A Fistful of Rain

“He never said that.”

“He sure did.” I was indignant. “Before I left for the Scandal tour, we went to dinner, and you and he talked about the wild life on the road. About the way you two used to party when you were touring.”

Joan’s expression shifted, moved away from her anger to an almost curiosity, as if she was seeing me for the first time. “When was this?”

“When we went to Ringside for dinner, just before I left.”

She glanced over at Chapel, then back to me, and now the curiosity had become concern. “That never happened, Miriam.”

“It did!”

“We didn’t eat at Ringside. We had dinner at our place before you left, sweetie, and you left early, because you had to get home and pack.”

I tried to remember, and the thing was, now that she’d said it, I knew she was right. But I really thought we had gone to dinner at Ringside, I was certain I could remember the sound of Steven’s voice, the way he kept laughing as he told his anecdotes about life on the road.

But it hadn’t happened, and I withdrew to silence, feeling foolish and confused, and a little scared. If I was making that up, then what else was I creating in my mind? What else was I lying about?

CHAPTER 19

Sunday was broken only by Chapel’s arrival with Mikel’s PDA. I composed a list of fifteen names I thought I recognized, people that Mikel had actually liked, or at least, that I thought he’d liked, and I looked around for an entry for Jessica and didn’t find one, but there was one for a girl named Avery Sanger, so I put her on the list, too.

Chapel told me he’d make calls, letting them know the when and where of the service, and then he left us alone again, and that was the most exciting thing that happened on Sunday.

We left the hotel in the darkness before dawn the next morning, Chapel guiding me out much the way he’d guided me in, straight to his waiting Audi. We were followed by the guy Burchett had sent over, and it was the first time I’d seen him, though Chapel assured me there’d been someone on duty outside my room the whole time.

As we were getting into the car, Burchett called Chapel and confirmed that it was safe for me to return home, that the press had finally gotten bored with waiting for my return. I was grateful for the news. I wanted to get home and get changed, to have some time by myself before the funeral.

Joan stayed behind on the curb, waiting for the valet to bring her Volvo, promising she’d pick me up for the service that afternoon.

In the car, Chapel gave me the latest.

“Now they’re onto the pictures,” he said. “The story has been on the networks, MTV and the like. NME and Dotmusic are covering it. Rolling Stone’s guy arrived in town yesterday. There’s a good chance reporters will show up at the service since they know you’ll be there, and if that happens I want you to keep your mouth shut. Don’t answer any questions. Nothing, Miriam. Just keep your head down.”

“I will.”

“Van, Click, and Graham got in last night. They released a statement through the label about how they needed to be with you, to support you, and they’ve canceled the next week of dates to be here.”

“Van must have bled over that,” I said.

Chapel ignored the comment, turning us onto the Broadway Bridge. “Not as relevant, but it may interest you to know that as of Saturday night Nothing for Free had jumped twelve spots on Billboard’s Top Fifty, to eleven. We’re expecting to hear it’s in the Top Ten sometime today. Scandal reentered at sixty-seven. ‘Queen of Swords’ is in heavy rotation in just about every major outlet, and it’s been the most requested video on MTV for the last two nights. You can interpret that however you like.”

“My interpretation is that this is one fucked-up world,” I said.

“I’m not sure I disagree. The third single off Scandal, what was that one called?”

“ ‘Lie Life.’ ”

“Was that written about Tommy?”

“I was riffing off ‘Lush Life’ by Billy Strayhorn. Van had this idea for a song about this asshole she’d been seeing, he was also a musician in town. So she wanted a breakup song where she could get angry and kick and growl, and I wanted to play with an old standard. That’s all it is.”

“There’s a lot of death imagery in the song. It’s getting play now, too.”

“It’s about how this relationship was bleeding her dry,” I said. “The single didn’t do very well.”

“That may be, but it’s getting play now.”

“If you tell me the label’s released a Greatest Hits compilation, I may have to kill myself.”

“Don’t do that.”

“It was a joke.”

“It wasn’t funny.”

The way he said it told me I should just shut up now.

There was no sign of the police, or the press, or even of Burchett’s people. The lawn beneath the trees had been chewed by footprints, and pockets of mud slopped over the sides of the path. Copies of the last couple issues of the Oregonian were still on my porch, too, but those were the only real indications that I’d been gone. I unlocked the door and switched off the alarm, and Chapel told me he’d talk to me if he had more news later.

“You’ll be at the funeral?” I asked.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” he said. “You don’t need me there.”

That disappointed me for a moment, and then I realized that he’d never known Mikel, and that he really didn’t know me. I wasn’t his friend. I was his client.

He got back in his Audi and pulled away, and I locked up and looked at the clock, and it wasn’t even a quarter past six. I put on a pot of coffee, cleared my voice mail while it brewed, and drank a cup while smoking a cigarette, feeling oddly empty inside. The sun came up, and from the backyard it looked like the day would be clear and cold. At least it would be beautiful at the cemetery.

I fixed a bowl of shredded wheat and opened the copy of today’s paper, heading for the funnies. When I finished the comics, I searched out the obituaries, finding them paradoxically at the back of the “Living” section. Chapel must have gotten something to the paper, because there was a notice about Mikel’s passing. It was short, and didn’t really say much about who he had been. There were no details included about where the service would be, or when, and the only connection between my brother and my celebrity was in our last name. I was simply his surviving sister, Miriam.

I decided I’d read the rest of the paper, too, mostly to see exactly how bad things were looking for me, personally. The story was still on the front page, but now below the fold for only two paragraphs before jumping to the end of the section.

That’s how I learned that Tommy had been released.

I wasn’t sure what I could conclude from that, if it meant that the cops didn’t think he’d done it, or they did and just didn’t have enough evidence to charge him. If Chapel had known, he hadn’t bothered to tell me for some reason. If he didn’t know, then calling him would be pointless.

I could call the cops and ask them, but that seemed to me to be asking for trouble.

Tommy had been released.

I realized, with some alarm, that I was relieved. When I looked at the feeling harder, I realized why.

Tommy hadn’t killed Mikel. It had to have been someone else.

Fuck if I knew who.