Record Store Reckoning Read online

  The door closed behind her with a soft thunk as she stepped inside, prompting her to let out a little eep. She called out again but was met with only the low-level hum of the HVAC system pushing warm air through the store.

  She put her hand on the light switch. After taking a deep breath to steel herself against being grabbed by a bad guy in a mask, like from the old Scooby-Doo cartoons, she flipped the switch to the on position. The LED lights flared to life, bathing the room in a warm yellow glow.

  All was still.

  Maybe a burglar was in the back of the store. Her skin broke out in goosebumps at the frightening thought. She made her way toward the office on her tiptoes, for some reason afraid of making noise.

  The scene was all wrong. Surely, a robber would have tried to make an escape or whack her over the head by now. The only other explanation must be Eddie. He was in good health but was also on the other side of seventy. Had he suffered a heart attack or a stroke and couldn’t respond to her calls?

  “Hey, Boss. I’m back.” Darcy put her fingertips on the office door and pushed it open.

  Eddie was seated behind the desk in his leather executive chair. His eyes were closed, and his head was leaning to one side as if he’d fallen asleep. It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d crashed while hard at work.

  Darcy let out a shaky laugh. “Stupid paranoia.”

  Then a nauseating coppery stench filled her nostrils. The unmistakable smell of blood.

  “Eddie!”

  In the blink of an eye, she was by his side. A stain the color of brownish maroon covered the left half of his lime green polo shirt. His right hand lay on top of the stain in a futile attempt to stop obvious bleeding. It was covered in blood, too.

  As understanding that Eddie wasn’t asleep hit Darcy, the world swam before her eyes. To keep from passing out, she grabbed the corner of the desk with both hands and sucked in as much air as her lungs could take.

  The instant the spell passed, she dropped into the guest chair and called 9-1-1.

  “I need help. My boss is dead.”

  Chapter Two

  Too overwhelmed to do anywhere else, Darcy was staring at the acoustical ceiling tiles when a man’s voice registered in her stunned brain. It was Paul Gerard, a local cop. A real by-the-book kind of guy, but he was also a huge Green Day fan, so that made up for some of his nit-picking nature.

  “Darcy Gaughan? It’s Marysburg P.D.”

  “Back here.” She tried to swallow, alarmed by the tremble in her voice. “I’m not armed.”

  Seconds later, he appeared in the doorway, all six feet four and two hundred, fifty pounds of him. His service firearm was trained on Darcy. Once she raised her hands, he holstered his gun, evidently satisfied she didn’t pose a threat. After taking a few moments to assess the scene, he donned surgical gloves and pressed his fingers against Eddie’s neck to check for a pulse.

  “Is he…” The lump in Darcy’s throat made it impossible to say more.

  Paul’s brown eyes had softened by the time he turned toward her. “I’m sorry. He’s gone.”

  He removed his gloves and spoke into his police radio, requesting additional officers and a crime scene investigator.

  Darcy closed her eyes to keep from breaking down and weeping. Even with them squeezed tighter than a drumhead, hot tears escaped along with the brutal realization that there was nothing to be done.

  Eddie Maxwell, Darcy’s teacher, mentor, and savior, had breathed his last breath.

  Before she realized what was happening, someone had whisked Darcy out of the office and planted her on the stool behind the cash register.

  “Right. I need to get the store ready to open. Thanks.” She got to her feet, her knees wobbly from the devastating events. She needed something to do. Something she could grab and hold onto for dear life so she didn’t drown in a sea of grief.

  “Take it easy, Gaughan.” Marysburg Detective-Sergeant Kaitlin Rosengarten eased her back onto the stool. “You’ve had a shock to your system. We needed to move you so we can begin our investigation. The store’s not opening today.”

  “But—”

  “No buts.” The detective took a small notebook from her pocket. “My team has a lot of work to do here. The more you cooperate, the sooner we’ll be finished.”

  As if on cue, a police officer with bulging muscles under his uniform shirt, and short, dark hair walked past them. He had a black nylon bag with all kinds of zippers and pockets slung over his shoulder. Darcy had watched enough cop shows to recognize an evidence collection bag when she saw one.

  She rubbed her forehead. “Any chance this is a nightmare I’ll wake up from soon?”

  “Sorry.” The detective popped a mint into her mouth. “This is all too real.”

  With broad shoulders and dark brown eyes that could make a saint confess to a crime, Detective-Sergeant Rosengarten personified authority. Salt and pepper hair that was pulled back into a tight bun made her look older than she was. In fact, she was only two years older than Darcy.

  Despite the pasted-on smile, the woman was not a friend. They’d had a handful of run-ins during Darcy’s drinking days. Back then, Darcy had made Kaitlin’s life as a patrol officer difficult. Even with five years of sobriety in her pocket, she sensed Kaitlin wasn’t likely to put much stock in what she said.

  At least that gave Darcy an idea of where she stood. Even the slightest hint of indecision meant Kaitlin would try to toss her in a cell and make every attempt to forget all about her.

  “I need to call my coworkers.” Darcy pulled her phone from a back pocket. “I don’t want them hearing about this through the grapevine.”

  She’d take things one step at a time. One minute at a time. The same as during her early days of sobriety. She’d done it then. She could do it now.

  Kaitlin put her hand over the phone’s screen. “Give me their numbers. I’ll have an officer contact them.”

  Despite a desire to lash out at the cop, she shrugged and scribbled down the phone numbers for the store’s other employees. Thanks to things like call-offs due to illness and last-minute schedule changes, she’d committed the numbers to memory.

  “Charlotte Ryan, Hank Greenbaum, Izzy Preston, and Peter Douglas.” Darcy ran her fingers through her hair with one hand as she handed over the piece of paper. “I don’t know what we’re going to do without Eddie.”

  Kaitlin furrowed her eyebrows as she studied the list. “That’s it? Only four people?”

  “Two of them are full-timers. I work full-time, too. Eddie works,” her voice caught in her throat, “worked more hours than me. We have each other’s backs. We didn’t need anyone else.”

  Officer Gerard approached. That made three on the scene. With a population a tad shy of eleven thousand, Marysburg wasn’t a big city. The twenty-strong size of its police force was reflective of that. The cops on hand made up a good chunk of those who were currently on duty.

  “The primary scene’s secure, Detective-Sergeant.” He pointed toward the office, where black and yellow police tape warned all not to cross. “Other than the staff from the coroner’s office, I don’t want anyone entering the store. We’ll look for evidence out here when we’re finished with the primary scene.”

  “Good. Get someone to manage crowd control. We’ll have onlookers here in no time.”

  Kaitlin flipped open the notebook as she turned her attention back to Darcy. “Tell me your whereabouts for the last twenty-four hours.”

  Darcy bit back a snarky response. The cops should be looking for Eddie’s killer, not wasting time by peppering her with questions. Acting surly with the police wouldn’t bring back Eddie, though. She closed her eyes until the churning in her gut settled down. Then she took a deep breath.

  I can do this. For Eddie.

  “I was out of town until yesterday. My flight landed in Indianapolis a little after five. I got home around six-thirty and spent the rest of the day doing laundry and hanging out with my cat.”


  Normally, the drive home from the airport took Darcy ninety minutes. She missed Ringo so much, the journey had taken only seventy-five. Once she’d hit the highway, the speedometer’s needle never dropped below eighty. She’d said a little prayer when she pulled into her driveway, thanking the powers above that she didn’t get caught in a speed trap.

  And for making sure Rusty’s engine didn’t blow up.

  Kaitlin raised an eyebrow but refrained from commenting on Darcy’s speeding. “Can anyone verify this?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.” Darcy fished around in her purse until she found the airport parking receipt. A quick glance at it as she handed it to Kaitlin confirmed she exited the parking lot at five twenty-five.

  The detective perused the document. “And what time does the store close on Sundays?”

  “Six.” Once again, the hair on the back of Darcy’s neck rose to stand at attention.

  “Can anyone confirm when you got home?”

  Darcy’s cheeks got hot when she realized where the line of questioning was going. She hung her head in shame at the memory of a falling-down drunk Darcy taking a swing at Kaitlin during an arrest six years ago. The alcohol was in control of her then. It wasn’t now. She looked the cop in the eye and placed her palms on the cool glass countertop.

  “The neighbor girl, Halle Birch, looked after Ringo while I was gone. She stopped by around eight to return the key I gave her.”

  “We’ll talk to her to confirm that. What about today?”

  Darcy recounted her morning from the time her alarm went off until she made the 9-1-1 call. “You can call Jenna right now. She’ll vouch for me.”

  “We’ll see.” Kaitlin gave her a half-smile, as if to send the message she didn’t believe a word Darcy had been saying. “Do you know who was working with the deceased yesterday?”

  The deceased? Darcy’s blood began to boil. Eddie deserved better than to be referred to in such a cold, offhand way. He’d been a good man, and not only to Darcy.

  “The deceased has a name. Eldred Maxwell. He was known to one and all as Eddie.”

  Kaitlin raised an eyebrow. “Who was working with Mr. Maxwell yesterday?”

  “According to the schedule,” Darcy pulled a piece of paper from a corkboard mounted behind the register, “it was Charlotte and Peter. He left at four. She worked until close and signed out at six-fifteen.”

  The detective tapped her pen on the counter as fast as a speed metal drummer. The continuous tat, tat, tat grated on Darcy’s nerves. And both of them knew it. Darcy was in a better place now than in the past, though. She could wait as long as Kaitlin.

  Eventually, the detective rubbed the back of her neck. “Any idea who would want to harm Mr. Maxwell?”

  She shook her head. “Eddie spent his life helping people, making the world a better place. He was one of the good guys.”

  A flood of memories washed over her. Darcy had attended Ball State on a percussion scholarship. At the time, Eddie taught trombone. Every now and then, she’d drop by during his office hours to talk about the intersection of brass and percussion.

  During her sophomore year, she formed Pixie Dust. Some people in the School of Music, including Darcy’s percussion instructor, shook their heads at the time and energy she put into a punk band.

  Not Eddie. He’d encouraged her to follow her passion.

  Six months after she graduated with a degree in Music Performance, her band was headlining gigs at sold-out theaters across North America. In less time than it takes to potty train a toddler, Pixie Dust went from an idea to a contender for The Next Big Thing in the music biz. Darcy had been unprepared for the meteoric rise. To cope, she turned to the bottle. What started out as a single, harmless nightcap to help her fall asleep morphed into a monster that ruled her every waking moment.

  For a while, she held it together.

  Then came the injury.

  Chronic pain in her elbow made it impossible to play. The only remedy was an extended period of rest. Between the alcohol abuse and the injury, she became a liability. Her bandmates chose not to give her the rehab time and fired her.

  The constant ache from the injury left her depressed. The agony of being cut off from her creation destroyed her. Her answer was to drown herself with a bottle.

  Eddie was the one who hauled her out of the abyss.

  Darcy’s trip down memory lane was interrupted when the evidence technician approached. “I think I found the cause of death, Detective-Sergeant. Thought you might want to take a look before we proceed.”

  Kaitlin pointed a finger at Darcy. “Everyone, even so-called saints, has enemies. I’ll be back. While I’m gone, I want you to think long and hard about who may have done this. The more you cooperate, the better this will be for you.”

  A tension headache was extending its tendrils from the base of Darcy’s skull upward. She stared at the schedule as she struggled to come up with the name of someone, anyone, who had a bone to pick with Eddie.

  She was still drawing a blank when Kaitlin returned. The detective held a cell phone in front of her so Darcy could see the screen. “Do you recognize this?”

  Darcy studied the photo. A long, thin object was in the center of the shot. At one end, a handle was covered with dozens of tiny stones of various colors. The gems encircled a photograph of the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley. Clean edges tapered to a sharp point at the other end. It was an ideal tool for piercing and cutting open objects like envelopes and cardboard boxes.

  A dark red sheen covered the blade portion of the object.

  “Yeah. It’s Eddie’s letter opener. Is that what was used to kill him?”

  “That remains to be seen. It was on the floor, underneath his desk. Any idea how it got there?”

  Darcy looked at the photo again. The letter opener was one of Eddie’s prized possessions. Eddie had met Elvis once and talked about it every chance he got. He’d told Darcy the story so many times, she could recount it, word for word, without hesitation.

  The memory made her smile even as a new lump formed in her throat.

  “No. He kept it on his desk. For display only. The only time he touched it was to tell his Elvis story.”

  “Which would help explain the sharp point.” Kaitlin chewed on her lip then nodded. “I’ve got all I need from you for now. I’ll be in touch if I have more questions.”

  “I’m free to go?” Cool relief washed over Darcy. Despite the awful circumstances, it was reassuring to know she wasn’t going to be led away in handcuffs.

  “Yes.” The detective gestured toward an officer standing by the store’s entrance. “It looks like a case of death by suicide. That’s a call for the coroner to make, though.”

  After arranging to be notified when the police had finished their crime scene work, Darcy left the building on wobbly legs. Twice, she had to put her hand against the wall to stay upright. Once she was safely seat belted inside Rusty, her body began shaking like she was going through a severe case of withdrawal symptoms.

  Suicide? The Eddie Maxwell that Darcy knew was the last person to commit suicide. He’d been in love with the record store, with the community, with life. Detective-Sergeant Rosengarten was wrong. This wasn’t suicide.

  It was murder.

  To add insult to injury, Eddie’s car sat without a sound to her left, like a loyal pet waiting for its master to come home. A wish that would never come to pass. He’d never drive it through town with the windows down and the stereo cranked up, jamming to the latest from Victor Wooten or another jazz artist. He’d never spend an afternoon off giving it his own bumper-to-bumper detail job.

  Sometimes, life was so unfair.

  Emotionally unable to go back inside, Darcy called the number on Kaitlin’s business card. She kept the call short.

  “Hey, just wanted to let you know that Eddie’s car is parked behind the building.”

  “Thanks for the information. If you think of anything else, you know how to reach me.” While Kai
tlin’s approach in the store had been gruff and borderline confrontational, her tone on the phone had been cordial, almost friendly even. The thank you had been totally unexpected, too.

  Maybe Darcy’s choice to volunteer information had made a good impression on the police officer. I hope so. I could use all the good karma I can get.

  As Rusty’s engine coughed to life, a new thought hit Darcy with enough force to take her breath away.

  Regardless of the circumstances, her boss was dead. That meant her job was in limbo. What was she going to do now?

  Chapter Three

  Darcy had learned a lot during her five years of sobriety. One of the most important was that isolating herself in times of turmoil was a recipe for disaster. In the days when she was drinking, she usually responded to bad news by retreating somewhere behind closed doors with a bottle of some variety of grain alcohol her only companion.

  Eddie’s death wasn’t bad news. It was devastating news of tsunami proportions. The only thing worse for Darcy would be losing her parents or sister. It would be so easy to drive home and curl up in the recliner with Ringo with a blanket over her head. The isolation would weigh her down, weaken her. She’d be making herself vulnerable to a lot of poor decision making.

  No. Going home wasn’t the answer.

  She needed to be around people, especially her coworkers. They deserved to get the news from her, not some rando cop. She grabbed her phone off the passenger seat and dialed a number.

  “Hey, Charlotte,” Darcy said. “Look, something happened at the store. It’s about Eddie. Can you meet me at the park shelter in fifteen minutes?”

  A quarter of an hour later, Darcy was seated at a wooden picnic table, drumming a tune with two sticks she’d found on her walk from the parking lot. She stopped when the crackle of dead leaves signaled someone’s approach.

  “I got here as quick as I could,” Charlotte said as she took a seat across from Darcy. Her cobalt blue hair was much shorter than the last time Darcy had seen her. The bob style flattered her high cheekbones and accentuated her greenish eyes.