Jazz Funeral (39 page)

Melody looked him straight in the eye and told the truth. “That’s not it.”

“No, that ain’t the whole thing. ‘Cause it’s worse than that. Whoever it is knows you know. That’s why you can’t go back.

‘Cause they’d know where to come get you.”

Raymond said, “You been watchin’ too much television.”

Melody twisted her mouth into a kind of ironic half smile. She shook her head slowly from side to side, as if to say, “Poor Chick. Pitiful. A candidate for the loony bin.”

At least she hoped that’s how it would play, but she had a feeling the distressed look on Tyrone’s face reflected her own.

“It’s not that! I swear it’s not that! Listen, I’ll prove it to you. Let me sing with you tomorrow and I’ll go back home and straighten it all out. I swear it!”

Just let me have this one chance and life will have been worth living. I’ll die happily if I can just do that. I’ll climb up to the roof of that building and take a short walk to the ground. Just let me sing Ham his song and go.

Tyrone gave her a hard stare. “You mean that, little sister?”

“I swear it on a stack of bibles.” That was easy, she wasn’t a Christian.

“My wife and I are gon’ take you there and walk you up to the door. You okay with that?”

No!

But she’d worry about it later. She could slip away after the gig. By the time they noticed, she’d be dead. “Just let me do the gig.”

He nodded slightly. “You want it, you got it.” The room exploded.

“All riiiight!” Raymond and Chick slapped each other high fives. Terence came over and shook Melody’s hand. Joel hollered, “Yes!”

Melody thought she must be missing something. All this fuss couldn’t be about her.

When it had subsided, Tyrone said, “You got a place to stay?”

“Well, I had a hotel room, but—”

“Where?”

“The Oriole.”

“Oh, shit! Kid your age at the Oriole? Oh, shit.”

“It’s full of kids my age. That’s mostly who’s there.”

“Well, you ain’t goin’ back.” He pulled out a wad of bills. “Joel’ll take you to a Holiday Inn, someplace like that. You really think you can turn black?”

Melody smiled. “With a little help from my friends.”

He turned to Joel. “You know that place ya mama gets her hair fixed? Take her to Louise, see what she can do. Maybe she lend you a wig or somethin’. Then go ‘round to Billy DuPree’s, get her a caftan or somethin’ African-looking. If she’s wearin’ something like that, her skin’s dark enough, maybe nobody’ll look at her too close. Maybe she’ll pass.”

To Melody, he said, “A hundred dollars of that money’s your costume allowance. The other hundred’s an advance on the gig.”

She heard someone gasp, maybe Raymond, and knew that meant he was overpaying her, giving her a handout. “I can’t—”

But he put up a hand. “Dawlin’, aren’t you forgettin’ something? You’re gon’ make us rich.”

She tried to speak, but couldn’t get anything out.

“Now y’all get out of here. Be back at three o’clock. Terence, you call the others. We gon’ have one hell of a rehearsal. Melody, what’s your best song?”

Joel said, “They’re all her best song, Daddy.”

Melody thought that maybe she wouldn’t die, maybe just go to California or something.

Ti-Belle had been running from this all her life. This cell, this stink, this depressing half-light, and the ugly faces, ugly voices of the other prisoners.

Now that she was here, she couldn’t believe it hadn’t happened years earlier. She’d sung everywhere there was to sing, including on national television, and after the first few years didn’t even break out in a sweat at the thought of someone recognizing her. She’d genuinely convinced herself no one ever would. She looked different; she had a different name; she’d grown up.

She had a notion why she’d gotten away with it. Because the only place she ever sang in Doradale was the choir. Nobody had especially noticed her voice, and anyway, the songs she did now were so different.

Yet Proctor had figured her out. Why hadn’t anyone else? Probably because they hadn’t been with her much and he had. He hadn’t gotten it at first—it had taken a while. She’d been so arrogant, she hadn’t had the sense to stay away while he was at Nick’s.

But she couldn’t have stayed away. She might have lost him.

She’d had to press her advantage.

Now she had lost him. As well as her career and her liberty.

Today she was going to “bond out,” as her lawyer called it—she was only in a holding cell—but she was going to jail if she lived long enough. She’d left prints on the knife and she knew it. She’d thought of that a thousand million times since leaving Doradale.

Should she have fought harder? Denied she was Lacey Longtree? Yes. Almost certainly. But she couldn’t go kicking herself about it now—because she knew she could no more help what she’d said, the way all that came out of her, than she could help attacking Proctor. That was the part she wished she could take back—everything else was irrelevant. Because if they printed her, she was dead, and once they’d booked her for battery, they were going to print her.

Only one thing could keep her out of prison. Her uncle Gamet was twice as mean as her daddy ever thought about being. If he was still alive, she had a good chance of dying instead.

“Come on, Ti-Belle.” She hated the way they called you by your first name.

But she might have a few days. There wasn’t even a crime lab in Doradale. Who knew where they’d have to send the prints? She could go somewhere—Mexico, Europe. But what was the point? With no Nick and no career, what was the point of anything?

But Nick was waiting for her, looking like he was going to cry.

“Nick Anglime, what are you doing here?”

“I thought you might need a ride.”

“You came to get me?”

For answer he opened his arms.

“I thought you hated me.” But then she remembered that he didn’t yet know she’d killed her father.

“Why would I hate you, honey pie?”

But he must know; Proctor must have told him.

“I guess I lost my temper back at your house.”

“I like a woman with spirit.” And she knew she had him forever. Knew, in fact, that he’d help her with the problem she hadn’t mentioned yet. This was a man with more heart than brains.

She liked that.

Skip watched as they left, fuming. Ti-Belle had spent about an hour in a cell. If the sheriff of Pine County, Alabama, hadn’t been so damned arrogant, they might still have her. Just because Ti-Belle said she was Lacey Longtree didn’t mean she was—Skip still didn’t think she had probable cause on the murder charge. But what to do about the old crime wasn’t her decision. She’d called the sheriff and said Ti-Belle had admitted she was Lacey Longtree, but hadn’t exactly confessed to the murder. Told him the singer was going to bond out and she didn’t know if she’d be able to find her later. Was there any way to identify her—a scar or something—as the real Longtree?

The sheriff had guffawed in her face. “Detective, you got somethin’ against that little Cajun gal? There ain’t one hair of her gorgeous head that looks like Lacey Longtree. I’d love to catch up with Ms. L., I sure would, but I’m just afraid you’re barkin’ up the wrong tree. You know how these singers are—the beauteous Ti-Belle’s probably so full o’ drugs she doesn’t know her name.”

“Well, look, I’ll send you a copy of her prints by Federal Express.”

“Hey, I thought New Orleans was supposed to be the Big Easy. Go to JazzFest, have some popcorn shrimp. I can wait till Monday, no problem.”

He was so dismissive, he reminded her of her least favorite sergeant and she was a little thin-skinned about O’Rourke right now. He was the one she was really mad at. She was furious that he’d had the gall to tell her what to do. He’d said not to let Ti-Belle out of her sight—that she’d lead them to Melody.

But if Ti-Belle knew where Melody was, she’d have already found her. She might have killed her daddy and she might have killed Ham, but she no more knew where to find Melody than Skip did. It was a waste of time.

They went to Nick’s, of course. About an hour later they came out again.

They drove across the bridge to the West Bank, a place many New Orleanians had never even been. It was like never having had a hurricane at Pat O’Brien’s—a matter of pride. When they ended up in Marrero, Skip began to develop a new respect for O’Rourke.

Marrero didn’t even look as if it belonged in Louisiana—it could have been a seedy part of California, maybe. Everything was new here, meaning built in the last couple of decades. Every ceiling was low. The whole town looked made for dwarves. On Fourth Street there were mingy little nightclubs that looked more like hamburger stands.

Not far from there, blacks lived in a housing project, cheek-by-jowl with blue-collar whites in mobile homes. On weekends they could rim into each other at some of the bars on Fourth Street and bang each other upside the head with pool cues. If things got dull.

To Skip, even the project wasn’t as depressing as the nasty little lanes lined with cheap bungalows, many of them prefab, a lot of them neat, some falling down, and every single one with heavy-duty bars on every single window. People owned these places, called them home. One of the streets was named Silver Lily. It made you want to cry.

Nick and Ti-Belle drove to a gun store. Skip parked and looked in the window while they bought a gun. A handgun. Ti-Belle was the one doing the talking, testing the thing for heft—and eventually the one paying. Skip couldn’t for the life of her think of any plausible, legitimate reason why Ti-Belle Thiebaud would need a handgun. Uptown ladies carried them, fearful of getting mugged in their front yards, if you thought that was legitimate. But Ti-Belle didn’t live Uptown. Nick did, but since Audubon Place had a gate at the entrance, it was hardly a paradise for muggers.

They made no more trips, just drove home and went to bed about nine-thirty—or at least the lights went off then. Skip went home depressed. She hadn’t seen Steve all day, hadn’t talked to him, and didn’t think he’d be there.

But he’s on a big project, Skip. It’s nothing to do with you.

Maybe it is.

She couldn’t stall that second nagging little voice.

Her apartment was stuffy and unwelcoming. She opened the windows and turned on the ceiling fan. The soft light from the lamp spilling on a new purchase, an antique English table, was pretty on her new sofa, her melon walls. But she couldn’t get comfortable. She wanted a joint.

Hell, I want Steve.

Failing Steve, she wanted a joint.

But Jimmy Dee wouldn’t be too bad either.

She picked up the phone. “Dee-Dee, I need you.”

“This is getting to be a habit. What is it, angel? Bear bite?”

“The bear’s out. I need conversation.” She paused. “And drugs.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh what?”

“You’ve been Little Miss Nancy Reagan lately. Something must be wrong.”

“Get over here, Dee-Dee, and bring a big fat joint.”

He came in holding it out to her. “What’s the prob?”

They sat together on the couch, companionably passing the joint. “Probs plural. I’m beat. I hate this case. I’m worried silly about the kid. Cappello’s on sick leave and O’Rourke’s my sergeant.”

“Oh, my poor tiny thing. Not the dreaded O’Rourke!”

“I could kill him.”

“And the bear? What about him?”

“The bear.” Skip sighed. “Nothing new. I guess I’m still upset that he stayed at Cookie’s the other night.”

“Jesus. This is why I don’t date women, you know that?”

“It is not. You just don’t think we’re cute.”

“I don’t think most of you are cute. But you, Margaret Langdon, are tiny and adorable. I would say marry me, but you’re too damned insecure.”

“I am, aren’t I?” She felt horribly sad. “What the hell’s wrong with me, Jimmy Dee?”

“You’re too dainty and helpless. Such a tiny thing against the world—who could cope?”

“Waaah!” She was pretending, but she really was close to tears and she didn’t know why.

“Tell Papa.”

“He says he loves me. …”

“Bleeagh.”

“He even acts like he loves me.”

“Well, he better. The brute.”

“But…” She bit her lip, trying not to make too big an ass of herself.

“But what, babycakes?”

“I don’t see how he could!” The words burst out of her like air out of a suddenly released balloon, a rubber sphere propelled by its own insides, bouncing off walls, falling finally flat and shrunken.

Dee-Dee’s kind eyes reminded her of those of a maid her family had once had, a big, comfortable woman who’d called Skip “dawlin” and held her against a mammoth bosom. “Oh, my precious darling. Give Dee-Dee a hug.”

His chest was bonier than Louvina’s had been, but it did the trick. “I can’t believe I’m acting like such a dork.”

“Babykins, I remember sex. I mean, I have to reach pretty far back, but I can just barely barely recollect a tiny bit.”

“And what do you remember?”

“Turns strong men to jellyfish. By that I mean myself, of course.”

“Oh, Dee-Dee, come off it. You don’t have an insecure bone in your body.”

“Oh, my dainty darling, hush yo’ mouf. You’ve never seen me in love, do you realize that?”

“Not a pretty sight?”

“Omigod, the pacing. The tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth. The agony! You wouldn’t have a moment’s peace. I’d keep you on the phone till three
A.M
. I wouldn’t eat, you’d have to feed me intravenously. But of course it would be worth it. I have much better taste in men than you do.”

Skip burst out laughing, thinking that a world with Dee-Dee in it couldn’t be all bad. “Oh, you idiot, what would I do without you?”

“Well, you won’t have to. Unless you move to California with all the fruits and nuts.”

“Don’t be such a bigot.”

“Bigot, hell, I’m jealous. We’re talking my people.” He paused, seemed to reflect, to know that he’d lapsed into the inanity people fall into when they’re trying to avoid something—sometimes a good-bye, sometimes another subject; a painful one. He took a deep toke, held it a long time, looked anxious, as if he had something unpleasant to say; something scary. “Listen, I want to talk to you.”