O
ut in the hall, I heard a familiar voice. Brittany had arrived. I sprang to my feet, but felt pulled in two directions.
“My friend is here. Can I see her just a minute?”
Detective Furlow closed his notebook. “Go ahead, we’re done for now, Shaley.”
“You sure?” I glanced out the door. “I want to help all I can.”
Mom stood up. The detective did the same. He towered above me. “Don’t worry, I’ll be around. I’m going to be right here for a while, talking to your Mom.”
“Okay.” With a quick look at Mom, I scurried across the room and into the hallway. Brittany stood close to the door, whispering with Mick. She’d hung around with me enough back home to know our bodyguards.
“Brittany!”
She rushed at me. We hugged each other hard.
I pulled back and looked at her, starting to shake. The mere sight of her brought tears to my eyes. “You look
great.”
She’d cut new layers in her long blonde hair, and the makeup on her hazel eyes was perfect.
She scrutinized me through her thick, long lashes. “Are you
okay?
Carly told me what happened. I just can’t believe it.”
“I’m … yeah.” Words tangled in my head. So much to tell her. I didn’t know where to begin.
Pete Strickland reappeared up the hall, followed by Ed Husker,
Rayne’s sound tech. They headed our direction.
Great. More people.
“Come on, Brittany.” I took her arm. “Let’s go somewhere to talk.”
I hauled her two suites down, Bruce heavy on our heels. We passed Wendell, standing guard at the suite next door, where the other band members and Ross had gathered. Wendell’s arms were folded, a tight T-shirt showing off his rocklike muscles. At five eleven, he’s the shortest of our bodyguards but intimidates me the most. His black hair, two inches long and gelled, stands straight up. His eyes are deep-set and hard. A long shiny scar runs the length of his chin.
Briefly, he nodded to me. I nodded back.
In the third suite, the atmosphere hung heavy and dark. Carly sat on a couch along with the two other backup singers.
I stopped just inside the door. “Is it okay if we just sit over there and talk?” I pointed to the front corner of the room.
“Sure,” Carly said. “Brittany, you remember Lois and Melissa?”
Lois is tall and skinny with short brown hair. Melissa is a large African American who sings like an angel but hardly says a word. Brittany had met them and all the other band members before at our house, but it had been a while since they’d seen each other.
“Yeah.” Brittany managed a smile. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Lois said. Melissa nodded.
Brittany and I sank onto the carpeted floor. Quickly I told her the details. Her eyes filled with tears. She took my hands in hers. “Shaley — “
Ross poked his head in the suite. His pudgy face was flushed. The large diamond ring on his right hand glittered in the overhead light as he gripped the doorpost. “Lois, Melissa, Carly, come on next door. We need to talk about the tour.” He flicked a look at Brittany and me, then disappeared. Carly gave us a tight smile as she and the other two women filed from the room.
Brittany bit her lip. “You think he’s going to stop the tour?”
Canceling would make Tom’s death doubly hard. Local promoters would have to be reimbursed their advance fees. Ticket sales
would be paid back. Ross, Mom, the whole band, the technicians and roadies,
everybody
would be out a lot of money.
“I don’t think so.” My voice was tight. “I know Ross. He’ll be thinking about the bottom line. He’ll say we still have Marshall to do Mom’s hair and makeup. I don’t mean to say Ross is cold, but the fact is — it’s not like one of the band members is dead.”
Pain stabbed through me. The tour might physically be able to continue, but how could I manage the rest of it without Tom? Especially after Brittany left.
Brittany picked at the carpet. “It’ll be over for
me
for sure. When Mom hears this, she’ll want me on the next plane home. Count on it — I’ll be leaving tomorrow.”
My eyes widened. “Brittany, no! I
need
you here!” I hadn’t had time to think about it, but she was so right. Brittany’s mom was very strict. We’d had to beg her to let Brittany come in the first place.
“I know.” Brittany’s focus drifted over my shoulder, as if she saw something in the distance. Fear flicked across her face. Her mouth opened, then closed. She pressed her lips in the expression I knew all too well.
I leaned forward. “What is it?”
For as long as I’d known Brittany she’d had an uncanny ability to sense things. Not often, nor predictably. But when the sensing came, she always turned out to be right.
She shook her head.
“Come on,
what?”
Brittany turned troubled eyes on mine. “I feel something.”
Her fear curled up in my stomach. “I know. Tell me what it is.”
She bit her lip, studying me. “I’ll just say this: we
have
to persuade Mom to let me stay.”
T
his is not right.
Anger had started to bubble inside him, acid eating at his insides. All these cops. All the chaos and worry and tears. As if Tom’s life had been worth something.
He had to hide it, this anger of his. He had responsibilities. People to talk to, decisions to make. Not to mention the monster man detective — Furlow—was about to question him.
This would not be a problem. No detective was going to trip him up.
He watched two cops conferring, his mind spinning back to the day he got out of prison. “Good luck,” a guard had told him as he walked out to freedom. He’d just smiled. Luck? He didn’t need it. He had his superior intelligence — and a purpose. A service to perform.
For the right amount of money, of course.
“Hey!” An officer swaggered over. They all swaggered. Thought they were so powerful. “Detective Furlow wants to see you now.”
“Sure.”
He turned and walked confidently toward his second session with the cops.
O
ver and over I asked Brittany what she’d sensed. But she refused to tell me. That ticked me off, and I told her so. As if I didn’t have enough on my mind already. As if I wanted to fight with my best friend.
“Shaley,” she finally huffed. “I don’t
know
exactly what’s going to happen, okay? Only that you need me with you this week. Because the tour’s going to continue, and without me … there’s danger.”
“There was danger before you got here. Obviously.”
“I mean danger for you. Personally.”
“We have three bodyguards; what are
you
gonna do?”
“I don’t
know!
But you kept bugging me so I told you what I felt. Stop taking it out on me.”
A huge sigh deflated my chest. I slumped over and stared at the carpet. “Sorry. I’m just … This is all so …”
“I know.”
Shortly before one o’clock, Mom came into the room, looking haggard. “Girls, we’ve been released to go to our hotel. The limos are waiting at a side door, and our suitcases have been loaded. Come on.”
I pushed to my feet, muscles prickly from sitting cross-legged too long. “What about the tour?”
“We’re going on with it,” she said tersely.
I exchanged a grim look with Brittany.
As we slid into our limo, guarded all around by policemen, her words trailed through my mind.
Danger for you …
Kim, Morrey, and Carly got into the stretch limo with me, Mom, and Brittany. Bruce and Wendell climbed in last. The rest of the band went into a second car. As usual, Ross had gone ahead to check everyone into the hotel. Some of the personal attendants and others who traveled with the band drove with him. The driver shut the door behind us, and seconds later we began to roll out of the parking lot.
I pushed Brittany’s warning out of my head. It was only a threat if she didn’t stay. But she would — we’d make sure of that. Brittany couldn’t literally protect me. But we had plans while she was here. Maybe what she’d sensed would only happen if we couldn’t follow through with those plans.
“Oh, great.” Mom peered forward through the windshield.
“Look
at the crowd.”
Outside the protected area of the HP Pavilion parking lot reporters swarmed. As our limo crept forward, they descended upon us like wasps. Policemen fought them back with little success. Camera flashes split the night. Voices yelled my name.
Me?
I turned wide eyes to Mom.
She put an arm around me, whispering, “They’ve heard you found him.”
I leaned into her. I hated these types of crowds. Even when separated from me by a car, the crush of people snatched air from my lungs.
Brittany cringed on my left, hands shoved between her knees. “Where did they all come from?”
Morrey made a sound in his throat. “They never sleep.”
Television camera lights surged on, spilling over shouting mouths and microphones, a man being shoved back by police, a disembodied hand holding a still camera high. Beyond the lights, dark shadows played over faces and shoving bodies, turning them grotesque and malformed.
Something pummeled the window. I screamed. Brittany sank her fingernails into my arm.
“It’s okay, girls.” Mom’s voice sounded tight. “They can’t get in. We’ll be through this in a minute.”
“It’ll be all over the news tomorrow.” Kim sat straight, unaffected. She was fearless in crowds. “You wait. I’m talking
every channel. All day.”
We pulled away from the crowd onto the street. Our limo picked up speed.
“My mom will hear.” Brittany’s breath hitched. “She’ll make me go home.”
“Mom,
do
something,” I begged. “Brittany
can’t
leave.”
Onstage, Rayne O’Connor always looked confident and beautiful. A bundle of dancing, singing energy, feeding off the crowds. Now the corners of her mouth drew down, and her eyes were bloodshot.
She patted my leg. “I’ll call Linda tonight, even though it’s late.” Mom leaned forward to look at Brittany. “I promise — I’ll get her to let you stay.”
Brittany let out a hopeful sigh. If anyone could accomplish that, it was my mom. Hard to say no to Rayne O’Connor.
At the hotel, Wendell, Bruce, and Mick hustled us in a side door and up to our rooms. We met Ross on our private floor for our room keys and the night’s “code” — a list of names and room numbers, plus the password. For protection and privacy, only those in our party and a few key people on the buses had the code. Anyone else calling the hotel and asking to be put through to one of our rooms would be denied.
“You’re not leaving your room tomorrow, understand?” Mom said as a bellman opened her door for her and lugged in suitcases.
For weeks, Brittany and I had planned to go shopping on Saturday. I thought again of Brittany’s warning to me — the plans we should keep. At least that’s the way I interpreted it. Tomorrow would be plenty soon enough to argue with Mom about shopping. I could wear a disguise, and we’d have a bodyguard with us. We’d
be plenty safe. But first things first—Brittany needed to be allowed to stay.
“Okay. But remember, you have to call Brittany’s mom tonight.”
“I will. Just let me get settled.”
I hugged Mom hard before Brittany and I went into our own room next door. As typical, Mom and I had adjoining suites with a door in between so we could go back and forth without stepping into the hall.
Fifteen minutes later Brittany and I were in our pajamas, sitting cross-legged on our matching queen beds. Mom hadn’t called yet. I’d already dialed her cell phone to say, “Please call Brittany’s mother
now.
We’re waiting up to hear.”
Not that we’d have gone to bed anyway. Brittany and I had passed beyond exhaustion, now too wired to sleep. The chaos of police officers at the Pavilion and the crowds of reporters around our limo had momentarily numbed my pain. In its place — a simmering determination to find justice for Tom.
“I’m going to help the police solve this,” I declared.
“Yeah. I’m with you.”
Brittany flipped her long hair around and around her right forefinger — a sign she was thinking hard. “Know what? This is a little too convenient — shooting Tom on a night when Rayne isn’t performing the next day. Almost like the killer knew he could do it without stopping the tour.”
I pursed my lips. That was true. Many times Rayne would have to be in another city for a concert the very next day. With a delay like we’d had tonight, another concert in less than twenty-four hours may not have been possible. “But that makes it sound like someone on the tour did it.”
Brittany tilted her head.
“You
think
that, Brittany?”
“I don’t know.” She lifted both hands. “It’s just — Look, why would a local roadie do it? None of them know Tom.”
“Maybe the killer
didn’t
know him. Maybe the guy was after something in Ross’s office, and Tom came in at the wrong time.”
“But nothing was taken.”
I rubbed the pink silky fabric of my pajama bottoms. “Maybe the guy had to run out before he found what he wanted.”
“Like what?”
“I have no idea.”
Brittany considered that. “Does Ross carry secret information with him?”
“Depends on what you call secret. You saw those reporters — any one of them would love to know
anything
private about Rayne. Ross’s papers include contracts about performance dates. So, yeah, if someone’s just dying to know exclusive information, like all the special things Rayne O’Connor insists on having in her dressing room. The blue leather couch, the kinds of food, the size of the mirrors.”
“But no reporters could get backstage, right? You told me security guards are everywhere and that only local union workers got in that private back door.”
“True. So what if one of those workers wanted the information? He could sell it to a tabloid for a
lot
of money.”
Tabloids. I hated them. And their paparazzi.
Flopping back on my bed, I stared at the white ceiling. “It would be such a gamble, carrying around a gun like that. You’d have to stuff it in your pants or something, and what if someone saw it?”
Brittany had no answer.
I sighed. “If Tom was killed only because he saw someone in Ross’s office who shouldn’t be there, you’d think he’d be just inside the door. Like he stepped into the room to say, ‘What are you doing here?’ Instead, he was all the way in the room — behind the desk.”
“Maybe the killer dragged him there.”
I closed my eyes, picturing the carpet. Was it the kind that would show the drag marks of a body? I hadn’t seen anything like that.
Brittany’s cell phone rang. She checked the ID and winced. “Uh-oh. Home calling.”
“Mom probably talked to her.”
Despite my trust in Mom’s ability to convince, I held my breath as Brittany answered.
“Hi, Mom.” Her shoulders tightened, then hunched.
Please, oh please!
Brittany listened.
“Uh-huh. Yeah.”
I didn’t dare move. Had Mom’s call not worked?
Brittany bit her lip. “I know.”
My gaze fixed on her face, gauging every expression.
“Remember, Mom,” she said. “It happened
here,
in San Jose. And we’re leaving on Sunday anyway. Whoever did it must be someone local. So I’ll be just as safe going with the tour to Denver as I would if I came home.”
I had to hand it to Brittany—she could argue like a lawyer in court. Her mom always said she was destined to be an attorney.
She tensed again, then closed her eyes. “I will. I promise.”
I leaned forward.
Brittany’s eyes flew open. Her muscles relaxed. She nodded excitedly and gave me a thumbs-up.
My hands raised in the air.
Yes!
Brittany promised her mother the world. No, she wouldn’t go anywhere without a bodyguard. Yes, she’d do everything Rayne O’Connor said. Yes, she’d check in with her worried parents twice a day.
Parents.
Unexpectedly, the word bit. A reminder that I had only Mom — and an empty black hole for a father I never knew.
“Okay. Thanks so much! Call you tomorrow.” With triumph, Brittany hung up.
“Oh, thank goodness.” Weak with relief, I punched in Mom’s cell phone number. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. You did it!”
Mom managed a tired chuckle. “I know you need the company. Now you two go to sleep.”
“Yeah. Good night.”
Some time after three a.m. Brittany and I finally wound down. Yawning, we slid into our beds.
As sleepiness pulsed through my veins, I thought of Tom. My closest friend on tour. Like a big brother. Everyone liked him. Who would want him dead?
Tom, I miss you so much. I
will
find out who did this to you.
Whoever it was, that person would
pay.