Dead Suite Part 21

"I don't know. . . ." Maeva looked apologetic. "You know that the pregnancy and nursing sucked most of my powers away and-"

"I say we go check it out," Rosemary said, opening the door.

Sadie and Maeva followed behind, with Sadie pausing to set the alarm and lock up.

"There's no harm in looking," Sadie remarked, and then she saw the officer sitting in his car. "But there's no way I want that cop knowing we're chasing down a hunch my psychic friend got off a necklace."

"There's a Pagliacci Pizza right up the street from the theatre," Rosemary said. "I think we're all hungry."

Maeva and Rosemary climbed into the Mini Cooper and Sadie got into her Corolla. When she pulled out of the driveway, she rolled down her window and told the officer they were heading for pizza before going to Rosemary's.

"You go. I'll follow," he said with a shrug.

Sadie guessed he was getting paid no matter where she went, so she continued on her way, following Maeva and Rosemary as they drove toward the neighborhood of Wallingford. They all found street parking on Stone Way halfway between Pagliacci's and the small theatre. By unanimous agreement they decided to order pizza first.

Sadie asked the officer if he wanted some pizza and he politely declined. She told him that after they placed their orders they would walk up and down the block a couple times for exercise until their pies were ready. He looked bored.

Rosemary filled them in on the details about the theatre as they casually walked up the block after ordering their pizzas.

"The Stone Soup Theatre is a professional neighborhood theatre. The building used to be a pet-grooming salon, so it's not what you might call fancy-shmancy. There's an upstairs stage and a downstairs stage and cozy seating for maybe fifty people," Rosemary said.

When they reached the front door Maeva tried it.

"Locked. I'm guessing no performance tonight."

"Okay, so now what, Sherlock?" Sadie asked.

"How should I know?" Rosemary said.

"It was your psychicness that brought us here," Sadie told Maeva. "Are you getting any weird vibes?"

Maeva's stomach growled loudly. "The only vibe I get is hunger pangs for my pizza. Has it been fifteen minutes yet?"

"No. It's been, like, five minutes."

Sadie sighed and the three casually leaned against the front of the building. Up the block, the officer who was supposed to be keeping her safe from serial killers was in his car busily texting on his phone. A young couple walked down the sidewalk across the street holding hands and Sadie's heart ached for Zack . . . and then for Owen . . . and then just for someone . . . anyone . . . to love her.

Abruptly, Rosemary whirled around and began groping the wall they were leaning against.

"I'm totally getting something off this poster!"

Sadie and Maeva turned to watch their friend as she ran her hands up and down the playbill that was tacked to the theatre door. The poster was a colorful advertis.e.m.e.nt screaming COUNTER ATTACK! in bold red font.

"What are you getting?" Sadie asked "I don't know . . . I just get the sense this paper is trying to tell me something."

Rosemary continued to cop a feel. Sadie watched as a woman pus.h.i.+ng a baby stroller down the sidewalk crossed to avoid them while muttering to herself about weirdos.

Sadie looked pointedly at her watch. "Pizza's probably ready by now."

"Might as well go," Maeva added.

But Rosemary had her back to them and her hands on the wall. Sadie walked up and told her, "Don't worry about it. It's probably nothing."

"Sorry." Rosemary sighed and stepped away. "I lost it."

Sadie wasn't sure if Rosemary was referring to her sanity or the psychic connection she felt with the wall. She was about to offer a snarky response when her eyes zoomed in on the lower half of the playbill, which had previously been covered by Rosemary's hands.

"That's him!" Sadie cried. She shoved Rosemary aside and stabbed a finger at the photo on the poster. "Oh my G.o.d, that's him!"

"Who?" Maeva and Rosemary chimed simultaneously.

"Him!" Sadie shouted, pointing at one of the cast members on the poster. "This actor . . ." She leaned in to read the name. "Ed Muirhead. He was the one who met me and claimed to be Hugh Pacheo!"

"Oh my G.o.ddess, I was right!" Rosemary exclaimed with surprise. "You totally owe me an apology for doubting me."

"Hey, I never doubted you. I just . . ." But then, because it was pointless to argue with your friends when they were psychics, she gave in. "You're right. I'm sorry."

"Wow! So this is the guy who pretended his son was dead and hired you to clean up, then gave you the witch-hunt necklace?" Maeva exclaimed. "He doesn't look like a murderer."

"I know. He looks like a totally normal guy. That's what I thought when I met him. He looked like he was somebody's friendly grandfather." Sadie dug into her pocket and took out her cell phone. "I've gotta call Petrovich."

She was punching numbers into her phone when the door to Stone Soup burst open and Ed Muirhead stepped outside. He took a step between them before his eyes locked on Sadie and a look of shocked recognition lit up his pale face.

Before Sadie could say anything, the man took off at a dead run. Sadie, Maeva, and Rosemary bolted after him. Halfway down the block he scurried over a chain-link fence and into a back lot. Maeva dropped out of the chase.

"Go tell the cop!" Sadie yelled to Maeva over her shoulder.

Sadie and Rosemary continued over the fence after Ed Muirhead. Sadie landed with a loud oomph on the pavement on the other side, but Rosemary's s.h.i.+rt got hung up on the points atop the fencing.

The parking lot backed onto a residential street and Ed was trying to scramble up and over a wood fence and into someone's yard. Sadie reached him when he was halfway up and grabbed him around his middle. She yanked and tugged at his waist with all her might.

"Let go!" he shrieked.

But Sadie was like a seagull with a French fry, and there was no way Ed Muirhead was getting out of her grip. There was an awkward moment when Ed's pants began to slowly slip off his hips.

"Hold him!" the officer shouted from the other side of the fence as he tried to climb over.

Sadie had serious doubts she could maintain her grip around Ed's pelvis long enough for the police officer to get there. Luckily, Rosemary had freed herself from the top of the fence and was racing to help. Then, abruptly, Ed Muirhead went completely limp and the two toppled to the pavement and rolled around a few seconds. Sadie managed to straddle his chest with her knees on his arms, effectively pinning him to the ground. Rosemary arrived in time to extract a canister of spray from her purse and spritz Ed in the face.

He began sputtering and screeching loudly.

"Was that pepper spray?" Sadie asked, not leaving her perch on the man's rib cage.

"Hairspray," Rosemary replied.

Sadie was distracted by the fact that Rosemary had hairspray but was completely bald.

"My eyes are burning!" Ed shrieked.

"You stabbed three women to death and then hanged that poor guy in his garage!" Sadie yelled in his face. "You're lucky we don't cut your b.a.l.l.s off!"

Chapter 16.

Rosemary spritzed Ed Muirhead in the face one more time with her killer hairspray before the officer made it up and over the fence.

"Argh!" Ed screamed. "I don't know what you're talking about," he sputtered. "I never hurt a soul! Some guy asked me to play the part of a grieving man hiring you to clean up after his son who hanged himself."

Sadie leaned forward and grabbed Ed by his ears.

"Who the h.e.l.l takes a job like that!" she screeched. "You're telling me someone asked you to pretend your son hanged himself? What kind of a sick, so-called actor fakes something like that?"

"An old actor who barely sc.r.a.pes by doing community theatre," Ed gasped.

The officer took over then, snapping cuffs onto Ed's wrists and hoisting him to his feet.

Sadie looked into Ed's pathetic, beady little eyes, which had looked so kindly before. She totally believed him.

"I've called for backup," the officer said, breathing heavily, as if he'd done all the work himself. "Let's go," he told Muirhead.

This time they discovered a gate and used that instead of climbing over the chain-link fence. Sadie, Maeva, and Rosemary followed Ed and the cop. Just before he was tucked into the back of the patrol car, Sadie gave in to a burst of anger. She reached into the opening of Ed's b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rt, grabbed a handful of graying chest hair, and pulled.

"Who hired you?" she demanded.

"Stop that!" he cried.

Rosemary and Maeva pulled her back while the officer opened the back of the car.

"Some guy e-mailed me and said he saw my performance and asked if I could do a private job for him," Ed shouted to Sadie.

"Women are getting killed! Tell me who paid you!"

"Save the interrogation for the professionals," the officer said, trying to calm Sadie down.

"I don't know who hired me," Ed shouted from the backseat. "The guy used the same cell phone he gave me to call you. On the day I met up with you, he slipped a couple hundred cash in an envelope with my name on it through the mail slot at Stone Soup along with that phone."

"So for a couple hundred bucks a murderer hired you to trick me?" Sadie wanted to beat the c.r.a.p out of the guy right then and there. The officer, sensing her anger, pulled her away from the car, but Ed kept talking.

"He . . . he told me you ran a company that did trauma cleaning and that this was an elaborate prank to get you into the garage. In the e-mail he said he was a friend of yours and that you were into practical jokes. He said there was a present for you left in the garage and he told me not to go in, no matter what, because it would ruin the surprise."

"Go!" the officer ordered. "Go get your pizza and when Detective Petrovich gets here you can let him do the talking, okay?"

Sullenly, Sadie walked up the street with her two friends.

"He sure was spry for an old guy," Rosemary said. "I'm surprised you were able to hold him down."

"Do you believe him?" Maeva asked.

Sadie thought about it for a couple seconds as she watched Petrovich's unmarked car pull up to the curb with lights blazing.

"Yeah." Sadie nodded. "As messed up as it is, I think he's telling the truth."

They went in and paid for their pizzas but Sadie had lost her appet.i.te. Carrying their food, they started back toward their cars, where Petrovich was talking to the other officer.

Petrovich let them tell their story.

"One thing," Petrovich asked. "How did you know to come here and look at that theatre for the face of the guy who told you he was Hugh Pacheo?"

Sadie shared a look with Maeva and Rosemary and then shrugged.

"Well . . . actually, we just stopped at Pagliacci's for pizza. We were taking a walk while waiting for our pies and when he came out of Stone Soup, I recognized him as the guy who met me at the garage job."

"Quite the coincidence." Petrovich narrowed his eyes. He looked pointedly at each of them. "You're sticking with that story?"

Sadie nodded. "Works for me."

Petrovich snapped his notebook shut.

"Good, because all this excitement has made me starved," Maeva said. She opened her pizza box and offered a slice to Petrovich.

Dean was never one to turn down pizza, so he was about to accept the slice when Sadie gave him her entire box.

"I'm not hungry." Then she turned to Rosemary. "Go ahead and drop off Maeva and I'll meet you at your place once I'm finished here."

They agreed, and once the Mini Cooper had left the street, Petrovich turned to Sadie.

"You believe this Ed Muirhead was just hired by this e-mail guy?" he asked, biting off a piece of Sadie's Brooklyn Bridge-style pizza and chewing a mouthful of pepperoni, sausage, and mushrooms.

"He seemed believable but then he's an actor by trade, right?" Sadie shrugged. "He seemed pathetic but not like a serial killer."

"Probably women said the same thing about Gary Ridgway," Petrovich pointed out.

Sadie shuddered. She didn't want to think about the Green River Killer who had terrorized Was.h.i.+ngton in the eighties and nineties. She sure didn't want to think about the forty-nine women he was convicted of killing, or the dozens more he confessed to.

"If it's not him, you will catch the guy doing this," Sadie told Petrovich vehemently.

"Yeah." Petrovich stubbornly stuck out his chin. "Gotta go," he added. "I've got a suspect to interview." He turned to walk away and then stopped and looked at Sadie. "You're going straight to your friend's place, right?"

"Absolutely."