Dead End Road

by Lori Whitwam

  Seth agreed. “We know all these guys, which is part of why this sucks so much ass,” he said. “But if stories don’t fit with what we know, or if somebody acts nervous, we might learn something.”

  “Exactly,” Mouse said, as Trent came in the back door from the patio. “But don’t sweat it, man. We’re just covering all our bases.”

  Seth nodded, and Trent reached the table and dropped into his seat.

  “Cassie says she gets to start on third base Monday,” Trent said, smiling. He didn’t smile often, but always had one to spare when it came to his daughter.

  “Didn’t get her athletic skills from her old man,” Marshall said, ducking a fist-delivered reprimand from the road manager.

  Seth had just tossed back another shot when Roberto and Andy made their way through the maze of tables. Chairs were shuffled, and they took their seats, with Andy at the end of the table by Abby, and Roberto to his right, next to Trent.

  “What a fucked up day,” Andy said, brushing long, sandy bangs out of his eyes.

  “It seems to be the general opinion,” Seth said.

  The next several minutes were spent catching Andy and Roberto up on what they discussed, keeping the investigation and suspicions focused solely on non-Dead End Road members. Seth let the conversation flow around him, except when his direct input was required. Instead, he held Abby’s hand and watched everybody’s expressions and reactions. Stroking his thumb across her palm, he worried she’d been pulled into this clusterfuck. He probably wasn’t even good enough for her in the first place, multiple attempted murders aside. But, damn. He’d never felt anything like this before, and he was slightly ashamed to admit he was selfish enough to try to convince her they could work.

  “You know what almost happened, don’t you?” asked Roberto, slamming his shot glass down on the table, causing Seth to realize his attention had wandered.

  Seth blinked and focused on the outspoken guitar technician. “Um, yeah. I was almost blown up.”

  “Well, sure, that. But if the bomb had gone off under the bunk, it would’ve wiped out your Paul Reed Smith.” The potential horror was significant enough to make his voice tremble.

  Seth nudged Abby. “See, I told you. ’Berto’s all about the guitars.”

  Roberto gave a short laugh. “Screw you, man. You can take care of yourself, but the guitars are helpless. Somebody’s gotta look out for them.”

  “I told Abby the same thing. If you ever wanted to do me in, it’d be over a guitar, and I’d totally see it coming.”

  “You better believe it. And the next time you fuck up a twelve-string, I’m taking your head off with a brick.”

  Seth held his hands up in surrender. “Fair enough. I’ll take it easy on the twelve-strings.”

  Trent’s phone signaled a new message. He picked it up to check the display just as Chanda arrived with fresh pitchers, glasses, and a platter of stuffed potato skins.

  Trent swiped his finger across his phone, blacking out the screen. “That was a text from Danny. He’ll be here in a few minutes.”

  Seth was glad to hear it. The sooner he saw and talked to everybody and put his mind at ease, the sooner he could devote all his attention to Abby.

  “Hey, guys,” Seth said. “I’m not the only one who’s had a tough day. Must’ve been a big surprise to see the state troopers this morning.”

  “You got that right,” said Andy. “Then the ATF guys showed up and went over every inch of the van and the trailer.”

  Marshall reached for the fresh beer pitcher. “It ain’t the first time we’ve been pulled over. Cops always figure they’ll find something on a tour bus. Woke me out of a sound sleep, and I’d only been down about two hours when Mouse pulled over.”

  “What happened on the bus?” Abby asked. “Did the dog find anything?”

  “Just the bunk and the countertop beside it,” Marshall said. “They took the bottle and other stuff under the bunk, including the guitar.” He cast a cautious glance in ’Berto’s direction. “They hooked up the bus to be towed, and drove us back here.”

  “They think we might get the bus back by the end of the week,” Trent said, picking a bit of tortilla chip off his black t-shirt.

  “I guess everybody’s going to have to figure out how to get back to Texas now, huh? And when?” Abby’s eyes met Seth’s, and he got the distinct impression she was warning him not to invite any of them to stay with them at her house. She didn’t need to worry. He had no such intention. He just wanted to know where everybody was going to be during the next few days.

  “Yeah,” Trent said. “They said we can leave tomorrow if we need to. Unless something points to somebody in particular, they won’t have anything else to go on till they get stuff back from the lab, and it could be a couple of weeks. They can’t keep everybody here that long without any evidence.” He looked at Mouse, who nodded. “We have some ideas, but we’ll work out the details here shortly. I have to fly out tomorrow for sure, because if I’m not home for the softball tournament on Monday, my ex-wife’s gonna skin me alive.”

  Seth found it amusing Trent, who was one of the most formidable-looking guys he’d ever met, was so easily cowed by his pint-size ex-wife. He suspected it had more to do with not wanting to disappoint Cassie.

  Andy glanced at Abby, then at Seth. “What about you, Seth? This whole thing going to change your plans?”

  “Nope. I’m just keeping my head down and letting the professionals handle it. I have more important things on my mind.” He put his arm lightly across Abby’s shoulder, and she shifted against his side. How much longer did they have to stay here in the Pickled Shamrock?

  “We’ll be okay,” Abby said. “I live kind of out there, but it also means it’s hard for anybody to get near the house without my knowing about it.”

  “Must be nice living in the country,” Andy said. “I grew up in Atlanta, lived in Chicago for a while. Austin’s small compared to that, but I always wanted a place on a lake.”

  “I live on a small lake off Gleason Road, and you’re right. It’s really peaceful. When stuff isn’t blowing up, at least.”

  Roberto’s face lit up and he opened his mouth to speak, but Seth suspected where he was going and cut him off. “‘Berto, I already warned these guys. If there are any jokes involving banging, blowing, or exploding, ass will be kicked.”

  Roberto closed his mouth and drooped his head in disappointment. “Bummer. I had some good ones.”

  “You can share them with the class after I leave.”

  Finally, the last member of the group arrived. Danny dropped into the chair at the far end of the table. The young man displayed the slumped but careful posture signifying an effort to keep nausea at bay. Even as short as Danny’s blond hair was, it managed to look as if he’d recently had an encounter with a fork and a faulty toaster. His eyes were bloodshot, and his eyelids sagged.

  “Little hair of the dog, Danny?” teased Roberto.

  “Need a whole lot of hairs, man,” Danny muttered.

  “Well, try to get it together, Dan, my man,” said Trent. His no-nonsense tone conveyed they were going to take care of business and not whine about the inconvenience. “We wanted to get everybody together, compare notes, and decide how to get all our stuff back to Texas once the cops are done with it.”

  “No problem, Trent. I have a couple of ideas,” Danny said, widening his eyes in a futile attempt to appear alert.

  “Good. Get some food in you, and we’ll get it sorted out. You have a room?”

  “Yeah, across the street. That’s where y’all are staying, right?”

  Trent nodded. “Except for Seth, the lucky bastard.”

  Seth rolled his eyes but couldn’t argue. He was a lucky bastard.

  Abby picked her purse off the floor and poked around inside. “I thought so. I don’t smoke very often and thought I had some cigarettes in here, but I’m a little stressed right now and if any situation ever called for a cigarette, this is it. I’m going
to scoot over to the bar and buy some, and stop off at the bathroom. Back in a few.”

  Seth watched her cross the room, exchanging hellos with several customers along the way. He noticed the appreciative looks she received from the largely male clientele, and wondered if she’d ever dated any of them. He needed to know who to hate. As he forked up a stuffed potato skin and began cutting it into pieces, he thought he had a way to steer the conversation to everybody’s whereabouts the night before. But he needed to set it up just right.

  As soon as he could work it into the discussion, he said, “I’ve been thinking. A big key to the whole thing is finding Kevin Merinar and figuring out where he was last night. He’d be stupid to send me a threatening text from his own phone. So where was he, and did somebody else get their hands on his phone?”

  Trent rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Kevin and another guy, Josh somebody, were helping with security most of the night. I sent both of ’em off on a couple of errands, messages, stuff like that.” He paused and his eyes sharpened as if he’d just remembered something. “I did send Kevin out to the bus once. My radio died, and I sent him for the spare battery.”

  Very interesting. “Anybody else see him?”

  Andy chimed in. “I did. I was up in the lighting booth with Danny, remember?”

  “Yeah. I went out for a smoke and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge on the bus, about halfway through the show, maybe a little before. When I came back, I remembered I left my phone on the counter, and Andy went after it.” Danny tossed back a shot and grimaced. Seth hoped he didn’t barf under the table. He still looked pretty rough. Tequila was probably not a great idea.

  “When I went out,” Andy said, “it took me a few minutes to find the phone. It fell behind the cooler. I passed Kevin in the parking lot on my way out.”

  “Kevin came back in and gave me the battery, worked the floor with me and Josh for a while, then he took off. Said he had to go see somebody. I didn’t see him again, but it was after the solos. Maybe a half hour before we finished up.”

  Seth knew by the last twenty minutes of every show, the crew and the house staff were moving around, getting ready to wrap things up. It was a lot harder to pinpoint where everybody was. Still, it was interesting nobody saw Kevin after the solos. And now he had a decent idea where all his own guys were. He didn’t know what it meant yet, but he’d work it all out sooner or later.

  Abby returned to the table and grabbed his arm. “Look, Sammy just came in. Maybe he has some news.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Seth

  Sammy crossed the room and pulled up a chair, which he wedged in beside Trent, directly across from Seth and Abby. He looked serious, but Seth thought he detected a glint in his eye suggesting he was looking forward to being the one to impart significant information.

  “Well, Sammy, don’t keep us in suspense,” Abby said. “Did you beat a confession out of somebody?”

  The police officer cast a sidelong look at the pitchers of beer. He probably needed one. “Things are clearing out at Dash’s. They’re about done talking to the employees, but nobody really had any useful information.”

  “What about Kevin? Has he turned up?” Seth asked.

  “No. They haven’t found Purcell yet, either.”

  “Tell Kincaid Purcell was at Gatsby’s in Cincinnati on Wednesday. I didn’t see him because security made him leave before he came inside, but they told me he was there,” Trent said.

  “Good to know. We’ll get a picture if we can, have somebody show it around the club in Chicago in case he was there too.” Sammy looked at Seth. “Kincaid’s team did talk to those former crew members of yours, though, and they’re both clear, far as they can tell. And the guys who left for Alabama last night gave their statements to the police down there.”

  Seth sighed. “That’s all good, but not exactly helpful.”

  Abby studied Sammy for several seconds. “There’s more, I can tell. Spill it, Sam.”

  “Oh, there’s more. For starters, the ‘crazed fan’ is a lot more interesting than we expected.”

  “In what way?” Abby asked.

  “She’s been in some trouble in the past.”

  “If I have to drag this out of you one sentence at a time, none of us will ever get out of here,” Abby said. Though she tried to sound threatening, Seth thought she mostly sounded tired.

  “Okay, okay,” Sammy said. “The girl’s not wound too tight, that’s for sure. She was arrested a couple of years ago in Iowa for breaking into some actor’s hotel room. He was in town for a press event, and found her hiding in his shower.”

  “Yeah, creepy,” Seth said.

  “She was also arrested for assault. She went out with a guy a few times, no big deal, but she thought it was. He started seeing somebody else, and Pam cut his tires. He caught her in the act, and she went after him with the box cutter she was using. Just a scratch, lucky for him. By the time her lawyer was done, she received sixty days in a mental health facility instead of jail time.”

  Seth was glad she hadn’t had anything more dangerous than a keyring in her hand when Abby jumped her. The girl was obviously unbalanced, but was she crazy—or clever—enough to orchestrate an attempted poisoning and bombing? “Where is she now?”

  “Headed back to Iowa, I guess,” Sammy said. “There’s no evidence to tie her to the bomb, but they’ll keep an eye on her. She was in Cincinnati and Chicago this week, so they’ll keep digging, see if there’s anything there.”

  “Any news on the bourbon bottle?” A lot of Seth’s thought process hinged on the results of those tests.

  “No, but Kincaid was going to call the lab as soon as they move the last of the club staff out of there.” Sammy suddenly looked uncomfortable. He licked his lips and began turning an empty shot glass. He looked down at his hands, saw what he was doing, and pushed the glass aside. “There’s one more thing, and I’m not sure how to say this.”

  “Just spit it out,” Abby said.

  Sammy drew a shaky breath. “There’s one person we can rule out for sure.”

  “Who?” Seth asked.

  “Stacy Ballantyne.”

  “Why? Where is she?” Seth didn’t doubt Stacy’s ability to fuck with him, even from the other side of the world.

  “She was found dead in a hotel room in Vancouver last November.”

  Their table became an island of silence in the otherwise bustling bar. Shocked expressions froze on faces before everyone’s attention turned to Seth. He felt like he had picked up a live electrical wire, his body coursing with sickening numbness. “Dead? How?”

  “Bad combination of pills and alcohol, according to the report.”

  “Accidental? Or did she…?” Seth couldn’t complete the thought. Abby clutched his hand under the table.

  “Inconclusive. She didn’t leave a note, but the investigators felt there were indications it might not have been an accident.”

  “Fuck,” Seth said. “I can’t believe this.” The idea Stacy was dead was too much to comprehend.

  “When’s the last time you heard from her?” Sammy asked.

  “None of us saw her after the night we broke up. She tried calling for a while, until I changed my number. She was involved with a band out west, Darknoise, I think.”

  “She was running around with a different band when she died. Cold Apathy or some stupid-ass name, but I hear they’re bad news,” Sammy said. “The guy she was with passed out in somebody else’s room that night, and found her the next morning.”

  “Are they sure of his whereabouts?” Seth would find it easier to believe someone else was responsible for Stacy’s death. She’d always seemed so determined and indestructible.

  “Yeah, they’re sure,” Sammy said. “Security video shows him entering a room with Stacy, but she left and went back to her room. He didn’t come out of the first room till about ten o’clock the next morning.”

  Trent shook his head. “Rotten news. Not surprising, thoug
h. She was a lot worse, more reckless, the last couple of months before she left. I hoped she’d get her shit together before it was too late.”

  Sammy stood and returned his chair to the neighboring table. “I have to get back to the club, but we thought you needed to know about some of this.”

  “I appreciate it,” Seth said, shaking Sammy’s hand. “It sure isn’t what I expected to hear, though.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sammy said. “No easy way to break news like that.”

  “I guess not.”

  They all sat in silence for a few moments after Sammy departed. Mouse said, “Last November? How come we never heard anything before now?”

  Seth took a deep breath, trying to clear the dull feeling in the middle of his chest. “No clue. She was out west and died in Canada, but you’d think somebody would’ve said something.” He looked around the table. Everyone looked shell-shocked, even Andy and Danny, who had joined the crew long after Stacy left.

  “I’ll call Joey,” Marshall said. “Caroline needs to know. She didn’t like her, but they did spend a lot of time together.”

  “Thanks, man,” Seth said. It was a conversation he didn’t want to have, and he was relieved to have it taken off his hands.

  Abby’s hand tightened on his thigh. At first he thought she was sending a signal they should get the hell out of there, but he noticed she was looking toward the door. He saw her friend, Monique, scanning the room. Abby caught her eye and waved, and Monique made her way in their direction, her loose-fitting Indian print dress billowing around her.

  “I saw your Jeep out behind Dash’s. I hoped I’d find you here.”

  “Seth wanted to touch base with everybody after what happened this morning. We’re heading home pretty soon, though.”

  “I saw Paige when I took her your books, and she told me what happened.” She tucked a loose curl behind her ear. “But I need to talk to you about something else.”