Free Red House Blues by sallie tierney

information, after he checked out
Suzan’s identification and made a few calls. Suzan imagined he
called Paula and Keith. But after jumping through the hoops all she
got of any use was affirmation that the 111 Fir Street address on
the FedEx boxes had indeed been where Sean had lived.
    She was also given the name of the band Sean
had been playing with when he died. Scalplock. Charming, thought
Suzan. An Indi-Punk band, or so said the officer. Back in
Bellingham Sean had gravitated more to the lyrical side of classic
rock guitar. Sean was never a head-banger by any stretch, even when
he was drugging. At least not when Suzan knew him. He was more into
Dylan, Santana, Clapton, Hendrix. Acoustic mostly. Romantic, she
thought. Then all of a sudden he’s in Seattle playing in a Punk
band called Scalplock? There seemed to be quite a lot she hadn’t
known about her husband.
    “Anything else we can help you with, Mrs.
Pike?” said the officer, apparently eager to get back to his more
promising homicide-related activities.
    “Do you know if any notebooks were found
with my husband or in his room?”
    “Nothing here,” he said, ruffling through
the file. “I can ask the detective in charge but your husband’s
effects were cataloged into the evidence room, and there’s no
notebook listed.”
    It had been a long shot anyway. Of course
they could be holding back information during the investigation but
chances were there had been no notebooks. The officer said
Scalplock had been playing at Jax’s, a Punk bar on Fifth, the night
Sean was killed. Suzan wasn’t ready to show up at the Fir Street
house so Jax’s seemed like an obvious place to start.
     

Chapter 8
     
    Seattle - 1930
    Martin missed the first step, barking his
shin in the dark. Rosemary hadn’t seen fit to leave the back porch
light on for him. But he did notice through a rotgut haze that the
kitchen light was on. She was waiting up for him. Going to give him
what for. Well, he wouldn’t stand for it. He was still the man of
the house, no matter what she might think. Man didn’t have to give
up being a man when he was down on his luck. Didn’t he have the
right to cut loose a little when he got a few dollars? Not right.
Nobody else was working. She didn’t have any call to be so high and
mighty all the time. She was taking in goddamn laundry from the
goddamn bloodsuckers on First Hill, for chrissake.
    The kitchen door was unlocked as it always
was. Rosemary was hunched over the rickety ironing board smoothing
wrinkles from a damask table runner. She didn’t look up as her
husband stumbled through the door.
    “Why are you wasting electricity up to all
hours? Costs money, damn it,” he said.
    “Why are you wasting money drinking till all
hours, Martin? At least my ironing puts food on the table.”
    “Here it comes. The goddamn ironing. Rub my
nose in it every time you get the chance. I’m sick of it,
Rosemary.” And sick of you, he thought to himself.
    “That’s fine with me, Martin,” she said.
“Because I stayed up to tell you I’m leaving. Right after I deliver
this basket of linens to Mrs. Phelps I’m packing up and going to
live with my sister in Cincinnati. I’ve had all I can take. The
bank called again today. They are foreclosing, Martin. They are
taking this house and I can’t stop it. I don’t make enough to make
up the back payments you didn’t make.”
    “Well, good riddance, I say. Ever since we
moved into this damn house things have gone from bad to worse. Good
riddance.” He sat down hard in the strait backed kitchen chair.
“Run off to that rich bitch sister of yours. If she’d loaned us the
money like I asked her, I could have paid the bank. As long as I
had a good job at the mill, butter wouldn’t melt. Then the mill
shut down and all of a sudden I’m poison. There’s loyalty for you.
You deserve each other.”
    Rosemary put the iron down at the end of the
board and saw her husband sitting there in the stiff oak