The house wasn’t large—twenty-five hundred square feet or so—but had been constructed by artisan builders, with one instruction: make it comfortable and comforting. She was a nester—tough for a performer who traveled seven months out of the year—and she wanted a home that cried cozy, cried family.
When she was twelve, Bishop Towne had sold the house she and her sister had grown up in, a ramshackle place north of Fresno, in the mountains. He said it was hard to get to in the winter, though the real reasons were that, one, his father had built it and Bishop would do anything he could to separate himself from his old man. And two, the rustic family manse hadn’t fit the image of the lifestyle he’d wanted to lead: that of the high-powered country superstar. He’d built a ten-million-dollar working ranch on fifty acres in the Valley and populated it with cattle and sheep he had no interest in or knowledge about raising.
The move had been horrifying enough to Kayleigh but worse was that he’d sold the beloved family house and land to a mining company that owned the adjacent property and they’d bulldozed the structure, planning to expand, though the company’d gone bankrupt; the unnecessary destruction was all the more traumatic to the girl.
She’d written a song about the place, which became a huge hit.
I’ve lived in LA, I’ve lived in Maine,
New York City and the Midwest Plains,
But there’s only one place I consider home.
When I was a kid—the house we owned.
Life was perfect and all was fine,
In that big old house … near the silver mine.
The silver mine … the silver mine.
I can’t remember a happier time,
In that big old house … near the silver mine.
Now, the man responsible for this displacement walked inside Kayleigh’s spacious living room and bent down and hugged her.
Bishop’s fourth wife, Sheri, accompanied him. She too embraced Kayleigh, then sat, after an awkward moment of debate about which piece of furniture to choose. Ash blond hair sprayed persuasively in place, the petite yet busty woman was a dozen years older than Kayleigh, unlike Wife Number Three, who could have attended the same high school as Bishop’s daughter—in the class behind her, no less.
Kayleigh, like Bishop, couldn’t remember much about Number Two.
Hulking Bishop Towne then maneuvered his massive frame onto a couch, moving slow—slower than a lot of people even older than he was. “The joints’re catching up,” he’d complained recently and at first Kayleigh thought he meant the dives he’d played in his early, drinking, fighting years, but then she realized he meant hips, knees, shoulders.
He was in cheap jeans and his ubiquitous black shirt, the belly rolling over his impressive belt, leaving the more impressive silver buckle only partly visible.
“Was he still there, across the road?” Kayleigh asked, looking out, noting Darthur Morgan, vigilant as ever, in the front seat of the SUV, pointed outward.
“Who?” Bishop growled.
“Edwin.” Who did he think?
“Didn’t see anybody,” he said. Sheri shook her head.
Edwin—the first damn thing she saw this morning, looking out the window of her second-story bedroom. Well, his car, the big red car. That’s what she saw. Which didn’t make the sense of violation any less.
Kayleigh lived on the way to Yosemite and Sierra National Park, just where the area started to get interesting geographically. Across the two-lane road in front of her property was a public recreation area and arboretum, filled with rolling hills, jogging paths, groves of trees and gardens. The lot allowed twenty-four-hour parking, just the place for a sick stalker to perch.
She said, “He was there a while ago. Just sitting, staring at the house.” She closed her eyes briefly, shivering.
“Oh, my,” Sheri said.
“Well, nobody’s there now,” Bishop repeated distractedly, noticing a wad of tissues on the coffee table where Kayleigh’d been sitting with her iced tea and mobile, on which she’d called friends and family about Bobby’s death.
“Hey, sorry about Bobby, KT. I know you … I mean, I’m sorry.”
Sheri offered, “It’s terrible, honey. I feel so bad for you. For everyone.”
Kayleigh stepped into the kitchen, got a milk for her father and an iced tea for Sheri, another for herself too. She returned to the living room.
“Thank you, honey,” the woman offered tentatively.
Her father lifted the milk as if toasting.
“Daddy.” Her eyes avoiding his, Kayleigh said quickly, “I’m thinking of canceling.” It was easier to stare toward where a murderous stalker had been spying on her than to make eye contact with Bishop Towne.
“The concert?” The big man grunted. His ragged vocal style was not a function of any emotion, of course, but was simply because that’s the way he talked. No lilting tones, never a whisper, just a guttural rasp. It hadn’t always been that way; his voice—like his joints and liver—had been a victim of his lifestyle.
“I’m thinking of it.”
“Sure. Course. I see.”
Sheri tried to deflect what might be an uncomfortable moment. “If there’s anything I can do? … I’ll bring some dinners by. Tell me what you’d like. I’ll make you something special.”
Food and death had always been linked, Kayleigh now thought.
“I’ll think on it. Thanks, Sheri.”
The word “Mom,” had, of course, never been on the table. Kayleigh didn’t hate her stepmother. Either you were a woman of steel, like Margaret, her mother, and you fought with and—at times—corralled a man like Bishop Towne, or you took the residual prestige and the undeniable charisma and you surrendered. That was Sheri.
Though Kayleigh couldn’t blame her. Nor could she her father either. Margaret had been his first choice and, despite the others along the way, they’d still be together if not for fate. There was no one who could take his first wife’s place so why even try? Yet it was impossible to imagine Bishop Towne surviving without a woman in his life.
He grumbled, “You tell Barry?”