Jazz Funeral by Julie Smith Read Free Book Online

Melody’s missing. Omigod!”
    She was quick. She had put the two things together and realized they might be connected.
    “What time did Melody leave here?”
    “About five, I guess. Five-thirty, maybe. What time was he killed?”
    “We don’t know yet.”
    “Omigod! Ham! Melody’ll just die.”
    “Okay, you said they were really close. Had they fought lately? Were they getting along?”
    “They never fought. Ham was like—well, he was more like an uncle than a brother. You know, because of the age difference. He’s not that much younger than Melody’s mom, can you believe that?”
    Skip smiled. Blair was poised, but she was still sixteen.
    “Actually—Actually …” She made the word momentous, telegraphed that she was finally about to let Skip in on something. Something private, for those under twenty only. “Actually, he was more like a father than an uncle. Melody’s dad’s so old and everything—well, I don’t know if that’s it, he’s just not—he’s not—” She was losing resolve.
    “Not really a very good father.”
    “Well, maybe not. He’s not very …” She searched for the right word, gave up. “He’s kind of distant.”
    “And Melody’s mom?”
    Blair’s guard went up again. She executed another of her habitual shrugs. “She’s okay, I guess. But Melody likes Ham and Ti-Belle better than her parents.” She glanced at her mother, looking slightly guilty. “I mean, they’re young and hip, and Ti-Belle’s famous.” The elder Rosenbaum rolled her eyes, but Blair missed it. She had put a fist to her mouth. “Omigod. I can’t believe he’s dead.”
    “What did you think of Ham?”
    “Me? What did I think? I thought he was really cool. I mean, chubby, but, you know; cool. He knew a lot of sh—uh, stuff.”
    “What kind of stuff?”
    “Oh, music. You know.”
    “What about drugs?”
    “Drugs! No way.” Her eyes didn’t stray even slightly toward her mother. And her face was so scornful Skip might have believed her even if they had.
    “So who are Melody’s other close friends?”
    “I don’t know. The boys in the band, I guess. The ones she sings with. Doug Leddy and Joel Boucree.”
    “Was one of them her boyfriend?”
    “Not really.” Blair sounded uncharacteristically vague.
    “Did she have a boyfriend?”
    “Yeah. But I don’t know if they were too close anymore.”
    “Why is that?”
    Blair shrugged.
    “What’s his name?”
    “Flip, uh, Phillips.” She shifted in her seat, obviously uncomfortable.
    Seeing Blair was closing down again, Skip left her and went back to Ham’s block. Things were quieter now. Most of the neighbors had tired of the show and gone home. And most of the guests had gathered all the gossip there was and gone out in the world to spread it.
    Skip started at one end of the block on Ham’s side of the street, worked her way to the other, and came back down the block on the other side. When she was done, she had learned three things:
    No one had seen Ariel deliver the tasso at three o’clock Tuesday.
    Mrs. Thiel Greenleaf had been cutting some flowers in her front yard shortly before five o’clock that day and had seen Melody arrive at Ham’s just as Mrs. Greenleaf was going back in her house. (She hadn’t seen Melody leave.)
    And half the neighborhood knew Ham and Ti-Belle fought—long, loud, and often.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Melody had done what everyone does in the movies when something awful happens. She had hollered “No!” at the top of her lungs, as if she could make it stop, turn time back and erase disaster, regain her innocence, and start being grateful for the imperfect world she had known up to that instant to ward off this new, shattered one.
    She was embarrassed about that, felt silly. Oddly, the memory of her hysteria was almost as painful as the other memory—the moment in which everything had come apart. After yelling, she had simply stared for a moment, trying to hang onto history, to the moment before it