White Hot

by Elise Noble

  Then there was Ty. He’d been angry enough to hit Ethan, and his animosity was obvious when I spoke to him, but did his blood still run hot? Now he’d lost Lisa for good, would he have sought further vengeance?

  The stalker puzzled me too. Could she have been involved somehow? More than once, obsession had led to insanity, and just last night, the news channels had broadcast the story of an Oklahoma woman who’d accelerated into the side of her ex-fiancé’s car when she saw him riding with his new girlfriend. The girlfriend died, the guy was left paralysed, and the spurned woman lost a leg, and all because she’d decided that if she couldn’t have him, neither could anybody else.

  What crazy thoughts lurked inside Lavinia’s head? I needed to track her down and find out.

  Who else would stand to gain from Ethan’s absence? Although I liked him, I couldn’t discount Ronan. He’d been in the shadow of his ex-bandmate for years. Perhaps he wanted another shot at hitting the charts, this time as a producer rather than a musician? What would happen to the studio with Ethan out of the picture? Like Harold said, no publicity was bad publicity.

  And what about Christina? Why her? Why not Stefanie, for example? Was it simply a case of Christina being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or was she part of the plot? Could she have been double-crossed and turned into an unwitting victim?

  Another possibility, however remote, was that Ethan had been the victim of a random attacker. Some psycho, high on drugs and his own fantasies, a freak who got off on violating women.

  So many questions, so few answers. I needed a damn vacation. Tahiti, Bermuda, the French West Indies. A month of sitting on a beach with palm trees and cocktails and half a dozen bare-chested waiters, string bikinis and flip flops, and Ethan beside me to rub in my sunblock. Fuck! Dan, stop thinking about him that way.

  But there was no rest for the wicked. I needed to start with what I had. Speaking to Ethan would have been the best option, but that wasn’t possible for a few days, at least not in person. I could send Lyle, but…yeah. Lyle didn’t understand nuance. Instead, I turned the car towards Spectre Productions.

  Even though it was a Saturday, the place was still busy. The receptionist recognised me from my last visit and smiled.

  “Are you here to see Ronan again?”

  “Is he around?”

  “He’s in a meeting, but he’ll be finished up in just a minute. Would you like a drink?”

  “I’ll never say no to coffee. Black, no sugar.”

  Two minutes later, she came back with my Americano and a cappuccino for herself. At least Spectre had invested in a decent coffee machine.

  “Ronan said you were trying to help Ethan?” she said, settling back into her seat.

  I didn’t particularly want my involvement to be broadcast to the world, but since she already knew, I wasn’t going to lie. “That’s right.”

  “Well, good. It’s about time somebody did. Everyone who’s ever spent five minutes with Ethan knows he’d never have killed that girl.”

  “So everybody liked him?”

  “Well, not everybody. This is the music industry—there’s always drama going on, and it’s usually blown out of all proportion.”

  “What drama was going on with Ethan?”

  She looked around furtively then lowered her voice. “He came in with a black eye a couple of months ago, and he wouldn’t tell anybody what happened.”

  “I already know about the altercation.”

  “Oh.” She sounded a little disappointed. “I suppose Ronan told you about the lawsuit too?”

  Lawsuit? What lawsuit? “No, he didn’t mention that. Somebody was suing Ethan?”

  “I’m not sure if it had gotten that far, but I overheard him discussing it with Ronan.” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.”

  “No, you were absolutely right to share. It might help.”

  “Could you not tell Ronan you heard about it from me? I’m not normally one to gossip.”

  Yeah, right. “Sure, I won’t let on. Who’s suing him?”

  “Uh, some DJ, I think?”

  “Do you know his name?”

  “Sorry.”

  Never mind. I’d just have to convince Ronan to tell me. “Anything else I should be aware of?”

  She turned pink and shook her head just as Ronan walked through the doorway to her left.

  “Daniela, this is a surprise.”

  He grabbed my hand and shook.

  Yes, it was. I just loved surprises. Unannounced visits always got suspects more flustered, so I tended to drop by without notice a lot.

  “I hoped you might have a minute?”

  “Of course, come on through.”

  I drained the last of the coffee then followed him into his office. Music played quietly in the background, and he turned it off as I sat down.

  “Just listening to some demos,” he explained. “Ethan used to do most of that, but in his absence, those decisions are falling to me.”

  “Do you enjoy that kind of thing?”

  “Truthfully? Yes, but I don’t have time to do that and my day job. We need to hire extra help.”

  “Not an easy pair of boots to fill, I imagine.”

  “No, but I’ve got an old acquaintance who’s interested. It’ll be a good fit.”

  Convenient. “Is he anyone I’ve heard of?”

  “She, actually, and I doubt it. Reena’s talented, but she never quite managed to crack the commercial scene.”

  So with Ethan gone, Ronan was going to install a friend of his into the job. Just how close of a friend was she?

  “What name does she perform under?”

  “Reena Cassidy, pop with a folk edge. She mainly sings covers, but her own tracks are better.”

  “I’ll make sure to look up some of her stuff.”

  Reena Cassidy. Someone else for Mack to delve into, just in case she was getting bored.

  Ronan reached behind him and pulled a bottle of water out of a mini-fridge. “Want one?”

  I shook my head.

  He unscrewed his and took a swallow. “What can I do for you today? I assume this isn’t a social visit.”

  “I’ve got a few people on my radar, and I’m trying to get a feel for them. I’m hoping you can help me out.”

  As well as giving me more of an insight into the man who is Ronan Pearce.

  “Sure. Who do you have in mind?”

  I’d already spoken to Ronan about Harold, so I skipped him. “Ty D’Angelo for starters.”

  “Ty was a hanger-on. Ethan’s too nice; that’s his problem. Ty was using him for his contacts and his studio, but he couldn’t see it. Although the bust-up wasn’t pretty, I’m glad he’s not around anymore.”

  “Can you see him harbouring a grudge?”

  Ronan stroked his chin while he thought. “In all honesty? No. I’d imagine him as the type to move onto his next victim rather than wasting time on the past.”

  “Have you seen him around recently?”

  “He called a month or so ago, wanting to use the studio. He asked for a discount, but I told him no. We’re fully booked, and even if we weren’t, I wouldn’t have given it to him.”

  “Nothing apart from that?”

  “No.”

  “How about Lavinia? Have you seen her around?”

  Ronan’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Lavinia?”

  “Ethan said she’d been following him around?”

  “Oh, you mean bird woman?”

  My turn to look puzzled. “Bird woman?”

  “Black lady, small, kind of sad looking? Late thirties, early forties? The first time I saw her, she was wearing a sweater with canaries on it. I turned to Ethan and said, ‘Look, bird woman,’ and it stuck.”

  “He didn’t tell me about that. Just that he saw her around, and she wrote him letters.”

  “Yeah, that’s her. Ethan always got letters from crazies—most celebrities do—but bird woman was harmless. Every so oft
en, she’d talk to him or give him a little gift, but mostly she just stared. One day when it was cold, he bought her a cup of coffee.”

  Well done, Ethan, you sure know how to deter a stalker.

  “Did she ever seem upset? Do anything hurtful?”

  “Not that I saw. I mean, she had to be sprung in the head, but not in a nasty way.”

  If Ronan was right about Ty and Lavinia, I was fast running out of suspects.

  “You mentioned letters from crazies—did any of them stand out to you?”

  “Ethan liked to open his own mail. Every so often, he’d tell me about a problem, but he didn’t seem worried by anything recently.

  “I also heard rumours of a lawsuit. What’s happening with that?”

  “Which one?”

  Damn, there was more than one? “How about you give me details on all of them? Why didn’t you mention them before?”

  “Lawsuits happen every week in this business. There’s always some greedy asshole out to make a quick buck off the back of somebody else’s success. It’s nothing unusual.”

  “So what was happening with Ethan?”

  “The most recent claim came from another DJ. He accused Ethan of stealing parts of his song.”

  Ronan’s chuckle and shake of the head told me what he thought of that accusation.

  “But you don’t believe it?”

  He turned to his computer. “Here, listen for yourself.” He pushed a few buttons. “This is from DJ Steel.”

  A song played out through Ronan’s tinny speakers. The beat was something I’d dance to in a club, but the drums were too heavy, and there was an annoying chirp every few seconds.

  “And this is Ethan’s.”

  This track was different, more urgent and definitely catchier. It was a song you’d hum along to on the radio then curse about all day because you couldn’t get it out of your head. It was smooth, polished, and light-years away from DJ Steel’s track.

  “They don’t sound anything like each other.”

  “Exactly. There’s maybe a few notes in there that are the same, but that’s just coincidence. I was with Ethan when he wrote it. He tried out all sorts of tweaks before he settled on that.”

  “So DJ Steel doesn’t stand a chance?”

  “None. I’ve seen his type before. All he wants is a blast of publicity from having his name associated with the Ghost’s. By the time the suit gets thrown out, people will know who he is. Like they say, no publicity…”

  “Is bad publicity,” I finished. “So with Ethan being all over the news, whatever claims this asshole makes are going to get even more column inches?”

  “That’s possible, but don’t you think murder’s kind of a drastic marketing tool?”

  “To any normal person, yes, but people have been killed over far less.”

  “In the paper last week, some teenager shot another in FoodLand over a donut. A damn donut.”

  I’d read that story, too. There was something seriously wrong with society when a sixteen-year-old kid couldn’t even buy a snack after school without taking a bullet to the chest.

  “Sometimes, I think the world’s gone mad.”

  “You’re not wrong. Do you want copies of the paperwork for the lawsuit?”

  “I’d be much obliged.”

  “I’ll email it over. Avoids printing out a ream of paper—got to save the planet, right?”

  I was more concerned about saving Ethan, but email worked for me.

  When I left, I’d added one more suspect to the list but taken several steps back with two others. And Ronan himself? He hadn’t rung any alarm bells.

  This fucking case was gonna be the death of me.

  CHAPTER 25

  WHEN I GOT home, I called Mack, but she was in a restaurant, about to chow down on a steak dinner. Slacker. No doubt she’d be having Luke for dessert, so I wouldn’t get anything useful from her until tomorrow.

  That meant I was reduced to doing my own searches at my kitchen counter while I ate instant noodles washed down with a bottle of beer. No, they didn’t go together, but I was too tired to cook and too edgy not to drink.

  I found several blogs where DJ Steel had accused Ethan of plagiarism, but so far, they’d been overshadowed by all the stories on the murder. Bummer for him. What was he planning next?

  After that, I googled the Ghost. What did the mainstream media have to say about him? Well, he didn’t get drunk, he didn’t flout the law, he didn’t fall out of clubs, and he didn’t get into fights with other celebrities. There was the odd page of puffed-up, speculative bullshit, but they were few and far between until the story of the murder broke. No solid facts, no dramatic photos. The Ghost had certainly lived up to his name.

  Even after Christina died, the articles had little personal information on Ethan. The same photos cropped up over and over—a grainy snapshot of him on stage with King, his mug shot, and one of him in court with Lyle just after he’d been arrested. Nothing on his early years, and Mack hadn’t found anything so far either. To all intents and purposes, his life had started at sixteen when he met Ronan and joined the band.

  He’d materialised rather than grown up.

  Curiouser and curiouser.

  As I slept that night, Ethan took centre stage in my dreams, and not in a good way. In a very good way. A way I shouldn’t be thinking about him. My subconscious needed a reminder of my number one rule—I didn’t screw around with clients.

  Except the devil on my right shoulder had clearly been having words with her counterpart on Emmy’s because she reminded me that technically, Ethan wasn’t my client. The kids were. I was going to have to gag her, the little bitch.

  Still flustered, I woke early and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I decided to get back at Mack for her ridiculously early phone call the other day.

  As the hands on my bedroom clock crawled past 5:00 a.m., I hit dial.

  “Is it an emergency?” Mack croaked down the line.

  “Define emergency. I’m dying for coffee—does that count?”

  “What do you want, Dan?”

  “Just wondering how your research went yesterday.”

  There was a clatter as she dropped the phone. Sleepy Mack wasn’t very coordinated.

  “You still there?” she asked a few seconds later.

  “Yup.”

  “Right, okay, I checked the Rubies website. Whatever Christina was doing that night, she wasn’t booked through them. They had her marked down as unavailable, but when I looked at the IP logs, she’d added that notation to the calendar herself.”

  Interesting. Was Stefanie right about Christina going it alone?

  “Did you have any luck with her phones?”

  “I’ve got the call history for her main number, but if she had another, it wasn’t in her name.”

  “Anything good on the one you did find?”

  “The odd call from an unregistered phone, but not much recently and nothing that looks like a pattern. The only regular callers were Stefanie and one Octavia Jackson, who—”

  “Runs the Rubies website.”

  “Right. Her office screens the clients, makes the bookings, and emails the details to the girls.”

  “Did you look at the messages?”

  There was a pause, and I imagined Mack putting on that indignant little pout of hers.

  “Give me some credit, please. I went back six months, which is all that was available. Their hosting company had a server failure before that, and it turned out their backup policy wasn’t as robust as it could have been.”

  Fucking great. One step forward and two back again. What if there had been a clue in the missing information?

  “Did you find anything?”

  “I’ll send over a summary, but the only thing that jumps out was a couple of rendezvous with a congressman from Minnesota.”

  “Married?”

  “Of course. But he was hosting a fundraising dinner at the time of the murder.”

  He could always
have hired someone, but how did Ethan fit in? I shoved him down the list.

  “Could you also run checks on a singer called Reena Cassidy and a DJ Steel?”

  “Are you paying overtime?”

  “I’ll cook you dinner when this is over.”

  “If that’s supposed to incentivise me, it’s not working.”

  “How about I promise not to cook you dinner, ever?”

  “That’s more like it.”

  Although it was still early, I decided to head to Riverley. I needed to return Emmy’s car before I broke it, and besides, her gym was better than the one in my building’s basement.

  When I arrived, I found out Emmy wasn’t home.

  “Something urgent came up in Florida. She flew out in the early hours,” Oliver told me.

  At 6:30 a.m., he was already working, scribbling on a yellow legal pad at the breakfast bar, dressed in yet another made-to-measure suit.

  His attire didn’t surprise me—Oliver didn’t do casual—but the sight of Lyle sitting next to him made me raise an eyebrow.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked Oliver.

  “I figured somebody needed to turn Lyle here into a trial lawyer, and it’s not the work of five minutes.”

  Lyle gave me a sheepish smile, his mouth full of cereal. He finished chewing then swallowed. “I’m learning a lot. Oliver’s, like, a trial guru.”

  Oliver’s expression didn’t change, save for a tiny quirk at one corner of his lips. “I wouldn’t go that far. But you’re learning. By the time the trial starts, you’ll be ready.”

  At least they were getting along. More than that, I noticed a spark in Oliver’s eyes that hadn’t been there in a long time. Not since he suffered his own tragedy six years ago. I’d worried about him ever since, and even though Emmy invited him to hang out at Riverley, he rarely turned up. He avoided relationships too. Like me, he preferred one night of oblivion over anything lasting.