Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 07 (24 page)

To implicate Matt? It hadn’t, thus far, or anybody else (Darla Jean did not qualify as a suspect). I muddled for a long while, almost able to make a connection but unable to bring it into focus. First there was Matt, then the mannequin dressed to look like Matt, then Keswick dressed to look like the mannequin dressed to look like Matt. Except, of course, Matt Montana was a package designed and produced in Nashville.

I finally gave up the antediluvian issue of man versus mannequin and returned to a more concrete realm. It seemed likely that Pierce Keswick had come to Maggody as a result of one of two telephone calls. I wanted to talk to Katie Hawk about hers—which she’d failed to mention earlier. But first I decided to talk to Lillian Figg and find out in more detail what she and Pierce Keswick had said to each other. And swing by the Dairee DeeLishus on the way to the motel parking lot. Country music fans may survive on a diet of broken promises and harrowingly bad puns, but I thought I’d squeeze in a corndog and a cherry limeade.

Twenty minutes later I tapped on the door of the bus and was admitted with a sinister hydraulic hiss. Lillian suggested we sit at one of the tables in the middle of the bus, explaining Matt was in the shower and liable to pop out into the back room without so much as a towel. Modesty, she’d added with a small shrug, was not among his talents. She offered me a cup of coffee and, when I declined, sat down across from me. Her eyes were red and her eyelids swollen, but she’d repaired her lipstick since I’d last seen her in the Wockermann living room.

“I still can’t believe it,” she said. “Pierce and I met a good twenty years ago, when we both were so damned determined that we thought we’d invented the word.” She rubbed her face hard enough to peel off a layer of skin. “I don’t know if I’m gonna get by without that son of a bitch.”

“Tell me about Country Connections.”

“Fifteen years ago, give or take, Pierce and Ripley inherited everything from their parents. Pierce was the executor, naturally, and he bullied Ripley into selling the house and the farmland in the delta and investing the whole bundle in a seedy little label company that was about to sink into obscurity. It’s not exactly a major force in Nashville these days, but it’s respectable. Pierce puts in eighteen hours a day, and his reputation for honesty is a rare thing in the business. Was, I guess.” She knotted her fingers and looked away.

“Why did you say that Pierce bullied Ripley into investing in the company?”

“You’ve met Ripley, right? He claims that back then he was lost in such rigorous and demanding intellectual pursuits that he had no time to read the legal papers Pierce shoved under his nose. He was crawling around yards in northeast Mississippi in search of botanical specimens and pallid young southern intellectuals.” She caught my questioning look and shrugged. “I don’t think so. His kind are so obsessed with analyzing literary passion that they’re too exhausted to indulge in it themselves. I find them curiously asexual.”

“Quite a contrast with what you’ve told me about Pierce,” I said impassively.

“Pierce spent his childhood fishing and hunting. Ripley used to go to the attic, dig old clothes out of trunks, and reenact scenes from A Streetcar Named Desire to entertain his mother’s bridge club.”

My expression slipped just a tad. “It’s hard to see him as Stanley Kowalski, survivor of the stone age.”

“Try Blanche DuBois, depending on the kindness of strangers,” Lillian said drily. “Pierce left when he finished high school, joined the army, and ended up in Nashville. God, it’s gonna be a lonely town without him. He held my hand at funerals and kept me company during my lowbudget divorce. You ever been divorced?”

I nodded, surprised. “Yes, once.”

“Take my advice and hire a lawyer to make sure everything was filed properly, notarized …” She looked over my shoulder. “Arly was asking me about Pierce.”

Matt wore a terry-cloth robe, although it was belted loosely and most of his chest was exposed. He sat down across from us and propped his bare feet on the back of the seat. This exposed enough to give his most tepid fan a stroke.

“Lillian and Pierce,” he chanted in a cruel parody of the schoolyard rhyme, “sitting in a tree, F-U-C-K-I-N-G; first comes the contract, then comes the screw, and now they’re fuckin’ Matt and Katie, too.”

Lillian winced. “Why don’t you get back in the shower and turn it on cold?”

“Aw, I was just joking. I owe everything I have to you and Pierce. You discovered me, and he was generous enough to offer me an exclusive contract that’ll keep me tied up for four and a half more years. I know Katie’s grateful, too, now that she’s in the same situation.”

It was cold outside, but the temperature was plunging in the bus. I’d learned at the police academy that marital disputes were a helluva lot more dangerous than armed robberies, ticking bombs, and pit bulls. My experience to date consisted of going out to a rusty trailer at the Pot o’ Gold and lecturing two teenagers on how to resolve arguments about her lack of expertise in the kitchen. The only time I’d been in real danger was when she’d tried to get me to taste the chili.

“That contract was in your best interest,” Lillian said defensively. “Your single happened to hit the charts and win the award, but the label company took a big risk when they put up well over a quarter of a million to cut the new Christmas album. Would you have preferred to keep performing at those dinky amateur-night clubs?”

“What I’d prefer,” he said, grinning at me, “is to be released from the contract so I can go over to MCA or Arista and make the sort of money a star deserves. I’m stuck not only with pissant Country Connections, but also with Lillian here, who’s promised to deliver me at the back door of the poorhouse if I’m not a good boy.”

“Richer or poorer, till death do us part,” Lillian said as she went into the bedroom and closed the door.

“Till death do us part,” echoed Matt, licking his lips as if he could taste each word. If Lillian turned up dead in Mrs. Jim Bob’s front window, I’d have a good idea where to begin the investigation. I tried to remember what bits of gossip I’d heard from Ruby Bee and Estelle. Katie Hawk’s name had been mentioned.

“Does Lillian represent Katie’s professional interests, too?” I asked.

Matt spoke more loudly than necessary. “If you wanna call it that. The agency signed her up, arranged for her to cut a few singles at Country Connections, and every now and then they book her at a crappy club. Slavery is alive and well in Nashville.”

“How does Pierce’s death affect your contract?”

“Depends on what Ripley does, but there’s hope. He ain’t what you call a true aficionado of country music. I went by his place one night to pick up a press release, and he was listening to a CD with some woman screeching like she was being poked up the butt. In Italian, too. I hope he’ll sell out to Breed, who’ll sell my contract to one of the big companies. Next year I’ll be playing in Las Vegas between tours in Europe. When I get tired of that, maybe I’ll open myself a country music house up in Branson, Missouri—right between Willie Nelson’s and Barbara Mandrell’s. I’ll have ‘em over for supper on Sundays.”

“Perhaps you can persuade Auntie Adele to keep house for you,” I suggested, watching him carefully.

“She’s too old for that. I’ll fix her up with an apartment of her own just like Elvis did for his aunt. After all she did for me, I ought to take care of her till the angels take her away—long as they don’t take their own sweet time about it.”

His consideration for Dahlia’s granny was touching. I wondered if he was so egotistical that he hadn’t stopped posing for the press long enough to take a hard look at her earlier in the afternoon. “She looks fairly healthy for her age. How old is she, Matt?”

“Old as the hills, I reckon.”

“Do you think she’s taken a turn for the worse since you were here two years ago?”

“Shit, I dunno. I just said what they told me to say. I guess she said what they told her to say. I thought the old bag did a better job of acting like Aunt Adele than she would have done herself—if you’d found her.”

“Maybe so,” I said as I stood up. “When’s the last time you spoke to Pierce?”

“I don’t know. Couple of days ago in his office, I suppose. He was real fond of lecturing me.” Matt grinned at me, possibly because he knew I was floundering like a fish out of water.

“He didn’t say anything to indicate he might come to Maggody?”

“Nope. After he got off his high horse, we reviewed my new album. Come Christmas, it’s all you’re gonna hear on every radio station in the whole damn country. Hey, you wanna hear ‘The Maggody Blues’?”

“I don’t think so.” I went to the door of the partition and knocked. “Lillian, a couple more questions before I leave you in peace.”

She opened the door. “Yes?”

“What time did you speak to Pierce yesterday?”

“He called me at about three,” she said. “He wanted to make sure we’d arrived safely and everything was set for the concert. He was going to call today. Guess he won’t.”

“Did you leave the bus last night?”

“I went for a walk, and then I went to the bar and sat there until it closed. And no, I didn’t talk to anybody.”

I lowered my voice. “Were you and Pierce …?”

“He was my best friend, not my lover. Matt has trouble conceptualizing a relationship in which one person’s not screwing the other physically, emotionally, or financially.” She glanced over her shoulder at a chirrupy sound. “Another call, probably from Amy. She’s in a dither, and Ripley won’t even talk to her.”

“Why is Amy calling you?” I asked bluntly, my ignorance of such matters well-established by now. I wasn’t overcome with embarrassment; after all, not one of them had my expertise in such matters as following school buses or mediating over chili made with turkey sausage.

“I’m a partner.” She shut the door.

Matt had found a bottle of wine and was tippling as I headed for the front of the door. “Some might say,” he said, ignoring the red wine that ran down his chin and splattered on his white robe, “that she has a conflict of interest, being my agent and manager on the one hand and a partner in the label company on the other hand. It’s sort of like having your hands in both ends of the cookie jar, but I checked with a lawyer and it’s legal.”

“Where did you go after you left the PD last night?”

“I bought a jar of field whiskey and went up to the place where Katie’s staying. I sat below her window, listening to her sing, till my toes froze. I got back here about midnight.”

“Can Lillian confirm that?”

“I dunno. I was too cross-eyed to git any farther than this seat right here.”

I left the bus, considered questioning the boys in the band, and decided to leave it as an act of total desperation. The possibility that I might arrive at that point shortly did nothing to lighten my mood as I drove out Finger Lane to our local bed and breakfast.

Ripley answered the door and led me into the living room, where Katie sat on the sofa, “Our hostess,” he said, “is on the telephone, and our host is in the attic. May I offer you tea?”

Only for the very briefest second did I allow myself to imagine Jim Bob in a feather boa, prancing around the trunks. “I need to speak to you,” I said to Katie.

“Speak,” she said listlessly.

“In private.”

Ripley leaned toward me, his fingertips under his chin. “We don’t have any secrets, Arly. You just ask Miss Katie Hawk anything you want, and I’ll help her answer.”

It occurred to me that he was beginning to annoy me. “I need to speak to you,” I repeated to Katie, who, for the record, was also beginning to annoy me. “We can go out on the porch or we can go up to your room.”

Katie led the way to her room. Once we were inside, I sat down on the ruffly bedspread and said, “When is the last time you spoke to Pierce Keswick?”

“A week ago. He had some new material he wanted me to listen to. Something called ‘Your Death Put a Damper on Our Love.’ I wasn’t real excited.” She stood in front of the mirror and began to brush her waist-length hair, but she was watching me furtively.

“Pierce’s secretary said you called yesterday at four o’clock. She said you called collect from a launderette.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

“If you want to lie about it, that’s up to you—but there are two or three dead bodies in town, depending on whose tales you believe, and this is a police investigation. Did I mention that the telephone company will have a record of the call?”

Katie’s aloofness vanished, and she looked as if she wanted to stamp her foot or snatch up the brush and fling it at me. She seemed to be leaning toward the latter, but instead narrowed her eyes and said, “Okay, so I went to call Pierce. I wanted some privacy—”

“You wanted privacy so you went to a public phone?”

“I had to because the woman who owns this place is the type to eavesdrop in the hall or listen in on an extension. Matt’s driving me crazy. He wouldn’t leave me alone on the bus, and I thought Pierce ought to know.”

“And what did Pierce say?”

“Nothing.”

“Did anyone see you leave the house?”

“I climbed down the drainpipe outside the window. Back home there was a walnut tree that was mighty useful when my pa wouldn’t let me go out at night. He never did figure out why I had scabs on my elbows and knees all the time. Ma had her suspicions, but she never said much.”

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You climbed down a drainpipe and walked to the launderette to call Pierce collect and tell him that Matt’s been bothering you. Pierce says nothing, but drops everything and comes dashing here within a matter of hours. What was he going to do—slap Matt on the hand?”

“I told you,” she said, getting more agitated and glancing at the door with every word. “He didn’t say he was coming here. He just said he’d talk to Lillian about keeping Matt away from me.” She went to the window, pulled back the drape, and looked down at the yard as if terrorists were creeping up the hill through Mrs. Jim Bob’s loblolly pines. “You don’t know what it’s like to have someone after you all the time. When I perform, he comes to the club and sits at the front table. He brings champagne backstage. He hangs around my apartment door. He calls all hours of the day and night and sends flowers two or three times a week!”