The Red Slippers Read online

  “Well, someone doesn’t agree with your methods,” I said, “and they’re sabotaging your show. They started by harassing Maggie because they knew that without her the performance would flop. And when that didn’t work, they tried to shut down the entire production by causing the scenery to fall. We don’t know what else they’re planning, but odds are it’s something!”

  “What do you want me to do?” Jamison asked. “Go around apologizing to everyone for making them feel bad?”

  “It’s probably too late for that,” I said, “but it’s not a bad idea. I think you should delay the show. Even if it’s only by an hour, I would have a better shot of figuring out who did this.”

  “I can’t do that. Oscar won’t wait an hour for a show to start. If for some reason he did decide to wait, he’d be so prejudiced against the show it wouldn’t matter how good it is; he’d still write it off as unprofessional.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but Jamison kept talking.

  “And I know Oscar. If he writes this show off, then he writes off Maggie as well. Do you want that? You know what a bad review will do to her career, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Destroy it.”

  “Doors open in thirty minutes.”

  I was at a loss. I was tired. I was hungry. My foot hurt. I was out of leads and I was out of time.

  Thirty minutes later Ned was waiting for us in the lobby with our tickets. He looked handsome wearing a tie under his sweater. My friends and I had gone back to Bess’s house and changed into more appropriate clothing. I wore a simple black dress, while Bess had chosen a gorgeous purple gown with a beaded top. She was always the most fashionable of us. George, who hated dresses, was wearing a dark-green jumpsuit Bess had convinced her to wear. Under any other circumstances, we’d be taking pictures, but none of us felt like celebrating. While we had been changing I had hoped that I would have a flash of inspiration and suddenly know who the suspect was, but I was still flummoxed. I was convinced something horrible would happen during the show and all I would be able to do was watch. Instead of looking forward to the performance, I was dreading it.

  “Nancy! Are you okay?” Ned said, rushing over to me.

  I quickly told him about the tree falling, and George reenacted my dive out of the way.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “It’s just bruised. I’ll be walking on two feet again in a few days.”

  “Well, please tell me you at least caught the person responsible.”

  I shook my head.

  Ned kissed the top of my head gently. “Well, there’s still time,” he said. “I believe you can do this.”

  All the determination that had wilted out of me earlier came roaring back. I wished Jamison had been there to see this. There were other ways to inspire people to do their best aside from yelling and screaming.

  I looked up at Ned. “Thank you,” I said sincerely.

  “Of course,” he said. “Anyway, I don’t know anything about this case, except what you told me last night on the phone, but I’m ready to do whatever you need. What’s our next step?”

  I bit my thumb as I thought. “When we were investigating, we focused entirely on Maggie,” I said. “We need to rethink everything, concentrating on Jamison. Are there any assumptions we’re making?”

  George tapped her foot as she thought, while Bess looked at the ceiling. My eyes wandered as I let my mind drift over everything that had happened. A short, balding man dressed in a three-piece suit strode into the theater. I knew instantly that this was Oscar LeVigne. Miss Taylor quickly came up to him and introduced herself.

  Oscar gave her a once-over and then turned away. Miss Taylor hurried after him.

  “Maggie Rogers, the star of the performance, got her start right here in River Heights. At my school,” she said. “You know how important the early training is. All the habits are established in the first four years.”

  “Excuse me,” Oscar said. “I need to find the men’s room.” He walked away, leaving Miss Taylor blushing in embarrassment.

  “We assumed the culprit was Maggie’s peer,” I said. “That it was another dancer.”

  “Yeah . . . ,” George said.

  “But if this is about Jamison, wouldn’t it make more sense that it would be one of his peers?”

  “You’re not saying what I think you’re saying, are you, Nancy?” Bess asked. “You know Miss Taylor couldn’t do something like this.”

  “I know it seems like a long shot, but think about it, Bess,” I said. “She’s around the theater all the time. She can go anywhere she likes. She had access to the poster files.”

  “But Maggie’s her star student. Maggie doing well tonight will only help her. Why would she jeopardize that?” Bess asked.

  “Jealousy makes people do crazy things,” I said. “I doubt her dreams included teaching in a small town. She probably had bigger ambitions in her life too. Maybe she really wanted to be a choreographer. Sebastian said that all the teachers in the area applied to lead this tour. Maybe Miss Taylor applied, and she’s mad that Jamison was selected instead of her.”

  “You don’t have proof,” Bess insisted. “You have no idea if Miss Taylor applied to choreograph this show.”

  “We need to find out,” George said. “We have only a few minutes to pursue this lead.”

  George was right. I made my way over to Miss Taylor. Ordinarily, I would carefully craft the tactic I was going to take, but I didn’t have time to come up with an elaborate ruse this time. I was just going to have to wing it.

  “After seeing Jamison with his dancers, I’m so glad you were my ballet teacher, instead of him,” I said as I approached her.

  “That man is a monster,” Miss Taylor hissed. She quickly covered her mouth. “Forgive me. I shouldn’t say that. It just drives me crazy that he’s being rewarded, even though he tortures his students. Some of us nurture our students. We should be the ones showing off what we can do to Oscar LeVigne, not the man who caused one of his students to suffer a nervous breakdown within two months of joining the New York City Ballet.”

  My head shot up. Jamison and the New York City Ballet . . . I knew I had heard something about that earlier, but I couldn’t place it. Between the length of the day and the pain in my foot, my brain felt sluggish. I needed my friends to help me puzzle it out.

  Around us the lights in the lobby started flashing.

  “We’d better take our seats,” she said with a smile.

  “I’ll be there in a minute,” I said.

  “Make it quick. You don’t want to miss it.” She headed inside the theater. A few feet away, she stopped and turned back. “Nancy, please don’t say anything about what I told you. I know the parents of the ballerina I mentioned are very protective of her privacy. They’ve worked really hard not to let it get out beyond a small group of people. I just happen to have a friend at the New York City Ballet who told me.”

  I nodded as I hobbled back to my friends.

  “What’d you find out?” Bess asked.

  The ushers were giving us dirty looks. We had three minutes until curtain time.

  “Well, she’s definitely bitter,” I said. I hesitated for a second. I knew Miss Taylor had asked me not to tell, but this was a big clue and I needed their help. “This is a secret, but she said Jamison causes his students to have nervous breakdowns, including one who made it into the New York City Ballet,” I said.

  “Didn’t Maggie say that Jamison only had one student who made it into that company?” Bess asked.

  All of a sudden it came back to me “Yes! Veronica, Sebastian’s sister!” I said.

  My brain raced, no longer sluggish, as the pieces snapped into place. Sebastian had easy access to Maggie’s phone. He handled odd jobs for Jamison all the time. He easily could have altered the poster. He was also at the restaurant with us, giving him plenty of opportunity to leave the note.

  “It’s Sebastian!” I announced. “He’s getting revenge on his sister’s behalf.”

/>   Inside, the house lights went down. The ushers shut the theater doors as the piano started playing.

  George, Bess, and I all stared at one another in horror.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Showtime

  “WHAT DO WE DO?” BESS asked.

  “You know he has something planned,” George said. “This guy was a professional piano player by age fourteen. He’s determined.”

  “We need to get into his dressing room,” I said. “Maybe there’s a clue in there.”

  “How do we get there?” Ned asked.

  “Around back,” Bess said. “There’s a stage door we can go through.”

  “We have to go outside and around the building?” Ned asked.

  Bess nodded. Ned looked at me on my crutches. After a beat, he wrapped his arm around me, handed my crutches to George, and swooped me up, holding me like a baby.

  “Forgive the indignity,” Ned said, “but this is going to be a lot faster than you hobbling through the snow. Safer, too.”

  “All right,” I said, “Let’s find out what Sebastian is up to.”

  As we made our way around the building to the stage door, I was glad that it was cold and the area outside the theater was empty. We must have made for an odd sight: the four of us sneaking through the parking lot, George and Bess each carrying a crutch, and Ned carrying me.

  Bess opened the stage door and Ned put me down. I got my crutches back and we made our way down the hall.

  We made it past the greenroom, where all the dancers who weren’t onstage waited their turn. A group of them played cards. Others were on their cell phones. A few stretched. A video feed showed the performance onstage, so they could see when they needed to get to the wings.

  “This is it,” Bess said, pointing to a door on the right.

  She tried the knob, but it was locked.

  “Now what?” George asked.

  “I can probably break in,” Ned said, leaning back to throw his shoulder against the door.

  “I have a better idea,” I said, nodding at George. She grinned, reached into her bag, and pulled out a set of lock picks. “No need for both of us to get hurt.”

  “I wouldn’t have been hurt,” Ned protested.

  “Did you get a new set?” I asked George as she knelt in front of the lock.

  “My aunt gave me some money for Christmas,” George explained. “It was either this or a GPS tracker.” She stuck two picks in the lock and started working one around inside carefully, sticking her tongue out unconsciously as she tried to manipulate the pin inside the lock. George had taught me some of the rudimentary principles of lock picking, but it was as much an art form as a science, and George had the magic touch.

  Sweat beaded on her forehead as she continued to work. Her brow creased in worry. I could feel myself starting to get anxious that this was taking too long, but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want George to feel any more pressure.

  “I could still break it open,” Ned said.

  “Got it!” George exclaimed. She turned the knob and we were in.

  We scanned the room, which was incredibly tidy. Sebastian’s casual clothes hung neatly in a closet. Piles of sheet music sat on a table. There was a backpack in the corner.

  “Are you sure there’s going to be a clue in here?” Ned asked. “This room looks barren.”

  “There has to be something. The app on Maggie’s phone, the poster, the scenery—all required research and planning. Sebastian hasn’t done anything spontaneous. If my hunch is right, he’s been thinking about getting revenge on Jamison for a long time. We’ll find something that indicates what he has planned next.”

  We stepped farther into the room. Bess took the desk, George went to the vanity, Ned sprinted to the closet, and I headed toward the backpack in the corner.

  “If there’s anything that seems weird, flag it. It could be a clue. Sebastian is smart. It may not be obvious what his plan is.”

  I could hear my friends opening drawers and rummaging through Sebastian’s belongings as I dumped the contents of the bag onto the floor. A phone charger, some gum, a toiletries kit, and an old photo album. I flipped through the photos. They were all of him and his sister. It started when they were preschool age and ended with Veronica holding up her offer letter from the New York City Ballet. From the pictures, it was clear that they were incredibly close. They were always hugging and smiling and genuinely seemed to be proud of each other and all their accomplishments. Even though I knew that what Sebastian was doing was wrong, I could understand the pain he felt seeing his sister suffer.

  But I didn’t see a single clue. Just for the sake of doing something, I emptied the toiletries kit on the table, but all it had was a toothbrush, deodorant, a comb, and a bottle of talcum powder.

  George came over. “Nothing of note in the closet. You find anything?”

  I shook my head.

  “The only thing I’ve learned is that this guy must have really stinky feet.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “How much talcum powder does one guy need?” George asked, picking up the bottle that was on the table.

  “You found talcum powder too?” I asked.

  “Yeah, a bottle about three-quarters full.” She shook the bottle. “This one has less, but it’s still at least half full.”

  “Can I see the bottle you found on the vanity?” I asked George.

  George brought it back to me. The bottle was the same size and color as the talcum powder I’d found, but the logo was different. I looked closer.

  “This isn’t talcum powder. This is orthochloro-benzalmalononitrile,” I said, sounding it out.

  “In English?” George asked.

  “That’s the main chemical in tear gas!” Ned exclaimed. “We talked about it in my chemistry class last semester. Tear gas is actually a powder.”

  I hastily set the bottle down.

  “It has to get over a certain temperature to emit a gas, which is when it causes all the symptoms, like crying, sneezing, difficulty breathing, and so on,” Ned continued.

  “Is there a way Sebastian could get the stage area hot enough to emit the gas?” I asked. “Having a bunch of dancers onstage crying and coughing is going to make the choreography look pretty bad.”

  “The Fresnels,” George said. “They’re the biggest lights, and they get really hot. I heard the crew talking about it when I was undercover. If you touch them without gloves, you can actually burn your flesh.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Bess said.

  “We have to get those lights turned off,” I said.

  Ned scooped me up again, George and Bess grabbed my crutches, and we made it back to the front door of the theater.

  Ignoring the ushers who tried to stop us, we entered the theater as quietly as we could. A few people turned to glare at us, and I felt bad for distracting them, but I reminded myself that getting hit by tear gas would be even more distracting. George led the way to the lighting booth, and we pushed our way in, shutting the door behind us.

  Jamison sat in the booth behind the crew member running the board, watching the show. His head snapped toward us. It was tight quarters with all of us piled in.

  “Are you kidding me? How many times and how many different ways do I have to tell you to get out of my theater?”

  The crew member working the lighting board stayed focused on the show, studiously ignoring the commotion we were causing.

  “You have to turn off the Fresnels,” I said.

  Jamison turned to the board operator. “Don’t you dare turn those lights off, Kevin.” He turned back to us. “Forget the police. I’m having you sent straight to the loony bin, because you have clearly lost your mind. If we cut the Fresnels, three-quarters of the stage will be dark.”

  “Better than one hundred percent of the dancers crying and coughing,” George said.

  “What on earth are you prattling on about? None of you are making any sense.”

  “Sebasti
an put tear gas on the Fresnels. When the lights get hot enough, tear gas will spread through this entire theater,” I said.

  Jamison opened his mouth, presumably to tell us we were crazy again, but he paused. I could see him putting the pieces together.

  “Do you have definitive proof?” he asked.

  “We found this in Sebastian’s dressing room,” Bess said, handing Jamison the bottle of tear gas.

  “I don’t buy it,” Jamison said.

  “That’s proof,” George said, exasperated. “What more do you want?”

  “I don’t know what orthochlorobenzalmalononitrile even is,” he scoffed. “You could be pulling a prank on me, getting me back for belittling you earlier.”

  “If you didn’t treat people so badly, you wouldn’t have to worry about that,” Bess muttered under her breath.

  Onstage, a dancer sneezed. “It’s starting,” I said to Kevin, the board operator. If Jamison wouldn’t see sense, maybe I could appeal to Kevin. “You have to turn off the lights right now.”

  Kevin looked at Jamison, clearly unsure what to do. “Don’t do it,” Jamison ordered.

  From the stage, another sneeze. “Kevin, come on,” I implored.

  Now a cough. If we didn’t cut those lights now, it was only going to get worse.

  Kevin looked back and forth between me and Jamison. I could see the gears turning in his head as he tried to figure out who he should listen to.

  Another cough.

  “Kevin—” Jamison started, but before could finish, Kevin sprang into action.

  “I’m sorry. Don’t kill me,” Kevin said as his hands flew over the lighting board, and suddenly, just as Jamison had predicted, more than half the stage was dark. The audience gasped, but Jamison had trained his dancers well. They kept going as if nothing had happened.

  “Thank you,” I said to Kevin. “You did the right thing. Now can you make sure that a crew member removes the powder from the lights at intermission?”

  He nodded.

  For the first time since we’d encountered him, Jamison was speechless. He seemed completely in shock. I wasn’t going to wait around for him to start yelling again. I turned back to my friends. “Let’s get backstage and tell Maggie the case is solved,” I said. “Her big solo is right after intermission. I want her to feel completely confident.”