Out of the Blues by Mercy Celeste Page A

why with Doug and not her first husband? Cody was easy. He didn’t want kids and by the time he came along in her life she was over having children…her words. I think Arden was pushing forty when Cody came along. She was at least mid-thirties. I had no idea how old my mother was.
    Doug just turned fifty. Harper and I were exactly half his age. And Cody was younger than Doug by several years. Hell, Cody would be in his early forties now, if he’d lived. Forty-three or four. I’m fairly certain Arden was nearing sixty, though you couldn’t tell it from looking at her.
    She had a fabulous plastic surgeon, one so fabulous she married him. Again, her words.
    I finally dragged my ass out of the car and went to unlock the door to my unit. The air conditioning hit me in the face first thing. I paid for the climate controlled unit because of Cody’s guitars. I didn’t want them warping in the southern summer heat.
    The light switch was to the side and I turned it on. Fluorescent flickered on overhead, buzzing in the quiet of the morning.
    Everyone would be at work now. There was very little traffic, and I made sure to pick a storage place that wasn’t in a heavily travelled area because I was paranoid as hell.
    I’d packed my life in boxes and stored everything I couldn’t bear to part with here as well. I had tons of shit from a life lived all over the world, but none of it mattered to me.
    What mattered was in boxes at the back of the unit. I walked past my life to the guitar cases leaning against the wall and pulled the heavy utility quilt off the one I wanted. I didn’t need to open the case to know what was inside but I did anyway. The 1954 black and blue Les Paul was probably worth about fifteen grand without it having belonged to Cody. The rumor was he bought it from Eddie Van Halen, but Cody could bullshit with the best of them. His father had bought it at a yard sale back in the eighties from a family selling off their father’s possessions after he’d died. They didn’t know that a Les Paul Gibson was the Rolls Royce of guitars. This guitar meant everything to Cody. His dad died not long after that in the earthquake. He’d been on his way to see the World Series and hadn’t made it over the bridge.
    Cody was trying to make a name for himself and was opening for metal bands back then. He was a kid, maybe seventeen. I wasn’t even born yet.
    Cody’s step-mother and his step-sibs had raised holy hell when they weren’t in the will. Just Harper and myself. He left me his house and half of his money Harper got the other half. I got the rights to his legacy. I feel guilty about that when Harper’s love of singing came from Cody’s encouragement. But she didn’t even bat an eye at the lopsided arrangement. I don’t mention how much money I make every year from residuals and shit from Cody’s music. I don’t like to think of myself as a dick, but maybe I am where Cody’s legacy was concerned, even with my own sister.
    I can’t license his music for commercials or shit like that. And I own all of his unpublished songs. I could sell any of those and make a killing. I didn’t want people I didn’t know butchering one of Cody’s songs so I kept them hidden away in a safe.
    I traced my finger across the surface of the guitar. I’d have to replace the strings if I was going to use it. Seven plus years in storage and they’d be useless. I covered the other guitars up again and looked through the crates of Cody’s clothes and books and other things Cody had at the farmhouse. Everything I could find was here, hidden away from his family.
    They’d broken into the house in California and taken whatever they could get their hands on. The cops found his gold records in a memorabilia shop down in LA. I paid to have them back. I still couldn’t find the platinum and diamond records.
    The rest of the stuff they’d taken didn’t matter to me, it was just stuff, nothing Cody would have missed. I had security on