by BV Lawson
Afraid the oil on his fingers might contaminate a possible rare Chopin manuscript, he took his time. The light in the room kept flickering as the storm took its toll on power lines. But there was enough light to see a smaller portfolio inside covered with glints of gold embroidery and glass. Red glass, like rubies. It was like the pouch Harmon Ainscough described, the one that vanished after Konstantina’s murder.
A moment later, the lights in the Opera House winked out.
Chapter 47
It was the third time Sheriff Sailor banged on the door, but still no answer. He tried the knob, and the door swung open. Turning toward Nelia nearby, he motioned with his head in the direction of Nelia’s gun. “Just in case,” he said.
They were startled by a loud crack behind them and swirled around to watch as the force of the winds broke off a branch the size of a telephone pole from an oak tree in the yard. Sailor shook his head, and they entered the house, keeping their guard up. Paddy could be unpredictable. He’d been known to start fights in a drunken stupor, been found stone cold on public benches, ticketed for public urination, and of course the thefts and marijuana, but he’d never before called the sheriff to say he was committing suicide.
Sailor pointed for Nelia to check one of the bedrooms while he checked the other, but they were empty. Sailor paused in the kitchen to examine a bottle on the counter. Cayenne pepper capsules. A low moan rose from the living room, and the Sheriff and Nelia approached the back of the sofa from different sides, converging in the front where Paddy lay outstretched on the floor. Nearby were a couple of empty tequila bottles and one empty bottle of sleeping pills.
Nelia knelt beside Paddy, and Sailor called the dispatcher to send out EMTs. He glanced over at a TV tray, where a cardboard file box was sitting, the label scratched off. Still, he recognized it. The missing Opera House box. Also on the tray lay several papers. He picked the one on the top. It was an unsent love letter to Nanette Keys from Seth. Next to it was the missing library manuscript.
Paddy stopped moaning and started mumbling, low and unintelligible. Sailor got closer and shook Paddy gently. “What is it, Paddy?”
Paddy lay there, his mouth moving wordlessly. Then he licked his lips and uttered in a low, hoarse voice, “We were searching for it. All those years. We never found it in the Opera House. So we searched all those houses. Then he came and messed everything up.”
“Searching for what, Paddy? You mean those break-ins years ago, don’t you?”
“But we never found it. Just never found it.”
His voice was getting weaker, and the sheriff hoped the bottle of sleeping pills hadn’t been full. A siren faint in the background grew louder, and Sailor headed to the door to point the way for the medical crew. As they rushed in and worked with Paddy, Sailor’s radio crackled on. A dispatcher forwarded a call through, and he was surprised to hear Maida.
“I expect you’re busy, Sheriff, and I hate to bother you. But I haven’t heard from Scott. He’s an hour late. That’s not like him.”
“Drayco told me he was meeting someone in Norfolk. Probably got caught in traffic due to the lousy weather.”
“He would have called. You know that.”
Sailor did know. In the sheriff’s dealings with Drayco, he was usually early, never late. “Was he stopping anywhere else, Maida?”
“The only place he mentioned was the Opera House.”
“The Opera House?” The sheriff looked at Paddy who was on a stretcher, hooked up to oxygen and an IV. But apparently, Paddy was listening to the sheriff’s end of the conversation and was sufficiently aware to gaze back at Sailor, a wide, unblinking stare. The look in those eyes said more than enough to make Sailor’s blood run cold, and he jumped up and darted out the front door. The rain pelted his uniform, soaking his shirt, and the wind picked up his hat and launched it into the sky. But Sailor hardly noticed. This was shades of his younger brother all over again, and this time, he hoped he got there in time.
Chapter 48
Drayco waited a few moments and was relieved when the lights came back on, although dimmer, bathing everything in a sepia glow. He opened the satchel as wide as possible to get a better look at what he was now certain were rubies on the smaller case hidden inside. He walked toward the stage and its brighter lighting.
If he were the type to believe in ghosts, he’d swear the spirit of Konstantina was near him now, her presence palpable. This innocent-looking case he held was both what she lived for and what she had died for, and it felt like lead in his hands.
Yet it could also contain a priceless manuscript. Drayco was so absorbed by an overwhelming eagerness to glimpse notes possibly penned by Chopin’s own hand, it took him a moment to realize he wasn’t alone.
A piece of railing caught his sleeve and pulled him around toward a figure perched in the middle of the catwalk, just as his practiced ears heard the unmistakable click of a revolver being cocked. He instinctively twisted toward one side simultaneously with the discharge of the gun, falling against the railing. He stopped short of slipping down the stairs but banged his head hard on the catwalk floor.
He tried to raise himself up as the figure approached, but a wave of dizziness washed over him, and he fell back again. He knew who it was by the apricot conical-shaped wheezing. Through a thick swirling fog, Drayco watched the man scoop up the pouch with his left hand and peer inside. In his right hand, he clutched a Webley.
Drayco managed a wan smile. “‘G’ is for Gozdowski. Hello, Filip.”
Seth Bakely stood silently over Drayco at first, then stooped down and opened Drayco’s coat, looking at the red stain spreading over his right shoulder.
Seth’s accent was thicker than Drayco had heard it before, with more hints of Polish than Tangier Island, as if the past fifty years had never happened. “Thanks for finding my heritage, Drayco. Been looking for this all my life.”
Drayco tried to raise himself once more, but he fought a losing battle as another wave of dizziness hit. No way he’d be able to reach the gun in his shoulder holster. His own voice sounded far away, as he said, “And it only took three murders to do it, right Filip? Konstantina, Oakley, Nanette.”
“You’re right about the murders.” Seth stepped back. “But I’m sorry to say you’re not right about the numbers. It took four.” He raised the gun and pointed it at Drayco’s head. A shot rang out, but Drayco didn’t feel any pain.
He heard a small cry and turned his head far enough to see Seth’s body tumbling through one of the gaps in the railing. Seth fell to the floor at the back of the stage, wearing his own badge of red from the bullet hole in his chest.
From below, Sheriff Sailor lowered his gun and ran up the stairs. Drayco fell back against the catwalk one last time as he watched the ceiling continue to swirl until the light slowly faded to black.
Chapter 49
Friday 26 March
The first sunny day in Cape Unity in over a week felt like a mistake. The storm left litter strewn in its path—a grate from a charcoal grill hanging on a tree, a garbage can dropped on one of the defiant boats still moored at the pier—but it also left behind deep blue skies, sucking out the clouds and pollution.
“Thought you might like to see this view at its best, for a change.” Sailor had opted for the short-sleeve version of the uniform and didn’t seem to mind the goose bumps. The sunlight glinted off ripples in the water, a golden tide heading toward shore. They walked along the pier basking in the warmth radiating from the planks.
“Like a postcard,” Drayco adjusted the sling on his arm.
“Cape Unity isn’t such a bad town unless you’re obsessed with fifty-year-old grudges.”
“Between half-brothers, at that. How’s Oakley’s nephew Paddy doing?”
“Physically, okay. Emotionally, not so much. He only decided to start talking to us last night, but he’s devastated at losing Seth. Despite doing everything he could to prevent such an ending—warning you with that last letter, throwing what h
e thought was the murder weapon off the pier. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t know the story behind the HAH cane or that mask he sold to Squier. Or that Seth had two Webleys.”
Drayco stopped to examine a post covered in carved initials and dates and ran his finger over the splintered surface. “Paddy was an innocent victim. Like Nanette.”
“Ironic, isn’t it? Seth uses her to blackmail Oakley into silence but ends up falling for her. Yet he winds up killing her after she confronts him about what she read in Oakley’s testament.”
Drayco watched a rockfish splashing through the water, finding its obliviousness to human concerns oddly soothing. “So in the end, Seth’s sense of injustice drowned out everything else. Paddy, Nanette, his own chance for happiness.”
The sheriff clapped a hand on Drayco’s back, avoiding the injured shoulder. “Guess the lawyers get to sort out what happens to that manuscript. But I have it on good authority it may come down to finders, keepers. Whatever will you do with all that money, your highness?”
“Sotheby’s sold some rare manuscripts, Chopin and Beethoven, for several hundred grand. There’s also the leather case with the rubies, which might fetch a penny or two. Not enough to retire on,” he added with a small smile, “But possible seed money for matching grants to restore one aging Opera House.”
The sheriff looked at him in amazement. “Thought you were going to dump the place.”
“I was. I may still. But then I think of what it’s meant to the community. And all the people who have performed there, including Konstantina’s last concert. Might be more of a fitting tribute to her than Oakley’s shrine.”
The sheriff squinted at the full sun. “Have to admit, I’m grateful you were a musician in your former life. Not sure anyone else would have drawn the same conclusions. Makes me want to believe in Kismet.”
“Have you been talking to Reece? He’s on a Kismet kick.”
“Guess it’s in the air. Or barometer fluctuations squeezing those little gray brain cells.”
Drayco leaned against the post and looked in vain for the rockfish to make a reappearance. “You do know why I left you in the dark, don’t you?”
“I get it.” Sailor turned his head to glance at a car pulling up, but Drayco didn’t have to see him to hear the scowl in his voice. “Just don’t do it again.”
The car didn’t turn off its engine, and the Starfire’s window rolled down as Nelia’s head poked out. “You ready?” Drayco had protested he could drive his own car back to D.C., but he was outvoted.
Sailor held up his hand. “He’s coming.” The sheriff turned to Drayco. “It was nice of the potentially soon-to-be-single Mrs. Squier to visit you in the hospital.”
Drayco shrugged, then wished he hadn’t, forgetting about the shoulder. “So did the Jepsons, Reece, you, and Tyler. It’s a friendly town.” He smiled, remembering the flowering plant Nelia brought him, with a tiny toy piano on top. It was she who’d offered to drive him in the Starfire back to D.C.
“Squier could get one to twenty for the embezzlement.”
Legally, yes, likely, no. If Reece had a betting pool on that one, Drayco would lay wagers on Squier avoiding jail time, with restitution. He said, “You know, I wasted a lot of time believing Squier was our murderer. I’m embarrassed to admit I couldn’t get past that repulsive voice of his.”
The sheriff flicked a pebble on the dock railing into the water. “So, you got some new hot case waiting for you to invoke your consultant magic?”
“Would you believe it’s a decade-old blackmail case?”
Sailor grinned. “Let’s hope it doesn’t include a burned letter. And Doc, next time you’re in town, why don’t I treat you to some of that Wachapreague flounder.”
“It’s a deal, Sheriff.”
EPILOGUE
Friday 26 March
Unlike his last visit here, it was Nelia who was waiting in the car across the street watching from afar, not him. She went along with his request to stop at a florist first after they arrived in D.C., understanding his need to do this. And to do it alone.
The late afternoon sunlight cast a crisscross pattern of shadows on the ground as fallen leaves swirled around like mini-vortices in the wind. Drayco knelt down and placed one red carnation on each of the tiny graves marked by tombstones with the names Callie Cadden and Calvin Cadden.
The nightmares were less frequent in the past few days, but they hadn’t stopped, and he didn’t want them to. He needed them. Needed the reminders that he should never let his guard down, never be complacent. There were no universal truths, no fate, no Kismet, no God’s will, no sense, in any of this. He hadn’t been so much a conduit of death as merely a bit player.
He straightened up, taking one last look at the graves. Tomorrow would mean a new case, a new day, and like all new days, there would be beginnings and endings and ways in which some things would never be the same.
THANK YOU FOR READING
I hope you enjoyed Played to Death, the debut outing for Scott Drayco. There will be more adventures ahead in the upcoming second installment, Requiem for Innocence, in which he returns to Cape Unity and becomes further involved with the community and its people—and their secrets.
Now that you have finished my book, won’t you please consider writing a review at your favorite online bookstore and/or Goodreads? I’d also love to hear your feedback via my website at bvlawson.com, where you can also sign up for my newsletter and receive a FREE Scott Drayco ebook!
Check out the other books in the Scott Drayco mystery novel series:
Played to Death
Requiem for Innocence
Dies Irae
Elegy in Scarlet
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to the lovely folks on the Eastern Shore of Virginia who helped inspire some of the sights and scenes in this book. Both Cape Unity and Princes of Wales County are purely fictional and an amalgam of various town on the Delmarva Peninsula.
The English translation of Bohdan Zaleski’s poem “Mgła mi do oczu zawiewa złona” is by Professor Mieczyslaw Tomaszewski of the Warsaw Academy of Music.
Special thanks to Michael Garrett for his editing assistance with an early draft of this novel.
Most of all, I give my undying gratitude—to infinity plus ten—to my amazing family for their encouragement, especially my astoundingly patient husband Charles, who is my supporter-in-chief.
ABOUT BV LAWSON
Author, poet, and journalist BV Lawson’s award-winning stories, poems and articles have appeared in dozens of national and regional publications and anthologies. A four-time Derringer Award finalist and 2012 winner for her short fiction, BV’s Scott Drayco series has been honored by the American Independent Writers, Maryland Writers Association, named Best Mystery in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, and been a finalist for the Shamus and Silver Falchion Awards. BV currently lives in Virginia with her husband and enjoys flying above the Chesapeake Bay in a little Cessna. Visit her website at bvlawson.com. No ticket required.
Connect with Me
Visit my website
Follow me on Twitter
Follow me on Facebook
Follow me on Pinterest