We are delighted to welcome author Tom Carter to Omnimystery News today.
After collaborating with numerous country music stars to write their autobiographies, Tom has written a fictional murder mystery, Nashville: Music & Murder (Sing Before Dying; February 2017 trade paperback and ebook formats). We are delighted that he has chosen to share an excerpt from it with us, the first chapter. And look for our interview tomorrow with the author!
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SINGER MACI WILLIS FAKED ANOTHER smile, then gazed wearily across a sea of 18,000 jubilant fans. Twenty years ago, she would have given her heart and soul to draw a crowd this size. But tonight, the demanding masses were draining her of everything she had.
As her eyes scanned the room, she heard not the adulation of an army of admirers, but the deafening roar of a thousand lions that had just spotted a solitary gazelle named Maci.
Looking down, she told herself that she could hold her composure together for a few more minutes. The rhythmic stomping of feet told her what she already knew — that people were hungry for more musical manna — and were hoping for a third encore.
With her nod to the band, the opening chords of one of her signature hits filled the arena. Then, as a sea of smart- phones flashed at her, she waved her hand, a gesture to stop the music.
“You probably heard I’m not too big of a fan of these phones,” she said.
A few hundred fans who had seen the previous month’s tabloids hooted in approval. They’d read the story of how Maci, while dining at a riverside restaurant, was approached by a fan who tried to force her into an unwanted selfie. In one swift, nearly choreographed motion, Maci snatched the boy’s phone and threw it into the river. When the press called the next day, her only comment was, “I don’t know why they call it a smartphone when there always seems to be an idiot attached to the screen.”
Now, in front of a capacity crowd, Maci decided to double down. Rather than address the entire audience, she turned her attention to a pudgy teenage girl in the front row, who was still squinting into her phone as she recorded Maci.
“Darlin’,” she said. “You. Open your eyes. You’re sitting beneath a thirty-foot Jumbotron. Me and my band are standing here in front of you, larger than life. And your mama paid two hundred dollars for that seat. And now, you want to squeeze us all down into a teeny, tiny, four-inch screen.
“Well, I’m waaay too big for a four inch screen!”
The crowd roared in support of Maci. When the Jumbotron captured the image of the young offender, it finally dawned upon her that she was the target of Maci’s remarks.
“Honey, just look at yourself,” said Maci in a voice that blurred the chasm between sarcasm and concern. “You’re scarcely fourteen years old, and you’re already at least thirty or forty pounds overweight, maybe more. That ain’t living, darlin’. Put down that stupid phone. Throw it out. Get out of your chair. And get up on your feet and dance!
“In fact, everybody, put down your phones!” Maci yelled to the audience. “Get up on your feet! You didn’t come here to see Samsung! You didn’t come here to see Apple! You came here to see the greatest female singer alive — and to hear the best songs in the history of country music! Now get up and dance!”
The band instantly ripped into the opening bars of the third encore. Maci had worked the crowd into such a frenzy that only a few noticed the glistening tears rolling down the chastised girl’s reddened face. Just as two other teenagers left their seats to console her, the Jumbotron cut away from her and back to Maci, and the cries of the crowd reached a new crescendo.
Winding down from two hours of singing and shuffling across a 40-foot stage, Maci took a deep breath. The sprawling screen above the platform magnified the sweat that beaded on her brow. Her normally erect posture was slightly bent, as if she carried not just the weight of the night’s performance, but of the entire world’s.
“Maybe not the entire world,” she thought to herself. “Just thousands of fans, a production crew of sixty, and five truckloads of equipment. Plus a sizeable part of the country music industry.”
Outside, additional Jumbotrons on the façade of Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena thrust Maci’s voice and image out to the throng of fans without tickets. Throughout the evening, she’d intermittently talked directly to the sidewalk followers, who for the most part were a bit more drunk that those inside. A drone-mounted camera occasionally panned the crowds who came to life each time they saw themselves on the massive screens. One man shot the moon to his fellow fans and a few women flashed their breasts.
The frenetic sea of Maci’s fans stretched down Broadway for two blocks, nearly reaching the bank of the Cumberland River. From that vantage point, most could neither hear nor see Maci’s show; they’d come primarily to drink and mingle with other folks, and occasionally they’d contribute their own song and dance. Temporary beer stands had taken root in the middle of the road, which had been closed off to accommodate the crowds. In each booth, bartenders poured a steady stream of ice-cold lagers for the mob, who had come as much for the beer as for the music.
“You folks outside should have scooped up some tickets from the scalpers,” Maci shouted into her microphone. “The cost would have been outrageous, but I’m worth the money!” The lilt in her voice hinted that her energy was waning like a jet aircraft leaking fuel. Even so, her little asides ignited smatterings of applause from both inside and outside the arena.
“How much more do these people want from me?” Maci mumbled off microphone. “How much more can I give? Let’s see what the old gal’s got left.”
Lifting the microphone to her lips, she blasted out the first few words of “Come and Get It,” her chart-topper from nearly fifteen years earlier. As the band joined in, the audience once again rose to their feet. Maci crossed the stage, dragging the spotlight with her, toward her steel guitarist. Feigning astonishment, he leapt from his seat on cue, and Maci playfully pushed him away. Sitting in his chair, Maci sloppily played a three-string verse without a chorus, and then jumped atop the borrowed chair where she wobbled back and forth to the delight of her audience.
Just as she expected, a hefty faction of the crowd mimicked her movements by jumping up and teetering on their seats. Unaccustomed to balancing on their chairs, people were laughing, spilling beer and falling like leaves in a windstorm. Holding her microphone to her waist, Maci made sure her admirers could see, but not hear, her exaggerated breaths, which were worthy of a boxer after going twelve rounds with Muhammad Ali. The theatrics once again worked the crowd into blistering ecstasy as the lights began to fade.
“Bye bye, folks,” she thought as the darkness embraced her. “I’m leaving my stage, leaving it without an ounce of remaining energy. Time for y’all to go back home to your bored and boring lives.”
Precisely as the curtains dropped, the room’s semi-dark- ness was shattered by the burst of the arena’s house lights which pierced the air like a thousand tiny suns. Their idol gone from sight, fans squinted into the glare, contorting their faces like animals surfacing from a long winter’s hibernation. Many hummed or sang as they headed toward the exits. Most were smiling, and a few were teary eyed from having finally seen a living legend. The Queen had left her throne. There was no High Princess in the wings. The music had silenced, and so had the listeners’ world.
Or so they thought.
Before the fans could leave, the arena was thrust into total blackness. Scattered exit signs eerily dotted the darkness like flickering fireflies. Some fans wondered aloud if there had been a power failure. Then, in a flash, the surprised audience released a collective gasp as spotlights sliced through the ocean of black. As the crowd slowly realized what was happening, their murmurings rose from unexpected joy, to unbridled jubilation to outright nirvana.
“Nobody returns to the stage four times!” shouted the announcer through the sound system. “Except for Maci Willis!!!!”
Like shoppers squeezing through a Black Friday turnstile, the departing fans wrestled madly to get back to their seats. “The show must go on — again!” yelled the announcer. “You won’t miss what you don’t see, so you’d better see what you might miss!”
Shouts, sometimes profane, resounded from fans, especially those bottlenecked inside the exit tunnels where ushers struggled to herd them back inside.
Then she appeared.
Alone in seven spotlights, Maci stood motionless as she was lifted through the stage floor, bathed in an aura of pastel footlights. Then, as the band played the opening chords of another signature song, she began to frantically dance in place with the fervor of a barefoot child on a tar roof.
“You didn’t think I’d leave without singing my favorite song, did you?” she screamed into her earset microphone. “You ain’t getting rid of me that easy. I’d NEVER leave you!” Separated from their assigned seats, the confused audience shifted like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces had sprung to life. As the band began to play, Maci ripped away her designer gown, flashed her legs beneath her mini-dress and the musical madness became as loud as New Year’s Eve at Times Square. The crowd, startled yet joyous, unanimously wondered how long the show would actually go on. Except for one fan. He knew exactly how long.
Having followed Maci’s touring extravaganza through three cities, he’d memorized the show down to its smallest detail. He knew this encore was truly the last. He knew just when Maci would strut across the stage, and exactly when and where she’d stop to pose for one last flurry of photos like a gloating minstrel. Like a legend finally at rest.
Like a perfect target.
While the houselights had sent most of the crowd to the exits, he waded against the plethora of fans, working his way closer to the stage. He knew the arena well; the route backstage, the nearest exit, the gateway through which he could sink safely and silently into the night.
Like a child seeking a hidden toy, he slid his hand gently under his black, all-weather coat to reaffirm the presence of his .357 Magnum whose steel jacket bullets could penetrate an engine block. Patting the weapon’s cold steel contours, he marveled at its sleeping power which he would soon awaken.
“The entire crowd’ll want to kill me,” he whispered to no one. “But that won’t be personal. They’ll want to kill me because I killed her.”
Like a salmon battling its way upstream, he wove his way through the widening flow of torsos engulfing him.
Still too far to see Maci clearly, he repeatedly glanced upward at the Jumbotron as he inched toward the stage. The face he saw no longer had the youthful glow that had filled her early album covers. He could see the streaked mascara and the tired lines on her face that resembled creases on silk. “Maci’s exhausted,” he told himself. “She needs to rest. She needs … me.”
He drifted, lost in the crowd, moving slowly but methodically closer to the stage. As the song entered its second verse, he smiled wryly, realizing he could now ignore the Jumbotron and look straight into Maci’s eyes.
“I love you, Maci,” he yelled, his voice buried beneath the blare of the music and the roar of the crowd. “I understand your songs better than all of these simpletons!”
As he continued his journey toward destiny, his excitement over seeing Maci was matched only by his disdain for the audience. They were fools. They didn’t understand Maci. They didn’t understand her or her songs. Not like he did. Idiots. All of them.
Maci and four backup singers slipped into an a cappella refrain as the band members raised their hands high to kindle a round of unified clapping throughout the arena. Not content to merely clap, the crowd began to stomp their feet in time with the music. Feeling their cadence through the soles on his boots, he knew the crowd’s emotions were rising. As were his. None of them realized how close they were to the end of Maci’s show, and of her life.
But he did.
An unimpressive row of security ushers, dressed in canary yellow sport coats, stood rigidly a few feet apart from each other, forming what passed for a protective line in front of the stage and the performers standing on it.
“Useless geezers,” he smirked aloud, safe and smug in the knowledge that his spoken words still could not be heard above the din and fray. He could announce his plans aloud and no one would hear. He shook his head at the inept, unintimidating guards. “A Girl Scout could get by you. Maci deserves better than a handful of escapees from an old folks’ home.”
His heart raced. He was now close enough to count Maci’s finger rings, and was more energized than ever. His voice beginning to rasp, he couldn’t hear his own words this close to the stage, no matter how forcefully he shouted.
Realizing he was no longer struggling amid the masses, he drew a deep breath as he turned to gaze at the people in the front row, who rhythmically danced in place. Like the Pied Piper, he would soon abandon everyone on the ground floor before scaling to his lofty perch, and taking his place onstage aside his beloved Maci Willis.
“I’m closer to Maci than anyone else in the hall except her people on stage,” he said, congratulating himself.
His starstruck eyes suddenly filled with lust, he barely noticed the nearby security guard waving at him. For a moment, he was tempted to leap up, grasp the lip of the plat- form, and pull himself onstage.
“Not now,” he told himself. “Move now and they’ll stop you.”
The guard continued to wave.
“Me?” he mouthed as he pointed to himself, faking confusion.
The glorified usher nodded and signaled for the misplaced man to come to him.
Forcing a smile, he walked slowly toward the yellow coat and the old man wearing it. As if seeing a long lost friend, he thrust his arm around the fellow and pretended to yell into his ear. Moving stealthily, he slid his hand into his coat’s inside pocket. With a magician’s sleight of hand, he quickly found his Taser and dropped the guard.
Maintaining his grasp on his prey, he called out to two of the nearby guards.
“Need some help here,” he shouted. “Looks like heatstroke.”
The two guards discretely eased their companion to the ground, trying their best to not distract attention from the show.
A drunk from the front row, deciding that a dousing of liquid was the best way to revive someone, flung the contents of his plastic cup into the fallen guard’s face. Upon seeing this, two more guards left their posts to drag the drunk away.
With five guards out of the way, half the stage was now his.
“Hell’s bells,” he shouted, his voice still inaudible to the crowd. “I was expecting a challenge. Seems like you clowns are actually trying to help.”
A shiver ran through him. “Like you’re trying to help,” he said. “Like it’s meant to be. Like it’s destiny.”
Glancing at his watch, he counted in time with the beat as the music approached its bridge into the third verse.
“Three …, two …, one …,” he shouted. “Showtime!” High above the arena, a thunderous cloudburst exploded from the ceiling, raining colorful, vibrant foil confetti upon the crowd like blessings from Walmart.
Despite the full saturation of stage lights, he knew the torrent of tinsel would conceal his movements as he pulled himself onstage in one quick, coordinated maneuver.
There, behind the cascade of colored paper, illumination and glitter, he slowly rose, invisible to the audience. While the crowd was swept away by sensory overload, his focus sharpened. His entire world was now reduced to Maci, his gun and his hand.
Her back turned to him, he watched her take her first step to stage right. There, she’d halt to wave goodbye to fans, lingering for a moment in a frenzy of camera flashes. He waited until she struck a photo-worthy pose, which she’d hold for several seconds, just as he’d seen in her last two concerts. Inhaling slowly, he steadied his breath as she hit her mark at stage right. He vowed she’d never make it to stage left.
Holding his breath, he pointed his gun squarely into the back of her heart. His thumb cocked the hammer as he made a mental note to squeeze, not pull, the trigger. Resting rigidly on his knees, he felt his forefinger easing toward him.
The impact of the policeman’s tackle ignited the shooter’s reflexes. His elbow buckled and his grip tightened as the officer collided with his arm. The force knocked the stalker violently to the floor, sending the pistol sliding across the stage.
The officer had acted quickly — but not quickly enough. As his head hit the platform floor, the shooter saw a spurt of blood and hair from the left side of Maci’s head.
Amid the blinding spotlights and the relentless storm of tinsel, most of the audience had failed to see the three-feet-long flash from the weapon’s barrel. Those who discerned a policeman wrestling a man to the floor assumed it was another case of an overzealous fan trying to get too close to the star.
But onstage, it was a nightmare come to life. The stage- hands and musicians had been close enough to hear the cannon-like blast of the weapon. A few of them joined in the melee, helping the officer subdue the stalker. Others started to join, but were stopped mid-step by the sight of a fallen Maci Willis, whose head lay in a widening pool of crimson.
On cue, the thicket of confetti stopped. People in the higher seats, along with everyone viewing the Jumbotron, saw the ongoing skirmish taking place on the stage.
And they saw the fallen Maci.
The crowd emitted a bone-chilling chorus of shrieks, as if the entire arena had been cast into an inferno. The music ceased, the house lights were raised, and everyone under the cavernous ceiling could now see the four-man fracas at stage right, violent and unexplainable.
As the shrieks gave way to shouts, sobs and pandemonium, Maci’s sparkling dress reflected the spotlights that were still swirling in time to the now-silenced music. Only the scurrying of first-responders was able to lower the arena’s volume, and a concerned, unintelligible murmur filled the air. In seconds, Maci was hoisted upward by emergency personnel, while the stagehands and musicians fumbled about helplessly, equally torn between the urge to look and the urge to look away.
From the first row to the top tier, confused and terrified fans fell into a hush. For the first time all night, the arena was silent.
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Photo provided courtesy of
Tom Carter
Author Tom Carter has collaborated to write the autobiographies of more country music stars than any other writer in the world. Carter co-wrote with Reba McEntire, Glen Campbell, Merle Haggard, Tammy Wynette, George Jones, Ronnie Milsap, LeAnn Rimes, Jason Aldean and Ralph Emery. Including hard back and paperback editions, Carter's co-written memoirs have been listed seven times on The New York Times and twice on the USA Today best-sellers list. Now, for the first time, Carter has written a fictional murder mystery set on Nashville's Music Row, home to celebrities and their recorded music.
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Nashville: Music & Murder by Tom Carter
A Murder Mystery
Publisher: Sing Before Dying
As a teenager, Maci Willis fled the poverty and sexual abuse of her Louisiana childhood with the hope of finding a new life as a Nashville recording star or greasy spoon waitress. Despite the odds, the former fate unfolded, and Maci recorded hit songs for two decades while indulging a pampered lifestyle void of risks and regrets.
But all of that changed during one fateful performance.
While Maci sang a fourth encore to a crowd of 18,000, the music was shattered by a gunshot fired by an obsessed fan. She emerged triumphant from the attempt on her life — only to face another attempt shortly afterwards. Was it a coincidence? Or was something more sinister at work?
— Nashville: Music & Murder by Tom Carter
