. It was broad daylight outside, she reminded herself, and when she tried the switch on the wall, the basement flooded with light.



Sage kept moving.



The basement seemed to run the entire length of the theater. From the stairway, Jane could see the rows of wigs that now sat on mannequin heads, old and new. Most of them had faces either carved into them or drawn on them; they were supposed to be artistic, Jane supposed. Mostly, they were grotesque.



She was, however, glad to see no skulls among them.



She walked around the center of the main room.



There were racks hung with costumes, most of them now conserved in cases. There were shoes, canes, stage guns, props and boxes everywhere. She saw no sign of Jennie.



“Jennie?” Jane called out.



No one answered her.



She realized there were three rooms that led off the main section of the basement; they were separated by foundation walls. There were no doors, just arched separations with handsome wood carved designs as if someone, long ago, had determined that a theater must be beautiful—even in the storage areas.



Jane made her way through crates and boxes to the first of the rooms.



It contained more crates and boxes.



Irritated, she shook her head.



“Where are you?” she whispered aloud.



The ghost had gone through the door—and then disappeared. But Sage had brought her here for a reason.



And then disappeared.



“You could be more helpful,” she said. But then again, if she was right and the ammo in the one Peacemaker was live, the ghost had been a great deal of help; she’d saved a man from dying.



But if it was live...



Then someone here was setting people up to die.



The thought chilled her, and she walked into the last room, the one closest to the Old Jail Bed and Breakfast. In fact, it almost seemed as if she was under the Old Jail.



This room was different. The light from the main room didn’t seem to reach far enough and she couldn’t find another switch. The one bulb down here illuminated the main room and stretched as far as the second room. By the third room...



The third room was filled with shadows. As she walked toward it, she stopped for a minute.



It was creepy, mostly shadowed—and crowded with mannequins. Some of them were poor, barely more than two-dimensional, and held theatrical billboards. Some of them were excellently crafted and wearing costumes or cloaks from the many decades the theater had been in existence. Some were old movie props, collected fifty-plus years ago.



Some were headless.



And some had heads with faces that offered very real expressions of anger, fear, hope, happiness—and evil. Some were lined up. Some were falling over on one another.



“Ah, Sage, where are you?” she asked.



At first, there was nothing. Her little pencil flashlight was back in her room; she hadn’t thought to stuff that in a pocket with her cell phone.



She wondered if it was better to see—or not see—the mannequins. Coming close to one, she saw that it was a mannequin of a Victorian woman, carved from wood.



The eyes were huge, made of blue glass. The mouth was a circle, as if the woman had witnessed the greatest terror on earth.



A placard hung from the wrist. Jane stooped to read it. Come One, Come All. Come Scream! The Gilded Lily Brings You The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde!



Turning from the mannequin, Jane bumped right into a mannequin of Mr. Hyde.



She almost screamed but managed to swallow down the sound.



Federal agents don’t scream at the sight of mannequins! she chastised herself.



Something swung toward her—an arm. A gasp escaped her and then she laughed softly. Backing away from Mr. Hyde, she’d pushed a replica of King Lear.



“Sage!” she whispered.



She was stunned when, in response, she heard a groan.



So far, Sage McCormick’s voice had been silent; it was unlikely that the ghost had suddenly decided to groan.



“Jennie! Jennie, is that you? Are you down here? Are you hurt?”



She began to squeeze her way through the mannequins. In the eerie light, some seemed real, as if they could come to life. Among them were chorus girls and cancan dancers, fan dancers, handsome men in tuxes. And wolf men and grisly zombies and vampires....



She heard the groan again.



That wasn’t the ghost, she was sure of it—and definitely not the mannequins.



A deranged-looking figure in a straitjacket held a cleaver high. The cleaver was plastic, although the mannequin was creepy. Out on the street it had probably drawn many to the theater; by day it would be a come-on to those who wanted to be a little scared by their entertainment.



Ignore the mannequins. They aren’t real.



“Jennie?” she called again. The mannequins might not be real, but they made it very hard to find someone who was.



“Go ahead. Try to scare me. I am ignoring you,” Jane said aloud. She laughed at herself and admitted that the mannequins scared the hell out of her. She determinedly wound her way around some shrieking harpy and a man with a fly’s head.



Again, it seemed that one of them, a man in a turn-of-the-century tux, swung around to touch her and knock her in the arm. She almost cried out in surprise, but realized she’d pushed another mannequin into it and the thing had moved.



She heard the groan again.



Another mannequin with a wide-open circular mouth was in front of her, holding up a book. She scooted by it and at last found the flesh-and-blood woman she sought.



Jennie was crumpled on the floor, lying on her back. Her eyes were closed and a trickle of blood had dried on her forehead.



“Oh, Jennie,” Jane cried, digging in the pocket of her skirt for her cell phone as she knelt down by the woman, clasping her wrist to test the strength of her pulse.



It was weak.



“Jennie, stay with me. I’m getting help right away,” she said.



Even as she spoke, she felt as if there was a tap on her shoulder. She looked up. Sage McCormick was with her again, in front of her, between Jennie’s crumpled body and a row of frontier schoolboys.