Treble at the Jam Fest

by Leslie Budewitz

  “Easy, girl,” I said as Pumpkin knocked the spoon out of the bowl in her zeal for one more drop, but I knew as it clattered on the slate table top and tumbled to the floor that I was talking to myself.

  Deep breath in, deep breath out. I held my fingers above the keyboard. You know how to do this. Start at the very beginning.

  First column: Motive. Next, Means. Third, Opportunity. And fourth, Questions.

  First row: Gerry Martin. I had lots of questions about him. The first was his relationship with Rebecca Whitman. I clicked on the top row and inserted a column between opportunity and questions, labeling it Relationship to Victim. Then I added Rebecca’s name on the left, though she wasn’t my first suspect. I could reprioritize later.

  “Oops. Nearly forgot my favorite.” I added a new column,

  Whabouts, short for Whereabouts. Not a word used much in daily life, but the key to a successful investigation.

  Time to focus on suspects. Below Rebecca’s name came Dave Barber’s. Had he struck back, angry over Martin’s attempt to shove him off the stage—or lashed out for some other reason? In his backstage conversation with Marv Alden, Dave made clear that he’d wanted Martin out of the way—and that a woman’s insistence on keeping Martin on the playlist had been a major obstacle. He had to mean Rebecca.

  What about other suspects? I set the laptop on the table and started pacing—not easy in a space sixteen feet by twelve. I paused in front of the fireplace to scoop up Sandburg and made the half turn. You have to be careful with dark-furred animals—both Sandy and Pepé the dog had suffered the errors of outrageous footing far too often.

  His paw snagged my silver hoop earring as he draped one front foot over my shoulder, and I wriggled the hoop free. Gabby shared Tracy’s love of unusual earrings; my tastes are simpler.

  “What about the Drakes?” I asked Sandy. Had Gabby lost her cool over the slight?

  I reached the wall between living room and bedroom and pivoted. I hated to think about a man’s death in such calculating terms.

  But both the reality and the prospect of death demand hard, scary questions. What if Tanner died? What if Adam stayed in Minneapolis, to run the business? I couldn’t ask Adam to sell the company his best friend had built from the ground up. Tanner had taken it from a dorm room dream to an innovative operation employing dozens of people in its mills and sewing rooms, not to mention its sales force and other staff. Sell it off to some faceless conglomerate that saw “green manufacturing” and “sustainable, American-made” as nothing more than marketing slogans?

  Whoa, Nellie, as my granddad used to say. You got the cart halfway down the track while the horse’s nose is stuck in the feedbag.

  I studied Sandy’s small, neat face. He opened one eye, the other barely a slit. “You’re right, I’m overreacting. Getting it over with, so I can behave rationally when the time comes.”

  He gave me a yeah, sure look and nestled into my shoulder.

  The CD ended, the machine clicking and whizzing the next disc into place. I had no idea what was in the player. The lyrics began.

  One hand cradling Sandy against my shoulder, I pushed “stop,” then “forward.” I did not need Willie Nelson’s advice on being lonely. I wasn’t blue or lonely, just sad. And a bit uncertain.

  I punched more buttons and the Gerry Martin disc began to play. I let it continue. The man had been good. He deserved an audience.

  He deserved justice, even if no one in town liked him very much. Tanner’s illness had reminded me that life is fragile, and unfair. Maybe Martin had hit a rough patch, mad at the world for not going his way, as Rebecca had said. Letting his jerk flag fly. Maybe he wouldn’t have gotten over it. Or maybe he’d have come out the other side the Mother Teresa of the jazz world.

  It didn’t matter. We didn’t get to judge him. But he’d died in my town, and I wanted to do everything I could to get him justice.

  I sat, tucking the cat next to me with care. Added Gabrielle Drake to the lineup. But I couldn’t overlook Ann and Grant.

  Gabby’s overprotective parents had put a lot of stock in Martin’s patronage. Had they feared he would use a youthful misstep as an excuse to block her promising career?

  Two more rows filled in.

  “You can’t leave him out just because you like him.” Reluctantly, I added Sam Kraus to the list, then clicked on the Motive column.

  The look Sam had given Jennifer this afternoon, when I thanked her for soothing Martin’s ruffled feathers, came back to me. I added jealousy—affair?

  I huffed out a ragged breath, then typed in resentment—musical success? Musical tensions? Hard to imagine salt-of-the-earth Sam summoing murderous rage. But investigating shows you faces of people—people you thought you knew—that you’ve never seen before.

  And sometimes, you wish you could go backwards. Unsee what you had never expected that now felt glaringly obvious.

  I peered at the rows and columns. They mocked me.

  I could almost hear Kim telling me to stop before I put myself in danger. If it came to that, I would stop. Ike Hoover might pin his badge to a polo or a fleece quarter-zip, but he carried a gun and the keys to the jailhouse. There are things people won’t tell a cop, no matter how much they like him or how piercing his eyes.

  Talking to me is different. I’m their friend and neighbor. The cute girl who runs the shop down the street, who sells their favorite strawberry jam, carries free-range chickens that actually had run free, and is almost always willing to help with any village event.

  I stifled a yawn. Closed Excel and powered the laptop down. Those empty boxes would have to wait.

  Thinking of Ike made me think about my father. My mother’s remarriage would redefine our family. Bill had been part of “us” for nearly a year now. But marriage changes things.

  I put my wineglass out of cat reach and padded over to the bench by the front door. Dug in the bottom of my blue bag for the black box. Opened it. Peered at it. Carried it into the bedroom and slipped the ring on my right hand.

  With the rest of the clan so near, and his revelation about Tanner’s illness, I had not had the chance to tell Adam about my sister’s weird reaction to my mother’s engagement.

  When he left, what else wouldn’t I get to tell him?

  A few weeks away, a month or two—that would be fine. We’d text and talk, and in those moments when nothing but the other person’s face would do—well, they make apps for that.

  But what if …?

  I sat on the edge of the bed. Stretched out my arm and held up my fingers. The center diamond caught the light from the lamp on the nightstand and sparkled. The channel stones glistened, and the white gold, worn thin from so many years on my mother’s hand, gleamed.

  I slipped the ring off and slid it on to my left hand. Outside, the wind picked up. A branch hit the side of the cabin, and the lamp flickered.

  I drew my knees to my chest, laid down my head, and cried myself to sleep.

  Fourteen

  I’m telling you guys. You won’t have any friends left if you keep killing them.” I picked up the dead mouse on the bottom step, carried it by the tip of its tail to the edge of the clearing, and flung the evidence of my cats’ crimes deep into the woods. Wiped my fingers on my skirt and glanced down.

  “Ohhh.”

  I crouched and cradled the nest in both hands. Built by beak and claw, as expertly as any human basket weaver’s work. But nothing could have kept the weathered twigs and branches safe in last night’s storm. I scanned the duff along the edge of the woods, afraid of what I’d find.

  And there it was, nearly hidden by the moldering leaves and needles. Lightly speckled, the palest, softest blue, the tiny egg lay crushed on one side.

  “Get back, Pumpkin.” I didn’t think my fat tabby cared about the empty nest or broken robin’s egg—she was simply curious what I might
be up to. But I couldn’t bear to leave the egg behind, so I slid my curved fingers underneath it and laid it gently in the nest, then stood.

  “Come on, you two.” Pumpkin trotted after me, Sandy running ahead and leaping up the steps to our deck. It’s not that they’re actually trained or obedient—they are cats—but they know I pour them each a few tasty tuna treats before I leave for work.

  I tucked the nest into the corner of the kitchen window sill, sniffing back a tear. It would be safe there—as if that mattered now—and I could see it when I washed up.

  A few minutes later, I stood in the driveway, surveying my domain. The calm waters and clear skies belied last night’s winds.

  That was equally true in town, I realized a few minutes later. The few branches that lay along the narrow highway gave no hint that major gusts had stormed through. And you couldn’t tell that a man had been killed, a festival threatened, plans ruined.

  Plans. Gerry Martin’s plans to build a recording studio intrigued me. I’d heard about it first from Gabby, then in the conversation I’d overheard between Barber and Alden. A town like ours needs a diverse economy—anything that provides construction work, followed by a few steady jobs, is good. If it brings in outsiders and their cash, double good.

  And it meant moving his home base here. Where Rebecca, the maybe-ex-lover, lived.

  I passed by my usual turn into the village and the entrance to the state park. The natural place to dig for more info, or to start recruiting someone else to open a studio, was the music crowd. They were busy this week.

  So I’d start with the builders’ crowd.

  Oversized pickups filled most of the parking spaces in front of Perk Up, the breakfast-lunch-coffee joint on the highway, next to the gas station and convenience store. I slipped the Subaru in between a red rig advertising Jewel Bay Construction, aka Chuck the Builder, and a log home builder’s mud-splashed blue truck.

  “Coffee, black.” The woman behind the counter wore a denim shirt with CYNDI embroidered on the breast pocket. I took half a step back for a better eye on the pastry case. “And a sugar twist.”

  “Hey, Erin.” Chuck the Builder stood and swung a wrought iron chair out for me. “What brings you in here?”

  “Classing up the joint,” the log home builder said, his baby blues twinkling.

  “Change of pace.” I set my plate and cup on the table, and sat. “Good to see you guys.”

  The morning paper from Pondera lay on the table. The feature photo on the front page had been taken from the river, looking up. The headline read Musician Tumbles to His Death Along Popular Trail.

  “You just missed Ike Hoover,” Chuck said. “Not that any of us knew anything, or that Ike would say anything. But I have to wonder, the way he’s poking around, if that body ended up on the rocks by accident.”

  Cyndi refilled his cup. “That poor man.”

  I presumed she meant Martin, not Ike, but in the middle of a death investigation, it could be either one.

  “Why all the fuss about music?” asked a man I didn’t know. “Most of it’s noise to me.”

  I took a bite of the twist, all sugar and air.

  “And they wonder why you spend three nights a week at the bowling alley,” the log guy replied. “Takes all kinds.”

  The bowler chuckled. “Ain’t that the truth.”

  “His name was Gerry Martin. He was planning to build a recording studio somewhere around town.” I took a teeny sip. Too hot, thin, bitter. I’m not the coffee snob Adam is, but this stuff tasted burned.

  Chuck had angled his chair away from the table, making room to stretch his legs. Now he leaned back, scooting down an inch or two in his chair, but said nothing.

  Patience, Erin. I dipped my twist in the coffee, hoping the fried dough would soak up enough caffeine to give me a decent dose without me having to drink the stuff.

  “Don’t suppose it matters now, but yeah. I worked up the plans for him and his sound engineer down in Texas. Woulda been a good piece of work.” Chuck held his coffee mug in front of his chest, his tongue prodding his cheek as if he was working a tooth. Or thinking.

  “You suppose anyone else would be interested? Town could use a good clean business like that.”

  “Easier said than done,” the bowler said. “You were talking half a mill, weren’t you? Apart from the land.”

  “Or better,” Chuck said. “Though land wasn’t a problem.”

  That surprised me. “So Martin already owns property here? I didn’t know that.” I turned to the bowler. “You gotta admit, noise or not, the festival’s a boon for the local economy.”

  He grinned. Chuck set his cup on the table and rose. “Those two-by-fours aren’t gonna nail themselves. Good to see you, Erin. Danke for the java, Cyndi.”

  When the leader of the pack departs, the rest get restless. Besides, we all had our own two-by-fours to nail, metaphorically speaking.

  In my car, I pulled up the county property tax records, a gold mine for the serious sleuth. Too small to read on my phone.

  A few minutes later, I rounded the corner in front of the Jewel Inn. A runner sped down the hill from the River Road and headed up the way I’d come—a young woman in a white T-shirt and tight black running shorts, on a good clip.

  Took me longer than it should have to recognize her.

  Why was Gabrielle Drake out for a run? The workshops should be starting any minute now.

  I parked in my usual spot in the Back Street lot. Other teachers—both the regular faculty and the guest artists—would have been thrilled to have her in a class on vocals, jazz guitar, or ensemble work. But emotions don’t always cooperate.

  When my father was killed, I’d been at the Playhouse for a rehearsal. I’d been ticked off at him, for some long-forgotten reason. And in my seventeen-year-old pea brain, the thoughts and self-

  recriminations had gotten twisted and tangled, and I’d felt so guilty for being angry the very last time I’d seen him that I might as well have killed him myself.

  Losing a mentor wasn’t the same. But it had to suck.

  I climbed out of the Subaru, not bothering to lock it, and crossed the alley. In the next block, Rebecca’s nearly identical Subaru stood behind her gallery. The semi-official car of Northwest Montana.

  After nearly a year, our courtyard still made me tingle with delight. Liz Pinsky would say that’s how feng shui works. Maybe so, but it could as easily have been the industrial-strength cleaning and a few well-positioned planters.

  Or the fountain—metal mountains and fish in front of a corrugated metal backdrop. Chuck had introduced us to the man who created it. Chuck’s niche is remodeling, the more complicated the better. And more profitable. He’d worked in Red’s last fall, after my mother bought the property—not a high-end or high-dollar project, but the building was nearly as old as the Merc and needed an experienced hand. He’d also done the build-out for Le Panier and Chez Max next door, a newer building than ours but more of a hodgepodge.

  If I remembered right, Chuck had created that swanky apartment above the gallery for Rebecca, too.

  She must have introduced him to Martin. The log home builder had called the studio a half-mill project. Five hundred thousand is a lot of money. If the project had gone south, that might explain both Chuck’s reluctance to talk and the accusations Martin had flung at Rebecca.

  I needed real coffee. I marched through the Merc and into Le Pa­nier.

  “Double shot,” I told Wendy. “Your very best.”

  She raised one eyebrow and focused on her espresso machine. That’s Wendy for you.

  “Croissant, Erin? Or pain au chocolate?” Michelle, the other barista, asked.

  I am a creature of good habits, but after the sugar twist, my system needed more substance. “The veggie quiche. For here.”

  In the seventies, Jewel Bay outgrew
itself and much of the town’s commercial enterprise moved from “the village,” aka downtown, up to the highway, where more land was available and visibility higher. The hardware store became a full-scale building supply. The gas station moved and added auto parts.

  The new supermarket all but put Murphy’s Merc out of business. My granddad had been offered the opportunity to buy in, but his three boys had chosen other careers and he preferred to stay small and stay put. He’d remained the unofficial mayor of unincorporated Jewel Bay, but with a splintered kingdom. Occasionally, tensions flare—the town’s many festivals tend to be held in the village, and a few owners of highway businesses get irked at being asked to sponsor events that don’t send foot traffic past their doors. But most understand that bringing people in to town helps us all. Tourists need gas and groceries, and the more jam I sell, the more money the jam-maker and I have to spend elsewhere.

  But while the highway cadre patronizes the Perk Up, there’s always a morning crowd at the Jewel Inn, and another klatch that favors Le Panier. I sat at a tile-topped table with Heidi and Ginny Washington, our veteran bookseller.

  “We were chatting about Gerry Martin,” Ginny said. “I always stock a rack with local music and CDs by festival artists. Sold out of his yesterday.”

  “I’m not surprised.” Heidi’s bracelet slid down her arm as she raised the white china espresso cup to her red lips. “He wasn’t as popular as he used to be. I don’t know if he’d gone out of style, or lost his touch. But death sells.”

  That it did.

  “I heard last night that there have been some cancellations,” she continued. “Now that his death is national news.”

  “Students? Fans?”

  “Both,” she said. “And questions from sponsors. But the board is reaching out, like you suggested, and that ought to help reassure people. Reporters can’t be far behind.”

  With Ike and his deputies asking questions all over town, that would be inevitable.

  “What are you wearing?” Ginny reached for my hand. “Your mother’s engagement ring?”

  I nodded, my throat tight, and changed the subject. “Turns out, Martin was so ticked off after Friday night’s concert in the courtyard that he decided to leave early. What I don’t know is whether he told anyone, or whether he meant to ghost them and disappear.”