About an hour-and-a-half later Michael eased his family's rather large van into a tighter parking space than he would have preferred on Patterson Avenue in downtown Richmond.  He had seen a public lot a few blocks back with plenty of room to maneuver, but he wanted to park as close to the Budget Music store as possible.  From the spot he had found on the street it was possible to see the entrance but not inside the store itself.

"Okay, we're here," he announced as he shifted the van into park and left the engine running.  "Now, listen up, guys," he said to his kids, "we didn't tell you this earlier, but when I called this store yesterday about the Masque record album they said not only that they had a copy of it but also that my name was already on it, as if it were reserved for me."

"That's weird," his son Michael said.

"Yes, it is," his father continued.  "We don't know who might have 'reserved' it for me.  Maybe it was the same person who wrote the message we found the other night after the concert.  We don't know.  But it's obvious that this mysterious someone has been planning this for a while and maybe even has been secretly watching us."  He looked toward his wife.  "For all we know," he added, "someone might be watching us this very minute."

His wife and children reflexively glanced out the van's many windows to see if they were indeed being watched.  A moment's looking around was all it took, however, to tell them that they'd have no way of knowing if they were, given the amount of traffic and the number of parked cars on the street and the pedestrians on the sidewalks.

"Honey," Bev said, "I really don't know if you should go in there.  I'm afraid."

"I'm worried myself," her husband replied.  "But here's what we can do."  He took his cell phone out of his pocket, called up its address book and dialed his wife's cell number.  Her phone began to ring.  "Answer your phone, honey," he said.

Bev opened the cover of her phone, automatically opening the line.  A faint squeal of feedback began to sound from the speaker due to its proximity to Michael's phone.

"Now," Michael said, cupping his hand over his phone, "I'm going to go in the store with my cell phone turned on and in my pocket with the speaker volume turned down.  You guys," he said, looking at his kids, "have to be completely quiet so that Mommy can hear with her phone everything that goes on while I'm in there."  He looked back to his wife.  "Honey, if you hear anything at all that sounds suspicious, and especially if you hear me yell out for you to call the police," he said, turning toward his oldest son, "Jeff, you call 9-1-1 on your cell phone and tell them you're at 5900 Patterson Avenue in downtown Richmond.  Whatever you do, honey," he added, turning back to his wife, "keep the line open on your phone."

Bev looked into her husband's face.  For the first time since they had found the message the other night she found herself feeling genuinely afraid.  She leaned over and hugged his neck.  "You don't have to go in there," she whispered.

"It's the only way to get to the bottom of this," he said, kissing her cheek.  "Besides," he said, pointing toward the entrance, "it's a legitimate business.  It's been here for twenty years and more.  A fair number of people have been going in and out just since we got here."

Bev looked toward the glass door.  A young woman with a toddler walked out of the store, carrying a plastic bag in one hand along with her purse as she held her child's fingers with her other hand.  As she exited, a couple of young boys entered.  It all looked perfectly innocent and safe.

"Remember," Michael said, unbuckling his seat belt and opening the driver-side door, "keep the doors locked and your phone line open.  If you hear anything weird, or if someone comes up to the van and starts harassing you, Jeff calls 9-1-1 on his phone.  The rest of you," he said, looking back toward his younger children, "keep quiet.  This is important."

"Okay," they all said softly.

Michael leaned back over and gently kissed his wife's lips.  "Love you, " he said.  "Be back soon."

Michael stepped out of the van and closed the door behind him.  A moment later he heard a click as his wife locked the doors and moved over to the driver's seat.  Michael took his phone out of his pocket and said into it, "Can you hear me now?"

"Yes," his wife's voice came faintly from the speaker.

"Good," he said, putting the phone back into his pocket as he walked toward the store's entrance.

"Here goes," he said to himself as he swung the store's door open.
 

Michael's eyes took a moment to adjust to the relative darkness of the store after being out in the noonday sun.  After a moment, he could see a few aisles of CDs and other merchandise stretching off to the left side and a single row of racks holding record albums and 45 r.p.m. singles off to the right.  A handful of customers browsed among the racks.

LPs and 45s.  Just like the old days, he thought to himself as he walked toward the counter.  A young man was standing idly at the register.

"Hi," Michael said, leaning over the counter.  "My name is Michael Brooks.  I called yesterday about..."

"Oh.  About that Masque album.  Yeah, I talked to you," the clerk said, smiling faintly and reaching down behind the counter.

Michael could now put a face with the voice on the phone.  The kid definitely hadn't been born the last time Michael had been in the store.

The clerk stood back up and handed a shrink-wrapped record album to Michael.  "KANSAS" it read in bold yellow letters across the top, and "masque" in a cursive lowercase script in the lower left corner, all against a deep black background.  Arcimboldo's Water filled the right two-thirds of the cover, leaving the left side a blank, featureless void.  If this wasn't the "original" album his wife had spoken of, it was sure close to it; Michael noted the yellow "The Nice Price" sticker affixed to the shrink-wrap in the upper right corner and the record company's white promotional sticker about a third of the way down on the left side that read, "Featuring the smash hit, 'It Takes a Woman's Love (To Make a Man).'"  Smash hit, Michael chuckled to himself.  Wishful thinking on the record company's part.  He noted that for whatever reason there was no price tag on the album.

"Yep," Michael said, "This is it.  Masque by Kansas.  Unopened, by all appearances."

"Uh-huh," the clerk replied, "and on the back is the label that has your name on it."

Michael turned the album over.  A sticker with a handwritten message was affixed to the plastic wrap near the bottom of the back cover, partially obscuring the picture of Kerry Livgren.  Across the sticker were the words, "To be given only to Michael Everett Brooks of Culpeper, Virginia."  Michael wondered for a moment if the placement of the sticker had been accidental or intentional.  He hoped that the cell line to his wife was still open.

"That's me, all right," Michael said.  He then turned to the clerk with a smile and said, "Do you need to see my I.D.?"

"Well, since we were instructed that it go only to you..." the clerk said, his voice trailing off as he left the sentence unfinished.

"No problem," Michael said, pulling out his wallet and showing his driver's license to the young man.  "We were instructed," Michael thought to himself.  What's going on with that?

"'Michael Everett Brooks, Culpeper, Virginia,'" the clerk read.  "I guess you're you, Mr. Brooks.  Do you still want the album?"

"Yes, I do," Michael replied.  "How much do I owe you?"

"Nothing, sir," the clerk said.  "We didn't get this through our purchasing channels.  It was given to us to give to you."  The young man caught himself, looking as if he had said something he shouldn't have.

"Given to you to give to me?" Michael asked.  This whole thing was getting weirder and weirder.  "You're sure about that?  I don't want to get you in trouble with your boss."

"Oh, yes, sir, I'm sure," the clerk stammered.  "There's no charge."

Michael looked again at the yellow sticker in the upper right corner of the album. Free, Michael thought to himself, is about as nice a price as you can get.

"Well, okay then, thanks," Michael said absently as he turned toward the door. That wasn't so bad after all, he thought as he put out his hand to push it open. Strange, but not bad.  All that worry and cloak-and-dagger stuff with the phones for nothing.

"Mr. Brooks," a gruff, older voice suddenly said from behind him as he started to open the door.  Michael stopped and turned around.  Behind the counter, next to the now obviously nervous clerk, stood an older man who had apparently walked up from a back room.  He was shorter than the clerk, slightly balding with streaks of gray through his thinning hair.  He wore a bushy mustache, and his five-o'clock shadow was obviously a few hours early.  Like the clerk, he wore a store name tag on his shirt.  Michael figured him to be the manager.

"Mr. Brooks," the older man said again, slightly lowering his voice, "young Tony here forgot to give you something."  He reached down behind the counter.  Michael's hand instinctively moved toward the pocket holding his cell phone.

"The man who brought that album to us several months ago with instructions to give it only to you also left this for you," the gruff man said, straightening back up from behind the counter, onto which he placed a package wrapped in plain brown paper and tied up with string.  Michael walked back to the counter.  A handwritten message scrawled across the top of the package read, "To be given only to Michael Everett Brooks along with the Masque record album."  Michael recognized the handwriting as being similar to if not the same as that on the sticker on the back of the album.

"What is it?" Michael asked, mystified.

"We don't know," Tony answered, his voice catching slightly.  "He left both the album and the package here with instructions that it go only to you."

"What did this character look like?" Michael asked.

"Again, we don't know," the older man said, lowering his voice again.  He obviously didn't want to be overheard by the other customers in the store.  "We found the album and the package together in a paper grocery bag one morning outside the back door as we were opening," he said in a gruff whisper.  "As we were bringing them inside, the telephone rang.  A man's voice on the other end said that he was the one who had left them here and that we were only to give the record to you and the package along with it.  Other than that phone call, we never heard from him again.  And we never saw his face."

Michael studied the package.  It was about a foot long, about eight inches high and about nine inches deep from front to back.  "And you never considered opening it yourself?  Just out of curiosity?" Michael asked.

"We don't open things that don't belong to us," the man replied with a hint of pride in his voice.  "It would be like stealing."

Michael lifted the package and looked at its underside.  No further writing there.  "And you never thought to try to call me right when you received it?"

"The man who left it said to wait for you to come get it."

Michael held the package out in front of himself.  Whoever had left it and the album for him to "come get" knew way more about him than he was comfortable with.

"Did he say why they had to go only to me?"

"He said that you would know," the man said.  Right, Michael thought to himself.

"So you've never heard back from him since that morning?" Michael asked, turning the package over in his hands, listening for any movement from inside.  He thought he heard something shift.  Michael took a little comfort in the thought that if the manager had felt that the package were dangerous, he would never have kept it right under the counter all this time, assuming that he was telling the truth about how long he'd had it.  If this were a bomb, Michael mused, it probably would have gone off by now.

"No," the clerk said with a twinge of nervousness.  "Never once."

Michael suspected that he was lying, but he saw no point at this time in challenging either of them on it.

"Well, okay, then," Michael said, turning back toward the door.  "Thanks."

"You're very welcome," the older man said, less than sincerely, it seemed to Michael.

He left the store and walked back to the van, where his wife quickly unlocked the passenger-side door for him as he reached for the handle.

"Wow, Dad," Graham exclaimed as his father got into the van, "that was so cool!  We could hear you and everything!"

"Yeah, it was like we were secret agents!" Katherine added excitedly.

"So you got the album," Bev said, looking at what her husband was carrying as he got into the van and closed the door behind him.  "But what's that package?"

"Don't know," Michael replied as his wife hit the left turn signal and prepared to pull out of the parking space.  "The manager said they went together and that I would know what it was all about."

"Do you know what it's about?" she asked.

"No idea at all," he replied.  "Not yet, at least."

"Let's open it!" Jeff yelled, laughing.  "Maybe it's a bomb!"

"You've been watching too much Spike TV, Jeff," his father said as his wife pulled into traffic.  "We'll take a closer look at this package and at the album when we get back to the seminary."

"Maybe there's another secret message written in black-light ink," younger Michael offered.

"Yeah!" Emily yelled.  "Get Mommy's penlight!"

"It's too bright out here," her father replied.  "We'll need darkness to see anything like that.  We'll be back at the seminary in a few minutes; we can check then."

"Hurry, please!" young Emily said urgently.  "This is all so cool and exciting I have to go to the bathroom!"

The other kids immediately cracked up at this.  Michael turned to his wife as she made her way back toward Chamberlayne Avenue and said, "Better stop at the McDonald's up here and let her go."

"Okay," his wife agreed.

"Can we eat lunch here, too?  Please?" Katherine asked.

"Yeah, can we?" the others added their voices.

"Okay, okay," Michael answered.  "We'll eat here then go back to the seminary."

"Yay!" the kids yelled together as their mother drove into the restaurant's parking lot.
 

Back at the record store, after watching the Brooks van drive off, the older man turned to his clerk.  The young man wore an extremely uncomfortable look on his face.

"Tony," the man said, "time to call... the Preacher."