Jessica Fletcher & Donald Bain

by She Wrote 33 - Nashville Noir (v5) Murder

  I’d finished reading the feature and was skimming the rest of the paper when one item caught my eye in the entertainment section. Sally Prentice, the up-and-coming country-and-western star who’d been given Cyndi’s song, would begin recording her new CD that night at a Nashville studio. It was a short mention accompanied by a head shot of the singer.

  I folded the paper and tucked it into a drawer in the nightstand next to my bed. When I returned to the living room, Cyndi was engrossed in playing and singing a new song.

  “Sounds nice,” I said.

  “I got up in the middle of the night to write it down,” she said proudly. “I think it’s as good as ‘Talkin’ Through the Tears.’ ”

  “That’s wonderful, Cyndi. I’m impressed with how you can continue to create under these circumstances.”

  “I think I’d go crazy if I didn’t have my music,” she said, hugging her guitar to her chest. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Mrs. Fletcher, but there’s nothing else for me to do here. In the jail, they had classes from morning to night. At least it passed the time.” She looked around the room. “How many hours can you spend sleeping or showering or watching TV?” She gave a soft snort. “I’ve never been so clean.”

  I started to say something but she rushed to add, “Gosh, I hope you don’t think—I absolutely do not wish I was back in jail. I will be eternally grateful that you rescued me from that. All I’m trying to say is: I need to occupy my mind, to keep being creative. If I allow myself to think about the trouble I’m in—” Her voice broke and she struggled to regain control of her emotions. “Anyway, not to sound too big-headed about it, my music is my escape. I think what I’m writing is good—at least I hope what I’m writing is good. But good or bad, I need to keep doing it.”

  I understood what she meant, and was grateful that she had her music as a creative outlet to occupy her mind. “I’m sorry to have to leave you alone so much,” I said. “I know it must be difficult for you, but you understand it’s all for your benefit. I’m talking to people, trying to find out the truth.”

  “I know that. Besides I don’t mind being alone. I mean it. I don’t. When you have three younger sisters at home, you’re always looking for a place to be alone.” She smiled thinking of them. “Anyway, this hotel’s really nice. I feel a lot safer here than I did at the correctional facility even though they were watching me every minute of the day.” She gave a little shiver. “I don’t think I’ll want to wear navy blue for a long time.”

  “The color of the jail uniform?”

  She nodded. “If you didn’t make any trouble. The troublemakers had to wear yellow. I don’t like that color either. You could pick them out a mile away. And white, the women who were pregnant wore white. And the ones who worked in the kitchen wore gray.” She made a face.

  I laughed. “You’re kind of limiting the choices in your wardrobe if you avoid all those colors,” I said.

  Cyndi laughed, too. “If I get out of this, I’m sticking with pink. That’s the one color I never saw in jail.”

  “When you get out of this,” I said.

  “When I get out of this.”

  I hated to break her lighter mood, but I had some questions that had been rattling around in my brain, and we needed to address them. “Let’s talk about the case for a few minutes,” I said, taking a seat on the red sofa across from her. “The best way to defend you is to find out who was in Mr. Marker’s office before you opened the door, because in all likelihood, that’s who the killer is.”

  Cyndi nodded and set her guitar down on the floor. “I didn’t see anyone go in there.”

  “But someone may have already been inside when you arrived.”

  “I didn’t think of that.”

  “You said you heard him arguing with someone on the phone.”

  “I just assumed it was on the phone.”

  “That’s what I thought. Now think real hard. Could you possibly have heard another voice, the voice of the person he was arguing with?”

  “I don’t think so. But he had music playing, so it was hard to hear anything.”

  “You never said he had music playing. Did you tell that to the police?”

  “I didn’t remember it until now.”

  “And the voice you heard. Are you sure it was Marker’s?”

  “It was a man’s voice; that’s for sure. I thought it was his voice, but I guess it could have been someone else.” She was grinning at me now.

  “Don’t get excited yet,” I said. “There’s still a long way to go.”

  “I know, but at least now it’s beginning to make sense to me. It didn’t before. Could that person have been hiding in the office when I came in?”

  “Probably not. There’s a second door from that office that goes into the hall.”

  “There is? I don’t remember it at all. I’d just been in his office once before, and the only thing I noticed were the awards in his bookcase and on his desk. He’d won so many awards.”

  “Well, there is a second door,” I said, “and there are two ways to reach that door, either by walking down the hall from the elevator or by coming up the fire stairs from the parking lot at the rear of the building. Now, you wouldn’t know if anyone came in from the parking lot, but you could have seen someone get off the elevator and walk down the hall. Do you remember anyone in the hall?”

  “Let me think.” She looked uncomfortable. “You know I’ve been trying so hard to forget that night that I think I blanked on whatever I saw, if I saw anything at all.”

  “Take your time,” I said. “See if you can picture the elevator door opening. Does anyone get out?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t see anyone. I kept going over in my head what I would say to Mr. Marker when I saw him. When I couldn’t concentrate on that, I flipped through Country Weekly magazine. I was tapping my feet to the music being played, checking my watch. I wasn’t paying any attention to anything outside in the hall.”

  “That’s all right,” I said, giving her a small smile, “it’s not critical, but all the same, if something occurs to you, or if you remember any detail you haven’t told me, please make certain you let me know.” I stood up. “Now, you’ll have to excuse me; I need to make a few phone calls.”

  “Sure,” she said, her mind elsewhere. “I can’t believe I forgot there was music playing till now.”

  I was halfway to my room, when she called out, “Oh, I almost forgot. Mr. Washburn was here this afternoon.”

  “Good,” I said, turning. “I’m hoping to catch up with him later. What did he have to say?”

  “A lot of legal mumbo jumbo, something about motions he has to file with the court, and dispositions he has to do.”

  “You mean depositions.”

  “I guess so. He said he expected the case would go to the grand jury next week.” She looked down at her hands and sighed, then picked up the guitar and strummed softly.

  I watched her for a moment, then went into my bedroom to make the calls. It was good to have discussed that night again. I had been dancing around the subject a bit, trying not to add to the pressure she was under, but if we were to make progress, Cyndi would have to help us, too. It was time to face the facts, no matter how painful.

  My first call was to Lynee Granger. “Hello, Mrs. Granger,” I said. “It’s Jessica Fletcher.”

  “How’re ya doin’?”

  “I’m calling for some advice. I see in the newspaper that Sally Prentice is recording a new CD tonight at a studio called BIGSound, on Division Street.”

  “I know all about that,” Granger said. “BIGSound’s owner is an old pal of mine. So’s the keyboard player on that session.”

  “Really?”

  “Yup. A real fine musician, on the A-list for studio sessions.”

  “Well,” I said, “I was wondering whether it would be possible for me to attend the recording session.”

  She laughed. “I figured that’s what you’d be asking. As a matter of fact, I was
planning on goin’ there myself tonight. They don’t let many spectators in for sessions like this one, but my pal invited me this afternoon. I should warn you that it won’t be a finished recording, more like a rehearsal, a run-through for the musicians before they get down to business. Still, if you’d be interested I can bring you along with me.”

  “I would love that, Mrs. Granger.”

  “Seems like we should maybe be callin’ each other by our given names by now. Whaddya think, Jessica?”

  “I agree, Lynee.”

  “You don’t have a car, do you?”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t.”

  “Well, then, suppose I pick you up about seven thirty. That all right?”

  “That’s fine, Lynee. Thank you so much.”

  I made a series of calls to Cabot Cove, speaking first with Seth Hazlitt, who took my call despite having a patient with him. Janet Blaskowitz, he reported, had a pacemaker implanted, was doing fine, and would be going home the following day.

  Buoyed by that good news, I called city hall and spoke with Major Shevlin.

  “Great hearing from you, Jessica,” he said. “How are things going?”

  I filled him in the best I could, and he talked for a few minutes about the legal defense fund he’d spearheaded for Cyndi. “We’ve already got over a thousand dollars in it, Jessica.”

  “Splendid. I know Cyndi will feel terrific knowing that people back home are supporting her.”

  I caught Mort Metzger just as he’d arrived at police headquarters after having participated in the arrest of a parole violator from another county who’d decided to hide out in Cabot Cove.

  “Guy’s a moron,” Mort told me. “Thought by moving a county away he’d be safe. Took us just two days to find him living over at Pete Rollins’s motel.”

  “Glad you nabbed him,” I said, and gave our sheriff the same report about Cyndi that I’d passed on to Seth, adding that Detective Biddle had been especially cooperative thanks to Mort’s intervention.

  “Glad I could be of some help, Mrs. F. You take care now, and stay in touch.”

  I had a message on my cell phone from Evelyn Phillips, the editor of the Cabot Cove Gazette, and reluctantly returned the call, although I would have preferred not to. I love Evelyn as a person, but her aggressiveness as editor of the town’s only newspaper can occasionally rub some people, including me, the wrong way. She answered on the first ring and sounded out of breath.

  “Jessica,” she said upon hearing my voice, “what perfect timing. I’ve wanted to talk with you. You got my message?”

  “That’s why I’m calling, Evelyn.”

  “I’ve had a brilliant idea. There you are in Nashville, Tennessee, trying to help our own little country music star, Cindy Blaskowitz, who’s been accused of murdering in cold blood one of Nashville’s top music executives. Could I convince you to write a daily report for the Gazette about how the case is going, your involvement in it? It would be wonderful to get some insight into Cindy’s frame of mind, human interest pieces that my readers would absolutely love. Then, too, it might give a big boost to the mayor’s fund-raising campaign for Cindy. That’s what I call a win-win. What do you say?”

  “I’m afraid not, Evelyn. I’m going to have to say no.”

  “No? Just like that?”

  “I know you mean well and you want the Gazette to appeal to everyone in town. And I’m sure you have Cindy’s best interests at heart,” I said, not entirely certain that last part was true. “But I just don’t have time for writing articles. There’s too much to do. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but it’s out of the question.”

  There was silence on her end.

  “Evelyn?”

  “It was just a suggestion,” she said glumly.

  “And a good one,” I said, “just not one I can take up right now. I have to run. We’ll talk another time.”

  I hated to end the call so rudely but didn’t want to discuss her “suggestion” for even a moment longer. I returned to the living room, or parlor as it was called by the hotel, and relayed the information about the mayor’s campaign and about Janet Blaskowitz from my talk with Seth.

  “I know,” Cyndi said. “I talked to Mama earlier and she told me she was doing a lot better. She thinks the world of Dr. Hazlitt, says he hung the moon.”

  “I tend to agree,” I said.

  “She said everyone in town has been so supportive. Her boss told her she should just take her time getting better and not worry about rushing back to work.”

  “Good advice.”

  I told Cyndi of my plans for the evening. Initially I’d considered not confiding in her, but decided that she was entitled to know everything and anything that had a possible bearing upon her predicament.

  “You’re going to see Sally Prentice record her CD?” she said, unable to keep the disbelief from her voice.

  “Yes. I think it makes sense to see as many people personally as possible who might have played some role in this situation.”

  Her eyes couldn’t have opened wider. “Do you think that Sally Prentice might have killed Mr. Marker?”

  I laughed, and waved away that thought. “Don’t rush ahead of me, Cyndi,” I said. “I’m not saying anything of the kind. It’s just that there are other individuals who were close to Marker, and I want to find out what they know. Your former landlady, Mrs. Granger, is taking me as her guest. She’s a friend of the studio’s owner, and knows one of the musicians.”

  A pout crossed her pretty young face. “I wish I could go, too,” she said.

  “I’ll give you a play-by-play as soon as I get back. In the meantime, how about ordering up some dinner?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lynee Granger drove a vintage green Jeep with a soft top and a stick shift. I climbed into the passenger seat—there were no backseats—and she shoved the gearshift into first gear and peeled away from the hotel, pressing me against my seat back. I felt like an astronaut during blastoff.

  “Had dinner?” she asked as she went through the gears, almost sideswiping a car and cutting off another.

  “I did,” I said, aware of the catch in my throat.

  “Good. Oh, almost forgot.”

  She reached behind her, came up with a large white Stetson cowboy hat, and handed it to me.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “It’s for you, darlin’. Got to look like you belong here in Nashville.”

  I put it on and checked myself in her rearview mirror.

  Lynee gave me an assessing glance. “Now you’re a proper Nashville lady.”

  “I wouldn’t want to look like anything else,” I said through a laugh.

  BIGSound Studios occupied an impressive, one-story brick building. Like several other studios I’d passed since arriving in Nashville, this one had a huge statue of a guitar at its front entrance. I mentioned it to Lynee.

  “Guitars in Nashville, Jessica, are like sand on the beach. Probably got more guitars in town than telephones.”

  The lobby floor was pink-and-white marble; large color photos of performers who’d recorded there lined the walls. A young woman came through a door, flashed a big smile at Lynee, and hugged her. “You look younger every day,” she said.

  “You forgot to take your truth serum today, Bobbie,” Lynee retorted. She pointed her thumb at me. “Looky who I brought with me. This here’s Jessica Fletcher,” she told Bobbie. “She’s a famous mystery writer; she wants to catch the session.”

  “Oh, I know who you are,” Bobbie said, shaking my hand. “Everybody knows who you are from the newspaper.”

  I smiled, but said nothing.

  “Well,” said Bobbie, “you’re welcome to be here as long as you’re with Lynee. Let’s just go ahead on back.”

  We walked down a long hall with framed gold and platinum records hanging on the walls on either side, leading to the control room, a dark, cavernous space painted black. The only lights were pin-spots in the ceiling that were trained on the hu
ge console that spanned the expanse of glass separating the control room from the studio, and on a long, narrow, dark wood table up one level from where the console was situated. Lynee and I took seats at the table.

  “Pretty fancy,” I said, swiveling in my white leather chair.

  “It’s one of the biggest studios in Nashville,” she told me. “Lots of megahits have been recorded here. I mean really big hits. Only the top singers get to record here.”

  “They must think that Ms. Prentice will be one of those stars,” I said.

  “That’s the talk around the business,” Lynee said. “Once a buzz develops, things really start to happen. The publicity machine cranks up and it’s what you call—um . . .”

  “A self-fulfilling prophecy.”

  “Exactly what I was thinking.”

  I turned my attention from the console and the two young men working at it to the studio beyond the glass. Musicians had begun filing in; a drummer was setting up in what was almost a separate room surrounded by noise baffles. A grand piano was being positioned, and two technicians were busy placing microphones at the various instruments, four of them on the drums alone.

  “Quite a production,” I said as I watched with fascination.

  “Takes a lot to put a song on a CD, Jessica. See, the first thing that happens is—”

  I held up my hand to stop her. What had diverted my attention was Wally Brolin, who’d entered the studio carrying his guitar. “That’s Wally Brolin,” I whispered.

  “Sure is. Looks like he got himself a gig with Sally.”

  “He mentioned he was hoping for that.”

  My eyes went back to the studio. Sally Prentice had arrived wearing a patchwork skirt, denim jacket, and green cowboy boots. Her clothing wasn’t what interested me, however. She crossed the studio, passing the other musicians, went directly to Brolin, and threw her arms around him.

  “Wally and Ms. Prentice seem fond of each other,” I said.

  “Looks that way, don’t it?”

  A few minutes later, Sally Prentice entered the control room and greeted the technicians at the board. She waved at Lynee and me. “Hi, y’all.”