~ Maddie ~
“Who would send Kellen a box full of bees?” Fran asks. “Who would do something like that?”
We’re huddled together in the hotel parking lot by my SUV, quietly talking and crying together, unsure of what to do as we try to process the shock over our friend’s death. Jackson told me they would take Kellen’s body down to the second floor and transfer her to the service elevator so they could take her out through the loading dock and not alarm the other guests by wheeling the gurney through the hotel lobby. It seemed like such an undignified exit for a woman who had reached such great heights.
“Did anyone notice that her death is eerily similar to the murder in her first book?” Hailey says through her tears.
Kellen’s first book, The Sting of Death, was a runaway success. Critics said it was so good because it felt authentically terrifying. As if it could happen to anyone.
What Kellen didn’t like to publicize was the reason it rang so true was that she drew on her worst fear—bees. She came by her apiphobia honestly. Her terror stemmed from the very real fact that she was deathly allergic to them.
“Since they’re making a movie out of the book and it’s been in the entertainment news so much, anyone could’ve done it,” MJ says. “That’s the downside to being famous. All the crazies come crawling out of the woodwork.”
“Do you think it was a prank gone bad?” Hailey asks. “What did Jack say, Maddie?”
I recap my conversation with Jackson, leaving out the part where he said tomorrow I should bring some good ideas of who would fill a box from my shop with bees and send it to a woman who was allergic.
It had gone over my head when he said it. Probably because I was so numb, but now it’s beginning to sink in that he may think I had something to do with Kellen’s death.
Well, I didn’t.
My conscience is clear… even though my heart is broken because Kellen is dead and I wonder whether she would still be alive if I hadn’t invited her to be part of the show.
But how could I have known?
My eyes are filling with tears so, at first, I think I’m seeing things because a tall, heavyset brunette exiting the hotel’s rotating door looks like… Olivia Knowles?
I swipe at my eyes and before I can stop myself, I’m muttering, “Oh, my gosh, is that…”
Fran, MJ, and Hailey turn in the direction that I’m pointing.
“That’s—Olivia!” Fran shouts. “Hey, Olivia!”
Hailey, MJ, and I join in calling to her and waving our arms over the top of our heads. I fear we look and sound like a bunch of troublemakers.
Despite the spectacle, Olivia keeps her head down and her cell phone pressed to her ear as she speed walks to her car and then ducks inside. It’s odd because it seems unlikely she didn’t hear us.
Even so, she starts her car and drives away without even giving us a second look.