Record Store Reckoning Read online

  “Love the cut. Don’t think I’ve seen you with hair above the neckline before.” Darcy smiled. She liked her friend’s new look. Even with a broken heart, it was crucial to find the moments of joy in life and celebrate them.

  “I finally gave Joey the boot for good last week, so I decided it was time for something different.” Charlotte had been in an on-again, off-again relationship with Joey Fulton, the manager at the local credit union, for ages. Joey wasn’t a bad guy but had gotten into fitness big time in the last year. Ever since, he’d badgered Charlotte about how he thought her hips were a little too wide or her arms were a little too flabby.

  With a hug or encouraging word always at the ready, Charlotte was one of the kindest souls in Marysburg. The twenty-eight-year-old was patient and would tolerate a lot of things. Emotional abuse wasn’t one of them. The woman was kind, but she wasn’t weak. She could do better than her ex.

  She also had an affinity for jazz.

  She’d played trombone during her middle and high school years. That was when her love affair with classic jazz began. She performed in a couple of ensembles while in college, the music providing an ideal creative outlet to her accounting studies. These days, she was part of a quintet that performed on the weekends at the local brewpub.

  Charlotte had been one of the record store’s best customers and often hung out with Eddie, talking about jazz legends like Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald. When the chance to work with him came up, she dropped her well-paying accounting gig like a singer dropping the mic at the end of a show-stopping song. In the four years she’d been working with Eddie and Darcy, she’d never once mentioned having even a second of regret.

  “That’s awesome.” Darcy gave Charlotte’s hand a squeeze. “You deserve someone who cares about you for who you are.”

  While she’d made great progress on her own state of well-being in the last five years, Darcy wasn’t ready for a serious relationship. She still had too much work to do on herself. Maybe someday, though.

  “Someone like me, maybe.” A gray-haired, heavy-set gentleman took a seat next to Darcy.

  “If you weren’t forty years my senior, I’d marry you tomorrow, Hank.” Charlotte blew him a kiss. “Now, what’s going on, Darcy. It’s bad news, right? Especially since I was supposed to be at work at eleven.”

  Darcy took her AA token out of her pocket and squeezed it. There had been a lot of tough moments since she’d gotten sober. The bead of sweat that broke out on her brow forecasted that this one was going to be in the top five of tough moments.

  “When I got to work today, I found Eddie in his office. He was dead.”

  The color drained from Charlotte’s face. At the same moment, Hank let out a breathless, “What?”

  “The police found his Elvis letter opener under the desk. It was covered in blood. Looks like he was stabbed in the belly.” Darcy squeezed her eyes shut to keep the tears at bay.

  Hank took Darcy’s hand as he reached across the wooden table for Charlotte’s. “How awful. Do they know what happened?”

  “Not yet. The police said it looks like suicide. The front door was unlocked when I got there, which was weird. The whole set up doesn’t make sense.”

  Darcy focused on the coin in her palm. If she looked at her coworkers, she’d lose the tenuous grip on the control she still had. The store needed a leader. She’d been second in command. With Eddie gone, that meant she needed to step up.

  Hank let out a long, ragged breath. “I can’t believe it. He was fine Saturday when I left. Said he had dinner plans with some school of music colleagues.”

  “He was in a great mood yesterday. We spent an hour working on the schedule for bands performing on Record Store Day.” Charlotte hugged herself. “Do you know if the cops are going to notify his family?”

  Eddie had an ex-wife and two stepsons, one of whom, Rafe, lived with him. Darcy wasn’t a fan of Rafe. It wasn’t that he was a horrible person or a criminal. She didn’t like the fact he was slacker who had turned sponging off his stepdad a career.

  Rafe worked fifteen hours a week at the local library. He claimed that a back injury from playing football in high school kept him from working full-time. Darcy didn’t buy it. One time, she ran an Internet search for his alleged exploits on the gridiron. The search came up empty.

  Despite his assertions, she thought he was lazy. End of story.

  “My old buddy Detective Rosengarten is on the case, she said she’d notify next of kin. She’s also supposed to be letting you both know so don’t freak out if she calls. I’ll get ahold of the kids as soon as school’s out.” Darcy liked to joke with Izzy and Peter, the store’s high-school-aged employees, by calling them her kids since having children of her own wasn’t in her plans.

  “What do we do now?” Charlotte began chewing on her lower lip.

  Darcy shrugged. She wanted to be honest, but she also didn’t want Charlotte to worry.

  Hank was retired from a job in the retail world. He worked at the record store because enjoyed it. Charlotte wasn’t in such a comfortable spot. Her income and health insurance came from working at the store. She needed the job. Same as Darcy.

  “Kaitlin promised to let me know as soon as they were finished at the store. I want to reopen tomorrow if you guys are good with that.”

  Hank and Charlotte nodded in unison. As they did, relief coursed through Darcy, just like the warm waters at the vacation resort pool had flowed over and around her.

  The team would stick together and keep the store going. Darcy knew, like she knew every drum fill her hero Gina Schock ever played, that Eddie would be pleased.

  The trio chatted for a while. At Hank and Charlotte’s request, Darcy recapped her vacation. Then the conversation turned to Eddie, as each of them shared funny stories about their beloved boss.

  By the time the meeting broke up, Darcy’s heart was lighter, but she still wasn’t ready to be alone. With no word yet from the police, she decided some chips-and-salsa therapy would see her through until she had to call the kids.

  * * *

  Like many of the businesses in Marysburg, Selena’s South of the Border Grill catered to the townsfolk during the week and the Ball State crowd at night and on the weekends. The owner, Nathan Echols, was a Marysburg native and BSU grad. Between his business acumen and his loyalty to the community, he’d kept Selena’s running strong for over twenty years.

  He’d also helped the fledgling Pixie Dust by hiring them to perform at the restaurant on Cinco de Mayo. Darcy had never forgotten that support and tried to repay it by visiting Selena’s as much as possible.

  The restaurant occupied the first floor of a brick-and-mortar building at the corner of Maple Avenue and Trout Street, in the heart of the Marysburg Business District. It was flanked on one side by a deli and on the other by The Big Bean, an independent coffee shop. A web services firm made its home on the building’s second floor.

  A maintenance man was power washing the restaurant’s canary yellow awnings as Darcy approached. The bright color always lifted her spirits, calling to mind the long, sunny days and warm, firefly-filled nights of summer, her favorite time of year.

  Spring wasn’t a bad second choice, though. Today’s forecast had called for a mix of sun and clouds, with a high in the mid-sixties. Not bad for the first week of April in Indiana. It was the kind of day that signaled winter was finally over and wasn’t coming back for a long while.

  Darcy liked Spring for another, deeply personal, reason. She enjoyed watching the grass turn green and the flowers bloom. Nature’s annual rebirth reminded her of her own life. How, with things like hope and faith, a new start was never out of reach.

  “Nachos and a soda. Nothing more.” She took a deep breath as she entered the restaurant. The comforting aroma of seasoned beef and chicken welcomed her like an old friend. Any thoughts of booze were shoved aside by her growling stomach.

  Evidently, trying to cope with the murder of her mentor and friend had created qu
ite the appetite.

  She rarely ate out by herself. It could get expensive, and Darcy had found she enjoyed the craft of cooking. Ringo rarely objected to beef and chicken scraps, so that was an added bonus. When she went out, Selena’s was a safe place. The bartender, Thea Lewis, was one of Darcy’s friends. They first met the night Pixie Dust performed at the restaurant and had since bonded over their love of Broadway musicals.

  Once inside, Selena’s customers could turn left for the dining room or right for the bar. Darcy chose the bar because that was where Thea would be.

  “What’s a girl gotta do to get a drink around here?” Darcy perched herself on her favorite stool, the one at the end of the bar farthest from the beer taps.

  “Holy smokes, DG. I heard about Eddie. Is it true?” Thea filled a pint glass with ginger ale and garnished it with a lime wedge. At six feet tall and over two hundred pounds, the bartender cut an imposing figure. The platinum blonde buzz cut and tattoo sleeves covering both arms completed the don’t-mess-with-me vibe. And hid the bruises that came from playing in a women’s rugby league.

  She was kind of a modern version of the fictional warrior Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones. That was a show that Darcy could not get enough of.

  While the woman behind the bar might have looked intimidating, in fact, Thea was one of the friendliest people Darcy knew. She smiled easily, laughed out loud at the drop of a hat, and preferred hugs to handshakes.

  “News travels fast.” Darcy brushed a few strands of hair away from her eyes and stabbed a straw into her drink. “Yeah, afraid so.”

  It was bad enough Darcy had to cope with the death of her friend. It was borderline unbearable she seemed designated to be the official bearer of bad news.

  It was enough to make a girl want a drink.

  Almost.

  “I, uh,” Darcy placed her sobriety token on the bar in front of her. “I don’t want to be alone right now.”

  “You came to the right place, buddy. Supreme nachos it is, then.” Thea pushed a few icons on a computer screen behind the bar, filled a coffee mug emblazoned with Selena’s smiling sun logo, then took a seat directly across from Darcy. The bartender’s swift, graceful movements conjured images of Eddie waltzing through the aisles of the record store as a Lena Horne record played.

  “Thanks.” Darcy took a long sip of her ginger ale. The cold liquid soothed her throat, but not her heart. “I can’t believe he’s gone. I keep hoping I’m going to wake up and all this’ll be one big, horrible nightmare.”

  While she tossed the sobriety token between her hands, Darcy told Thea everything she could remember from the moment she arrived at the store. It hurt her soul that there was so little to say.

  “I was originally scheduled to work yesterday. Eddie agreed to cover my shift so I could have an extra day of vacation. I can’t help feeling if I would have been there instead of him, he’d still be alive end everything would be okay.”

  A server brought the conversation to a halt by putting the nachos and two plates on the bar. “Nathan says these are on the house. And he’s sorry for your loss. He’s tied up on a call or he’d have delivered the message himself.”

  Darcy’s eyes welled with tears. “Tell him I understand, and I really appreciate it.”

  After he walked away, Thea pointed a crooked finger at Darcy. “You need to put any feeling of guilt out of your head right now. You don’t think Eddie really killed himself, do you?”

  “Nope. Absolutely not. The odds of him doing that are about the same as me going out on tour again.” Darcy let out a long sigh as she reached for a sour cream-covered tortilla chip. “I feel so helpless right now. I don’t know what to do.”

  “You did the right thing by coming here.” Thea tapped the sobriety token with a closely trimmed fingernail. “For now, keep it simple. Take things one hour, one day, at a time.”

  When Darcy nodded, Thea fetched a dog-eared spiral-bound notebook from under the bar. They assembled a to-do list for Darcy while they munched on the nachos. By the time Darcy scooped the last blob of salsa onto a chip, the list of tasks filled up most of a page.

  “This is good. I haven’t made one of these since my early days of sobriety.” Darcy ran her index finger down the list. There were twenty-three items in all, ranked from highest priority to lowest.

  “This isn’t too overwhelming, is it? I know you don’t want to be sitting around at home, but you sure you can handle all this?” Worry lines crossed Thea’s forehead.

  It was a welcome reminder to Darcy that she wasn’t alone in this tough time. Even though her family was hours away, she had friends only minutes away.

  “I can do this. It’ll help keep me on task. I can use it to focus on one thing at a time.” Darcy tapped the top item on the list. “Like giving the kids the bad news.”

  * * *

  A few hours later, Darcy, Izzy, and Peter were sitting at a corner table of The Big Bean. The devastating news had left the high schoolers in stunned silence. After giving them a few minutes to absorb the information, Darcy cleared her throat.

  “I’ll try and answer any questions you have.” She took a sip of her green tea. The subtle floral aroma of the drink calmed her. Given that she’d just had to inform two bright young people their boss was dead, she needed as much help keeping calm as possible.

  “Do you know about funeral arrangements? I want to be there.” Izzy closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, they were cloudy with tears instead of the usual sparkling blue. She played saxophone in Marysburg High School’s marching, jazz, and concert bands. She and Eddie had bonded over contemporary jazz artists like the singer and pianist Diana Krall and vibraphonist Sasha Berliner. As the child of a single mother, she needed the job to help pay for her music expenses.

  “I’m sure Eddie’s stepson will be handling it. I’ll text you as soon as I know something.”

  “What about the store? I’m supposed to work tomorrow.” Peter picked at his dreadlocks. It was something he did when he was nervous. Like Izzy, he was a musician and played bass in the school’s jazz and basketball pep bands. His dream was to attend the prestigious Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. Eddie had been helping him with that. The man’s death was truly a shocking loss for both teens.

  “Assuming the police finish their work today, we’ll be back in business tomorrow. I’ll do everything I can to make sure the store stays open. I think that’s what Eddie would want.”

  Izzy and Peter nodded in unison.

  “Yeah, that’s what he’d want.” Izzy gave Darcy a hug. “For Eddie.”

  “For Eddie.” Darcy smiled and pulled Peter close so they could share a group hug.

  After the kids were gone, Darcy asked for another green tea. She had a lot of questions to mull over. One question rose above all others.

  The store had always been Eddie’s dream. She wanted to keep that dream alive. How on Earth was she supposed to pull that off?

  Chapter Four

  Darcy awoke with a start, drenched in sweat, with a pounding like a bass drum behind her eyes. It was still dark outside, but she wasn’t getting back to sleep any time soon. Horrific visions of ten-foot-tall blood-soaked letter openers chasing her through a maze of twenty-foot-high Alice Cooper album covers made staying awake way better than going back to sleep.

  Ringo was curled into a ball at the foot of the bed, snoring away. Darcy breathed a sigh of relief that her nightmare hadn’t awakened her fuzzy buddy. She’d lost track of the times she’d woken up, her throat as rough as sandpaper from screaming while still asleep, to find Ringo trying to help her escape from whatever monsters were pursuing her by pawing at her arm.

  After wiping a line of perspiration from her brow, she slipped from under the quilt her mom had made for her and exited the bedroom. Eventually, Ringo would hear her messing about in the kitchen and join her for breakfast. That was a way better reason for the little guy to get up.

  A bit later, Darcy stood on the ste
p outside her backdoor, scrolling through her phone while Ringo chased a squirrel. There were reports from Muncie to Fort Wayne, even Indianapolis, about Eddie’s death. They all said the same thing.

  The man died of a single self-inflicted stab wound.

  “They’re all wrong, buddy.” Darcy put her phone in the pocket of her hoodie. A breeze out of the north made her shiver. It was a reminder that April mornings in Central Indiana were often pretty darn chilly.

  Ringo, who was now sniffing the bushes that lined the northern edge of Darcy’s property, stopped his investigations and ambled over to her. He sat, looked up at her with his big copper eyes, and gave her a mrrow.

  “Exactly.” She crouched down and scratched under the cat’s chin, his favorite spot. Actually, one of many favorite spots. Ringo wasn’t choosy. He relished every bit of attention Darcy gave him.

  “There’s no way Eddie killed himself. And even if he did, which I’m not saying is the case, stabbing himself would be a horrible way to go. It’d be worse than listening to a fifteen-minute prog-rock keyboard solo. There have to be a million ways to do it that wouldn’t be so godawful.”

  Ringo bonked his head against her shin, then went and sat by the back door. Evidently, the feline thought there was nothing more about the topic to discuss.

  If only that were the case.

  Darcy was on her third cup of English Breakfast tea when the sun broke over the horizon, bathing her kitchen in a cheerful, yellow glow. Her mouth curled up on one end into a half-smile. As her therapist liked to say, it was a new day, with endless possibilities and opportunities.

  The was in mid-sip when the rhythm of a Parliament/Funkadelic tune emanated from her phone to fill the room.

  “Detective, what can I do for you?” Darcy kept her tone cheerful in the hope it would keep the conversation from devolving into a series of back-and-forth accusations.

  “It’s Detective-Sergeant. I wanted to let you know the cleanup crew is finished. You can open for business as usual. They’ll send you a bill. Check with your insurance company to see if you have coverage.”