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“Impossible. They would never get a gun past security.”

“Unless it’s one of them plastic guns, the ones that can be printed with a 3D printer. They don’t show up on security scanners.”

Odelia heaved a deep sigh.“Let’s just hope nothing happens. I don’t want Opal to die on my watch. Well, I don’t want her to die, period, but especially not on our watch.”

“If that happened, I’m sure she’d kill us,” said Gran acerbically.

Chapter 13

Opal was clearly in her element. As she launched into her opening monologue, the crowd was laughing at her jokes, and it was obvious the woman was born to do this job.

“She’s good, Max,” said Dooley as we watched on. We’d found ourselves a prime spot to watch the show, where we were out of sight for both the audience and the cameras.

“Yeah, she certainly is,” I agreed.

Odelia, meanwhile, stood chewing her bottom lip and looking particularly ill at ease. As a detective hired to protect Opal this was a tricky moment: the star was seated on stage in front of an audience of about a hundred people. Anyone could simply walk up to her and do her harm. Several security people were present, but Odelia was still nervous.

“The killer is probably up there,” said Dooley, whose train of thought was clearly following my own. He was pointing to the series of booths behind the audience, near the studio’s ceiling. “I once saw a movie where the killer sat in one of those booths with a sniper rifle,” he added cheerfully. “Luckily he missed that time and Clint caught him.”

“Not helping, Dooley,” I said as Odelia’s gaze now traveled up to the booths indicated and the chewing intensified. If this went on her lip wouldn’t survive the onslaught.

“I’m sure the security people wouldn’t let a sniper with a sniper rifle into the building,” I said, and Odelia nodded, clearly on the same page.

“Oh, but this particular sniper paid off a member of the security team,” said Dooley. “Very easy to do, and you’ll never find out who it was they paid off to turn a blind eye.”

“God,” Odelia groaned, and suddenly took off, presumably to check out those booths.

“Now look what you’ve done. Odelia has gone off to find your sniper.”

“He’s notmy sniper, Max. I didn’t pay him to shoot Opal. Someone else did.”

“We better go and help her,” I said, and turned to follow Odelia.

I almost bumped into Harriet and Brutus, who’d suddenly materialized.

“Where are you going, Max?” asked Brutus.

“Dooley thinks there might be a gunman hiding in the rafters,” I said.

“Oh, crap,” said Brutus and both him and Harriet joined us in our hot pursuit.

We mounted a staircase and soon found ourselves in an area of the studio that obviously didn’t attract the attention of the cleaning crew, as there were dust bunnies everywhere, and a sizable layer of grime and soot. It was also very hot up there. Not the best seats in the house, I imagined. Soon we were crawling higher and higher, and temperatures were rising. Finally we arrived in a narrow darkened corridor and I could see Odelia already opening the door to one of the booths located one next to the other.

As I joined her and took a peek inside, I saw lots of technical equipment, and a lone technician seated behind a panel with plenty of buttons and knobs and switches. He looked up when Odelia walked in, lifted his headphones and said,“Everything all right?”

“Oh, sure,” said Odelia, giving him two thumbs up. “Just curious to see what kind of work goes into producing a show like this.”

“Plenty of sweat and tears, trust me,” said the guy, then let the earphones drop back onto his head and focused on what was happening down below on stage.

Odelia closed the door, and proceeded to the next booth. This one was empty, and only consisted of a couple of seats and monitors. Presumably so a producer or network executive could watch the show without being disturbed. There were two more booths, one of which held the guy in charge of the lighting, and one where three people sat staring at several screens showing different angles of stage and audience, and picking a different camera angle every couple of seconds. They didn’t even look up from their job.

“No snipers,” said Odelia finally. “Phew.”

“Phew,” Dooley echoed. “What a relief!”

“A lot of fuss for nothing,” Brutus grumbled.

“At least we got to see what the show looks like from way up here,” said Odelia.

And just as we were about to return down below, suddenly there was a loud scream. And as we looked down, I saw how a large section of the lighting gear detached itself from the frame holding it up and crashed onto the stage below, narrowly missing Opal!

“The killer is down there!” said Harriet.