Painted Black (28 page)

Bobby sat in the cab next to him. “I've got a bad feeling about Brian. That's why I came back tonight.”

“You mean like Erlene's visions?”

“No, I don't really know how to describe it. It's just a premonition, I guess. He was going to sack Frank and the others today, I thought maybe that might cause trouble. I didn't like him being alone with Frank and those goons.”

“Good point. Was he really gonna sack 'em all by himself? That doesn't sound like Brian.”

“He told me he had to face up to it.”

“Maybe he's beginning to see the light.”

From somewhere behind him, an ambulance wailed. The flashing lights were a mile behind and coming fast. In a few racing heartbeats, the ambulance was right behind Clovis, blinding him with flashing red lights and a siren that made the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

The ambulance filled the night with lights and noise. Clovis eased the big truck over to the side of the road so the ambulance could pass. It hurried on ahead, disappearing between the trees, lights flickering on and off.

“Somebody's not having a good night,” Clovis said. “I wonder who it is?”

“God bless 'em, whoever they are,” Bobby whispered.

As they came around the final turn, Bobby was shocked to see that the ambulance had turned into Cotchford Farm's driveway. Alarms began going off in his head. Somehow, someway, at that exact moment, Bobby knew who the ambulance was for. He should've known it all along. There was only one answer.

Oh no! Oh please! God no! Don't let it be that!

“Uh-oh,” Bobby said. “It's Cotchford.”

For a moment, Bobby thought his mind was playing crazy tricks on him. They lumbered the delivery truck to a halt and got out and ran to the house just as they were wheeling Brian out on a gurney. He had a sheet over his head. Bobby knew who it was without looking.

“Oh, shit!”

“Is it … ?” Clovis asked.

Anna nodded slowly, tears streaming down her face.

The ambulance attendants wheeled Brian across the lawn where the pieces of the white picket fence were still piled up. They slid Brian's gurney into the ambulance. The lights and siren went back on and in a moment it disappeared back up the driveway. They took Brian's body and just like that, he was gone. Gone from this earth.

Brian Jones was dead. Bobby felt numb. Clovis tried to hold back the tears.

Bobby felt wracked with guilt.
Oh God, I left him alone. We were never supposed to leave him alone. Erlene warned us.

As Bruce Spangler passed Cotchford Farm, he saw the ambulance lights flashing in the driveway. He told the driver to keep going. A chill went down his back.

If anything happened to Brian, I'm a dead man
.

Renee and Skully were back in London a few hours later, checking out of their hotel. They looked like any young couple now as they chartered a cab for the airport. They passed the newsstand, and the headlines of every paper were the same, in as big a type as possible: brian jones dead! they screamed the shocking banner in every language.
brian jones mort! brian jones ist tot! ¡brian jones muertos!

The cops called it “Death by Misadventure.” No one seemed to know anything remotely close to the truth. The police made it seem like a simple drug and booze overdose. These rock stars did it all the time, didn't they? There was no mention of Frank Thorogood. According to all reports, Brian simply drowned in his pool. He took too many drugs and passed out in the water. Simple as that.

Skully said, “The lights go off, he's alive, the lights go back on, he's dead. It's like a cheap paperback murder mystery.”

“Can you believe it?”

“I swear, in all my years, I never heard of anything like that. How many people do you think were trying to kill him?”

“Apparently, more than we thought.”

Erlene awoke from a nightmare in her bedroom in London. She screamed and the lights went on. Cricket was beside her in a flash.

“What's wrong, Hon?”

“Am I awake? Or is this a dream?”

“You're awake.”

“Can I have a sip of water?”

Cricket handed her a glass and she sipped. She took a deep breath. Lately, her pregnancy had sparked vivid psychic visions, especially at night. Her dreams were haunted by disturbing images of Brian Jones. She felt linked to Brian through the mirror.

“We have to call Clovis.”

“Now?”

“Yes, right now. I think something terrible has happened.”

Bobby and Clovis spent a sleepless night at Cotchford Farm. In the morning, there were still police sniffing around the garden and pool area. Frank Thorogood was still around, too, making statements to the press and posing for pictures.

“Why are you still here? Get your shit and get out!” Clovis shouted. “You have no legal right to be here anymore, Frank!”

Frank glared at them. He said nothing. They went into the house. Frank continued loading moving boxes into his car.

They huddled together in the center of the room, some quietly sobbing, others brooding, some angry.

Clovis pulled Bobby aside. He dropped his voice. “If there's money in this house, we gotta get it before Frank finds it. He's probably been searching all night right under our noses.”

“Shit!”

“Brian never told me where it was. Did he ever tell you?”

“No. How much do you think?”

Clovis whispered. “He told me it was over a hundred grand in cash in American dollars, English pounds, and Swiss francs.”

Dust Bin Bob whistled low. “A hundred? That's a lot of jack.”

They looked around and saw several places where Frank had already pried panels loose from the wall. Anywhere he thought there would be room to hide the cash he searched. He wasn't very careful about putting things back. It was obvious he'd been looking.

“I thought he was packing all night.”

As Frank finished loading the last of his personal items into his car, Bobby went after him.

“See here, sir. Any money you find in this house is the property of Brian Jones's estate. You must report it to the police.”

“Piss off,” Frank said.

Bobby knew there were a few thousand pounds at the very least in Brian's bedroom in plain view. In true rock-star style, Brian slept with piles of money around him. If he had to pay for something, he loved to lay in bed and count out the bills in cash. That money magically disappeared after the ambulance left, and Bobby was pretty sure of where it went.

As soon as Frank drove away, Bobby called the police and suggested they search Frank's car. They stopped him within ten miles. They didn't find a huge stash of money; only a few thousand English pounds that Frank claimed were his.

Frank was the last person to see Brian alive. That officially made him a suspect in the eyes of the police. The cops treated him as such.

Bobby brought their little group into the studio to view the mirror-gazing photographs he'd shot in Morocco.

“I thought we should look at these all together.”

He passed them around. Erlene stared at them all, one by one, until she came to last picture of Brian. Tears welled up in her eyes.

“You know these visions I've been having? I don't think they're coming from me.”

“What do you mean?”

Erlene pointed to her swollen belly. “I think they're coming from in here.”

“You think the baby is psychic?”

She nodded. “I never had such powerful visions before I was pregnant.”

“But how could the baby know anything about Brian? It hasn't been born yet.”

“It knew enough to warn us to never leave him alone. Eleanor Rigby and Claudine Jillian were trying to warn him, too. Somehow they all knew Brian. Somehow they all loved him.”

Cricket said, “I get the feeling the Brian has loved and been loved by lots of women going back many lifetimes.”

Erlene grabbed Clovis's hand. She bent over and gasped.

“Ahh!” she screamed. Suddenly, the floor beneath her was wet.

“What is it?”

“My water just broke!”

Clovis turned a whiter shade of pale.

“Oh my God! She's having the baby!”

Cricket said, “Get in the car, and we'll drive you to the hospital!”

Erlene shook her head. Her words were coming in short phrases now, in between the bursts of breathlessness.

“No time … for that now. We're going to have to … do it right here. I can feel it coming.”

For the second time in two days, an ambulance was dispatched to Cotchford Farm. Only this time it was for the opposite reason. Life, not death, was in the air tonight. Cricket called while Clovis made Erlene comfortable.

“Boil some water,” Bobby told Clovis.

“They always say that in the movies when there's a baby coming; boil some water. Why?”

Bobby laughed. “To make tea, of course.”

The ambulance arrived in ten minutes, and the emergency medical workers delivered the baby shortly thereafter. Clovis and Erlene were the parents of a healthy young baby boy.

Erlene held the baby in her arms and smiled.

“What should we name him?”

“How about Brian?”

“How about not Brian?”

“As in Not-Brian-Jones Hicks?”

Erlene shook her head.

“That's not what I meant and you know it. This baby's gonna have a great Hicks name like his daddy. Clovis Junior.”

Clovis wanted to hold the baby. He scooped him up out of Erlene's arms every chance he got. Each time, she insisted he give him back after a few minutes. This continued until feeding time. When it was over and Clovis Junior was dozing contentedly, Erlene said, “Would you bring me the mirror-gazing pictures, hon? I want to see something.”

Clovis quickly retrieved them and handed them to Erlene.

Erlene studied them carefully.

She rubbed her fingertips and touched the photo of Brian again. She closed her eyes.

“Now I understand. He wasn't flying. He was floating. This is from the bottom of the pool looking up. See? We all thought he was flying, but he wasn't. He was floating facedown in the pool. It was the dead man's float.”

Erlene opened her eyes again.

“That's what the spirits in the looking glass were trying to tell us. They were trying to warn Brian.”

Dust Bin Bob said, “You can't save a man from himself.”

Erlene held her new baby. She spoke softly. “I think Brian knew his fate all along. I think he knew, deep in his heart, that it was inevitable. His destiny was to be the first great tragedy of the modern rock and roll era. He was destined to be a martyr. It was useless to fight it.”

Clovis said, “He was right about one thing.”

“What was that?”

“Just before he died, he told me that he wanted to spend the rest of his life here at Cotchford Farm. He wanted to die here. And he did.”

Epilogue

Brian Jones was laid to rest in his childhood home of Cheltenham. It was the biggest funeral the town had ever seen. The only Rolling Stones in attendance were Bill and Charlie.

The Stones went ahead with their plans for a huge free concert in Hyde Park a few days after Brian's death, except now it was a memorial concert for their fallen guitarist. Twenty-year-old guitar phenomenon Mick Taylor from John Mayall's Bluesbreakers replaced Brian in the Stones. Brian had planned on attending the Hyde Park gig with Anna before he died to show there were no hard feelings between him and the band. He wanted to wish them luck.

The next day, Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull left for Australia to film the movie
Ned Kelly
. During that trip, Marianne would suffer a nervous breakdown and attempt suicide.

Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg had two children together but never married. They stayed together until 1980.

In a deathbed confession, Frank Thorogood supposedly admitted killing Brian Jones. The mystery continues to this day. I suspect we will never know what really happened at Cotchford Farm.

Ironically, Dust Bin Bob noticed the date of Brian's demise was exactly three years and a day from the date he had saved the Beatles from an assassination attempt by his brother, Clive, in Manila. This time, he wasn't there to save the day. Brian's fate had been sealed.

During the next year, rock and roll would lose Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison.

And, of course, we all know what happened to the Stones. When Brian predicted they would go on for another fifty years without him, he was prophetic. The greatest rock and roll band in the world keeps rolling on. Ronnie Wood eventually replaced Mick Taylor and the band got even bigger. They survived the loss of Brian Jones just like they survived everything else.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Judy Coppage and Michael Rose at the Coppage Company. Special thanks to my longtime manager, Joel Turtle. Thanks to Skyler Turtle for everything he does to keep my career moving forward. Thanks to Pete Heyrman, editor at Bear Press. Of course, once again, thanks to my wonderful wife, Jay, who puts up with me and whose kisses are still as sweet as honey. Thanks to Joel Harris. I also want to thank the Greg Kihn Band, and all the musicians I've had the pleasure of playing with over the years.

And thanks to you, my extraordinary fans.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Greg Kihn

978-1-4976-6309-1

Published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com