The Fame Equation (6 page)

Over the past week Petey had become solid in his ground cues, and we were in the early stages of introducing the travois. This was a drag made of two eight-foot long four-by-four posts with room for the horse between them, with a cross bar of four feet in length at the end that dragged on the ground. Many Plains Indian tribes used a similar set up with a hide stretched between the poles behind the horse to carry crops and household goods. Today I drove Petey around our covered arena, while Jon took on the role of a horse pulling the travois.

Jon walked alongside Petey, and in front of and behind him, grasping the open end of the travois in his hands. The cross bar end dragged on the ground behind him. Horses who are driven often wear blinkers, but at this stage, I wanted Petey to see everything. He became a little wide eyed when the travois came close, so I stopped him and let Jon pull the thing toward and away, over and over until Petey relaxed. When the gelding lowered his head and began to lick his lips in acceptance, I decided that was enough for today.

As I led Petey back to the barn, he reached over and grabbed a portion of the lead rope and held it in his mouth. This might be considered disrespectful from another horse, but Petey just liked to lead himself. Just as I got Petey back in the cross ties my cell phone rang. For safety purposes, I have a “no cell” rule when working with the horses, but Jon was already undoing Petey’s surcingle and reins, so I crossed the aisle and went to the tack room to get my phone. My heart gave an involuntary leap when I saw the call was from Keith Carson.

“Have you heard from Melody this morning?” Keith asked as soon as I answered.

“No, why?”

“She missed an interview we had on WSIX radio. It was an important interview. A really important interview and I was just wondering why she’d stand me up and embarrass me like this. Why she’d jeopardize our single. Why she wants to sabotage both her career and mine.”

I’d never heard Keith so angry.

“Sorry to go off on you, Cat,” he said, after taking an audible breath. “Carole told me you were at Melody’s yesterday. Did she say anything while you were there? Give any reason why she might not show up this morning?”

I told him that, as far as I knew, Melody was looking forward to the interview, and that she even had her nails done so she could “look good on radio.”

“Do you want me to call her?” I asked.

“No. Davis and Buffy have been calling her all morning. But will you let me know if you hear from her? Some young artists do stupid things unconsciously to derail their careers. It’s a classic fear of success, but I didn’t take Melody for someone who would do that.”

Neither did I. All she’d ever wanted was to be a country star and she’d worked much harder than most for her success. Fear of success? Not Melody Cross.

As soon as I hung up, Buffy called, and that conversation was similar to the one I’d just had with Keith, with one exception.

“Some reporters might have made the connection between you and Melody at the wrap party. If anyone calls to ask about her,” she said, “I’d appreciate you keeping quiet about her missing the interview. Especially if anyone from a national outlet calls: one of the networks, that sort of thing. We want to know what the situation is before we take a position.”

Buffy would know all about that, as she used to be media. In fact, that’s how Buffy and I met. She had been a local reporter who’d called me after Sally and I won our first world championship. Melody once told me that some of the best publicists had worked both sides of the media game.

“You’re probably in the middle of something so I hate to ask,” Buffy continued, “but I have a new client meeting that I cannot change and I was wondering if you could go over to Melody’s house? Davis is in a lunch meeting or he would go, but someone should check to be sure she isn’t sick or something. Maybe she fell and got hurt?”

Buffy said these last words as if she hoped that was the case.

“According to my paperwork, you are the person Melody asked me to call in case of an emergency and I know you have a key . . .”

“Of course,” I told her. “Of course I’ll go, and I’ll call you as soon as I get there.”

I hung up and filled Jon in. Instantly, our easy camaraderie of the morning was replaced with tension. “I know she’s a friend,” he said, looking at me, “a good friend, but don’t get too wrapped up in her career.”

I looked back at him, and rather than anger and fear that I was going to leave the bulk of the workload once again to him, I only saw concern.

“I’m just going to check on her. It’s probably nothing. A sudden case of the flu. Or maybe she overslept and is embarrassed.”

Just then Sally chose to produce so many bubbles in her water bucket that much of the water overflowed into her stall.

Inside my farmhouse I shook out my mouse brown curls, ran a brush over the worst of it, and re-fastened the mess into a ponytail. Then I dabbed on some lip gloss. It was much cooler today than it had been yesterday, so I grabbed my good winter jacket, the one without hay stuck in the lining and horse slobber all over the sleeves, and shrugged into it.

Agnes called my landline just as I was ready to go, and then Annie Zinner texted me with information about the horse she and Tony were going to drop off here on Sunday. Next, Darcy’s school counselor called to okay the requested early dismissal on Friday so we could check out the riding center. She was quite chatty and by the time I had dealt with all of the calls and texts, forty-five minutes had passed.

When I finally opened my back door to leave, I found Keith standing there, his right arm elevated and his hand balled into a fist. He either was ready to punch me or knock on my door. I hoped for the knock.

“Now Melody has missed a lunch with our label head,” he said, shoving both hands into the pocket of a handsome, black leather jacket. “Davis had to fake excuses, lie for Melody, and he was not happy.”

Keith had an animal-like electricity to his anger.

“I’m headed to Melody’s house now,” I said. “Buffy asked me to go.”

Keith nodded then shook his head from side to side. “I can’t believe she did this.”

“I’m sure she has good reason. I’ll call you when I have news.”

He nodded again, then squeezed through the hedge that separated our properties.

I went back into the kitchen for my cell, which I had left on the counter, and when I opened the back door to leave for the second time another man was there, also ready to either knock on the door or punch me, and with this man, it really could have been a punch.

Hill Henley had been the owner of what was left of the Henley Plantation and let’s just say his gene pool could have used a little chlorine. His ancestral family home, Fairbanks, was a tall, pale, L-shaped structure located about a hundred yards east of my property line. It was the most prominent plantation home in the area during the Civil War. Hill, however, had let the antebellum mansion fall into ruin, and after he sold it he moved a flimsy single-wide onto the only twenty acres that he had left. There, he trained Tennessee Walking Horses, caroused, got drunk, and was an ineffectual single parent to his eleven-year-old son, Bubba, his wife having run off some years ago. Bubba was a local mischief-maker, but had, in a way, saved my life back in February, so I was partial to him.

A visit from Hill was never pleasant, especially now, as I needed to get to Melody’s.

Hill took a grimy ball cap off his head to reveal long wisps of grimier hair. “I came askin’ if Bubba can stay the weekend, from Friday after school to Sunday just before supper.” Here in the South, many people called lunch dinner and dinner supper. Hill was one of those people.

I sighed and looked at my watch. Then I realized I wasn’t quite as polite as I should have been. Until recently Hill would have left Bubba by himself while he was gone. Some months back I had asked Hill to let me know if he needed a place for Bubba to stay and here he was, hat in his hands, asking.

“Sure, Hill,” I said as I forced my freshly-glossed lips into a smile. “I take it you don’t plan to be around?” I would not have put it past Hill to drop Bubba off and then enjoy a quiet weekend at home.

“I got to head to Alabama and Miss’sippi. I got one client lookin’ for a new horse and another who wants to send me two. Neither are what you might call kid people. Prob’ly not a good trip for Bubba to go on.”

The parenting classes Hill had been court ordered to take might be doing some good. Bubba had gotten into so much trouble through Hill’s neglect that a local juvenile judge had stepped in to re-direct Hill, rather than Bubba. The results in both had been positive.

“You did the right thing in asking me,” I said. Then I remembered that Jon, Darcy, and I were touring the Mighty Happy center Friday afternoon. “I might need to pick him up after school, though. Jon, Darcy, and I have to be in Kingston Springs at three.”

Hill told me that Bubba’s social worker had made him add emergency contact names to Bubba’s paperwork, names of people who had permission to pick Bubba up from school, and Carole and I were the two names he added. I wondered if Carole knew, as I certainly hadn’t.

“I need you to sign this.” Hill pulled a crumpled, lettersized sheet of paper out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Then I got to get copies to Bubba’s school and social worker.”

I looked at the paper, and thought of the many other, mostly disgusting, things that could also have been in Hill’s pocket, then gingerly took a corner of the page. At the top was a short paragraph that said Hill had spoken to me about keeping Bubba and I had agreed to do so. There were blank spaces to indicate the dates that I would be responsible for Bubba, and Hill had filled those in with a pen. From the uneven distribution of the writing, I gathered the pen had been trying to run out of ink. If the pen belonged to Hill, I couldn’t blame it for wanting to die.

Nodding, I put the paper down on my kitchen table, pulled a pen out of my purse, and signed and dated the paper. I looked to see if a witness or a notary was needed, didn’t see any indication that either was required, then handed the paper to Hill.

“Your horses?” I asked.

“My man, he’ll come take care of ’em,” Hill said. Hill often talked about his “man,” who seemed to be one of several people hired to feed the animals and do odd jobs around his farm.

“Okay, then. I have to get to Pegram,” I said, shooing him out the door. Then I turned to look at him. “I really do hope you find the horses you want,” I said. “If you do well in your business, that will be good for Bubba.”

Hill almost smiled before he put his grimy cap back on his grimy head and slithered between the fence rails that separated my property from his former home, Fairbanks.

More than an hour after Buffy called I finally found myself in my truck, headed toward Melody’s house. I turned on the radio to find Razzy Bailey singing about his “9,999,999 Tears.” It was about a fifteen-minute drive down Sam’s Creek Road, then left on Hwy. 70 and through the little town of Pegram.

I was so sure that I’d find Melody at home––filled with embarrassment that she missed her morning appointments–– that I almost stopped at Finch’s Country Store for fried chicken and home fries. Everyone felt better after some of Finch’s fried chicken. But, something urged me onward and I passed the tiny, wooden store without a glance.

When I pulled up to Melody’s little yellow house the first thing I noticed was that her car was not there, and my heart sank into my stomach. I had been so sure that she would be home. I used my key to open the gate, and just as I got out of the car a dark BMW pulled in next to me and Davis got out.

“Hi,” I said. “Buffy said you were in a meeting and asked me to come by to see if Melody was here. I take it you haven’t heard anything.”

Davis shook his head and we mounted the steps before knocking on the door. When Davis knocked again, louder this time, I called out Melody’s name. The house resounded with silence.

“Her car’s not here,” I said, stating the obvious. “But I have a key.”

Davis held up a key of his own, but I used mine to open the door, and we went inside. It looked much the same as it had the afternoon before, just without Melody. The movers had not yet arrived, and Melody’s note to the movers about my furniture was on her kitchen table. Davis picked up the note, read it, and gave me a questioning glance. There was something in his look that bordered on hostile.