The Book Stops Here (10 page)

“I like to change things up. And sometimes I just don’t want to run into anyone. Everyone wants to talk.”

I chuckled, but didn’t comment. We passed a dozen more stage flats leaning against the wall and I stopped to look at them. “Boy, they store stuff everywhere, don’t they?”

The flats were made of thick wood planks wrapped in painters’ canvas. These were bigger than the ones I’d seen a few minutes ago, at least ten feet high and several yards wide.

Despite the dimness of the space, I could see that the two in front had been freshly painted. One showed a lush garden scene and the other a sandy shore leading into a sparkling blue lake.

I squinted at the verdant garden scene and tried to imagine how it would appear on camera. “This looks so real.”

“The guys do a great job, don’t they? These were painted just yesterday and they’ll be used for some of the segments in the main staging area. Just to give a different look.” Randy leaned in to more closely examine the stage flat, then straightened. “Anyway, the dressing rooms are right over here. Let’s go find Derek and . . .”

But I’d stopped listening as one of the green leafy plants in the garden scene moved closer to me.

“Whoa.” My stomach did a little dip. Was I hallucinating? The painting was moving. Then I heard a creaking sound and realized it wasn’t my imagination. The flats were moving forward. Falling.

“Oh no,” I muttered, then yelled, “Help!” The entire stack of heavy panels was about to fall on top of me.

“What the hell?” Randy spun around and grabbed the edges of the wood, but the angle of his approach was all wrong and the flats kept coming at me. He shifted position and tried to get a better hold.

“Help!” I screamed again, loud enough for the entire studio to hear.

Everything happened in slow motion. The wood slipped out of Randy’s grip. My leg muscles began to quiver and I fell to my knees while still keeping my arms outstretched, trying to keep the heavy boards up.

“Hold them!” I cried.

“I’m trying!” he yelled.

The planks were too heavy and I couldn’t stop them from pressing down on me. My arm muscles gave out and the wood hit the top of my head and pushed me down.

“Get help!” I yelled, but my voice didn’t carry far.

“Hold on there! I’ve gotcha.” A wiry old man ran over, slipped under the flats next to me, and used one shoulder to keep the wood from falling farther. I could see his spindly back muscles starting to shake.

“Whoa, boy,” he said. “That’s heavier than it looks.”

“Be careful,” I shouted, pushing out with my arms again to try to keep the wood from trapping him, too. “Don’t hurt yourself!”

“I think I’m . . . oh, boy.” All that weight was too much for his skinny body to hold and he tottered dangerously.

My arms were shaking as badly as the old man’s. I shifted again to use my back to hold the flats at bay, but now I could feel my neck muscles screaming.

The old man curled himself into a ball next to me.

I wasn’t ready to watch his life being squeezed out of him, so I pushed his shoulder. “Crawl out the other side!” I shouted. “Move.”

“I can’t,” he muttered, sounding feeble and defeated.

“Hang on! Help!” I yelled it louder, over and over again.

“Try to hold them back while I get more help,” Randy shouted, and ran to the door leading to the dressing rooms. He hollered for help. For heaven’s sake, where was everyone?

I was certain I could survive the weight of the flats for a short
time, but I wasn’t so sure about the old guy. And he’d been trying to save me! The guilt—or something—gave me a shot of adrenaline and I was able to push back on the crush of wood for a few more seconds.

“Nobody’s coming,” I shouted. “You need to get help.”

“I’m not leaving you,” Randy said, running back to me and sounding insulted that I’d suggested it. He reached under and tried to lift the flats, but they didn’t budge. “How about if I hold them while you run and get help?”

“I’m already wedged under here!”

Randy bellowed, “Help!”

Footsteps pounded in our direction.

“Brooklyn?”

“Derek!”

“Damn it,” he cursed loudly, and followed it up with a string of expletives. “What happened?”

“I’m stuck,” I moaned.

“Duh,” Randy said.

I almost laughed, despite being a little too close to suffocating to death.

“I’ll get you out of there,” Derek said.

“Thank God.” My voice sounded desperate. I could only see Derek’s shoes, but then he got down on his knees, bent over, and shifted the planks onto his shoulders. I wasn’t sure how he summoned the strength to do it, but he managed to stand up slowly, steadily, with the full weight on his shoulders and back. After a moment, I could feel the load being lifted off me.

“You have room to crawl out now, Brooklyn.” He said it gently, as if I were an injured animal.

“Thank you,” I whispered, and reached out for the old man. “Come on, let’s get out from under here.”

The old guy didn’t respond and I wondered if he had passed out from sheer fright. That had been a lot of weight pressing down
on us. Up on my hands and knees with inches to maneuver now, I shuffled out backward, dragging the man with me to safety. It was slow going, but we made it. Thank Buddha, because my arm muscles were beginning to cramp.

Once we were both out from under the wood, I collapsed on the linoleum floor.

Now that the danger was past, Derek and Randolph were able to let go of the flats. The heavy wood crashed to the concrete floor with a loud reverberation. Dust clouded up. Randy bent over and rested his elbows on his knees, gulping in air.

Derek was breathing almost normally after his amazing rescue mission. He knelt down and rubbed my back. “Are you all right?”

“I’ll get there. Is that old man okay?”

“He’s winded but he’ll be fine,” Derek said. Then he lowered his voice and asked, “How did they fall?”

I twisted to look up at him. “I have no idea. I must’ve nudged them, but I didn’t think I was that close.”

He helped me stand up, then pulled me into his arms and held on tightly. “Damn it,” he muttered. “I want to know how that happened.”

“I do, too,” I said. One minute the heavy flats had been secure against the wall, and in the next heartbeat, they were toppling over. It took too much energy to relive the nightmare, so I squeezed my eyes shut and clung to Derek for another minute.

“I wasn’t sure where you went,” I said.

“I was answering a phone call in the dressing room,” he explained, stroking my back. “I’m sorry. I never should’ve left you alone.”

“It’s okay,” I whispered, but I knew I wouldn’t have come so close to being crushed to death if Derek had been with me.

From over Derek’s shoulder, I watched my would-be rescuer stir, then wheeze as he crawled a few feet over to the wall.

“Let me help you,” Randy said, and lifted the old man by the arms until he could sit up and lean against the wall.

The old guy was still trying to catch his breath. His hair was pure gray and matched his thick, gray eyebrows and bushy mustache. He was gaunt and his cheeks were hollowed with age. He was probably in his seventies and wore thin, round eyeglasses and a dark green janitor’s uniform with an old-fashioned name tag sewn onto the front pocket. It read G
ARTH
.

He was still wheezing. I couldn’t believe he’d been so brave.

“You must be Garth,” I said, pointing to his name tag.

“Sure am,” he said, and gave me a shaky grin.

“You were really brave to help me,” I said. “I’m Brooklyn, by the way.”

He waved off the introduction. “I know who you are, missy. I’ve seen you doing those book segments. You’re a smart one.”

“Thank you, Garth. Thank you so much for trying to save me. You could’ve been killed.”

“Ah, that was nothing,” he said, embarrassed by my gratitude.

“Do you work here?”

“I’ve been a janitor here for a while now.” He had to stop talking to suck in more air. He was completely worn out. “Good thing these young fellas came along when they did or we woulda been squashed like two bugs.”

“Yes, good thing,” I murmured, still trying to figure out how I’d caused the flats to fall. Maybe we’d had a small earthquake. I hadn’t felt one, but it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that the earth had trembled enough to jar the planks away from the wall.

Randy helped Garth to his feet. I suggested that we call an ambulance to have him checked out at the hospital, but he refused to let me fuss over him.

We watched him walk unsteadily toward the door leading to the dressing room hallway and disappear.

“I hope he’s okay,” I said.

“I wouldn’t worry about Garth,” Randy said. “He’s pretty spry for an old guy.”

The three of us walked back to my dressing room and closed the door. Derek insisted that I lie down on the sofa and rest for a few minutes.

Randy sat in the orange chair and Derek took the swivel chair.

“That was weird,” Randy said, raking his hands through his perfect hair, clearly shaken by the episode.

I nodded. “I was thinking there must have been an earthquake. Did you feel anything?”

“No,” Randy said. “But something must’ve caused those flats to fall.”

“Yes, something,” Derek murmured, staring hard at him. “Or some
one
. Could it have been caused by your
stalker?”

Chapter Six

“Stalker?” Randy said, taken aback by Derek’s suggestion. “But it was an accident.”

It was useless trying to relax now that Derek had brought up the subject, so I sat up and joined the conversation. “I was thinking it could’ve been the guy who attacked me earlier today.”

Derek considered that possibility. “You described him as a rather large man. Did you see anyone like that in the vicinity?”

“No,” I grumbled. “It was too dark to see anyone, but I can’t imagine a guy that big sneaking up on us. He’s not exactly stealthy.”

But there might have been someone else. I thought back to that moment in the hallway and tried to be realistic. All those flats leaning together were at least two feet thick, possibly thicker. The hall was dimly lit at that end. Randy and I had been staring at the painted flat farthest from the doorway leading into the hall. All of those factors made me realize that someone might have been able to sneak up quietly if they’d stayed close to the wall.

But it couldn’t have been the scary, oafish loudmouth who attacked me earlier. As Derek had said, the man was large. I couldn’t imagine him sneaking up on anybody.

“It wasn’t the guy who grabbed me in the parking lot,” I concluded. “He was too big and cloddish to get away with it.”

“Which means it’s the stalker,” Randy said, sounding miserable.

“Tell me why you think someone is stalking you,” Derek said.

Randy went through the whole litany of incidents he’d recited to me earlier.

When he was finished, Derek nodded slowly and was silent for a long moment. I could tell he was thinking carefully because he had a habit of twisting his lips as he pondered possibilities. Finally, he said, “For the sake of argument, let’s assume that your stalker caused the mishap with the falling stage flats.”

Randy gritted his teeth. “Okay. So now what?”

“So up until today,” Derek said, “this person has only been trying to scare you or embarrass you.”

I felt my eyes widen. “But today he tried to hurt you. Well, and me.”
Especially me
.

“Exactly,” Derek said.

“So, what the hell does that mean?” Randy asked.

Derek’s gaze was on Randy. “It means he might be growing more desperate.”

Randy’s eyes narrowed. “Are you saying he’s escalating? Isn’t that what they call it on TV?”

Derek nodded. “Yes.”

“But Derek,” I said, “causing the stage flats to fall on top of us had to have been a spontaneous act. He couldn’t have planned it. How did he know we were going to take that route through the other studio?”

“True,” he said. “The opportunity presented itself and he took action.”

“But the dead animals and even the script pages,” I continued. “Those had to be planned out to some extent.”

Derek smiled and nodded. “Absolutely right. Those would take careful timing. Premeditation.”

“Oh, hell.” I turned and stared at Randy. “He could’ve been following us the whole time, just waiting for his chance to do something vicious.”

“Do you often take the long way around to the dressing rooms?” Derek asked Randy.

He shrugged. “I’m always wandering around the place. I never know where I’ll end up. People have gotten used to me telling stories of some prop or backdrop I discovered in some far corner. I just found this back entrance to the dressing rooms yesterday, so I don’t see how someone could’ve known I’d come this way.”

“Did you mention the new route to anyone?”

His shoulders slumped. “Yeah. I was telling a couple of the prop guys that I’d been looking over those planter boxes in the studio next door. They mentioned that they were going to be using them for a new show they’re taping next weekend.”

I shivered at the thought that someone might have been following us along the dark halls and through the empty studio. Given the way my life had been going lately, I had trained myself to be more aware of my surroundings. So much for awareness. And especially after the assault I’d suffered earlier, it was disturbing to realize how easily distracted I’d been by all the fascinating nooks and crannies and oddities of the studio.

Derek observed me for a long moment and I knew he was trying to read my mind. I’d bet it wasn’t too hard to figure out what I was thinking. His mouth twitched in a slight smile and then he glanced back at Randy. “Since it sounds like he—or she—has been following you around the country, is it safe to assume that this person has some connection to the show?”

Randy’s lips twisted in frustration. “Yes, but I hate the idea. I get along with everyone. Who in the world did I piss off so badly that now he wants to try to kill me?”

And me,
I thought, but didn’t say it aloud. Instead I tried to help him focus on the people who worked with him. “Think about it,” I said. “Is there a stagehand or a camera operator you somehow insulted or irritated? Maybe someone on the production staff? Do you recall anyone acting weird around you?”