by Kathi Daley
While the music wasn’t the sort I enjoyed, I found the atmosphere energetic and somewhat alluring. While I was pretty sure that at least part of the reason the energy level was so high was due to the drugs that were circulating quite openly, I still found the liveliness of the place invigorating.
“Okay,” Mike said before we separated. “We know what we need to do. It will be important that we collect our samples without drawing attention to ourselves, so blend in. Once you have a sample, text the others to let us know what you have. Remember, anything with saliva is best. Discarded gum, a cigarette butt, a discarded glass, or a beer bottle. If at all possible, we should try to collect more than one sample per person, but we don’t want to overdo it and become obvious. The band member who goes by the name Lucifer is our prime suspect. If nothing else, we need a viable sample from him. We’ll regroup after a couple of hours so we can evaluate our progress.”
Once Mike had finished his spiel, he and Bree went off in one direction and Tony and I went in another. Having access to the VIP tent was going to be the key to our success. Sometimes I forgot how connected my easygoing boyfriend really was.
“This is actually kind of fun,” I said to Tony as we mingled with the crowd, keeping an eye out for any of our four subjects.
“I will admit that doing the detective thing is sort of a rush. And while I’m not really a fan of this music, I’m kind of getting into it. At least for today.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. I’m sure I will have a splitting headache by the end of the day, but right now I am feeling the vibe.” I paused and looked around at the crowd. Mike had acquired a list of all five bands that were scheduled to play, and Tony had downloaded recent photos of the members of each one. So far, I had only been able to identify two musicians, and neither were from Satan’s Sin. “I hope the band members show up at some point. If all they do is go onstage, do their set, and leave, this whole trip will have been a waste of time.”
Tony took my hand in his. “I think they’ll show. But even if they don’t, it won’t have been a waste. Sometimes these things take time.”
I supposed Tony was right. “There is one thing I’ve been wondering now that we are here.”
“What’s that?” Tony asked.
“If Darlene left in the middle of the concert and was never seen alive again, she couldn’t have been meeting up with one of the four members of the band. They were all onstage. If her intention was to meet up with one of them, why wouldn’t she have just waited until after the concert?”
“Good question,” Tony acknowledged. “Maybe she figured she wouldn’t be able to get away from her friends after the concert, or maybe she arranged for someone else—maybe one of Lucifer’s friends—to take her backstage to wait for the band to finish.”
“Lacy seemed to know that Darlene wanted to go to the concert to hook up with someone associated with the band. That brings me to the question of why Lacy lied about the fact that Darlene was at the concert to hook up with a man when she was interviewed two decades ago, and why Darlene lied about going to find the bathroom. Why not just tell her friends what she was doing if they knew about the hookup?”
Tony frowned. “Where are you going with this?”
“I’m just wondering if we aren’t barking up the wrong tree. Not that I don’t think we should try to obtain DNA from the band members as planned, but I feel like we are missing something important. The problem is, I have no idea what that something might be.”
Tony nudged my arm. “It looks like Abaddon just entered the tent. Let’s hang back, but keep an eye on him. He’s heading toward the bar. Hopefully, that will result in a used glass or beer bottle.”
The problem, we soon found, was that glass was not allowed at the concert, so what we ended up with was a plastic cup. I wasn’t sure if DNA could be pulled from plastic, but as soon as the cup was abandoned, Tony did the supersleuth thing and managed to bag it and slip it into his backpack. We texted Mike, who informed us that he had managed to get a cigarette butt that Satan had tossed, which meant we needed to hope that Lucifer and Beelzebub showed up.
“What if the samples we collect are no good?” I asked Tony.
“The band has three more stops on their tour. We can try again. If we can match the samples we are collecting with any of the samples Brick had, that at least would let us know we are on the right track.”
“All of these men have black hair. It may be dyed black, but it is black nonetheless,” I pointed out. “Mike said from the police report that the hair found in Darlene’s hand was blond. I suppose that one or more of the men could be wearing a black wig and there is blond hair underneath, but somehow I doubt it.”
“That is a really good point. I’ll step out into the parking lot where the reception is better and try to pull up a photo of the band twenty years ago. Maybe the black hair is a recent adaptation.”
“I’ll come with you. I really don’t want to stay here alone.”
We left the tent and went out into the parking area. Tony pulled up a photo of an album cover from 2002. All four musicians had black hair. That was five years after Darlene was murdered, though, so Tony continued to search until he found a promotional poster from 1996. Three of the men had black hair then, but one of them, the drummer Beelzebub, was blond. The sample that matched the old DNA had been labeled with the letter L, however, which seemed to indicate that it belonged to Lucifer. Something wasn’t making sense.
“Let’s head back inside,” Tony said.
I started coughing when we returned to the tent. I hadn’t noticed the strong stench of marijuana when we’d been inside before. I had a feeling I was going to be stoned by the end of the night from secondhand smoke if I spent too much more time in the VIP area.
“There’s Lucifer,” I whispered to Tony. “He is heading toward the men’s room.”
“I’ll follow him,” Tony offered.
Which meant I was going to be alone, so I texted Mike to check in and to see how he and Bree were doing. Mike texted back to say that while he hadn’t managed to track down any additional band members, he had run into a big-time groupie who seemed to have all the scoop about the history of the band, including the names of all the various roadies who had toured with them over the years. Bree pretended to be representing a popular music blog, and she was happily spilling her guts about everything she knew.
By the time I finished texting with Mike, Tony had returned.
“Did you get anything?”
Tony nodded. “I did.”
I couldn’t help but make a face. “Dare I ask?”
“A tissue. Lucifer blew his nose, then tossed the tissue in the trash, and I used my gloves and a Baggie to secure it. Now we just need a sample from Beelzebub.”
“I don’t see him.” I stood on tiptoe and looked around.
“Yeah. I don’t either. I guess if he doesn’t show before they take the stage, we’ll just need to wait until after their set and hope they come back to the tent.”
Beelzebub still hadn’t visited the VIP tent by the time the band went on, so the four of us left the area to see the concert. The group was loud, that was for certain, but they really weren’t too bad, and their lyrics were actually haunting if you could get past all the noise. I focused on the face of each of the men as they played. They seemed to be having a good time, but I noticed a look of fatigue as well. If I had to guess, they had been partying hard the entire weekend.
“I think my hearing is going to be permanently affected,” Bree shouted.
“I agree,” I shouted back. “Do you want to walk over to the beer tent and take a break?”
Bree nodded.
I told Tony what we were going to do, and Bree filled Mike in on our plans. The music could still be heard quite far away at the concession area, but at least we could speak without shouting.
“Dang it, I stepped in gum,” Bree said.
“Sorry. I saw that guy who was in line in front of us toss it on the ground.
I should have warned you. Hang on and I’ll see if I can get it off.” I pulled out a pair of gloves and pried it from the bottom of Bree’s shoe. I was about to toss it in the trash when, at the last minute, I put it in one of our sample bags.
“Why are you saving the gum?” Bree asked.
I shrugged. “I’m not sure. The guy who tossed the gum looked familiar. I can’t quite place him, but something is telling me to hang on to it.”
Bree looked toward the edge of the tent that opened onto a passageway that led to the rear of the stage. “I think the guy is with the band. He headed down that hallway that is restricted to band members and their teams.”
“Before we leave today, let’s see if we can find out what his name is. I just have this gut feeling that he might come into play at some point.”
Bree bit the corner of her lip. “Do you think he was with the band all those years ago?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. He looked old enough to have been with them for a long time. The groupie you met gave you a bunch of names. Do any of them who have been with the band since the 1990s begin with an L?”
Bree pulled out the list. “The band manager is named Barry. He has been with them from the beginning. The publicist is Arnie, and he has been around since the beginning as well. The woman also knew the real names of the band members.”
“Which are?”
“Satan’s real name is Roy, Lucifer’s is Ben, Beelzebub’s is Lance, and Abaddon’s is Tyson.”
“So if Brick was going by real names rather than stage names, L could be Lance, who we know as Beelzebub.”
“Yeah, I guess. I suppose identifying the killer is really going to come down to the DNA. Without that, I can’t see how we’ll ever figure this out.”
Bree and I made it to the front of the line for the beer. We ordered four cups, then headed back to where Tony and Mike were waiting for us. Each group played a set that lasted an hour to ninety minutes, and then there was a short intermission while the next band set up. At first, I was afraid that Satan’s Sin would leave after their set, but we heard someone mention that all the bands took the stage at the end for one huge grand finale.
After Satan’s Sin completed their set, the four of us returned to the VIP tent, which by this point was almost as loud as the concert itself. We had samples from three of the four band members; all we needed was Beelzebub’s, which, given the fact that he had been the only one of the four with blond hair, whose real name was Lance, and who was at the top of my suspect list, was the most important.
“Do we know what some of the others who might have been around back then look like?” I asked. “The band manager, for example? It seems that as long as we are here, we may as well collect as much DNA as we can.”
“I think the guy over there is the manager,” Tony said.
I considered the man Tony had referred to. He had on a simple red T-shirt, faded jeans, and Nikes. He didn’t look like a band manager. Of course, I didn’t know any band managers, so how could I say?
“Who’s he talking to?” I asked.
“I think that is the head roadie,” Mike said. “Both men have been with the band since the beginning. And I agree that it wouldn’t hurt to try to collect DNA for them as well. Let’s watch them and wait for an opening.”
“I just hope Beelzebub shows soon. I really don’t want to have to hang around until midnight when the band will be back for their encore,” I replied.
“Other than onstage, I haven’t seen him at all,” Mike said. “I’ll ask around, see if I can find out whether he tends to hang out with the fans.”
As it turned out, Beelzebub wasn’t the sort to mingle. Mike spoke to several fans who followed the band, and everyone pretty much agreed that Beelzebub headed back to his trailer between sets.
“I’ll see if I can track him down,” Mike said. “The rest of you should stay here and focus on getting DNA samples from the manager and anyone else you can track down who might have been with the band when Darlene was murdered.”
Mike was lucky and found Beelzebub smoking a cigarette while sitting on a bench outside his trailer. When he tossed the butt into the dirt, Mike was there to retrieve it. Tony managed to bag a cup that the band manager had been drinking from, and Bree was able to pick up a napkin that the head roadie had used to wipe his mouth from the trash. By the time we left, we had samples from eight men. Now we just had to hope that one of them would give us a match.
Chapter 16
Friday, April 6
It was a week since we’d collected our DNA samples and Mike finally received the results.
“I can’t believe that none of the items we collected matched the sample Brick had for subject L,” I groaned.
“We were wrong about the whole thing,” Mike informed me. “None of the samples that Brick tested matched any of the four band members. Two samples we took did match Brick’s: the one for the band manager, Barry Boxer, matched the sample for B and the one for Arnie Cook, the publicist, matched the sample for A. Neither matched the original sample that was found with Darlene’s body.”
“So we still need to figure out who L and S are,” I said. “Did you test the gum?”
“Gum?” Mike asked.
“The gum that I pried off the bottom of Bree’s shoe. I put it into one of the sample bags. I’m pretty sure that the guy who tossed it onto the ground was with the band.”
“I’m sorry, but I didn’t notice any gum. Did you label it?”
“No,” I admitted.
“I’ll go back to look through all of them again. We had multiple samples for some of the suspects, so rather than testing them all, I picked out the best ones for testing. The gum could be in the pile I didn’t use. Do you happen to know the name of the guy whose gum Bree stepped on?”
“No, but he looked familiar. I might have seen him in one of the photos we looked at when we were checking out the band members.”
“Okay, then take another look at the photos to see if you can identify him. Maybe we’ll luck out and his name will begin with an L or a S.”
“Do you have the photos?” I asked.
“Frank has the file up front. He can show them to you. If you do identify the guy, text me. I need to head out for a meeting with Dover. He claims to have information to share, so I figured I’d listen.”
“Why would he wait until now to tell you what he knows?”
Mike shrugged. “Sometimes folks have to work up to doing what they’ve known all along they should.”
I followed Mike down the hallway. He left the station, and I asked Frank if I could take a look at the file. I needed to get back to my route and didn’t have a lot of time, but I thought I ought to take a quick look now and then come back for a better one later if need be.
The photos were mostly ones of the band that Mike had found from old magazines, album covers, publicity flyers, and internet searches. Some of them were only of the band members, while others were of live concerts that included people in the audience.
“Do you know if there is a photo of the concert that Darlene attended the night she died?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. Mike has been printing photos as he finds them, but I’m sure if he had one of that concert, he would have marked it. Social media nowadays pretty much guarantees that every event is captured by someone, but years ago, it wasn’t as common to have concert photos as widespread as they are now.”
“True. Still, it couldn’t hurt to look.” I called Tony and asked him to try to hunt up any photos he could find of the concert Darlene had attended the day she died. He promised to do so, and I went on with my route.
I was just leaving Grandma Hattie’s Bakeshop when I got a text from Mike, asking me to find a quiet place to talk and call him when I got there. It was another nice day and Tilly and I weren’t all that far from the park, so we headed in that direction.
“What’s up?” I asked Mike as I settled on a bench in the sun.
“Dover told me that he wen
t to the bar on Saturday to try to talk to Brick. Initially, he’d said he hadn’t seen Brick since he’d been fired, but he was feeling guilty about the lie and wanted to clear the air.”
“Do you think he might have killed Brick?”
“Honestly, no. If he had, he would never have admitted to lying. I think he realized that he would be a suspect and panicked when I asked him about the last time he’d spoken to Brick. We chatted for quite a while, and I didn’t get the vibe that he was the one who pulled the trigger. He did have some information I found interesting, though.”
“Oh, and what was that?”
“Dover said there was a postal box on the bar when he went in on Saturday. Brick had been looking into it but stopped when Dover walked into the empty bar. He told me there were photos laid out on the bar that Brick picked up and put somewhere behind it as Dover approached.”
“It sounds like the box Brick received on the day before he died. We need to find those photos.”
“I agree. I’m going to head over to the bar to take another look around. If Dover is correct and Brick had the box before opening on Saturday and was shot shortly after closing that same day, it stands to reason that the photos that were in it are still hidden somewhere in the bar.”
I knew I should continue with my route and not take the time to get involved, but I could just deliver to the businesses between the park and the bar on the way, and I was ahead of schedule despite my stops to talk to Mike. “I’m heading in that direction. I’ll meet you there.”
As always, I felt bad when I needed to execute the drop-and-run, but today it was absolutely necessary, so I quickly apologized to each of my customers and sped through my route at what felt like record speed.