Dead Wood - By Dani Amore Page 0,10
the Spook knew that Mr. Springs’ answering machine was on the kitchen counter and that every evening the first thing Mr. Springs did when he got home was put his briefcase on the kitchen’s island, then turn his full attention to the answering machine.
The Spook stood behind the British investment banker for just a moment, then reached up and looped the guitar string, cross-handed, over the man’s head. Springs heaved back but the Spook easily pivoted and brought him down, then kneeled on the man’s back. He worked the thin metal cord back and forth like saw until it had thoroughly cut through the soft flesh of the banker’s neck. The Spook heard a scream reduced to soft gurgles and Springs thrashed for several seconds before his nerves received their final instructions.
And then Springs was dead.
His contract with the bank’s partners fulfilled, the Spook stood, wiped the blood off the string with one of the kitchen towels, then went back to the guitar. He threaded the string back through the tuning key, tapped the peg back in place and wound the string tight, tuning by ear.
The Spook picked up the glass slide and confidently eased into the opening licks of “Moonlight Mile.”
He only had time for one or two songs.
The guitar sucked, sure. But his hero had played on worse.
This one definitely went out for Keith.
Eight
The address Clarence Barre had given me was on a street called Rivenoak, along the small strip of homes east of Jefferson. It was a valuable stretch of property, bordered on one side by Lake St. Clair. On the other side of Jefferson was the bulk of Grosse Pointe, acting as a thick layer of insulation from the depravity of Detroit proper.
The neighborhoods here were very upscale. Big lots, big houses, big money. The royalties from Clarence’s backlist must have been both large and frequent.
The house itself was a statuesque Colonial. It was between two larger Tudors and just a few houses in from Lake St. Clair. A small cul-de-sac with benches and wildflowers was at the end of the street. Clarence could stroll down here after dinner, smoke a cigar, and watch the boats pass by and the gulls doing their thing. He probably would have done something like that before his daughter’s death. Now, my guess was that if he did come down and look out over the water, he’d think the kind of thoughts no parents should have to entertain. Someone once said the most painful thing in the world is to outlive your children. Seemed to me to be a pretty safe bet.
I parked my car, a utilitarian gray Taurus, in the stamped concrete driveway. I went to the door and used the brass knocker, trying to tap out the bass line to Clarence’s “Mississippi Honey.”
He answered the door wearing the kind of outfit he’d worn to my office; jeans, a colorful shirt and a black leather vest. Shiny, pointed toe cowboy boots as well. They looked to be of the same kind of leather as the bolo tie around his neck.
We shook hands and then he showed me in to his living room. It was like the man himself; warm, rugged and comfortable. Leather furniture, dark Persian rugs, some gold records on the wall as well as some pictures of a younger Clarence Barre with some minor and not-so-minor celebrities.
“Can I get you anything, Mr. Rockne?” he asked.
“Please, call me John. No thanks, I’m fine.” We each took a leather club chair and he looked at me questioningly.
“So...”
“What can you tell me about Nevada Hornsby?”
An almost imperceptible smile crossed Clarence’s face. He knew I was taking the case. In fact, he’d probably known before I had.
“He runs a salvage operation out of St. Clair Shores,” Clarence said.
“Salvage – like sunken ships?”
“Wood. Old lumber that sunk hundreds of years ago. It’s valuable stuff. Jesse used it to make her guitars.”
“So that’s how they met,” I said.
He nodded. “Ironically, in my mind, when she started using that salvaged lumber was when her career really took off. She’d tried different stuff, built a pretty big following with exotic woods. But when she started using the stuff from Hornsby, everything changed. For the better.”
“Even her personal life,” I added.
He didn’t like that. “That’s how she saw it, I’m sure. But I never liked the guy from day one. Real quiet. Standoffish. Like he had something to hide.”
“Such as...”
“Who knows?”
I looked at my notes. “He’s got an alibi.”
“The alibi is bullshit,” he said. “Probably bought