The High Notes: A Novel(21)
“Have you called the police? Is she a missing person?” Scott looked intrigued and Hendrix shook his head.
“No. She’s a little bitch and she broke her contract.” His face was hard and angry.
“Did she steal money from you?” Hendrix shook his head and looked annoyed.
“Was there some kind of argument or fight with you or someone on the tour?” Scott asked, trying to figure out why Hendrix wanted her so badly. He was on a relentless manhunt for her, as though he wanted revenge for something.
“There was no fight. She’s a troublemaker, and she can’t get away with this. It sets a bad example to all the others. If they all get away with walking out like that, I’ll have empty stages all over the country. She’s toured for four years. She knows what’s involved. And she worked for another tour manager for five years before I signed her.”
“Maybe she was just tired of it. Did she have a boyfriend somewhere? Does anyone know?”
“I asked. They say she doesn’t.” It seemed like a wild goose chase to Scott, but he didn’t want to say so. Glen Hendrix wasn’t the sort of man you said no to. He expected to get what he wanted, and sounded like he expected Scott to deliver her head on a silver platter to make an example of her.
“Where is she from originally? Maybe she went home to her parents.”
“She’s from nowhere. Vegas between tours, Texas originally. No parents to speak of, she has a broken down, ex-rodeo-rider father. They had some kind of falling out, and they don’t speak.” Her father had called Glen to complain about when she wouldn’t give him access to her paychecks, and he tried to get Glen to give him access anyway, but he couldn’t.
“Have you called the police to see if she was in an accident after she left the tour? She could have been killed or injured in a highway accident,” Scott suggested, and Glen shook his head. He hadn’t thought of that. “I’ll check with the highway patrol in Wyoming, where she was when she left, and the surrounding states.” Glen looked satisfied. “And what happens when you find her?” Scott asked, curious about Hendrix’s determination and vindictiveness. He still thought she must have had some kind of romance with Hendrix and had rejected him. It made no sense to Scott that Glen was so hell-bent on finding her. She was just another singer.
“She comes back to work to finish out her contract or I sue her, and blackball her with every tour manager in Vegas,” he said smugly.
“Is it worth the effort and the money?” Scott asked him and Glen nodded.
“I put out the word to the scouts I use all over the country. One of them will find her. She’ll take a job in some dive somewhere, and they’ll spot her. But maybe you’ll find her first.” Scott felt like a hit man or a bounty hunter as he listened to Glen. He thought Glen was over the top on this one, but a job was a job and business had been slow lately. He had trained with a detective agency in New York that did mostly corporate assignments, and had followed a woman to Las Vegas, in his own life, and stayed after they broke up. He was forty years old, and tired of dating showgirls.
There was something about Iris’s photographs that captivated him. She had beautiful eyes, and there was something very sensitive, vulnerable, and touching about her. She looked like a nice person, a real one and not just a performer. He wondered why she had really walked away, leaving no trace behind her. She obviously didn’t want anyone to find her, least of all Glen Hendrix, which Scott could understand. He wasn’t a good guy, but he paid his bills on time. And Scott felt it wasn’t up to him to decide if his assignments were worthy or not. Most of his searches were for people who had skipped town owing money, or guys who had dumped their wives and families to dodge child support, or had run off with their girlfriends. Iris’s “crime” didn’t seem heinous to him, and didn’t seem worth pursuing, unless Glen was a rejected lover, but Scott couldn’t imagine him in that role either. He looked like a man without a heart. And the beautiful blonde in the photographs on his desk looked like she was all heart.
Glen left his office a few minutes later, and Scott did what he said he would. He checked with the highway patrol in Idaho and Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana. There were no accidents she’d been involved in, and they had no Jane Does who matched her description at the moment. He wondered if she was running away from another guy, and not Glen. But her friends had insisted she had no boyfriend, which seemed unusual to him too, for a girl who looked like Iris.
He pinned her photographs on a corkboard near his desk and glanced at her on and off all day. She was beginning to haunt him. And given what he thought of Glen, he almost hoped he wouldn’t find her, and wasn’t sure what he’d do if he did.
* * *
—
In Jackson Hole, Iris was having fun singing with Boy’s band. They tried out a few more of her songs.
By the third week, Boy and his band decided that maybe it was time to move on. They were packing the house at the Elk. Sean and Joe had a gig to go to in Nashville, and Annie wanted to take a few days to visit her parents. It felt like it was time to go. They didn’t want to stay until people got bored with them. Boy was in no hurry to go back to Nashville, and he asked Iris what her plans were that night at dinner. There was a definite bond between them that had happened through their music, but Iris had stayed just out of reach, and thought it best for now. They were both going to go their separate ways and she didn’t want to get her heart broken. They hadn’t talked about it, but Boy understood and respected the boundaries between them. He liked her too much to hurt her or rush their fences or do something she wasn’t ready for. She wasn’t the kind of girl a good man would take lightly.