Rock Wolf Investigations: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

Speaking of people who had wanted to be on stage. “Did you ever get a chance to start your dance studio?” Adam wondered out loud. “I remember that was something you had wanted to do. We chatted about it one night after Harvey went kind of ballistic on the Moonrise at a meeting.”

  “I remember.” Olivia looked chagrined. “And no, I’ve never had a chance, but now I will. I just have to figure out how to move on and pick up the pieces.”

  “Well, when you get it figured out you look me up.” Adam was almost sure he would want to somehow be involved in such an endeavor. “It’s a good idea. A performing arts group that could do a few shows on the side just to give the kids real stage experience is something Branson needs. You might be surprised how quickly a showing of “The Nutcracker” would sell out at Christmastime. And if people’s kids are going to be on a Branson stage, you should have plenty of interest in your studio, even from nearby cities like Springfield.”

  “See?” Duke Dunbar grunted. “I told you that you had a good idea. Even he thinks so and the guy is a real agent.”

  Adam held up his hand. “Agent and many other things. But I have been in the business for a while. Are you still considering the plan you told me about all those months ago involving the Moonrise and teaching during the off hours?”

  “Yes.” Olivia pursed her lips and looked worried. “I’ve checked into it though and the rent is absolutely prohibitive. Even though I’m asking to use the place when it’s just sitting empty.”

  “Like I said, let me poke around a bit,” Adam suggested. Then he cast a sideways look at Duke. “Did Ellie say anything to you about this case?”

  “She’s running down a lead at a nightclub across town,” Dunbar told Adam. “That’s all I know about it. They’re going tonight to ask the guy some questions. If you’ve got other leads, I suggest you text her. She’s been running background checks on everyone.”

  “Oh, good,” Adam muttered. He wondered what a background check on himself would look like. Probably not very flattering. “Then I’ll just plan on sending her the names I got from our perusal of the credit card receipts.”

  “That sounds like a good plan.” Duke gently touched Olivia’s shoulder and she stood up.

  They were leaving, heading toward the front doors of the theater as though they had other places to be. Adam had known Olivia for a long time. He had never seen her like this—relaxed and happy. The events of the last week involving her uncle and a string of pickpocket instances at the Moonrise Theater hadn’t been well documented to the public. This had been a surprise at first considering there was almost nothing that Hilary Allenwood didn’t report on. No matter how awkward or better left alone a topic was, Hilary went for it. But after Hilary’s strange questions about Titus Holbrook and Rock Wolf Investigations, Adam could not help but wonder if Titus and Duke Dunbar had done their level best to cut Hilary off at the knees when it came to reporting the down and dirty truth about whatever had happened at the Moonrise.

  Good for Olivia, he thought. The woman had been through enough.

  “Olivia, Duke, thanks for stopping by.” Adam realized they weren’t just polite words. He really meant it. “And I wish you all the best, Olivia. I do. Have your dancing violinists call me and we will get them sorted. But I’ll be in touch about your dance studio idea as well.”

  “Thank you, Adam.” Olivia gave a jaunty wave and then bounced out the front doors of the theater looking far more contented, happy, whatever you wanted to call it than Adam could remember being in years.

  “Lucky bitch,” Margo muttered as the theater doors closed and she and Adam were once again the only ones in the lobby area of the Star. Margo did not look up from her desktop. “Sometimes I think that certain people were just born to have all the luck.”

  Adam frowned. He felt a wave of anger swelling up from deep inside his gut. Margo had no idea the hell that Olivia had been through in the last decade or more. Adam stomped toward the desk, not caring if Margo thought he was being rude. “If Olivia Houghton is having a bit of good luck, it’s because she earned every single second of it dealing with that low life loser uncle of hers for the last ten plus years.”

  Margo finally lifted her gaze from the stack of paperwork in front of her. She glared at Adam. “Did you finish with that inventory yet? Because I need it back so I can file a final sales report for the accountant.”

  “Oh yes. I’m done with this month’s, but I would like the reports from the last two months so that I can go through the same process,” Adam retorted. “I’ve heard from Ron Skaggs that his share was off the last three months, not just this one. I’m beginning to be afraid that what I thought was an honest, isolated mistake is actually something else.”

  There was a hard tense moment between Adam and Margo. She was in her thirties, smooth and polished. She wore the sort of clothing you’d expect an office manager to wear—slacks, a blouse, a blazer, and a sweater—but all her clothing was from designers with custom tailored and expensive fabrics. Her mousy brown hair was swept back into a chignon and always anchored with a jeweled clip of some kind. Today’s featured a butterfly, yet the fanciful design didn’t fit the wearer at all. Margo was anything but fanciful.

  “You’ll have to ask Mr. Lightman for the inventory reports for those past months. I can’t just hand them out.” When Margo finally spoke, her voice was cool and controlled. She might as well have been working for the IRS. “You are supposed to be checking those things each month.”

  Adam didn’t want to hear about his failings as a business manager. He wanted to hear that he was going to get an opportunity to look at the books again. “But I have a contractual right to look at those reports anytime I want.”

  “What for?” Margo demanded. Her tone turned ugly. Her hands were moving restlessly across the desktop. She picked up a pen, set it down again, picked it up, and tapped it against the wood. “What is it you think we’re doing? Hiding something? Fudging the inventory list so you get shorted a percentage or something?”

  “I don’t know what’s going on.” Adam matched her tone and leaned forward just a little in order to make sure she understood he wasn’t playing around. “What I do know is that you—and by extension Mr. Lightman—shorted my client over a thousand dollars on this last statement that you gave me. I intend to make sure this is the only time it has happened and if that means going over the statements for the last two months, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

  “Don’t push your luck.” Margo’s response was quick and harsh. But she also sounded defensive. Was she ashamed about making the mistake? Maybe she had intended to keep that a secret from Mr. Lightman. “That little whore you’re managing is more trouble than she’s worth. If you start making waves about merchandising issues, then Lightman is going to be only too happy to break that contract.”

  Adam drew back, surprised by the vehemence and certainty in her tone. “You and I both know that Kari Jo Mounds is the number one seller of merchandise at the Ozark Star Theater. Let’s not be stupid and pretend we don’t acknowledge that. Kari Jo’s fans buy more T-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, journals, CDs, ballcaps, and that silly fake jewelry she wears than anyone else buys merchandise related to the Garth Brooks Tribute or Ron Skaggs, and that isn’t a secret, it’s a freaking reality. Plus, I talked to Mr. Lightman this morning. He didn’t seem all that eager to get rid of Kari Jo. So, instead of pretending you’re the biggest junkyard dog in town, let’s talk about how you’re going to make sure this never happens again because if I find out that you’re screwing with those inventory numbers and the reports on purpose, I’m going to go straight to Lightman with what I’ve discovered. You might be good with numbers, honey, but I’ve got a few years of experience on you and a whole lot more sense.”

  And with those final, damning, and probably way too aggressive words, Adam marched out of the foyer and back toward his office. He felt determined to make sure Kari Jo’s last few months under his management were successful, and dogged to figure
out who was stalking the young singer and why he or she wanted to scared her. Adam was also determined to find a way out of his current rut, which was rather surprising because he hadn’t actually realized he was in a rut until right now.

  Chapter Eleven

  “This is a bad idea.” Ellie nearly tripped in her stupid high heels. That would be terrible because if she faltered at this point, she was probably going to wind up smashing her face into the scantily clad backside of some other club goer, and that would just be gross. “I want to go home before I vomit.”

  “If you vomit, I’m going to take off my shoe and murder you with it.” Caroline sounded perfectly serious. She was having a much easier time with her heels. Probably because they fit her feet or maybe it was just because she had practice.

  “There he is. Do you see? By the booth.”

  “Booth?”

  Of course, Ellie was looking for a booth. Four walls, glass, a door, that sort of thing. But what Caroline appeared to be gesturing to was a table set up in a corner of the room that appeared to be covered in electronic equipment. It was surrounded by towers of lights that flashed and blinked and made you really want to puke if you looked at them for too long.

  There was a young man standing behind the table with a huge pair of headphones on, one side over his ear, the other sitting on top of his head. He looked ridiculous. Beneath the headphones was a ballcap he had turned backwards and his clothing looked as though he’d bought it for someone three sizes larger. His pants positively hung off his hips and half his underpants were hanging out. His baggy T-shirt was pulled up on one side as though he wanted to make sure everyone saw his underpants, too. What kind of moron was this guy?

  “All right.” Caroline grabbed Ellie’s arm and began dragging her around the edge of the crowd. It was hard to see inside and harder to breathe. “So, I’m going to like, talk to him first. Okay?”

  Caroline’s eyes were caked in so much sparkly, glittery makeup that Ellie found it difficult to take anything she said seriously. Of course, Ellie had a bad feeling that her face looked just as bad. She hadn’t wanted to see after Caroline painted Ellie’s eyes, cheeks, and lips. Ellie’s hair felt like it had been yanked and teased beyond belief as it sat piled on top of her head into what probably looked like a poodle pompadour. The dress she was wearing seemed like scraps of material were awkwardly sewn together and her push-up bra made her boobs hurt too. Why did people make it so painful to be a woman?

  “Fine,” Ellie muttered. “I’ll follow behind you then.”

  “Okay.” Caroline was giving Ellie that suspicious look again. “But you can’t be a bitch and start grilling the guy. Okay? Aston Ryan is big news on the club scene.”

  Ellie had not been aware there was a club scene in Branson. The place was supposed to be a mecca of family-friendly, low-key, predominantly Gospel entertainment. But when Ellie had suggested going to the club earlier in the day just so they could talk to this Aston Ryan DJ guy before he went on duty or whatever, Caroline had almost snorted herself into a coma of laughter. Evidently, these people were like vampires. You did not know where their lair was until the appointed hour when they came out to hunt.

  Ellie wobbled along behind Caroline. Somehow skirting the edge of the club floor was supposed to be easier than pushing your way through the middle. This sounded logical, even to Ellie. But the club was filled with smoke and hazy from the hot lights overhead and the steaming bodies writhing to the music, which was so loud Ellie could hear it thumping in her bones. It was awful. Her eyelids were caked with some weird mascara that had glitter in it and she was afraid to blink. So, her eyes burned and she kept having to shove people back onto the floor as they careened towards the edges as though they had totally lost control like bugs flailing around just waiting to be killed by the bug zapper.

  “Hey, baby, long time no see,” Caroline purred. If you could call it a purr since she had to shout at the top of her lungs to be heard in the room.

  The DJ guy, assumingly Aston Ryan, turned and spotted Caroline. “Hey, chica, what’s happening?”

  What’s happening? Somehow Ellie felt as though she had been abruptly transported back to middle school. She was at a school dance and the popular boy was about to take one look at her blotchy skin and frizzy hair and laugh her back to the science labs.

  “I brought my friend to meet you,” Caroline said, beckoning to Ellie.

  Great, now it was her turn. She wondered if she should imitate or just do her own thing. Not that there was any way to interrogate this guy in her usual way, not when she was dressed up like a freaking club clown.

  “Your friend got game, baby.” Aston Ryan slung his arm around Caroline and gave her a smooch.

  Eww. Ellie couldn’t help it. She folded her arms over her chest and curled her lip. Then she looked at Caroline. “I thought you said this joker was hot and heavy with Kari Jo Mounds?”

  “Oh baby, I am,” Aston Ryan said with certainty as he licked Caroline’s ear. Then he turned back to Ellie and gave her an up and down. “You a big fan of Kari Jo, huh?”

  “I know her,” Ellie decided to just go with it. It was like she was acting in a really bad after school special. Time to play it up hard core. “Boy, she’s gonna be so pissed when she finds out you’re screwing my friend here, too. She don’t like two-timers.”

  Aston Ryan guffawed. “Bitch, please! Kari Jo is right across the room right now with her latest boy toy. I can do what I want. Kari don’t care. She just comes crawling back when she needs her man fix. I’m the only man she got. The rest of them is just boys. Children.” He put a weird amount of emphasis on that last word. Child-ren, as though he wanted to make sure she understood it.

  Ellie did not look where Aston Ryan had gestured. She needed to recover her cred apparently. “I know Kari Jo got a boy over there. She told me to come and tell you that she’s pissed.”

  “What?” He clucked and made snapping and hissing noises with his mouth. It was bizarre, like a language she didn’t understand. “That bitch ain’t right in the head. She knows why I don’t come around in public. I told her that before. We agreed. She knows we screw when we want in private because of her mama.”

  “Her mama?” Ellie frowned. “Are you saying you pretend not to be a couple with her because of her mother?”

  “Yeah. Her mama is one crazy bitch!” Aston Ryan threw up both hands and then brought them down crosswise against his hips. It was a gesture that obviously meant something to him. Ellie needed an interpreter.

  It was official. Ellie had somehow slipped through a wormhole into the Branson wannabe gangsta, ghetto club scene where young men and women from modest, but good backgrounds tried to somehow pretend to be part of a culture they could not even dream of. Not that Ellie had grown up in that sort of cultural scene. She was from St. Louis, four hours north, but very different from a cultural perspective. And nobody spent time in an FBI field office without being dragged down to the depths of what average Americans called “the bad neighborhoods,” the places where the real scary thugs and their posse hung out and did business.

  “Right, playa,” Ellie told Aston Ryan. “You’re afraid of her motha. Got it.”

  “I ain’t afraid of nothin’!” Aston Ryan blustered. He looked highly offended and Caroline was getting a pissy look on her face, too.

  Ellie had forgotten Caroline’s request not to ruin her cred down in club land. “I met her motha, dawg,” Ellie drawled in her best imitation of Aston Ryan’s weird speech pattern. “You right. That bitch is nuts. But if you love the girl, don’t you think you should stop playing around?”

  “I don’t love that chick,” Aston Ryan seemed offended. “That’s stupid. It ain’t about love. It’s just sex, girl. Kari Jo ain’t going to love nobody. She’s famous. She’s going to Nashville.”

  “Not for a few months yet,” Ellie shot back.

  Aston Ryan scoffed. “You’re wrong, girl. You ask anyone. Kari Jo is going soon. She’s got a new manager and that
guy is going to take her places!”

  As if just by talking about her, they had somehow summoned Kari Jo to them, Ellie turned around and found herself face-to-face with the young up-and-coming country star. Her long dark hair was streaked with purple and she had enough glitter on her face to anchor a war ship. With all of that makeup, it actually took Ellie a moment or two to realize Kari Jo was pissed.

  “What in the hell do you think you’re doing flirting with my man?” Kari Jo shouted.

  Ellie was dumbfounded. Behind her, Caroline carefully extracted herself from DJ Aston Ryan’s clingy embrace. The whole plot had just gotten thicker and weirder. Ellie hadn’t actually met Kari Jo yet, so there wasn’t a lot of chance the young star would realize she was talking to someone on her side.

  “Listen, kid,” Ellie began, but never got further.

  “Kid? Did you really just call me kid, you crone?” Kari Jo howled the words at such a volume that nearly everyone in the club turned around. “How dare you?”

  Kari Jo threw a punch. It was a silly, half-hearted, poorly planned, and poorly executed punch, but she threw it anyway. Her fist glanced off of Ellie’s jaw and that was all it took to send Ellie’s instincts into overdrive.

  Reaching out, Ellie snatched Kari Jo’s hand in her palm and twisted it down and around. The young singer had to bend over and fall to her knees to avoid losing her arm. She was howling in pain and anger.

  “Aston Ryan, do something!” Kari Jo wailed.

  But DJ Aston Ryan apparently knew when he was overmatched and stood back with his hands up. “No way, girl. You on your own. You throw a punch, you better know who you’re trying to kill.”

  Ellie looked at Caroline. “Let’s get her out of here. Now.”

  Caroline gave a horrendous eye roll, but at that moment, Kari Jo was so busy passing out from pain that it was going to take the two of them to carry her out anyway. They hoisted Kari Jo between them and began dragging her toward the nearest door marked EXIT. Before long, they were staggering into the hot, muggy night that somehow felt a lot less hot and muggy than the air inside that nasty club.