“I can come with you, can’t I?”

Since I’d followed Quinn out of my office and down the hall to the main door, he shouldn’t have been surprised by my request.

Just like I shouldn’t have been surprised by his answer.

“No.”

“But I’m going to go anyway. You know I am. Since we’re both going to the same place—”

“No.” When he punched through the door and walked into the parking lot, I was right behind him. I stayed there while he unlocked the door of his unmarked police car.

“But you’ve got this whole car to yourself,” I said. I wanted to be in on the investigation and I knew that wasn’t going to happen unless I walked into the Rock Hall with Quinn, so I didn’t curl my upper lip when I peered inside the car. Utilitarian black vinyl seats, stripped-down dashboard…this was not the kind of ride I pictured for him. Then again, I suppose the car was standard issue for public servants. And since I was one of the public, it was time for Quinn to start serving.

“There’s no reason you can’t give me a ride,” I told him.

He yanked open the door and slid behind the wheel. “I don’t need a reason. The answer’s still no.”

I stabbed a finger toward where my Mustang was parked. “It’s not like you can keep me away. If you don’t take me, I’m just going to get in my car and drive to the Rock Hall myself. And have you seen the price of gas?”

I can’t say for sure because the sun reflected off his windshield and just about blinded me, but I think Quinn smiled. Then again, maybe it was a sneer. “Take the bus.”

“In this outfit?” Honestly, I’m amazed at men. They can miss the most obvious things. I sidestepped around the open driver’s-side door. Quinn couldn’t close it while I was in the way, so like it or not, he was in for a lesson in high style. “The sweater’s from White House Black Market. The pants are Nanette Lepore, from Saks, and good thing they were on sale, since I’m going to have to toss them. The shirt…” I fingered the collar of my white cotton blouse. “Well, I can’t remember where I bought it, but I know it cost me plenty. I’m much too well-dressed for the bus-riding crowd.”

Quinn stuck his key in the ignition. “Don’t worry about it. Mingling with the masses builds character. Believe me, I mingle all the time, and I’ve got plenty of character.”

“Which is exactly why you’re going to let me come with you.”

“Which is exactly why I know better than to let you.” He gave me a level look and I don’t think he was sizing up my outfit. He wanted me to move.

I planted my feet. “Think about it…I was with Vinnie when he died. Your friend, that other cop, he told you that, didn’t he?”

“So?”

“So, don’t you get it? Vinnie’s murder and the attack on Alistair…they might be related.”

While Quinn thought about this, I beefed up my position.

“Something Vinnie said to me before he died might be important. Only you’ll never know unless you talk to me about it. And I’m not going to talk to you about it unless you let me go with you. That means you’ll do it, right?”

When Quinn didn’t cut me off at the knees, I knew I was finally getting somewhere. He sat back and took his hands off the steering wheel. “You didn’t kill Vinnie, did you?”

Did the police really suspect me?

My heart lurched into my throat. My blood ran cold. “Is that what your friend said?” My voice wobbled. So did my knees. One Martin in prison was one too many, and Dad already had that slot all to himself. Besides the food (less than first-rate, I imagined), the girl gangs (I was so not into following the crowd), and the shared showers (need I say more?), I couldn’t picture myself in an orange jumpsuit.

I blurted out the same explanation I gave Quinn’s friend when he questioned me back at the condo. “I told your friend the whole story. The door to Vinnie’s apartment was open when I got there, and I walked in. That’s when I found Vinnie.” The memory of the knife sticking out of Vinnie’s chest, rising and falling with every labored breath, caught me off guard. I’d been pretty good about the whole thing. Up until that moment. Suddenly my stomach went wonky, my head spun. If I didn’t grab on to the door of the unmarked police car, I would have toppled right over.

“You don’t really think I could kill someone, do you?” I asked Quinn. My voice was as breathy as Vinnie’s when he breathed his last. “Your friend, he doesn’t think—”

I was obviously upset, and I expected that a little understanding was in order. Laughter was not.

Quinn grinned up at me. “My friend knew Vinnie Pal was staying there. And he knew all about Vinnie’s lifestyle and his reputation. He took one look at you and decided right then and there that you were a high-priced call girl who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

A new kind of horror gripped me. “You set him straight, didn’t you?”

“About the wrong time, wrong place thing? Or about the call girl thing?”

I wasn’t about to dignify the question with an answer, so I stuck to the matter at hand. “None of it changes a thing. Quinn…” Still hanging on to the door of the car, I bent to look him in the eye. “I was the last one to see Vinnie alive. And now Alistair’s been attacked. Two Mind at Large band members in one day? Even I can see that it’s a little weird. And suspicious, too.”

He didn’t agree or disagree. He just leaned over and opened the passenger door.

Before he could change his mind, I hurried around to the other side of the car and climbed in. We were on our way to the Rock Hall in no time.

Good thing it wasn’t too far away.

The vinyl seats were lumpy and uncomfortable, and the police car smelled like…

I sniffed, and this time I couldn’t have controlled my reaction if I tried. I made a face.

Quinn wasn’t a detective for nothing. He slid me a sidelong look. “Cigarettes. The guy who uses this car on night shift. He says he’s going to quit, but you know how it is.”

“You should get one of those air freshener things. You know, the kind you hang off your rearview mirror.”

“A hula dancer, what do you think?” Quinn’s smile was wicked. “That would send my lieutenant into a state of feminist-induced furor.”

“At least the car would smell better.”

He drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “Smells better already. But then, you don’t smell like stale cigarettes.”

I was glad he noticed. Happy Heart isn’t cheap, and I’m not rolling in dough. “You see, giving me a ride is a good thing. I’ve already made your day better. So, what’s our strategy when we get there?”

“My strategy…” He made sure he paused so I didn’t miss the emphasis, “is to check out what happened and talk to everyone involved. Your strategy is to look inconspicuous and stay out of the way. Then again…” He sighed, and, call me egotistical (or maybe it was just hopeful), but I swear he didn’t sound nearly as annoyed as he had earlier. Wistful was too poetic a word. Maybe hopeful worked for Quinn, too. “You couldn’t look inconspicuous if you tried.”

Now we were getting somewhere! More comfortable flirting than I was when we were at each other’s throats, I settled myself as best I could against the stiff vinyl. “What you’re saying is that I could be mistaken for a high-priced call girl. Is that such a bad thing?”

Quinn pursed his lips. “Not that I can see.” We were nearly to the Rock Hall, and he stopped at a red light and raised a hand in greeting to the cop who was directing traffic there before he looked my way. His eyes sparked, and maybe it was my weakened condition that made me susceptible. When he looked at me that way, I felt as if I was about to melt.

Quinn’s left hand was on the steering wheel. He moved his right hand across the seat until the tips of his fingers were just barely touching my thigh.

The melting factor rose a few degrees.

He kept his eyes on the road, and I did, too. That didn’t mean I wasn’t keenly aware of the heat of his skin and the touch that was almost not a touch. My insides quivered and my outsides…well, let’s just say it was too bad Quinn was clocked in on the payroll. I could think of better things to do with our time.

He pulled up in front of the Rock Hall, and unlike the rest of us mortals, he didn’t have to wait for an open meter. He angled his car right behind an ambulance with its lights spinning.

Once he had the car in park, he turned to me. “So…” He moved his fingers a fraction of an inch. A feeling like liquid fire spread up my thigh. “What did Vinnie say to you before he died?”

The whole touch-but-don’t-touch thing? It was a dirty trick and Quinn knew it. That’s why he grinned when I shot daggers at him. “You’re underhanded,” I said, and I didn’t wait for him to deny it. I got out of the car.

“No more underhanded than you.” Who the hell would have the nerve to steal a cop car, I didn’t know, but when Quinn got out, he locked the door. He tossed the keys in the air, caught them in one hand, and shoved them into his pocket. “You played me for a sucker. That’s how you got a ride out of me. So I figured—”

“You’d play me,” I snarled.

He didn’t notice. He was busy flashing his badge at the uniformed cop stationed outside the revolving doors that led into the lobby. I breezed in on his coattails, so to speak, and nearly ran smack into him when he stopped just a couple of feet inside the lobby.

“Keep quiet and stay out of the way,” Quinn instructed me, and before I could remind him that I was always quiet and I was never in the way, he was striding across the lobby toward the makeshift stage set up outside the gift shop and the crowd gathered there.

“He’s really into you.”

It had been a long day. And it wasn’t even three. When Damon popped up right next to me, I jumped and pressed a hand to my heart.

I didn’t lose my cool, though. Before I said a word, I made sure I turned my back on the action. With everyone focused on the stage area, nobody was going to pay attention to the lone woman over by the front doors who was clutching her chest and talking to herself.

My smile was sour. “He’s a jerk.”

“Maybe, but he’s crazy about you.”

I grunted. “He’s got a funny way of showing it.”

Damon laughed. “All guys have a funny way of showing it. You should have figured that out by now.”

First Grandma Panhorst and now Damon. Did every dead person within a hundred-mile radius have an opinion about my love life?

I crossed my arms over my chest. “So now you’re an expert? From what I’ve heard, you weren’t exactly Mr. Commitment.”

“You got that right, baby!” Damon’s grin was as dazzling as the sunshine that streamed through the glass lobby. “I had a thousand chicks and a thousand good times and I’ll tell you what, I wouldn’t trade a minute of it. But I’ve also had nearly forty years to do nothing but think. And thinking about it…”

Damon’s eyes lost their luster. “Back then,” he said, “it was a game, and the name of the game was having them all. Young, old. Short, tall. Fat, skinny. I didn’t care. I preferred my women young and gorgeous, like you…” He gave me a wink. “And it was always easier if there wasn’t some jealous boyfriend or husband who wasn’t getting all bent out of shape because I was screwing his old lady. But I’ll tell you what, I wasn’t particular, and stealing some other guy’s chick, well, that was all part of the fun. I wanted any woman any other guy had. When I had her, I had the time of my life. But once I had her, I didn’t want her anymore. Now…” He scraped a hand over his jaw and glanced across the lobby to where Quinn was talking to one of the dozen or so uniformed officers who had responded to the emergency call.

“That cop of yours, he’s gonna get what I can never have, and I’m not just talking about the sex. It’s you, Pepper. It’s everything you are.” Damon’s voice sizzled with emotion. His eyes glimmered, not just with reflected sunlight, but with a heat that came from within. He leaned closer, and okay, I knew better. I knew I couldn’t make contact with a ghost. Not without turning into a female frosty.

Try and tell that to my hormones.

When Damon stepped nearer to look into my eyes, I tipped my head back.

When he got even closer, my eyes fluttered shut.

When he brought his mouth down on mine—

“Ouch!”

Good thing there was such a hubbub going on in the lobby. When I yelped, nobody heard me. When I jumped back and away from the icy cold touch of Damon’s lips, nobody noticed.

My mouth stung. Like I’d smooched an icy piece of metal, my lips were raw.

“I’m sorry.” Damon raised a hand to touch a finger to my mouth, but hey, it was the old once-burned, twice-shy thing. Only burning wasn’t what I was worried about. I ducked out of the way, and then I was sorry I did; Damon looked as if I’d slapped him.

“I couldn’t help myself, Pepper,” he said. “I’ve never felt this way before! Not about any woman. Man, can you believe it? This is a first! Damon Curtis is jealous!” He looked back to where Quinn was talking to one of the paramedics, and I looked that way, too. “Jealous of a cop!”

There was a time I thought a broken heart was nothing but a metaphor. Or was it a simile? No matter, I swear I felt mine crack in two. There wasn’t anything I could do, and nothing I could say. No worries. When I turned back to Damon, he was nowhere in sight.

And wonder of wonder, when I looked around to see where he went, I saw Quinn instead, just as he raised a hand to wave me over. I moved fast. Before he could change his mind.

I’d been so busy concentrating on Damon, I’d pretty much blocked out everything going on around me, but as I crossed the spacious and wide-open lobby, the commotion got louder and the crowds got thicker.

I stepped around a group of Rock Hall employees watching the action. And a couple of paramedics standing around wondering what to do with the empty stretcher they were carrying.

The acoustics in the lobby were great for music, but they amplified the uproar of voices and the crackle of police radios until it all blended into one giant nightmare of noise. Still, through it all, one voice rose above the racket. Alistair Cromwell was sitting on the top stair of the steps that led up to the stage. He was dangling his smashed glasses in one hand, and there was a gash across the bridge of his nose. One of the paramedics was trying to dab a gauze to the wound, but Alistair would have none of it.

“Get your bloody mitts off me, you bloody little ponce.” Alistair slapped the man’s hands away. “I’m right as rain, and if you can’t see that for yourself, then you’re in the wrong business.”

Quinn turned his back on the scene. He acknowledged me with a nod, and he was just about to turn to the short, bald man who stood at his side when he stopped and squinted in my direction. “What happened to your mouth? Your lip is bleeding.”

“My lip…” Until I tried to talk, I didn’t realize that in addition to being raw, my lips were swollen. Like I’d gotten a whopping dose of Novocain, my mouth was numb. I tried to answer Quinn again, slower and more carefully this time. “I wan into…”

A dead man’s lips?

Couldn’t exactly say that, so I waved a hand in the direction of the revolving door where we’d entered the hall. If Quinn wasn’t so preoccupied, he might have noticed that there was nothing over there I could possibly have run into. The way it was, he took my story at face value.

He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief and pressed it into my hand before he turned back to the man at his side. “This is Gene Terry, Mind at Large’s business manager and agent,” Quinn said. “I was just telling him that you saw Vinnie this morning.”

“Talk about bad luck!” Gene had a Brooklyn accent as thick as a deli pastrami on rye and really good taste in clothes. His navy blue suit was Armani. His white dress shirt must have been made-to-order or it wouldn’t have fit so well over his broad shoulders. Unfortunately, the effect was lost when he paired the outfit with black-and-white sneakers. He was a head shorter than me and completely bald. Since I had the hankie in my right hand, he grabbed my left hand and pumped it. He looked at my chest before he looked me in the eye. “Officer Harrison here tells me you were with Vinnie this morning when he kicked it. Did he say anything? I mean, anything for the boys in the band? Anything for me?”

Carefully, I touched the hankie to my lip. When I lifted it away, it was stained with red. “Vinnie was weally woozy,” I said. “I twied to talk to him but as for wesponding…” I screeched my frustration and chose my words carefully. “He didn’t say much.”

Terry had a round body and heavy jowls. When he frowned, his face folded in on itself. “Did he tell you who—?”

“Bloody hell!”

Alistair’s shout split Gene’s question in two. I spun around just in time to see him grappling with two strapping paramedics. He was far older than either of them, but he was having one heck of a hissy fit, and he had rock stardom on his side. He pushed himself to his feet and stood, and the paramedics backed off to give him plenty of distance. When he walked over to where we stood, he wobbled.

“Get rid of these bleeding idiots, Gene. I can’t take it anymore. They’re fussing over me like I’m a bloody retard. Call my personal doctor.”

“We’ve done that, Al.” I could tell Gene had been through this song-and-dance before. He moved in on Alistair and took charge, lowering his voice like he was talking to a child. Or a wild animal. “Dr. Brighton is in L.A. He’s canceled his appointments for the rest of the week and he’s going to be on the first plane.”

“As if there are planes between L.A. and this bloody place!” Alistair’s face was red. A vein bulged at the side of his neck. “Who the hell ever thought of doing a concert in this hellhole? It’s a death trap, that’s what it is.”

“It was an accident.” Gene put a hand on Alistair’s arm, made eye contact, and refused to look away. I’d seen one of my uncles do the same thing with a cocker spaniel that was impossible to train. “One of the lights fell. You just happened to be under it at the time. It’s not going to happen again. This isn’t even the stage you’ll be using for the concert. That will be outside. What were you doing here anyway, Al? You told me you were going to be home this morning.”

“Shit.” As if he didn’t realize he was holding on to them, Alistair looked at the bent and twisted glasses in his hand. He tossed them on the floor. “I thought it would be fun just to pay a visit. You know, see the place and get the lay of the land. I couldn’t resist jumping up on that stage. You know, for a look. It’s going to be hell getting the sound right in this place.”

“That’s what the sound team is for. They’ll get it right.”

“And the crowds…” Alistair looked past the soaring windows to the plaza beyond. “How the hell many people do they think they can get out there? It won’t be like Shea.”

I don’t know if Quinn had heard enough or if he had a legitimate place to go. Either way, he didn’t bother excusing himself before he moved toward where a couple of guys in blue windbreakers were looking over the wreckage of lights and wires that littered the stage.

Gene Terry watched him go, then returned to the matter at hand. “Shea was a long time ago,” he reminded Alistair. “You know we don’t get the crowds we used to.”

“Well we bloody well should,” Alistair grumbled. “And who the hell are you, anyway?” he asked, turning on me. “I told them, no damned reporters.”

“I’m not a weporter.” I winced “My name is Pepper. I was with Vinnie this morning and when I heard what happened to you…” I tasted blood on my lips and held the hankie to my mouth again. It was the first I noticed that Quinn’s initials were embroidered on it. “It seems stwange, doesn’t it? I mean, it’s awfully cuwious…Vinnie was murdered. And then this.”

Something told me this was something Alistair had yet to consider. He squinched up his eyes and stared at me hard. “What the hell is this woman jabbering about?” he asked Gene, as if I wasn’t even there. “Is she interrogating me?”

“She’s concerned.”

I tried to thank the agent for his support with a smile, but it hurt too much.

“I’m not intewwogating…” I clenched my teeth. “I just think we need to talk about it. That’s all.”

“The cops say Vinnie’s place was burglarized.” This came from Gene, and I was grateful. It was more than I knew when I left the condo.

“If it was a wobbery—”

I grimaced.

“If it was wandom—”

I counted to ten, searching for patience and words that didn’t include any Rs.

“We can’t dismiss this,” I said and congratulated myself when I managed to not sound like Elmer Fudd for a whole sentence. “What if it isn’t a coincidence?”

It was my turn to come under Terry’s ministering care. He dropped his hand from Alistair’s arm and patted mine. “You’re right,” he said. “We do need to talk. Hearing about Vinnie’s last moments will help give us all closure. But you’re jumping to conclusions as far as what happened to Alistair is concerned. It was an accident.”

“Pwobably.”

I’d been so busy concentrating on my vocabulary, I didn’t notice that Quinn had joined us. He looked over his shoulder back toward the stage and the crime scene technicians who were working there.

“The techs aren’t sure yet, but it doesn’t look as if the wires were cut. We’ll know more in a little while.”

“I don’t care what they say. This place is dangerous.” Alistair didn’t wait to hear any more. He shoved his way through the crowd, and Gene Terry followed. Even when Bernie the bodyguard appeared out of nowhere and ushered them away, I could still hear Alistair’s high-pitched bitching.

Gingerly, I touched the hankie to my lip. There was less blood than before. “Were you telling the twuth? Was it an accident?”

“You mean Alistair? And the lights?”

“And Vinnie. It’s awfully coincidental.”

Maybe, but if Quinn saw the connection, he didn’t have time to tell me about it. His cell phone rang.

He talked for a minute, and when he snapped his phone shut, I snapped myself out of my thoughts and fell into step behind him. “I have to go,” he said.

“You’re going to let me wide along, aren’t you? I mean, I can come with you, wight?”

“Not to the scene of a murder/suicide.” The crowd of uniformed cops in front of him parted and Quinn didn’t waste any time. He strode toward the revolving doors that led outside.

“But—” I scrambled to catch up. “But what about me? How am I going to get back to the cemetewy?”

He paused for a fraction of a second before he pushed through the doors. A smile crinkled one corner of his mouth. “You can always take the bus.”

I had the perfect comeback. Honest. But two things happened before I had a chance to deliver it. Number one, Quinn headed out the door and was gone. And number two…well, that might have had something to do with the voice I heard behind me. The one that stopped me cold.

“The angel of death circles overhead like a dove.”

It sounded like something Damon would say. Or at least something he might have written in a song. But this wasn’t Damon’s voice. I turned just in time to see a thin woman with long, stringy hair shuffle past. I recognized her at once. She was the one who’d been cleaning Damon’s exhibit the first time I visited the Rock Hall. And she’d been in Vinnie’s class, too. Just like she had been that night, she was wearing beat-up jeans and a shirt decorated with beads and sequins. It was all topped off with a dirty denim jacket.

Now—as then—she had a coffee cup in her hands. It had City Roast printed on the side of it. The cup was empty, and she twisted it in bony fingers, breaking off tiny bits of Styrofoam and scattering them like a trail of breadcrumbs.

Or clues.

Remembering something I’d seen in Vinnie’s apartment and, come to think of it, at Damon’s grave, too, I perked right up. City Roast wasn’t one of the big chains in the area. As a matter of fact, as far as I knew, their coffee was sold at only one place in the city, the West Side Market, an open-air extravaganza sort of shopping place not too far away.

Before she had a chance to get by me, I intercepted the woman. “Hey!” I tried for a friendly smile, but it hurt too much, so I gave her a wave before I pointed to what was left of her cup. “That’s my favorite coffee, too. Vinnie liked City Woast. I know because he had some of the cups in his apartment. Were you a fwiend of his?”

She frowned. “He forgot to stop. He promised he’d come for me and he passed right by.”

Something told me we weren’t talking about Vinnie. Or even about coffee. I didn’t have the luxury of wimping out, so I gulped down the heebie-jeebies. “You mean the angel of death? What, you guys had an appointment or something?”

“He’s coming for me.” The woman’s eyes were so pale, they were nearly colorless. “He said he would, and he’d never lie. He won’t disappoint me. Not again.”

I was getting nowhere fast. I decided on another tack. “Alistair’s glad the angel of death didn’t stop for him.”

“Alistair’s my cat. He’s a sweet little thing.” Her brows dipped low over her eyes. “He doesn’t like the dog next door. No, he doesn’t. But my Alistair doesn’t have to worry about the angel. I won’t let him go outside so the dog can’t eat him.”

“That’s weally smart.” Since I couldn’t smile, I nodded. “But I was talking about this Alistair. Alistair Cromwell. He almost got smashed by a light. And Vinnie…” Again, I pictured the coffee cups strewn around the penthouse. “When was the last time you saw Vinnie?”

“Vinnie’s aura is all wrong. He’s not a cat.”

“No, he’s not.” It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that there might be anyone who hadn’t heard what happened to Vinnie. It was obvious this woman was one bottle short of a six-pack. If I broke it to her, how would she take the news of Vinnie’s death?

Or maybe I didn’t need to tell her. If she knew Vinnie well enough to visit and leave her signature coffee cups behind, did she know him well enough to know what had happened to him?

Well enough to kill him?

I considered the possibility while I carefully formed my question. “You know Vinnie is dead, wight? He died this morning.”

“He died too young.” A single tear slid down the woman’s cheek. “He thought sandwiches were mother’s milk. And all the sunshine was killing poison. He’s circling now.” She looked up and beyond the glass walls that soared overhead. When she smiled, I saw she had a couple of missing teeth. “He’ll be back. He’s coming for me. My lover.” She was still smiling and mumbling when she shambled away.

“All wighty, then.” Watching her go, I shivered and hugged my arms around myself.

“She bothering you?” Gene Terry was back from wherever—minus Alistair and Bernie—and when he saw me watching the woman as she got on the escalator, and headed toward the downstairs exhibits, he came to stand beside me. “Belinda’s harmless.”

“You know her? I thought she was on the staff here. You know, maintenance.”

He laughed. “Belinda’s not a cleaning woman. She’s—”

“As cwazy as a loon.”

“Yeah, she is that.” Gene shook his head. “The psychedelic movement was kinder to some than others.”

“So all that stuff about the angel of death and sandwiches…?”

From where we stood, we could still see Crazy Belinda. She got off the escalator, and I wasn’t surprised when she headed in the direction of Damon’s exhibit. Gene was watching her, too. “Believe it or not,” he said, “she was beautiful once. We were wild about her.”

“We? As in the band?”

Gene nodded. “She spent a lot of time hanging with the guys. Then she just sort of dropped out of sight. When we arrived in Cleveland for this gig, she showed up out of nowhere. Acted like nothing had changed. Like we could just pick up where we left off so many years ago.”

“And the guys in the band…” Yeah, I was being nosy. But remember, I was talking murder. Even if Gene didn’t know that’s what I was talking about. “Were they happy to see her?”

“What do you think?”

“I think she’s got some cwazy fixation with death. And with Mind at Large. It’s cweepy.” I was sounding cwazy and cweepy, too, and I vowed to choose my words more carefully.

Gene dismissed the whole thing with a wave of one hand. “Belinda, she’s just talking nonsense. Even before she destroyed her brain cells, she was a space cadet. She’s harmless.”

“And very cwee…Stwange…odd.”

“There seems to be a lot of that going around.”

I couldn’t see Belinda anymore, so I turned toward Gene and found him looking at the stage and the light that had crashed down on it so hard, it left a crater the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. His expression clouded. “I can’t believe we almost lost two of the guys today. Brings the whole thing back like it was yesterday. You know, about Damon.”

“But Damon wasn’t murdered.”

“No, no he wasn’t.” Gene shook himself. “I was just thinking, that’s all. We’ve been through so much together, me and the band, yet when the guys need me most…” He shivered. “I was in Pittsburgh the night Damon died, checking out the venue for our next concert date. I spent a lot of years in therapy coming to grips with the fact that even if I’d been with him, there probably wasn’t anything I could have done to save him. And this morning…” Gene sighed. “There I was, sitting on my duff back at my hotel, drinking espresso and eating eggs Benedict while somebody was slicing up Vinnie.”

Since there had actually been more stabbing than slicing, Gene’s comparison wasn’t exactly accurate. I didn’t bother to correct him. Mostly because I figured slicing or stabbing, it didn’t much matter. Dead was dead.

“And then this happens to Alistair.” Gene interrupted my thoughts just as they were about to latch on to the memory of Vinnie on the floor with that knife sticking out of his chest. For this, I was grateful. “It’s strange, don’t you think?”

“Exactly what I was twying to tell Quinn.” Don’t ask me why I bothered to look outside. Of course, Quinn was long gone.

“You don’t think it was a coincidence.” Gene studied me carefully. “Funny, you don’t look like a cop.”

I would have laughed if my mouth didn’t hurt. “I’m no cop.”

“But Officer Harrison said you sometimes work together.”

“Did he?” I was surprised (and strangely gratified) to hear Quinn would ever admit it. “I’m a kind of consultant.”

“You mean like a private detective.”

“Sort of. But not weally.” I felt it necessary to add this last bit, just so Gene didn’t get it into his head that he wanted something investigated. I had enough on my plate. “I weally work as a tour guide. At Garden View Cemetewy.”

Gene’s eyes lit. “Where Damon is buried. Is that how you met Belinda?”

“I met her downstairs. She was cleaning Damon’s exhibit.”

Gene chuckled. “Thank goodness the folks who run this place are tolerant! Belinda’s obsessed. Damon and the guys…well, she thought of them as family.” The gleam in his eyes diminished, and he looked at me carefully. “How did you get involved in all this?”

I was all set to give him the same story I’d concocted for Vinnie. The one about how I was a big fan. But something told me Gene wouldn’t believe it. For one thing, I was too young and obviously too with-it to be of the Mind at Large mindset. For another, I didn’t want to risk having another old guy try to seduce me because he thought I was an easy target. Been there, done that, thank you very much.

With not one original idea in my brain, I fell back on an old ploy, one that had worked well for me when I was investigating Gus Scarpetti’s murder.

“I feel silly admitting this,” I said, and I made sure I gave Gene a tiny (the only kind I could manage) smile along with the explanation. He might be old, but he was a man, and I had yet to meet one who couldn’t be schmoozed by a little feminine charm. “I got intewested in Damon Curtis because, like I said, I work at the cemetew…at Garden View. I’m hoping…” Here I looked away, then sighed. With any luck, he’d believe he was the first one who’d heard my secret. “I’d like to wite a book someday. About Damon. I’ve started my wesearch. That’s why I went to talk to Vinnie.”

Over the years, I’d bet Gene had heard this same story from a thousand people (though probably not with the preponderance of Ws). Big points for him, he didn’t tell me I was wasting my time. In fact, he looked downright interested. “What have you found out?” he asked.

“About Damon?” I wasn’t expecting this, and I scrambled. “Oh, you know, this and that. Vinnie was vewy helpful. He told me all about how Damon used to wite his songs.” Since Gene didn’t know which he my his referred to, this was technically true. I remembered the story I gave the Lakewood cops and decided a little corroboration wouldn’t hurt. “He loaned me a couple things, too. You know, CDs and such.”

“I’ll tell you what…” Gene reached into his pocket, pulled out a business card, and handed it to me along with a pen. “You write down your name and address and I’ll see what I have around that might help with your research. You’ll hear from Zack.” He looked across the hall to where a tall, skinny kid with long hair and bad skin was talking to a TV reporter. “He’s our PR guy. Don’t expect anything too soon. Between dealing with what happened to Vinnie today and getting ready for the big concert, we’re going to be pretty busy.”

I scribbled down the information and handed the card back to Gene. “You’ll still do the concert?”

“The show must go on!” He tried for cheery, but I could tell he was hurting. “Vinnie wouldn’t want us to cancel.”

“And Belinda?”

When I saw that Gene was confused, I caught him up on my thought process. “I’m just wondering, that’s all. If there’s any weason, you know, that Belinda would think the show must go on. Or any weason she might want the concert to be canceled.”

“You don’t think—” Belinda was long gone but Gene automatically looked toward the escalator. “Nah!” He dismissed my suspicions with a snort and a shake of his head. “She’s crazy, all right, but she’s not dangerous. You don’t think she and Vinnie—”

“I know she might have been there.”

“At Vinnie’s place? Did you tell Officer Harrison?”

“I didn’t have a chance. Quinn doesn’t hear anything Quinn doesn’t want to hear.”

“Then do me a favor, okay?” Gene put a gentle hand on my arm. “Let’s keep this under our hats. There’s no use pulling a mentally ill woman into the limelight if we don’t have to. And you know…” He bent nearer. “That’s exactly what you’d be doing if word of this gets out. You think every reporter in the country isn’t just itching for a lead? They’d go chasing after Belinda in a minute if they knew she’d been over to Vinnie’s place.” He looked me in the eye. “And you, too, you know.”

I’d never been one to shy away from the spotlight, but I knew exactly what he was saying. The Lakewood police had already decided that I was a high-priced call girl. My poor mom, hiding out in Florida because of what happened with my dad, didn’t need another family scandal. If this made it’s way into the press, she’d never be able to show her face in town again.

I nodded, silently agreeing to Gene’s plan, but that didn’t mean I was willing to completely relinquish responsibility. “But what if she’s guilty?” I asked him.

“Belinda? Guilty?” Gene laughed, and when the PR guy waved him over, he patted my arm and took off in that direction. “Believe me when I tell you this, honey, because I know it for a fact. The only thing Belinda was ever guilty of was partying too hard.”