Nashville Noir (5 page)

“Well, Mrs. F., I suppose I’d better give Mrs. Blaskowitz a call and break the bad news.”

“I don’t envy you that, Mort. Will you be calling her immediately?”

“Soon as we hang up.”

“Then I’ll call her in fifteen or twenty minutes.”

“I’m sure she’ll appreciate that, Mrs. F.”

My phone rang ten minutes later. It was Janet Blaskowitz.

“Jessica, I just received a call from Sheriff Metzger and . . .” She began sobbing.

“I know, Janet. I spoke with the sheriff, too.”

“My God, what are we going to do? They say she murdered Mr. Marker.
Murdered him!”

“I know, I know,” I said, “but try to calm down. Above all else, Cindy needs us to think clearly. I’m sure there’s been a huge mistake that can be straightened out if we put our minds to it.”

“I tried to call Mr. Marker earlier today to see if he knew where Cindy might be. His secretary said he wasn’t available.”

An interesting way to say someone is dead
.

“I’m beside myself,” Janet said. “My baby! Cindy is so sweet and innocent, she’d never—”

“Why don’t I come over, Janet? We can sit down and plan a course of action. Have you spoken with Cindy?”

“No. How do I reach her?”

“Wait until I get there. We’ll call the police department in Nashville and see if they’ll allow you to speak with her.”

“To think of her in some filthy jail cell, wasting away, frightened to death. I can’t stand it.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

I called my favorite local taxi company and was soon dropped off in front of Janet’s modest, well-kept house. Emily answered my knock and led me to the living room, where her mother was huddled on a couch with her two younger daughters, Mia and Liz. I’d no sooner sat when my cell phone vibrated. I opened it and saw that it was Seth Hazlitt.

“Where are you?” he asked without any preliminary words.

“I’m at Janet Blaskowitz’s house.”

“I figured,” he said. “I just got off the phone with Mort, heard about what happened in Nashville.”

“Oh?”

“How is Mrs. Blaskowitz holding up?”

“She’s distraught, as you can well imagine.”

“Let me speak with her.”

I handed the phone to Janet.

She could barely get out a “hello.” I couldn’t hear Seth’s side of the conversation, but Janet nodded and said “okay” several times, before handing me back the phone.

“I’m going to drop by and give her something to help calm her down,” Seth told me.

“That’s a good idea,” I said.

He ended the call. If there was ever a dedicated doctor, Seth Hazlitt was it. How many physicians made house calls anymore?

Janet Blaskowitz looked as though she might pass out any minute.

“Want me to make some tea?” I asked her.

“No,” she said weakly. “Dr. Hazlitt said he’s stopping by.”

“Would you like me to stay with you until he gets here?”

“Yes, thank you. He’s a little worried about my heart condition.”

“Oh, Janet. I didn’t know you had a heart condition. Are you in any pain?”

“What are we going to do, Jessica?”

“You’re going to rest while we wait for Seth. In the meantime, why don’t I go in the kitchen and do what I suggested, try to contact the Nashville police and see if you can talk with Cindy.”

Her response was to close her eyes and shudder.

I called the number Mort had given me and asked whoever answered if I could speak with Detective Biddle. After a minute’s wait, he came on the line. I introduced myself, said I was a close friend of Cindy Blaskowitz’s mother, and asked if she could speak with Cindy.

“Sorry, ma’am, but I’m afraid that’s impossible.”

“Why?”

He tried to hide the pique in his voice but was only moderately successful. “Number one, Mrs.—what’d you say your name was?”

“Fletcher. Jessica Fletcher.”

“Yeah. Well, number one, Mrs. Fletcher, Ms. Blaskowitz, if that’s what you call her, doesn’t want to talk to anybody. Number two, the chief has put a gag order on this case. Number three, she’s not here at Central. She’s out at CDC, the Correctional Development Center—women’s jail in plain-speak. Number four, ma’am, there’s a procedure everyone has to follow regarding visitation and phone calls to inmates. Does that answer your question?”

“You say Blaskowitz is what I call her. What do
you
call her?”

“I call her the name she gave us, Cyndi Gabriel. That’s Cyndi with a
Y
instead of an
I
, and an
I
where a
Y
’s supposed to be. C-Y-N-D-I. Gabriel.”

“I see. Does she have a lawyer?”

“She’ll be assigned one. Look, like I said, you can’t speak with her, and I’m done speaking about her, too.”

“Can her mother speak with her?”

“No, ma’am. Thanks for the call. You have a nice evening, Mrs. Fletcher.”

Seth arrived soon after I hung up.

“Were you able to reach her?” Janet asked me. Her voice sounded even weaker than before.

“Not yet,” I said.

“What are we going to do?”

“What you’re going to do, dear lady, is take two of these pills, help you settle down,” Seth said, seating himself next to Janet and lifting her hand to take her pulse. He asked Emily to fetch a glass of water from the kitchen.

Janet looked at me. “What did they say, Jessica?”

I started to relate to Janet what Officer Biddle had said when she suddenly began turning gray and gasping for breath, her hands to her chest. Seth sprang up immediately. “Call 911,” he instructed, which I did, the dispatcher assuring me that an ambulance would be there shortly. The two younger children, who’d moved from the couch to allow room for Seth, ran to their mother, but Seth shooed them away. He swung Janet’s legs up on the cushions and propped pillows behind her. “Take it easy,” he said as Emily delivered the water and Seth prompted Janet to take the pills.

“Will my mama be all right?” Mia, one of the young daughters, asked.

“Ayuh,” Seth said, “she’ll be just fine.” He looked at Emily. “You have any relatives in town can stay with you and your sisters while your mother is in the hospital?”

“My mother’s cousin lives nearby.”

“Please call her, and tell me if she needs to speak with me.”

Emily went to make the call, pulling her sisters with her. It seemed that only a minute had passed before two EMTs arrived, and under Seth’s direction placed Janet on a gurney, took her to the waiting ambulance, and drove off to Cabot Cove General Hospital.

Janet’s cousin agreed to keep the girls overnight, and said she’d be over to pick them up as soon as possible. I waited for her to arrive. Once I was confident that they would be properly cared for, and after issuing multiple assurances that their mother would be all right and leaving my phone number in case they wanted to speak with me, I joined Seth at the hospital, where he’d already ordered a battery of tests.

“Nothing else we can do right now,” he said. “She needs to rest.”

After telling Janet that he’d be by in the morning, Seth drove me home and we settled in my dining room to discuss what had transpired that night. Neither of us had had dinner, so I rustled up some leftover roast chicken, broccoli, and mashed potatoes. My appetite had flown, but Seth dug right in, pushing aside the broccoli and dipping into the potatoes. “Could use a little more butter,” he decided. My dear friend and beloved Cabot Cove physician rarely follows the dietary advice he dispenses to his patients.

I ignored his call for more cholesterol and said, “You know, Seth, I had an uncomfortable feeling about Cindy’s trip to Nashville from the beginning.”

“The infamous ‘feelings’ of Jessica Fletcher,” he said as he headed for the kitchen to retrieve a salt cellar from a top shelf, returning to set it down on the table with a sharp rap. “When you get a ‘feeling’ about the stock market, madam, I trust you’ll share it with me. I can use a little more put by for my retirement.” He energetically salted the chicken.

After clearing the table—I’d barely touched my dinner—we went into the living room carrying steaming mugs of coffee. “I feel as though I have to do something to help her, Seth,” I said.

“Not your responsibility, Jessica. Sounds to me like it’s strictly a matter for the Nashville police and its legal system.”

“You’re wrong, Seth. Cindy went to Nashville because the CCC raised money for her to do so, and I was an enthusiastic supporter. She’s all alone there, sitting in a cell with no one to hold her hand and hear her side of the story.”

“She’ll have a lawyer, won’t she?”

“The officer I spoke with said that one would be assigned to her, but that’s a poor substitute for having a personal advocate at your side.”

Seth cocked his head at me and frowned. “Why do I have this nagging feeling that you’re talking yourself into going to Nashville, Jessica?”

“Is that what I’m doing?”

“I believe it is. But let me point something out to you. The way I see it—”

My ringing phone stopped him in midsentence. It was Evelyn Phillips, the editor of the
Cabot Cove Gazette
.

“I hope I’m not disturbing anything important, Jess,” she said.

“I’m having a conversation with Seth.”

“About Cindy Blaskowitz, I bet.”

“You’ve heard.”

“I just got off the phone with a reporter from the
Nashville Tennessean
. He’s doing a story on her arrest and—”

“Oh my,” I said. “Bad enough she’s going through this without having to become a news item at home.”

“You can’t honestly expect me not to do a story, too, Jessica. Murder is big news. What’s this business of her changing her name? The reporter told me that—”

“Evelyn, I hate to cut this short, but I really need to get back to Seth.”

“Sure, only I need a statement from you about the CCC and how you were the ones who sent her to Nashville.”

“I’ll call you back, Evelyn, in the morning.”

I hung up and started to dial another number.

“Who was that?” Seth asked.

“Evelyn Phillips.”

“Who are you calling now?”

“Susan Shevlin.”

“Oh?”

“I need her to book me a flight, and a hotel in Nashville.”

S
torms in the Midwest and South the next day, Tuesday, wreaked havoc on airline schedules, and my flight, originally scheduled to land in Nashville in the afternoon, arrived at nine that night. A cab let me off in front of Cindy’s “building,” which turned out to be a large rambling Victorian, the original porches of which had been enclosed, making it look as though the house had been wrapped in glass-patterned paper. I knew from Susan Shevlin that it was subdivided into smaller units to accommodate the tenants, leaving the landlady, Mrs. Granger, with the largest “apartment.”

Deciding to spend a night at the rooming house where Cindy had been staying was a last-minute, impetuous decision, aided by the fact that my hotel of choice couldn’t accommodate me for my first night in Nashville. I’d decided to experience the flavor of Cindy’s surroundings before setting off for the jail in the morning to attempt to speak with her. I’d called the landlady, Mrs. Granger, explained why I was coming to Nashville, and she graciously invited me to stay. “Terrible thing,” she said, “what happened to Ms. Blaskowitz. It’s got everybody in the house on edge. I’m sure she’ll be glad to see a familiar face from home. Seemed like such a nice, gentle young woman, hardly capable of whackin’ a music publisher in the head, not that some of them don’t deserve it. I knew Marker. Heckuva way to go. Well, you get yourself here to Nashville and I’ll have your room all made up for you.”

Thankfully, Mrs. Granger was a night owl. When I knocked at her door at a little after ten, she waved off my apologies for the lateness of the hour. She was not only still awake but fully clothed and about to go out. “New York’s not the only city with a nightlife,” she told me with a grin. “If you’d come earlier, ah would’ve caught the show at the Bluebird. No biggie. You’re here now. I can go see one of my former girls who’s got a late gig at Tootsies.” She glanced at her watch. “Should be able to catch the tail end of her show, but there’s still time to give you a cup of coffee or something stronger—I think I got some bourbon in the kitchen—unless you want to settle in right now.”

“Settling in sounds wonderful,” I said. “I’ve spent my day in airport lounges trying to find a seat and keep it as the delays backed up. I’ve had elbows poked into my ribs, newspapers strewn across my lap, and babies thrust into my arms when their mothers took another child to the bathroom.”

“Flyin’s no fun anymore, so I hear,” she said as she grabbed a key from a board on the wall. “Like I told you on the phone, the empty unit’s not much, but the sheets are clean. It’s paid up to the end of the week, so I won’t charge you the full amount.”

“Clean sheets are all I need at the moment,” I said, giving her a weary smile. “Unless—have you heard anything from Cindy?”

“No, but not that I’d expect to. Got a call from a detective who says he wants to ask me about her, why I can’t imagine. All I know is that she came here to become a big star, like so many of ’em do, paid her rent, and kept pretty much to herself.”

I rolled my suitcase behind her to the base of a staircase, where she paused and eyed me up and down. “It’s up two flights. Can you make it?”

“I can if you can,” I said.

Mrs. Granger was not what I expected. From Susan’s description of the place, I’d envisioned an elderly lady in a housedress, fussing over her young charges like a mother cat with a litter of wayward kittens. But Lynee Granger was taller than I, with erect posture, and a wardrobe closer to Dolly Parton than Minnie Pearl. Her cranberry satin shirt had rhinestones along the collar and down the plackets of the sleeves. She wore her tight jeans low and tucked into red cowboy boots. Silver bangles jingled on her wrists and a rhinestone guitar hung from a silver cord around her neck. Black hair was piled high on her head, with tendrils framing her face and curling into big hoop earrings. From the back, I would have guessed she was in her twenties or thirties. Face-to-face, and despite the artful hand she had with makeup, I estimated her age at midforties, maybe a bit older.