Double Minds

  "Where is Gibson?" she cried as she headed back for the stage area. "I just want to go back to the hotel and be alone."

  Daniel grabbed her arm again. "Stop and sit down here with me, please. I just want to pray with you, all right?"

  She paused and dug into her bag for something to wipe her face with. She found the T-shirt she'd worn over to the Coliseum today. She used it to wipe the black under her eyes, then her nose, then her cheeks ...

  "All right," she said. "Just ... let me go into the bathroom for a minute."

  He checked out the restroom before letting her go in, then he waited outside the door. She went in and stood in front of the mirror, looking at her reflection. She looked like a vampire. She hated the sight of the smeared mascara and thick matte makeup. She filled the sink with water and bent over it, allowing herself one last, good cry. Then trying to pull it back in, she washed her face.

  Daniel was outside waiting for her, waiting to pray. Even now, he was probably praying. Why couldn't everyone on the tour be like him?

  She washed off her tears and told herself to stop crying. She didn't want Daniel to remember her self-pity.

  Daniel was still quietly waiting when she came back out. Gibson, who'd probably expected her to spend more time with Serene, wasn't back yet. Daniel pulled her into a corner in the backstage area, where two folding chairs sat catty-cornered. She sat down with him, arms folded on her knees. She couldn't meet his eyes. "I'm fine, Daniel. I know you're tired. I just needed a good cry, but I'm over it now. Time to move on."

  "You have every right to cry." He took her hand, laced his fingers through hers, and began to pray without a prelude or a note of warning. As he talked to God about her situation, she found her sadness pinching her face again. She fought to hold back another meltdown.

  He asked God to help her with her sorrow, to lift her spirits, to remind her that it wasn't over, that there was still a plan. He asked him to do his perfect will in her life. When he finally ended the prayer, she was a wreck.

  He handed her a handkerchief. She looked down at it, hating to mess it up. "I didn't know guys still carried handkerchiefs."

  "Helps on stage under those bulbs. Can't have sweat dripping into our eyes. That one's clean, though."

  She smiled and looked down at it. "I wasn't worried that it was used." She blotted her eyes again, saw more black. How much of that stuff had she caked on tonight, anyway?

  "Parker, this is wrong. They shouldn't have done that to you."

  She shook her head and stared at the white cloth. "It's just business."

  "Not good business."

  She breathed a bitter laugh and sat back. "Oh, Daniel. That's nice of you to say, but I know what you think of my talent."

  His eyes softened. "What do you mean?"

  She swallowed the dryness in her throat. "That night I was performing for your group? The night Brenna died ... I got the phone call from Gibson and I had to step out. Then I heard you tell the kids that I just slipped away so I wouldn't get the glory."

  He looked embarrassed. "Oh," he said. "Yeah, I remember. I didn't know you were listening."

  "But I'm not really that pious, and I'm not that selfless." She smiled and shook her head. "I really wanted the applause."

  He stared at her for a moment, then laughed. "That's okay. We all want applause. That's why we perform."

  "Yeah, but I let you go on thinking that was why I left."

  His smile faded. "Well, after the news came out, I figured it out."

  "But the point is that I didn't even want to set the record straight."

  "You've been kind of busy." He took her hand, held it, looking down at it.

  She knew she shouldn't go further, but she felt the need to unload all her baggage--to lay it down and walk away from it. "That night, I heard you telling them that I didn't have a voice that could draw crowds."

  "Parker, did you hear the rest of what I said? That you can take your audience right to the throne of God? You did that tonight, too. Who says you don't have talent? Just because some record executive doesn't get it, doesn't mean you're not gifted."

  She fingered the handkerchief. "I went with Serene to the hair dresser one day and watched how they pampered and fawned all over her. I thought, Someday I'll have that, too. How stupid."

  "I don't believe that's what it was about for you," he said. "I've seen you worship with your songs. God smiles when you write, and when you sing."

  She wanted to believe it, but right now her head swirled with humiliation and failure.

  "Ready to go, Parker?"

  She turned and saw Gibson. "Yeah, guess so." She'd have to tell him about the tour. Maybe she'd wait and tell him with her family.

  She turned back to Daniel. "Thank you, Daniel. I appreciate your waiting with me."

  He clung to her hand a moment longer. "I'll be praying," he whispered.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Gibson plugged one ear and tried to hear David Carter's voice on his cell phone. He was having problems hearing the detective who'd taken over the Evans/Teniere case because the conversation in the adjoining hotel room was getting heated. His family was incensed that Parker had been cut from the tour, but Gibson couldn't help thinking that it might be a blessing in disguise. With Mick Evans still at large, and Parker's possible sighting of him tonight, he was glad she wouldn't be sitting like a piano-playing bull's-eye at the center of the stage tomorrow.

  "We've learned some interesting things about Mick Evans's background," Carter was saying.

  Pete's voice was rising in the adjoining room. He wasn't taking Parker's news well. Gibson went to the door between the rooms and closed it. "I'm listening."

  "We already knew his father left his mother for Tiffany when Mick was seven. Father basically ignored him as he was growing up. Mother struggled. She wasn't very well educated, married Nathan when she was seventeen and pregnant. She wound up working two jobs to support Mick."

  "But she took Nathan back to court, right? Tried to get more money."

  "And lost the suit. Nathan and the judge were golf buddies. So not too long after, the mother offs herself."

  "Yeah, I know all that. Mick found her."

  "This part you don't know. His dad's stuck with little Mick all of a sudden, so he moves him into the mansion, where he lives with Tiffany and the child they had together."

  "Brenna."

  "And apparently Tiffany doesn't like having him around. So a few weeks later, they pack him up and send him to a boarding school in Colorado."

  Okay, so Mick was a traumatized kid. No excuse. Lots of kids had traumatic lives and didn't wind up murderers. "But he told me he's lived with them off and on lately. He works with his dad."

  "Yeah, after he graduated from college with a 4.0, his dad let him come home. Put him to work in his record company. But we've interviewed his friends and coworkers, and they all say that it was no secret that Mick and Tiffany didn't get along. And he was hardly on speaking terms with his sister. He hated her, and the feeling was mutual."

  Gibson ran all that through his mind. It was helpful. Maybe now that Tiffany and Brenna were dead, Mick had no further agenda involving Parker. For the thousandth time since Parker had alerted him, Gibson wondered whether he was making too much of this.

  Gibson lowered his voice. "Can you think of any reason he'd be following this tour?"

  "Not unless he has some kind of vendetta against your sister. We know her house was broken into, and that he was following her. And that he's probably the one who called her."

  None of it made sense. The man who called Parker from the pay phone had promised to protect her. And the person who broke in hadn't stolen anything; instead, he'd left the song sheets. In hindsight, it was clear he'd been warning her about the stolen song, before anyone else even knew it had been taken.

  "I'll keep you informed, but you do the same," he said. "No kidding. I need to know what I'm dealing with here."

  "My g
uess is that he's still in Nashville somewhere, James. Don't sweat it. He wouldn't put himself out there like that."

  Gibson hung up the phone and sat on the bed for a moment, staring into space. God, please let that be true.

  He heard his dad's voice booming through the wall. He had to get back in there. He opened the adjoining door and leaned in. Parker was hunched on one of the beds, arms around her knees. Lynn sat on the edge of the other one. Pete and LesPaul were standing.

  "What hotel is Jeff Standard staying in?" Pete bellowed.

  "You can't go to his hotel!" Parker cried.

  "Yes, I can, and I will!"

  LesPaul looked ready to punch someone, himself. "Dad's right. At least maybe we could recoup the money invested in this tour. Or scare Standard into putting Parker back into the concerts."

  Parker covered her face. "I don't want to force my way onto that stage. That's not how it was supposed to be!"

  "You rewrote your songs because she promised you this spot," LesPaul said.

  "Maybe that's where I went wrong. Maybe I just sold out."

  Lynn got up and came to sit next to her. "Honey, you didn't sell out. You have a dream. You thought God was making it happen. We all did."

  "We thought wrong."

  "No, we didn't. You heard the people who bought your CDs for the last two nights. You drew them closer to God, they said. And if all the money we spent was to impact one person that way, then it was money well spent."

  "What a crock." Pete set his hands on his hips. "Lynn, you're killing me."

  "It's true, Pete. Music has power to impact people--I don't have to tell you that. To draw them closer to God. Don't tell me you didn't feel the Holy Spirit when you were playing with her onstage."

  Pete looked at Parker, and his face changed. "No, I felt something. It was emotional, all right."

  Quiet settled over the room as everyone absorbed Pete's admission. Gibson wondered if this disappointment would be enough to send his dad back to the bottle. He crossed the room and looked out the window. The parking lot wasn't well lit. Anybody could be out there.

  "I'm so sorry, guys," Parker said. "You did so much to help me get ready. You put your own work, your whole lives, on hold. I wouldn't have asked any of it if I'd known it was going to turn out like this."

  LesPaul's voice was softer as he answered. "How could you know? Come on, Parks. Nobody could have anticipated this."

  "I should have," she said. "I know I'm not the best performer in the world. I'm no Serene. I thought maybe my voice was unique enough that I could pull it off."

  "You did pull it off," LesPaul said.

  "You sure as blazes did," their father echoed. He sat down beside her, touched her knee. "Here's what we're gonna do, sweetheart. I've given this a lot of thought. You've got to go country with some of these songs. Jesus gets good airplay on country stations. That'll get you into some venues that you haven't thought of."

  Gibson's jaw dropped, and he looked at his sister. She unfolded from her knot, stretched her legs out in front of her. "Venues like honky tonks and mud races, with a few churches in between?"

  "Parker, I'm not kidding."

  Parker had the grace to smile. "Dad, I'm a Chris Christian songwriter. I'm not changing." She sighed and grabbed the remote, turned on the television.

  Mick Evans's face filled the screen.

  The sight of him seemed to suck the air from the room, as Nancy Grace spoke of the search for the "person of interest" in Tiffany Te-niere'smurder.

  "What did you find out, Gibson?" Pete asked.

  He shrugged. "They don't have any reason to believe he's here in Jackson. Carter thinks he's probably still in Nashville, hiding somewhere."

  "I sure hope so," Lynn said. "So what about tomorrow? We're going home, right?"

  LesPaul shook his head. "Mom, I can't go home. I have a contract to help with the set."

  "Surely you can't be expected to fulfill that when your sister was booted off the tour."

  "I will be. They need both Gibson and me. I doubt seriously that Standard pulled the set designer in on the decision about Parker. He's counting on us. I don't want to be known as somebody who doesn't keep his word."

  Gibson agreed. "We can tell him tomorrow that we need to quit, and we'll be close enough to Nashville for him to get replacements. But it would be bad business to leave him holding the bag."

  "I don't want to pay for another night in a hotel," Parker said, "but I sure don't want to go to the coliseum and sit through the concert. It's humiliating."

  "We'll put it on my credit card, sweetie," Lynn offered. "Your dad and I will stay behind with you, and we'll wait for Gibson and LesPaul. Then we'll all head back to Nashville after the concert."

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-NINE

  Parker lay in the dark in the room she shared with her mother, and stared at the ceiling. The events of the night should have left her sapped of energy, but her mind was wide awake, full of recrimination sand fears.

  Fear for her future loomed close to her fears of Mick Evans. How had her life come to this? Here she was without a job, in a hotel room she couldn't afford, after pouring her life into a set of songs that no one would ever hear.

  And a killer might still be stalking her.

  Her telephone blared out, its mad piano ringtone bringing her off the bed. Heart racing, she grabbed it and looked at the clock. It was two a.m.

  Serene's face filled the screen.

  "Who is it?" her mother asked from the other bed.

  "Serene." She tossed the phone on the bed and lay back down. "I don't want to talk to her."

  The piano played again and Lynn got up and reached for it. "Answerit. Maybe she changed her mind."

  Knowing that wasn't it, Parker answered the phone. "Hello?"

  "Parker, what room are you in?"

  Parker rolled to her back and shoved her hair back from her face. "Why do you want to know?"

  "Because I'm here in your hotel. I need to talk to you."

  Parker sighed. "It's two o'clock, Serene. Everybody's asleep."

  "It's important. Tell me what room."

  How had Serene gotten here from her ritzy hotel a few miles away? Had she come in a cab? A limo? "Are you alone?"

  "No, I brought Sam, my bodyguard."

  Oh, yes. She'd forgotten about the bodyguard for the tour.

  She heard Gibson in the adjoining doorway. "Parker, what is it?" "Serene's downstairs. She wants to come up."

  He groaned. "Let me get dressed, and I'll go down and make sure nobody's following her."

  Parker told Serene to wait. She turned on the lamp as Gibson went down to get her. She looked back at her mother, who was blinking as her eyes adjusted to the light.

  "She has a lot of nerve waking me up at two in the morning, after what she did," Parker said.

  "You weren't even sleeping," Lynn pointed out.

  "That's beside the point. I was up all night with her two nights ago, and what thanks do I get?"

  "I'll bet she's had a heart-to-heart with Jeff Standard, and he's changed his mind. I'll bet you're back on the tour, and tomorrow everything will be back like it was."

  If only that were the case. But Parker didn't dare hope.

  After a few minutes, Gibson led Serene in. "It looks all clear," he said. "Call me if you need me. The bodyguard's in the hallway."

  He went back to his room, leaving the adjoining door slightly ajar. She heard the mattress squeak as he lay back down. She could hear her father's snore softly ripping in the other room. None of the activity had awakened him or LesPaul.

  Serene stood just inside the door and stared at Parker. The star looked like the girl she'd befriended at the lunch table so many years ago. Her face was clean of makeup, her eyes swollen.

  She stood before Parker and her mother. "I know you both hate me."

  Parker threw up her hands. "Hate you? Is that why you woke us up? Because you're worried what we think of you?"

  "Yes, s
ort of."

  The tiny bit of hope her mother had incited faded to nothing. "That figures."

  Serene came farther into the room and sat on Parker's bed. "Tonight I went back to my hotel, and I've never been so lonely in my life. I'm sick over what happened with you, Parker. I wanted you with me on the tour. It's no fun to do this alone."

  "You're not alone. You have a whole entourage. Managers and makeup artists and bodyguards and record executives."

  "But I need a friend."

  "So is that why you wanted me on the tour in the first place? So you'd have somebody to hang out with? Because that little luxury for you cost me a lot of money."

  "Of course not. You know I wanted to showcase your talent. I thought you were doing great, and I know the crowd loved you."

  Lynn sat on the side of her unmade bed, holding her robe closed. "Maybe you could talk to him again. Tell him how much time and money Parker has put into this."

  "I did talk to him. He was so nice before, but now he's criticizingmy hair and the band and the things I say on stage. Oh, and the article in the New York Times? Butch thinks Jeff was behind it."

  Now she had Parker's attention. "What do you mean, behind it?"

  "Butch found out that Jeff and Nigel are old college friends. He thinks this article was Jeff's way of breaking me away from the squeaky-clean Chris Christian girl image as we got started on the tour. If he could have dug up some compromising pictures, he would have, but there weren't any."

  "You really think Jeff would tell the press you have an eating disorder?"

  "It's publicity, and in today's culture, it's not all that negative. Butch thinks Jeff's the one who called Nigel when I collapsed."

  Parker couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Well, you can't let him get away with it. He can't treat people this way."

  "Oh, yes, he can." Serene's face twisted as tears filled her eyes. "What am I supposed to do? Lose everything I've worked for? He owns me, lock, stock, and barrel."

  "Oh, my word," Lynn muttered. She went into the bathroom and came back out with a box of tissue.

  Serene blew her nose. "He came in after I saw the article, but Butch wouldn't let me say anything to him about giving Nigel the story. He didn't want me to make him mad, so I had to bite my tongue."