Dead Wood - By Dani Amore Page 0,11

and paid for.” Clarence’s face had turned slightly reddish in color. I had a feeling pissing him off wouldn’t be a good idea.

“What is the alibi? Do you know?”

Clarence shook his head. “The cops wouldn’t tell me. Said it was an official matter. Official my ass.”

“If you don’t know what the alibi is, how can you be so convinced it isn’t valid?” I asked.

“Because of what Jesse said,” he said. His voice was full of exasperation. I felt like the dumb kid in class and no matter how hard the teacher tried, I just couldn’t grasp the concept at hand.

“That he was possessive,” Clarence said. “Jealous. Christ, the guy’s practically a hermit. Just him, his ship and dragging dead wood out of the lake. No wonder he latched onto Jesse.”

A silence hung in the air for a few moments.

“Are you going to help me?” he asked.

“Here’s what I think,” I said, leaning forward. “My advice is if you are determined to have the outcome of this investigation be the uncovering of a complex murder plot involving your daughter, don’t hire me.” He looked at me, almost a glint in his eye. It reminded me of Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven.

“I’m ninety-nine percent sure that if I do further investigation,” I continued, “I’m going to find that it was, in fact, a burglary gone wrong. Maybe you’ll get mad and won’t want to pay me or maybe you’ll just try to beat the shit out of me. Whatever. If, however, you truly are interested in uncovering the truth – even if that truth isn’t something you agree with, then we can talk. So you tell me what you want out of this, and we’ll see what we can work out.”

He eased himself out of his chair and walked toward the pictures on the wall. He passed by the ones featuring himself and other celebrities. He paused at the end of the row. I couldn’t see what he was looking at. But his big shoulders slumped slightly. For just a moment, he looked like a tired old man.

“My wife was a pessimist,” he said. His voice was low and gentle. “Back then, I was just a studio musician and a songwriter doing small solo gigs at backwoods clubs. She was a secretary who came to see me play once. Introduced herself. She was so goddamn beautiful. Blonde hair, gray eyes that could twist your insides if she looked at you a certain way. This was before my would-be manager approached me and told me he could make a star out of me. That I was a hit-making machine waiting to be put into production.”

I leaned forward in my chair, trying to get a better look at the photos on the wall as he told his story.

“Anyway, we started seeing each other and got married only a few months later,” he said. “I was writing, singing and playing whenever I could. Hell, all the time. But it was just me and her back then. That wasn’t just love. It was intense love.”

He turned back to me and his eyes blazed at me. Jesus, I thought, this guy is old-school.

“See, she didn’t want to have kids,” he said. “It was that pessimist in her. She thought most people were bastards through and through. A truly low opinion of human nature, of society in general. She was sort of a split personality, which I found very attractive. She had a heart of gold, but her take on the world was that it was the equivalent of a pack of hyenas trying to rip off a chunk of the carcass.”

“Why did she think that?” I said.

He just shrugged his big shoulders. “She never really said. I think her parents splitting up had something to do with it. I don’t think her childhood was the greatest. But it’s not like she was a sad sack, either. She was happy go lucky most of the time. But it was hard to get her to give people the benefit of the doubt, you know?”

“I do.”

“She loved me, though. I guess she thought I was the exception to the rule.”

I nodded. Like so many theories on human behavior, there was a grain of truth to it.

“But when it came to people and the world around me, I was Mr. Fucking Optimistic. The world was my oyster, boy. I knew I could make good music. The future was full of joy, happiness and success. And money, too. To me, that was all