Murder With a View by Diane Kelly

Author:Diane Kelly [Kelly, Diane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Collin’s cruiser approached Music Row, a small district in Nashville that served as home to a number of both historic and new recording studios, as well as office space for music production companies. The parklike entrance to Music Row featured a bronze statue of Owen Bradley playing a piano, a tribute to the late producer who’d been the first to build a music business in the area. Bradley had produced many classic hits by Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Kitty Wells, and Brenda Lee. Clearly, Bradley hadn’t thought these women were tomatoes. Keith Hill can kiss my asparagus.

Collin pulled into the lot of a single-story studio. The mustard-yellow paint went nicely with the ketchup-red door and window trim.

As we climbed out of the car, I asked, “Does Shep know you’re coming?”

“No,” Collin said. “I didn’t want to lose the element of surprise. When people are flustered, they sometimes accidentally reveal things they wouldn’t otherwise.”

We went inside and checked in with a receptionist in the foyer. She pointed down a hallway to our right. “Shep Sampson’s in studio three.”

“Is he alone?” Collin asked.

“No,” she said. “There’s two other musicians in there with him. Wait until the light goes off over the door before you knock, okay?”

We walked down the hall and waited in front of the door, both of us staring up at the round red light. I found myself involuntarily humming “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Collin humored me until the light suddenly went off, then he stepped forward and knocked on the door. Rap-rap-rap. He pulled his badge from his pocket and held it at the ready, like a press member with a backstage pass.

A few seconds later, a fortyish woman with long auburn hair opened the door, a mandolin cradled in her arm. She took in Collin’s badge and gun before her focus shifted to me. Her eyes ran from my face, down my coveralls to my scuffed work boots, and back up again. “Can I do something for you?”

“We need to speak with Shep Sampson,” Collin said.

“All right.” The woman waved us into the room, which incorporated two small sub-spaces, a control room filled with high-tech dials and screens and lights, the other with stools and microphones. The control room and the “live room” were separated by a half wall and a large pane of plate glass. Men sat on two of the stools in the live room, one holding a guitar, the other holding a banjo. In light of the fact that T-Rex told us Shep Sampson played the banjo, it was immediately clear which of the two was the man we were looking for. Shep even looked like a shepherd. The banjo picks he wore on his fingers and thumbs made it appear as though he had claws, like a dog. His shaggy hair had dark roots that blended into lighter brown at the ends, likely the result of sun and wind damage. He had big brown eyes, whiskers, and a rather large, protruding nose, not unlike a canine snout.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.