“I’m happy to be here,” Jane assured him. “I can stay at a chain hotel anywhere.”
She was happy. They’d been between cases when Logan had heard from an old friend of his—a Texas cop, now an Arizona sheriff—that a skull had appeared mysteriously in the storage cellar of a historic theater. It had sounded fascinating to her and she’d agreed to come out here. The local coroner’s office had deemed the skull to be over a hundred years old and had determined that handing it over to the FBI was justified, so that perhaps the deceased could be identified and given a proper burial. Like most law enforcement agencies, the police here were busy with current cases that demanded answers for the living.
The skull, she knew, was no longer at the theater. She would work at the new sheriff’s office on the highway, but she was intrigued by the opportunity to spend time at the historic theater, learn the history of it and, of course, see where the skull was found.
That was the confusion—and the mystery. No one remembered seeing the skull wearing the wig before. Granted, the theater had been holding shows forever; it had never closed down. And people had been using the various wigs down there forever, too. From her briefing notes, Jane knew that everyone working at the theater and involved with it had denied ever seeing the skull, with or without a wig. It seemed obvious that someone had been playing a prank, but Jane wasn’t sure how identifying the person behind the skull—given that he or she had been dead over a hundred years—would help discover who’d put it on the rack.
The sheriff, Sloan Trent, had wanted to send the skull off to the Smithsonian or the FBI lab, but the mayor had insisted it should stay in Lily until an identification had been made. So, Sloan had requested help from his old friend, Logan Raintree, head of Jane’s Texas Krewe unit of the FBI teams of paranormal investigators known as the Krewe of Hunters. And that had led to Logan’s asking Jane, whose specialty was forensic art, to come here. The medical examiner who’d seen the skull believed it was the skull of a woman and he had estimated that she’d been dead for a hundred to a hundred and fifty years.
“Come, Ms.—or, I guess it’s Agent—Everett!” Henri said, pushing open the slatted doors and escorting her into the Gilded Lily. “Jennie! Come meet our forensic artist!”
Jane tried to take in the room while a slender woman wearing a flowered cotton dress came out from behind the long bar behind some tables to the left. The Gilded Lily, she quickly saw, was the real deal. She felt as if she’d stepped back in time. Of course, her first case with her Krewe—the second of three units—had been in her own hometown of San Antonio and had actually centered on an old saloon. But the Gilded Lily was a theater and a saloon or bar, and like nothing she’d ever seen before. The front tables were ready for poker players, with period furniture that was painstakingly rehabbed. To the right of the entry, an open pathway led to the theater. Rich red velvet drapes, separating the bar area from the stage and audience section, were drawn back with golden cords. The theater chairs weren’t what she would’ve expected. The original owners had aimed for an East Coast ambience, so they, too, were covered in red velvet. The stage, beyond the audience chairs, was broad and deep, allowing for large casts and complicated sets. She saw what appeared to be a real stagecoach on stage right and, over on stage left, reaching from the apron back stage rear, were railroad tracks.
“Hello, welcome!”
The woman who’d been behind the bar came around to the entry, smiling as she greeted Jane. She thrust out her a hand and there was steel in her grip. “I’m Jennie Layton, stage mother.”
“Stage mother?” Jane asked, smiling.
Jennie laughed. “Stage manager. But they call me stage mother—with affection, I hope. I take care of our actors...and just about everything else!” she said.
“Oh, come now! I do my share of the work,” Henri protested.
Jennie smiled. “At night, we have three bartenders, four servers and a barback. And we have housekeepers who come in, too, but as far as full-time employees go, well, it’s Henri and me. And we’re delighted you agreed to stay here.”
“I thought the theater history might help you in identifying the woman,” Henri said.
“Thank you. That makes sense. And it’s beautiful and unique.”
“Lily is unique! And the Gilded Lily is the jewel in her crown,” Henri said proudly.
“Well, come on up. We have you in the Sage McCormick suite,” Jennie told her, beaming.