The Fame Equation

by Lisa Wysocky

  A visit from Hill was never pleasant, especially now, as I needed to get to Melody’s.

  Hill took a grimy ball cap off his head to reveal long wisps of grimier hair. “I came askin’ if Bubba can stay the weekend, from Friday after school to Sunday just before supper.” Here in the South, many people called lunch dinner and dinner supper. Hill was one of those people.

  I sighed and looked at my watch. Then I realized I wasn’t quite as polite as I should have been. Until recently Hill would have left Bubba by himself while he was gone. Some months back I had asked Hill to let me know if he needed a place for Bubba to stay and here he was, hat in his hands, asking.

  “Sure, Hill,” I said as I forced my freshly-glossed lips into a smile. “I take it you don’t plan to be around?” I would not have put it past Hill to drop Bubba off and then enjoy a quiet weekend at home.

  “I got to head to Alabama and Miss’sippi. I got one client lookin’ for a new horse and another who wants to send me two. Neither are what you might call kid people. Prob’ly not a good trip for Bubba to go on.”

  The parenting classes Hill had been court ordered to take might be doing some good. Bubba had gotten into so much trouble through Hill’s neglect that a local juvenile judge had stepped in to re-direct Hill, rather than Bubba. The results in both had been positive.

  “You did the right thing in asking me,” I said. Then I remembered that Jon, Darcy, and I were touring the Mighty Happy center Friday afternoon. “I might need to pick him up after school, though. Jon, Darcy, and I have to be in Kingston Springs at three.”

  Hill told me that Bubba’s social worker had made him add emergency contact names to Bubba’s paperwork, names of people who had permission to pick Bubba up from school, and Carole and I were the two names he added. I wondered if Carole knew, as I certainly hadn’t.

  “I need you to sign this.” Hill pulled a crumpled, lettersized sheet of paper out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Then I got to get copies to Bubba’s school and social worker.”

  I looked at the paper, and thought of the many other, mostly disgusting, things that could also have been in Hill’s pocket, then gingerly took a corner of the page. At the top was a short paragraph that said Hill had spoken to me about keeping Bubba and I had agreed to do so. There were blank spaces to indicate the dates that I would be responsible for Bubba, and Hill had filled those in with a pen. From the uneven distribution of the writing, I gathered the pen had been trying to run out of ink. If the pen belonged to Hill, I couldn’t blame it for wanting to die.

  Nodding, I put the paper down on my kitchen table, pulled a pen out of my purse, and signed and dated the paper. I looked to see if a witness or a notary was needed, didn’t see any indication that either was required, then handed the paper to Hill.

  “Your horses?” I asked.

  “My man, he’ll come take care of ’em,” Hill said. Hill often talked about his “man,” who seemed to be one of several people hired to feed the animals and do odd jobs around his farm.

  “Okay, then. I have to get to Pegram,” I said, shooing him out the door. Then I turned to look at him. “I really do hope you find the horses you want,” I said. “If you do well in your business, that will be good for Bubba.”

  Hill almost smiled before he put his grimy cap back on his grimy head and slithered between the fence rails that separated my property from his former home, Fairbanks.

  More than an hour after Buffy called I finally found myself in my truck, headed toward Melody’s house. I turned on the radio to find Razzy Bailey singing about his “9,999,999 Tears.” It was about a fifteen-minute drive down Sam’s Creek Road, then left on Hwy. 70 and through the little town of Pegram.

  I was so sure that I’d find Melody at home––filled with embarrassment that she missed her morning appointments–– that I almost stopped at Finch’s Country Store for fried chicken and home fries. Everyone felt better after some of Finch’s fried chicken. But, something urged me onward and I passed the tiny, wooden store without a glance.

  When I pulled up to Melody’s little yellow house the first thing I noticed was that her car was not there, and my heart sank into my stomach. I had been so sure that she would be home. I used my key to open the gate, and just as I got out of the car a dark BMW pulled in next to me and Davis got out.

  “Hi,” I said. “Buffy said you were in a meeting and asked me to come by to see if Melody was here. I take it you haven’t heard anything.”

  Davis shook his head and we mounted the steps before knocking on the door. When Davis knocked again, louder this time, I called out Melody’s name. The house resounded with silence.

  “Her car’s not here,” I said, stating the obvious. “But I have a key.”

  Davis held up a key of his own, but I used mine to open the door, and we went inside. It looked much the same as it had the afternoon before, just without Melody. The movers had not yet arrived, and Melody’s note to the movers about my furniture was on her kitchen table. Davis picked up the note, read it, and gave me a questioning glance. There was something in his look that bordered on hostile.

  “My barn manager and I are supposed to pick up the furniture tomorrow, after the movers finish,” I said with caution. “It was nice of Melody to give me things that meant something to her. She easily could have given them to someone else.”

  Davis nodded, and put the note back on the table. Then he shoved his hands into his pockets and walked through the rooms of the house. We both knew Melody wasn’t there. There was no sense of her, and that was unsettling.

  “Could Melody have gone to her family?” Davis asked, sliding into a chair. “She did that once before after a call from her mother. Claudine is . . . needy, or at least pretends to be.”

  “No. Well, I don’t think so. All Melody ever said to me about her family was that she was done with their dysfunction and had decided to let them sink or swim on their own.”

  On the other hand, I thought, if a desperate call came in from one of them, would Melody have blown off an important interview and lunch? I shook my head. No. She might have found someone else to come to her family’s aid, but she would not have put her career in jeopardy to do so. They had never been good to her.

  “The house closing!” I said the words so loudly that I startled even myself. “Maybe she’s at the closing. Maybe the time got moved up and she forgot to tell anyone.”

  Davis jumped up, cell phone in hand. “Do you know who her Realtor is?” he asked.

  “No.” My heart plummeted into my stomach. “She did her house hunting when I was busy with horse shows. But, if we look around maybe we can find a card, or some paperwork.”

  Despite a pretty thorough search, during which we found songwriting notebooks, an organized collection of gas and fast food receipts, and a stack of church bulletins, no indication of a Realtor or closing attorney was in sight. Probably, she had all of that with her in her car.

  Davis called Scott Donelson, Melody’s attorney, to see if he knew anything, but his assistant said Scott was in court. Davis didn’t want to give too much away as the tabloids had spies everywhere, so he left a message for Scott to call him.

  While he was on the phone I made a quick call to the church, finding their number in one of the bulletins.

  “Why no,” Ruthie said. “We haven’t seen her today.”

  I was somewhat surprised that the pastor had picked up the phone herself.

  “The, uh, address book in my phone isn’t working,” I said after a pointed look from Davis, “and I can’t remember her number. I, uh, wanted to wish her luck with her new house.”

  Ruthie said she would pass the message on.

  “I guess we can leave a note for her,” I said after I hit the “end call” button on my phone.

  “Sure,” Davis said. “In case she hasn’t gotten the four thousand texts and emails Buffy and Scott and Augie, and I, and even Keith, have sent her in the past few hours.” Then he threw up his hands. “Sorry. I’m wo
rried. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m worried, too.”

  And I was. The Melody Cross I knew wanted success so much that she would never have missed an interview. Not if she could help it.

  Cat’s Horse Tip #4

  “Horses cannot vomit, because a valve that leads to the stomach prevents food from going back into the esophagus. This is one reason why tummy aches can be deadly to horses who overeat, or eat bad food.”

  6

  AFTER RETURNING HOME, GETTING CAUGHT up on lots of paperwork, and tucking the horses in for the night, I spent the evening talking to Brent. If we didn’t see each other, we often ended our days filling each other in on our recent activities over the phone.

  Tonight Brent was in his clinic with a cat who had ingested some sort of poison. After doing all he could for the poor thing medically, he was now giving her emotional support. That was the kind of animal doc that Brent was.

  I also called Melody numerous times, and even texted her and sent an email or two. Then I called the Lowe’s, as I remembered she was supposed to spend the night there. A snooty receptionist insisted Melody wasn’t there, even when I used the code name she sometimes used, Aria Bender. Then I sent Buffy a text to ask if she knew if Melody had checked in, or if she had closed on her house.

  By the time I turned in at ten P.M. I had not heard from anyone and was so upset I couldn’t drink my evening hot chocolate. Where was Melody? Had she been kidnapped? Mugged? Had an accident and driven into a ditch? We had many steep roads with no shoulders and deep drop offs in our area. I tossed and turned all night, wishing I had thought to get Davis’s phone number. Maybe he had heard something.

  The next morning I sent Darcy to school with the reminder that she needed to be at the riding center no later than three. Then Hank and I headed to the barn to work with Jon and Petey. Unless it was very hot or very cold, Hank usually slept in the barn. He often wandered up to the house after Jon fed him his breakfast, however, in hopes of some of my breakfast scraps. He usually got some, but they came from Darcy. I was a harder sell.

  As soon as I walked into the barn Jon said, “What’s wrong?”

  People who work with horses together are dialed in to each other more than other co-workers might be. Because horses know more about people’s emotional state than people often know about themselves, it is important to only try to teach a horse something when you are fully focused. Jon had sensed right away that I was distracted. Of course, the bags under my bloodshot eyes might also have tipped him off.

  I filled Jon in, knowing he was the last person who would ever blab information about Melody to a member of the press. After I stopped talking, Jon nodded. He wasn’t a person who analyzed things; he was a “just the facts” kind of guy.

  “You’re a good friend, but you’ve done all you can do,” he said. “Do you want to skip the session with Petey today?”

  I considered. No. I didn’t. I couldn’t wait to see the expression on Darcy’s face when we showed her Petey pulling a cart. I had bought a sleek, black wooden training cart with large, spoked wheels, and had it hidden under a tarp behind the barn. We needed to keep Petey moving forward.

  “Give me a moment and I’ll get my brain on track,” I said.

  By the end of the session we were able to hook Petey up to the travois and jiggle it, although we did not ask him to pull it around. Maybe tomorrow.

  “I like this driving stuff,” said Jon as we brushed all traces of harness marks from Petey’s shiny coat. “Reminds me of my gramps.”

  The hand that held the brush I was using stopped itself in mid air. “Your gramps?” I asked.

  “My grandpa. Gramps.”

  This was a rare opportunity to learn more about Jon and I knew I needed to tread carefully. “So how does driving Petey remind you of your, um, grandfather?”

  “Gramps had this skinny, gray draft horse who pulled his plow. A few times I got to ‘help’ drive old Slim to the shed Gramps called a barn. I was six, maybe seven. Thought it was pretty neat.”

  “Where did all this take place?”

  Jon looked at me as if I was a moron. Then he smiled. “Oklahoma.”

  He meant, I knew, the Cherokee Nation in eastern Oklahoma. In a strange turn of events, I had recently learned that Jon was half Cherokee, as well as a mix of Norwegian and German. My question about location had really meant if the driving had taken place on tribal land or his grandfather’s small acreage. Jon had interpreted the question differently and that’s why people around the world misunderstood each other. Life was all about clear communication.

  Love you, too. Jon’s words when he ended his mysterious phone call jumped into my brain. Who was he communicating with then? Before I had time to ponder that thought, Hank dropped his stick and let off a beagle howl loud enough to curl my toes. Then the barn door opened and Keith Carson stepped through.

  I gave a worried glance to Jon who nodded and continued to finish up with Petey. Somehow I found myself running down the aisle toward Keith. The words, “Do you have news about Melody” were on my lips, but Keith’s angry voice jumped in first.

  “Have you heard from her?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “We’re supposed to fly out at noon for the first leg of our tour. The production trucks are already in Louisville and her sound check is at four.”

  Holy moly. I had forgotten the Louisville concert was tonight. Agnes lived in Louisville and Melody had arranged with Davis to put her on the VIP guest list. If Melody did not show up, Agnes would drive everyone bonkers asking why. I looked at my watch. It was already after ten, but Keith was probably flying out of the small, private John C. Tune airport in West Nashville, which was a little over twenty minutes from here, rather than the commercial international airport on the east side of town.

  “What happens if Melody doesn’t show up?” I asked, my voice a lot smaller than I wanted it to be.

  “We’ll make an announcement, say she’s got food poisoning or something,” he said, hooking his fingers through a board on Bob’s stall front. Bob woke up from his nap and came over to brush his nose against Keith’s fingers. Bob was not a mouthy horse so I did not worry that Keith might lose a guitar-picking finger.

  “Augie booked the date and just now called some song-writers I’ve co-written with to fill in,” he said. “One of them is Brad Paisley. The audience will think it’s a special night, and for them it will be. But, we have Columbus, Ohio tomorrow night, and St. Louis on Sunday. If Melody doesn’t make herself front and center soon, we might have to cancel the tour.”

  Melody had taught me enough to know that a cancelled tour could mean millions in losses for the artists, record label, agent, manager, promoter, and venue, and more than one probable lawsuit. Keith looked like he was about to cry and I reached up to grab his shoulders.

  “She will show up,” I said, looking him in the eye. “This is not like her. There has to be a reason, a good reason.”

  Keith nodded, then steeled himself and nodded again. “You’ve got my number,” he said. “If you hear from her . . .”

  “I’ll call or text you. And you’ll do the same?”

  He nodded again before he turned to catch his plane.

  “Hey, Keith,” I called after him. “I hate to bring this up now, but remember that Sally Blue’s owner, Agnes Temple, lives in Louisville and has a backstage pass for tonight.”

  Keith looked perplexed for an instant, then smiled. “Is she the one who gushes? The one with bright blue hair who says her horse is psychic?”

  “That’s her.”

  “Ah. Thanks for the reminder. I might introduce her to Brad. He’s got a guitar I’ve been hoping he’ll sell me. He might give it to me real quick if I tell him I can make Agnes go away. Thanks, Cat. Your Agnes is going to be the highlight of my night.”

  After Jon and I picked up Bubba at Cheatham Middle School, the three of us met Darcy at the Mighty Happy Therape
utic Riding Center promptly at three. Robert greeted us, and ushered us right into the barn. Jon’s eyes widened at the red brick floor and the open concept stalls, and he gave a slow nod of approval.

  “Our volunteers undergo training in safety, horse behavior, various disabilities, and our program procedures,” Robert said to Darcy as we stood by the arena gate and watched a lesson get started. “The mounting process can be tense, especially when we have riders with severe disabilities,” he continued. “Getting an unbalanced rider on a horse can turn into an accident if everyone, including the horse, is not well trained.”

  I looked at Darcy. She wasn’t a touchy-feely kind of person and I thought the close, physical contact the volunteers had with the riders might make her uncomfortable. But, her sharp eyes were scanning the scene, and I could almost see her brain taking it all in. Forget the bored expression on her face and the annoying snap of her bubblegum. Darcy was into this. I think we had a service project!

  “What’s wrong with that little boy?” she asked, nodding at a small child on a brown and white pony.

  “He looks mighty happy, doesn’t he?” said Robert. “And there’s nothing wrong with him. He’s perfect in his own way. His brain just processes things differently than yours or mine. See, they’re playing a counting game.”

  We watched as the little boy threw one large, soft, stuffed dice and watched it tumble to the arena surface.

  “Dillon, how many dots face the ceiling?” Emily, who was teaching the lesson, asked.

  Dillon sat on his pony and smiled.

  “How many dots?” Emily prompted again.

  Slowly, Dillon took one hand from his reins, examined his fist intently, and then shot his arm up high above his head with four fingers showing. Then he laughed so hard I thought he was going to fall off his horse. He might have, too, if a volunteer who was standing next to him hadn’t steadied him.