Tie Die

by Max Tomlinson

  Lynda turned back to Colleen. “Spit it out.”

  “As you know, I’m working for your ex.”

  “More than working, from what I saw.”

  “You, and whoever you’re working with, owe him $27,000.”

  Lynda smiled, not a nice smile. “How the hell do you figure that?”

  “The twenty K ‘ransom’ that was collected, plus seven grand interest.”

  Lynda made a face. “Seven fucking grand? I know Steve isn’t that fiscally savvy, but he’s borrowing money from the wrong people.”

  “He didn’t want to borrow it from your father and lose his catalog, so he went with some shysters. And they aren’t going to wait for long.”

  “Sounds like Steve’s got problems, then, doesn’t it?”

  “Well, his problems are yours now. That’s why you’re going to pay him back.”

  “Babe, I don’t know how to tell you this—but you and Steve’re shit out of luck.”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t have it.”

  “I do not.” Lynda gave a sneer. “Maybe you can go ply your trade down on Mission … at ten bucks a pop it might take a while, but with your experience, you’ll get there, eventually.”

  Colleen’s hand came out of her jacket so fast it surprised even her. She smacked the side of Lynda’s face hard, knocking her sideways. Lynda staggered, caught her balance, grabbed her face, looked at Colleen with genuine surprise. “Why, you goddamn bitch!”

  Colleen thought about dragging Lynda upstairs, checking the safe. But that would be admitting that she was the one who broke in the other day.

  If Lynda had the money, she’d return it.

  Colleen got one of her business cards, set it on a sideboard, next to a cloisonné vase. “If I don’t hear from you by noon tomorrow, I go to the police.”

  Lynda’s face dropped. “I don’t have it.”

  “Then get it from whoever does. Like your father.”

  Lynda’s face went white as she took a deep breath. “He doesn’t have it.”

  “Then who does?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Meaning what? The thugs who ripped me off ripped you off, too?”

  Lynda looked at her with a plaintive frown. What a mess.

  “Work on it,” Colleen said.

  “I’ll try.”

  “It’s going to have to be a little better than try.”

  “Maybe I can get the twenty.”

  That was a start. But now it was Colleen’s turn to shake her head. “It’s twenty-seven. You kicked off this little stunt so you can clean it up. And then I forget going to the police.”

  Lynda stood, lips pursed, blinking rapidly. Colleen looked at Melanie at the top of the stairs again, staring over the banister. She looked confused.

  “Do you have any idea what’s going on?” Colleen asked her.

  “Leave her out of this,” Lynda said.

  Colleen turned back to Lynda. “Then pay Steve back.”

  Melanie gave a guilty look, stormed off.

  Colleen turned, opened the front door, and left.

  She was good and hungry now. But she’d stop at a pay phone first, call Steve, let him know the news.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “The good news is, Melanie’s home,” Colleen told Steve from the outdoor pay phone. The attendant was gassing up her Torino at the Shell station on San Jose Avenue, checking the oil. Premium was almost seventy cents. At this rate, the fill-up was going to cost close to fifteen bucks. Regular gas ran a dime cheaper, but the Torino struggled with it and No Lead, which they were pushing these days, made the big block V8 ping and knock. The writing was on the wall for muscle cars. A light drizzle fell into the afternoon air.

  “The end of a painful episode,” she heard Steve say. He sounded relieved, but there was still that measure of anger in his voice. She could understand. She just didn’t want him to act on it.

  “Next step,” she said, “is your twenty K, plus interest. I’m working on it.” The less Steve knew about the details, and her visit to Lynda, the better.

  “What do I do, love?”

  “Stay well away from Lynda until all of this is settled.”

  “You shouldn’t have to shoulder everything.”

  “That’s what you’re paying me for.”

  “I keep forgetting that.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll send you a bill when this is all done.”

  There was a pause. “I’d like to see Mel.”

  “She’s okay, Steve. Take it from me. But heed my advice and stay away until the dust settles.”

  There was another pause. “Yeah,” he said, finally. “Okay, then.”

  “And do me one more favor?”

  “What’s that?” he said quietly. She wondered if he was thinking what she was thinking. About last night. But, as they said, business and pleasure don’t mix. Or, if they did, they probably shouldn’t. Not too often.

  “Get your locks changed today,” she said.

  “Another one of your brilliant ideas,” he said. He had such an adorable way of talking, she didn’t think she could stand it. But he was too laissez faire about things that could turn dangerous. She watched the attendant check the dipstick.

  “Has Octavien Lopes been putting pressure on you for the money?”

  “Let me worry about that.”

  “It blows me away how easygoing you are about getting your leg broken. This is serious, Steve.”

  “He called again. Well, one of his toadies did. Some charming little fella named Chepe. Actually, he dropped by. With some guy with one big eyebrow.”

  Her heart sunk. “Subtle.”

  “Ya.” She heard Steve suck on a cigarette.

  She took a deep breath. “Here’s to getting it taken care of soon.”

  “Did you talk to Lynda or something?”

  She thought about making something up but didn’t want to lie to him. “I suppose I did.”

  “Without talking to me first?” His voice turned cold.

  “I don’t want to see you in traction at SF General. The less you and Lynda have to do with each other until this is all taken care of, the better. I’m the one who let the bag guy snag the money down at the Transbay Terminal, so I’m straightening this mess out.” Including taking care of whoever else was involved.

  She heard him puff on his cigarette. “I would’ve preferred being consulted about it first, though, yeah?”

  “Next time.” Maybe.

  On the forecourt, she heard the attendant slam the hood of her car.

  “Got to go,” she said. “My car’s blocking a gas pump.”

  She heard him take another drag. “It was nice last night. Until the trouble and strife showed up.”

  “It was,” she said in a soft voice.

  “I’d like to get to know you better, Coll.”

  “Likewise,” she said. “But this isn’t a good time—for either of us.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, for the moment, you’re still a client. With a number of balls in the air that need to be caught and dealt with. Besides, I’m not sure you know what you’d be letting yourself in for. I’ve got a skeleton or two in my closet.”

  “Join the club,” he said. “But it doesn’t make any difference to me.”

  A warm rush rolled over her. “That’s the nicest thing anyone has said in a long time, Steve,” she said, “and I should probably have my head examined for saying this, but can we leave it up in the air for now—like everything else in your life?”

  He laughed. “Sure.” Then, “By the way, the band with no name is playing The Pitt again tonight. And I’ve got a private eye to pay. I can put you on the guest list.”

  “Probably not. But thanks for the invite.”

  “Fair enough. I’ll catch you later, love.”

  “Ciao.”

  She called Owens, explained the situation. It took some time.

  “So, the whole thing was a ruse?” he said incredulo
usly.

  “To finagle Steve’s catalog. Bottom line, Melanie Cook is back home.”

  “Well, some guy with no name is in the morgue because of it,” Owens said. “So Lynda Cook and her crew aren’t off the hook. Meanwhile I’m notifying Missing Persons to check on the kid. Close the report.”

  “You do what you need to.”

  Back home, Colleen found herself in that rare situation when working a case: time to kill. She wouldn’t hear back from Lynda until tomorrow, if she heard anything at all. She couldn’t call Moran without a good reason because there was Daphne to contend with. She hadn’t heard from Alex and there were no new messages from her answering service.

  She wouldn’t go see Steve perform at The Pitt tonight; she needed to give things a break. But she did need to know more about his past. Why had he fallen from stardom so rapidly? What had Lynda been talking about when she let loose on Steve last night?

  The main library on Van Ness stayed open late. Colleen drove down, parked by the Civic Center.

  Once inside, she worked her way through the card indexes. Then she realized, one way or another, she was going to spend the evening with Steve after all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  When Colleen sat down at a microfiche machine in the public library and read the article “Rocker Runs” from the London Daily Mirror, April 1966, things began to make sense. Once the shock passed.

  At first, she found it hard to believe a man like Steve would run from a situation like that. But she got it. He was a kid at the time and the prospects of an underage girl dying in his hotel room bed—nude, as the papers kept pointing out—was not something the world took kindly to. Even so, nothing made Colleen feel he had done anything truly underhanded. His guitarist, and childhood friend, maintained Steve never used drugs and abhorred them. He was a boozer, and that seemed to be it. He was a decent guy. Any way one looked at it, the event was a tragedy for all parties involved, for the poor girl who died, her family, and Steve, who paid for it many times over. His career was eviscerated, and he became an outcast. All in one single night. He soon fled France, where he’d initially run, to Brazil. In Rio, he met a young American record exec on vacation by the name of Lynda Morris. The two hit it off, marrying on the beach after a whirlwind romance, allowing Steve U.S. residence. He had also established Brazilian citizenship so that he could escape extradition should he move elsewhere. He came to the U.S. with his new bride in 1967. The case in the U.K. had been filed as Death by Misadventure, but the British authorities still wanted to talk to him. But he was safe enough if he kept his head down and didn’t return to the U.K. Shame was his punishment.

  His new wife, Lynda, made futile attempts to secure Steve a new recording contract. But no one would touch him. His money was gone. He worked construction. Melanie came along, but she wasn’t enough to save Steve and Lynda’s marriage. The two divorced. Lynda came into perspective as Colleen saw a woman who had believed in Steve, trying to revive his decimated career to no avail. And Lynda’s anger at Steve, although certainly not justifiable, bore a slightly different context now.

  Colleen put Steve to one side and did some research on The Lost Chords, Delco records, and even found a couple of minor articles in Variety about the ongoing lawsuit over rights to Steve’s catalog.

  That gave her an idea. She went to the periodicals section, dug out the latest copies of Variety.

  There was an article at the bottom of page 17 of a recent issue that caught her eye. “Shades of Summer. Again.” The song Colleen loved. A Hollywood director was quoted as saying it would make an ideal song for an upcoming RomCom—Romantic Comedy. Unlike the Chords’ other songs, all firmly rooted in foot-stomping rock ‘n’ roll, “Shades of Summer” predicted the Summer of Love and sounded it, full of jangly guitars, phased drums, and ethereal vocals. Sure, it was just another pop song, but it was ahead of its time. Steve called it silly and downplayed it, but it was clear he had been growing as an artist, and it made his rapid exit all the more heartbreaking.

  Now she understood why Steve refused to let his music go. Even at the cost of borrowing mob money from Octavien Lopes.

  She drove home, feeling wiser but glum, and circled the block before she pulled into the lot, looking for a white van, or anyone out to do her harm. She found none.

  Up in her flat, she called her answering service. No new messages.

  This was what they called a quiet evening at home. She wondered what Alex was up to.

  She poured a glass of wine, dimmed the lights, fired up the stereo, and got out her precious album, autographed by the guy who sang it, the same guy who was in serious trouble if his ex or her dad didn’t come across with $27,000. She cleaned the record off with the disc-washer and put it on the turntable and set the tonearm down carefully on side two. Very few crackles for an album over ten years old.

  She couldn’t help but wonder what other connection existed between Steve’s demise as an artist in 1966 and his current situation. Delco Records was hovering in the background. There was the news in Variety about an upcoming RomCom. Lynda’s father was in the movie business. Coincidence?

  She sat back, lit a Virginia Slim, and took a sip of Pinot Noir as the guitars chimed in the intro to “Shades of Summer.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  By late afternoon the next day, Colleen still hadn’t heard from Lynda. She hadn’t heard from anybody. At one point, she picked up the phone just to check for a dial tone, make sure the thing still worked. Her answering service, likewise, had no new messages. Outside, the fog had given way to soft rain.

  She called Lynda’s house. No answer.

  How could Colleen have gotten it so wrong? She had really thought Lynda was going to come through with some money. There was the threat of SFPD.

  So much for intuition. She slipped on her bomber jacket over a white T-shirt and jeans. She’d make one more attempt to convince Lynda to do the right thing.

  She checked the window out front on Vermont. No white van lurking.

  She got her junior burglar tool kit and headed over to Lynda’s house on Colon Avenue.

  No lights were on as she drove by. No car in the driveway. Odd.

  She parked down on Monterey, got her PG&E hard hat, clipboard, threw on a plastic raincoat, headed up to Lynda’s house with her bag of tools. Rang the front bell on the gate, just to make sure Lynda wasn’t home. No answer.

  The squeal of small wheels caught her attention. Colleen turned her head slightly to see a young woman in a scarf pushing a baby carriage.

  “Problems?” she asked. She had a high voice.

  “No,” Colleen replied, looking at her clipboard. “Just a follow-up.”

  Damn. She waited until the woman moved by.

  Colleen followed the same brick wall alongside the house she’d taken the other day when she broke in. She got to the emerald green door. No one at the window of the house next door. She slipped on her gloves.

  The lock to the green door to Lynda’s yard was still the way she’d left it, broken. Lynda either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t had time to make repairs. Checking around, Colleen let herself in. The side door to the garage was still easy to pick.

  Lynda’s black BMW was not in the garage.

  Colleen entered the kitchen through the garage quietly, tiptoed in.

  No breakfast dishes out, no box of cereal, no carton of milk. A couple of unfinished TV dinners sat on the yellow tile counter. A half-eaten Salisbury steak and a barely-touched Mac & Cheese. Colleen suspected Lynda had the former, Melanie the latter. Lynda Cook, master chef. And even though she owned a snazzy Kenmore dishwasher, none of the dirty dishes in the sink had made it that far.

  A half-empty bottle of vodka sat on the kitchen counter, along with a near-empty can of Tab, next to a spanking new Radar Range microwave oven. The latest gadget. It didn’t look like anyone had had breakfast, going by Lynda’s fastidious kitchen habits.

  In the living room, Colleen was surprised to see more disarray.
The place had been neat enough yesterday when she stopped by. The stereo was lit, but no music was playing. The crocheted sofa blanket trailed across the floor. The brass floor lamp by the sofa lay on its side, the shade snapped off, halfway across the room, misshapen. A tall glass had spilled off the coffee table onto the rug.

  Colleen got on her hands and knees and sniffed. Vodka and Tab would be her guess.

  She stood up.

  Did Lynda drink herself silly last night, stumble off to bed after trashing the living room? She might have had a rough night, dealing with the pressure of Colleen’s twenty-seven-K demand.

  Colleen headed up the stairs. And that’s when she noticed the movie poster for Deadly Blessing lying on the floor of the landing. Glass was broken. Shards lay on the rug below. The frame was cracked.

  Colleen heard the murmur of a television upstairs. Coming from Melanie’s room?

  Maybe someone was home.

  “Hello?” Colleen said evenly. “PG&E. There was a gas leak reported. Anyone home?”

  No response.

  She headed up to Melanie’s room.

  The small TV was on at low volume. The bed was unmade, and clothes and shoes were scattered by the closet. A can of Coke lay spilled across the rug. Not like the room she had seen before.

  Colleen went over, turned off the TV.

  Something wasn’t right. Her heart thumped with anticipation.

  She crossed the hall to Lynda’s room.

  Lynda’s bed was unmade, the covers pulled off to one side. No big surprise there, but the side table drawer was pulled open, the drawer that Colleen had opened the other day and discovered a baby-blue-handled pistol and dildo.

  She stepped around the bed to investigate.

  And jumped when she saw Lynda Cook, twisted and bent, facedown on the floor, in a silk dressing gown barely covering her naked backside. Her blond hair was matted with thick, congealed lumps of blood and brains surrounding an ugly hole in the back of her head. The blue shag rug directly below was a thickening crimson blotch.

  Colleen had seen dead bodies in her time, but you never really got used to them. She let her stomach settle. It took a while.