Free Bed of Bones (A Sloane Monroe Novel, Book Five) by Cheryl Bradshaw

She said no, told me to go inside. I figured she’d run right out and return within a minute or two, so I did what she asked.”
    “How long after she walked outside did the explosion happen?” I asked.
    “Five or six minutes maybe? I heard the movie come on, but I wasn’t watching it. I was looking at the theater door, waiting for her to come in. I kept wondering what was keeping her and figured she hadn’t found the glasses yet.”
    Her eyes brimmed with tears, her words jagged, struggling to surface. She swept her uninjured hand beneath her nose, wiping the fluid away.
    “Can I get you anything?” I asked.
    “No. Thanks.”
    I reached for a box of tissues on a shelf, plucked a few out, handed them to her. “Take your time.”
    “It’s just…I should have been there, you know?” she stammered. “I should have gone to get those glasses for her, but she insisted.”
    “It isn’t your fault.”
    She nodded like she’d already been told that a dozen times today. I expect she had.
    When her emotions settled, I continued. “You were staring at the door to the theater, waiting for her to come in. Then what happened?”
    “I heard a loud “pop,” and felt a sharp pain. Blood was all over my shirt. I wasn’t sure if it was mine or someone else’s. I looked down, and that’s when I saw it.” She hoisted the blanket, revealing a bandage taped across her abdomen. “A piece of metal sliced through my shirt, pinning it to my skin. It was sticking right out of me. I tried to pull it out. It was too deep. I kept staring at the blood—there was so much blood—and, I must have passed out. When I woke up, I was here.”
    I winced. She was lucky to be alive.
    “Do you remember seeing anyone who looked out of place, anyone who may have seemed suspicious, or shouldn’t have been hanging around the theater?”
    “I was so busy preparing for the movie to start, it’s all a blur. People were coming and going around me all day, but I couldn’t tell you what any of them looked like. It’s like I saw them but I didn’t really see them, you know?”
    I shifted gears.
    “Did Melody have any enemies? Any trouble in her personal life?”
    Most of the time when I asked this question, I received a resounding “no,” so it was a revelation when she blurted, “She had a stalker.”
    Bingo.
    “When was this?” I asked.
    “After we started filming.”
    “Did she know him? Was he in her life in some way—an ex-boyfriend, maybe?”
    “He was a stagehand. Most people didn’t pay him any attention because he was quiet, a loner. He never talked much to anyone, and when he did talk, he didn’t like looking people in the eye. He bugged me though, even from the beginning.”
    “Why?”
    “His eyes. You couldn’t ever see them. His bangs hung past his nose. He wore silver bracelets, long chains over his shirts, and his fingernails were polished a matte grey color. He wasn’t thin though. He looked like Severus Snape on steroids.”
    “How did the stalking begin?” I asked.
    “He left flowers in her trailer. There was never a card, so we didn’t know it was him at first. Then I caught him following her. We’d be at a restaurant, look out the window, and there he was. We started seeing him all the time. I’d show up at her house and find him parked across the street, staring through her front window like some kind of deranged psychopath.”
    “What did Melody do?”
    “At first she was polite. She thought he had formed some kind of innocent crush. She decided it was best to let him down easy, so she told him she wasn’t interested.”
    “How did he react?” I asked.
    “When we arrived on set the next day, he’d taken a two-by-four to some of the props, destroying them. He was fired. When he showed up at her house again a week later, she called the cops, filed a restraining order.”
    “Did it help?” I asked.
    “We didn’t see him again, but he let us know he was still around.”
    “How?”
    “He left