“And the marks you were talking about?” he asked Frank.

“You’re sure you want to hear about this?”

“Yeah.”

“There were two sets of marks on her neck-the one horizontal, across her neck-the other V-shaped, from her chin to behind her ear. The second marks would be typical of a suicide by hanging, but they were made by the rope sometime after she was killed. The first were the ones that marked the pull of the rope when someone stood behind her and strangled her.”

He was silent for a long time, then asked. “Why?”

“He probably told her the truth at the restaurant,” Frank said. “He had lost a lot of good players because of her attitude. Just as it looks like things have stabilized and The Wasteland’s big break is coming along, she starts making trouble with Gordon.”

“But she was the heart of the group! Her voice.”

“Gordon was going to offer him a new singer,” Frank reminded him.

“Susan?”

“I suppose he would have worked with Susan on the songs he had already written with Joleen, then taken Susan with band to Europe.”

Buzz frowned. “You’re right. He had already given her a couple of them to learn. Susan sang them on the tape Gordon brought last night.”

“Mack wanted to make sure he had sole rights to the songs.”

“Oh, and then what?” Buzz asked angrily. “What did he think would happen down the road? Have you ever heard one of Mack’s songs? Dull stuff. Technically passable, but nothing more. He just provided the wood. She set it on fire. With her dead, who would have provided that fire?”

“Now,” I said, “I think you’re getting closer.”

They both stared at me.

“Buzz,” I asked, “until you wrote ‘A Fine Set of Teeth-’”

“You mean, ‘Draid Bhreá Fiacla’?”

“Yes. Until then, had anyone other than Mack written a song with her?”

“No, but he didn’t understand that either, did he?” he said, and looked away. “No, he couldn’t.”

I didn’t contradict him, but I wondered if he was right. Perhaps Mack understood exactly what it meant, and perhaps Joleen, who had known Mack better than the others, also believed that the safest course was to hide any affection she felt for Buzz. I kept these thoughts to myself; bad enough to second-guess the dead, worse if the theory might bring further pain to the living.

When we were fairly sure he’d be all right, and had obtained promises from him that he’d call us whenever he needed us, we left Buzz’s apartment.

We were in the stairwell of the old building when we heard it-the first few notes of ‘Draid Bhreá Fiacla,’ the notes a woman with a fine set of teeth used to sing with eyes closed.

The notes were being played on an Irish harp, and a young man’s voice answered them.

Two Bits

On the hot July day on which he reached his majority, Andrew Masters came into a handsome fortune, yet at three o’clock that very afternoon he was focusing his attention on a twenty-five-cent piece. His contemplation of this infinitesimal portion of his wealth took place beneath a large, shady tree near Jefferson Road, just outside the western Pennsylvania town whose oil fields had made his father rich. His father had not owned the oil, but in his youth he had developed a special pump that oilmen needed. In the early 1870’s, during the Pennsylvania oil boom that followed the war years, the oilmen had bought a great many pumps, bailers, cables and other equipment from Mr. Masters, so that his oil tool and supply company became one of the largest in the country. With a shrewd eye for a good investment, his riches increased.

His charming manners and unflagging industry made him appealing to a handsome woman who came from an excellent and well-to-do family. Her family did not approve of the match; they were horrified when the young couple defied them by eloping. While Andrew’s maternal grandparents had sworn never to allow his mother to inherit a cent, they had softened their hearts upon Andrew’s birth-hence the fortune their first grandson now found at his disposal.

Yet it was upon twenty-five cents and not his several millions that young Andrew meditated now. He had spent the last few hours beneath the tree, knowing that he was not delaying any family festivities; there would be no cake or candles, no champagne or caviar. In the Masters family, this date had not been celebrated as Andrew’s birthday since the day Andrew turned seven. For more than a dozen years, the first day of July had been commemorated only as “The Day We Lost Little Charlie.”

Andrew himself thought of it in this way, and was as silent and stiff with remembered grief as were his parents. The manner in which his younger brother Charlie was taken from the family was destined to make this day infamous to all who remembered the events of fourteen years ago, and if there were fewer and fewer persons who recalled it, the Masterses would never be numbered among those who had forgotten.

On his seventh birthday, Andrew sat beneath this same old oak tree. In his mind’s eye, he could even now clearly see Charlie, a cherub faced five-year-old, extending his small hand toward his brother and saying, “For your birthday, Andrew. I want you to have it.”

In the hand was a small, unpainted wooden soldier, one whittled from a scrap of pine by Old Davey, the head groom of Papa’s fine stable. Compared to the mechanical tin clown or the horsehair rocking horse up in their nursery, it was a poor sort of toy, but Andrew had coveted it. Still, he resisted temptation.

“Thank you, Charlie,” he said. “But I can’t take it away from you. Old Davey gave it to you.”

Their conversation was interrupted by the rattle of an old buggy coming up the road. The horse was sturdy but unremarkable, while the buggy was out-and-out shabby, nothing like the smart surrey or the four-in-hand drag or any of the other fine carriages owned by the Masterses. This particular buggy was not unknown to the boys, for they had seen it only a week before. Andrew smiled, soon recognizing the two men in the buggy as those who had given them four peppermint sticks and a dozen pieces of taffy on that occasion. Mama did not approve of this sort of cheap candy, and the brothers had delighted in secretly consuming these confections not an hour before their supper.

“Hello, boys!” the driver called, pulling up. “Ain’t ya lookin’ fine today.” Andrew could not return the compliment. The driver, who had told them his name was Jack, was a short man whose dark hair curled wildly around the edges of his cap. His bushy eyebrows put Andrew in mind of a caterpillar race. One of his eyeteeth was missing, and the remainder of his smile was tobacco stained. The man sitting next to him appeared to be a stretched out version of the driver, tall and thin, but with the same brows and fewer teeth. Jack introduced him as Phil. “Me and Phil is brothers, jest like you two. C’mon and join us, we’re gonna buy us some fireworks!”

As Independence Day was only three days away, Charlie thought this would be a splendid adventure. Andrew hesitated. “I’ll ask Mama,” he said.

The men laughed. “Yer a mama’s boy, ain’t ya?” the thin one chided.

“Come on,” Charlie urged him. “It will be a secret, just between us two!”

Andrew, who could only resist so much temptation in one day, gave in to this one. The men helped the boys up into the dusty conveyance, and crowded in after them. Andrew sat between the men, while Phil held Charlie awkwardly on his lap. They were hardly settled when Jack snapped the reins. The buggy lurched forward and they traveled at a quick pace down the road.

Andrew began to regret his decision almost immediately. The buggy was not well-sprung, and its jolting motion jarred his teeth. Phil and Jack, he thought, had not bathed in weeks. When they reached the road that would take them a short distance into town, Jack turned the wrong way. Andrew told him so, which brought a sharp look from Phil, but Jack merely explained that if they bought the fireworks in a place where his family was so well-known, someone would likely tell his father all about it. Imagining his father in an angry mood was enough to curtail further protest from Andrew.