by Clea Simon
Contents
Cover
A Selection of Recent Titles by Clea Simon from Severn House
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Acknowledgments
A Selection of Recent Titles by Clea Simon from Severn House
The Boston Noir Mysteries
WORLD ENOUGH
Blackie and Care Mysteries
THE NINTH LIFE
AS DARK AS MY FUR
Dulcie Schwartz Mysteries
SHADES OF GREY
GREY MATTERS
GREY ZONE
GREY EXPECTATIONS
TRUE GREY
GREY DAWN
GREY HOWL
STAGES OF GREY
CODE GREY
INTO THE GREY
WORLD ENOUGH
Clea Simon
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
First published in Great Britain and the USA 2017 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.
This eBook edition first published in 2017 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited
Trade paperback edition first published
in Great Britain and the USA 2017 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD
Copyright © 2017 by Clea Simon.
The right of Clea Simon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8733-7 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-849-1 (trade paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-909-1 (e-book)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
This ebook produced by
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For Jon
ONE
September, 2007
Ten o’clock, and the opener will be on soon. Opener! She laughs at herself. It’s only the Craters and the Whirled Shakers tonight, and the bill was probably decided by a coin toss between them backstage. It’s the Shakers she came to see, their psychedelic pop still gets her going, with its tambourines and the beat. But maybe she’ll stay for the Craters. Depends on how tired she is. Depends on the crowd.
There are only about thirty people in the room. Twenty-something if you don’t count the bartender, but after a long day at work, Tara is glad enough for the company and for the empty chair by the table up front. Beer in hand, she settles in, waiting for the music. Twenty-seven, she counts. Twenty-four if you subtract the two wives and a girlfriend. A good house, really, for two bands that have been around the club scene for twenty years. Then again, most everyone here has been, too. She knows most of them by sight, if not by name, and when she closes her eyes she can place them in the Rat, the Channel, Oakie’s, Jumpin’ Jack Flash. All the great old places, closed now, torn down to make way for condos and parking garages. Those cavernous rooms and black-painted basements are what she thinks of when she thinks of the ’80s, back when she, the bands, and everyone here were in their heyday.
She opens her eyes to a bit of a shock. The women are all thirty pounds heavier than in her mind’s eye. Or they’ve gone thin, like she has, a little drawn, a little leathery. The men have fared better. Gray, if they have hair, and some of them have gone from biker tough to resembling the butchers, delivery men, and press operators they are during the day. But mostly they’re in good shape, if a little rough. Besides, it’s her crowd and nothing new sounds as good.
Twenty years ago, the Shakers wouldn’t have been playing a pub like this, as much a burger joint as a music room. But twenty years ago, they’d been the hot new rising stars. The best of Boston, they’d pull in quite a crowd, a Friday like this, and there’d have been half again as many label scouts among the fans.
‘Hey.’ Tom from the Exiles pulls up the chair next to hers, settling his shot glass on the scarred wood table.
‘Hey.’ Tara has never known Tom well. She’s seen his band a thousand times, can picture him in his Motorhead T-shirt banging out the bass riffs. But she only ever talked to him when he’d been behind the bar upstairs at Oakie’s, those thick hands grabbing Buds four at a time from the reach-in. The upstairs – that had started for the overflow but it had become their hangout. The bar for the music crowd. Tom wasn’t much of a bartender. Couldn’t mix more than a screwdriver, but he knew everyone. His band wasn’t much either, the kind of group you’d go see just because of who would be there – an extension of the bar. Social. Fun. Still, they’d kept at it. She knew he was still playing out, and he felt like family after all this time.
‘Good crowd, huh?’ They smile and nod, both happy enough to be there. Tara’s about to ask him about the Exiles, just to be friendly, but right then the Shakers take the stage. Two guitars and a bass bash out the first chord. It’s loud and lively, and the drummer jumps in with a fill, kicking everyone up to speed. More guitar and Phil, the singer, has grabbed the mike. He’s smiling. Happy to be on stage. But that wide-eyed grin soon gives way to a rock-star grimace, eyes squeezed shut. Then he’s prancing, the guitar taking over the song and Phil’s body with it, as he swings the mike stand high, twirls around. Stadium moves. The guitars crash again over the driving beat of the bass. Joey, the drummer, solos, fast and neat, and the guitars are back. Phil is singing his heart out, and just like that, the song is done.
‘Awesome.’ Tom could be speaking for both of them. Twenty years ago, ten even, Tara knows she’d be up on her feet, dancing, in front of the stage. Maybe up on the table. Maybe next song. Joey counts off the next tune. ‘One, two, three, four!’ and the guitar-bass unison cranks up the pace before Phil joins in. Tara drains her beer. Maybe she will get up, dance right in front of the band like she used to.
She looks around for Min, knowing that she’s not likely to have shown up in the five minutes since she last surveyed the crowd. Min would’ve liked this. The band sounds good; everyone seems mellow. Not that Min’s been out much recently. Unlike some of their old friends, the ones who�
��ve moved on to have families and buy houses out in Watertown or Medford, Min hasn’t really replaced the rock scene in her life. But she’s grown tired of it. When they meet for lunch – Min works at the hospital a couple of blocks from her office – she goes on about how sad it all is.
‘How’s it sad? Nobody’s pretending we’re twenty.’ Tara is used to the usual complaints. ‘We’re having fun, and we still like the music.’
‘It’s just kind of pitiful. The dwindling crowd and all.’ Min always shakes her head at this point, which makes Tara a little angry.
‘It’s the same as any other pastime. We’re a group of old friends.’ Even as she says it, Tara knows it’s not entirely true. She and Min are friends. They’ve spent time together outside the clubs. Gotten to know each other. Helped each other through breakups and miscarriages (Min’s) and divorce (Tara). But for the rest, it’s clubland only. And Min has never had quite the feeling about the music world that Tara has, that it’s her family. Her only real home. Looking around the room tonight, Tara pities her friend. This is something real. Maybe they are all outcasts, but they found each other, didn’t they?
‘Hey, kiddo!’ As if on cue, Gina is there, collapsing into the one chair left. ‘Don’t they sound great tonight?’
‘Killer.’ Tara knows Gina drinks too much, knows that she’s never gotten over Phil, even though the singer has moved on to a wife and two babies. She sees Gina glaring at Katie, Phil’s long-ago ex, still a fan. Still a knockout, too, in her wan blonde fashion, her hair still silky smooth down past the shoulders of her black leather jacket. She looks like a star, even after a sunless work week, and Gina will never forgive her for that.
‘What’s the news?’ It cheers Tara to see how Gina’s doughy face brightens at the question, her one claim to fame being her connection with the band.
‘They’re talking about going into the studio again. You’ll hear, they’re going to do some of the new songs. They’re really great.’ Gina leans in, and Tara smells alcohol and sweat. ‘I think this may be it!’
OK, so maybe Min has a point. They’re all a little lost. But isn’t it something that they found each other? That they have the scene?
‘I’ll listen for them.’ The next tune has started and Gina is up again, shaking it in front of the tiny stage, standing between Katie and the band. Looking at her, her too-tight stretch miniskirt making indents in her waist and thighs, Tara thinks twice about getting up to dance. But just as she’s reconsidering another song kicks in, a repeated guitar riff she knows in her sleep. It’s ‘World Enough’, their hit. The song that almost got them onto a major label, out of Boston, out of all this. The bass joins in, four fast bars of building beat. Then the drums. Screw the years, it’s time to dance.
If we had world enough, world enough and time …
Time’s played them all for fools, but they’re still here, and Tara loves it. In a minute, it’s 1986 again. She’s bouncing around, shaking it with Gina. For a moment, the years, the dinky pub, don’t matter. She remembers descending into a steaming basement, working her way through a packed house, and hearing this riff, this command to dance.
I love you baby, and you know that ain’t no crime.
The lyrics are inane. Tara knows that, and sings along anyway, shouting into the PA’s roar.
World enough and time!
With a crash, the song ends, and the present-day world returns. Tara heads for the bar.
‘You hear about Frank?’ Gina is leaning over toward her. Gina always knows what’s going on. Tara holds up her empty bottle – and two fingers – for the bartender, a tall, grizzled man whose name she can’t recall. Gina’s got an empty in front of her, and Tara’s feeling generous.
‘No, what?’ The beers arrive, and she slides one over to Gina.
‘He’s dead.’ Gina takes a swig, downing half the bottle. ‘Some kind of accident.’ Band and beer forgotten for a moment, Tara stares. Dead? ‘I heard he fell down a flight of stairs. They’re saying it could be some fucked-up form of suicide.’
‘Shit.’
‘Yeah, really. But this way, they get the insurance. You know about the baby, right?’ Tara nods. She’d heard that Frank’s only child, Mika, had been having problems. That her son – Frank’s grandson – hadn’t been right since he was born.
She takes a pull from her beer, tries to think of something to say. But Gina is gone, back on the floor for the next number. One of the new tunes, it sounds good enough but Tara has lost the urge to dance. Frank. Shit. Maybe Min is right. Tara used to think of this crowd as the lucky ones. The runts who’d survived. They were rejects and outcasts, and she included herself in that crowd, but they’d bucked the curse. They’d all been lucky enough to find each other, to find their own place, here in the clubs.
She’d never been able to explain it to Peter, her ex, but she’d always felt blessed to be included. He’d insisted that her outsider status was a choice, that she could join in the real world whenever she’d wanted. He hadn’t understood, and had gone on without her. Now, she wonders if the luck has run out. We are the runts, she realizes, but we haven’t escaped. Gina, Min, Tom and the other bands. And now Frank. We’re sickly. We have fewer successful marriages and happy families. Too many of us have died.
‘Why the long face?’ Robbie from the Craters has pushed in beside her, an amber shot of whiskey in his heavily tattooed hand. ‘It’s Friday!’ It’s too loud to explain about Frank, about everything. So she nods and clinks her bottle to his shot glass. Turning to the stage, they watch the Shakers doing their thing, same as twenty years before.
It was the night she’d first worn her leather jacket. Tara remembers her pride in it, and the immediate, reflexive fear that maybe the black leather, with all its silver biker hardware, was the wrong look. Not that she could pull off pink. Not like Min.
‘It’s ironic,’ her new friend had explained, yelling over the music the night they’d met, two weeks before. Sure enough, the way the bubblegum leather set off Min’s hennaed hair was more tough than prissy, like a girl gangster from the ’50s. Black was more conventional, and Tara had taken comfort in that. Besides, it was just so perfect. The way it zipped up, trim, as if made for her. The pockets, big enough for a reporter’s notepad or even a CD, now that she had a player, and the way she’d found it at the back of the yard sale, buried in a box of T-shirts and old belts. She’d been glad of the cold that late September night, the early frost that made the dirt crumble beneath her feet. Only the day before it would’ve been too warm to wear her new find. Instead, she shivered as she dashed across the sad little median of a park, making her way toward Oakie’s, her new home.
‘Five bucks.’ She handed over the money, nodding hello to Brian, the bouncer, and silent Thomas, the dignified older doorman who guarded the stairs to the basement club.
‘Have fun.’ Brian smiled at her. She was beginning to be recognized as a regular.
‘Thanks.’ She’d clomped down the stairs with the thrill of eagerness for everything new. Who would be there tonight? Would she know anyone? Meet anyone? The cold of the entranceway gave way to a humid warmth. Ten thirty and the room was getting crowded. She’d timed it right. Time to get a beer, look around, and not be the first person in the room.
‘Hi, Tara, isn’t it?’ Gina was still girlish then, bordering on chubby but cute with it. Rounded. Outgoing, too: she was one of the first scene people Tara had come to know. ‘Gonna be a good night.’
‘The Sierras are supposed to be great.’ She’d never heard the headliner, but she’d read about them in Boston Rock.
‘Overrated.’ Gina took Tara’s wrist and pulled her forward, past the bar. ‘You got here just in time.’
Tara recalls smiling and thinking she’d like a drink. But Gina didn’t give her time to order. Pulled her instead past the half-bar where everyone piled their empties. They were right in front of the stage.
‘Isn’t it a little early?’ Tara looked around. The club was filling. She
recognized Katie; her hair a silky wave down her back. Rich from the Free Press, a few others. When she turned back to the stage, she saw four long-haired men, their hair cut in modified Beatle bobs. ‘What’s this?’ They were plugging into their amps, an on-stage stack of Marshalls that belied their ’60s look.
‘The Whirled Shakers,’ Gina yelled in her face as the drummer started a loud, rumbling roll. ‘Whirled, like …’ She twirled her forefinger in a blender motion. But by then the two guitars had joined in as well and a fifth had leaped onstage. The guitarists pounded out power chords, and for a moment she couldn’t tell if they’d noticed the interloper. But then he grabbed the mike, swung the weighted stand above all their heads and yowled. One of the guitarists, the one with lighter hair, looked up and grinned. The singer howled again, then hunkered over the mike, and the band was off.
Forty minutes later, she was as sticky as the floor, her wet hair clinging to her face in tendrils. What a band! Sweating and bruised, from when the crowd had surged forward, pushing her hip-height into the stage overhang. She’d be sore tomorrow, black and blue. Just then she felt great, though. She’d looked up at the singer then, able to peek under his long, dark bangs. He’d been smiling. Why not? The crowd, the night was his, but before she could even close her mouth, the bodies holding her up had fallen back and she’d stumbled with them, only catching herself on the arm of a fat bearded guy who’d held her a little too tight as he helped her up.
‘Thanks.’
‘My pleasure.’ He’d nodded and released her, acknowledging the liberty. She was glad of the leather then, a shield of sorts against the odd grope. The guy who’d grabbed her had been fat, but not soft. Biker big. She shook off the shiver of fear; this was her world, her home, she’d not be intimidated. But she’d been aware of him watching her after, as another song got everyone moving, and later still, when they’d all collapsed, sodden, on the bar.
‘Buy you a beer?’ He’d gotten there first. By the looks of him, he usually did.