Killer in the Band

by Lauren Carr

  For weeks, she had fought the growing feelings of desire for the handsome young man who had come to her hoping that she could use her influence to help him.

  Talent. Yes, there was no denying Joshua Thornton Jr.’s talent. But that was only a small part of it. His passion for the music he played was infectious. Listening to him play the violin, the piano, and every other instrument he’d mastered stirred feelings inside of her that she had thought had died with her husband.

  One afternoon, he played Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto in C Minor for her. By the time he finished, she was in tears.

  Her feelings for him were inappropriate. She was well aware of his age. When he saw the tears in her eyes, he assumed that his playing had been terrible. When she told him that she couldn’t work with him anymore, it seemed to only confirm his assumption. In humiliation, he packed up his violin to leave.

  But he didn’t make it out the door.

  Suellen was not sure who kissed whom first. It had happened so suddenly. All she knew for sure was that the weeks of pent-up desire had then culminated in the living room on the floor, next to her prized grand piano.

  Taking in a deep breath, Suellen could still feel the intensity of that afternoon as if it had happened only moments ago. She felt as if her body were being transported across a wave back in time to that very afternoon—to the second that their love for each other had been consummated. But instead, the time wave brought her to an earlier time.

  Chapter Three

  Twenty-Eight Years Earlier

  So this is what surreality feels like.

  In the backstage area of the outdoor concert hall at Robert Morris College, twenty-year-old Suellen watched the growing audience.

  Is this real? Did all of these people really come here to see us? To listen to my songs?

  Her dark-brown eyes wide with awe, she swallowed. A drop of sweat rolled out from her short dark hair and dripped down the back of her neck. It sent a shiver down her spine.

  It’s all come together. Everything I’ve worked for is here—now.

  “How many do you think there are?” Harrison Calhoun said, his breath tickling her ear as he came up behind her.

  Suellen let out a shriek.

  “Suellen Russell’s nervous?” The guitar player chuckled. “Never thought I would see the day.”

  “It’s almost time for us to go on, and no one is here.”

  “I’m here,” Harrison said in an exaggerated offended tone.

  “I know I can count on you. It’s the other children I worry about.” After regaining her composure, she noticed that Harrison had a shiny black electric guitar. The Philadelphia radio personality had been using the same instrument since their group had formed—until that night.

  “Nice,” Suellen said. “Did you buy it for this gig?”

  “We’re moving up,” Harrison said with a grin. “Bigger houses and audiences. Thought it was time to invest in a better sound. You should hear that new song you wrote for this concert on this beaut. It’ll bring a tear to your eye.”

  “I’m sure it will,” Suellen said. “Has Dylan gotten here yet?”

  “Yeah, he’s cleaning up,” Cat Foxworth said as she came up behind Suellen. “We got a flat tire. That’s why we’re late.”

  The group’s backup singer had spruced up her sexy appearance for the career-making event with a perm that made her thick, wavy blond hair appear to be even bigger. Suellen wondered what the members of the audience would notice first. Would they first notice her midriff-baring leopard top, her body-hugging pants, or her blond do? Cat’s sexy appearance only added to her impressively large vocal range.

  “You would not believe the drive here from Philadelphia,” Cat said with a roll of her eyes.

  “Are you and Dylan fighting again?” Suellen asked. Silently, she wished she’d made a rule that band members couldn’t date each other. Dylan Matthews was moody enough as it was without the lovers’ spats with Cat, which only added fuel to his fire.

  “Again? We have to stop fighting in order to fight again.”

  “Why do you put up with him?” Harrison asked.

  “Because he’s better in bed when he’s mad,” Cat said. “But that wasn’t what made the drive so horrid. Everything was fine until we went past that creepy old mental hospital on the hill.”

  “Dixmont State Hospital,” Suellen said.

  Having grown up on a family farm only forty minutes away from Moon Township, Suellen Russell was familiar with the abandoned state mental hospital that rested on top of a hill minutes from the campus. The hospital, which had been established in 1859, had been in the news after being closed down four years earlier. Many in the area were curious to see what would become of the sprawling facility and its many outbuildings. Local residents feared that a steel mill or some developer would take over the land.

  “Did you know that Dylan and Wednesday’s mother died there?” Cat asked.

  Harrison chuckled, and Suellen suspected that it was because Cat had called Dylan’s sister, their drummer, Wednesday instead of her actual name, Wendy. Wednesday, the daughter on the Addams Family, a popular television show, wasn’t dissimilar from Wendy, who had a dark personality and manner.

  At first, Suellen had been hesitant to hire the eerie eighteen-year-old who hardly spoke to anyone in the band—unlike her older brother, who was able to flip on his charm as though it were a switch. Wendy Matthews had no charm, but she was an excellent drummer.

  Suellen knew little about the brother and sister, but she did know that they’d been raised in the foster-care system around Pittsburgh. They never mentioned their parents. For all she knew, their mother could have been a patient at Dixmont State Hospital.

  “I think Wednesday was pulling your leg,” Harrison told Cat.

  “She’d have to grow a personality before she could do that,” Cat said. “She was rather matter-of-fact about it. We were driving here along Highway Sixty-Five, and Wednesday looked up the hill at the place, which was strange to begin with, and said, ‘Oh, look, Dylan. There’s Mom’s place.’ Dylan grunted. Then she said that their mom wished they had gone to visit her more often.”

  Shivering at the eerie conversation, Suellen looked around for the rest of her band.

  Cat continued. “Then Silas joined in—”

  “Silas?” Harrison asked. “Who’s—”

  “Wednesday’s boyfriend,” Cat said.

  “Wednesday has a boyfriend?” Suellen and Harrison gasped in unison. Somehow, they could not imagine a girl with such a dark personality attracting a man.

  Cat was nodding her head. “He’s been living with them ever since our last concert a few weeks ago. I didn’t think it was possible, but he’s weirder than Wednesday. Based on what he said when we were driving past Dixmont, I think he knew them from before, because he knew about that mental hospital, and I think he knew about their mother. He said that she was with their father.”

  “I wonder what he meant by that,” Suellen asked.

  “Don’t know,” Cat said. “He kept on going, telling Wednesday not to worry and that their mother was not alone, that she was with other lost souls, and that one day, they would be with her.”

  Suellen shuddered. “Just stop talking.”

  “The whole place gave me the creeps. You should see the cemetery. It’s like the one they used for the music video of ‘Thriller.’” Cat shook herself. “Downright creepy if you ask me.”

  “Looks like the gang’s all here!” Taking a deep drag on his cigarette, Keith Black sauntered over to them. The bass guitarist took great pride in being named after Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. For him, it was all about the image—sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. In keeping with his bad-boy image, he dressed in black jeans and a black vest with no shirt underneath it. Even his bass guitar was black.

  Giggling, two girl
s who had arrived with the musician waited off to the side for him to finish his business with the band. While they looked young, they appeared to be far from inexperienced. They seemed to ooze sex—which was right up Keith’s alley.

  When Keith whipped his dark sunglasses from his eyes, Suellen instantly saw their red rims and knew that he’d been enjoying the Fourth of July holiday to the max.

  It would have been easier for Suellen to have gathered the band members together before the concert if they had traveled together. The band’s leader, Suellen, had been spending her time off from school with her parents at their family farm in Chester, West Virginia, which was close by. Cat, who had been staying with Dylan when they weren’t fighting, had made the trip with him and his sister. Unable to arrange additional time off from the radio station where he worked as an on-air personality, Harrison had made the four-hour drive from Philadelphia the day before and had stayed at a roadside motel near the university. Since he was not into recreational drugs, he had refused to allow Keith in his car, which wasn’t a problem. The professional guitar player had friends, most of whom were other rock musicians or groupies, all over the country.

  Suellen wondered where Keith had met the two girls and whether they were even of legal age. Her guess was that he had met them at a party only a day or so before. Would Keith’s new friends even be around to give him a ride back to Philadelphia after the concert? If not, Keith would find a way home. The bass player truly lived in the moment.

  “We go on in forty minutes,” Suellen said. “Where are Dylan and Wendy?”

  “Right here, love!”

  Suellen didn’t think she had ever seen such a wide grin fill the handsome singer’s face. He practically skipped out of the door of the student union and swept Cat up into his arms. As always, he was wearing his red guitar strapped across his back. Even though he knew only six chords and couldn’t play his guitar unless it was plugged in, it was part and parcel of his image as the lead singer of a rock group, and he was never without it.

  “Happy Fourth of July!” The cigarette hanging from Keith’s lips seemed to be waving a greeting at Dylan.

  “Happy Fourth of July, Wendy,” a man Suellen was not familiar with said to the drummer.

  Turning around, she saw a young man with jet-black spiked hair wearing a black-leather vest over his bare, bony, heavily tattooed upper body. His arm was draped across Wendy’s shoulders. They were both wearing black-leather dog collars around their necks.

  He must be Silas.

  “Independence Day it is,” Dylan sang out before offering a quick greeting to each of the band members.

  When the lead singer came to Suellen, he grasped her arm and led her away from the rest of the group. “Hey, Sue,” he said in a low voice, “did you get a chance to look at those songs I gave you?” He glanced back over his shoulder.

  Following his gaze, Suellen noticed that Cat was watching them from a few feet away. Directly behind her, Harrison was furrowing his brows with a questioning look on his face.

  “Sorry, Dylan,” she said. “But ever since I got back home, my folks…Well, there was a family reunion—”

  Noticing that Cat was inching closer to them, Dylan ushered Suellen farther away. “That one song—the one I pointed out to you—could be a breakout song for both of us.”

  “Dylan, I told you when you gave them to me that the lyrics I’ve written have been for my own music. I’ve never written lyrics for someone else. When I write music, I hear the lyrics in my head at the same time. They come together as one piece. I don’t know if I can write—”

  “I need that song!”

  Frightened by the outburst, Suellen yanked her arm from his grasp. “I think we’re through here.”

  As Suellen walked away, Cat said to Dylan, “Did you give that song to Suellen? Are you crazy?”

  “Like a fox.” Flipping on his “charm switch,” Dylan made an announcement. “Smiles, everyone! It’s the Fourth of July. Time to celebrate our independence!”

  The two young groupies hugged Keith at the same time and took turns giving him deep kisses. Behind the threesome, Harrison was talking to Cat, who was shooting daggers at Dylan with her eyes. Seemingly oblivious to Cat’s disdain, Dylan took his sister by the arm to extract her from Silas’ grasp and ushered her toward the stage. As he led her away, Suellen saw something in her face—something she had never seen before.

  Was that…emotion?

  Suellen fought the time wave pulling her away from the concert and back into the present.

  “Suellen! Suellen, can you hear me?” J.J. called to her from a faraway place. His voice sounded like it was coming from the end of a long tunnel.

  No, not yet. I can see it—right there in front of me.

  Chapter Four

  Joshua felt as if he had just slipped off to sleep when his cell phone buzzed on the nightstand. With a groan, he squinted at the caller ID and found that J.J. was calling him. Seeing that the time was four thirty in the morning, he uttered a deep sigh. “Good morning, Son.”

  “When you said to call you if I needed anything, did you mean it?”

  “Depends.”

  “I need someone to go feed the horses.”

  Joshua sat up. “Seriously?”

  “I’m at the hospital with Suellen,” J.J. said. “She had a seizure last night—”

  “How is she? Is she okay?”

  Then awake, Cameron was sitting up next to him. “Is it Suellen? What happened?”

  While Cameron fired off questions, Joshua tried to wake up and to make sense of J.J.’s story. In the middle of the night, he’d woken up and seen Suellen shaking in the bed next to him. She’d been having a seizure. He’d called 9-1-1, and even though she’d been coming out of it by the time the EMTs arrived, Tad had insisted that she be taken to the emergency room.

  “Is she okay now?” Joshua asked.

  “She seems to be okay,” J.J. said. “She doesn’t remember what happened. They’re doing a whole battery of tests, and she won’t be released until morning. In the meantime, the horses need to be taken care of, and the dogs and cats and chickens need to be fed, too.”

  Joshua sat up in his bed. “Then go do it. They probably won’t release Suellen until after breakfast—maybe lunch.”

  “Dad, please,” J.J. said. “I don’t want to leave her here alone.”

  In Joshua’s other ear, Cameron was telling him to ask J.J. what was wrong was Suellen.

  Instead, Joshua asked, “What about Clyde Brady?”

  “He’s getting senile,” J.J. said. “Suellen hasn’t seen him in the last couple of days. She called and left messages—”

  “Has she checked to see if he’s had a heart attack?”

  “Who?” Cameron jumped up.

  “He seems to have come in the morning,” J.J. said, “because the stalls have been cleaned and the horses fed when Suellen checks on them. But he seems to forget about them in the evening. Tad said he could be coming down with what he called sundowners—where he’s forgetting things toward the end of the day when he gets tired.”

  “Could be. If he’s remembering to take care of the horses in the morning, then why do you need me?”

  “To make sure it gets done. Will you do it, Dad?”

  Joshua let out a groan.

  “Dad, you said that if I needed anything—”

  “I wasn’t talking about shoveling horse manure.”

  Cameron laid her hand on his arm. “Josh, play nice.”

  With a growl, Joshua said, “Okay, don’t worry about it, Son. I’ll make sure the barn animals are taken care of.” After hanging up the phone, he threw back the covers and climbed out of bed.

  “Why didn’t you ask him what was wrong with Suellen?”

  Joshua yanked open a dresser drawer and took out a pair of underwear. “Because now is not
the time to have that discussion,” he said while getting dressed. “Tad didn’t want us to see his medical bag at the house for a reason.”

  “Privacy laws,” she said.

  “The source of this secrecy is Suellen Russell.” He stepped into his pants. “J.J. is not one for hiding things and keeping secrets. If he could have, he would’ve told me what was going on before leaving here yesterday afternoon. If he’s hiding Suellen’s medical condition, it’s because she doesn’t want us to know.”

  “If you come right out and ask him, will he tell you?”

  “I know J.J. better than he knows himself.” Then dressed, Joshua bent over the bed to kiss her. “I have ways of making him talk.”

  “But first you’re going to go shovel horse manure?” With a giggle, Cameron pulled the covers up to her chin.

  “Why don’t you come with me?” Joshua asked in a surprisingly bright tone. “You and me together in the fresh morning air. We’ll watch the sunrise. It’ll be romantic.”

  “No.”

  “I’m asking you out on a date.”

  “You’re asking me to go shovel horse poop,” she said, “and I don’t wanna. Find someone else.”

  “Okay, I’ll go wake up Izzy and take her out to do it. She said she wanted to live on a farm. Well, now’s her chance to see what it’s really like.”

  Cameron sat up straight in her bed. “You’re not taking Izzy near those horses. It’s too dangerous. Captain Blackbeard kicked Clyde Brady in the head last year. That palomino will charge any person who goes near her.”

  “She won’t get near the horses.” He gave her a second kiss. “Don’t worry—I’ll take care of our daughter.”

  As always, his reference to the daughter they shared made Cameron smile. “You’d better.”

  Joshua fully expected Izzy to whine and sulk when she was dragged out of her warm bed to shovel horse manure.

  To his surprise, she practically danced with joy in her seat during the drive out to the farm. Not only did she take to the farm chores like a duck to water, but she was also welcomed by the pack of dogs, the barn cats, and, excluding the horses, every other critter, all of whom treated her like a longtime member of their farmyard club.