A bit of Internet sleuthing turned up a Beegee Johnson in Cleveland, Ohio. He was thirty-nine, a chemist, and Jaytee’s brother. He’d been employed by a pharmaceutical company but had no current employer. My call was picked up by an answering service that said Beegee Johnson was out of the country on business. I left a message for him to call me back about his brother.
Next up for excavation was Mason Britt’s background. Payback for Roscoe was coming his way as well.
The Internet yielded little of interest, but I had a few sources who could help me out. Millie Roberts would be at the café, and I needed a big stack of french toast to get my brain cells churning. Because the café was gossip central, I could find out a lot about local people from Millie.
Sweetie had gone for a run, and Pluto was sound asleep on my bed. I slipped out and drove to the café. It was after the breakfast rush, so Millie was able to sit and talk after she served my french toast, bacon, and coffee.
I asked about Mason Britt, and she hesitated. “I knew his sister very well. She worked for me for over five years. Mason, I don’t know if anyone knows him now.”
“What happened?”
“Beth died of cancer. She was so young and it took her slow and ugly. It was toughest on Mason. He was only seventeen and it broke him. He joined the marines after that and headed to the Middle East. As I recall, he did several tours there and in Afghanistan. It was like he wanted to get killed. Then he disappeared. He’s back in the area, but he doesn’t come around the café. I don’t think he’s renewed a single old friendship.”
While the story plucked the sympathy strings, I couldn’t forgive Mason for his part in hurting Roscoe. “He’s foreman for Bijou LaRoche’s operation over at Hemlock Manor.”
“Hemlock Manor?” Millie cut a sideways glance at me. “You made that up.”
I nodded.
“I like it. I’ll use it every chance I get. Bijou is a man cannibal. She puts them in her pot and cooks them alive.”
Laughter erupted from me, startling the few remaining customers in a corner of the café. Millie grinned. “I knew you’d like that.”
“Harold escaped only parboiled.”
“That man needs a wife. He’s at an age where trouble is about the only thing he’s going to find if he keeps poking at fast women.”
Millie and Jitty shared a common vein of wisdom when it came to men. Millie loved Harold, but she held his feet to the fire, just as she did mine. “Harold’s working through things.” I didn’t want to go into more detail. “So what else can you tell me about Mason?”
“He played baseball in high school. Must have been the years you were in New York or up at the college. He was a standout. Then after Beth died, he left Sunflower County.” Her eyebrows arched. “I did hear mention of him involved in some religious cult.”
“Jebediah Farley’s church. I saw Mason at what passes for their church grounds.”
Millie shook her head. “He was a decent young man. Had a bright future. I don’t know Reverend Farley, but I’ve heard some things I don’t like. Abusive toward women is what I’d call it. Females in the church have no say in anything. They bear children, do the work, and don’t dare open their mouths. Beth Britt would have spit in Farley’s face. It hurts me to think Mason has taken up with someone like him.”
Now she was really making it hard for me to think of taking vengeful actions against Mason. But a tragic life didn’t give a man the right to harm innocent creatures. Everyone had troubles. Rich and poor, smart and dull. Hard times visited each one. Compassion was the lesson, not cruelty.
“Thanks, Millie. This is a big help.” I could try to get his military records, though Coleman would have more success than a PI. “Any clue how he hooked up with Bijou?”
“No,” she said. “I do know he’s been working for her for a while. Must be doing a good job. Bijou doesn’t suffer a fool, except in the sack. She has a lot of businesspeople coming in and out of town.” She signaled one of the waitresses for a coffee refill for both of us. “She has a little airstrip for the crop dusters and the gentlemen who come in on private planes. She’s sharp when it comes to business. And treacherous. She’d sell her mama for a profit.”
I had to hand it to Millie. She nailed Bijou and then hammered it home.
“What’s the story on Yancy Bellow?” Millie knew a little bit about everyone in the county and a lot about some.
“Wealthy and quiet about it. Likes to do cultural things. Never been married, and most of the women he’s dated have been in New York. Folks think he’s too big for his britches, but he donates to the battered women’s center, a healthy chunk of money. And he’s done a lot for the youth of the county. Cece may know better than anyone. And speaking of Cece, how is she doing with that hot harmonica player?”
“She’s really happy.”
“She’s a special woman and deserves a good man.” Millie rose. “I have to chop onions and peppers for the jambalaya tonight. Curtis is cooking, but I’m helping out a little.” She leaned down to kiss my cheek and whispered in my ear. “I expect Elvis to make an appearance tonight.”
Millie loved reading the National Enquirer. Elvis sightings were mentioned frequently in the tabloid, and Millie believed the King was alive, that he’d simply decided to walk out of the pressures of his life and assume a quiet existence. Sometimes I thought she might be right.
“I hope he does. I’d love to meet him.”
“Me, too. Just keep your eyes and heart open, Sarah Booth. Scott Hampton may not be dark-haired like Elvis but when he plays his guitar he makes my gizzard quiver.”
I gave Millie a hard hug. “You are incorrigible.”
“I’m old enough that I can be whatever I wish. You watch your back. I don’t know what’s at stake with all the meanness directed at Scott’s club. An innocent man gunned down, it’s just more than I can comprehend.”
“You and me both,” I told her. I grabbed my jacket and purse and set off.
10
Sitting in the Delaney Detective Agency office at Dahlia House, I pored over Internet articles and consumed the facts. Around me the house had settled into quiet. Sweetie was running through the fields and Pluto slept on my computer desk, snoring lightly. I’d thought he’d lost weight, but from this angle, he seemed to have gained heft. A diet might be in his future.
I’d barely thought the word when one green eye opened and zeroed in on me. If Pluto could talk, I was sure he’d say, “Try to put me on a diet and see what happens to you.”
Perhaps he was just a large-boned kitty.
My method of digging up information on the band involved newspaper articles and some music magazine stories that detailed the beginning of Bad to the Bone. Because the band wrote a lot of music, magazine writers were always finding threads of the band members’ pasts in each song and extrapolating. It wasn’t scientific, but it gave me a lot of personal information.
Reading about blues musicians was easy duty. Jaytee Johnson, especially. He grew up in Chicago and started his first band at the age of eight. He taught himself to play the harmonica. A record producer heard him play and Jaytee was given a scholarship to a fancy arts high school where he excelled academically and musically. His family supported him, an unusual situation for most musicians, especially those who claimed the blues as their genre. Jaytee was a golden child. Whatever he turned his hand to, he excelled at.
Where other boys his age were getting jail time, bullet wounds, expulsions from school, Jaytee took home scholarship grades, civic awards, and musical opportunities. It was the story a fairy godmother would concoct to create the perfect musician—talent, motivation, hard work.
I found nothing to indicate Jaytee would betray Scott and the club. Or Cece for that matter. Jaytee was linked with several A-list celebrities as an escort or date or travel companion, but there wasn’t a hint of a serious relationship.
The same could not be said for Mike Hawkins, the keyboard player in the band. Mike carried the
weight of musical training and production experience for Bad to the Bone. He’d learned to play the piano from an elderly woman at a local church in an Arkansas town of three thousand people. His love of the blues put an end to access to the church’s upright when he was fifteen. Devil music couldn’t be played on an instrument in the Lord’s house and Mike was jettisoned from the church.
Chicago was the happening city for the blues, and Mike moved there on his own. He was only fifteen, his only talent was his ability to play a keyboard. He fell into the drug scene and gang life. Two close calls with death from overdoses finally sent him into rehab, where he met Zeb Kohler, who’d sat in as drummer for a few tour dates with Scott’s band. The young musicians determined to clean up their acts and join Bad to the Bone. They’d both achieved their goal. In more than one article, Mike attributed turning his life around to Scott, the band, and his wife, Danni. His loyalty to Scott since appeared unswerving, and Mike had an additional anchor, his wife and their daughter.
Zeb’s past was the darkest of all the band members. He’d grown up in the system in Memphis, passed from foster home to foster home. When he hit eighteen, he left for the Chicago music scene. For a kid without connections getting gigs was tough, and he ended up on the street with two choices—sell drugs or sell himself. He chose the former and became valuable in a gang for his intelligence. He put together schemes and plans for raising profits and laundering money that impressed his boss.
By the age of twenty-two, he was driving a Ferrari and living the life of a drug lord. He had everything he wanted. Women, money, cars, clothes—everything except the blues. There was no room in his life for playing music. No legitimate band wanted him. He was too high profile, too dangerous. Drummers without such baggage could be found in abundance.
Scott ended up playing a gig in Chicago and took Zeb on for one show. He liked the kid’s style, his ability to give everything he had to the drums. He hired him for two additional shows. It was the lifeline Zeb needed. His love for music was stronger than his love for drugs and violence, and he changed his life. In the end, Scott had given him the job that saved him.
The newest member of the band was Davy Joiner, a kid who laid down a bass line with such confidence he sounded like he’d been playing for fifty years. He was only twenty-one, a graduate of Georgia Tech with a degree in engineering. Job security and a life of comfort were no counterweight to the lure of the blues. He’d walked away from job offers with salaries in the six figures to play in the band.
While a lot of the information I gathered could be put at the door of PR and hype, it gave me an understanding of the band members. Both Mike and Zeb had connections to crime and drugs. The threats against the band could easily come from their past. As much as I hated doing it, Delaney Detective Agency would have to probe those connections. Mike or Zeb could have unwittingly brought the element of violence into Zinnia.
When I was done, I e-mailed the files I’d put together to Tinkie. The phone rang almost instantly. “Frasbaum is such a smug bastard. And he’s not in Europe. He’s in Chicago. He moved back about two months ago.”
“Do tell.”
She’d spent over an hour on the phone with the former manager, who accused Scott of stealing and hiding money from the other band members and of sabotaging the Spanish leg of the last tour on which Frasbaum had served as band manager. “He said Scott owed him money.”
“Did he have anything to support those charges?”
“Not that he was willing to show me. To be honest, he sounds more like an extortionist than a murderer. He thinks he can say whatever he wishes, make allegations, and Scott will pay him off to shut him up. Also, Coleman made a few calls for me and it turns out Frasbaum is wanted on domestic abuse charges. He beat up his girlfriend pretty badly before he fled for Europe with the band.”
“Did Scott know about the abuse?” I couldn’t believe the man I knew would help a felon flee, especially for hurting a woman.
“Of course I can’t know for sure, but I’d say no. Piecing the situation together, it looks like Frasbaum had a set-to with his girlfriend about the European tour. He beat her up pretty good, and he was already on the plane and flying to Germany when she went to the police. I don’t see how Scott could have known. Frasbaum denied it when I confronted him with the facts. And then he hung up.”
“Damn.”
“He’s really mad at Scott, Sarah Booth. I’d go so far as to say he hates him. He can’t stand it that Scott ditched him and then became a success. And he let it slip that he knew about the blues club in Zinnia.”
“Great job, Tinkie.” I’d just moved Wilton Frasbaum to numero uno on my suspect list. Revenge, payback, jealousy, malice—he had a number of key motives to try to hurt Scott and the club. And he had a known record for violent action.
“Coleman is working with the Chicago PD. There’s not really much we can do down here.” Tinkie sounded glum at our lack of ability to nail Frasbaum. A beep on the phone line let me know she had an incoming call. “Hey, wait a minute. It’s Coleman.”
I powered down my computer as I waited for Tinkie to come back on the line. When she did, she had big news.
“Chicago PD let Coleman know that Frasbaum has fled. They went to talk to him about the assault charges and he escaped out a back window. There’s an APB out for him. Do you think he’ll head down here to Zinnia? Maybe he’s going to try to intimidate Scott for cash. When I talked to him, he offered to give me some dirt on Scott if I would pay for it, so I’d say he’s short on funds and may be looking for an easy mark.”
“He doesn’t know Scott very well if he thinks that tactic will work.” Scott was one of the easiest going people I knew, but he’d never stand still for blackmail.
“We’ve done what we can for the moment, Sarah Booth. Koby’s funeral is in an hour. Shall I pick you up?”
“That would be great. I would have thought he’d have his service in his hometown.”
“His girlfriend is here. He’s estranged from his family.”
Tinkie had done the background work on Koby, which had turned up nothing suspicious. Just sadness. From everything we could find, he’d been an on-again, off-again college student studying anthropology on the GI bill, who happened to make great money as a bartender.
She continued. “After he got out of the marines, he moved around a lot, bartending, working as a bouncer. I think Tatiana is the only person who loved him.” Tinkie sniffed. She was too tender for her own good. “I checked with Scott. Koby was cremated, so there’s a memorial service. I don’t know what they’ll do with the ashes.”
This was going to be a hard afternoon. “Swing by for me. I’ll be ready and waiting.” I’d been to far too many funerals in my life, but I had to attend Koby’s. For Scott’s sake. For the band. And for the case. Sometimes the strangest people showed at a final service.
* * *
The small group that gathered at Freeman’s Funeral Home chapel consisted of the band members, Mike Hawkin’s wife and young daughter, Coleman, DeWayne, Oscar, Harold, Millie, Cece, and Madame Tomeeka.
When Tatiana Scitz entered the room, all small talk ceased. She wore a black leather miniskirt and motorcycle jacket. Thick black liner rimmed her eyes, complete with flash lashes. Her boots were thigh high. It wasn’t traditional funeral attire in Zinnia, but Tatiana wasn’t a traditional girl. I put a hand on her shoulder. “Come and sit with me and Tinkie.”
The band had chosen an informal service. There was no minister. Scott invited all attendees to take the podium and speak about Koby. “We didn’t know him well,” Scott said, “but we liked everything we knew. He had big plans for the bar and for making the club a success.”
Tatiana spoke first. She blinked back tears as she talked about how she met Koby and how quickly they’d realized they were meant for each other. “I should have come with him when he left Austin,” she said. “I stayed behind to pack up our belongings. I shouldn’t have waited.” She sat down, wiping away tears.<
br />
Zeb was about to tell his stories when the back door of the chapel opened. To my shock, Mason Britt entered. He wore camo pants and a black T-shirt. He strode to the podium and faced us. If he was there out of fondness for Koby, it didn’t show on his face. He was furious and didn’t hide it well.
“I served in Afghanistan with Koby. We were like brothers. He was a good man, deeply religious, a man who’d given his soul to Jesus. Until he fell in with a pack of musicians. Blues musicians. The devil’s music took him straight to hell. Now, he’ll burn in eternal flames because of you. This is on you.” He pointed around the room. “On each and every one of you. Tempters, debauchers, fornicators, whores. A good man is dead because of your treacherous lies.”
All the members of the band, Coleman, and DeWayne stood. “Leave now.” Coleman was calm but steel threaded his voice. “Mason, this isn’t the time or the place.”
“What better time and place? Koby is dead because of that juke joint and these people.” He stepped down and walked to stand directly in front of Scott. “You’re responsible for his death.”
“The person responsible is the one who pulled the trigger,” Scott said calmly. “You’ve got a wire loose, buddy. My suggestion is to get some help. I appreciate your service to this country, and I’m sorry you’re so afraid you have to believe in a god who punishes people who love music and a good time. But don’t bring that crap in here.”
Mason drew back a fist, but Coleman caught his arm before he could swing. “Come outside with me,” Coleman said softly. I could clearly see his white knuckles. His grip on Mason’s wrist had to be punishing.
“You’re as bad as the rest of them,” Mason said to Coleman. “God is going to punish all of you. There’s a price to pay for sin.”
“There’s a price to pay for shooting someone in cold blood,” Scott said. He wasn’t about to back down. “Whoever killed Koby snuffed out the life of a good man. I will see that person punished.”
Bone to Be Wild Page 13