Matinees With Miriam. Vicki Essex

gathering in the corners of her eyes made his stomach clench.

      “Mira.” Arty hurried over, whispering harshly. “You’re making a scene.”

      “I won’t sell the Crown. I won’t sell the Crown,” she repeated in a quavering mantra. Arty said something to her that Shane couldn’t hear. It was then she seemed to notice all the eyes on her.

      With startling speed, she spun and hurried out, knocking one of the foam-core-mounted posters of the condo off its easel. The whole setup clattered loudly across the floor as Miriam Bateman tripped on one of the easel legs and scrambled for the exit like a frightened deer skidding across an icy pond.

      Shane stood there, gut churning. What on earth had just happened?

       CHAPTER FOUR

      “MIRA? HONEY, ARE you okay?”

      “I’m busy.”

      Arty stared around the empty theater, the aisle lights and dingy stage floods the only illumination. “Where are you, girl?”

      “I can’t talk right now, Arty, I’m concentrating.” The echo of her voice gave him some inkling of where she was. He sighed, cursing his old bones as he climbed the ladder into the fly loft above the stage. Sure enough, he found Mira hanging from one of the cables, strapped into a well-used nylon harness, tinkering with the sliding mechanisms. He gripped the railing. “I wish you’d stop playing on this old thing. It’s not safe.”

      “It’s fine. I made modifications so I don’t need anyone else to help me use it,” she said as she took a grease gun from her tool belt and applied a glob to the track.

      “I’m not worried about you needing help to use it. I’m worried about you getting hurt.”

      “This was a state-of-the-art rig in its day, Arty. I can’t let such an investment go to waste.”

      “‘Its day’ was over twenty-five years ago. It’s almost as old as you. It’s never going to get used again, Mira.”

      She glared at him defiantly. “No? Then what do you call this?”

      With a heart-lurching lunge, she flung her whole weight to one side. Arty yelped as she dived toward the ground headfirst, but at the last minute, she flipped around and lightly touched the floor with her toe before ascending once more. Her path around the stage stopped abruptly, however, as the rig juddered. She gave a little oof, then laughed as she took up the slack from a connecting rope and dragged herself back to the platform Arty clung to.

      “Are you crazy?” he screamed. “Do you have a death wish?” His heart pounded. “Get down from there this instant!”

      “Relax, Arty. I’ve been playing on this thing nearly my whole life. Grandpa taught me how it all works and I’ve made it so it’s perfectly safe.”

      “So it’ll be your grandpa’s fault when you fall and crack your skull open. I’ll be sure to thank him when I die of a heart attack.”

      She pouted. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

      “You scare me all the time, Mira. I worry about you.” He wiped a hand over his brow. “What happened tonight? You haven’t had a panic attack like that in years.”

      She climbed down the ladder ahead of him so he couldn’t read her expression. “That school brings out the worst in me.”

      “Mira...”

      “It wasn’t a panic attack. I’m too old for those now.”

      Arty sighed. She acted tough, but he knew she was fragile inside. Jack had always indulged her because of it. “You got pretty upset.”

      “I’m upset because Shane Patel won’t get the hint.” She started taking the harness off. “I can’t sell the Crown. This place is my home. It’s all I have left of Grandpa.”

      “That’s all well and good, honey, but it doesn’t explain what happened to you out there.”

      Her shoulders sagged. “It was nothing. You know I don’t like it when people pressure me. Or stare.”

      Yeah, he knew. Miriam’s parents had been a couple of deadbeats from the start, and when they did pay attention to her between drunken binges, they either berated her ruthlessly or expected her to perform like some kind of circus monkey. Jack had pulled her out of that hellhole away from his no-good son when he’d discovered they’d been leaving her alone for days at a time. That rough beginning had made her an easy target for gossip and bullying in school, too.

      “I didn’t think you’d show,” Arty said.

      “I didn’t, either. But I had to make myself clear to Mr. Patel.”

      Arty studied the flush in her cheeks when she said his name. He knew Janice had brought that orchid to her from a nonexistent secret admirer. It seemed Mira had fallen for the ruse. “He’s not a bad guy. Used to spend his summers in Everville. He’s practically one of us.”

      “He isn’t.” She said it so sharply, Arty wondered at her hostility. He decided to push the matter.

      “I don’t know. He’s easygoing, knows the terrain, the people. For a kid who only spent two months a year here, he’s got a better memory for folks’ names and occupations than most.”

      She made a dismissive “Pfft” sound, but didn’t say anything to contradict his claim.

      “Y’know, I don’t think he’s going to stop trying to convince you to sell.”

      She paused. “I know.”

      “So...what? You gonna call Sheriff McKinnon to kick him off your property every time he comes around?”

      “Ralph has better things to do.” She turned, a shrewd look in her eye. “No, I’ve got better ways to stop him in his tracks.”

      “They don’t involve more weapons, do they?”

      “Give me some credit. There’s more than one way to crack a nut.”

      * * *

      “MS. WELKS.” SHANE greeted Everville’s mayor. She looked up from her paperwork, smile lines radiating around her face. Her dark red hair was the color of a banked ember. He was put in mind of a lioness watching her cubs from a hot, flat rock.

      “Mr. Patel, thank you for coming.” She gestured at the visitor’s chair across from her cluttered desk. “Can I offer you some tea? Coffee?”

      “Nothing for me, thank you.” He wasn’t sure the tiny “mayor’s office” even had room for an electric kettle. There wasn’t much in the way of a town hall in Everville. The main administrative building housed a bevy of municipal functions, but Ms. Welks’s office was barely the size of his living room in his Brooklyn condo. Filing cabinets stacked with bulging folders and yellowing binders surrounded the perimeter. An overgrown mother-of-millions plant by the window spilled out of its cracked pot, its progeny scattered over the water-stained credenza and linoleum floor.

      “Sorry about the mess,” she said, noticing his silent assessment. “Life of a municipal bureaucrat.”

      “I’ve seen worse,” he said, though the paperwork was usually spread over offices ten times this size in other cities he’d worked in. And there were usually assistants to help with this kind of thing. The mayor of Everville didn’t even have a secretary. “You wanted to talk?”

      She nodded. “I heard you made quite an impression with your condo presentation at the high school.”

      “I sure hope so. The people who attended certainly made a good impression on the food tables.” He studied her surreptitiously, trying to gauge her feelings. Certainly there were some who’d voiced their concerns to her over the past two days.

      Mayor