Bill Fitzhugh - Fender Benders (10 page)

“Okay.”
 
The sheriff
was patient, like he was involved in a negotiation with a child.
 
“I guess I expected that.”
 
The sheriff steepled his fingers and looked
from Henry to Eddie.
 
“If it helps any,
the medical examiner said she died real quick.”
 
Eddie looked up at the sheriff, but didn’t speak.
 
“Now I considered some other possibilities
but they just ain’t flush with the facts.”

“Like what?” Henry asked.

“Well, like you said, it’s possible her lover gave her the
poison and then shot her.
 
But why would
he shoot her if she was dead already, which she was?”

“Unless he thought the poison hadn’t killed her.”

“Well yeah, but that still leaves me wondering about the
letters cut out of the magazine.
 
Why
would she write a note?
 
Did it say
‘depressed,’ Henry?”
 
Henry nodded,
confirming the note’s existence.
 
“‘Course I suppose it’s possible there was something more sordid going
on, like if she was having some sort of affair with two men or a man and
another woman, but if we go down that path, well, that’s a can of worms I don’t
wanna open,” the sheriff said.
 
“About
all I know for sure is that poison was in her before the bullet was and,
according to the medical examiner, if she took this poison, she wouldn’a been
able to shoot
herself
.
 
Of course somebody coulda slipped her the poison but there’d be no
reason to shoot her afterwards.”
 
The
sheriff held his hands up.
 
“I can’t make
sense outta this except for the way I said.”

“I could see that,” Henry said.

“I’m real sorry to have to tell you this, Henry, but I’m
gonna write it up as a suicide.”

“Well, now, wait a second.”

“I’ve got to, Henry.
 
I’m real sorry, but without further evidence, I don’t have a better
choice.
 
We got no third party
fingerprints, otherwise we might be able to find out who she was seein’ and
then we might be able to compel a blood sample, but without that note or the
gun—” The sheriff tilted his head slightly.
 
“You don’t have the gun, do you Henry?”

Henry shook his head again.
 
“It’s gone too.”

The sheriff let out a long breath.
 
“Without that, I’m stuck,” the sheriff
said.
 
“It’s either a suicide or I have
to open up a murder investigation that I already know don’t go anywhere.
 
And then I’d have to drag you into it for
tampering with evidence and such, and I don’t wanna do that, Henry.
 
I think this other’s the best way.”
 
He stood and walked Eddie and Henry to the
door.

“I understand,” Henry said.
 
“I’m sorry I did what I did, but…”

“I know, and I can’t say as I blame you.”
 
The sheriff put his hand on the door knob,
then stopped and looked at Henry.
 
“Unless you got anything to add, I’m closing the case.”

Henry shook his head.

“All right then,” the sheriff said.
 
He opened the door.

Henry started out of the room but Eddie just stood there, silent,
his glazed eyes staring at the floor.
 
“Eddie?” Henry said quietly as he touched his son-in-law’s
shoulder.
 
“Eddie, let’s go.
 
It’s over.”

With that, Eddie looked up and said, “Good.”

16.

For the most part, Nashville’s
fabled ‘Music Row’ consisted of a three-quarter mile stretch of two unassuming
one-way streets running parallel to one another.
 

Many of the publishing companies, recording studios, law
firms, and record companies were quartered in the modest houses and other
simple buildings that fronted on the magnolia-lined streets.
 
But not everyone worked out of these quaint
dwellings.

There were several large structures of courageous
architectural design on Music Row, primarily at the north end.
 
When the country music industry hit it big
and the money started pouring in, the entertainment conglomerates began
building on Music Row.
 
When they did, it
appeared they were not hindered by any covenants, codes, or restrictions in
terms of architectural styles or the unity thereof.
 
For example, the Gaylord Entertainment
building looked like something out of a 1950’s science fiction movie.
 
On the other hand, Reba’s corporate
headquarters, just up the street, offered a more modern design, almost
church-like in its motif, while the MCA building, just off the Row, presented a
facade reminiscent of a Seattle Brew Pub or an enlarged Ray-O-Vac battery.

The largest of all the structures on Music Row belonged to
the two main performance rights organizations.
 
The ASCAP and BMI buildings were so immense as to make songwriters and
publishers wonder if they were getting all the money they were owed.

Somewhere on

One of the offices contained a small legal library, some
fine art, and a beautiful maple desk and credenza on which sat the most
up-to-date computer equipment available at any given time.
 
This was the office of Franklin Peavy,
Esquire and technophile.
 
Franklin
was a serious over- clocker with a Celeron Socket 370 super-heatsink fan combo
for keeping his gear cool.
 
His CPU was
always equipped with the most memory, the fastest processor, zip drives, and
the latest video and audio cards on the market.
 
He had a wireless mouse, a mounted digital camera for video e-mail, a
thirty-six inch monitor, and every other cutting-edge peripheral
available.
 
“Wireless application
protocol connects me to the universe,” was his motto.

The second office consisted of three walls covered with
framed platinum records, gold CDs, and cassettes of artists the firm
represented.
 
There were photos of the
artists accepting awards, blown-up charts from
Billboard
, and racks of compact discs.
 
It was in this office where Big Bill Herron,
co-owner of Herron & Peavy, sat at his desk flipping urgently through a
paper.
 
It was the new issue of
Nashville Scene
— the one with the
annual list of ‘Nashville’s Power
100.’
 
Big Bill needed to know where he stood
among ‘The Most Important People in Country Music.’

Big Bill was in his mid-sixties and liked to joke that he
was suffering from what he called ‘biscuit poisoning.’
 
He wasn’t quite 5’8”, 220 pounds, but he
was damn close.
 
His gut was the first
thing you noticed after you stopped staring at his spectacularly round
head.
 
It was a fleshy beach ball.
 
In fact, all of Big Bill’s features, from
nose to butt, were so unusually bulbous that many people in the business
referred to him as Tennessee Ernie Borgnine.

“Goddammitall!”
 
Big Bill threw the paper on the floor, mad as
a pig on ice with his tail froze in.
 
“I
don’t believe it!
 
That can’t be right.”
 
He snatched the magazine up off the floor and
turned back to his listing and sure as God made little green apples, he was
Number 99.
 
It was a comedown, and a bad
one.
 
Less than ten years ago Bill was
Number
7,
and now he was Number 99?
 
“Well shitgoddamitall!”

Like many people in the business end of the music industry,
Bill started out as an artist. But it quickly became clear he was better riding
gain on the microphone than singing into it.
 
Over the years he established himself as an innovative and successful
producer as well as an artist manager.
 
He had a good ear for a song, and he had hooked up with a good attorney,
Franklin Peavy, to form a business exploiting their respective talents as well
as the talents of others.

That wasn’t to say Big Bill robbed his clients blind.
 
You didn’t stay in business long if all your
clients went broke.
 
You had to be
careful how and where you got that lagniappe.
 
You had to know the intricacies of publishing, recording, performance,
and merchandising contracts.
 
You needed
to know what songs were hits and which ones were filler and who was willing to
give up some of their publishing just to get recorded.
 
You also had to know when to give up some of
your own points and to whom.
 
These were
the things Bill and his partner knew as well as anyone.
 
Given that, Big Bill wondered why he was so
close to being off the damn list.

Big Bill knew the music industry was voracious, and in more
ways than one.
 
It chewed up and spit out
talent as well as those who managed and produced them.
 
The machine had to be fed.
 
And with fresh meat arriving every day, there
was always someone to feed into the teeth.
 
It was just that Big Bill was used to doing the chewing.
 
He wasn’t used to being the meat.

Once a powerful and successful management firm, Herron &
Peavy was now just getting by.
 
They
blamed it on the current state of country music.
 
After a huge surge in popularity in the
1990s, which had translated into record breaking sales and staggering income
for more than a few, the industry had gone into a slump.
 
In fact if you believed all the whining on
Music Row, you have thought everyone in the business was losing money.
 
Still, Herron & Peavy had a marginal
stable of artists and songwriters, and there was a steady trickle of old
producing and publishing money coming in.
 
But Big Bill needed more and being dropped to 99 on the Power 100 wasn’t
going to help.

Bill was his own worst enemy, financially speaking.
 
His accountant liked to say Bill’s spending
habits were out-of-line with his income.
 
He maintained a 10,000 square foot home in Belle Meade, complete with a
half million dollar recording studio which, unlike every major studio in town,
didn’t have a computer or a single piece of digital equipment in it.
 
Big Bill was dangerously devoted to analog
technology, arguing that it gave a warmer sound than the crisp, isolated 0’s
and 1’s of binary sound reproduction.

Big Bill also wore expensive, tailor-made clothes.
 
Not that he was a connoisseur.
 
He was just trying to compensate for his
looks.
 
As someone once said of him, “Big
Bill was born ugly and had a bad setback.”
 
He also threw his money at car dealers.
 
He figured if it was true that one was a lot more handsome with a c-note
in his pocket, then imagine how good looking he must be when he pulled up to
the valet in one of his Mercedes, or his Cadillac, or his decked out Excursion,
the largest model of compensation made by the Ford Motor Company.
 
And, as if the car payments weren’t enough,
Big Bill was sending alimony checks to three ex-wives along with child support
for six children and the lawyers they rode in on.
 
Things had gotten so bad lately that Bill had
been forced to sell his house in Aspen.
 
Despite his six figure income, Big Bill
Herron was, as they say, in a bad row of stumps.

17.

It was
noon
on a Thursday
when Bill’s partner appeared in the doorway.
 
Franklin was wearing his
usual office attire: black mock turtleneck, sports coat, dark slacks.
 
He was a graduate of Vanderbilt law school
and a good attorney, but more and more he’d been thinking what he really wanted
to do was produce.
 
Unlike Big Bill, Franklin
was enamored
of
 
modern
digital studio technology, especially the computerized systems by Alesis,
Tascam, and Fostex.
 
But, like everyone
else in the business, Franklin’s
favorite was ProTools by Digidesign, considered by many to be the ultimate
system for digital audio production.

Franklin looked
up from the sheaf of phone messages in his hand.
 
He could see Bill was irritated and he knew
why.
 
“I see you managed to hang on to the
hind tit of that list,” he said in his southern gentry lilt.
 
Franklin
had grown to hate Big Bill more than he could say.
 
There were a lot of reasons for the hostility
but what chapped Franklin’s ass the worst was how Big Bill got all the glory
and Franklin just dotted the ‘i’s’ and crossed the ‘t’s’.
  
Of course, Bill hated Franklin
just as much as he was hated.
 
The two of
them would rather not have to work together one more day, but since the names
Herron & Peavy were worth a far sight more together than either name by
itself and since they both felt they were too old to go out and start from
scratch they stuck together like a hateful old married couple afraid of being
alone.

Big Bill tapped the face of his thin gold watch.
 
“We open too early for you today?”
 
His voice had the twangy stress of a mean
good old boy.

“I was out late,” Franklin
said, returning his attention to the phone messages.
 
“Went to Estella’s after the awards, kept her
from killing a man, had a few drinks.”

“That’s very touching.
 
I’m happy for you both.”
 
Bill
held up the magazine.
 
“Now what the hell
we gonna do about this?”

Franklin shook
his head in contempt.
 
“Nothing
to do.
 
The magazine’s out, you’re
on the list, stop
your
whining.”
 
Franklin
walked away leaving Bill to stew about his decline in Music
City’s power structure.
 
One of the phone messages triggered a thought
and Franklin pulled his tiny
digital recorder from his pocket.
 
“Reminder.
 
Call Ken at Swerdlow,
Florence
to
discuss controlled composition clause.”

As soon as Franklin
turned his back, Bill angrily flipped him the bird, mouthing the words, ‘
stop
your
whining
.’
 
He stood, went to the door of his office, and
slammed it.
 
On the way back to his desk,
Bill stopped to look at the wall of gold records he had produced and he
wondered how and when things had gone so wrong.
 
When Bill came into the music business all you needed was a microphone,
a room with padded walls, a two-track reel-to-reel, and somebody who could sing
and play guitar.
 
Now everything was 24-bit,
integrated digital recording, editing, processing, and mixing systems.
 
Big Bill had seen things go from 45s to LPs
to 8-tracks to cassettes to CDs.
 
And
now, according to the trades, the compact disc was about to be replaced by
something called a flash memory device.
 
Then there was something called music streaming and a computer file
compression code called MP3.
 
What the
hell was that all about?