“You heard the man,” I said. “Get out of this office and don’t come back.”
He retreated, perhaps deciding at last that we really meant it. When we were alone, Mike said, “We’ve got to get into that office, Al.”
“With crime-scene tape on the door?”
“Stacy must have a key. She was there alone most of the time.”
“I don’t know if we should involve her,” I said, but he was already dialing the number she’d left us. He told her to come by after six, when the other tenants would have closed their offices for the day.
She appeared right on schedule, as chipper as ever. “Hi, guys. What are we going to do tonight?”
“Break into your office. Did you bring the key?”
“Hey, are you serious?”
“I’m afraid he is,” I told her. “Let’s get it over with.”
I sliced carefully through the crime-scene tape so we could stick it back together and with luck avoid discovery. Then Stacy unlocked the office door and we slipped inside. “If anyone’s watching, the light will show from outside,” she warned.
“We’ll have to chance it,” Mike decided. “Shining a flashlight around would be even more suspicious.”
She directed us to one of the filing cabinets along the wall. Mike was interested in finding the sound-activated tape recorder that was eavesdropping on our office, but I was more interested in the thick files on Lily Lake and several others. “There’s lots in here,” I said, “but nothing startling.” Lake had come out of nowhere two years earlier, at age seventeen, to win first prize in one of those reality talent shows on TV. Her parents were dead and she was pretty much on her own. She hailed from Cedar Rapids and Santillo’s file even included a copy of her birth certificate under her real name of Lily Lafferty. I had to admit Lily Lake looked better on the marquees. Looking further, I found a photo of Lake with Sly Morgan, the reputed boyfriend. He was a good decade older than she was, with bare arms that showed off a couple of his spectacular tattoos.
“Here are two more tickets for tonight’s show,” Stacy said, pulling them out of the file folder. “He must have been planning to attend.”
“Maybe he was going to take you,” I suggested. “I think at this point we should all go to that concert.”
The Melrose Concert Center was located across from the County Court Building in a part of downtown that hummed with activity during the day but usually dozed off after six o’clock. It was only two blocks from our office so we walked over, wearing raincoats against the misty drizzle that filled the night sky. This way we avoided the parking problem that always occurred when shows with the reigning pop stars came to town. I sent Stacy and Mike in to claim the seats from Santillo’s file drawer while I kept Mike’s ticket and headed backstage. A burly security guard didn’t let me get far. I showed my ID and asked to see Lily’s business manager.
About ten minutes before the start of the concert he appeared, a short bald man named Art Brunner. “The guard said a detective needed to see me. What about?”
“I’m private,” I told him, showing my ID again. “It’s about the killing of a man named Santillo last night.”
“I don’t know a thing about it.”
“He was gathering information on Lily Lake.”
“So are half the people in the country. She’s already a big star and she’s going to be huge.” His smile of pleasure revealed a row of yellow, crooked teeth. I hoped he’d make enough off Lily’s concerts to get them fixed.
“Could I speak with her?”
“Not a chance before the concert. She rests up and doesn’t see anyone before.”
“How about after?”
“I’ll ask her. She might give you five minutes. She’s a star, you know?”
“Is Sly Morgan in with her now?”
His face hardened. “What’re you, from the tabloids? Her personal life is personal. She doesn’t like people asking about it.” He turned away and the conversation was over.
I found my seat over on the right side of the auditorium just as the curtain went up on the opening act, a hard-rock trio that blasted my eardrums. They played for a numbing forty-five minutes and then there was a brief intermission before Lily Lake took the stage, backed by her own group. The young crowd went wild when she appeared center stage wearing low-slung white jeans and a fringed top that left her navel and midsection exposed. It was the proper costume for a teen rock star and they wouldn’t have expected anything else. Lily Lake was short and slim, appearing almost tiny on that big stage, but she whirled like a dervish, clutching her wireless mike as she belted out an anthem to infidelity, about high school romance and the next guy who comes along. It wasn’t my sort of music, even if it was a notch up from the hard rock.
Lily sang and cavorted for a full hour before she called it quits, and then came back for a double encore. It was about ten-twenty by the time she finished, to the screaming delight of her fans. I looked around for Mike and Stacy but couldn’t find them in the crowd. Instead I made my way backstage once more. This time Art Brunner was nowhere in sight and the place was filled with teenage girls trying any scheme to get closer to their idol. I finally spotted Brunner with two security guards trying to clear the backstage area. Avoiding them, I was heading toward the star’s dressing room when a hand grabbed me from behind by my coat collar. “Where you goin’, old man?” a raspy voice asked.
I twisted around enough to see the tattooed arm and knew I was in the grip of Sly Morgan. “I wanted to speak with Lily Lake, but you’ll do for now.”
“Lily’s resting after her performance, and she’s not likely to see you anyway. Who are you?”
“Al Darlan, Darlan and Trapper Investigations. I’m looking into the murder of a man named Rich Santillo last night.”
He loosened his grip on my collar and shoved me into an alcove beneath a spiral staircase to the upstairs dressing rooms. “We don’t keep up with the local news. When you’re touring like Lily one city’s the same as another.”
“Santillo was a stringer for the tabloids. He had a hot story, too hot for somebody.”
“How does it involve Lily?”
“He had lots of information on her, and he was killed while she was in town. Where were you around eight last night?”
“Watching her performance, same as tonight. I fly in to some of her tour stops when I get the chance.”
“So the tabloids are right about you two. Why keep it a secret?”
He grinned. “She’s a bit young for me. You know how people are.”
“Not anymore, I don’t. If Santillo uncovered a secret about Lily, might you or her manager have killed him to keep it a secret?”
Sly Morgan snorted. “What’s a secret worth these days? Certainly not murder! Anything they could write about Lily would only increase her sales. The teenagers would eat it up.”
“Anything?”
“You name it. Did she make a sex video? Did she snort cocaine? Is she really a lesbian? Hell, she probably could have killed her mother and it wouldn’t hurt her popularity. We’re in the 21st century!”
“Did she?”
“What?”
“Kill her mother?”
“Both her parents died in an auto accident when she was three. You didn’t read through all those clippings you said Santillo had.”
“Maybe it’s something else. Maybe she’s a guy.”
He snickered at that. “Lily’s no guy, believe me.”
“Can I see her? I’d like to talk to her, ask her a couple of questions.”
“Will that satisfy you?”
“I hope so.”
“Wait here,” he said, and went off toward her dressing room.
I lingered backstage among the musicians and dancers for nearly ten minutes before he returned for me. “I really had to talk her into it. Follow me, and keep it short.”