The Sam Prichard Series - Books 9-12 (Sam Prichard Boxed Set 3) Read online

  The crowd got so loud that the entire building seemed to vibrate, and Bittner held up his hands to ask them to calm down. When the sound began to die away, he smiled and said, “Y'all want to hear one more song before they leave the stage?”

  The response was overwhelming, and Bittner turned to Sam. “Buddy, I think you better sing another one,” he said, still leaning into the microphone so that the crowd could hear him. “These folks just might get upset if you don't, and then they might not like me at all!” He looked back at the crowd. “Come on, y'all, tell 'em you want another song!”

  There was no denying that he was right, not with the crowd screaming the way they were, so Bittner reached out and took hold of Sam's arm, pulling him back up to the microphone. He patted Sam on the shoulder, then stepped aside and began applauding. Sam looked around behind himself and saw that the band were all back in position, so he nodded. He called out, “Everything I Need”, but Bittner held up a hand.

  He leaned close to the microphone, looking at Sam. “I heard this one on the radio today, and sent somebody out to get me a copy. You guys mind if I join in?”

  The crowd went crazy again, and Bittner waved a hand to someone offstage. A young man came running to him, carrying his own guitar, and he threw the strap over his neck and stepped up beside Sam.

  It hadn’t been rehearsed, but it couldn't have gone better. Sam sang through the first verse and Bittner joined in on the chorus, but when the second verse began, Sam stepped back. Bittner took the cue, and obviously he really did know the song, because he took the microphone and sang the second verse perfectly. Sam joined in on the chorus, and then the two of them did the reprise together.

  Sam didn't know if the crowd could actually hear the song or not, because they never stopped roaring the whole time, but they seemed to love the impromptu duet. As the final strains died away, Bittner leaned over and said, “I was planning to catch you backstage, because I'd love to record that song. We'll talk later. Don't go away after the show, okay?”

  All Sam could do was nod, and then he and the band headed for the wings. Bittner's own band came running out onto the stage, and suddenly they heard the opening licks of his one of his own hits, “A Place In Your Heart”.

  Bittner's show, of course, was a big hit. Sam and Indie got to watch it from the wings, along with the rest of the band, and they were having a fantastic time. During Bittner's break, he found Sam and the others, and they put together a quick handshake deal for him to record “Everything I Need”.

  “Okay, you let me join in on your song,” he said, just before his break was over. “How about you join in with me on my closer? I'm ending the show with my new release, do you know it?”

  Sam's eyes went wide. Bittner's latest song was “The Road I Didn't Follow”, Sam's and Indie's new favorite of all his music. “Yes, sir, I sure do,” Sam said.

  “Good deal,” Bittner said. “When I start talking about doing our last song, you just come on out, and I'll introduce you again. Sam Prichard, right?”

  Sam nodded, and Bittner hurried back out to the stage. Indie was jumping up and down with excitement, hugging Sam and kissing him, while the band gathered around with their own exclamations of delight and support.

  When Bittner said it was time for his final song, Sam did as he was told and walked out onto the stage. The country star glanced over at him, and said, “Hey, this feller was good enough to let me sing along with him a while ago, so I thought it might be nice if he came out and joined in with me, y'all okay with that?”

  Sam felt a rush of pride as the crowd roared their approval. Bittner leaned back from the mic and said, “Okay, just like yours, I'll do the first verse, you do the second verse and we'll duet on the last verse and the choruses, okay?”

  Sam nodded, and from the standing ovation they got when it was over, he figured he must not have messed it up too badly.

  When it was all finished, Bittner invited Sam and the band to join him for a very late dinner, “or a very early breakfast, however you want to look at it,” and they happily agreed. There was a restaurant not far away, and they ended up staying until almost four in the morning, just talking and enjoying the company. Bittner set all of their heads to spinning when he said he was taking copies of their latest CD back to his label, in the hope that Step Back Once might get a shot at the big time.

  Sam and Indie finally got home at just before five, and fell into bed. Sam wrapped his arm around his wife and held her close, and the two of them were sleeping peacefully within minutes.

  Sam was dreaming, and in the dream he was sitting in his living room with Indie by his side. Suddenly, there was pounding on the door, and he leaped to his feet, a gun magically appearing in his hand. As he went toward the door, it suddenly burst open and Grayson Chandler was standing there. Chandler had been the most evil man Sam had ever known, literally trying to bring about the end of the world, and Sam honestly believed that it was only a miracle that he had been stopped. The sight of him coming through Sam's own front door was such a shock that it snapped him awake. He woke to find himself sitting up in his bed, gasping for breath, trying to get the pounding of the door out of his head.

  It wouldn't stop, and suddenly Sam realized that it wasn't part of the dream. Someone was actually pounding on his front door, and he could hear his name being called. Indie had also awakened, and was just sitting up beside him as he slid out of bed and pulled his pants on again.

  “Sam?” Indie asked, but he shrugged as he walked out of the bedroom. Early in the morning like this, his bad hip always gave him problems, so he was limping.

  As he got to the living room, it dawned on him that the voice calling his name was coming from Chris, so he opened the door. Chris pushed past him into the living room and dropped onto Sam's couch.

  “Good morning,” Sam said ironically, but Chris was rocking back and forth and shaking his head.

  “Sam, I need your help,” Chris said. “It's Candy, she just called me.”

  Sam shook his head to try to clear it. “Candy? What's the matter, Chris, what's going on?”

  “Candy just called me, she's been arrested for murder! She got up early this morning and went to see her son, Charlie, and I guess she and her ex got into an argument. She says she got pissed off and walked out, but she went back a little while later to try to talk to him again, and the cops were there. Carlos, that's her ex, he's dead—and I guess little Charlie said she's the one that killed him! They arrested her, they say she's going to be charged with murder!”

  Indie had come into the room, dressed in the same clothes she had worn the night before. Sam glanced at her, and her eyes were wide. He turned back to Chris.

  “Okay, you said she called you. What did she tell you? Did she do it?”

  Chris was shaking his head, still rocking back and forth. “No! No, she said he was fine when she left, and she was gone about forty-five minutes. She said she went and got some coffee, and was trying to just calm herself down, then was going back to try to talk to him again. All she wanted was to take Charlie on a trip with us, we're going out to see her folks in California in two weeks. She wanted to take Charlie along to see his grandparents, but Carlos has custody and he just never lets her take him anywhere. Anyway, she said when she got back, there were cops all over the place and they said Carlos had been stabbed with a butcher knife, like ten times or something like that, and they said Charlie told them that she did it. She swears up and down she didn't do any such thing, and I don't know what to think, Sam. Dude, we need your help.”

  Indie caught Sam's eye. “I'm gonna make coffee,” she said, and he nodded at her.

  “Okay, give me a minute to think,” Sam said. “I'm not even awake yet, just give me a minute.” He walked down the hall to the bedroom, and came back a moment later with his cell phone in his hand, then sat down in his recliner. “Do you have any idea who's handling the case?”

  Chris shook his head. “I don't know her name, Candy said it's some lady
detective.”

  Sam nodded. “That'd be Karen Parks,” he said. He dialed a number from memory and asked for Detective Parks. A moment later, she came on the line.

  “I had a feeling I'd be hearing from you,” she said as she picked up the phone. “I've got your bass player in my jail, on murder one.”

  “Yeah, so I heard,” Sam said. “Trouble is, I'm hearing that she says she didn't do it.”

  “And your point is? Sam, they always say they didn't do it. In this case, though, she might as well just give it up, because her own kid says she did.”

  “He saw his mother stab his father? Actually saw it?” Sam asked.

  “Heard it,” Karen said. “When she showed up this morning, Daddy sent the kid to his room, but he could hear them fighting. The kid said it got quiet for a few minutes, but then they were fighting again and he heard his daddy screaming. Everything got quiet, so he came out and found his father lying on the kitchen floor in a big pool of blood. There was a butcher knife sticking out of him, a big one, and he'd been stabbed repeatedly. Mama was gone, so the kid called 911, and the mother showed up again about ten minutes after the squads got there. I got called in, and went down to do the preliminary. It's a real mess, Sam, and that poor kid is going to need therapy for years.”

  “What about physical evidence?” Sam asked. “You got anything tangible to tie her to this killing?”

  “CSI is working on it now,” Karen said. “There are some bloodied fingerprints on the knife, but they were too blurred for me to tell if they might be hers or not. Looked about the right size, though. Then there's the fact that there's skin under the vic's fingernails, and she's got three long scratches on her arm that match. She says it happened when he grabbed hold of her as she was leaving, but it looks to me like the kind of thing that happens when you're fighting for your life.” He heard her sigh. “Sam, I think she did it, but I know you. You've always been loyal to your friends, so you're going to do everything you can to prove she didn't, and we both know it. I'll break the rules for you and let you look through the file, but it'll be sometime tomorrow before I get the CSI report. How about you come by after lunch tomorrow?”

  Sam nodded into the phone. “Yeah, thanks,” he said. “I'll be there around one.”

  He hung up the phone and turned to Chris. “That's Karen Parks, in homicide. We're old friends, and she's willing to let me look through the file they're building on Candy, but it'll be tomorrow afternoon. I'll go down and see Candy at the jail in the morning, but there really just isn't a whole lot I can hope to do, today.” He ran a hand over his face. “Chris, has there been a lot of bad blood between Candy and her ex? Is it possible he might have driven her to the point she would actually do this?”

  Chris made a face and rolled his eyes. “Geez, Sam, no way,” he said. “Candy doesn't have any violence in her. She and I get into screaming matches all the time, and she's never even slapped me, not even when I deserved it. There's no way in the world I could believe she would kill somebody, no matter how mad she was.”

  Sam looked him in the eye for a moment. “Karen says Candy's little boy says he heard it, that he heard them fighting when his father was killed. How are things between her and the kid? Do they get along okay?”

  Chris shrugged, his eyes wide. “Yeah, they get along great! She gets him every other weekend, and he comes over to our place, you know that. He's a great kid, I think the world of him. I can't understand why he would say something like this, I really can't.”

  Sam sat there for a few moments longer, then took Chris's arm and led him into the kitchen. They sat down at the table while the coffee finished brewing, and Indie asked if they wanted some breakfast. Chris shook his head, but Sam smiled.

  “Yeah, Babe, I think that would be good. Something light, maybe.”

  Indie nodded, and a moment later she was breaking eggs into a bowl and adding shredded cheese. Sam got up and got coffee for himself and Chris, then poured a cup for Indie, added sugar and set it on the counter beside where she was cooking. He sat down beside Chris again and looked at his friend.

  “Chris, I know Karen pretty well. She wouldn't sound so confident if she wasn't pretty certain of her case, but that doesn't mean she couldn't be wrong. I'm going to do everything I can. If Candy is innocent, I'll find proof of it, but you need to understand that if she's not, there's nothing I can do.”

  Chris stared into his coffee cup for a moment, then turned around and looked at Sam. “You've got to believe me,” he said. “I've been with Candy for over a year now, I know her. She doesn't have a mean streak in her anywhere, I swear she doesn't. There's no way she would ever seriously hurt anyone. Remember, I told you, she said she walked away and left the house? That's exactly what she does when she gets angry, she turns around and walks away. It drove me nuts, the first few times she did it to me, but then I figured out that if I let her go and get over it, the problem didn't last. We got over it and moved on.”

  Sam smiled at him. “Then all I gotta do is figure out who really killed the guy,” he said.

  3

  As Sam had said, there was essentially nothing that could be done on a Sunday, so he went to the jail to visit Candy the next morning. Visiting hours started at 10 AM, and because of his license as a private investigator, Sam was allowed to speak with her in an interview room, rather than from behind a sheet of glass. He put his gun into a locker and the jailer buzzed him in.

  “Thanks for coming, Sam,” Candy said as she was escorted into the interview room. It was obvious that she'd been crying, and Sam gave her a hug before they sat down across from each other at the table.

  “Candy, this is a mess,” Sam said. “I talked to the homicide detective on the case yesterday, and she seems pretty sure she's got a case. According to her, your own son says you did it. What can you tell me that might help me prove your innocence?”

  “Sam, I don't know what to say. I went to see Carlos yesterday morning, to try to talk him into letting me and Chris take Charlie on vacation, and he just went ballistic on me. He started screaming about me being unreliable, insisting I was using drugs. Sam, I haven't used any kind of drugs in years, I don't even like to take aspirin. Carlos has always been like this, he's always trying to keep Charlie away from me, but my folks haven't seen Charlie in over five years, now. All I wanted to do was take him on vacation to visit my family.”

  “Yeah, Chris told me that. So, you and Carlos got into a fight about it? Give me the details.”

  “It was pretty stupid,” Candy said. “I got there, and Carlos opened the door and let me come inside, even gave me a cup of coffee. He told Charlie to go to his room so we could talk, and we sat down at the table. He already knew what I wanted, we talked about it before, so I told him I had just come by to see if he was willing to let Charlie go. He started in talking about me not having a reliable job because I'm in the band, and how he doesn't like Chris. I told him Chris is a good guy, and I make more money in the band than he does on his job, so I think my job is pretty reliable, right? Anyway, he told me there was no way in hell he was going to let me take Charlie out of the state, not even for a day, and that's when we started yelling at each other. I told him he was a selfish jackass who just wanted to keep Charlie and me both under his thumb, and he called me a few names that were a lot nastier than that. I told him to go screw himself and got up to leave, and he grabbed hold of my arm and asked me where I thought I was going. I told him I needed to go calm down before I could try to talk any sense through his thick head, and I yanked my arm away and stormed out the door. I drove over to my favorite coffee shop, Sammy's over on Québec, and got me a cup, then just sat in my car with it for a couple of minutes. When I finally felt like my temper was under control, I went back, and that's when I saw police cars all over the place. I jumped out and started yelling about what was going on, because I thought maybe Charlie got hurt or something, but the cops wouldn't let me go inside. They told me Carlos had been stabbed, and they were waiting for the
coroner because he was dead.”

  “Was the detective there yet?” Sam asked.

  Candy shook her head. “No, she got there about five minutes later. She went inside for a few minutes, then came out and talked to Charlie. They had him in one of the cars, but they wouldn't let me talk to him. After she talked to Charlie, she came over to me and asked me for my side of the story. I asked her what she meant, and that's when she told me that Charlie said I killed his father. Sam, I was in shock. I couldn't believe Charlie would say something like that because it wasn't true. I asked them to let me talk to Charlie, but they wouldn't. I could see him, sitting in the back of a squad car, and he kept looking at me like he wanted to talk to me, but they wouldn't let me go to him.” Candy wiped at her eyes. “Sam, he was crying, it was breaking my heart, but they wouldn't let me go near him.”

  Sam nodded sympathetically. “Go on,” he said.

  She wiped at her eyes again. “Anyway, I told that detective exactly what I just told you, and she asked me if I could prove that I was at the coffee shop. I told her that I got a cup at the drive-through window, so the girl that was there would probably remember me—this hair, you know? She walked away and made some phone calls, but then she came back about five minutes later and told me I was under arrest for murder. I guess the barista said she didn't remember seeing me, and I paid in cash so I hadn't even gotten a receipt. At least that would have shown what time I bought the coffee, you know?”

  Sam sat there and looked at her for a moment, then said, “Candy, Charlie apparently said that he heard you and his dad fighting, but that it got quiet for a few minutes and then started up again. He said he heard his dad screaming, and then a little bit later he came out of his room and found his father dead in the floor. Was there anyone else at the house? Anyone else who might have stabbed Carlos?”

  Candy shook her head again. “Not when I was there, or at least, not that I saw. The only thing I can figure is that somebody might have been hiding in the house, or else someone came in right after I left.”