The Last Songbird by Daniel Weizmann

Author:Daniel Weizmann [Weizmann, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2023-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

21

STRANGE AND MOURNFUL DAY

If Thom Goldfischer resembled Annie Linden at all, it was in the faraway glow of his pale blue eyes. Otherwise, I didn’t see it. Sitting there in a large white showroom of empty Jacuzzis, leaning back in a swivel chair with his stretched-out feet dangling flip-flops, thumbing Sports Illustrated, he was tall where his mother was slight, lumbering where Annie was light, a cool customer, which she wasn’t.

Still, you never knew how the DNA traveled.

I arrived unannounced, wandered the tiled floor, marveled at the large jet stream spouts, the placards reading Seats 4–5, Seats 6–7, Seats 10. They were expensive as used cars, too, these big round baths. From the corner of my eye, I watched him as he watched me. He was good-looking but there was something self-tasting, willfully complacent about his chiseled handsomeness. Too tanned, too satisfied. Well, he worked in the hot tub biz, after all. Getting mellow was his calling.

“How’d they get the name?”

“Jacuzzi?” He smiled, put down the magazine, locked into his sandals and stood. “It’s a family name. Italian brothers. They tried their hand at airplane propellers. Then they made water pumps for the orange groves upstate. One of the brothers had chronic back pain, so they used their knowledge of irrigation on the human body.”

“Nice,” I said.

“People associate that name with…the seventies, the party lifestyle. But they really come in handy these days.”

“How’s that?”

Approaching, he was at least six-foot-two and solid, in a white polo shirt with company label and unfaded jeans. “Besides the health benefits, Jacuzzi time is family time. You have a family?”

I told him I didn’t.

“Well, either way, friends or family, you put away the cell phone, the iPad. You turn off the TV. Whoever you’re with, you face each other. You talk to each other. Sometimes it’s the only real together time in the day.”

“I’m Adam Zantz.” We shook. “I’m actually not in the market for a hot tub. I was Annie Linden’s driver.”

He got tight around the neck and jaw. “The singer who just died?”

“Yeah, the singer who just died. Listen—I know some of the history.”

He bristled, lost his smile. “And you want me to pay you to keep from—”

“Nothing like that. I’m not here to harass you or waste your time. But I’m a former licensed investigator and I’m trying to figure out what other secrets Annie might have had.”

He looked around the empty store. The farawayness in his eyes was tallying something now, losing glow. “Okay. Well. Come sit down, let’s talk.”

I joined him at the big oak table. He was all calm control. I sat on the plastic seat and fidgeted like the runt Jacuzzi brother.

“Listen,” I said, “I’m sorry to disrupt your day. And I’m even more sorry about the news.”

“I figured it was a matter of time before someone from her camp came around. Did Minnie Olivera tell you about me?”

“Not exactly, but I do know her. I did ask your mother about Annie Linden—”

“Yeah?” He sat up, tightened up.

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