The Strangers on Montagu Street (51 page)

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Authors: Karen White

Tags: #Romance, #Psychological, #Contemporary, #Fiction

BOOK: The Strangers on Montagu Street
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We began walking up to the Ravenels’ front door. “Why would she hide it?” my mother asked. “Don’t songwriters want their music to get out there?”
“Only if they get paid for it,” Jack said.
I wanted to ask him what he meant when the front door was pulled open by Alston. “Hello,” she said. After closing the door behind us, she asked, “Is my mother expecting you? It’s my parents’ date night, so they’re not here.”
Jack smiled, but I could see his anxiety in the pulsing of his jaw muscle. “Actually, we’re still looking for Nola. When I spoke with you earlier you hadn’t seen her, but I was wondering whether maybe since then she might have called.”
She hesitated just for a moment. “I tried calling her about thirty times, figuring she’d answer a call if it was from me. She finally called me back about an hour ago.”
Jack inhaled sharply. “I asked you to call me if you heard from her.”
Alston’s bottom lip trembled. “I know. But she said she was here in Charleston and not to worry, that she was just taking care of something and would be back home tonight. She told me not to tell you because you would just want to interfere. I figured it was okay to wait and tell you because she’s okay.”
Jack closed his eyes and I could tell he was trying to keep his temper in check. “Do you have any idea what sort of thing she needed to take care of?”
Again, she hesitated.
I stepped forward. “Please, Alston. We’re all worried about Nola and we need to find her to make sure she’s safe. Has she used your computer recently?”
She began to cry. “Please don’t tell my mom. She’ll kill me. I promised her that I wouldn’t break my promise to you to not let her use it. But when Nola was here yesterday I left her alone in my room while my mom made me fold a load of laundry downstairs. When I got back, my laptop was in a different spot. And when I used it later it was on the Facebook home page, and I knew that’s not where I was the last time I used it.”
“She didn’t say anything about it?” Jack asked.
“No. And I didn’t ask. It was like we were both keeping the same secret so we wouldn’t get in trouble.”
“It’s okay, Alston,” my mother said as she put her arm around the young girl. “We understand you’re trying to protect your friend. But we need your help now. Can you go get your laptop and let us see whether we can find out anything?”
She nodded eagerly. “I know her Facebook password, if you think that will help.” She was already running upstairs.
When she returned she led us to the kitchen, where she placed the laptop on the table, the Facebook home page already showing. She sat in front of it and typed something before Nola’s home page filled the screen. Her profile picture surprised me; it was a photo of her, Jack, and me at my birthday party that Alston had taken using Nola’s iPhone. I felt the now-common prick of tears in the backs of my eyes and quickly blinked them away.
“Can you go to her messages?” Jack asked.
Alston nodded and made a quick click to the message page, where a single name appeared: Rick Chase. She clicked on it and a string of messages, the last one from the previous day, ran down the screen.
Jack cursed under his breath and leaned forward to read them.
Alston vacated the seat. “Sit here, Mr. Trenholm, so you can see them better.”
Jack sat and began scrolling through the messages. Without looking up, he said to Alston, “It doesn’t look like she’s been using Facebook since I told her not to—at least until last week. I’m guessing that’s why you know her password—so you could let her know when she had a new message?”
Slowly, Alston nodded. With her gaze firmly glued to the floor, she added, “The last time she spoke with him on the phone, she told him to message her on Facebook, since you wouldn’t have access to that.”
“But what would they have to talk about?” I asked, leaning forward and squinting but still unable to read the screen.
“Bonnie,” Jack said. “And the untitled song she was working on when she died.” He leaned forward, his finger hitting the down arrow button harder than necessary. “According to his messages, Rick apparently has it and wants to give it to Nola, but first he wants to hear her play it for him on Bonnie’s guitar. He’s coming to Charleston.”
He was silent for a while as he continued to read. “Damn,” he said, pushing back the chair with sudden force. Glancing at his watch, he said, “They were supposed to meet at the John Calhoun statue in Marion Square half an hour ago.” He stood, then turned to Alston. “Call me if you hear from her; do you understand? No matter what she says, call me.”
“Yes, sir. I promise this time I will.” She blinked rapidly, but not fast enough to stem the flow of tears that poured down her cheeks. “Is Nola going to be okay?”
I squeezed her arm and gave her a reassuring smile before racing after Jack, who was striding quickly out of the house toward his car. I followed while my mother hesitated. Calling out to Jack, she said, “I’ll go back to the house and wait there in case she comes home. Let me know if you need backup and I’ll send James.”
Jack nodded, then sent a glowering look in my direction. “Go with her, Mellie.”
“As if,” I said, using my favorite Nola expression as I opened the passenger door of his car and stepped inside.
CHAPTER 30
 
T
he first bubble of nausea hit me as Jack’s car crossed Broad Street. I wasn’t sure whether it was the breakneck speed and two-wheeled turns as he hurtled down Meeting Street that started it, or the two Twinkies I’d bought at the drugstore because I’d been so hungry. Either way, I found myself with my eyes closed as I prayed I wouldn’t throw up in Jack’s Porsche.
I swallowed heavily, then turned to Jack. “What did you mean—about songwriters only wanting their songs out there if they’re paid for it?”
“I found something out about Mr. Chase. I flew up to New York last week to have a little discussion with my agent before firing him. As a parting gift, he got me in touch with an old friend of his who’s an agent in the music business who happens to know Jimmy Gordon’s agent. He made a few calls for me and I got three minutes on the phone with Jimmy himself.”
I sat there for a moment, trying to digest the Twinkies and what he was telling me at the same time. “What did he say?”
“That when he met with Bonnie and Rick, it was because she was the known writer of ‘I’m Just Getting Started.’ Just her. No partner or anything. Jimmy wasn’t even aware that Bonnie wasn’t getting credit for it after he recorded it.”
“So how come the song is credited to Rick Chase?”
Jack sped through a red light, narrowly missing a cluster of women carrying shopping bags. “Think about it. Bonnie was an addict. Rick would supply her until she was barely coherent, maybe make her sign papers giving up her rights to the song. I think that’s how he stole it from her. From Nola.” I watched him swallow. “He probably killed her, too. In a way. The disappointment and sense of betrayal she must have felt when she heard the song on the radio and knew she hadn’t received any credit for it must have devastated her.”
I swallowed down a ball of nausea. “Poor Bonnie,” I said. “And poor Nola. All this time thinking it was Jimmy Gordon who stole her mother’s song. Rick must have fed Nola some story to make her believe that—you don’t have to look very hard on the Internet to find the writer of a song. But Rick must be feeling some guilt. Don’t you think that’s why he wants to give Nola the new song—so that he can make it up to her?”
Jack shot me a look. “The guy’s a slime bucket, Mellie. My guess is he doesn’t have the song but thinks Nola does. He lied that he had it to get her to meet him. I bet he’s planning to take it from her.”
“But she doesn’t have it, or at least doesn’t know she does.” I thought for a moment. “He’s come all the way from California. What do you think he’ll do when he finds out she doesn’t have it? Maybe we should call the police.”
Jack responded by pressing harder on the accelerator. “I can get there faster.”
I closed my eyes, not wanting to register how fast we were going. “Why would Rick ask her to bring the guitar?”
“Knowing what I know about him, he probably wants her to sing it while he videos her on his phone or something so he can re-create it. That’s assuming she even knows it.”
I looked at him, my eyes wide. “She knows it—or at least part of it. I’ve heard her singing it in the shower when she thought nobody was listening. But she sings the same part over and over, like she doesn’t know what comes next.” I paused for a moment, remembering. “It’s haunting, and beautiful. Sort of Joan Baez at her best. Bonnie sings it, too.”
He sent me a sidelong glance just as the light turned red on Calhoun. Instead of stopping, he sped up to make it through the intersection, narrowly escaping being clipped by a delivery truck. He slid into a spot just vacated across from the Francis Marion Hotel, and we both raced from the car toward the iconic statue inside the square.
The park was almost deserted, the outline of the old statesman on his column highlighted by the bruised sunset sky. As we approached the square white granite base we didn’t see anybody. We slowed, looking down the other paths in case Rick and Nola were heading away from the statue.
I heard the quiet crying first and reached for Jack’s arm in alarm. “Over here,” I said, pulling him to the other side of the granite. We stopped suddenly, our eyes trying to make sense of what we were seeing.
Nola sat in the grass with her back against the white granite, her knees drawn up to her chest, her head lowered as her shoulders shook with each sob. Bonnie’s guitar case lay nearby, splayed open, the remains of the guitar sprinkled over the ground like confetti in front of the crying girl. The neck had been separated from the body of the instrument, the soundboard crushed flat, as if somebody with a large foot had simply stepped on it. The broken strings sprang up in spindly, wild abandon, splattered over the splintered, pale wood like petals from a dying flower.
“Nola!” Jack rushed to her side and knelt in front of her. “Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”
She shook her head without lifting it.
Jack placed his hand gently on the back of her head. “Tell me what happened. I promise I won’t get angry—I just want to know the truth.”
She sniffed, then raised her head. “He didn’t hurt me. But . . . but look what he did to Mom’s guitar. It’s ruined!” She began to sob again, her young world seemingly in as many pieces as her mother’s instrument.
Jack gathered her in his arms and she didn’t protest. “It’s okay, Nola, as long as you’re all right. We can get another guitar. It won’t be the same, but it’s replaceable. You aren’t.”
She pressed her face into his neck and put her arms around him as she cried harder. Jack patted her back as if he’d been comforting her hurts since birth, and I had to turn away so I wouldn’t start crying, too.
“Where did he go?” Jack asked.
Nola looked up, wiping her eyes with the heels of her hands, and I noticed she wasn’t wearing any makeup. She shook her head. “I don’t know. He left after he broke the guitar.”
Jack ran his hand through his hair, turning his head as if trying to determine the direction in which Rick Chase had fled, and I could tell he wanted to go after him. Instead, he looked back at Nola and his face softened. “Don’t worry about that jerk—I’ll deal with him later. But why was he here?”
With a loud sniff, Nola said, “He kept asking me for the music my mom and I were working on when she died. He wouldn’t believe me when I told him I didn’t know, and that we hadn’t even finished it. All I know are the first couple of lines—but I didn’t tell him that. I’m not
that
stupid. Especially after he told me that he was the one who sold ‘I’m Just Getting Started’ to Jimmy Gordon.”
“He admitted it?” I asked.
Nola nodded. “He was proud of it. Said my mother wanted more time with the song to make it better, but he knew it was ready to be a hit, so he made Mom sign over the rights to him, the fu . . . stupid jerk. He told me Mom wasn’t interested in the money anyway, so what he did wasn’t so wrong. That she should have been happy that he was responsible for making the song so popular.” She started to cry again and Jack folded her in his arms. “I’m so stupid. He came to see me the night Mom died, and he told me that she’d been afraid she was going to jail on drug charges and had asked Rick to put the song in his name so that any money it earned wouldn’t get confiscated. The jerk even said that he was going to give every penny to me. But then he said that Jimmy Gordon had cheated us and was making sure we weren’t going to get paid. And I believed him. I’m such an idiot.” Fresh sobs erupted as she buried her face in Jack’s neck.
Jack smoothed the hair on the back of her head. “No, Nola. You’re just young, and Rick Chase took advantage of that. And he’s the only idiot here thinking he’s going to get away with it.”
I bent over to pick up a piece of the guitar, trying to hide a wave of nausea. “Why would he do this?”
With another sniff Nola said, “I think he was trying to find the music—like Mom had hidden it in there, since I said I didn’t know where it was and that the guitar was the only thing of hers that I took with me. He didn’t find anything, though. He just . . .” She hiccuped loudly. “He picked it up and swung it against the bottom of the statue just to make sure.” Her face wore a mask of abject despair, the tears dripping down her cheeks.

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