Highway 61 Resurfaced (v5)

by Bill Fitzhugh

  “He’s alive,” Rick said. “But I don’t think he knows what happened. He’s mumbling about bees or being under siege or something. I can’t understand what it is.” He looked up at her. “Did you look around? Is anyone else here?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s creepy. There’s nothing but trash in the rest of the house. It looks like everything he owns is in this one room.”

  The ambulance arrived a few minutes later. Rick and Lollie stepped out while the paramedics worked. Rick said, “All right, look. The cops will be here in a minute and we’re going to have to talk to them. Unless you want to be spending a lot of time with the police over the coming months, don’t volunteer anything about your grandfather’s death.”

  “Okay with me. What should we say?”

  Rick suggested a plausible story and told Lollie not to say anything more than that. She agreed. They went out to the front porch and sat on the railing, waiting for the cops. Lollie seemed rather calm, almost inappropriately so. Rick was unnerved by what he’d seen and he wondered why she wasn’t. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lollie checking her reflection in the window. She adjusted her blouse and brushed her hair back as if she was sitting there waiting for a date to arrive. This wasn’t the first time something about her had given Rick pause. In fact, the catalog of examples was getting thick enough to strain credibility. Why did she always pay in cash? Why hadn’t she hired him to find out who killed her grandfather? Was it a coincidence that the next guy he found for her was now being treated by paramedics? Why had she asked if Suggs had named his attacker? The more he thought about it, the more he was struck by the improbability of everything that had happened. An odd notion forced its way into his thoughts and he started shaking his head.

  Lollie noticed this and asked what he was thinking about.

  “The casinos,” he said. “I was wondering if I could call someone and ask what the odds are that two men I wanted to talk to would end up dead or dying the day after I tracked them down.” He gave her another sideways glance.

  “Why’re you looking at me like that?” It seemed to amuse her.

  “How am I looking at you?”

  “Like you think I beat up that old man,” she said, gesturing toward the house. “Or killed my grandfather.”

  “Well, now that you say it out loud, it does sound a little funny.”

  She was incredulous. “That’s what you were thinking?”

  Rick offered an embarrassed grin and scratched his scalp. “Well …”

  She stood up and faced him, arms folded across her chest. “You may want to keep in mind that you’re not the one who wanted to talk to my grandfather or his partner. I am. And now I can’t.”

  Rick mulled that over for a moment. Was he just being paranoid? Were there sensible answers to all his questions? “Maybe you’re right,” he said.

  “Maybe?”

  “It’s just, well … what’re the odds?”

  “I get your point,” she said. “But I don’t know what the answer is. You’re the PI. Figure it out and get back to me.” She nodded toward the street. “Meanwhile, cops are here.”

  Three squad cars arrived at the same time. After talking to the paramedics, one of the cops came out to the porch. He asked Rick and Lollie if they were the ones who’d found the man.

  “That’s right,” Rick said. “And we called 911 immediately.”

  “So he was conscious when you found him. Did he say anything?”

  “Nothing that made sense,” Rick said. “It was something that sounded like ‘be easy’ or ‘bees cease seeing’ or maybe one of the words was ‘pieces,’ because he had a piece of an old record in his hand when we found him.” The cop dutifully wrote everything down.

  Lollie said, “Is he going to make it?”

  The cop shook his head. “They don’t think so.” Just then the paramedics brought the gurney out with the sheet covering Lamar’s head. The cop pointed his clipboard at Rick and said, “So what were you doing here in the first place?”

  “I work at a radio station.” He handed the cop one of his WVBR business cards and told him that he and Lollie were doing research for a blues show they were planning to do. Figuring his story would sound more convincing if he piled on the facts, he went though the whole Blind, Crippled, and Crazy legend and explained that they were hoping to get Suggs to do an interview. When he finished, the cop seemed satisfied with the story and sent them on their way.

  They got in Rick’s truck and drove off. Lollie seemed to have put the whole episode behind her before they’d reached the bottom of Broadway. “So,” she said. “Who else can we talk to who might know more about my grandfather and these tapes?”

  Rick mentioned Beau Tillman, the juke-joint owner who’d said Woolfolk had died owing him money. And there were the three bluesmen, if any of them were still alive. Lollie said they ought to talk to Tillman next. Rick thought it was strange that she wasn’t more concerned about finding who killed Suggs and her grandfather, and why. He didn’t think coincidence could explain the two murders. But what could? He knew people were after the mythic Blind, Crippled, and Crazy tapes. But why would anybody kill these two old guys? And why now?

  Maybe he was looking at it from the wrong angle. Maybe it wasn’t about the tapes. Maybe it was about something else Woolfolk and Suggs had in common. If Beau Tillman was to be believed, they’d cheated their fair share of artists. Maybe somebody had been holding a grudge for a long time. Somebody who thought he’d been screwed and knew only one way to make things right. But then he had another, slightly farther-fetched idea. What if it was some blues fanatic avenging the suffering of the artists he revered? If that was the case, Rick wondered who might be next. Maybe others had already been killed. He hadn’t considered that before.

  And while these were all intriguing possibilities, Rick couldn’t stop wondering about Lollie’s casual attitude in the wake of these two killings. When they got back to the Vicksburg and pulled into the parking lot, where Lollie had again insisted on leaving her car, Rick said, “I’ll find out what I can from Beau Tillman and see who else we can track down who knew your grandfather. I’ll call you as soon as I get anything.”

  “I’ll be waiting to hear from you,” Lollie said as she got into her car.

  He gave her a wave and a smile as she pulled out of the parking lot. He also gave her license plate a good look.

  SMITTY CHISHOLM CALLED the station that night with the legal names for Blind Buddy Cotton (real name Bernard Lewis Cotton), Crippled Willie Jefferson (William Jeffrey Johnson), and Crazy Earl Tate (Earle Lincoln Tate). Rick didn’t find any of them in the master death file, so his next trick was trying to find them in real life. He doubted that any of them were involved in the murders of Woolfolk and Suggs, but he hoped they could give him ideas on anybody who might hold an old grudge against them. He also hoped one of them might know something about the whereabouts of the famous recording, though he couldn’t believe he’d be the first to ask.

  Approaching the last hour of his shift, Rick figured it was time to do the new segment of his show he’d been thinking about. He pulled a sound-effects CD and cued it up. Coming out of “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” Rick opened his mike and said, “There’s that Zimmerman character again with a song old enough to be your daddy. It’s eleven o’clock and you’re listening to WVBR-FM, Vicksburg, big rock by the big river. And now it’s time for … ” He played the sound effect of a lion’s roar. “Oops, wrong cat.” He hit the button again and got a meow. “There we go. It’s time now for the Crippled Crusty Boogers Blues Hour, brought to you by the Vicksburg Animal Shelter.” He pushed the button again and got a trumpeting elephant. “Got a big empty house that needs a little life added to it? The Vicksburg Animal Shelter has new and used elephants and convenient financing.” Three goats started bleating. “Front yard overgrown? Tired of all that mowing? Hurry down today for a herd of hungry ruminants.” An ominous rattlesnake rattle. “Looking for the perfect gift for that e
x-boyfriend?” Cows began mooing. “Always wanted to make your own cheese? The Vicksburg Animal Shelter has herds of hungry Holsteins!” He paused before pushing the button again. A lone dog began to howl, then faded as Rick said, “But seriously, there are hundreds of abandoned cats and dogs and other household pets just waiting for a good home. And even if you can’t adopt one of these guys, think about helping them out. Monetary donations are always welcomed, but you can also volunteer some time or give blankets, towels, newspapers, collars, leashes, and food. The Vicksburg Animal Shelter is a nonprofit organization and they need your help. Do what you can. Crusty Boogers and I thank you.”

  Rick started a record that opened with a bluesy guitar lick. “And now it’s time to sing the blues on WVBR. It’s the Crippled Crusty Boogers Blues Hour with Johnny Winter from 1969 doing ‘Black Cat Bone.’ ”

  RICK WOKE UP the next morning in a mood to indulge his suspicions about Lollie Woolfolk. He went to his office, pulled her file, and made some calls. It didn’t take long for things to unravel. The license-plate number he’d memorized turned out to have been stolen from a rental car. He drove over to the address on the client-information form. Rick hoped she hadn’t paid much for the house, since it was somewhere in the middle of the Mississippi River. As he drove back to his office, he tried to call her but discovered her phone was no longer in service. Turned out it was a throwaway. Rick was starting to get agitated.

  He called the police department in Belzoni, said he was writing a story for the Vicksburg Post about the murder of Tucker Woolfolk and was trying to confirm that his only living relative was a granddaughter named Lollie.

  “No, there’s a son, a Mr. John Woolfolk and his wife. Lollie’s their daughter. I spoke with them at the funeral.”

  “Funeral?”

  “Yeah,” the man said. “Yesterday.”

  Rick was now officially pissed off. He didn’t like being duped, it was bad for the reputation, bad for business. He’d beenhad. But by whom? And why? The why was the easier question to speculate about. Someone needed help finding the two men who were most likely to be in possession of the mythic tapes. Rick could only assume they were both killed so they couldn’t identify their attacker. The who was the hard part. Two things were obvious about the woman claiming to be Lollie. First, she wasn’t who she said she was, and second, she hadn’t killed Tucker Woolfolk, because she’d been at dinner with Rick the night he was murdered. That meant she had a partner. But knowing that didn’t help much. Since she’d tossed her cell phone, Rick figured he wasn’t going to see the faux Lollie again, at least not anytime soon. If that was true, it seemed to mean one of two things: Either he’d spooked her when he’d betrayed his suspicions about her, or maybe her partner had found the tapes at Lamar Suggs’s house.

  That’s when it hit him, oddly, from the blind side, as these things tend to. Lamar Suggs wasn’t saying “bees easy” or “bees cease seeing.” He was saying “BCC.” The initials for Blind, Crippled, and Crazy. He was telling Rick what had caused all the trouble.

  Rick called Smitty Chisholm at the museum and asked what the tapes might be worth.

  “You mean in dollars?”

  “Is there something else?”

  “How about artistic and historical value?”

  “Tell me about the money,” Rick said.

  Chisholm guessed they’d sell around ten thousand units in the U.S. and another ten in Europe. The Japanese market, he said, was much bigger, adding another thirty to forty thousand units. “Definitely a gold record, maybe platinum over time.”

  It was enough money to kill for, certainly, except for one problem. You’d have to show clear title to the master recordings before a major label would get within ten feet of them. And without big-league promotion and distribution, the value of the tapes was far less. Still, people were killed every day for virtually nothing, so maybe the folks after the tapes were the kind willing to settle for whatever they could get.

  Rick did think of one scenario where killing Woolfolk and Suggs both made sense and avoided the chain-of-title problem. That was if the killer stood to inherit from the killed. But since the woman who’d hired Rick wasn’t really Lollie Woolfolk, that didn’t seem to make any sense. Unless she was a Suggs. Or maybe her partner was related to one of the men. Or maybe it was even more complicated than that. The whole thing was starting to give Rick a headache.

  He went back to his office to start his search for the whereabouts of Blind Buddy Cotton, Crippled Willie Jefferson, and Crazy Earl Tate. He parked behind the Vicksburg and headed down Clay Street. When he walked into the antiques store, Pee Wee Milkwood waved from behind the counter and said, “Hey, wanna see something? Just got this.” He held up an old rifle. “It’s a model 1842 U.S. musket,” he said, handing it over. “Made by the Harpers Ferry Armory around 1853.”

  Rick found Pee Wee’s enthusiasm for and knowledge of the Civil War hard to resist. He wasn’t a gun devotees but this was a piece of history and Pee Wee always had something interesting to share about the item in question. “How long is this thing?”

  “ ’Bout six feet,” Pee Wee said. “The stock’s made of walnut; just beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Rick looked down the forty-two-inch barrel. “Not easy keeping this thing steady.”

  “You ain’t just whistling ‘Dixie,’ ” Pee Wee said. “That’s why you had to get toe-to-toe with the enemy, especially since it’s not rifled. Shot came out of there like a knuckleball. That’s the last smoothbore U.S. arm made in sixty-nine caliber. It was also the first U.S. weapon that the Harpers Ferry and Springfield Armories made with fully interchangeable parts.”

  “Interesting.” Rick was aiming at the front door when it opened. He lowered the gun as a young woman walked in and looked around as though browsing.

  “Be right with you,” Pee Wee said. She gave a wave like she didn’t need any help.

  “Be kind of hard to do those Marine Corps rifle drills with this thing,” Rick joked. He held it in front of him, both hands on the stock, and spun it slowly, like a propeller. “Especially if you mounted the bayonet.” Next he tried to swing the musket around like he’d seen soldiers do in countless movies.

  Pee Wee made a sudden gesture and said, “Careful.”

  What Rick didn’t know was that the browsing woman was now only four feet behind him and that the tip of the barrel was going up her skirt. She let out a surprised yelp, then screamed, “Perv!”

  Rick turned to see the pervert in question but instead saw the woman uncoiling from a martial-arts stance into a roundhouse punch. It caught him on the side of the head and he hit the floor like 170 pounds of paste wax.

  While he was out, which was less than a minute, he dreamed he was on the battlefield at Vicksburg when a cannonball hit him square in the head and bounced off, like in a cartoon. When he came to, Pee Wee and the woman were hovering over him. Pee Wee said, “You okay?”

  Rick blinked a couple of times and flexed his jaw. “What happened?”

  The woman said, “I thought you were trying to look up my skirt.”

  He looked at her. She was a striking brunette, tall and athletic, but peeking up dresses wasn’t his style. He sounded genuinely baffled when he said, “What?”

  “It was the musket,” Pee Wee said. “You were twirling it around and it, uh, goosed the lady.”

  “Oh.” Rick put a hand to the side of his face, thinking how he preferred being beaned by a purse. “Uhhh, sorry.”

  She pointed at his head. “That’s why I punched you.”

  “Looked like something out of a Charlie Chan movie,” Pee Wee said.

  “I think you mean Jackie Chan,” Rick said.

  “No, I mean Charlie Chan. You reacted about as slow as Warner Oland might’ve.”

  “Warner Oland?” Rick glared at Pee Wee as he pushed himself up on his elbows. “Help me up.”

  Pee Wee put his hand on Rick’s chest and held him down. “No, I think you should lie still for a second, see if yo
u can find any of your dignity down there.” He smirked.

  “I didn’t hit you that hard,” the woman said. “You went out pretty easy.”

  “I’m obliging that way,” Rick said. “So don’t let anybody tell you chivalry’s dead.”

  Pee Wee gave Rick a pat on the arm. “Don’t feel bad, she says she has a brown belt in karate.”

  Rick looked at him and said, “Yeah, that makes me feel much better.” He extended his hand toward the woman and said, “By the way, I’m Rick Shannon.”

  She looked surprised. “The radio guy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And private investigator?”

  “That’s right.”

  She pointed up the stairs, toward his office. “I was on my way up to see you.”

  “What are you, like an assassin or something?”

  “No, really. I was.” She kept nodding her head.

  Rick looked at her for a moment, then at Pee Wee, who had a what-do-you-know look on his face. Rick kept waiting for the woman to introduce herself, but she just smiled at him like she was as dazzled by the coincidence as Pee Wee. Finally, Rick said, “Well, who are you?”

  “Oh, my name’s Lollie Woolfolk.”

  11

  “HE STUCK A fork in my knee! What was I s’posed to do?” Crail was propped up in the bed in room 122 at the Best Western in Greenwood, a pint of Jim Beam on the table next to him and a cigarette burning in the ashtray.

  Cuffie was at the foot of the bed unbuttoning her shirt. “You were supposed to find the tapes, baby.”

  “I know,” Crail said, like he didn’t appreciate the implication that he was so dumb he didn’t know that. “And I looked all over that big-ass house. I’m tellin’ you, they weren’t there.”

  “Well, they’re somewhere,” Cuffie said, sounding her frustration. She walked over to the table and took a drag off the cigarette.

  Crail leaned forward to examine the three holes left by the fork’s tines. “Damn thing stuck too,” he said. “It was in the bone or between ’em, one. I had to pull like hell to get it loose. You ain’t never felt nothing like it.” He took a slug of the bourbon, then almost spit it out when Cuffie poked his wound. “Ow! Be careful. What’re you doin’?”