Master of the Opera

by Jeffe Kennedy

  “I already told you why.”

  “I think you’re lying.”

  “You’re free to think anything you want to. My father is in town and wanted to discuss my engagement.” She couldn’t help throwing that out there. A little dare.

  Roman’s gaze turned speculative. “So that’s what he’s up to.”

  Go, Dad! Sounded as if her father hadn’t wasted any time smoking out the Sanclaros.

  “Up to?” She raised her eyebrows and tried to look innocently casual even as Tara’s little red notebook burned a hole in her pocket.

  “This cocktail party on the dock tonight is for all the talent and opera staff, but we’re all invited.”

  “Sounds pretty straightforward to me.”

  “You listen to me, sweet girl.” He hissed the endearment and flexed his fingers, glancing at the cops and away. “All of this is bigger than you are. You’re only a tool. And, if you’re lucky, you’ll enjoy it. But I can make sure you don’t, too.”

  It took all her resolve, but she cast her eyes down, trying to appear meek. Funny that she didn’t feel afraid now. Annoying, too, because showing a little fear would be useful.

  “Yes, Roman.”

  He picked up her left hand and kissed the ring. “That’s my good girl. See how easy it is for you, if you think only about pleasing me?” He squeezed her hand, hard enough that she gasped. Arrogant ass, to threaten and intimidate her while the cops watched. “This is a new beginning for the Sanclaros. You and I will lead the family into a bright new future, sweet girl. Just as Angelia and Seraphina did.”

  Holding her hand in the same tight grip, he cupped the back of her neck, his fingers vising the tendons there so she couldn’t turn her head. He kissed her, hard, possessively and without the least amount of affection. He might as well have struck her across the face again.

  “Until tonight.” He smiled. “I’ll send a dress over for you to wear. There will be photographers.”

  4

  As soon as Roman exited, discreetly followed by the uniforms, Christine dashed down to the lower storerooms, the keys on her belt loop jingling as she ran down the spiral steps. It wasn’t easy to find privacy. Every tech seemed to be going crazy, in and out of all the rooms in the last-minute frenzy of opening week.

  Several people called to her, asking for help with their jobs. She was sorry to lie, to shout back that she was on an important errand. Worse, she had effectively removed Matt from the pool, too.

  Well, a good manager learns to set priorities, right? Never mind that hers had little to do with opening night.

  She escaped into an empty storeroom—empty of people, that is, but crammed full of stuff—shut the door, and slid to the floor, leaning against it to prevent any more surprises. Pulling out Tara’s little notepad, she held it in her hands, feeling a sense of reverence and a little grief for this woman she’d never known. Christine had never been all that big on praying—and after the prayer marathon with the Sanclaros, she felt even less inclined toward it—but she offered up a heartfelt wish that Tara’s spirit would find its place. In whatever world.

  Then, with another urgent wish that this would be it, she flipped open the notepad.

  Tara’s now familiar lists filled the first few pages, her familiar boxes drawn to the left of each item, most with big checkmarks in them.

  It didn’t really differ from the lists and notes Charlie had given her that first day—the stuff already passed over by the police and, now she felt sure, Charlie himself. Mostly it was her daily tasks, notes about what needed doing next.

  Then she hit it.

  Find magic flute

  A chill of certainty ran over her scalp. The flute—and Matt said it had gone missing yet again—that Carla had been so determined to find. Her heart thumping, she flipped over the next sheet. These were hurried notes, not at all orderly.

  Found flute—not in Mozart room. Bad news: I think I’ve found human remains. A mummified hand with an opal ring. Glass-topped box. I have a bad, bad feeling about this. Just by looking at it, I know it’s not a prop or an artifact. Will discuss with Carla. Keeping this record as CYA.

  Eureka.

  “Only it didn’t save your ass, did it, Tara?” Christine murmured. She turned to the next page, but it stared back at her, resolutely blank. Where did she find it? The note was dated the day before she disappeared. However Carla had reacted, it had been enough to scare Tara into hiding the notepad.

  A loud knock right behind her head made her jump, and the doorknob rattled. She held her breath, hoping the person would go away.

  “Christy?” Matt yelled through the door. “Are you in there?”

  With a sigh, she carefully closed the precious notepad and pushed it deep into her back pocket, then opened the door. Matt, a brilliant grin transforming his somewhat homely face, held the notebook, one arm wedging the pages open.

  “How much do you love me?” he demanded.

  “Get in here!” She hurried him in, checked up and down the hall, and locked the door again.

  “I meant love in a metaphorical sense.” Matt’s gaze followed her nervously. “You know I don’t bat for your team, right?”

  “Hush. Show me.”

  He laid the notebook on a gilt credenza and pointed ostentatiously to the line. It was inked in between two other lines, nearly illegible. Angel’s Hand: Egyptian artifact, possibly for Aida. CJD L6-Verdi.

  “So are we going to look for it?”

  “No!” Christy slammed the notebook shut, as if prying eyes might see too much. “I mean, we still don’t know what it really is or what it looks like—and the Verdi room is worse than the Mozart room.” It was amazing how much easier lying became, the more you did it. It also felt, however, like removing yet another brick in the divider between reality and fantasy. How would she remember which version was true?

  “Mostly because someone stuck all that stuff from the Cavalli operas in there.”

  “No kidding! No—you go help Steve and the other guys. I’ll look for the hand after I find that flute. Who keeps moving it?”

  Matt did his spooky finger wiggle. “The theater ghost! Where will you look?”

  “I’ll start with where I found it last time.”

  “Where was that, anyway?”

  “Oh,” she waved a vague hand at the floor, “in that one storeroom downstairs, at the far end.”

  After he left, she waited a while; wanting to be sure he wouldn’t double back. Or head to the Verdi room himself. While she waited, she made herself a fake list, so if anyone stopped her, she could look busy. Though she wanted to check the hallway, she forced herself to play the role of busy props assistant instead.

  She dodged various groups, taking her preferred route down the spiral staircase, rubber soles squeaking against the metal grate. The big freight elevator was in constant use, clanking and grinding with protests, so she ran into a few other people on the tight curves—one of them teetering on the narrow inside edge, while the one on the outside turned sideways and pressed against the handrail to slide by.

  The negotiating happened mainly via smiles and quick hand signals, as the cacophony of last-minute rehearsals, buzz saws, and other electronic tools screaming away made conversation next to impossible.

  Inside the relative quiet of the storeroom, Christine locked the door and pulled out her iPad. She’d done the Verdi room early on, one of those first quiet, creepy days. She was sure of it. Scanning her database, she found the listings. Nothing about the Angel’s Hand. It had been written in after she’d been through there.

  By someone who had access to the Big Notebook of Doom. And who knew she’d been adding to the database as she went and so wouldn’t look at it again.

  She wouldn’t waste another minute looking for the red herring there. No, it would be here, in the Mozart room. In the cabinet where the magic flute was supposed to be and never was. Carla’s game of chess.

  To be safe, she spent a few minutes pushing a leather-bou
nd seaman’s chest against the door. Then she went to the back of the room, to the antique armoire with roses carved in the doors, the stained wood dark with age, the red of the petals the rusty black of old blood. She’d looked in this cabinet before, on the first hunt for the flute, and remembered the glass-topped box. But she’d been focused—hell, she’d been frantic—on finding the flute, so she’d pushed it aside, one of the many things she’d touched and never added to her lists.

  There it was. Hidden in plain sight.

  Covered in old leather, the box smelled like something dead but felt like something alive with magic. The glass of the top, though dusty, showed the contents clearly.

  A human hand.

  But there was no ring. Then she glimpsed the white gold band that matched hers and knew the opal and diamond ring had been turned in, toward the palm.

  No wonder Tara had known immediately how wrong it was. Though Victorian in design, the hand was no English family’s mummified relic. Its nails were long and carefully oval, the shape of the hand a lady’s, preserved in all its refined delicacy. The ring a relic of recent centuries. The twin of her own.

  With a deep sense of certainty, she knew these fingers, immortalized in the box and hidden in the opera props, would fit the other handprint on the pillar and break the binding that held the Master and the shadow people captive.

  Taking a table runner from a box—and squelching the urge to note in the database that she’d done so—Christine wrapped up the box and stuck it deep in her big shoulder bag. It seemed insane to carry it around but worse to leave it here.

  If the Master wouldn’t let her use it, she’d at least keep anyone else from finding and using it. She would hide the horrible artifact away where it could never be found.

  It was nerve-wracking, spending the afternoon running errands all over the opera house, the various rehearsed solos, duets, and choruses jangling together in her head. The excitement and stress over the imminent opening night seemed vapid compared to the crazy drama her life had become. When she had a few moments, she added her own notes to Tara’s and hid the notepad in the vent again—with a coded reference to the object’s new hiding place. Then she sat at her desk with the door invitingly open, ostensibly working on the iPad inventory—but writing down everything that had happened. It felt like the right thing to do. She hoped that following in Tara’s footsteps this way wouldn’t lead her down the same doomed path.

  But her fate would never be the same as Tara’s, because she had the Master.

  Tara hadn’t really had anyone.

  This was the worst part—how badly she wanted to go find the Master. To tell him what she’d found out. To be with him. But this would be it: her final performance as Roman’s fiancée. Tonight she would lay the trap for the Sanclaros. She’d draw them out with the promise of the Angel’s Hand, then either expose them as murderers or blackmail them into silence.

  Then she could leave the sunlit world, with all of its thorns and sharp edges, forever.

  Her father was taking care of the financial end. Detective Sanchez would take care of the law.

  “Wardrobe delivery service!” Hally chirped from the doorway. She’d curled her hair for the party so the unnaturally bright red spiraled wildly. Her dress, in glaring daffodil yellow, clung to her slim figure.

  “Wow!” Christine commented. “You look hot. And bright.”

  “Yellow is the color of regret.” Hally smiled thinly. “It seemed appropriate. For you I brought black.”

  “Thank you! I so didn’t want to wear what Roman thought up for me.”

  Hally wrinkled her nose. “Dove gray. Full length. I saw it in the messenger bag outside your apartment door. I left it there.”

  “Good. Get the door, would you? I’ll change.” Christine took the garment bag from her friend and raised her eyebrows at the chichi store name embossed on it. “Can I afford this?”

  “Oh, didn’t I mention? I met your dad. He showed up at the bar at lunch hour. Handed me a credit card and told me to buy whatever. He also said I’d been a good friend to you and wanted to see my paintings—gave me the number of his art buyer.”

  Christine clutched the dress to her. “Oh my God, you didn’t show him that painting, did you?”

  Hally clucked her tongue. “No, silly. Besides, it’s not done.”

  “Okay.” She breathed out her relief. “I’m glad he was nice to you.”

  “Isn’t he always?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Yeah. Well, it’s nice when people turn out to be better than you thought.”

  “I didn’t think things worked that way.” Christine pulled the dress over her head and turned for Hally to zip it up.

  “Wouldn’t it be a great world if people became better all the time? It should work that way. That fits perfectly. I impress myself.”

  “It’s short!”

  “So what? You have fabulous legs.” Hally dangled a pair of silver strappy stilettos from her fingers. “And these shoes will top it off.”

  “Ooh!” Christine seized them. “You really bought Jimmy Choos? My dad will have a fit.”

  “Hey—don’t hand me your credit card and tell me to have at it if you’re on a budget.”

  “So noted.”

  Hally fished out Christine’s makeup and jewelry from the bag and set them on the desk. “I didn’t know which jewelry you’d want, so I brought anything silver. That way you can keep your protective sacred spiral pendant on. And all the makeup—shit!”

  One of the eye shadows tumbled off the desk and shattered on the concrete floor. She crouched to gather up the pieces.

  “What’s this?”

  Hally was holding a piece of heavy paper. The first note from the rose, which Christine had hidden away under the eye-shadow tray, just in case.

  “Give me that.”

  Slowly, she looked up from it, assessing Christine. “This was one of the notes you got?”

  “Yes. But it doesn’t matter now, because I know who’s been doing all these things.”

  “Oh, yes. It matters very much.”

  The little office fell so silent; the soprano aria wafting from the main stage seemed to be in the room with them.

  “I know this handwriting.”

  5

  The party was all it should be.

  Carlton Davis, master manipulator, had managed to dovetail the “special celebration” with a planned cocktail reception for patrons while the public opening-night tailgating festivities ramped up in the parking lot. Tourists and locals alike set up folding tables by their cars, broke out the fine linens, silver, and crystal and ate and drank, enjoying one of the best sunset views Santa Fe had to offer.

  It was surpassed only by the opera house loading dock, with its sheer edge dropping over the valley. Christine’s father had supplemented the catering with excellent champagne and a string quartet, bribed down from Taos. Quite the expense to assemble all the players in one spot, but he seemed to be enjoying himself.

  Christine’s father handed her a flute of champagne. “Ah, and the Sanclaro clan arrives. All of them except the wife, who declined, complaining of a migraine. This is going to be fun.”

  She glanced over her shoulder to see Domingo Sanclaro, flanked by Roman, Angie trailing meekly behind, clapping shoulders and working the crowd.

  “I’m surprised you call it ‘fun.’ I can’t wait for it all to be over.”

  Her father chuckled. “You have to understand, when you’ve been in big business for a long time, it’s like a duel. You find better and better swordsmen—and women—” He interrupted himself to toast her. “—to pit yourself against. To test yourself. What has Sanclaro Corp. done? It’s the financial equivalent of going to the schoolyard and hacking up little kids with a machete.”

  “Nice image, Dad.” Christine grimaced and he grinned, happy to have gotten her goat.

  “Apt one, too. I despise fraud. Especially the kind that takes advantage of people who already have next
to nothing. Taking Sanclaro apart before his peers will be sweet indeed.”

  “It doesn’t bother you that they’re family?”

  His face turned hard. “They are not my family, or yours. We share a genetic connection, nothing more profound than that. I was spawned by a coldhearted bitch who spread her legs, popped me out, and dumped me like an unwanted puppy at the pound. That’s not family. Never forget it.”

  He didn’t have what she had, however—that racial memory connection to the tribal priestess who’d started it all. Christine wished she could share that with him; tell him that there was something meaningful and valuable in it all. But she kept the secret close.

  Davis went on, not noticing her quietness. “If that Detective Sanchez can also nail him and his vile son for murder that will be a bonus. But it’s the financial ruin that will hurt him where he lives.”

  “About the murder, I don’t think—”

  “Carlton!” Domingo Sanclaro stepped up next to her, shaking her father’s hand and ignoring her completely, little tool that she was. “I haven’t seen you in ages. I thought we’d never get you out to our part of the world.”

  Sanclaro wore a perfectly tailored tuxedo and scanned her father’s not-Armani suit with a barely veiled sneer, completely falling for his gambit. Never underestimate the power of seeming to be an idiot. “You remember Roman. Once he and Christy marry, I’m making him VP.”

  “He’s young for it.” Carlton frowned at Roman, giving him the same dismissive glance Domingo had given Christine. She wanted to kiss her father.

  “He’s a bright and capable young man. He’ll make a fine husband for your daughter,” Domingo replied smoothly. “I assume sweet little Christy here is still your only heir?”

  Her father frowned at her, as if just noticing her presence. “Yes, well, though she’s only interested in some aspects of the business,” he managed to make her sound flighty, “you know how girls are. They try on new occupations like dresses, isn’t that right, dear?”