Murder Boogies With Elvis (15 page)

We were on the level where the orchestra pit was located. We followed Mr. Taylor down a hall that was carpeted in a gray indoor-outdoor carpeting, and which was painted the color I figured my bridesmaid dress was going to be, a magenta. I hoped that it was some paint left over from a production and not some that someone had chosen for the wall.

“I like your outfit,” Mr. Taylor told Sister. “You trying out for
The King and I
?”

“Taking a martial arts class.”

“That’s good. A lady should be able to protect herself. My sister got a gun, but she shot her big toe off while she was taking a class on using it.”

“Lord, I’ll bet that affects the way she walks,” I said.

“Not really. She has trouble wearing sandals, though.”

Sister cut her eyes around at me. We had reached the orchestra pit, which I had never seen from this advantage. It was a mess with chairs turned over and several broken instruments.

“There’s police tape up all around,” Mr. Taylor said. “We can just duck under it, though. That’s what everybody’s been doing coming in here and getting their musical instruments. The bass fiddle was ruined, though.”

“We know,” I said. “We were here and sitting in the front row when the guy fell.”

“Scared the hell out of me. Y’all watch the paint now. It’s just on the very top, but be careful.”

“You’re grinning like a jackass eating briars,” Mary Alice whispered to me. I didn’t take offense, because she was, too.

We settled on the bench, two ten-year-olds.

“You ready? I’m going to push the button.”

“But we need music and neither of us plays,” Mary Alice said. “Can’t you get on here with us?”

“Not enough room. How about I whistle ‘How Great Thou Art’ and y’all sing?”

Not exactly majestic, but still exciting. Mr. Taylor pressed a button and began whistling. Sister and I felt the Wurlitzer leave the ground.

“Sing,” Mr. Taylor commanded.

“Oh, Lord, my God,” I began to sing tremulously as we rose past the other instruments, breaking the crime tape.

“Good.” Mr. Taylor started whistling again.

I looked over at Sister, which was a mistake. She was twitching.

“What’s the matter with you?” I asked.

She burst out laughing. “Oh, Mouse, look at us. This is one of the funniest things that I think has ever happened to us.”

“Y’all sing,” Mr. Taylor called and resumed his whistling.

But we were holding on to each other, laughing so hard by this time that we were crying. Two old ladies rising up to heaven on a Wurlitzer that reeked of wet paint while an old man whistled a hymn.

We were laughing so hard that for a moment the screams seemed simply white noise, a creak in the lifting mechanism of the organ.

The organ stopped its rise with a slight bump. For a second there was silence, and then we heard what we knew were screams. Sister and I both looked over the side of the bench.

Dusk was clutching Mr. Taylor’s arm and pointing toward the dressing rooms. “Call nine-one-one. He’s dead.”

“Who’s dead?”

They rushed off leaving us in the air.

“Larry? You reckon it’s Larry?” In panic, Sister started punching every button on the console. “Damn.”

Every button that she wasn’t hitting, I was. One of us finally connected with the magic one and the organ began to descend. We were off and running before it even touched the floor.

“Oh, Lord, I know it’s Larry,” Sister said.

We ran down the hall in the direction that Dusk and Mr. Taylor had gone. An open door and a light told us where they were. They were kneeling on either side of Larry Ludmiller, who lay crumpled and bloody on the floor. Dusk was wringing her hands and sobbing, and Mr. Taylor was holding up a baseball bat.

“I think he’s dead,” he said.

O
h, Lord.” Dusk moaned, leaning over Larry. “Somebody call nine-one-one.”

Mary Alice reached into her purse, pulled out her cell phone, and hit the 911 button. Then she handed the phone to me and rushed out of the room. I understood this. Sister’s stomach and the sight of blood have never been compatible.

Unfortunately we have had so many emergencies since I retired from teaching that, I swear, I’m on a first-name basis with most of the 911 operators. They even recognize my voice, which is embarrassing. Today a new person answered though, for which I was grateful. I explained that there was a badly injured man at the Alabama Theater and that we needed help immediately. No use telling them that he was dead as a doornail.

I closed the phone, stepped out into the hall, and sat down on the floor. I could hear Dusk and Mr. Taylor talking excitedly. Down the hall I heard a toilet flush. Hopefully Sister was feeling better; I wasn’t.

I shut my eyes and tried to concentrate on my mantra. Omm. The cute white wicker wastebaskets with pink shells on them at Bed Bath & Beyond. Omm. New shower curtains for the guest bathroom. Omm. White battenburg. Omm. Would probably just wilt in the humidity of a bathroom. Omm. Didn’t want to have to spend time starching and ironing shower curtains. Omm. Omm. Some new towels would be nice. And some of those thin washrags that Fred favored. Felt like almost nothing in your hand. Cheap. Omm.

“Where are you?” Sister asked. “Bed Bath & Beyond? Rich’s?” I had made the mistake once of telling her about my white-sale fugues.

“Bed Bath & Beyond,” I answered truthfully. “I got a five dollar coupon yesterday in the mail. They’re having a sale this weekend.”

She sat down beside me on the floor. No easy feat for a two-hundred-fifty-pound sixty-six-year-old woman. What she did was lean against the wall and just sort of slide down. She was sucking on an Altoid; I could smell peppermint.

“Lord,” she said. “I just can’t believe this. Hand me the phone. I guess I’d better call Virgil. Poor Tammy Sue. I can’t imagine how she’s going to take this.”

I really needed some new hot pads, too. I had seen some cute ones, a little muffin man wearing a chef’s hat and holding up a plate. They had some with cows on them, too, sort of like the Gateway cow.

“The phone?”

I handed it to Sister. I had never quite understood that Gateway cow.

There was a shriek from inside the dressing room. “He moved. He moved his hand!”

Sister dropped the phone. I looked around the door. Dusk had her fingers against the side of Larry’s throat. Mr. Taylor was kneeling, wringing his hands.

“I feel a pulse,” Dusk exclaimed. “He’s alive. Call nine-one-one!”

“I just did.” I got up and walked slowly toward the prone figure. “You’re sure he’s alive?”

“Feel.” I leaned down and Dusk placed my fingertips against Larry’s throat. A slight, thready pulsing. Oh, God.

“I’ll go meet them at the side door,” Mr. Taylor said. “Lord, I thought he was done for, for sure.” He dashed out, nearly crashing into Sister, who had just appeared in the doorway.

“He’s really alive?” she asked. “Not just some dead muscles jumping like frog’s legs or a chicken with its head chopped off?”

I said, “Not very alive, I don’t think. But he’s got a pulse.”

Sister stepped into the room. “Maybe we should give him CPR or something.”

Dusk looked up at her and scowled. “We’re leaving him alone until the paramedics get here.”

“Good idea,” Sister agreed.

It was only a few minutes before the paramedics arrived, but it seemed forever. The three of us watched Larry, who never moved again. Occasionally Dusk or I would reach over to feel the pulse that was still there
but faint. If he was breathing, and he had to be, surely, his breath was so light that there was no discernible movement of his chest.

“Somebody hit him right above the ear. See?” Dusk said. “Probably with that baseball bat.”

Sister disappeared down the hall again.

I took Dusk’s word for it. I picked up Larry’s hand and rubbed it. Surely that wouldn’t hurt anything. The hand was cold. But the pulse beat in his throat.

And then the room was full of paramedics, of equipment, of commands. We were told to wait in the hall. Mr. Taylor and Sister joined us there.

“Damn,” he said. “Damn. He was lying back here the whole time I was working on the organ.”

“He might have been here since last night,” Sister said.

I noticed her phone lying on the floor and picked it up. “You going to call Virgil?”

She reached for it hesitantly. “I guess I’d better. Reckon where they’ll take Larry?”

“University Hospital,” Mr. Taylor said. “It’s the closest trauma center.”

Dusk suddenly began to cry deep sobs that shook her tiny body. She put her hands to her face, and I saw that they were blood spattered. I looked down. Mine were, too.

“Come on,” I said, putting my arm around her. “Let’s go get cleaned up.”

Sister volunteered the information that the restroom was right down the hall on the left.

Dusk and I washed our hands and arms, and I wet a paper towel and wiped her face, which was as flushed and hot as if she had a fever.

“You were very brave back there,” I said. Tears ran down her cheeks. I wiped them away.

“It’s all my fault,” she whispered.

“No, it’s not. It’s not your fault at all.”

“But Griffin wouldn’t have been here if it weren’t for me.” She sobbed into the wet paper towel.

“That doesn’t make what happened your fault.”

She sighed and wiped her face. “But I feel so guilty.”

“The curse of the Southern woman. I feel guilty when it rains on our picnic.”

Dusk tried to smile. “No, Mrs. Hollowell. I feel that guilt, too. But Griffin is dead because of me. I was married to him.”

“You what?” There was a small bench in the restroom, and I sat down heavily. “What?”

Dusk sat down beside me and held the paper towel to her eyes again. “It’s true. No one knows it but Day and probably the police by now. They’re going to think I killed him, I know.” She leaned over and placed her head against her knees, sobbing.

I was having trouble absorbing this. The red velvet cushion on the bench was worn, and in several places yellowish-brown foam rubber was visible. Bed Bath & Beyond would have some cushions to fit; they were beckoning. But Dusk’s voice brought me back.

“It was so simple,” she said, sitting up and wiping her face. “He wanted to become a United States citizen, and I admired him so much.” She looked at me. “It’s all my fault.”

“Your parents don’t know about this?”

She shook her head. “Day does, but I didn’t think I would ever have to tell Mama and Daddy. As soon as Griffin became a citizen, we were going to get a di
vorce.” She leaned her head back against the wall. “We never even lived together, Mrs. Hollowell.”

I was trying to put two and two together here. “Is that what he was doing in Birmingham, then? Seeing about a divorce?”

“Oh, Lord, I wish it had been.” Dusk got up, got another paper towel, and wet it. Outside we heard several pairs of footsteps hurrying down the hall. Suddenly I wanted to know if Larry was still alive, what his chances were.

“Wait right here,” I said in my best schoolteacher voice, pointing to the bench. “I want to hear the rest of this, but I want to see how Larry’s doing.”

“Not too good,” Mary Alice said when I asked. She was standing at the end of the hall with Mr. Taylor. “They’ve put his head in one of those foam things, and they’re hooking him up to everything on God’s earth. I called Virgil. He’s going to meet us at UAB with Tammy Sue. They’re trying to stabilize him some before they can move him, though.”

Mr. Taylor was wringing his hands again. “I just can’t believe it. I just can’t.” He looked around me and down the hall. “Where’s Dusk? Is she all right?”

“She’s been better. I’m going to stay in the bathroom with her until she calms down some.”

“I’m going to call Debbie,” Mary Alice said, opening her phone. “Tell her what’s happening.”

Debbie. Griffin Mooncloth had had an appointment with Debbie. I hurried back to the restroom where Dusk was sitting on the bench just as I had ordered. She looked up, waiting for information.

“They’re trying to stabilize him enough to move him,” I said. “That’s all I know.”

She nodded and bit her bottom lip like a child. She
looked about ten years old, I realized, tiny and with a tear-stained face.

“Griffin Mooncloth had an appointment with my niece Debbie,” I said. “And it wasn’t about a divorce?”

“Day recommended her. She and Debbie were in school together.”

I nodded that I had known that.

“Anyway, what he wanted was to find out if he could keep me from divorcing him. He said he loved me and wanted us to be married, really married.”

“And what about you?”

“I was fond of him, Mrs. Hollowell. I really was. But I went through the ceremony as a favor to him, not because I wanted to be his wife.” More tears and the wet paper towel. “And when I said I was getting a divorce, he started threatening me, saying that I had broken a federal law by marrying him so he could become a citizen. And I had. Day and I looked it up.” Dusk looked up. “I could have been put in prison, Mrs. Hollowell.”

“But he was still seeing Debbie? He still thought you might divorce him?”

She sighed. “I think he was trying to find out if there was some simple, legal way that he could prevent the divorce. I honestly don’t think he wanted to have me arrested. He wasn’t a vicious man, Mrs. Hollowell.”

“But he wasn’t above threatening you.”

“True.”

We were quiet for a few minutes, each of us lost in our thoughts. Outside there were calls down the hall, and the sounds of people scurrying by, even some equipment being rolled past.

“They’re going to think I killed him, aren’t they? But I didn’t, Mrs. Hollowell,” Dusk finally said. “I
don’t know why I didn’t just admit to this to start with.”

“The switchblade knife wasn’t yours, was it?”

“Good heavens, no.” Dusk looked astonished that I had even asked her this. “I didn’t know a thing about it. I didn’t even know Griffin was going to be in the Elvis line. It sounds like something he’d do, though. He’d think it was fun to come out on the stage and improvise.” Dusk began to cry again. “He could be a lot of fun, Mrs. Hollowell. I just wasn’t in love with him. Not like Day was.”

“Day was in love with Griffin Mooncloth?”

The sobs stopped. Dusk realized that she had revealed more than she had meant to.

“She was fond of him,” she said carefully, trying to cover her mistake. “She met him when she came to New York to visit me. That’s what I meant. She admired his dancing.”

The door opened and Sister stuck her head in. “They’ve done all they can. They’ve got him loaded up and are fixing to take him to the ambulance. I’m going to follow them to UAB. Do you want to go, Mouse? Mr. Taylor said he would take you and Dusk home if you don’t.”

“I’ll go with Mr. Taylor unless you want me to go with you.”

“What I want is a Valium and some Maalox, and I know you don’t have any.” The door closed and then reopened immediately. “Oh, I forgot. The police are here. A man named Tim Hawkins said he wanted to talk to you.”

Oh, Lord. We’d be here forever.

But we weren’t. We waited until we heard the gurney being rolled down the hall before we came out of
the restroom. Tim Hawkins and Mr. Taylor were standing in the hall talking. Behind them, in the dressing room, several policemen were busy working, measuring, dusting for fingerprints. A lot of good that was going to do them. Sister, Dusk, Mr. Taylor, and I had done a pretty thorough job of trashing the crime scene, including examining the bat and kneeling beside Larry.

“Hello, Mrs. Hollowell. We meet again.” Tim grinned.

I gave him my schoolteacher look. “Hello, Timmy.”

He turned to Dusk. “And you’re Dusk Armstrong. You found Larry Ludmiller.”

“I came to get my makeup bag.” Dusk’s voice was shaking. “When I went in the dressing room, I fell over him.” She pointed to her knees. “Really fell over him. I flipped the light switch and turned around and there he was. I thought he was dead.”

“We all did,” Mr. Taylor said.

“Yes, we did,” I agreed. “And then Dusk saw him move his hand.”

“His finger.” Dusk held her hand up. “He moved his finger like this.”

Tim Hawkins nodded. “Tell you what, Miss Armstrong. I’m going to need to talk to you, but we’ve sort of got our hands full here. Mr. Taylor’s said he’ll take you home.” He turned to me. “You too, Mrs. Hollowell. Then he’s going to come back and help us out some. Show us around. Okay?”

“You don’t want to talk to me again, do you?” I asked.

Tim shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Can I get my makeup bag?” Dusk asked.

“Sorry. Later. We’ve got the room blocked off.”

“Well, y’all don’t get near the Wurlitzer, you hear? I
just touched it up where that guy fell on it the other night, and the paint’s not dry.” Mr. Taylor looked at the busy policemen. “I swear, eighty years and the most we’ve ever had happen here at the Alabama is an occasional heart attack. And they say that during the opening of
Gone With the Wind,
somebody threw a stink bomb. Can you believe that? Just goes to show.”