Murder in the Choir (The Jazz Phillips Mystery Series) (2 page)

“You have no idea, Jazz,” he murmured. “I seem to be spending most of my time on the phone to Little Rock.”

That wasn’t good and I almost backed out. If it had been anyone but Dee, I would have. Life is too short for some things. “There are a couple of things I need to finish here, but I can drive down later this afternoon,” I told him. “I can be there by three o’clock or so. Unless you want to send a chopper. Pea Vine would love that.”

Dee laughed. Paul Vinson is the CID comptroller, sour and humorless, and not even the head of the division calls him Pea Vine to his face. “No, there are limits. I don’t want to stroke him out!”

I called my wife to let her know I would be out of town for a few days. When Nellie heard where I was headed, she told me to be careful. There aren’t many straight roads in western Arkansas, but US 71 between Ft. Smith and Mena is the worst there is for curves and poor drivers. It is one of the most dangerous federal highways in the entire nation.

On the other hand, it’s also one of the most beautiful roads in Arkansas, and I didn’t mind the drive at all. It was late enough in the fall for the trees to be turning, and the sweet gums were especially bright this year. The air was crisp and clear, the way it is after thunderstorms, and I drove south with the car heater on and the windows down. The only thing better would have been riding my Guzzi, but it was too cool for that and no room for my stuff. I don’t carry much forensic equipment, but I find a laptop and a Kevlar vest useful. Nor do I like to go into a murder investigation unarmed. Part of my agreement as a consultant with the State of Arkansas is being carried on the books as a sworn peace officer who’s allowed to carry a gun. Thank God I’ve never had to fire it at anything but paper targets.
 

The road straightened out a bit just before I got to Mena. I filled my travel mug with fresh coffee at a drive-in and headed south for DeQueen. I often wonder where some of these places get their names, but not enough to look it up. Some of them make sense, like Saratoga or Y City or Mineral Springs, but what about places like Needmore or Umpire? Nor can I seem to remember where places get their names when someone tells me. That’s strange because I can tell you the most minute details of every major case I had. Nellie likes to remind me of this when I forget something she told me two days before.

There wasn’t much color south of DeQueen, so I thought about what I knew about Smiley Jones. The Little Rock paper had run a human interest article on him several months back. I don’t read the “Life and Leisure” section much and was doing the Sunday crossword when Nellie spotted it and passed it over. She knew I liked his music. I read it through twice, and I had it for good. Six months later, the details were right there, as fresh as the day I read them. Unlike the source of place names, my Memory Central must have decided the information was important.

The article was good and told me a lot I didn’t know. One was that Smiley was born at home in a small black community not far from Nashville, the one in Arkansas. He retired there after a long career on the road. His legal name was Wilbur Orton Jones, Junior, which I didn’t know, and he was much older than I thought. Like me, he got his sobriquet early in life and there was a reason. When he smiled, especially later in life, it was like seeing the pearly gates. He was all perfect white teeth, and the writer said Jones smiled with his eyes, not just his mouth. He wrote that when Smiley moved through a crowd, it felt like a warm, peaceful river reaching out to gather everyone in.

Like many other black musicians, Smiley began his career playing piano for local churches, but it didn’t take him long to find out honkytonks and bawdy houses paid better. So for a couple of years he did both, playing at road houses until the wee hours, then running home to change for church. That came to an end when he ran into a couple of elders in one of the places he played. The main attraction there was not the bar or the band, but the rooms on the second floor, and Smiley had spotted the elders coming down the stairs. Smiley told the reporter that, until they saw him, they looked like cats that had just swallowed a cage full of canaries.

The elders grabbed Smiley and took him outside. One of them showed him a pistol. The other offered him a one way ticket to New Orleans, and Smiley was happy to take it. He said that was the best thing that ever happened, because he got lucky right away. He switched to guitar, teaching himself to play in less than a month, and began working with a jazz band. Later, he put together his own band and did some singing as he played. He was good, even by New Orleans’ high standards, so it was not long until he became well enough known to go on tour. The rest is an American success story. By the time he retired, Smiley had worked with every major jazz player in the country and with every major celebrity on the USO circuit in Korea and Vietnam. He was also a regular performer on national television.

While the writer mentioned there were some rough patches along the way, he didn’t give details. I scribbled myself a note to check these out.

What I knew so far told me there were plenty of other places to look for the killer, but I wondered what might have happened during those rough times that might set murder in motion so many years later. While that had happened a long time back back and was low priority at the moment, it was something to bear in mind.

I stuck the note in my shirt pocket and began thinking through a list of things I needed to check. The information I got over the phone left me with a distinct impression the killer was not someone local, and I’ve learned to listen to first impressions. I didn’t know anything for sure, of course. I didn’t have enough facts even to write that impression in ink or to suggest a line of inquiry. Yet, I considered it a definite possibility.

I wrote myself another note and stuck that in my pocket, too. I would sort them later, but right now I needed to keep my mind open and let it roam. With written notes, I don’t have to worry about forgetting things, and they help me clear the mental slate. One of the biggest mistakes an investigator can make is going too hard in the obvious direction and neglecting subtle, less promising leads. Going with the obvious works most of the time, and it clears a lot of cases. Yet, I’ve learned the hard way it can come back to bite you in the ass.

So I turned my mind to what I didn’t know and made more notes. One thing I didn’t know much about was Smiley’s family life or what he had done since he retired. The article had been vague in this area and either of those might lead to motive and a killer. Everything I ever read about the man told me Smiley was one of the most popular men in show business. He was well known as a gentle soul who never had an unkind word to say about anyone, and he was never demanding.

I assumed the same was true in his personal life, but one never knows. When things seem too good to be true, they often are, and a reputation like that normally makes me suspicious. Everyone has a dark side and when I hear too much praise, I normally wonder what the real story is. With Smiley, I had a hard time doing that. I didn’t want to think ill of the man because I loved his music. That doesn’t make sense because I know better. Some of the worst felons produce some of the finest prison art, and I knew I had to be very careful to be objective when looking at Smiley.

That also meant I might have a hard time getting accurate information. People invest a lot of hope in living saints, and coming across as a devil’s advocate would not sit well. I was sure the information I needed to complete the investigation lay in some dark chapter of Smiley’s history, but I would have to strike a careful balance to get it. Push too hard one way or another, and the sources dry up.

I pulled into Nashville about two o’clock with a shirt pocket stuffed with notes. Unlike it’s counterpart in Tennessee, Nashville, Arkansas, is a sleepy little town of four thousand souls in the Ouchita Mountains in the southwestern part of the state. I’m not sure where Nashville gets its name, whether it’s from the city in Tennessee or maybe in honor of the same person. Or someone else with the same surname. There’s a Nash not far away, near Texarkana. Whatever the source, it’s an old place, settled early in the 1800s and it has its charm. These days, Nashville describes itself as a “community of choice,” which may sound odd for a town in the middle of the Bible Belt. Yet, I think what is being expressed is not a political stance, but the hope that people might choose to live there. I think those who like small, southern towns might find it pleasant. Certainly, the pace of life is much slower.

I pulled over and called the number Dee had given me when I talked to him earlier. I was looking forward to seeing him again. Even though we didn’t see each other often, we always picked up wherever we left off last time, despite whatever might be going on around us.

Or maybe we grew close because of the stuff going on around us, the nature of our jobs. Even as partners in the Highway Patrol, we saw things every day that no one should have to witness. The only respite we had was each other and the trust that grew between us over the years, and I was surprised how much I missed that close connection when I moved to CID. While we didn’t deal with as much awful stuff in CID, the things we did deal with were far worse. Like most police officers, I find it easier to deal with the immediate tragedy of a child killed in a car crash than with the ongoing tragedy of multi-generational incest.

So I was glad when Dee landed in the CID, too. I was senior enough by then to make sure I was assigned as his trainer and we became partners again. Not that Dee needed much in the way of training from me, other than being shown where we kept the pencils and hid the key to the john. I’m told the two of us became living legends in the CID, but I don’t put much stock in that. We did close a lot of hard cases, and we put a lot of sick people away for a long time.

All this came to an end when I was promoted to head of the Division. I made Dee my chief supervisor and trainer, and he was my intended replacement when I retired. Yet, my retirement happened sooner than we expected. The politics involved got to be more than I could stomach and I took an early out. A political hack was promoted ahead of Dee, and Dee asked to go back to investigator, taking a cut in grade. This meant a cut in pay, too, but it was the kind of work he loved. When he stepped aside, the division went downhill despite the good work we had done to build it up. I hated to see that, but I didn’t have cause to complain. After a while, it sent a lot of business my way.

The number Dee had given me was his cell phone and he picked up on the second ring. He gave me directions to the sheriff ’s office, and when I got there I found him waiting at the curb. Nor did he look happy. No one else might have seen it, but I did. He was torqued.

“Good to see you, Jazz!” He held out a hand that swallowed mine when I offered it. “Damn, I’m glad you’re here.” He looked me up and down carefully, noting my losing battle with gravity. Then he grinned. “I guess I shouldn’t mention how good the pie is in the restaurant here. Nellie would nail my ass.”

I laughed. “She tells me I block out too much sunlight.”

He pointed to my shirt pocket bulging with notes. “I see you’ve been hard at work already. Let’s grab a cup of coffee and talk about it.” He nodded to a coffee shop across the street. “We can have some privacy there.”

The shuck and jive didn’t fool me for a minute. Meeting me at the curb was a bad sign. It told me something else was going on, most likely a turf fight over who got to run the show. That didn’t make much sense since it was normally the county sheriff, desperate for a solution, who called in the state CID. Nor was Dee ever much concerned over turf or who had jurisdiction. His primary concern was preserving the chain of evidence and nailing the assholes who did it, and it was not uncommon for him to let the locals take most of the credit for a bust. His reputation made him welcome where a lot of investigators from Little Rock were not.

Sure enough, Dee confirmed that when we sat down and ordered. “I had to talk to you before the Fibbies did. They’ve taken over the sheriff’s office.”

I was surprised to hear the Bureau was involved in a local homicide. Dee nodded. “Yeah. I didn’t know about it when I called you. They’re trying to make this into a federal case. You know, the usual civil rights bullshit.”

“Maybe you’d better tell me what’s going on, Dee.” I didn’t bother to hide how I felt about this.

“The governor pushed the panic button. That’s what’s going on. He leaned on the Attorney General and Barton called in the feds. It was too late to head it off by the time it got to me.” He shrugged. “Not that they consult me much these days.”

Barton Smith was one of the hacks our current governor brought with him to Little Rock. He was as floppy as a flag when hot issues were on the wind, and his record as attorney general was less than brilliant. I detested the man.

“What are they claiming? Conspiracy to violate Smiley’s rights?” I asked. This thing was beginning to sound more and more like a major disaster. I wondered if I should turn around and head back to Ft. Smith.

“Now, don’t go backing out on me, Jazz. They saddled me with this thing and I need you to keep it from going south.” I had to smile. Dee knows me almost as well as Nellie and can read me like a book.