Masques and Murder — Death at the Opera 2-Book Bundle

by Blechta, Rick

  “I will tell you after we clink.” We did and both took an appreciative sip. “Before I even met you, I had heard of you. Gerhard Fosch and I knew each other, you know.”

  “How come you’ve never said anything?”

  She shrugged. “Lots of little reasons. Anyway, about eighteen months before his heart attack, we met by chance at the airport in Zurich. All flights were delayed due to snow, so we stopped and chatted for a bit. He was on his way to hear you sing in Oslo.”

  “I remember that. It was my first engagement in Europe and I suspected he’d pulled a few strings to get it for me. I sang Ines in Trovatore. God, was I nervous!”

  “One reason I never told you about this meeting is that Fosch was quite irritated with you. He knew I was in Canada and asked if I had heard of you. I told him only by name. I had not heard you sing. ‘She is the most frustrating creature with whom I have ever worked!’”

  “Gerhard said that? Why?”

  “Because you did not believe completely in yourself. He said you had all this talent and seemed content to dole it out in tiny portions. ‘If she ever just lets go, she might be one of those singers for the ages. She has all the ability, but refuses to trust it. She thinks too much!’ I have always remembered what he said.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “It was not my place. I remembered, though, and tried to show you the door. But you’re the one who had to have the confidence to walk through it.”

  “That’s not fair!”

  She smiled wistfully. “Oh, but it is. How many people, how many critics have felt this way and told you? Did you listen?”

  “Of course I did.”

  Lili shook her head slowly. “Not until Paris — then again yesterday with the Mozart, and even more so tonight. Tonight,” she said with a theatrical flourish of her hand, “tonight, Gerhard Fosch would have been so very proud of his little songbird.”

  I burst into tears. Lili had used his personal endearment for me, something I had not heard since he lay dying in my arms. To have told Lili something so private while not ever letting me know he’d so much as met her seemed just like him. I wished dearly that I could have given him that final gift while he still lived.

  But he’d been right, as always. I just hadn’t been ready.

  I dragged myself into my condo around midnight, totally and completely done in. After a little food and another glass of champagne, fatigue had flooded in as the adrenaline left my bloodstream. The past two days had finally caught up with me.

  I was humming “Una voce poco fa” from The Barber of Seville as I pulled the pumps off my aching feet. Not bothering to turn on the lights, I stumbled over to the couch and flopped down, rubbing first one foot, then the other. Tomorrow I wasn’t budging from my bed until at least eleven.

  As I looked out the window, my phone’s insistently flashing light caught my eye. I was of half a mind to ignore it, but picked it up, dialling in the code.

  “Marta, it’s Lainey. I’ve been trying you all day. Where the hell are you and why aren’t you answering your phones? Anyway, I dragged myself into work to make sure I didn’t fall even more hopelessly behind and I found something on my computer — an email Sébastien downloaded while he was waiting for me in my office that last evening. It was in my mail program’s trash folder, but he hadn’t emptied it. It’s from that reporter who was also murdered. I’m coming to Toronto to show it to you.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Talk about crashing down to earth with an almighty thud.

  I sat for a good five minutes playing space cadet while I thought over what this might mean.

  Why hadn’t Lainey read the email to me over the phone? Hell, she could have faxed it to me. Sent it via courier. Why did she have to bring it to Toronto?

  The clock in the bookcase opposite the piano told me in its ghostly blue that it was nearly 12:30.

  “Oh, hell with it,” I said. “I’m calling her.”

  She wasn’t on my auto dial, so I had to look up her number. The phone rang until her voicemail picked up.

  “Lainey, it’s Marta. Please call me before you set out. I don’t care what time it is, I want to talk to you. Okay?”

  I tried her cell with similar results, then sat stewing. Before I was a bit peeved. Now I was worried. What if the same people who’d killed her boyfriend had come after her? Was the email itself the thing that caused them to kill Sébastien?

  And what would stop them coming after me?

  Taking the phone into the bathroom, I jumped in the shower, but it wasn’t the nice, long soak I had been looking forward to, since my ears were focused on the phone possibly ringing. Twice I was fooled and turned off the water before I just gave up and got out.

  Ten minutes later, I was in bed with the covers pulled up to my ears. Even in my keyed up state, it didn’t take long for sleep to creep up on me. The phone stayed obstinately silent all night, but maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.

  I was in the middle of one of those frustration dreams. I had to be on in moments. I could already hear the overture to Rigoletto echoing backstage, but for the life of me, I could not find the way there. I usually try to wake myself from this sort of dream, but I was too deeply asleep to make that climb back to consciousness. The dream seemed to go on for hours as I frantically searched for the way onto the stage. Then a fire alarm went off and water started shooting down from the invisible ceiling, completely soaking me.

  Somewhere in there I realized it was my phone ringing. Reaching out, I nearly knocked it off the night table, but before the voicemail clicked in, I managed to fumble it to my ear.

  “Marta? Lainey. I’m nearly to your place but I don’t remember the exact address and nothing looks familiar.”

  “You’re driving?” I asked groggily.

  “Yes. I left Montreal at eleven last night and slept a bit at the rest area somewhere past Kingston.”

  “Where are you now?” I asked, pulling myself into a sitting position. Christ, it was barely 6:00 a.m.

  Thank the Lord I’d gone to the grocery store. By the time Sam rang from the lobby that Lainey was there, the coffee maker was making its end of cycle burbling noises. Having no coffee would have been unbearable.

  Lainey, literally falling into my arms two steps inside the door, quite frankly looked like shit. This is a woman who’s never known a bad hair day, someone who, even without makeup, looks fabulous.

  Her filthy hair was roughly pulled back and held in place by a rubber band. Her eyes were sunken black hollows, and her face had the colour of day-old oatmeal. I patted her back as she trembled against me. “You’re in a bad way, girlfriend,” I said.

  “You can’t imagine what I’ve been through the past three days.”

  “There’s coffee ready. Maybe you’d like to take a shower?”

  She pulled away from me. “Did you lock the door?”

  I reached out and threw the dead bolt. “You really are spooked.”

  “I’m just glad I’m here safe and sound.” Lainey took a deep breath and smiled wanly. “First, a quick shower and then we’ll talk.”

  Hearing the water snap off in the bathroom, I roused myself from the sofa, where I’d been looking on my laptop at the news websites from Montreal, and got busy in the kitchen making toast with lots of butter, remembering that Lainey always had preferred it that way.

  She padded into the kitchen bundled in my white bath robe with a towel wrapping her hair.

  “That’s better,” she said. “I used one of those little shampoos you had on the shelf. Nice stuff.”

  I offered her a mug, which she took gratefully. “I only steal from the best hotels.”

  “Is that also the source of this very fine bath robe?” she asked with a hint of mischief.

  “If you must know, the manager of the Intercontinental Hotel in San Francisco gave it to me when I told him how much I liked it.”

  We stared at each other for several seconds before cracking up. On more
than one occasion in the past, both of us had stolen towels to help furnish the apartment we’d shared while we were in university. This time I was telling the truth, however. My hotel pilfering days were long over — except for shampoo and conditioner.

  Lainey’s face collapsed and I thought she might cry, but instead she rallied bravely with a tiny smile. “Thanks so much for being here for me.”

  “It’s not as if I had a lot of choice. You were on the road long before I could stop you,” I answered, but it wasn’t harshly.

  The toaster finally popped and I busied myself with the butter.

  Topping up my coffee, I grabbed the plate of toast. “Let’s sit in the living room. It’s the first sunny morning in three days and I want to enjoy it.” We sat side by side on the sofa, munching as we squinted into the sunlight streaming in. After a few minutes, I gave up the struggle. “Maybe I’ll draw the sheers.”

  “Great toast. I haven’t eaten it like this in years. Thanks for remembering. It’s just what I needed this morning: coffee and toast with my bestest bud.” This time a tear trickled down her cheek.

  I popped a last corner of toast into my mouth and wiped my fingers on the leg of my sweat pants. Picking up my coffee, I lounged back, trying to smile. “I guess it’s time we had that talk.”

  Lainey sighed heavily, and put down her mug. “The email is in the back pocket of my jeans,” she said as she got up.

  While she was gone, I took our mugs to the kitchen and refilled them.

  She came back dressed again with her drying hair hanging gorgeously to her shoulders. I hated her. After every shower, I always had to spend a long time combing out the tangles.

  Unfolding a piece of paper, she handed it to me.

  Cher Sébastien,

  How good to hear from you, my friend! I hope you’re well and thriving.

  You ask a very interesting question. I poked around in my notes since I immediately recognized the name, but the last thing I remembered hearing about him was several years ago. That caused me to make a few phone calls to contacts I’ve been cultivating, hence the delay in answering your email. Sorry about that.

  So, here’s the drift. There was a contract out on your boy and, if someone found him, the rumour is that they were going to make him suffer for what he did — before they put the gun in his ear.

  Now you tell me that he was killed in an accident over two years ago back your way. I looked up the news accounts at the time, but they were pretty sketchy. Are they sure it was an accident? With the amount of money your boy had on his head, there was certainly a good incentive to go to the trouble of finding him after he ducked out on his handlers.

  On the crown’s side, he was also persona non grata because their whole prosecution went down the toilet since he was the only one left of their “dream team” of informers, the other two already having already been sent off for dirt naps. The profile info I have on the trio is attached to this email. You’ll have better resources to find out about them than I do.

  So I knew most of this shit before, but earlier today one of my sources gave me a new twist on the whole episode. Apparently, the way the witnesses were gotten to and eliminated was because they had somebody from the RCMP Major Crimes Unit in their back pocket. That person gave up the witnesses.

  The delay in my getting back to you was in following up on that. It seems to check out at this point. It’s more than likely, then, that they did get to your boy in eastern Ontario. I doubt very much that his death was an accident. What I do find curious is that the Mounties never stuck their noses into the investigation, although maybe they did and we don’t know about it.

  Here’s the upshot: I smell a really great story here, my friend. Would you like to collaborate on it? At my end, I’m going to see if I can smoke out who the informer is in the Mountie camp and you can investigate whether this house fire really was an accident or not. Whether you’re game or not, I’m going to put my investigation on the front burner. Quite frankly, things have been far too quiet out here for too long. It’s about time I got hold of a juicy story. This one obviously has national implications and could be good for both our careers.

  Call me soon to give me your thoughts. We should jump all over this right away. You might want to get started by talking to the other two witnesses’ families to find out what they know, if anything. The details of their particulars as of four years ago are on the document attached to this email. It shouldn’t be too difficult to track them down.

  A bientôt!

  Peter

  Curled up at her end of the sofa, Lainey clutched her coffee mug as if she was trying to warm not only her hands but her heart, too. “So now you see why I was a little more than freaked out. Less than fourteen hours after this guy Peter sent out that email, both men were dead. Now I have it and I’m petrified that if anybody finds out, they’re going to come after me.”

  “Come after both of us now that I’ve seen it, too,” I pointed out.

  “What should we do?”

  “Is the email still on your computer at McGill?”

  “I filed it under a different name and moved it to the university’s encrypted storage. Do you think someone would search my computer at school or am I being ridiculous? From what Sébastien told me once, if you have the right equipment, you can get files off a hard drive even after it’s been erased.”

  I shrugged. “Not being trained as a spy, I wouldn’t know. It seems to me now that part of our education was sorely neglected. What kind of university degrees are they handing out today?”

  “You can joke about this all you want, Marta, but I’m really freaked.”

  I put the printout down on the coffee table. “There’s nothing in this email that points a finger at anyone, but it looks as if this Peter in Vancouver uncovered something too damaging to let him live. You’re certain Sébastien spoke to him on the phone?”

  Lainey nodded. “But he didn’t tell me what was said. There really wasn’t time before those two fake cops showed up at the door.

  “Boy, am I glad he didn’t. I’d probably be in Montreal right now for a double funeral.”

  My friend shook her head. “I spent the entire drive here thinking the same thing and trying not to feel guilty. It’s all so horrible.”

  “If anyone should feel guilty, it’s me. And believe me, I do.”

  “Did the cops come to interview you?”

  “Yes, Sunday morning, not too bright and far too early.”

  “So what did you say to them?”

  I tried to keep it as succinct as possible, but telling her still took nearly fifteen minutes. “At the time, I was certain those Mounties held back a lot that was important. Now we have a good idea what it was. And no wonder they didn’t want to tell me. They’ve had enough bad press over the past few years.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Surely they must know there’s a rat in their midst.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “And it seems to me that the most likely person who would want Sébastien and Peter dead would be that rat.” I read through the email again to be sure. “What is so telling is ‘they’ got hold of the information that someone was poking around where they shouldn’t be and then acted on it so quickly.”

  We spent the rest of the morning using my poached Internet connection to browse all of the news outlets in Montreal and Vancouver to see if we could garner any new information.

  The two deaths were still top of the news, but most of what we found was rehashed or little more than speculation. The prognostications of one CBC Newsworld talking head, a supposed globally recognized expert on “media assassinations” (as he dubbed them), were downright laughable — from the viewpoint of what we knew.

  Lainey had grown restive and got to her feet. “We’re no closer to a decision than when I called to tell you I was coming. Maybe we should just go to the Toronto police, show them the email and tell them what we know and be done with it. Surely that would be safe.” />
  “For whom?”

  “Why, us, of course.”

  “What about my husband?”

  Lainey turned and stared at me. “Am I missing something here? You didn’t find him, did you?”

  “Ah ... no, but he might still be out there.”

  “So assuming he is, why do you think he counts?”

  “Didn’t you hear what I told you about the Mounties?” I said, anger rising. “I’m sure he cut out from their witness protection program because he knew they were going to kill him.”

  “How can you defend him?” Lainey shot back. “He screwed you over. Don’t you forget that for one instant!”

  “Marc was doing the only thing he could. If I tell the cops that I may have seen him in Paris and it turns out I did, I could be signing his death warrant. I’m not willing to do that.”

  “You certainly are a Pollyanna, I’ll hand that to you.” Lainey shook her head. “What do we do now?”

  “Take our minds off it. I find sometimes that letting something percolate in my subconscious leads to new answers. How about we go to my gym? I made a vow the other day that I wouldn’t put on weight again. It gets harder to avoid that every year, doesn’t it?”

  Lainey snorted. “Don’t I know it.”

  “And maybe it will help us come up with something.”

  The gym I go to is for women only and it’s a short walk away. So by the time I get there, everything feels pretty loose and I’m ready to work out. That day, I primarily used the treadmill with some work on the other machines after. Lainey, in a borrowed outfit, went at it with a vengeance, all her rage and frustration coming out as she threw herself around from one machine to another, much the same way she used to throw herself around the percussion studio at McGill after a particularly bad lesson. She even broke a timpani head once — and that ain’t easy! By the end, when we hit the showers, we were sweaty messes.

  I treated her to a massage after, and we got back to my place (by taxi) shortly after 1:00 p.m., completely famished, feeling rather self-righteous and totally mellow.