The Dead Play On

by Heather Graham

  “Maybe he had a different sax and his killer did take it,” Larue suggested.

  “That seems like the most logical explanation,” Quinn said. “The killer lured him to Rampart, where he killed him when no one else was around. He stole the sax from him. But then he discovered it was the wrong one and figured maybe Arnie needed money and had sold it.”

  “Could be,” Larue said.

  “But he stole all the instruments when he robbed that group of musicians, right?” Danni asked.

  “He did,” Larue answered.

  “If he was looking for a saxophone, why take other instruments?” she asked.

  “So that no one would know he was looking for a sax?” Quinn suggested. “Anyway, somehow the killer got Arnie to go with him. Maybe he was a friend, or maybe he preyed on Arnie’s generosity, which seems pretty well-known, and pretended to need help with something. Maybe he even told him another vet needed help. When Arnie was dead, he took the sax then discovered later it was just a regular sax, not worth what a Penn Special is. Or maybe it wasn’t the monetary value. Maybe he knew it supposedly had special powers and what he wanted was to play as well as Arnie played. And then he started trying to figure out where the sax had ended up, first hiding his goal by stealing a bunch of different instruments. Then he started targeting people he thought were likely to have ended up with it, and when Morelli and Barrett couldn’t or wouldn’t tell him, he got pissed off and killed them.”

  “Sounds like a good working theory,” she said.

  “Where is this sax you got from Tyler?” Billie asked.

  Quinn pointed out the case where it was sitting under the table.

  Billie picked it up and opened it carefully then took out the instrument.

  “You play?” Danni asked him with surprise.

  “If you can play a bagpipe, the sax is a piece of cake.” He coaxed a few off-key notes from the sax. “I didna say I could play well,” he said. “Give me a minute.”

  He began to play again. The sounds were suddenly clear and good.

  “Nice,” Danni said.

  “Is it the sax itself? Is there something special about it?” Quinn asked.

  “It’s a good instrument,” Billie said. “But...”

  They all sat in silence for a long moment, staring at Billie and the sax.

  “It’s a sax,” Billie said at last.

  Quinn laughed suddenly. “Okay, so, apparently, the ‘magic’ doesn’t come out for us.”

  “All right, no offense, guys, but I’m feeling like a fool—sitting here and waiting for a sax to do something,” Larue said.

  “We’re not offended,” Danni said and looked at Quinn. “We need to call Tyler and get him to take us out to meet Arnie’s family. We have to know more about that sax.”

  “I’ve got to go home and study some files,” Larue said. “I didn’t handle Arnie’s death, and obviously not the attack on the musicians, but now...with what you’re telling me, maybe everything does all connect. At any rate, I’ll call the night shift and have them set up interviews with those musicians starting first thing in the morning. Quinn, I’ll give you a heads-up as soon as I have a schedule—figure you’ll want to talk to them, too.” He rose.

  Quinn knew that Larue had knocked back the scotch in a single swallow and then nursed his coffee the rest of the time they’d been speaking. The man did look tired as hell, but then, he knew that Larue didn’t believe in set hours, and that his life was pretty much his work. He loved New Orleans and considered himself a warrior in the city’s defense.

  Quinn followed him to the courtyard door and locked it thoughtfully after him. It was nearly ten. They should all get some sleep and start in the morning, he thought.

  But when he returned to the kitchen he found Danni gathering up her shoulder bag, her keys in her hand.

  “I called Tyler. The band’s giving him the night off. I’m going to drive by and pick him up, and then he’ll take us to meet Arnie’s family. He says they’re always up late anyway, and I figured we might as well make a start on things.”

  He smiled. Danni was her father’s daughter. She wouldn’t stop now.

  After all, stopping could mean another life lost.

  “Let’s do it,” he said.

  “I’ll be holding down the old fort,” Billie said drily. “If Bo Ray comes to after all that pain medication, I’ll bring him up to speed. And if he doesn’t, I just might practice on that sax.”

  * * *

  Bourbon Street was heading into full swing when Danni drove toward it along St. Ann’s to pick up Tyler Anderson. He was without an instrument and told them that, without him there, the band was only going to play songs that didn’t require a sax.

  The Watson family lived in the Treme area, just the other side of Rampart at the edge of the French Quarter. She was easily able to find street parking.

  The house was in a line of dwellings that had mostly been built between the 1920s and 1970s. While the Treme area had faced some tough times with gangs and drugs since the summer of storms—Katrina, Rita and Wilma—Danni had a number of friends who lived in the area. True, some had left after the storms, never to return. But many had dug in, driven by a love for New Orleans so deep inside them that it would never die. There was crime here, as there was everywhere. But there were honest citizens here, too, just trying to get through life with work, family and friends.

  The Watson house appeared to have been built in the early twenties, with porch and window arches reminiscent of the Deco Age. The yard was neatly mowed, and there were flower beds with lovely blooms lining the concrete path to the house.

  “They’re good people,” Tyler said. “They didn’t deserve this.”

  “No one deserves this kind of thing, Tyler,” Quinn said.

  “No, but them more than most.”

  He’d let the Watson family know that they were coming. Before they reached the front door, it was opened by a tall, straight-backed elderly man with light mahogany skin. He smiled as they came up the path. “Welcome, and thank you, folks,” he said. He had his hand out, ready to greet them. “I’m Woodrow Watson. Pleased to have you. Danni Cafferty, I knew your father. Fine man. Can’t say as you’d know me. I was just in your shop a few times. Now, Michael Quinn, I have met you, sir, but I’ll bet you don’t remember me.”

  Quinn smiled. “You’re wrong. Now that we’re face-to-face, I do remember you. Your whole family showed up at football games. Arnie was a year or two younger than me, but he was in the band, and you all came out to see him every game.”

  “That’s right, son, that’s right. You sure could throw a football,” Woodrow said.

  “Well, that was then,” Quinn said.

  “Come in, come in,” their host encouraged. He looked at Tyler. “Thank you for bringing us all together.”

  “Yes, sir,” Tyler said.

  They entered directly into a parlor with a comfortable sofa covered in a beautiful knitted throw and a number of armchairs set with covers to match the throw. As they came in, a woman, wiping her hands on a dish towel, came out to greet them, as well.

  “I’m Amy Watson, and thank you all for what you’re doing. Tyler says we’re going to have some help with things at last.”

  “We’re going to do our best, Mrs. Watson,” Danni promised her.

  “Please. I’m just Amy, and my husband is Woodrow. Sit, sit,” Amy said. “It’s a little small and tight in here, but please, make yourselves comfortable. Can I get you anything? We don’t keep any spirits in the house here—figure you can find enough just about anywhere else in the Big Easy. But I have coffee, tea, juice...”

  “We’re just fine, Mrs. Watson, thank you,” Danni assured her.

  “We just finished dinner and already had some coffee,” Quinn added. “Too much, you know, and w
e’ll never sleep.”

  “Well, then, if you decide you’d like something, you just holler,” Amy said.

  “I promise, we will,” Danni said.

  “Let’s sit, shall we?” Woodrow asked.

  Danni, Quinn and Tyler took the sofa; the Watsons chose the chairs facing them over the carved wooden coffee table.

  “I know this is a difficult time for the two of you,” Quinn told the Watsons, “so I apologize in advance for any pain my questions may cause, but the more information I have, the better I can do my job. So...where was Arnie’s special sax—the one you gave Tyler—on the night he was killed?”

  The Watsons looked at one another without speaking. Amy had a look of gratitude in her eyes, and it mirrored her husband’s. Woodrow was the one to speak. He looked at Quinn and Danni and said incredulously, “You said killed. You used that word. Killed. So that means you believe us—you believe our son didn’t just suddenly stick a needle in his arm. Right?”

  “We do believe you, Mr. and—I’m sorry, Woodrow and Amy,” Danni said. “We do believe you. Some musicians were held up at gunpoint leaving work not long ago. And more recently two musicians have been killed in their homes. We believe that someone is out there looking for something, and it might be Arnie’s sax.”

  Woodrow stood up and walked to the fireplace. He leaned an arm on the mantel and looked at his wife then back at Danni. “You think someone is looking for Arnie’s sax? And that they’re killing over it?”

  “The sax you gave me,” Tyler said. “And don’t worry—it’s safe. Danni has it at her shop, over on Royal Street.”

  Amy and Woodrow looked at each other again.

  Finally Amy sighed. “We don’t have his special sax—the one my mother gave him. We assumed he had it with him the night he was killed. We figured it was stolen.”

  “Then what did you give me?” Tyler asked her. “You made me feel...”

  “That sax is just a replica. We wanted you to feel you had something special of Arnie’s,” Woodrow said. “And you always said he was so good and you were second-rate. We figured if you thought that was Arnie’s ‘special’ sax, you’d feel like you could play just as well as he did. And I’ll bet you have. Playing is believing. Living the music, son, you know that. So we gave you one of his other saxes, the one that looked like the special one his grandmother gave him.”

  Tyler looked as if he’d been hit in the head with a two-by-four. “But you don’t understand. It has to be that sax. I could see what Arnie saw. I could feel him when I played it.”

  “Magic in the mind, son, magic in the mind,” Amy said. “And it was the best gift we figured we could give you, though there’s no gift out there that says a big enough thank-you to a real friend. And, Tyler, you were his friend. I think you believed in him so much in your mind that you saw his death so you could go out and fight for him.”

  “I believed it,” Tyler said. “I believed that sax was magic, that I could play because of that magic—that I could almost talk to Arnie again,” he finished softly.

  “That’s magic, son. Love and belief,” Amy said. She looked back at Danni and Quinn. “I don’t rightly know what else could have happened to Arnie’s special sax besides whoever killed him taking it. Arnie was found with nothing except the clothes he was wearing. And,” she added, her lips tight, “that needle in his arm. They even told me they couldn’t find another single track line on him, but I think they wind up with a dead black boy on Rampart Street, and they just don’t want to think anything else.”

  “I can assure you, Amy, the detective who’s now on the case—Detective Larue—doesn’t see the world that way at all. We’ll find the truth,” Quinn promised her.

  “You know, I heard something about those musicians being held up,” Amy said. “But they were only knocked around and hurt. They weren’t killed.”

  “Two people have been killed now, and as I said, right in their own homes. So don’t answer the door to anyone—even old friends of Arnie’s. The killer might come around here if he doesn’t have the sax and I’m right that that’s what he’s looking for,” Quinn said.

  “We’re not alone here,” Woodrow said. “We got good friends. We got family around the area. Hey, we got Tyler.”

  “Always like a second son,” Amy said fondly.

  “Amen,” Woodrow agreed.

  “You may be in danger, though,” Danni told them.

  “Got a shotgun in the back. I always did protect my home,” Woodrow said.

  “Don’t you worry none about us,” Amy said. “Even I know how to use that gun. You just go out there and find out who murdered our boy.”

  “We plan to do just that, Amy,” Danni told her, reaching out to touch the woman’s shoulder reassuringly. “I’m not sure how we’ll go about it, but I promise you, we’ll do everything it takes.”

  “As will Detective Larue. He’s a good guy,” Quinn said.

  “You know the man well?” Woodrow asked.

  “I worked with him for years,” Quinn said. “Since...”

  “No worries, son,” Woodrow said. “We know about your troubles. You been clean all this time now?”

  “Yes, sir,” Quinn said.

  “You got an angel with you, boy,” Amy said. “Don’t you forget that.”

  Danni watched Quinn. New Orleans was a good-sized city, but that didn’t mean that old-time citizens forgot anything. She knew Quinn’s dark past, and she wasn’t surprised the Watsons did, too. Both his downfall and his resurrection had been covered in the local media.

  “I never forget, Amy, trust me,” Quinn told her.

  “Bless you, boy,” Woodrow said.

  “Thank you,” Quinn said. “And you can’t come up with any explanation of what might have happened to that sax?”

  “None. None at all,” Woodrow said. “We reckoned the killer took it that night, like Amy said.”

  They were back to square one, Danni thought. But if neither Tyler nor the Watsons had Arnie’s special sax and they were right and the killer was still searching for it, just where the hell was it?

  “You at a dead end already?” Woodrow asked. He was clearly trying to sound matter-of-fact, but there was a hopelessness in his voice that squeezed at Danni’s heart.

  “No, sir,” Quinn said. “We’re just at the beginning.”

  “Thank you,” Woodrow said. “Thank you for what you’re trying to do. But thank you most of all for believing in my son.”

  Quinn gave a reluctant grin. “Thank Tyler for that, Woodrow. He made us see the light, so to speak. Not that it was all that difficult—your son was a true hero. But because these days we recognize what soldiers go through, it was easy for people to think maybe he just couldn’t shake the pain of the past. The killer was clever, I’ll give him that. Thing is, by being his champion, Tyler gave us what we needed to get started. No one can promise they’ll solve every crime, but we will promise you this—we won’t stop.”

  “Good enough for me. Tyler, you know how we feel about you. And Michael, Danni, you call on us or ask us anything you need or want, any time, day or night,” Woodrow said. “You got our number? Or numbers? Arnie made us buy cell phones. Said he had to get us into the twentieth century, even if he couldn’t quite drag us into the twenty-first.”

  “We’ll put them in our phones right now,” Danni said.

  They took a minute to exchange numbers. Amy still had trouble saving a number to her own phone once someone had called her, but in the end they prevailed.

  Once that was accomplished, Quinn told them, “We could use a list of the people he was hanging with the most since he came home.”

  “Us, of course. And the rest of the family. Tyler there. The bands he played with,” Woodrow said. “I can tell you some of the names.”

  “I know most of them,
” Tyler said. “Like I told you, he was sitting in with my group, the B-Street Bombers, the night he died.”

  “At La Porte Rouge?” Danni asked.

  “Yes,” Tyler said.

  As they spoke, Amy was scribbling on a pad she took from the phone stand by the door. Now she handed the sheet to Danni. “Those are the people he talked about most—the boys in Tyler’s band, a couple of others. I’ll keep thinking and make a list of anyone else,” she promised.

  Tyler glanced over at the sheet. “Yep, that’s them. Gus Epstein, lead guitar. Shamus Ahearn, drums and sometimes bass. Blake Templeton, keyboard and sometimes rhythm guitar. We have a steady gig at La Porte Rouge. The bartender runs the place, and he likes us. A couple of guys pinch-hit sometimes, like Arnie was pitch-hitting for me that night. The bartender, Eric—Eric Lyons—sits in sometimes. And one of the waitresses—Jessica Tate—sings with us when we can get her to come up and it isn’t too busy. We work a heavy schedule, but we love what we do, and in this city you can be replaced pretty much at the drop of a dime, so we’re glad for the gig.”

  “Want to go barhopping?” Quinn asked Danni. “Or, should I say, want to hop into one bar?”

  “Seems like a good idea,” Danni said.

  They rose, but Amy stopped them as they turned toward the door. “Are you sure I can’t get you anything first? We’ve got some leftover shrimp and grits, and that’s a dish that gets better warmed up. Or a cola or something?”

  “No, no, honestly, sounds wonderful, but we just ate,” Danni assured her.

  “Well, then, you just wait a minute. No one leaves my house without a little bit of hospitality,” Amy said.

  She disappeared into the kitchen for a brief moment and came back with a small white cardboard box.

  “For when you’re hungry or need a little treat,” she told Danni.

  Danni thanked her and they left, promising to keep in touch.

  She drove back to Royal Street, and as they went, Tyler talked to them about his bandmates.

  “Shamus, the lucky bastard, is right out of County Cork. I always thought that was cool, but he thinks growing up here would have been the coolest thing in the world. Goes to show you—the grass always does look greener. Gus was born in Miami Beach but his mom was from Kenner, Louisiana, so he’s been coming up to New Orleans since he was a kid. Blake is from Lafayette, about two and a half hours from here. I met Gus at an open session one night, and the two of us met Shamus at—go figure—Pat O’Brien’s. I knew Blake from a school competition years ago, and I’d heard he was moving here, so I gave him a call. That was years ago now. We’ve had the steady gig at La Porte Rouge for about two years.” He was quiet for a minute. “You know, if one of these guys was a crazed murderer, shouldn’t I have seen the signs somewhere along the line?”