Memphis Noir

by Laureen Cantwell

  When we got to the front doors, Jed, dressed in his cute jacket, threw them open for us. He greeted the group and told them where to start the self-guided tour. He watched the people file in, a frown forming on his face when he saw the card players. I was last, and he bent toward me to whisper, “What the fuck? Did they stay all night and then come over here?”

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” I whispered back. “I’ll stick with them to see.”

  Tailing them might derail my personal, secret plan, but I could always put it off another day. What I wanted to do—had always wanted to do, but hadn’t had the guts for—was sneak upstairs and see the bathroom where Elvis died, lying in his vomit. Like I said, I was fascinated with seeing where famous people died. Something weird in me, I guess. I got to go to Ford’s Theatre once, where Lincoln got shot, and it was a thrill seeing the place Kennedy was ambushed too.

  I gave a longing glance at the staircase that led to the upstairs, to Elvis’s bedroom and the infamous bathroom. The stairway was forbidden to visitors. I always thought they could charge a bunch of money for people to go up there; they’d make a killing.

  The group, guided by their headsets, entered the first room. Everyone, even Eustace, got wide-eyed at the white furniture in the living room.

  “Did you ever see such a big couch?” Jory said.

  Eustace gave her an indulgent smile, like she was being stupid or naïve or both. She fluttered her eyelashes at Wes. He returned a sexy, quirky smile. She fluttered again. Eustace didn’t seem to notice.

  Kandy, though, looked like she’d about had it. She lifted her chin and moved a couple of steps away from Wes.

  Staying behind them, I didn’t think they’d noticed me. I wanted to hang back and see what was going on. Was Wes here to keep track of the card sharks? Maybe Aaron was doing that too.

  By the time we got to the Jungle Room, the one with that waterfall on the wall, the temperature around all three couples was dropping fast. Were none of them getting along? Even little Henry was squirming in his mother’s arms. She handed him to Aaron, and he took his baby, but gave Bea a dirty look. Bastard, I thought. It’s your kid. You can hold him. I hoped Jed wouldn’t be that kind of dad.

  The group trooped down the stairs to the game rooms, but when we got there Wes had disappeared, spit cup and all. I wondered how the hell he had gotten past me. There was an outside door, so maybe he’d left that way.

  Eustace and Jory were ignoring the well-stocked liquor rack behind the bar and talking softly to each other, their noses almost touching. I thought it didn’t look friendly, but I couldn’t really tell. I inched closer to hear what they were saying. I hoped there were enough people on the tour to shield me.

  Before I got to where I could hear what they were saying, Jory spun away from him. Eustace turned abruptly too, and started talking to Kandy, who had been just behind him.

  Now I had to inch closer and see what those two were talking about. Eustace was smiling at her, and she was returning a wary look. Kandy spotted me.

  “Hey, Izzy, what are you doing here?”

  “I could ask you the same thing. You been here as many times as I have.”

  “Yeah, well, Wes wanted to come.” She looked around. “Hey, where is he?”

  It had taken her long enough to notice he wasn’t there. But Jory wasn’t in the room anymore either. Jory and Wes? Stranger things have happened.

  Or maybe Wes was waiting somewhere to waylay Jory and teach her a lesson about cheating. You’d think he would want to teach Eustace too, but Eustace had height and weight on Wes.

  The group started to move to the billiards room. When Eustace and Kandy headed that way, his arm around her waist, I put my plan into action.

  Bea and Aaron seemed to have made up. Henry was sound asleep in his daddy’s arms, and his mommy was beaming, touching shoulders with her husband. Nice that someone’s getting along, I thought.

  I hurried up the stairs, through the Jungle Room, kitchen, dining, and into the living room, then stopped. There were voices in the front hall. One was Jed’s, but I didn’t recognize the other. No, others. There were two more people there. I flattened myself against the living room wall, willing them to leave.

  “See you later,” said a female voice as she headed for the living room—where I was!

  I scrambled into the dining room, then through to the kitchen where I crouched in the corner by the ancient security system, which was a couple of small TV screens and wall phones. My palms were itching. I opened my mouth so my nervous breathing couldn’t be heard. I knew they didn’t like tourists wandering around alone all over the place.

  I heard steps moving to the Jungle Room.

  I started to rise, then heard another set of steps coming from the Jungle Room. They continued out of the kitchen, and I started to get up again. Yet another set of footfalls came from the Jungle Room. I ducked.

  What the hell was going on?

  I waited a good ten minutes, then stuck my head out. No one was there. I made my way back to the front hall.

  This time I heard angry male voices.

  “How did you think y’all would get away with it?” That accent had to be Wes.

  “Here’s the deal.” This nasal voice was Aaron. “Give us back what you stole last night, and we let you get off without a beating.”

  There was scuffling, muffled protests, then I heard them go out the front door.

  Should I go after them? See if I could help? The hall was empty. It was now or never. I wasn’t about to let my opportunity pass. I took a deep breath for courage and tripped up the carpeted stairs as fast as I could, my heart racing. I got to the top and stopped. I had no idea where the bathroom was. I tried a few doors until I found what looked like it might be Elvis’s bedroom. It was dominated by an oversized bed. Some clothing was strewn about, maybe the same things that had been there the night he died. Was it being preserved as a shrine?

  A door led to, I was sure, the bathroom. I grinned. This was it. I was going to see the place poor Elvis died after taking all those drugs that fateful night. I crossed to the doorway. I turned the knob, psyching myself up, and nudged the door open.

  I had read somewhere that the bathroom carpet was red. That must have changed, because the floor was tile now. Sure, they would want the carpet changed, after the vomit that Elvis landed in.

  I pushed the door open more, inch by inch, savoring my anticipation. I glanced behind to make sure nobody was about to shoo me away. Turned back to the bathroom.

  There it was. The black porcelain toilet. The one Elvis had fallen off, to his death.

  There was something else too.

  A woman knelt at the toilet. The lid was up. Her head was inside.

  After a moment of shock, I knelt beside her and pulled her head up, out of the water. When I lowered it to the floor, her head flopped at an unnatural angle. One of her eyelashes floated in the bowl alongside a shiny brownish object. Her left arm, which had been tucked under her, fell to the floor, her rings clanging. Her face was badly bruised, but it was Jory, for sure. And she was dead.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” a deep voice said behind me.

  “I, I just found her like this. I was trying to see if—”

  “Stand up.”

  I stood, and a large man in a security uniform took two long strides to reach Jory. Water ran from her ruined hairdo onto the hard tile floor. Her eyeliner was all smudged, and her thick makeup clumped on her face. None of that would bother her now.

  The man felt for a pulse and shook his head. He spoke into his radio, and another security person was there in less than a minute.

  Water and blood dripped off her face onto the floor, blending with a few brown spots.

  “What did you do to her?” asked the large one.

  “I just lifted her head to see . . . to see if she was all right.”

  “No, I mean what did you do to her before you dunked her in the toilet?”

  I took
a step backward. “You think that I . . . ? I just found her.”

  “What’re you doing here?”

  The second guy, a short redhead, was calling 911.

  “It’s been a goal of mine for a long time,” I started to explain.

  “To kill someone in Elvis’s bathroom?”

  “No! To see this room. She was here when I got here.”

  After the cops arrived, I was handcuffed and taken out the front door, past Jed. The way my arms were wrenched behind me like that killed my poor shoulder.

  “Izzy! What’s going on?”

  “They think I killed Jory!”

  “Who’s Jory?”

  There was no sign of Wes or Aaron.

  The cop hustled me to his car and shoved me into the backseat.

  “I’ll be right there!” Jed yelled. “I’ll come to the station!”

  Later, he told me he had come right away, but I was in a small, stuffy room being questioned for hours while he waited. I fell into his arms in the reception area. The whole night remains fuzzy to me to this day. I was so scared I couldn’t stop shaking while I was being hammered with stupid questions. Not that I mentioned they were stupid questions. I’m not dumb.

  Jed took me home, and I had a hot bath and a couple of cups of tea, laced with bourbon. It’s not bad in a pinch. Even with all that, my shoulder was still on fire. Morning came real soon. I called in sick. Agnes raised holy hell, but I told her I couldn’t come, I’d been in a wreck and spent the night at the hospital. No way was I going to tell her I’d been in jail, being accused of murder.

  Jed called in sick too, and we spent the morning racking our brains, trying to figure out what the hell had happened. He brought me an ice pack for my shoulder.

  “Look, Wes left before she did,” I said. “I thought they were gonna meet up somewhere. She was on the outs with her old man, far as I could tell.”

  “Did you tell the cops that?”

  “Of course. But I don’t know his last name, or anything about him. Except that he was upset about the card game and was hanging out with Kandy. I gave ’em her name.”

  “Uh, she’s not gonna like that.”

  “You’re right. She’ll never forgive me. But what was I supposed to do? Anyway, it looked like she was through with him.”

  “Was everybody breaking up with everybody during that tour?” Jed asked.

  “It looked that way. They were arguing about the card game too.” I took off the ice pack.

  I told him about hearing people come through the kitchen while I hid there and the threats in the front hall.

  “Were they threatening Jory?”

  “I don’t know if they’d have time to do that, then kill her before I got upstairs. I wonder if they were threatening Eustace. Maybe one of them had already killed Jory. I think I should talk to Kandy.”

  “Will she be at work?”

  “Not sure. Sometimes she works the night desk.”

  I called the Peabody, and Kandy answered.

  “It’s me, Izzy. What time do you get off?”

  “Izzy! What happened? No one would tell us anything.”

  I told her I’d spill everything after her shift. She met us at a little dive bar near where Jed and I live, and the three of us got a booth in the back corner.

  As I told her about finding Jory’s body upstairs, her eyes got wider and wider. “How awful for you. What do you think happened? Did she slip and fall?”

  “Considering how beat-up her face was, I doubt it. I think her neck was broken too. It flopped all funny-like.”

  “Somebody killed her?”

  “The cops thought I did.”

  Kandy shook her head slowly.

  “Kandy, I have to ask you. About Wes. He left the tour, then Jory left.”

  “And that older guy too.”

  “Eustace? Jory’s husband?”

  “Yeah, right after I noticed you missing, he was gone. It was weird, everyone leaving like that.”

  “Did you think Wes might be meeting up with Jory somewhere?”

  “In the upstairs bathroom?”

  “Well, more likely the bedroom. That would be sacrilegious, but maybe they don’t care.”

  “Wes told me they had a thing once, but it was a long time ago.”

  Jed and I glanced at each other. Did Wes and Jory meet up, quarrel, and he kill her? Then come downstairs and threaten . . . Eustace?

  “Wes could have told her he wanted to talk to her, maybe say they were going to rekindle their old flame,” Jed speculated. “Then, when she showed up, he told her how angry he was over the card game, and they fought.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Did you see Aaron leave?”

  “They both left,” Kandy said, “to change the baby. He had a poopy diaper. Stunk to high heaven.”

  Something about the scene in the bathroom was still bothering me. Those brown spots. Were they tobacco juice? Had Wes been there and missed his spit cup? Or tipped it while they fought—or rather while he beat the shit out of Jory?

  Maybe. But something else was nagging at the back of my brain. I couldn’t dredge it up.

  “Look,” Kandy said, “I should tell you about those people. It’s complicated. You know Eustace is a playwright, right?”

  “I figured that out. Eustace and Jory Rage.”

  “They came through here a few years ago and stayed at the Peabody,” she continued. “Jory was drunk a lot and flirting with everyone, including the bellhops. Eustace and I, well . . .”

  “You fucked him?”

  “Just a few times. It wasn’t recent. But do you know about Wes?”

  “What about Wes?”

  “He had a bit part in that first play, but got dropped from all the productions after that.”

  “And he fucked Jory, right?”

  “Well, those people do that a lot, you know.”

  I held my head in my hands. “There are tons of motives floating around here.”

  Kandy shrugged. “I suppose so. I’d better go. I have to get to work early tomorrow.”

  I wondered if that were true. Did she have a motive?

  * * *

  That night, I tossed and turned until Jed said I could go sleep on the couch if I kept it up. I stayed as still as I could, but my mind spun with motives and suspects.

  Jory was dead. Someone killed her. It wasn’t me.

  Was it Wes, her old lover? Was that his tobacco spit on the floor of the bathroom?

  Was it Kandy, wanting to get back together with Jory’s husband?

  While I was huddled in the corner of the Jungle Room, other people had traipsed through, moving toward the front of the house. It could have been Kandy. It could have been Eustace. Bea and Aaron left the tour. Wes had already left it. I was putting my money on Wes.

  In the morning, before I left for work, I called the police and told them my theory about the brown spots and Wes. I also gave them the background I’d learned from Kandy.

  They let me talk to a detective working on the case. “We’ve gone into backgrounds on everyone involved. The substance you saw wasn’t tobacco juice. It appears to be soap that dripped on the floor.”

  There went that theory. The soap on the sink was brown.

  “Is there any evidence anyone else was there?”

  “Besides you, you mean?”

  Yes, that’s what I meant, you moron. I didn’t say that. I wasn’t stupid.

  That’s when a lightbulb went off. I figured out what was bothering me about the murder scene: the thing floating in the toilet.

  Later in the day I asked Jed if he’d ever met Jory Cay. He’d acted like he hadn’t before.

  Now he clenched his jaw and closed his eyes. “It’s not a good memory. Eustace hired me for a part in The Rabid Night, kind of a big part. He was excited about me. Then Jory”—he bit down on her name—“scotched the whole deal. I wouldn’t sleep with her, and she got me fired after three rehearsals.”

  “What part was it?” I got a cold fee
ling in my chest.

  “Kondo, the supporting male part.” His eyes glinted. I’d never seen him so angry, so bitter.

  The guy who had played Kondo had gone on to ever bigger and better things and was now a top box office draw.

  I took a short breath and swallowed my inclination to pull away. I reached out to touch Jed’s arm. “Aw hell, I’m really sorry about that.”

  “So am I.” He poured himself three fingers of bourbon. No tea.

  * * *

  The TV news carried the story the next night. Eustace Rage was arrested and charged with the beating and drowning of his wife. On the screen, he looked like he’d been beat up bad. Aaron and Wes? The reporter said Eustace had admitted that his jealousy flared up when he saw his wife getting back together with Wes, the man he’d gotten rid of all those years ago. She’d had other affairs over the years, but nothing like the one she’d had with Wesley Stark. However, Eustace insisted he hadn’t killed his wife. He loved her.

  No one ever mentioned the guitar pick in the toilet.

  By bedtime, the fire in my shoulder went away. The cold in my gut didn’t. I looked at Jed after he was asleep, trying to decide whether to turn him in or leave him come morning.

  THROUGH VALLEYS

  by JAMEY HATLEY

  Westwood

  for Katori Hall

  I am not a librarian. I don’t hold the proper degree, and librarians are very particular about titles. Nevertheless, I am efficient and tidy and quiet. Exactly what you would expect unless you are actually looking looking. In this tiny library in the hood, I am a ghost in old-ladyish shoes, disappearing down an aisle with a cart full of books. I nestle them in perfect order so that Sula, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Eva’s Man are there right when you need them.

  “Here comes lunch,” said Miss Anne, the legitimate librarian and branch manager.

  No one delivers over here, where boundaries are messy—Westwood, Walker Homes, Valley Forge, even Whitehaven. Still, for a week or so, a skinny teenager in a wifebeater and sagging shorts arrived with enough food to feed a small family. Crumpy’s hot wings. Fish plates from Kimble’s Fish Market. Barbecue from A&R. Steaks from Marlowe’s. Pizza from Exlines’. Each day I tried to send the food back. Each day the teen refused.