Free The Alpine Pursuit by Mary Daheim Page B

hat. The feathers were blown backward, making it look as if she were about to take off. “Amy and Ted had to come early with Roger. If we’re careful, we’ll be fine. Go slow, Emma.”
    “I hardly intend to drive like a maniac,” I replied, then remembered that I hadn’t asked anybody if they had a camera. Too late. Milo wouldn’t allow pictures during an interview.
    “I’m still mad,” Vida declared loudly as she trudged through a path that had apparently been made by the medics and the deputies. “My car’s right over here at the edge of the parking lot.”
    My car wasn’t. I realized that I’d have to walk all the way around the theater. I’d be better off going inside and leaving through the main entrance. Without another word, I watched Vida disappear from view.
    Fortunately, the rear door was unlocked. I wondered if it had been that way during the play. If so, anyone could have entered the theater and tampered with the .38 special. Of course, I thought, it could have been some sort of accident. I didn’t know which was worse, especially for Nat, who had fired the fatal bullet.
    No eyes were on me as I quietly entered the backstage area. The temptation to eavesdrop was great. I hesitated by a pile of stage flats near the workshop’s open doors. Stepping behind the disassembled scenery, I tried to hear what was being said some thirty feet away.
    Milo had his back to me and his laconic voice was low. I could hear Destiny, however. She was speaking in high-pitch, verging on hysteria.
    “It was an artistic decision,” she declared, “a social statement! I had to use a gun to point out how dangerous they are!”
    “You sure as hell did that,” Rip Ridley said in an angry voice. “I could have been shot, too! So could anybody else onstage!”
    Milo stepped in to stop the argument. “Hold it,” he ordered in a voice I could hear. “Cut the crap, everybody. Speak when you’re spoken to.” He lowered his voice to pose another question I couldn’t make out.
    But I could hear Destiny’s response: “Not just
anybody
could get at the gun. I mean, not without being seen. It was right there in the prop box by the wings until Nat made his entrance in Act Two.”
    I moved cautiously to the other end of the flats, hoping to hear better. Admittedly, I felt foolish, like Lois Lane on the trail of the big story. If I needed rescuing, I’d be lucky to get Clark Kent, let alone Superman.
    But Milo’s queries were now partially audible. It sounded as if he’d asked Nat about wearing the gun during intermission.
    “The gun was in the belt holster,” Nat replied, his educator’s voice modulating each word and carrying across the backstage area. “I never took it off once I put it on.” He glanced down at his hip. The now-empty holster was still there. Nat regarded it with revulsion.
    “So . . . long did . . . sit . . . prop box?” Milo inquired.
    There was a pause. I leaned around the side of the flats to see who would respond.
    “About two hours.” The speaker was Boots Overholt, whose grandparents owned a farm on the edge of town. I vaguely recalled that he had enrolled at the college the previous fall. Apparently, he was one of the stagehands or techs.
    “You were . . . of props?” Milo asked.
    Boots nodded. He looked like a future farmer, with a forelock of blond hair and a sparse, close-cropped beard. “I put everything out there about seven, including the gun. We wanted to use a starter gun, but Ryan Talliaferro—he coaches track—wouldn’t let us borrow his.”
    Ryan taught English but, like many of the faculty members, wore a couple of extra hats. One of them could have been a dunce cap for marrying Carla, our former reporter. I suspected that since taking on his scatterbrained bride Ryan had learned the hard way about lending items. While working at the
Advocate
Carla had borrowed many things from her fellow staffers. Rarely, if ever, did she bother to return them, and often, when pressed,