Stormy Weather
Clark opened the door to the conference room and stepped aside to allow Toni Taylor to enter, followed by the members of the Mountaintops. He watched their faces as they trooped single file into the room and found chairs around the conference table.
Toni looked tired but wary, and instead of sitting she leaned against a wall. He knew that she had more than just a passing acquaintance with the Metropolis police department, and he also knew that the FBI had taken an interest in the club and its activities. He’d noticed the same dirty white van with a dry cleaner’s logo painted on the side parked across the street from the club three times since he’d started his undercover assignment, and the last sighting had made him suspicious. His enhanced vision had revealed two bored men and a bored woman wearing FBI windbreakers operating racks of expensive surveillance equipment and several tape recorders.
Perry had been very interested in Clark’s tip about the FBI investigation, but none of his usual contacts in the Bureau had shed any light on the object of their quest. So Perry had decided to continue the undercover operation at the club, and he’d cautioned both Clark and Linda to be wary of interfering in a Federal investigation. For a moment, Clark wondered how much Toni knew about the surveillance, then decided she either didn’t know or that she was a terrific actress.
Shamika entered next and brought his attention back to the present. She projected an air of detachment, which Clark had already learned was more a defense strategy than her real attitude. She found a chair and slid into it with a show of disinterest.
Connie stumbled in a moment later and looked at the officers at the far end of the room with obvious forced enthusiasm. She looked too tired to flirt seriously with them, but she did find the energy to wink and smile at the uniformed officer close to one wall. The young man seemed startled by her actions, and Connie’s beauty-queen smile grew real for a moment. The moment confirmed Clark’s opinion of her, that she wanted male approval and admiration above almost everything else. Besides the success of the band, of course.
Ramona glanced at him and murmured, “Thanks, Charlie.” Then she stepped cautiously to a seat at the end of the table, as far from the policemen as she could get. She propped her elbows on the table and frowned at the officer who was wearing a slightly rumpled brown suit.
That was Ramona, thought Clark, caring about individuals but still all business. If the Mountaintops were a Fortune 500 company instead of a band, Ramona would slide into the CEO role with little or no change in the way she conducted herself.
Lucy stumbled past him as if she were running on empty. She didn’t appear to look at the strange men in the room before she plopped down between Connie and an empty chair. Something had been taken from Lucy in the last two nights, and he wasn’t sure she’d recover any time soon.
Lois stopped in the doorway beside him and he inhaled her scent. She smelled good to him despite the lingering odor of two two-hour sets cranking out the tunes for an enthusiastic crowd. And as always, her gaze took in the entire scene before she deigned to enter the room.
He held the door open with one arm extended, and Lois’ hand drifted towards his as if drawn by some magnetic force. As their fingers touched, both of them jerked with surprise, and she turned to face him with a rueful smile. “Sorry, Charlie.” Her smile widened and she leaned closer. “Good thing you’re not a tuna.”
It took him a moment to recall the old Chicken of the Sea commercials, where Charlie the Tuna kept trying to get caught by the company’s fishermen by showing good taste, only to be denied because they only wanted tunas that tasted good. He smiled back. “Good thing you’re not trying to catch me.”
Lois chuckled. “You’re quick with the quips, too,” she said as she walked to her chair. Even as tired as she obviously was, she never let her guard down. Her wary attitude reminded him of those interesting shorthand pages she’d been working on. Was it possible that she was more than just a beautiful musician?
One with a beautiful heartbeat?
Toni Taylor derailed his train of thought when she turned to face him. “Thank you, Charlie. You can go on home now, unless you have something else to clean up first.”
The officer in the brown suit called out, “Wait. Is this guy with the band?”
An opposing chorus of “Yes” and “No” came from several different people. The officer sighed and said, “Sir, are you a part of the band?”
“No, I’m not,” replied Clark.
Before anyone else could speak, Lois surprised them all. “Yes, he is. He’s our sound tech. He’s not on stage with us, but he’s as important to the group as any one of us.”
Connie turned to Lois and gave her a double-eyebrow wiggle, then said, “Yeah, Charlie can stay as far as I’m concerned.”
Brown Suit asked, “Do you know Christie Baldwin, sir?”
Clark frowned at him. “Only as a singer in the club. I’ve mixed sound for her and the other musicians several times.”
“Then you can stay. Ms. Taylor, I think you should be here too.”
Toni shrugged and closed the door behind her, then sat in the nearest empty chair. “What is this about, Inspector? It’s late and we’re all pretty tired.”
“I know. I’ll try to make this as brief as I can.” He ran his hand through his short salt-and-pepper hair and looked at the floor, then back at the group in front of him. Clark thought he looked like someone who wished he were almost anywhere else but here, and not just because of the late hour.
He took a deep breath and straightened up. “I’m Detective Inspector William Henderson of the Metropolis PD. This afternoon at about five-thirty, two young ladies in the third grade went to an apartment a few blocks from here to sell some candy. They knocked on the front door, and when it swung open, the mother of one of the girls peeked in and rushed the girls away, then called us. A woman was lying dead in the front room of the apartment.”
Even Shamika had been drawn into the story. Connie burst out, “So who was it and why are you telling us about her?”
“Because the dead woman has been identified as Leanne Petrosky.”
All the women in the room, plus Clark, looked around at each other and shrugged, shook their heads, or both. Ramona finally offered, “That’s a shame for her, Detective, but I don’t think any of us know her.”
Henderson nodded. “That’s because you knew her by her stage name, Christie Baldwin.”
Shamika slapped the table twice and shouted, “Two to one drugs over the booze!” Lucy gasped, then closed her eyes and let her breath out slowly. Toni rolled her eyes and muttered something about Johnny not wasting any time. Lois and Connie were stunned into silence, but Ramona called out, “Detective! What did she die of?”
Henderson fixed Ramona with a cold stare. “Murder.”
Jaws dropped all around the table. Shamika gasped out, “Murder? Really?” Toni leaped to her feet and shouted, “What! Are you sure? When? Who did it?” Ramona tried to ask, “Why are we here now?” Connie stood and thrust her chair back against the wall and demanded to know how Christie had been killed. Lucy wrapped both hands around her chair arms and cried out, “No! No! No!” Then she fell silent.
Everyone else reacted loudly, Clark noticed, except Lois Lane. The first thing she did was to grab her sister’s elbow and lean over to whisper to her. Clark couldn’t hear what she was saying because of the noise level in the room, but he did see Lucy turn her pale face to her sister and jerk her head in a ‘no’ motion.
Henderson raised his hands for silence. “Please. Ladies, please calm down! Quiet down, please.” He waited as his audience settled back into their chairs. “I’m sorry to break it to you like this, but I didn’t want you to read about it in the paper tomorrow or hear about it on the news. I understand that Christie had been having some trouble with the other members of the band. Is that right?”
A cacophony of responses began, but Ramona slapped the table and stood. “Mountaintops! Everybody quiet down. Let me answer.”
Toni broke in. “No, Ramona. Don’t say a word to this guy without a lawyer present.”
Henderson sighed. “Ms. Taylor, I’m not accusing anyone of anything. I just want to get a feel for the victim’s last few days. We might be able to find out who killed her if we – “
“No!” Toni stepped forward and slashed the air with her hand. “No more questions, not here and not now! You want to talk to these women, you either arrest someone or you wait until they can get legal representation!”
“You sure about that?” asked the weary detective.
“Very,” replied Toni.
Henderson sighed again. “Okay. In that case, someone will be at your hotel tomorrow morning with a material witness subpoena for each of you, and a very special one for you at your place, Ms. Taylor. Good night, ladies.”
“Subpoena?” “What is this, harassment?” “Jack-booted storm-trooper!”
At that last comment – from Shamika – Henderson lifted one foot and pointed at his shoe. “Standard police issue loafers, sixty-seven-ninety-five plus tax. And for the pair, too, not each one.” He put his foot down. “I’ll try not to wake any of you up too early.”
He led the silent uniformed officers out of the room. As Clark was about to close the door, Toni whispered, “Charlie! Watch them and make sure they leave.”
Clark opened the door again and leaned out. He saw the four policemen leave the club and watched the night man lock the door behind them. He turned and closed the door. “George let them out. They’re gone now.”
Toni took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Look, you ladies need a lawyer. Do not – I repeat, do not – talk to the police without a lawyer present. I guarantee you that you’ll make a mistake and say something they want to hear and they’ll clobber you for it.”
Lois crossed her arms and leaned back. “Sounds like you have some experience with this kind of thing, Toni.”
Toni frowned at her. “I have enough experience with the police to know how to stay out of trouble. And whoever killed Christie has dropped a boatload of trouble in all of our laps.” She stopped and touched gazes with each of the women in the band. “I sure hope none of you know anything about this.”
Ramona said, “Hey! Don’t start that, okay? None of us killed her!” She turned to the other band members. “Right?”
All four of them shook their heads and replied in the negative. “See, Toni? We’re in the clear.”
Toni’s gaze narrowed. “And that means what?”
“Nothing! It means that none of us did anything to Christie! That’s all I meant!”
Interesting, thought Clark. Ramona seems to know something about the real business run out of the Metro Club. Though how she could have played here for almost a month and not known might have been even more suspicious. And Lois had almost implied that Toni was a mobster herself. Also very interesting.
Toni lifted her hands and waved them in front of herself. “Okay, fine, whatever! Nobody knows anything! Now all of us need to get some rest before those process servers show up in the morning.”
Toni turned and strode out the door. Ramona shrugged and said, “I guess this meeting is officially adjourned. Good night, ladies. And get as much sleep as you can.”
*****
Clark was almost halfway home when he heard suspicious noises on the next block. When he checked them out, he found a burglary under way, so he slipped into his Silent Vigilante clothes and bundled them up for the police. On a whim, he tied one of the thieves to a pole and hung a sign on him which read “Courtesy of your friendly neighborhood Silent Vigilante – Please check the security video.”
By the time he considered that the sign might not be such a good idea, the police had responded to the silent alarm. So he decided to salvage what he could from the situation and write up the incident for Perry.
Instead of going home, Clark went directly to his desk at the Planet. First he wrote up the Vigilante story, knowing that Perry would be less unhappy if he had an actual article in his ink-stained hands. Then he typed up what he knew and what he suspected about Christie’s murder, then retyped the information as if it were a story. He considered calling Linda in to help him, but after her odd behavior the night before he decided that she needed her rest more than he needed her help.
He saved the file on his local hard drive and leaned back in his chair. The story wasn’t nearly ready for publication. He needed to talk to the police, try to get some hard information from the medical examiner’s office, and see if he could wrangle someone to interview the Mountaintops for him. After all, he and Linda were still under cover.
He wondered how closely the murder was connected to the mob activities at the Metro Club. His first impression was that Toni Taylor hadn’t known about it before Henderson had made his announcement, but maybe she was a better actor than he thought. Maybe her actions and her well-concealed injuries earlier that evening were related to the murder somehow.
Thinking about Toni brought him around to thinking about the women in the Mountaintops. Perhaps one of them was involved. Maybe one of them had finally had enough of Christie’s antics and had permanently ended the relationship. Christie had certainly provoked each of them to some kind of action on several occasions. He decided to review what he knew about each woman and see if he came up with any answers.
Shamika Jones, drummer and occasional guitarist, was the biggest and strongest of the five. She moved with a tightly controlled power both onstage and off, and her hand-eye coordination was excellent. She seemed emotionally detached from others at times, but Clark believed that she was simply reluctant to open herself up to people. She seemed to be committed to the success of the band over her own fame – just as the other four seemed to be – and if Christie were standing in the band’s way, Shamika might be motivated to do something about it.
But Clark didn’t think she’d killed Christie. Shamika was more likely to loom threateningly over Christie than to knock her around, even out of anger or frustration. Clark had seen Shamika peacefully defuse confrontations on two occasions, one of which involved an overly aggressive admirer who was bothering Connie. Shamika had intimidated the inebriated man into leaving them alone without touching him or even making a fist. In Clark’s mental list, Shamika was the least likely suspect among the band members.
Next he considered Connie Vandross, guitarist and vocalist. Connie was the glamour girl of the band, the one most likely to be featured in a video close-up with her eyes mysteriously shifting from one side to the other. None of the women were unattractive, but Connie was by far the sexiest and most beautiful from a magazine cover point of view. If they were ever on the cover of Rolling Stone, the photographer would surely put Connie and her shoulder-length blond hair and her high cheekbones in front.
And Christie had been close to Connie in the Miss Universe contestant category. Her beauty had obviously been one of the reasons Johnny Taylor had taken up with her. And when Christie was singing to the audience, her visual appeal shot straight past the stage lights.
But Connie didn’t seem to be jealous of Christie on that level. Connie’s dislike of Christie had been based on the dead woman’s behavior and substance abuse, at least as far as Clark had observed. Not once had Connie made any kind of catty remark about Christie in Clark’s hearing. And she’d had any number of opportunities. If Connie had killed Christie for anything other than self-defense, Clark would be very surprised.
What about Ramona? The keyboardist had been deeply insulted the night before by Christie’s behavior and insistence on having Lucy play for her show-stopping solo rather than Ramona. As business manager, Ramona knew to the dollar how valuable the Mountaintops were to the Metro Club and how many patrons they’d brought in. Clark had asked the other bartenders about Christie, and they had all said that she’d been okay, but that the Mountaintops were at least twice as good. Their musicianship and their stage presence had eclipsed Christie Baldwin’s by a large margin. They also said that Christie was an asset to the band when she stayed within the arrangements, but that she had made a habit of trying to take over set closers and song endings after the first few shows. Ramona had been overheard complaining about the potential damage done to the band’s reputation by the singer’s antics more than once.
But was that a motivation to kill someone? To some, perhaps, but Ramona had impressed Clark as being as level-headed and in control as anyone he’d ever met. He’d watched her keep the women in the band in line without coming across as demanding or heavy-handed, yet they’d done things together that he didn’t believe they would have done on their own, and they’d done them because Ramona had asked them to and then had pitched in and carried more than her share of the load. Like Connie, Ramona didn’t seem to be a good candidate to be the guilty party.
What about Lucy Lane? She was the youngest and most volatile member of the group, and she’d been the most upset when Christie had sabotaged the band on stage. She had been the one who’d protested most vehemently to Toni and the other musicians about the singer’s excesses and lapses. The word among the wait staff was that Lucy had attached herself to Christie when the band had first arrived and had seemed to almost idolize her, but that starry-eyed view had quickly collapsed as Christie had fallen further under the influence of drugs and alcohol. It appeared that Lucy had fixated on Christie as a maternal figure, a replacement for her own mother whom Lucy believed had failed her, and then when Christie had proven to be all too human, Lucy had experienced yet another major disappointment. Any police psychologist could make that a motive for murder.
Yet Clark couldn’t see her deliberately killing Christie. If Lucy had smashed her guitar over Christie’s head onstage – or even offstage after one of those infuriating diva moments – Clark would not have been too surprised. But Lucy didn’t seem to be the type to kill someone deliberately. In a moment of hot anger, yes, but he couldn’t see her planning a murder and carrying it out. She wasn’t that cold-blooded.
That left her sister. Lois Lane was smart and determined and supremely talented as a musician, yet there was something lurking under the surface of her musician role, something that Clark hadn’t yet identified. He had seen her angry but never out of control. He had seen her laughing and playing on stage with the other women in the band, obviously having a terrific time, but she’d never seemed to Clark to let everything go, to release herself fully to the moment. It was as if she had something to hide, some secret that burdened her. If any of the women in the band had deliberately killed Christie Baldwin, Lois Lane was probably the one best able to plan such an act and carry it out.
But it didn’t fit what he knew about her personally. From the gossip among the wait staff, he knew about her stepfather, the man Lois and Lucy called Randy the Dandy and how the man supposedly had some loose ties to organized crime. But he also knew that both Lois and Lucy had rejected any business relationship with either their stepfather or his associates, with the exception of financial support while they’d been in high school and then two years of college for Lois and one for Lucy. He also knew that Lois hated what her mother had done by marrying into the mob and then drinking herself into a boozy haze almost as much as Lucy did, and that her distaste for her mother’s lifestyle was based on principles, not on personalities. Lois knew that a criminal act didn’t take place in a vacuum, that it always affected both the criminal and those around him or her. And her dedication to both her sister and to her career would stop her from taking that step.
The act didn’t fit Lois. Clark couldn’t see her planning such a crime without the greatest of provocation, and unless there was something huge that had escaped his attention, it was most unlikely that Lois had murdered Christie.
And if none of the Mountaintops had killed her – who had? And why?
He shook his head and closed down his computer. He wouldn’t solve this case by sitting at his desk. A little sleep was just what the doctor would order if there were a doctor around, and his apartment was a far better place to do that than his desk at the Planet.
