The Cin Fin-Lathen Mysteries 1-3

by Alexie Aaron

  “Tim is in the hospital, and Mrs. Baker is in Colombia, South Carolina visiting her daughter, who just gave birth to Edith’s first granddaughter. The conductor won’t come out till they announce the band.”

  As the tape continued, we viewed the announcements and Doctor Sanders entering, bowing and giving the cue to start the timpani drum roll for the National Anthem. Carl’s seat was the only empty chair. It sat there empty in the second row at the front of the stage. I noticed we weren’t the most professional looking group, talking between numbers and dropping music. We came to the first scream in Phantom. Detective Curtis stopped the tape and pulled out a copy of the score.

  “Show me where we are in the music.”

  I flipped the pages, and following the line in the score that was my part, I put my finger on the moment. He rewound the tape, and I used my finger to follow the music until I signaled him to stop the tape.

  “See the baffled looks. Sally is supposed to do the scream, back in the percussion section. She’s looking around. Bernice is off her chair. And Doctor Sanders is glaring back at the percussionists.”

  “All I can see is his back.”

  “I was in a direct line to the percussion section. Believe me, there was a glare.”

  He rewound the tape, and we ran by the scream again and again. I was shaking my head.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You know, on this tape the scream doesn’t sound like Carl would have made it. I don’t know if it’s the quality of the recording, but it sure doesn’t sound like him. I can’t see anyone in the band screaming. If he screamed behind the curtain then why isn’t it muffled by the backdrop?”

  “Good point.” He looked around him before calling, “Harry!”

  Harry came up onstage from his eavesdropping spot.

  “Can you show us where the microphones were set last night?”

  “They wouldn’t have been changed. We were told this morning not to touch anything onstage till we got the all clear from the cops.” Harry reached over and flipped a couple of switches. The lights came up. He walked over and pointed to the front center. “It’s balanced so that the flute section has the highest level. Those two hanging microphones pick up the band. The announcer’s microphone would be turned off during the performance.”

  “Any other microphones on the stage?” Detective Curtis asked.

  “Just the one by the stage manager’s cue area. We have use of it if we need to make any emergency announcements.” Harry walked back over and showed us the button, how to lock it on and off, and the small pickup microphone over the ledge that the monitor was on.

  “Where was Miles last night?” I looked at the detective.

  “Miles was...” He thumbed through his notes. “Up in the lobby. They had a problem with an outside door that wouldn’t close. Let’s see, yes, a security guard confirmed this.”

  “So, if this microphone was left on.”

  “You would hear everything that was going on back here during the performance,” Harry supplied.

  “Can we run the tape to the start of the intermission?”

  Detective Curtis shook his head. “Cart before the horse, cart before the horse.”

  “Cart before the mule more likely,” I said impatiently.

  He started the tape from the first scream and ran it forward through Sally’s shriek. At the end of the piece he slowed it down. I looked at him questioningly.

  “I want to see if anyone left the stage, even briefly. I already checked for that last night. No one did, but it doesn’t hurt having another set of eyes.”

  “How late were you up working?” I asked.

  “Two maybe three in the morning.” He shrugged. “Let’s get back to the tape.”

  Nothing remarkable happened till the intermission.

  “See, there’s Art pointing out the wet stage. He dabs at what I thought was water, it bright red. It was blood, I assume?”

  “Yuck,” Harry supplied.

  “Harry, are you still here?” Detective Curtis swung around.

  “You didn’t ask me to leave.”

  “Leave.”

  “K.” Harry slowly walked off.

  “Where were we?”

  “Yuck.”

  “Ignore the yuck.”

  “K.”

  “So that’s where he got it from.”

  “Indeed. Slow the tape down. All right, here I… wait a minute. Why is the tape still running? They stop it at intermission and start it again when we return.”

  “I don’t know. I will find out though.” He jotted down the question.

  “Run it back to the end of that last number and turn the sound up.”

  He did so. We heard the applause and the musicians leaving the stage, we heard some of them pass by the stage manager’s cue microphone, and then we only heard the sounds from the stage again. I motioned to have it run back again.

  “Listen, the microphone was on. Who turned it off?”

  “Miles? No, if he turned off the microphone. Wouldn’t he have paused the tape till after the intermission?”

  Detective Curtis jotted down some notes. He picked up a folder and leafed through it. Finding what he was looking for, he scanned it and read it aloud. “Officer Walker asked Art what happened after he and Bernice left the stage. Art said, Miles escorted Bernice and him to the refreshment room and left them there.”

  “I heard Miles crossing the stage not long after I asked him to escort the two to the room,” I interrupted.

  “Patience.” He scanned that sheet and the next. “Let me look at his interview.” He took out another folder, looked through more papers and shook his head again. “He just said he wanted to find out what you were doing onstage.”

  We focused our attention back on the monitor. I watched myself reach down and feel the floor. I didn’t remember doing that. I couldn’t see my expression, but I could see myself bring my hand up and hide it as I turned around. “This is where the nightmare begins. I got up and walked around the curtain.”

  “How could you see Carl if it was dark there?” he asked as he paused the tape.

  “When I pulled back the curtain the spotlights were still on, and they lit the area that I pulled back.” I sighed. “I was surprised at first. I thought he was really late! And then my mind took in what my eyes were seeing. I think I may have laughed. The whole thing didn’t look real. I don’t know, like an animation cell or a scene out of a teen thriller.”

  He started the tape and kept it running on slow play.

  “Here comes Miles.”

  The tape continued on in that agonizing slow pace. It took forever for him to cross the stage. I pulled back the curtain, exposing Carl for the first time to the camera. Miles fainted and fell on top of me, pushing us both towards the floor. I hung on to the curtain for a moment until I lost my footing on the blood, and we fell together, sliding under Carl. The two guards ran in slow motion to the side stairs and first rolled Miles off me then pulled the curtain further back. They stood there dumbfounded, staring at Carl while I was floundering on the ground trying to get up.

  “Slippery?”

  “What?”

  “Why did it take you so long to get up?”

  “My left arm can’t support my weight. I believe I mentioned my injury. I can’t push myself up on the left so I have to adjust my weight and balance to the right. See?”

  He nodded and stopped the tape. “Thank you, for coming here and helping with this.”

  “Do you want me to leave?” I asked.

  “I think we’re finished with the tape.”

  “Oh no, we aren’t done yet. I have some questions.” I got off the stool so I could pace. I don’t know why I pace, but I seem to need to - anyway they do it in the movies. “Why weren’t you surprised when I told you over the phone that I didn’t think Carl was killed behind Bernice and Art? Why isn’t he blue? He was blue when I first saw him, I swear. Where’s his tape recorder?” I stopped pacing. “Detective Curt
is, I think that Carl was killed somewhere else. The murderer used his tape recorder and taped his or her scream and had it timed to play back while we were playing.”

  “Alibi?”

  “I think he or she then picked up the tape recorder as the band left the stage at intermission. Turned off the microphone and got rid of or hid the recorder.” I put my hands on my hips. I tried to look imposing. I didn’t want to be patted on the head and sent home.

  Detective Curtis blew air out of his nose. “You want to know why I was here till the wee hours this morning?”

  “Well, it’s a start.”

  “Come on.” He got up and looked around, catching sight of Harry he called, “You might as well join us. I am going to need your brawn.”

  Harry arrived smiling. Harry hadn’t changed much in the last few years since I had him over the house. He had a lot of nerve. Fearless was a good adjective for him, fearless.

  “We need all the lights on back here, and how tight can we get these curtains?”

  “Tight?” Harry asked.

  “Out of the way,” I need to have as much uninterrupted floor space as you can give me.” Detective Curtis made a squeezing motion with his hands.

  “Righto.” Harry went to work. Daylight flooded backstage as the automatic loading door opened. It took a little longer for the curtains. We helped him rope them together. When we were finished, Detective Curtis motioned us over to where I found Carl.

  “First, what I have to say stays here. Harry, do you understand me?” A nod from Harry was enough for the detective. Knowing Harry, I would have asked for a better assurance than that, but that wasn’t my problem. “The coroner, Doctor Monitor, estimated the time of death to be about six-thirty. You heard the scream at seven-twenty. This supports your theory on the use of a tape recorder or maybe someone screaming back here by the microphone. What bothered me last night was why wasn’t his body discovered before the concert? If he were killed here, the blood pool would have been much advanced. You would have been walking in it on the way to your seat.”

  “Detective Curtis, what was the cause of death?”

  “Well that’s a bigger problem. It first looked to us that it was from the impalement of the microphone stand, but then why the mouthpiece in the mouth? You said on the phone that he was blue, so I thought maybe he was strangled, forced to swallow the mouthpiece. I pushed to have the autopsy done last night. Believe me, they weren’t too pleased. The official cause of death was suffocation due to paralysis of the lungs. Carl had a circular bruise on his neck where a needle was inserted into the artery. The mouthpiece was jammed in his mouth as he was dying. The microphone stand was inserted post mortem. There was some evidence of pooling in his back indicating he was laid down. His eyelids stayed open after death because he died quickly. There was some breakage in his joints suggesting he was posed. We have to wait on toxicology to find out what caused the paralysis.”

  “Shit!”

  “Harry, don’t swear,” I said automatically.

  “You do. And, hey, you’re not my mom.”

  “Ahem,” the detective said and waited for Harry and I to stop talking before he continued, “I came back here, and I saw some things we overlooked.” He got down on one knee and pointed to a ridge in the floor. “See this straight line?”

  “Yes.”

  “If Carl bled out naturally, the blood would have hit this ridge and followed along it. But it was on both sides of the ridge. I think Carl was killed somewhere else, maybe on plastic or canvas, and he was dragged or carried over here. He was posed, and the blood was poured off the plastic down the microphone stand and over the floor.”

  “If he was already dead, why go to the trouble of posing him?” Harry asked.

  I looked at both him and Curtis. “The killer was sending a message.”

  “What message?” Asked Curtis

  “Don’t be late,” I said quietly.

  Chapter Six

  With Harry’s help we searched the stage. After being told not to touch anything, we started with the storage rooms and worked our way inward. The percussion section was set up on a series of risers that were interconnected. Under one of the risers at the very back our search came to fruition. Harry and Detective Curtis lifted the riser up and exposed a neatly folded, heavy plastic drop cloth in a clear plastic shopping bag along with an empty bottle of water.

  “Why the water bottle?” Harry asked.

  “Don’t touch it,” warned Detective Curtis. “Let’s put this thing down. Humph. I think,” he squatted down near the bag, “that this was slid. See where the dust is disturbed?”

  “The back of the riser would have been behind the backdrop,” Harry pointed out.

  “The killer would just have to bend down and push. No one would have seen him from the audience.”

  “So, we have the murderer killing and stuffing Carl somewhere back here over a conveniently laid plastic. Carl was moved to the front, posed, decorated and the excess blood poured out on the floor. The killer then carefully folded up the plastic and hid it under the riser as he or she went in and joined the band,” I surmised.

  “Or joined the band as you left the room and entered the stage,” Detective Curtis offered.

  “What about the needle?” Harry asked.

  “Pocketed.”

  “Tape recorder,” Harry pushed.

  “Yes, the tape recorder and fingerprints!” I clapped my hands together.

  “Gloves.”

  “I saw on a show were you can get fingerprints off of plastic gloves,” Harry volunteered.

  “Maybe, but what if they weren’t plastic, and where are the gloves?” Curtis asked.

  “Hidden in a pocket and taken home. But the tape recorder that Carl used is too big not to be noticed in a pocket. Detective Curtis, Harry, I think that the killer took the time to fast forward the tape fifteen minutes, no more. He had to allow time for forming up. He then walked outside, screamed into it and rewound it. He then started it, stepped into line and played the concert. At intermission he - I keep saying he - he or she grabbed it on the way off stage, turned off the microphone and disposed of it.”

  “Where?”

  “Somewhere private...” I started.

  Harry was up and running calling “Restroom!” after him.

  “Don’t touch anything!” Detective Curtis yelled after him.

  I got up and went into the women’s room just in case our murderer was female. I was looking in one of the trashcans, carefully shifting through the papers and whatnots when I heard Harry yell, “Got it!”

  I ventured into the men’s room to find Harry and Detective Curtis staring into the basket under the paper towel dispenser on the wall.

  “What do we do now?” I asked.

  “I need to call in reinforcements. What time is it?” Detective Curtis asked.

  I looked at my watch and groaned, “Almost four.”

  “Problem?”

  “I have to gather all those music folders and get them to band by seven.”

  “Why?”

  “We have a rehearsal tonight. My alto… is still in the trunk!” I realized. “That’s right, I forgot it last night. Whew! I thought I would have to go all the way home and come back.”

  “I think I want to be at that rehearsal tonight. I have a lot more questions to ask. I think it would be an excellent opportunity.” He pulled out his cell phone.

  “How long to get the troops here?” I asked.

  “Maybe twenty minutes to an hour. Why?”

  “I’m hungry, famished. I didn’t eat this morning,” I explained.

  “Come to think of it, I could use some food myself.”

  “Hello?” Harry butted in. “I would be happy to go out and get some takeout. Except...”

  “Except what?” I asked.

  “I don’t have any wheels here.”

  “Use my car.” I dug in my purse and pulled out some cash and my keys. “I’m not fussy, but you better bring back some
caffeine with the meal,” I said, handing him the keys and money. “Detective?”

  “Anything.”

  “BMW!” Harry cut him off. “Are these BMW keys? Woo hoo!” He all but flew to the open loading door. “That blue one over there?”

  “Yes,” I said now regretting my impulse.

  “Yee ha!” Harry jumped down and all but ran to the car before I changed my mind. By the time we got to the loading dock, Harry had the top down and was reaching into his shirt pocket, coming up with a pair of surfer sunglasses. He looked in the mirror, fluffed his hair and smiled big, all teeth showing.

  “I hope you’re not going to regret this,” Detective Curtis said behind me.

  “Detective, I regretted it on the woo hoo, the yee ha just confirmed my stupidity.”

  Harry backed out of the space, beeped the horn and jetted out of the parking lot. I sat down on the loading dock contemplating how much my insurance was going to go up while Detective Curtis made his calls.

  ~

  Harry did come back, and my car was in one piece. He brought deli sandwiches and plenty of Cokes. I didn’t ask for my change. I never received any from my son, and I didn’t expect any from Harry.

  Detective Curtis was eating as he walked around supervising the day shift photographer and fingerprint team. The tape recorder was rescued from the waste bin, but the tape was missing - dead end. Harry and I were picnicking on the loading dock, staying out of everyone’s way. He and I were getting caught up on gossip when something on the cement caught my eye.

  “Excuse me Harry.” I got up and walked over to inspect some reddish gravelly stuff on top of the dock. “What’s this?”

  “Cat litter most likely. We use it to absorb paint spills. The lazy so-and-sos most of the time just sweep it out here.” He got up and walked over.

  “Look how the red litter stops in a straight line,” I pointed out.

  “There is a lot of it just inside the door here. Oh my god!”

  “What?”

  “This is where the bastard killed that Carl guy.” Harry was off like a shot and returned with Detective Curtis.

  “Well, I’ll be damned. How did my crew miss this? Very sloppy work.” He left and came back with the photographer and crime scene team. “Cin, Harry, I think I will have to ask you to move your picnic inside.”