Not Who We Expected

Book 4: Locard Institute Thriller

by Lisa Black

Genres: Female Sleuths; Thrillers

Synopsis

Dynamic forensic analysts Ellie Carr and Rachael Davies return in New York Times bestselling author Lisa Black’s latest riveting Locard Institute thriller, as they solve a deadly mystery unfolding in the shadow of a celebrated rock star.

The two crime experts are enlisted by legendary rock star Billy Diamond to find his missing daughter. A level-headed student at Yale, Devon left six months earlier with her boyfriend, Carlos, for a career development retreat in Nevada. Her calls and notes became less frequent until they stopped. Billy wanted to give his daughter space—but after learning Carlos' body was found a few miles upstream from the ranch, he needs answers.
 
Rachael and Ellie hatch a plan—as Ellie goes undercover, Rachael will work with Billy to find out about Devon. But Rachael has a second agenda, to find out why Billy seems so familiar with her late sister Isis, whose little boy Rachael is raising. The music idol is hiding something, but what? 

The southwest ranch is full of surprises.  Devon is not only alive but thriving, and no one mentions Carlos. The attendees follow their leader, Galen, with slavish devotion, and their daily mind-body exercises stretch from brain-numbing to downright treacherous.  If Galen is behind some nefarious scheme, how does it relate to the rock star and his daughter?

To answer those questions, Rachael will also have to ask: Who was her sister Isis, really? The answers will draw Ellie and Rachael deeper into danger. In Billy’s world and in Galen's, the living, the missing, and the dead all have secrets.
 

Release date: February 25, 2025

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

It might not be the largest private home Rachael Davies had ever visited, but it definitely made the top ten. She stepped out of her car, leaving it on the wide circular drive, behind two haphazardly parked SUVs. Slightly biting air refused to pretend it was still fall; winter approached, without subtlety.

The building’s rectangular footprint spanned half an acre, according to her quick estimation. A balcony ran the length of the upper floor, held up by graceful white columns. Dead leaves rustled along the brick porch under white-shuttered windows. More cars were scattered around a detached garage. The former pathologist wondered as she approached if the house had originally belonged to one of the Founding Fathers or some other wealthy colonialist. They were less than fifty miles outside DC. It might have been a plantation.... Either way, it was a place where someone like her would once have had to go around back to the servants’ or the delivery entrance.

She marched up the brick steps to the front door and knocked.

No one objected. No one answered at all.

The door consisted of clear glass panes arranged in a looping, almost floral pattern, allowing her a broken-up view of a cavernous entryway. She found a doorbell set in brass, rang it, heard the peal inside. Waited. Still no response.

She checked her watch to see if she had arrived on time, neither too early nor too late. Not an easy task when she had to drive nearly two hours from the Locard forensic center on the Chesapeake Bay, through DC traffic—always a nightmare—simply because rock legend Billy Diamond had asked her to.

Billy Diamond had shredded his guitar onstage with the band Chimera from the time he was fifteen. He tended to be coy as to exactly how many decades had passed since then. The band’s total record sales had waxed and waned over the years but generally had fallen somewhere between Billy Joel’s and Taylor Swift’s. At least they had until their very public and acrimonious split several years ago.

Rachael tried the knob, which turned easily. Sound escaped through the open crack—voices, music, clattering, as if someone in the kitchen had dropped an armful of metal pots. She pushed the door and stepped inside. The commute had been too many miles to simply turn around and leave.

Besides, Rachael was as much a rocker as the next girl. Meeting Billy Diamond was not an opportunity to be passed up lightly.

Sounds came from everywhere, voices and shouts and laughter, the occasional snap of a snare drum. These echoed off the marble floor, the high ceiling, and the stone steps leading up a curving staircase. An ornate round table had been centered under the chandelier. It held a vase of wilting roses and a Starbucks cup with lipstick on the rim.

Hallways ran off to the right, left, and center. She began eeny-meeny-miny-moeing her options, but then a wiry older man with a small snare drum tucked under one arm tripped down the steps, his sneakers squeaking with each riser. He noticed Rachael only when he nearly ran into her.

“Oh, hey, Mama,” he said.

“Hello. I’m—”

He continued past her without slowing. Lacking a better idea, she trotted to keep up, an Alice in business attire following the White Rabbit.

They passed through a sitting room of sorts with white chiffon curtains and overstuffed settees. A woman of indeterminate age vaped on an ottoman while running her fingers through wild auburn hair. She didn’t seem to notice either Rachael or the snare drum, directing her conversation to a gorgeous young man on a couch who appeared to be asleep.

The wiry man and the drum came to a stop in a hexagon-shaped sunroom with band instruments set up in its center—guitars, drum set, a saxophone lying across a chair, music stands. It looked convincingly haphazard, but Rachael wondered if it was some kind of photo shoot rather than a practice or concert spot. No amplifiers, and temporary-appearing heavy black curtains covered some of the windows.

“Excuse me,” she said to the man, who nearly dropped the drum while attaching it to a stand. “I’m here to see Billy.”

“Aren’t we all,” he muttered, then seemed to remember his manners. “He’s upstairs.”

“Could you be more specific? I’m guessing ‘upstairs’ covers a lot of ground.”

He got the drum attached, straightened, and surveyed his handiwork. After moving a music stand four inches to the left, he continued. “Yes, sorry. I’ll help you find him. Who are you? All media requests need to go through me, but I can see you’re not a reporter.” His eyes swept her from top to toe and back again. “Besides, if you were, you’d have a photographer with you.”

Why her looks told him that, she couldn’t guess, and she didn’t bother trying. “I’m Rachael Davies, from the Locard Insti—”

“Ohhh, yes. You’re Isis’s sister.”

She was, but she was still startled to hear it mentioned for the second time in as many days. Isis had been dead for what, almost two years now? “I am, but—”

“Come with me.”

And he was off again.

She followed him through a kitchen, littered, but not badly, with used plates and the detritus of take-out food, and up to a normal-sized elevator which rested in a corner. The rear of the house looked out over a short expanse of lawn that ended in a waist-high field that might be some kind of crop or a very large English garden.

“I hope you can help him,” the man said as the electric doors closed and the cage began its ascent. “He’s driving me nuts. I’m Newton Garcia, by the way. Don’t call me Newt. I’m the manager for Billy Diamond. I used to be the manager for Chimera, but when they split, I stuck with Billy. Wasn’t that a brilliant idea!” he finished, adding this last as if to himself.

“Okay.” She realized she had no idea how many people had made up Chimera or what their names were. Rachael might obsess over a favorite song here and there, but she was no groupie. “I’m not quite sure yet why he’s asked to see me.”

The aging rocker had called her personally at the Locard Institute, a center for forensic research, training, and investigation. He had told her he needed her help to find his missing daughter, and asked if she would come and talk to him about it, because he had been a good friend of Isis, and Isis had always said that her sister Rachael was the smartest person she knew and could solve anything. Rachael had very much doubted that Isis ever said anything of the sort, but the combination of famous rock star and missing child had made her willing to sacrifice an afternoon in the lab.

“It’s about Devon,” Newton said, and the elevator came to a stop.

So the missing child wasn’t a secret, but still, Rachael needed to talk to the client—potential client—before anyone else. “How is he driving you nuts?”

The elevator opened onto a long hallway with doors on either side of the marble floor, the perfect place to use the child’s Big Wheel beside a half-moon table. The table held a small lamp and a red lace bra. Voices and at least one television sounded along the way.

Newton held the elevator door as she stepped out. “How isn’t he driving me nuts? The venue is too big, it’s too small, the sound is off, a solo tour is a terrible idea, a solo tour will sell millions, and Samson is the worst drummer ever, so let’s get Mitchell. Mitchell is a . . . . It’s just nerves, that’s all.”

Rachael glanced in some of the rooms as they passed. Nothing outrageous: beds, pieces of classic furniture, the occasional pair of jeans on the floor. A canary in an ornate cage, carefully monitored by a pensive tabby cat on the window seat. No beer can pyramids or smashed guitars.

“If this touring as a solo act is a flop, it will be a financial and emotional disaster for all concerned, including me. Very definitely including me. But it will be a body blow to the guy’s ego. Of course it will be. How could it not? All that’s at stake is his entire musical legacy. Did he make Chimera, or did Chimera make him? I didn’t know Billy when he was younger, but I’ll bet he’s never handled stress very well.” He waved her ahead of him, into a room near the end of the hall.

“That’s not true,” Billy Diamond said as they entered. “I handle stress excellently well.”

Rachael had met a number of famous, semi-famous, and not at all famous people through her work at the Locard—but never a rock star, a genuine rock star, with thirty albums totaling well over three hundred million in sales, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, inclusion in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Her nerves hummed, something that hadn’t happened in a while.

That he knew Isis did not surprise her. As DC’s premier party planner, Isis had handled events for all sorts of people. That Isis had ever mentioned her, that surprised Rachael. The two sisters had never been enemies, but Rachael didn’t think they’d ever truly been friends either.

And now here was Billy Diamond.

An amp cord caught his toe as he hastened to shake her hand. Even more wiry than his manager and dressed in a pair of plaid pajama pants and a T-shirt so faded she couldn’t read the lettering, Billy Diamond first pumped her hand with a firm grasp and then held it in both of his. Thin black hair liberally spiked with gray had been gathered into a ponytail; he had tattoos on both arms, a collection of bracelets, and bare feet, which he now shook free of the amp wire.

Given that most of the walls were covered in acoustic tiles and that a soundboard with enough electronics to run the International Space Station was on display, this had to be the actual practice space. A man in sweats and sporting a braided beard tuned a guitar; he gave Rachael a quick but friendly smile. A woman with seriously toned arms and a shock of pink hair didn’t even glance up from the pile of electrical cords she seemed determined to untangle.

Meanwhile, Billy was saying, “Thank you so much for coming out. I’m desperate, I’m telling you, really desperate, and Isis was such a friend to me. She said you were so sweet and softhearted, you’d never leave anyone in pain.”

Again, Isis said that? As if.

“And I am in pain, believe me, and I know you understand, because you’re raising her baby now, aren’t you? Danny?”

“Danton,” she corrected. “He’s two and a—”

“I saw that in a magazine or the paper. Does anyone read the paper anymore? Do I? I’m not even sure. But I need your help, please.” He raised her knuckles to his lips. “Please.”

Who could resist such an awkwardly cheesy appeal? Even spoken with breath smelling of orange juice and rum. “Why don’t you tell me what the situation is, and we’ll see if the Locard can help.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” His head snapped in one direction, then the other. “Let’s sit . . . Oh, there’s nowhere to sit. This is where we—Well, let’s go to the parlor. It’s actually called a parlor, do you believe that? The people who had this place before me, they called it that.”

“It’s beautiful,” Rachael said. A little small talk often helped to put clients at ease, and this one needed to come down a notch or two. “I had no idea you lived so close to the capital.”

“Yeah, well . . . I had to get away from the craziness, you know, the . . . just . . . LA and Nashville and New York. I’d had enough—”

“He thought he might go into politics,” Newton translated.

Rachael felt her eyebrows rise and tried to stop them mid-flight.

“I didn’t . . . it’s not . . . It was a good deal. The house was a good deal,” Billy finished after a sharp look at his manager. “Let’s go.”

“The photographer will be here at two,” Newton called after them.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

Rachael caught the manager’s eye roll just before Billy led her away, looping one arm through hers, as if they were going to stroll across the green bank of La Grand Jatte. Or as if she might try to escape.

“The parlor” now had a pool table and a poker table, heavy red curtains layered with dust, and a bar in the corner, which didn’t seem too dusty at all. “Drink?” Billy offered. “We’ve got everything. Wine, liquor—even sweet iced tea if you want it.”

She said that water would be great and found a grouping of armchairs, then pulled one closer to another. This interview needed to stay under control and on topic, she could see, or they’d be there all afternoon. Not that that would be a bad thing.

He handed her an ice-cold bottle. “Water. Ugh. You know what fish do in that?” He slumped into the adjacent armchair without waiting for her reaction to the punch line. Ice tinkled in his own glass—probably not full of water, to judge from the darting gaze and the frenetic speech. But she could be wrong. He might just be stressed and chronically hyperactive.

“So . . .” she began.

“Do you like music?”

“Uh, yes. Yes, very much. I’m a huge fan of Chimera, a huge fan of yours, always have been,” she added, assuming his question had truly been, “Do you like my music?”

She’d guessed right. His face dissolved into a smile of pure happiness. “Really? Which one is your favorite? Wait, don’t tell me. It’s ‘When You Wake,’ right? You look like a hopeless romantic. Hopeful romantic.”

Not the way she’d describe herself, but she didn’t tell him so or that she’d never heard that particular song. “I’m not sure I could pick a favorite. I considered ‘New Road’ my theme song when I got my first car.”

He laughed merrily, then launched into a longish story about how the lyrics had popped into his head while he was driving through gorgeous Canadian mountains on his way to join the band in Alaska. She could have listened for hours but wanted to get home in time to make Danton’s dinner. Her mother had book club tonight, and Loretta took book club very seriously.

It took some gentle prodding to get him back on track.

The singer clasped his hands together. “Okay. Oh gosh, where do I begin? It’s my kid, Devon. I have only one kid. Like you now, right? She’s nineteen, amazing, she’s so smart, and I know you must think, she’s my kid, grew up with . . . this.”

He gestured around the room, maybe at the high ceilings and crown moldings, the beautifully maintained antique windows, or maybe at the wastebasket next to the bar, with the fruit flies hovering over the discarded bottles, an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts and glass pipes. Rachael couldn’t tell.

“You’d think because she’s Billy Diamond’s that she’d be stealing cars by the time she’s ten. But she’s not like that! Devon is . . . She’s the most hardworking person I know, and I know a lot. The music business is not all drugs and jamming. It takes a massive amount of—Anyway, Devon has always been straight As, soccer team, takes a homemade cake to her nana on her birthday, just the sweetest kid ever. Smart. I don’t know where she gets it. Certainly not from me.”

He stopped, and Rachael wondered if he was waiting for her to disagree. For all she knew, Billy Diamond might make pancakes every Sunday morning before church and tutor disadvantaged math students. What she wanted to do was ask about Devon’s mother, but he went on before she could finish the thought.

“She’s not part of this . . . life, I mean. She doesn’t trade on my fame like other celebrity kids, and I’ve tried to help her not be part of it. Like . . . no social media. She doesn’t party. Paparazzi don’t follow her around, because she’s convinced them that she never does anything interesting. Most of my fans don’t even know I have a daughter, and most of her friends at Yale don’t know I’m her dad. And that’s the way we both like it.”

“She’s a student at—”

“Yeah. Supposed to be in her sophomore year now. You know she qualified for three scholarships but turned them down? ’Cause they need to go to the kids who need the money, not people like us.”

Rachael nodded her approval.

“I see what you’re thinking. If Devon’s such a perfect kid, why am I here?”

“Take your time. Background is vital.”

“Well, here’s the foreground. Now she’s disappeared.”

A kid who didn’t look old enough to drive walked into the room, carrying an electric guitar in each hand. The paint jobs were impressive. One had a waving flag motif over a field of grayscale zombies. The other had a collection of wild cats—tigers, lions, cheetahs, jaguars—of varying colors, all peering with menace through bright green reeds.

“Which one?” the kid asked.

After the briefest consideration, Billy pointed at the one with the cats, and the young man exited without another word. The rock star flopped one hand at his wake in a dismissive gesture. “We donate those. I don’t play them. They’re just painted up to look cool for a charity auction. Real fans know I don’t play anything but Geneva. She’s been with me since . . . Let’s see now . . .”

“Devon has disappeared?” Rachael prompted. “Have you reported—”

“From my life, I mean, not disappeared like you’re thinking. I know where she is, but she won’t answer my calls, won’t text. She’s gone . . . What is it? Incommunicado. And I’m worried.”

He rubbed his eyebrows with both hands before summarizing. Devon wanted to take a gap year, have a break, do some traveling. Billy wasn’t crazy about it—he knew all about losing your momentum, which was how he had screwed up the fourth album. But if anyone deserved a little time off, it was Devon. Then summer began, and instead of backpacking through Malaysia, she went to a sort of life coach retreat spa in Nevada. That was Devon, through and through. Even her downtime must be productive. It sounded to Billy as if she was rethinking her major—economics, with the aim of going into nonprofit guidance—so perhaps taking some time to reassess would be the smart thing to do. She sounded enthusiastic about this retreat place at first, but then he heard from her less and less, until “less” became “not at all.” Cell phone service was spotty, and soon he couldn’t get ahold of her or Carlos.

Rachael jotted down notes on a small spiral-bound notebook. “Carlos?”

“Her boyfriend. That’s another reason I didn’t give a thought to her going, because it wasn’t Malaysia and because she wouldn’t be alone.”

“And the boyfriend is—”

“Sweet kid. They were two peas in a pod, really. He needed somewhere to go over last Christmas break, so Devvie brought him home, and that was that.”

“What does Carlos’s family think about this spa?”

This stumped him. “I . . . I don’t know anything about his family. I don’t even have their number. I’ll get back to Carlos in a minute, though I’m sure it was Carlos’s idea . . . the counseling aspect of it. And it’s not actually a spa, more like a ranch. It’s called Today’s Enlightenment, or something ridiculous like that.”

“And you’ve tried calling this ranch?”

For the first time an expression of true annoyance crossed his face. “Of course I did. I’m not stupid.”

“No, of course not,” Rachael soothed. “I’m sorry if my questions sound a bit ridiculous at times, but I have to establish what has and has not been done.”

“Oh. Yeah, okay. Some chirpy girl in their office says, ‘Yes, Devon and Carlos are there. They’re fine.’ But every time I called, they’re out picking beans or in motivation class or doing finger paintings or whatever and can’t come to the phone. I’d leave a message, and no callback. Finally, I told the chirpy girl that either she put Devon on the phone or I was going to show up at her door that night. She got a lot less chirpy after that, but I talked to Devon. That was three weeks ago. September twenty-third.” The flow of words stopped without warning.

“And?”

“She said she was fine.”

“But you had your doubts?” Rachael asked, guessing that was the case.

“Yes and no,” he said. “She said that I shouldn’t call her anymore, that I was interrupting her ‘progress.’ She talked about that a lot, progress. She said she was tired of defining herself by my standards and counting on unreliable people. She said my life revolved around myself and that was fine, but hers needed to revolve around herself, and a bunch of other gobbledygook like that. Basically, she was ticked off because Carlos had bailed on her and I was a shit father. She put it more gently than that, because she’s Devvie, but that’s what she meant.”

“Okay.” I wasted a trip, Rachael thought. The Locard Institute could wow the world in many ways—training scientists, researching innovative new ways to solve crimes, explaining the inexplicable to private clients—but talking a daughter out of a delayed teenage rebellion fell outside those areas of expertise. What Billy needed was some family counseling. “I appreciate your concern, Billy, but—”

Newton materialized next to the coffee table. “Photographer will be here in five. We have to get you into makeup.”

“In a sec.”

“Now.”

“Talkin’ about my kid here,” Billy snapped.

“You can talk and get your face prettified at the same time.” Newton said this lightly, jollying the great man along, but Billy wasn’t having any.

“In. A. Minute.”

“They charge by the minute,” Newton warned.

“They charge by the photo, and only the ones we purchase. Now, get out of my face, Newton.”

His tone sufficed to make the manager turn and leave, though he muttered, “No one says that anymore,” as a last act of defiance.

The man’s shadow hadn’t left the doorway before Billy said, “No matter how this tour goes, when it’s over, I’m firing that guy. I know what you’re going to say after ‘but.’ But why don’t I go myself if I’m that worried?”

“Or send . . .” She didn’t know how to phrase it. A flunky? One of his minions?

“I can’t. For one thing, you see what it’s like here. I don’t get time to pee without interruption. But most importantly, I don’t want Devvie to think I’m checking up on her.” He leaned forward, staring into Rachael’s eyes. “Devvie’s a celebrity kid. It’s . . . it’s hard on them. You don’t know.”

“No,” Rachael admitted.

“They’re expected to be a normal person after growing up in abnormal circumstances. There’s no going to school with the same kids year after year, riding bikes in the driveway. It’s all Dad’s work, Dad’s entourage, moving around and trying to do homework with a tutor on the road. They can’t trust anyone. Either people try to be her friend because she’s my kid or they want to tell her why her dad is a bum who can’t sing. Kids like her are in therapy by the time they’re ten, in rehab by the time they’re fourteen, and that doesn’t come as a surprise to anybody, does it?”

He paused for a response here, so Rachael nodded.

“Devon’s different than that. She’s been so strong all these years—and this is the first time she’s ever jumped out of her box to do something on her own. I can’t let her think I don’t have confidence in her. My dad did that to me. I won’t do that to her. After she finally took a step on her own path, I can’t go charging in, putting the whole place in an uproar, and it becomes all about me and autographing some chick’s boob. See?”

Rachael tried to picture her son as a timid college sophomore. Timid didn’t describe him, but things might change when he left the security of their home. The thought made her heart flutter.

“And I can’t send anyone else. First, Devon knows everyone who works for me, probably better than I do. She was handling my schedule before she could drive. Second”—he glanced at the open doorway, leaned closer, and lowered his voice a decibel or two—“I can’t trust anyone here. My new band is grumbling about their placement, the roadies don’t want to be called roadies anymore, both groups want a lot more money, and Newton is trying to kill me. I need someone neutral. I need the Locard.”

As sympathetic as Rachael felt toward a parent in distress, and though Billy had already promised to pay the kind of fee that could launch a new research study, she had to make something clear. “This is not the type of thing in which the Locard has a lot of expertise, Mr. Diamond.”

“Call me Billy.”

“It sounds as if you want us not only to check on your daughter’s welfare but also to convince her to reconcile with you, without mentioning you or letting her know that you are involved or even aware.”

He considered that. “Yes, exactly.”

“I don’t see how that would be possible.”

He brushed this away with a wave of one hand. “Isis said you could figure out anything.”

Speaking of that... “How did you know Isis?”

What she meant was, “How well did you know Isis?” Her sister had a long and varied history, the kind that had given their father prematurely gray hair and driven a wedge between the two siblings. But she had made a success, at last, of a party-planning business, catering to the wealthy and high-profile clients of DC. And Billy looked like he threw a lot of parties.

It tugged at Rachael, this opportunity to find out a little more about her sister’s life during the past eight or ten years, the years in which they hadn’t spoken much other than in quick, bitter arguments. The birth of Danton had repaired some ties, but only a fraction.

The abrupt change in topics had silenced Billy, so she prompted, “Through her business? Elite Events?”

“Yes! Yes. Uh yeah, Isis and I did a lot of business together. She put together great stuff, and you know, I trusted her, and I don’t trust many. She said. . .