CHAPTER 38
It had been fifteen minutes since I’d “stolen” the cat, and in that time Ash had arrived. I was still lying there, listening to it all—listening to Greta describe me as Ash drew, listening to Mike talking to the organizer of the event, who also happened to be staying in the damn eco estate and now had concerns about the security in this town generally. At least I didn’t have to worry about the identikit drawing of me; I mean, no offence, but I’d seen Ash’s art lying against the walls in the dining room—it was more abstract. I was about to pull my phone out and play Candy Crush while I waited for all the chaos to subside, when . . .
“Mmm, there’s something familiar about this face.”
I sat up straight when I heard Ash utter those dreadful words. Surely it wasn’t possible that, between Greta’s mad ramblings and Ash’s avant-garde flair for art, they would have gotten anything that could be identified as human, let alone me.
“She seems so familiar,” I heard Ash say to herself.
Shit! I crawled over to the hole and pressed my eye to it again. Adrenalin swooshed in my veins as I waited for the grand reveal. The minute it was shown to Mike, he would recognize me. I didn’t have to wait long.
“Mike,” Ash said. “I’m done. You can get this photocopied.”
The moment of truth.
“Let’s see,” Mike said.
I could see his legs moving again. He took a few steps, stopped, and then I heard some rustling of paper. There was a long pause and then I heard it. His tone was such a giveaway that I knew my time was very much over.
“Are you sure this is her?” he asked.
Oh, dear Lord!
“One hundred percent,” Greta said. “I will remember that face for as long as I live.” Her voice cracked when she spoke, as if she was about to cry.
Great! So now I was a face that she would remember forever. Just what I needed.
“Okay,” Mike said, sounding strange and tentative. “I’ll go over to the station and get some photocopies of it and start distributing it around town.”
“Thank you,” said the man that I’d identified earlier as the organizer of the event.
And then the crowd started moving off. I waited to see what Mike would do next, peering through the hole like a creepy stalker.
Ash was also still there, and she whispered, “Jesus. I recognize that face.”
“Me too,” Mike said. “Me too.” And with that cliffhanger (cue dramatic cliffhanger music in my head), both of them decided to walk away, leaving me crouching there, feeling sweaty and sick with nerves.
Well, this was it. As soon as I stepped out from under the stage, I would be recognized, apprehended and this time probably “booked” or whatever they called it. In a few hours’ time, I would have a criminal record, so I might as well look around and get what I came for, and then I would leave and march myself straight into the police station. Maybe Mike would take pity on me. But probably not.
I crawled deeper into the space under the stage. According to the diary entry, there was a small door that led into a room. It was unlikely that whatever I was looking for was still there. I mean, what were the chances that this room had not been disturbed in seventy years? I crawled my way past some old costumes and props. A pile of old velvet curtains that had obviously been taken down and replaced with new ones. I crawled past an empty Coke can, a discarded condom wrapper . . .Eeeew.I crawled a little faster and finally I got to the back and found what I was looking for. There it was, the—
“Shit!” I hissed to myself when I saw it. “No.” I reached for the pieces of wood that had been hammered over the small door and pulled on them. They were not going anywhere, unless I had a crowbar in my bag, which I did not.
All of that drama for absolutely nothing!All that cat maiming and stealing and running and hiding and getting my face plastered all over town . . . for nothing. I hung my head and slumped against the wall, feeling totally dejected. Maybe I had been wrong about this whole thing.Maybe I wasn’t meant to tell this story, after all.Not that I was basing that on anything scientific, other than some half-imagined voice that I thought I might have heard in the early hours of the morning.
Seriously, what was wrong with me?
