Cover Your Eyes (13 page)

Rudy glanced back and frowned. “Ain’t that some shit.”

A bitter taste soured the beer. “Thirty years since a righteous conviction and some attorney wants to unravel it all.”

“She’s making a name for herself. In a week people won’t care about her request.”

KC shook his head. “If the last thirty years have taught me anything, it’s that any good case can be undone. Any case. The right attorney can knot up the truth and twist it in all sorts of ways.”

Rudy took KC’s mug and refilled it. “That was a bitch of a case. I remember you talking about it and the brutal hours you all worked. All you cops looked like the walking dead.”

“Had us tied in knots. Shit. I had nightmares about that crime scene for years.”

The lines in Rudy’s face deepened with a frown. “I can’t imagine.”

“We were all afraid he’d get off. Without a body we knew a conviction would be tough.”

“But you found her. Gave her a proper burial and sent the bad guy to jail.”

KC raised his mug in salute. “Yeah. God bless, anonymous tipster.”

Rudy glanced back at the television. “You think the DNA is gonna go against you?”

“Hell no. I don’t.”

“There was a cop here on Thursday. Deke Morgan.”

“My partner.”

“Looks a hell of a lot like his old man.”

“Buddy could’ve spit him right out. But don’t tell Deke unless you want to piss him off.”

“He was asking about Dixie.”

KC shook his head. “Hell of a murder.”

Rudy filled a glass with water and took a long swallow. “Nice kid. Had her issues. But then who doesn’t?”

“Kinda reminded me of Annie.”

“Maybe.”

KC gulped the beer and set the mug carefully on the bar. “Hey, I need another favor?”

Dark eyes grew darker. “What’s that?”

“There’s a gal in the office. She sings. I’d like her to sing at my party.”

Rudy shook his head. “Hey man, I got a reputation to uphold. Only the best here.”

“I know. But Georgia is top notch. Really. You won’t be sorry. Even Brenda thinks she’s great.”

Rudy hesitated as if he’d never offered a fast
yes
in his entire life. “One song.”

“Three.”

A smile quipped the edges of his lips. “Two.”

Rudy shrugged. “Deal. This Monday?”

“Sure.”

“So what the hell are you gonna do with yourself after the Force.”

As tempted as KC was to have another beer and cling onto his old life, he rose from the bar, refusing to second guess today. “Hell, if I know.”

 

 

Deke parked in front of Rick’s small one-level house and grabbed the cold six-pack of beer. He crossed the cracked sidewalk and up to the well-lit front stoop. He rang the bell. The baritone bark of the wolf dog reverberated through the house and the bay window’s thick curtain flickered.

After the scrape of two dislodging chains, the door opened to Rick wearing a battered Vanderbilt T-shirt, jeans, and no shoes. His hair stuck up on end as if he dug his fingers through it a thousand times.

The dog appeared, big, black, and menacing as he stayed close to Rick’s side. Rick gently rubbed the dog between the ears. “It’s big brother, Tracker. We’re safe for now.”

Deke held up the six-pack. “You texted. Said you were digging through the case files.”

Rick pushed open the door. “Come on in.”

Deke held out his hand. Tracker sniffed until he was satisfied he posed no threat and then retreated to a large dog bed. Beside it, an electric space heater blew out warm air onto his thick fur. Tracker closed his eyes but his body clung to a tension signaling he remained on duty.

Deke glanced toward the old dining room table that had come from his family’s house. When Buddy had died, Deke had offered any furnishings to his siblings. Rick had put dibs on the table that had hosted so many gatherings. Alex had taken a guest bedroom set and Georgia had taken all the family pictures. “Looks like you jumped right to it. How long have you been at this?”

“Since I got home.”

“Nonstop.”

He shrugged. “Love a puzzle.”

Deke twisted off a beer top and handed it to Rick. “I always thought all the puzzle pieces had been put into place.”

Rick grinned as he raised the bottle to his lips. “No such thing in life.”

“True.” Deke set the six-pack next to an open file box and grabbed himself a beer. A twist and the top opened. “So what pieces are bothering you?”

“I’ve only scanned the records at this point. Buddy was as meticulous then as he was the day he died.” He reached in a box. “Found a picture of Buddy and KC. Amazing how much you look like our old man.”

Deke took the thirty-year-old image of Buddy and KC standing by the 1971 gold Cutlass that had belonged to Jeb Jones. Buddy stared stone-faced directly into the camera while a mustached KC grinned. The caption read,
Annie Dawson’s Body Found
.

“Annie Dawson’s bones were found in the woods by a hunter who called it in.”

“Scattered bones were found. Along with the necklace and blood remnants of soaked clothes identified as Annie’s. The bones found were badly mauled by animals.”

“Dental records?”

“No head found. Only arms and torso. Severed with a hacksaw.”

Deke set the article aside and let his thumb click over the dusty, faded file tabs. “Any evidence found on the remains?”

“None. Not after months in unseasonably warm weather. And given what science they had available, they couldn’t have done much with it.”

Today if those bones had been found they’d have extracted DNA from the marrow and been able to positively identify her. “Anything else jump out at you?”

“You do know that Jeb recanted his confession.”

“Ms. Wainwright pointed that out to me in one of her many phone messages. That doesn’t mean much.”

“No. But I’ll keep digging.”

Deke tipped the lip of the bottle to his mouth and took a liberal sip.

“Think that attorney is digging into the case?”

Deke imagined Rachel Wainwright tracking all the people connected with the case. If he’d been in her shoes, he’d have done the same. “I would not be surprised. Not at all.”

“So what is her gig?”

“What do you mean?”

“What drives her? Most crusaders have some incident that set them on the path.” Rick studied Deke. “And if I know you, you’ve asked around about her.”

He’d asked when she’d first crossed his path. He knew about the family’s endless moves, her brother’s substance abuse and her devotion to family. “Maybe.”

Rick laughed. “So?”

“Her brother was convicted of murder. She went to law school because of his conviction. Her hope was to get him a retrial. He was killed in prison.”

Rick arched a brow. “That will do it.”

Deke scraped his fingernail against the beer label. “Luke Wainwright had been partying with the victim. Both were using. Next morning, he’s passed out at his mother’s home and the victim is found strangled in a ditch. Long story short the victim was well-connected and Luke had a bad attorney. The DA went for second-degree murder. That shouldn’t have held up in court but his attorney caved.”

“So Rachel was right about her brother?”

“At least partly. I’m not convinced he killed the woman but he was a train wreck waiting to happen.”

“She could be right about Jeb.”

Tension slithered up his spine but he kept it from his voice. “We’ll know soon.”

Rick took a sip of beer. “Wainwright’s hot.”

Deke glanced up, his gaze sharp.

Rick laughed. “So you’ve noticed, too?”

“I noticed.”

“After this is all over, maybe you two could hook up.”

Deke shook his head. “I’m two for two as far as marriage and divorce go. No thanks.”

His gaze danced with laughter. “Why not? You don’t have to be alone forever. Maybe third time’s the charm.”

“Shit. I’ve more than proven I’m a lousy partner in romance.”

“Doesn’t have to be a forever.”

“Rachel Wainwright takes life seriously. Relationships would be no different. And I don’t do serious anymore.”

 

 

 

The passage of thirty years made the task of authenticating the Annie letters difficult but not impossible for Lexis. To accomplish the job, she needed a sample of handwriting that was undeniably Annie’s. She knew Annie had attended a small high school north of Nashville, but likely her records wouldn’t contain a sample. Annie had worked an odd collection of jobs after graduating high school but the chances of an employment application still existing were nil. A signature on the lease she’d shared with Joanne and Beth or the marriage license wouldn’t be enough.

Bill Dawson would be a hard case so she figured her best bet was Margaret Miller, Annie’s devoted sister who must have saved letters or the handwritten songs Annie was rumored to have written.

Lexis parked in front of the little, one-story clapboard house. As a female private investigator, she had an advantage. Women could blend better. A maid’s uniform allowed her to go unnoticed in a hotel. A white collar shirt, jeans, and a clipboard enabled her to pass as a meter reader, cable employee, and a car rental agent. Lexis had learned an outfit could sell her story better than words.

Out of the car, she hiked up the waistband of her designer jeans. She wore a
Nashville Rocks
T-Shirt and her best cowboy boots. The shirt was too small and the jeans too tight, a reminder she needed to cut back on the bagels and sodas. Still, despite the tight fit, she’d achieved the look she was after.

She moved up the cracked sidewalk to the front door adorned with a fall wreath decked with a yellow bow embossed with the words
Happy Birthday
. From what she’d learned, Margaret Miller had kept a yellow ribbon on her lawn for the last thirty years. Yellow had been Annie’s favorite color and Margaret had dedicated her life to the memory of her sister.

Moistening lips heavy with lip gloss, she knocked on the door. Inside she could hear the television and then steady footsteps. The door on the other side of the screen opened to Margaret and the smell of fried chicken. She wore her white waitress outfit complete with name tag and hamburger and ketchup stains.

Margaret studied Lexis through the screened door. “What can I do for you?”

“Ms. Margaret Miller?”

“That’s right.”

“I’m with Lane Producers. Sorry for the late night visit but my flight just arrived from LA.”

Margaret folded her arms. “Why are you here?”

“We do documentaries on country music stars of the past. Your sister Annie Rivers Dawson’s short-lived career came to our attention the other night when my boss was watching the news.”

Margaret’s gaze narrowed. “Everyone saw that. I’ve been hearing about it day and night since.”

“I saw the show of you and Ms. Wainwright.”

Margaret frowned. “It wasn’t a show for me. I was damned mad at her.”

Lexis had guessed Margaret would be sensitive on the subject and knew she had to handle this with extra-soft kid gloves. “I could see you were upset. Must be painful.”

Margaret twisted a brass button on her sweater. “You’ve no idea.”

“Maybe I do. I lost my sister.” Bits of the truth enhanced credibility as the right outfit did. “It’s been fifteen years, but there’re days when it feels like yesterday.”

Margaret’s chin raised a fraction. “Yeah. It hurts. Especially when all you had were bones to bury. But no one cares about that.”

“I care. In fact, I did a little digging on your sister’s short-lived career and I must say I was impressed. She was a star on the rise.”

The hard lines burrowing into Margaret’s forehead softened a fraction. “That she was. Ask anyone and they’d tell you she was an angel.”

“No doubt.”

“Why are you here?”

“We, the other producers and I, were talking about Annie over coffee last night. We were all thinking she could be the subject of a documentary. She was talented, beautiful and now she’s gone.”

Her eyes widened with delight. “You want to make a movie about Annie?”

“This is all preliminary, but I thought it would be worth it to talk to you.”

“What do you want to know about Annie?”

“I want to know about her as a woman. Her hopes and dreams. What she loved about music and singing. You knew her better than anyone.”

“That’s true.” Margaret frowned. “This ain’t gonna be one of those tell-alls, is it? I don’t want you bashing Annie.”

“I’d never dream of bashing her. I want to tell her story.”

Margaret hesitated and then pushed open the screened door. “Come on in. I got mementos I can show you.” Inside, the sweet scents of a baking cake greeted her. “Can I get you a lemonade? I was about to have one.”

“I’d love one.”

The hallway sported dozens of framed pictures featuring two young girls and their parents. Beyond the living room furnishings were older, threadbare on the arms, and looked as if they’d been purchased in the seventies. The carpet was gold shag and the chair rail trim on the walls an avocado green.

Margaret appeared with two glasses of glistening lemonade. “I’d offer you cake but it isn’t cool yet. Today’s my momma’s birthday and I always bake her a cake.”

“How old is your mom?”

“She’d have been eighty-two. She passed this time last year. She left me her house. I’ve lived here my whole life.”

Lexis sat with Margaret on the couch, accepted the lemonade, sipped, and smiled when the cold bitter wetness hit her tongue. “Are those pictures of you and Annie?”

Margaret beamed. “They are. That one is of Annie and me. She was nine and I was three.”

Lexis studied the picture of two little girls dressed in matching sailor suits. Annie’s blond hair shimmered in contrast to Margaret’s dull brown hair and whereas Annie’s smile was radiant, Margaret’s was goofy and awkward. Annie’s arm was wrapped around Margaret’s shoulders but it wasn’t a casual easy touch. Annie looked a bit stiff and strained as if she wasn’t crazy about her little sister.

“She was good to me,” Margaret said. “So sweet. She was always thinking about me.”

“You two grew up in this house?”

“Yes. We had the same momma but different daddies. That’s why we look different.”

Lexis didn’t miss the threads of apology and shame. “I think you look a great deal alike. Especially around the eyes.”

“Really? You think so?”

“I do.” Lexis shifted her gaze to another picture. Again two girls. Annie had bloomed into a stunning young woman whereas Margaret still sported that goofy grin as well as thick glasses. “Must have been hard when she moved out to live on her own.”

“I cried for days. But she kept promising that she’d come back and see me and I could come see her. We were less than thirty miles apart but it felt like a million miles.”

“I heard she did well in Nashville.”

“She did. She started singing in a local church but quickly found work in the honky-tonks. She sang and looked like an angel.”

“I also heard she was a songwriter.”

Pride had Margaret standing straighter. “She was. I kept all her songs in a scrapbook.”

“Could I see them?”

“Sure!” She set down her lemonade and hurried to the back of the house. Seconds later she emerged with a large and well-stuffed yellow scrapbook. Margaret indicated they sit on a couch of shabby crushed velvet.

Margaret laid her hands on top of the book, drawing in a deep breath as if she were touching a Ouija board and summoning Annie’s spirit. “I can imagine her sitting right here when I read her songs.”

Lexis peered over Margaret’s arm as she opened the book. The pages were jammed with publicity shots, handbills for gig nights, and bits of ribbon and flattened flowers. Margaret had a story about every picture as she turned each page. In Margaret’s stories, Annie played the role of angel and heroine. However, the letters sent to Rachel painted a woman who wasn’t afraid to get involved with an unavailable man.

In the center was a stack of handwritten songs written on napkins, scraps of paper, and a diner menu.

Lexis studied the samples and knew if she had one she could authenticate the letters.

“When did she start dating Bill Dawson?”

Margaret frowned. “They didn’t date long. Fact, Momma and I were surprised when she called saying she’d gotten married. Right out of the blue. We were stunned. But he was a nice enough fellow and Momma wanted her to have security. Being a singer is a tough life, even if you got talent.”

“A pretty woman like Annie would have dated more than one man.”

Margaret giggled. “The boys loved Annie. Loved her.”

“She never confided in you?”

“Not about boys she dated. I asked, of course, but she said I was too young. When I pushed she did say she had a special Sugar she liked.”

“Sugar?” Lexis slowly turned a scrapbook page as if the name had no meaning.

“She blushed when she spoke about him but she never did tell me his name. Even wrote a song about him. She said one day I would meet him.”

“That must have been Bill Dawson,” Lexis suggested.

“Must have been.” She frowned. “But I never could picture the two of them together. He was stiff. But she said she loved him. Momma and I didn’t get invited to the wedding. Of course, when Momma and I finally saw her after the wedding, Momma guessed right off about the baby.”

“Was Annie excited about the baby?”

Margaret’s face glowed with appreciation. “She was. Said she’d find a way to be a big star and a great momma.”

“What was Bill Dawson like? You said he was stiff.”

“Nice enough. Kept saying she didn’t need to sing no more because he was gonna make them rich. I could tell he loved her more than she loved him. But that was the way it always was. Boys was always falling for Annie and she kept moving along like none of them mattered.”

Lexis thought about the letters. She’d read the first few and based on them alone Annie had loved one man.

The phone rang and Margaret frowned.

“Feel free to get that. I’ll sit here and look at the book if that’s all right?”

Margaret hesitated. “Sure. It’s the best way to get to know Annie.”

Margaret vanished around the corner to a kitchen phone mounted on the wall.

Lexis turned the pages of the book searching for a loose scrap of paper with Annie’s handwriting on it. She soothed her guilt with the promise that she’d return the sample as soon as she’d authenticated the letters. In her mind she was doing Margaret a favor. If Rachel was fighting for Jeb there was a good chance he was innocent and the real killer remained free.

She turned the scrapbook page to find a crumpled sheet of notebook paper filled with lyrics written in thick dark ink that reminded her of the letters. She carefully tugged the paper free, cringing when it crinkled and then tucked the sheet of paper in her purse.

From the kitchen Margaret’s voice was low and nervous. Carefully Lexis turned the page hoping for a picture with Annie and her Sugar. There were plenty more pictures but most were of Annie on stage. Margaret’s voice grew more animated. The receiver slammed into a cradle.

Margaret came around the corner, flushed face and angry. Lexis cocked a brow. “Everything okay?”

“No, it is not.”

Lexis kept her hand steady, already wondering how she’d explain the stolen song notes if Margaret pressed. “What is it?”

A deepening frown added to her plainness. “That reporter. She wants to talk to me again.”

“Is that bad?”

“We met the other day and she told me she’d not cover the story until the DNA came back. Now she wants me to guess who might have killed Annie, if it wasn’t Jeb.” She curled fingers into fists. “It was Jeb. I know it was.”

“Did you ever see Annie and Jeb together?”

“I saw him once. It was the time I went to see her at her apartment, before the baby and before her marriage. He was there cutting the grass but he had a creepy way of staring at her. Made my skin crawl.”

“Did you ask Annie about him?”

“I did. And she said not to worry, that he was harmless.” Margaret’s lips flattened. “She was the sweetest girl in the world and it was her sweetness that got her killed. She didn’t see his evil, but I saw it then and I saw it at the trial. He killed her.”

Time had erased all Annie’s faults and magnified all Jeb’s sins. “Why?”

“He wanted her. Plain and simple.”

“Were there other men that gave her the creeps?”

“I heard her telling Momma that the bars were full of sloppy drunks. She longed for the day when she could sing on a big stage.”

Lexis turned a brittle scrapbook page to a picture of a very pregnant Annie who gently cradled her belly. “Whatever happened to Annie’s baby?”

“You’d have to ask her husband. He never would tell Momma or me. We begged him over and over to tell us. Momma was willing to raise the baby as her own. But he wouldn’t tell. Said it was none of our business. Momma was fixing to sue but then she had her stroke. She had to go to the home and I was too young. No judge would have given me that baby.”

“I’m sorry.”

Margaret slid the scrapbook back to her lap, smoothing her hand over it as if she’d done it a thousand times to calm frayed nerves. “If you don’t mind would you see yourself to the door? I’m getting one of my headaches.”