“Hi, Cordy!” Donna gushes. “I brought you some of my Aunt Rose’s cannoli. And look who’s joining me—Audrey and Sean.”
Cordy looks right past me, showing the greatest interest in the Italian pastries and my husband. Donna and I could have easily stayed home. “Well, hell-ooo! Isn’t this a nice surprise.” She pats the chair beside her while making direct eye contact with Sean and simultaneously reaching for the plastic container of cannoli. “Did you come to hear more of my stories?”
“We sure did,” Sean says. “Audrey has been telling me that you know Joni Mitchell. Did you know David Crosby, too? He’s one of my favorites.”
That’s all it takes. Cordy is off on a long soliloquy about the lives and loves of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. For Donna and me, this is like listening to reminiscences at a class reunion of a high school we didn’t attend. But Sean listens with sincere fascination.
I try to be patient, but all this talk isn’t bringing us any closer to the information we came here for. Despite my warning to Sean, I’m the one who longs to switch into interrogation mode. With effort, I bite my tongue. I know my husband well enough to have confidence there’s method to this long preliminary chat.
Finally, after Cordy and Sean have polished off four cannoli and wandered down paths that take us from Haight-Ashbury to Asbury Park, Sean circles closer to our target. “Now tell me about John Freeman. What was going on in his life when he wrote those lyrics Audrey found?”
Cordy leans back in her chair, a sprinkling of powdered sugar dusted across her ample bosom. “Oh, John was a sensitive soul. He fell in love too easily. There was a girl named Gracie, a back-up studio singer with a sweet voice but no stage presence. John lost his mind when she dumped him for Stephen Stills. Or was it Peter Frampton? I suppose it doesn’t matter after all these years. Anyway, I caught him on the rebound.” She leers at Sean. “Still very enjoyable.”
“Ah, right. I was wondering more about the band. Did Freeman and the other members of the band get along?”
I watch my husband do his work. He’s not going to confront Cordy directly about the purse-snatcher. He wants to see if she’ll give something away as she reminisces about the band.
“There were always artistic differences in these bands.” Cordy shifts her substantial hips in the upholstered desk chair she uses at the kitchen table. “John had such a soulful voice and tended to write love ballads. But the bass guitarist understandably wanted to add a few more hard-driving rock anthems to their repertoire.”
“The bass player was—?” Sean asks although I suspect he already knows the answer.
“Gabriel Noonan,” Cordy answers promptly. “Child prodigy bass player. Only sixteen when he played with Five Free Men.”
I have to give her credit—she has an amazing memory for names.
Cordelia Dean continues her tale of Five Free Men. “They argued a lot in the days leading up to the recording of their last album. Whether to stick with the tried and true ballads that were working for them or whether to branch out in a new direction. John won the battle. That last album only contained one of Gabe’s songs, and it was a B-side to “Now It’s Time to Rock.”
“But John died before the album released, right?” Sean confirms.
“Yes, they were pressing the records when he wrapped his motorcycle around a tree.”
Cordy dabs at her bleary eyes with a crumpled napkin although I see no dampness there.
“Did the band break up right after he died?” Sean asks.
Cordy thinks for a moment. “About a year later. They hired another lead singer for the album tour, but audiences booed him. Then they cut another album of Gabe’s songs, which was a flop, and their record label dropped them.” She lifts her hands. “Whattaya gonna do? The music business is brutal. If you’re not producing hits...” She makes a throat-slitting gesture with her index finger.
Sean inches his chair closer to Cordy. “So the other members of the band never performed after the early eighties?”
“They didn’t perform together as Five Free Men. But they all played as studio musicians and filling in on the tours of bigger bands.” Cordy gazes up at the ceiling as she riffles through the files of her memory. “I think maybe Gabe toured with The Stones for a while.”
“Have you stayed in touch with them over the years?” Sean asks.
Cordy shakes her head. “Not in close contact. But you know, I hear things from friends of friends. The drummer has Parkinson’s, I heard. That’s a hell of a thing for a guy who once had the fastest sticks in the business. But I think the other two are still performing.”
“But financially, ‘Now It’s Time to Rock’ was such a hit, still producing royalties today—do they need to perform?”
Cordy gets huffy. “Rock ‘n’ roll is not just about the money, honey. Performing is in a musician’s blood.” She waves her hands above her head and sways in her seat. “You have no idea the tremendous rush they feel standing on stage in front of a stadium full of screaming fans.”
But screaming fans don’t pay your medical bills. The guys in Five Free Men must be in their seventies like Cordy. I see where Sean is headed.
“How do you think the other band members feel about the lyrics you sold?” Sean slides that question in while coaxing Ziggy the tom cat into his lap.
“Why should they care?” Cordy asks, her mellow voice taking on a sharper edge. “The note belonged to me. John wrote it in my apartment and left it for me.” She reaches over and pulls Ziggy into her own lap. “Besides. I didn’t sell it. You did.”
For the first time since we arrived, Cordy addresses me. I’m not sure how to respond, but I don’t have to. Cordy keeps talking. “You and Peter called all the shots. Where to sell it. How to spend the money.” Her tone is defensive, aggrieved.
“But I asked your permission,” I remind her.
“Phfft! I didn’t have much choice, did I? Not with Peter and his father nagging me nonstop about that damn tax bill.”
This is the first time I’ve noticed Cordy express anything less than affection for Peter.
“Hank and Diane were visiting Palmyrton this weekend,” I say. “Did they stop by to see you?”
Cordy’s eyebrows shoot up, and her hand tightens on the cat. He squirms away in protest and hits the floor with a thump. “Hank is here? Why?”
I lift my shoulders. “To visit Peter and Noreen, I guess. They haven’t seen one another since the move.” I continue to closely observe Cordy’s reaction.
“Well, thanks for the heads-up. If Hank’s coming over here to bug me about those taxes, I’ll just pretend I’m not home.”
“Everyone hates paying taxes.” Sean smiles, trying to return the conversation to its previous friendliness. “I just wondered if there was a lot of buzz in the music community about the discovery of the Freeman lyrics. I bet your phone’s been ringing off the hook.”
I’m impressed by Sean’s appeal to Cordelia Dean’s ego. It works like a charm.
Cordy grins, revealing teeth turned yellow and uneven with age. “I’ve gotten calls and emails and Facebook messages from people I haven’t heard from in years. Nothing like a long lost memory to bring people out of the woodwork.” As if to prove her point, Cordy’s phone starts chirping. She glances at the screen and smiles. “There’s another one. I’ll talk to him later.”
“So word spread pretty fast?” Donna enquires. “How did people know?”
“Gif knows as many people as I do. Roadies have their own network. It’s how they stay employed.”
Gif. That would explain why the Freeman lyrics sale is common knowledge. “Do you know who bought the lyrics?” I ask her. “The dealer wouldn’t tell me.”
“Probably some rock wannabe investment banker,” Cordy scoffs. “Bruce once raised a hundred grand for charity by giving some Goldman-Sachs dude a fifteen minute guitar lesson. I’ll tell you one thing,” Cordy continues. “If I sell anything else from my collection, I’m going to spend the mone
y on something fun.”
None of us speaks, but I’m pretty sure we’re all thinking the same things: what else does Cordy have to sell? And what is fun for an old woman in poor health who rarely leaves her house?
“Oh, you definitely deserve to have some fun with your money,” Donna agrees. “What will you do first?”
Cordy winks. “That’s my secret.”
“So you think we’ll get lucky again, and find something else good?” Donna presses on.
Cordy’s gaze shifts slyly from Sean’s face to Donna’s to mine. “That depends on where we look. How come Ty didn’t come tonight? Where is he?”
This is the opening I’ve been waiting for. “He’s with his sister. She was hit by a car yesterday when she was working at one of my estate sales. Her leg is broken, and she just got out of the hospital, so Ty is helping her get settled at home.”
Cordy’s face darkens. “Hit by a car? How did that happen?”
Donna explains, providing lots of dramatic detail, including the fact that Ariel had shopped at our sale.
Cordy listens intently, her breathing becoming more labored, her hands trembling a bit as she sips a mug of tea grown cold. When Donna finishes, Cordy says nothing, but I sense the wheels turning in her head. This story has unnerved her. What’s she thinking?
I’m just about to ask her about Ariel when her phone rings again. Cordy startles, glances at the caller ID, and this time she answers it. “I’ll call you right back,” she tells the caller. “I have some visitors who were just leaving.”
I guess we’re dismissed. But I still have more to find out.
Cordy heaves herself out of her chair with great difficulty. Once standing, she sways slightly, and Sean offers her a steadying hand. Certainly, she needs us if she’s going to find whatever else it is she thinks she’s got. She’s too out of shape to climb the pulldown steps to the attic or go down the steep, uneven stairs to the basement. And the garage is a booby trap of rusty old garden equipment mixed in with heavy boxes. How bizarre to possess this valuable item right in your own home, yet not have the strength to get your hands on it!
And I can’t shake the feeling that the old gal is scared. Is she scared that whatever she has is putting her in danger? Scared that she doesn’t know whom to trust to help her?
Or am I wrong? Is it excitement I’m seeing?
“So, Cordy—once Ty gets his sister taken care of, would you like him to come over here for a little more work on the basement and garage?” I ask, determined now to get back into this house. “Seems like you and Donna have finished in the attic, right?”
“Yeah, maybe...er, I’ll call you.” Cordy keeps herding us toward the back door. That phone call must be nagging at her. “Ty might be helpful.”
When we reach the door, Sean lays his hand on Cordy’s shoulder. “You really need to be more careful about home security. Keep the doors locked.” He steps out on the porch and retrieves the key from the flowerpot. “And keep this key inside.” He hands it back to her.
Cordy opens her mouth as if to protest, then changes her mind. She nods her head and puts the key in her pocket. “Thanks.”
As we leave, Donna asks one more question. “What about the missing pages from your notebook, Cordy? Did you figure out what’s gone?”
“Oh, that,” Cordy laughs sheepishly. “I found what I needed. It was there all along.”
Chapter 18
SEAN, DONNA AND I DEBRIEF over a beer at Blue Monday, Palmyrton’s premier dive bar. Smurf blue on the outside, police blue on the inside, it’s a hangout for cops and fireman as well as the aspiring singers who come for Open Mic Night. Sean took me here on what we now agree was our first date although at the time, we were both desperately pretending it wasn’t. The jukebox blares “Layla” as we enter, setting an appropriate seventies vibe for our discussion. Sean nods to a variety of cops and firefighters he knows, lined up on stools at the bar watching football. The three of us take a quieter—although quiet is relative at Blue Monday—table in the corner.
“Am I the only one who thought there was a whole lotta weird going on there?” I ask after the waitress delivers our beers.
“Cordy suddenly wanted to get rid of us once that call came in,” Donna agrees. “But she wants Ty to come back.”
“Telling Cordy about Charmaine’s injury seemed to shake her up, don’t you think?” I ask.
Donna and Sean both nod, so it wasn’t my imagination working overtime. “Her breathing got heavier,” Sean verifies. “Like she was climbing steps when she was just sitting there.”
“I think she was scared,” Donna says, “But like, excited at the same time, if that makes any sense.”
“Yeah, like skiing a double black diamond,” Sean says. “You’re having fun because it’s so risky.”
That’s not an experience I’m familiar with, but I get the analogy. “If that’s really the way she feels, then my theory is right. Cordy has something that other people want. She’s getting excited about it, but she’s also nervous.”
A collective groan goes up at the bar. “There goes the game!” A beefy fireman slams down his empty bottle of Bud. The bartender switches off the TV. I guess the Jets have lost another one. Sean glances in that direction, and waves over to our table a cop who’s about to leave.
“How’s the Charmaine Griggs hit-and-run investigation going?” Sean asks after the ritual commiseration about the Jets’ lousy defense.
The cop shakes his head. “Not great. None of the witnesses could give us even a partial on the plate. No agreement on the make of the car other than it was a low sports car. We’ve been talking to autobody shops all over Palmer county, but if the guy was smart, he took it to Pennsylvania or New York to get it fixed.”
“What about the missing witness—the woman who bought the dresser?” Sean probes.
“She hasn’t come forward. But the victim told us the woman asked her a lot of questions while she was shopping at the sale.”
Another cop shouts for the guy talking to us, and he lifts his hand to us. “Gotta go. Catch you around, Sean.”
“So what does that mean?” Donna asks. “The police are giving up on finding that monster?”
“No, but the longer it goes with no leads, the less time they’ll spend on it.”
“Kind of like your Pelletierre murder,” I say.
“Well, murder stays on the front burner longer than a hit and run where no one was killed,” Sean says. “But essentially, you’re right.”
“How does all this relate to Cordy and her weird behavior this evening?” I ask to bring us back to the conversation we were having before the interruption. “Cordy seems resentful that I sold the Freeman lyrics.” I pick at a plate of French fries that I wish Sean hadn’t ordered. “And really annoyed at Peter and his dad.”
“Agreed.” Sean takes a swig of his IPA. “Definite mixed signals.”
“I think she had no idea she had the Freeman lyrics,” I say. “She was genuinely surprised when I found them and shocked that they were so valuable. But now, people have been calling her, talking about the past. I suspect she’s remembered something else she’s got, but she doesn’t know where it is. Cordy needs us to find it, but she doesn’t want me to sell it in conjunction with Peter. She wants to keep control of the money for some reason.”
“What does she need the money for? She can’t travel. She can’t drive. She has no kids.” Sean says. “Peter and Noreen are just trying to take care of her. She should be grateful.”
“Ha! I’ve seen plenty of old people desperate to hang on to their independence and their way of life,” I remind my husband, “while their so-called helpful relatives are working overtime to get them into assisted living. All in the name of health and safety.”
“But Peter doesn’t want her to move. He’s trying to help her stay in that house,” Sean reminds me.
Sean is right. I don’t understand why Cordy would resent Peter for helping her stay in her funky little hippie hid
eaway. I have no answer, so I change the subject. “Why is she so obsessed with Ty? I think the flirtatiousness is just an act. There’s some reason she wants him, not you, Donna.”
Donna lifts her shoulders and shakes her head. “If Cordy needs help going through her junk, why doesn’t she get it from Gif? He could go into the attic and basement and garage.”
The three of us sit with that thought for a moment.
“Maybe she doesn’t totally trust him, any more than we do,” Donna speculates. “Even though he’s always around supposedly doing her favors.”
I nod. “The afternoon of the day I sold the Freeman lyrics, Gif went down to the basement, supposedly to adjust her water heater. But when he came back up, it seemed like Cordy didn’t even want the water heater adjusted. But maybe I’m seeing his behavior as suspicious because I just don’t like the guy.”
“That,” Sean points at me with a French fry, “is a hazard of the interrogator’s job. It’s very hard to prevent yourself from seeing guilty actions in a person you want to be guilty.”
He’s right, of course. I put Gif out of my mind for the time being and return to the issue of Ty. “Why does Cordy trust Ty?”
“Yeah, why?” Donna echoes. “He doesn’t particularly like her, and he makes no effort to conceal it.”
“Maybe that’s why she wants him there,” Sean offers. “She perceives him as the one person who doesn’t want anything from her.”
Donna throws back her shoulders in offense. “I don’t want anything from her.”
“No, but maybe she thinks of you as...” I trail off. I don’t want to say “needy” but that’s what I’m thinking.
Donna stares into her beer. “You mean she thinks of me as another Ariel.”
“What else is different between Ty and Donna?” Sean says to paper over our discomfort.
Donna and I laugh as Donna ticks off differences. “Let’s see... Ty’s got a fade and I have layers. He can shoot baskets and I can stuff ravioli. He’s got one stud earring and I have two hoops. Is there anything else I’m missing?”
Rock Bottom Treasure (Palmyrton Estate Sale Mystery Series) Page 13