“Two minutes is all the schedule has for you, Kari,” Adam explained. His patience was really running out with this young woman. She was talented, sure, but she wasn’t a team player and it was starting to show. “You’re the opening act, not the headliner!”
“I should be.”
“Well, maybe we can negotiate that next year. But for now, you have to play by the rules or we’re going to get fined by the management.” Adam was tired of having this argument.
Kari Jo glared at him and then flounced off toward her dressing room. Adam huffed out a huge sigh and followed along in her over-perfumed scented wake. He had to scoop up the rest of her junk off the floor first. That was another one of Clint’s pet peeves. Kari Jo treated the entire theater like her personal bedroom. She never followed rules about food and drink near the equipment. She never followed rules about who was using the stage to practice. She basically considered herself above the rules thanks to her current popularity.
Her dressing room door slammed shut, but Adam walked right in anyway. He tossed the latest pile of crap on her couch and the glared at her through the dressing room mirror. She was taking the glitter streaks out of her hair and removing the thickly caked-on stage makeup from her pristine twenty-two year old complexion.
“Kari Jo, I know you’re popular right now—” Adam never got to finish.
“Popular?” She glared at him in the mirror. “I’m not just popular, Adam. I’m the queen of this stage and that tired old impersonator knows it! Everyone knows it. They’re all jealous of me!”
“Well, jealous is fine, but when people are envious you need to be gracious or you’re going to make a bunch of enemies and you might need these people later!” Adam argued.
Kari Jo swung around on her little makeup stool. “Need them? Are you out of your damned mind? Why would I ever need them? I’m going to be a huge star.”
“This isn’t Nashville.”
“No, but it should be!” She gave him the evil eye. “You haven’t gotten me a single gig in Nashville!”
“That isn’t true,” Adam said calmly. The truth was he’d gotten her several different stints opening for big named stars in the mid-range fame category on stages in and around Nashville. “You’re not willing to play the smaller venues, and that cuts down considerably on what I can get for you. You have to be willing to play smaller venues. You build a following and then you get the bigger concert halls interested and then you get your own show and your own tour.”
“I’m not playing some rinky dink stage in a back alley in Nashville! I’d rather go back to Dallas!”
“Then maybe you should!” Adam snapped. He’d had it with this spoiled brat for one night.
Kari Jo threw a makeup compact at Adam. He ducked just in time for it to bounce off the wall and split into three pieces. Tinted dust fell on the floor and covered everything on the sofa with powder. Adam glared hotly at Kari Jo. She was still ranting at him. He refused to pay attention to her tirade about how he sucked and how he didn’t believe in her. Then he noticed amongst the junk she had tossed on the sofa when she’d first walked in was a rather odd envelope.
“Where did you get this?” Adam reached out and picked up the envelope between his thumb and index finger. He waved it in the air at Kari Jo.
Her tirade abruptly stopped. Just like that. She responded in a cool, detached, and uninterested voice. “I don’t know. I must have gotten it from someone on stage. Someone turned off the effing lights, so I’m not sure where it came from.”
Adam ignored the jab. He was busy trying to figure out why anyone would have cut out letters from a magazine and pasted them on the outside of an envelope. It seemed like a creepy stalker move to make for a regular run-of-the-mill fan.
“You really don’t know where this came from?”
“No!” Kari Jo snapped. “Why would I even care?”
“Because someone went to a lot of trouble to try to make sure you don’t see their handwriting. That’s why. And it’s kind of the opposite from what you usually get.” He made a vague gesture to the dozens upon dozens of papers that included names, addresses, emails, Instagram handles, phone numbers, and screen names for chat rooms. A few weeks ago there had even been a letter handed to Kari Jo from the apparent president of her unofficial fan club.
Kari Jo sniffed and proceeded to put her hair up in a ponytail. “You need to go, Adam. A date is picking me up in like ten minutes and I have to get dressed.”
“You’re going out now?” Adam wasn’t sure why he was surprised about this. Kari Jo went out all the time. She was a party hound and even in a town like Branson that was more about family friendly fun than partying the night away, there were a few clubs that catered to the younger set. “It’s after ten o’clock!”
She turned and gave him a dramatic eye roll. She had put green clip-on streaks in her hair now. Fake streaks were kind of her thing. Glittery on stage, colorful in public. Adam thought they were ridiculous, but the fans seemed to like them. For the most part, he tried to stay out of her business and let her do celebrity her way. This letter didn’t fall under that category though.
Removing his knife from the front pocket of his trousers, Adam slit the top of the letter open and drew the paper out. He tried to touch it as little as possible in case there were prints. He’d watched enough crime television to know how this worked.
“Oh, great. That’s just freaking great,” Adam muttered.
Kari Jo didn’t look at him. She was too busy redoing her eye makeup. “What are you bitching about now? You’re worse than my mother.”
That was insulting. Kari Jo’s mother was finally banned from the backstage area of the Ozark Star because she was such a notorious pain in the ass. The theater’s owner—a man named Harvey Lightman—had refused to renew their contract four and a half months ago unless Kari Jo agreed to keep her mother out of the Star. Rhiannon Mounds was a mountain of a woman with an ego the size of her home state of Texas.
Adam waved the letter around for Kari Jo to see. “Do you see this?”
“Oh weird!” Kari Jo finally seemed to focus on the situation. “It’s one of those cool magazine cut out things like you see on crime shows! That’s awesome! Can I have it? It’s mine, right?”
“Kari Jo, the letter says you broke my heart and now I’ll break your face. No. You can’t have it like some ridiculous souvenir!” Adam frowned at her. “Have you gotten anything else like this?”
Kari Jo gestured absently to the pile in a corner of the room. It was littered with stuffed toys, dead flowers, boxes of chocolate and other goodies. There were letters and phone numbers all mixed in the bunch. She was busy putting on her lipstick to go with a skimpy dress hanging on a rack nearby to be bothered.
“You need to go, Adam,” Kari Jo ordered. “I’m changing and then I’m meeting Trevor in ten minutes.”
“Trevor?” Adam frowned. “Who is Trevor?”
“I don’t know. I met him yesterday.”
“What happened to the guy you went out with last night?”
She affected a bored shrug and started to strip naked right there in front of Adam. “I don’t know. He was boring. I told him I would call him some other time.”
Adam turned away quickly before he had to see what was under Kari Jo’s bra. As much as people teased him about being close to the young star, he had zero interest in a woman that young. He was forty-five years old and married to his work as a business manager for singers on the Branson scene. He’d had several clients move on to be big names. He didn’t want to go there with them. It made him a popular guy with some of the other, bigger stage managers in places like Los Angeles and Nashville. If Adam Cathcart passed you something, he passed you something big.
So instead of dealing with Kari’s squirming into her tiny dress, Adam focused on the pile of fan mail. It only took him a few minutes to find three more of the creepy letters. Dammit. Why didn’t stalkers and potential murderers realize their stupid letters wouldn’t b
e viewed by the celebrities themselves? If you wanted a celebrity’s attention, you should be sending shit to their business managers, including bullshit threats.
“Kari Jo, we’ve got a problem,” Adam said irritably. “You need to cancel your plans so we can sit down and talk about how to handle this.”
“What? Are you kidding me?” Kari Jo snorted at him and then plucked a gauzy wrap off the chair. “I’m not canceling anything. You’re my manager. You deal with it. I’m going to go have some fun! I’m young, I’m beautiful, and I’m totally on fire right now and I don’t care what some silly fan thinks, I’m not letting anyone ruin this for me!”
And there she went. Adam watched her sail out of the dressing room as though he had just made some offhand comment about being a responsible adult. But no. He’d been trying to warn her that someone was angry at her. Obviously. And it was impossible to say who it was. After all, Kari Jo had probably pissed off just about every man in town between the ages of fifteen and fifty.
Chapter Three
At some point, Ellie Pierce was going to have to commit murder. It sounded extreme and yet when she thought about it, Ellie was almost certain that anyone would be able to see the situation and know she really hadn’t any other choice in the matter.
“I’m not doing that.” Caroline stared up at Ellie with her big blue eyes and her pale blonde hair. Add her ridiculous attitude and Ellie felt that murderous rage rising once again. “That’s not part of my job.”
“I’m sorry,” Ellie said, pushing the words through clenched teeth. “Sending a fax is not part of your job as the administrative assistant in this office?”
Caroline had the brass to bob her head up and down in the affirmative. “I work for Titus Holbrook, not you.”
“Okay,” Ellie mused in a slow and deliberate voice. “You work for Titus. I work for Titus. I’m employed as a security agent in this office and you are the administrative assistant. Can you explain to me how that does not make you responsible for sending this fax? Especially given the fact that I will have to make you move out of the way in order to send it myself?” Ellie was glaring at the fax machine now. As far as she was concerned, it was part of the conspiracy.
Across the small office, Duke Dunbar was sitting at his desk banging away on his laptop and doing his level best not to laugh his ass off. Ellie could tell; Duke’s face was crumpled up into the most ridiculous expression like he was about to bust a gut trying to hold back the loud guffaws that no doubt wanted to slip out.
The office of Rock Wolf Investigations was small and somewhat cluttered, but they didn’t really need more. There were six desks in the single room that was filled with windows and allowed a great view of the surrounding hilly, tree-covered terrain on the shores of Tablerock Lake. The building had once been a store of some kind and the windows were a leftover of that. But now the sign had changed and the interior was filled with desks and security paraphernalia instead of souvenir T-shirts.
The air conditioning was turned down to such a degree that Ellie actually felt comfortable in her black blazer and silk blouse. Step outside into the August heat and it was another story, but Titus Holbrook was the owner of this building and this business and Titus didn’t like heat. At all.
“You should go back to your desk now,” Caroline suggested. She adjusted the ankle length skirt of her trendy striped wrap dress. “I bet if you try really hard, you can apply that former FBI brain to finding a way to fax online. I’m pretty sure they have services for that.”
“You mean because you’re going to prevent me from sending it on the machine sitting behind you?” Ellie raised an eyebrow. It was ridiculous to think there could actually be blood spilt because of a stupid fax. And yet, Ellie was ready to do it.
“Prevent you?” Caroline didn’t even look up from her computer screen this time. “No, of course not, but I’m a little busy right now. I might be able to move so you can get back here to send the fax in twenty minutes. Maybe thirty.”
Ellie had to really grind her teeth to keep herself from freaking out. Caroline was on Ellie’s last nerve and she was jumping up and down in her ridiculous heels. “I think that shopping for your fall wardrobe can wait, Caroline. Either you send this now or you move aside and let me send it. Or I will move you and you won’t like it.”
Across the room, Duke had given up the pretense of not laughing. He seemed to have settled for chuckling with the most polite approach. Younger wasn’t there at the moment, which was too bad. Caroline had a crush on Younger Davis and she tended to be more willing to look good while Younger was around to impress. Titus wasn’t present either, which meant Caroline felt free to act like a total bitch.
“You wouldn’t dare!” Caroline said primly without even bothering to look up from the website she was perusing, presumably for fall wardrobe options. “That would be assault. I could actually have you arrested for that.”
“But you wouldn’t,” Ellie told Caroline, “because you know Titus would get pissed and take my side.”
“That’s not true.” Caroline might have slanted Ellie a look from beneath her lashes. It was hard to tell.
But that didn’t matter. Ellie was through playing nice. She slammed her fax down on the desktop beside Caroline. Caroline did not move to reach for it. Ellie didn’t care. She hadn’t really expected Caroline to do anything productive for her job anyway. That would have been asking far too much of the arrogant blonde.
So, Ellie settled for doing exactly what she’d threatened to do. She marched around the desk and grabbed hold of the rolling seat that Caroline was sitting in. First, Ellie spun the chair around a few times for good measure to disorient her victim. Caroline’s knees and feet banged into the desk and the credenza, but Ellie didn’t care.
Caroline shrieked and flailed her arms around. Ellie easily ducked her idiotic and pointless blows and proceeded to use the chair like an appliance dolly. Tipping it back, Ellie put the sole of one of her sensible black loafers on the bottom of the chair and sent it careening into the middle of the room where it came to rest against the front of Younger’s empty desk.
“You bitch!” Caroline snarled.
Ellie did not respond. She had a limited amount of time to punch in the fax number, put her fax on the document feeder, and then press send. Then she turned and prepared to defend her position in case Caroline did something bizarre, like get up out of her chair and attempt to stop the fax.
About this time, Ellie realized they were being watched. There was a man standing in the office doorway. He had apparently slipped inside the room during the “fight” and was now watching with obvious amusement. He was six feet tall with brown hair that sort of flopped across his forehead. He had a sprinkling of gray at his temples and his eyes were dark and bright with humor. The laugh lines around his eyes and mouth suggested he would enjoy a good joke. His body wasn’t heavily muscled like Duke’s, but still athletic, as though he had played a lot of sports in his life and probably still kept up with something, maybe racquetball at the gym or tennis or golf. He looked like an urbane type, not a contact sport kind of guy. But he was tan and wearing neat khaki pants and a trendy pastel-colored golf shirt. His shoes were expensive. Ellie had to admire the shoes. She was a connoisseur of good business casual herself and this man seemed to have it down.
Behind Ellie, the fax machine began to whir and buzz as the document was fed into the machine and the fax was sent. All of that for a four page report sent to the Stone County Sheriff’s Department. Talk about ridiculous.
“Hello.” The man spread his hands before him. He had a low, pleasant sort of voice. “I’m sorry to have—uh—interrupted your morning. It was suggested I come and have a chat with you all about some security issues I’m having.”
Ellie glanced at Duke. She wished Titus were here. Duke was a great guy and a good security agent. He was former Missouri State Patrol too. But he didn’t usually handle the business end of things. With Younger gone, that left either Ellie or Carolin
e.
Caroline leaped to her feet and gave her chair a shove with one foot as though she had intended to roll it out into the middle of the room. “How can I help you this morning? My name is Caroline. I run the office here at Wolf Rock Security.”
Duke sighed and Ellie wanted to slap her forehead with her palm. The man only smiled. He looked amused. That was good. “I thought the name of the firm was Rock Wolf Investigations?”
“Oh. Right. Whatever.” Caroline gave a dismissive wave her hand. “I keep telling Titus, he’s the owner, that he needs to change it. That doesn’t make any sense. Wolf Rock. Right? Because I’m assuming there’s a place called Wolf Rock and that’s what he named his business after. I think it’s probably in Montana though because that’s where he came from. Titus, I mean. The owner.” Caroline finally trailed off looking mildly embarrassed.
“Right.” The man pursed his lips for a moment and then he looked right at Ellie. “My name is Adam Cathcart. I manage several different acts here in the Branson area. I’ve got musical clients, a magician, and half a dozen comedians. I’ve got an issue that I tried to take to the Branson Police Department, because that’s where I thought that I should start, and now they’ve referred me to you.”
Ellie exchanged a look with Duke Dunbar. He’d had plenty of recent dealings with the Branson Police Department that had ended in a less than satisfactory fashion. Duke was already rolling his eyes when Ellie gestured to a chair in front of her desk. “I don’t think that surprises us, Mr. Cathcart. Please, have a seat and you can explain your problem.”
“Thank you.” Adam Cathcart seemed to be studiously ignoring Caroline. She didn’t like that and flounced back over to her desk. After wrangling her chair back into position, she sat down and returned to her online shopping. Cathcart gave her a significant look and then looked back at Ellie. “I didn’t get your name.”
“I’m sorry. My name is Ellie Pierce,” Ellie told him hastily. Then she gestured at Duke. “This is Duke Dunbar. We’re both security consultants for Mr. Holbrook and Rock Wolf Investigations.”
Rock Wolf Investigations: Boxset Page 26