Wes slid the flyers back into the file and turned to Jenna. “Did you hear about the body they found up on Catwalk Point?”
“Just a little on the news this morning.”
“Scary, isn’t it?” Rinda said. “It’s not something you’d expect to happen around here…I mean, this isn’t the big city—everybody knows just about everybody.”
Jenna said, “I don’t think anyone really knows anyone else.”
“That’s because you’re not from around here,” Rinda said.
“No, I think she’s right. I’ve heard there are public lives, personal lives, and private lives. The public life is the one everyone sees in your daily routine, the personal one you reveal to your family and closest friends, but your private life, that’s just what you know about yourself, what you hide from everyone else.” Wes drained his cup as the words sank in.
“You’re saying that you really don’t know me, even though we’re brother and sister?”
“I don’t know you privately. Your most intimate thoughts or actions. And neither of you,” he moved his hand from Rinda to Jenna as he looked directly at Jenna, “has any idea of what I’m like. Privately.”
“What are you trying to do, freak us out?” Rinda asked.
“Just tellin’ it like it is.” He winked at Jenna, left his cup on the edge of Rinda’s desk, then hurried up the back stairs.
“Sometimes he can be so weird,” Rinda whispered. “I don’t believe we’re really related.”
“I heard that!” he said from somewhere overhead. “Remember, Big Brother is watching and listening.”
“Then hear this—get to work.”
“Yeah, yeah…”
Rinda rolled her eyes. “That’s what I get for letting him and Scott wire the place.”
Twenty minutes later the stairs creaked with the weight of Wes’s footsteps. “I think I found the spot that needs repair,” he announced, returning to Rinda’s office. “I’ll run a new wire and that should take care of the problem.”
“I hope.”
“Trust me,” he said, and his gaze moved to Jenna’s as he zipped his jacket. “Younger sister. As I said before, she has ‘no faith.”
“Limited faith. I have limited faith,” Rinda countered.
He checked his watch and winced. “Gotta run.” Flashing a smile at his sister and Jenna, he added, “Seems like you’re on top of things.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Rinda said as he lifted his hand and left, his boots ringing on the hardwood floor as he exited through the front. The double doors banged hard behind him.
Rinda shivered as a blast of cold air swept inside. “We’ve got to find a way to insulate this place.” She walked to the thermostat and turned the heat up a few more degrees. “Can’t have the paying customers freezing. By the way, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
“Shoot.”
“Did you take back the black silk dress—you know, the sheath with the beaded neckline? The one you wore in Resurrection?”
“Take it back? No. I donated it to the troupe. Why?”
Fine lines appeared between Rinda’s eyebrows. “It’s missing.”
“Missing?”
“Yeah, Lynnetta came in over the weekend and was going to make a few alterations to it and she couldn’t find it.”
“But it was in the large stage closet.”
“I know. I checked the closet.”