Awaken the Devil Page 2

  Every instinct she possessed told her that Daphne's assumption was the truth. The man in the shadows had been Chandler Bentley, and this entire exercise was doomed to failure.

  It was the girl. Chandler recognized her immediately. He sorted through the cards in his lap until he found the one that corresponded to the number pinned on her sea green leotard. Fielding Amanda French, aged thirty. She was probably younger than that. They almost always lied in this business. The young ones were older and the old ones grew younger every year. Though thirty was pushing it, almost too old to be a professional dancer. Someone should have told her twenty-five was more reasonable.

  Her chestnut brown waves were pulled back from her face in a no-nonsense ponytail, and even in the harsh glare of the stage lights, it was obvious that her gleaming blonde highlights came from sunshine and not a bottle. She was smaller than she'd seemed when he'd seen her all alone. He referred to her stats again. Five foot three and one hundred and two pounds. Much smaller than he liked the girls in his line to be.

  He had noticed earlier that her fey features were rather curiously devoid of make-up, revealing a smattering of faint brown freckles over the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were green. An improbable light, mossy green that could not possibly be natural. Yet judging from the rest of her, he had to assume that it was.

  She had on the same Spandex as the rest of the dancers—it was imperative that he be able to see every movement of the auditioning dancers' bodies—but on her the outfit seemed almost indecent. Too brief. Too clinging. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair and handed the cards off to his casting partner, Sara.

  He had vaguely hoped to discover the girl had fled the auditions completely. Or that she would be patently awful. He'd turned to look at her earlier because he'd felt the force of someone's gaze on him, the distinct message of danger, but when he'd turned he'd seen only her. She didn't appear dangerous; she appeared to be a kindergarten teacher.

  He forced himself to concentrate on some of the other dancers. It took far more willpower than he would have liked to keep his gaze from wandering back in her direction. Ten dancers were up, but the routine showed him only three people he thought deserved further consideration. Unfortunately, one of them was Fielding French, whom he wanted to dismiss on principle. He hadn't liked the way she had stared at him from across the room. He hadn't liked the way it had made him feel—exposed and trapped—when he rarely felt anything at all. And he particularly didn't like the way that she had drawn him toward her when he hadn't even meant to move.

  But he was a businessman first. He would always do what was best for the show at any cost. Unless, of course, the cost was related to his daughter, Anne. That focus was how he'd consistently eked out the best show possible for the last thirteen years. There was no luck in one of his shows, only hard work and precision.

  His merciless grandmother had taken every opportunity to drill into him the axiom that God was in the details, and somehow, over the years, the details had become his religion. Off the top of his memory, he could not recall seeing a more proficient tapper at a line audition. If Fielding French continued to hold up under the pressure, he would cast her.

  Sara and his staff were sorting through the cards, and eventually the papers came back to him in two piles. He glanced at the smaller pile and saw that the three names there were his choices as well. Trust his well-trained staff to know what was best; yet he was still incapable of turning control over to them. He didn't even wait for the routine to finish. He'd been doing this for twenty years and had refined the process to an art. "Number twenty-three, you in the pink leotard, and you, sir, you may stay. The rest of you may go."

  He turned his attention away from the stage and the compelling visual lure of Fielding Amanda French. He listened with only half an ear to Sara telling their three choices to come back for the singing audition in the afternoon before she called the next group. As he watched the new dancers he couldn't shake the feeling that he was going to be exceptionally sorry he'd told the French girl to come back. And after all of his mistakes, he'd become very good at knowing when he was going to be sorry. Very good, indeed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Fielding's rush of relief was almost drugging. She'd made the first cut. As had Daphne in her pink leotard and the only man in their group. Though she was never able to see the faces of their judges, Fielding recognized the cold, articulate voice that called out her number from that ill-fated phone conversation. Chandler Bentley. The sound of it had turned her stomach to lead, like some kind of bizarre reverse alchemy.

  Fielding also recognized the female voice that had asked her to come back in the afternoon for the singing audition. Despite the less than ideal conditions, she couldn't control the rush of almost childish excitement. Sara Flynn was Fielding's unchallenged, all time idol—a fabulous singer and dancer and this generation's answer to Julie Andrews. Fielding had been following Sara Flynn's enormous success for years. Mac and his bizarre wishes aside, she would probably never have another chance to speak to her in person.

  Backstage, Fielding and Daphne finally discovered they really did have something in common, the idol-like worship of Sara Flynn. The man who had made the cut looked at his watch with the alligator band, seemingly unmoved by the presence of one of the biggest stage stars to ever come out of England.

  "Look, two hours is a long time. Maybe we should grab some lunch. I'm Kyle, by the way."

  Introductions were exchanged on the way to the deli a few blocks from the theater. They covered all the other prerequisites of conversation. Where had they gone to school? Where were they from? How long had they been acting?

  With her scarf wrapped all the way around her face, Fielding had to talk loudly to give her answers. It was October, so she didn't look too insane, but the truth was, to conceal her face from anyone who might have known her from the old days when New York City had been her main stopping grounds and given her away, she would have worn a parka in June. She needed this part.

  As they scooted into their booth at the deli, conversation turned to the general housing situation in the city and their specific addresses at the moment. Kyle lived in a walkup in Queens, and Daphne lived in Brooklyn, near Prospect Park. Fielding lied casually and told them she resided there as well, since Josh did. There was no way that she could explain her two million dollar loft on Central Park West without giving away at least some part of her truths.

  Like the fact that her parents had both died covering stories when she was six, leaving her the beneficiary of both of their wills and the recipient of their life insurance policies. From her grandparents, she'd also inherited two large newspaper dynasties. Not a good way to keep journalism out of the conversation.

  "Where do you live exactly?" Daphne asked, before taking a suspicious bite of her sandwich as though it might be unsatisfactory. She set it down on the old fashioned white-speckled table and slid closer to the glass window that faced the sidewalk, folding her legs up onto the blue vinyl bucket seat. "I live across from an Italian restaurant. It smells amazing."

  Fielding's sandwich smelled amazing too, but not for the first time today Fielding's stomach heaved. She'd been so hungry, but now she placed her food back on the wrapper with trembling hands. In desperation, she rattled off Josh's address in an old but trendy building that he loved.

  "No kidding! I just live a couple of buildings over." Daphne was clearly thrilled to discover that they were supposedly neighbors.

  "Oh, God." Fielding amended her inappropriate reaction almost immediately. "I mean, wow. That is a coincidence."

  "I know. Such a big city and still such a small world. Now that I realize you live there, I know I've seen you before. You live with your boyfriend, right? I've seen you guys walking. He's very cute!"

  She picked her sandwich up even though her throat felt tight, took a big bite just for something to do, and almost choked. "Josh?" Fielding laughed unintentionally. "Josh's not my boyfriend he's…my brother."

 
"That's so weird. Ya'll don't look anything alike. Him with all that dark hair and you all light."

  "Steps," Fielding fabricated, watching the entire conversation spiral out of control as though from far away.

  "Steps?" Daphne repeated the word as though it was the weirdest one she'd ever heard. Maybe they didn't have divorces wherever she had hailed from.

  "Stepsiblings."

  "Oh, of course. How long have your parents been married?"

  "They're not." Both Daphne and Kyle stopped eating and stared at her. Could she be any stupider? Somebody should shoot her before she did any more damage. "Anymore. They're not married anymore. They're divorced." Fielding nodded like she was making perfect sense and scanned the room for any means of escape. Subterfuge wasn't going very well thus far.

  "You live with your ex-step-brother?" Daphne clarified.

  "Yes." Fielding tried for casual coolness, like everyone in Manhattan was doing it.

  "But you're not together?"

  "No." She looked again for another quick exit. She could think of nothing that wouldn't make the situation worse than it already was. Suddenly her cell phone rang. Josh's office phone number flashed on the caller ID. "Thank goodness." Her enthusiasm earned her more stares from her table mates. "I'm sorry. I've really been waiting for this call." She pulled out some cash and threw it on the table before fleeing into the cold. She still hadn't eaten.

  "What have you got?" She asked as soon as she was sure that neither Daphne nor Kyle had followed her.

  She could practically hear Josh rubbing his hands together like some cartoon villain. There was nothing he loved more than showing off his prowess as a researcher. Except, possibly, picking up trashy women.

  "Chandler Everett Bentley, the fourth. The tenth Duke of Moreland among other things. Forty-three years of age. One daughter, apparently named Anne. I'm having a little trouble getting specifics on her. Could be that her name's not really Anne, or it's short for something else, but the math tells me that she's about nineteen."

  "Wife?" She stopped in front of a florist and realized that she was holding her breath, hoping that Bentley's history included a divorce decree. She immediately cursed herself for her stupidity and lack of focus. Any attraction whatsoever to Chandler Bentley was completely out of the question.

  "Dead. Here comes the fun part. I can't believe that this isn't the ultimate green room gossip. Thirteen years ago someone decided to try and separate Helena Bentley from her head."

  "She was murdered?" Fielding herself couldn't believe that this was not the piece de resistance of cast party gossip. This must be the thing Mac had intimated. The event for which he wanted Bentley proved innocent.

  "Quite emphatically. In their bed. When the police came, Bentley was in the room with her, just sitting there in his favorite Queen Anne chair wearing nothing but a towel and a frown. How's that for weird? He denies murdering her. Says he doesn't know who did since he was in the shower when it happened."

  "So what did the police do?"

  "There's evidence that Bentley was in the shower. and there's also evidence that he was in the bedroom playing Scream with the old ball and chain. Circumstantial in both directions."

  "Why would he murder her?" Not that it really mattered. Fielding had no trouble imagining a man possessed of a voice like Bentley's murdering for no reason at all.

  "Who knows? Maybe she was making time with the cabana boy. The generally accepted theory was that he was sorry he had married a chorus girl and felt she was sullying the Bentley name."

  "That's ridiculous."

  "That's England, honey. What do we know about it?"

  "I mean, it just doesn't make any sense. Wouldn't killing in cold blood sully your name just a little worse than marrying beneath you?"

  "Don't go getting all logical on me, okay, honey? Anyway, no one ever proved anything, so his name was safe I guess."

  "So he never went to prison?"

  "Not even for a day. Hell, he never even went downtown with the boys to answer a couple of questions. Apparently, they always came to him. I guess it's good to be king."

  "So who did they arrest?"

  "Nada, the case is open. The cops aren't finished with Bentley though. He's still suspecto numero uno in their book. I guess the evidence is just too circumstantial to go throwing the Duke of Moreland in the slammer but…"

  She could hear papers shuffling. "The papers slaughtered him. One of them called the whole investigation the Dance of Death. How's that for cheese? I mean, I know I'm not the reporter here, but come on. Even I would never write a headline like that."

  "Josh, concentrate. Was Bentley so anti-press prior to that point?"

  "I guess that he was a little camera shy before his wife joined the big chorus line in the sky, but after every rag in the country painted him out like Jack the Tapper, he went crazy about the press. When the cops decided to let off a little, he went through and systematically destroyed every paper that so much as ran his wife's obituary."

  Fielding leaned against the wall and thought about Mac's little weekly. It was the small time. Nothing really. Fielding could have bought and sold the thing a dozen times over without dipping into the real reserves, but it was Mac's pride and joy. He loved it more than his many other papers and magazines. Even when he was gone, she would feel compelled to protect it since he'd built it from the ground up. "How did he do that?"

  "Money, money, money. The pernicious root of all evil. Pernicious, that's a good word isn't it? I like the way it just flows off the tongue. Pernicious…pernicious."

  "Josh!"

  He tsked. "Poor Fielding, no time for fun. Too busy trying to steal a man's privacy. Where was I? Oh, yes. Anyway, the man's bank accounts read like a phone book. Numbers everywhere. He probably leaves a pile of gold every time he goes to the john."

  She cringed at the imagery. "Thank you. Anything else?"

  "Not yet. My friend Emma is a gossip columnist over in Jolly Old. She's going to overnight me with all the old articles that she can find. In the mean time, I would suggest confining your interviews with this joker to places other than bedrooms and showers."

  "Sound advice from you, as ever. Oh, by the way you're my ex-step-brother now, and we live together. If some blonde with unreal-sized eyes shows up and asks about me, just tell her that I'm not home."

  "Can I invite her in to wait for you?"

  Fielding sighed. Some days Josh's irrepressible humor was almost more than she could take. "Not unless you can do better than the three carats she's currently sporting."

  "That's a negative, captain. So when will I see you?"

  "Maybe later. Otherwise I'll be by the office in the morning."

  She headed back to the theater deep in thought about Helena Bentley, Chandler Bentley's brutally murdered wife. How odd that it was never talked about. No doubt the English papers lived in fear of even mentioning that Bentley was doing a musical, let alone something about Helena, but the theater community was small and sensational. How had he avoided being discussed backstage at every show he did?

  Fielding actually felt a little sympathy for the man, being hounded by the press that way. How invasive that must have been. Especially for someone who was so inherently private. And she felt doubly bad for his daughter. It must have been so violating. Especially if, to give Bentley the benefit of the doubt, he was innocent as he and Mac both claimed.

  Josh's words came back at her with painful force, turning her stomach with revulsion and fear of the man whose voice she'd heard on the phone. She was trying to steal Chandler Bentley's privacy, he'd said. But she wasn't trying to do that at all, was she? She didn't want to violate his privacy, his space or his life. She just wanted to please the only parent she had ever known and free Bentley from the castigation he had received in the court of public opinion. It was harmless. Even honorable and justified. If she kept telling herself those very words, maybe the discomfort would go away.

  She headed back to the theater in a sud
den flurry of wind and leaves. The weather had been fine when she'd arrived early this morning, but it seemed to be following her mood now, growing cold and morose. She huddled in the holding room waiting for her turn to sing and wondering again why she was doing this. I owe him. I just owe him. The deafening noise of the hundreds of dancers still waiting their turn was nothing but a buzz over the other turmoil in Fielding's head.

  When her turn came to go back on stage, she discovered to her consternation that the house lights were up. A couple rows back four people sat close together, heads bent, whispering. In the first seat, talking to his neighbor with an almost feral smile, was the man with the intense hazel eyes. Definitely Chandler Bentley. In a way, she was relieved to see the man again in the flesh. Despite Daphne's proclamations, a part of her still hadn't been sure the earlier encounter had happened at all.

  Next to him was petite and gorgeous Sara Flynn. Likely she had been cast as one of the principles and wanted to see who her supporting cast would be. On Sara Flynn's left was a portly middle-aged man in an Atlanta Braves cap, whom Fielding guessed to be the director, and the last was Armand Mancier. Fielding had worked with Armand years ago, before Dale, before England and before Mac's sudden illness. But there was little chance that he would remember her.

  She learned that she was wrong on that account almost instantly.

  "Fielding French. You remember me, yes?" A thick French accent still softened his words. Bentley glanced towards the choreographer, then zeroed in on Fielding. She squirmed under the force of his gaze, but didn't look away. Finally, he returned his attention to the cards in his hands.

  "Yes, I do." Shaken by the silent exchange, she forced herself to smile past the irrational fear that Armand would somehow do the math and come up with the right equation. "You choreographed that production of 42nd Street what, seven years ago?"