A Murderer Among Us, page 6
She was quiet over the line for a minute. Then she told him, “You forgot something,” she told him.
“What?”
“A dog? If I get a nice big dog, you get to go home at night.”
He shook his head. “A nice big dog would be good, but I won’t be leaving you.”
She let out a sound of aggravation. “What? You’re going to guard me the rest of my life?”
“I believe that between us, we’ll glean the truth. We’ll find out if there was more than the many law enforcement and fire personnel saw that day.”
“They were looking for cause, not a reason,” Sky murmured. “Should we make coffee first, grab something—”
“Believe it or not, I have coffee. And food. We need to go.”
“I’m going to shower and come down,” she said, ending the call.
* * *
CHASE LOOKED AT his phone for a minute, grimaced to himself and rose to wander the living room. The house was a beautiful one, but he knew that it had been falling apart when Jake had purchased it. He’d always loved period things.
There was a picture on the mantel, and he walked over to it. The photo had been taken when he and Sky had first started dating. But Hank was in it as well, along with Jake. It had been taken on stage one night, maybe at the casino stage in Florida, a smaller venue, maybe about seven thousand people, and it was one of the nights they had each come in for just a song or two. But the pride that both Jake and Hank wore on their faces was wide and touching, just like the way they all stood together, he and Sky in the middle, Hank and Jake flanking them.
He turned away from the picture, reminding himself that he was working. Someone in or connected to the band was selling drugs. Bad drugs. Not that they couldn’t kill on their own, but these had been contaminated with fentanyl.
Jake had known it, and Jake had died.
And if there was anything he could do for Sky’s father, it was going to be to keep his daughter safe. And between them, they would find the truth.
* * *
SKY HEADED FOR the shower. She realized she was arguing with him just to argue. She should be glad. Chase was on her side. Since she’d get nowhere by looking at the players and roadies and demanding to know if one of them had killed her father, it was great to have someone on her side.
Then again...
Hank McCoy was Chase’s grandfather. And he was on the suspect list. Was Chase open to believing his own grandfather might have killed Jake?
She doubted it; if someone had told her that her father was a murderer, she wouldn’t have believed it.
She turned the water on, not sure if she wanted it to be hot and soothing or cold enough to really wake her up and straighten her out.
Sky tried both, and both were good. But she hurried and dressed quickly and casually in jeans and a tunic and hurried down the stairs.
“Let’s go.”
“Don’t we both have cars here?” she asked.
“Leave yours.”
“Why don’t we leave yours?”
“Are you being argumentative for the sake of it? We’re going to my house.”
She winced. She was doing it again. Arguing just to argue.
“Fine. We’ll take your car.”
The distance between the Garden District and French Quarter wasn’t great, but Jake was an expert of winding his way around the tourists who seemed to think it was fine to suddenly step out into the street at any given minute.
“The problem with the French Quarter,” she murmured.
“Wandering tourists?” he asked. “No big deal. There’s not so many this close to Esplanade and Rampart. Anyway...we made it.”
He hit a button on a remote, and the gate that led to his courtyard swung open. He pulled his car into the garage, leaving room for those who were due to join them.
“They’ll take rideshares or walk, depending on where they’re staying,” Sky commented.
“Probably, but just in case...we’ve some room here. And it’s even possible to find spaces on this street this far from the river. Anyway, I’ve got to shower. I’ve ordered food, so if it gets here before I’m out—”
“I think it will be safe for me if I see that a food delivery is arriving.”
He didn’t reply but led the way through the kitchen entrance.
She remembered his home. And like her own, she thought, it was a great one. Having survived a number of serious fires, it was one of the oldest in the area, stemming from the late 1700s. But it had been treated with care through the years. It was a smaller house than hers with a narrower stairway, with touches of the period in the archways and architectural details. Her home was decidedly Victorian while his was more French Gothic, but both were part of what they loved about New Orleans: the history, the color and the music. Especially the music. She smiled, thinking about the wonderful performers she so often saw when she just took a walk down Royal Street.
“What?” Chase asked.
“What?”
“You’re thinking something and smiling,” Chase said.
“Just that I wonder... I mean, the guys started as kids, basically. My father being the grand old man in his twenties. And I wonder if they hadn’t all grown up surrounded by so much great music if they would have become the group that they were. It wasn’t one song—it wasn’t a vocalist or a guitarist or any one instrument. These guys loved and grew up with and studied music, all of them,” she said.
“As did we.”
“And I still love it and use it, just in a different way,” she assured him.
“Okay, so...the kitchen is smaller, but it has an island. So just in case—”
“I can safely handle food,” she assured him.
“Okay, I’m headed upstairs.”
“Go!”
He did, hurrying up the narrow flight that led to the second floor. He had a great balcony up there; they’d watched a few parades go by from that vantage point, though they took different routes now.
When he was gone, Sky slowly turned around, taking in the house. He’d either remained a fairly neat person or he had someone come in to clean. And while not the size of her place, he had a table in the dining area that stretched straight into the parlor that would seat eight, and there were plenty of sitting spaces in the parlor.
She walked to the left side of the house and found that one room was all but filled with a drum set. But Chase also played guitar, and he had a collection of tambourines and maracas. She smiled when she actually found a cowbell on the shelf along with the other smaller instruments.
What was he really doing with his life? she wondered.
When she’d hear about him through one of the band members or their families, he was just taking another class, sitting in with a group somewhere, working on something in a lab. He seemed to travel a lot, too.
She hadn’t been there long before she heard a buzz and remembered that he had a gate bell, similar to the one she’d installed. She quickly headed for the front, freezing in the parlor when she looked up the stairs.
Chase was there, bottom half wrapped in a towel. His shoulders were bronzed and glistening, and his abs and pecs had remained smoothly muscled.
“I’ve got it!” she cried to him. “For God’s sake, get dressed!”
“I don’t know if you should answer the door—”
She ignored him, hurrying on to the front. She pushed the button at the door that opened the gate and stepped out to the porch. It was the food arriving, two burly men bearing boxes and bags. She greeted them pleasantly and directed them to the island in the kitchen and the long table in the dining room. They’d barely gotten things on the table when Chase came hurrying down, now in jeans, a T-shirt and a casual jacket.
She realized the latter probably concealed a weapon.
But he thanked the delivery men as well and saw them out.
“See?” she said. “Food, delivered, safely, and I managed it just fine on my own.”
He didn’t reply to that but said, “Let’s start getting this stuff open and out. Oh, paper plates. There’s a tray of plastic forks and all on the counter... We’ll be ready, and if there’s time...”
“If there’s time, what?”
“We’ll quickly run up to my office.”
“Shouldn’t we do that first? Food gets cold. I see you have crawfish étouffée, gumbo...all the right stuff, huh?”
“One hopes. You’re right. Leave it all covered. That’s a salad—doesn’t matter. Come on upstairs,” he said.
He hurried ahead of her, turning to the right.
His office was impressively neat and well equipped with his computer, a good-sized monitor, printer/copier complete with a scanner and a tray with neatly folded papers. His desk was large with an ergonomic chair, and there was a love seat in the rear of the room and another chair that could be brought up to the desk.
She wondered who he might work with here at times.
And she couldn’t help but feel a bit of jealousy. Did he write music sometimes? Maybe with someone...with whom he could make beautiful music?
“All right, the remaining group. Four guys—one of them my grandfather. Hank always admitted he did some pot in his day, doesn’t care for it now, says he can take a nap at the drop of a hat without it. Drinking—a bit to excess in his younger days, wild, crazy and a success—but he says he respected Jake so much, even when he didn’t realize it, and he learned to temper himself. Yes, he’s my grandfather, and yes, I want him to be innocent.”
“Did any of them go crazy on drugs at any time?” Sky murmured.
“Not really, and certainly not in comparison to a lot of groups out there who suddenly had tons of money and adulation. I looked up a bunch of public-domain stuff. They never went crazy peeing on stage à la Jim Morrison or anything, but Joe Garcia once drank himself into a stupor and ripped up a hotel room and cooled his heels in jail overnight.”
“Brandon?” Sky asked.
“He’s been rowdy a few times, but whatever he has or hasn’t done, it was never bad enough for an arrest. I’ve been with him during Mardi Gras when I was worried that he’d get himself in trouble and I wanted to make sure he’d get home okay. Brandon...he was there that night.”
Sky nodded. “I’ve never seen Mark or Chris have anything more than a beer or two. And if he does drugs of any kind, Brandon certainly has never asked me to join in. Then again, other than being polite when my mom has had anyone around, I haven’t really hung out with any of these people for years.”
“Your dad never frowned on anyone having a drink. Even sober, he’d buy a beer for a friend. He’d be out of there if people were drinking to excess, they... Well, they just didn’t. They respected him, and they followed his lead. They might all owe him their careers—and their lives.”
“Roadies?” Skylar said.
“Okay, let’s just remember we can’t label them as guilty of anything just because we were never as close to any of them as we were the band members,” Chase said.
Sky smiled. “Gotcha. So...?”
“So. Justin West, Charlie Bentley and Nathan Harrison,” Chase said. “Justin has been with the group longest, he’s turning fifty in the fall, and has no arrest record that I can find, and records like that are accessible. I have seen Justin kick back after a show with a lot of tequila, but he’s also a family man, two sons in college, still married to Julia, his wife of twenty-seven years. Charlie Bentley, forty-three, divorced, handsome man, glad to sweep up the ladies after a performance. He had a DUI back in 2008. He was young, and in the biz... Driving under any kind of influence is a sin in my book—plenty of rideshare companies out there—but that’s a personal thing.”
“Not personal at all. Too many people have been injured or killed by impaired drivers,” Sky said.
He nodded. “Still, doesn’t turn him into a murderer or...”
“Drug pusher?”
“Right. Then we have Nathan Harrison. Also in his early forties, also divorced—a couple of times—still a good dad to his kids, so I hear. Coaches his son’s Little League team and is on decent terms with both his ex-wives, no arrest record, but again, likes to party after a show and considers himself quite the hunk for those young women who like to hang around rock stars.”
A buzzing sounded.
“First of our lunch guests,” Chase said, rising. “Let’s see who it is.”
“Everyone responded. Hanging around until sound checks and all tonight,” Sky murmured. “Well, except for Hank, of course—”
“Because Gramps is in the hospital,” Chase reminded her.
“He’s doing okay?”
“He’ll be in there another week or so and then... He’ll be out of any kind of heavy lifting until he finishes with his cardio rehab.”
“Puts you in a bad position, doesn’t it?” Sky asked him.
“What do you mean?”
“Skyhawk with no drummer.”
“You don’t hang around a lot. They have no lead singer and they’ve managed.”
Sky laughed. “All those guys sing, and they’ve divided the songs well. But being a drummer...hmm, harder call.”
“And the rock world is filled with them.”
“But not drummers who belong with Skyhawk.”
“Hey, let’s focus. Be charming and fun and see what we can learn about people.”
Sky nodded gravely. “Someone fixed that amp. And they knew how to do it. Fray it just enough that the band would be in the middle of something and that would mean my dad would be impatient enough to fix it himself without stopping the show.”
“They’re all fairly tech-savvy when it comes to the shows.”
“No, seriously, think about it. There’s so much going on. The light show, the mic stands, the amplifiers, all usually run by a good DJ until the band’s front man takes over. I think—”
“I think we’re talking about a single wire—one mic.”
She stopped, almost tripping down the stairs. She grabbed his arm to steady herself. Naturally, he was there, catching her. But she looked into his eyes.
“You knew—you knew long before all this came along. You have known that what happened to my dad wasn’t an accident and—”
“I haven’t known anything. I’ve suspected some things, yes. But don’t you understand? We don’t know who to suspect, and even if we did, damn it, Sky, the legal system works on proof. I don’t like that you’re here, because yes, I think something was done on purpose to your dad. And if whoever did it thinks you’re on his trail, there’s going to be another so-called accident!”
She was still holding his arm. His hands were still on her shoulders.
The buzzing sounded again.
He released her and turned and headed on down the stairs, hitting keys on his system that opened the gate and the front door.
He stepped out to the porch.
Their lunch guests were arriving.
Chapter Four
“Skylar of Skyhawk! Wow, kid, it is great to see you!”
Nathan Harrison was the first to arrive. He greeted Skylar with a massive hug, pulling her tightly into an embrace, then setting her at arm’s length to study her. “Honey,” he added, “you are beautiful like your mama, but man...do you have a lot of your dad in you! That dark hair and those blue, blue eyes! I’m thrilled, and I swear,” he added, suddenly serious, “your daddy is going to be smiling up in heaven, knowing his girl is doing his stuff with a voice to challenge the angels!”
Nathan was a solid, strong and good-looking man with red-blond hair, a beard and a mustache that made him look like a Viking roadie. He’d always been nice to her, but she knew he could be wild.
She liked Nathan. His hug was warm. His welcome seemed real.
But then, who? She had always cared about these people, her “uncles” when Skyhawk had performed with all this crew for years and years.
“Hey!” Chase said lightly. “Watch the merchandise.”
“Aw, come on! Jealous of an old man?” Nathan returned. He cast his head at an angle, arching a brow. “Hmm. You young-uns are hosting this luncheon together, I surmise?”
“Well, it’s lunch, and we’re both here,” Sky said lightly. “Nathan, great to see you. How have you been?”
“Up to no good, like usual!”
Stepping from behind Nathan, Joe Garcia was doing the talking. He wasn’t a short man, being about six feet even, but Chase and Nathan were about six three or so, making him appear small in their presence. But Joe was a showman, too. He’d kept in shape and could move like a man thirty years his junior.
He must have also been a mind reader because he quickly said, “Come on, now! The best things come in small packages!”
“There’s nothing small about you,” Sky assured him dryly, giving him a hug, too.
The buzz sounded again.
“That’s going to be Justin and Charlie,” Nathan told them. “You know, both moved out of New Orleans. Justin’s living down in Orlando and Charlie headed up to Baton Rouge. The pandemic years were hard, Skyhawk wasn’t performing and...”
“Hey!” Joe protested. “We kept you guys on payroll all the way through it.” He looked at Sky and gave her an encouraging smile. “That was something your dad insisted on—none of the usual bonuses and perks, but a paycheck at the very least.”
“And were we grateful! But in Orlando, Justin could have his family near the theme parks, and there wound up being some work down there. But you know Justin—he’d never let anything interfere with Skyhawk.” He laughed suddenly. “He liked being a three-to four-hour drive to the Fort Lauderdale and Miami areas, too. ’Cause, you know, Skyhawk isn’t the only group heading out there! He took the kids down to see Cheap Trick last year, and he worked some old-timers, too. Anyway, he’s super excited. Says that age doesn’t dull a rocker—like Cheap Trick commanded that state. But this show has you, Sky! The Sky of Skyhawk. Sold out, you know, and resales... People are asking like crazy—in the thousands—to get in. This is going to...”
