Rhythm & Clues

by Sue Ann Jaffarian

  “And I told you,” he answered firmly, “I have no idea where he is.” He shot Mom a sneer. “And stabbing me isn’t going to make him appear out of thin air.”

  I wanted to ask again about who he thought had sent us to kill him but felt I’d hit the same brick wall. I went in another direction. “You’ve been Acid Storm’s manager a long time, haven’t you?”

  Titan nodded. “Since the very beginning. In fact, I discovered them in a little club in Oxnard.”

  I took a seat in a chair in front of his desk. No sense we should all be uncomfortable. “Are you the one who got them back together several years ago?”

  “Yes,” he said, indicating the posters with a swing of his chin. “Some of my other old bands were finding a second life on the fair and summer circuit. Lots of baby boomers flock to those concerts. I approached Bo, and he jumped at it. They’ve done well,” he said, pausing briefly, “until recently.”

  “By ‘recently’ do you mean when Shankleman fired you and replaced you with Cydney Fox?” In answer, he shifted his stance, obviously uncomfortable and not just because of his injury. “And why did Shankleman do that?” I pressed.

  “We heard he did it without consulting the other band members,” Mom added. She’d taken a seat next to Lorraine. “Is that true?”

  Titan hemmed and hawed. He was a short man. Bending at the waist to lean on the desk made an almost right angle out of him. “Bo was unofficially in charge of the band,” he finally said. “It was like that in the old days, too. Oxman and Spencer-Hall were too busy shagging groupies and getting high to care about the business end of things. Bo was the only one with any sense.”

  “He’s always struck me as having a good head on his shoulders,” Mom noted.

  “If he was such a good businessman, then it sounds as if he might have had a reason, a good one, for canning you,” I noted.

  “Artistic differences,” was all Titan said.

  “And Cydney Fox just happened to be waiting in the wings to take the job?” I asked, remembering our chat with Oxman. “Has she been in the picture all this time or did she show up a few months ago and talk Bo into hiring her?”

  “I haven’t heard a word about her since all that mess back in the day, so I was just as surprised as everyone else.” Titan shrugged. “But who knows? Maybe Bo’s kept in touch and just didn’t say anything.”

  “Is she qualified to manage the band?” asked Mom.

  This question prompted a snort from the bent man. “Not that I know of. Back then, all she knew how to do was party and look good doing it. I haven’t even seen her since she’s come back, so who knows what she’s been doing.”

  “So one day,” I asked, “Bo announced you were out and Cydney Fox was in? Just like that?”

  “Pretty much,” Titan answered. “No warning or explanation or anything. Bo showed up here a couple of months ago yammering something about her needing a job and about us owing her. He said the bookings were easy to do, so she was going to start doing them with Bo’s help. He gave me a thirty-day notice, pursuant to our contract. I booked the band through the Fourth of July, then dropped them.”

  I leaned forward. “What did he mean by the band owing her? Wasn’t it Cydney Fox who brought down the band in their heyday?”

  Titan lifted a hand off the desk and pointed a sausage finger at me. He was a nail biter. Not a bad one, but it was still a sign that he was a nervous type. It went along with a few of my other observations. He was like a jittery cat, ready to bolt under the bed at any perceived sign of danger. But what danger? We’d just told him that Fox was dead, and he’d seemed genuinely surprised, but he’d been on the watch for someone when we arrived. He was already afraid, and I didn’t think it was because three generations of women showed up at his door. He was expecting someone, and he expected that someone to want to harm or kill him. Was it Shankleman or was there another danger lurking in the shadows? Perhaps one that caused Shankleman to pull a disappearing act, one that Fox did not escape? And had she been a target or merely in the wrong place at the wrong time when the murderer showed up to take out Shankleman?

  “That’s exactly what I told him,” Titan said, jabbing his stubby, gnawed finger in the air in my direction. “If anything, she owed us. The band lost everything because of her.”

  “And what did Boaz have to say about that?” Mom asked, leaning forward to not miss a word.

  Titan didn’t answer right away. Instead, he shifted his eyes and his body, rotating them in opposite directions. He might have been uncomfortable or he might have been trying to remember his conversation with Boaz or he might have been trying to think up a lie. My money was on door number three.

  “Hey, have a heart,” he finally said. “How about letting me sit? I can think better if blood isn’t rushing to my head. And there’s some water in the fridge in the other room,” he added. “I could sure use some.”

  “Lorraine,” I said to my niece, keeping my eyes glued to Titan, “would you please get him some water?”

  Lorraine popped up from the sofa and headed for the outer room. “Sure.”

  “Bring two,” Mom told her. “I’m quite parched myself.”

  “Go ahead and take a seat, Titan,” I told him. He straightened and started to move to his chair behind his desk. “But keep your hands flat on the desk at all times,” I added, remembering how he’d pulled the gun from one of the drawers before. I didn’t want any surprise second weapons. Just to be safe, I moved the pencil cup out of his reach after noting it also contained a very sharp letter opener.

  “Yeah,” Mom said, “don’t even so much as think about scratching your butt or we might have to really mess you up.”

  I turned and quickly shot Mom a look of mixed disbelief and annoyance. I made a mental note to myself to insist, when this was over, that she have a full physical, mind and body.

  Titan gingerly settled in his chair just as Lorraine returned with four squat bottles of water clutched against her body with her left arm. In her right hand was the gun that had been kicked to the side in the scuffle. I sighed with relief when I saw that she’d had the good sense to pick it up using a paper towel; that was all we’d need to have her prints on a weapon. That gun might have been sitting undisturbed in Titan’s desk for years or it might have been used in any number of crimes. It was bad enough our prints were probably all over this place without them being on a gun too.

  “What should we do with this?” she asked, holding up the gun.

  “Give it here,” Mom replied, quick as a bunny.

  “No,” Titan and I snapped in unison. Mom rolled her eyes at us like we were spoiling her fun.

  “Give it to me,” I told Lorraine. “I’ll think of something.”

  Using the paper towel like a pot holder, Lorraine transferred the towel and the gun to me, then handed Titan one of the bottles of water. She put one bottle on the desk by me and took the other two back to the sofa and took a seat again. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the gun, but I sure as hell didn’t want it anywhere near Titan. Getting up, I said to Titan, “You stay right where you are. I’ll be right back.” The look he gave me broadcast that I had a 50/50 chance that he’d listen.

  I glanced over at the love seat. Lorraine was sipping her water and looking nervous. Mom had also just wet her whistle and looked alert. “Mom, pull out your knife and come stand next to the desk. If he moves, turn him into Swiss cheese. I’ll be right back.”

  “That old lady’s batshit crazy,” Titan protested.

  I waved the gun in his direction, not that it posed any threat being held like a hot pot pie. “That batshit-crazy old lady is my mother, and it’s genetic.” He clamped his mouth shut fast, like an alligator seizing his meal, and watched with worry while Mom took out her knife. She deftly snapped the blade open and moved closer to the desk.

  Taking the gun into the outer offi
ce, I looked around for a good place to stash it. For the same reason I didn’t want our prints on it, I didn’t want to take it with us. Well, not the only reason. Guns make me nervous, and if we were stopped for any reason, I sure didn’t want one in my possession. I studied the desk but dismissed it as too obvious. I turned my attention to the kitchenette, looking for a good but improbable place to store the gun. There were cabinets above the small counter. I opened one and found various disposable goods such as paper plates, a couple of bowls, napkins, and cups, and a couple ceramic mugs. In the next cabinet were some handy food items like soup and cereal. One of the cartons contained packets of instant oatmeal in various flavors. It was the large economy size. We kept boxes of the same stuff in our office. I took the box down. It was almost empty. Fortunately, Titan’s gun was small and compact, like him, and I was able to stick it into the box, cushioning it with the remaining packets.

  “Good grief,” Mom said when I returned to Titan’s office. “We thought you’d abandoned us, you took so long.” While Mom seemed annoyed, Titan looked relieved. I had only been gone a few minutes, wanting to get back before Mom mistook a simple thing like Titan passing gas as a threat, but I had also taken a minute or two extra to stop and run some ideas through my head without distraction.

  “So,” I said to Titan, ignoring Mom and getting the questioning back on track, “what did Shankleman say when you reminded him how Fox had brought down the band years ago?”

  He shrugged, obviously more comfortable in his chair in spite of his puncture wound. “He said some BS like the past is the past, and we should move on.”

  I narrowed my eyes at the small, round man. Something wasn’t adding up. Evasion wafted off of Titan like cheap aftershave. “Forgiving for the past is one thing, but replacing a successful manager with someone who tanked the group years ago doesn’t seem like a smart move to me.”

  “And Boaz is a very smart man,” Mom underlined again with conviction. She gone back to join Lorraine on the sofa.

  “I could see,” I said to Titan, “giving her something else to do but not handling the bookings, which meant income to the group.” I paused as the gears in my head started to mesh like teeth on a zipper. “Unless the real point here wasn’t about giving her a job but taking one away from you.” My eyes met his in time to see a flicker of something. Was it surprise at the idea or surprise that I was getting closer to the truth?

  “Nonsense,” Titan finally said, forcing casualness into his voice. “He wasn’t taking anything away from me. I’d told Bo shortly after New Year’s that I was thinking of retiring at the end of this year, but I expected him to stick with me until then. Maybe he jumped the gun and decided to transition to someone new now.” Titan shifted his body and winced. “At least that’s what I’m thinking, but I sure didn’t think it would be her.”

  “So that was a complete surprise?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Yes. I met with Bo and tried to talk him out of using Cydney, but he was adamant—about her and about doing it as soon as possible. So we agreed that I’d book through the Fourth of July. After that, they were on their own.”

  Something still wasn’t adding up, but I didn’t have enough information to call Titan out on his story. “Do you have any idea who might want to kill Shankleman or Cydney Fox?”

  Titan’s eyes bulged like he’d been squeezed tight. “I thought you said it was Cydney who was dead.”

  “We did,” Mom confirmed. “But it seems to me whoever killed her might have been looking to do harm to Boaz and found her instead.” Mom had voiced exactly what I was thinking. “Maybe Boaz grabbed Ringo and left because he’d been threatened.”

  “And whoever did the killing, they were very angry. Cydney Fox was killed by repeated blows to the skull.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lorraine shiver at the memory. I turned my eyes back to Titan, trying to imagine the short, portly man bludgeoning anyone with such viciousness, but couldn’t. “Maybe it was someone who lost income because of her and Shankleman.”

  “What about the other members of the band?” suggested Lorraine, shaking off the bloody scene now burned into her memory.

  Titan considered the possibility. “I can’t see David Oxman mustering that much energy for anything. He’s a very competent musician, but he has the personality of dirty laundry. He’d be more likely to bitch about it, not take revenge.”

  “And Simon Tuttle?” I asked.

  Titan considered the question a moment. “He’s a young guy.” He aimed a finger at a poster on the wall of the current Acid Storm group to make his point. “And strong enough, but I’ve never seen him lose his temper. Oh, he gets mad enough once in a while, but he sloughs it off quickly, and he has a lot of talent. Simon Tuttle could be doing a lot more with his music than playing backup with these old guys, but it seems to suit him for some reason. I know during the off-season he does a lot of freelance gigs and studio work.”

  “What about Oxman and Shankleman?” I asked. “Do either strike you as the violent type?”

  “Definitely not Boaz,” my mother protested. “He’s sweet as a lamb.”

  “The old lady’s right,” Titan said.

  “Watch who you’re calling an old lady, Humpty Dumpty.” Mom patted her handbag where she’d once again stored her knife.

  “Madam is correct,” Titan said with heavy sarcasm. “Bo is a lot like Simon, but even more reasonable—positively Zen at times. He gets angry but gets over it quickly, and I’ve never known him to hold a grudge. If he killed Cydney I’d be totally shocked. And like I said, Dave is more the type to stew and rant but not take action. If anyone in Acid Storm was the type to beat someone to death, it would have been Kurt.”

  “You mean Kurt Spencer-Hall?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Titan confirmed. “He was a mean SOB. I could never understand how he got so many sweet young things with that nasty personality, but it could explain why none of them stuck around for long.”

  “But he’s the guy who died, right?” asked Mom.

  Titan nodded and briefly shut his eyes tight. “Yeah. Drug overdose. I identified the body myself. Had to fly to Mexico to do it. Nasty business.”

  Mexico wasn’t mentioned in the Marigold report, just that Spencer-Hall was dead. I hadn’t read much after hitting that piece of information. “Mexico?”

  “Yeah,” Titan said. “After the shit hit the fan all those years ago, Kurt disappeared into Mexico. Besides the group’s financial troubles, Kurt had several charges of rape hanging over his head from several of the groupies. He still had me listed as an emergency contact, so I got the call when he was found dead. It was several years after all the scandal.”

  A lull filled the room like heavy humidity. Something told me if we left, we might never see Titan again. He was spooked when we got here, and hearing about Fox’s death had rattled him more. There was a good chance he might disappear the minute we were gone. I needed to get from him everything I could now.

  “Who were you expecting to show up today?” I asked him.

  “I wasn’t expecting anyone.”

  “Don’t give us that,” Mom said, sounding like a tough cop from a movie.

  “You were definitely afraid of something,” Lorraine pointed out. “You had the door locked, and you ran when you saw us.”

  “You can’t be too careful in this neighborhood,” he answered. He lifted a hand to his mouth and gnawed at the end of a thumb.

  “You were afraid of something or someone when we got here,” I noted, “and now that you know about Cydney Fox, you’re as jumpy as a squirrel crossing a highway.” Immediately Titan stopped chewing his nail.

  “I’m not afraid of anything,” he said, but his darting eyes gave away his lie. “I just heard noise outside in the hallway and checked on it. You two rushed me, and I panicked.”

  “And you still haven’t clarified who you thought had sent us to
kill you,” I pointed out. “If not Shankleman, then who?” At this question Titan clammed up, his jaw tight as a vault. He locked his small, beady eyes on me, letting me know even torture by my mother wasn’t going to unlock that answer.

  “Shankleman has a sister, doesn’t he, in Syracuse, New York?” I asked, moving to another topic. “Do you think he might have gone there?”

  “But Boaz told us he didn’t have any family,” Mom said.

  “I’m not surprised,” Titan said, looking at Mom. “Bo and Harriet have been estranged for years. I doubt he went there.”

  Titan fidgeted again and glanced at his wristwatch without taking his hands off the desk. Unlike Oxman’s, Titan’s watch was an expensive timepiece. “Look,” he said, looking up at me, “I’ve told you all I know, and I need to be somewhere. My wife’s expecting me. As it is, I’m going to be late.” He narrowed his eyes in Mom’s direction. “And I’m going to have to change my pants before I go. Fortunately, I keep extra clothing here.”

  fourteen

  Back in the car, Mom huffed and puffed at me. “Odelia, you know darn well that little pipsqueak knows more than he’s saying. Why didn’t you go after him?”

  “Because,” I answered as I buckled my seat belt, “I could tell he’d dug in his heels and wasn’t going to say anything more.”

  “So we’re done?” Lorraine asked from the back seat. “That’s it?” She sounded as disappointed in my efforts as Mom.

  “Not entirely,” I said as I pulled out of the parking space and started down the street. At the first cross street I made a right-hand turn, then another right when I spotted an alley entrance. The alley ran behind the buildings on Titan’s side of the street. I drove slowly. The alley was narrow, with just enough room for two cars to pass side by side if the drivers were careful and clung to the sides. On trash day only a disposal truck would fit. I hoped Titan was taking his sweet time changing his trousers.

  “Smart thinking, Odelia,” Mom said, catching on quickly. She glanced into the back seat. “I’ll bet she’s going to check out his car,” she told Lorraine. “Maybe tail the guy.”