STAGESTRUCK - The Complete Series (32 page)

“All finished,” Mica announced. “You look as beautiful as always.”

“You really are an artist.” I told her as I examined myself in the mirror. “Thanks for getting this done so fast, I can’t believe I fell asleep in my dressing room and missed my actual appointment.”

“No problem, you’ve been so busy lately I’m surprised you didn’t crash sooner. Are you all settled in to the new place?”

“For the most part. I still have some boxes to unpack, but all of our necessities are set up.” I replied.

“Have you heard anything new about the break in?” She asked.

“What?” I replied, taken aback.

“The break in… you know, the reason plainclothes cops have been wandering around the place? I’ve talked to everyone here but for the life of me I can’t figure out which part of the building got hit. The police have interviewed almost all of the crew members. They printed me last week and I heard that they were over at Kinky Boots yesterday. You haven’t heard about it at all?” She pressed.

I couldn’t tell if Mica was sharing theater gossip or if she knew that the break in had happened in my dressing room and was trying to get me to crack. “I noticed a few cops hanging around, but I’ve been so distracted I didn’t give it another thought.” I lied. “How did you know it was a break in?”

“Marcus had all of the locks in this wing changed.” She answered. “And I overheard Shane talking about installing more video surveillance. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened; I just wish that I could figure out WHERE it happened.”

“Maybe the break in was at one of the other theaters.” I suggested. “That could be why we don’t know more details.”

“I guess that could be it.” Mica replied. I could tell by the tone of her voice that she didn’t think that was the case for a second. “Are you sure you haven’t heard anything?”

“Positive,” I told her with a thin smile. I thought that Mica and I had become friends, but I couldn’t forget that she’d taken Serena’s side in the beginning.

I told Mica goodbye and left the makeup room. ‘Has her friendly attitude been an act this entire time?’ I wondered as I made my way back to my dressing room. ‘Is she the one who planted the article that day?’ Suddenly, the memory of finding Mica in the dressing area hallway flooded my mind. She’d said that she’d been looking for me to offer congratulations, but what if she’d been casing the place?

“Harper, you should have been in costume a half hour ago.” Bruce’s voice echoed in the narrow space. I looked up and saw his head peeking out of the stage door.

“I’ll be ready in five minutes; I won’t miss my first scene.” I assured him.

“You better not.” He snapped before disappearing.

I unlocked my door, shut myself in the room, and quickly changed into my first costume. I’d become an expert and pulling the clothes on and off without messing up my hair. Once I was dressed, I glanced at the clock and knew that I had at least twenty minutes until I had to be on stage. I grabbed a bottle of water from the mini-fridge and set off for the side stage to watch for my cue.

The final scenes before my entrance played out before me as I chugged the water. I tossed the empty bottle into a recycling bin before stepping out onto the stage.

The moment I started moving, I knew that something was wrong. I felt disoriented and I struggled to maintain my balance as I moved towards Dylan. My face flushed with heat and I struggled to keep myself from vomiting. Concern spread across his face as he realized that I was in trouble. I completely forgot that there was an audience in front of me; it took all of my concentration to just stay on my feet.

As the stage spun around me, Dylan broke character for the first time in his career. He rushed across the stage and lifted me into his arms. His face was the last thing I saw before passing out.

I woke up a few hours later, still disoriented. My head pounded against my skull, my mouth felt like it had been stuffed with cotton, and a pinching pain radiated from my left hand. Hushed voices whispered all around me and I groggily opened my eyes.

I was in a dimmed hospital room, surrounded by machines and monitors. The pain in my hand was from the I.V. needle, which was sending clear fluid into my bloodstream. My eyes adjusted to the dim light and I realized that Janette, Dylan, Marion, and Bruce were just outside the door speaking with a doctor.

“Hello?” I called out with as much volume as I could muster; everyone rushed into the room.
“Kate, thank god,” Dylan said as he rushed to my side. “How do you feel? Do you remember what happened?”

“Give her a chance to wake up, Dylan.” Janette scolded him and took a place on my other side. “Can I get you anything? Are you thirsty?”

“My mouth is dry.” I choked out. Janette moved for the water pitcher on the bedside table but Marion beat her to it.

“Of course your mouth is dry,” she said soothingly as she poured me a glass. “Drink this, you’ll feel better.”

I took a long drink and set the glass on the bedside table. I turned to Dylan. “I do remember what happened. I felt fine backstage. But when I stepped out in front of the audience, everything started spinning. What’s wrong with me Dylan?”

“Ms. Harper, I’m Doctor Godwin,” the silver haired man in the white jacket interrupted. “I’m Chief of Internal Medicine, I’ll be in charge of your care. I know that you’ve been through quite an ordeal this evening, but I have a few questions that I need to ask. Are you up for that?”

“Sure,” I told him. “I know you have to have my medical history. There’s really not much to tell, everyone in my family is really healthy and the worst thing I’ve ever had is the flu. Whatever made me pass out tonight is a new problem.”

“Your medical history is important, Ms. Harper, but that’s not what I’d like to talk about right now. We’ve run some initial labs and the results are quite concerning. Tell me, are you experiencing any pain right now?”

“I have an awful headache and I’m really nauseous.” I told him nervously. “It almost feels like motion sickness… is something seriously wrong with me Dr. Godwin?” My friends shifted anxiously around me and I prepared myself to hear the worst.

“You’re going to make a full recovery, Ms. Harper.” He assured me. “But I’m afraid…”

He was interrupted by a light knock on the door; it swung open and Detective Ramos entered the room. “Kate, I’m glad to see you’re awake.” He said with a smile.

“Thanks… what are you doing here?” I asked. Nothing was making any sense and I was growing frustrated.

“Detective, I was just about to explain to Ms. Harper what happened this evening.” Dr. Godwin explained.

I looked from the doctor to the detective. “Someone did this to me, right? That’s why you’re here.”

“Ms. Harper, we found a significant amount of arsenic in your system.” Dr. Godwin began slowly. “The medication in your I.V. is an antitoxin; you should be feeling much better by morning.”

“Someone tried to kill me?” I gasped. Janette took my right hand and Dylan wrapped a comforting arm around my shoulder.

“Not necessarily,” Dr. Godwin replied. “The levels of poison in your bloodstream would kill a small animal, but not a human. I think that whoever did this wanted to get your attention, to scare you.”

“They messed with my body to screw with my head.”

Detective Ramos nodded. “Unfortunately, we see this type of thing in stalking cases all of the time. And now that the stalker has physically hurt you, we have to expect the attacks to escalate.” He warned softly.

“Kate, I’m hiring a private investigator and full time guards.” Marion insisted. She turned to Detective Ramos. “I don’t mean to step on your toes, but I think that we can all agree that the faster we figure out who’s doing this, the better.”

“I have no problem working with a private investigator.” He assured her. “In fact, I can give you a list of people the department has worked with in the past if you’d like.”

She waved the offer off. “That won’t be necessary, I’ll handle it myself.” She turned to Bruce. “You’d better get straight back to the theater and figure out how in the hell this bastard was able to get to her in the theater you swore to me was safe.” She snapped.

“I’ve already dispatched an officer to review the theater’s security footage.” Detective Ramos assured her. “Kate, it would help if you could give me a timeline of your day. If we can figure out when you were poisoned, it may help us find the culprit.”

“I can help you with that.” Dr. Godwin announced; he flipped through my chart. “Kate, can you tell me what you’ve eaten today? What time and roughly how much?”

“I had a roll and coffee for breakfast and my lunch should be in my mini-fridge. I accidentally fell asleep this afternoon and I was too rushed to eat when I woke up.”

“Without much food in your stomach, you likely metabolized the poison pretty quickly. I’d guess that Kate ingested the poison no more than twenty minutes before she passed out.” Dr. Godwin announced.

“The water bottle,” I said flatly. “The poison had to be in the water bottle. But how is that possible? It didn’t taste any different.”

“Arsenic is one of the few tasteless poisons in existence.” The doctor explained. “It’s also odorless. There’s no way you could have known the water had been poisoned.”

“How is that even legal?” Janette asked in frustration. “Shouldn’t whoever makes the stuff be required to ad dye and odor and a rancid flavor to keep stuff like this from happening?”

"There are many people lobbying to make that happen,” the doctor explained. “But the manufacturers lobby even harder against it, because it’s not cost effective.”

“Kate, where did you get the water and what did you do with the bottle when you were finished?” Detective Ramos asked urgently.

“I got it from my mini-fridge,” I explained. “I drank it backstage and tossed it in the recycling bin.”

Detective Ramos pulled his phone from his pocket and typed out an urgent text. “I’ll have an officer bag the contents of the bin.”

“The stalker had to have broken back in to Kate’s dressing room to poison the water bottle. That means we should have them on video, right?” Dylan asked hopefully.

Detective Ramos’s phone chimed and he stared speechless at the screen.

“What’s wrong?” Janette asked urgently.

“I just got a text from the tech guy that I sent to the theater. We didn’t get footage from any of the cameras in the dressing room hallway. The files are full of static and white noise.”

“What do you mean there was no footage?” Bruce demanded. “I have people watching those monitors full time!”

“I don’t have all of the information yet Bruce, but it’s likely the stalker turned off the recording elements of the software but not the live feed. I need to get to the theater and oversee all of the processing. Would you like to join me? I’m sure that Kate needs to get some rest.”

“Yes, yes, I’ll come with you.” Bruce sighed. “Kate, I’m so sorry that this happened to you. The theater will provide twenty four hour security until we find this bastard. I’ll have Marcus work out a schedule and we’ll be ready to go when you’re released.”

“Thank you Bruce. Any idea when that will be, Dr. Godwin?”

“Baring any complications, I think you can go home tomorrow afternoon.”

“Great, Bruce I’ll be back to work on Friday.”

“Kate, that isn’t necessary.” Marion assured me. “We can have Maggie cover until we’re sure that the theater is safe.”

“No, that would only cause a bunch of unnecessary questions.” I insisted; a horrific thought crossed my mind and I turned to Dylan. “Oh my god, what happened on stage after I passed out? All of those people saw it, I completely ruined the show. Please tell me that no one knows I was attacked.”

“No one knows.” He assured me quickly. “After you collapsed, I got you off stage and we took a ten minute intermission. Bruce explained that you’d come back to work before you’d completely recovered from the food poisoning and that your body just couldn’t take the stress. I rode in the ambulance with you and Luis and Maggie finished the show. Bruce also gave everyone vouchers for a free ticket to a future performance.”

I breathed a sigh of relief and turned to Detective Ramos. “Can you still keep the investigation quiet? I realize that you have to gather evidence but can you be discrete? I think my makeup artist has already figured out the break in happened in my dressing room. I’d prefer if the whole theater doesn’t find out that someone’s trying to kill me.”

“Kate, if someone knows about your break in, they didn’t hear about it from my guys.” He assured me. “Who is your makeup artist? Is there any way she could be behind all of this?”

“Her name is Mica,” I replied. “She wasn’t very nice to me when I first landed the role, but like everyone else she’s been really friendly since my debut. I’ll admit that after I left her chair today, I felt like she knew more about what’s been happening than she was letting on.”

“Serena Carson is also a makeup artist, correct?” The detective asked.

“Yes,” Bruce quickly replied.

“So she and Mica are colleagues. Are they friends?” Ramos asked Dylan and me.

“I know that they used to be.” I told him. “But a few weeks ago, Mica apologized to me and said that she didn’t believe Serena’s rumors anymore. We’ve been friendly ever since.”

“Did her apology seem genuine?”

“It didn’t strike me as insincere but at this point nothing would surprise me. And I’ve caught her in the hallway outside of my dressing room. It was after all of my first reviews came out and she claimed that she’d stopped by to congratulate me.”

“But you didn’t believe her?” Detective Ramos asked.

“I did at the time but looking back it doesn’t really make much sense. I got to the theater really early that day to decorate my dressing room, no one else was there yet.”

“So at that time of the day, Mica shouldn’t have expected to find you in your dressing room.” He observed.

“No.” I agreed.

“Alright Kate, I’ll start a background check on Mica and get to processing your dressing room. I’m going to bag and test the contents of your mini-fridge, it’s likely the attacker poisoned everything. We’ll also need to do the same thing at your apartment.”

“You think that the stalker may have been in our home?” Janette gasped.

“It’s unlikely,” he assured her. “I’m familiar with your new building and the security there is top notch. I just feel that it’s better to be safe than sorry. I’d hate for you to go home tonight and eat a snack, only to wind up in the hospital bed next to Kate.”

“I’m not going anywhere tonight.” Janette insisted. “I’m not leaving here without Kate. I’ll give you my key and let the doorman know to expect you.”

“Thank you that will be helpful.” He agreed.

“Folks, it’s getting late and Kate needs to get some rest.” Dr. Godwin announced. “Two of you can stay overnight, if you’d like. Everyone else needs to clear out.”

“Do you want to stay too?” I asked Dylan.

He shifted uneasily on his feet. “I really need to get some rest too, Kate.” He told me. “But I’ll stay if you want me to.” He added when he saw the disappointment on my face.

“No, that’s alright.” I assured him. “I’ll probably just sleep all night anyway and Janette will be here if I need anything.”

“Call me if something happens?” He asked Janette.

“Of course,” she replied.

“Kate honey, I’ll be back first thing in the morning.” Marion told me. “If you need anything, just let me know.”

We all said our goodbyes and soon Janette and I were alone in the room.

“Be honest,” she said, “how do you really feel?”

“I’m terrified, but my headache is starting to go away. Thank you for staying with me tonight.”

“No problem, Kate. Try to get some rest, we’ll be out of here in no time.”