She put down the receiver, smiled, and gestured to the chrome and glass staircase. “You can use those stairs or there’s an elevator around the corner.”
I must not have been the first to give her such a blank look because she immediately pulled out a floor plan from beneath the counter.
“Here’s where we are. You go up these stairs, through the double doors, left, straight down the hall till it deadends in a cross corridor, take another left and keep going almost to the end. Pell’s door will be open and he says to holler if you don’t find him.”
Beyond the sleek chrome-plated doors on the next level lay the shabby workaday reality I remembered from my tour on Saturday morning. The concrete landing was painted black, as were the industrial-steel steps that led down into the studio area.
“Wow!” said Heather as we stood looking out over the various sets in different stages of being built or torn down.
The whole lower floor was almost in darkness now. The main overhead fluorescents had been turned off and only a few security lights lit the main path through the labyrinth. Yet I could see a bright glow from somewhere over on the far side, as if a single floor lamp had been left burning.
Outside, I knew that the sun was still fairly high in the western sky. In here though, it might as well have been midnight for all the shadowy gloom.
At least the second-floor halls were brightly lit and we kept taking left turns till we fetched up at Pell’s door.
“Ah, you found me.” His long pleasant face warmed with a smile of welcome that included Heather.
“I thought Lynnette was with you,” I said.
“She is. I told her she could go play in the toy section.”
I frowned. “You’re not worried about her wandering around down there in the dark?”
“Is she wandering? I told her not to go past the toys.” He walked past us and out into the hall a few steps to where the landing was.
We followed him. Immediately next to the steps below, a dining room vignette was half built. Or half dismantled. It was hard for a layman to tell. Beyond that, Lynnette sat on the floor under a torchère lamp, about a quarter of the way down one of the long rows. She was surrounded by teddy bears and other stuffed animals.
“Hey, Miss Deborah,” she called. Her braid had loosened and tendrils of fair hair tumbled about her face. “Look at all these bears!”
“You could be Goldilocks,” I called back. To Pell, I said, “I’m all turned around. Point me toward the reception area.”
“Over there.” He pointed across the wide dim expanse to the red exit light. “You came the whole width of the building.”
Like me, Heather was overwhelmed by all the stuff she could see from this landing: not just the movable walls or the two- and three-sided rooms filled with furniture or appliances, the cameras, table saws, workbenches, and so many aisles of accessories down on the floor, but also the chandeliers, paddle fans and hanging lights that were suspended from the catwalks and steel rafters that interconnected and crisscrossed the space overhead.
“And the door you brought Dixie and me through on Saturday?”
“Two aisles over and straight down to the back.”
In the far distance, I could see another red exit light, but between the black-painted floor and walls and the dim lights, it was difficult to make out enough detail for me to orient myself completely.
“Rats in a maze,” Pell said in his usual soft, self-deprecating tone. “Did you want to show Miss McKenzie around?”
“Heather,” she corrected him.
“Heather.” He smiled. “I can put more lights on for you.”
“I do want to show her something,” I said, “but not in the sense you mean. She wants to see Savannah’s hiding place.”
He stiffened. “I don’t think that’s a good idea at all.”
Heather and I had discussed this and I said, “It’s not for a news story, Pell. Remember how you told Dixie and me about that time she went away for four months right before you came here twenty-odd years ago?”
I could tell he thought I was betraying his trust and—by extension—Savannah’s.
“She didn’t go away to get over a love affair,” I said. “She went away to have a baby.”
“Ah.” Pell looked at Heather a long considering moment, then nodded. “Yes, I see.”
“I brought pictures,” Heather said, hefting a manila envelope in her hand. “Documents. I thought if I could just find her, sit quietly for a few minutes and show her some of my baby pictures, maybe she’d—”
“Clasp you to her bosom and tell you to call her Mommy?”
“Pell!” I was surprised that he could be so harsh.
“Sorry, Deborah. Heather. But even when Savannah was well, sentimentality was never her thing. And now we’re dealing with a very sick woman. She’s not going to respond in any predictable way. So I really am sorry, ladies, but I can’t let you in.” He turned to me. “Besides, David Underwood took my key, remember?”
“I expect you found another,” I said dryly. “And of course, Savannah has her own. She’s in there right now, isn’t she?”
“I mean it, Deborah, you can’t go in.” His long homely face was distressed.
I held up my hands to calm him. “We won’t. But, Pell, if she’s so sick, she needs help. You know she does.”
“I’m trying to convince her—”
“You can’t convince a delusional person. Believe me, I know. I sit on mental health hearings all the time. There are times when you just have to do what’s best for the person until they’re well enough to make their own decisions again.”
“She didn’t kill anybody,” he said. “Not Chan, not—”
He broke off abruptly.
“Not who, Pell?” I asked softly. “Evelyn? Is that why Savannah flipped out eighteen months ago? You said she was here when Evelyn fell, and you meant that literally, didn’t you?”
Heather was bewildered. “Who’s Evelyn?”
“It was an accident.” Pell’s eyes were anguished. “It really was an accident. I was in the stacks rounding up a handful of things to dress the set when Evelyn went up the steps. Savannah was at the end of the aisle. I heard her gasp ‘Oh, no!’ just as Evelyn screamed. Then Savannah started screaming and everyone came running…”
His voice trailed off in memory. “She used to have cycles, Savannah did, and the highs kept getting higher and the lows were dragging bottom. She was near the end of a pretty bad low when it happened and she just couldn’t handle the pain. Seeing Evelyn fall knocked her for such a loop that we had to commit her to the local hospital till her father could send someone to take her back to Georgia.”
Pell turned to Heather. “You saw her in the hospital down there, so you know.”
“Yes.” She looked very young standing there, gazing up into his worried face. “But I also know I can’t go back to Boston without seeing her and having at least one serious talk together.”
Pell sighed. “Okay. I’ll try. Why don’t you sit down on the steps here? If I can get her to come out, she might feel less menaced if she’s taller.”
“Should I leave?” I asked.
“No,” said Heather. “She knows you.”
I sat down and leaned back on my elbows. “Okay. Tell her Ms. Sotelli’s here, too.”
As we waited, we watched Lynnette play. She had found an antique wicker doll carriage and tucked a few teddy bears in, then set up a tea party on the floor for the others. We could hear her murmuring to herself, carrying on a lively conversation for five or six different characters. It was all very peaceful and quiet.
“She probably won’t come,” Heather said pessimistically for the third time.
That’s when we heard footsteps in the hallway.
We had moved down a couple of steps to leave room for her to sit above us if she chose, but Pell followed behind her with a chair, which he placed on the landing.