Wilding Nights

by Lee Killough

  A glance at his watch explained that. After two o’clock. He punched Allison’s number into his phone.

  “I’ve been all the way through the Rolodex numbers once,” he told her. “So far no one I’ve talked to knows Demry’s movements last night. It’s all written down.” He had used the word processing program on the computer to list the name, numbers, and call results as he went. But now he needed to tell her about Tonya without quite lying. “I have one possible lead. There’s a printout of an e-mail on his desk inviting Demry to a local club last night. Since I’m ready to close up here, I can check that out before coming back to the office and retrying the numbers that didn’t answer.”

  “What club and who invited him?”

  The whip crack in her voice startled him. What bit her? Maybe she really was psychic and catching some vibe. He read her the message, and Tonya’s e-mail address.

  After a moment, Allison said, “She’s a musician?”

  Her skeptical tone surprised him. Did Tonya’s profession not match the vibe? After they had this psycho in custody maybe he could talk her into explaining. “I’m wondering if the invitation was a setup.” He explained his triangle theory.

  “It’s worth checking out.”

  He printed out his call detail list. “How’s it going with you?”

  “Dead ends.” She paused. “Why didn’t you mention the e-mail message when I called earlier?”

  He searched for an answer that avoided admitting the truth. “I...don’t have a good excuse.” The last page of his list dropped into the printer tray. “When’s the autopsy?”

  This time she paused even longer than before. “They did it this morning. There wasn’t much we didn’t already know.”

  Zane disconnected with a grimace of frustration. He knew she spent her day running into dead ends but had no idea what leads she followed there. How did he avoid covering the same ground she had? What approach would be best with her...remind her that he could not read her mind the way Garroway probably did...or ask the lieutenant to clue him in about her moves?

  Debating the question, he shut off the computer, rolled down his sleeves, and clipped the tie back on. Coat? No. It went over his arm and he left the house, locking the door behind him. Sunlight and humidity enfolded him. This time when he started the car he switched on the air conditioner before heading downtown to the jazz club.

  Since Avenue A remained the same width as when its bricks were laid in the 1800's and trolley tracks ran down the center, parking was banned. But Zane stopped in front of Five To Midnight long enough to climb out and read the poster in the Live! Nightly! window beside the door. It said nothing about a flutist named Tonya, however, only held a photograph of four men in turtlenecks clustered around a double bass and identified as the Malcolm Neery Quartet. Testing the front door, he found it locked but heard piano music inside. In the alley, the fire door stood open, a liquor distributor truck parked outside. Zane parked behind it.

  Inside the fire door, a cool, dim hallway stretched toward the sound of the piano. In a room off to his right a man in a white bar apron and another with the distributor’s name on his shirt counted stacks of liquor cases. Zane rapped on the door casing, and when the men turned toward him, held up his ID. “I’m looking for information on Tonya, one of the musicians.”

  The man in the apron grunted. “Talk to the boss, Jack Reed. In at the piano.” He resumed counting cases.

  Zane followed the music into a space more brightly lighted than it ever was at night. The bandstand stood against the side wall opposite a circular fireplace in the middle. He threaded his way between tables toward it. The pianist, middle-aged and balding, played with total concentration, leaning low over the keyboard of the baby grand, but Zane could not tell if the man played well or not. It sounded like most jazz did to him...I-don’t-know-where-I’m-going noodling. Then a thread of melody amid all the riffs caught his ear and he listened in amazement.

  When the music paused, Zane said, “I never knew jazz included variations on themes by Salieri.”

  Reed swiveled around. He eyed Zane while reaching for a coffee mug sitting on top of the piano. “You recognize it?”

  Zane spread his hands. “Between five years of piano lessons and my parents’ idea of family time together being to haul me along to concerts and operas they wanted to see, yeah.”

  After a swallow of coffee, Reed smiled. “Salieri’s fitting, don’t you think? Like him, I dream of possessing great talent, but all I can do is recognize it in others...and give them a forum.” He gestured at the club.

  Zane lifted his brows. “The world also needs people who can recognize talent and will give it a chance.”

  The smiled flickered again. “Are you looking for a chance?”

  “No, for justice.” Zane tucked his sunglasses in his shirt pocket and brought out his shield again. “I need to contact Tonya. A friend of hers was attacked last night. He might have come here during the evening.” He handed the club owner one of Demry’s photos.

  After a glance, Reed returned it. “Sure...the lawyer. Ivy League type with a full head of hair and a five hundred dollar leather blazer. Was he badly hurt?”

  “Killed, I’m sorry to say.” Zane reached in his coat for his notebook. “Do you know what time he left, and whether he left alone or with someone? And may I have copies of any credit card receipts?”

  “Killed?” Reed grimaced. “That’s too bad. Sure...I’ll look up his credit card receipts. I don’t know when he left. He came in about nine. That’s when Tonya knocked on the office door and asked please could I give her lawyer a table by the bandstand.” He smiled. “Nothing’s too good for him as far as she’s concerned. But I suppose he’s entitled to her hero worship after saving her music...and he’s earned special treatment for taking the case pro bono.”

  Ah...she had been a client. And Demry worked for free, or a very reduced fee, and won. Not much motive there for her killing him. Unless the fee included sex for services and she had a jealous boyfriend who found out, or whom she told. On the other hand, winning her case meant someone lost. How hard might that someone have taken it?

  Reed said, “Tonya will know when he left. I’ll get her phone number for you.” He started to stand, then stopped, his gaze jumping past Zane. “You’re in luck. Here she is.”

  Zane heard the rap of boot heels behind him and turned to see a woman coming out of the hallway. And rethought the sex-for-services scenario. An oversized sweater and long skirt accentuated her stocky build and the helmet style of her dark hair drained the color from an otherwise pretty face.

  “Hi, Jack. I thought I’d practice here for a couple of hours.” She set a carryall-sized canvas purse on a table by the bandstand, then an instrument case labeled T. Mixon in large white letters. “Maybe you’d like to accompany me?”

  “There’s a detective to see you,” Reed said, and went back to noodling on the piano.

  She blinked. “A detective? To see me?”

  Zane listened and watched closely. She sounded, and looked, genuinely surprised. “I’d like to ask you about Alex Demry.”

  “Alex?” Her eyes widened. “I don’t understand.” She opened the instrument case. Fingers surprisingly long and thin for Tonya’s build made Zane think of spider legs as she assembled the flute. “What kind of trouble can Alex be in?”

  “Someone attacked him last night after he left here.”

  “Attacked!” She flung her head up. “Oh, my god. Is he hurt?” Her distress sounded authentic. The tense lines of her body and face agreed with her voice.

  All of it made him confident she knew nothing about Demry’s murder. Just to be sure, he said, “I’m afraid he’s dead,” and waited to see how she reacted.

  She sucked in a sharp breath. “Oh, no!” The arachnid fingers clamped convulsively around her flute. “How? What happened?”

  If she were faking, she deserved an Oscar. “We’re trying to piece it together. Do you know what time Mr. Demry left here
last night?”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “Sometime between eleven-fifteen and quarter to twelve. After I finished my set at eleven I sat with him and visited until the band started their set.” Her fingers slid into position on the flute keys and began rhythmically pressing them in time to the piano music. Zane doubted she noticed either the instrument or her actions. “Then I went out in the alley for a cigarette, and ended up having two because I hadn’t smoked all night. After that I hit the ladies’ room. When I came back into the club there was someone else at the table.”

  “He didn’t tell you he would be leaving?”

  She shook her head. “I thought he wanted to hear the cuts from the band’s new CD. He was interested enough in it to text it to himself.”

  On the missing phone. Had he lost the running from the killer or did the killer take it? Maybe because Demry wrote down something in it about him? “Tell me about this copyright case he won for you.”

  For a second she stared at him. “Do you think that has something to do with this?”

  A note of caution had entered her voice. He gave her a bland smile. “We have to check all the possibilities.”

  The piano hit the opening notes of the Dragnet theme...dum, de, dum, dum. Playing clearly did not require all Reed’s attention and he had sharper hearing than Zane anticipated. Taking Tonya by the elbow, he steered her to the far side of the fireplace.

  She shook her head. “I can’t imagine killing anyone over...” She frowned at the flute, turning it in her hands. “I do a lot of improvisation. Surfing the Internet one night I landed on the homepage of a guy who’d come up to me at Jazz–that’s a club in Austin–going on about how much he admired my work and he wanted to produce a CD with me. He had worldwide contacts that would give me global distribution, he said. But I’d never heard of him before and even musicians like me who are almost nobodies get wierdos coming up to us. So I told him thank you but no thanks. And he kept bugging me...sitting right in front of me while I played, and when I took a break, he’d give me the pitch all over again. He was giving me the creeps, so I said, look, what part of no don’t you understand? Leave me alone. But his homepage looked terrific so I let it load...and the music playing on it was mine!” Color darkened her cheeks. “It was one of the pieces I’d improvised at Jazz!”

  If he stole it in retaliation for his CD plan being turned down, Zane reflected, he could be the kind who struck back when angry. The question was how violent he might become. “What’s this guy’s name?”

  “Lionel Manning.”

  Zane wrote it down. “What does he look like?”

  She pursed her lips a moment. “Oh, he’s about six feet, skinny, and in his twenties or early thirties. Maybe...brown? hair. He wears glasses.”

  Zane kept writing. “And he lives in Austin?”

  “Just a minute.” She handed him the flute and dug her phone out of her bag. The arachnid fingers played across the buttons, then she handed it to him in return for the flute. “There’s his address and phone number. I e-mailed him, and after I found his address and phone number of the internet, I sent him snail mail demanding he take the music off his site or pay me for the use and post some acknowledgment that it was mine, not his. He asked if I could back up my claim with anything written. Of course not. It was an improvisation; I had it in my head. So suck eggs, he said. But I went to Alex. I won’t bore you with the fine points of copyright law I now have memorized, but fortunately for me, this creep couldn’t carry the music in his head.”

  “He’d taped your performance,” Zane guessed.

  Tonya nodded. “Alex learned that Manning had been kicked out of the Elephant Room once for taping a performance, which you’re not supposed to do without permission, of course. If one musician, why not another, and maybe he isn’t always caught, so Alex got a PI to temp at Manning’s maid service and check the music collection while she was cleaning.”

  Zane grinned. Smart move! Demry made a good detective

  “She found he not only made tapes, all carefully labeled by artist, date, and location, but burned CD’s from them. Including a set with my improvisations at Jazz.” Tonya bared her teeth. “We had him by...the...nuts.”

  Writing down Manning’s address and phone number, Zane regretted he would never have the chance to know Demry. They should talk to the PI and see what else she knew about Manning. There had been a card for a private investigations firm in Demry’s Rolodex, he remembered. “How long ago was the trial?”

  “No trial. As soon as we showed his attorney and him the pictures the PI took of the tape and CD labels, he settled out of court. That was two months ago. Finished?” She dropped the phone back in her bag. “I think he expected that would keep everyone from learning what a schmuck he is. But I’ve made sure they do know. I posted about him on the internet, with the warning that I wasn’t the only artist he’d taped, and since I have a photographic memory and I happened to see the PI’s report, I sent private e-mails to musicians named in it.”

  Zane frowned. “The settlement didn’t include a non-disclosure clause?” A major mistake by his attorney if so.

  She nodded. “Sure, but I just forfeit the money by violating it.”

  “And...does Manning know you posted?” That would upset him.

  Tonya smiled. “Oh, yes. A week later I got this really flaming e-mail, which started off by calling me a lying, cheating, no-talent bitch who must have gotten my gigs by screwing the club managers. It seems some of the musicians I wrote checked his web site and found their music, too, and were filing copyright suits of their own, and he accused Alex of putting me up to posting. We were both going to be sorry, he said. If Alex wanted to stay healthy, he better never show up in Austin again. He threatened lawsuits and disbarment proceedings.”

  Definitely upset. Angry enough to do more than threaten? “Did Demry suggest you post?”

  Tonya’s stare went wide-eyed and innocent. “Of course not.”

  Meaning maybe he had...less a shark than someone chumming the water. Giving Manning one hell of a motive for going after him. “Did you see Manning around here last night?”

  Tonya blinked. “Here? You think he’d come all the way down here after Alex?” She frowned thoughtfully. “I didn’t see him...and I couldn’t miss him. My skin would crawl if he walked in.”

  Maybe not, depending on her preoccupation with performing and Demry. There was another possibility, too...a variation on the triangle theory. “You think pretty highly of Demry.”

  She hugged her flute. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s--he was a god.”

  “How does your significant other feel about that?”

  “I’m not currently--” Her eyes widened. “You’re covering all the bases, aren’t you? Do you want to know where I was at whatever time, too?”

  What an opening. “Well, since you’ve offered...what were you doing between twelve and one?”

  “I sat in with Neery’s band the last fifteen minutes of their set, which ended at twelve-fifteen, then I went on for my final set from twelve-thirty to one-thirty. After that I turned the bandstand over to the wannabes--Jack has an open mike the last half hour–and went home.”

  Which pretty much gave her an airtight alibi. “That’s where?”

  “I’m staying with a girlfriend at 1932 Airport Drive.”

  Out north-west near the rodeo grounds. “Did you see Demry talking to anyone here that he might have left with?”

  She thought, then shook her head.

  Maybe one of the quartet noticed something.

  Zane returned to the bandstand. “Will you look up the phone numbers of Neery’s group for me?”

  “All I have is his, I’m afraid.” Reed ran his fingers up the keyboard in a long arpeggio. “But if you want to wait, they’re coming in to work on a piece Neery wasn’t satisfied with last night. You can even have a turn here.” He waved at the piano.

  Zane grimaced. “No thanks.”

  Reed’s brows hopped. “Piano l
essons didn’t hook you, huh?”

  Not after he decided that his parents had enrolled him in them and all the other extra-curricular activities to relieve them of spending time with him. “Do you serve any kind of meal?”

  “No, just pretzels, nuts, and the like.” Reed jumped into “Yes, We Have No Bananas”, grinning. “There’s ice cream we use in the ice cream drinks, though.”

  Zane shuddered. “I’ll be back.”

  After the club, the alley felt like a greenhouse. He hurried out of it. Thank goodness for the Avenue A architecture...covered sidewalks and second floor balconies echoing the early settlers’ New Orleans origin. Despite the shaded sidewalks and the breeze coming up the street from the Gulf, however, as soon as the approaching trolley passed, he dodged across the street to the air-conditioned comfort of Arbys.

  While they made up his sandwich, he called Allison and updated her.

  She broke into the middle of his recital. “Describe Tonya.”

  There came that tension in her voice again. “Do you have a witness who saw a woman near the scene? It couldn’t have been Tonya.”

  “Unless your tweaker’s timetable is screwed up and he saw Demry after Gary’s second pass down Lavaca.” But when Zane gave her Tonya’s descriptors, her voice relaxed. “You’re right...it’s unlikely she’s involved.”

  It had to be the description that made the difference. “So someone did see a woman, I take it.”

  “No. No one saw a woman...or anything else. This Manning is worth checking out, but we need to be careful nosing around. If he’s involved and we alert and alarm him...” Her voice trailed off.

  The memory of Demry’s body flashed through Zane’s head. “Right.”

  When he carried his sandwich back to the club, Tonya sat on the edge of the bandstand playing something sharp and soaring...like a hawk’s cry, or a wail...while Reed followed on the piano. Two men matching those in the photograph outside had appeared. One sat at a table by the bandstand, reading over sheet music. The other stripped the canvas cover from a double bass on the bandstand.