by Linda Barnes
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.
Thirty-Six
Once she got her voice under control, Dee phoned Hal. I listened while she lied. She told him she had a twenty-four-hour bug, and wanted no one, absolutely no one, admitted to her room. No calls put through. I could hear his voice rise in panic over the receiver. She assured him that she’d be a hundred percent for the concert. He shouted that he needed to see her, that he’d be there right away, that he’d bring a doctor. She yelled him down, vetoing all suggestions. Then she hung up, put a hand to her stomach, and ran for the bathroom.
She was in there a long time. I could hear an occasional retching noise.
I used the interval to make a call of my own. Mooney agreed to meet us in the lobby.
When Dee ventured out, she seemed okay, her face washed pale, no makeup, wet washcloth to her mouth. I checked the medicine cabinet, the bathroom wastebasket, found nothing with which she could have done herself much harm.
“You scared, Dee?” I asked gently when I found her stretched lifelessly on the sofa.
“Of AIDS? Shit, I been tested so many times. Everybody in the business has, except the Singing Nun. I haven’t got it. Not because I took such good care of myself and never screwed around with guys whose names I didn’t know, and guys who shot drugs, and guys who slept with other guys. There’s nothing wrong with me. I just feel rotten, rotten, rotten.”
“Mooney, the cop I told you about, the one you met at the station, will be downstairs in ten minutes. You want him to come up here?”
“Here?” She stared at the elegant room as if it were a prison cell. “Shit, no. I need to get out. There’s a bar in the lobby. We can have a drink.”
“You could have one here. Room service.”
“Hal told them to cut off the liquor supply. Nice, huh?”
“He can do that?”
“He pays the bills.”
We had to wait until Mooney phoned up and called off the door guards. Dee spent most of the time in the bathroom, and when she emerged, she was subtly different. She still looked pale and sad, don’t get me wrong, but she’d managed a faint radiant glow. A damn good makeup job. No blush, pale lipstick. Like a bride, I thought. Maybe the reason I can never figure Dee out is that part of her is always onstage.
Even if I hadn’t known her for twelve years, I’d have been impressed by the way she handled herself in the lobby, by the way she tried to handle Mooney.
“Have you caught him yet?” she asked quickly, taking Mooney’s hand and hanging on a little too long for a routine shake. “Brenda’s boyfriend?”
To Mooney, the line must have read like overwhelming concern. To me, it seemed a calculated opener: if the cops have already caught the murderer, then I won’t have to talk about Lorraine.
No such luck. No Ray, Mooney said.
We moved into the bar, which was really a lounge, f
ull of linen-covered tables, potted palm trees, and gold-framed oil paintings of the Public Garden. The hostess tried to seat us near a window. Dee murmured something and we wound up at a table near the back of the room, secluded behind the greenery.
“Do you know where the bastard lives?” Dee asked as soon as she’d ordered a Scotch and soda. Mooney and I stuck to coffee.
“We’ve got an address, thanks to Carlotta. I took some troops out there. Seems like he moved the night Brenda died.”
“Moved,” Dee echoed.
I noticed the way her eyes never left Mooney’s face, except to slip occasionally to his hands. Musicians are vain about their hands. I wondered if Mooney was.
“No forwarding address,” Mooney said. “Scooted owing money to the landlord.”
The waitress arranged Dee’s drink on a coaster. Our coffee came in a large silver pot.
“Dammit,” Dee said as soon as the waitress was out of earshot. She acknowledged my presence at the table, stared at me for a long time. I nodded encouragement.
She stared down at her hands, rock-steady on the glass, and said, “Brenda was killed to scare me, to send me a message.”
“Do you want a lawyer present during this conversation, Miss Willis?” Mooney asked.
“No. No. Call me Dee, please. I’m not making any sort of confession here, any official statement, except—”
“It’s the ‘excepts’ I worry about,” Mooney said.
“Just listen,” Dee said. “Please. I don’t want any freaking lawyer. I just want to tell you the truth.”
I’m not saying Dee lied. But the way she told the story to Mooney—well, the focus was slightly different. It was a miracle that she—Dee—had emerged alive from that harrowing night. It was no longer the story of Lorraine’s declaration of love, its rejection, her suicide. It was Dee’s tale, about Dee’s terror, Dee’s survival.
Mooney said, “So you figure Brenda’s boyfriend knew the gist of it from what he overheard at the hospice, right? And he wanted to set the stage, show you he knew what happened at Lorraine’s, so you’d better pay up or else.”
Dee answered in a husky murmur, and I was aware of the power of that ever so controlled voice. “I don’t see why he had to kill her. Just finding her drunk, or unconscious, would have sent me the same message.”