Three Chords, One Song

by Beatrice M. Hogg

  Mik DeSalle Dead of Drug Overdose

  World famous rock guitarist Mik DeSalle, 53, found dead of a drug overdose in his home in the Hollywood Hills. DeSalle was the lead guitarist of the seventies band Sheffield Steel and went on to become one of the most influential rock guitarists to come out of that era. DeSalle was born Richard Shelton in Pittsburgh, Penn., in 1952. He was married four times and had numerous affairs with women from both the acting and music worlds. He is survived by his wife, actress Sally Fountaine, and his three daughters, Evelyn Shelton MacRae, Lucille Williams DeSalle, and Soleil DeSalle. His son from his first marriage, Richard Shelton, Jr., preceded him in death, dying five years ago of a drug overdose. Funeral and memorial plans have not yet been announced.

  Lucy

  Lucy read the news story on the Internet long before she received a call. And when she received the call, it was from his manager, Toby Reynolds, not Sally Fountaine. Sally never hid her dislike of Lucy and her hatred of Mariah, Lucy’s mother.

  “Uh, Lucy,” Reynolds started as if he had just spoken to her an hour ago, instead of ten years ago. “I’m sure you have heard about Mik by now,” he said matter-of-factly, as if it wasn’t the death of her father he was talking about.

  She didn’t bother to answer. “Have you called my mother?” she asked. She looked out of her window at the fog lifting off of the San Francisco Bay.

  He hesitated. “I left her a message.” He cleared his throat.

  Lucy didn’t hesitate. After all these years, he was still intimidated by her formidable mother. “What’s wrong, Toby, are you afraid to talk to her?” She knew that he wouldn’t answer that one, so she asked another question. “When is the funeral?”

  When he hesitated again, Lucy knew who was pulling his strings. “Hasn’t Sally made funeral arrangements yet, or is she too busy getting her hair done?” She ran her hands through her dark brown shoulder-length hair.

  “A memorial service is being planned.” He sounded like the story she had just read.

  She was fuming now. “When is the funeral, Toby? Or has that bitch already had him cremated? You know his family always wanted him buried in the family plot in Pittsburgh.”

  He wouldn’t answer. “You have my condolences.” He hung up abruptly.

  Lucy pressed the speed dial to her mother, poured herself a glass of water, grabbed a box of tissues and sat down in a comfortable chair. She wouldn’t be going into her office today.

  Soleil

  Why was the fucking phone ringing at 4 a.m.? Soleil groggily stared at the pulsing light from her transparent phone. What kind of crank call was this? Maybe Faith was in jail again. If so, then she could just rot there. But something told her to pick up the receiver.

  “Hello?” She yawned into the phone.

  “Soleil, this is Jason.” Jason had been one of her classmates at the Musicians Institute. “You remember my friend Zack? He’s an EMT.” Jason’s voice sounded strange, like he was afraid of something, or stalling for time.

  “What the fuck does that have to do with me? Why are you calling me at 4 a.m. to talk about Zack?” Jason must be on drugs or something.

  “Uh, Zack just called me. He just got back from an emergency call in the Hollywood Hills.”

  Soleil sat upright. This couldn’t be good, she thought.

  “He picked up your father, Soleil. He ODed. He died before they got him to the hospital. Zack wanted me to tell you before you heard it on the news.” He coughed. “I’m sorry, Soleil.”

  Jason hung up before she could even respond. Now she was wide awake. Soleil ran her hand through her dreads. “Oh, shit.” The tears welled up in her hazel eyes. “Oh, God, I didn’t mean it.” She knocked the phone off of the table and fell back on the bed. “I didn’t mean it.”

  Eve

  Eve was late for work. She couldn’t find her left red pump. Were gremlins moving her shoes while she slept? It was a stormy summer morning in Pittsburgh. The storm would make the traffic even worse. She needed to transfer to one of the branch offices instead of working downtown. The phone rang just as she found the shoe in her laundry hamper.

  “Evelyn?”

  Eve didn’t recognize the voice. No one called her Evelyn, with the emphasis on the “Eve,” in the English way. No one, that is, except her father. Now she knew whom the caller was.

  “Hello, Sally. Why are you calling me?” She hated her father’s fourth wife.

  “Evelyn, dear, I don’t know how to tell you this, but your father is gone.”

  “Gone where?” Eve still didn’t know why Sally Fountaine was calling her.

  “He’s dead. He died last night. I just got home from the morgue. I’m having a memorial service on Wednesday. I would like you and your cousins Joseph and Christine to attend.”

  “I’ll tell Mom.” Eve couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  “Deidre isn’t invited. Neither is your Uncle Joe nor your three aunts.” Sally had an edge to her voice that didn’t sound like the voice of a grieving widow.

  “Well, why me then?” This didn’t make any sense. She ran her hand through her dark blonde bob.

  “I have always felt sorry for you, Evelyn. Having your father walk out of your life when you were only two, leaving your mother for those black bitches, losing your brother—it must have been hard for you.”

  Sally was not only a bitch, she was a racist bitch. “I don’t need your pity.”

  Evelyn remembered her grandmother’s last wish. “When will the body arrive back here to be buried next to Grandma?”

  “We’ll discuss that when you get here. I’ve made three reservations on United for departure tomorrow morning.”

  Evelyn was getting ready to say that as a travel agent, she could get the tickets at a cheaper rate, but Sally had already hung up.

  She had to call her office and tell them that she needed to go on bereavement leave for the father she hadn’t seen in years. But first, she had to call her mother and tell her that her first love, her high school sweetheart, the father of her two children, was no longer alive. She had no idea how her mother would react, just as she couldn’t explain the tears running down her face.

  Lucy

  Lucy thought about her parents as she stepped out of the black limousine and followed her mother to the steps of the church. Lucy pulled down the jacket of her black linen suit as she squinted in the bright southern California sunshine. She watched her mother saunter along in her caftan. Mariah was dressed in a deep rich blue, standing out in a sea of black.

  Lucy shook her hair as the photographers snapped madly. She wished that she had remembered to bring her sunglasses. But Mariah stared defiantly at the photographers, who leaned forward to capture her still-beautiful countenance. Her smooth mahogany skin gleamed as her braids streamed behind her. Once a diva, always a diva, Lucy thought. She wished that she had inherited her mother’s skin, instead of having light tan skin that was prone to breakouts.

  When Lucy spoke to her mother on the day of Mik’s death, she found out that Mariah had already found out the time and location of the memorial service. Even though she was no longer in the music business, she still had her contacts. Lucy agreed to accompany her mother when she crashed the ceremony. Neither of them had cried on the phone, but when Mariah met her at LAX, they both had tears running down their faces.

  As they entered the church, she heard reporters talking into their cell phones. “Lucy DeSalle,” “Mariah Williams,” she heard their names repeated over and over again. She knew their faces would be on all of the entertainment news programs that night.

  An usher showed them to seats in the back of the church. Above the funereal organ music, Lucy heard Mariah say, “Hell, no!” Lucy took a deep breath and tried to keep up as her mother marched to the front of the church amid a sea of growing whispers. The heavily made-up and surgically-lifted Sally Fountaine frowned when she saw Mariah heading toward the family rows in the front of the church, but she quickly turned away. Mariah sat down
in the fourth row, directly behind her Shelton cousins from Pennsylvania, whom Lucy vaguely remembered from childhood visits.

  She tried to make out who else was seated in the family rows. Pale blonde Eve sat in the second row, her eyes red from crying. Lucy looked around for Soleil, but didn’t see her. She was sure Soleil had also been banished from the funeral. She had tried to call her, but the last number she had for her baby sister had been disconnected.

  Lucy smiled slightly as she thought of the situation. Her father had been a true rock and roller. He had loved the ladies, and skin color had meant nothing to him. Mik’s first and last wives had been white, his second wife had been East Indian, and his third wife had been black and Cherokee. But the DeSalle name would only live on through his two black daughters. Dreads-wearing, guitar-playing Soleil was nowhere in sight. If Sally hated Lucy, she loathed Soleil, as Soleil was the only sister that truly embodied the soul of Mik DeSalle. She was the most like him—in looks, temperament and talent. Sometimes even Lucy found herself resenting Soleil, in spite of Soleil’s turbulent childhood.

  The organ stopped as the minister started the service. At the same instance, a sound came from the open church door. It was a high, perfect contralto voice accompanied by an acoustic guitar. Lucy turned around just in time to see the flashbulbs pop furiously before an usher closed the church doors. Mariah gently nudged her and winked. Another uninvited guest had made an appearance. All of the daughters of Rock God Mik DeSalle were now in attendance.

  Ignoring the minister, Lucy looked around the church to see who else was missing. The first thing missing was her father’s body. There was just a large photograph on an easel near the pulpit. She wondered if the body had been sent back to Pittsburgh or if indeed Sally had had him cremated against his family’s wishes.

  She looked at her Pittsburgh cousins, who looked like her Uncle Joe’s children. Where was Deidre, her father’s first wife? Where were her father’s three sisters, Aunt Betty, Aunt Gloria and Aunt Darlene? Her father came from a large Scots-Irish family from Pittsburgh’s South Side, so where was everybody? Maybe there was a private ceremony being held in Mik’s hometown. Or maybe they had also not been invited.

  The outside music still seeped through the closed door. Soleil must have brought a portable PA system with her. That girl knew how to stage a media event.

  Faith, Soleil’s mother and Mik’s third wife, wasn’t there, either. Maybe she was in rehab again.

  And what about Mik’s rock star friends? Only members of his last back-up band, which had been together for only a few months, were in attendance. None of the members of Sheffield Steel were there. None of the musicians and singers that toured with him when Mariah was in his band were there, either. Neither were any of the famous faces that had populated her childhood. Where were all of the famous guitarists and session men her father used to jam with?

  She looked at the blonde in the front row again. This wasn’t a memorial service. It was a Sally Fountaine Production.

  * * *

  The next day, the phone rang while Lucy was relaxing on the sun porch of her mother’s beloved Malibu beach house. Mariah was a smart chick and had invested her money in prime California real estate since the seventies. Her rental income alone was enough to keep her in the style to which she had become accustomed.

  After spending over twenty years of her life as a singer, Mariah decided to go back to school and get degrees in sociology. Now she was a roving professor in Multicultural Studies within the local community college system.

  “It’s for you, Lucy,” Mariah poked her head into the sun porch. “George Lieberman.” She handed the cordless phone to Lucy.

  “Hello?” Lucy wondered why Lieberman was calling her.

  “Lucy, I’m glad I caught you before you went back to Frisco. I need you to come by the office tomorrow at 11 a.m.”

  “Why?” Lucy already knew the answer. After all, Lieberman had been her father’s attorney for the last fifteen years. Even when strung out on drugs, Mik still tried to take care of business.

  “To go over your father’s will.”

  Lucy glanced up at her mother. “Okay, I’ll be there.” She handed the phone back to Mariah.

  Mariah came out to the sun porch and set the phone down on the table between the two chairs in the room. “That bastard had better have left you something. I hope that bitch didn’t force him to change the will.” She sat down in the empty chair.

  “I didn’t know that he even had a will.” Lucy looked at her mother. Her unlined bronze face and dimples made her look decades younger.

  “Well, he kept Lieberman busy for all of these years. Someone had to handle the royalties from his songs. And when he signed over that song to that car company three years ago, he got a large chunk of change. Enough to keep him in smack and crack for years.”

  “Do you really think that he left me some money?” Lucy thought about what she could do with a little extra money. Maybe pay her car off.

  “He always said he would take care of you. Since he didn’t keep that promise in life, maybe he kept it in death.” Mariah had a faraway look in her eyes.

  “I can take care of myself.” She looked at her mother, the one person she could always count on to take care of her and to care for her. She reached over and took Mariah’s hand. “You really loved him, didn’t you?”

  Mariah blinked and stared out at the ocean waves.

  Before she caught herself, she voiced the suspicion that had been nagging at her. “I thought Mik had cleaned up. I thought he was working with a new band, planning to go on tour.”

  “He was.” Mariah still stared straight ahead.

  “A drug overdose?” Lucy looked at her mother. Her face was stone-like.

  “They claim he had a relapse, went on a weekend bender while Sally was away on location.”

  “What do you think?” She was afraid to ask.

  Mariah sighed and released her hand. Lucy noticed the slight tremble.

  “Mik may have taken the drugs, but whoever gave them to him wanted him dead. Someone else set this whole thing in motion.”

  Lucy caught her breath. “You think that Mik was murdered?”

  Mariah got up and headed back into the house. “I just hope that he finally left you some money.”

  Chapter Two

  Lucy

  The next morning Lucy opened the glass doors labeled “Lieberman, Armstrong and deRosa.” She stopped when she came to the attractive blonde sitting at a desk made of expensive wood. The suite’s furnishings matched the high-powered clients that Lieberman and his partners catered to.

  “Lucy Williams for Mr. Lieberman—uh, I mean Lucille DeSalle.” It had been so long since she had called herself by her father’s last name.

  The trim woman in a fashionable designer suit got up from her desk. “Yes, Ms. DeSalle, they’re all waiting for you.” Lucy followed her to the open door of a conference room.

  Lucy walked in the room. She could feel the tension in the air, thicker than the LA smog outside the large windows covering one wall. When the receptionist closed the door behind her, Lucy found it hard to breathe. She felt like she was entering a battlefield. Part of her wanted to run back to the shelter of her mother’s Malibu home.

  Seated at the black lacquered table were George Lieberman, Sally Fountaine, Eve and Soleil. The three women tried to maintain an equal distance from each other around the round table. All four looked up as Lucy entered, but no one offered a greeting.

  Lieberman stood. He looked relieved, as if he couldn’t wait for this ordeal to end. “Lucy, have a seat.”

  Sally tossed her blonde hair, carefully dyed to look as if she had spent all summer at the beach. She smirked and looked around the table. “Now the gang’s all here—the bitch, the whore and the bastard.” She crossed her arms across her blue suit jacket.

  Lucy ignored the comment. She nodded to the table as she decided where to sit. “Hello, all.” She tried to force lightness in her tone
, to counteract the dark cloud that was brewing. This was not going to be enjoyable, money or no money. She decided to sit between Eve and Soleil. Sally and Soleil sat on each side of Lieberman.

  Soleil turned to face Sally. By the angry scowl on her face, it was obvious she wasn’t going to ignore Sally’s comment. “You were a whore before I was even born.”

  Lucy looked at her younger sister. Her style was a mixture of the Gap, Melrose, and starving rock musician. Her well-worn jean jacket covered the large sun tattoo that adorned her upper left arm. When she turned, a fountain of multicolored dreadlocks radiated around her head like the rays of the sun. People either loved or hated her—there was no middle ground with Soleil.

  Lieberman cringed and stared past her out the window. Eve spoke up next. “Sally, you were a bitch back when you were still Sarah Jane Fountain from West Bumfuck, Ohio!”

  Lucy looked around at her other sister. With her short blonde hair and modest pastel cotton blouse and pants, she didn’t even look like the type of person that ever used swear words. Today her eyes blazed green.

  Mik’s famous temper had been inherited by all three of his daughters. Lucy bit her tongue. She had spent most of her life trying to control her tendency for outbursts. There were already too many divas in this room. Leave it to Mik, he not only slept with divas, he produced them.

  Lieberman’s gaze returned to the room and he cleared his throat. “Ladies, please!” He reached over to shake Lucy’s hand. “Thank you for coming, Lucy.” He opened a thick leather binder. “Let’s get down to business.” It was obvious that he wanted them out of his office before a full-scale brawl broke out. “Mr. DeSalle made me the executor of his last will and testament.”

  He looked at Sally. “Now Mrs. DeSalle, Mik had several life insurance policies of which you are the beneficiary. One of them stipulated that in the event of his death, the home you shared in the Hollywood Hills would be paid off. It appears that the policies total around three million dollars, before taxes. All of the items in the home will remain in your possession, with the exception of the recording studio equipment.”