Sticky Fingers (33 page)

All the while, the roar of the audience grew and grew until I feared I’d never hear the music over their noise.

Dooce’s lead guitarist stood slightly to the right of the stage, and a pinpoint of light struck him from above. He banged his opening chord, and the reverberation shook the building. The crowd shouted back like a monster. From behind us, the stage crew formed a wedge and rushed past. Dooce went with them, and he burst onto center stage just as the lights exploded around him. The crowd roared at the sight of him.

Then it was time to sing, and I forgot about watching the lights and listening to the massive noise of the audience. I focused on the music that came clearly through my earpiece. We ripped through Dooce’s opening number—a fast, feel-good song that rocked the house. It took me half the song to figure how to blend my voice with the rest of the band, but I got it. The second number—also upbeat and fun—kept the audience on their feet. Dooce was easier to follow than I’d expected. He was a pro who knew how to cue the band without cheating the audience. We segued into one of his biggest hits. Deondra took the backup solo, while Kate and I harmonized a bunch of “oooohs” and “la-la-las.”

After that, Dooce took time to shout at the audience. He introduced Stony as his longtime buddy, and the crowd went wild for the local guys. Deondra, Kate, and I used the interlude to grab our water bottles and guzzle. My heart pounded, but I was ready for the next songs.

We took a twenty-minute break halfway through, but Deondra sat down right on the stage to rest, sweating buckets, so I stayed with her.

“I could never do this every night,” Deondra said. “I’m shaking like a leaf.”

Kate scampered off to pee and probably refill her vodka supply. When she came back, she brought energy bars for us. Deondra wolfed hers and half of mine.

The rest of the concert blew by like a storm. Dooce was a performer who knew how to give the audience a show worth the price they’d paid. He really rocked. He was still good-looking in a wasted kind of way—tall and lean and muscled. He had to be—his concert was choreographed to show off his athleticism as well as his music. But I could see that he dyed his hair black, and he’d had at least one facelift done by an overeager surgeon.

He came back to us once during a song that featured the backup voices. He and Deondra dueled during the gospel segment, and he did some grind dancing between me and Kate that brought a roar from the crowd.

But after that, it was all an adrenaline blur for me.

Dooce performed two curtain-call numbers, and then it was all over.

Kate and I helped Deondra stagger back to the greenroom, where she collapsed on a sofa and asked for a beer and a plate of hot wings.

Dooce made the rounds in the greenroom, wearing a towel around his neck and follwed closely by a glowering Jeremy. Dooce thanked the local musicians for their help. Stony looked happier than I’d ever seen any man. Dooce gave Deondra a big kiss, grabbed Kate’s ass and pretended to rub it for good luck.

Then Dooce put his hand between my thighs and groaned with pleasure for the crowd. I let it pass. No big deal. He was a rock star, after all, not Mr. Rogers.

“I love Pittsburgh!” he crowed to all of us. “I’ll jam with you anytime.”

“Let’s go, Dooce,” Jeremy urged. “The bus is waiting.”

But he hung around. In a minute, I realized what kept him in the greenroom, and it wasn’t Flynn’s food.

It was Jane Doe. Dooce had zeroed in on her, and within minutes he slipped one arm around her waist and pulled her with him as he spoke to everyone else.

He even scooped up her daughter, carrying the little girl over to the buffet to find a treat for her. Whether it was all for show, or he really did dig Jane Doe, I don’t know. But he acted like a courtly gentleman with her.

Jane Doe looked starry-eyed.

Jeremy headed my way—probably looking for his payoff for letting me into the building. I braced myself. When I got him alone, I intended to ask how he knew the Crabtrees.

But Flynn appeared. He took me by the wrist and pulled me away. In my ear, he said, “Police are here.”

“Shit.”

“Take the kids. Nooch has the keys to your truck. Use the exit through the kitchen.”

24

Sage didn’t ask questions. Neither did Richie as we dashed through the service kitchen and out the door into the night.

But Sugar complained the whole way about giving up the laptop she’d appropriated.

Nooch finally picked her up like a sack of potatoes and carried her through the maze of tractor-trailers parked outside. Already, Dooce’s crew scurried around opening the trucks and rolling handcarts toward the arena, preparing to tear down the stage and haul it to their next concert venue.

We spotted two police officers standing guard beside the Escalade.

I skidded to a stop, holding the kids back. “Can’t go that way,” I muttered.

Richie said, “We left your truck in Section D.”

“Let’s go.”

But our path was barred by two more officers who stood watching the rowdy crowd of concertgoers head for the parking lot. The last thing I wanted was to end the evening getting arrested for car theft. One of the officers turned our way.

I realized we were standing beside a bus. I reached for the door handle and found it open. I shooed the kids and Nooch inside.

We found ourselves in what must have been Dooce’s travel bus. A driver sat behind the wheel in a big captain’s chair. He was reading a paperback and smoking a smelly cigar. He wore a vintage Dooce T-shirt that didn’t do his belly any favors.

“Hey.” He took the stogie out of his mouth and glanced at the backstage credentials around our necks. “Dooce send you?”

“Yes,” I said without hesitation.

“Wow. He always goes for the girls with kids, but you take the cake. Three, huh? And all grown up.”

“Yes.”

“Who’s the muscle?” He pointed at Nooch.

“Bodyguard.”

The bus driver shrugged. In his world, bodyguards were normal. “Okay. Well, there’s drinks in the fridge while you wait.”

Sage and Richie looked at me with big eyes. I gave them a throat-cutting gesture to keep quiet, but Sugar wasn’t taking any orders—silent or otherwise.

“Put me down,” she said to Nooch. “Before I kick you in the teeth.”

Nooch hastily obeyed.

“I want to get out of here,” she said to the bus driver. “Take me to a hotel.”

The driver grinned. “The Ritz or the Waldorf?”

“One with room service and a computer room.”

“Oh, yeah? Your mom have anything to say about that?” The driver winked at me.

“My mother is dead,” Sugar said.

That information startled the driver into dropping his cigar.

“Ha-ha,” I said. “Very funny, Sugar. Now, come over here and get yourself a Pepsi.”

“I don’t poison my body with sweets.”

The interior of the bus was set up like a standard recreational vehicle with a living room and kitchen combo behind the driver’s seat. A laptop sat on the fold-out table. Sugar headed straight for it.

Toward the back, a doorway led, I presumed, to a bedroom and bath. What caught my attention in the front of the big vehicle, though, were the heavily framed shadow boxes on the walls. Dooce didn’t display his gold records on the bus.

He displayed bones.

Big bones.

Big animal bones.

Leg bones, skulls, tusks, teeth. All kinds of bones.

“Wow,” I said to the driver. “This is an interesting collection.”

“Oh, yeah, Dooce loves this stuff.” He retrieved his cigar and waved it at the framed boxes. “Picks up items all over the country. You should see his house. He’s got a whole dinosaur in his basement.”

“No kidding.”

“And he’s working on a whatayacallit—a woolly mammoth now.”

I said, “That must be an expensive hobby.”

“Oh, you know. These guys all make a fortune on tour. They gotta spend it somewhere.”

“Does Dooce have any help? Doing his collecting?”

“What d’you mean?”

“You know—Jeremy. He seems to help out a lot. Does he have a hand in Dooce’s collection?”

“Nah. Jeremy’s just a glorified maid. He opens car doors, picks up the hamburgers. That’s about it.”

Richie had been staring at the bones on the walls. When he turned to me, I saw tears on his face.

I put my arm across his shoulders. “It’s okay,” I said.

“But my mom,” he began.

“I know.”

“Did she—?”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” I said.

“She was in contact with Dooce. I know she was. She talked to lots of celebrities, but she always said it was because they wanted to meet her. I heard her on the phone a lot. But I didn’t think…”

Sage had been peering out the windshield of the bus. Over her shoulder, she called, “Boy, there sure are a lot of people out there.”

I got the message.

“C’mon, kids.” I grabbed Sugar’s hand and dragged her away from the laptop. “It’s time to go home.”

“Hang on,” the driver protested. “Dooce should be here any minute. You should wait.”

“That’s okay. I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this.”

“Hey, Dooce ain’t no creep. He just likes to show kids all the dinosaur stuff. Kids go crazy for dinosaurs.” He winked. “Nothing too raunchy for the moms. He has a wife and kids at home.”

“Right. Well, sorry, we’ve got to be going.”

“Good thing your kids saw the bones, I guess, huh?”

“Wonderful,” I said. “Good night.”

We bailed out of the bus. I figured Jane Doe was on her own with Dooce. She’d probably be safe enough—especially if there were any chairs handy to hit him with.

The mob waiting for Dooce outside had quadrupled. Our backstage passes got us past a security guy who appeared outside the bus, and then we found ourselves plunging into the crowd that had gathered around. The people carried signs and waved T-shirts. Already, Dooce’s guitarist was among them, mingling with the fans, signing autographs. Cameras flashed. Kids shouted. Somebody played a Dooce song on a tinny radio.

“Let’s hit the road,” I said to the kids.

We blended into the huge crowd and slipped past the police. In a few minutes, we found the Monster Truck and piled in. Stuck in the traffic exiting the arena lot, I pulled out my cell phone and checked the screen.

Six missed calls from Bug. Two from Loretta.

It was Loretta’s attempts to contact me that puzzled me. Instead of calling her, I passed my phone to Richie. “Call your dad. See if he’s home yet.”

If Eckelstine had been arrested for murdering his wife or for breaking into a museum without authorization, I didn’t know what I was going to do with the kids. But fortunately, Eckelstine picked up, and he told Richie to come home. Half an hour later, I dropped off Richie and Sugar.

I grabbed Richie’s sleeve before he bailed out of the Monster Truck. “Thanks, kid. The clothes are great.”

“No problem.” He took a steadying breath and finally looked up at me. “Those bones in Dooce’s trailer? Those came from my mom, didn’t they?”

“Some of them, probably.”

“She sold them to him?”

“Looks that way to me.”

“That’s how she paid for everything, right? Selling Rhonda.”

That was the way I figured it. Clarice had been selling off her father’s important paleontology discoveries to pay for Richie’s dressmaking hobby and Sugar’s astronomical ice-skating expenses. She’d kept it secret because selling to collectors was bad form among the scientific set.

But Richie looked shaken by the idea.

I said, “Parents do whatever they can to make their kids happy. Sometimes they make mistakes, but— Look, kid, your mother wasn’t my favorite person in life, but she really loved you. She wanted to help you become whatever you want to be.”

Richie struggled to hold back his feelings, but the dam broke. He hung his head and cried. I’d been there, at the moment when I knew my mother was gone—the woman who gave me life, but tortured me, too. The loss mixed with terror. The fear of being alone fought the relief of seeing the end of someone who frightened me in life.

I hugged Richie, and he let it all out, sobbing hard against my shoulder.

Finally, he sighed and sat up. He wiped his tears with both hands.

I gave him a gentle shake. “You’ll be okay, kid. You’re amazing. I meant what I said before. I’m grateful for all your help. If you can make me look good, you’re obviously a genius. And Nooch? Hell, what you did for him was miraculous. You’re going to be a star.”

He smiled wanly. “Maybe.”

“I’m sure of it. I just…”

“Yeah?”

“I need to know if I can wear this dress to a wedding tomorrow.”

Richie regained his composure. “Is it Mick Jagger’s wedding?”

“No.”

“Then the answer is no.” He shook off my hand and slid across the seat to exit the truck. But then his mood softened and he glanced back. “Okay, take off the belt,” he coached. “It looks too S and M for a wedding. And add a slip. Do you own a slip?”

“Of course I do,” I lied.

“A bra would help, too.”

“Good suggestions,” I said. “Thanks, kid. Keep in touch.”

Sugar slid out of the truck and turned back long enough to say with a sneer, “I hope I never see any of you ever again.”

I opened my mouth to make a wisecrack, but Sage elbowed me in the ribs.

“You’re welcome,” I said to Sugar after Sage closed the truck’s door. I didn’t know what to think of Sugar, but she sure as hell wasn’t normal.

Sage said, “That chick is definitely screwed up. You should have heard what she said about her mother earlier.”

“What did she say?”

Sage shrugged. “Rotten stuff. How she hated her. How she finally got her wish.”

“Her wish?”

“That her mom’s dead, I guess. She’s a real creep.”

I agreed. Sugar was one young lady destined to grow up alone, with her tech gadgets to keep her warm. And she seemed to prefer it that way.

We dropped Nooch off next. I noticed he had a new bounce in his step as he headed into his grandmothers’ house.

“I guess clothes make the man after all,” I said to Sage.

“He’s cute,” she replied with a yawn. “Everybody had a good time, Mom.”