Bill Fitzhugh - Fender Benders (53 page)

“The point is I didn’t kill anybody.
 
But I’ll say this: whoever did kill those
people, you gotta admit, he was smart.
 
No two ways around that.
 
That’s
what I was thinking as I read your book.
 
Man, that
is one smart son of a gun.
 
And you know what else I was thinking?”
 
Jimmy stared at Eddie without answering.
  
“All right, I’ll tell you.
 
It was almost like somebody was trying to
frame me.
 
You know what I mean?
 
All that evidence was just too damn perfect
considering I didn’t do it.
 
So I started
wondering who would know enough about me to make it look like I was a
killer?
 
And you know
what?
 
I could only think of two people,
you and Tammy.
 
And since she’s
dead, that
left me thinking it mighta been you.
 
I mean, who better to frame me than my
biographer?”

Jimmy couldn’t believe it.
 
Eddie almost sounded like he believed what he was saying.
 
“You bother to assign a motive to my crime?”

“Well jealousy seemed like the best bet,” Eddie said.
 
“You were pissed that Megan left you for me
and well, you acted out.
 
Is that
it?
 
Is that why you tried to frame me,
Jimmy?”

“Well, Eddie, that makes perfect sense except for the fact
that most of the victims were dead before Megan left me.”

Eddie looked at Jimmy for a minute.
 
“Well you got a point there,” he said.
 
“But I can’t figure out who else might’ve
done it.
 
Guess it’s just one of life’s
mysteries.”

“I guess.”
 
Jimmy
looked at his reflection in his coffee.
 
He was thinking about his contract for the continuing web version of
Eddie’s biography.
 
He figured this was
probably his last opportunity to get some first-person material.
 
“So what now?
 
You about to start your
next album or are you still writing songs?”

“Funny you should ask,” Eddie said.
 
“Turns out I finished the last song a few
days ago.
 
And I tell you what, it was
worse than giving birth.”
 
Eddie told
Jimmy how he’d slipped into an emotional tailspin after Big Bill’s murder.
 
“It’s all a big blur,” he said.
 
“I can’t even remember the sequence of events
after that shot fired.
 
One second I was
on stage receiving the award,
then
all hell broke
loose.
 
Screaming women and cops and
blood and paramedics, and the next thing I remember is being stuck here in the
house, all alone, trying to forget something I didn’t think I ever could.”
 
Eddie fixed his eyes on Jimmy’s.
 
“I was looking square at Big Bill when it
happened.
 
I couldn’t erase that image no
matter how hard I tried.
 
His
expression.
. . it was a terrible thing to see.”
 
Eddie looked down at his coffee again and
shook his head slowly.
 
“For a while
afterwards, every time I closed my eyes I saw Bill’s head snap back just as
that white cotton wall turned red.”
 
Eddie looked up.
 
“Every time I
fell asleep that rifle would fire again.”
 
He slapped his hand on the book, startling Jimmy.
 
“Woke me up like a cannon shot.
 
It was like being haunted.
 
I can’t say for sure, but it seemed like Big
Bill looked at me just before he fell down, like he wanted me to undo what’d
happened, like it was my fault or something.
 
That’s not the sort of thing you want burned into your mind, right?”

“I can see how that might become bothersome.”

“Damn right it was bothersome.
 
And making matters worse was the media out
there.”
 
He gestured toward the front
gate.
 
“They’ve had me trapped in here
for weeks.
 
After the funeral, I started
drinking, you know, trying to get some sleep, trying to forget what happened,
trying to erase that image in my head.
 
I
disconnected the phones and the TV and the computer.
 
I just wanted to be alone.
 
It felt like I’d lost my own father and they
wouldn’t give me time to grieve.
 
And
then I started seeing Bill’s face whenever I closed my eyes and, hell, I
thought I was going crazy.”

“Funny, I would’ve expected you to be seeing Tammy’s face.”

Eddie smirked.
 
“Except of course I didn’t see her die, did I?”

Jimmy shrugged.
 
He
was looking for something in Eddie’s eyes — remorse, guilt,
pleasure, something.
 
But they revealed
nothing.

“Anyway, it took me while to figure out what the hell was
going on.”

“Which was?”

“I finally realized it was another song trying to get
out.”
 
He held up a hand.
 
“I swear
,
it was
worse than after Tammy died.”

“So you wrote a song.
 
Then what?”

“Been sleeping like a baby ever since.”
 
Eddie jumped up from the table.
 
“Hang on a second,” he said on his way out of
the room.
 
“Let me play it for you.”
 
Eddie came back a second later with his old
Fender.

Jimmy spent the rest of the afternoon listening to Eddie
play the songs he’d written for the new record.
 
He had to admit they were pretty good.
 
Finally Eddie got around to the new song, the one triggered by Big
Bill’s death.
 
It was a beauty.
 

It would be the first single off the second record and it
would go to number one, just like Big Bill had planned.
 
Except of course that Big
Bill was supposed to be alive to hear it.

102.

Franklin was
waiting on his last appointment of the day.
 
He was sitting at his desk looking over the ‘key man’ insurance policy
the company had taken out years ago on Big Bill.
 
The underwriter was Nashville Casualty and
Life.
 
They owed a cool million on the
death benefit.
 
It’s funny how things work out
, he thought.

Franklin had
been busy all week.
 
He’d ordered new
stationery and had the old Herron & Peavy sign replaced with one that said:
The Peavy Company.
 
He’d upgraded his
ProTools to top-of-the-line and was ready to go into the studio to start work
on Eddie’s second record.
 
The only
problem was he hadn’t spoken to Eddie since Bill’s funeral.
 
His phone seemed to be out of order and he
wasn’t answering email.
 
He knew the
press was camped out at Eddie’s house and he didn’t want to deal with that so
he figured he’d just wait it out.
 
It
wouldn’t be long before some other scandal broke and the press would break camp
and move on like a bunch of Bedouins.

In light of Jimmy’s book and the rumors that had followed, Franklin
had hired a new image consultant for Eddie.
 
They’d been discussing the possibility of repackaging Eddie, going with
the all black thing, and positioning him as the head of a new outlaw country
movement.
 
Franklin
had put in an exploratory call to Waylon Jennings’ people to discuss
a collaboration
but so far, nobody’d called back.

Franklin propped
his feet up on his desk and gazed out at Music Row.
 
The sun was reflecting off the big shiny
leaves of the magnolia tree outside the window.
 
He started to think about knocking down the wall that separated his office
from Big Bill’s, give himself a little more room.
 
He jumped slightly when his assistant buzzed
him.
 
“Two men to see
you Mr. Peavy.”

“
Thanks,
send ‘em in,” Franklin
said.
 
He stood and walked around his
desk as Otis and Chester walked in
and closed the door behind them.
 
“Come
on in, fellas, have a seat.”
 
Franklin
went to his bar, poured three glasses of whiskey, and served his guests.
 
“Here’s lookin’ atcha.”
 
They clinked glasses and enjoyed the drink
before Franklin went to his desk
and picked up a file.
 
He pulled some
checks from inside.
 
“I put you on the
books as ‘indie promo’ expenses,” he said with a chuckle.
 
“Hundred thousand a year
for the next three years.”
 
Chester
and Otis nodded.
 
“Good,” Franklin
said.
 
“And worth every
dime.”
 
He looked at Chester.
 
“You want me to put yours in escrow or in the
market or what?”

“Buy me some blue chips,” Chester
said.
 
“Give me something to follow while
I’m inside.”

“When are you going?”

“They gave me ‘till Monday to ‘get my affairs in order,’” he
said.
 
“Then I’m gone for about a
year.
 
I’m lookin’ at it like a year of
rehab.”

“There you go.”
 
Franklin
handed another document to Chester.
 
“I also fixed that publishing error we made
on your boy’s song.
 
He’ll get proper
credit on future copies and all he’s owed on the publishing, mechanicals, and
licensing.
 
Of course there wasn’t
anything I could do about the lyrics.”
 
He pulled a check from the file and held it up.
 
It was for $350,000.
 
“I’ll see that he gets this.
 
His landlord had a forwarding address for him
down in Austin.”

Chester shook Franklin’s
hand.
 
“I’d appreciate that.”

Franklin turned
and put his hand on Otis’s shoulder.
 
“I’m sorry I missed Estella’s service.
 
I had to be at Bill’s.”

“Yessir, I understand.”

“How are you holdin’ up?”

Otis bobbed his head a little.
 
“I’ll be all right, Mr. Peavy, thank you for
asking.”

“She was a fine woman, Otis.
 
We were lucky to have her long as we did.”

“Yes, sir.
 
We
was
sure lucky.”

103.

The Long and Short of
It
stayed on the best seller list for eight months.
 
Jay Colvin negotiated 1.25 million for the
film rights to the story.
  
He got
another million dollars for Jimmy’s proposal on Big Bill’s biography.
 
Jimmy had a hard time believing any of it, at
least until the checks arrived.
 
And when
they did, he decided it was time to move.
 
Though he was going to miss listening to his neighbors’ sexcapades,
Jimmy had discovered that lately he wasn’t having such a hard time getting
laid.
 
Funny how that works
, he thought.

Jimmy was loading the last lamp into the back of his rented
U-Haul truck when a familiar car pulled into the parking lot of the apartment
complex.
 
The second he saw Megan he felt
it again.
 
That way she
always made him feel.
 
He knew he
should just get in the truck and leave, but he couldn’t move.
 
Megan parked and got out looking at Jimmy
with a bittersweet smile.
 
She was
dressed simply in jeans and a t-shirt.
 
“Hey,” she said.
 
“Looks like I
got here just in time.”

“Yeah, I’m, uh, just about done.”
 
Jimmy wiped his hands and stuffed them in his
pockets.
 
“What’re you doing here?”

“Just came by to see if you were still around.”

Jimmy didn’t know how to respond to that.
 
The thought that she’d come looking for him
turned his mind to mush.
 
All he could
think about was pulling her close and kissing her.
 
He wondered if Megan would always have this
power over him.
 
Maybe I should just give in to it
, he thought.
 
No,
show a little self-respect
.
 
“I hear
you left Eddie,” he said.

She shrugged.
 
“Yeah,
I read your book.
 
Decided I didn’t want
to take the chance of getting a headache being around him so much, you know?”

Jimmy nodded.
 
“Good
move,” he said.

“It’s a great book by the way.
 
Congratulations.
 
I always knew you’d make it.”

“Thanks.
 
So,
you going
back to radio?”