Thirty-Five

I dialed the station from a public phone in the lobby, hoping Cal and my car would reappear while the police kept me on hold. No one could find Mooney. He was away from his desk, which could mean anything from a quick trip to the men’s room to chasing down a hot lead on Brenda’s death. Maybe he’d finally gone home to face his dragonlady mother and get some sleep. Joanne was not available. I hesitated over leaving Ray Daggett’s name and address with the desk sergeant. With some trepidation, I phoned Mooney’s apartment, and naturally got the dragonlady, who informed me she wouldn’t dream of waking her boy for a call from the likes of me.

She disapproved of me when I was a cop because, she told me, women aren’t meant to be policemen. She still dislikes me now that I’m no longer a cop. I’m beginning to take it personally.

I left Ray’s name and address with Mom. She might hate me, but she’d make sure Mooney got it. I clinched that by telling her it might help his chances for promotion. She fancies herself as the mother of the police commissioner. Mooney just laughs it off.

My Toyota didn’t show, so I dialed Gloria at Green & White Cab, searching my pockets for dimes, nickels, and quarters to feed the phone.

“I need a ride at Saint John’s on Allston Street,” I said when she picked up on the second ring.

“The hospital? You okay?”

“Fine. Any news for me?”

“I found out a couple things,” Gloria said casually, as if she really weren’t proud of being one of the best-connected gossips in town, which she is. “Berklee Performance Center keeps their cash right next door at Bank of Commerce. Man listed on the exempt sheet is one of their regular security people, George Wolfe, with an e on the end.”

“Thank you.” I remembered Dee’s unflattering description of security at the Performance Center.

“Wait up, babe. Best is yet to come. Paolina called me.”

It made my mouth dry. I swallowed. “Paolina?”

“That’s what I said. Her mom won’t let her call you, but she knows her way around a phone book, and she figured that ‘no calls’ didn’t extend to roundabout messages. She says thank you kindly for the kite. Says she got it up about a mile in the sky this morning. Says she hoped you saw it.”

I found myself smiling for the first time since I’d heard about Davey. “If she calls again, tell her I’ll look for it. Tell her … Thanks, Gloria.”

“Yeah,” she said, her voice a little gruffer than usual. “You need anything else, you let me know.”

“Just send the cab, okay?”

Getting by the cops on the hotel room door wasn’t hard this time. I knew one of them. My acquaintance nodded at me and said, “This one’s okay,” to her beefy partner. He barely grunted, but he gave me the once-over and I was sure he’d recognize me the next time we met.

Dee was picking at the Reverend’s old Gibson, humming a tune under her breath. I realized I hadn’t seen her alone for more than a few minutes since the night she’d ventured so disastrously into the park, the night she’d hired me. My eyes did a quick search, but the room seemed empty. A pack of Marlboros, my dad’s poison of choice, sat on a low table near Dee’s chair. The ashtray had long since overflowed.

Dee remembered her burning cigarette, took a puff, stuck the butt under a string near a tuning peg. She fingered a B flat the hard way, looked over her shoulder, and attempted a smile when she saw me.

“Jimmy says keep on playing, get on with the tour, don’t miss a date, or I’ll never get the chance again,” she muttered over a progression of chord changes.

“Got a bass player?”

“Jimmy’s flying in two from the coast. Both veteran session men. One’s from a glitter-rock band, but Jimmy swears he’s okay on the blues.” She tried her smile out again. “I say only the broads in my band get to use makeup. He wears the teensiest bit of eye shadow, we go with the other one, even if he can only play in A.”

I made sure the door was closed, bolted it from the inside. “Dee,” I said, “this tour may stop before it starts.”

She ignored me. I’m not even sure she heard me. “You know that song?” she asked. “Old song. ‘Wild Women Don’t Get the Blues’?”

“Dee?”

“Well, it’s crap, Carlotta. A load of crap.”

“I found Davey,” I said. “Have you been drinking?”

“‘Oh, baby, I been drinkin.’” She sang Randy Newman’s line, trying to look unconcerned. “I told you, forget about him.”

I sat down on the couch, uninvited. “MGA/America’s attorney didn’t agree with you.”

She shrugged as if nothing mattered anymore, sat tall in her straight-backed chair, and fingered a familiar riff, the opening to Danny O’Keefe’s “Steel Guitar.” She started singing before I could interrupt.

“Carol once told me she dreamed she was pretty,

Lived in a very cool part of the city,

With a man who came home every evening at six,

And begged her to play him his favorite licks,

On a steel guitar, on a real guitar,

She could put it all together on a real, on a steel guitar.”

“Remember that one?” she said, keeping the rhythm going. “Dum, dum, dum da da dum. I’ve been thinking of opening with it.”

I unfolded the letter from Stuart Lockwood, held it so she couldn’t avoid seeing it. “Lorraine ever sing it with you?” I asked. “‘Sweet Lorraine,’ ‘Missing Note,’ ‘Duet.’ It was all in the song titles in the lawyer’s letter, right? There was never any plagiarism.”

“Plagiarism is what the letter said,” she responded slowly, staring down at Miss Gibson, her fingers moving along the strings like they were separate creatures with minds of their own. “Sing it with me, Carlotta. Try Lorraine’s part.”

“’Cause her daddy’d been a welder during the war,

And he played country music every night till four,

With some drugstore cowboys who could pick and grin,

And if you let it all out, they’d bring it all back in.

On a steel guitar, on a real guitar,

’Cause they could put it all together on a steel,

on a real guitar.”

“Dee,” I said. “Stop it. What happened to Lorraine? Sweet Lorraine?”

She just sang louder, and I gave up and joined in, faintly at first.

“He taught his daughter to drink whiskey like water,

To go for the man with something to offer,

He said to her, baby, you can go very far,

With an easy laugh and a steel guitar.

That steel guitar, that real guitar,

You don’t need a man, you got a real, you got

a steel guitar.”

“Did you kill Lorraine?”

Dee hugged the guitar like a shield, cutting off the song mid-note. “Oh, sweet Jesus, Carlotta, no.”

“Just no. That’s it?”

“It was suicide. Cross my heart. Suicide.”

I waited. Silence was usually the best technique with a suspect, but Dee had the perfect defense, the guitar. “Dammit, you made me forget,” she said. “What’s the next verse, Carlotta? Please.”

I didn’t answer.

“Please.”

“Jack,” I said, reluctantly.

“Yeah,” she said. “Old Jack.”

“Jack was a rambler, he’d been around Nashville,

He knew all the tricks and he sure wasn’t bashful.

He heard Carol playing steel guitar.

He said to her, baby, you and me could go far.

On a steel guitar, on a real guitar,

Let’s put it all together on a real, on a steel guitar.”

“Dee,” I said insistently.

“One more verse. The killer verse.”

“I’ll make a long story short, they had a

couple of children,

Jack went to war and the enemy killed him.

Carol got his pension and his Purple Heart,

And now every evening till two she just picks him apart.

On a steel guitar, on a real guitar,

She says I don’t need a man, I got a real,

I got a steel guitar.”

She finished with a flourish, whining the last note up the neck of the old guitar. “Think I can open with that?” she said. “Funny and sad? Or you think it’s too bitter?”

“Talk to me, Dee. About sweet Lorraine.”

When she started to play again, I clamped my right hand over the strings.

“Shit,” she said.

“Talk,” I said.

She laid the guitar in her lap, ran her fingers soundlessly over the frets. “I was there,” she said finally, her voice as empty as her face. “That’s all. I was there. I slept at Lorraine’s that night. We drank wine, and I felt woozy, and I passed out. I think she put stuff—pills, something—in our drinks. When I woke up, she was dead. I got out of there.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because I was young, and I was scared. I ran to Davey. Davey was living at my place, remember? I was supposed to spend the night with him. He was waiting when I got home.”

“Was Lorraine dead when you left?”

“Don’t you think I’ve asked myself that a thousand times? Was she dead? I thought so. I’m ninety-nine percent sure she was dead. The whole thing, it happened so long ago.… It didn’t seem real. It still doesn’t. Sometimes I’m playing a bar—or driving—and I swear I see her.… But it’s never her.”

She swallowed. “Davey knew I ran away. And he knew about the suicide note.”

“‘Missing note,’” I said. Another phony song title.

Dee tried the bridge to “Steel Guitar” again, staring at her hands so she wouldn’t have to look at me. “Yeah. Lorraine left a note, a last letter to me. A letter about me.”

I saw the photo of Lorraine at the picnic in my mind. So young.

“See, we had this thing, Lorraine and me, while I was with Davey. You gotta remember, I was still a kid from backwoods Missouri. I didn’t know about gays, lesbians, whatever. I was just pretty damned naïve. I was fooling around with sex was all. I did that a lot, fooled around, with all kinds of sex. And Lorraine, she’s like in love with me. That’s what she kept saying that last night, she’s in love with me, and she’s gonna be mine forever. We’ll be together forever eternally.”

Dee half sang the last sentence like a mocking children’s song. When she started to talk again, her voice was cool, distant, and angry.

“Well, I told her it wasn’t that way with me. I told her it wouldn’t even make a halfway decent lyric. Too crappy sentimental. Together, forever, June, moon, spoon. I don’t do that kind of shit. I wasn’t gonna be true to her; I wasn’t gonna be true to Davey. Hell, I’m not proud of it. I’m just not that kind of person. I wasn’t made that way. I wasn’t nasty to Lorraine. I told her I liked her fine. I said we could fool around when I was in town, but I had plans for the road, and I liked men too. Liked men better.”

“What did Lorraine say?”

“That she knew I’d come around; that we were perfect singing partners.”

“Duet.” The third bogus song title.

“She said we’d do music together,” Dee went on, “her kind of music. She thought maybe we’d join one of those women’s music labels, like Yolanda, or Lady Godiva, or whatever. One of those goody-good labels where the artists back causes and never earn a dime. Do music about ‘our love.’”

“Uh-huh,” I said quietly, to keep her talking.

“I told her it wasn’t gonna happen. She killed herself. She left a note.”

“And Davey knew about the suicide note?” While I asked, I realized I wasn’t absorbing answers. I was just hearing about suspects and perps like when I was a cop. I wasn’t thinking about my Lorraine, the first death I’d mourned, or my Davey, the Davey I’d slept with, or my Dee, the best singer I’d ever backed on rhythm guitar.

She responded bitterly, “Sure Davey knew, with me just about passed out on the floor. I couldn’t even get the words out, couldn’t make myself say it: Lorraine is dead. The letter was in my hand. I held it out to him. He read it. He kept it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me, Dee?” I kept my voice low, but I couldn’t keep the anger out of it. “Why didn’t you tell me?” All those years wondering why Lorraine killed herself. All those years of guilt. And I never would have guessed the truth. I saw Lorraine’s plain oval face, her smooth brown hair. Heard her clear soprano voice. I’d known her for what? two, three years. And never suspected she was gay. Certainly never suspected she loved Dee Willis.

“Oh, sure,” Dee said, “tell little Miss Cop. You would have gotten me busted for sure. Made me turn that awful letter over to the police, the whole thing. You know what a rumor like that could do back then? Dee Willis, the singer, she sleeps with chicks? Chick even killed herself over Dee Willis. Believe me, I never wanted to come out of any closet, Carlotta. I had a tour planned. I had management. I thought I was going someplace big in a hurry.”

She reached into the guitar case and picked up her bottleneck slide. “It’s Davey I don’t understand. After all this time … All he had to do was come to me. I gave him money before, whenever he needed it. And it was never like blackmail. It was like I said: a gift to a friend who did me a favor. We even joked once that I was paying him royalties, because I wrote “For Tonight” right after Lorraine’s letter, inspired by all that crap about always and forever. Davey used to swear he made one chord change, but he didn’t; it’s all mine, just like the rest of the songs.”

She set the guitar on the floor, its narrow neck leaning against the couch. I was afraid it would fall. “I don’t understand him turning nasty like this,” she said, and I’d never heard her sound so tired, so drained. “He knew Lorraine’s death wasn’t my fault. It happened, and maybe I should have handled things differently. If I had a moment to live over, that’s the one I’d take.”

“When you found Brenda dead, when you called me, you were talking about Lorraine, weren’t you?”

“It was like a nightmare, like it was happening all over again. And that’s when I knew Davey must have gone nuts, killing poor Brenda for no reason except to remind me that I owed him for keeping his mouth shut. That’s when I decided I’d pay him, hock what I had, go into debt, take any contract MGA would give me, pay him, and get on with my life.”

I picked up the guitar. The aged wood felt silky smooth. There was a deep scratch to the left of the pick-guard. It smelled like old cigars. “Tell me more about Lorraine.”

“What’s to tell?” Dee said, head bowed. “I liked her. I cared about her.”

“Do you think she was trying to kill you too? With the pills and the booze?”

“I don’t think about it anymore. I don’t think about anything but the music. The music, this goddamned ungrateful music is my fucking life, Carlotta. If I can’t have the music, I don’t want anything else. I’ve given up what most people care about. I don’t have a home. I don’t have a kid. I was scared shitless the night Lorraine died. And I wasn’t going to let Lorraine’s death be what people thought about when they heard my name. Dee Willis. Dee Willis. People think about my songs when they hear my name. Not some ugly suicide from a long time ago …

“Oh, how could Davey do it?” she asked, shaking her head and holding out her hands as if they could wring an answer out of the air. “Why now? Why go to some goddamn lawyer? I thought if I found him, if you found him … Maybe he got so drunk, he was out of his mind—”

I plucked an A minor chord, followed by an E minor that seemed to hover in the air. “The blackmailer had to go through a lawyer,” I said. “He couldn’t come to you. He’s not Davey.”

“What?”

“He’s not Davey,” I repeated. “Davey’s not blackmailing you. Davey talked too much to the wrong person. And that wasn’t his fault either.”

Dee ran her hands through her dark curls, squeezed them to her temples as if she had a killer headache. “Stop hitting minors, for chrissake,” she said. “Tell me who the hell the blackmailer is. Tell me—am I better off than I thought? Or worse? What happens next?”

“Depends.”

“On?”

“You. You can shut up and pay a fortune to the guy. And remember, he’s not just a blackmailer either. Ray Daggett killed Brenda.”

“Who?” Dee said. “Run that by me slow.”

“Brenda’s boyfriend. Brenda’s ‘boy-toy.’”

“Brenda’s little honey? Ray? How’s he know Davey? How’s he know about Lorraine? I mean, maybe he killed Brenda ’cause they had some kind of lovers’ shit, but I don’t understand him blackmailing me.”

“He knew Davey. I’ll explain it all later, but the question you have to answer now is simple: Do you want him to go free?”

Dee dropped her hands to her lap, looked at me for a long time before answering. “Brenda was a tough cookie,” she said finally. “We didn’t agree on much. But she was a real decent player. The Reverend would have called her a ‘sportin’ ’player.”

“I take it that means you don’t think her killer should walk. Good. But you’ll have to talk to that cop friend of mine. You’ll have to tell him about Lorraine.”

“Shit,” Dee said. “Shit. I have to think. Either give me back the guitar or play it, okay?”

My fingers found the notes to something the group used to sing. I was surprised I remembered the words.

“Look down the road, far as my eyes can see,

Far as my eyes can see.

I couldn’t see nothing that looked like mine to me.”

“Nice,” Dee said. “Skip James?”

I kept playing; not singing, just fooling around with the melody.

“You said you found Davey,” Dee said. “I knew you could.”

I sang another verse. “Yeah,” I said.

She spoke softly over the guitar break. “Did you talk to him? Do you think he’d give me back Lorraine’s letter?”

When I told her where he was, she started to cry. I didn’t have the heart to ask her any more questions. I didn’t really need to anyway.