A Fistful of Rain (14 page)

“Joan.”

He took a different mobile from his pocket, matte black and no bigger than a credit card, and asked me for her number. I gave it to him, and he dialed. It seemed to ring several times before anyone answered, and then Chapel started speaking, introducing himself. He didn’t hand over the phone, just saying that he represented me, that my brother had been murdered, and that for the sake of my privacy he had moved me from my home to a hotel. I couldn’t hear Joan’s half of the conversation, not even when Chapel told her about Mikel. He asked her if she would mind joining me, staying with me for a day or so, and there was no appreciable pause for her to answer, and then he was saying I was at the Heathman, under the name Jennifer Lee, and that the sooner she got here, the better.

Then he hung up and said, “She’s on her way over.”

“I wanted to talk to her. You should have let me talk to her. She knew Mikel.”

He slid his phone back into his jacket, exhaling, and his face changed, smoothing. I realized that he’d been as worked up as I was, that he was as worried as I was, though maybe not for all the same reasons.

“I should have,” Chapel said. “I apologize.”

I thought about saying that I accepted it. Thought about offering him an apology of my own, too, for whatever good it would do. Maybe to bank against future transgressions.

Instead, I got up and grabbed the robe off the back of the chair, then went into the bedroom to change, slamming the partition behind me.

CHAPTER 18

Barry had dropped off clothes and smokes before Joan arrived, and Chapel left almost immediately after she got there. I had showered and eaten a room-service sandwich—ordered by Chapel—and was feeling so sleepy I was having trouble keeping my eyes open.

Joan gave me energy, though, along with unconditional comfort. I took it greedily, trying not to remember that I hadn’t been around to give her the same when Steven died.

Chapel returned Saturday night, about an hour after I woke up, with a long list of accomplishments. He’d arranged the funeral for Monday afternoon, at a parlor called Colby’s in Southeast. He’d picked Colby’s, he told me, because they could be discreet, and that was going to be even more important, because Van and Click and Graham all intended to be at the service. He’d spoken to Graham, and passed along concern and condolences from all involved. Apparently even Oliver Clay had expressed sympathy for my loss. Big of him.

It was the mundane questions that threw me. What kind of casket did I want for Mikel? What kind of flowers? Should there be music at the service? Choral, or organ, or something else? Was there a song he liked? Did I, perhaps, want to play? Did Mikel want to be cremated, or buried, and if buried, where? Who of his friends did I want invited to the funeral?

“I don’t know his friends,” I admitted.

“If it’s all right with you, I can go through his things, see if I can find an address book. Did he keep an address book?”

“He had a PDA, one of those pocket things,” I said. “Should be at his house.”

“Then I’ll bring that back here, and you can put together a list of guests.

“You remember a car on your street, a gray Chevy?” Chapel asked me. “It was parked down the block from your house.”

“The beater?”

“Burchett’s people figured that’s where the signal from your house was going, that the receiver was in the car.”

“So Burchett found the tapes?”

“He couldn’t get into the vehicle. But he told the police about it, and they’ve moved it to their lot. Their people are going over it.”

“But that means that the police will have the tapes,” I said. “If there are tapes, then they’ll have them.”

“Yes, but as evidence. Their existence might be leaked, but not their contents, not until they’ve got the people responsible.”

That didn’t actually reassure me very much at all.

Chapel went on, telling us that Tommy was still in custody, but that he hadn’t been charged.

I asked him why.

“A guess? The police don’t have the evidence and they’re trying to get it.”

“What about Miriam?” Joan asked. “Is she a suspect?”

“For about six hours, she was the prime suspect,” Chapel told her.

Joan was almost incredulous. “For heaven’s sake, why?”

“The search they executed at her home turned up a lot of blood, they thought it might have been her brother’s.”

“It wasn’t,” I said. “It was mine.”

“They know that now.” Chapel shook his head. “No, she’s in the clear for the time being. Even if she wasn’t, the D.A. would want to be damn certain before he took the publicity of charging her.”

Joan was looking at me. “Why did they find blood in your house?”

“My hand,” I said.

“You said you cut it on tour.”

“I lied.”

“Why would you . . .” And Joan trailed off, because she figured out the answer to that one, and it led to another question. “That’s why you’re home? Because you couldn’t stay sober on tour?”

Chapel wasn’t speaking, and from his expression, he looked like he wasn’t listening, either. I knew he was, but he did a good job of pretending not to.

I tried to make a joke, I said, “It’s just the way Steven told it, Joan. It’s just part of the job.”

“He never said that.”

“He sure did.” I was indignant. “Before I left for the
Scandal
tour, we went to dinner, and you and he talked about the wild life on the road. About the way you two used to party when you were touring.”

Joan’s expression shifted, moved away from her anger to an almost curiosity, as if she was seeing me for the first time. “When was this?”

“When we went to Ringside for dinner, just before I left.”

She glanced over at Chapel, then back to me, and now the curiosity had become concern. “That never happened, Miriam.”

“It did!”

“We didn’t eat at Ringside. We had dinner at our place before you left, sweetie, and you left early, because you had to get home and pack.”

I tried to remember, and the thing was, now that she’d said it, I knew she was right. But I really thought we
had
gone to dinner at Ringside, I was certain I could remember the sound of Steven’s voice, the way he kept laughing as he told his anecdotes about life on the road.

But it hadn’t happened, and I withdrew to silence, feeling foolish and confused, and a little scared. If I was making that up, then what else was I creating in my mind? What else was I lying about?

CHAPTER 19

Sunday was broken only by Chapel’s arrival with Mikel’s PDA. I composed a list of fifteen names I thought I recognized, people that Mikel had actually liked, or at least, that I thought he’d liked, and I looked around for an entry for Jessica and didn’t find one, but there was one for a girl named Avery Sanger, so I put her on the list, too.

Chapel told me he’d make calls, letting them know the when and where of the service, and then he left us alone again, and that was the most exciting thing that happened on Sunday.

We left the hotel in the darkness before dawn the next morning, Chapel guiding me out much the way he’d guided me in, straight to his waiting Audi. We were followed by the guy Burchett had sent over, and it was the first time I’d seen him, though Chapel assured me there’d been someone on duty outside my room the whole time.

As we were getting into the car, Burchett called Chapel and confirmed that it was safe for me to return home, that the press had finally gotten bored with waiting for my return. I was grateful for the news. I wanted to get home and get changed, to have some time by myself before the funeral.

Joan stayed behind on the curb, waiting for the valet to bring her Volvo, promising she’d pick me up for the service that afternoon.

In the car, Chapel gave me the latest.

“Now they’re onto the pictures,” he said. “The story has been on the networks, MTV and the like. NME and Dotmusic are covering it.
Rolling Stone
’s guy arrived in town yesterday. There’s a good chance reporters will show up at the service since they know you’ll be there, and if that happens I want you to keep your mouth shut. Don’t answer any questions. Nothing, Miriam. Just keep your head down.”

“I will.”

“Van, Click, and Graham got in last night. They released a statement through the label about how they needed to be with you, to support you, and they’ve canceled the next week of dates to be here.”

“Van must have bled over that,” I said.

Chapel ignored the comment, turning us onto the Broadway Bridge. “Not as relevant, but it may interest you to know that as of Saturday night
Nothing for Free
had jumped twelve spots on
Billboard
’s Top Fifty, to eleven. We’re expecting to hear it’s in the Top Ten sometime today.
Scandal
reentered at sixty-seven. ‘Queen of Swords’ is in heavy rotation in just about every major outlet, and it’s been the most requested video on MTV for the last two nights. You can interpret that however you like.”

“My interpretation is that this is one fucked-up world,” I said.

“I’m not sure I disagree. The third single off
Scandal,
what was that one called?”

“ ‘Lie Life.’ ”

“Was that written about Tommy?”

“I was riffing off ‘Lush Life’ by Billy Strayhorn. Van had this idea for a song about this asshole she’d been seeing, he was also a musician in town. So she wanted a breakup song where she could get angry and kick and growl, and I wanted to play with an old standard. That’s all it is.”

“There’s a lot of death imagery in the song. It’s getting play now, too.”

“It’s about how this relationship was bleeding her dry,” I said. “The single didn’t do very well.”

“That may be, but it’s getting play now.”

“If you tell me the label’s released a Greatest Hits compilation, I may have to kill myself.”

“Don’t do that.”

“It was a joke.”

“It wasn’t funny.”

The way he said it told me I should just shut up now.

There was no sign of the police, or the press, or even of Burchett’s people. The lawn beneath the trees had been chewed by footprints, and pockets of mud slopped over the sides of the path. Copies of the last couple issues of the
Oregonian
were still on my porch, too, but those were the only real indications that I’d been gone. I unlocked the door and switched off the alarm, and Chapel told me he’d talk to me if he had more news later.

“You’ll be at the funeral?” I asked.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” he said. “You don’t need me there.”

That disappointed me for a moment, and then I realized that he’d never known Mikel, and that he really didn’t know me. I wasn’t his friend. I was his client.

He got back in his Audi and pulled away, and I locked up and looked at the clock, and it wasn’t even a quarter past six. I put on a pot of coffee, cleared my voice mail while it brewed, and drank a cup while smoking a cigarette, feeling oddly empty inside. The sun came up, and from the backyard it looked like the day would be clear and cold. At least it would be beautiful at the cemetery.

I fixed a bowl of shredded wheat and opened the copy of today’s paper, heading for the funnies. When I finished the comics, I searched out the obituaries, finding them paradoxically at the back of the “Living” section. Chapel must have gotten something to the paper, because there was a notice about Mikel’s passing. It was short, and didn’t really say much about who he had been. There were no details included about where the service would be, or when, and the only connection between my brother and my celebrity was in our last name. I was simply his surviving sister, Miriam.

I decided I’d read the rest of the paper, too, mostly to see exactly how bad things were looking for me, personally. The story was still on the front page, but now below the fold for only two paragraphs before jumping to the end of the section.

That’s how I learned that Tommy had been released.

I wasn’t sure what I could conclude from that, if it meant that the cops didn’t think he’d done it, or they did and just didn’t have enough evidence to charge him. If Chapel had known, he hadn’t bothered to tell me for some reason. If he didn’t know, then calling him would be pointless.

I could call the cops and ask them, but that seemed to me to be asking for trouble.

Tommy had been released.

I realized, with some alarm, that I was relieved. When I looked at the feeling harder, I realized why.

Tommy hadn’t killed Mikel. It had to have been someone else.

Fuck if I knew who.

Upstairs, I went through my closet, looking for something to wear to the funeral. Everything I had in black was inappropriate. Even my dresses, all of them too formal or too ratty or too sexy. There’d been a phase of Tailhook where we’d all gone for the Man in Black look, Van and I in short black skirts and black nylons—Van had gone with garters—and black suit coats and blindingly white blouses, and Click in the complementary suit. I had black jeans, black tanks, black tees, black shoes, black boots, black undies.

Nothing I could wear to my brother’s funeral.

So I took my car to the Nordstrom at the Lloyd Center, the mall that got dropped in the Northeast by mistake. It’s an indoor mall, with an ice skating rink at its heart, and I got there just as they were opening the doors, making straight to the east end for my shopping, dodging mall walkers and professional consumers. Fifteen minutes got me three outfits that looked like they would fit, and I thought about trying them on, but shoppers and salespeople had begun to recognize me, and the thought of getting trapped in a dressing room made me want to spit. I got out as fast as I could, was back home only forty-nine minutes after I’d left, and felt that at least I’d managed the shopping successfully.

I laid out my outfits on my bed, but the silence of the house started to grate on my nerves, so I hit the remote and switched on the television. I was picking out shoes and stockings with no holes when MTV News came on the screen, and Gideon Yago ran down the bullet points, and then he hit the tragedy in Portland.

I stopped what I was doing and turned to watch him. He said my brother’s name, and my own, and the band’s. He talked about how Tommy had been questioned and then released. A picture of me that I had never seen before came up on the screen behind his head, somewhere sunny, me smiling broadly at the camera.

He offered me MTV’s deepest condolences.

I turned the television off, threw the remote across the room.

The last drink I’d taken had been in the wee hours Friday morning, just before I’d earned myself handcuffs. I’d been dry for over two days.

This seemed as good a reason as any to break the fast.