High Strung

by Jacki Moss

  “Bingo. We’ve got some work to do.” Leigh slipped back into bed and started drawing lines between facts and people on her steno pad.

  Chapter 15—No Strings Attached

  Sophie had made a nest out of the oriental rug runner in a shaft of morning sunshine in the hallway. She and Dagwood were snoozing together, enjoying a cuddle buddy relationship and keeping each other warm on the cold hardwood floor. Their bond had been almost immediate upon meeting each other, echoing Cafton and Leigh’s bond. They were so very different on the surface but so very alike in their hearts.

  “Y’all be good and don’t clean out the refrigerator again,” Cafton joked to the two furry companions as he and Leigh headed out to the car. “Individually, they are smart. Together, they are too smart. It’s like having a pair of mischievous chimps in the house.”

  “What one can’t do, the other can. I swear they plan this stuff out,” Leigh agreed.

  Cafton locked the back door and watched Leigh as she walked a couple of feet ahead of him toward the car. There was nothing about her he didn’t like and maybe even love. Even her style. It wasn’t a fashion or trend style, it was her own individual style, built around a combination of her personality and practicality. Today, she dressed in layers, understanding the fickle Middle Tennessee weather. This chilly morning she wore a warm, loose, natural wool sweater with a white turtleneck underneath; well-worn jeans with natural, not artificial, faded spots; a hand-knitted wool scarf; and a classic forest green fedora you could tell had adorned her head for years. After just a few steps, realizing Cafton wasn’t beside her, Leigh turned around and reached her hand out for him, which he took like a treasure.

  “Let’s go pick Heckle’s brain, or what’s left of it. The fingerprint report should be back by now. Should we bring him up to speed on Ketchum’s information?” Cafton asked.

  “Oh, no, not yet. We’re just poking around for leads right now, and Ketchum is just working a hunch. We need to find something solid linking Dangcat to a possible suspect first. Then we will let law enforcement know,” Leigh said. Her decade of fraud investigation experience had taught her how to work with and around law enforcement. She knew just when and how far to push, when and how much to disclose.

  “Want some tunes?” Cafton asked as he started the car. “I need to listen to the final mix of Jump Steady’s new album before approving it to go to master. They are Bynum’s opening act. It’s the record Dangcat was working on when he disappeared.”

  “Sure. Jump Steady? I’ve heard of them. I saw them at a bluegrass festival last summer. They really tore it up! Had people out of their seats buck dancing in the grass. They’re from Kentucky, aren’t they?”

  “Right. A small town in Kentucky. Great backstory. Even though they grew up rich kids, they have the authentic bluegrass pedigree. Their parents were east Kentucky mountain people, the product of generations of miners. But their father managed to escape the poverty and get into school. He was a skinny but fast scat back in high school. His speed and scrappiness got the attention of a Kentucky university. They gave him a football scholarship. He went on to dental school from there. Their mama was working in the cafeteria at the university, where they met.”

  Cafton shoved the cassette into the player.

  “The dad finished dental school and started a great cosmetic dentistry practice in Kentucky. When the boys came along, their parents exposed them to the traditional mountain music and expanded their music tastes widely as they became more and more affluent. The boys grew up listening to everything from mountain music to bluegrass to classic rock to down-and-dirty blues. They also got to meet many renowned musicians and hear them first-hand because of their dad’s celebrity-based clientele.”

  Leigh listened intently.

  “The brothers naturally developed their own sound from their diverse background. Sort of gut-bucket rockabilly, heavy on the strings. Fiddle, dobro, acoustic guitar, and mandolin. Very clean, organic sound. All original songs. We know they will be a chart-topper when people hear them in person,” Cafton explained as they headed toward the downtown police precinct.

  After the third song, Cafton pulled the car over into a parking lot. “There’s something peculiar about this. Do you hear a mandolin in any of these songs?” He rewound the tape and they listened carefully to the first song. “No mandolin.”

  “No mandolin,” Leigh agreed.

  After listening to each song, they agreed, no mandolin. The recording still sounded great, though.

  “Dangcat must have cut the brat out of the mix,” Cafton said. “Dang told us he had warned Chad throughout the recording sessions he was stinking up the place. He told him if he didn’t improve, he was going to drop his tracks out of all the songs and drop the song featuring him on lead vocals and his solos from the record. Obviously he did it.”

  “The ‘brat’ is Chad? Why do you call him the brat?”

  “Yep. The brat is Chad, the youngest member, the baby brother, of Jump Steady, and the mandolin player. We feel pretty sure Chad’s end game is to get this album under his belt, tour with Bynum, become rich and famous, dump his brothers, and then cross over into pop. But it’s a pipe dream. He’s all ego with very little talent to back it up either in country or pop,” Cafton explained. “Giving the devil his due, he practices his fingers to the bone, but he’s just not talented. He’s all mouth, energized by his sense of entitlement, all fueled by the testosterone load of a twenty-year-old narcissistic male.”

  “Eeeew. That’s a volatile brew, and a pretty self-serving plan,” Leigh acknowledged. “So how did he take to Dangcat’s warning? Most egomaniacs buck up against anything that forces them to face the truth about themselves.”

  “Not well. Dangcat said he threatened to tattle on him to me. Dangcat handed him the phone and said, ‘Be my guest.’ He then realized he didn’t have any weight to throw around in the studio,” Cafton continued. “When Dangcat called his bluff, he stormed out in a huff. Dug trenches in the gravel parking lot out back of the studio, spinning his wheels. We literally had to get someone out there to rake all the gravel back into place after his temper tantrum.”

  “Anger management issues?”

  “Anger management. Emotional immaturity. Narcissism. Selfishness. Impulsiveness. Laziness. Manipulation. Finger pointing. Blame-shifting. Rage. You name a character flaw, and he’s the poster child for it. When he acts nice, everyone knows it’s just that: an act. Even his own brothers can’t stand him.”

  “Sounds like there’s not much to like there. Did he finally settle down when the tour started?”

  “No, he’s been slinging attitude and thumping his chest at Bynum the whole time they’ve been on the road. Bynum is fed up with him because he keeps being disruptive to the tour, throwing temper tantrums, and, to top it off, can’t even play worth a damn during the shows.”

  “Does he know for sure he has been cut out of the mix?” Leigh asked, contemplating a possible motive.

  “No, I don’t think so. Dang had just finished the mix a few days before they all left on tour. Bynum and I have not heard it or signed off on it to go to master yet. We don’t let the talent control what goes into the final master. We leave it up to the professional, Dangcat,” Cafton explained. “I got this tape from the studio vault where we keep all the masters and pre-mixes.”

  “What if he did know? What do you think his reaction would be?” Leigh pressed.

  “He’d probably go ballistic. He’s pretty unstable. His brothers keep him in check most of the time, but if he were unleashed and his brothers not around to reel him in, he could probably become unhinged.” Cafton’s brow furrowed. “What’s behind that question?”

  “Remember in Dangcat’s car inventory bag? There was a cassette,” Leigh recalled.

  “Sure. We all listen to music all the time,” Cafton said.

  “But there was just one cassette, not half a dozen,” Leigh responded.

  “Gotcha. You’re right. No one has just one cass
ette.”

  “Does Dangcat’s vintage junker have a cassette deck?” Leigh tried to remember what the dashboard looked like.

  “Good question. If it does, it wouldn’t be factory, but he was restoring it. Maybe it does now.” Cafton followed her train of thought.

  “Or maybe it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, what is the cassette in Dangcat’s car?” Leigh wondered.

  “One way to find out.” Cafton pulled out of the parking lot and headed back to the impound lot.

  Once there, Leigh asked the attendant if they could see the contents of Dangcat’s inventory bag. The attendant told them they could see it if the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations detective had not taken it as evidence. He’d check.

  “The TBI? I thought Heckle and Metro were handling this,” Cafton said.

  “Depends on what he found and what he thinks may be going on. If there’s a possible murder, they turn it over to the TBI,” Leigh explained. “If they think it’s a kidnapping, it becomes a Federal crime, and the TBI will turn it over to the FBI. At this point, it looks like Heckle thinks, because of where they found Dangcat’s car, there is a suspicion of murder. It looks to me like there was also an abduction. I’m sure they are working that angle.”

  Cafton was sick to his stomach. “Murder. Dangcat. I had sort of considered that in the back of my mind, but I just kept trying to ignore it. Now I can’t. If that’s the case, then by damn, we will find who did this to him.” Cafton was sick and angry.

  The attendant came back with the inventory bag. Nothing was missing. There was the cassette. It was identical to the one Cafton had in his car right now, except it was marked Jump Steady 1, instead of Jump Steady 3, like Cafton’s.

  “Oh, crap. That explains Dangcat’s sticky note on his desk. He made three rough mix tapes—3-mix the note said. Mine, this one, and maybe one for, uh, someone else,” Cafton contemplated.

  “Someone, meaning Chad,” Leigh clarified.

  “Yes.”

  Leigh asked the attendant if they could have the keys to open the car. He made her promise they wouldn’t move anything or leave any fingerprints, because the detective would be very pissed off if he let them spoil his crime scene. She promised.

  They reached Dangcat’s car and unlocked it on both sides. Cafton took his handkerchief out of his pocket and used it to carefully open the doors to the car.

  Cafton looked in from the driver’s side and Leigh from the passenger’s side.

  “Well, they most certainly came for fingerprints. Half of the dashboard and squares of the headrests and carpeting have been cut out and taken away. They must be doing the cyanoacrylate fuming back at the lab,” Leigh deduced. “Hope they found something to get a hit on. No need for the hanky, sweetie, the techs have already gotten what they needed. They won’t be back for prints,” explained Leigh.

  “Oh, I didn’t think about that. I just didn’t want to get dirty,” said Cafton.

  Cafton looked at Leigh, smiling at her technical knowledge of investigation techniques and at his own fastidiousness.

  Cafton braced himself on the driver’s seat as he leaned forward to get a closer look at the dashboard’s instrument panel.

  “No tape deck attached underneath,” reported Leigh.

  “No factory tape deck, just an eight-track, no retrofit,” reported Cafton, pressing the radio faceplate with his knuckle to ensure nothing was behind it. “So if he was going to play the tape for someone, he couldn’t do it from his car. Maybe he had to get into someone else’s car to do it.

  “And who, besides you and Bynum, had an interest in listening to the tape…” Leigh suggested.

  “Chad!” they said in unison.

  “But Chad’s on tour,” Cafton said, mentally calculating when the tour bus left. “They left the night my house was firebombed. He was, uh, hmmm, late and missed the bus. He caught up with them a couple of hours later at the Alabama line rest stop.”

  “Did he drive his car to catch up with the bus?” Leigh asked, wondering if it was the scene of the crime.

  “No. His girlfriend drove him in her car. Bynum said he smelled like gasoline. Hmmm. Like maybe one might smell if they had been messing around with Molotov cocktails,” Cafton speculated.

  “And when did your threatening phone calls stop?” Leigh’s eyebrows were raised, acknowledging she probably already knew the answer.

  “The last one was right before my home was firebombed,” Cafton recalled.

  “Right. And what did the caller say?”

  “He said, ‘Payback is hell, Cafton,’ and then hung up. Within half an hour, my front porch was in flames,” he recalled.

  “Flames like in hell.”

  “Yep. Like in hell,” Cafton agreed.

  “Let’s just take this a bit farther. If it was Chad, why would he stop calling you?”

  “He’d stop because he would be found out. He would have a difficult time placing a threatening phone call to me through the hotel switchboard, especially since it would show up on the hotel bill, which I pay!” Cafton realized.

  “Granted this is all conjecture, but we have motive, opportunity, and a possible suspect who seems capable of just about anything when he feels he is wronged,” Leigh said. “But we don’t have a body.”

  “This is giving me a bad feeling,” Cafton conceded. “How ’bout you?”

  “Yes, yes, me, too. Not to be callous or disrespectful, but who else do we know who literally doesn’t have a body, who just has a head?” Leigh’s puzzle was being completed by the minute.

  “Ketchum. Oh, my God! Does Ketchum have Dangcat?” Cafton’s legs almost buckled under him. He held onto the door jamb to keep from folding onto the ground. Leigh shut the car door and came around to comfort Cafton.

  “Sweetie, we don’t know that for sure, but we owe it to Dangcat to find out,” she said.

  “And we need to know, so if Bynum and anyone else is in danger, they know!” Cafton was back in focus and thinking ahead.

  “Whoever did this has nothing left to lose, and it probably wouldn’t matter if they did. It takes a psychopath to perpetrate a cold, up-close-and-personal, gruesome act like beheading someone. It also takes planning. Like getting wire,” she said.

  “Unless you already had it. Unless you have a mandolin wire,” Cafton concluded.

  Chapter 16—Cut to the Chase

  Bynum called the boys’ rooms and told them to meet him in his suite at seven forty-five a.m. After some grumbling by them about how early it was, Bynum explained it was a mandatory tour meeting and everyone had to show up. No excuses. He softened the blow by having room service send up a full breakfast spread. Food could always make young men happy, or at least shut their mouths for a while.

  Right on time, the boys knocked at Bynum’s door. They greeted Bynum and Mattie and exchanged pleasantries as usual. Bynum gave everyone time to get some coffee or tea or soda in them and to eat before filling them in on the Ketchum visit.

  “Now that you’re awake and fed, let’s get this meeting started. Remember a few weeks ago in New Orleans, when we kicked off the tour, we were all interviewed by some New Orleans police officers?” he began.

  The boys nodded.

  “Well, they want to interview us again. This afternoon at three, let’s all meet back here and get this out of the way,” Bynum instructed.

  The boys started muttering about it being a waste of time, and how they had nothing more to offer. Chad crossed his arms over his chest and sat silently for once.

  “I know, I know,” Bynum agreed, “but a detective from New Orleans has some evidence…” Bynum said.

  “Like what?” Chad sullenly interrupted.

  “I don’t know, Chad, just some evidence, some reason he thinks we might be able to help him find the person who did that horrible thing to that man. We have nothing to worry about.”

  “Then why us? Why is he talking to us? Is he talking to everyone in the hotel again?” Chad persisted.

  “I don’t know, Ch
ad. That’s why we will all need to be at the meeting with him. He will tell us details then,” Bynum insisted.

  “I’m not wasting my time with this bullshit.” Chad stood up. “I have sound check and rehearsal. I don’t have time for some pig trying to pin some bullshit on us.” Chad was shouting. His brothers stood up and tried to shush him.

  Bynum instinctively stepped between Chad and Mattie. He was becoming more than exasperated with Chad’s unpredictable, volatile behavior; he was now to the point of being alarmed. He tried to smooth Chad’s ruffled feathers. “It’s just a formality, Chad. Nothing to be upset about. The sooner we answer his questions, the sooner he’s back on the plane to New Orleans, and the sooner we get back to business as usual. All we have to do is cooperate…” Bynum continued.

  “Cooperate! Cops don’t want cooperation! They want someone in cuffs. They want a suspect. They want to close cases. They want a sucker to make them look good. They don’t care who it is. It doesn’t matter if he’s guilty or not!” Chad slammed down his juice glass on the fireplace mantel and clenched his fists at his side. His face grew practically purple with anger. “Well, you all can sit here like a bunch of patsies and be interrogated if you want, but I have better things to do than to be railroaded by some bumbling cop.” Chad turned to storm out.

  “No one is railroading anyone! This is just to ask questions.” Bynum followed Chad to the door. “If you don’t come to the meeting, you’re off the tour,” Bynum cautioned Chad as he walked out the door.

  “Then I’m off the damn tour! I don’t need you all now anyway!” bellowed Chad as he walked out, slamming the door behind him for dramatic effect.

  Chad’s oldest brother, Joshua, said, “I’m sorry, Mr. McCooter. He just gets all sideways when anyone tries to make him do anything. He’ll calm down after a while. He doesn’t like police officers much. A few years ago, back home, when he was seventeen, he got busted for selling some pot. Dad let him spend a week in jail to teach him a lesson. All that really happened to him was they booked and fingerprinted him and he spent a few days in the pokey.”