Page 37 of Already Lost

All he had to do was this one, and itwould be over.

He closed his eyes with the lightestsmile, stroking a hand over the closed and zipped case. Just one more horriblething he had to do, and it would be over. All of the problems they’d beenhaving were going to go away. His grandmother would be healthy again. She couldbe discharged from the hospital. And she wouldn’t be mad at him anymore. She’dbe grateful.

Or maybe she wouldn’t even notice, orrealize it was his efforts that saved her. That was fine, too. All he wantedwas that she could come home. One more thing to do, and then she would be homeand everything would be fine. Everything would be right back to normal. Evenbetter than normal, actually.

When she was back, things would bewonderful.

He just had to make sure that he got thisone thing done, for her.

He checked the case one more time, tickingoff all of the elements one by one to be sure he had them. Then he ran throughthe scenario in his head, trying to make sure he had covered all eventualitiesand there was nothing that had slipped his mind.

He would go to the place he knew he neededto go – that was not something he needed to pack, but rather something hecarried with him already: the information in his head. Then he would find theperson who needed to be there – he would know them when the time came.

Next, he would use the bottle and the rag(check) to make sure they couldn’t fight back. Then the ropes to make sure theycouldn’t escape (check). Next he’d set up the gramophone (check) and the record(check) – he would have to be quick about it, which was going to be strangebecause for the other three he’d been able to prepare ahead of time. He had tomake sure his hands didn’t shake, that he didn’t drop or damage anything.

Then they would dance. Finally, he wouldend them with the largest item he was going to carry – check. Afterwards, he’dneed to call the police – but he already knew where he could find a publicphone nearby, and that wasn’t going to take long at all.

It seemed he had everything he needed.

He was ready.

He took a deep breath and lifted both thebag and the case, holding them, testing their weight.

He was ready.

He nodded to himself one last time andstarted to climb down out of the attic, eyes ahead, aiming for the front doorand the waiting night.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Laura placed the printout down right inthe middle of all their other notes, crime scene photographs, and research.

“Earl Maverford,” she said, triumphantly.

Nate peered at the piece of paper. “Thisis him?”

“Yep,” Laura said. Finding a photograph ofhim hadn’t been easy. She would have given up, if she hadn’t randomly stumbledacross one while looking up his discography. It looked like it had been takenat a family gathering, not used for a record or the press. Maverford waswearing a suit, smiling, dark hair and dark eyes becoming almost obscured inthe low-quality reproduction photograph. “There’s a lot more to it, too. Imanaged to find a blog post going into his work which talks about the song.”

“Why didn’t we see this before?” Nateasked in some surprise.

“Because it was way down on the tenth pageeven of the search for his name,” Laura replied. “Let alone any other search.But this post has a lot of information which I think we’d never be able to hearany better even if we got it from the horse’s mouth. There was a lot going onbehind the scenes at this record label.”

“Go on,” Nate said.

“It wasn’t just the singer who wasdesperate to make it big,” Laura said. “The songwriter was the same. They wereall part of the same studio, owned by the record label. It was a kind ofdevelopment farm before that was a concept. They were all vying for a chance toreally work with the record label, but as the blog post puts it, they only hadone shot to make it.”

“If they didn’t sell big, the labeldropped them completely?” Nate asked.

Laura nodded. “So, the songwriter –Maverford – wrote this song thinking that he would pitch it for one of the bigvoices of the day. Maybe Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday.”

Nate gave a low whistle. “Billie wouldhave made it a hit, for sure.”

“Well, that’s what he thought. But therecord label had other ideas. They decided they wanted to give it to a singerfrom the same stable – a nobody. Nena Flora. They were trying to launch hercareer and they decided to give her this song to do it, only she flopped, likeJack told us.”

“But didn’t the writer just write moresongs?” Nate asked.

“He did, but he never managed to get oneof those bigger singers to sing his music,” Laura said. “He felt like hiscareer was ruined because his one big song, the best he’d ever written, endedup in the hands of this nobody and she didn’t do it justice. Later in life hedid interviews where he claimed that he was stifled after that, never given abig chance. And the only reason we really know about all this was that heoutlived many of his contemporaries. He spoke about it right towards the end ofhis life when the rest of them had passed on and he was the only one left togive insight about what it was like back then.”

“Just like Nena, he went to the gravebelieving his career was ruined,” Nate said. “This one song has a lot to answerfor.”

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