XO (30 page)

THE KNIFE DROOPED
in his hand, his eyelids and shoulders sagged too. “Kayleigh … no.”

“Don’t move.”

“Oh, Kayleigh.” Smiling again but sorrowfully. “Do you know what kind of trouble you’ll get into, you do this?”

She stayed strong.

“This’d be terrible. So terrible. Don’t do this to yourself. Please! Think of your fans, think of your family.” As if he was genuinely worried for her, not himself. “It’s the first thing the police’ll look for, setting me up. They won’t want to believe you did it, they’ll hope it isn’t true, but the deputies have been there before. It happens all the time. Domestic, stalking … It happens all the time.”

“You killed Bobby!”

Thick brows knit further, making him even more ominous. “I didn’t do that, of course not. And I heard about the attack on Sheri. I’m sure they told you I was behind that too. But I’d never hurt anybody close to you. It’s all lies.”

Shoot him! she told herself. And yet her finger remained outside the trigger guard. The gun wavered for a minute then she thrust it forward. Edwin Sharp didn’t even squint.

“And you
kidnapped
my sister and niece.”

“Maybe I
saved
their lives. From Ritchie’s driving, like I told you.”

She looked around but held the gun steady.

“You’re a smart woman, Kayleigh.”

And she had flashback of a recent conversation she’d had with her father, who’d called her a “smart girl.”

“You called me from a pay phone but can anybody place you where you made that call? It’ll be in my cell phone records. That’ll be easy to
find…. And, I’m sure you used gloves or a paper towel when you were handling this.” A glance at the knife. “And you probably bought it at a store with a self-checkout. But they’ll link it to you, Kayleigh. That’s what they do for a living.”

“Shut up! I’m going to kill you!”

He examined the knife. “It’s new so they’re going to check every store in town that sells this brand. There won’t be that many of them. You’d pay cash but all they have to do is look at the data-mined records of anyone who bought this model knife in the past few days with cash. They’ll figure out the exact store and register fast because you probably only bought this one thing, right? That’s a giveaway. They’ll get a warrant to collect the cash paid into the checkout machine. They’ll fingerprint the bills. And they’ll trace serial numbers of the bills you got from an ATM. That’s all recorded, you know.”

Of course it isn’t!

Is it?

Don’t listen to him. Scream for help then pull the trigger….

“There could even be a video or still picture of the self-serve transaction. It’ll take them all of five minutes to link you to this knife. And meanwhile there’ll be rookies searching the trash around the area here to look for bags and packaging and the receipt.” He glanced toward the toilet, which trickled as it continued to fill. Or the sewer pipes here. They’ll get you in an interrogation room and, Kayleigh, you’re such a good, honest person, you won’t hold up; they’ll have a confession in ten minutes. Madigan won’t want to but he won’t have any choice.” He glanced at her hand. “Can you even carry a concealed gun legally?”

I’ll do it on my own.

Except I can’t.

I’m a fucking coward.

The gun lowered.

“Oh, Kayleigh, they’ve brainwashed you so badly.
I’m
not the enemy.
They’re
the enemy. Here, I’m going to set the knife down.” He wiped it on his shirtsleeves, removing his own prints, and then he rested it on the floor. “That way there’ll be no connection between us. You take it and use it or throw it out. This never happened.”

He sounded so sincere. Kayleigh wished Kathryn Dance was here to look at the stalker and nod that he was telling the truth or shake her head
that he was lying. He stepped back and she eased forward, picked the knife up and slipped it back into her jacket.

“Think about
this,
Kayleigh: Sure, you’re being stalked. But not by me. Maybe it’s the reporters and photographers. Maybe it’s your
father.
He claims he wants what’s best but does he? I’m not so sure. And what about the others? Maybe … I don’t know—Alicia, Tye Slocum—oh, keep an eye on him. I’ve seen how he looks at you. And Barry Zeigler. He’s holding on to you pretty tight. Who else does the label have as big as you? Neil Watson—but come on, he’s like a bad tribute act to himself. And who
else
is out there watching you, stalking you? Fans and strangers. People who don’t even know your music, but only that you’re beautiful and famous and rich. And they figure, why should you have all those things and not them? They don’t get how hard you work for them, how much you sacrifice.”

She whispered, “Can’t you just leave me alone? Please!”

“Oh, Kayleigh, you don’t want me to leave you alone. You just don’t know it yet.”

“LEAVING HOME …”

Her hit song about the middle-aged immigrant woman being deported back to Mexico. The lines kept running through Kayleigh’s mind as she packed several suitcases and lugged them downstairs to the living room of her house, where Darthur Morgan took them from her and placed them in the SUV.

Alicia Sessions was there too, helping her with the temporary move in her Ford F150. Kayleigh hadn’t wanted her to go to the trouble but the woman insisted on schlepping guitars, amps and boxes of provisions from Whole Foods—the store where organic-minded Kayleigh shopped, as opposed to Safeway, the source of the staples in the household where she was bound.

“I can really manage.”

“No problem at all,” Alicia said.

“Well, stay for dinner, at least.”

“I’m seeing some friends in town.”

As efficient as she was, as important to the operation, Alicia remained largely a mystery to Kayleigh, the band and crew. She was a loner, who’d lived on the periphery of the professional music scene for years, performing alternative and post-punk in New York and San Francisco, without much success. She’d get her job done for Kayleigh and the business and then disappear in the evenings and on weekends for horseback riding and listening to music. Who the friends she was meeting tonight might be, Kayleigh had no idea. She assumed Alicia was gay. While the singer didn’t care one way or the other, aside from hoping she was in a loving relationship, in the country world the taboos were falling, but slowly; the genre was still the sound track of middle, conservative
America. And Kayleigh guessed Alicia wasn’t comfortable bringing up her preferences.

After the SUV and Alicia’s pickup were loaded, Kayleigh turned and looked over the house, as if for the last time.

Leaving home …

She climbed into the driver’s seat of the SUV, Morgan in the passenger for a change, and gunned the engine, then headed down the long drive, Alicia’s truck following.

Expecting to see him,
him,
in the lot of the park, she rolled fast through the turn onto the road, skidding. Morgan grabbed the handhold and gave a rare smile. Kayleigh glanced around and into the rearview mirror but there were no red cars.

“It’s for the best,” he said.

“I suppose.”

She realized that he was looking at her face closely. “Something happen at the theater?”

“What do you mean?” Kayleigh kept her eyes pointed fiercely straight ahead, avoiding his as if he’d think: Oh, I know. She lured Edwin into that hall to kill him. I recognize that look.

“Just checking to see if everything’s all right,” he said placidly. “You get an odd phone call or run into somebody there?”

“No, everything’s fine.”

Kayleigh reached for the radio but her hand paused then returned to the wheel. They drove all the way to Bishop Towne’s house in complete silence.

She parked in the drive and Morgan helped Alicia carry the boxes, musical equipment and suitcases to the porch, then the guard strode into the night to check out the perimeter. The two women went inside.

The small ground floor might have been an exhibit in a wing of the Grand Ole Opry. There were pictures and reviews and album covers—mostly of Bishop Towne and his band, of course. Some were photos of women singers whom Bishop had had affairs with long ago—and whose albums had been nailed up only after Wives Two through Four appeared. Unlike Margaret, they wouldn’t have known about the earlier indiscretions and would have assumed the women were professional associates only.

But there were also a lot of pictures of Bishop and Margaret. He’d never taken those down, whatever the Later Wives’ jealous concerns might have been.

Mary-Gordon came running up to Kayleigh and flew into her arms. “Aunt Kayleigh! Yay! You’ve gotta come look. We’re doing a puzzle! I rode Freddie today. I wore my helmet, like you always say.”

Kayleigh slipped to her knees for a proper hug, then rose and embraced her sister. Suellyn asked, “How you doing, K?”

The singer thought: Considering I could be in jail for murder, not bad. “Hanging in there.”

Kayleigh introduced her and Mary-Gordon to Alicia, who smiled and shook their hands.

“Wow,” the girl whispered, looking at Alicia’s tattoos. “Those are neat!”

“Uh-oh,” Suellyn said. “I see trouble.” The women laughed.

Kayleigh greeted her father and Sheri, whose voice was still ragged from the smoke. Oddly, she now sounded much like her husband. Her skin seemed pale, though that might have been only because she was wearing none of the makeup she usually applied in swaths.

Kayleigh’s attitude toward her stepmother had changed 180 degrees since the attack, and she regretted her pettiness toward the woman. She now hugged Sheri, in whose eyes tears appeared at the display of affection.

Alicia gave Bishop and Sheri some details of the ad plans for the upcoming Canadian tour and then she glanced at her watch and headed off.

“Better you’re here,” Bishop said to Kayleigh. “I told you, you should’ve come. Right at the beginning, I told you. Sheri’s got the room made up. For that guard too. Where is he?”

Kayleigh explained that Morgan had remained outside to check the property. He’d be in, in a moment.

“I did a picture for your room, Aunt Kayleigh. I’ll show you.”

Mary-Gordon gripped the handle of one of the wheelie suitcases and sped off down the hallway. Kayleigh and her sister smiled.

“In here! Here it is, Aunt Kayleigh!”

She’d seen this guest room before and it had been functional, stark. Now the bed had new blue gingham linens, frilly pillow cases, matching
towels, candles, some cheap decorations from Michaels craft store, like geese in bonnets, and framed pictures of young Kayleigh and her family—photos that had been in shoe boxes when last seen, before Sheri. It was really a very comfortable space.

She’d be sure to thank her stepmother—who, of course, had done all this work while injured.

Kayleigh admired Mary-Gordon’s picture of the pony and set it prominently on the bedside table. “Can we go riding tomorrow?”

“We’ll have to see, Mary-Gordon. It’s a busy time. But we’ll have breakfast together.”

“Grandma Sheri and Mommy made pancakes. They were pretty good. Not the best but pretty good.”

Kayleigh laughed and watched the little girl help unpack the suitcases and, with an expectant gaze toward Kayleigh, put away each article of clothing or toiletry where directed. As the girl made decisions about how to stow everything, she was absorbed and seemed to get huge pleasure from the simple tasks.

A tap in Kayleigh’s mind, like a finger flicking a crystal glass. An idea for a song. “I Could Learn a Lot From You.” A parent to a child. How the mother or father has gotten some things wrong in life and it’s the child who rearranges the adult’s perspective. It would have a twist. The first three verses would make listeners believe that the child was singing to the parent; only in the last would it be revealed that the parent was narrating the story. A melody came almost immediately. She sat down and wrote out the words and music on improvised staff paper.

“What’re you doing, Aunt Kayleigh?”

“Writing a song. You inspired me.”

“What’s ‘inspired’?”

“I wrote it for you.”

“Oh, sing it to me!”

“It’s not finished but here’s part of it.” She sang and the girl stared raptly at her.

“That’s a very good song,” Mary-Gordon announced with a furrowed brow as if she were the artists and repertoire director of a major label, passing judgment on a young songwriter’s submission.

Kayleigh continued to unpack, pausing momentarily to look at a picture
of the family from fifteen or so years ago: Bishop, Margaret, Suellyn and Kayleigh on the porch of the old family house in the hills an hour north of here.

I’ve lived in LA, I’ve lived in Maine,

New York City and the Midwest Plains,