Stage Fright by Gabrielle Holly Read Free Book Online

forehead. His left eye was bruised and nearly swollen shut. He looked like he’d been in a fight, but he stared directly into the camera with a crooked grin. Toni thought it looked like he was thinking, ‘fuck you’. She smiled back at the image, feeling deeply connected to the handsome greaser. “What’d he do?” she asked.
    Thomas lifted the Arrest Record from the table top. “Let’s see, ‘public intoxication’, ‘petty theft—hubcaps’, ‘loitering’, ‘loitering’, and ‘loitering’ again and ‘resisting arrest’. I’d be willing to bet he got that shiner while resisting arrest when they got him for loitering number three.”
    “Poor guy,” Toni said.
    “‘Poor guy?’” Thomas scoffed, “You’re kidding, right? It sounds like he was a punk.”
    Toni shook her head, “It sounds like he got on the wrong side of the local law.”
    “Babe, what did you say his birth date was?” Mike asked.
    Bridget glanced down at the Incident Report. “October 30th, ’29.”
    “That was the day after Black Tuesday—the stock market crash,” Mike muttered. “Does it say where he was born?”
    “Brooklyn, New York. I wonder what he was doing in Travois?”
    They all looked at Mike. “Idea?” Thomas asked.
    Mike squinted as if concentrating. “I don’t know. I was just thinking about Preston Stringman—that lighter he carried around—the one he took off the dead guy after the crash. Monroe is born the next day less than half an hour from the Financial District then they both wind up here in this little Wisconsin town…”
    “What? You’re thinking reincarnation?” Thomas asked.
    Mike shrugged. “Just a thought.”
    Thomas gathered up the reports and the photographs, slid them into the folder then dropped the file back into the box. “Well, there’s not much here. We’ll set up the equipment in the theatre tonight and see if we can get anything.”
    The four filed out of the conference room and thanked the front desk officer on their way out. Toni couldn’t shake the image of Kip Monroe in the mug shot, with his black eye and his defiant grin. Her thoughts turned back to their encounter in the VIP room and she was overwhelmed by the need to help him.
     
    * * * *
     
    On the way back to the theatre, Bridget admired the late nineteenth century architecture of downtown Travois. When the van passed a red brick building with 1890 inscribed on the pediment and a sign reading, ‘The Antique Emporium’, she begged Thomas to stop. “Fifteen minutes—please, Thomas!”
    Mike shook his head. “She says fifteen minutes, but she means an hour or two.”
    “If only that were always true,” Bridget teased.
    “I’d kind of like to poke around in there too,” Toni said.
    Thomas rubbed his forehead. “Fine. We’re three blocks from the theatre. Let’s park the van there and walk back.”
    Within minutes they were stomping the snow from their boots outside the antique shop. Thomas was the first to enter and an elderly woman with a cotton-candy puff of white hair looked up from her magazine to greet them. Bridget could tell that she immediately recognised the star of Paranormal Research Team. “Oh my goodness! I heard that you folks were in town,” she said. “You’re working on the Bijou. Right?”
    Thomas plastered on his accessible-celebrity smile and extended his hand. “Thomas Becker. I’m sure you recognise the rest of my team, Bridget O’Malley and Mike Briggs. And this is Toni Bianchi. She’s a talented medium and helps us out from time to time.”
    “Oh yes. Of course I know all of you—except you,” she said nodding to Toni. “I’m a big, big fan of the show. Well you just take your time and browse around. We’ve got three whole floors of treasures. If you need anything at all, you just holler. My name is Jean.”
    Thomas winked and Bridget bit back a giggle as colour crept into the shopkeeper’s wrinkled cheeks. The men headed over to the display of record albums while