Killer Riff

by Sheryl J. Anderson

  Was I being analyzed or tested? I decided to play along. “No, because if I change my mind in five minutes, it will still have been a pleasure to meet you, but not much fun getting to know you.” I unfurled my napkin, rerouting it into my lap.

  Olivia permitted me to see a flash of brilliant white, perfectly straight teeth. “Excellent point.”

  “I wasn’t planning on this interview being adversarial, were you?” I asked.

  “Not at all,” she said, “I just like people to appreciate the weight of what they say.”

  “Occupational hazard of being a therapist?”

  “I think of it more as a requirement of being an intelligent human being.”

  “Do you mean what you say when you suggest your father was murdered?”

  This time, the smile was genuine, but sad. “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “Have you shared your concern with the authorities?”

  She nodded. “I’ve been told there’s no evidence to support my assertion. But all that means is, they aren’t looking hard enough.”

  “What do you think they should be looking for?”

  “Claire Crowley’s fingerprints. She killed my father.”

  3

  I had to give her credit: Olivia Elliott seemed fully appreciative of the weight of what she had said, even giving me a delicate scrunch of the nose and mouth so I’d understand how terribly awkward she knew all this was for everyone involved.

  But where she was cool and unflappable, I was decidedly flapped. I paused a moment, expecting the entire restaurant to fall silent and a few stuffed shirts to explode. But everyone kept talking and cell phones kept ringing and Olivia kept smiling as I made sure I understood exactly what she was saying.

  “You think Claire Crowley killed your father,” I said, dropping my voice a few decibels and hoping she’d follow suit.

  “I know she did,” she said firmly but a little more quietly.

  “Even though his death was accidental.” I’d thought that her belief in a murder scenario might have grown out of her refusal to believe he’d overdosed, but if she was presenting me with a suspect, she’d given the matter rather specific thought. I wondered if there was some emotional component to what had happened for which Olivia held Claire responsible—for instance, that Russell had been depressed and Claire had noticed but not brought it to anyone’s attention.

  But again, I was a step behind. Olivia had something much more literal in mind. “An accident? That just shows you what people in this city will do for Claire. She’s wrapped herself so tightly in Micah’s shadow that people think they love her just because they used to love him. She’s rehabilitated herself and gone from home-wrecking, coke-sniffing queen bitch to St. Claire, rescuer of the oppressed. She Who Must Be Fawned Over.”

  The waiter stepped up to ask us for our order, and I deferred to Olivia. I wasn’t sure how she was going to eat or that I even wanted to. But she readily ordered the crabcakes and an iced tea, and I nodded; it would give me something to look at besides her blazing eyes.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me, ‘Why Claire’?” Olivia prompted as soon as the waiter withdrew.

  “There are actually a few other questions that should come first,” I said diplomatically. There was a pressing need to proceed with caution here: Not only did I want to keep this assignment from vaporizing and taking my new job with it, but Olivia was connected to Henry on a personal level, too, which meant the article going south could wreak havoc I hadn’t even considered.

  “Such as?”

  “What makes you think he was murdered, when there’s no supporting evidence?”

  That actually made her take a deep breath and slow down for a moment. “My father had some issues with prescription drugs back in the day, but he was long past that. Years past that.”

  Sympathy corkscrewed through my chest as I realized the fragile ground on which she stood. “Just because he hadn’t used in a long time …, “I began gently.

  “My father was clean,” she insisted, her jaw clenching.

  “Which is why the medical examiner ruled it an accident.”

  Her slender fist came down on the table hard enough to get us sidelong looks from the tables on either side of us. “You’re not listening to me. He didn’t have any pills in the apartment. How could he accidentally take something that wasn’t there to take?”

  Her anguish was understandable, but I needed to keep what facts I knew in full view. “You weren’t living with your father.”

  “No.”

  “So he could have had pills and you wouldn’t—might not have known.”

  “I turned the place upside down after he died,” she said fiercely, eyes sparkling with anger or tears, I couldn’t be sure which. “There was nothing. Nothing.”

  “Maybe he took it all, so there was nothing to find.”

  “Why are you so sure I’m wrong?”

  I hesitated, and she picked up on it immediately, her fingers picking in agitation at the pattern in the tablecloth. If she went Spellbound on me and started drawing ski tracks with her fork, I wasn’t sure what I’d do. But the fact that I was thinking about Gregory Peck instead of answering her question probably meant she had a point. Was I sure she was wrong? Was I hoping she was wrong? Did I want her to be wrong so my own life stayed less complicated? No. I wanted to get the story right, tell what happened and not what she hoped or wished or feared happened. “It’s not that I’m sure you’re wrong, I’m just not sure you’re right.”

  She’d teased a tiny thread out of the tablecloth and now rolled it between her fingertips. “Yet.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Journalism is all about parsing out what people say and twisting it to suit the story you want to tell, isn’t it.”

  “As opposed to therapy, which is parsing out what people say and twisting it to suit the story you think they should be telling.”

  She sat back in her chair, looking me over analytically. “How long were you in therapy?”

  “What makes you think I was?”

  “You have a pretty strong opinion about it.”

  “Does that mean you were a journalist at some point?”

  She smiled sourly. “No, but I’ve been dealing with them most of my life and I know how they play.”

  “From what I’ve read, the press has dealt with your family’s immediate circle pretty nicely.”

  “They should’ve just left us the hell alone.”

  Tell that to your publicists, I thought, but then again, her father had handled everyone’s publicity. So I said, “They’ll swarm all over you if you start announcing your dad was murdered.”

  “It doesn’t matter now. Everything’s already ruined. I meant before, when there was still a chance for things to work out.”

  “For whom?”

  She took a long time to answer that one. “Any of us.”

  “And that chance is gone now?” I asked gently.

  “My dad’s gone,” she said with the raspy force of someone determined not to cry.

  “And you blame Claire Crowley.”

  She nodded quickly, eyes opening wider to contain the tears. “Now she’s in control.”

  “Of what?”

  “The money. The music publishing, the master tapes, everything. My dad had majority control, but now she does.”

  “But, assuming she did kill him, why now?”

  “I don’t know. I was hoping you’d help me figure that out.”

  Which was why I was standing in the middle of Russell Elliott’s elegant home an hour later. The apartment was one-half of the entire fifth floor of a magnificent old building on Riverside Drive. You could see up to the Boat Basin from one end and past the end of Riverside Park from the other. The Crowley apartment was the other half of the floor and, in the cab on the way there, Olivia had told me about running back and forth between the two apartments with Adam when they were children, as though it were all one big house—bigger than the house I’d grown up i
n, certainly—with musicians, actors, models, artists, and other assorted luminaries coming and going at all hours. People still came after Micah died, as Russell grew in reputation as a producer and Claire got more involved with her charity work and a clothing line; it had still been one of the great rock salons. With Russell gone, would they all still come around?

  Olivia gave me the guided tour of the warmly appointed apartment. We now stood in what Olivia called the study, a huge room with a spectacular view of the river, filled with low-slung burgundy leather furniture, coolly shaded lamps, glowing hardwood floors, and impressive stacks of electronics. Everything was tidy and sparkling, very much one of those “a place for everything and everything in its place” sorts of rooms, so it struck me as odd that a small mixing board sat on the floor in front of a stereo cabinet that was otherwise so neatly organized that there wasn’t a single dangling cord to be seen.

  I pointed to the board. “Was your dad working on something?”

  Olivia looked at the board with dull enmity. “He was always working on something.”

  “What was he working on that night, do you know?”

  Olivia looked up at me with a sour frown. Of course she knew, and she was about to tell me when a second thought occurred to her and, instead, she said, “No.”

  The very fact that she didn’t want to tell me about it made it essential for me to know. “I don’t believe you.”

  Olivia shrugged, but I didn’t buy the dismissive act. She cared, but she didn’t want to admit it. So whatever her dad had been working on had to be important, maybe even related to why she thought he was dead. I tried to imagine a piece of music that could be that monumentally important to anyone and my heart raced when I thought of it. Trying to keep my voice casual, I said, “So the Hotel Tapes are real?”

  Crimson flooded Olivia’s face, as though I’d walked in and found her doing something illegal and/or immoral. “What makes you say that?”

  “You want me to help you, but you’re hiding this from me, so it’s either huge or secret or both. And the Hotel Tapes would qualify as both.”

  Rock legend held that Micah had been a compulsive taper. Never sure when a few moments of improv on the guitar or piano might blossom into a hit song, he’d had tape recorders running all the time. Gray Benedek had said in an interview right after Micah died that the best music any of them had ever made was on those tapes. Which set up a howling demand for the tapes to be released. Russell had issued a terse statement that the number and quality of the recordings had been grandly overstated, but the rumors about tapes being found and cleaned up for release bobbed to the surface with seasonal regularity.

  “Your dad was working on the Hotel Tapes, wasn’t he.” I could feel my pulse in the base of my throat, but I wasn’t sure if the surge in adrenaline was from discovering a legend was real or finding something someone might have been willing to kill for.

  Olivia bobbed her head, as though something were keeping her from committing to an actual nod. “It was his secret hobby. As technology got better, he’d go back and fiddle with them, convinced he could clean them up enough for release.”

  “How many are there?”

  “There were supposed to be twelve, but Micah lost one of them somewhere along the line.”

  “How long are they?”

  “Like two hours each.”

  Twenty-two hours of unreleased Micah Crowley. I was salivating, and I was only a fan. If I’d been in a position to do something with the tapes or make money off them, would I be willing to kill for them?

  I didn’t get a chance to think about that too long because Claire Crowley descended upon us at that moment, catching us completely by surprise, and it was hard to keep your focus on something else when Claire Crowley stormed into a room.

  “What the hell are you doing in here? With a stranger, no less!” Claire demanded.

  Momentarily taken aback by Claire’s vehemence, Olivia collected herself and turned the tables as best she could by asking why and how Claire could come barging in unannounced.

  Claire held up a ring of keys. “We looked out for each other, your father and I. I thought I heard someone over here, and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t an intruder,” she said with a cold glance to me.

  The fact that she had her own key didn’t surprise Olivia, though it gave me pause. Opportunity is always one of the first things you look at in a murder, and having your own key to someone’s place creates all kinds of opportunities. And cuts down on telltale signs of forced entry and other forensic footholds.

  “This is Molly,” Olivia said, striving for decorum. “She’s writing an article about Dad.”

  Claire, having acknowledged me as fully as she was going to, kept the frigid intensity of her glare focused on Olivia. “You self-serving little bitch,” she growled, fists clenched and blood pressure skyrocketing. Even with her face contorted by anger, Claire was amazing, lovelier in person than she was in press photos. Although she had to be close to fifty she didn’t seem that far removed from the dewy young woman on the cover of Subject to Change’s first album, Juiced. I knew more than one guy in high school who picked up the CD just because of the picture, which showed a shirtless Micah standing behind Claire—she, covered only by her long strawberry blond hair and Micah’s hands, eating a peach out of her juice-stained hands. Micah claimed it was an homage to the Allman Brothers and to T. S. Eliot before them. But more plainly, it was an homage to the fact that sex sells. So did the album, which went gold in three months.

  “Self-serving?” Olivia exclaimed in the upper register between incredulity and offense.

  “This isn’t about your father,” Claire spat. “It’s about your pathetic need to be the center of attention. Grow up, little girl, and stop wiping your tears all over the front page of every damn tabloid in town.”

  It occurred to me to protest that Zeitgeist was not a tabloid, but it also occurred to me that remaining quiet would increase my chances of staying out of trouble and allow me to continue to observe from this intimate vantage point.

  “Why do you care?” Olivia asked icily.

  “You’re family, Olivia,” Claire replied with a viciousness that would make me run away from home at the earliest possible moment.

  “Oh, of course.”

  “And the boys will get dragged into it—”

  “Screw the boys!”

  “That was always your goal, wasn’t it.”

  She might as well have slapped Olivia across the face. Clearly, this was hugely sensitive territory I’d have to explore more fully. Silent for only a moment, Olivia flushed with a combination of embarrassment and the effort to respond with equal viciousness. Claire didn’t give her the chance, turning to me to ask, “And why exactly are you here, again?”

  I didn’t want to get in the middle, as sorry as I suddenly felt for Olivia; I’d need to interview Claire at some juncture, and alienating her now would only cause problems then. Right now, spinning the point of view might help everyone. “Molly Forrester, Zeitgeist magazine. I’m doing an article on Olivia’s perspective on growing up around the band now that her father’s gone.”

  Olivia threw me a grateful glance, while Claire regarded me with suspicion. “Won’t that be entertaining,” she said flatly.

  “I’d like to speak with you when it’s convenient, Mrs. Crowley. For background, context.”

  Claire looked back at Olivia, and I could almost see Olivia melting into a small child under the heat of the gaze. “Excellent idea.”

  “Do you keep your own calendar?”

  “Now that Dad’s dead,” Olivia said quietly but with an unmistakable bite.

  “You want to understand her in context?” Claire asked. “Come to the show tonight. Everyone will be there.”

  Olivia sucked in a sharp breath, then plastered on a smile. “That’s a terrific idea.”

  Surprise flickered over Claire’s face. Had she expected Olivia to protest or just not expected Olivia would be able to
smile after the harshness of their exchange? Whichever it was, it didn’t linger. “Jordan’s playing at Mars Hall tonight. We’d like you to be our guest.”

  Jordan Crowley live? Me a guest? I tried to remain the cool professional and not shiver into the ardent fan. “I didn’t think Jordan played clubs anymore.”

  “He doesn’t usually, but he’s struggling a bit with the new album,” Claire said. “We thought getting in front of a live audience might inspire him.”

  “‘We’?” I asked.

  “Russell and I. We planned this date before Russell died.”

  “Are you managing Jordan now?”

  “No, no, nothing so formal. Advising more, trying to help fill the void now that Russell’s gone.”

  Olivia’s smile tightened. “It takes a village to raise a rock star.”

  It also took guts or class or both to raise a rock star whom your dead husband fathered with another woman while you were still married to him. Claire Crowley certainly wasn’t coming across as a warm and nurturing woman—though perhaps I wasn’t meeting her under the most flattering of circumstances—but she’d found a way to include her husband’s illegitimate child and the child’s mother into her innermost circle. It might have been a stunt, but it was an impressive, long-lived one. When Bonnie and Jordan first surfaced, Claire issued an elegant statement about forgiveness and understanding and wanting to strengthen the family, not break it apart. In her position, I think I might have been issuing a statement about castration and smacking faces and yanking hair out by the roots.

  Even after Micah’s death, Claire, Bonnie, and the boys were reported to stay close. Things may have been—must have been—rocky behind closed doors, but in public, Micah’s clan was one big happy family, with Russell as the wise uncle who oversaw their problems and their musical careers. Could something have tipped the idyllic balance and, as Olivia suggested, driven Claire to the breaking point?

  “I’ve never seen Jordan live,” I said, struck by how odd the term sounded when standing in a room where a man had died. Maybe been murdered. “I’d love to come,” I said, making sure to direct the response to both of them.