Authors: Terri Blackstock
On her lunch break, Parker went to the police station, hoping to find Gibson in. He was on the telephone, taking notes, his desk littered with papers and pictures, drink cans and empty coffee cups. Rayzo was eating a hamburger at his desk. He had a mustard stain on his shirt. She gave him a wave and dropped into the chair at Gibson’s desk.
Gibson acknowledged her with an uplifted finger telling her to wait, then finally got off the phone. “What’s up, Parks?”
She leaned toward him. “I didn’t want to call you from work becauseI didn’t want to start more rumors if anybody else overheard. But Daniel Walker just told me something I think I should pass on to you.”
“Serene’s guitar player?”
“That’s right.”
She related what he had told her about the Evans family and the possibility that Brenna had been spying for her dad. “I feel bad even saying it,” she said in a low voice. “But it’s the second time I’ve heard it. But even if she was a spy, it wouldn’t explain why she was killed.”
“It might.” He shifted through his notes. “You did hear Nathan Evans saying somebody meant it for him?”
“Yeah, but what could that mean? That one of his enemies came after his daughter for some reason, right? Not that she did anything wrong.”
He rubbed his eyes and flipped back through his notes.
“But that doesn’t explain my phone call,” Parker said. “If the killer was trying to get at Evans, why did the caller say it was about me?”
Gibson shook his head. “It’s possible it’s a prank, that some kid decided it would be fun to scare the living daylights out of you. Your number’s in the phone book, so it would be easy for them to do.”
“At night from a pay phone at a convenience store? Besides, it wasn’t a kid.” She looked down at her hands, wishing she could know for sure. “And it seems like they would have threatened me instead of promising to protect me, if it was a prank.”
“Parker, don’t worry. I’m not discounting that call. I’m taking everything we’ve found into consideration.”
“Are you making any headway?”
He looked from side to side, and met Rayzo’s eyes. “Some, yes. But I can’t talk to you about it right now.”
Realizing her being there might cause problems for him, she slid her chair back. “Guess I’d better get back to work.”
“How does Serene like the songs?”
“She loves them. Looks like we’ve got a tour to prepare for.”
“Yeah, let’s hope we can solve this case so I can put in for the time off.”
Parker couldn’t help being jumpy for most of the day as people came and went from the studios. Each time the front door opened, her heart leapt. The off-duty cop moonlighting as a security guard was two inches shorter than Parker’s five-eight—not the bouncer type. The fact that he carried a gun gave him a little more credibility, though. She hoped it was enough.
She spent the day on the phone with the labels, scrolling through her computer calendars, trying to find space for the artists who’d been booked in the studio during the lost days. The delay had ruined deadlines and cost people money. She hoped some of them would finally go to one of the lesser studios around town. Their sound boards might not have all the bells and whistles that were the pride of Colgate Studios—and they might not be drug- and alcohol-free—but they were adequate for the needs of some of these artists.
Her own hopes of finding studio time were quickly vaporizing. What was she going to do? Her main purpose for working here was to get free studio time. Now, when she needed it most, there weren’t any available except from seven to ten a.m. She had to be at work at eight, so that wouldn’t work.
When Serene’s group finally broke for lunch, her friend came out and leaned on the upper ledge of Parker’s desk. “Going to the concert tonight?”
Parker had forgotten about the free concert at the Ryman Auditorium tonight to raise money for an inner-city ministry. “I don’t know, Serene,” she said. “I’ve got to work on my songs. And I don’t know how I’m ever going to get any studio time. I’m starting to lose hope that I can get this done in time for the tour.”
“Don’t lose hope,” Serene said. “We’ll work it out.”
She looked up. “We?”
“Yeah. We got a lot done today. I’m about to finish up in the studio. I have extra time booked. If this keeps up, I can give it to you.”
“But I can’t pay for it,” she said. “That’s why I work here, remember?”
“You have a right to the time. If I have it booked and then I pull out, surely it’s okay if you take it.”
Parker looked at the long list of artists waiting to get into the studios. It wouldn’t be right to take early evening hours when there were paying clients waiting to use them. “I’ll have to think about it,” she said.
“Don’t think too hard, Parker. This is business. I won’t cancel the time until we’ve finished mixing, and that could be a while yet.”
Parker stood up to stretch. It was after five. Cat was in the back doing some filing, waiting to relieve Parker on the night shift. “I can’t believe this day is finally over. Want to get something to eat?”
“I’m not hungry, but I’ll go with you,” Serene said.
Parker doubted that Serene truly wasn’t hungry. She had to be—she was starving to death. Maybe Parker could coerce her into eating, once they got there.
Parker got her laptop and purse, then headed out to the car and unlocked the door for Serene. As she got into the driver’s side, she realized how small Serene looked sitting in the round pod of the VW. She seemed to be shrinking away. Parker felt huge next to her.
“Hook your belt,” Parker told her. Serene did. “So, how are the songs going?”
“They’re beautiful,” Serene said. “We finished recording ‘Double Minds,’ and as soon as it’s mixed, we’re going to press some singles and release it to the radio stations.”
Parker’s stomach churned as she thought about the true meaning of that song. Now it was anything but what she had originally planned. “Have you been thinking about the video?”
“Not really, and it’ll be on a crash schedule,” Serene said. “Any ideas?”
Parker thought about it. “Originally, when I conceived the song, I thought of a crowd of people with spirits moving in and out of them, pulling them to the right path when their flesh took them somewhere else.”
“The song doesn’t mean that anymore,” Serene said. “The video is supposed to be about me wanting to leave the man I love, but the other side of me can’t do it.”
“Yeah, I know. Two sides of you battling the same problem with different solutions.”
“I guess it’s basically the same. We could computer generate the ghostly parts. Maybe show me fantasizing about whether to throw him out or let him stay.”
The more Serene went on, the more excitement thickened her voice. Parker didn’t even want to make suggestions. The video was going to be about Serene and some guy. She’d probably spend all her time making pouty poses and letting the fan blow her hair. Real deep stuff.
When Parker started up the car, she plugged in her iPhone. “Want to hear the title song for my CD?”
“Something new?” Serene asked.
“Relatively new,” Parker said with a smile. “I’ve held it back for myself.”
“No fair!”
“Oh, yeah, it’s fair. I’ve given you my best. This one’s mine. It’s called ‘Ambient.’”
Serene listened to the demo, rapt, as Parker’s song filled the small car. Neither of them spoke as the song played. She drove, softly singing along with her own voice.
When the song came to an end, Serene looked at her. “Okay, I seriously hate you.”
Parker grinned. “Why?”
“Because I could have gone platinum with that song.”
Parker laughed. “Maybe I will, instead.”
Serene sighed. “It’s beautiful. Vintage Parker. It’ll make you a star.”
“You think so?”
“You’re playing it on the tour, aren’t you? Because you have to. It’s your best yet.”
“Of course,” Parker said, “if I can get it recorded.”
“Play it again.”
Her three favorite words. Parker obliged, and Serene listened quietly. When it was over, Parker realized she was driving aimlessly. “Where do you want to eat?”
“Doesn’t matter. I told you, I’m not hungry.”
“Have you eaten today at all? Did you eat yesterday?”
Serene had to think about it for a moment. What a shame. Eating was not something Parker had to think about.
“I had half a piece of cantaloupe this morning,” Serene said. “But I’d love a drink.”
Parker decided to just pick up a salad and eat it later. She turned into McDonald’s. “Too many cars in the drive-thru. Let’s go in.”
“Okay,” Serene said, “but I don’t feel like dealing with any fans right now.”
It wasn’t as though Serene had paparazzi chasing her whenever she left the house. Nashville was pretty jaded where celebrities were concerned—and Christian celebs garnered even less attention. But people did recognize her, and she got stares almost everywhere she went.
Parker got her salad and drink, and as Serene ordered, Parker went to stand by the glass exit door. She looked out into the parkinglot.
Lord, I don’t know what to do for her. Help her before it’s too late
.
Absently, she scanned the cars—until she saw a man with long brown hair sitting in a white Corolla. He seemed to be staring right at her, through sunglasses. Her heart went into overdrive, and she stepped back from the glass.
Calm down
, she told herself. Just because the guy who called her might have had long brown hair and
might
have a small, light-coloredsedan, didn’t mean that
this
guy was watching her.
Serene came out, sipping on her drink. “Ready?”
Parker pushed open the glass door and started across the parkinglot. Glancing back at the man, she saw that he was looking down now, as though reading. She got in and started her VW, and glanced over again. “Do you know that guy over there?”
Serene glanced toward the other car. “Nope.”
“He was staring at me a few minutes ago.”
“You sure?”
Parker realized that he could have been watching for Serene. She was the beauty, the talent, the celebrity. Still … “No, I guess not.”
As they pulled out, he kept looking down. She pulled into traffic, then glanced in her rearview mirror. He was pulling out of his space.
She turned off the main street and navigated her way through a neighborhood. The man didn’t turn after her. Relieved, she made her way through the back streets, back to Colgate. She dropped Serene off and watched as she went in, saying another prayer for her shrinking friend. Parker wanted to see her succeed and be happy, but she feared that Serene’s dreams were, once again, taking her somewhere destructive.
As a child, Serene’s seven-year-old dreams had been about having different parents—a mother who wasn’t being gnawed to death by cancer, a father who knew how to smile, siblings who could hunker with her under the bed when things got loud and out of control, who would keep her from being so alone in her fear. When her mother died not long after her eighth birthday, Serene’s dream world grew more intense. They were dreams of going to heaven and meeting her new, improved mother, with color in her face and energy to run and swing and play. She longed to be there … prayed to be there …
plotted
to be there.
When Serene was eleven, she swallowed a bottle of her dad’s sleeping pills and woke up days later, woefully alive. The doctors concluded that she was headed down the wrong path—a path to drugs and destruction. They suggested that her father send her to a camp for troubled youth. The hope of going there had given Serene—then called Sal—a new dream of escape from the oppression in her home. But her father had quashed it, as he did everything else in her life. No way he could stand to be without his little Sal, he told the doctors. He would steer her back to the right path. And steer he did.
When she returned to school, there were rumors about her attempted suicide, started by neighbors who cared enough about her plight to gossip, but not enough to do anything more. The kids in her class treated her as though they would absorb her darkness if they got too close.
But Parker wasn’t put off by it. One afternoon, not long after Serene’s return to school, Parker crossed the imaginary line that she saw around Serene, and approached her lonely table at lunch. “Did you take the pills to get high, or to kill yourself?” she asked.
Sal looked at her, shocked that anyone would ask outright what others only whispered about.
“Don’t worry, Sal,” Parker said, sitting down. “I won’t tell anybody. I can keep secrets.”
The girl considered Parker for a moment. In her eyes, Parker saw her running through what she knew about her. She hoped she remembered that Parker wasn’t mean.
Finally, trust and resolution glimmered in her eyes. “I was trying to kill myself.” She said it almost defiantly, as though she expected Parker to gasp and choke, then run to tell the teacher.
Parker didn’t move or change her expression. “Why’d you want to do that?”
Sal looked down at her hands. There were scars on her palms, burn marks in the shape of a grill rack. “No reason.”
Parker studied her for a long moment, then she looked away, hoping it provided a measure of mercy to the distant girl. She dug into her lunch sack and pulled out a zip-locked sandwich, an orange, a baggie with a cut-up apple, a bag of Cheez-Its, and a small Tupperware dish. “This is embarrassing. My mom thinks I have to eat five fruits or vegetables a day, so she crams them into my lunch bag. The sandwich is peanut butter and bananas, which I like. But I only want half of it, because after I eat part of the apple and orange, I’m full.” She pulled the sandwich out and thrust half of it at Serene. “Here’s your half. I think my mother secretly packs extra for friends.”
Sal seemed moved that Parker would consider her a friend. She pushed aside the bag of Cheetos she’d gotten from the vending machine and ate the sandwich. Later, when they spoke of that day, Serene told her that lunch had spawned dreams that her mother was alive, that she’d packed a balanced lunch—the kind that would make Mrs. Branch, their health teacher, smile. Dreams in which her mother stood in the kitchen in her pajamas in the morning, slicing up bananas while she reminded her to brush her teeth.
Dreams that would never be fulfilled.
From that day on, she and Parker had been best friends. Her desire to head for heaven anytime soon had diminished. Apparently, she chose to head there the long way now, through slow, brittle starvation that masqueraded as her ticket to beauty and fame. That call to suicide was insidious, offering freedom, then trapping its victim in bondage.
Sal had legally changed her name to Serene when she broke free of her father and her deadly home, but she still saw the world from behind the bars of her eating disorder. Parker had tried for many years to pray her free … just as she’d done with her own father. But a person had to want freedom more than bondage before God would grant it. Prayers of the double-minded often went unanswered.