Darkness Before the Dawn (Maggie Bennett 2)

Maggie couldn’t resist a smug little smile. “I guess we are,” she agreed, reaching for more coffee.

Randall watched her reflection in the window and smiled his own smugly triumphant smile.

seven

“Don’t you think a cocktail party is a little macabre?” Maggie muttered under her breath a few hours later, looking around the chattering, well-dressed people on the bare sound-stage at Stoneham Studios.

“It’s not a cocktail party, it’s a wake,” Randall said in a reproving voice. “Haven’t you noticed? Everyone’s wearing black.”

“Even me.” She looked down at her clinging silk dress with a disconsolate eye. It was Kate’s, and it was too small for Maggie’s long-limbed body. The black hem showed far too much leg, the bodice clung almost indecently, and the sleeves pinched her arms. But it was black, and at least somewhat formal, and that was all that mattered.

“There you are.” Kate bustled up, breathless, pale, and edgy. “I was afraid you weren’t going to make it.” Her look at Randall was a combination of awe and surprise; Maggie could well understand both. As for her awe, Randall Carter in black was even more impressive than Randall Carter in dove gray, and he was easily the best-dressed man in the room, which was full of well-dressed men. But that was nothing new.

Her surprise, Maggie knew, was for his date. Ever since Mack’s death, she’d kept herself away from men. Not out of any misplaced sense of mourning—she was too well-adjusted for that. It was simply that no man had interested her.

Randall was a hell of a way to start dating again, she thought morosely. But then, she had had no choice in the matter. Kate had called Maggie and Randall separately, inviting them to the party, and she could think of no good reason not to go with him. She’d done her best to remove any illusion that they might actually be socializing by alternating snappishness with silence, until Randall had finally snapped back.

“Your charm, Maggie dear, leaves a lot to be desired.”

“I reserve my charm for those who deserve it,” she said, knowing her voice sounded sulky but unwilling to do anything about it.

He’d paused at the entrance to Stoneham Studios. It was a huge warehouse on Chicago’s West Side, and it was just after six on a sultry summer evening. The heat lay heavy in the air, heavy along her nerves. “I thought we were going to cooperate with each other.”

“I’m cooperating,” she said. “I’m just not friendly.”

He’d raised that damnable eyebrow again. “Really? You could have fooled me.” His hand reached out to politely take her elbow, but she yanked herself out of his reach before he could touch her.

This time when he took her arm, she couldn’t pull away, not in a crowd of people. Not that she didn’t try, but his long, thin fingers bit into the soft flesh above her elbow, and her choice was to make a scene or relax. She promised herself that the scene would come later. Kate was staring at them, her brown eyes wide, and Maggie quickly placed a grim smile on her mouth.

“Maybe you’d better introduce us to our hostess,” she said sweetly, moving her high-heeled foot purposefully toward Randall’s instep.

“And then we’ll mingle,” Randall added, side-stepping her attack neatly, his fingers tightening. “Come along, Maggie.”

Alicia Stoneham was a great, cheerful, horsey woman with rawhide skin covered with freckles, red hair that was graying in patches, large, tobacco-stained teeth, and a fuschia-colored mouth that often gave way to a braying laugh that had the uncanny ability to make other people laugh, too. She was sitting on the strangest couch Maggie had ever seen, composed of chrome and hot pink plastic, with horns and tendrils and other strange protuberances. Alicia caught Maggie’s look of astonishment and emitted her braying laugh as she surged to her feet to look her directly in the eye. Which meant she was over six feet tall, since she was barefoot and Maggie was wearing heels, Maggie thought as she took the huge, hamlike hand that Alicia thrust at her.

“It’s a prop,” Alicia announced in a voice that still maintained a western twang, gesturing toward the sofa, “from one of Francis’s sci-fi epics. Damn, I’ll miss that boy.” She shook her head sadly, and the diamond drop earrings, entirely real and worth a small fortune, shook with her. “You’re little

Kate’s sister, aren’t you? You’ve got the look of your Ma about you.”

Sybil Bennett was almost a foot shorter and much more lushly built than Maggie, and she had carefully retouched raven hair, but Maggie nodded anyway. “So I’ve been told. You’ve met Randall Carter?”

Alicia eyed him approvingly. “You sure work fast, boy,” she brayed. “Are you going to be as fast coming to a decision about the Studio?”

Randall smiled his chilly smile. “I never talk business after hours, Mrs. Stoneham,” he said in the wintry voice that had quelled many a lesser person.

Alicia Stoneham was made of sterner stuff. “Hell, call me Alicia,” she shouted, slapping the elegant Randall on his elegant back. “Mrs. Stoneham’s my mother-in-law, may she rest in peace. Not that she will, of course. That woman was a troublemaker from way back. I don’t doubt she’s stirring up St. Peter something fierce.”

“What makes you think she isn’t stirring up the devil?” Maggie asked, feeling immediate fondness for Alicia Stoneham. Anyone who pounded Randall Carter deserved high marks.

“Hell, that woman was so damned good, she’d make a nun feel guilty,” said Alicia, gesturing with her cigarette and dropping ashes all over Randall’s shoes. “Now me, I’m a hell-raiser from way back. I never let a little morality get in the way of what needs to be done. It’s a lesson you all could learn.” She gestured to the group around her. Maggie could see Caleb in the background; he had a disapproving expression on his long, dour face, and she flashed him a friendly smile.

The fingers tightened again, and she turned to glower at her unwanted escort.

“Who the hell is that?” Randall demanded.

Maggie smiled sweetly at him. Her tallest heels didn’t quite bring her up to his height, but she arched her neck and looked him straight in the eye. “Alicia Stoneham.”

“I mean the man you were grinning at.”