by Scott Pratt
She paused for a few seconds and shook her head. “I don’t think I’ve ever said that many words at one time in my entire life.” She looked at me, smiled, and nodded her head several times.
“What?” I said.
“Go to Nashville,” she said. “Do what you do. Go be a hero.”
CHAPTER 5
As the jet descended from an overcast sky toward the private airstrip, I looked out the window into a soupy fog. Paul Milius owned a fifteen-hundred-acre estate called “Xanadu” outside Franklin, about thirty miles south of Nashville. I didn’t know it when I first flew over it that day, but the estate included a couple small lakes, surrounded by rolling pastures fenced with white rails and populated by more than fifty quarter horses. There were also patches of woods; several creeks and ponds; an airstrip; a massive, thirty-room, twenty-thousand-square-foot home that looked like a palace; a five-thousand-square-foot guest house that would be my home when I was in Nashville; two tennis courts; a golf driving range; an indoor-outdoor swimming pool; an airplane hangar; and a garage that contained fifteen vintage, antique automobiles, collectively worth around $2 million.
Milius’s wife, the country music icon Lana Raines, had dispatched their luxurious Gulfstream 550 jet to pick me up at the Tri-Cities airport, five miles from my home, at eight in the morning. I was the only passenger, but a pretty, sassy, young brunette named Becky acted as flight attendant and offered to attend to my every need. She seemed genuinely disappointed when I had no needs. The flight had taken about forty-five minutes, so taking into account the loss of an hour because we’d crossed into the Central Standard Time zone, I was arriving in Nashville fifteen minutes earlier than I’d left the Tri-Cities.
As soon as the jet rolled to a stop on the runway, Becky ushered me out the door, and a uniformed chauffeur who introduced himself as David held open the rear, passenger-side door of a navy-blue Mercedes S63 AMG sedan. The car drove down the runway and eventually wound up at the front door of the mansion. I climbed out of the car without waiting for the chauffeur to open the door for me and walked up to the house. The door opened before I could knock or ring a bell.
“Mr. Dillard? Welcome.”
The shapely young woman who spoke to me was wearing a pair of what looked to be very expensive blue jeans (although I’m not particularly knowledgeable about such things), a white blouse that appeared to be made of silk, a bright, multi-colored scarf of the same material that hung loosely around her neck, and black shoes with spiked heels. Her hair was thick and shiny and black and wavy and tumbled down her shoulders like a waterfall. Her face was attractive—not beautiful, not striking in any particular way—but easy to look at. Her skin was tanned and smooth and had a sheen to it, as though it had been moisturized recently.
“Follow me, please,” she said without introducing herself, and she turned and started walking through the most spectacular home I had ever set foot in. Everything seemed to glisten: chandeliers, shiny granite floors, elegant wood moldings, vaulted ceilings, expensive paintings and tapestries. As I looked around the place, it put me in mind of how a Roman emperor or a Colombian drug lord might live, and I wondered whether the kitchen and bathroom faucets and fixtures might be plated in twenty-four-carat gold. But there was something else that struck me about the place. It was so opulent, so gaudy, that it didn’t seem real, and it certainly didn’t seem like a home. There was nothing cozy or comfortable about it. It was cold.
“That’s a beautiful scarf,” I said as we continued past magnificence on all sides. “Is it silk?”
“Yes,” she said. “It was a gift from Lana.”
“I didn’t catch your name,” I said.
She glanced back over her shoulder and said, “I’m Lisa. Lisa Trent. I’m Lana’s personal assistant. Are you going to get Mr. Milius out of jail today?”
“I’ll try,” I said. “Depends on the judge.”
“I’ve heard you’re very good at what you do.”
“Really? Who’s talking about me?”
“Lana, mostly. She says she knows one of your best friends, and he’s told her about all the exciting things you’ve done. You’ve lived quite an interesting life, haven’t you?”
“I don’t know about that. Seems like it’s been pretty simple to me. How long have you known Mrs. Milius?”
“Not long, actually. I’ve only been working here for about a month.”
“Where are you from, Lisa?”
“I grew up in a little place called Dayton, Tennessee.”
“Dayton? Down around Chattanooga, the place where they held the Scopes trial?”
“That’s it, the monkey trial.”
“Which side do you come down on? Creation or evolution?”
“Oh, I’m a creationist through and through. What about you?”
“I’d have to say I’m a mixture. All this was created somehow and evolved into what it is now. It’s still evolving.”
“Into what?”
“Beg your pardon?”
“What’s it evolving into, Mr. Dillard? Where do you think it ends?”
“I have absolutely no idea. I just hope it doesn’t blow up any time soon.”
We rounded a corner and entered a huge, opulent sunroom/atrium decorated with palm trees, ferns, and dozens of species of tropical plants. Sitting at a white wicker table about fifteen feet from the entrance was a woman dressed in a kimono, red silk covered with pink blossoms. She was lifting a dainty, white porcelain cup to her lips as we approached, and she looked me up and down intently, the same way a man sizing me up before a fistfight might look at me. Her face was just a touch fuller than I remembered during her heyday, but Lana Raines-Milius was as striking as ever. Her red hair glowed like fire, her cobalt-blue eyes were intense, her lips were sensual, and her skin was smooth and creamy white. Everything about the woman suggested sexual allure. I knew from doing some research that she was thirty-three years old, had sold sixty million records by the time she was twenty-five, and had famously quit the industry at the ripe old age of twenty-seven. I walked up to the table and reached out my hand. She remained seated and continued to eye me.
“Leon didn’t tell me you were tall, dark, and handsome,” she said in a smooth, southern lilt as she took my hand and squeezed.
“He probably hasn’t noticed. It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Milius.”
“Call me Lana, please,” she said. “You’ve lightened my bank account by a million dollars. It’s the least you can do.”
“Fine then. It’s nice to meet you, Lana.”
“Your eyes are beautiful,” she said. “They’re the same color blue as mine.”
“You’re very kind.”
“I trust your flight was satisfactory.”
“It was. Thank you for sending the plane.”
“What can I offer you? Have you had breakfast?”
“I have, thank you.”
“Tea then? Coffee? Juice?”
“Coffee, please. Black.”
“Lisa, would you tell Michael to bring Mr. Dillard a cup of black coffee, please? And tell him I’d like some fresh tea. I’ll catch up with you a little later.”
Lisa excused herself and left the room through the same door we’d come in.
I watched her go and said, “Nice girl. Pretty, too.”
“Everybody’s pretty in Nashville,” Lana said. “Fans won’t pay millions to watch ugly people perform. It’s the same in Hollywood and New York, London, Calcutta, doesn’t matter. It’s show business, it’s glamorous, it’s fairyland. Nothing is real, and nothing is ugly with the exception of the truth.”
“So it’s strictly about appearances?” I said. “I thought success in Nashville was supposed to be about the quality of the music.”
“Lots of people can make good music,” she said. “Lots of people can sing. Tens of thousands of them. Only the pretty ones get paid, though. If someone pays eighty dollars for a concert ticket and they come to watch and live through the performer vicariously, they
don’t want to be ugly. They want to be beautiful for a few hours. If they wanted to be ugly, they’d just go in the bathroom and watch themselves in the mirror.”
I thought about the country performers I’d listened to and watched on television, especially over the past few years, and all I could do was nod. All the most popular country singers were beautiful, even the women.
“So that’s all it takes?” I asked. “Beauty and a little talent?”
“A healthy dose of drive and a treacherous heart are distinct advantages, but even with beauty, talent, drive, and treachery, making it big is still a lottery. Luck is the most important part of the process.”
A short, chubby, balding black man appeared just then, wearing a white coat and shirt and black pants. His hair was receding and starting to gray, and his cheeks were full and round. He walked slowly and carried a rectangular tray at waist level.
“My goodness, Michael,” Lana said. “Could you move any slower? The man asked for coffee. Where have you been? Did you have to pick and grind the beans?”
“Had to grow ’em first, Mizz Lana. Got ’em here as quick as I could. So whacha need now, missy? Wants me ta sing fo’ da gentleman? Wants me ta dance? Wants me ta smile at him?”
For a second, I thought I’d been transported in time to Tara, or maybe to the set of a bad Al Jolson vaudeville act.
“Stop it,” Lana said. “Mr. Dillard, meet Michael Pillston, our chef. He’s a well-educated and articulate man, but he’s angry because his assistant—a woman he hired, mind you—has called in sick today, and he is forced into the lowly position of having to serve us. Poor baby. Michael, this is Joe Dillard. We’ve hired him to represent Paul.”
“I know,” the chef said in a deep bass. He turned to me, bowed slightly, and gave me a cross between a smile and a smirk. “Welcome to Xanadu, Mr. Dillard. I hope it isn’t your downfall.” And with that, he turned sharply on his heel like a solider and marched out of the room. The slow gait was gone.
I’d been away from home for just over an hour, and already I’d ridden on a private jet and met Paul Milius’s pilot, copilot and a stewardess named Becky. I’d landed in a paradise called “Xanadu” and met a chauffeur who introduced himself as David, a country star named Lana Raines-Milius, her personal assistant, Lisa, and a grumpy chef named Michael.
“Wow,” I said, picking up my coffee and looking at Lana. “This place is really…interesting.”
“Oh, honey,” she said as her lips curled into a mischievous smile. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
CHAPTER 6
Paul Milius wasn’t nearly as pretty as his wife, although his physical appearance had undergone some fairly significant changes in recent years based on older photos I’d seen of him on the Internet. His nose was smaller and straighter than it had been in early photos, and his hairline had moved forward and smoothed out. His teeth, of course, were perfect. He had the face of a man with loads of money and vanity to match.
Milius was a large, somewhat lumbering man with mid-length, curly black hair, dark eyes, and a broad face. I met him in the visiting room at the Metro-Davidson Correctional Center in Nashville, about ninety minutes after I got off the plane in Franklin, and the first thing I did was look at his hands. I couldn’t help it. Could he have strangled a young woman with them? They were formidable. The answer was yes.
The look on Milius’s face was a mixture of desperation, confusion, and fear, similar, I suppose, to an animal caught in a trap. The problem Milius faced was that he couldn’t get out of the trap even if he gnawed off an arm or a leg. We went through the formalities of introduction and a bit of small talk before I said, “Your wife paid me, Mr. Milius, but I need to be certain that you’re comfortable with me representing you before I appear in court with you.”
“I’m comfortable with it,” he said.
“Do you know anything at all about me?”
“I know a lot about you, Mr. Dillard. My wife is thorough, sometimes to the point of obsession. I know how old you are, how many kids you have, and where you went to high school, undergrad, and law school. I know how many cases you’ve tried and your record in court. I know you’ve been a defense lawyer, a prosecutor, and now you’re a defense lawyer again. I know you’re a decorated Army veteran, and I know you were a Ranger. I know your parents are dead and your wife is ill, and I’m extremely sorry about that. You have two grown children and one grandchild. Your house and land are paid for, you’re not in debt, and you don’t gamble, don’t do drugs, don’t drink much, and don’t smoke. You pay your taxes on time. I also know you most likely killed several men who tried to assassinate you and your family a couple years ago at your home, and you were probably at least indirectly responsible for the disappearance of a man named John Lipscomb, whom I was acquainted with, by the way, and despised. You aren’t afraid to stand up to authority, you aren’t afraid to bend rules when you think they need to be bent, and you aren’t afraid of cops or big cases, although I believe this is probably by far the biggest case you’ve ever taken on. As far as I’m concerned, you seem to be just what I need.”
I could have done without the references to John Lipscomb and the Colombian sicarios Leon Bates and I had killed, but since it was all true, there wasn’t much I could say.
“Your turn,” Milius said. “Tell me what you know about me.”
“I made some inquiries,” I said. I suppose I could have reached into my briefcase and pulled out a file, but since he’d rattled off all the information about me without looking at anything, I decided to show off and do the same.
“Forty-four years old, married to Lana Raines-Milius for fifteen years, no children. Son of Eugene and Daphne Milius. Born in Queens, New York, moved to Nashville when you were sixteen. Only child. Your father, who was a pharmaceutical rep, died of a stroke when you were eighteen. Your mother is still alive, a retired chemistry professor, and lives near you outside Franklin. You graduated high school with honors and then graduated from Belmont College in three years. Majored in business management. Went to work immediately for Steelhead Records in the promotions department. Worked for four other record companies before you decided to start your own label when you were twenty-seven years old. Gathered a small group of investors, incorporated off-shore, and went to it. You’ve done well and are responsible for ‘democratizing’—a phrase you introduced to the world—the country music industry through the use of social media. Estimated personal net worth is $450 million and growing. Reputation as a tough negotiator but no serious accusations of dishonesty. Borderline diabetic, never been arrested.”
“Until now,” he said with a sigh. “This is absolutely unbelievable. I don’t know how anyone could think I killed Kasey. I loved her like a daughter.”
“We don’t need to get into any specifics right now,” I said. “Too many eyes and ears in these visiting booths. I’ll try to get the judge to set a bond when we go to court in a couple hours. If he does, we’ll talk somewhere more private. In the meantime, the judge will ask you at the arraignment whether you understand what you’re charged with. Do you?”
“They charged me with murder, didn’t they?”
“Second-degree. Second-degree murder is pretty simple. It’s defined by the statute as a knowing killing of another.”
“Ridiculous. I didn’t kill her. The district attorney is a friend of mine, for God’s sake.”
I help up my hand to silence him. “Not now,” I said. “I need to tell you that second-degree murder is a Class A felony in Tennessee. It carries a minimum of fifteen years and a maximum of sixty years. Since you’ve never been arrested, you’ll probably qualify as what’s known as a mitigated offender. That means the minimum sentence for you would be thirteen and a half years, and the maximum would be twenty-five years. If you plead and take the minimum, you’d be eligible for release on parole after serving a little less than three years. I’m not saying the parole board would release you the first time you came up—they most likely wouldn’t release
you until you’ve served at least ten years—but it’s possible. Do you understand?”
“You’re saying I could plead guilty to murder and serve less than three years? Is that what I’m hearing?”
It’s funny how people hear what they want to hear sometimes. I’d just told him he’d most likely serve ten years and he’d heard three.
“I’m saying it’s possible, not probable. Depends on the prosecutor and the judge and whether you even want to consider a plea. Since your wife paid me so much money, I’m operating under the assumption that we’ll be going to trial. Besides, if the prosecutor wants to stick it to you and the judge is on his side, you could plead guilty and draw a twenty-five-year sentence.”
“You’re making me dizzy,” he said.
“Sorry. It’s a little complicated, but you’ll figure it out eventually. For now, when the judge asks you if you understand the charge against you, just say yes. We’ll plead not guilty, and I’ll ask for bond. I’m assuming you can handle a significant bond? Say a million dollars?”
Milius nodded.
“Do you have a passport?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll have to surrender it. What about a trial date? Do you want to be tried as quickly as possible, or do you want to drag it out as long as we can?”
“I want this behind me as soon as possible.”
“Good. I’ll see you in court. And remember this very, very clearly, Mr. Milius. You don’t have any friends at this jail. If anyone wants to talk to you about your case, they’re either trying to set you up to extort you, or they’ll make a deal with the prosecution and testify against you. So keep your mouth shut.”
CHAPTER 7
