Deadly Overtures: A Music Lover's Mystery

by Sarah Fox

  “Did you see Pavlina when you were at the theater last week?” I asked, not wasting any time getting straight to the questions.

  Igor’s sullen gaze shifted in my direction. “Who?”

  Elena let out an angry exclamation in Russian. I didn’t know what exactly she’d said, but it seemed effective.

  “Fine,” Igor said. “I saw her. So?”

  I decided to go for the most important question next. “Did you kill her?”

  He turned sharply to his cousin and spoke rapidly in Russian. He didn’t seem pleased, but Elena was even less so.

  “Answer the question,” she said in a tone that left no room for argument.

  Igor’s jaw set with annoyance, but he did as told. “No, I didn’t kill her.” He glared at me. “Who are you to ask me that, anyway?”

  Elena spoke up before I had a chance. “That doesn’t matter. I’m sick of the police bothering me, all because of you. We want to get this mess cleared up.”

  “I told the police I didn’t kill her,” Igor said. “But of course it did no good. Once they decide who they want to pin a crime on, they don’t care about the truth.”

  Even though the detectives on the case weren’t my favorite people in the world, I thought Igor’s assessment was a tad harsh. I had no intention of pointing that out to him, though. Instead I looked Elena’s way, waiting for her judgment.

  “He’s telling the truth,” she said to me. “He didn’t kill her.”

  I knew she expected me to accept her word as a solid fact, but could I be certain she was telling the truth? Was she willing to lie along with Igor to keep her cousin out of trouble?

  I wasn’t sure. Based on the way she’d talked about him before his arrival, I suspected that she wouldn’t be too hesitant to throw him to the wolves if he were guilty. But what if she was a good actress? That was something I’d have to consider. For the moment, however, I didn’t say anything, knowing that showing any doubt as to the veracity of Elena’s statement would cause discord and shut down the conversation.

  Igor pushed back his chair. “I answered your questions. So we’re done here, right?”

  “Hold on,” I said quickly, stopping him before he stood up. “When you saw Pavlina, what did the two of you talk about?”

  He scowled at me for a second or two, but when Elena snapped his name, he replied. “At first she didn’t talk to me at all. She walked right past me in the hallway. So I asked her if she was going to pretend she didn’t recognize me.”

  “What did she say?” Elena asked.

  “She took a good look at me and then acted all surprised, like she hadn’t recognized me at first.”

  “Maybe she didn’t,” Elena said. “It’s been almost ten years since you last saw each other.”

  Igor’s scowl deepened. “Maybe it was easy for her to forget. For me, it wasn’t so easy. I went to jail because of her.”

  His words had grown heated with anger and I realized that it was no wonder he was a suspect. He clearly had a deep grudge against Pavlina and if she’d failed to recognize him right away—or had at least pretended she didn’t know who he was—that could have stoked the flames of his fury, causing a deadly explosion.

  “But she did recognize you eventually,” Elena prodded.

  Igor nodded. “She said she hoped I’d turned my life around, but she was too busy to talk with me.” He glowered at the memory. “Then she walked away.”

  “Did you follow her?” I asked, before I could stop myself.

  “No. Are you still trying to pin her death on me? I told you, I didn’t kill her!” His voice had risen in volume, drawing startled glances from other patrons.

  “Keep your voice down,” Elena ordered. She glared at me. “Of course he didn’t follow her. Didn’t you hear me before? I told you he wasn’t lying.”

  I stifled a sigh. “I wasn’t suggesting that he’d killed her,” I said, although I still hadn’t ruled out that possibility completely. “I was simply wondering how much he knew about her movements that night.” Not waiting to give the others a chance to speak, I forged ahead with another question for Igor. “When exactly did you talk to her? Was it before the concert or after it started?”

  He directed his answer at Elena. “A few minutes after I talked to you. I was on my way out of the theater when I saw her.”

  “So just before the concert started,” Elena said to me.

  I nodded, a bit disappointed. I was hoping Igor might have had some valuable information about others Pavlina had interacted with backstage after she’d left her seat in the audience.

  “Did you see anyone else talking to Pavlina that night?” I asked.

  “No,” Igor replied. “After she walked off, I left.”

  “To wait for Cameron to do his part in your plan to steal the recording equipment,” I said, unable to keep myself from bringing up that point.

  “What?” Elena’s eyes went from me to her cousin.

  Igor sent a death glare my way.

  “You stole that equipment?” Elena said in a low, but icy voice. “I knew you were up to no good that night!”

  “You can’t prove anything,” Igor said to me instead of responding to his cousin.

  Elena sat back in her chair and threw up her hands, letting out an exclamation in Russian.

  Igor ignored her. “And if Cameron talks, he won’t like what happens next.”

  Elena looked like she was ready to slap him. Perhaps he clued in to that fact as well because he stood up and stepped away from her. “I’m done here.”

  Before either of us could protest, he made a beeline for the door and disappeared out of the café.

  Elena muttered something under her breath. “You see what I mean?” she said more audibly. “A disgrace to our family.”

  “But you still believe he didn’t kill Pavlina.”

  Elena took a second to compose herself. “No, he didn’t kill her. But how do we make the police believe that?”

  By “we” I assumed she meant me, because I couldn’t imagine her pleading with the detectives to believe in her cousin’s innocence. She might coolly set out the facts to them, but if they didn’t believe her she would no doubt attribute that to their incredible stupidity and walk away in a huff. And I doubted that the detectives would take her word at face value. Igor had a strong motive to kill Pavlina and he easily could have returned to the theater—or never left—to kill her after the concert was under way. The police would no doubt think Elena was trying to protect her family. Heck, I still wasn’t completely convinced that she wasn’t. Although, as much as I disliked the concertmaster, I had to admit I was leaning toward believing her.

  “The police will require proof,” I said in answer to her question. “Either proof that Igor didn’t kill her or proof that somebody else committed the murder.”

  “He has no alibi. At least not a good one,” Elena said. “He told me before that he was with a friend after he left the theater, but that friend is a criminal too. The police won’t believe them.”

  I figured Igor’s friend was the same one I’d seen with him while watching Cameron’s meeting from my storage room prison. Silently, I agreed that he wasn’t the type of person the police were likely to believe.

  Elena slipped her magazine into her designer purse. “You’d better get busy. I’m sick of the police poking their noses into everything. Get this sorted out so we can move on.”

  Without further parting words, she stood up, snatched her jacket from the back of her chair, and headed for the door. I stared at the spot she’d vacated, stunned by her exiting words, although perhaps I shouldn’t have been. She seemed to think I was her servant, someone she could boss around. While that irked me to no end, I planned on doing as she suggested. I’d continue to work on the puzzle, to figure out who the guilty party was. I wouldn’t do it for Elena, or to ma
ke her life easier, but I’d do it for Pavlina, the orchestra, and all the innocent people who were at risk with a murderer on the loose.

  Chapter Nineteen

  BEFORE TAKING ANY steps to further my investigation, I decided to enjoy the rest of my sandwich and latte. I took my time, flipping through the newspaper as I ate, and savoring every delicious bite. Without Elena and Igor at the table with me, the atmosphere in the café was far more pleasant and relaxing. The conversation I’d had with them never strayed too far from the forefront of my mind, however.

  After finishing my scrumptious lunch, I returned to my car, thinking over everything they’d told me. Although I was leaning toward believing Elena’s endorsement of her cousin, I wasn’t completely convinced and decided it wouldn’t hurt to get a second opinion. While still parked by the curb, I sent a text message to Hans, telling him that Igor had denied killing Pavlina and that Elena insisted he was telling the truth.

  Should I believe her or is she likely to lie to cover for him? I asked to finish up the series of messages.

  By the time I’d sent the last text, a car had stopped behind my parking place, clearly hoping I was about to leave so they could snag the precious space by the curb. Returning my cell phone to my purse, I freed up the parking spot for the waiting hatchback and set a course for home.

  While riding the elevator up to my third-floor apartment, I checked my phone to see if Hans had replied to my messages. He had.

  Elena doesn’t think much of Igor and wouldn’t lie for him. I’m sure of it. If she says he’s innocent, he is.

  “Innocent” wasn’t quite the word I’d have used to describe Igor, since he was a thief, but I knew what Hans meant. And if anyone knew Elena well, it was Hans. The two of them had been in an on-again off-again relationship for years. Knowing that led me to go with my inclination to believe Elena, and if I’d had a physical list of suspects, I would have scratched out Igor’s name.

  Another message from Hans arrived on my phone. Does this mean Elena’s in the clear now?

  I disembarked from the elevator and tapped out a response as I slowly made my way down the hall to my apartment.

  Not yet. I can’t prove Igor didn’t kill Pavlina or that Elena knows nothing about her death.

  After sending that message, I let myself into my apartment and shed my outerwear. By the time I’d hung up my coat, I had another message from Hans.

  As long as she’s under suspicion, that’s bad news for the orchestra.

  With a heavy sigh, I typed out a response. I know. I’m doing my best.

  If that wasn’t good enough for him, he’d have to get into sleuthing mode himself.

  Fortunately, he sent back a simple thank-you and we left it at that.

  I wandered around my apartment for the next several minutes, doing a bit of tidying here and there, my mind elsewhere. What I hadn’t mentioned to Hans was that I wasn’t sure what step to take next. There were still several suspects on my list, but I wasn’t sure what I needed to do to find more clues.

  Maybe it would be best to give my mind a short rest, to focus on something else for a while and come back to the problem refreshed in the morning. With that strategy in mind, I called Sharon, a friend from my university days, and arranged to meet up with her for a couple of hours that afternoon. I drove to her place and we took her five-year-old son to a nearby park to play while she and I chatted. As I’d hoped, it was refreshing to do something completely unrelated to the murder case, and I returned home that evening ready to tackle the murder mystery anew during the coming week. I still wasn’t sure how to proceed, but I knew I’d figure that out eventually.

  While heating up some soup for my dinner, I shuffled through the small stack of magazines I kept on a shelf in my living room. I was looking for the latest issue of Classical Spotlight, the one featuring Pavlina on the cover. I found it easily and took it to the kitchen table so I could flip through it while I ate. The magazine might not prove helpful at all, but I wanted to read up on Pavlina in case there was some tidbit about her that would give me insight into her life, that would help me figure out who might have wanted her dead and why.

  I’d read the magazine when it first came out—or had skimmed through it, at least—but that was nearly a month ago now, and at the time I hadn’t had anything more than a passing interest in the story about the young, upcoming composer.

  Once settled in at the table with a steaming bowl of vegetable soup in front of me, I studied the cover of the magazine. In the picture, as in life, Pavlina had a certain spunky style. Her hair was stylishly blown about by the power of an unseen fan and she wore several necklaces of different lengths and a collection of bangles on her left wrist. On her right wrist was the charm bracelet I’d seen her wearing at the theater.

  The charm bracelet!

  With my spoon halfway to my mouth, I stopped, my thoughts kicking into motion, racing through my head.

  That was it. That was what my subconscious had been trying to draw my attention to over the past several days. Every time I’d seen Pavlina alive at the theater, she’d had that pretty charm bracelet on her wrist, including on the night of her death. But when Mikayla and I found her body in the washroom, her right wrist was bare of any jewelry. There’d been a smear of blood on her lower arm, drawing my attention to it. At the time, I hadn’t noticed the absence of the bracelet, but now the fact that it had been missing screamed at me with possible significance.

  But what exactly was the significance?

  If it had come off during a struggle with her attacker, it should have been on the floor of the washroom. It was possible that it had been hidden beneath Pavlina’s body and that the police had found it once they’d moved her. However, I suspected that the killer had taken Pavlina by surprise. The only visible wounds were to the back of her head. There was no injury to her arm that I had noticed, so the smear of blood on her wrist—and the smear I’d noticed on the counter—could have been the result of splattered blood or contact between those two spots with the wound on her head as she’d collapsed to the floor.

  So, if the bracelet hadn’t been lost during a struggle, what had happened to it?

  My best guess was that the killer had removed it.

  But why?

  A hum of excitement ran through my body, starting out low and then growing in volume. I didn’t know the answer to that question, but it was likely important. If I knew why someone would want to remove Pavlina’s charm bracelet from her body, that might help me identify the killer.

  Judging by the magazine photos and the two nights I’d seen Pavlina at the theater, she made a habit of wearing lots of jewelry. Yet while her necklaces and bangles changed with her outfits, the one constant seemed to be her charm bracelet. What significance had it held for her? Was it a gift from someone special?

  I didn’t think the answer would lie within the pages of the magazine, but I returned my attention to it anyway. As I resumed eating my soup, I read through every word in the article about Pavlina before studying the picture on the cover as well as the smaller photos on the inner pages. By the time my bowl was empty and I’d finished reading, I unfortunately had no further insight into the importance of the bracelet or the identity of the murderer.

  If the magazine didn’t hold the answers I needed, I’d have to look elsewhere. With a decided lack of enthusiasm, I realized I needed to pay a visit to the police. They were about as likely to tell me if they’d found Pavlina’s bracelet at the scene of the crime as they were to give me a million-dollar check just for the heck of it. But if they hadn’t found the bracelet and they didn’t know it was missing from Pavlina’s wrist, I needed to inform them of that fact. They’d probably dismiss the information as unimportant, but that wasn’t my problem. I felt it was my duty to tell them what I’d discovered. As usual, what they did with the information was up to them.

  Deciding to pay a visit t
o the police station before my teaching hours started the next day, I spent the rest of the evening reading and watching television, thoughts of Pavlina and her bracelet hovering at the edge of my focus, like background music that I was always peripherally aware of.

  Even in my sleep that night, the bracelet didn’t stray far from my thoughts. I had a strange dream about it, one where the charms were scattered on the floor. I was trying desperately to gather them up, only to have each one slip through my fingers as soon as I’d picked it up.

  In the morning I shook off the dream as well as my residual sleepiness, wasting no time getting ready for the day, despite the fact that I wasn’t looking forward to speaking with Detectives Chowdhury and Van den Broek. It was best to get it over with, I told myself, and—if I were extremely lucky—maybe I’d be able to get a feel for how the police investigation was going.

  That was unlikely, but my interminable curiosity pushed me to be hopeful.

  MY MEETING WITH the police didn’t get off to a good start. They kept me waiting for nearly an hour in the reception area, where I had little choice but to sit in one of the hard chairs, playing games on my phone to pass the time. I knew the detectives were busy and there was no guarantee they’d be able to see me when I arrived, but I couldn’t help but suspect they were making me wait on purpose.

  Perhaps I didn’t really suspect that of Detective Chowdhury, but I certainly wouldn’t have put it past Detective Van den Broek. The guy wasn’t my biggest fan by a long shot, although I doubted he was anyone’s biggest fan. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, though, and made no comment when he finally appeared to accompany me to the back of the building.

  “Is Detective Salnikova in?” I asked out of curiosity, my gaze falling on her unoccupied desk.

  “Not at the moment.” Van den Broek gestured to a chair by his desk. “She’s not working the Nicolova case.”

  “I know,” I said.

  I didn’t bother to add that I was interested in simply saying hello. No doubt he would view that as frivolous and a desire on my part to waste police time.