I hit the button and played the message back. The accent was twangy and nasally, relatively common in these parts among the didn’t-finish-high-school-and-pumping-gas-at-the-filling-station crowd. I tried to place it. East Tennessee, perhaps? I didn’t think so. More like rural Mississippi or Alabama, maybe west Tennessee. There was no way to pinpoint it. The only thing I knew for sure was that there’s only one region in the country where the phrase
I replayed the message, listening carefully for background noises, other voices, anything that might reveal the caller’s identity. Nothing. I dug around inside my cluttered center desk drawer until I found a blank tape, then replaced the one in the answering machine. I tucked the tape with the message on it inside my jacket pocket, grabbed a spiral notebook, and locked my office door behind me as I headed back to Ray’s.
Halfway down the hall, I stopped. I was alone, with only the cracked linoleum, green chipped plaster, and decades’ worth of dust balls surrounding me. This wave of fatigue swept over me, and I found myself feeling almost dizzy.
“Okay,” I muttered, “now you’re getting death threats. Add that to the list.…”
“I thought you’d changed your mind,” Ray said when I opened the door to his office. I took off my jacket and laid it across the back of the chair, then loosened my tie about down to the third button and rolled up my shirtsleeves. Then I sat down at the desk across from him, opened the notebook, and pulled the cap off a cheap pen.
“All right,” I said, “let’s get to work. First of all, let’s consider all the alternatives. Could it have been just a random crime? Could Rebecca have walked in on a housebreaker?”
“Maybe.”
“Was anything stolen from her apartment? Money, jewelry, the television, a VCR?”
“No, definitely,” Ray said. He shook his head. “Nothing was taken.”
“And nobody’s ever made mention of her being raped or sexually assaulted, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So the police have eliminated the possibility of random crime, and so can we.”
“For the time being.”
I looked up at him after scribbling a note on the page. “Yeah, for the time being. Now, what about lovers?”
He made a humming noise. “I never thought of that.”
“With the severity of the beating she took, there had to be some degree of passion involved. Somebody had to loathe Rebecca Gibson to wear her out that bad. Whoever it was could have killed her a lot easier.”
The bags under Ray’s eyes and the creases on his forehead lifted as he brightened. “Yeah, I hadn’t thought of that. The problem is, I don’t know if she was seeing anybody. There were rumors, of course, about her and-”
He paused. “Her and who?” I asked.
Ray settled back in his chair again. “Naw, it couldn’t be.”
I slapped my pen down on the paper. “Don’t do that to me. If we’re going to help Slim, we’ve got to consider every possibility.”
“I don’t see how Dwight could have-”
“Dwight who?” I demanded.
“Dwight Parmenter,” he answered. “Dwight’s the guy we were singing with Sunday night at the Bluebird.”
I pulled a picture of Dwight Parmenter out of memory and ran it past. Guy was tall, wiry. He was wearing a checked flannel shirt that night. During their performance, he seemed to be the quietest, the one with the least ego. He was also, musically, the least impressive.
“The guy on Rebecca’s right?”
“Yeah.”
“So tell me about him,” I said. “Did he and Rebecca have something going on?”
Ray plopped his elbows on the desk and leaned forward. “Maybe. I know they’d been seen out a few times. I know Dwight was sweet on her.”
“I didn’t notice any particular sparks flying Sunday night.”
“That’s ’cause Slim was there. And partly because you have to get to know Dwight to see what he’s really thinking.”
I paused for a moment. “Let me get this straight. Rebecca was still singing and performing with her ex- husband, her ex-husband’s partner, and the guy who may have been her lover-all at the same time.”
Ray grinned. “Yeah, I guess that’s about it.”
“Does any of this seem just the slightest bit strange to you?”
The grin widened into sheepishness. “You got to understand, Harry. People in the music bidness do things a little bit different.”
“Apparently so. Okay, so we’ve got Dwight Parmenter. Maybe you’re right and he wasn’t involved. If he wasn’t, he’ll be easy enough to scratch off the list. What about other lovers?”
“How much time have you got?”
I drew a line beneath my notes on Dwight Parmenter. “How much will I need?”
Ray straightened up. “Harry, Rebecca was a grown woman, and she’d been around awhile. And like I said, music-bidness types-”
“I know, I know. Operate under a different set of rules. Tell me this. Is there anybody out there who was involved with Rebecca and broke up with her under particularly bitter circumstances. More than just your usual soap opera.”
“The only one I know of is Slim,” Ray said. “I mean, people come together, stay awhile, and then drift back apart. Law of the jungle, man. I do know the only one she ever married was Slim, outside of some guy back in west Tennessee she married back when she was eighteen.”
“What about him?”
“Hell, I don’t even know his name. But Rebecca used to joke about him. Said he was a tractor-trailer mechanic, chewed tobacco, and would rather hunt deer than have sex.”
“At least he had his priorities straight.”
“Maybe so. But they divorced with no big battles, and she came to Nashville to make it big as a country- music singer. That must have been twelve, thirteen years ago. As far as I know, she never saw him again.”
“So Slim was the only one where any … recriminations were involved.”
“Yeah, but even then, they still worked together. Their business interests were tied together real close. They co-owned songs, split royalty checks-the whole shooting match.”
“Only Slim was getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop on most of their deals, right? Otherwise, he wouldn’t be so broke.”
“Not really,” Ray said after another moment’s pause. “Slim just ain’t no good at handling money. That’s why he never has any. It runs through his fingers like gas through a ’66 Cadillac.”
“Well,” I said, encouraged, “that may help. After all, if she wasn’t screwing him, business-wise, there was no reason to kill her.”
“Yeah,” Ray mumbled. Then he looked away nervously.
“What?”
He looked back at me. “I’ve seen their partnership agreements and all the contracts,” he said. “Slim and Rebecca set up a weird arrangement.”
“What was the arrangement?”
Ray bit his lower lip. “In the event that either of them died, the rights to the song catalog totally reverted to the other.”
“Oh, no,” I muttered. “The rights don’t revert to Rebecca’s estate?”
“Nope,” Ray said. “They go back to Slim.”
“And how much is that worth?”
“There’s no way to answer that question. Right now the catalog brought in enough for both of them to live on, if they was careful. But if some major star was to pick up a song or two of theirs, say Garth or Wynonna or somebody like that, and make a number-one hit out of it-well, hell, the sky’s the limit. Six figures easy. Maybe
