LITMIR.BIZ

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him in silence from the tunnel.

      The photographer packed up his equipment and told Knox he was done. Soon the other techs left, too, and then there were just the three of them. For a moment, the silence around them seemed…unnatural.

      “Sam Stone and the Curious Case of the Egyptian Museum.” Sean was looking at the tableau. “And Alistair Archer swears that someone—something—came out of that tableau and attacked Jenny Henderson.”

      “The priest—Amun Mopat, I understand,” Madison said.

      “Indeed, the priest. And he’s still wearing his robe.”

      “There’s something missing—something off in the scene,” Madison said as she studied the tableau.

      “I have that feeling, too. But what?” Sean asked. He stared at it, frowning.

      Madison continued to study it, as well. Mannequins, snakes and the items in the “Egyptian Museum” had been moved by the police and put back, but they weren’t experts on how the display had been set up. There was something wrong, but she couldn’t pin it down.

      Sam Stone was entering, ready to wrest the priest, Amun Mopat, away from Dianna Breen. The sarcophagus, the mummy fallen to the floor, the stand with the canopic jars—all still there. So was the statue of the ancient Egyptian warrior, tilted to the wrong side, and the jackal and the sphinx.

      “I wish I knew this place as well as Alistair does,” Sean said.

      Madison watched in silence as Sean noted where the body had been and he walked to the tableau, not touching the velvet cord that separated the scene from the hall passage. He stepped over the cord. There wasn’t much he could do to mess up what had been a perfect recreation, since the police and the techs had already been through the entire place. She found it oddly disturbing, as if the characters were now out of focus, and far more haunting than the ferocious and bloody scenes in the studio.

      Madison tried to shut herself off, tried to focus on the victim.

      Jenny?

      But she didn’t feel the presence of anyone near her. She stood there alone in her little world, frozen. She could envision Alistair and Jenny coming here, Alistair walking ahead, Jenny sensing someone at her back, crying out desperately for help….

      And then feeling a knife cut through her throat.

      Madison gave herself a furious mental shake. She was in the tunnel; the murder had happened only a few feet from where she was standing.

      But there was nothing here that wasn’t solid and real.

      Jenny Henderson’s body was at the morgue. If she was hanging around the place she’d been murdered, hoping to communicate, Madison could feel no impression of her.

      She walked a step closer to the blood, hoping that didn’t make her ghoulish. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine the scene. Jenny must have coerced Alistair into bringing her to the studio. Jenny was an actress, a budding actress who needed every possible opportunity. No casting was done at the studio, but she probably believed she could learn something that might give her an edge when they were casting bit parts.

      Had Jenny and Alistair paused to look at the tableaux? Or had Jenny’s mind been on her agenda—and Alistair’s mind on Jenny?

      She took note of where the body had lain. There was a distance of perhaps twenty feet to the door. Alistair had walked ahead….

      “All right,” Sean said, startling her. “Here’s how I heard the story from Eddie—how it was told to him by Alistair. Jenny convinced him to bring her over—she wanted to get into the studio, see the costumes and the Egyptian creatures. Or the mythical creatures the Egyptian priest, Amun Mopat, brought to life. And according to Alistair—” Sean paused, approaching the door that separated the tunnel from the studio “—he came this way, and turned.”

      “And saw a monster—or the priest,” Madison said.

      “Which means—” Sean paused again, walking to the display “—that the killer was in the tableau. As soon as Alistair passed by, the killer came down.” Sean moved up to the display, then got down, his movements silent. “The robed figure left his position and crawled over the velvet cord and attacked Jenny Henderson. He’d left Sam Stone and his femme fatale where they belonged as he stepped down to seize Jenny, and cut her throat.”

      Sean was suddenly standing behind Madison.

      For a moment, she could feel the fear, feel as if the killer’s breath touched her….

      She felt his hands on her shoulders, and the other girl’s fear seemed to fill her. She could practically see—feel, touch!—what had happened.

      Her throat closed; she could barely scream.

      Alistair!

      The sound didn’t leave her lips. She managed to step forward before she began trembling noticeably.

      She almost slipped on the blood.

      Deep in his own thoughts, Sean hardly noticed her.

      “This place, the movie—they have everything to do with the murder,” he said, repeating what he’d told her before. “Everything.”

      4

      Madison stared at Sean Cameron, feeling frozen at first, and completely lost. There was nothing she could do here. She’d hoped there would be, but she felt nothing except cold and fear and dread. She could picture what had happened but she couldn’t see a face. She imagined the mannequin of the priest moving, saw him walking swiftly….

      Saw him kill.

      “Poor girl, poor Jenny Henderson—and poor Alistair,” he murmured.

      “Alistair didn’t do it,” Madison said. Her voice was low, but her words were passionate. “It happened just the way you reenacted it. He was ahead of her and then he got to the door. Someone was already in here, waiting. Someone who knew that Alistair came to see the noir movies on Sundays, and someone who also knew about Jenny. Yes, it was taking a chance that Jenny would show up and that Alistair would fall in with her plans, but it wasn’t really that big a chance.”

      “Someone—or the kid. The kid does tell it your way. But there’s nothing to exonerate him.”

      Madison was startled by the voice of Benny Knox. He’d come in behind them. She’d been concentrating so hard, she’d forgotten he was with them.

      “Yep, according to the kid, he walked to the door—and the thing came out of the tableau. I don’t know what the kid was on, but temporary insanity or whatever is probably going to be his best defense,” Knox went on.

      “If he says that’s what happened, it’s what happened. Alistair isn’t on drugs, and he doesn’t drink. He’s a good kid—which is pretty amazing when you realize the money he has access to and how everyone tries to suck up to him because of what his father might be able to do for them!” Madison said angrily.

      “Whoa.” Knox lifted a hand and took a step back in mock-horror. “Well, when they need character witnesses, they can call you to the stand.”

      Madison tried to check her temper, but he continued quickly, “Look, I’m sorry. We are going to investigate. If the L.A. police weren’t determined on that, you can guarantee the FBI would be. But you’ve got to understand—you’re looking at a locked-room mystery here, and the thing is, if a room is really locked, the people in that room are the suspects. Nine times out of ten what you see is what you get.”

      “What you see is a kid in shock and a brutally murdered young woman,” Sean Cameron said. “And I wouldn’t go counting on there being no other answer. For one thing, a costume is missing from the studio.”

      “Missing?” Knox asked sharply.

      “It’s not on the mannequin,” Madison said, “where it should be—where

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