Nashville Noir

by Jessica Fletcher

  The rest of the first set flew by with little attention from me—my mind was a jumble of conflicting thoughts—but lots of cheers and foot stomping from the enthusiastic crowd. Prentice eventually announced that they were taking a short intermission but would be back soon. The management played a country CD over the PA system, and I took that as an opportunity to get some fresh air.

  I didn’t want Lewis Whitson, Marilyn Marker, Sally Prentice, or Wally Brolin to see that I’d been in the audience and waited until I was confident I could make my exit without being noticed. I snaked my way through the maze of people and blue haze of cigarette smoke in the direction of the door, stepped outside, and drew in a deep breath. It had gotten colder since I arrived, and damp, the sort of chill that goes right through you, although the crowd outside milling about, waiting to get in, shielded me from the worst of the wind.

  Loud laughter and squeals of recognition greeted the arrival of more of the club’s would-be patrons. Music from the sound system settled over the people’s conversations like a melodious cloud, forcing everybody to raise their voices to be heard. I edged toward a clearer area on the sidewalk, dodging knots of country music fans. It was then that I noticed Wally’s pickup truck. It was stopped in the driveway, facing nose-in to a parking lot next to the club, the motor running. I ducked back against the Douglas Corner building, peered around some people, and squinted. Sure enough, Alicia was behind the wheel, and Wally stood at the open passenger-side window.

  I tried to come up with a way to get close enough to the truck to hear their conversation but that proved impossible, not if I didn’t want to be seen. But then Wally climbed into the passenger seat, and Alicia drove farther into the lot.

  I waited to see if they would find a parking spot. The lot was full. They pulled up next to a Dumpster with a dozen garbage bags piled next to it. I waited until more people entered the lot and slowly trailed them, pulling my hat down over my brow and hiding myself behind first one and then another group of people going to their vehicles.

  I could see the truck’s taillights and a plume of smoke from its exhaust pipe. I walked past the truck and circled around, skirting a cluster of trash bags and crouching behind them. The Dumpster was ahead; it was only eight or ten feet away from Wally and Alicia. I drew a breath, straightened, and moved along the border of the parking lot, my back to it, hoping that they wouldn’t see me. They evidently didn’t. I reached the Dumpster and concentrated on my hearing. Their voices were clear, and angry.

  “. . . and you think I haven’t stuck my neck out for you, Alicia,” Wally said.

  “You bet you did and for good reason,” she responded in her Southern drawl. “You got me into this mess with Marker. You owed me big-time.”

  He uttered a string of four-letter words. Their conversation ceased. Then Alicia said in a voice that approximated the scratchy sound of a cat in distress, “You’re a dirty, rotten liar, you know that. You swore Marker would do great things for me.” Her laugh was sardonic. “Yeah, great things. You think I enjoyed that, Wally? How do you think that made me feel? You know what I felt like? I felt lower than pond scum. And what did I get for it? What did he ever do for me? What did you ever do for me?”

  Now Wally’s voice rose in anger. “What did I do for you?” he snarled. “I got you off the hook, that’s what I did. You’re like all the rest of your type, thinking you’re so damn talented, thinking you can flirt your way to the top. Sally Prentice’s got more talent in her little finger than you have in your whole body.”

  His stinging comment caused a halt in the conversation. As I waited for them to continue, I sensed something at my feet. I looked down and saw a large, greasy, black rat scurry beneath the Dumpster. The yelp that came from me was purely involuntary, and it was loud enough to cause Brolin to open the passenger door and look in the direction from which the sound came. The rat had not only caused me to shriek, I’d instinctively jumped a few feet away, just far enough so that I was now visible from the truck. I ducked back behind the Dumpster but heard the truck door slam shut and footsteps come my way. Seconds later, I was face-to-face with Wally Brolin, who didn’t look at all pleased to see me. Another door was shut with force, and Alicia came up behind him. I shivered, but I wasn’t sure if it was from the cold, or the rat, or the apprehension I felt facing these two.

  “I don’t believe this,” Brolin said. “What are you doin’, following me?”

  “I wasn’t following you, Wally,” I said, forcing calm into my voice. “I came to hear Sally Prentice. You said you weren’t playing with her tonight. Evidently, you have trouble with the truth.”

  Alicia stepped forward and stood next to him.

  “Hello, Alicia,” I said, still trying to override my fear.

  “She heard us, didn’t she?” Alicia said.

  “What’d you hear, you old snoop?” Brolin asked, pushing me toward the back of the Dumpster.

  “Enough to cause me to think the conclusions I’ve come to are good ones. Excuse me.”

  I tried to walk around them, back toward the street, but Brolin blocked my path.

  “Don’t do anything foolish, Wally,” I said, mustering strength in my voice. “You’re in enough of a mess as it is.”

  “What are you going to do about her?” Alicia demanded of him.

  “What am I going to do?” he said. “You’re the one in trouble, girl.”

  I tried to assess my situation. The street and noisy crowd in front of the club were a good forty or fifty feet from where we stood. Would anyone hear if I screamed? My eyes darted about in search of something to use as a weapon. I saw nothing.

  “Do something!” Alicia insisted, stamping a cowboy-booted foot on the ground like a petulant child.

  “I’ll tell you what you should do, Wally,” I said. “You should go to the police and tell them everything you know. You don’t want to see an innocent girl spend her life in prison for a crime she didn’t commit, do you?”

  “What are you talking about? Are you saying that I killed Marker?”

  “Don’t listen to her, Wally,” Alicia demanded.

  “No, Wally. I don’t think that you killed Marker.” I looked directly at Alicia. “I think she did!”

  Alicia responded by running to the truck, where she pulled Wally’s shotgun from its rack. She turned and slowly approached us, the weapon pointed at me.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Wally said. “Put it down.”

  Alicia pulled the trigger. But as she did, Wally brought up his arm and deflected the gun, causing the buckshot to hit the Dumpster with a series of earsplitting pings. He wrestled her for the gun and prevailed, sending her to her knees.

  “Yeah,” he growled. “She’s the one who killed Marker.”

  “I know that,” I said.

  Alicia clambered to her feet. Panic was written all over her pretty face. She raced to the truck, threw herself in the driver’s seat, put it in gear, and jerked forward, then slammed it into reverse, hit the gas, and roared backward toward us. Wally dragged me out of the way in time to avoid being crushed against the Dumpster, and Alicia roared down the row of cars and trucks.

  I turned in the direction of the street. The shotgun’s discharge had gotten the attention of people who’d been congregating on the sidewalk in front of Douglas Corner. I closed my eyes in anticipation of Alicia mowing them down, but miraculously they all jumped to safety as she caromed into the street, turned, and sped away, the tires screeching.

  I slumped against the Dumpster and tried to pull myself together. My white Stetson hat had flown off in the fracas and now lay squashed on the ground, a black tire tread adding a new design.

  “She’s crazy,” Wally said, breathing hard. “She killed Marker and thought she’d get away with it, but I was going to go to the police and turn her in.”

  “The way you called the police to tell them where to find Cyndi?” I said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  I retrieved my hat, used my fis
t to push it back into some semblance of its original shape, and started walking toward the street. He followed. “Hey,” he said, “I just saved your life.”

  A mass of people had gathered at the entrance to the lot; some sprinted to their cars to see if they had been damaged. The others were shortly joined by two uniformed officers who’d been summoned by the club management upon hearing the shot.

  “What’s going on here?” one policeman asked.

  “Would it be possible to contact Detective Perry Biddle?” I asked. “I know it’s late, but I assure you he’ll want to know what’s happened here this evening. Tell him Jessica Fletcher is here and knows who killed Roderick Marker.”

  As the officer made the call on his mobile phone, Sally Prentice and the other two musicians joined the crowd. She came up to Wally. “Hey, big guy. I’ve been looking all over for you. Get back inside,” she said. “We’ve got another set to do.”

  “I don’t think he’ll be doing any more playing tonight,” I told her.

  “You again,” she said, scowling at me. Her gaze shifted to Wally: “Are you in trouble?”

  “No, I’m—I don’t feel good. I’m cutting out.”

  He started to lope away, but I motioned to one of the officers and suggested that Detective Biddle would want to talk to Brolin. The officer ran after him, grabbed his arm, and informed him that he wasn’t going anywhere.

  Brolin came back to where I stood. “What did you tell them? You’ve got it all wrong,” he said. “I had nothing to do with Marker’s murder.”

  “I know that, Wally. Alicia was the one who attacked him in a rage and smashed his head with the trophy.”

  “That’s right,” he said, brightening. “She’s nuts. I hope they put her away for the rest of her life.”

  “If you’re willing to testify against her, Wally, you might be able to make a better deal for yourself with the police.”

  “Me? Like you just said, I didn’t kill anybody. What do the cops have against me?”

  “You covered up for the killer and tried to frame Cyndi.”

  “I didn’t frame anybody.”

  “But you let an innocent person be arrested, knowing full well who the real killer was. It may have seemed like a good idea, but in hindsight it wasn’t so clever. You may be a good musician, Wally, but you hit a wrong chord this time.”

  It seemed an eternity before Biddle arrived. He took in my disheveled appearance but was gentlemanly enough to not comment. We stepped away from the crowd.

  “You have a way of intruding on my days off and now you’ve ruined my night at home in front of the TV.”

  “Should I apologize?”

  He laughed. “Not unless you don’t have the answer I’m expecting. Just wanted to lay a little guilt on you. Glad you had me called. This scene is more interesting than anything on television. Besides, the game was a blowout.”

  I gave him a quick rundown on what had transpired.

  “Put out a BOLO on the truck,” Biddle ordered, and instructed Wally to give the officers its description and plate number. “Driver’s name is—” He turned to me. “What’s her name?”

  “Alicia Piedmont. Oh, and she’s armed. She has his shotgun,” I added.

  “This is all a big mistake,” Wally said.

  “If it is, we’ll sort it out down at headquarters.” Biddle told the officers to place Brolin in the backseat of their patrol car and deliver him to the central precinct. “Coming?” he asked me.

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I said. “I’ll call Cyndi and Mr. Washburn on the way. I’ve never wanted to make a phone call so much in my life.”

  “What a drag,” I heard Sally Prentice say to the other musicians. “Can you get another guitar player down here? This is messing up my whole appearance.”

  I climbed in the front of Biddle’s unmarked sedan. As he was about to pull away, I said, “Please, wait just a minute.”

  He looked at me quizzically as I angled his rearview mirror to put on my Stetson. “Just a souvenir,” I said. “How do I look?”

  “You look like an old-time country-and-western star,” he said.

  “Old-time, huh?”

  “Yeah,” he said, ripping into a Goo Goo Cluster and handing another one to me. “But a good old-time.”

  Chapter Twenty- four

  “Alicia had been having an affair with Marker,” I said.

  “He always did have a weakness for platinum blondes,” Lynee said.

  “She was furious when he put all his efforts into Sally Prentice. Alicia had expected that she’d be chosen to be his next country star. She’d gone to Marker & Whitson to confront him.”

  “Didn’t she know that Cyndi was there?” Lynee asked.

  “No, she didn’t. Alicia used the door from the parking lot and the back stairs to go up to his office. When Marker told Alicia he wasn’t interested in her anymore—he was already making plans to seduce his latest protégée—she went into a rage, grabbed the CMA award off his desk as he walked away, and swung it at his skull, knocking him out. As you know, he died later from his injuries.”

  Lynee shook her head. “I tried to tell my nephew that Alicia was a bad seed, a liar and a user, but he wouldn’t listen, had a real crush on her.”

  “And just as you suspected, Mrs. Fletcher,” Detective Biddle put in, “we found the key to that back door in her possessions. Apparently Marker gave all his girlfriends a key, but his wife didn’t have one. That’s why she always left her car out front at the fire hydrant and collected all those parking tickets.”

  “How did Wally get involved in all this?” Jamal asked.

  “When Alicia realized what she’d done, she ran out,” I said. “According to Wally, she called him in a panic. He told her to sit tight and he’d think of something.”

  “When Cyndi showed up at his door,” Biddle added, “he called Alicia back and told her to relax. He had the perfect way to get her off the hook. Let Cyndi take the rap since he rightly guessed that we were already looking for her.”

  “If Cyndi hadn’t run from the scene,” I said, “she might never have been arrested. Once she did, however, she chose exactly the wrong man to run to. He had told me he encouraged her to go to the police, but Cyndi swears he scared her silly, telling her the police would never believe her, that she had better lie low until he could figure out a way to get her out of town.”

  “And all the while he was just trying to make her look more guilty,” Lynee said. “And then he went and ratted her out, huh?”

  “Yes,” I said. “He was the one who told the police where she would be that morning.”

  “How did you know that, Jessica?”

  “Our sheriff back home, Mort Metzger, had told me a man had tipped off the police as to her whereabouts. The police had a photo of Cyndi, but it was never published in the newspaper. I checked all the previous day’s papers my first morning in Nashville. The only one who knew the police were looking for Cyndi, and knew where she would be that morning, was Wally.”

  “I wish she hadn’t been afraid to call home.”

  “Oh, Janet,” I said. “She was terrified for herself but worried more about your health. She knew if she called home, you’d know immediately that something was wrong. You could always tell by the sound of her voice. And if she told you the truth, that she was suspected of assault, later murder, and was being sought by the police, she feared it would trigger a heart attack or worse.”

  There were five of us sitting around the table. Detective Biddle had arrived first. Then Lynee Granger and Jamal Washburn came in. Finally, I’d joined them, bringing Cyndi’s mother, Janet Blaskowitz. Thrilled that her daughter had been exonerated, she had accepted an offer from the committee Cabot Cove Mayor Jim Shevlin had headed up to raise money for Cyndi’s defense. The committee insisted Janet use some of the contributions to fly down to Nashville for her daughter’s singing debut at the Bluebird Café. The remainder of the funds would go to Cabot Cove Cares, the arts organ
ization that had funded Cyndi’s trip to Nashville.

  “What happened to Alicia?” Janet asked. “I can’t help feeling sorry for her even though she did a terrible thing.”

  “She didn’t get far,” Biddle replied. “My guys picked her up about a mile away, sitting in the truck, crying hysterically. She spent the night in the hospital psych unit before we took her to be booked. She’s now at the same women’s jail facility where Cyndi stayed. I’m guessing she’ll plead temporary insanity.”

  “So are you going to charge Wally?” Lynee asked Biddle.

  He raised his hand and counted on his fingers. “Let’s see,” he said, “we’re holding him on aiding and abetting, accessory after the fact, perjury for lying to authorities—and the list goes on.”

  “A colleague of mine has been assigned to his case,” Jamal added. “From what I hear, they’re working on a plea bargain in exchange for his testimony against Alicia.”

  “Poor Wally,” Lynee said. “His popularity with the girls was his undoing.”

  “Poor Wally, my foot,” I said. “He was the one who recognized how good Cyndi’s song was and brought it to Sally Prentice. He wanted to get on her good side so she’d insist on having him play on her recording.”

  “You mean it wasn’t Marker after all?” Janet asked.

  “Oh, no. He shares plenty of the blame,” I said. “At Wally’s suggestion, Sally pushed Marker to give her the song, and demanded a cowriting credit. Marker was eager to please his swiftly rising star, so he conceded to everything she asked. They all got what they wanted. Sally got the song, Wally got the CD gig, and Marker got—”

  “Murdered,” Biddle put in.

  “Yes,” I said. “And he didn’t deserve that—not that anyone ever does. But before he jilted Alicia, he managed to get Sally Prentice’s signature on a Marker & Whitson contract, which I’m betting his partner is very happy about, even though Sally won’t be singing ‘Talkin’ Through the Tears’ on her album.”