He seemed to cotton on quick that once pushed too far, my mother could be a rattlesnake striking, stinging so viciously that you’d find little chance at recovery. At least, I liked to think that’s akin to what Cass thought as Mom held his attention, kept it as the cowboy backed away, only stumbling back when I blocked his exit from the door. I wanted so badly to do a little chest thumping myself, to show I was as much the alpha that I knew my mother to be just so this asshole would catch the hint and keep it.
“Let him pass, Ransom.” Mom’s voice had returned to normal, but still held a warning I recognized.
A quick step back and I was out of his way, though I followed behind him making sure Cass retreated out of the house before that urge of mine to strike got too bad.
“Mom,” I started, stepping back into the studio, but stopped in the middle of the room when my phone rang. It took a glance to change my instinct to silence my phone when the 615 area code flashed across the screen. The few friends I had left from Nashville were named in my phone. As were Bobby’s sons, my unofficially adopted uncles, so I knew there could only be one other person from Tennessee hitting me up. The smile that moved over my mouth was quick, maybe a little worrisome but I still grinned, nodding to Mom and Aly as I hit the speaker icon. “You might wanna hear this,” I told my mother.
“Hey, Sara, how you doing? I’ve got you on speaker and Mom’s in the room. You find out anything?”
“Well shit, hey y’all. Keira, you there?”
“I’m here, honey,” Mom answered, smiling at Sara’s pleased accent. “Ransom said you did a little digging?”
“Oh hell yes, I did,” Sara answered and I sat on the console next to the soundboard, pulling Aly to my side as I held up the phone. Mom flanked my other side and the flush of color in her cheeks had paled, telling me her anger at Cass’s classless move had been forgotten as she listened to her former writing partner on the other end of the line. “And girl, you’re gonna shit. In fact, I’d be willing to bet my open toe Louboutin’s that you’ll be pulling that little shit’s contract faster than a duck on a Junebug.”
“Oh…okay,” Mom said and I got why her face had gone even paler, why she rubbed the back of her neck as though she wanted the tension there to disappear. I knew the way my mom’s mind worked—she’d brought Cass into our home. She’d been sure he was the real deal and had the talent to really make something of himself. But at what price? “Sara, tell me.”
“Well, turns out the Sony talent search did end a little different than the organizers wanted. Cass and that Aymes fella were the last two competitors in the contest. You remember Elvin Reynolds, Keira? That fat asshole who used to troll the Bluebird on writer’s night?”
“I do. The one always chasing after the waitresses fresh off the bus?”
“That’s right. Turns out Reynolds got himself sorted. I ran into him last week at the Hermitage. I’d heard he’d left Sony but knew he’d been there long enough to remember the last competition, definitely the gossip, nosey old thing that he is. You owe me a beer, at the very least for giving that man half an hour of my time.” Mom winced, didn’t join in with Sara’s laughter as she listened and I realized she was too anxious, too eager to hear what her friend had discovered to relax enough to joke.
“What’d he say, Sara?” I prompted, nodding at Mom when she squeezed my arm.
“Right, well to hear Reynolds tell the story, it wasn’t Cass who looked like the sure thing to win the competition. He said all the dirty details came out a day or so before the winner was to be announced. By that time word had gotten around that the Aymes kid had hauled ass back to Oklahoma. Turns out he’d been caught with some girl who wasn’t even eighteen at the Drake Motel. Couple of nights before the winner was supposed to be announced, Aymes gets a visit from a P.I. who hands him over pictures of him and the girl at the hotel bar. Then Aymes and the minor making out against his hotel room door. Then, one of Aymes passed out, hickeyed up and completely naked in the bed next to the girl.”
“Jesus.” Aly’s unrestrained oath echoed in the studio before Sara’s raspy alto started up again.
“Well that ain’t the hell of it all. Reynolds says the higher ups wanted to know what had happened. It was one thing for a married man like Aymes to get caught with his Wranglers around his boots. It was something else altogether for that very same married man to get caught with a minor just two days before he won a hundred grand contract with Sony.”
“What did they find out?” Mom stepped closer to the phone, as though willing Sara to hurry along with her story.
“They tracked down the P.I. You know how that elements works, Keira. How many did you serve coffee to in Bobby’s diner while they were on a case?”