Master of the Opera

by Jeffe Kennedy

  Matt stuck to her all day like the proverbial glue. He kept reassuring her that he’d protect her, but the way he kept sliding white-eyeballed glances at the door and jumping at the least little thing, she suspected he was more frightened himself than brave.

  Often Christy felt the tangible creep of a penetrating gaze on the back of her neck. She refused to look behind her, and stayed with others always. She was the lame gazelle sticking to the center of the herd while the lion paced the edges. She would not be culled from the group, not until she was ready. No matter how much she might long for the ecstasy of the lion’s teeth sinking into her throat.

  After work—when everyone left en masse by mutual agreement, counting heads once more after the doors were locked—she went to the history museum. At lunch she’d called the library to inquire about local lore. The very helpful reference librarian told her she’d be better off with the New Mexico History Museum for research on the old families of the region. For information on Native American legends, she’d best go to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, a jaunt that would have to wait for the weekend.

  It didn’t escape her sense of the ironic that she’d lied to Roman about driving to Albuquerque after work the week before. Now it would be the truth and she doubted he would believe her. Especially since she couldn’t tell him the reason behind it. The way he’d looked at her when he made her promise to wear the ring gnawed at her. No—he didn’t trust her at all.

  That was all it was, she told herself. Nothing more sinister than that.

  Hally was right that she was crazy to have accepted this engagement. All the reasons—needing the lawyers, keeping her father at bay, not upsetting Roman, needing time to think—none of it made any sense.

  The dream images revisited her, and she felt as if she were forever running down those spiral stairs, the monster just behind her. She had no time to stop and think. To make a plan.

  Run, her deep thoughts whispered with urgency. Run!

  She ignored the voices, as she’d learned to. They mostly told lies.

  Fortunately, with tourist season in full swing, the museum stayed open until 8 p.m., down at the Palace of the Governors. She had to park in the pay lot on Water Street and walk into the Plaza, the sidewalks thick with people. Passing through the arcade, she spotted the mean violin-playing busker, tourists passing him as if he weren’t there. He saw her, however, and his tune changed from a country jig to the song the theater ghost sang. Sweet, full of longing, and beyond naming. Like an aching sense of nostalgia for a happy childhood moment you never really had.

  Remembering his scorn from the last time, she swung out into the street, blocked off for the evening’s festivities. Music from a mariachi group in the band shell nearly drowned out the plaintive melody.

  “Hey, leddy!”

  She walked faster.

  “Hey, young leddy—you no’ deef. Come back here. I gots a message for ya!”

  Christy stopped at that. Wasn’t she looking for information? For omens and their meanings? Not thrilled, but feeling that she needed to do it, she went back and faced the old man and his gap-toothed, unfriendly grin.

  “I wonnert when you’d come back to listen.”

  “I didn’t. I was passing by. What message?”

  He played the song slowly, an exquisite tenderness transforming his face into something nearly angelic, as in a renaissance painting. The song, of course, had no words, sung only by the violin. Same as when she’d heard it at the opera house, really, the lyrics unintelligible, just the liquid melody, full of unmet emotion. So much of opera was that way—sung in other languages so you weren’t trapped by the words. Words could be used to spin lies, but music—at its heart, music only told the truth.

  Even if it was a truth you didn’t care to hear.

  The song ended, snapping her out of her reflection, and she wiped away a tear that suddenly trickled down her cheek. Like a scab had broken open because she’d moved carelessly, leaking blood.

  The old musician pointed his bow at her, his gnarled smile back, the gnome replacing the angel. “Better. You listen.”

  “But I don’t understand the message.”

  He shrugged. Not his problem. He went back to the sprightly jig he’d been playing before, the crowds flowing around him, a piece of bedrock parting the stream.

  Christy walked on to the museum, turning over the song in her mind. Not just the song but the realization that music carried truth that words didn’t. Roman’s words, the Master’s words—they muddied the waters. That meant something.

  At the museum she pored through the records on the Sanclaros. The helpful collections assistant pulled several volumes on the conquistadors for her also, flagging the sections about Salvador Sanclaro and his part in the campaigns. She’d vaguely known much of this—mostly from her U.S. history class in high school—how the Spanish and Portuguese had come to Mexico and what would become the American Southwest back when the early colonists were still setting up shop on the East Coast in the late 1500s.

  She traced her finger over an illustration of Sanclaro’s shield—the same as the emblem on the amazing gates that guarded the estate from the outside world. The notation said the Sanclaros had worn it in the Crusades. The family name likely dated to the same era, probably a borrowed version of St. Clair, a fairly common French surname honoring the patron saint of clarity that bled into the name Sanclaro over time.

  The cross honored the Catholic church, of course, the diagonal swords pointing upward to indicate the family’s continuing battle against evil. The circle turned out to be a halo, indicating that the family considered themselves to be eternal defenders of the holy church.

  The Sanclaro name turned up regularly through the long four hundred years following the arrival of the conquistadors, the ensuing wars with the Indians and Mexico. A detailed treatise, labeled as likely an accumulation of several folklore tales, on a particularly ugly event claimed that Salvador Sanclaro had kidnapped the daughter of a tribal chief, married her, and declared the tribe’s territory to be his. The tribe fought and was destroyed by Sanclaro’s men and allies. Descriptions of the terrible day said the lovely river valley had been soaked in the blood of the entire tribe, all dead. The land became the Sanclaro compound and the Indian bride—never named—died in childbirth, leaving behind twin daughters.

  The tribe had been known as the People of the Bear.

  Christy almost stopped there, her head reeling, but forced herself to go on.

  Several old paintings were reproduced in the documents. One, a set of portraits that seemed to be made for a cameo necklace, showed identical young girls with large dark eyes. A flowing ribbon at the bottom of each named them, Angelia and Seraphina.

  Far from suffering for their sins, the Sanclaros prospered. Gold, ranching, land, politics. Where other families failed, the Sanclaros flourished. Their fortune grew and their reach widened.

  The opal ring was also mentioned in connection with the family. A letter included in the papers mentioned that Salvador gifted his twin daughters with identical opal and diamond rings on their eighteenth birthday. Since then, it seemed, the Sanclaro brides always wore these rings.

  An Angelia of the relatively modern era had been born at home in 1890, twenty-two years before New Mexico became a state. The photos showed her as a baby, posed with another infant who looked remarkably the same. In fact, Christy had to read the notation twice to figure out which was her—and learned the other child was her twin brother. Angelo, of course.

  Another photo showed them, with the same wide, dark eyes and glossy black hair, pre-adolescent and slender. Then Angelo, serious in his WWI uniform. Angelia appeared next in her engagement portrait, the luminous opal on her finger, prominently displayed by a coy hand to her cheek. Her fiancé, interestingly enough, was not mentioned.

  Over the years, she took her place as the matriarch of the Sanclaro family, ruling all the enterprises with an iron fist, particularly after Angelo died in
1929, under odd circumstances. However, many suicides and accidents had followed the stock market crash that year and, though the family fortunes had taken a relatively minor hit, his death was blamed on it. And on a vein of insanity that seemed to haunt the family.

  He left behind a six-year-old daughter, named Angelia, of course—how did they keep them all straight?—who was raised by her aunt, as if the child’s mother had never existed. Perhaps she hadn’t. One letter hinted darkly that Angelia and Angelo were, in fact, the parents of the girl.

  The daughter—a product of incest or not—grew up to be a lovely young woman, glowing in her eighteenth birthday portrait, wearing a mink stole and a saucy hat. Surprisingly, she attended college in New York, a development that sent an uneasy current through Christy. Surely that was a coincidence.

  She turned the page to find the chill of the truth. That Angelia had married in college, hastily. The gossip column related the society wedding, which the Sanclaro family had not attended, and managed to make it clear the bride was expecting. The groom’s family however, the Davises of New York, footed the bill in elaborate fashion. She recognized some of the names—various elderly aunts and uncles.

  Why had she never heard this story?

  Perhaps because of the scandal. A divorce came within two years. Angelia Sanclaro—who seemed never to have taken Davis as her married name—returned to New Mexico. There was no mention of the child.

  But Christy knew. Knew with crystal clarity what had happened to the child.

  It boggled the mind, but the timing was right and it explained so much, including the vague stories about Christy’s grandmother dying in childbirth, leaving her grieving widower to raise the child alone. A child he foisted off on his sister. Domingo Sanclaro, only two years younger, would then be her father’s half brother. Had her father even known?

  Domingo only took over the family business—a sprawling empire of real estate, mining, oil drilling, and similar interests—after his grandmother died in 1996. Christy would have been around four or five then, which would match the time when Domingo began visiting. And when her parents began fighting.

  It also explained her father’s deeply loyal interest in the Santa Fe Opera House—and how the Davises had managed to obtain an island of property in the vast Sanclaro holdings—which he refused to sell, even during the various economic downturns and despite the fact that all his other businesses were on the East Coast. It had to be a bequest from his mother. A woman who’d left him without a backward glance and later died in a car wreck on the road to Las Vegas, according to a yellowed newspaper article.

  All those jokes about betrothing them—and Roman was her cousin, albeit via half brothers. It made her stomach turn.

  “Catching up on your research?”

  She jumped, as if she’d been caught doing something wrong, slamming the volume closed in pure reflex. Detective Sanchez stood on the other side of the table, smiling in a way he probably thought was friendly but conveyed his suspicion. He surveyed the stacks of books and files.

  “Doing a little background check on the new fiancé’s family, huh? Aren’t you supposed to do that before you accept the ring?”

  “Wow—news travels fast.”

  “When the Sanclaro lawyers call our offices to instruct us to leave you be as you’re now family, yes. Yes, it does.”

  Always had been family. She couldn’t quite assimilate it.

  “Then why aren’t you leaving me be?”

  “Free country, right? Museum is open to the public. Mind if I sit?”

  Before she could answer, he’d pulled out the wooden chair and made himself comfortable. He spun around a reproduction of an etching thought to be of Salvador Sanclaro, surrounded with Christlike rays of light, noble in his Spanish armor. Sanchez made a rude noise at the image.

  “Don’t care for the Sanclaros?”

  Sanchez screwed up his face and considered. “Hmm. Rapists, pillagers, robber barons. Not a lot to admire.”

  “Is that why you’re harassing me?” Always accuse first, her father counseled.

  “Just saying hi to a friend.” Sanchez produced the friendly smile again, folded his hands over his ample belly, and tilted back in his chair. “So, tell me—how does a nice gringa like you manage to get engaged to the heir to one of the most powerful families in New Mexico within weeks of arriving in Santa Fe? That’s quite a feat, even for an old friend.”

  “Just lucky, I guess.”

  “You are lucky, Ms. Davis. What happened to Carla Donovan—that could have been you when you disappeared. Why her and not you? I wonder.”

  “Because she was abducted. I wasn’t abducted. I got—”

  “Got lost and fell asleep, right, I know the story. We also both know it’s a lie.”

  “Why would I lie about that?”

  “That, Ms. Davis, is exactly the part that bothers me.”

  “Has Carla woken up yet?”

  “Why—what do you think she’ll tell us?”

  “I want to know as much as you do.”

  “I’m betting that much is true. But you want to know for different reasons.”

  “We’re all concerned about her.”

  “Why didn’t you want your father contacted? Surely he’d be concerned.”

  Her stomach clenched and she resisted the urge to reach under her shirt, to touch the scars there. “Because he’ll be worried about me and make me come home. I don’t want to go home.” Was this what her father had been afraid she’d find out? Then why get her the job here at all?

  “Yeah.” Sanchez dropped his chair back onto all four feet with a clatter that made her start. “See, Christy, a good liar knows to lie about everything. Mix it up, you know? But you’re not a good liar—and I know that because when you tell the truth, which is most of the time, it’s very clear that you’re being honest. That was the truth right there. Tell me, does your father know about this ‘engagement’?”

  He actually made air quotes around the word. If she didn’t have the same surreal attitude about it, it would have made her angry. Still, her tone came out irritated.

  “No—it’s supposed to be a secret from him for now.”

  “Not much of a secret.”

  “Don’t you have to keep it confidential? Like a lawyer or a . . .” She floundered, looking for the right terms.

  “Like a priest and the sanctity of the confessional? No, I’m a cop. I’m the one who decides which information to release and which to keep close to my vest. Why do you ask, Christy—do you have something to confess?”

  The image of those shadowed, private confessionals in the cathedral flashed through her mind. You haven’t received absolution.

  “If you do, I swear to protect you,” he pressed. “Help us out here. Carla can’t tell us what happened to her. Tara will never be able to tell us. You’re the only one who can.”

  “I can’t tell you something I don’t know.” Her lips felt numb, and she tried to show the shining truth of that—she really didn’t know what had happened to them—but she felt the cloud of the lie, of what she did know and felt a gut-deep loyalty not to reveal.

  “Have Roman Sanclaro or his father threatened you?” Sanchez asked in a low voice that wouldn’t carry. “Blackmail, maybe?”

  His perception startled her and she felt sure it showed. Not trusting her voice, she shook her head, pressing her lips tightly together.

  Sanchez looked disappointed, scrubbed his scalp with it. “Has it occurred to you that an alliance with your father would be greatly valued by the Sanclaros?”

  Ha! If he only knew.

  “I’m not an idiot, Detective. People have been using me to get to my father all my life.” It came out more bitter than she expected, and she rubbed her arms, chilled in the museum’s careful climate control.

  “No. You’re not an idiot.” Sanchez eyed her, as if trying to peer inside her skull. “I suspect you’re even smarter than you seem. Maybe you’re one of those pretty girls who learn
ed early on not to threaten the men around them. Growing up under the thumb of a guy like Carlton Davis would do that.”

  “Wow—that was such a mix of insult and compliment that I’m not sure what to say. Do I say thank you or fuck you?”

  Sanchez laughed, leaned on the table. “Ah. There’s the real you. And I have a hundred bucks that says you never talk to Roman Sanclaro that way.”

  “Keep your bet because it’s none of your business.”

  “You are my business. You’re neck deep in my case. And there’s something you’re not telling me. I can smell it.”

  “I really don’t see how you could think I’m guilty of—”

  “Not guilty,” he cut in. “No, I don’t think that. Of course, I can’t completely rule anyone out. But my gut says you’re an innocent. Which is why I can’t leave you to the wolves.”

  “I’m not a babe in the woods.” Why did everyone keep implying that she was some virginal ingénue?

  “No. You’re no helpless infant. You’re the princess in the tower.”

  “What? Is that some kind of police code?”

  Sanchez laughed, stood, and tipped his cowboy hat to her. “I was reaching for the story metaphor. You’ve got princes and dragons fighting over you, don’t you? I do believe that makes you the trophy.”

  4

  The words stuck with her, as Sanchez likely meant them to. They wound together with Roman’s vague threats about her needing the lawyers, and how the Master spoke of needing her. In her apartment she pulled out the opal ring from where it had ground uncomfortably against her pelvic bone all day. The polished stone with the bear image had ridden in her back pocket, so she got that out, took off the silver spiral pendant, and set the three together again on the shelf beside the kiva fireplace.

  She stared at them, trying to perceive the wordless message there, as in the melody of the song. Though the engagement ring was a lie, it carried a certain truth about the Sanclaros. The Master hid himself behind masks and mystery but swore to be true.