Cover-Up Story

by Marian Babson

  Then Uncle No’ccount, who had been standing thoughtfully in the background, lifted his harmonica to his lips and joined in. The low mournful wail of the harmonica added an extra dimension to the song, breathed soul into the melody.

  It also brought recognition.

  Black Bart’s ‘Tribute to Maw’ was the melody I had heard Uncle No’ccount doodling on his harmonica soon after the Troupe had arrived in London. Doodling, experimenting with, working into shape.

  Black Bart might lay claim to it – but the song was no more his than Buckingham Palace. Uncle No’ccount had written it, and Bart was claiming the credit. And, if that were the case, then could Bart have written ‘Homesteader’, either?

  ‘He’s really got something there,’ Sam said softly. ‘Maybe an all-time winner. Do you realize we’ve never had any song for Mother’s Day? Oh sure, there’s ‘Mother Machree’, and ‘M Is for the Many Things She Gave Me’ – but never a ‘White Christmas’ kind of song the disc jockeys would keep coming back to, year after year. If we could promote this one the right way . . .’ He trailed off, lost in dreams of avarice too deep for words. I didn’t need to look up to know that there were dollar signs instead of tears in his eyes.

  The song ended and the audience exploded into applause. And this was England, where we tend to take Dear Old Mother rather coolly, as a rule. In the States, with the whipped-up hysteria encouraged on all sides by the mass media, this could be a sensation. Especially on a Mothers’ Day telecast.

  Bart jumped into the wings between bows. He glared at us and pointed an accusing finger at Crystal. “Don’t you run away now, you hear?’ he growled. ‘I want to talk to you. You, boy –’ he jerked his head at me – ‘you hang on to her, hear?’

  ‘Okay, okay –’ Sam was pushing at him – ‘but get out there. They’re going crazy. Take another bow. Take an encore.’

  Bart had never had any intention of doing anything else. The Cousins knew it, they waited with their instruments poised and began again as Bert came back onstage. Bart, his face back in the ingratiating smile, shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly at the audience, and went into his encore – a son any mother would be proud to own. At least, during the moments when he had a spotlight on him.

  He took two encores and, while the applause was at its height, I felt a faint movement behind me. When I turned, Crystal had gone. It seemed to be Bart’s day for having girls run out on him. And I was on the girls’ side. At the same time, it occurred to me that this was the second girl I had let slip away, and Bart was going to be none too pleased about it. It might be a good idea to disappear myself.

  I was too late. Bart was with us again, mopping his face with the sleeve of his shirt. ‘Where is she?’ he demanded.

  ‘Perhaps she went to the Ladies’ Room.’ It wasn’t very good, but it was the best I could think of. I was grateful that his costume wasn’t the type that called for six-guns, he was looking at me as though he would have used them.

  ‘I’ve had jest about enough of you, boy. I asked you where Crystal went. You let her get away, didn’t you?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I? I’m not your sister’s keeper.’

  ‘You sure ain’t – you ain’t man enough! Nobody is! You hear me?’

  The front rows probably heard him, the way his voice was rising. The Cousins and Uncle No’ccount had filed offstage and were waiting to get past us. Obviously, no one felt like giving Bart a friendly nudge to move him out of the way. It would have been like shoving a wounded panther.

  ‘Take it easy, Bart. Take it easy.’ Sam, the human buffer, was working at his job again. ‘Look, she can’t have gone far. She only just left. I would have stopped her, but I was too busy applauding. You were great, Bart.’

  Bart shook him off like a gadfly. He was too intent on trying to intimidate me. ‘Some day, it’s going to be you-and-me, boy! ’

  I stared back at him levelly. ‘That wouldn’t surprise me a bit.’

  He turned abruptly, and his eye fell on the unlucky Uncle No’ccount. ‘I want to talk to you, too,’ he snarled. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Bart.’ Lou-Ann moved in front of Uncle No’ccount. ‘Bart, why don’t we jest go home? I’m awful tired. Please, Bart.’ She clung to his arm. ‘Let’s go.’

  On a vague impulse to close ranks with anyone Bart was gunning for, I walked over to Uncle No’ccount. I had chosen the wrong moment, and got there just as he was putting back his teeth. I saw him catch my expression from the corner of his eye, and the flicker of amusement.

  ‘Why the hell do you do that?’ To cover my revulsion, I snapped at him. ‘You can play perfectly well wearing those things. I’ve heard you.’

  ‘Well, now,’ he said gently. ‘It was Bart’s idea – his orders, sorta. After all, there can’t be more than one glamour boy in the act now, can there?’ Something in his voice, perhaps in the very lack of expression in his face, travestied the remark. I grinned involuntarily. If Lou-Ann could ever learn to deliver a line with that expression and that timing, Sam might be on the way to his great female comic.

  After a moment, something flickered in his eyes again to answer my grin. ‘Not that there was ever much chance of me giving him a run for his money,’ he went on. ‘I’m only jest poor old Uncle No’ccount.’

  But he had another name – and I had heard it once. Standing there, I groped after it, and then I remembered. ‘Come on, Eugene,’ I said. ‘I’ll buy you a drink.’

  They had the Client almost calmed, but it set him off again when he saw us start to walk away. ‘Where the hell do you think you’re going, you no-account old fool?’

  Uncle No’ccount turned slowly and stared at him. ‘Doug here and me is going out and have a drink,’ he said slowly and clearly. ‘Maybe we’re even goin’ to talk business a little. Maybe we’ll even talk about songs.’

  Unbelievably, I watched the Client deflate. There had been no menace in the quiet voice. Nothing to give the game away – they couldn’t know that I had recognized the tune. Yet, Bart had given way against the veiled threat.

  I decided it was going to be a very interesting drinking party. There was more to Uncle No’ccount than met the eye.

  CHAPTER XII

  FOR THE FIRST TIME in months, Gerry and I met over the breakfast table in the morning. That is, we collided in the cupboard that serves us as a kitchen, poured boiling water into some instant coffee, dredged some biscuits and a jar of meat paste out of an almost forgotten recess, and carried everything into the office to spread out on the desk.

  Gerry burbled cheerfully, reading me snippets from the morning papers, and regaling me with his own observations about them. I didn’t mind. It was sheer reflex action on his part. Birds get very narky if you don’t chat them up in the morning, and I knew he was so used to this breakfast routine that he hardly noticed it was only me across the desk.

  I concentrated on the meat paste, wondering how long we’d had it, and how long it could keep safely. It tasted slightly odd, but that might have been the spices, and there was a faint flavour of cardboard, which was interesting in a product which had been sealed in a glass jar. I spread more on another biscuit. With any luck, I might come down with a first-class case of food poisoning and have to be taken to hospital for a while. Say, until the Client had gone back to the States.

  ‘Did you learn anything from Uncle No’ccount last night?’ Gerry folded the paper and settled down to a business conference.

  ‘Not much.’ He’d been very cagey. There had been moments when I’d thought he was secretly laughing at me. ‘He wouldn’t come off the act.’

  ‘You think it is an act?’

  ‘What do you think? He wrote that song, you know, ‘Tribute to Maw’. He probably wrote ‘Homesteader’, too.’

  ‘He told you that?’ Gerry was incredulous.

  ‘He didn’t tell me anything, and I didn’t ask. I heard him working on the melody shortly after they arrived. It was rough, but it was the same tune. I’m sure of it.’

 
‘But, “Tribute to Maw” – before anything happened to her? Do you mean he was expecting something to happen?’

  It was a thought that hadn’t occurred to me, and I pushed it away firmly. It might be risky, but I was excluding Uncle No’ccount from my short list of bastards. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I think it was just the melody he was working on. Then, when this happened, he set the words to it.’

  ‘You mean, sort of an all-purpose dirge. In case Zeke bought it, perhaps? Then, when Maw did, instead, he just switched over to her?’

  ‘Something like that. It’s a good melody. Too good for the words. If we could introduce him to a competent lyricist –’

  ‘You’re mad!’ Gerry called me back to order. ‘We don’t want any more to do with them than we can help. In less than a month, they’ll all be back in the States – and the best of British luck to the States. Don’t rock the boat.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I agreed. Apart from which, the Client was claiming credit for both songs, and it could be very nasty to interfere there. Whatever agreement there was between him and Uncle No’ccount – or, rather, whatever hold they had over each other – presumably it was more or less satisfactory to both, and there was nothing to be gained by an outsider coming along to upset the apple cart.

  ‘In a way,’ Gerry said thoughtfully, ‘it restores my faith in human nature to know that the Client didn’t write those songs. Uncle No’ccount may not be any lily, but he’s a lot more fragrant than the Client.’

  The telephone rang, and we looked at each other. Neither of us made a move. It went on ringing.

  ‘We ought to answer it,’ I said, without conviction. ‘It might be Penny.’

  ‘Or Amanda,’ Gerry said. ‘Or Samantha, or Jane.’ He got up and crossed to the phone. ‘Or Christine, or Kate, or ... Good morning. Perkins & Tate.’ His face fell, and he listened without saying anything. I had already felt in my bones that it was the Client. It was going to be that kind of day – again.

  ‘Charming,’ Gerry said, replacing the phone and tottering to the kitchen for more coffee. ‘We are invited to drag our arses over there just as fast as we can get the lead out.’ He came back, sipping coffee, and slumped across the desk from me.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said pensively, ‘perhaps I have it coming. We pay for our transgressions, and all that. But you’re a reasonably clean-living chap – how did you get dragged into it?’

  ‘Perhaps I had my fun in a previous incarnation.’ I sat there hopeful, waiting for some twinge from my stomach to tell me that the meat paste was doing its deadly work. Nothing happened. I felt fine. I was fighting fit and ready to face the day – it was too bad that the day had to include the Client.

  Lou-Ann opened the door to the suite. Without make-up, the circles under her eyes were blackly noticeable. She had been crying, too. It was probably unfair to blame that on the Client – after all, the girl’s mother had just died. But I found myself wishing that she were still in the room downstairs.

  ‘Come in, boys,’ she said. ‘It was real nice of y’all to come over here so quick-like.’

  ‘Nice, hell! ’ the Client snarled. ‘We’re payin’ them. Don’t you keep forgettin’ that.’

  He wasn’t an inspiring sight, leaning against the mantelpiece in crumpled pyjamas, unshaven and scowling. He looked more natural that way, but not very much like the Lonely Homesteader image. He might have lost a few fans, if they could have seen him like that. On the other hand, he might not. Some women like the blue-jowled brute type.

  I ignored him. ‘Did you get any sleep?’ I asked Lou-Ann.

  ‘Ah surely did.’ She smiled wanly. ‘I took one of them pills the doctor left for me. It didn’t work too good, but Bart wouldn’t let me take another one. I guess maybe he was right. After a while, I went to sleep. They jest take a long time to work, I guess.’

  ‘You wanta be careful about pills.’ Bart pushed himself away from the mantel and came forward. ‘They ain’t nothing to fool around with. I don’t like you having them at all. You better give them to me.’

  A nasty little chill slid down my spine. There was nothing wrong with the words, nor with Bart’s expression. Even his voice was smooth and properly concerned. But it was all phoney. All too pointed.

  ‘No.’ A stubborn expression closed down over Lou-Ann’s face. ‘I’ll keep them. I’ll be all right. You don’t have to worry about me none. I’m not a kid.’

  With Bart, she might be better off if she were. But the offer had been made and refused now. In front of witnesses. I felt a damp perspiration break out on my forehead, and tried to convince myself that it was just the tainted meat paste taking effect. But I couldn’t make myself believe it. Nothing so cheerful.

  ‘Why don’t you go lay down for a bit, honey,’ Bart said, with laboured concern. ‘No need for you to be up so early.’

  ‘Maybe I will.’ She smiled gratefully, but lingered. She didn’t really want to exchange the life and warmth of company for a darkened room, but she was afraid of discouraging Bart by not responding enough. It was obviously the first time he had paid any attention to her since the shotgun was removed from his back.

  ‘You git along now,’ Bart urged. ‘Have a little nap. You won’t miss nothing. We’ll all still be here when you wake up. Honest.’

  ‘All right, Bart,’ she said, and disappeared into the room, leaving the door ajar.

  Bart went over and closed the door firmly, then came back to us with a worried frown. ‘Ah’m really worried about that little gal,’ he said confidentially. ‘She is so broke up over her poor Maw that she don’t hardly know what she’s doing.’

  I avoided Gerry’s eyes, and tried to stand firm against an impulse to run screaming all the way to Scotland Yard. What could I complain about, after all? A man was telling us he was worried about his wife. It was normal, understandable, and hardly a matter for the police. But not when that man was Black Bart.

  It was my imagination. It had to be. There was absolutely no evidence that Bart could be planning anything. Just as there was no evidence that Maw’s death had been anything but a traffic accident. Bart was far from the most savoury client we’d ever encountered, to say the least of it. But, while molesting children might not win him the Nobel Prize, it didn’t necessarily make him a candidate as a murderer, either.

  ‘Ah know I ain’t maybe been the best husband in the world,’ he wound up with the understatement of the year. ‘But I sure aim to do better by her from now on. Yessir, these past few days have showed me jest how much she really means to me.’ Face alight with resolution, he turned away.

  Gerry murmured something to me, but not so low that the Client didn’t catch it. He whirled back. ‘What did you say?’ he demanded.

  ‘Cauld grue,’ Gerry replied. ‘I said cauld grue didn’t agree with me at this hour of the morning. It’s what we had for breakfast,’ he added hastily. ‘You wouldn’t know, it’s a form of Scottish porridge.’

  ‘Oh, too bad.’ Mollified, the Client lost interest. ‘Maybe you can find something for it in the bathroom. They got all kindsa things in the medicine cabinet in there.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ Gerry said, and we both raced for the medicine cabinet. Of course, it was too simple. Bart wouldn’t have been asking Lou-Ann for the pills if she’d left them in plain sight in the medicine cabinet. We went back to the living-room.

  The Client had turned off the act and reverted to normal. He glared at us. ‘Where the hell is everybody? Why ain’t they here? I called them same time as I called you.’

  He strode to the telephone and snatched it up. ‘Try Room 437 again, will you – please?’

  The door opened then, and the Cousins piled into the suite. ‘Bart,’ Cousin Homer whined, ‘why’d you call us? Ain’t we all rehearsed enough? You promised us we could take a day off and go shopping today.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Bart said, intent on the telephone. He raked them with a contemptuous glance. ‘Where’s No’ccount?’

  Nobody met h
is eyes. The Cousins shuffled about unhappily. ‘We dunno, Bart.’ Cousin Zeke seemed to have lost some invisible toss and had to reply. ‘We ain’t seen him. Maybe he’s gone out on one of them Tours of London.’

  ‘Or maybe he ain’t up yet.’ It was impossible to place the source of the murmur. All three seemed to struggle to hold back snickers.

  ‘Oh, there you are!’ Bart’s attention was diverted by the phone. ‘Where the hell have you been?’

  The phone crackled wildly.

  ‘Yeah? Well, you drag it up here. Pronto!’ He slammed down the receiver and swung to face the Cousins.

  They weren’t laughing now. They cringed across the room, trying to appear indifferent to his gaze. ‘Whyn’t you come with us, Bart?’ Zeke offered hopefully. ‘We was going over to that Harrods, they say they got everything there.’

  ‘Naw, I can’t.’ Abruptly, Bart remembered his pose. ‘I gotta stay here with Lou-Ann. She ain’t been too good lately. I want to keep an eye on her.’ His face, his voice, were suitably grave.

  The Cousins obediently fell into respectful attitudes. ‘Poor kid,’ Cousin Homer said, in a hushed voice. ‘How is she?’

  ‘Restin’,’ Bart said. ‘Leastwise, I hope so. She sure needs it. Good, normal rest, that is. She took some of them pills last night. And I don’t believe that stuff does you any good at all. Worse than nothing, that stuff is.’

  ‘It ain’t so bad, Bart,’ Zeke defended. ‘It’s right smart stuff. Ain’t gonna do nobody no harm.’

  I remembered now that Bart had thrown Zeke’s sleeping pills overboard. Perhaps I was wronging him. Perhaps he honestly did have a ‘thing’ about pills, and just wanted to get rid of Lou-Ann’s.

  ‘That’s what you say,’ Bart sneered. ‘I seen you eatin’ them like they was candy, days you got nervous. And Lou-Ann ain’t got your constitution. She’s delicate-like.’

  He might have said more, but his voice had been rising, and the bedroom door opened. Lou-Ann stood there.

  ‘Howdy, boys,’ she said. ‘Nice of y’all to drop over.’