Killer Riff (9 page)

Adam walked off the stage.

The crowd, moments ago rocking along in cheerful abandon, grew uncertainly quiet. Olivia sank into her chair, staring at Jordan with great pain. I sat down, too, looking around for Claire and Bonnie, but I didn’t see them at any of the other front tables. They were probably backstage somewhere, and I could only guess at how they might be responding.

“Valium and Jack” was the other hit single from the final album, but its virtues as a piece of music were inseparable from its legacy as Micah’s epitaph. Popular legend had it that this was the precise cocktail on which Micah had OD’d. Why on earth was Jordan feeding the rumor mill the notion that Russell had done the same thing? Was he trying to link the deaths in people’s minds? And if he was, was he being sensationalistic or was he trying to make a statement about what he thought really happened to Russell? Or was he trying to cover it up?

Adam hurried up to the table, dodging the outstretched hands of people at other tables. “Let’s go,” he said, pulling Olivia to her feet. They both seemed to assume I would follow, so I did, glancing back up at the stage as we left to see Jordan watching Adam carefully but never missing a beat of the song.

I’d expected Adam to leave the theater, but he led us backstage. He had a mission in mind, and for some reason thought Olivia and I should be part of it. I could still hear Jordan’s singing, muffled and distorted by the walls between us. The audience was hushed.

Claire was in the hallway outside Jordan’s dressing room, waiting for Adam. She started to speak, but he didn’t give her the chance, stepping into her, close and furious. “Don’t.”

“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”

“Unpredictability is not one of your charms, Mother.”

“You shouldn’t have left the stage.”

“Why should I associate myself with his infantile need to be the center of the universe?”

“People enjoyed seeing you play again.”

Adam reacted in disbelief, but Olivia was the one who spoke. “You told him to do this, didn’t you. You want people to think this is what happened to my father. To cover your tracks. You bitch.”

Claire Crowley looked as though she were preparing to slap Olivia until she remembered that I was standing there. Adam looked as if he’d be happy if the roof caved in at any point in the next ten minutes. I hadn’t even known Russell Elliott, and the emotional toll of the evening was apparent to me; I didn’t know how the rest of them were still upright and coherent.

“Molly,” Claire said, placing her hand on my arm instead of cracking it across Olivia’s flushed face, “could I ask you to see Olivia home? She’d be more comfortable there, don’t you agree?” She gave my arm a squeeze; I couldn’t be sure if this one was meant to be encouraging or threatening.

“I’m leaving, but I’m not going home,” Olivia announced before I could answer Claire. “C’mon, Molly.” She turned with a defiant flourish and started for the stage door.

What would “The Ethicist” recommend in such a situation? I was there at Claire’s invitation, but that had been extended only because I was a friend of Olivia’s. So which one was actually my hostess, the one I shouldn’t offend? But then, my article was about Olivia, so I needed to stick with her, no matter how that might sit with Claire. Besides, if Claire thought I was buying into Olivia’s theory that Claire had something to do with Russell’s death, she’d be willing to talk to me again just to talk me out of it.

I weighed the odds quickly and said, “Thank you, Mrs. Crowley, it’s been quite an evening.”

Claire tightened her grasp on my arm, not permitting me to turn away from her. “When can we have lunch?”

“I’ll call you and set something up. I’d love to know more about your relationship with Olivia,” I said, trying to sound businesslike and polite.

“I’d like it to be tomorrow,” she said with the steeliness of a woman accustomed to getting her way.

“I’ll call you in the morning,” I replied, trying to walk away. Out in the theater, the music stopped and the applause began. Claire turned in response to the sound and let go of my arm.

As quickly as she’d released it, Adam took it and walked me over to where Olivia was waiting impatiently. “I know a great place where the three of us can have a quiet drink and wash this foul taste out of our mouths.”

Olivia wrapped herself around Adam’s free arm. “Why is everyone being so awful?”

“‘Cause they don’t know how else to be, Ollie,” he said with a quiet sadness.

“Hey, coward! Get back here.”

Adam didn’t stop, but I looked back over my shoulder to make sure it was, in fact, Jordan who stood just inside the door from the stage, his guitar up on his shoulder as if he were a baseball player leaving the field. Bonnie ran up to him, hand to her throat, eyes wide, as though she were worried an explosion was imminent. She stroked her son’s arm, but he didn’t react. Claire stood near them, swaying slightly as though vacillating between standing with Jordan and following Adam.

“Adam!”

I couldn’t pinpoint the difference in Jordan’s tone, but it made Adam stop and turn around. “Good night, Jordan.”

Jordan grimaced in disbelief. “You diss me in front of my fans and that’s all you’ve got to say?”

Adam took a deep breath before replying, “Yes.”

I admired his restraint. Olivia took a different approach. Bracing herself on Adam, she leaned forward in fury. “You’re a soul-sucking pig, Jordan Crowley!”

“You watch your mouth, young lady,” Bonnie said sharply.

“I was paying my respects!” Jordan protested.

“You don’t respect anything,” Adam said, turning his back on Jordan again and escorting Olivia and me out the stage door.

Security, paparazzi, and fans choked the alley. Screams went up and flashes went off as people recognized Adam. Some yelled for Olivia, too. I just hoped I’d make it down the metal steps to the street without falling, given the height of my heels and the urgency with which Adam was moving us along.

Olivia descended first, and I was about to follow her when the stage door banged open and Jordan flew out. The crowd screamed even louder, but Jordan didn’t react to them at all. He lunged straight at Adam, who was still holding my arm, so we both got tangled up as Jordan grabbed Adam by the lapels and shoved him back against the platform railing. I tripped over Adam’s feet—or Jordan tripped over mine or some other painful combination—so the three of us crashed into the railing, me between the two of them, Adam behind me. They grappled with each other like Olympic wrestlers, oblivious to the crowd and cameras. Though I struggled mightily to force them apart and escape, I was no match for their fury-fueled adrenaline. Adam grabbed Jordan’s shoulders and spun us all around, slamming Jordan into the railing now.

The noise of all the camera shutters firing repeatedly was like all the wings flapping when the birds descend on Tippi Hedren and her friends, and it took every ounce of concentration I had not to scream. What the photographers missed was Adam’s question to Jordan as he tried to shove him over the balcony:

“You want to be the next one to go? I can take care of that, too.”

5

“Write the story. Don’t
be the story.”

Somehow, the only response I could come up with was, “Yes, ma’am.” It was early, I was undercaffeinated, and I had a pretty impressive bruise on my rib cage from one of the bounces against the railing. Fresh out of the shower, I was studying the damage in my dresser mirror when I answered the phone, so I was distracted and not fully prepared for the venom at the other end.

“You’re supposed to be interviewing Olivia Elliott. Why are you in the
Post
, sandwiched between the Crowley sons?” Eileen exclaimed.

I sighed, partly because of the bruise and partly because, until that moment, I had no idea anyone had actually published a picture.

“Research,” I attempted.

“Do you have any idea how this makes the magazine look?”

There had to be a way to spin this that Eileen would approve of, especially since, having already taken a literal hit for the situation, I wasn’t interested in taking a figurative one, too. “Like a cool publication whose reporters get invited to all the best parties?”

Eileen made an angry noise in her throat that sounded like a garbage disposal with too much pasta in it. “Come see me when you drag your overexposed backside into the office. Which better be soon.”

“I’m meeting Olivia for breakfast. For the article,” I said, knowing that wouldn’t make her any happier. And I had to call Claire, too, speaking of unhappy women. But I needed more information before I did that.

“Eat fast. And bring me my ascension-to-the-throne question, too,” she demanded, hanging up so forcefully that I thought the reverb might shatter my phone. I slammed my handset down, too, knowing she wouldn’t hear it but needing to respond in kind.

As I searched for an outfit in the piles Cassady had left scattered around my room the night before, I reviewed events. Did I have anything I needed to apologize for? Or had I, in pursuit of a thorough background for my article, simply been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time? I preferred the latter, but Eileen seemed to be rooting for the former. One more chance to see me fail.

I’d almost coaxed myself into the comfort of my Banana Republic pinstripe shirtdress when the doorman rang. Danny, the regular doorman, was on vacation, and I couldn’t wait for him to come back because Todd, the substitute, took forever to make his point and I really didn’t have the patience for it this morning.

“Good morning, Ms. Forrester,” Todd began. “How are you this morning?”

“Fine, Todd, how are you?” I asked, hoping he wasn’t looking at the
Post.

“I’m quite well, thank you. There’s a gentleman down here who says I don’t know him because you stopped dating him, but it’s quite important that he see you—”

Even more excruciating. Todd didn’t have the paper, but Kyle did. “Thank you, Todd, send him up.”

I hung up, shot a brush through my hair, and slapped on my mascara first; if he knocked before I could put on all my makeup, at least my eyelashes wouldn’t be invisible, which makes me look as though I’m eight years old and I’ve been crying.

He knocked just as I was debating eye shadow colors. I wondered what our beauty editor, Marlie, would suggest in a situation like this: keep him waiting or finish painting? I split the difference, pausing long enough to swipe a taupe stripe across both eyelids, then hurrying to the door.

Fortunately, I didn’t fling myself out the door and into his arms, but I was considering it, and that must have been evident by my expression.

“It’s okay, you can be happy to see me,” he said with a grin.

“Hello, Peter,” I said with no grin at all.

“You look disappointed. Were you expecting someone else?” His grin broadened. “I told the doorman I was an ex. I won’t insinuate that it’s a long list, but I can’t be the only one on it.”

True, Peter Mulcahey was an ex. Specifically, the man I stopped dating when I started dating Kyle. Because we were both journalists, we continued to run into each other, which he enjoyed far more than I did. Tricia believed he went out of his way to seek me out, which was a credible theory, though I did my best to dissuade him. I’d really thought I might’ve seen the last of him, since the last time we’d crossed paths, he’d gotten shot. Not by me. Not that the thought hadn’t occurred to me.

Peter looked good, but he always looked good in that golden glow sort of way, with his bright blond hair and lapis eyes and crooked smile. He came off like Prince Charming, but in my experience thus far, he was more of a chocolate Santa: all shiny and sweet on the outside, hollow on the inside.

“The doorman said you were someone I’d ‘stopped dating,’” I said. Perhaps Peter didn’t appreciate the sharp distinction between “man I dumped” and “man I stopped dating” that I was making in my head, and given that I still had occasional guilt pangs about not breaking things off with more finesse, that was probably a good thing in the long run. And I really couldn’t see him admitting to anyone that he’d ever been dumped. But it was still annoying that it was his misapprehension of his status in my life that had led us to this awkward moment.

“It’s the truth.” His cool eyes narrowed. “And yet, I surprised you. That means there’s someone you’ve stopped dating more recently than you stopped dating me. Did you finally shake off the cop?”

“Go away, Peter.”

His delight was maddening. “You did. Damn, I have great timing. Invite me in.”

“I’m on my way out.”

He looked me over, starting with my semibrushed hair and moving a bit too slowly down to my bare feet. “Really.”

“Peter”—I sighed—”why are you here?”

He held up his copy of the
Post
, offering me my first look at the picture of me, Adam, and Jordan. It looked like a cross between a football tackle and Martha Graham choreography. The headline read:
WHO’S COME BETWEEN THEM?

Peter pulled a mock frown. “What exactly is going on here?”

I almost didn’t want to know the answer, but still I asked, “What does the caption say?”

Peter read, “‘Jordan and Adam Crowley fight over a woman, or at least around one, after Jordan’s sold-out show at Mars Hall last night. Reps for both declined to comment or to identify the woman.”

Which meant someone asked Claire what happened and she told them she wasn’t going to talk to them. I’d known Peter long enough to be sure that the same approach wasn’t going to work with him. Closing the door and ignoring him would only challenge him to pursue whatever he thought the story was with greater vigor. “I’m doing a profile of Olivia Elliott.”

Peter held the newspaper close to his face and squinted, pretending to examine the page microscopically. “And where is she, exactly?”

I snatched the paper from him, not sure whether I should shred it on the spot or place it lovingly in my scrapbook. After all, I hadn’t done anything wrong, I’d just been standing between two famous semisiblings who had come to blows. And threatened each other’s lives. That still sat uneasily. It’s problematic to parse a statement that someone spews in the heat of the moment, but I kept coming back to Adam saying, “I can take care of that, too.”
Too.
Implying he had previously taken care of something similar. And since the topic at the time had been “the next one to go,” it wasn’t all that wide a conclusion to jump to Adam saying he’d been a part of someone else “going.” Was Olivia looking in the wrong direction by blaming Claire for Russell’s death?

I’d never been in this situation before, with this number of people simultaneously pointing fingers at one another and/or themselves over a death. Especially one that had been ruled accidental. Maybe it was all stress bubbling to the surface and hauling up years of emotional baggage with it. But it felt increasingly as though there were more to Russell Elliott’s death than met the official eye. Which meant it was a great story. Which meant I had to keep Peter Mulcahey far, far away from it.

So, feeling a little like Granny letting the Big Bad Wolf through the door, I invited him in. For a moment. “Let me grab my shoes and I’ll walk out with you,” I said, opening the door wider. He took back the newspaper, but he followed me in.

I led him into the living room, discreetly scanning table-tops and hoping I hadn’t left too much research in evidence. The cascade of CDs on the coffee table—everything I had by any of the Crowley men—was the most telling material visible, but I hoped it would escape Peter’s notice.

“Have a seat,” I suggested, pointing at the armchair farthest from the CDs and continuing on to the bedroom. My hope was that I could grab my shoes, handbag, and notebook and have Peter back out in the hallway before he started nosing around. “Just take a second.”

“You still haven’t painted,” he said, not sitting down and surveying the room with a slight frown.

“I keep changing my mind about the color.”

“Why don’t you like to commit?”

He couldn’t have stopped me colder if he’d beaned me with a book from my desk, where he stood now, baldly and boldly poking at the stacks of paper sliding into one another there. I leaned back toward the doorway, thinking about beaning him with the kate spade wedge I held in my hand and sorting through the various searing retorts that raced through my mind, ranging from, “Excuse me?” to, “I do so!”

Commitment had not been the issue in our breakup. If anything, he was the one not taking the relationship seriously, and I was already drifting away when I met Kyle. But there was no point in debating; he was fishing for a reaction, and I wasn’t going to give it to him. Instead, in a rare moment of restraint, I took a deep breath, put the shoe on my foot, grabbed the rest of my stuff, and strode back into the living room.

“Did you come to analyze me, or did you have something more journalistic in mind?” I asked as I continued past him. One of the advantages of a small apartment is that it doesn’t take long to show someone to the door. I opened it and gestured to the hallway. “Let’s go.”

He strolled past me, smirking. “When I saw the picture, I had to check on you.”

“In person.”

“I wouldn’t have seen the look on your face if I’d called.”

He pushed the elevator call button while I locked the door. There was something about him, there had always been something about him, that made me certain he was up to no good. “Let’s skip the foreplay, Peter.”

“It’s one of my strengths,” he protested.

“Have you taken a poll?” I asked. “C’mon, what do you want?”

Peter leaned in as though the empty hallway were filled with people and he needed to whisper a state secret. “I heard Adam Crowley’s coming into a lot of money.”

“How nice for him.”

Peter straightened up slightly. “And I was wondering, since you’re so close to him, if it had come up.”

“I am not close to him.”

Peter dangled the paper in front of me again. “Really?”

“Okay, here’s some inside info: Adam Crowley already has a lot of money,” I said with a sigh, stepping into the elevator.

Peter shook his head. “I hear most of Micah’s estate went to Claire, and she keeps everybody on a pretty short leash.”

“Quinn has you doing an article on Adam?” Peter wrote for
Need to Know
, Quinn Harriman’s relatively new monthly with aspirations that straddled the lad-mag and Manhattan insight genres.

“No, I’m doing an article on Ray Hernandez.”

“The club designer?”

Peter nodded. “And Ray says Adam’s backing his next venture. Soon as his cash comes in. But Adam’s being very mysterious about where that cash is coming from. If he didn’t mention a new revenue source, maybe these guys are up to something they shouldn’t be.”

I sympathized with Peter’s zest for looking for a deeper story but was irritated by his casual expectation that someone else would do most of the digging. “Or maybe Ray’s playing with you.” Peter shook his head doubtfully while I tried to remember: What exactly had Olivia said about Claire controlling the money now that Russell was dead? If Claire was getting more, did Adam think he was getting more, too? Who had the greater need—Claire or Adam? Were Peter and I on intersecting stories? “So?” I asked neutrally.

“I want to figure out if Adam’s fronting for someone else or if he’s planning a new album and investing his advance.”

So far, so good. I was thinking murder, and Peter was thinking finance. The trick was to keep our paths parallel for as long as possible. “I really didn’t get that much of a chance to talk to him last night, despite what you think that picture implies. However, in the event that I talk to him again while I’m working on the Olivia piece, I’ll see what I can find out.”

The elevator doors opened. Peter threw his arm around my shoulders as we walked out into the lobby, proclaiming, “You’re better to me than I deserve.”

“Got that right,” Kyle replied.

Kyle stood in the lobby next to Todd, who was frozen with the phone to his ear, a slightly panicked look on his face. I tried not to imagine the conversation that had preceded Todd’s picking up the phone, though given Kyle’s scowl, something about “There’s already a gentleman up there” had apparently been mentioned. Kyle reached over and helped Todd hang up the phone.