Steel Guitar (12 page)

“Whoa,” I said. “First of all, trust me, no drugs in the park. Then what do you figure? Dee changed the sheets? What did she use to clean up with? Think she carries a can of Ajax? You see a bunch of used towels anyplace? Dirty sheets?”

“I don't think there's much that road manager wouldn't do to smooth this tour. That record producer, either. Everybody seems like they want to do Dee Willis a favor. Even you.”

“Oh, I get it. You think she called me to bring over a mop and a vacuum cleaner.”

“Don't get mad,” he said.

“It's late. Maybe she died somewhere else and somebody moved her here,” I said. “What's wrong with that?”

“Just walked the stiff through the halls? It's kinda early for Halloween.”

“Brenda and Dee had a pretty public argument last night,” I said. “I think Dee may have fired her.”

“And?” Mooney said.

“So maybe she decided she didn't want to look for another job. Took a bunch of pills, couldn't remember how many, took some more, had a few drinks. Died.”

“In her own hotel room, I might buy it But who moved her? And why?”

I said, “Isn't this where the cops always look for the significant other?”

“Finding her in Willis's bed sort of made me forget she might be married. Was she?”

“I'm not talking marriage, Mooney. I'm talking sleeping with, and she was very cuddly with a guy first time I saw her.”

“What guy?”

“Five-six, slight, dark eyes, dark hair. Freddie, the drummer, called him her ‘boy-toy,' and Brenda didn't appreciate the term one bit. He was a kid. Couldn't be more than twenty-two, twenty-three.”

“This ‘boy-toy' have a name?”

“Haven't the faintest. You finished here?”

“You can go,” Mooney said, “if that's what you're asking.”

“Can I talk to Dee?”

“They moved her down the hall. I think a doctor's in there asking for her autograph.”

“Yeah, you think I can talk to her?”

“Doctor says no.”

Hal must have gotten somebody good.

Mooney said, “If you manage to talk to her, you're not gonna come out and tell me what she said, are you?”

“No,” I said.

“I can't force you to tell me,” Mooney said.

“I'm glad you're clear on that.”

“What about a favor?” Mooney asked. “A return on letting her walk after that park crap.”

“What do you want to know?” I said cautiously.

“While you were waiting for the cops to come, you hear Miss Willis say anything odd?”

“Odd?” I tossed the word back at him.

“Something like, ‘I should have called the doctor. She might have been alive.…'”

“Would that be odd?” I asked.

“Considering the lady's been dead for hours and the other people in the room all say they never even thought about a doctor, yeah, I would say that's a little odd. Makes you think maybe Dee was there before the others. Since it's her room, she might have come back earlier than the rest.…”

“Going fishing?” I asked Mooney.

“And I wonder how this dead woman got into the room. They've got those card-keys, supposed to be pretty secure.”

“I was here the other night, after the park business, and a whole crowd was partying in Dee's room. Got a duplicate key at the desk. No questions asked.”

“Interesting,” Mooney said. “And I hear you lost your handbag.”

I hoped Jo had kept her mouth shut about Mickey. I didn't need Mooney riding me about my relationship with a known Gianelli.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Did it turn up in any of the dumps?”

“Not that I've heard,” I said. “Not yet.”

“Keys in the bag?”

I nodded.

“Change the locks yet?”

“No, Mom, but I'm gonna put Roz right on it.”

“Good.”

“So can I see Dee?”

“Sure. If you can get past the doc.”

I gave up after twenty-five minutes. Reporters, probably tipped off by somebody in the hotel, were starting to swarm up the elevators.

I stayed long enough to watch the well-groomed hotel manager escort Brenda's unfashionably bagged body down a service elevator. God forbid a tourist should be confronted by the grim reaper in the lobby.

Seventeen

The phone shrilled while I was mid-dream, so I incorporated its jangle into a bizarre scenario involving Dee, Mooney, my ex-husband, Cal, and me, in which the four of us raced through hotel corridors, popping in and out of doorways like cartoon characters. The rules, reminiscent of musical chairs, were strict: whoever lacked his or her own room when the phone stopped ringing would be in deep trouble—or else something quite erotic would happen, something involving Dee's gold four-poster bed and several silky red scarves.

I woke with the telephone receiver in my hand, so I put it to my lips and muttered hello.

“Is this the Carlyle Detective Agency?” The voice was male and extremely well-bred, a bit British in its intonation.

“Yes,” I said, leaning back on a pillow. Sunlight streamed through my thin bedroom curtains. I glanced at the clock-radio on the bedside table and saw it was past nine, almost nine-thirty. I'd overslept.

“Miss Carlyle?”

I prefer Ms., but I grunted acquiescence.

“Taylor Baines here. I'm an attorney with Barlow, James, and Hunt. Retained by MGA/America.”

“Yes,” I said again, because he'd stopped talking.

“It would be far better to speak in person.”

“Concerning a certain singer?”

“Yes.”

I said, “What time?”

“Can you make it at eleven?”

“Where?”

“Number One Beacon Street. The twenty-second floor.”

I scribbled on the back of an envelope.

“Eleven o'clock,” I said. As soon as I hung up, I found the phone book and dialed the Four Winds. I asked for Dee Willis, rather than room 812. No cop or doctor would let Dee spend the night in that gold-swagged bed. The receptionist informed me that Miss Willis was unavailable. I tried for Jimmy Ranger or Hal Grady, and got the same response, the all-purpose publicity freeze.

I wondered how Dee was handling Brenda's death this morning. I checked to see how I was handling it, and was surprised to find I was angry. Angry at death? Pretty presumptuous of me. Angry, I supposed, that no one but Dee seemed to care. What the hell was wrong with someone like Jimmy Ranger, who seemed to see Brenda's death only as a possible roadblock to the tour? What about Hal? Mimi, the groupie? Freddie? The unflappably cool guitarist, Ron. I remembered them all, dry-eyed and unshocked, as if they lost a band member once a month, as if Brenda were some plastic mannequin who adorned the stage and struck the occasional chord.

I swung my feet onto the cool wooden floor, and remembered the night I'd heard about Lorraine's death. I was getting dressed for a party—I still had the dress I'd been planning to wear tucked away in a closet somewhere—and I'd kept on applying mascara to my lashes, adjusting my stockings, combing my hair—carefully, very carefully, as if each separate grooming act were important, gravely important, even though I no longer had any intention of going to the party.

I didn't cry until six hours later.

Maybe the band deserved a break. Maybe they hadn't processed the information yet.

I wondered how long Brenda had been part of the group. When had Dee become discontented with her playing? Maybe Brenda was a new addition. Maybe Dee would brush it off.

But what the hell had she meant by “He did it; he's responsible”? Had the Dunrobie letter made her so nervous that she'd yelled at Brenda more than usual? Did she think that Davey had somehow tricked Brenda into overdosing for the sole purpose of throwing a scare into Dee?

Did she think Davey had poisoned a gin and tonic and left it on her bedside table for Brenda to come along and swig by mistake? I'd ruled mistaken identity out from the start. Two circles on the magazine meant two glasses, two people. And any fool could distinguish the tall, big-boned Brenda from the delicate Dee.

Dee had been clear about one thing; she didn't want me to continue the Dunrobie search.

I wondered about the lawyer's call; what kind of trouble was Dee in now? I wondered what combination of drink and drugs had finished Brenda.

I staggered across the hall to the shower and stood under its stinging spray, washing my hair because it needed it. The water turned icy before I finished rinsing.

I dressed quickly, in my reliable navy suit again, choosing a silk shirt this time to match the lawyer's upscale address. Its notched collar looked fine with my aunt Bea's gold locket.

My bold fashion statement for the year is this: clothes cost too damn much money, and shopping for cheap good clothes takes too damn much time. And even if you find your dream outfit, the washer and dryer eat it alive, or you're condemned to continually ransom it from the dry cleaner.

I don't own a lot of clothes. I maintain you can make do with the same stuff over and over if you use the occasional scarf and change your shoes and jewelry. Not that I own much jewelry.

Fortunately, my tenant, Roz, has glitz enough for both of us. She was standing at the refrigerator door, pondering either breakfast or the meaning of life. Her hair, bleached and colored more often than I shampoo, was coal-black with a central white stripe. She looked not unlike a skunk. I wondered if she'd made a mistake and changed her mind halfway through the dye job.

She turned at the sound of my footsteps. Her necklace, looped over a torn black turtleneck, looked like it had been soldered together from beer-can tab-pulls. Each of her fingers was ringed. I'm used to the six studs in her left ear. Her right varies. Today she sported what looked like two strands of neon hanging from tiny chicken bones.

I don't wear earrings. They hurt. And I think they're just plain silly.

“Can you do a job for me?” I asked. “Two jobs.”

“Today?”

“Is that a problem?” Roz has a heavy schedule, which involves making the scene at several rock clubs, and painting pictures that seem stranger the longer you look at them.

“What is it?”

“First, call a locksmith, and have the locks changed. Not all of them, just one on each door.” If the thief came calling, which I doubted very much, I'd enjoy catching him in the act.

“Okay,” Roz said, “then what?”

“Surveillance.”

“Boring,” she said, turning back to refrigerator inspection.

“Money,” I reminded her.

“Better than cleaning, I suppose.”

The way my house looks, Roz obviously thinks anything is better than cleaning. I always mean to sit her down and explain the basics, like you sweep the kitchen floor before you mop it, but somehow I can never bring myself to start the lecture.

I gave her the Winter Street address, told her to stick to anyone who left the building carrying a red mailing tube, not to lose the tube, to get the license plate of anyone who picked it up in a car, to follow the car—

“I could do this better with Lemon,” she interrupted.

Lemon is her karate instructor and sometime lover, although Roz is not the monogamous type. He owns a dark green van, a great surveillance vehicle. Roz doesn't drive, and I often think she keeps up her self-defense lessons so she can have a set of wheels at her disposal.

I said, “No fooling around in the van while the mailing tube walks.”

“Red,” she said. “It won't get by me.”

One thing about Roz: being an artist, she knows her colors.

I took the T to One Beacon Street.

During the train ride, I tried to read the
Globe
without elbowing the passenger sitting beside me, or socking anybody standing in the aisle. Brenda's death hadn't made the obituary column, much less Metro news. I wondered where the bass player came from and who'd been notified as next of kin.

I finished reading and stared critically at my blackened hands. I swear the quality of newsprint declines daily. The lawyer with the nice British voice was going to get a surprise if he offered to shake hands.

I found a coffee shop in the lobby, followed the signs to the restroom, and scrubbed the ink off. Then I rushed back to the elevators and rode up to the twenty-second floor.

Eighteen

“This is a little awkward,” Taylor Baines admitted with a charming smile after releasing my clean hand. I sat in a caramel-colored leather chair that commanded a view of Boston harbor through a huge picture window. The ocean looked smooth as glass, green as a 7-Up bottle.

He was a small, dapper man, late forties by the crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes, older by the silver hair. Impeccably dressed in a navy suit with a fine gray stripe, the proper amount of white shirt-cuff peeped out of his sleeves. His gold wristwatch was thin as a dime.

He sat behind a desk that was twice as big as my dining room table.

He asked if I'd take coffee. I said yes, cream and sugar, please. He small-talked until a woman appeared with a tray and two china cups. Saucers and silver spoons too. He neatly segued into business as soon as the door swung shut behind her.

“I represent MGA/America, which currently has an interest in Miss Dee Willis. You are a, uh, friend of hers.”

It wasn't a question so I didn't answer it.

Taylor Baines stirred his coffee and waited for me to explain my relationship with Dee. One corner of his mouth tilted up when I said nothing.

“You are also a private investigator licensed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” he said.

I nodded.

“Miss Willis has taken a rather unfortunate tone with the police, concerning an accident which occurred at her hotel last night, involving a member of her entourage.”

I made a noncommittal noise.

“I am told that she has been both too forthcoming and too closemouthed in her interactions with the police department, and that she runs the risk of getting herself and her tour, which is financed entirely by our client, into some, er, difficulty.”