Setting the Stage for Murder

by Robert W. Gregg

  Copyright © 2008 by Robert W. Gregg

  All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, magnetic, photographic including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher. No patent liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained herein. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover photos courtesy of Steve Knapp, www.keukaview.com

  ISBN 978-0-7414-5020-3 Paperback

  ISBN 978-0-7414-6944-1 eBook

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  To my wife Barbara

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  PROLOGUE

  “Professor Whitman!”

  “Why must she do that,” Kevin said under his breath. He had asked the members of his little summer opera company on Crooked Lake to, please, be informal. No titles, just plain Kevin. Most of them had gotten the point. Not Lisa Tompkins, one of too few violins in the small orchestra. She was either the product of an unusually proper upbringing or derived some perverse pleasure in ignoring his wishes.

  “It’s Mr. Gerlach,” Lisa shouted from somewhere behind the curtain. “He’s drunk. I can’t get him to wake up.”

  Harley Gerlach was a far more serious problem than Lisa Tompkins. If he had passed out from too many tumblers of scotch, it was hard to imagine that the dress rehearsal would go well. Or even that it would take place at all. Not for the first time, Kevin found himself regretting his decision to cast the man in the leading role. He had a beautiful voice when he was sober, but he was rarely sober and he was thoroughly loathed by the rest of the company. To say that he was impressed with himself would be a gross understatement. And obnoxious? The word could have been coined with him in mind. But it was too late now. The first performance of Puccini’s comic opera Gianni Schicchi was due to take place in four days.

  “I’m coming, Lisa. Don’t you worry about it. I’ll bring him around.”

  Kevin hurried down through the auditorium, its seats now empty, bounded up onto the stage, and pushed his way through the curtain.

  The sight that greeted him was one with which he was now familiar: a barely furnished bedroom which would be the setting for the single act of the opera. In fact, except for a couple of wooden chairs and a handful of knickknacks, the only furniture in the room was a large bed. The bed in which that rascal Schicchi would pull off his little con.

  Lisa Tompkins was standing beside that bed and pointing to the bedspread, which looked suspiciously lumpy.

  “He’s there. Under the covers. Drunk as a skunk. I smelled it as soon as I came in.”

  “Isn’t that great,” Kevin said sarcastically, as much to himself as to Lisa. It was 5:20 in the afternoon. Dress rehearsal was scheduled for 7:30.

  He walked over to the bed and pulled down the spread, something Lisa had apparently been reluctant to do.

  “He looks sick, doesn’t he?” Lisa volunteered.

  Yes, thought Kevin, he looks very sick. There goes the dress rehearsal. But he was determined to rouse his problem baritone.

  “Come on, Harley. Time to wake up. Now! Are you hearing me?”

  But even as Kevin shook and hollered at the man in the bed, he realized that something was seriously wrong. Something other than too much liquor.

  He bent over his star, looking closely at the puffy face, and was almost immediately aware that Gerlach was not breathing.

  “Lisa, quick—get to a phone and call 911.”

  She hesitated, as if waiting for an explanation.

  “Come on, girl. This is an emergency. Make that call.”

  That Harley Gerlach had been drinking was obvious. But it wasn’t scotch that had given him the tortured face that stared up at Kevin. Around his neck was a cord which looked very much like a piano wire. And it was wrapped tightly, cutting deep into the flesh. Deep enough to have choked off all breathing. Gianni Schicchi was not drunk. He was dead.

  CHAPTER 1

  The idea for staging an opera on Crooked Lake had come to Kevin Whitman back in the winter when he was putting the finishing touches on the syllabus for his spring course at Madison College on the history of opera. He had decided that his syllabus was on the heavy side. Too much Wagner. Even too much Verdi, although Kevin himself never tired of Verdi. He had begun to consider leavening the course with a comic opera or two when a commercial interrupted the radio program which he had lost interest in at least ten minutes earlier. Irritated by the pitch for a skin lotion guaranteed to turn every woman into Cinderella, he got up from his desk to turn the radio off. But before he got there, the commercial took a musical turn. In the cause of promoting the product, some clever ad agency had borrowed Giacomo Puccini’s beautiful aria from his opera Gianni Schicchi, ‘O mio babbino caro.’ Americans in the millions would recognize the tune, even if only a tiny few knew its source. A cliché, yes. But a lovely one.

  Kevin decided on the spot that he would add Gianni Schicchi to his syllabus. And it was but a few minutes later that an exciting thought struck him: What if he could arrange to stage the opera on Crooked Lake during the summer?

  But almost immediately some inner voice spoke up. It reminded him that he hadn’t the faintest idea whether such a thing was possible. Where would the opera be presented? What permissions would have to be obtained? How could he assemble a cast? An orchestra? A cast and an orchestra of people who could sight-read, who would not sound like a ragged church choir and a town band? And if that pro
ved to be possible, who would design and construct the set? Make costumes? Conduct the opera? Yes, he thought, his worries multiplying, who would conduct? Me?

  It was at that point that this exercise in brainstorming brought Kevin up short. If it could be done at all, he would have to do it, and do it for all practical purposes alone. He knew of no one he could talk into joining him in this harebrained plan. No one on the Madison College faculty. No one among his friends in the city. Or on Crooked Lake. It was a crazy idea, and he found himself dismissing it as readily as he had first embraced it. Or tried to.

  He had an early dinner at the faculty club with a friend from the physics department and was back in his apartment by eight o’clock. And a lonely apartment it was. The ghost of his former wife, Susan, had long ago vacated the place, but no one had taken her place. He had considered a dog, but dogs and big city living did not go well together. Cats were more manageable, but he didn’t much care for cats. What he really wanted was a woman, and not just any woman. He wanted Carol Kelleher. Sitting on the couch, listening to a piece of sublime music with him. Padding around the kitchen in slippers and bathrobe, rustling up a breakfast of eggs Benedict. Sharing the big king-sized bed.

  But none of this was possible because Carol Kelleher was the sheriff of Cumberland County, too many miles away in remote upstate New York, while he was toiling in the groves of academe, nurturing his students’ interest in music, and writing and publishing enough to keep his dean happy. It was not exactly an arrangement conducive to a close long-term relationship. Although the spring semester had not yet begun and would not come to an end until nearly five more months had passed, Kevin was impatient for the time to pass more quickly so that he could return to Crooked Lake for the summer.

  This was not the first time that Kevin had been frustrated by the problem that jobs and geography created for his relationship with Carol. But it was the first time he had considered that problem on the same day that he had decided to include Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi in his syllabus. Which had led to the wild idea of staging that opera on the banks of Crooked Lake. He had seen it as a way to enliven the cultural climate up there, only to dismiss the idea as impractical. But now that he was once again regretting the stubborn fact that Carol would always be a long way away from September to May, Kevin revisited the Puccini plan. What if he could bring it off? Might it lead to a visiting appointment at that college on the lake? He was due a sabbatical, which meant that a leave of absence shouldn’t be hard to negotiate.

  Suddenly, Kevin felt a rush of adrenalin. Yes, he said to himself. None of the problems that had led him to dismiss the idea now looked so daunting. He remembered what an old high school teacher of French used to say: vouloir c’est pouvoir. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

  Kevin decided to call Carol, and not in her official role. When he had first met her, she was wearing her sheriff’s hat, questioning him about his discovery of a dead man on his dock. That had been two summers ago. But what had begun as the investigation of a crime had gradually become something else, something infinitely more satisfying, something which had been renewed the previous summer as they cooperated to solve yet another crime on normally tranquil Crooked Lake. And became lovers.

  The phone rang five times in the sheriff’s Cumberland apartment before he heard her voice.

  “Hello, this is the sheriff.”

  Her tone suggested that she had been expecting a call in her capacity as the local guardian of law and order.

  “Carol, it’s Kevin.”

  “Well, hi down there.” She sounded relieved that the call was not about law enforcement. “I was expecting someone else. An annoying problem involving a pair of vicious dogs. But you don’t need to hear my tale of woe. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “Just wanted to tell you I love you. But I’ve got an idea I want to run past you, so do you have a few minutes?”

  “All night if you like. And I love you, too. What’s up?”

  “I’ve been thinking,” he began and then paused, as if to think about what he had been thinking.

  “I should hope so,” Carol said. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  Now she’s making fun of me, he thought. Heaven knows what she’ll say when I tell her what I’m going to do.

  “Look, I’ve got a plan. A plan for next summer. Are you sitting down?”

  “Of course I’m sitting down. Are you all right? Has something happened that I should know about? Why the mystery?”

  “Sorry,” Kevin answered. “There’s no mystery. I just wanted to tell you that I’m thinking about putting on an opera next summer. On Crooked Lake. At Brae Loch College, if they’ll let me do it.”

  There. He’d said it, and it wasn’t as hard as he had imagined it would be. Carol, on the other hand, sounded stunned.

  “Whoa! You’re going to do an opera? Up here? Forgive me for being surprised, but I don’t remember you telling me that you’re an impresario or whatever it is they call people who do things like that.”

  “Impresario, no,” Kevin said, and then hurried on to explain why he thought his plan might appeal to Carol. “But let’s just assume for a minute that it’s possible. What if I could enlist the support of the college people, put on a good show, and then use that to sell them on the idea of giving me a visiting appointment for a year. That would mean I’d be on the lake the year around—well, at least for a year.”

  He didn’t have to tell Carol why that would be desirable.

  “You’d really do that?” she asked. “Cut your ties down in the city to be up here?”

  “I might. But I wouldn’t have to resign from Madison. I’ve got a sabbatical coming. Why not spend it on the lake, sharing my love of music with the students at Brae Loch and sharing my cottage with you. Not now and then, but every day.”

  But Carol was apparently in the mood to be practical.

  “I’d love to have you here. You know that. And you know I can’t pack up and move to the city. But—”

  Kevin wasn’t interested in whatever ‘buts’ Carol had in mind.

  “I haven’t got it all figured out,” he interrupted, “but I wanted to see what you think of the idea. Pretty clever, right?”

  “Yes, very clever. And, I would wager, pretty unlikely. Sure, I’d love to have you around all the time. Like right now, so we wouldn’t have to be discussing it over the phone. But why do you think Brae Loch would be so welcoming? Does it even have a music department?”

  “Carol, you’re not trying to be a wet blanket, are you?”

  “Of course not, just trying to be realistic. You took me by surprise, and I suppose my first reaction was that it sounded like one helluva lot of work—if it’s even possible.”

  Kevin knew that Carol was raising the right questions, questions he hadn’t given much thought to. Questions he’d have to give a lot of thought to.

  “You have put on an opera before, haven’t you?” Carol continued, sounding doubtful. “You know, not just taught your students about opera but actually staged one?”

  “No, I’m afraid not,” he said, somewhat defensively. “That’s not my department. But it won’t be that much of a stretch.”

  Determined not to let Carol’s doubts dissuade him from pursuing his Puccini plan, Kevin ticked off a list of his credentials, previously unknown to the sheriff.

  “You don’t get to teach music appreciation like I do if you can’t read music, don’t have a pretty good ear, can’t play an instrument, that kind of thing. So, no, I probably wouldn’t be very good at teaching my students to play a piano or a violin or whatever. Or to sing Aida. But I do play the piano. Don’t laugh, but I’m not bad on wind instruments either. Played oboe and bassoon for awhile. I know that no symphony orchestra would consider offering me a contract, and I wouldn’t accept one if it was offered. But I can handle a short opera—provided I can round up a few people with decent voices. Oh, and enough musicians to form a halfway decent orchestra.”

  Carol
was surprised by this oral resumé of Kevin’s musical accomplishments. Surprised and impressed. How little I really know about him, she thought. My God, I’ve been sleeping with him for over a year and I didn’t even know he could play a bassoon.

  “I’m impressed,” she said. And meant it. But she couldn’t resist a bit of needling. “Of course I’ve never heard you sing. That’s probably because I’ve never showered with you.”

  “I think we can remedy that, don’t you? Anyway, I don’t have to have a good voice to judge whether others do. And I’m counting on there being a fair number of talented people up there around the lake. It’ll just be a matter of rounding them up, rehearsing, and voilà, we’ve got an opera.”

  Carol could see that it was pointless to play the hardheaded realist. And maybe, just maybe, Kevin could bring it off. After all, he had been invaluable in helping her to solve the murders which had shocked the region over the last two summers. Besides, if he could parlay his plan into a year’s appointment at Brae Loch College, she’d be one happy sheriff.

  “Want to tell me what opera you have in mind?”

  “I don’t think you’d have heard of it,” Kevin said, remembering that opera was not her thing.

  “Try me.”

  “Okay, it’s Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi.”

  “You win. I’ve never heard of it, much less heard it or seen it. I’m not sure I could even spell it.”

  “It’s a man’s name, Schicchi—like ‘ski key.’ He’s a smart peasant who outwits the greedy relatives of a recently deceased old man. Fools ‘em all and writes a will which gives him most of the estate, him and his lovely daughter.”

  Carol considered this brief plot sketch.

  “So it’s sort of a comedy, right?”

  “Yes, indeed. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to test the waters up there with one of those operatic tragedies. You know, most of the cast dead by the final curtain. I want the audience to leave with a smile on their faces.”

  “You’re probably right,” she said, thinking of the tragic deaths which had marred the two previous summers. Deaths which had involved Kevin in the sheriff’s ultimately successful search for two killers. “Let’s have a summer in which nobody gets killed, offstage or on.”