I was cooler than I would have expected myself to be. When I realized where I was, the wooden floor had bruised my knees, but I hadn’t screamed and I had my bangle to my ear and was dialing 911.
It was 4 a.m. before the police finished with me, but Claude was fiddling with the backup rig when I walked in, the one I’d been wearing on stage dangling from my left hand.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“Er,” he said. “Yes?”
I gave him my best Dazzling Smile. God knows the orthodontia cost enough. “Hey, Claude?”
He raised a properly suspicious eyebrow. Flirting was the wrong tack, I decided. An appeal to his hacker identity was more likely to get me what I wanted.
I said, “Can you show me how to download and compile that raw file? The one we made tonight?” I held up the drum rig and let it swing from my crooked fingers.
“You going to do something illegal with it?”
“Only technically.” I winked.
A smile spread across his face like bread rising, warm and steady. I felt like a first-class heel for using his ideals so cynically. But I did it anyway.
At least I felt bad about it. It’s possible that’s the biggest thing separating me from Peter.
Peter was on a call, headset rather than bangle, when I found him in the business office. Because he was Peter, and if he went without contact with his phone for longer than fifteen minutes, withdrawal symptoms might set in.
From his end of the conversation it sounded like he was setting up a press conference. About the death. Of course.
“Put this on.” I shoved the Clownfish tiara at him.
He stared at me, his hands not moving, his mouth making noises that were probably very important to the person on the other end of the line. The tiara wobbled across my palm. I wanted to jam it down his throat.
I threw it into his lap because that was better than hitting him with it. “Put it on,” I said again.
“Gotta go,” he said to the phone call, and dropped the connection. He set his gadget aside and picked up the headpiece. “Are you about to pull a gun on me, Neon?”
“There’d be some buzz in that.” I tried for sweet reason and probably approximated icy mildness. “And the cameras in here aren’t mysteriously malfunctioning, the way the ones in my dressing room were.”
He blinked and glanced at the door.
I said, “You got your wish. Plenty of news coverage.”
His eyes went sideways to the phone this time. Probably a better bet than trying to get past me. “You know, in the long run, Mitchell’s death might turn out to be a good thing for you.”
“Are you insinuating I killed my best friend, Peter? Because I think we both know that’s not true.”
“You couldn’t have,” he said calmly. “You were on stage in front of ten thousand people.” The consummate press agent, stilclass="underline" always rounding up the numbers. “And you were wearing the Clownfish. Your alibi is airtight. If I do say so myself.”
My lip curled. I felt like Grace Jones for a moment. Billy Idol. It was probably a better look on them.
“How’s your alibi, Peter?”
He tapped the thin plastic oblong in his shirt pocket. “I’ve been on the phone all night, except when the police were talking to me.”
God. I wondered if he could manage to carry on an upbeat conversation with some fluff page reporter while simultaneously shooting Mitch three times in the chest. The headset was a noise-canceling model.
It was actually plausible. He would only have felt fear, remorse, emotional connection if he chose to, after alclass="underline" He’d elected to turn all that off by default. Otherwise, assuming he got the drop on Mitch—which whoever killed him patently had—it would have been as complicated for him to kill somebody while carrying on a conversation as it was for most of us to talk on the phone while rummaging in the fridge.
Yes, he was capable of planning a murder, carrying it off, and never getting caught. And it’s not like I had any proof. I just…knew Peter.
“Put the tiara on.”
I must have gotten the sneer right that time, because he reached out gently and picked the thing up, then set it on his head. I’d cued it up to autoplay at the moment when I’d turned the knob and opened the door.
I watched him with a lover’s interest.
His face pinched. He winced.
And then he shut off—touched his bangle and calmed himself, tuned out, edited whatever empathic function he’d been feeling. Back to his baseline sociopathy.
It probably was a good thing I didn’t have a gun.
“Of course it’s a miserable thing to have happened, sweetheart. And of course you’re upset. But think of how advantageously we can cast this. It’s romantic. It’s tragic.”
“Mitch and I weren’t romantically involved, as you know perfectly well.”
He shrugged.
I said, “You killed him.”
“What possible benefit to me could there be in such an action?”
Media interest. Buzz. Drama. Gossip. The top of the news cycle, baby.
But I didn’t actually have to say that. Instead I dropped my voice and said, “Promise me you did not kill him.”
Peter smiled sadly. “I promise you, Neon. I did not kill your friend. But I don’t expect that to change your mind.”
He was lying. Was he lying? He must have known that I would never allow him to pressure me into using Mitch’s death to my advantage. Mustn’t he? Had he turned off those parts of his brain as well?
Could I avoid Mitch’s death serving my career? Actually, I couldn’t see how, when, as Peter said, my alibi was bulletproof. Hell, I’d been wearing the Clownfish. It wouldn’t even hold water that I might have hired someone to do away with him.
“A virtual poker face isn’t going to cut it anymore,” Peter said. “The fans want to feel you have skin in the game. Real loss. This will help you. You’ll see. Everybody loves a little tragedy.”
“Murder,” I said. “But deniable.”
He smiled. Yes, I was sure he’d done it. And I was sure that no one would ever prove it. Peter was a very, very plausible man: an asset in his profession.
Even if I went to the police with my suspicions, Peter would somehow use our history to suggest that I was a jilted girlfriend out for revenge. Even if I hadn’t killed anybody, that was going to look great in the tabloids. If I thought I could convict him, I’d go for it. But no. Not for nothing, not to make him look like a martyr. No.
“And we have the Clownfish recording.” He tapped his ugly plastic tiara. “That’s unbelievable, what that’s going to be worth. The artist who is willing to exploit this medium is an artist who is going to the top.”
“You’re fired,” I told him.
“I work for the label, Neon, not for you.”
“The label’s fired. You’re all fired. I’ll walk away right now.”
“Neon.” He shook his head soothingly. “I know you’re upset and confused. But what are you going to do without Mitch and without me? Nobody can handle that kind of isolation in a high-stress career, sweetheart.”
I closed my eyes. Nausea clotted at the back of my tongue. “You’re probably right.”
He smiled.
“You’re still fired.” My Reasonable Voice was coming out as more of a snarl. “Have Clarice write up some sort of buyout agreement for the rest of the tour. You can tell her I’ll pay anything reasonable to settle. Unless you really want to fight out a long, expensive breach of contract suit.”