"Did you recognize them?" I ask.
The croissants arrive and Janet pauses to gobble one. "Never saw 'em before in my life. One guy was bald and had a pirate patch over one eye. The other was tall and freckly."
"Longhair?"
"Down to his butt. I first saw him, I thought he was a chick. He was messin' with my computer—that's another thing, Jack, these assholes ripped off my PC. I got no idea why."
"I'll tell you in a minute."
"Anyway, they ran off like their balls were on fire."
"And then ... ?"
Janet calls another time-out for a blueberry muffin. Afterwards she says, "They garbaged my car, so a friend came and got me. I've been down in Lauderdale ever since, just chillin'."
"Was it you who called the sheriff's office and told them not to check the house?"
She nods guiltily. "I remembered I had a bag of buds under the mattress. I knew the cops'd find it and I wasn't up for a hassle, so I gave 'em a story—'My boyfriend raised some hell but everything's okay now so please don't send a squad car.'"
"Well, it worked."
"Remember I told you about the Convent-Cam setup, the girls who dress up like nuns? That's who I've been stayin' with. To be honest, Jack, I been scared to go home."
"You want to know what scared me? The blood on the carpet, Janet. What the hell happened?"
"I stepped on a broken lightbulb, that's what." She swings a long leg up on the breakfast table and kicks off her sandal, revealing a large dirty bandage on the sole of her foot. "When they broke my kliegs, the glass went all over the place. I bled like a hippo."
A waitress carrying a coffeepot is poised beside our table, staring uneasily at the grungy gauze.
"Stitches?" I inquire politely.
"Seven," Janet reports. "No biggie."
"The big bald goon was Cleo's bodyguard. The long-haired one was her so-called record producer."
Janet hoots. "That little bimbo has a bodyguard!" She pulls her leg off the table. "Why'd they bust into my place? What'd they want?"
"Your brother's music." I signal for the waitress to deliver the check. "Jimmy's final album."
"No way!" Janet sits forward, smoldering. "No way. That is nothappening."
"Don't worry. They're both dead."
"If only."
I slide the Postacross the table and point to the headline next to the picture: Airboat Theft Ends in Fatal Crash.Her eyes widen.
"Come on," I say. "Let's go for a drive."
Certain details of the story need not be disclosed. For instance, there's no reason for Janet to know that Emma was kidnapped, or that I was shooting a gun at Jerry and Loreal when they swamped.
But I'm telling her enough to paint the picture.
"What they wanted was the master recording of everything Jimmy wrote in the islands. We found it hidden on the boat after Jay Burns was killed."
"Jay was in on this?"
"At least the pirating of the tracks, yeah. Maybe more."
"His 'best friend,' "Janet says acidly. "I'm so over these people. But why'd they kill him?"
"He got spooked."
"And what's with this 'accident'?" She taps two fingers on the newspaper photo.
"I told Cleo Rio I had the master. We set up a trade. The guys on the airboat were coming to get it when they wrecked."
"A trade for what?"
"Something personal. Something they stole from me."
We're cruising in the Mustang because a busy donut shop isn't the best place to be chit-chatting about murder.
Janet says, "I can't believe they shot Tito. Holy shit."
"They thought he had a copy of the hard drive. That's the computer box where your brother stored the album tracks. They figured you had one, too. That's why they broke into your house."
"This is nuts. Totally."
"It's Cleo," I say.
"But why would she care about Jimmy's stuff? She's the one with the dumbass hit song." Janet gazes out the window, shaking her head. "Crazed," she mutters.
I ask her if she sat in on any of the Exuma sessions. "Did your brother ever play any of the songs for you?"
"Long time ago," she says. "He wrote it for some girl, she dumped him for one of the Ramones."
"What was the name of the track?"
"God, lemme think. Jimmy only had a few lines written. Mostly he just hummed and played along on the guitar."
"Would you know it if you heard it again?"
"I dunno. I remember it was a really nice song, but we're talkin' like three years ago. Maybe longer."
I insert the disc of "Shipwrecked Heart" into the stereo and twist up the volume. Janet hunches intently toward the speakers. After about eight bars she says, "Pull the car over!"
This requires some slick navigating, as we are boxed in the center lane on the interstate.
"Jack, come on!" She's beating the dashboard with both fists.
Flashing my headlights, I shoot through a Fiat-sized gap between two eighteen-wheelers. Snaking a course toward the shoulder of the highway, I'm greeted by upraised digits from a corpulent biker and a swarthy businessman in a Lincoln. As I brake to a halt, Janet begins stabbing at the buttons on the stereo console.
"Play it again! I want to hear it again," she demands tearfully. "Where's the damn Replay thingie?"
"Calm down. Deep breaths."
I re-cue the disc and take her hands in mine. Once more we listen to her brother's song, Janet protesting, "But isn't that the name of Cleo's album—'Shipwrecked Heart'? How can that be?"
"Is this the one Jimmy played for you?"
"Yeah, Jack, it's the same song. He didn't have a title yet, but now I remember what he called it."
"Tell me."
" 'Kate, You Bitch.' "
Gershwin, eat your heart out.
"That was the name of the chick who dumped him," Janet explains. She shakes a finger at the speaker: "Listen right here, where he's singin', 'Shipwrecked heart, my shipwrecked heart'? When Jimmy did it for me, it was, 'Kate, you bitch. You skanky bitch.'"
"I believe I like the new lyrics better."
"Come on, Jack. He wasn't finished yet."
Fair enough. A Paul McCartney tune called "Scrambled Eggs" eventually became "Yesterday," the most widely covered song in music history. While it's the same syllabic hop from "Kate, You Bitch" to "Shipwrecked Heart," I somehow doubt the genealogy of Jimmy's composition is destined for pop lore. In any case, the number's over and Janet is getting weepy again.
"It turned out so pretty," she says.
"Remember when you couldn't think of a reason Cleo would kill your brother? This is why she did it. She needed a hit song and this is the one she wanted."
"And Jimmy wouldn't give it up."
"Bingo." I ease the Mustang back into traffic. "But here's the pisser: I can't prove a damn thing. Except for Cleo, everyone who knows the truth is dead—Jay Burns, the two imbeciles on the airboat. Tito's alive but he can't offer much. Hell, he didn't even play on the sessions."
"So there's nothing to give the cops," she says gloomily.
"I'm afraid not."
"And nothing to put in your newspaper."
Tragically, that is true.
We're driving back toward the donut shop. Janet has slipped behind sunglasses to hide the redness in her eyes. Miles ago she turned off the stereo. I ask her what she's thinking.
"I was just wonderin' how Cleo did it."
"We'll probably never know."
"But if you had to guess—I mean, you've wrote about stuff like this before, right? Murders and all."
The truth is, I've been thinking a lot about the same question. "She probably drugged him. Slipped him something before he went in the water, to knock him out."