Three Chords, One Song

by Beatrice M. Hogg

  “Do you think that she’ll press charges?” Eve gave Lucy a worried look.

  “Probably not.” Lucy knew that this wasn’t the kind of publicity Sally wanted.

  “I have to admit, you gave it to her good!” Soleil burst out laughing. Soon, in spite of themselves, all three of them were laughing.

  “The look on her face was priceless,” Lucy sputtered. “If only she could bring emotions like that to her acting!”

  Soleil tried to talk through her laughter. “Maybe now she will be able to. Maybe you did her a favor, Eve. Gave her what ten years of acting classes couldn’t give her!” She started laughing again. “Maybe you should send her a bill!”

  The sisters continued to laugh for several minutes. Diners at other tables stared at them even more than before. But the laughter seemed to bring them together in a way that sorrow never could.

  Lucy was glad that they were finally civil to one another. Maybe the three of them could get along. If they didn’t kill each other first.

  Chapter Three

  Lucy

  After lunch, they walked back towards Lieberman’s office building. Lucy stopped at a late model British green Jaguar sedan and disarmed the alarm.

  Soleil looked at the car in admiration. “Nice car, Lucy. Web designing must be treating you very good up there in San Francisco.”

  “This is Mariah’s car. She bought it for her fiftieth birthday.” The car was flashy, but the perfect car for Beverly Hills.

  “What happened to the Land Rover?” Soleil was taking her keys out of her backpack.

  “She still has it. This is her second car. She loaned it to me to use while I am down here.”

  Eve walked to the passenger side. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Well, I’m happy with my Toyota Tacoma.” Soleil pointed to a gleaming black truck parked a few spaces away. “You can’t haul equipment around in a Jag.” She jingled the keys in her hand. “And speaking of equipment, I think I’m going to pay a visit to Ms. Fountaine before she gets a chance to redecorate.”

  “What?” Eve looked at Soleil in disbelief.

  “Mik left me his recording equipment and guitars. You know Sally doesn’t want me to have that shit. By the time the appraisers get over there, that studio could be empty. I’m going over there right now with my camcorder. I’m taping all of that shit and writing down all of the serial numbers. That way, if she tries to get rid of them, I can trace them. That bitch thinks I’m crazy. She hasn’t begun to see crazy yet!”

  Lucy could just envision more bloodshed. “How are you going to get in?”

  A strange expression Lucy couldn’t decipher came over Soleil’s face. “I know the gate code. I doubt if she has thought to change it yet.” The expression disappeared when she laughed and looked at Eve. “She probably stopped by her plastic surgeon’s office to find out if Sister Eve has done any permanent damage to his work.”

  Eve laughed. “Well, be careful, Soleil. We’ll see you later.”

  “Don’t worry about me, I’ve handled worse.”

  Lucy and Eve got in the Jaguar as Soleil walked to her truck. “Do you really think she will be all right?” Eve asked.

  “Soleil can handle herself. She has seen more in her twenty-two years than most people have seen in a lifetime. More than most people want to see in a lifetime.”

  “But something seems wrong, though. I just met her, but I feel that she is holding something back.”

  Lucy wondered if Eve sensed the same thing in her. “Soleil has a lot of secrets. She’ll never let them all out. She has had a hard life.”

  Lucy wasn’t ready to talk to Eve about Soleil. Even though they were all sisters, Lucy felt that Soleil should be the one who decided what Eve should know about her past.

  “It is true that her mother is a drug addict?” Eve was curious about her newly discovered sister.

  “Faith is a lot of things, one of which is a drug addict.” What could she say about Faith, the woman who had ruined her happy home?

  “Do you know her?”

  “Mik left my mother for Faith.”

  Eve shook her head knowingly. “Like he left my mother for Hollywood.”

  Lucy felt the tears start to well up. She wasn’t going to cry today, not here, not over Faith. She had already spent a lifetime crying for the father she had lost. She took a deep swallow to push them back. “Exactly,” was her only response to Eve’s analogy.

  Soleil

  Soleil watched in her rearview mirror as the Jaguar slid out into traffic. Everything seemed surreal to her. In the course of a week, her life had changed. And in the course of a few hours, her world had turned upside down. Seven million dollars! She couldn’t believe that Mik had left them that much money! But even more meaningful to her was the fact he had left all of his studio equipment and guitars to her.

  Mik had a priceless collection of guitars and basses he had bought or had been given over the last twenty years. He had bought her a left-handed Stratocaster. It was still her favorite guitar, and she had played it at her graduation recital at the Musicians Institute.

  She had no idea where she would put all of the equipment from Mik’s studio. An excited chill ran down her spine when she thought of the beautiful music she could make with all of her dad’s old instruments. But when she thought of how she came to own it, her excitement faded.

  Her father was gone. Even though he had let her down for most of her life, Soleil still held out the smallest hope that one day he would finally become the father she had wanted. Now it was too late. And she was to blame.

  As she turned up her street, she brushed away thoughts about the last time she had seen Mik DeSalle alive. She hoped she had a good battery for her camcorder.

  Eve

  To Eve, Los Angeles was a blur of strange images as Lucy sped down the freeway towards Malibu. She wanted to hate this place, this warm sunny place of dreams, the mistress that had taken her father and her brother away.

  After going to Eve’s hotel, Lucy had driven around the city, giving her a tour of the major areas near downtown. Lucy showed her the clubs in West Hollywood that looked dingy in the bright daylight. She couldn’t believe this was where her father had discovered a new life for himself, playing clubs like the Whisky and the Roxy. She couldn’t understand why, or how, her father could leave his wife and two children to move to this town.

  Lucy provided a running commentary on her hometown. She seemed to know the history of every place, and was especially knowledgeable on anything connected with music. But that was to be expected; she was the daughter of musicians. Eve was the daughter of a secretary and a construction worker. She never knew Mik DeSalle, the rock star. She only knew Richard Shelton, Sr., the father she lost when she was two.

  So how could she accept money from that stranger? She was in a town filled with strangers, with all of her friends and family three thousand miles away in Pittsburgh. She looked at Lucy. Even though they had spent time together as children, they were basically strangers to each other. And even then, Ricky had gotten along better with Lucy than she had.

  Ricky. What would her brother have made of all of this? It still hurt to think of the death of her only real sibling, her beloved brother. They had only been ten months apart and had been as close as twins.

  Eve’s only other visit to California was five years ago, to bring Ricky’s body home from San Francisco. What had he been doing in San Francisco besides visiting Lucy? Where had he gotten drugs for his overdose? Lucy never really explained what had happened. She had been too distraught during that weekend, and Eve hadn’t contacted her since. Eve resolved to ask Lucy about that before she left. But she knew now was not the time. It was obvious that Lucy had loved this stranger called Mik DeSalle.

  The traffic started to pick up as Lucy headed up something called the “PCH” towards Malibu. Eve’s only coastal experiences had been vacations in the Bahamas and Myrtle Beach. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live on a beach, espec
ially in earthquake country.

  “What was it like to grow up living on a beach, Lucy?”

  “Well, we didn’t move to Malibu until I was a teenager. Mariah had bought the property in the early seventies, but it took her years to get the house built the way she wanted it. It faces a public beach, so the property was cheaper than places nearby with private beaches. I used to jog along the beach during the summertime, and watch the guys in Speedos.” She laughed. “I grew up mostly in Silver Lake and Los Feliz, where my mother has apartment buildings.”

  Eve tried to relax into the plush upholstery of the sleek car. The scenery was beautiful as they drove up the coast. Ocean waves lapped against the sand. It looked like one of the travel brochures she used to hand out in her office. “Apartment buildings? How many does she own?”

  “I think that she owns four. Grandma always told her that black people needed to have land, and Mariah sure did her part. Besides the apartments and the house in Malibu, I think that she has another house somewhere in Pasadena.”

  Black people. It was hard to accept that the black woman seated next to her was her sister. As Eve looked at her, she had to admit they did have similar features. At lunch she had been surprised to discover that all three of them were left-handed. Whether she liked it or not, these two black women were her last connection to the father she had lost. She knew she wasn’t a racist, but she couldn’t help but look at Lucy’s smooth medium brown skin and dark brown eyes. She looked at Lucy’s dark brown hair and absently touched her own hair. They were so different, but they were also alike. Could she learn to love Lucy like a sister?

  And what about Soleil? She was intrigued about the wild young woman that she had met for the first time this morning. And Lucy’s answers to her questions only intrigued her more.

  Lucy

  As she entered Malibu, Lucy was excited to be showing off her mother’s house to Eve. Out here, the ten-room house with a sun porch, pool and manicured backyard was just an average place, but she knew Eve would be impressed. For some reason, she wanted her to be impressed. Was it because Eve was white, she wondered? Or was it due to the fact she wanted to show Eve that Mariah had done all right for herself, even without the benefit of marriage to their father?

  She could tell that Eve had been impressed by the Jaguar. Mariah had never been the type that was interested in material things, but when she turned fifty, she had decided to treat herself. Mariah had never considered the house an important possession, just a comfortable home for the two of them. Mariah’s only prized physical possession in the house was her Steinway.

  Lucy pulled in the driveway as Eve looked around her incredulously. “Well, here we are, home sweet home!” She watched as Eve looked in disbelief at the rock garden surrounding the round pool. Lucy turned her head so that Eve couldn’t see the look of smug satisfaction on her face.

  The backyard led to the dining room, of which it was a part. Lucy wanted to see Eve’s reaction to the ocean view. She led the way through the house to the sun porch, where the ocean waves were in plain view, and went out the door. Even though the beach was impressive in a car, standing on the enclosed deck a few feet away from the sand always gave her a thrill.

  “Wow! Lucy, this is beautiful!” Eve stood by her side as they gazed down the porch to the nearby ocean, sparkling in the sunlight. Even the presence of sunbathers couldn’t mar the beauty of the Pacific Ocean from this vantage point.

  “Yes, it is great, isn’t it?” The sound of the ocean waves had always been a great comfort to her. She finally looked over at Eve. Her breath caught in her throat when she realized how much Eve looked like her brother Ricky. Dear, sweet Ricky, the brother that they had both lost. But only Eve had known him as a brother. Lucy felt faint and looked quickly away from Eve.

  “Lucy, is that you?” She could hear Mariah’s voice from inside the house.

  Mariah met them at the entrance to the sun porch. “Eve! What a lovely surprise!” Mariah acted as if she was used to having Eve at her home. She hugged the woman warmly, and Eve stiffly allowed herself to be hugged. “You look great! I haven’t seen you in ages! How is Pittsburgh?” Mariah acted as if Eve were in town on a vacation, not to attend her father’s funeral.

  “Hi, Ms. Williams. It’s nice to see you again.” It was obvious that Eve didn’t know how to address Lucy’s mother.

  “Call me Mariah, girl! ‘Ms. Williams’ is way too formal. We are almost family, you know.”

  While Mariah continued to gush over Eve, Lucy went into the bathroom. She splashed cold water on her face. As she looked at her reflection, she thought about what had happened since she left here this morning. What would Mariah think when she told her about the inheritance?

  When she went back in the living room, Eve and Mariah were sitting on the long dark brown leather sofa. The room had white walls and carpet, which reflected the sunshine that streamed in through the window. Mariah had made the room cozier with overstuffed furniture in brown and beige. The Steinway stood guard at one window.

  Eve was telling Mariah about her relatives in Pittsburgh. Our relatives, she had to remind herself. So far, it didn’t seem that the money had been mentioned yet. Lucy couldn’t wait to tell her, as she desperately wanted her mother’s advice on what to do. But she wondered if she should discuss it in Eve’s presence. Sister or no sister, they had different agendas, different lives and different thoughts about the money and what it meant. Maybe Eve was right, they really did have different fathers, different facets of the same man.

  Before Lucy could decide what to do, Mariah asked the question. She looked up at Lucy. “Well, what happened at Lieberman’s office? Are you rich?” she asked jokingly.

  Eve turned pale at the mention of the money. Lucy nervously twirled a strand of her hair, a gesture she remembered Soleil doing earlier.

  Lucy knew that she had to say something. “Eve punched Sally in the nose.”

  Mariah was visibly startled. “What?” She looked at Eve for confirmation. “You hit Sally? What for?”

  Eve was getting ready to cry again. Lucy decided that she had made a mistake starting the story at that point. “Sally had Mik cremated.”

  Mariah’s eyes grew wide. Lucy hadn’t seen her mother angry very often, but she was angry now. “The family plot…”

  Before she could finish the sentence, Eve broke in. “She knew about the family plot, but she didn’t care. She wanted him all to herself in life, and also in death. That’s why she didn’t invite my mother or aunts to the memorial service.” Her voice started to crack. “How am I going to tell them? They don’t believe in cremation, they’re Catholic. Joey and Chris left right after the service. I told them not to tell. He was supposed to be next to Grandma and Grandpa… and Ricky.” Mentioning her brother’s name caused her tears to flow again.

  Mariah took Eve into her arms and let her cry. Lucy went to the other side of the sofa and held her sister also. Ricky. How she missed Ricky. So much like her father. Now they were both gone. Soon large tears were running down Lucy’s face, too.

  Mariah tried to calm the blonde woman in her arms. “I’m so sorry, Eve. I know he wanted to be buried back in Pittsburgh. That’s what he always used to say.” She rocked Eve like a hurt child. “Do you want me to call any of them? Just let me know what you want me to do. Maybe we can get him a memorial stone and put it in the Shelton family plot.”

  Eve backed away and tried to wipe her eyes. Lucy got up and went to get tissues. She brought them back and distributed them to her mother and sister. “That’s a good idea, Mariah. We definitely can afford it.” The words came out before she could stop them.

  Mariah looked at her. “What does that mean?”

  Eve straightened up and dabbed at her eyes, still red from this morning’s tears. “He left most of his money to me, Lucy and Soleil.”

  Mariah looked at Eve and then at Lucy. Lucy was riveted to the floor. She felt like she couldn’t move.

  “How much?”

 
Lucy started to answer, but no sound came out of her mouth.

  Eve answered. “Five million dollars in cash. And he left us all the rights to his songs, which earned two million dollars in royalties last year.”

  Mariah looked stunned. “Seven million dollars? He left seven million dollars to all three of you?”

  Lucy found her voice. “And he left all of his recording equipment and instruments to Soleil.”

  Mariah nodded. “That makes sense.”

  Lucy continued, “Soleil should be here later so we can decide what to do with the money. Eve doesn’t want it. Soleil does want it. And I want to give it to charity. We do think we should keep the song rights, though.”

  Mariah nodded her head again. “I can’t believe he was able to hold on to that much money. I wonder if Sally knew. I know Faith didn’t. He was never that good with money. What did Sally get?”

  Eve answered. “She got to keep the house and all of their other material possessions. She also got the money from his insurance policies, so she didn’t do too badly. But she is pissed off about the whole thing. Says she plans to contest the will.”

  Mariah regained her composure. “When the will is made public, you girls may find yourselves getting a lot of publicity. What are you going to do?” She was the old take-charge Mariah again. “And Faith. When Faith hears about this, she is going to go crazy.” Mariah absently scratched at an old scar on her arm. “Soleil will not be safe.”

  “Soleil has never been safe from Faith.” Lucy looked at her mother’s arm, the one she broke over eight years ago. She had always thought the scar was strange looking.

  Soleil

  After leaving Beverly Hills, Soleil had quickly stopped at her apartment to pick up her camcorder, retrieve a fresh battery and find a notepad under her bed. She jumped back in the truck and headed towards the Hollywood Hills before she lost her nerve.

  She wasn’t nervous about the chance she might see Sally; she was nervous about entering her father’s home for what she knew would be the last time. She willed herself once again not to think about the last time she had seen him there, what she had said and done to him.