“What’s the matter?” Alvy said from inside the closet.
“Nothing that a week at the beach wouldn’t fix,” I whispered, then louder: “I need you out here.”
I heard her pull herself up off the floor. “What happened?” she asked as I sat there on the floor holding my right foot and rubbing the toe through my shoe.
“I slipped.”
“I can see that.”
“Help me get this mess cleaned up,” I said. “We’ll never get it back in order. Let’s just get out of here.”
I got up on all fours and leaned over the drawer. I reached in and gathered up the files that were still in the drawer and mashed them forward to make room for the ones on the floor. As I did, one caught. It caught because it had been slipped into the bottom of the file drawer, flat rather than on its edge, with the rest of the folders covering it up. Scratched in ink on the tab was one word: GIBSON.
“Oh, shit,” I muttered. It was the best I could do under the circumstances.
“What?”
“Look.” I pulled the folder out. Alvy’s face lit up like she’d just won the lottery
“You found it!”
The folder was about an inch thick. I opened it. On top of the stack lay a boilerplate-printed contract with Rebecca Gibson’s name typed in. On the last page, signatures and dates nailed down the deal. There were a few sheets of correspondence and copies of checks, minus commissions, paid to Rebecca. Another thick pile of stapled sheets proved to be Rebecca’s recording contract, followed by a copy of an advance check for fifty thousand dollars. Eighty percent of fifty thousand dollars was probably more money than Rebecca, or anybody else in her family for generations back, had ever seen in one lump sum.
After a few more loose pages, there was another stapled stack of papers, this one headed ALLAMERICA SPECIALTY INSURANCE COMPANY, and below that: SERVING THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY SINCE 1969.
I whistled as I read through the first few paragraphs.
“What?” Alvy asked, looking over my shoulder.
“Here it is.” I flipped through the policy, doing my best to speed-read. Finally I got to the important parts, and when I did, it took my breath away. I turned to Alvy.
“Two million dollars,” I whispered, “with Mac Ford named as beneficiary.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh, my God,” she squealed. “Two million dollars!”
I turned back quickly to the file. This still didn’t prove anything beyond the fact that Mac Ford’s financial problems would soon be over, and that wasn’t enough to get Slim Gibson out of jail.
My eyes hurt. I picked up the file and limped over to Mac Ford’s desk, set the file down on top of a pile of clutter, and flipped on his desk lamp. There were more loose pieces of paper, nothing beyond business stuff with lots of numbers, and Mac’s private correspondence with promoters. One handwritten note outlined an agreement to slip Mac five grand on the side in cash in order to get Rebecca to agree to a series of dates in Texas, presumably at the insider’s price.
“Crap,” I said, frustrated. I flipped quickly through the last few pieces of paper and was about to give it up when I got to the end of the file. An envelope, with its flap torn open, lay loose in the file. I picked it up. It was addressed to Mac Ford at an address that was not the office. I showed it to Alvy.
“That’s his condo in Franklin,” she said.
I recognized the return address as Rebecca Gibson’s. The envelope was postmarked two days before her death. My fingers shook as I opened the envelope and slipped the letter out. It was handwritten on plain white paper, the cheap kind you can buy at any drugstore.
“Dear Mac,” it began.
I’ve given it a lot of thought and decided that we’ve gone about as far as we can go together. I hate to do it like this, but I really couldn’t handle telling you to your face. I also thought I’d send this to your home so you could handle telling the people in the office.
I’ve been negotiating with another manager who I feel can advance my career a lot farther, a lot faster. I’m sorry, but like our contract says, I’m giving you my thirty-day notice. Thirty days from your receipt of this letter, I will no longer be a client of Mac Ford Associates, Inc. If there’s any papers to sign, please send them to me. I’m grateful to you and wish you the best of luck in the future.
Sincerely,
Rebecca
I eased back in Mac Ford’s office chair, the springs squeaking as wearily as I felt.
“That’s it,” I said.
Alvy’d been standing behind me, reading the letter over my shoulder.
“Yeah, that’s it,” she said. Only there was an energetic edge to her voice, as if the thrill of discovery outweighed the terrible thing we’d discovered.
Ford McKenna Ford had murdered Rebecca Gibson. He’d done it quickly and, in terms of his purposes, neatly. Two million dollars was too much money to kiss goodbye because some goddamn ignorant west Tennessee cotton-field crooner got sucked in by a different snake-oil salesman. This might not be enough to convict Ford, but it would sure get Slim out of the crosshairs.
The only question was what to do with it. If the police came in here and found this without a search warrant, the evidence would be tainted, inadmissible. But if an employee of MFA, Inc., blew the whistle and took it to them, would it hold up in a court of law?
I was willing to take my chances that it would.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “We’ve got one more stop to make.”
I stood up and dropped the letter back into the file, then tucked the file under my arm.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Just come on,” I said. “This is some serious shit here, Alvy. We’re going to the police.”
“Oh, no, we’re not,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“No!”
I stepped to the door of the office and turned to her one last time. “I’m not going to argue with you. Let’s go.”
Then I turned and stepped through the door into Alvy’s office.
“Oh, shit,” I said. Maybe it was the fatigue and stress, but this was becoming my favorite expression.
Alvy came up behind me. She grabbed my arm without saying a word and squeezed so hard it would have hurt like hell if I’d bothered to notice.
Mac Ford was standing in the middle of Alvy’s office. In his right hand, he held what I can only describe as a very large, chrome-plated pistol.
“Let me just ask one question,” I said. “Why didn’t you come in this morning and get rid of this file? You’d have saved us both a lot of trouble.”
Mac Ford stood there for a moment, his hand steady but his eyes clouded and thick, unfocused. It took me a few seconds to figure it out, but I think he was blasted out of his gourd. When he spoke, I knew it.