by Gary Gusick
“Praise Jesus. So, if it wouldn’t be impolite, I’d like to go back to sleep, get the rest of my beauty rest.”
“I wouldn’t want to keep you from that.” Darla told Vickie goodbye, and turned her attention to Tommy’s cellphone records for the week before the car bombing. There were four or five calls every day between Tommy and Cill, twenty-nine calls in all. Most of the time it was Tommy calling her. Not all that unusual for a man said to be smitten. There were also a dozen back-and-forths between Tommy and the main number for the Hinds County Sheriff’s Department. Plus a half dozen calls between Tommy and L. N. McClure. That raised a red flag, though it wouldn’t do any good to ask McClure what the calls were about. It was a client-attorney thing, and McClure couldn’t discuss the subject or content of the calls even if he wanted to.
Darla came across ten calls from a business listed as ETA International Inc. The first call was made a week before Tommy was killed. It lasted fifteen minutes. The remaining nine calls were made the day of his murder. The short duration of each of them suggested they all went directly into Tommy’s voice mail. The caller didn’t leave a message and Tommy never returned any of the calls. Who was trying to get in touch with Tommy on the day of his murder and why? Sans any other active leads, this seemed like the time to find out.
“ETA International,” the woman on the other end of the line said, when Darla called. “Have a blessed day.”
“Excuse me,” said Darla, “but I’m trying to reach Electrical Technicians Associates. That wouldn’t be you, would it?”
“I’m afraid not,” said the woman. “ETA is short for Elvis Tribute Artists.”
“Oh, so you’re an association for Elvis impersonators,” asked Darla, sounding as friendly as she could.
“We don’t favor the word impersonator,” the woman replied. “We’re a talent-booking agency. We represent the top Elvis tribute artists in the world. Is this something you’re interested in?” Darla’s questions seemed to have made the woman uncomfortable.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” said Darla and ended the conversation.
Checking the street address she found ETA International was located in the newly rehabbed Union Life Insurance building in downtown Jackson. Just three blocks away.
The building directory in the Union Life lobby said ETA International was in Suite 1600. They were the only tenants on the sixteenth floor.
Suite 1600 turned out to be an impressive-sized reception room and an inner office. The walls looked freshly painted and the furniture smelled like they’d just taken off the plastic wrap. Three of the four walls of the reception room were adorned with photos of Elvis at various stages in his illustrious career. The fourth wall behind the receptionist desk contained a built-in display case filled with dozens of Elvis bobbleheads, many of which bore little resemblance to the King of Rock and Roll.
The have a blessed day lady was a plumpish woman with frosted hair who occupied the chair behind the reception desk. When Darla approached her desk, she seemed to be posting a comment on her Facebook page and didn’t look up.
“I’m Detective Cavannah, from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.”
The woman stopped in mid-post and her head shot up. Darla showed the woman her ID and badge. The woman got a sheepish expression on her face. “Honest,” she said, “I wasn’t doing personal posting. I was doing research. What can I do for you…” She paused. “…Detective?”
“Maybe you can clear something up for me,” said Darla. “Most of those bobbleheads in the display case, they don’t look that much like Elvis.”
“Those are our ETAs,” said the woman. “Every Elvis tribute artist we represent gets his likeness on a bobblehead. It generates extra income at concerts.”
“A facsimile of someone imitating Elvis,” said Darla. “Do a lot of people buy something like that?”
“We’re having a two-for-the-price-of-one special right now,” said the receptionist. “Let me know if there’s one you like.”
“What I’d like is to see whoever is behind that door.”
“That would be Mr. J. B. Caulder, our CEO,” the woman said. “I’ll tell him you’re here.” J.B. Another guy who uses initials, thought Darla. You’d think they’d just change their first names.
“May I say what this is in reference to?” the receptionist asked.
“I think he’ll know why I’m here.”
“It’s about Officer Elvis? The ETA that was killed?”
“Tell Mr. Caulder I’m on a tight schedule,” said Darla.
The woman got up from her chair and curtsied. She knocked softly on the interior room door like she was afraid of waking a sleeping ogre.
The seating area in the reception room had a small sofa and a club chair arranged around a glass coffee table. The coffee table had a bust of Elvis etched into the top. Classy.
Occupying the sofa was a ponytailed guy in an expensive T-shirt, from which bulged well-muscled arms covered with tats. His eyes were glued to his phone. He was texting.
Darla sat in the opposite club chair. She crossed her legs; the .380 Taurus strapped to her ankle, as usual, was visible.
“You Hugh the Glue’s wife?” Ponytail asked without looking up from his texting, like he’d made her when she first walked in the room.
“I was, yes,” she said. “Are you the bouncer in this place, Mr. …?”
“Marks,” he said, “Director of Transportation,” finally meeting her eyes and shrugging his shoulders. “The tribute artists, they all like to sit in the backseat and be chauffeured around like they’re big shots.”
Yeah, Marks was the muscle in the operation. “I’ve seen your photo somewhere before,” said Darla.
“Maybe it’s social media,” he said, getting back to his texting. “You got a lot of Facebook friends?”
“No,” said Darla. “But I look at a lot of mug shots.”
“Oh,” said the guy. Nothing more. Like most strong-arm guys, he knew when the time had come to keep his mouth shut.
The receptionist returned to her desk and ten minutes of quiet went by before a thick-necked bald-headed guy, with a brown and gray soul patch on his chin and a prizefighter’s scar above his left eye, poked his head out of the interior office. Dressed in a silk suit, he had the bearing of a New Jersey hood, but smiled big-time, the way Southerners do whether or not they are glad to see you. He signaled in Darla’s direction like she was next in line and then turned and walked back into his office. The Director of Transportation didn’t bother looking up.
The suit squeezed behind a desk that took up most of the room. J. B. Caulder let his tree stump of a body sink into an imitation leather swivel chair, and took a pull from a coffee cup that had a photo of Elvis with Richard Nixon on the front. Nixon had his arm around Elvis.
Darla found a seat opposite him in one of the two folding chairs.
“J. B. Caulder,” he said, with an accent that sounded like it had been dipped in the murkiest part of the delta swamps.
“I’m here about the death of Detective Tommy Reylander.”
Caulder put on his confused face, the kind you give the traffic cop when you’re caught speeding and are about to play dumb. “I’m sorry, Detective,” he said, “but is it a donation you’re looking for? Or perhaps you’d like to book one of our Elvises for the funeral? A tribute to the tribute artist?” That good ole boy smile again.
Darla took out her recorder and placed it on the desk. “I’m a lousy note taker,” she said. “It’s easier if I record everything.”
Caulder studied the device for a second, and then looked down at the back of his right hand, appreciating what looked to be a fresh manicure. “Pray, proceed, Detective.”
“Someone from this office made ten calls to Detective Reylander’s cellphone in the week before he was killed, nine of them on the day he was killed. Would that be you?”
“I’d have to check,” he said. “I don’t keep track of all my calls. Much of my business is over
the phone. What if it was me?”
“How many Elvis tribute artists does your company represent, Mr. Caulder?”
He diddled with his computer until the right page came up. “One hundred twenty-three nationally,” he said. “Here in Mississippi, eight. We handle only the premier ETAs.”
“So why all the calls to Tommy Reylander?”
“ETA International is always on the lookout for outstanding talent to expand our Elvis Empire,” said Caulder.
“You ever hear Tommy sing?”
“I have to admit, it was sometime back.”
“Then you know he could barely hold a tune.”
“That, of course, is merely one opinion,” said Caulder.
“I’d be comfortable putting it to a vote.”
Caulder shifted in his chair, and made a point of looking at his computer, acting like there was urgent business that needed his attention. “I’m sorry, but what is it exactly that you’d like to know, Detective? I’m sure you didn’t come by merely to express your musical opinion.”
“Like I said, why all the calls to Tommy, Mr. Caulder?”
“You expect me to divulge the nature of private conversations?” asked Caulder.
“According to our records, there were a lot of calls but only one conversation,” said Darla. “You called Tommy nine times the day he was killed. All your calls went into his voice mail. He never returned one of them.”
Inhaling deeply, Caulder let his breath out slowly. He cleared his throat, and spoke with more feigned sincerity than before. “I wanted to buy Mr. Reylander’s Cadillac for our various tribute artists to use. He rejected my first offer. We were in the process of negotiating.”
“How could you be negotiating if Tommy never called back?”
“What difference does that make at this point?” said Caulder, sounding a tad exasperated. “From what I saw on YouTube, the vehicle is damaged beyond repair.”
“You watched the explosion on YouTube?”
“Along with a half a million other viewers, the last time I checked. I try to stay abreast of the ETA industry. My livelihood depends on it.”
“How well did you know Tommy?”
“How well can one know anyone who doesn’t return his calls?” said Caulder. Darla took it to mean that Caulder and Tommy had a connection, but Caulder wasn’t going to talk about it.
“And where were you night before last, at say ten p.m.?”
Caulder smiled. “At last, the real question. As it turns out I was at a meeting with our board of directors in Hattiesburg.” Caulder checked his Rolex. Another I’m-short-on-time move.
“I’ll need you to furnish me with a list of people who saw you there,” said Darla.
“My executive assistant will email it to you,” said Caulder. “Now, if you’re planning an event and need an entertainer, I’d be more than happy to assist you, Detective. Otherwise…” He removed a small pack of business cards from his breast pocket, peeled one off, and handed it to Darla. “Maybe you’d like to talk to my attorney.”
She took the card. L. N. MCCLURE, ESQUIRE, it said.
“L. N. McClure was Tommy Reylander’s lawyer, too,” said Darla, “but I’m guessing you already knew that.”
“Jackson really is a small city, isn’t it?” Caulder said, turning back to his computer.
Darla wasn’t buying the Cadillac story. The story fit but Caulder had only come up with it when she pressed him. Unfortunately, she’d run out of questions for now. She handed Caulder her card. “Tell your executive assistant—I assume that’s the lady out front—I’ll need the list by the end of the day.”
“Forgive me if I don’t stand,” said Caulder, and turned back to his computer screen. As Darla reached the door, he said over his shoulder, “Help yourself to a free bobblehead on your way out. We have a large inventory.”
Chapter 9
The One Everybody Calls Brother
THE NEXT NIGHT
Tommy’s cousin in Fish Belly, Arkansas, could not be located, nor any of his second or third cousins. The responsibility for the funeral arrangements, for better or worse, fell to Cill.
As the site for Tommy’s wake, she selected Higginbotham & Higginbotham Funeral Home (Higgie & Higgie, the locals called it), with services to be held the following morning at Tommy’s church, the Southern Church of the Holy Redeemer, where Brother Tommy had been not only a member in good standing, but also the featured singer in the choir, and when he pushed for it, the soloist, and always in one of his glittering Elvis costumes.
Since Tommy’s remains were in short supply, Cill had elected to dispense with a coffin and have what little there was cremated. In place of a coffin, in the viewing room, center stage, so to speak, was a life-size cardboard cutout of Tommy, dressed, of course, as Elvis, in both Tommy’s and Elvis’s younger days. The cutout was flanked on the left and right by four free-standing horseshoe floral arrangements, with photomontages of Tommy chronicling Elvis’s career as a performer.
The walls of the viewing room were decorated with photos of Tommy (dressed as Elvis) having his picture taken with various Mississippi luminaries—most of them, even the politicians, looking a bit uncomfortable.
There was no visual reference to Tommy’s career as a member of the Hinds County Sheriff’s Department, only a one-paragraph blurb in the leaflet that was handed out at the door.
Darla had come to pay her respects to her onetime partner and longtime frenemy, but also to touch base with her friends, Kendall Goodhew and Lulu Brister, neither of whom she’d seen in over a month, due to an unusually heavy caseload recently at MBI.
It wasn’t just social. After living in Jackson for five years Darla understood that a gossipy friend or two who’d resided in the area all their lives could be a source of valuable information for a homicide investigation. There was invariably a wealth of background material that all longtime Jacksonians knew and talked about, but that never found its way into an official report. All Darla had to do was ask a question or two and be ready to listen. Kendall and Lulu were always up for gossip.
The three women made their way around the room, taking in the various photos along the way. They stopped in front of one of Tommy with Darla’s deceased husband, Hugh, taken during Hugh’s football days at Ole Miss. Tommy wore an embroidered fire- engine-red jumpsuit, with matching cape. Hugh was in his Rebels uniform.
“Well, that’s a shocker,” said Lulu. “No disrespect to the dead, either one, but I thought Hugh Cavannah had better taste.”
“Hugh was generous that way,” said Darla, remembering his willingness to please his fans. “He’d let anyone take a picture with him. He thought he owed it to them.”
“Tommy always loved to capitalize on other people’s fame, whenever he could get away with it, the self-aggrandizing little prick,” said Kendall. “Bless his heart.”
“So, we’re having a bless his heart evening, are we?” asked Darla.
Like most women in northeast Jackson, Kendall adhered to the time-honored tradition of following disparaging remarks about foes—or friends, for that matter—by blessing their heart. The blessing of someone’s heart also had gender-specific social protocols. For a man, it was always simply “bless his heart.” For a woman the preferred wording was “bless her sweet heart,” or one could go a step further and say, “bless her sweet little heart,” or even “bless her pretty little heart.” The reference to “little heart” was not meant as a comment on the woman’s generosity, but rather the delicacy of her nature.
“Blessing someone’s heart wipes the meanness of what you’re saying off the books,” said Lulu, sticking up for Kendall.
“Catholics go to priests for that,” said Darla. “We call it confession.”
“Baptists, we’re more of the DIY type,” said Lulu. “Wash away the sin right on the spot and move on.”
“This is a streamlined way of dealing with transgressions,” said Darla. “I may have to resort to that if my schedule gets any tighter.”
“Yeah, give it a try,” said Kendall. “Understand, I’m not a recruiter for any church.”
“No, I don’t see you that way,” said Darla.
Kendall’s blunt speech and tendency to employ intemperate language, even in the presence of clergy, had resulted in her ouster from both the Central Methodist and Northwest Baptist congregations.
Lulu, by contrast, was quite ladylike and was considered a valuable asset to any religious or social group—principally based on her encyclopedic memory for the intimate details of the lives of friends and acquaintances, and her propensity for sharing such.
Kendall and Lulu were Darla’s closest friends. They’d been there for her when Hugh died. Kendall had invited Darla to stay with her and Lulu had hushed up the local gossip surrounding Hugh’s death. Kendall and Lulu had also been matrons of honor at Darla’s marriage to Stephen.
The three women stood side by side, surveying the crowded room—a better turnout than most of Tommy’s gigs.
“I have been doing a head count since I got here,” said Lulu. “I’d say there’s around two hundred, more or less.”
“Is the number important?” asked Darla.
“Are you kidding?” said Kendall. “This is Jackson.”
“Two hundred isn’t really a number you’d be proud of,” said Lulu. “Four or five hundred, those are the kinds of numbers you’re looking for. The price of entry for any kind of social consideration.”
“I’ll have to bow to your expertise on the subject,” said Darla.
A funeral aficionado, Lulu was just getting started. “Basically, I see four groups here tonight. The first group are what you would call Tommy’s fan base. See those senior ladies in the pink T-shirts with the words ‘Officer Elvis Forever’ on the front.”
“Kendall and I are part of the second, smaller group,” Lulu continued, sounding like a tour guide. “We’re mourners by avocation—Southerners who believe attendance is required at all death-related arrangements. The third group, of which you, Darla, would be a member, is the law enforcement community.”
“Even your boss, fatso Shelby Mitchell, has showed up,” said Kendall. “I saw him hanging around outside with a few of his favorite county cops, chewing his wad and spitting onto the asphalt parking lot at will. The odious old fart. Bless his heart.”