There was a knock at the door and everyone froze. Jared looked at P.J. "Are you expecting someone?"

"No."

"Then stay here. I'll get it."

When he reached the door he looked through the peephole, and surprise elevated his eyebrows. "Eddie?" he murmured aloud. He glanced over his shoulder at the group inside the suite. Focusing in on P.J. he said, "What's he doing here?"

"I don't know," P.J. said. "I gave him the name of the new hotel and the room number just like I did Hank and Nell, but I didn't actually expect to see him."

With a shrug, he opened the door to the guitar player.

"Hey," Eddie greeted him, sauntering into the hallway that led to the suite. "Whazzup?" Stopping in the archway, he looked at P.J., Hank and Nell around the table. "Hell, I didn't know it was a party. I guess my invite musta got lost in the mail." Coming closer, he peered down at the piles of correspondence on the table and his brow creased. "Whatcha all doin'?"

"Going through P.J.'s fan mail," Nell said.

Shaking his head, he gave them a pitying look. "It's Sunday, people. I mean, I love you to pieces, Peej, but reading your kudos is the best you could think to do on our one day off?"

"What are you doing here?" Hank demanded impatiently. "Why aren't you out with the catch of the day?"

Eddie grimaced and sank down in a chair at the table. "Turns out she was barely nineteen."

Everyone burst into laughter and Hank said what Jared at least was thinking. "You can't honestly have been surprised by that."

"Hey, I make it a point to check their ID," Eddie said with utter seriousness. He sank lower on his tailbone. "Only it turns out this girl's was fake." He shuddered. "Man, I don't ever wanna find myself up on statutory rape charges."

"That only happens if they're under eighteen," Jared assured him.

"Even so, man. I ain't interested in babies. They gotta be at least twenty-one." Picking up the letter closest him, he idly perused it. Then he snapped upright, dropping it on the table as if it had grown teeth. "What the-? That's one sick monkey!"

Jared picked it up and skimmed it. "Yep," he agreed, folding it back into its envelope. "It's another for the oughtta be in jail group."

"There'smore like this? What the hell's going on?"

With the caveat that Eddie keep it under his hat, he filled the blond musician in. To his surprise, Eddie grabbed a handful of letters from the box and dug right in to help.

They fell back into the easy rhythm that the guitar player's unexpected arrival had momentarily disrupted. They were quiet for the most part, long stretches of uncomplicated silence broken by the occasional conversation or sporadic joke to ease the tension that far too many of these letters produced.

"This is kind of nice, being around adults," Eddie said out of the blue. "Young women have great bodies, but how often can you discuss their hair or their nails or what should be done about their bitch of a roommate who keeps helping herself to their shampoo and mascara?"

"Yeah, there's something to be said for maturity," Nell agreed without a trace of irony.

Jared noticed that Eddie kept glancing at her. He'd shoot Nell a look across the table, his eyebrows furrowed as if trying to figure out the answer to some deep, dark mystery. Then he'd go back to his stack of letters, only to give her another surreptitious look.

Hank noticed it, too. Jared smothered a smile when the other man hitched his chair closer to hers and draped his arm casually across its back.

Eddie shrugged and looked away. But a short while later he started sneaking peeks again.

P.J. had been growing progressively more quiet and pale by the minute, and Nell abruptly pushed back from the table and crossed to the corner of the room where the box of marginal letters sat. Picking it up, she carried it back and dumped it on the table in front of her friend. "Here. I think you oughtta go through this box."

"Oh, no, really, I'm fine-" She cut off the obvious lie and gave Nell a wan smile. "Thanks. Some of this stuff is starting to creep me out."

"No crapola," Eddie said. "Like I said, tiny thang, there's some real sick monkeys out there and celebrity obviously brings them out of the woodwork."

Jared gave Nell a warm smile of approval when she looked his way. He should have thought of giving P.J. the less disturbing correspondence himself.

They had waded through another hour's worth of reading when P.J. suddenly jerked erect. "Oh my God."

Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at her. "What?" he demanded.

"I think this is him." She rattled the small bundle of papers in her hand. "Listen to this:

"Dear Miss Jayne,

"'Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which The Lord thy God giveth thee.'

"It is so nice to hear music from a young woman who understands the message writ in Exodus 20:12. Clearly you have your values straight. I trust that you will keep up the good work.

"Yours in Christ,

"Your biggest admirer,

"Luther Menks"

She looked up at them. "The return address is from Tipton, Iowa."

"Bingo," Jared murmured and held a peremptory hand out for the papers.

She passed them over.

Nell's brow pleated. "I get the reference to the honor-thy-mother note that came with the snake," she said. "As well as the fact that the area ties in with the interview you did the day you mentioned Marvin. But it's not exactly a threatening note. Why would Colleen include it in the correspondence she considered marginal?"

"Because of the ones Menks sent subsequently," he answered.

P.J. nodded. "She attached notes to a lot of these explaining why she included them. This was the first one he sent and they put it in a pending file where they hold correspondence for a month before answering. When one arrived that she considered marginal, she looked to see if there had been any previous letters sent by the same man."

"What does the second one say?" Hank asked.

"The second is actually along similar lines," Jared said, looking up from reading the last two letters that Menks had sent. "He admires her, she's one in a million to honor the fifth commandment in this age of parental disrespect, yadda, yadda, yadda. It's the third one that attacks her for not responding to his first two letters and for what he considers her lack of respect toward her mother." He looked at P.J. and saw that most of the color she'd regained reading the less disturbing letters had vanished from her cheeks, leaving her complexion pallid once more. "I know this is disturbing," he told her. "But it's actually good news."

"You think so?" she asked coolly. "Because I found that quote about all the men of the city stoning me to death kinda bad news."

"What?"Nell stared at them in horror.

"Deuteronomy?" Hank asked, and when Jared nodded he turned to Nell. "The violation of the fifth commandment was a capital offense in the old testament," he told her. "The Bible references it in several different books. It wasn't a one-way street, though-Ephesians tells parents to conduct themselves so as to be worthy of honor. Our guy is obviously selective and only chooses the passages that reinforce his beliefs."

"Which makes him a fanatic, which sounds dangerous," Nell said and turned back to Jared. "And you see this as good news, how?"

"Because we know who we're dealing with now," he said evenly. "I have a name, which makes finding more information possible. And information is power." He turned to P.J. once again. Waited until she looked him in the eye. "The power to stop this psycho dead in his tracks."

 

P.J.CLOSED THE DOOR behind Nell and the guys and slumped back against it. She felt as if she'd just stepped off one of those whirling carnival rides; her head was reeling and her stomach felt wonky. Today was supposed to have been an opportunity to recoup from the crazy tour schedule, but instead she'd spent it reading sick letters from so-called fans. The stoning reference had just been the cherry on her sundae. What else could possibly go wrong?

Her cell phone rang from the other room.

She jerked in shock, then reined herself in.Get a grip, she commanded herself sternly.Not everything is bad news.

"You want me to get that?" Jared asked from the suite.

"No." Pushing away from the door, she strode into the sitting room and crossed over to the desk where she was recharging her phone. Looking at the number on the screen she saw it was her manager and picked it up, pushing the talk button. "Hey, Ben. What's up?"

"Priscilla, we've got a situation with your mother that has to be addressed immediately."

A sigh escaped her. "I was afraid it was too much to hope you'd be calling to tell me the album went platinum." Hadn't she known it would be more bad news?

"Oh, that's going to happen, as well, and probably sooner rather than later, considering the strength of your sales," he assured her with his usual no-nonsense Yankee briskness. "Unfortunately, it's not what we need to discuss today."

"What did she do this time?"

"She sold an unauthorized biography about you." He hesitated a second then added, "The working title isUngrateful Child. "

For once pain wasn't the first emotion she experienced over hearing about one of her mother's betrayals. Instead pure unadulterated fury pulsed through her veins. "I'll take care of it," she said in a tight voice and hung up without bothering to exchange the usual pleasantries with her manager. Then, breathing heavily, she punched out her mother's number.