Tombs of Endearments (17 page)

Until I saw that the crucifix was topped with a crown of thorns and that it dripped blood and had fire and brimstone shooting out from the sides of it.

And that Ben’s right arm was tattooed with the face of a leering red Satan and the words
Praise the Lord.

I wondered which arm applied to his current stage of spiritual development. I wasn’t sure which scared me more.

No matter. I had a job to do, and just so there was no mistaking that I wasn’t going to be intimidated into not doing it, I employed my slightly-pissed-and-not-going-to-take-it-anymore tour guide voice, the one I used with the senior citizens who were convinced they could chatter with one another and wander off when I was trying my damnedest to educate them. It was loud enough to command attention, friendly without being too sweet. Let’s face it, coming out of a five-foot-eleven redhead, it was also bound to make an impression.

“I talked to Gene Terry yesterday,” I said. I waited while the grumbling and the curses faded to a dull roar. “He told me I could stop in and see you.”

I had used both common sense and fashion sense that morning. Remembering Vinnie’s lecherous looks, I’d chosen a black pantsuit and a yellow shirt with a high neckline and long sleeves.

It didn’t stop the guys from leering.

“Come on in, pretty lady.” Mike’s anger was forgotten in a moment. He bowed and ushered me closer with a gesture that sent a tsunami of alcohol fumes my way. “Gene told us you were coming. He
didn’t tell us you were a hot little number.”

Pete was skinny enough to slip between Mike and the equipment so he could get nearer to me. Up close, he looked more emaciated than ever. He was as pale as one of those fish that live so far below the surface they never see the light, and his face was a map of wrinkles and lines. I’d seen dead people who looked more alive. I knew a couple of them personally. I guess that’s why when Pete looked me up and down and licked his lips, it gave me the willies.

“Don’t listen to this old man,” Pete purred. “I’m the only one here who can get you backstage passes to the concert.”

“Bullshit.” Ben finished one cigarette and lit another. “This chicky don’t need no stinkin’ backstage pass. She’s gonna be too busy to go backstage.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “In the tour bus with me.”

“Actually, I already bought my ticket for the concert.” Yeah, yeah, so I lied. Like it was some big deal? “I was surprised to see there are so many seats left.”

“You should have seen sales before Vinnie did us the favor of getting himself offed.” When Alistair tried to remove the broken drum from his drum set and it wouldn’t budge, he gave it another kick. He glared at the drum before he glared at his bandmates. “Of course, what the bloody hell did we expect? Who’d want to come see a bunch of old, has-been musicians?”

“Plenty of people.” Pete played bass, and the way I remembered it, he didn’t sing much. No wonder. His voice was high-pitched and nasal.
“We’re still on top of the world. Nobody can touch us.”

“Nobody would want to touch you.” Mike thought this was pretty funny. He laughed and choked and pounded his chest.

“Yeah, well, things are going to change.” Pete made a grab for a sheaf of music that was on a nearby table, and I had a feeling he’d been through this tirade with his bandmates before. They turned away. I was a new audience, and he took full advantage. He waved the music under my nose. “Now that Vinnie’s out of the picture, maybe Gene will listen when I tell him I’ve got some good songs in me, too. We can record my songs instead of Vinnie’s and then—”

“Then the whole world will know what a loser you are!” Mike laughed.

When I saw Pete’s top lip curl, I knew I had to take charge.

“Hey! Listen up!” Pete was near the glass window that looked into the control room. Alistair was directly opposite him, over near his drums. Mike was standing across from me, and Ben was facing him from the other side of the studio. I marched into the middle of the pack. Maybe I had a death wish, but at least for as long as they kept their mouths shut, I also had the floor.

“I know you must be busy,” I said. “I’m sure it takes a long time to record a song. I don’t want to hold you up.”

“Oh, baby, I could hold you up,” Mike purred. “Over my head, while I—”

“That’s why I’m going to say what I have to say and get out of your way.” I cut him off before he
could elaborate on the fantasy. “As Gene may have mentioned to you, I have a message for you. All of you.” I looked around the circle. “It’s from Vinnie.”

“Yeah, we heard.” Mike cracked open the new bottle of liquor, took a swig, and offered the bottle to me. When I declined, he drank my share. “I didn’t think Vinnie still had it in him to catch the eye of a babe as fine as you. So, he was banging you before he got killed, huh?”

“No.” My protest was swift and vehement. “I took Vinnie’s class at the Rock Hall. That’s how I knew him.”

“So if Vinnie had something to tell us while he was teaching that class at the Rock Hall, why didn’t he just call?” Ben asked and added, “Oh yeah, we all thought Vinnie was a jerk. Nobody would have wanted to talk to him, anyway.”

“He didn’t give me the message at the Rock Hall.”

“You’re the girl who was with him when he died.” Pete thought he had it all sorted out. He pulled himself up to his full height. It might have been effective if he was bigger than a Munchkin. “So Vinnie said something to you before he died, right? Like one of those deathbed speeches. Don’t tell me, let me guess. He was sorry we spent our time recording his shitty songs instead of my good ones.”

“He didn’t give me a message before he died.”

“Yeah, right.” Pete dismissed me with a good-riddance wave of one hand. “Like he gave it to you after he died!”

“Well, see…” I looked from Alistair to Mike, and from Pete to Ben. “He did.”

Not too long before this, if I heard someone confess to talking to the dead, I would have been speechless. Sure, I would have thought that person was a little crazy. Or a lot crazy. But for all its faults (and considering that my dad would be spending the next ten years as a guest of the federal government, I admit that these faults are many), my family raised me right. Early on, I learned to be tolerant and polite. Unless it was for something vitally important (like a sale at Saks or—come to think of it—a murder investigation), I knew better than to make a scene.

Of course, Alistair, Ben, Pete, and Mike hadn’t been brought up in the Martin family. In fact, my guess was that they’d probably been raised by wolves. Or maybe it was hyenas. That would explain why they all started to laugh.

I gritted my teeth in a grin-and-bear-it way and realized that I’d learned a couple of things that day. Number one: I did not ever want to spend time with ancient rock and rollers again. Number two: I don’t like the smell of Southern Comfort. Number three: It’s humiliating to make an important announcement and have it met with complete and total disbelief.

I guess that’s what really pissed me off.

I ditched the tour guide voice for something sure to attract a little more attention. “Laugh if you want. You know it’s possible. At one time, you were all involved with black magic.”

“Big deal.” Ben wheezed and fingered the tattoo of Lucifer on his arm. “You don’t think we actually believed any of that garbage, do you?”

“Vinnie did.”

Mike thought about taking another drink and changed his mind. He hung on to the neck of the bottle. “It’s true,” he said. “But how do you know it? Is that what he told you when he was dying? About the spells he used to cast? Shit, leave it to Vinnie to spend his last minutes on earth still talking that trash. We only went along with him and the whole magic scene because sometimes his freakin’ magic bullshit included orgies. Did he tell you that, too?”

“He told me—”

“Wait a minute!” Squeaky voice or not, Pete knew how to make himself heard. His words cut across mine like a knife. “What’s this really all about? Are you a cop?”

Like I may have mentioned before, guys aren’t always good about picking up on the obvious. I was much too well-dressed to be a cop (well, except for Quinn, who was much too well-dressed to be a cop, too, even though he was a cop). “I just sort of ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time as far as Vinnie was concerned,” I told the band right before I remembered that old saying about being in for a penny and in for a pound. I wasn’t sure what money had to do with how much something weighed, but I knew all about taking chances. And about how if I didn’t, I might not get the opportunity again.

“Actually,” I said, glancing around at the bandmates, “it’s not just Vinnie I’m here about. What I’d really like to figure out is what really happened to Damon and how it’s keeping him stuck here on earth.”

Amazingly, the mention of an almost forty-year-old
death was exactly what was needed to bring Mind at Large together. I could practically see a wall go up. The band on one side. Me on the other. Oh yeah, they were wary all right, and realizing it, my Spider-senses tingled.

As if he knew it, Mike looked me up and down. I had a feeling that for the first time, he was really seeing me. “You one of Damon’s bastards?” he asked. “You don’t look like him.”

“And duh, I’m not anywhere near old enough!”

“Then why do you care?” The question came from Alistair. Since it was the first completely civil thing I’d ever heard him say, I paid attention.

I was tempted to come up with some story to make them happy, but I opted for the truth, instead. For one thing, if I expected them to take Vinnie’s warning to heart, the least I could do in return was be honest. For another, there was already too much hot air in the room. I didn’t want to add to it.

“I care,” I said, “because I happen to know that Damon isn’t resting in peace. And because I think his death and Vinnie’s murder might be connected.”

“Except Damon wasn’t murdered.” This, from Ben.

“Yeah, that’s the story, and who am I to dispute it?” I didn’t want Ben to think I was singling him out, so I looked from man to man. “But you all know Damon had too much to look forward to. He wouldn’t kill himself. He was heading out on his own.”

“That’s what Vinnie told you!” Mike’s expression just about screamed,
Aha!
“Ain’t nobody else
knows that but us, so it has to be. Is that what you came here to do? Accuse us of something? Blackmail us?”

I threw my hands in the air. “What did I come here to do? Honestly, I don’t know. It sure isn’t because I want anything from you. Any of you. I’m just trying to make sense of it all. If Vinnie didn’t tell me—”

I was tired of trying to explain and getting nowhere fast. I dug in my purse and pulled out Dan’s digital tape recorder. Before I turned it on, I looked over my shoulder and into the control room. Techie Number One and Techie Number Two didn’t look so bored anymore. Bernie had a donut in one hand, but he wasn’t eating it. The roadies had gathered around just on the other side of the glass wall, their heads bent, anxious to hear more.

I remembered how Ben had communicated with the control room earlier. “Can you make it so they can’t hear us?” I asked him, and when he hit all the right buttons—I knew because the expectant look on the technicians’ faces dissolved—I turned on the recorder.

“Careful. Danger. The group…” Vinnie’s familiar voice scratched out the words. The guys bent closer to hear. “One. One more will die.”

I flicked off the recorder. “Anybody need to hear that again?”

Since nobody did, I slipped the recorder back in my purse.

Suddenly sober as a judge, Mike shifted from foot to foot. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

“What am
I
going to do?” I parroted the ques
tion and thought through my options. Sad but true, I had only one. “I’m going to investigate Vinnie’s murder. There’s got to be a connection, and it’s got to lead back to you guys. And maybe to Damon, too. So…” I glanced around the circle. In an effort to hear the recording better, the bandmates had all moved closer, and one by one, I looked them in the eye. “Let’s start by coming clean. Did one of you have something to do with Damon’s death?”

“That’s bull.” Alistair snapped out of the shock of hearing his dead bandmate’s voice. He scratched a hand through his straw-colored hair. “None of us had a reason.”

“You all had reasons.” I shouldn’t have had to point this out, but since nobody seemed willing to cop to it, I had no choice. “He was going to destroy your careers.”

“But he didn’t, did he?” Ben’s grin was anything but pleasant. “He might have thought that walking out would ruin Mind at Large, but the band only got better.”

“Like you’d know.” Pete snorted. “You weren’t part of us then. You never would have been. If Damon lived.” Pete’s eyes lit, and he pointed a finger. “Frame Forward was trash, man. You were going nowhere. Until you joined us. You had the most to gain.”

“Yeah, just like you”—Ben emphasized this with a stab of one finger every bit as accusatory as Pete’s—“had a reason to kill Vinnie. So we’d start recording your songs for a change.” Ben puffed out a breath of annoyance. “You all had as much at stake as I did. None of you were anything without
Damon. Which means every single one of you must have been mad as hell when he said he was leaving. You were dead in the water, man. You would have stayed that way if I didn’t step in.”

“Bollocks!” A vein bulged in the side of Alistair’s neck. “You were the one who wanted to be our lead singer. You wanted it bad. Bad enough to kill Damon?”

“Bad enough to kill you to shut up your stupid mouth.” Ben kicked aside the nearest chair and went after Alistair.

And in one pristine moment of clarity, I realized that Vinnie’s message from Beyond was spot on. These guys were in danger.

What Vinnie had failed to mention was that they were going to kill each other.

Truth be told, I figured the sooner, the better.

I didn’t bother to say goodbye. I grabbed my purse and headed out the door. When it closed behind me, it shut out the sounds of the new argument breaking out.

But only for a moment. Before I got even as far as the control room, the door banged open and the guys stomped out.