“My boyfriend has a personal emergency.”
The line was dead silent for a few long heartbeats before Nelson cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, did you sayboyfriend?”
“Doxx. Thedrummer?” Chase hissed the words into the phone.
“Yeah, what of it?”
Nelson started laughing hard. “Chase, you have to welcome him to the wonderful world of dick!”
“You’re an ass.” I laughed back. “Look, we can discuss all of this later when we’re back. Because after this, I have to figure out how to handle our two canceled shows. Just take care of him for me.”
“Of course,” Chase said. “Plane and car at the airport when he gets there.”
“Do you know if Vincent is around?”
“He’s probably home, in his smoking jacket.” Chase laughed. “Lawyer, too?”
“Yeah. I’ll let Aaron tell you all what’s going on when he gets there, but yeah. A lawyer. I’ll call Vincent after I get Aaron out the door.”
“Good. I’ll text you with the details of the plane and car.”
Chase hung up and I saw Aaron’s phone flashing and buzzing with another phone call. He called from the bathroom, “Mine?”
“Yeah. New York area code.”
“Could you grab it?”
I snatched the phone and swept the answer button across the screen. “This is Aaron’s phone.”
“Oh, uh…” The deep voice on the other end was confused, and stuttered a moment. “Is he around?”
“He is, who is this?”
“Mel,” came the simple answer.
“Oh, Mel. Okay, hang on. Things are popping over here. This is Maddox.” I climbed out of bed and headed for the bathroom.
He squeaked and then cleared his throat. “Right yes. Of course it is.”
I held the phone out to Aaron and waved at it. “Speaker please. I need to get all this packed.”
Tapping the speaker, I let Mel know he was listening.
“Aaron, man, I know you’ve been busy and I didn’t really want to call, but...there was a message on the common line this morning that I wanted to let you know about. Gary the ass deleted it before I could get the information down, but…it was Violet. She was terrified. Like weeping. I didn’t know she had the common line. I tried calling a few times, but I also didn’t want to call you in the middle of a drum solo.”
Aaron let out a blast of a laugh and immediately crumbled to the ground in tears. I slid into him, grabbing him off the floor and holding him to me on my lap.
“I can’t do this,” he whimpered.
“Do what?” Mel asked.
“Violet is being held on suspicion of murder,” I answered.
“What.”
“It’s a long story.” I stared at the phone still in my hand. “Mel. Can you get to Philadelphia International airport by eight in the morning?”
“Well, it’d be a trick with the way things run on NJ transit and Amtrak—”
