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Mostly, she thought it was cold and drafty, and even with the furnishings, too dungeony for most tourists’ tastes. Dinner theater? But then, why lock up the set?
Bonita was tugging on D.D.’s arm, clearly agitated again.
“Are you looking for the demon man?” D.D. asked.
Quick no, eyes wide with fear.
“But you’re looking for someone?”
Yes.
“A guest?”
No.
Pause. D.D. clearly trying to figure out how to most efficiently ask the next question. “Is it someone I’ve met?”
Yes.
“Mayor Howard is still upstairs with Sheriff Smithers,” Kimberly provided. “The cook is in the kitchen. Smithers’s deputies are rounding up the guests. Someone broke into Martha Counsel’s office. I’m wondering if there isn’t a fox in our midst. Or maybe,” she considered, looking at the girl, “a demon.”
The girl sighed. Tugged D.D.’s arm again.
“Hélène!” D.D. declared suddenly. “The other maid.”
Yes yes yes yes yes yes!
“Are you worried about her?”
Yes!
“Do you think something bad might have happened?”
Furious head nod.
“The demon?”
More nodding.
Kimberly and D.D. exchanged a glance. “Hélène’s personnel file was missing from Martha Counsel’s office,” Kimberly murmured.
“Top-to-bottom search. Entire place. Between a suspicious death and now a missing woman, we have cause. Let’s tear this place apart.”
“The mayor is going to have a fit,” Kimberly said.
D.D.’s smile was feral. “Let him.”
She took Bonita’s hand. “You stay with me, all right? We’re a team. Where I go, you go. You don’t leave my side; I don’t leave your side.”
The girl looked up at her. In the shadows, her expression was hard to read. Something between longing and fatalism, Kimberly thought. And being a mother herself, that expression on a child’s face broke her heart.
“You’re not staying here anymore,” Kimberly spoke up.
The girl startled. Clearly she hadn’t expected this.
“As of now, you are a witness. We’re taking you away and keeping you safe.”
That look again: wanting to believe but fearing to hope.
