“What are you talking about? Are you saying that I killed Marker?”
“Don’t listen to her, Wally,” Alicia demanded.
“No, Wally. I don’t think that you killed Marker.” I looked directly at Alicia. “I think she did!”
Alicia responded by running to the truck, where she pulled Wally’s shotgun from its rack. She turned and slowly approached us, the weapon pointed at me.
“Don’t be stupid,” Wally said. “Put it down.”
Alicia pulled the trigger. But as she did, Wally brought up his arm and deflected the gun, causing the buckshot to hit the Dumpster with a series of earsplitting pings. He wrestled her for the gun and prevailed, sending her to her knees.
“Yeah,” he growled. “She’s the one who killed Marker.”
“I know that,” I said.
Alicia clambered to her feet. Panic was written all over her pretty face. She raced to the truck, threw herself in the driver’s seat, put it in gear, and jerked forward, then slammed it into reverse, hit the gas, and roared backward toward us. Wally dragged me out of the way in time to avoid being crushed against the Dumpster, and Alicia roared down the row of cars and trucks.
I turned in the direction of the street. The shotgun’s discharge had gotten the attention of people who’d been congregating on the sidewalk in front of Douglas Corner. I closed my eyes in anticipation of Alicia mowing them down, but miraculously they all jumped to safety as she caromed into the street, turned, and sped away, the tires screeching.
I slumped against the Dumpster and tried to pull myself together. My white Stetson hat had flown off in the fracas and now lay squashed on the ground, a black tire tread adding a new design.
“She’s crazy,” Wally said, breathing hard. “She killed Marker and thought she’d get away with it, but I was going to go to the police and turn her in.”
“The way you called the police to tell them where to find Cyndi?” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
I retrieved my hat, used my fist to push it back into some semblance of its original shape, and started walking toward the street. He followed. “Hey,” he said, “I just saved your life.”
A mass of people had gathered at the entrance to the lot; some sprinted to their cars to see if they had been damaged. The others were shortly joined by two uniformed officers who’d been summoned by the club management upon hearing the shot.
“What’s going on here?” one policeman asked.
“Would it be possible to contact Detective Perry Biddle?” I asked. “I know it’s late, but I assure you he’ll want to know what’s happened here this evening. Tell him Jessica Fletcher is here and knows who killed Roderick Marker.”
As the officer made the call on his mobile phone, Sally Prentice and the other two musicians joined the crowd. She came up to Wally. “Hey, big guy. I’ve been looking all over for you. Get back inside,” she said. “We’ve got another set to do.”
“I don’t think he’ll be doing any more playing tonight,” I told her.
“You again,” she said, scowling at me. Her gaze shifted to Wally: “Are you in trouble?”
“No, I’m—I don’t feel good. I’m cutting out.”
He started to lope away, but I motioned to one of the officers and suggested that Detective Biddle would want to talk to Brolin. The officer ran after him, grabbed his arm, and informed him that he wasn’t going anywhere.
Brolin came back to where I stood. “What did you tell them? You’ve got it all wrong,” he said. “I had nothing to do with Marker’s murder.”
“I know that, Wally. Alicia was the one who attacked him in a rage and smashed his head with the trophy.”
“That’s right,” he said, brightening. “She’s nuts. I hope they put her away for the rest of her life.”
“If you’re willing to testify against her, Wally, you might be able to make a better deal for yourself with the police.”
“Me? Like you just said, I didn’t kill anybody. What do the cops have against me?”
“You covered up for the killer and tried to frame Cyndi.”
“I didn’t frame anybody.”
“But you let an innocent person be arrested, knowing full well who the real killer was. It may have seemed like a good idea, but in hindsight it wasn’t so clever. You may be a good musician, Wally, but you hit a wrong chord this time.”
It seemed an eternity before Biddle arrived. He took in my disheveled appearance but was gentlemanly enough to not comment. We stepped away from the crowd.
“You have a way of intruding on my days off and now you’ve ruined my night at home in front of the TV.”
“Should I apologize?”
He laughed. “Not unless you don’t have the answer I’m expecting. Just wanted to lay a little guilt on you. Glad you had me called. This scene is more interesting than anything on television. Besides, the game was a blowout.”
I gave him a quick rundown on what had transpired.
“Put out a BOLO on the truck,” Biddle ordered, and instructed Wally to give the officers its description and plate number. “Driver’s name is—” He turned to me. “What’s her name?”
“Alicia Piedmont. Oh, and she’s armed. She has his shotgun,” I added.
“This is all a big mistake,” Wally said.
“If it is, we’ll sort it out down at headquarters.” Biddle told the officers to place Brolin in the backseat of their patrol car and deliver him to the central precinct. “Coming?” he asked me.
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I said. “I’ll call Cyndi and Mr. Washburn on the way. I’ve never wanted to make a phone call so much in my life.”
“What a drag,” I heard Sally Prentice say to the other musicians. “Can you get another guitar player down here? This is messing up my whole appearance.”
I climbed in the front of Biddle’s unmarked sedan. As he was about to pull away, I said, “Please, wait just a minute.”
He looked at me quizzically as I angled his rearview mirror to put on my Stetson. “Just a souvenir,” I said. “How do I look?”
“You look like an old-time country-and-western star,” he said.
“Old-time, huh?”
“Yeah,” he said, ripping into a Goo Goo Cluster and handing another one to me. “But a good old-time.”
Chapter Twenty- four
“A
licia had been having an affair with Marker,” I said.
“He always did have a weakness for platinum blondes,” Lynee said.
“She was furious when he put all his efforts into Sally Prentice. Alicia had expected that she’d be chosen to be his next country star. She’d gone to Marker & Whitson to confront him.”
“Didn’t she know that Cyndi was there?” Lynee asked.
“No, she didn’t. Alicia used the door from the parking lot and the back stairs to go up to his office. When Marker told Alicia he wasn’t interested in her anymore—he was already making plans to seduce his latest protégée—she went into a rage, grabbed the CMA award off his desk as he walked away, and swung it at his skull, knocking him out. As you know, he died later from his injuries.”
Lynee shook her head. “I tried to tell my nephew that Alicia was a bad seed, a liar and a user, but he wouldn’t listen, had a real crush on her.”
“And just as you suspected, Mrs. Fletcher,” Detective Biddle put in, “we found the key to that back door in her possessions. Apparently Marker gave all his girlfriends a key, but his wife didn’t have one. That’s why she always left her car out front at the fire hydrant and collected all those parking tickets.”
“How did Wally get involved in all this?” Jamal asked.
“When Alicia realized what she’d done, she ran out,” I said. “According to Wally, she called him in a panic. He told her to sit tight and he’d think of something.”
“When Cyndi showed up at his door,” Biddle added, “he called Alicia back and told her to relax. He had the perfect way to get her off the hook. Let Cyndi take the rap since he rightly guessed that we were already looking for her.”
“If Cyndi hadn’t run from the scene,” I said, “she might never have been arrested. Once she did, however, she chose exactly the wrong man to run to. He had told me he encouraged her to go to the police, but Cyndi swears he scared her silly, telling her the police would never believe her, that she had better lie low until he could figure out a way to get her out of town.”
“And all the while he was just trying to make her look more guilty,” Lynee said. “And then he went and ratted her out, huh?”
“Yes,” I said. “He was the one who told the police where she would be that morning.”
“How did you know that, Jessica?”
“Our sheriff back home, Mort Metzger, had told me a man had tipped off the police as to her whereabouts. The police had a photo of Cyndi, but it was never published in the newspaper. I checked all the previous day’s papers my first morning in Nashville. The only one who knew the police were looking for Cyndi, and knew where she would be that morning, was Wally.”
“I wish she hadn’t been afraid to call home.”
“Oh, Janet,” I said. “She was terrified for herself but worried more about your health. She knew if she called home, you’d know immediately that something was wrong. You could always tell by the sound of her voice. And if she told you the truth, that she was suspected of assault, later murder, and was being sought by the police, she feared it would trigger a heart attack or worse.”
There were five of us sitting around the table. Detective Biddle had arrived first. Then Lynee Granger and Jamal Washburn came in. Finally, I’d joined them, bringing Cyndi’s mother, Janet Blaskowitz. Thrilled that her daughter had been exonerated, she had accepted an offer from the committee Cabot Cove Mayor Jim Shevlin had headed up to raise money for Cyndi’s defense. The committee insisted Janet use some of the contributions to fly down to Nashville for her daughter’s singing debut at the Bluebird Café. The remainder of the funds would go to Cabot Cove Cares, the arts organization that had funded Cyndi’s trip to Nashville.
“What happened to Alicia?” Janet asked. “I can’t help feeling sorry for her even though she did a terrible thing.”
“She didn’t get far,” Biddle replied. “My guys picked her up about a mile away, sitting in the truck, crying hysterically. She spent the night in the hospital psych unit before we took her to be booked. She’s now at the same women’s jail facility where Cyndi stayed. I’m guessing she’ll plead temporary insanity.”
“So are you going to charge Wally?” Lynee asked Biddle.
He raised his hand and counted on his fingers. “Let’s see,” he said, “we’re holding him on aiding and abetting, accessory after the fact, perjury for lying to authorities—and the list goes on.”
“A colleague of mine has been assigned to his case,” Jamal added. “From what I hear, they’re working on a plea bargain in exchange for his testimony against Alicia.”
“Poor Wally,” Lynee said. “His popularity with the girls was his undoing.”
“Poor Wally, my foot,” I said. “He was the one who recognized how good Cyndi’s song was and brought it to Sally Prentice. He wanted to get on her good side so she’d insist on having him play on her recording.”
“You mean it wasn’t Marker after all?” Janet asked.
“Oh, no. He shares plenty of the blame,” I said. “At Wally’s suggestion, Sally pushed Marker to give her the song, and demanded a cowriting credit. Marker was eager to please his swiftly rising star, so he conceded to everything she asked. They all got what they wanted. Sally got the song, Wally got the CD gig, and Marker got—”
“Murdered,” Biddle put in.
“Yes,” I said. “And he didn’t deserve that—not that anyone ever does. But before he jilted Alicia, he managed to get Sally Prentice’s signature on a Marker & Whitson contract, which I’m betting his partner is very happy about, even though Sally won’t be singing ‘Talkin’ Through the Tears’ on her album.”
“She won’t?”
“No. She came to the conclusion—with a little encouragement—that the song was bad luck for her. She gave it back to Cyndi.”
There was some thumping on the sound system and we looked over to see a man with a long gray beard tied like a ponytail waving at the musicians. They sat in a ring of folding chairs at the center of the room, facing each other, a microphone in front of each one. Three songwriters holding guitars were performing this night, and three other musicians—a bass player, a young woman on a fiddle, and a fellow sitting on a cajón, a boxlike drum—were accompanying them. There was only one empty seat in the house, and it was at our table.
“We can’t talk during the music,” Lynee said. “House rules.”
“I’ve had enough talking to last me a long time,” Janet said. “Everyone has been asking me questions ever since I arrived. I’m ready just to listen.”
Just before the house lights dimmed, the last one in our party slipped into his seat. “Sorry,” Brian Krupp said, “got stuck over at Marilyn Marker’s house doing an interview for an upcoming feature.”
“Is she going to take over her husband’s partnership in the firm?” I asked.
“If she can get it,” he replied. “Her stepson is suing her for half of her share of the business. Anyone want to wager on who Whitson would prefer to work with? Never a dull day in Music City, USA.”
A voice came over the sound system. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a special treat tonight, a young songwriter in Nashville who’s ready to make a
new
name for herself.” There was a ripple of laughter. “She’d already passed one of our auditions, but was unfortunately delayed. She’s ready now. And we’re delighted to have her here. Please give a warm round of applause for Cindy Blaskowitz.”
I looked at Janet, who couldn’t take her eyes off her eldest daughter. “Blaskowitz?” I whispered.
Janet nodded, tears streaming down her smiling cheeks. “She decided she didn’t want to change her name after all,” she whispered back. “I’m so proud of her.”
“As well you should be.”
Cindy tapped the microphone in front of her and dipped her head. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to be here,” she said, grinning. “A little later, I’m going to sing a song I wrote that many of you have heard about, but I’d like to open up with something different. This song is not mine, but it was written for and about me by the songwriter David Stewart. It’s a cautionary tale for every young country performer who comes to Music City. I hope you like it. It’s called ‘Nashville Noir.’ ”