Ssome smoky dive. She’d hear him before she ever saw him— he played slide guitar like nobody else. Sometimes they’d coax her onto the stage and she’d play alongside him, the air thick with cigarettes and beer and sweat—the smell of the blues.
Sonny Lee warned her about the streets. He told her there was danger out there. But she’d always fit in better there than anywhere else. Better than she’d ever fit at school. Besides, she was street-smart enough to say no to the pretty boys who’d try to sweet-talk her into making that first big mistake. To the older men who wanted to buy her a drink. It was the music that seduced her—nothing else. She looked out for herself because nobody else did.
She’d slept all night on the vinyl seat, her long legs and arms hanging over the edges, stirring only when the staff started trickling in. The clatter and bang of Robert as he racked dishes finally woke her up for good.
Yawning, she checked her phone. Two in the afternoon. She had one text from the guy who’d ordered a guitar months ago, wondering where it was. Three calls from Sonny Lee. He’d be in the shop by now. Where she should be.
Sonny Lee should fire her and get some good help is what he should do.
Her mouth tasted like sawdust, which she totally deserved. Stretching the kinks out of her back, she hobbled over to the bar, where Robert comped her a Coke. She carried it to the ladies’ room and sipped at it while she cleaned up as best she could—raking her fingers through her tangle of hair and gathering it into a rubber band. She dabbed at a spot of mustard on her T-shirt with a wet paper towel. Where’d that come from? Was it new? Or had it been there when she put it on? At home, laundry was hit-or-miss.
Good intentions rattled around her brain like dice against an alley wall. I’ll stay home tonight. I’ll get caught up on my custom work and anything Sonny Lee asks me to do. I’ll cook Sonny Lee a nice supper.
Cooking was hit-or-miss, too.
She shoved open the door, letting it bang shut behind her, squinting in the sunlight. It must have rained overnight, because the wet cement was steaming. The air hung honey-thick, pressing all the scents of the city close to the pavement.
Emma turned off Beale Street and followed the cutthroughs and alleyways to the shop. She stopped at Sweetie’s along the way and bought two of the sticky buns Sonny Lee liked, though they cost her last few dollars. A peace offering.
The neon sign in front of the shop flickered.
S. L. Greenwood, Luthier. Custom Guitars and Repairs.
And underneath, their new sign, put up a month ago as a symbol of their new partnership.
Studio Greenwood.
To her surprise, the sign in the front window had been flipped from “open” to “closed.” Way too early.
Maybe business had been slow, and he’d closed up early so he could get some work done. Which he probably needed to do since Emma had let him down. Again.
Or had he not opened up at all? Sonny Lee wasn’t as young as he used to be. He sometimes had trouble making it down the stairs after a late Friday night. But music was blasting from the speakers inside the shop, turned up louder than Sonny Lee allowed, during business hours anyway.
The front door was locked, so Emma let herself in with her key. “Sonny Lee?” she called, but there was no way
She’d hear her with the music blaring. She circled behind the counter and hit the off button, and an eerie silence descended. “Sonny Lee?” she repeated. “It’s Emma. I’m home.” No answer.
The air in the store had a charred quality, as if Sonny Lee had been using his wood burner recently. The coffee in the pot had boiled away to a thick syrup and the carafe had cracked. Her heart flip-flopped.
She pushed through the swinging door that divided the store from the workshop. It was dead quiet. Spooky quiet. Tools lay scattered on the workbench and sawdust littered the floor. The drawer in his workbench hung open. Her grandfather hadn’t cleaned up the night before. He always cleaned up. His apartment was a disaster, but you could eat off the floor of the shop.
“Sonny Lee!” she shouted, circling around behind the workbench.
And that’s where she found him, crumpled on the floor, his head haloed by a pool of blood.
Emma screamed, an anguished animal sound, and fell to her knees beside him. She pressed her fingers under his graybristled chin, felt for a pulse, and found one—thready and weak.
“Hang on, Sonny Lee. Hang on,” Emma whispered, reaching for her phone and punching in 911. The dispatcher had barely answered, when Emma burst out, “I’m at Greenwood’s on Hoopeston. My grandfather—Sonny Lee Greenwood—he’s been hurt.”
“Hurt how?” When Emma fumbled for an answer, the dispatcher said impatiently, “Is he shot or stabbed or what?”
“I don’t know. I think he fell, and hit his head. His head’s bleeding, anyway.”
“Is it bleeding a lot?”
“Looks like it was, but it’s scabbed up now.”
“How long ago did this happen?” To Emma’s guilty ears, the dispatcher’s voice sounded accusing.
“I—I don’t know. I haven’t been home.”
“Is he breathing? Does he have a pulse?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Does he have a history of heart disease? High blood pressure?”
“Who knows? He’s seventy-three, but he never goes to the doctor’s. Look, can’t you ask these questions later? My grandfather, he needs—”
“EMS is on the way, honey,” the dispatcher said. “What’s your name?”
“Emma Greenwood.”
“And you’re Mr. Greenwood’s granddaughter?”
“Yes.”
Emma heard the clatter of a keyboard as the dispatcher took down the information.
“Anything else, Emma? Can you see any other injuries?
Broken bones?”
Emma shook her head, which of course the dispatcher couldn’t see through the phone. “No.”
“Any history of stroke?”
“Not that I know of,” Emma said.
“They’ll be there any minute. Listen for the sirens. Are you on the first floor?”
“Yes. Door’s unlocked. Come in through the shop. Studio Greenwood. I won’t hang up.” Emma set the phone down on the floor next to her and leaned over Sonny Lee. STo her surprise, her grandfather opened his eyes. He tried to speak, but the words came out garbled.
“Sonny Lee! Hang on,” Emma said. “The paramedics are coming and you’re gonna be fine, all you have to do is lay there and wait.”
In answer, Sonny Lee flopped his right hand, banging it on the floor. He clutched an envelope in his gnarly fingers. “What’s that?”
He flopped his hand again in answer. Carefully, she extricated the envelope from his grip. On the outside, Memphis Slim was scrawled in pencil.
Memphis Slim. Sonny Lee’s name for her.
Emma sat on the floor next to him. “Just hang on a little longer,” she said, pressing her hand against his cheek, blinking back tears. He breathed out, a long sigh of letting go. His head drooped back and his eyes glazed over, like a skin of ice on a blackwater puddle. He was dead.
Emma could hear the faint sound of sirens through the open windows, too late. They couldn’t bring Sonny Lee back to life. What would happen to her now? Would she end up in foster care? That old fear kindled and burned.
No. She had places she could go, people she could crash with for a night or two.
A night or two. What about the rest of her life? And what about the shop, with all its woodworking tools? And Sonny Lee’s collection of vintage instruments, many of them one of a kind. What would happen to them?
She needed time to think. To plan, and she wouldn’t have it if she stuck around. She needed to get out of there. She could at least take the guitars that she’d built herself. She could claim that much. Maybe she could get the rest later somehow. When she had a place to stay.
In a daze of grief, Emma climbed the stairs to her bedroom. She yanked a backpack off a hook on the wall and stuffed four T-shirts, a pair of jeans, a flannel shirt, and socks and underwear inside. That was most of her clothes, when you counted the ones on her back. She pushed up the loose ceiling tile over the mattress she used for a bed and pulled down her money stash—the proceeds from the sale of two guitars. She slid the money into the backpack pocket, and Sonny Lee’s letter into the front pocket of her jeans. That was about it: her whole life inside one backpack.
Sirens clamoring right outside pulled Emma out of her thoughts, and emergency lights bloodied the windows. There was no time to pack anything else. The two Studio Greenwood guitars she’d finished leaned against the wall, still in their cases, where she’d left them the last time she came back from Mickey’s.
She pulled one of Sonny Lee’s fedoras down low over her eyes, slung the backpack over her shoulder, scooped up the guitars, and descended the outside stairs to the alley as the paramedics came in the front.
Moments later, she was walking down Beale Street, a guitar in either hand. Emma looked just like a hundred other guitarists in Memphis, heading for a gig. Except for the tears streaming down her face.
Chapter Two
Too Little, Too Late
By the time Jonah broke into the dungeon, Jeanette was dead. She hung from the wall, her long plait of gray hair matted with blood, her face swollen, her body bruised and broken. Tools of torture had been flung carelessly aside— useless now.
Jonah knew she was dead because he couldn’t feel her pain. The pain he was feeling was all his own. “Jeanette,” he whispered, his voice breaking, along with his heart.
He snapped the manacles around her wrists in two with his fingers, letting the chains clatter back against the wall. Gently, he lowered her to the stone floor, giving her damaged body the care it deserved, that it should have had. She’d saved his life many times over, but he’d failed her now.
Until five years ago, Jeanette had worked in the infirmary at the Anchorage, where Jonah had spent much of his early life after leaving Thorn Hill. She would hold his head over the basin until the black sick was out of him, then clean his face and mop his sweaty forehead and change the mitts on his hands. After his doses, she would cradle him and sing songs to him until he slept. She provided the comfort of human touch at a time when he almost never got it. Most important of all, she’d saved his brother’s life. She’d left the Anchorage when he was twelve, but not a week went by without a phone call or text or e-mail from Jeanette.