A Bad Day for Romance (17 page)

She fished her wallet out of her purse and flipped it open, bypassing her Freshway card and jcpenney credit card and the card that proclaimed her an ordained minister of the Universal Life Everlasting Church—that one, a gag gift from Jelloman, had come in handy a time or two—and finally found the one she was looking for.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, Miss Halburtson,” she said, flashing the card that proclaimed her a code compliance officer of the building department of Licking County, Ohio. She’d bought it from a fellow who made a tidy living modifying legitimate ID cards, but he changed only the photo, because recent advances in printing technology made it nearly impossible to create such pieces from scratch. Ohio, of course, was not ideal; nor was the building department, but Stella couldn’t afford any of the top-of-the-line offerings, like a Kansas City ATF officer ID or a Missouri Narcotics Officers Association membership card. Fortunately, few people asked to examine the card up close. “I’m afraid I wasn’t entirely straight with you. My name is actually Lynn Smith, and I’m helping out in the investigation into Bryant Molder’s death.”

“You’re not here about my car payments?” Lexie said, looking so relieved she might faint. Stella noted with interest that the mention of her purported boyfriend’s name didn’t seem to provoke any sort of painful emotions, either.

“No, miss, and I’m sorry for the subterfuge. But I’m afraid we have reason to believe that your apartment is being watched. You may be in danger.”

Lexie’s eyes widened. If she was responsible for Bryant’s death, which seemed increasingly unlikely the more she chattered, she was covering it well.

“Oh no, I was afraid he wouldn’t stop with just Bryant,” Lexie wailed. “Do you all know where he’s at or is he, like, on the lam right now?”

“Uh…” Stella said, mystified.

“Rex Rendell! That’s who killed Bryant. He just couldn’t stand Bryant stealing his clients. That’s how he saw it, anyway.”

“Right,” Stella said, mystified even further. She was at a tricky juncture now; admitting she had no idea who Lexie was talking about would surely undermine her credibility.

“Here, I’ve saved all his emails. Let me show you.” She grabbed her phone off the kitchen counter and dabbed at it. “I mean, I’ve thought about it before, that he might take it out on me and Divinity and his other clients, only it wasn’t really our fault, you know?”

“Er, what wasn’t your fault?”

Lexie glanced at her, frowning. “That we all dropped him. I mean, now we’re all releasing our work online, we’re, like, out from under the tyranny of the major recording labels. The gatekeepers aren’t relevant anymore, you know? Bryant knows—knew—all these indie producers who can totally help you get your work out there online without having to pay for studio time, and he’s also got the TV leads, so it just seems like a waste of time to focus on traditional vocal training. I mean, maybe five years ago when the industry was totally different—but now it’s like you got to diversify. You got to have your fingers in all these different pies, right? Here.”

She handed Stella the phone, and Stella read the email.

Ask Bryant if he can fix your glottalizing. —Rex

REX RENDELL, voice coach to the stars!

Nominated for the prestigious Silver Songbird Award, 2008!

“Um, I’m afraid I’m not familiar with glot—glot—” Stella said, handing back the phone; squinting at the tiny lettering would give her a headache in no time.

“Glottalizing.” Lexie sighed dramatically. “Okay. So, like, Rex was classically trained, and he thinks that’s the only way to sing. And glottalizing is this thing where you click when you’re voicing. And he was always trying to get me to stop. But the first month I released my new single, I sold almost
sixty
copies. Right? So maybe it wasn’t this big huge problem Rex always said it was.”

“Uh… let me see if I understand. You used to take voice lessons so you could get picked up by one of the big labels—”

“Who are completely
terrified
of innovation,” Lexie said, nodding energetically. “They won’t take a chance on anyone who’s even a little bit different, no matter how talented you are.”

“Okay. They got their thumbs up their asses, so you did this online thing with Bryant—”

“A guy Bryant knew,” Lexie said. “Charged me two hundred and fifty bucks, and that included mixing and graphics and prepress, all of it.”

“And now your song is out on the Internet, where people can buy it.”

“Yes!” Lexie said. “For ninety-nine cents, and I keep seventy percent of every sale!”

“So, help me out here… If you sold sixty of them, you made, like…”

“Forty-one dollars and fifty cents. But that’s just the first month, and it’s going to keep growing. There’s this guy I know who made almost four hundred thousand dollars last year on his first album.”

Stella nodded as though the whole thing made sense. “Anyhoo… Rex, your voice coach, was upset because no one wants lessons anymore, and he blames Bryant for hooking you all up with these, uh, producers.”

“And the shows. He was especially mad about the reality shows. He thinks they’re, I don’t know, beneath us or something.” Lexie shrugged, adorably. “Um, do you think Rex is going to come try to kill me soon? I mean, should I call my folks and tell them, just in case?”

Her momentary vulnerability tugged at Stella’s heartstrings. So far she seemed both much more naive, and much nicer, than Divinity; it was hard to tell through the green goop, but she seemed lovely, too. “Well, let’s just go over things and then we’ll figure out a next step—that sound okay?”

“Okay. I just feel so bad for Miss Edwards, since I won’t be able to come sing at the wedding. She seems like a nice lady.”

“You and Divinity were close? Is that why she asked you to sing at the wedding with her?”

“Oh hell no, I hate that stuck-up little bitch, she can fry in a pan full of chicken fat for all I care. I just owed her one, was all, and she never was planning to show up for the wedding, she was going to cancel at the last minute and this way there’d still be someone there to sing for her aunt. Of course, that was before she found out about Leif Torgrimson.”

“But doesn’t Leif scout for the big labels?” Stella asked, confused.

“Well, yeah.” Lexie looked a little uncertain. “I mean, I guess if a label
asks
to sign you, and you can still do your own stuff on the side, it’s not really selling out.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I mean, if Columbia Records wanted to give me seven figures I guess I’d do it.” Lexie frowned and examined her nails, which were painted the same bright pink as her toenails. “This is a competitive industry, you know? I mean, even with the auditions—Bryant can only ever send one of his clients when he has a connection. He gave Divinity
My Side of the Mountain
to make up for giving me
Bet the House
. She was furious, but you know, I
earned
it.” She shrugged, and Stella had to wonder which of her attributes made her better suited to poke at pie charts or pose in glasses and a business suit.

“Huh.” Stella mulled that over. “And Divinity was better qualified for
Mountain
?”

Lexie huffed. “Well, not at all, except she looks good in a deerskin halter top, I guess.”

“I have to admit that I haven’t seen many of these type of things,” Stella said. “But don’t you have to have a certain set of skills?”

“They train you some. I mean, the promo tape doesn’t hurt at all, which was why Divinity has been practicing with the bow and arrow, and zip-lining and using a compass, she might as well have joined the Boy Scouts by now.”

“Let me ask you a hard question,” Stella said. “Were you jealous that Bryant, who you were involved with, went away alone with his ex-girlfriend, who you’ve said you don’t much care for in the first place?”

“Oh, no, ma’am,” Lexie said sincerely. “Bryant was saving the best ones for me. I’ve got an audition for
The Bachelor
coming up. If I got in the finals, it could totally break me out. I mean, compared to that,
My Side of the Mountain
—well, it’s not very dignified, is it?”

Stella tried to overlook the fact that the question had been asked by a woman with a green face and Pebbles Flintstone hairdo. “But you
were
seeing him, weren’t you?”

Lexie sighed. “Miz Smith, there’s something you have to understand about this business. We don’t really
date
date. I mean, not when we’re starting out. You have to make all these strategic alliances, right? I liked Bryant just fine, and we had fun when we were together, and we went to some events together. But he’s dated lots of his clients. I mean, it works for him, too, if you go on his website he’s got shots of him with all kinds of girls.”

“So that wasn’t… a source of tension between you and Divinity?”

“No, not that. It was more… well, see, Divinity and I were living together until last summer. But I couldn’t hardly stand it anymore. She’s just awful messy.”

Stella, who had seen a cockroach make his way along the countertop over a crusted pizza box, kept her face neutral. “You’re saying her housekeeping skills…”

“Terrible! Just awful! It got so I was embarrassed to have friends over. Also she kept borrowing my clothes without asking and she used my makeup all the time and wore the points down on all my eyeliner.”

Stella, whose own house during her married years was so clean that you could have diapered a baby on the kitchen floor or eaten oatmeal out of the bathroom sinks, wondered what exactly was going to happen to this generation of girls, who seemed to have acquired almost no household skills. She supposed that she and all the other mothers of her generation were to blame, doting as they had on their offspring. Stella had made Noelle’s bed, cooked her meals, done her laundry, and vacuumed her bedroom for the first eighteen years of her life. But in that regard, as in so many others, Noelle had surprised her, emerging into adulthood a competent housekeeper and an enthusiastic cook. Maybe it was only a matter of time before Divinity caught up, too.

“How old are you, anyway?” she asked, on a whim.

Lexie frowned. “I guess you can find out anyway, but don’t tell, please. I’ll be thirty-one next May, but my official bio says I’m twenty-three.”

“My heavens!” Stella exclaimed. “Well, it’s a cruel business you’re in, if you ask me.”

“I know. I never expected to spend my best years like this,” Lexie said sorrowfully, glancing around her cramped apartment at the glittery costumes that looked a little limp and sad in the bright light of day.

“Oh, honey,” Stella said, knowing she ought to maintain her professional distance, but her maternal instincts trumping her common sense. “These aren’t your best years. Not by a long shot. I promise you, if you work hard and always remember to be yourself, your best years are ahead of you.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SINCE LEXIE HADN’T TURNED OUT TO
be much of a suspect, Stella decided to take a chance and swung by the jail on her way back to the resort to take another crack at Divinity. Tilly had gone to get takeout, which Stella figured was probably more about getting away from her sister for a while. Marty had just got back from sending a fax at the FedEx office, and despite the fact that they had the heat on in the waiting room, he hovered near the window without taking off his trench coat or driving gloves, while Stella and his wife talked. His part was crooked, as if he’d walked out of the motel without combing his hair. Meanwhile, Taffy was knitting a scarf that already looked like it was twice as long as any normal human could make use of. The vigil was starting to get the best of them, and Stella felt a little sorry for them.

“Hello, Stella,” Marty said morosely.

“How are you holding up, Marty?”

“Okay, I guess. Got a buyer on the hook for a six-bedroom colonial that’s been sitting—trying to get them approved.”

“Huh. I mean where Divinity’s concerned, actually,” Stella said gently.

“Oh. Well, shook up, I guess. You know how it is.”

“Nice of you to visit,” Taffy said coolly, “since you couldn’t bother to use your special influence to help poor Divinity.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” Stella said.

“Well, with you and the sheriff being so cozy, I would have thought you might be able to put in a word with these cretins.”

Stella glanced down the hall to the interior offices, where she glimpsed the receptionist from the other day peering over a magazine with a young woman in a Quail Valley patrol uniform.

“What did they, uh…”

“Well, it
says
visiting hours are ten to noon and five to seven,” Taffy said, pointing to a sign affixed over the reception desk, “but seeing as Divinity’s the only one back there other than some drunk they picked up, and all they have to do is sit around on their asses all day, I don’t see what it would cost them to let me go back and sit with my poor little girl.”

“Hmm.” Stella, who knew that in these small-town lockups, exceptions were the rule, depending on the relationships those being held had with the staff and visitors, figured that what was more likely was that Divinity had suggested that the guards could keep her mother out of her sight for just as long as they liked. “Well, let me see what I can do. But, Taffy, you have to know that I don’t have any special kind of relationship with anyone.”

“Really?” Taffy said, raising one eyebrow. “ ’Cause word is that you’ve been playing your sheriff against a
gentleman
who keeps a saloon.” She said the word
gentleman
as though it were a synonym for
excrement.

“Huh,” Stella said. “Funny the crazy rumors that get passed around.”

She turned her back on Marty and Taffy and headed for the reception desk, clearing her throat.

“Yes, ma’am?” the young officer said politely.

“Oh, Divinity didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“I’m here for an emergency visit. I’m her OA sponsor.”