CHAPTER 1
I’ve never witnessed a murder before.
I’ve seen more dead bodies than any humble vinyl record shop owner/barista should ever stumble across, which for the record—no pun intended—is two. I’ve lost count of how many delicious, caffeinated beverages I’ve served and how many fantastic records I’ve sold since my older sisters and I opened Sip & Spin Records in our hometown of Cedar River, Texas, six months ago. But the body count is not something I’ll soon forget, especially since I found both of them.
Trying to block out those memories, I focused my attention on the ice rink below me where two hockey players were, as far as I could tell, trying to kill each other. I sat on the edge of my seat, hoping I wasn’t about to witness a murder in real time.
“Knock his block off!” the man seated beside me yelled at the players. Beauregard Russell was tall, white, and frankly, unfairly handsome with rich brown eyes and the scruffy beginnings of a beard. Our relationship could best be described as complicated.
On the ice, the man in the white Yetis jersey threw another punch at the man in the Austin hockey jersey. Even from all the way up here in our suite-level seats, I could hear the blow connect. I shuddered.
“Cold, Juni?” Beau asked.
That’s me, Juniper Jessup, Juni to most everyone. I was born and raised in Texas. Most of my childhood was spent in my grandparents’ record shop, until MP3s and streaming music services drove them out of business. Now that vinyl was coming back in a big way, my older sisters, Tansy and Maggie, and I decided to re-open the family business as Sip & Spin Records.
Speaking of another go at things I’d once thought dead and buried, sitting next to Beau Russell was somehow both comfortable and awkward at the same time. It might be cliché, but he was my high school sweetheart. Until he wasn’t. We broke up right as I was graduating from college and moving to Oregon to take my dream job. Six years later, unemployed and firmly over Beau—that’s my story, and I was sticking to it—I moved back home. And now, we were on a date, kinda.
Beau removed his scarf and wound it around my neck. “This ought to help,” he said, arranging the ends so they laid flat. The blue and orange scarf featured the Austin Thunderbirds logo. Beau had bought the overpriced souvenir in the team store before the game. At the time, I’d teased him that it rarely got cold enough in Texas to need a scarf, but that was before we’d spent a few hours in a hockey arena. “Having fun?” he asked. He had to yell to be heard over the cacophony around us.
While I was genuinely concerned about the well-being of the two combatants on the ice, everyone else in the stadium seemed to be enjoying themselves. And by “enjoying themselves” I mean they were yelling and cheering at the top of their lungs. When the two huge skaters went down in a heap, the referees and their teammates finally decided it was time to step in and put an end to the fight. Both men had started off covered in protective gear—helmets, gloves, pads, mouthguards—which now laid strewn out on the ice around them.
“It’s a regular yard sale out there, isn’t it?” Zackary Fjord, the man on the other side of me, screamed in my ear.
One of the combatants was dragged away by two men in black-and-white-striped shirts. I’d never seen someone wearing ice skates dig his heels in, but somehow, he managed. The other fighter, surrounded by a huddle of players in Austin Thunderbirds jerseys, wasn’t moving.
“He’s not hurt, is he?” I leaned forward with my arms on the ledge in front of me.
Zack and his business partner, Savannah Goodwin, had treated us to seats in a private box. I’d never been to a hockey game before, and they assured me that these were the best seats in the house. We were sitting in a row of padded chairs overlooking the center of the rink. Behind us was a tall counter with more chairs, a table laden with snacks, and a small refrigerator stocked with beer, water, and soda.
“Beckel? He’ll be fine. He’s tougher than he looks. I should know, I used to date his ex-wife, and that woman is absolutely feral. Though he did just go three rounds with Miller ‘The Killer.’” Zack shrugged. “Seriously, Miller is a menace. He’s been suspended more times than I can count. He should be in jail, not on the ice.”
“You dated Beckel’s ex?” Beau asked.
“Well, she wasn’t his ex at the time, if you know what I mean,” Zack replied with a snarky grin.
“Classy,” Beau muttered before I could say anything.
Beckel, in his Austin Thunderbirds jersey, was helped to his feet. He waved at the crowd, which went ballistic. The other players started beating the ends of their sticks against the nearest surface, making a racket as he gingerly skated off the ice.
“See? He’s fine,” Zack said.
The guy who’d started the fight, Miller, was escorted to the penalty box. Our guy disappeared behind the bench. Another Thunderbird in a blue and orange jersey, who hadn’t been involved in the play at all, skated over to sit down in our penalty box.
I must have looked confused, because Zack explained. While they cleared the ice, the crowd quieted down, but they were still pumping in loud music over the speakers. It was easier now to hold a conversation without shouting, but that didn’t keep him from leaning in a little closer to me than was absolutely necessary while he talked. “Matching majors, but since Beckel is getting patched up, someone has to sit for him.”
“Huh?” I asked. When I’d enthusiastically agreed to attend a hockey game, I didn’t realize that the rules were apparently written in some gibberish language I’d never heard before.
“Five for fighting,” Zack said.
“Oh! Like the band,” I said.
Now it was Zack’s turn to look confused. “What?”
“You know, if you want to get into the record business, you’re going to have to expand your musical knowledge,” I told him.
“I am in the record business. I already own one record store, Rhythm and Brews in Galveston, remember?” he said.
Like Sip & Spin Records, Rhythm and Brews sold music and coffee drinks. Unlike our shop, their drinks had boring names like cappuccino and espresso. Ours had musically themed names, like Bohemian Frapsody. Zack and his partner Savannah were investors in Rhythm and Brews, which made them part owners.
Zack, like Beau, was a year or so older than me, which put him around twenty-nine or thirty. We’d been classmates at University of Texas. I majored in computer languages and software development. He’d majored in beer bongs and wild parties. We ran in very different circles, except for a few weeks during the fall of my sophomore year when he dated, and eventually cheated on, one of my study buddies. To be completely honest, I barely remembered him from college but when he called the shop out of the blue last week, he swore I’d left quite the impression on him.
He was an average-height, average-weight, average white frat boy, the kind who wore khaki shorts and polo shirts with the collars popped up. He came from money and wasn’t shy about making sure people knew it. Zack was the guy who’d park his BMW—always this year’s model, of course—in the reserved spaces because, according to him, a ticket was just the cost of doing business. His business was owning other businesses, and now he had his sights set on mine.
Not that my sisters or I were interested in selling Sip & Spin Records. Granted, we’d been open for six months and we’d barely made enough to cover the cost of rent and stock, but we had a steady stream of customers. If we didn’t have any more major setbacks, we might be in the black by the end of the year. At least, that’s what my middle sister, Maggie, claimed. She was the numbers person in the family and if she said we’d eventually turn a profit, I believed her.
In the meantime, I was living in my oldest sister Tansy’s spare bedroom, riding a lime-green adult tricycle around town instead of making payments on a car, and wearing a steady stream of vintage denim and concert T-shirts, some from bands that broke up before I was born. Although, to be fair, I’d ride the trike and wear the tees even if I was rolling in cash. It’s kinda my brand. Today, I had on a Red Hot Chili Peppers T-shirt under my new Austin Thunderbirds jersey that Beau had insisted on buying for me. It matched my blue glasses I’d worn for the occasion.
Even though my sisters and I definitely weren’t considering selling any share of Sip & Spin, when Zack offered us tickets to the game I couldn’t say no. I was drinking free beer and eating free snacks, and had been enjoying the game up until the fight. Yes, hockey was confusing at first, but the enthusiasm of the crowd was contagious and before long, I was cheering along. The Thunderbirds were up four goals to the Yetis’ two, but then in the aftermath of the fight, the Yetis scored, filling the stadium with boos.
“You gotta be kidding me!” Zack said, surging to his feet quickly enough to spill his beer all over my new jersey. He swiped at the spilt liquid on my chest. Beau swatted his hand away. Zack didn’t seem to notice. He continued arguing, “That was interference all day. You saw that, right?”
“Sit,” Savannah said from the other side of him, dragging him back down to his seat by his elbow. “We’re still up, and the Yetis always fall apart in the third.”
She leaned around him so she could address me directly. Savannah looked like she ought to be hanging out on a party boat instead of at a hockey game with a finance bro. She was tall, blonde, and tan. Her makeup was perfect, her eyebrows were a work of art, and she wore a simple diamond pendant around her neck that probably cost more than I made in a year even back when I was bringing in a computer programmer’s salary. It was certainly more than I made as a small business owner.
She handed me a handful of paper napkins. “He forgets his manners sometimes,” she said to me, with a wink, as if we were sharing a secret. “But don’t worry about him. Zack is very hands-off. You’ll be dealing with me most of the time.”
From what I’d seen—and felt—tonight, Zack wasn’t nearly as hands-off as his partner wanted me to believe.
Zack took a swig of his beer. Realizing the can was empty, he tossed it on the floor. “Anyone else need a refill?” he asked, swaying as he stood. For a moment, I was worried that he might tumble over the railing. Savannah shook her head. So did I. I’d had enough beer, but was eyeing the platter of wings. “Bro?” he asked Beau.
“I’m good,” Beau said. He was seated at the end of the row, so he stood. “Sit. I’ll grab you something.” He disappeared into the back of the suite.
The box was designed to seat a dozen or more fans, but tonight, it was just the four of us. “You’re enjoying yourself, right, Juniper?” Zack asked. He put his arm around my shoulder and leaned closer. I scootched over to the other side of my chair, as far away from him as I could get without climbing over the armrest into Beau’s seat. “You think any more on what we were talking about earlier?” He’d used the two intermissions between periods to give me the hard sell. He had numbers and folders and all sorts of graphics to go along with his pitch. None of it made a lick of sense to me.
“Like I said, my sister Maggie is our numbers person.” I was running out of polite ways to say no. Out of my two older sisters, Tansy, the oldest, was the responsible one. Middle sister Maggie was the organized one. And I was the baby, just over here enjoying my hot mess life and the free nachos.
“There’s more to it than numbers,” Zack insisted. Around us, a loud roar went up. I glanced over at the giant monitor mounted over the scoreboard to see a replay of our goalie stopping a puck that had almost gone into the net. I’d been so busy trying to fend off Zack, I’d missed the play. I wasn’t terribly invested in it, but I was enjoying the game and I was happy that we were winning. “At Fjord Capital, we’re family,” he continued.
“Funny you should mention that,” I told him. “At Sip & Spin, we’re actual family. It’s just me and my sisters. It doesn’t get much more family-owned than that.”
“Yes, but as I was saying, the numbers aren’t in your favor. Did you know that ninety percent of small businesses fold within the first year?” He slurred his words a bit, and his breath smelled of beer as he inched closer. “Your coffee’s good, but that’s never going to be a money leader. At best, it gets customers through the door. And the records? Sure, there’s a huge market right now, but the vinyl bubble can’t last forever.”
He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. To be completely honest, it was something that kept me up at night. I’d already experienced the collapse of the vinyl record market firsthand once before, back when my grandparents had owned the shop. They’d pivoted to tapes and CDs as they rose in popularity, but they couldn’t stay afloat once music went digital. My sisters and I were taking a big bet that the same fate wouldn’t befall us, but it was a constant shadow looming over us.
“Not to mention a string of bad luck,” he said. “If you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I do,” I said. Not that it was our fault a woman got killed in our supply closet during our grand opening party. Or that the mayor of Cedar River happened to be drinking a cup of Sip & Spin coffee when he dropped dead during last spring’s Bluebonnet Festival. “But I’ll have you know, there hasn’t been a single murder in Cedar River in almost six months.”
“Good thing, too,” Beau said. He’d returned and was standing over me. “Any more suspicious deaths around my girl, and I was going to have to take a hard look at our little Junebug.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. I loved the affectionate nickname, but wasn’t a fan of Beau referring to me as his girl, not that this was the time or place to point that out to him. He knew as well as I did that I wasn’t ready to define our relationship in such concrete terms. Beau was great. Better than great, if I was being honest. He had the ability to make me melt like a scoop of ice cream on the sidewalk in June with no more than a look. And worse, now I was blushing just thinking about it.
In another life, we’d probably be married with a little house overlooking the river, two point five kids, and a dog. But in this life, he’d broken my heart years ago and I wasn’t sure I was ever going to get past that. I wasn’t even certain I wanted to get past it. Maybe, if he was the only man in my life, I would have found a way to forgive and forget, but nothing was ever that simple, was it?
Beau had been a hothead back when I’d met him in high school, but he’d mellowed with age. So far, he’d been willing to let me take the time I needed to figure out what—and who—I wanted, but apparently sharing me with one other man was his limit. The way he was glaring at Zack made me worry I was going to witness another fight tonight, this one off the ice. He took Zack’s wrist and moved his arm so it was no longer draped around me before tossing a bottle of water to him.
“What’s this?” Zack said, looking down at the bottle in his hand. “I asked for a beer, bro.”
“You’ve had enough, bro,” Beau replied. “Game’s almost over, and you’ve already had too many.”
“Who are you, the fun police?” Zack asked with a pout.
Beau lifted the edge of his jersey where his badge was, as usual, clipped to his belt. Just shy of his thirtieth birthday, he was relatively young for a detective. He’d gone into the academy right out of high school and already had ten years on the force. “I don’t know about the fun police,” Beau said, forcing a little extra Texas drawl into his voice even as he shouted to be heard as the crowd exploded in applause. While Zack and Beau had been facing off in whatever this display of machismo was, the Thunderbirds had scored. He tapped his badge. “Cedar River Police Department.”
Savannah’s eyes went wide. When she gazed up at Beau, it was with a coy smile on her face. If I was the kind of person to get jealous, or if I had any claim on him, I would have been offended. As it was, I thought it was funny.
Despite Beau’s rugged good looks and imposing physical presence, Savannah had barely given him the time of day since we’d arrived at the game. Now she was practically drooling. It was a phenomenon I’d seen often. Savannah was a badge bunny.
“Well now, this has been great, but it’s time Juni and I get going.” He reached a hand out to me and I took it. Even after I stood, he continued to hold my hand. “Nice meeting y’all.”
Copyright © 2024 by Olivia Blacke.
