He looked at Hank, wincing when he saw P.J. shudder from the corner of his eye. "Damn. How many does that make?"
The fan club manager had come through for him. Colleen Borts had overnighted a box of the fan letters that she'd felt were disturbing and another that she'd found marginal. He would've preferred recruiting only Hank to help him go through the correspondence, but this was P.J.'s life and he could hardly keep her out of it when she insisted on being included. Besides, it was damn difficult to be the wall standing between her and danger if he was in one room while she was in another.
So here they all were, sitting around the table in the new suite he'd registered for her under his name at a new hotel, reading a disturbingly large number of crank letters.
"Twenty-seven," Nell said, answering the question he'd put to Hank.
"And how many are in the pile from the group I think oughtta be in jail?"
"Eleven."
"I guess there's some consolation in that, huh?" P.J.'s crooked smile didn't quite reach her eyes. "That there are fewer flat-out psychos than guys who just want to keep me barefoot and pregnant between tours?"
Nell scooted her chair closer to P.J.'s, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and giving her a hug. "I'm sorry, girlfriend. This really stinks. Are you sure you want to pore through all this crap? Hank and I could take over for a while if you'd like to go take a walk with Jared or something."
"No, I'm okay." Straightening, she reached for another handful of letters from the box in the middle of the table. "It's creepy and I can't honestly say it's not freaking me out. But it's actually better knowing what the letters say than to be left out of the loop and let my mind provide the content." Her smile was wry and barely there, but a little less forced this time. "I've got a very good imagination."
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."