Bantam of the Opera

by Mary Daheim

  “I should have remembered, but all these years I think of Madge’s employer as the Weisenheim Agency,” explained Renie. “Which it is, but it’s affiliated with Halycon Insurance of New Haven. Is your picture coming into focus, coz?”

  It was. “Interesting. So Madge really works for Justin Kerr’s father, Corny Green. Next I ask, so what?”

  “So…” Renie paused, munching on more popcorn. “Damned if I know. I said it was interesting, not informative.”

  “Did Madge know anything about the Justin-Corny-Inez connection?”

  “Heck no, I can barely get her to divulge any local gossip, let alone the home office rumor mill,” said Renie. “But to be fair, she was genuinely surprised that there was a connection. Cornelius Green is not unknown to her, but he seems to be some sort of mythical, Zeus-like figure sitting on top of a Revolutionary War monument in New Haven. Unlike most insurance company CEOs, he owns a big chunk of stock in the firm. In fact, his grandfather founded it back in the early part of the century. I suppose that’s why Corny wanted Justin to go into the business.”

  Judith gave a murmur of acknowledgment. Justin was well-heeled, which explained his expensive musical studies. Justin was probably married to Tippy, the license having been taken out under his real name. Maybe, just maybe, Justin and Tippy were keeping their status a secret not because of the late Pacetti, but for fear of alienating the enamored Inez. As an ally, a live singer would be a lot more help than a dead one. Maybe that help had already arrived, in the form of a recording contract from Bruno Schutzendorf. Judith and Renie tossed these ideas back and forth for several minutes. Then Judith updated her cousin about what had been happening at the B&B. Edna Fiske’s revelation about the lily-of-the-valley pips elicited a squeak of surprise.

  “Let’s back up,” said Renie. “You’re saying that somebody pinched the pips and fed them to Pacetti for lunch?”

  “Could be. I couldn’t find them when you were here Saturday night,. remember?”

  “Hmmmm. So what’s with the Strophanthin? A backup, just in case?”

  “Maybe,” said Judith. “Or a blind. Whatever it was, we’re dealing with somebody who knows a lot about poisons. Of all kinds. Damn, I wish Woody would call. I wonder if he’s been sent out on a more urgent case.”

  “What could be more urgent than a world-famous tenor?” Renie pointed out.

  “In this town?” Judith uttered a wry chuckle. “How about somebody throwing garbage in the fish ladders over at the ship canal locks? Or small children feeding stale bread to the ducks down at the lake. You know what we’re like around here—serial killers may come and go, but don’t muck with the wildlife.”

  Renie conceded that their hometown did indeed have a reputation for getting riled up over some pretty odd doings. “Bill says it’s our inability to deal with the darker side of human nature. This part of the world is so blessed by natural beauty that we can’t face that people can be ugly. So we avoid real evil and concentrate on comparatively petty misdeeds which…”

  “Hold it, coz,” interrupted Judith, who often found Renie’s secondhand lectures from Bill a bit tedious. “There’s somebody at my door.”

  “At eleven-thirty at night?” Renie sounded incredulous.

  But to Judith’s own amazement, her fiction turned to fact. The front door opened and the unmistakable tread of Bruno Schutzendorf was heard in the entry hall.

  “That’s right,” said Renie, somewhat abashed. “I forgot—he was at the performance, fourth row center.”

  Judith hung up and went out to greet her guest. Schutzendorf was unburdening himself of his Tyrolean cape, tweed jacket, and snap-brimmed cap.

  “A splendid evening,” he declared, his booming voice heedless of whoever might be asleep upstairs. “Inez was magnificent. Sydney Haines is superb. And this young Kerr—he is a pleasure! I am shaking my own hand for signing him to a contract.”

  “I feel left out,” Judith lamented. “How was the acting?”

  Schutzendorf, now mired under his pile of outerwear, gave Judith a bleak look. “Passable. Especially the two Americans. But you cannot see the acting on a recording. The interpretation, yes. The gestures, no.”

  “I was merely curious,” Judith said in a self-deprecating manner. “I mean, it must be amusing for Justin to play the lover of his former stepmother.”

  The bristling eyebrows knit together. “Ah! You know about that, eh? It is no secret. Inez, naturally, is somewhat sensitive. She is too young to be Justin’s natural mother, but the association might lead the uninformed to think otherwise. Still, there is an affection between them. Yet it is not just to do her the favor that I sign up her former stepson. He is a fine tenor in his own right. Had I needed Inez’s advice earlier, I would have made a better bargain. But after Salzburg…” He gave a vigorous shake of his head. “Hindsight, that. And there was no choice.” His rumbling voice had dropped to a mere mutter.

  “No choice?” Judith evinced surprise. “Don’t you run Cherubim Records?”

  Schutzendorf would have thrown up his arms if they hadn’t been full of clothes. “Ja, ja, but these singers! The temperament, the jealousies, the suspicion! But times change, people pass…into history. We have certainly lost a great tenor this week, have we not?”

  “We have indeed,” Judith replied. “Pacetti’s death must cause you a lot of problems. I mean, you must have had recording sessions scheduled.”

  “We did.” Schutzendorf nodded gravely. “Three in the next few months. They will have to be postponed unless we can find someone of equal stature. Not that there is anyone quite like Pacetti. Young Justin is a possibility for the less taxing roles, but not Calaf in Turandot, not even Don Alvaro in Forza del Destino! If we do not get appropriate replacements, we are lost. The other singers cannot be expected to rearrange their commitments.” He hugged his stack of clothing and sighed deeply. “This has been a terrible blow to Cherubim Recordings. I am desolated.”

  Judith could see why. She allowed Schutzendorf to mourn his loss for a few more moments, then waved him good night. With a heavy step, he ascended the stairs. She wondered if, police permitting, he, too, would leave Friday.

  Giving up on hearing from Woody, Judith went to bed. The sky was clear except for a few wispy clouds off to the north. A half-moon hung over the Rankers’s house. There was little wind, and the night air was mild. Any threat of frost seemed remote. Judith made a mental note to buy bags of candy for the trick or treaters. Halloween was only a week away.

  It was no wonder that when she slept she dreamed not of Italian widows or German impresarios or Spanish divas, but of a witch riding on a broom above the toolshed. “Mine, all mine!” the creature cackled.

  It wasn’t exactly the Voice of Doom, but it was definitely the cry of Gertrude.

  Dr. George Inouye’s offices were so new that he wasn’t yet listed on the building registry. The sleek structure that housed at least a dozen medical and dental specialists was situated across the street from the Children’s Medical Center and had its own underground parking garage. Judith inquired at the bank located in the building’s lobby, but the sloe-eyed teller had never heard of the eye specialist. Judith got into the elevator and rode up to the third floor, where Dr. Feldman held sway. But Mike’s orthodontist was no longer in the same place. A smiling blond receptionist whose name tag read “Carol Carsten” made apologetic noises to Judith.

  “This is the other Dr. Feldman’s office now,” Carol explained, as if she and Judith were on the most intimate terms. “You know, his wife, Sheila. Her practice has grown so that she’s taken over the entire floor. Dr. Harold Feldman is on Four.”

  “It’s Dr. Inouye I’m trying to find,” Judith said. “He just moved in here. Eye guy?”

  The receptionist kept smiling. “Dr. Inouye is on Five. We’ve added two floors and just about everybody has moved. It’s been a regular merry-go-round!” She uttered an exuberant laugh, as if to indicate that this was about as much fun as you could have in
the medical profession.

  “Thanks, I’ll go up…” Judith was interrupted by the receptionist who had, in turn, been interrupted by a young nurse carrying a chart. The two consulted, with the receptionist dispensing more smiles and an overdose of information.

  “Darilyn is new,” Carol explained. “Everybody is new, it seems; we’re all in new places. Really, it’s one thing after another! But she’s wonderfully eager and takes advice so well.” The receptionist suddenly snapped her fingers and stood up. “Darilyn! Don’t even try to decipher Edna’s handwriting. Just let me see any of the charts she did and I’ll translate. I got used to Finicky Fiske and all her strange ways.”

  Darilyn nodded and headed back into the examining room area. Carol sat down again and looked up at Judith. The young woman was clearly surprised to see the startled expression on her visitor’s face.

  “Are you all right?” she inquired, turning serious.

  “Hold it,” said Judith, leaning on the counter. “Did you say—I mean—could you be referring to Edna Fiske, R.N.?”

  Carol’s blue eyes widened. “Why, yes! Do you know her? Oh, my, I hope she’s not your best friend or something! It’s just that Edna was such a stickler about everything! The old school and all that. And her handwriting was so tiny and cramped.” She gave Judith an appealing look.

  “Edna’s working as a private duty nurse to someone I know,” Judith said, wondering how much she should reveal. “When did she quit her job here?”

  “At the end of September,” Carol replied promptly. “Don’t get me wrong, she’s a wonderful nurse. In fact,” she went on, lowering her voice, “she got an excellent recommendation from Dr. Feldman. Dr. Sheila Feldman, I mean.”

  Wheels were spinning in Judith’s head. Unfortunately, she wasn’t sure in which direction they were going. “How does that work?” she asked. “Do patients request certain nurses or do the names just come up on a bureau list?”

  “It depends,” Carol said, her earlier giddiness now flown. “Edna free-lances. She’s had quite a broad background in nursing and has built up a certain reputation. We refer her, as do a number of other doctors she’s worked for.”

  Judith asked her next question boldly. “Did you refer her to Mrs. Amina Pacetti?”

  “Let me look.” Carol got up and walked over to a bank of file cabinets at the rear of the reception area. A moment later she returned with a beige file folder. “Here it is,” she said, running her finger down a sheet of paper. “The request came in last Sunday. Dr. Feldman must have been called at home. She made the referral herself.”

  Judith became aware of the direction in which the wheels were spinning. She also understood why Edna’s comments on certain occasions should have indicated that the nurse not only already knew her patient, but her patient’s husband as well. “Why was Dr. Feldman called? Had one of the Pacettis been treated by her?”

  Carol not only closed the file folder abruptly, but her expression shut down, too. “I can’t violate doctor-patient confidentiality,” she declared in a prim voice. “I’ve already said too much.” Judging from the aggrieved look in her blue eyes, she felt that Judith had violated her.

  “No problem,” Judith said lightly. “Mrs. Pacetti is staying with me. So is Edna. Thanks for the help. I’m off to Inouye.” She gave Carol a friendly wave. The receptionist gaped at Judith’s departing figure. Judith figured her visit would probably provide Carol Carsten with entertainment fodder for at least a week.

  Two hours later, Judith was armed with a new prescription for glasses and a bill from the optometrist for $127.56. She was also armed with some new theories about Mario Pacetti’s murder. Her call from the pay phone in the lobby had gone for naught where Woody was concerned. He still wasn’t in the office. Judith’s status as Joe Flynn’s wife had got her nowhere in terms of trying to find out where her husband’s erstwhile partner might be. The woman on the other end of the line at headquarters insisted she didn’t know.

  Renie, however, had been at home. The lure of lunch and new developments brought her out of her lair. The cousins would meet at the Cascadia Hotel, call on Inez Garcia-Green, and eat in the Terrace Room. Renie wanted to reverse the order, but Judith insisted on seeing Inez first.

  “What’s our gig this time?” asked Renie as the cousins approached the hotel desk.

  “Amina sent us. Which she did. Sort of.”

  Surrounded by marble pillars and Flemish tapestries, the cousins waited for the Brooks Brothers–suited clerk to tend to their needs. A phone call to Inez’s suite elicited an ambiguous response.

  “Madame Garcia will be down in a short while,” said the clerk, with a professionally impassive expression. He turned his attention to a Japanese couple at the checkout section.

  “We’ll be in the Terrace Room,” said Judith, before Renie could beat her to it. “We’ll get a table for three.”

  “Good work,” murmured Renie as they climbed the wide marble stairs that led into the restaurant. “It’s almost one o’clock and I could eat a mule.”

  “Right,” replied Judith somewhat vaguely. “At least I’ll have time to fill you in.”

  “And I’ll have time to fill me up,” Renie noted, all but smacking her lips.

  As it turned out, the cousins had a great deal of time to devour their crab cakes and spinach salads. Indeed, they were at the coffee and we-really-shouldn’t-have-dessert stage when Inez Garcia-Green glided into the Terrace Room. She wore midnight blue, a tunic over slacks, and a matching turban. The handful of patrons who were still lingering in the Terrace Room watched her progress behind the maître d’.

  “Mrs. Flynn?” Inez gazed past the cousins, surveying the rest of the room as if to make sure there was no one of importance that she might have missed. With a regal smile for the maître d’, she allowed him to pull out a chair. “I have lunched. Cognac, please. Warmed.”

  Sapphire earrings sparkled on her perfect lobes. Gold and platinum rings set with diamonds, rubies, and more sapphires gleamed on her long, strong fingers. She wore her black hair neatly coiled at the base of the turban.

  “You requested a meeting, no?” She surveyed the cousins as if they were unworthy of her presence.

  Judith cleared her throat. “Mrs. Pacetti felt you knew something about her husband’s death. She suggested we talk to you.”

  “Talk to you? Why?” Inez’s piercing look changed to a smile for the waiter who had hurried over with her cognac.

  “My husband is a homicide detective. I sometimes assist him in his inquiries,” Judith explained, stretching the truth. “The woman’s touch, you see.”

  “And this one?” Inez gazed at Renie. “She was also at your establishment the other night. Your maid?”

  Renie’s brown eyes snapped, but she held her temper. “Companion. You know, like a duenna. I carry her fan and dispense largesse.”

  Inez did not appear to have a sense of humor. Nor did she understand when she was being teased. “I see no fan. To whom do you dispense this largesse?”

  Aware that Renie could string Inez along for hours, Judith broke in. “Why should Mrs. Pacetti feel you have information about her husband’s murder?”

  Inez waved a hand. “Oh! That Amina! She talks without knowing what she says! I sing with Pacetti; I see him two or three times a season. We are colleagues, no more. What would I know about why the poor man was murdered?”

  Renie wasn’t about to let Judith hog all the questions. “But you were lovers at one time,” she said, wearing her middle-aged ingenue’s expression. Seeing Inez’s hostile reaction, she continued. “Everybody knows that. It follows then that you would know more about him than your average soprano.”

  “I am never average!” declared Inez. “I am a prima donna assoluta!” Obviously, she was more annoyed at being termed run-of-the-mill than by the accusation of an illicit love affair. “And who is Amina Pacetti to cast stones? Has she not also taken a lover?”

  “Well—maybe,” Judith murmured, feeling very
unworldly. “But I heard she took up with Plunkett as an act of revenge.” Watching carefully for Inez’s reaction, Judith was startled when the soprano threw back her head and laughed aloud.

  “Plunkett! That miserable creature of repressed passion! You jest, of course.” Inez shot Judith a contemptuous look.

  Judith uttered a disconsolate sigh. “Oh, well, I guess I was mistaken. And Amina must have overrated your powers of perception. What a shame.”

  Picking up her snifter of cognac, Inez’s dark eyes flashed. “I have excellent powers, of perception and otherwise. I know this much—Mario Pacetti was called a fighting cock, but he was all cock-a-doodle-doo. And often, it didn’t do. Much.” Inez’s face set in hard, sharp lines.

  Judith, somewhat mystified, stared at Inez. “Didn’t do…Never mind. Or,” she hurried on, seizing the opportunity, “do you mean he wasn’t a well man?”

  “He was well when we were lovers.” Having had the subject broached, Inez now seemed quite comfortable with it. “You have a phrase in your language—‘able-bodied.’ It was that he was not always able, if you take my meaning. But his health was excellent otherwise at that time.”

  Fascinating as Mario Pacetti’s sex life might have been as a topic of general gossip, Judith pressed on. “You seem to be qualifying the status of Pacetti’s health. Do you mean that he later became ill?”

  Inez was sipping her cognac and visibly relaxing. She struck Judith as the type who put up barriers to protect her private self from her public image. Having determined that the cousins were less interested in Inez Garcia-Green’s personal life than in Mario Pacetti’s, she was beginning to unbend.

  “Ill, no, not that I know of. But we singers are always worrying about our voices. Mario worried even more than most. A mere cold to us is a tragedy. A sore throat is near death. Despite his reputation for accidents, Mario enjoyed superb health. Until these past few months, that is. Then there were cancellations. Not many, but starting in the spring, at Teatro Fenice in Venice. Rome, too. A severe cold, I heard.” Inez shrugged, the midnight blue tunic rippling over her impressive figure. “There were rumors, too, that he was postponing Otello next season at La Scala, and that he had backed out of doing Radames in Aïda this winter at the Met. Instead, he requested Rodolfo in Bohème.” She gave the cousins a meaningful look.