Polly tugged at my sleeve. “Wait ’til you see Gus. I convinced him to wear a hairpiece. It occurred to me that anyone named Troy ought to have a full head of hair.”

“And he went along with the idea?”

She grinned wickedly. “Well, I used a little cajolery. Told him how handsome he looked. Insisted it took ten or fifteen years off his age. Gotta check on Krystal and Megan one last time before the curtain goes up. Break a leg!” she said as she scurried off.

“All right, everyone.” Janine, looking arty dressed head to toe in black, motioned us into a huddle. “This is it, the big night. Knock ’em dead.”

Rita spoke into her headset to Mort, and the house-lights dimmed. The acrobat I seemed to have swallowed executed a series of somersaults and backflips in my stomach. Feather duster in hand, I stepped onto the stage.

By the time we got to act three, I was actually beginning to relax and enjoy myself. So far so good; in spite of numerous invocations, none of us had broken a leg-or even sprained an ankle. I wished my kids were present to witness my glorious stage debut, though I doubted they’d recognize their own mother in the getup I wore. I scarcely recognized myself. I looked more like the Mama character Vicki Lawrence once played in the old Carol Burnett skits than Kate McCall, amateur sleuth. I never thought at my age I’d be bitten by the acting bug. Perhaps I should give up my fantasy of becoming a crime scene investigator and make a career out of playing middle-aged, frumpy house-keepers. After all, life ain’t no dress rehearsal.

Both Krystal as Roxanne and Gus as Troy were doing a bang-up job-a couple of pros. I felt nerves flutter anew as the shooting scene drew near. I should have been used to this. It happened every time we got to the part where Claudia shoots Lance. It didn’t require much imagination to envision Lance’s inert body lying center stage, a bloodred boutonniere on his yellow oxford cloth shirt.

Drawing a deep breath, I entered, announced the arrival of the villain, ably played by Bernie Mason, then exited stage right to watch the rest of the scene unfold. I braced myself for the part where Krystal/Roxanne tells Bernie’s character, Take that! And that, and that!

As the tension mounted, I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. Glancing across the stage, I chanced to find Gus Smith watching me, a strange expression on his face. Our eyes happened to meet and a weird thing happened. Maybe it was the brightly striped red and yellow tie he wore that triggered my memory; I’ll never know. But whatever it was, I suddenly remembered the rhyme about the snake.

Red touch black, friend of Jack. Red touching yellow, kill a fellow.

Gus Smith was the snake-a poisonous one at that. I was staring into the face of Guido, “the Killer Pimp,” one of the FBI’s most wanted. My mind flashed back to the volumes of mug shots I’d stared at for the better part of the afternoon. I now knew why one of the faces had looked so familiar. Even though the man in the photo hadn’t been smiling, his lips had been slightly parted-parted just enough to reveal a gap between the top two incisors. It was the exact same gap I was seeing now.

Chapter 40

Guido…? I mouthed.

The final piece of the Rubik’s Cube clicked into place. Strange as it may sound, viewing the man from a distance brought everything into sharper focus. Admittedly, the stage makeup and hairpiece helped. The time I’d spent examining Most Wanted posters at the sheriff’s office and the post office paid off in aces. I was staring at an honest-to-goodness hit man. I was face-to-face with Guido, “the Killer Pimp.”

Claudia had admitted Lance had a gambling problem. They’d had to leave Vegas early. What if Lance had gotten in over his head with Bennie, “the Thumb”? What if Bennie had wanted to make an example of Lance and ordered a hit? This made perfect sense. I’d read enough mysteries, seen enough movies, to make the connection.

But the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question remained: Did Guido suspect I was on to him?

I swallowed hard. The man hadn’t avoided capture all these years by being stupid. His slitty-eyed, hard-mouthed stare was making me uneasy. I took that look as a yes. He was on to me big-time. I thought of the three a.m. phone call, the canary that used to sing, the snake on my doorstep. Next time he might not be so subtle. I was suddenly terrified. Even surrounded by others, I was no match against a certified killer. My mouth went dry; my heartbeat revved. Was EMS standing by with a defibrillator?

“Psst.” Rita poked me in the ribs. “Kate, wake up. You’re on.”

I gazed at her blankly. “On? On what?”

Janine prodded me toward the stage and whispered, “Was that a shot…?”

A shot? It took me a moment to comprehend what she was saying. It gradually occurred to me she was feeding me my line.

I wandered onto the stage. That’s the only way to describe my entrance, considering the stupor I was in. “Was that a shot…?” I mumbled and felt daggers from Rita and Janine in the wings.

Krystal saw me falter, and being the pro she was, picked up the slack. I’m sure more lines followed, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember them, so I took the only option open to me-I improvised. “I think I’ll bake some cookies,” I declared in my best theatrical persona.

From the surprised expressions of my fellow cast members, I sensed cookies had nothing whatsoever to do with the scene. Krystal shot me a dirty look, then valiantly forged onward toward the conclusion. Gloria, Gus/Guido/ Troy’s secretary, made a premature entrance, no doubt confused by the script change. “W-was that a shot I just heard?” she stammered.

In the wings, I glimpsed Rita’s stricken expression as Forever, My Darling began to unravel. Janine and Monica looked equally appalled.

At this point Gus/Guido entered and, true to the script, uttered his lines of dialogue proclaiming to an overjoyed Krystal/Roxanne that he hadn’t been killed, but only wounded.

“I’ll empty the dishwasher,” I announced, projecting my voice like Janine had instructed.

Again the glitch, the awkward pause, as the entire cast struggled to incorporate my odd behavior into the context of the play. Only Gus Smith and I seemed to be on the same page-a page invisible to everyone but us.

“You stepped on my lines,” Krystal hissed angrily as I exited stage right.

The second I was offstage I ran to find Bill. I found him standing next to Mort at the light board. A jumble of electrical cords covered the floor like vines in an Amazon rain forest. Normally, I have a proclivity for men in tool belts-especially ones with pretty blue eyes-but tonight I ignored my libido. I had other things on the agenda.

Bill looked up when he saw me, his eyes full of concern.

I yanked him aside, not wanting Mort to overhear. “G-Gus,” I said, unable to keep the quaver from my voice. “Gus murdered Lance.”

He drew me back even farther. “That’s a pretty serious charge,” he said in a hushed voice. “What makes you so sure?”

“I saw his picture in the sheriff’s office-on a Most Wanted poster.” My words tumbled over one another in their haste to be said. “He’s Guido, ‘the Killer Pimp,’ hit man for crime boss Bennie ‘the Thumb’ Sisserone.”

“You’re certain he’s the same man?”

“Yes… no, maybe.” I wrung my hands, something I’d never done before in my entire life, but there’s a time and place for everything. “With the hairpiece, he looks exactly like the guy I saw in the mug shot. He’s one and the same, right down to the gap between his front teeth.”

Bill raked a hand through his hair. “Jeez, Kate, even if he is this Guido person, why would he kill Lance?”

I latched on to his shirt front with both hands and shook him. “Work with me, Bill! Work with me! I don’t have time for lengthy explanations. Guido is on to me. The play is in the last scene before the final curtain. The minute it’s over, he’s going to split, and we’ll never see him again. Claudia will be up a creek without a paddle. We can’t let that happen.”