Double Minds (7 page)

CHAPTER

NINE

On her way home, Parker drove by Colgate Studios to get a look at the building in daylight. The road was roped off and blocked. Three media vans were parked there. Crime-scene investigators came and went.

The windows had been boarded up, probably at George’s initiative, since the studio contained so much expensive equipment that looters would love to get their hands on. The glass in the building was high-grade security glass, meant to keep thieves from smashing it out and breaking in. But it clearly wasn’t bulletproof.

She drove past. Stopping would invite reporters who might recognize her now. In their hurry to report her death last night, they’d probably found her MySpace page and studied her picture. Just as quickly, they’d probably forgotten her name.

She drove around the block to a favorite Starbucks. The drive-thruhad half a dozen cars, so she parked and went inside. She ordered her coffee, then sat down at one of the tables to wait, chin on her hand.

A man with stark, fake blue eyes looked at her as he fixed his coffee. Was he staring at her because of her recent celebrity? She decided to get up and wait for her coffee at the counter. The drive-thrutraffic had slowed the baristas down considerably.

“Excuse me. Are you Parker James?” The man had a charming British accent.

She turned around. “Yes.”

“I’m Nigel Hughes. I thought I recognized you.” He was still stirring his coffee. “You’re the songwriter who writes for Serene, aren’t you?”

Since he didn’t refer to her as the previously dead girl, her defenses lowered. “I am.”

“Grand. So nice to meet you. I work for
the New York Times
.I must say, you’re much more attractive in real life than in your publicity pictures.”

She didn’t know whether to be flattered or defensive. “
New York Times?
” Then he
was
interested in her because of the murder.

“I wonder if you might sit down with me for a bit.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t really have any comments about the murder.”

The girl at the counter called out her order. Parker took it across the room, pried off the top, and grabbed a couple of sugars.

“I actually have all I need about the murder for now. I had the good fortune to get an interview with one of the detectives this morning.”

She wondered if it had been Gibson.

“When I’m working on a story, I often like to work on side storiesas well. Kill several birds with one stone, you see. And when I was looking at your website last night, I grew interested in your songwriting. I thought perhaps I could do a story on you, as well. It would be excellent publicity.”

Parker looked at him more closely. She did need PR, and depending on when the article came out, it could do her a lot of good. “I could talk to you for a few minutes,” she said, stirring her coffee. “But I really can’t talk about the murder.”

“Excellent,” he said and waved his hand toward an empty table. She sat, took off her coat, and sipped her coffee. When he was seated, he looked into her eyes. His eye color didn’t look quite as fake as it had before. Maybe he’d been born with stunning blue eyes.

“Were you close to the girl who was killed?”

She set her jaw. “I told you, I don’t want to talk to you about the murder.”

“Yes, you did. Very sorry. I simply wanted to offer my condolences. Terrible thing, it was.”

Parker looked down at her coffee.

“So how long have you been writing for Serene?”

She brought her eyes back to him over her cup. “Since the beginning. We’ve known each other since we were kids.”

“She’s always recorded your songs, then?”

“No, she started out doing covers. You know, recording songs that other artists had made popular. But she decided she liked my songs better. She started recording them, and some of them became hits.”

“Christian hits.”

“At first. But ‘Trying’ hit the secular charts.”

“Secular charts. Is that what you call
Billboard
’s rankings?”

She smiled. “I guess people outside of the Christian market don’t call it that.”

“You have an interesting way of looking at things, you Christians.” She smiled. “Can I take that to mean you’re not a believer?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I believe in many things. Just not Jesus Christ.”

“Funny that you’d call him Christ if you don’t believe.”

“Why is that?”

“Because
Christ
means ‘the Messiah.’ If you think he’s the Messiah, then why don’t you believe?”

He grinned. “I didn’t say I think he’s the Messiah. I was merely calling him what you do.”

She gave him a smile that she hoped was winsome. “I call him Lord.”

He matched her smile. “As I said, you Christians have a funny way of looking at things.” He shifted in his seat. “So tell me, how has Serene taken her fame?”

“Very well.”

“Rumblings are that Jeff Standard is trying to sign her.”

Boy, this guy had done his homework. How had he gone from reporting on the murder at Colgate to snooping into Serene’s record deals?

“I can’t talk about that.”

“Then you confirm it?”

He was good. “No, I don’t confirm it. I simply don’t feel comfortable talking about Serene’s career with a stranger.”

“And here I thought we were friends.”

“You Brits have a funny way of looking at things.”

He laughed. “Touché. You’re very clever, you are.” He glanced toward the counter. “Can I buy you a scone? A muffin?”

She shook her head. “No, I’m good.”

“You’re not on one of those starvation kicks like so many of the girls in the entertainment field, are you?”

She wanted to ask him if she looked like she was starving, but she knew his answer might crush her ego. “No, I eat when I’m hungry.”

“Unlike your friend, Serene.”

She frowned. “What?”

“Oh, come now. I’ve seen the girl in concert. She’s practically skeletal, she is. Anorexic, isn’t she?”

That was enough. Parker pulled her coat back on and got to her feet. “I’m sorry, I have to go.”

He looked wounded. “Did I offend you? I’m very, very sorry if I did.”

“I have things to do.” She took her coffee and started for the door.

“May I talk with you again? Dinner, perhaps? Not for an interview, but just two people enjoying one another’s company? I don’t know many people here, after all.”

Was he asking her for a date? “No, I don’t think so.” She pushed through the door, leaving him standing there.

As she got into her car, she looked back. He was still at the glass, hands in pockets, watching her. Either he was captivated with her, or he saw her as a source of information.

She would Google him when she got home, and see who this Nigel Hughes really was.

Google confirmed that Nigel Hughes was a staff writer for the
New York Times
. Parker looked at some of his stories over the last few months. He seemed to be fascinated with celebrity scandals. His column appeared in the Entertainment Section.

He’d been one of the first reporters to dig up compromising photographs of one of the hottest Disney teen stars last year, and when Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan were suffering the indignities of their DUI scandals, he’d written about it extensively.

The fact that he was interested in Serene’s eating habits worried her. Why would he even care about a star in the Christian arena? One song on the
Billboard
charts wasn’t enough to warrant such scrutiny, was it?

If it was, maybe Serene could get her act together before he uncovered too much.

Resolving not to talk to him again, she went to the American Idol website to see if they’d posted any information yet about this summer’s auditions. Two years in a row, she’d stood in line with thousands of people and hadn’t made the cut, even past the producers who screened the singers. She had never even seen Randy, Paula, and Simon in person. She was neither bad enough to get on camera, nor good enough to go to Hollywood. It would have discouraged her, if not for all the fabulous singers she’d seen turned away.

Her latest idea for a shortcut to fame was through Christian music festivals that drew thousands to hear the most popular Christian bands play. Some of them had contests for new singer/ songwriters. She’d submitted demos to all of them.

No word from any of them yet.

She was also considering other reality shows than American
Idol
. She’d written off Survivor because she didn’t think she could ever do anything athletic without losing an arm or a leg. So she’d applied to be on
Big Brother
, hoping that being trapped in a house with a bunch of others for six weeks might give her some notoriety. They always needed a guitar-playing Christian to mock, didn’t they? She hadn’t gotten a reply from her application or the video she’d sent in, though.

So lately, she’d thought of trying to get on a decorating show. She’d applied for
Trading Spaces
and convinced her mother to trade houses for a weekend to decorate a room in each other’s home. If she could just have a camera crew here for the weekend, she would paint like a screaming banshee and sing her original songs while she did it. She’d get a decorated living room to boot.

But none of them had responded. There were fifteen emails from people who’d heard she was dead, then subsequently found out it was all a mistake. They gushed as though she’d been their best friend. Though she saw the irony in their emailing instead of calling, she was glad they hadn’t added their voices to her growing voice mailbox.

Besides the condolence/praise emails, she had a dozen e-cards she didn’t want to take the time to open. She wondered if Day Spring Cards had come up with a
So Glad You’re Not Dead
card, but she didn’t want to take the time to find out. She hit the delete key on each of them.

Familiar anxiety swirled up in her stomach, starting a bitter churning. She realized she hadn’t eaten lunch, so she went to the pantry and pulled out a bag of caramel rice cakes she’d bought on one of her health kicks. The idea was that one or two would assuage her hunger when she was trying to lose a few pounds. Instead, she binged on them and ate the whole bag. Unlike Serene, she didn’t purge. No, she preferred to let her calories go straight to her thighs.

Her father had aptly named her. Parker was the name of a guitar that was handcrafted and unusually shaped. What could be more fitting? Not her jeans, that was for sure.

Who did she think she was kidding? She wasn’t skinny enough to be a star.

Now that she’d finished the bag of rice cakes and the email, she still felt uneasy. Sick, almost. Her anxiety was pushing toward panic. There was only one remedy for that.

She went to her bedroom and got her Bible, which sat on her nightstand, on top of her workbook on James. Crawling onto her unmade bed, she opened the Bible to where the ribbon marked her place and began to read. As always, when she got into God’s Word, she felt sucked in, totally absorbed, fascinated by the living words that had such application to her life.

Time passed before she knew it, and just as she’d hoped, the churning in her stomach stopped. The anxiety level went down. She didn’t feel like she was going to explode.

She heard a door and looked out the window. Gibson’s car sat in the driveway. She slid off the bed and met him in the front room. “Did you solve the case?”

She’d never seen her brother look quite so tired. “Not yet.”

“I saw Chase this morning, and Brenna’s roommate Marta.”

He opened the fridge and shot a look back at her. “You need to stay out of this, Parker. I’m serious. You don’t have any business interrogating witnesses.”

“I didn’t. I just wanted to tell them how sorry I am.”

He closed the refrigerator door. “You ought to go to the grocery store.”

The nerve. “I wasn’t planning for company. I have rice cakes.” She grabbed the bag off her computer table. There were mostly only crumbs left, but she tossed it to him. “I’ll make you a sandwich. I have bread and some ham.”

“How old is it?”

She grunted. “Would I offer you something spoiled?”

“I don’t know. I get you and Tom mixed up.” Tom was his lazy, inconsiderate, womanizing roommate.

“Yeah, I see how that could happen.”

So Gibson and his roommate hadn’t yet reconciled. Which meant Gibson would be staying awhile.

“So how did Chase seem?” Gibson asked. “I have to go talk to him again today.”

“Sad. Upset.”

“Did you see his hand?”

“Yeah. He put it through the wall when he heard about her murder.”

He shook his head. “Something’s not right about that.”

She got the ham out of the fridge and checked the expiration date, just to make sure. “What do you mean?”

“Well, her roommate said Brenna was studying at Colgate Studios last night because she—Marta—was rehearsing in her room.”

“Right.”

“And she said Brenna didn’t go to Chase’s because he was in class.”

“Yeah,” she said, looking for the mayonnaise in the refrigerator door shelf.

“He had that swollen hand when he went to class that night.”

She found the jar and looked back at him. “Are you sure?”

He nodded. “And that was before the murder. I talked to his professor to verify his story, and he’d noticed it.”

Parker sucked in a breath. “But why would he lie about that?”

“Why do you think?”

No, that couldn’t be right. She didn’t see murder in Chase’s eyes. “Gibson, don’t waste time pursuing him. He’s a nice guy.”

“Parker, most killers don’t act like killers. He’s also a liar. You should stay away from him.”

That churning in her stomach began again. “Maybe there’s some other explanation. Maybe it has nothing to do with the killing. Did he have gun powder residue on his hands?” Her eyes widened. “Or in his car. Did you check his car?”

Gibson rolled his eyes. “I should’ve never let you help me study for that exam.”

“You didn’t let me. You begged me.”

“But I didn’t expect you to memorize the textbook. Yes, we checked all those things. No gunpowder residue.”

“Well, there you go.”