One of the twins announced the next series of songs would be performed by the four boys. He said boys although they were clearly in their late thirties and forties. He and his brother set down their instruments, but Loretta stepped to the microphone.
“I’ve got one more to play before we take our break.”
The others looked surprised.
“Just me and the fiddle,” she said. “I haven’t sung it like this before.”
Her brothers and nephews stepped back. She started a slow tap of one foot and then drew the bow across the strings. The plaintive melody soon became recognizable as the old mountain ballad, “Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies.” She played the tune through once, dropped the fiddle and bow to her sides, and sang a cappella:
Come all you fair and tender ladies,
Be careful how you court your man,
He’s like a star in a summer’s morning,
First appears and then he’s gone.
He’ll tell to you some lovely story,
He’ll steal your heart, he’ll make you cry,
And then he’ll leave like dew arising,
No way to know his truth from lies.
But when you learn his soul was faithful,
And that his life had been struck down,
You find your love can be rekindled,
For one once slain and sent to ground.
Come all you fair and tender ladies,
And praise who slew the stars of night,
But one with spade and knees earth-covered,
Has killed my love, my heart’s delight.
So all you fair and tender ladies,
Take warning for the man you love,
His breath is frail, and time is fleeting,
When death lies veiled in stars above.
Tears glistened in her eyes. The noisy bar had grown quiet, and her last word rang clear and pure until it faded into silence. A beat and then thunderous applause. Loretta didn’t acknowledge the unbridled response. She only looked at me. Then she set down the fiddle and bow, stepped from the stage, and skirted around us to head toward the restrooms in the rear.
“Wow,” Nakayla said. “That was a surprise.”
“Especially to the band,” Hewitt said.
Loretta’s brothers and nephews appeared stunned, obviously taken aback by the unplanned performance.
“Those weren’t the real words, were they?” Cory asked.
“The first verse was the old song,” Nakayla said. “Then she improvised the rest.” She turned to me. “How did she know about the shovel?”
“I told her it was a possible murder weapon. She wove it into the lyrics.”
“Are you going to talk to her now?” Hewitt asked.
Loretta’s nephews had started playing more contemporary bluegrass songs. I noticed Danny and Bobby at the far end of the bar.
“She said after they finished playing. I assume that means when they quit for the night.”
Nakayla stood. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to let her out of our sight. Not if she has information that could break open the case. I’m going to visit the restroom.” She made her way through the crowded tables and disappeared around the bar.
For the next ten minutes, I kept glancing toward the rear of the pub. Loretta reappeared and joined her brothers at the bar. One of them said something to her, but she only shook her head.
Nakayla slid into her chair beside me.
I leaned close to her so as not to have to shout over the music. “Did you speak to her?”
“It was more like she spoke to me. She told me to stay away from her. She wasn’t ready to talk, and I would only screw things up.”
“What do you think that meant?” Hewitt asked.
“I don’t know. We were the only ones in the women’s restroom. When I entered, Loretta was texting on her phone. She immediately stopped. I told her I liked her version of the song. That’s when she got defensive and said she wasn’t ready to talk about it.”
I looked back at the bar. Loretta was still standing by her brothers. They had beers; she had what appeared to be ice water. The brothers watched the performance; she watched our table. I looked away, not wanting to aggravate what I hoped would be a spirit of cooperation.
It soon became apparent that Case Dismissed shared the spotlight. Different band members would be featured for solo songs, and the others would leave the stage for the bar or restroom. It gave everyone a chance to shine. Loretta was the only one who didn’t make a repeat appearance.
We’d just listened to a couple of lightning-fast bluegrass tunes by the banjo player when I noticed Loretta was gone from the bar. Her brothers were headed toward the stage, but she had vanished.
“Did anyone see where Loretta went?” I asked.
“No,” Nakayla said.
“Maybe she went back to the restroom,” Hewitt said.
Cory slid back her chair. “Do you want me to check this time?”
“Yes,” Nakayla said. “I don’t want her to think I’m stalking her.”
Cory left. Five minutes later, she returned. “Loretta’s not in the restroom. I didn’t see her anywhere.”
Nakayla’s brow furrowed. “Sam, let’s find her.”
We circled to the rear of the pub, searching the tables along the way.
“I’ll check the restroom again,” Nakayla said. “Loretta might have gone in after Cory left.”
Nakayla returned a few seconds later. “She’s not in there.”
I stopped a waiter coming out of the men’s room. “Excuse me. Have you seen the woman who’s in the band?”
The man shook his head. “No. You tried the restroom?”
“Yes,” Nakayla said.
“Maybe she ducked out for a smoke.” He gestured to a door on the back wall. “That goes to Rat Alley. She might be out there.”
I opened the door and stepped into a sauna of trapped August heat. The alley was actually a tunnel with only one far entrance. I realized we were underneath Wall Street, the road that fronted the second stories of the buildings built on Patton Avenue. The alley was the only access for back doors on the lower level.
“It stinks out here,” Nakayla complained.
“Well, with a name like Rat Alley, it’s not going to be prime real estate.”
The tunnel looked like it was about forty yards long. Other restaurants and shops had back doors with trash cans, empty beer kegs, and HVAC units lining their walls. Bright, single-bulb lamps hung high on the concrete-block wall opposite the doors.
“If Loretta wanted to leave without her family knowing, all she had to do was walk out the tunnel entrance,” Nakayla said.
“Maybe. But do you think she would have left her fiddle?”
I turned away from the tunnel entrance and walked to the closer dark end. A rear bicycle wheel protruded from behind a stack of metal kegs. Someone had knocked it over. I stepped around the kegs into the niche between them and the wall.
The bike was an old Schwinn for girls, the kind with a spring saddle seat and balloon tires.
There were pink tassels on the handlebar grips, tassels that draped across the open, sightless eyes of Loretta Case Johnson.
Chapter 10
Detective Newland had quarantined Nakayla and me at a table in the rear of Jack of the Wood just inside the alley door. In addition to being detained as material witnesses, we’d been instructed to stop anyone from exiting into Rat Alley. That freed up a uniformed officer to gather contact information from the patrons for a more extensive follow-up later. At the moment, the police were only saying there had been an incident in the alley. The word murder and the name Loretta weren’t mentioned.
I’d called the police as soon as I’d discovered Loretta’s body, and the first patrol car had arrived within fiv
e minutes. Backup came within another five, and officers stationed themselves at the rear doors of all the businesses with exits into Rat Alley. I’d also phoned Detective Newland’s private cell phone and given him the news. He’d said that he and Tuck Efird were still at the police station and would be at the scene inside of ten minutes.
Nakayla had quietly briefed the on-duty manager of Jack of the Wood and asked that the processing of any payments by patrons wanting to leave be delayed until the police arrived. I’d stayed with the body and watched the alley until a uniformed officer instructed me to return to the pub. I’d requested he tell Detective Newland to see me as soon as possible.
Newly and Tuck Efird arrived together, listened to our brief account, and then moved to the alley to oversee the crime scene investigation. All Nakayla and I could do was wait for their return.
We were joined at the table by Cory and Hewitt. I brought them up to date.
“Can you tell how she might have been killed?” Hewitt asked me.
“I didn’t touch her or the bicycle, but I could see a thin red mark where something had severely pressed into the skin of her neck. My guess is that she was garroted. If someone knew what he was doing, she wouldn’t have been able to cry out and would have lost consciousness quickly.”
Cory’s eyes widened. “Do you think it could have happened in here? Someone slipped a wire over her head and dragged her through the door into the alley?”
“Highly unlikely,” I said. “Even though attention would have been focused on the stage, the restrooms would have meant patrons coming at unpredictable times.”
“We should find out if she was a smoker,” Nakayla suggested. “She could have stepped outside for a quick cigarette.”
“Good point,” I said. “Mention it to Newly. If so, there should be either a pack or single cigarette near the body.”
Hewitt tapped his finger on the table. “You know who the police will zero in on.”
“The family,” Nakayla said.
He pointed the finger at her. “Right as rain. And the way the band juggled between solos and duets, each one of them was offstage for a brief period.” He turned to me. “How long would it take for Loretta to die?”
“Properly done, in as little as a few minutes. We’re talking irreversible brain damage even if the garroting was halted before death. The perpetrator took a hell of a chance, but in the alley and quickly overpowering her, he could have pulled her down behind the empty beer kegs and gone unnoticed. The bicycle was probably used to further hide the body.”
Cory shook her head. “But if it was family, why here? Why now? There would have been plenty of opportunities later in more isolated settings.”
I thought back to my brief conversation with Loretta. “She told me she’d speak with me after the music. I didn’t get the sense that it was what I was going to ask her but rather what she was going to tell me. And the possibility of that later conversation could have created the urgency that prompted the killer. He was forced to strike when he did.”
“And her song,” Nakayla added. “You could tell it caught her family off guard.”
“How’d they react when the police arrived?” I asked.
“They were startled,” Hewitt said. “Hell, we all were. Everyone was onstage but Loretta. They stopped playing when it was clear the officers weren’t here to listen to the music. The police told them to stay onstage.”
“But I heard the banjo player arguing with one of the patrolmen,” Cory said. “He was complaining that he needed to find his aunt. The officer said he’d be taken into custody if he didn’t comply. One of the twins, I guess it was his father, told him to calm down. They’d find Loretta later.”
“Here they come,” Hewitt said.
I looked over my shoulder and saw double. Double double. Bobby and Danny Case were walking side by side toward us, identical scowls on their identical faces. Beside each of them walked a uniformed policeman, doppelgängers themselves. Al and Ted Newland, Detective Newland’s twin nephews. Each of them had a Case brother by the arm and was unsuccessfully ordering him to halt.
I rose from my chair, suspecting I was the destination.
“Where’s our sister?” shouted one of the Cases.
“We know you talked to her,” his brother accused.
I glanced down and read the name bar of the nearer officer. “Al, what’s going on?”
“We told them to remain on the stage. Those were the instructions Uncle Newly gave us.”
The fact that he said “Uncle Newly” told me the nephews were upset. Otherwise, they would have called him Detective Newland.
The Case brother beside Al shook his arm free. “We keep asking but no one will tell us what the hell’s going on. You talked to Loretta. Where is she?”
The Newland twins looked away. Hewitt got up from his chair. “Why don’t Cory and I return to our table. You gentlemen can sit here.”
“We ain’t sitting till we get some answers,” said the other brother.
Both men folded their arms across their bib overalls, signaling they weren’t about to budge.
I stepped to the side, putting myself between them and the alley door. “I’m very sorry to say that Loretta’s been killed. Her body was discovered behind the pub.”
Ted Newland and Hewitt moved to my side.
The color drained from the brothers’ faces.
“That’s not possible.”
“It’s some mistake.” The brothers’ words came out as desperate whispers.
“I wish it were so,” I said.
A moment of stillness, and then both men lunged forward. Al tried to intercept the nearer man but not before he’d crashed into me, knocking me backward against the door. Hewitt grabbed the other twin in a bear hug, but the older man flung him aside. The delay enabled Ted to yank that Case brother by the back of his overalls and shove him into a chair. I slid to the floor, pulling the second twin with me.
He screamed in my face, “You killed her! You killed her!”
Nakayla grabbed a handful of beard and pulled sideways, turning his head like a bridled horse. He let out a yelp of pain and tried to punch her. Al grabbed his wrist in midswing and snapped a handcuff on it. Then he wrestled the other arm behind the man’s back and cuffed it as well.
I crawled free just as the door opened behind me.
“What’s going on?” Newly stepped inside and quickly closed the door behind him.
“They wouldn’t stay on the stage,” Al said. “Ted and I tried to stop them, but they forced their way past us.”
“We want to see our sister!” the brother in the chair yelled. “You can’t keep us from our sister.” He too had been cuffed with his hands behind his back.
The four sons rushed up, angry but unsure what to do.
“This is police brutality,” shouted the banjo player in the alien shirt. He pointed at me. “He’s the one who should be in handcuffs.”
“This isn’t police brutality,” Newly said. “It’s a homicide investigation, and you can’t interfere with it.”
“Homicide?” Alien shirt looked at the older men for confirmation.
“Loretta’s dead,” the Case brother in the chair said. “Somebody killed her in the alley.”
“Then he really should be in handcuffs.” The banjo player took a menacing step toward me. “He’s the one talked to her. He’s the one she came to meet.”
Newly ignored him and spoke to his nephews. “Get transportation to take all six to the station for proper questioning. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
When the Case family had been taken back to the front of the pub, Newly handed me a pair of shoe coverings. “These are probably useless now since you were already at the scene, but slip them on and retrace your steps in the alley.”
Night had fallen, but Rat Alley was ablaze with the
halogen lights the Asheville Police Department set up to illuminate the crime scene. The press and onlookers stood behind a barricade that had been erected at the tunnel’s entrance. A forensic team in protective suits searched through every garbage bin and collected each discarded bottle or can that might hold a clue.
Newly’s partner, Tuck Efird was bent over Loretta’s body. The bicycle had been leaned against the far wall and the empty kegs had been moved to give the forensics team more room as well as create a barricade against the long-lens cameras of the television and newspaper photographers.
“Give it to me again,” Newly prompted. “So you came out here looking for the victim.”
“Nakayla and I. She went toward the head of the alley. I looked around here and in the rear. I noticed the bicycle wheel, walked over, and saw Loretta. I bent over like Tuck’s doing, but I didn’t touch her. The open eyes told me she was dead. I also saw the bruising around her neck.”
“And then Nakayla went inside to alert the manager while you phoned it in.”
“Yes. I didn’t want anyone getting away. Not that one of them was the perp, but they could be potential witnesses.”
“Quick thinking,” Newly said. “Did you see her with anyone other than her family?”
“No. She and I were supposed to talk after their set. Evidently, she had something to tell me. Then her brothers and her nephews got up in her face after she spoke to me.”
“You hadn’t come tonight for a prearranged meeting?”
“No. I’d thought of a few questions I hadn’t asked when we were at her house. I caught her right after she came in, and she agreed to talk with me. Later, Nakayla saw her in the restroom texting someone. Loretta warned her to keep away. She would speak to us when she was ready.”
“How long do you think she could have been gone before you noticed?”
“Fifteen or twenty minutes. She seemed settled at the bar with her brothers.”
Newly took a deep breath and looked at his partner. “How’s it going?”
“We can move the body,” Efird said.
“Okay. I’ll fill you in on what Sam’s telling me back at the station.” Newly turned to me. “Let’s go inside where it’s cooler. I’m sweating like a lathered horse.” Newly wiped his brow with the back of his hand and gestured for me to precede him into the pub. No one was at the back table and he told me to sit. “So what did you want to ask her?”
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