Music to Die For by Radine Trees Nehring Page A

your family can say exactly where both of you were and what you were doing. I’m that outsider. I wasn’t with Tracy every minute, but she obviously isn’t strong enough to have stabbed her cousin when he was facing her. You were with your mother and other people in the auditorium. The problem is, though, how accurately can officials here decide when Farel was killed? How sophisticated is the sheriff’s department or the coroner? Do you have a good medical examiner here? Farel’s body was still warm when I first touched it, so he hadn’t been dead very long. Do they have the ability to tell the time of death within a few minutes, one way or another? I doubt it, so you could need an alibi for a pretty wide time range.”
    She stopped at the stage door and turned to see if they understood the importance of what she was saying. Their faces appeared iridescent in the moonlight—two ghostly skulls with dark eyeholes. Tracy’s lips looked black, and Carrie saw them part several seconds before she heard the moaned, “Ohhh.”
    As the sound faded, Chase said, “Okay, but then we’re all gonna go to Farel’s house. We’ll keep an eye on you too.”
    Carrie felt a flash of temper and almost opened her mouth to tell Chase she was here because they needed her, not because she was enjoying herself, but she stopped the comment just in time and turned toward the door.
    Chase brushed past her and pulled the door open. As light from inside spilled out, Carrie looked back at Tracy. “Wait a minute,” she said.
    “Tracy dear, spit on this handkerchief. Your eye makeup has dripped into smudges on your cheeks. Let’s get rid of that before we go in.”
    After scrubbing off the marks, Carrie put her arms around Tracy—who looked ready to cry again—and whispered, “There, you’ll do, the cheek rub has put in color. You’re a good actress, so you can smile. You’ll get through this, and we’ll find Dulcey soon.
    “I’ve been thinking about the words of one of your recordings, ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.’ Think ‘He’s got Dulcey in His hands.’ Sing it to yourself now.”
    She patted Tracy’s back, released her, and nodded at Chase. “Okay,” she said.
    Carrie took Tracy’s hand as Chase opened the door, and the three of them stepped into an alcove next to the auditorium stage. There were people everywhere. Bright lights from the front of the stage blinded Carrie temporarily, though she could tell that two adults and two children, probably a family group, were playing and singing in front of the footlights.
    Someone shouted, “Next,” from the darkness of the auditorium seating area, and the four musicians stepped to the back of the stage. They continued playing while a group of cloggers clunked past Carrie and out into the bright lights.
    Neither Chase nor Tracy paid any attention to the activity on stage. Chase grabbed Tracy’s free hand and yanked her, with Carrie hanging on behind, toward a side hallway.
    Almost like a game of crack-the-whip, Carrie thought, suppressing a desire to giggle as they whizzed down the hall and into an oddly shaped room against the side of the round building.
    Several people sat on stools and folding chairs scattered in random disorder around the room. Some were leaning over guitars and other stringed instruments, playing softly to themselves, ignoring everything but their music. One large group sat against the back wall, gathered around Brigid Mason. She was perched on a high stool and seemed to be telling an Ozarks play-party story. As they came into the room she was beginning to growl her lines like a bear.
    Almost everyone in the room looked up as Chase, at the front of the human chain, came to a sudden halt, and Tracy, then Carrie—unable to stop their forward motion in time—banged awkwardly into each other and then into Chase’s back.
    As the three began to untangle themselves, a dry male voice said, “Y’all musta been practicin’ yore entrance fur