Bantam of the Opera

by Mary Daheim

  “Not pique,” Judith countered. “He’d have done it for gain. I keep getting hung up on Justin Kerr and Inez Garcia-Green. Why did they show up here with a stolen stage prop and an empty Strophanthin vial after Mario was murdered?”

  Renie’s short chin dipped toward her chest. “They grabbed the bouquet as an excuse. Did they know the bottle was in the plastic liner? If they—or one of them, either Justin or Inez—put it there, was the intention to get rid of evidence? Were there always two bottles, and whoever put the one into the bouquet dropped the other one by mistake? And if so, why was one empty and the other half-full? Then we get back to the big question—did the Strophanthin kill Pacetti, or was it the pips?”

  “The medical examiner—and Edna Fiske, for that matter—aren’t keen on the Strophanthin theory,” Judith noted. “So why in the world are these bottles floating around? I opt for them as a red herring. Then who does the Strophanthin point to?” When Renie didn’t reply at once, Judith continued, her dark eyes suddenly glimmering with the kernel of an idea. “Schutzendorf has a prescription—don’t ask me to pronounce it, it’s probably got an ordinary name like ‘Blood Pump’—for heart problems. He got it at the hospital after he stayed there the other night. What if he needed it because somebody had swiped his Strophanthin?”

  Renie’s mouth twisted as she thought this latest theory through. “He shares a bathroom with Plunkett, but Amina and Tippy could have gone in there. Or…” Her face lighted up as she pummeled the arm of the sofa. “Inez and Justin could have done it while they were upstairs.”

  Judith inclined her head. “After Pacetti was killed? Come on, coz, your brain is compost.”

  Renie’s eager expression changed to one of chagrin. “Well, if it were a red herring…”

  Judith gave Renie a curious little glance, then sank farther into the sofa cushions. “I’m guessing, but I think Inez and Justin were looking for something. I still think Inez sent those so-called threats, just to be annoying. The woman has no sense of humor, and whatever amusement she gets out of life—other than performing, that is—has to be some weird kind of thing, like getting people riled or scared or just plain put out. For all of her seeming indifference to the breakup with Mario, she may have been hurt. Or at least her vanity was wounded.”

  Renie raised her eyebrows. “So she sends threats? I don’t get it.”

  “You’re being dense, coz. Remember crank-calling boys in our youth?”

  Renie made a wry face. “I don’t remember our youth.”

  “Emotionally, some women never get beyond that stage. If they feel wronged or rejected, they do strange things. Cousin Marty’s ex-girlfriend sent him a pair of ostriches via UPS.”

  “Marty is such a dope she should have sent a pair of brain surgeons to operate and find out if he had one. Yeah, I remember that now. Okay, okay, I’ll buy petty harassment as a form of revenge. Rejected males beat the crap out of people—but females deliver. Or something.”

  “So I think that after Mario was killed, Inez got scared. That’s assuming she didn’t do it, of course,” Judith said by way of clarification. “She came here to see if she could find the rock and the sheet of paper and make off with the evidence. Think how silly that would have looked in the press. If there’s one thing Inez Garcia-Green doesn’t want to be, it’s belittled.”

  “And after six or seven years, the Spurned Woman Theory doesn’t wash, I suppose. But,” Renie went on, “what if she acted on behalf of her former stepson? Doesn’t it strike you as odd that the minute Pacetti keels over, Schutzendorf signs up Justin?”

  Judith regarded Renie with a quizzical expression. “It is odd. I wonder if Pacetti blackballed Justin with Cherubim Records? To spite Inez, maybe. Or at Amina’s behest, to do ditto.”

  Renie spread her hands. “Pacetti buys the farm, Schutzendorf has to buy himself a new tenor. And Justin trots along at Inez’s side because he doesn’t have that contract inked yet. Ambition can be a terrible thing.”

  “True.” Judith had leaned forward, fingering her chin. On the coffee table, the jack-o’-lantern leered at her. “Maybe that’s why Inez came the second time, to tell Amina that with Mario gone, Justin was going to get his big chance.” She stopped abruptly as a loud banging sounded at the back door. Both cousins hurried to the rear entrance.

  Skjoval Tolvang, who had not been in evidence upon their return to the house, was standing on the porch, lighting his pipe. Out in the yard stood several large cartons. The carpenter sucked at his pipe, then gestured at the boxes.

  “I collected your sink and shower and the rest,” he announced. “Tomorrow, they go in. Then I paint on Saturday and finish up the rest. I vork Sunday, if needs be. You vant a look-see?”

  Judith—and Renie—did. The bed-sitting room was finished off, the small bathroom awaited its conveniences, the closet boasted shelving. New glass had been installed in the original casements that faced the garden. The cousins admired Tolvang’s meticulous old-world craftsmanship.

  “This is really wonderful,” breathed Judith. “Mother will be thrilled.”

  “‘Thrilled?’” Renie snickered. “Come on, coz, she’ll say it’s about time and why didn’t you add on a sauna?”

  Judith acknowledged the bald truth of Renie’s observation. “Well, I’m thrilled,” she said, turning to Skjoval Tolvang. “If you’re done by the weekend, we can start moving the furniture in Monday.”

  “You vant me to help Sunday night?” asked Tolvang, making another stab at starting his pipe.

  “Oh—my husband can do it when…” Judith paused and swallowed. “…When he gets back from his trip.” She still hadn’t come to grips with confronting Joe. “But it might be a good idea if you give me the bill before he gets home.” Judith gave Tolvang a sickly smile.

  “Okay, vill do,” the carpenter agreed. “I stick to my price. Except for them pesky bedpost beetles.”

  Judith gaped at Tolvang. “Bedpost beetles? What on earth are they?”

  Tolvang had finally got his pipe to draw. In the dusk, a haze of gray smoke encircled his white head. “Like termites, only vorse. They vere chewing avay at vat vas left of your foundation.”

  “Oh.” Judith had a vision of their relatives marching across the lawn to make a meal of Hillside Manor. She could see the entire house crumbling around her ears. “Okay, that’s extra, right?”

  “Only two hundred bucks. And then the viring. It vas all shot.”

  “The wiring? How much?”

  Tolvang shrugged. “It’s not done yet, but I’m figuring maybe another five hundred. Not bad, all things considered. Like the plumbing.”

  Judith was beginning to feel numb. “That was included,” she said a bit testily.

  “Ya, sure, youbetcha. But ve veren’t figuring on the roots.” He pointed not to Judith’s fruit trees, but to the weeping willow in the Dooleys’ back yard. “Those veeping villows, they are the nuts. The roots go all over the place. I had to dig and dig. Four places, then I finally got a free spot to run the pipe to the sewer line.” He shook his head at the memory of his perseverance. “Four hundred.”

  Judith’s shoulders slumped. As near as she could calculate in her head, the bill was going to come to another twelve hundred dollars above the carpenter’s original estimate. That was beyond the grand she had put out for the appliances and other appointments. And wasn’t even counting what she would have to add—again—to her insurance. Gertrude was turning out to be a luxury that Judith wasn’t sure she could afford.

  “Uh…” Judith shifted awkwardly, glancing at Renie, as if in appeal. “Mr. Tolvang, would you mind terribly if I waited a couple of weeks to pay the extra thousand or so? It may be out of pocket because of this murder situation.”

  Murder and millwork, poverty and plumbing—they were all the same to Skjoval Tolvang. He shrugged again. “Vy not? I trust you. You know vere to find me; I know vere to find you.” He pulled on his pipe and dug around in his overalls. “Reminds me, here’s some change I foun
d vile I vas digging. Maybe it’ll help you out, py golly.”

  With a feeble smile, Judith accepted the handful of coins and put them in the pocket of her slacks. It was mainly pennies, a dime or two, and one quarter. No doubt Dooley and his friends had dropped the money on one of their forays over the picket fence. It seemed to Judith that these days, kids didn’t bother to retrieve small change. Even Mike wouldn’t bother picking money off his bedroom floor unless it was paper. Sometimes Judith despaired of the younger generation’s attitude toward their finances. But right now she was despairing over her own.

  “Maybe you can write all this off, when income tax time rolls around,” Renie said when they were back in the kitchen, starting dinner.

  “Oh, Lord, everything’s such a mess!” Judith exclaimed, wielding a frying pan for the oysters. “I’m in debt up to my ears, Joe doesn’t know Mother is moving back, Mother doesn’t even know it, and I may or may not have guests staying through the week! I could lose almost two grand on this Pacetti deal if they pull out tomorrow. I’ve already lost money on Mario and Tippy.”

  “Yeah, dying is sure a hell of an excuse to get out of paying your bill,” Renie remarked dryly. “I thought you wanted this bunch to hit the road.”

  “I do,” Judith answered doggedly. “If I knew they were going for sure, I could hustle up some fill-in business. Maybe. But it’s all up in the air. Just like this damned murder investigation. Wouldn’t you know Woody’s wife would have that kid early and screw up his schedule? Drat! Everything’s a wreck, especially me!”

  “Stop beating yourself up,” urged Renie, who was slicing potatoes to make homemade french fries. “When we were talking to Woody this afternoon, I got the impression you had an inkling whodunit.” She gazed at Judith, who was dipping raw oysters into milk, egg, and bread crumbs. “Do you?”

  “No,” Judith answered promptly, “but I have this ridiculous feeling that I should know. Then I think that if all these people go away, maybe nobody will ever know. And so what? Whether the killer is caught or not, I’m going to end up on a street corner with a tin cup selling pencils out of a shoe box. Oh!”

  “Oh what?” inquired Renie. She started dumping pieces of potato into a small deep-fat fryer.

  Judith’s black eyes were wide as she stood in front of the refrigerator with a cucumber in one hand and a beef-steak tomato in the other. “Shoe box. Boot box. Dan. I put him in the basement when Tolvang began the remodeling. When are we going to take him to the cabin and…uh…lay him to rest?”

  Renie was unperturbed. “Next weekend? The weather will hold. We shouldn’t get frost until November.”

  “Next weekend it will be November,” Judith reminded her cousin. “It could snow up on the river by then. Heck, it’s over sixty miles away.”

  “It won’t snow,” Renie replied, draining the french fries. “Here, ready for your vat o’ fat?”

  Judith allowed that she was, at least as ready as she was for anything about now. The cousins sat down to eat, discussing not the murder, but the family cabin, where Dan McMonigle had, in one of his maudlin moods, asked to have his ashes spread. Although the family vacation home was ideally set on a riverbank with Mt. Woodchuck towering over the surrounding forest, the present generation had not made much use of it. Joe Flynn wasn’t a nature lover; Bill Jones wasn’t keen on outdoor plumbing; the rest of the cousins had other interests. Judith often wondered if it wouldn’t be smart to sell the property.

  “You’d never get everybody to agree on that,” said Renie. “And even if they did, then there’d be a hell of a row over who got how much. Leave it be. As you already pointed out, you’ve got plenty of other problems just now.”

  Renie was right. After she went home around ten, Judith trudged up to the family quarters. Her guests still had not returned from Maestro Dunkowitz’s dinner party. Just as she was getting undressed shortly before eleven, Judith heard them come in. Maybe, she thought with mixed emotions, for the last time. Perhaps by tomorrow night, the Pacetti party would be gone from Hillside Manor.

  Judith tossed her sweater on the back of a chair, but draped her slacks over a hanger. Something fell out of her pocket. Puzzled, she bent down to see what it was. The change that Skjoval Tolvang had found in the garden lay on the braided rug. Judith scooped up the coins and laid them on the dressing table. One of them caught her eye. A closer look revealed it was not a Lincoln penny as she had thought, but a foreign piece. She picked it up again, wishing she had her new glasses. But by holding it under the lamp on the dressing table, she saw the word “Groschen.” All the pennies were foreign, Judith realized, and the quarter was actually a clip of some kind, perhaps a family crest. Judith closed her hand over the little item and leaned against the dressing table. Fragments of knowledge danced in her brain. When had she heard this? Where had she seen that? Who had said what? Before or after…?

  With a sigh of frustration, she paced the bedroom. On the dressing table, she noticed that her yellow rose had bit the dust. Had she forgotten to put fresh water in the little bud vase? But of course it had been almost a week since she’d picked it. It was due to die. Unlike other flowers, roses never seemed to last too long inside the house.

  Judith stopped pacing and stared at the drooping petals. Some of them had fallen onto the dresser scarf. She stared; she blinked; she took a deep, ragged breath.

  Moving quickly, Judith went over to the small bookcase that stood in the corner. She took down her much-used copy of Webster’s Biographical Dictionary and flipped to the headings under F. As a librarian, she had been asked many, many questions over the years. Students, especially, had required her knowledge and requested her help. Weights and measures, Colonial Africa, Babylonian religion, Paul Revere’s ride, Best Supporting Actor for 1956, the final score of the first Super Bowl—there was hardly a subject that Judith had not touched on during her twenty-year career in the public libraries.

  Judith squinted at the small print. Unlike siblings, she and Renie weren’t competitive. But like their mothers, they, too, could enjoy a good argument. Judith was convinced that Renie was wrong about Schutzendorf’s uncle, Emil Fischer. Or that something was wrong. Judith was determined to prove her point. Her eye strayed to the listings under Fiske: John, originally Edmund Fisk Green, 1842-1901. American philosopher and historian, b. Hartford Conn…. Fiske, Minnie Maddern, 1865-1932. American actress, b. New Orleans…Fiske, Haley, 1852-1929, President, Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., New York…

  Judith curbed her natural curiosity and moved up to Fischer. Sure enough, there were two Emils, one an operatic basso, 1838-1914, and the other, a German chemist who had won the Nobel Prize in 1902. The cousins were both right—Renie had remembered the voice of Wagner; Judith, the savant of science.

  In the silence of her room, with the autumn air fresh and crisp outside her dormer window, Judith stared at the silver moon. The wind was picking up again, blowing clouds in from the west. A crow called from the maple tree, then flew off into the night. Leaves fluttered in the brisk breeze, like feathers drifting to earth. Judith bit her lip, leaned against the casement, and closed her eyes tight.

  Fiske. Fischer. Fish…Something was fishy, all right. All along, Judith knew the killer had to have a sophisticated knowledge of poisons. And access to them. Judith felt as if she had been blind. Reaching for the phone, she started to dial Edna Fiske’s number, then thought better of it. Judith would bide her time, though it was swiftly running out. It wouldn’t be wise to alert Edna too soon.

  Or was it foolish to wait?

  SEVENTEEN

  JUDITH DIDN’T EXPECT to reach Woody Price, but she definitely wanted to get hold of Corazon Perez and Ted Doyle. They were off duty, Judith was informed, but would be paged.

  After putting her clothes back on, she sat on the bed for a few moments, but was too nervous to stay still. Renie might be up—she was a Night Person, after all. She tended to work late, insisting that she got her best creative ideas after dark. Consequently, she often
turned the phone off after ten o’clock. It was now almost eleven-thirty. Renie might be in bed; she could be in the bathtub. Judith didn’t want to take the chance of making the call. She was, after all, already taking more of a chance than most ordinary mortals would. Her almost certain knowledge of the murderer’s identity made her feel like a live target. Except, she tried to console herself, the killer didn’t know that she had figured it all out…

  Perhaps she’d feel safer downstairs. Eventually, she’d have to let the police officers in. But first, they’d telephone. Dare she risk being overheard on the kitchen phone? Judith decided she did. Being cornered in her own bedroom didn’t appeal to her. The tension in the old house seemed to seep from the very walls.

  But the familiar kitchen cheered her somewhat. She could hear the wind in the trees and the Rankers’s hedge rustling between the houses. Judith poured a small glass of tomato juice and wished, not for the first time, that she hadn’t quit smoking. She was about to change her mind about calling Renie when the phone rang. She snatched it up and answered in an uncharacteristically breathless voice.

  “Hello, Mrs. Flynn,” said the sleepy voice of Corazon Perez. “What can I do for you?”

  Judith hesitated. Obviously, Perez had been in bed. “Well—I had some information I should relay to you and Ted. I didn’t want to disturb Woody after he stayed up last night with Sondra. I’m afraid I woke you up, though.”

  “That’s okay, it’s part of the job.” Perez’s tone was philosophical. “Can you give me the data over the phone?”

  Again, Judith paused. Overhead, she heard footsteps. Not all of her guests had settled in for the night. “I’d rather do it in person. Is Ted Doyle off duty, too?”

  “That’s right. In fact, he was coming down with a terrible cold this afternoon.” The policewoman’s voice had become more alert. “Look, why don’t I get dressed and drive over to your house? It won’t take half an hour.”

  The footsteps were coming down the back stairs. Judith tried to assume a casual, cheerful air. “That sounds great. It’ll be terrific to see you again. ’Bye.”