Rock & Roll Never Forgets: A JP Kinkaid Mystery [Hardcover]

Chapter One

There are days when I honestly think there’s no escape from rock and roll.

The limo from the airport had dropped me off at not quite four in the morning. The lights in the hall and the front room were on; I’d have been willing to bet that Bree hadn’t been to bed at all, hadn’t slept except for short naps. I’d also have laid odds that she’d kept the status of my flight up on her computer in the kitchen alcove, tracking it as it made its way across the Atlantic and over Canada.

By the time I’d hit the bottom stair, she was waiting for me at the top, with the door open and the cats wreathing around her ankles. This, Bree within touching distance, was what I’d been looking forward to, consciously jonesing for, for at least a week; she’d welcomed me back off the road so many times over the last twenty-five years that this homecoming had the feel of an old bathrobe, something you slip into because it’s so comfy. Coming home to Bree, it always feels like that, you know?

This time was no different. First words out of her mouth— after I’d dropped the guitars and kissed her for about three minutes, and after she got her breath back—were an announcement that there would be nothing happening before noon. I thought about teasing her over it, she sounded so fierce, but I was too tired and too dragged down. She kissed me again, fussed over me as if she’d been ten years my senior instead of eleven years my junior, fed me some light gorgeous soup and homemade bread and my nighttime meds, and even managed not to ask how I was feeling. Once I put the spoon down, she had me upstairs, into bed, and unconscious.

I’ve known Bree since she was a dewy-eyed teenager. That’s a quarter-century of knowing, and she’s always been the wrong person to argue with. Besides, she’s so often right, especially about what masquerades as my health, that I usually do what she tells me and I don’t go on about it. I don’t lie to her about what my health is doing, either. My old lady can be fierce, when the spirit moves her. I find it’s a lot easier to be up-front with her, and avoid pissing her off.

Problem is, even Bree can’t control the outside world, though it’s not for lack of trying. So when my cell phone rang at twenty of nine the next morning, she’d got it and taken it into the hallway, ready to verbally rip whoever was calling this early a new one, before I could get my eyelids unglued.

It was just as well, since ungluing the lids was likely to take a while. I don’t do mornings very well in any case; I don’t mean to go on about the MS, but it’s worst during that first hour of the day. I’ve tried telling Bree that it’s just nature’s way of reminding me to take my morning pain meds, but she doesn’t seem to find that funny.

This morning was worse than usual. Jet lag’s always a drag, but it’s a lot worse coming late to early in time zones; San Francisco to Europe, I take a nap and my body adjusts, but this direction, it’s just bloody miserable. Makes it tricky for a touring musician, you know?

I lay in bed for a few minutes, eyes closed, feeling sunlight coming in through the bay windows, and trying to pinpoint where the biggest problems of the day were likely to be. Sole of the right foot, I decided; it was tingling and wanting to cramp.

I flexed both legs, nice and slow, trying to be careful, keep the stabs at bay; that didn’t work very well, and I bit back noise. Right quad, bloody hell, shit, that was going to be a drag—the entire muscle was yelling, and those are big muscles, the quad-riceps. The hands, mercifully, seemed fine. It’s not easy being a guitar player with a disease that can take all the sensation from your fingers without prior notice. To night I was due for my weekly shot, the drug that keeps me out of a wheelchair, and that was completely cocked up already, what with my internal clock thinking it was eight hours ahead and still on London time.

It was right around then that I finally started paying attention to Bree’s voice, drifting in through the closed bedroom door. There was a familiar note in it, exasperation, but more than that—it was mixed up with something else.

"… Carla, why the hell …" Silence. I could almost imagine the staccato rapping of Carla Fanucci, Blacklight’s imported–from–New York publicity handler and American operations manager. Bree’s voice came again, this time with something new in it—anger, or disbelief, maybe. "… biographer? No, he didn’t say anything to me, not a damned word. Of course I’m sure! Carla, I don’t know what you’re talking about! You want John to do what? No way. No. I said, no. Not a chance in hell he’s going to—no, I really don’t care whether—"

Silence, this time far too long. Bree, woken too early or, worse yet, thinking I’d been woken too early, would be quiet this long only if something was wrong. And Carla, well, if Carla was demanding I do something and ringing up this early to say so, it had to be something major. She knew just how late I’d got to bed last night.

I got to the door just as Bree was opening it. The brief push-me pull-you would have been funny, if the look on her face hadn’t killed any desire to laugh. She had this bleached, lost look on her face, and I felt my own stomach knot up; Bree only ever looked that way when one particular subject was on the table. That subject’s name is Cilla. I’m married to her.

"Here." Bree handed me the phone, not meeting my eye. Her mouth was twisted down tight. Shit. She was swallowing tears; Bree doesn’t cry in front of me, never has done. This had to be something huge. What in hell could Carla have said?

"Bree? …"

"It’s for you." Bree’s voice was bleak. "Carla. Something about a biography, a personal history of the band. She says you know all about it, and that it’s important, and that it can’t wait. Here. Take it, please."

I opened my mouth to answer, to say Look, love, I haven’t got a clue what you’re on about, but I didn’t get the chance. She turned on her heel and went, heading down to the kitchen. I heard water running: coffee? Filling the cats’ dishes? Trying to smother the sound of crying? I stayed where I was. Bree wouldn’t thank me for intruding right now.

"JP? Are you there?"

"Yeah." Her voice was a bit sharper than usual. So was mine. "Yeah, I’m here. Bloody hell. I didn’t get home until four this morning, Carla—you already know that. The European tour ended yesterday, remember? What ever this is about, couldn’t it have waited a few hours?"

"Sorry." That was bollocks. She wasn’t sorry. This was her job, and she was damned good at it. "But no, this really couldn’t wait. And what do you mean, what ever this is about? It’s about this biography. I wouldn’t have dragged you out of bed this early for anything else."

"What biography?" I was dizzy, a bit off, and my jaw was tingling. That was typical for not enough sleep, but it was also an indicator that I might want to start thinking about bracing myself for an exacerbation of the MS. Not a good sign. "What are you on about?"

"Oh, damn." Her voice had changed. "I called Ian about this yesterday—you guys were onstage playing. He was supposed to tell the entire band about it. No wonder Bree’s so pissed off. I’m sorry, JP. Ian did say he’d tell everyone."

"Yeah, well, what ever it is, Ian didn’t tell me. Maybe he told everyone else, but this is the first I’ve heard about a biography. Telling the entire band, was he? Have I been given the sack from Blacklight and no one’s told me yet?"

For some reason, I was feeling pissy, right at the edge of being insulted. If that was what Stu and Cal had been looking unhappy about after the gig last night, Ian had had plenty of time to fill me in before I left, and he hadn’t done it.

Carla picked up on it, of course. She’s razor-sharp, that girl is, but she’d have had to be completely dim not to suss out that my silence was because I was narked as hell and didn’t want to snap at her.

"You must have left for Heathrow before he had it together." Her tone had changed again. "Damn. Sorry, JP. I really didn’t mean to cause a situation here. I assumed you knew about it already. To be fair to Ian, I sort of dumped it on him in mid-gig, and he had a lot of stuff going on. I’m really sorry. Apologise to Bree for me, will you?"

"Yeah, I will. Look, hang on a moment, will you, please?" I covered the phone and gave in to a jaw-cracking yawn. "Sorry, I’m dead on my feet. Okay. Since Ian didn’t tell me, maybe you’d better do it. What’s all this about, Carla?"

"There’s an unofficial biography and history of the band in the works. I got the early word yesterday." I could hear her sucking down air. "The guy writing it? Perry Dillon."

"Shit!"

Bree’s reaction—that miserable lost look of hers, her silence, her refusal to meet my eye—had suddenly become entirely appropriate to a simple phone call. There were biographers, and then there was Perry Dillon.

"Perry Dillon." I sat down hard. "The same bloke who writes all those knife-in-the-ribs exposé books? The one every-one’s afraid to turf off the premises when he slithers in, because they’re afraid of his tactics once they can’t keep an eye on him? That Perry Dillon?"

"That’s the only Perry Dillon I know about." This time, Carla actually did sound almost apologetic. "You get now why I woke you up? Sorry it upset Bree, JP. I wasn’t trying to. But we ...