"No." She checked the cookies in the oven, tongue stuck between her teeth and portable phone pinched between cheek and shoulder. "I mean it, Gil. I have to be assistant leader for the Brownie meeting tonight." They weren't burned, not really. She was fairly sure that if ten years ago someone had told her that one day she would be stressing over chocolate chip cookies and Girl Scout meetings, she would have laughed herself sick. It was still a fairly laughable situation. "You've known about this for three weeks now."
"I need you. You're the people person."
If she had a dime for every time he threw that back in her face... "Call Nick. He's a people person too."
"He has plans."
"So. Do. I." Now she was leaning rather heavily on her tolerated insubordination.
"Fine. I'll call him."
Judging by the peevish tone in his voice she would pay for her refusal later. With that in mind, she decided to push it a little further. "You need to trust him more."
"I trust him." The way he snapped that out, far too quickly, told her she'd hit a nerve. "I wouldn't have hired him otherwise."
"You and I both know that's not the same thing." She dug the spatula into the nearly black edge of the cookie, trying to separate it from the non-stick pan, wondering how on earth it could still be that soggy in the middle. "Call him."
There was a huff of frustration on the other end, and she rolled her eyes, safe in the knowledge that he was half a city away.
"I'll be in right after the meeting," she pointed out in a half-hearted attempt to mollify him. "But I've been skimping on assistant leader duties all year. I have to go tonight."
"I'll see you later, then."
His goodbye caught her in the middle of pulling the second tray from the oven, and she had to listen to dial tone for a few seconds while she slid the tray onto the top of the stove and resolved to buy a new oven mitt as soon as possible. The one she was currently using had a large blackened area in the palm and no longer insulated against heat very well - Lindsey had left it on a burner once while making carefully supervised scrambled eggs. Apparently not supervised enough - the smoke had set off the fire alarm, and Catherine had had to throw the oven mitt into the sink and douse it with water. And then there had been another five minutes of shrieking noise while she tried to find the stool to turn off the alarm.
That had been two years ago, and she still hadn't replaced the oven mitt. It was yet another sign that she needed to live more and work less - yet another sign she was sure she would end up ignoring.
Nick slid the SUV into the parking space easily, long practice allowing him easy maneuverability with the bulky car. The sun was beginning to descend in the sky, throwing long shadows, but he still slid his sunglasses on out of habit. It was a reflex that probably came from too many years of working the night shift; anything other than pitch black felt oddly bright.
He took them off once he entered the theater, and flashed his badge at the staff entrance. A quick query to one of the other uniformed officers told him that Grissom and Brass were conducting their interviews in the green room. He rememberd the way from the night before and shouldered his way into the room, evidence kit in hand.
"Nick," Brass acknowledged him with a nod.
"I need you to interview Mallory Smith and Scott Loring," Grissom said without looking up from his opened binder, where he was obviously overviewing notes. "Ms. Smith is waiting just next door, in the cast dressing room, and Scott Loring will be arriving within the hour."
"Okay," he said, nodding his understanding.
"Detective Conroy will be working with you," Brass said with a knowing grin.
Nick tried not to wince. He'd appreciated being called in to help, especially after he'd told Grissom he had plans and rather effectively nixed his chance for overtime. But he and Erin Conroy did not get along, something he'd never been able to understand. Sara would have told him that was his male ego run amok, and he would have agreed with her if he thought he'd done the slightest thing to offend the female detective, but in this case, he had absolutely no idea what transgression he'd committed. As far as he could tell, she had taken an instant and total dislike to him, and they hadn't been able to progress past that in the two years she'd been a homicide detective in Vegas.
"Backround," Grissom said, backing up a few pages in his notes and finally glancing up at Nick. "We have a statement from the prop manager, Neil Meadows, that Mallory Smith was in a relationship with Richard Ellory at the same time as Bianca Tolmen. This relationship had lasted longer than was apparently normal for Mr. Ellory. Ms. Smith seemed to enjoy a relatively elevated status within the company until Ms. Tolmen arrived, at which point she became her understudy."
"I'd say that's motive," Nick observed, raising an eyebrow. "And Scott Loring?"
"You know as much as we do," Grissom said with a shrug. "He had dinner with Ms. Tolmen the night she died."
"But he couldn't have poisoned her," Nick pointed out. "Strychnine acts fast."
"He could still have poisoned her. He just didn't do it at dinner. Anyway, judging by the number of messages the fiancé left, I'd say he was the jealous type. Find out if he had any reason to be jealous of Scott Loring."
"Point taken. Okay - next door?" His query was met with a nod. "Right."
Erin Conroy was indeed sitting next door, in a delicate metal chair that looked like it was far more suited to its original purpose of dressing table chair than as a prop in a police interrogation. Across from her was a petite young woman with light brown hair swept back in a pony tail. She had a gymnast's spare, whipcord build and wore no makeup, seemingly preferring instead to rely upon a clear complexion and wide blue-green eyes. It was a look that worked for her, Nick noted with no small amount of masculine observation.
"Detective Conroy," he addressed, careful to start off the exchange as much on the defensive as he could be. They needed to work as a team if they were going to get through this like professionals.
"CSI Stokes," she responded coolly.
Well, so much for that.
He held out his hand to Mallory Smith, and felt only bone when he took it, a rather unnerving sensation. "I'm Nick Stokes, I'm with the Crime Lab." He sat down when she released his hand, irrationally nervous that he would break the small chair.
"Mallory Smith," she said, smiling nervously. "I'm not really sure why I'm here. I barely even saw what happened - I was pretty far in the back of the wedding crowd."
"Hmmm," Erin said. "Well, actually, our questions don't really have anything to do your observations on that night's performance."
"Okay..." the actress said with a frown. "What, then? Bianca and I weren't all that close."
Erin nodded, and flipped back a few pages in her notes. "How long have you been with the company?"
"About six years now. I moved to Las Vegas from San Diego - I was at the university there. Dance major...I wanted to be a showgirl."
"And you ended up performing Shakespeare?" Nick asked, intensely curious. Usually it happened the other way around.
"It's still the stage," Mallory answered, as if that were an explanation in itself.
"And how long have you known Richard Ellory?" Erin picked up the questioning.
Instantly, Mallory's entire body language changed. She leaned back and crossed her arms, eyes narrowing slightly. "What does that have to do with anything?"
Nick tried his best charming smile. "Humor us."
"Since I got here, pretty much. More like I knew of him. We didn't actually become friends until earlier this season. I landed the part of Hippolyta in Midsummer Night's Dream." Her voice was proud, challenging.
"Friends?" Erin asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.
"I'm sorry, I really don't see what bearing my private life has on this investigation. What happened to Bianca was horrible. I had nothing to do with it. End of story."
"You didn't answer the question," Nick pointed out.
"You didn't really ask one," Mallory rebutted.
"Let me rephrase," Erin tried with the sickly sweet smile Nick knew so well, and was intensely grateful that it wasn't turned on him this time. "We have testimony from other members of the theater company suggesting that your relationship with Mr. Ellory went well beyond friendship. Do you wish to confirm or deny those statements?"
If Mallory's eyes narrowed anymore, she would look like a cat. "Richard and I became lovers midway through the production."
"Thank you," Nick said, with a gracious smile.
Erin didn't choose the gracious route. "So, you were here for six years, and then just this fall you finally got a lead role, the lead actor - things were looking pretty good. It must have been incredibly frustrating when Ms. Tolmen arrived and took all of that away from you."
Fingers drumming restlessly against the long shelf of the room-length dressing table behind her, Mallory was now officially pissed off. "Bianca was an incredibly gifted actress. She won the role. That's the nature of theater. And I don't know who you're getting these 'statements' from, but Richard and I are still together."
"Still, he was also pursuing a relationship with Ms. Tolmen during this production. You're trying to tell me that didn't bother you at all?"
"It bothered me," Mallory admitted. "But it was over before she died. If you think I killed her in a jealous rage, then your logic is more than slightly flawed. And if you're looking for professional jealousy, why don't you look in Josephine's direction? It was no secret that Hero was just a stepping stone for Bianca. She wanted it all - and she could have had it, too, even over Josephine. The lead actress reduced to playing the ingenue to a girl just out of college? In the grand scheme of things, she had a lot more to lose than I did. And they hated each other. Again, no secret."
"If we want to talk to Ms. Calvert about her problems with Ms. Tolmen, then we'll ask her," Erin reminded the other woman. "Right now, we're talking about you."
"And I told you. I had nothing to do with it. I only saw Bianca on stage that night. She mostly kept to herself."
Nick tapped Erin on the shoulder and leaned in slightly. "We have no evidence tying her to any of the crime scenes. If we find anything, we can come back, but for now, all we're getting is her more pissed off."
For a moment, he thought she was going to disagree with him out of sheer spite, but she nodded quickly. "You can go, Ms. Smith. We'll be in touch later if we have any more questions."
Mallory didn't bother to say goodbye, and the only reason the door didn't slam was because it was set on a spring specifically so that it wouldn't slam while there was a production going on.
As soon as the door had closed fully, Nick shook his head. "I don't like her for it."
"She was evasive and occasionally outright devious," Erin countered angrily.
"You pushed her buttons."
"She fingered Calvert too fast."
"She had a point."
Detective and CSI glared at each other, and finally Nick held up his hands in mock surrender.
"Hey, look. It could go either way. But we don't have enough evidence to know yet. Truce?"
Erin looked at him suspiciously out of the corner of her eye for a few seconds, and then shrugged. "Yeah. Sure. I'll go get Loring."
"Richard Ellory," Brass read. "Fifty-two years old. Originally from Seattle. He did a couple of movies when he was in his twenties, came to Vegas when he was thirty-two and has been with the company since then. He's been getting leads for about the last ten years. And, I should tell you some information that's not on this handy little summary the background boys came up with. He and Mobley were frat brothers together. Pledged the same year."
"That explains why I've already gotten two calls from our good sherriff about this case," Grissom mused, leaning back in his chair, fist under his chin as he thought. "The question is, is he protecting him in the hope of innocence or the knowledge of guilt?"
"Mobley may be more of a politician than a policeman, but he wouldn't knowingly protect a criminal," Brass rebutted, quick to defend the honor of even a former cop.
"We'll see," Grissom evaded just as the door opened and Richard was escorted into the room by a uniformed officer.
"Detective Jim Brass, Las Vegas PD, and this is CSI Gil Grissom, Las Vegas Crime Lab," Brass introduced them. "Why don't you have a seat, Mr. Ellory."
Richard Ellory had aged spectacularly, and Grissom was surprised to feel the smallest amount of male envy in himself. Without prior knowledge of his actual age, an educated guess would have placed the actor in his mid to late thirties. He had jet-black hair only going slightly steel-grey at the temples, dark blue eyes, and a bone structure that made his features ageless. He sat with grace and somehow managed to look as if he were completely commanding a room in which he was decidedly at the disadvantage.
"Detective Brass, Mr. Grissom," he acknowledged them both in turn. "I assume that you think I have something of aid to offer in the investigation."
Brass raised an eyebrow at the excessively formal beginning. "I'd say that's safe to assume."
Richard nodded slowly, his face expressionless. "I see. Then I shall have to start by saying, in the most clichéd manner possible, that I had nothing to do with what happened to Bianca."
Thrust, parry. Grissom watched, fascinated. He had seen Richard Ellory perform onstage a dozen times, and had always admired his affected elegance. It seemed it was a characteristic he carried over into his life, as well. Was it an act, a bleeding of his stage persona into his personality, or had he always possessed that air?
"I wouldn't have expected you to say anything else. We just have a few more questions," Brass said, bulldogging ahead in his intimable manner. "What can you tell us about your relationship with Ms. Tolmen?"
"We were, briefly, lovers," Richard answered easily. "For a period of perhaps three weeks. Previous to that, we were good friends, and post-separation we remained good friends."
Grissom and Brass exchanged a surprised glance. They hadn't expected him to admit to the relationship quite so quickly.
"How was the separation itself?" Grissom prodded.
"As amicable as such things can be," the actor replied with a shrug.
"That's funny," Brass continued. "We hear it was pretty messy."
Richard ducked his head to hide a small smile. "I see you've been listening to gossip. In the interests of complete honesty: yes, I did initially react rather badly. In the heat of the moment, I said several things that were less than considerate. As I imagine any human being would."
"Uh huh," Brass grunted.
"With a small amount of distance, I realized that she had made the correct decision for logical reasons. I am not a vengeful man, Detective Brass. Return to those who told you of my earlier rash words and ask them what my interactions with Bianca after that day were like. I assure you, they were as warm as they had been previously." He leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs, twining his fingers and catching his knee in them.
He was cold - almost too cold. Apart from the small smile, his expression hadn't wavered in the slightest, and Grissom found himself comparing Richard's composure to Josephine Calvert's. They were well-suited to act across from each other, both with their elegance and perfect manners and blunt honesty. He'd been a criminalist for too long to take that at face value.
"And your relationship with Mallory Smith?" Brass pushed.
Richard nodded slightly, as if he had expected that question next. "Mallory and I have been seeing each other for approximately five months now."
"Five months? Really? What was going on with you and Ms. Tolmen, then?"
He seemed to ponder for a few seconds before replying. "Mutual human weakness. I'm afraid I can't give you any better explanation than that."
"And Mallory was just okay with that?"
"She never expressed an opinion one way or the other that I recall."
"Because you never told her or because you never asked her what she thought?"
"Both. Either." Another careless shrug. "To fall back on another cliché, Mallory is not a murderer."
"But that's just your opinion." Brass was clearly becoming increasingly frustrated. Richard was being just open enough that no one could accuse him of hiding anything, but evasive enough to lead them to suspect that he was hiding something.
"Do you have any hobbies, Mr. Ellory?" Grissom interrupted, trying another tack.
That got a reaction - mild surprise flickering in his dark blue eyes as he refocused his attention from detective to CSI. "I do. What makes you ask?"
Grissom tried his best guileless shrug. "Just curious, I guess. What kinds of things do you do?"
"I read. I golf and swim." Richard's expression was now openly quizzical. "Any number of other small things."
"How about wood carving?"
"Yes. In a manner of speaking. I've been hand-carving a small sailboat for several years now. Call it an exercise in progressive futility. Boat-building in the middle of the desert is not the most practical of endeavors."
Grissom had to smile. "No, I suppose it isn't. Thank you, Mr. Ellory, we have no further questions."
The actor was clearly still wondering where the question about wood carving had come from, but he surmounted that quickly and stood, shaking each man's hand in turn. "If I can be of any assistance in the future, please do not hesitate to contact me. I want as much as you do to apprehend whoever did this to Bianca."
"Oh, we will," Brass said sourly, and glared at Richard's back as he left the green room. "Wood carving, huh?" he asked as soon as the door had closed and they were once again alone.
"Another possible source of the sawdust we found in the dressing room and the bed sheets."
"I'd say we have our lead suspect," Brass said with a satisfied smirk.