Read Never Thwart a Thespian: Volume 8 (Leigh Koslow Mystery Series) for Free Online Page A

slowly down the hall. It was one thing for Bess and Frances to bicker with each other for well over a half century; it was another to have to hear about it. If she was lucky, the bat guano would distract Frances for at least twenty minutes, which should be more than enough time for Leigh to get the kids settled and herself the hell out of here before the next harangue.
    She entered the sanctuary to see the kids and Bess just on their way out of the room, heading through the far door to the basement staircase. Frances was already drenching the choir railing with some substance in a spray bottle, and two men were pulling up the filthy carpet and cutting it into strips. As one man jerked up a particularly nasty section, dust exploded into the air so thickly that it looked like Bess had rented a fog machine. Leigh coughed.
    “Sorry about that,” the man apologized. He seemed to be in his late twenties or early thirties, with blond hair, blue eyes, and a boyish grin. “One thing about being a smoker, your lungs are used to the abuse!” he laughed merrily. “But for anyone else, this dust is killer. When the YBC — that’s the Young Businessmen’s Chamber, you know — when we were doing the haunted houses and used the fans, the dust got so bad we had to start wetting down the carpet first. Hey, Gerardo!” he called eagerly, looking at his coworker. “We should try that now!”
    He made a bizarre gesture that Leigh assumed was meant to indicate spraying the carpet with a hose, but looked more like he was waving an imaginary handgun. Gerardo, a tall and rather handsome Hispanic man in his mid to late thirties, raised an eyebrow and stared dubiously.
    “Oh, never mind,” the younger man said, laughing at himself again. He turned to Leigh. “He doesn’t speak English. That’s Gerardo, and I’m Chaz. Are you another relative of Bess’s?”
    “I’m her niece, Leigh. Nice to meet you, Chaz.” She turned to the other man with a nod. “You too, Gerardo.”
    Gerardo nodded back at her politely. He remained mute, his face neutral of expression, but his dark eyes surveyed her with a knowing look she found unnerving. Leigh coughed again, then glanced up at the chancel area to see how her mother was faring. She needn’t have worried, since Frances was already in “haz mat” mode, attacking the guano with gloves, a paper smock, and one of her husband’s surgical face masks. She was scrubbing away like a mad woman, paying no attention whatsoever to anyone else in the room.
    “Did you ever see any of the haunted houses?” Chaz chattered, dropping his end of the carpet and releasing another cloud of dust. Gerardo made a snorting sound, pulled the carpet strip his way, and began to roll it up alone.
    Leigh shook her head. “Sorry. I missed them.”
    “They were really awesome!” Chaz continued proudly. “I’m in the YBC, you know. Or at least I was. I worked three Halloweens here. So if you need to know where anything is, just ask me. They used to call me ‘storage guy!’” He laughed at himself once more, holding his side for effect. “It was hysterical!”
    Leigh shot a glance at Gerardo, and she could swear the man returned a look of wry humor before swiftly averting his gaze.
    Leigh tensed. Though neither of the two men seemed threatening, something was not right with the picture Gerardo presented, and Chaz was rapidly proving himself to be a brainless chatterbox. Before she had so much as a second to disengage herself, Chaz launched into a long story about how he had once lined up a bunch of fake sarcophaguses along the sanctuary wall and then someone else had made them fall like a line of dominos, spilling the plaster mummies out on the carpet and nearly breaking the top of his own foot, which was so badly bruised he had to borrow another guy’s shoes because his instep was so swollen he couldn’t get his work boots back on…
    Leigh nodded and said “oh, really?” at regular intervals, looking for an