excerpt from "The Theft of Leopold’s Badge"

[rufusluciusivan]

The excerpt is from a book written by Edward D. Hoch. A surprisingly detailed scene compared to the brief mentions we usually get in mainstream Stories. It even features a second scene with the victim after she's found.

On what was to be the most exciting and memorable day of her young life, Rita Mulroney arrived early at the Parker Museum of Fine Art. She’d been up before dawn in the hotel room she was sharing with Christina Black, checking her costume and reviewing the plan for the day’s events. She’d moved heaven and earth with the casting director in Manhattan to win a spot as one of the nine muses in the day-long pageant, and she wasn’t going to miss her big opportunity.
 
It was, in reality, an elaborate fund-raising activity for the benefit of the Parker Museum, beginning with “Breakfast with the Muses” at eight a.m. It was designed mainly to attract the community’s business and financial leaders, who would be entertained by dancing girls while they breakfasted on eggs Benedict and hopefully pledged a generous sum for the museum’s expansion. This would be followed by luncheon and dinner performances by the muses for other community and social leaders, all in the museum’s Grand Atrium, surrounded by ten centuries of art treasures.
 
The nine muses, mostly modern dance students recruited in New York, had been in town for two nights already, and had held a dress rehearsal at the museum the previous evening, running through the simple dance numbers they’d be performing during each of the meals. Rita Mulroney had been cast as Erato, the muse of erotic poetry.
 
Leaving the hotel room at six-thirty, she shook Christina awake and told her the time. Then she hurried downstairs and found a taxi. She was at the back door of the Parker Museum before seven, and it was the director himself, Samuel Pearlman, who admitted her. He recognized her at once from the previous night’s rehearsal. “It’s Rita, isn’t it? You’re early. Sorry about this rain but I think it’s stopped.”
 
“I thought I’d change into my costume here and limber up a bit. The others should be along soon.”
 
Pearlman was a balding, paunchy man in his early fifties who looked more like an old-style banker than the director of an art museum. He smiled at her a bit mechanically and directed her down the basement hall to the makeshift dressing room by the employees’ lockers.
 
Rita’s costume, which she carried in a tubular canvas tote bag, consisted of a flesh-colored body stocking, together with a toga-like garment whose color provided the dancers with their only individuality. Hers was saffron and her hotel roommate Christina would be wearing a pale blue. Rita unzipped her bag and quickly shed her street clothes. She’d barely gotten into her body stocking when the dressing room door opened to admit another woman. She was older than Rita, perhaps in her mid-thirties, but still quite attractive, with platinum-blonde hair framing a pale face.
 
“Hello, there,” the woman said by way of greeting. “Are you one of the muses?” She was about Rita’s size, with good legs.
 
“That’s right.” Rita was busy slipping into her saffron-colored toga. “Rita Mulroney.”
 
The young woman smiled pleasantly. “Me too.”
 
“You’re a muse? I didn’t see you at rehearsal last night.”
 
“I’m filling in for one of the girls that’s sick. My name is Sandra Paris.” She started unbuttoning her dark blue raincoat.
 
Rita still wasn’t quite convinced. “Where’s your costume?”
 
“You’re wearing it,” Sandra Paris said, and her fist shot out to clip Rita on the jaw.
 
* * * *
 
By the time Rita Mulroney came to, a few minutes later, Sandra was busy tying her hands and feet. The younger woman tried to scream but there was already a gag in her mouth, held in place with adhesive tape. “Now,” Sandra said, hoisting her to her feet, “I’m going to put you in the maintenance closet across the hall. Just don’t be too noisy, though, or something worse might happen to you. Understand me?”
 
Rita nodded, her eyes above the gag wide and terrified. Working fast, Sandra Paris checked the hallway to make sure it was still deserted, then carried the girl across to the closet, leaving her on the floor on a pile of rags. She returned quickly to the dressing room and came back with Rita’s street clothes and her tote bag, throwing the coat over the girl and the rest on the floor beside her. “I wouldn’t want you to catch cold on my account,” she laughed.
 
She was back in the dressing room slipping into Rita’s saffron toga as two other young women arrived.
 
They looked at her a bit uncertainly, and one of them asked, “Do you have the right costume?”
 
Sandra acted uncertain. “I think so.”
 
“I’m Christina Black. At rehearsal last evening my roommate, Rita, was wearing that.”
 
Sandra relaxed a bit. “That explains it! She was taken ill as soon as she arrived here and the director pressed me into service as a last-minute replacement.”
 
Christina, a tall dark-haired girl with deep brown eyes, seemed uncertain. “Where is she? Did they take her to the hospital?”
 
“No, just back to her hotel. It’s nothing serious.”
 
The other dancers were drifting in, and Sandra introduced herself to them. “What about the routines?” Christina Black asked, still bothered. “Do you know them?”
 
Sandra passed it off easily. “Oh, sure. We did the same sort of thing up in Boston last month. These museum gigs are a cinch. The key is to look sexy without smiling. The muses never smile.”
 
One or two of the dancers stared at her a bit distastefully, but all seemed to accept her for what she professed to be—a last-minute replacement.

And later, the second scene:

“Check this out,” he said, handing it to Fletcher. “See if anyone has a record on this person.”
 
“She tied up one of the muses and took her place,” Pearlman was explaining. “Luckily our choreographer found her.”
 
“What muses?” Leopold asked.
 
“The show, the entertainment! We hired this fellow Harvey Tort to put on an entertainment while breakfast was served. He does this sort of thing for conventions and trade shows all the time. He hired nine dancers in New York to represent the nine muses. Thought it’d be appropriate with the museum setting.”
 
“And this madwoman, as you call her, substituted herself for a muse?”
 
“Exactly! She hurled a lighted flare at the van Gogh painting and completely destroyed it.”
 
Leopold stepped closer to the damage, running his forefinger over the inside of the slightly charred frame. The police photographer and fingerprint man had arrived, and after another moment’s examination he turned it over to them. “Let’s go talk to this muse she tied up,” he suggested to the director.
 
Pearlman led the way to the basement room where a pale young woman wearing a body stocking and a raincoat sat huddled on a chair. A slender man and a dark-haired girl of about twenty were with her, trying to comfort her. The man proved to be Harvey Tort, who’d staged the dance of the muses. “You found her?” Leopold asked him.
 
He nodded. “After the trouble upstairs I realized that Rita hadn’t been ill as that woman claimed. I came down to look for her and found her tied and gagged in a closet across the hall. I was calling her name when I heard a pail overturned in there. The door was unlocked and she was inside.”
 
Leopold smiled at the young woman. She was a few years older than the dark-haired one, though still in her early twenties. Her eyes were red from her ordeal. “Could you tell me your name, Miss?”
 
“Rita Mulroney.”
 
“I’m her roommate at the hotel,” the dark-haired girl volunteered. “Christina Black. She left before me this morning.”
 
Rita Mulroney nodded. “I was the first one here. Mr. Pearlman let me in. I was changing into my costume when this woman came in, older than the other muses.”
 
“Can you describe her?”
 
“Good-looking, platinum-blonde hair, about my height, maybe in her mid-thirties.”
 
Leopold made a few notes. “Now tell me just what happened.”
 
“I was in here early, changing into my costume. When she arrived she said she was one of the muses, though she hadn’t been at rehearsal. I asked where her costume was and she said I was wearing it. Then she socked me in the jaw.” She worked her mouth a little. “It’s still sore. She knocked me out for a minute or two, and the next thing I knew she had me tightly gagged and was tying my hands and feet. She must have known the others would be arriving any minute, because she carried me across the hall to that maintenance closet and left me there.”
 
“Then what happened?”
 
“I struggled with my bonds for what seemed like an hour. I could hear sirens and a lot of commotion upstairs. Finally I was beginning to loosen the ropes around my hands when I heard Harvey calling my name. I was still gagged but I kicked my tote bag with my feet and managed to hit a metal pail. He heard the noise and found me.”
 
“You didn’t see this woman again after she tied you up?”
 
Rita shook her head. “But she told me her name. She said it was Sandra Paris.”
 
“Probably fake, but we’ll check it.”