A Song to Die For (29 page)

“Or the rest of the boat's down there, too?”

“Let's troll on through this channel. We'll come back here for another look when the lake drops a little more.”

They searched the rest of the neighborhood, feeling about underwater with fishing lures. Mel caught a three-pound bass up the channel, causing Hooley to forget, momentarily, the crime scene he had witnessed this morning, the deaths of two young women, the frustration of a case unsolved. When this was over, he thought, he needed to take a good long fishing trip somewhere far away.

Hours later, having searched the entire convoluted shoreline of the lakeside community, the battery of the trolling motor now waning, they returned to the enclosed boat slip that had yielded the air horn. Approaching the place, Hooley saw that the lake level had now dropped more than two feet below the bottom of the garage door.

“I wouldn't have thought a lake this size could drop this fast,” Mel remarked as they moved slowly to the fatigued groan of the trolling motor.

“That's the good ol' L.C.R.A. When one of their moneymakers breaks down they'll waste no time droppin' the lake to get that generator ginnin' again.”

“The hydroelectric turbine?”

“That's the moneymaker I'm talkin' about, kid.” He reached into a compartment below the steering wheel of the boat and produced a flashlight, which he tossed to Mel. “Crane your neck up under that door, and take a gander.”

“Don't mind if I do.” Mel dropped to his belly on the rear fishing platform of the bass boat, and switched on the standard police-issue mag light. As Hooley eased the boat up to the gap between the door and lake surface, Mel twisted his shoulders off the edge of the vessel to get his entire head up under the door so the blinding light of day wouldn't interfere with his sight.

Hooley watched for several seconds as Mel angled the light around. The young federal agent said nothing, though several more seconds passed. Hooley knew by now that Mel was a pretty quick study. He could have assessed the place for evidence at a glance. Yet his head remained under the door in what had to be an uncomfortable position, even for a young man, for several more long seconds.

Hooley tried not to let his imagination carry him toward a disappointment, yet he could not help feeling he was about to round a corner in this case. He waited. “Well?” he finally shouted.

Mel drew his head out of the boat slip and rolled over on the deck, a blank expression on his face. “I'll be damned.”

“You will be if you don't tell me what you saw in there.”

Mel sat up and set his jaw as if to ready himself for a coming marathon, and began to list his findings. “Windshield. Shattered. Bullet hole.”

“No shit?”

“One more thing.”

“Well? What?”

“Long black hair stuck in the broken glass.”

Hooley felt that sadness again: the almost crushing feeling of loss as he imagined Rosa's last violent moments alive. But now he sensed something new accompanying the sorrow. It was just a spark, but it felt like hope.

 

29

CHAPTER

Creed felt the nudge on his shoulder and woke to the smells of burnt flesh and gunpowder as he reached for his sidearm and threw a fist at whomever had touched him.

“Easy, Hoss,” said Luster's voice.

Panting, Creed found himself sitting up on Luster's living room couch, having crashed there after their return from the Jollyville poker game. It didn't help that Luster was holding a shotgun. Creed's heart was pounding, which made him think about the appropriate nature of the new band name: The Pounders. “What the hell's goin' on?”

“You know how to talk turkey?”

“What?” It seemed like the middle of the night. The only light came from the kitchen.

Luster produced a small wooden box and, cradling the shotgun in the crook of his elbow, made the chalked lid of the box chirp turkey calls from the rim.

Creed focused on a cheap electric timepiece on the mantel—the replacement for the auctioned grandfather clock that once stood against the wall. It was about an hour before dawn. He nodded at Luster. “I used to hunt with my grandpa.”

“Good. You can call a gobbler up for me. Broke as we are, we've got to live off the land!” He chuckled. “Come on, there's coffee on in the kitchen.”

After coffee, Creed climbed into the passenger seat of Luster's pickup truck and they drove down a dirt lane toward the back pasture of the ranch.

“What all did you and your grandpa hunt?” Luster asked, as he drove slowly, sipping a cup of black coffee.

Through the oaks, Creed watched the pastel dawn creeping into the sky. “Turkey, deer, ducks, cottontails, squirrels, wild hogs…” He smiled to think of those hunts with his grandfather.

“I guess y'all did your share of fishin' in the Piney Woods, too.”

“Oh, hell, yeah. We ran trotlines for cats. Used cane poles for panfish. We ate everything from grindles to gaspergous. When I could finally afford a rod and reel, I started catching a lot of bass.”

“Don't lose that. Don't let the music business take over your whole life. I've seen too many musicians get hooked on it like a drug to where that's all they do is travel and play. They got no other life. Then they start poppin' those pills to keep going. Drinking. Hell, that's what happened to Hank.” He switched hands with his coffee cup, holding the wheel with his knee as he downshifted through a muddy stretch of road.

“It tends to take over your life.” He was thinking of Dixie and how she wanted no part of anything but the next show.

“Don't let it consume you like that. It ain't worth it. The music is important, that's true. People need it. But you've got to stay well rounded. You've got to have other interests. I don't care if it's huntin' and fishin' or golf or stamp collecting.”

“I do need to dust off the ol' Zebco.”

“Especially if you're a writer. A man should travel, read, do things, see the world. Then you'll have something to write songs about.”

“I hear you, Boss.”

“This is the place,” Luster said, coasting to a stop and shutting off the truck. “We'll walk the rest of the way.” He handed the turkey call to Creed.

Creed got out and clicked the door closed, assuming the game might be within earshot of a slamming door. Luster did the same after pulling his over-and-under twelve-gauge off the gun rack in front of the rear windshield. Creed followed Luster down a cow trail to a clearing in the woods. They sat on the ground and leaned their backs against oak trees, with the thorny leaves of some low-lying agarita bushes obscuring all but their faces. Creed was wearing his army field jacket, which he reasoned would blend in well enough with the woods at his back. Luster wore a flannel coat in green plaid. The light from the east had sufficiently illuminated the small clearing in front of them.

“The roost is a couple hundred yards away, in the creek bottom,” Luster whispered. “See what you can call up.”

With his first hen call on the wooden box, a gobbler answered, his mating call echoing through the cypress branches. Over the next half hour, Creed worked the tom in patiently, growing more excited as the gobbler's voice got closer. Finally, the large bird appeared at the far edge of the clearing. Luster had his shotgun ready, the forestock resting on his knee. A ray of sunshine knifed through the woods, spotlighting the gobbler as he fanned his tail and strutted. Creed was glad Luster had wakened him. The air in his nostrils felt cool and clean.

Scarcely moving his hand on the box, Creed chirped plaintive hen calls until the gobbler strutted within range. A blast from the shotgun flipped the turkey over backward where it lay quivering in the throes of death. It reminded Creed of the enemy soldier he had shot that night outside the hooch at Fire Base Bronco. Probably some rice farmer's son.

“Good work!” Luster said.

They retrieved the bird and ambled back toward the truck.

“Did you know Ben Franklin wanted the wild turkey to be the national bird?” Luster said.

“No, I never heard that.”

“Yeah, he said the turkey was a little vain and silly but was a bird of courage who would run a Red Coat clean out of the farmyard. Good thing ol' Ben lost that campaign.”

“How come?”

“Bald eagle don't eat near as good as wild turkey.”

Creed chuckled. “Yeah, Bald Eagle Liquor doesn't have much of a ring to it, either.”

They reached the truck, threw the bird in the back, and started home. As they drove back to the ranch house, Luster said, “There's something else I forgot to tell the band last night.”

What now?
Creed thought. “Yeah?”

“I had to make a deal with Sid. He gets to sing one song with the band as a guest singer.”

Creed groaned. “Can he sing?”

“Probably not. But don't worry, I got it figured. You give up your mic and step off the stage while he sings. We'll keep Sid's voice in the monitor, so he can hear himself. But you'll have a mic backstage, and we'll patch your voice into the main speakers out front. The band will have to listen to Sid onstage, but the audience will hear you.”

“You're serious?”

“We got no choice, Hoss. It was the only way I could get the three months grace period out of him.”

Creed sighed. “This is turning into the weirdest band in the business.”

At the ranch house, Luster cleaned and plucked the turkey while Creed cooked up some bacon and eggs. The entire band, plus Kathy Music, had stayed the night at Luster's place, vowing to get a fresh start on songwriting and rehearsing in the morning. Now the smells of coffee and bacon began to lure them from their rooms.

Kathy came out of her guest room wearing yesterday's clothes, no makeup on her face. She didn't wear much makeup anyway, Creed thought, and didn't need any. She had a cute, sleepy-eyed look about her. Creed admitted to himself that he had thought about waking up with her, but not exactly like this.

“You're quite the cook,” she purred as she loaded up a plate at the stove.

Creed was still scrambling eggs and flipping bacon. “I can squash bugs and lift heavy things, too.”

She smiled, and raised a sleepy eyebrow. “But do you do dishes?”

Creed began snapping his fingers. “
But do you do dishes,
” he sang, lending an impromptu blues melody to the lyric. “
But do you do dishes
,” he repeated. “Got a nice ring to it. We should write that together.”

“You're a live wire in the morning.”

“I've been up for hours. Luster woke me early and we went turkey hunting.”

“Really? Anyway, you're avoiding the question. Do you do dishes, or not?”

“
Do you do dishes, or not?
” he sang.

“I'll do the dishes,” Trusty Joe said, having wandered into the kitchen from a bed, or a sofa, or a floor somewhere in the house. “Then I'm gonna go out to the barn and visit with Baldy.”

Kathy carried her plate to the kitchen table and sat down. “I need to have a meeting with you after breakfast,” she said to Creed.

“Okay,” he said. “About what?”

“I woke up this morning worrying that I've bitten off more than I can chew. I need a crash course in music business one-oh-one.”

“I'll meet you on the patio after breakfast.”

Later, as Trusty Joe washed dishes, Lindsay finally woke up, but said she never ate breakfast anyway. She had a cup of coffee and went to the studio with Tump and Metro to work on some song idea she had come up with in her sleep.

Kathy was waiting with a notepad and a pen when Creed showed up at the patio table.

“Shall we call this meeting to order?” she said, the coffee having kick-started her cheerleader demeanor.

He nodded and sat down, his hands cradling the warmth of yet another cup of black brew.

“Where do I start?” she asked.

“A band needs four things to function.” He held up four fingers as a visual aid. “If we had a big record label deal, there would be a department for each of the four things. In our case, you're going to have to arrange it all yourself.”

“I'm not afraid of work. What are the four things?” Her pen hovered above the legal pad.

He began the list, going slowly enough for her to scribble as he spoke. “Live gigs … radio airplay … retail distribution … marketing.”

“Got it. Go on…”

“Live gigs: With Luster's name, you should be able to find an Austin talent agency to book the band, so you won't have to do that all yourself. Once you land a booking agency, let's say they book the band in…” he shrugged. “Des Moines, Iowa.”

“Oh, Des Moines is so lovely this time of year.”

“A couple of weeks before the gig there, the local country-western radio station needs to start playing the hell out of our record.”

“Okay. How do I get them to do that? Pay them?”

“No, that's illegal. That's called payola. No, you've got to call the program director once a day. Charm the hell out of him.”

“Charm … program … director,” she muttered as she scribbled. “How do I know who the program director is?”

“There's a list somewhere—some radio station association, or something. You'll have to figure it out.”

“Okay.”

“Talk up the great Luster Burnett, and his comeback, blah, blah, blah…”

“Blah, blah, blah,” she wrote.

“We'll press some singles and send them out to all the country radio stations, including the one in Des Moines. You have to time it to where you call the PD the day the single arrives so they don't just chuck it in the trash.”

“What's the single going to be?”

Creed shrugged. “Whatever song turns out best on the LP. So, the PD puts the single on the playlist and the deejays start spinning the disc a couple of weeks before the live gig in Des Moines.”