Rock Bottom Treasure (Palmyrton Estate Sale Mystery Series)

by Hubbard, S. W.

  Without much enthusiasm, I begin to read. Despite my lack of interest in nineties post-punk rock, I soon find myself caught up by the band’s story. Cordy’s writing is lively and captures the artistic tension among the musicians during rehearsals, the excitement when the crowd roars to life during a performance, the anger when the lead singer runs off the rails during a show, insulting the band’s fans and damaging the stage. She’s like a war correspondent embedded with the troops, living the same highs and lows as the men she’s covering. Soon I’m reading eagerly, as if this were a soap opera. Will Plan for Extinction finish their tour successfully? Will they stay together to record another album? Or will their artistic differences and personal demons destroy them?

  Three-quarters of the way through the article, I read a paragraph that stops me in my tracks. I go back and read it again, focusing on every word that Cordelia Dean wrote as my heart beats faster with excitement:

  What saves Plan for Extinction from self-inflicted catastrophe? Unquestionably, it’s the dedication of their young manager, Ross Pelletierre. One part car salesman, one part therapist, and one part creative midwife, Pelletierre is the force holding the band together. “The guys can’t live with one another, but they can’t create without one another,” Pelletierre says. “Someone’s always stomping off in a twist, and I have to smooth things over. Or someone will get an idea for a song that lasts for eight minutes and I have to persuade him to edit it down to three. But that’s ok. They provide the genius; I provide the grease that keeps the gears moving.”

  I lean away from the computer screen and knead my eyes. Ross Pelletierre’s murder has been at the top of the regional news for a week, yet Cordy has never mentioned that she once interviewed him when he was a very young man. That alone seems odd, as the woman never fails to mention her connection to every other famous person, living or dead.

  Could Pelletierre have been involved in an effort to buy up a musician’s publishing rights, and the deal went south? Maybe that’s what brought him to Palmyrton and got him killed.

  Maybe that’s what Cordy meant when she told Ty she’d outlived her enemies.

  Is whomever killed Pelletierre responsible for harming Charmaine?

  But Ross Pelletierre is twenty years younger than Cordy and now involved in film and TV production, not music production. So what could Cordy possibly have buried in her house that would be related to his current deals?

  Chapter 24

  I RETURN TO PERUSING Cordy’s final article. I still haven’t read anything outrageous in the story that could’ve gotten Cordy fired. It’s an interesting narrative, but certainly not controversial.

  Then I get to the final paragraph.

  Before I start to read the words, my eye is drawn to the abundance of asterisks.

  Oh, those are all the curse words abbreviated in the quote from Narwhal, the lead singer. Cordelia Dean quotes Narwhal calling the band’s guitarist a “***** talentless hack who only knows three chords,” the drummer a “child banging on his ****** cereal bowl,” and the bassist “a perverted *****always swinging his ***** around.” For good measure Narwhal adds that he can’t create music working with “that ***** Nazi prison guard, Ross Pelletierre.”

  The article concludes, “Plan for Extinction has three more stops on its European tour. Look for the band’s new album, T-Rex Rumble in January.”

  Whew! Did Cordy exaggerate to get a dynamite ending for her story? I guess if Narwhal challenged those quotes in a lawsuit, that could be enough to get Cordy fired.

  My next step is to research Plan for Extinction. Google doesn’t have much to offer. A very short Wikipedia entry tells me they were a seminal post-punk band. With only one album released, and one big hit single, they were on the cusp of greatness when the band broke up. They now have a cult following. It seems that after the Bass Line article appeared, Narwhal and the drummer got into a fist fight in which the drummer’s fingers were injured. The bass player tried to break it up and got his wrist broken for his trouble. After the fight, Narwhal went off on a week-long drug and alcohol fueled bender that landed him in the hospital.

  The rest of the tour was cancelled.

  Plan for Extinction never performed together again.

  T-Rex Rumble was never released.

  Under “sources” for the article is a single website: PlanFanCentral.

  When I click over to that website, I find an obsessive/compulsive’s labor of love: page after page of white type on a black background deconstructing the lyrics of every song the band played. My eyes are soon burning—I really don’t care about the deep inner meaning of these lyrics. There seem to be scores of songs, yet the Wikipedia profile said the band only released one album. I scroll back to the top of the page and see a line that says the website is maintained by a man named Jay Howard, the world’s foremost expert on Plan For Extinction.

  I bet.

  There’s a contact form that allows me to email Jay, so I send him a message. Since I sense a mind stuffed to the breaking point with arcane Plan for Extinction information, I decide to start with one simple question: What happened to band’s planned second album T-Rex Rumble after they broke up? I hit send and leave the library.

  By the time I arrive home, Jay Howard has sent me a reply.

  A four-thousand word reply.

  How could he have typed that much in the fifteen minutes it took me to drive from the library to my house? Armed with a cup of tea, I begin to read and soon feel like I’m back in college, trying to make sense of a philosophy treatise in a required class I didn’t want to take.

  Jay goes off on tangents, provides totally unrelated background information, and inserts his own stream of consciousness musings. But by jotting down key phrases as I read, I ferret out some useful information.

  Of the four members of the band, only the guitarist could read music. At every performance, they improvised songs, often spontaneously screaming out new lyrics that their passionate fans attempted to scribble down for posterity. On the tour, they were testing out material to include in T-Rex Rumble, and they planned to enter the studio to start recording when the tour ended.

  Except, as I know from the Wikipedia article, the tour ended prematurely with three of the four members injured or hospitalized.

  According to Jay, the songs that were to be included on T-Rex Rumble exist only in the memories of lucky fans who heard them performed on the European tour. Luckily for him, he was on junior year abroad at the time and caught the band’s gig in Berlin.

  It was the high point of his life.

  Jay signs the email with the assurance he’d be happy to talk further and incudes his phone number.

  I stare at the ten numbers for a while, uncertain that I want to have a phone conversation with a man whose life peaked at a punk rock concert twenty five years ago.

  I mentally compose a little cover story to explain my interest.

  Then I punch in the numbers on my phone.

  Chapter 25

  JAY HOWARD ANSWERS on the first ring, his voice breathy and anxious.

  I introduce myself and thank him for his quick response. I need not have worried about the cover story. As far as Jay is concerned, interest in Plan for Extinction needs no explanation. He immediately launches into further rambling on the band, and I summon all my patience to let him talk for a while before I rein him in.

  After five minutes of uh-hunh and really, I succeed in getting in a question. “What happened to the band members in the years after the tour?”

  “The band was greater than the sum of its parts,” Jay explains. “None of them were exceptional musicians on their own. It was the crazy chemistry they had together that created their unique sound.” I hear an odd guttural click, which is either a vocal tic or a repressed sob. “But they couldn’t get along.”

  “So they didn’t go off to play in other bands or have solo careers?” I ask.

  “Nope. They just slipped back into mainstream life. See, that’s part of the P
lan mystique. No one knows their real names. I’ve tried to track them down for years, but no luck.”

  “But their manager must have known their real names.” Ever practical, I think of Pelletierre handling the band members’ taxes and Social Security withholding.

  “Believe me, that’s where I started my search,” Jay says. “But try getting an audience with Ross Pelletierre— he’s the only one who got more famous after the band broke up. I could never get past his secretaries and assistants to ask him a question.” Jay heaves a mournful sigh. “Now we’ll never know. Pelletierre got killed recently.”

  Tell me about it.

  Jay launches into another long diatribe about how Ross Pelletierre was the only person who could tame the band members’ crazy artistic temperaments. I find my concentration drifting as he goes into Vaquita’s need for the spotlight and Loggerhead’s wild mood swings and Narwhal’s paranoid control issues.

  But amid the tsunami of psychoanalysis, I hear something that catches my attention.

  “Hold on. What did you just say about bootleg tapes?” I ask.

  Jay had been speaking faster and faster, and my question slows him down. “Yeah, Pelletierre was paranoid about fans in the audience secretly taping the new songs the band was trying out. He wanted the versions of the songs that would be on T-Rex Rumble to be the only recordings in existence. Of course, nowadays at rock concerts, everyone in the audience is making videos with their phones, but in 1993, it was harder to record. Ross insisted on security guards at every venue to check people’s backpacks for tape recorders. If only he’d been less strict, we’d probably have recordings of those precious songs. What a treasure that would be!”

  I feel an idea percolating in the back of my mind. “Are you sure there are no bootleg recordings?”

  “Oh, there have always been rumors about lost tapes floating around somewhere. But they’ve never surfaced.” Jay makes that odd grunting sound again. “I mean, if someone has them, why hold them back? They’d be worth a fortune.”

  ONCE I EXTRICATE MYSELF from my call with Jay, I text Ty.

  Come to the office tomorrow morning before you go to Cordy’s. I have a lot to tell you and it’s too complicated for the phone.

  He replies with a thumbs up, and I settle in to wait for Sean. Wait ‘til he hears about this link between Pelletierre and Cordy! Sean is always skeptical of coincidences. If a famous rock journalist and a famous rock band manager that the journalist once wrote about both turn up in an average suburban New Jersey town, there’s got to be a connection.

  Maybe I can solve Charmaine’s hit and run and Sean’s murder case. “How’s that for ambition, Ethel?”

  She settles her head between her front paws and looks up at me from under her doggy eyebrows.

  “C’mon, Ethel—show a little faith.”

  My excitement to talk to my husband works to keep me awake. Then I hear a beep from my phone.

  My ovulation tracker program is reminding me that tonight’s the night if we want to conceive in November. I look down at my oversized tee shirt and flannel pants. This is no way to honor the fertility gods.

  I hop out of bed, take a quick shower, and change into my honeymoon nightie.

  Ten-thirty and still no Sean.

  By ten-forty five, the historical novel about World War II that I’m reading slips from my fingers and clunks to the floor. I’ll just rest my eyes for a moment.

  The next time my eyelids move, I reach out for Sean, whose breathing I hear beside me.

  Instead of my husband’s broad chest, my hand encounters fur.

  Ethel has taken Sean’s place in our bed and yips at being disturbed. “If you wanted to sleep late, you should have stayed in your doggy bed,” I tell her.

  Sunshine pours through my bedroom window. “Sean?” I shout, but there’s no response.

  The alarm clock reads seven-thirty.

  How could I have slept this long?

  “Sean?” I pad downstairs in search of my husband, following the smell of fresh coffee.

  The warming plate under the coffee pot is still on, so clearly I just missed him. There’s a note on the counter.

  You were sound asleep when I got home. Early meeting today. See you at dinner.

  I stamp my bare foot in frustration. I really needed to talk to him.

  And connect with him.

  Didn’t he notice what I was wearing when he got into bed beside me? This from a man who makes a living being observant. Sheesh!

  I call Sean, but it rolls straight to voicemail. I leave a message telling him I have something important to tell him, but he still hasn’t returned my call by the time I leave for the office.

  Thank goodness the other man in my life is waiting for me as promised.

  “I think I know what we’re looking for at Cordy’s—bootleg concert tapes,” I announce to Ty as I breeze through the office door. “And somehow Ross Pelletierre wanted them too.”

  Quickly, I condense all that I learned yesterday for Ty and wrap it up with my conclusion. “As a journalist, Cordy would have had a tape recorder with her. She could have easily taped the band while they were playing. She traveled with them throughout the tour.”

  “O-ka-a-y.” Ty scratches his head. “But why has she held onto the tapes for all this time? Why didn’t she sell them years ago when she needed the cash?”

  This has puzzled me as well. I toss out ideas. “She forgot she had them. She didn’t know where she put them. She thought she lost them. I don’t know. But clearly our finding the Freeman lyrics has triggered something in her memory.”

  “But Ross Pelletierre got killed before we even started searching her house. If he’s part of this, why did he get killed?”

  “Let me think this through. Pelletierre told his colleague that he was about to make a big deal. So maybe whoever killed him met him down at the train tracks to negotiate handing over those tapes.”

  “But that sure as hell wasn’t Cordy,” Ty says. “She can’t stand up long enough to smash a fly.”

  “The killer knows Cordy has them somewhere in that house. Whoever killed Pelletierre is afraid we’re going to find the tapes before he does.”

  “Why doesn’t she just tell us to look for tapes?” Ty asks me. “I mean, I could find them in a box and pass right over them thinking they were worthless office junk that she never tossed out when she moved.”

  “I think it must be some kind of canary in a coal mine type of thing. Cordy is thinking, ‘When Ty finds X, I’ll know that the tapes are right nearby.’”

  Ty gives me the ‘what kinda fool do you take me for?’ look that he learned from Grandma Betty. I believe she perfected it during Ty’s teenage years when he would tell her he was going out to study algebra with a friend. “You ask me, you’re tryin’ way too hard to make your theory fit these facts, Audge. I never heard of this band. Sure, this crazy dude with the website thinks these lost tapes would be priceless, but who the hell else would give a rat’s ass? The lost tapes of John Lennon would be valuable. The lost tapes of Plan for Extinction?” Ty shakes his head. “I’m not feelin’ it.”

  Ty has let all the air out of my balloon. Perhaps he’s right—I let myself be carried away by Jay Howard’s passion. It’s a good thing that Sean and I missed each other last night. I’d look pretty foolish if he dissected my theory as well as Ty has done. Still, I can’t totally let go of my idea. “What about the Pelletierre connection? Cordy clearly knew him, yet she never mentioned him even after his name has been splashed all over the news every day. The man was killed a mile from her house and she never mentions she once interviewed him? More than interviewed—she traveled with him and the band for a few weeks in 1993. And the article he appears in is the one that cost her her job. If she can remember the details of Joni Mitchell’s love life, surely she’d remember Ross Pelletierre.”

  Ty rubs his chin. “Yeah, you right about that. Somethin’ shady there.”

  “So how should we proceed?” I ask Ty.
/>
  “I’ll find a way to ask her if she ever taped any famous concerts, like that Pink Floyd concert she was at. Then I’ll watch how she reacts.”

  “Be subtle,” I warn.

  Ty gives me the stink eye and leaves.

  Chapter 26

  DONNA ARRIVES AT THE office just as Ty leaves. She and I plan to work at the office this morning before going back to Elspeth Leonard’s house for more pricing and set-up. I sit down to plan the two sales we have coming up in the weeks before Thanksgiving. After that, we’ll be dead until January. Crime usually dies down around the holidays as well. Maybe December will be the month when Sean and I are both relaxed and rested enough to get plenty of “exposure” as our doctor likes to call it. Because it looks like November just slipped away.

  The holidays are stressful in so many other ways. We’ll be spending lots of time with our families, shopping for toys for nieces and nephews, getting Christmas cards from friends with photos of their kids in matching outfits sitting on Santa’s lap.

  December is a lousy time to be struggling with infertility.

  I can’t help obsessing over our missed opportunity last night. Wouldn’t it be lovely to be pregnant during the holiday festivities? It would be too soon to tell anyone, but if Sean and I could share that secret, every family portrait Christmas card we receive would be tolerable.

  Across the room, Donna throws down her pen and flings herself back in her chair. “I just suck at this!”

  “What’s wrong?” I’m jolted out of my worries into hers.

  “These papers I have to sign for my mortgage. I want to read them all, but I can’t understand half of it. I’m so stupid.”

  “You are not stupid. All that legalese is hard for anyone.”

  “And my lawyer won’t explain it. He says, ‘don’t worry about what it says, just sign next to the check marks.’” Donna looks seconds away from tears. “I don’t want to do that, Audrey. That’s what’s screwed me up in the past. Just doing what people tell me to do. Never questioning authority. Never being brave enough to say, ‘wait a minute—could you explain that to me?’”