for the fan of the month. You think we can still do that?”
It was a promotion Alicia Sessions had put together on Facebook and on Kayleigh’s website. Bishop had more or less shoehorned Sheri into working on various marketing projects for the Kayleigh Towne operation. The woman had been in retail all her life and had made some valuable contributions.
“It’s all scheduled, right?” Bishop asked.
“We’ve rented the room at the country club. It’d mean a lot to him. He’s a big fan.”
Not as big as someone I know, Kayleigh thought.
“And there’ll be some publicity too.”
“No reporters,” Kayleigh said. “I don’t want to talk about Bobby. That’s what they’ll want to ask me.” Alicia had been deflecting the press-and there’d been plenty of them. But when the steely-eyed personal assistant said no, there wasn’t room for debate.
Bishop said, “We’ll control it. Set the ground rules. Make sure they don’t ask questions about what happened at the convention center.”
“I can do that,” Sheri said, with an uncertain glance toward Bishop. “I’ll coordinate with Alicia.”
Kayleigh finally said, “Sure, I guess.” She pictured the last time she had lunch alone with Bobby, a week ago. She wanted to cry again.
“Good,” Bishop said. “But we’ll keep it short. Tell that fan it’ll have to be short.”
Having conceded one issue, Kayleigh said, “But I really want to think about the concert, Daddy.”
“Hey, baby doll, whatever you’re happiest doing.”
Bishop leaned forward and snagged one of the guitars his daughter kept in her living room, an old Guild, with a thin neck and golden spruce top, producing a ringing tenor. He played Elizabeth Cotten’s version of “Freight Train.”
He was a talented, syncopated fingerpicker, in the style of Arty and Happy Traum and Leo Kottke (and damn if he couldn’t also flat-pick as well as Doc Watson, a skill Kayleigh could never master). His massive hands totally controlled the fret board. In pop music, guitar was originally for rhythm accompaniment-like a drum or maracas-and only in the past eighty years or so had it taken on the job of melody. Kayleigh used her Martin for its original purpose, strumming, to accompany her main instrument-a four-octave voice.
Kayleigh remembered Bishop’s rich baritone of her youth and she cringed to hear what he’d become. Bob Dylan never had a smooth voice but it was filled with expression and passion and he could hit the notes. When, at a party or occasionally at concerts, Kayleigh and Bishop sang a duet together, she modulated to a key he could pull off and covered the notes that would give him trouble.
“We’ll make sure it’s short,” he announced again.
What? Kayleigh wondered. The concert? Then recalled: the luncheon with the fan. Was it tomorrow, or the next day?
“And we’ll talk about it, the concert. See how you feel in a day or so. Want you to be in good form. Happy too. That’s what matters,” he repeated.
She was looking out the window again into the grove of trees separating the house from the road, a hundred yards away. She’d done the plantings for seclusion and quiet but now all she thought was it would provide great cover so that Edwin could get close to the house.
More arpeggios-chords broken into individual notes-rang out. Kayleigh thought automatically: diminished, minor sixth, major. The guitar did everything Bishop wanted it to do. He could get music out of a tree branch.
She reflected: Bishop Towne had missed concerts because he was unconscious or in jail. But he’d never chosen to cancel one.
He racked the guitar and said to Sheri, “Got that meeting.”
The woman, who seemed to have a different perfume for every day of the week, rose instantly and started to reach for Bishop’s arm, then thought better; she tried to be discreet in his daughter’s presence. She
I don’t hate you.
I just don’t like you.
Kayleigh wafted a smile her way.
“You still got that present I got you a coupla years ago?” Bishop asked his daughter.
“I have all your presents, Daddy.”
She saw them to the door, amused that Darthur Morgan seemed to regard them with some suspicion. The couple piled into a dusty SUV and left, petite Sheri behind the wheel of the massive vehicle. Bishop gave up driving eight years ago.
She thought about making more calls about Bobby but couldn’t bring herself to. She strode to the kitchen, pulling on work gloves, and stepped outside into her garden. She loved it here, growing flowers and herbs and vegetables too-what else, in this part of California? She lived in the most productive agricultural county in America.
The appeal of gardening had nothing to do with the miracle of life, the environment, being one with the earth. Kayleigh Towne just liked to get her hands dirty and concentrate on something other than the Industry.
And here she could dream about her life in the future, puttering around in gardens like this with her children. Making sauces and baked goods and casseroles from things she herself had grown.
I’m canceling the fucking concert, she thought.
She stuffed her hair up under a silly canvas sun hat and examined her crops. The air was hot but comforting; insects buzzed around her face and even their persistent presence was reassuring, as if reminding that there was more to life than musical performances.
More than the
But suddenly she froze: a flash of light.
No, not Edwin. There was no brilliant red color from his car.
What was it? The light was coming from the south, to the left as you faced the garden, about one hundred yards away. Not from Edwin’s hunter’s blind at the arboretum or main road in front. It was from a small access road, running perpendicular to the highway. A developer had bought the adjacent land a year ago but gone bankrupt before the residential construction had started. Was this a survey team? Last year, she’d been glad the deal fell through; she’d wanted her privacy. Now, perversely, she was happy there might be crews around-and eventually neighbors-to discourage Edwin and others like him.
But what exactly was the light?
On off, on off. Flashing.
She decided to find out.
Kayleigh made her way through the brush toward the stuttering illumination.
Bright, dark.
Light, shadow.
Chapter 18
KATHRYN DANCE WAS in south Fresno, trying to find a restaurant that Crystal Stanning had recommended.
Her thoughts, though, were on how to handle the explosion when Charles Overby or, more likely, the CBI director in Sacramento told Sheriff Anita Gonzalez that Dance was going to be running the Bobby Prescott homicide.
