“I did.”
“But I couldn’t. I kept going to the house. When I got there I parked on the shoulder, so Alicia wouldn’t see me. I went through the trees and got to the house. The kitchen door was open and I saw Alicia by the stairs. She didn’t see me. I tackled her. She was really strong. I mean, you know, really. I didn’t expect that. The gun went off before I got it away from her. She jumped at me and I shot her. I didn’t think. I just pulled the trigger. I didn’t even know I got shot. All I remember is we were trying to put the fire out, you and me … and then I woke up here.”
His eyes closed slowly then leveraged open and he looked at Kayleigh. “I was going to mail you something before I left. There’s a card. I was going to send you a card. There’s a present inside too. My jacket. Look in the pocket. Where’s my jacket?”
Dance found the garment in the closet. Kayleigh fished through the pocket. She extracted a stamped envelope, addressed to her.
“Open it.”
She did. Looking over her shoulder, Dance noted the silly drugstore card with a mournful-looking dog on the front, the balloon above its head reporting, “I’m ‘Dog-gone’ sorry.”
Kayleigh smiled. “And I’m sorry too, Edwin.”
“Look in the tissue.”
She opened the square of thin paper; inside were three small guitar picks. “Oh, Edwin.”
“I got a deer antler in this pawn shop in Seattle. I made them out of that.”
“They’re beautiful.” She showed them to Dance, who agreed.
“I …” His eyes floated in an arc around the room and he remembered what he was going to say. “I sent them to you before but you sent them back. I mean, somebody sent them back. But if you want, you can have them now.”
“Of course I want them. Thank you so much. I’ll use them at the concert. In fact, I’ll thank you in person for them there.”
“Oh, no. I’m headed back to Seattle. I was packing up when Alicia called.” A wan smile.
“Leaving?”
“Better for you, I think.” He laughed. “Better for me too, you know. You think a famous star kind of likes you, then next thing some crazy people want to use you to assassinate a politician and some psycho’s stolen your trash to frame you for murder. Never thought being a fan could be so dangerous.”
Both Dance and Kayleigh smiled.
“Think I’m … think I’m … better off in Seattle.” His head eased toward his chest and he muttered, “It’s not as hot either. It’s really hot in … it’s hot here.”
Kayleigh smiled but said earnestly, “Edwin, you can’t drive like this. Wait a couple of days. Please. Come to the concert if you’re feeling up for it. I’ll get you a ticket front row center.”
He was fading fast. “No. Better. It’s better if I …”
Then he was sound asleep. Kayleigh looked over the picks and seemed genuinely moved by the gift.
She and Dance then left the hospital. They were in the parking lot when Kayleigh gave a laugh.
The agent lifted an eyebrow.
“Hey, you hear the one about the blond country singer?”
“Tell me.”
“She was so dumb she got dumped by her stalker.”
Chapter 67
THE DAY OF the show.
The band had arrived from Nashville at nine a.m. and come straight here, the convention center, where Kayleigh and the crew were waiting. They got right to work.
After a couple of hours Kayleigh had called a break. Backstage she had a tea and called Suellyn, then spoke to Mary-Gordon; she was going to take the girl shopping that afternoon for a new dress to wear to the concert.
After she disconnected she picked up her old Martin again and practiced a bit more with the picks that Edwin had given her.
She liked them a lot. Top flat-pickers, like Doc Watson, Norman Blake, Tony Rice and Bishop Towne, would never use big flexible triangles; the real virtuosos used small, hard picks like these. Kayleigh was more a strummer, but she still liked the control that—
A voice startled her. “How’s the action?” Tye Slocum asked, appearing silently from nowhere, despite his size. His eyes were on the instrument.
Kayleigh smiled. The guitar tech was referring to the height of the strings above the fret board. Some guitars had a bolt or nut that could be turned to easily alter the action. Martins didn’t; to make that adjustment required more effort and skill.
“Little low. I was getting some buzz on the D.”
“I’ve got a saddle I can swap,” he said. “I just found some bone ones. Real old. They’re pretty sweet.” The saddle, vital to a guitar’s tone, was the white bar on the bridge that transmitted the sound from the strings to the body. Acoustically the best material was hard ivory, from forest elephant tusks; soft ivory was the next best—from large African elephants. Bone was the third best material. Both types of ivory were available—some legally and some not—but Kayleigh refused to use ivory and wouldn’t let anyone in her band do so either. Tye, though, had good sources for vintage bone, which produced a sound nearly as good.
A pause. “Just wondering: Is he going to be mixing tonight?” A glance toward the control platform in the back, where Barry Zeigler sat with hard-shell earphones on, hands dancing over the console.
“Yeah.”
Tye grunted. “Okay. Sure. He’s good.”
Bobby Prescott had not only been the chief roadie but handled the demanding job of sound mixing, his father’s profession, at the live shows. Anyone on the crew could do a decent job on the massive, complex Midas XL8 mixing console—Tye was pretty good himself—but she had decided to ask Zeigler, as long as he happened to be in town. Her producer had started in the business as a board man when his own dreams of being a rock star hadn’t come to pass. Nobody was better than Barry at getting right both the FOH—front of house—audio, along with the foldback: the sound the band heard through their monitors.