Jazz Funeral

gig.”
    She heard someone gasp, maybe Raymond, and knew that meant he was overpaying her, giving her a handout. “I can’t—”
    But he put up a hand. “Dawlin’, aren’t you forgettin’ something? You’re gon’ make us rich.”
    She tried to speak, but couldn’t get anything out.
    “Now y’all get out of here. Be back at three o’clock. Terence, you call the others. We gon’ have one hell of a rehearsal. Melody, what’s your best song?”
    Joel said, “They’re all her best song, Daddy.”
    Melody thought that maybe she wouldn’t die, maybe just go to California or something.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
    Ti-Belle had been running from this all her life. This cell, this stink, this depressing half-light, and the ugly faces, ugly voices of the other prisoners.
    Now that she was here, she couldn’t believe it hadn’t happened years earlier. She’d sung everywhere there was to sing, including on national television, and after the first few years didn’t even break out in a sweat at the thought of someone recognizing her. She’d genuinely convinced herself no one ever would. She looked different; she had a different name; she’d grown up.
    She had a notion why she’d gotten away with it. Because the only place she ever sang in Doradale was the choir. Nobody had especially noticed her voice, and anyway, the songs she did now were so different.
    Yet Proctor had figured her out. Why hadn’t anyone else? Probably because they hadn’t been with her much and he had. He hadn’t gotten it at first—it had taken a while. She’d been so arrogant, she hadn’t had the sense to stay away while he was at Nick’s.
    But she couldn’t have stayed away. She might have lost him.
    She’d had to press her advantage.
    Now she had lost him. As well as her career and her liberty.
    Today she was going to “bond out,” as her lawyer called it—she was only in a holding cell—but she was going to jail if she lived long enough. She’d left prints on the knife and she knew it. She’d thought of that a thousand million times since leaving Doradale.
    Should she have fought harder? Denied she was Lacey Longtree? Yes. Almost certainly. But she couldn’t go kicking herself about it now—because she knew she could no more help what she’d said, the way all that came out of her, than she could help attacking Proctor. That was the part she wished she could take back—everything else was irrelevant. Because if they printed her, she was dead, and once they’d booked her for battery, they were going to print her.
    Only one thing could keep her out of prison. Her uncle Gamet was twice as mean as her daddy ever thought about being. If he was still alive, she had a good chance of dying instead.
    “Come on, Ti-Belle.” She hated the way they called you by your first name.
    But she might have a few days. There wasn’t even a crime lab in Doradale. Who knew where they’d have to send the prints? She could go somewhere—Mexico, Europe. But what was the point? With no Nick and no career, what was the point of anything?
    But Nick was waiting for her, looking like he was going to cry.
    “Nick Anglime, what are you doing here?”
    “I thought you might need a ride.”
    “You came to get me?”
    For answer he opened his arms.
    “I thought you hated me.” But then she remembered that he didn’t yet know she’d killed her father.
    “Why would I hate you, honey pie?”
    But he must know; Proctor must have told him.
    “I guess I lost my temper back at your house.”
    “I like a woman with spirit.” And she knew she had him forever. Knew, in fact, that he’d help her with the problem she hadn’t mentioned yet. This was a man with more heart than brains.
    She liked that.
    Skip watched as they left, fuming. Ti-Belle had spent about an hour in a cell. If the sheriff of Pine County, Alabama, hadn’t been so damned arrogant, they might still have her. Just because Ti-Belle said she was Lacey Longtree didn’t mean she was—Skip still didn’t think she had probable cause on the murder charge. But what to do about the old crime wasn’t her decision. She’d called the sheriff and said Ti-Belle had admitted she was Lacey Longtree, but hadn’t exactly confessed to the murder. Told him the singer was going to bond out and she didn’t know if she’d be able to find her later. Was there any way to identify her—a scar or something—as the real Longtree?
    The sheriff had guffawed in her face. “Detective, you got somethin’