Music to Die For Read Free Page B

shoes.
    She did the best she could when she bought dress shoes, and these heels were only an inch high, but her toes still felt pinched. More than once she’d wanted to ask a shoe manufacturer why anyone might think normal toes would fit comfortably in what they were offering. And—also more than once—she’d wondered what would happen if she wore lace-up walking shoes to a fancy occasion.
    As Carrie hurried across the loop driveway, she wished she’d started her shoe revolution tonight.
    But thank goodness, the door of the administration building was unlocked. Someone must be working late, maybe a cleaning crew getting ready for the spring opening.
    A few dim lights were on, but she didn’t see anyone as she hurried down the hallway past the open doors of the small auditorium, classrooms, and offices. The click of her heels echoed in the dark building, and, in spite of squished toes, she began to tiptoe. The furtive action brought back an image of the woman who had moved so silently through the forest.
    “The gowerow has taken the child.”
    Surely the strange woman was only a harmless local character, but her message was so weird.
    At last Carrie reached the back door of the building. It wasn’t locked either. She shoved the heavy door open and peered out. The craft village looked deserted, and the buildings were just one-dimensional humps against glaring security lights on the back of the main auditorium, but there was enough light to see the concrete walkway.
    Now, before she left the building... She took the napkin out of her purse and was chewing sticky, peach-soaked cornbread as she slipped through the heavy door and let it click shut.
    The hexagonal craft huts huddled close to the walk on either side of her, but their blank fronts made them all anonymous. They offered no hint of the rich displays of the potter, ironworker, weaver, and other inheritors of the Ozarks’ traditional self-sufficiency that would be showing their skills when the area opened to the public.
    The dark patches of the Heritage Herb Garden spread down the hill in raised beds on her left, and Carrie spent a moment wondering what mysteries might be unveiled there during the coming weekend. She looked forward to learning more about the preparation and use of traditional herbs grown here.
    She came to a final turn in the walk just as she was finishing the last bite of cornbread and wiping peach syrup off her fingers. She could see the stage door at the back of the auditorium and the dark shape of the outdoor stage next to it.
    The glow of a cigarette came and went. Someone was standing in the shadows at the edge of the outdoor stage, smoking. Probably one of the performers. Smoking wasn’t allowed inside. At least that meant the back door would be unlocked.
    Ignoring the person with the cigarette, she walked up the ramp and pulled on the stage door. It didn’t open. She tugged again, rattling the door, then knocked on the metal with her fist.
    “Kin I he’p you?” a male voice said from behind her.
    She jumped at the sound. She’d been concentrating on the closed door. “Well, yes, I’m looking for Farel Teal.”
    “Ain’t here. Who’s askin’?”
    “I am,” Carrie said stiffly. “And who are you?”
    The cigarette was pinched out, and a man walked toward her out of the shadows.
    As he came into the light over the stage door, she saw that he was probably about her age, in his sixties, and his face had the weathered look of a man who spends most of his time outdoors.
    “Name’s Ben. I work here, backstage. T’aint nothin’ around here I don’t know about, and I kin tell you Farel Teal won’t come rushin’ through the door ’til the last minute. He’s not one fer doin’ anythin’ extra, and comin’ in early is too much extra fer him.”
    Ben stopped and glared into her face, which was easy, since his stooped form was only a few inches taller than her own five feet two, and he now stood less than three feet in front of