Frank surreptitiously positioned himself between Buzz and Gordon. They worked quietly for a while, then Gordon said, “I’m sorry, Buzz. I-I never would have said anything to her if I thought…”
“It’s not your fault,” Buzz said wearily, contradicting his earlier outburst. He finished closing the last of his cases and began helping Gordon.
Mack came out, and told the bar owner that the detectives wanted to talk to him next. By then, most of the equipment had been carried into the backstage room. All that was left was a single mike stand-Joleen’s.
I walked onto the stage and stood where she had stood during “A Fine Set of Teeth.” I thought of her voice, clear and sweet on those first notes, her smile as she listened to Buzz’s solo. I looked out and wondered how she saw that small sea of adoring faces that must have been looking back at her; wondered if she had known of Buzz’s loyalty to her; remembered the bite and figured she had. I thought of her giving the sound man hell; she had both bark and bite.
I saw Mack, standing at the bar, at about the same moment he saw me. He stared at me, making me wonder if I was causing him to see ghosts.
Feeling like an interloper, I stepped away from the empty mike stand, then paused. I had the nagging feeling that something about the stage wasn’t right. When I figured out what it was, I called my husband over to my side.
“Tell your friends in the office not to let Mack leave,” I whispered. “There’s something he needs to explain.”
“Are you going to tell me about it, or has being on this stage gone to your head?”
“Both. Where is Mack’s equipment?” I asked.
Frank looked around, then smiled. “I’ll be right back. And maybe you should try to stand close to Buzz. This will be hard on him.” He took a step away, then turned back. “How did you know it was murder?” he whispered.
“I didn’t. Not until just now. Ligature marks?”
He nodded.
I walked into the backstage room. Gordon sat on the couch. Buzz was sitting at the piano bench. I sat down next to Buzz and lifted the keyboard cover. “You play?” he asked.
“Sure.” I tapped out the melody line of “Heart and Soul.” “It’s one of two pieces I can play,” I said.
One corner of his mouth quirked up. “The other being ‘Chopsticks’?”
“How did you know?”
“People just seem to know those two,” he said, reminding me about the missing sarcasm gene.
“Come on,” I said. “Play the other half.”
“Half?” he said, filling in the chords.
“Okay, three-quarters.”
Gordon laughed.
“Come on,” Buzz said, “there’s room for you, too.”
“I’ll pass,” he said, “I don’t even know ‘Chopsticks.’”
We stopped when we heard Gordon shout, “What are you doing to Mack?”
We turned to see Mack being led out in handcuffs.
“They’re arresting him,” Frank said as they left. “For Joleen’s murder.”
“So tell me again how you figured this out,” Buzz asked later, when we were back at apartment. We were sitting on the floor, around the coffee table.
“Okay,” I said. “We were the first ones at the club this morning, right?”
He nodded.
“You and Gordon both had equipment to pack up. Your equipment was still on the stage, because when you left Club Ninety-nine last night, you had every intention of coming back the next night. But one band member knew he wouldn’t be back. He packed up his equipment and took it home last night.”
“You figured that out just standing there?”
“I was thinking about that dirty trick the sound man pulled on her-making her hear her own voice a half-step off through the monitor. But the mike and monitor were gone. I knew you didn’t pack them up, neither did Gordon. You had only worked on your part of the stage, or to help Gordon. So Mack must have taken Joleen’s mike and monitor-but he hadn’t been up on the stage this morning. I looked around and noticed his equipment was gone. It’s not as elaborate as your rig, or Gordon’s kit.”
“And the marks you were talking about?” he asked Frank.
“You’re sure you want to hear about this?”
“Yeah.”
“There were two sets of marks on her neck-the one horizontal, across her neck-the other V-shaped, from her chin to behind her ear. The second marks would be typical of a suicide by hanging, but they were made by the rope sometime after she was killed. The first were the ones that marked the pull of the rope when someone stood behind her and strangled her.”
He was silent for a long time, then asked. “Why?”
“He probably told her the truth at the restaurant,” Frank said. “He had lost a lot of good players because of her attitude. Just as it looks like things have stabilized and The Wasteland’s big break is coming along, she starts making trouble with Gordon.”
“But she was the heart of the group! Her voice.”
“Gordon was going to offer him a new singer,” Frank reminded him.
“Susan?”
“I suppose he would have worked with Susan on the songs he had already written with Joleen, then taken Susan with band to Europe.”
Buzz frowned. “You’re right. He had already given her a couple of them to learn. Susan sang them on the tape Gordon brought last night.”
“Mack wanted to make sure he had sole rights to the songs.”
“Oh, and then what?” Buzz asked angrily. “What did he think would happen down the road? Have you ever heard one of Mack’s songs? Dull stuff. Technically passable, but nothing more. He just provided the wood. She set it on fire. With her dead, who would have provided that fire?”
“Now,” I said, “I think you’re getting closer.”
They both stared at me.
“Buzz,” I asked, “until you wrote ‘A Fine Set of Teeth-’”
“You mean, ‘Draid Bhreá Fiacla’?”
“Yes. Until then, had anyone other than Mack written a song with her?”
“No, but he didn’t understand that either, did he?” he said, and looked away. “No, he couldn’t.”
I didn’t contradict him, but I wondered if he was right. Perhaps Mack understood exactly what it meant, and perhaps Joleen, who had known Mack better than the others, also believed that the safest course was to hide any affection she felt for Buzz. I kept these thoughts to myself; bad enough to second-guess the dead, worse if the theory might bring further pain to the living.
When we were fairly sure he’d be all right, and had obtained promises from him that he’d call us whenever he needed us, we left Buzz’s apartment.
We were in the stairwell of the old building when we heard it-the first few notes of ‘Draid Bhreá Fiacla,’ the notes a woman with a fine set of teeth used to sing with eyes closed.
The notes were being played on an Irish harp, and a young man’s voice answered them.
Two Bits
On the hot July day on which he reached his majority, Andrew Masters came into a handsome fortune, yet at three o’clock that very afternoon he was focusing his attention on a twenty-five-cent piece. His contemplation of this infinitesimal portion of his wealth took place beneath a large, shady tree near Jefferson Road, just outside the western Pennsylvania town whose oil fields had made his father rich. His father had not owned the oil, but in his youth he had developed a special pump that oilmen needed. In the early 1870’s, during the Pennsylvania oil boom that followed the war years, the oilmen had bought a great many pumps, bailers, cables and other equipment from Mr. Masters, so that his oil tool and supply company became one of the largest in the country. With a shrewd eye for a good investment, his riches increased.
His charming manners and unflagging industry made him appealing to a handsome woman who came from an excellent and well-to-do family. Her family did not approve of the match; they were horrified when the young couple defied them by eloping. While Andrew’s maternal grandparents had sworn never to allow his mother to inherit a cent, they had softened their hearts upon Andrew’s birth-hence the fortune their first grandson now found at his disposal.