Dead Wood - By Dani Amore Page 0,52

I started reading about the latest weapons. By the time Ellen came in ten minutes later, I was ready to buy an automatic pistol that held seventeen rounds and came with a laser guide and a night scope.

“What do you want,” she said, with all the enthusiasm of a middle-aged man submitting to a prostate exam.

“Big meeting?”

“Big laughs,” she said, smirking.

I waited for the punchline.

“That conference room looks out on the parking lot. We saw this middle-aged loser pull up in a white Sunbird. Trying to park as far away as possible to avoid the humiliation. It didn’t work.”

“It’s a rental.”

“All this schmuck needed was a bald spot and a gold chain and we’ve got a mid-life crisis in full alert.”

“If that was a meeting about Rufus Coltraine I’m mad I wasn’t invited,” I said, ignoring her delight at my ride. Actually, the more she made fun of me, usually the better her mood. Sometimes, though, it was just the opposite. I wondered if she’d found something out, and more importantly, if she planned on sharing.

“It was and your invite must’ve gotten lost in the mail.” Her expression resembled newly dried concrete. Flat, emotionless and no sign of cracks.

“What’d you find out?” I said.

“None of your fucking business, Mr. Sunbird.”

I waited a moment then said in my most caring, parent voice possible, “Mom and Dad were very clear on the importance of sharing.”

She sat down and rubbed her hand over the top of her head. In Ellen’s repertoire of tells, this meant she was frustrated.

“All the music stores and pawn shops turned up squat,” she said. “No Rufus Coltraine. No Jesse Barre guitar. We even sent emissaries down to fucking Toledo. No dice. If he hawked a guitar, it most likely wasn’t around here.”

“And if he didn’t hawk it,” I said, “How’d he get the dope and why was a valuable guitar sitting in his apartment?”

“Twenty bucks buys enough dope for what he had in him,” she said. “You don’t need a guitar for that.”

I didn’t rise to the bait. Instead I said, “How’d you get the call on him?”

“Landlord. Neighbor said they saw someone in that apartment doing drugs.”

“Which neighbor?”

“Landlord didn’t know.”

I nodded. “Ever hear that one about the big pink elephant in the room?”

She crossed her eyes at me.

“They say it’s like living with an alcoholic who won’t admit the problem,” I said. “It’s like a big pink elephant sitting in the room but every one pretends it’s not there.”

When she saw where I was going, she flushed a little.

“Coltraine was set up,” I said. “No one wants to admit it, but he was.”

“Prove it,” she said.

“That’s what I’m doing.”

“No, you’re speculating.”

“Which is the first step in proving something,” I pointed out.

“I need evidence.”

Which meant that maybe Ellen felt something was wrong but didn’t want to come out and say it.

“Right now I’ve got evidence that links Rufus Coltraine to the murder of Jesse Barre,” she said. “Maybe he was walking by, saw her in the workshop alone, and did what he felt he had to do. Maybe he killed her and then got high right away, planning to sell the guitar later.”

“What about the Shannon Sparrow guitar?” I said. “Where’s that?”

She didn’t have an answer for that.

Her phone rang and she picked up the receiver, “Hold on just a second,” she said. She grabbed a few sheets of paper and shoved them at me then lifted her chin at the door.

“The Sunbird is calling,” she said.

Thirty

My mind was on Jesse Barre. Thoughts about the case were hopping and skittering across my brain like stones skipped across a lake. Rufus Coltraine, aspiring musician, dead from an overdose. The connections started to come fast and furiously. I had a sudden, urgent desire to learn more about Shannon Sparrow. After all, it was her guitar that was missing. She had a link to the deceased. By the nature of her occupation, she had a link to the dead ex-con. And there was something about her and her people that made me want to dig. I don’t know if it was the arrogance of her manager, or the seediness of the hangers-on, or maybe just Shannon herself.

I fired up the Internet and after less than an hour, I’d dragged about fifty articles onto my desktop. I tried to read them in a rough chronological order and by the time I’d gone through five or six, I started speed reading, passing over the expected redundancies. There were the obvious details: an early