Killer Riff (6 page)

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.

“That pleases me,” Claire said politely. “We’ll leave your name at the door. What was it again?” She knew, but if she needed to mark her territory, I could play along. I repeated it for her, and she nodded, her arm sweeping in the direction of the front door, like a Realtor who had decided I couldn’t afford the property she was showing and it was better to move along before anyone’s time was wasted any further.

Olivia frowned at her. “We’re not ready to leave.”

Claire bounced her key ring in her hand. “What else are you going to do?”

Olivia made a high, unhappy sound in her throat. “This is my home,” she managed.

“You couldn’t be here when your father needed you, but you can be here now? How convenient. For you,” Claire shot back.

“Don’t you blame me,” Olivia said, on the verge of losing control. I stepped forward instinctively, realizing a split second later that I was concerned she was going to accuse Claire too early, before a persuasive case could be made. Guess Olivia was getting to me after all.

“You’re the therapist, sweetheart,” Claire said, mockingly maternal. “You’re well versed in how often people blame someone else because they can’t handle their own guilt.”

I could feel the knowledge radiating off Claire like heat. Claire knew that Olivia suspected her. A quick glance to Olivia showed she was unexpectedly pale and quiet. Was this her first brush with Claire’s awareness? How close to the bone was Claire cutting? And what did Olivia have to feel guilty about? She was so vehement about her dad being clean, maybe he had had a problem that she hadn’t been willing to recognize. But did that make her suspicions of Claire any less valid? Or was this really just a case of everyone pointing fingers at everyone else because no one could accept the fact that Russell had killed himself, intentionally or accidentally?

“Please leave,” Olivia said in a voice I hadn’t heard yet—small, young, and tired.

Claire bounced her ring in her hand again, weighing her decision and not the keys. She looked at me, and I tried to concentrate, for the article to come and for my own peace of mind, on how vibrantly green her eyes were, not how cold they seemed. “Has she told you about finding her father?”

I started to answer that she hadn’t had a chance, but I stopped, wondering why I was feeling pressed to defend Olivia. Just because she was the first one to point a finger didn’t mean she was right. She might even be wrong that it was murder. But she’d raised Claire’s hackles, which raised my suspicions.

“Please leave,” Olivia repeated with increased urgency.

Suddenly, Claire held out her arms to Olivia and, when Olivia didn’t respond, swept her into a large yet perfunctory hug. “Don’t be late tonight.”

In response, Olivia stared at the floor and said nothing while Claire’s heels punctuated her anger all the way out the front door. Once the door rasped closed, Olivia looked at me expectantly. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to react, so I tried not to, which thrust the burden of comment back on her. After a few moments, she said, “Would you like a water? Coffee? I should’ve asked earlier.”

“No, thank you.” She seemed smaller than when we’d first met, as though interacting with Claire had made her shrink down into herself, like an anemone recoiling from a brush with a barracuda. I wanted to turn our conversation back to the tapes, but first I had to ask, “What should I know about your finding your father’s body?”

“I didn’t find his body, I found
him,”
Olivia said grimly. “He was still breathing when I got here, so Claire says it’s my fault he died. That I should’ve gotten help for him more quickly than I did.”

“What do you think?” I asked, self-conscious that I was sounding like a therapist and treading on her toes.

“I couldn’t think. He’d called me and asked me to come over, but he was sounding crazy. He’d been drinking. So when I first came in, I thought he’d just passed out. I figured I’d just tidy up, sit with him, talk to him when he woke up.” She gestured to an armchair with a deep seat and a long matching footstool, almost like a two-piece chaise longue, and I understood this was where her father had been sitting when she’d found him.

The end table beside the chair was a heavy disk of hammered brass resting on a column of monkeywood. It was Thai; I’d seen them when I was growing up, in the home of friends whose parents had been stationed at the embassy there. There was a circular stain on the brass, just about where you’d put a glass if you were sitting in the chair. I rubbed at it with my finger, but the stain didn’t lift. The circle was so perfect, it had to have been the same glass, night after night. A ritual.

There were also four scratches marking the corners of a rectangle on the table. The scratches were brighter than the ring. Newer. An ashtray? No, something bigger. But I didn’t want to get distracted, I needed to get the story out of Olivia. “Your father drank.”

Her nostrils flared in irritation. “I never said he didn’t. I said he didn’t do pills.”

“Okay. Did he drink heavily?”

“Not so much anymore. Said he was getting too old for the hangovers. But every once in a while …” She shrugged. “Don’t we all?”

“What happened to make you think this was different?”

“His breathing started to sound funny. I tried to wake him up, but I couldn’t. So I called.”

“Nine-one-one.”

“No. Adam.”

“Adam Crowley?”

She bobbed her head in agitated assent. “He’s my … This is going to sound stupid, but he’s like my brother.”

“Has he ever been anything else to you?” I asked, remembering Claire’s slam about “screwing the boys.”

Her head snapped up, and she looked at me with narrowed eyes. “Claire’s a bitch, and you can’t believe half of what she says.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No, we’ve never been anything else.”

I couldn’t tell if the anger in her voice was specific to that statement or about the whole situation, but I decided to press on. “Okay, so what happened when you called him?”

“He was finishing up rehearsal for this play. He told me he’d be right over, but he was coming from the Upper East Side.”

“He didn’t tell you to call 911?”

“You don’t understand, I didn’t want anyone to see my dad that way.”

“Unconscious?”

“Messed up.”

I started to express my objection to that line of thinking, but she cut me off. “Anyway, while I was waiting, Dad’s breathing got more distressed and I got scared, so I called 911 anyway.”

“But they didn’t get here in time?”

She swayed a little as she searched for the proper description. “Barely. They did their thing and rushed him in the ambulance, but he stopped breathing once on the way, and by the time he was in the ER …” She shuddered at the memory. “They asked me if he’d taken anything, and I said of course not. I didn’t know …” She made a shooing gesture, but I wasn’t sure if it was directed at me or the memories.

“But now you’re sure. Why?”

“Because I’m an idiot. Claire came over when she heard the paramedics, but I told her she didn’t need to come with us. So she was in here with all kinds of time to clean up and hide evidence and do anything else she needed to do.”

I rubbed the circle on the brass table again. “Did she say she cleaned up?”

“Of course not. She claims she went back to her apartment and waited by the phone.”

By the phone. I looked at the suggestion of a rectangle on the brass table again. “Where did you go to call Adam?”

Her breath clicked in her throat in irritation at my change in focus. “I didn’t go anywhere. I had my cell in my purse.”

“What happened to this phone?”

Olivia looked down at where my finger was tapping the brass table and blinked slowly, then looked around the room. “It’s …” She looked back at the table, perplexed. “I don’t know.”

“Was it there that night?”

She gazed at the table for a long beat, as though replaying the scene in her mind frame by frame. “No,” she replied slowly. “His glass and his headphones. That’s all. It didn’t even register … That’s so odd.”

If someone had indeed laced Russell’s nightly cocktail with a pharmaceutical kicker, it would be logical to remove the phone so he couldn’t call for help. But had it been removed before or after Russell called Olivia?

“What did your dad say when he called you?”

She waved her hands dismissively. “He was drunk.”

“In vino veritas.”

She paused uncomfortably. “I don’t remember.”

“Then I can’t help you.”

She walked away from me suddenly, as though that would put distance between her and my question. Perching on the edge of a sofa, she laced her fingers in her lap and was quiet so long that I almost thought she was waiting for me to leave. Finally, she said in a crisp, detached tone, “Everything had turned out to be a lie, and what was most precious to him had been used against him.”

That would be hard to hear anyone you care about say, much less your father. And then when it turns out to be the last thing he says to you, ouch. I gave her a moment before asking, “Do you know what he was talking about?”

“Guess,” she said unhappily.

“You.”

She gave me a withering look, thinking I was making fun of her, then looked away when she realized I was serious. Watching her face, I could see her censoring the answer until there was almost nothing left. “His work.”

“How could that have been used against him?”