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

by Blechta, Rick

  “What about Dan?”

  “Wait…. He just walked into the office. Oh God! His head’s all wrapped in bandages.”

  Tony waited impatiently as more conversation happened.

  Dan came on the line. “Tony? This sure is a bloody mess. I’d like to apologize for screwing up so —”

  “No apology necessary. Just get Marta out of there and back to Toronto safely. That’s all I ask.”

  “I’ll do my best, although I’m feeling a little out of it at the moment. I got slugged pretty hard.”

  “What happened?”

  “No idea. One moment I was talking to Marta and the next I was flat on my back with a Carabinieri shining his bloody flashlight in my eyes. All I know is I’ve got a huge lump on my head and the doctors say I have a mild concussion. They wanted to keep me in the hospital overnight, but I checked myself out and came here searching for Marta.”

  Dan was in agreement that it was best for Marta to leave directly from the police station. He’d try to get the Venetian Carabinieri to go with him to the hotel for the luggage. Failing that, he’d go by himself. He assured Tony that Marta would not leave the police station until it was time for her flight.

  After the conversation ended with Tony telling Marta that he loved her and couldn’t wait to see her, he sat for several minutes trying to digest what had happened. It must have been horrible for poor Marta, but at least nothing worse had happened. Again, they’d seriously misjudged her stalker.

  The next call was one that had to be made, regardless of the hour.

  “Shannon? Tony…. Yes, I’m well aware what time it is. I just spoke to Marta and Dan in Venice…. You’re not going to like what I have to tell you.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Dan walked back into the first-class lounge at Venice’s Aeroporto Marco Polo, looking like some sort of foreign potentate with that huge bandage swathed around his head.

  He sat down gingerly next to me, pulling something from a plastic bag. I could tell his injury was really bothering him.

  “Here. You’re going to use these on the flight.”

  It was one of those sleeping blindfolds and ear plugs that airport stores sell.

  “Is this so I can’t see and hear trouble coming?” I asked lightly — but I wasn’t really joking.

  “No. I want you to sleep if you can. You didn’t get a wink last night.”

  “How about you? You should probably be in a hospital bed right now.”

  “The reason this whole mess happened was because I didn’t do my job very well. That hurts my professional pride a lot. I’m going to be sitting in the aisle seat, and I’ll be keeping my eyes open. Besides, the doctor told me I shouldn’t sleep for twenty-four hours.”

  I took the blindfold and slid it into my shoulder bag.

  Dan was right. Sleep would be good for me. Only problem was, every time I closed my eyes, I would stare into the blackness and hear the terrifying raspy whisper of my enemy, telling me horrible things. Perhaps it would fade in time, but right now it was too near and too raw.

  When we’d arrived at the airport (via police escort), I discovered that Tony had changed my reservations to first class. Dan’s, too. Check-in was a breeze. Heaven only knew where our baggage went, but I really didn’t care at that point. Dan had disappeared with one of the cops during more questioning, returning only just before we departed the police station. He had my laptop and partially filled shoulder bag. I guessed he’d been removing all the surveillance equipment in my room. The fact that he allowed one of the cops to accompany him was telling. Dan, at his usual, wouldn’t have done that. He definitely looked the worst for wear.

  When it came time to board, I was escorted right onto the plane while everyone else was waiting in line. Wearing my large sunglasses and a black beret, they must have thought I was a someone. The way I was feeling at the moment, locking myself into one of the washrooms sounded like the best idea.

  “I have a favour to ask,” Dan said as we got seated, “but if you don’t want to do it, I’ll understand.”

  “You want me to look at people as they come on the plane, don’t you?”

  He smiled. “Got it in one. Can you do that?”

  I nodded.

  “Good. Now here’s what we’re going to do. You told me our friend’s accent when he spoke to you could have been Canadian or American.”

  “Yes. His Italian was good, but it had an accent that I’d say was North American — like mine.”

  “Look at every male getting on this plane. If you see someone you think reminds you of your adversary — and I want you to think of him that way, because that’s what he is — what I want you to do is squeeze my hand. I have my pen camera in my pocket, and I’ll take a photograph. After that, you’re off duty and I want you to get some sleep.”

  “This seems like kind of a long shot.”

  “It is, but we could get lucky.”

  “The only other thing I can say for sure is that he’s maybe three inches taller than me. When he whispered into my ear, I don’t think he was standing on tiptoes. He could be young or old, bald, blond, or dark-haired. I could shake his hand and not even know it was him.”

  “Answer this without thinking: slender or overweight?”

  “Slender. Oh! How come I didn’t realize I knew that?”

  “There’s probably more that you know, but we’ll have to dig it out of your subconscious. Shannon has spoken to your friend Lili. Maybe we’ll try hypnosis when we get back to Toronto.”

  As the plane boarded, I did my very best. Only four men fit our rather generous description.

  “He’s probably not stupid enough to be on this plane,” I said as the last two passengers, a grandma-type and a small boy, passed by.

  “But that tells us something in itself,” Dan said.

  “I don’t follow.”

  “I doubt if he would board a plane in this day and age with a disguise on. He’d need to have a second set of papers for one thing and he’d have to be certain no one could tell he had on a disguise. Seems like a high level of risk just to make a point, doesn’t it? I don’t think he’d bother.”

  We looked at each other for a moment, then said simultaneously, “Oh yes, he would.”

  Neither of us felt inclined to laugh, though.

  I buried my face in Tony’s shoulder so no one could see I was crying. Behind me was a skycap with a trolley full of our luggage. Off to my right, Dan stood talking with Shannon, who’d also come to meet the plane.

  “I’ve never been so glad to be home,” I sniffled into Tony’s coat.

  By way of answering, he just squeezed me tighter.

  Shannon had brought her SUV and we all piled into that: them in the front, Tony and me in the back.

  “How do you feel, love?” he asked.

  “Rotten. Dan bought me a sleeping mask and ear plugs. I spent most of the flight in that sort of grey zone between sleep and waking. What good I’m going be at rehearsal tomorrow is anyone’s guess.”

  “Shannon and I have talked a lot over the past few hours about what to do. Things have gotten beyond serious now. We have some ideas, but I think it’s best to hear what Lili has to say before we make any decisions. Do you feel up to visiting her? She’s cleared her afternoon.”

  “I suppose so, although what I need most is to sleep for at least twelve hours.”

  Shannon was negotiating traffic on the 427, one of the big highways encircling Toronto. As usual, traffic was miserable. The sky looked as if we might get a major dump of snow.

  As we took the ramp to the eastbound Gardiner Expressway, Shannon asked, “So where to? Your place or Lili’s?”

  “Take us to Lili,” I said, feeling calmer now that I was back in my usual surroundings with my husband’s comforting arm around me.

  We couldn’t hear what Shannon and Dan were discussing as we crept along with the other rush hour traffic, but there was a lot of head shaking between the two of them. Neither seemed to like what
was being talked about.

  I leaned back and continued trying to process exactly what happened to me less than twenty-four hours earlier. Maybe it was the fact that it was Venice — and there really is something decadent and mysterious about this most unique of cities — or maybe it was the terror of finally meeting this person face to face. I could not close my eyes without being right back in that dark alley, shoved against the wall and not knowing if I was going to live or die.

  Somehow I had to quickly regain my equilibrium. With the premiere of The Passage of Time less than three short weeks away, I was hard up against it. I could not imagine rehearsing the next day. The music was extremely challenging and I barely had control of my part. What was I going to do?

  Perhaps sensing the trail of my inner thoughts, Tony pulled me tighter against him as if to say, Marta, you are not in this alone. It was infinitely comforting — and I needed that more right now than anything else. From comfort and calm would come focus. In order to premiere this new opera, I needed as much focus as I could get.

  Lili stared across the room at me in that way she has. All she’d asked me was, “How are you feeling, my dear?”

  Upon our arrival at her house, she’d asked if she could speak to me alone. We were now in her studio, with Tony, Shannon, and Dan waiting in her sitting room. They had a lot to discuss, I was sure.

  When I didn’t answer immediately, Lili kept her death stare on me, making it clear we weren’t going any further until I spoke.

  Why was I so hesitant? Physically, I felt like garbage. I wasn’t sure I had it in me to go through with this opera premiere. I was depressed. But mostly, I was still frightened out of my wits.

  A minute ticked by, then another while I looked out the windows into her snowy backyard. I looked down at the floor, the ceiling, her piano — but not her.

  “I feel …”

  Lili leaned forward expectantly.

  I began to cry again. She did nothing. It wasn’t as if we hadn’t been through this before. My friend had supplied countless boxes of tissues as I sniffled my way through therapy sessions when she’d helped me get over the supposed death of my first husband. She thought this was the best way for me to “rediscover my backbone,” as she once put it. Eventually, something would click in me and things that were bothering me would bubble to the surface, often in a nearly uncontrollable torrent. Then Lili would help me sort through it all.

  Today, I guess she decided there wasn’t the time to wait me out.

  “I have been listening to the partial recording you gave me of the new opera. It is very interesting, I must say. How do you feel about it?”

  “Like I’m about to go headfirst into a meat grinder. I’ve learned most of the notes, the rhythms, but nothing speaks to me yet. Rehearsals begin tomorrow and I am so woefully at sea with the part.”

  She nodded. “That is a problem, but I do not think it is insurmountable, knowing you.”

  “How can you say that?” I asked, shaking my head. “Opera is not built around regurgitating a composer’s musical ideas. A performance has to have emotion and subtlety. It has to be done as an adjunct to acting. I have absolutely no idea how to perform this role.”

  That was one thing I’d been thinking about a lot while I’d been under Dan’s house arrest in Italy. I would have to create this role — with the director’s help, of course — since it was brand new. I should know how to do this sort of thing, but I had psyched myself to near immobility.

  “Are you having trouble because the situation in the plot of this opera is so close to what you are experiencing in your own life?”

  I’m afraid my jaw hit the floor. I already knew Lili was an extraordinary woman, but with the insight of those few words, she simply took my breath away.

  She sat back again and waited while her question pinballed through my brain, setting off lights and sounds all over the place. Her analysis was so simple, and yet so complicated.

  At its heart, The Passage of Time is about a human soul being gradually cut off from everything that has meaning. This is precisely what was happening to me. My privacy wasn’t my own any longer. I now spent a lot of my time looking over my shoulder. I was a captive in my hotel room, my apartment, in the opera house, basically everywhere. Everything that mattered was slowly being taken away from me. Why hadn’t I seen the parallels?

  Either she was developing psychic powers or I’d said that last thing out loud, because Lili answered, “Because you are too close to it.”

  “Is it so obvious?”

  “To me, yes. To others, I cannot know. Now, before we go to join the others, do you have anything else to tell me?”

  “I could confess how stupid I was in Venice. There was no reason to take the risk I did that last night.”

  “You did it because the performance went so well. I well know the invincibility a great performance can generate. And you were great, my dear. The best of that very excellent cast they assembled for the production. I was so pleased for you.”

  Her praise opened a door and suddenly I was able to tell her what had happened and how I was feeling. I was ashamed, of course, for holding hands with Dan and then almost kissing him. I could blame it on the champagne, of course. Isn’t that what they do in opera? The fact that my shadow knew all about it both alarmed and repelled me. After all, this man had no doubt watched Tony and me make love many times. Now this — and all because of my own stupidity. That was no doubt a large part of my emotional funk.

  “Marta, you must make a decision right now on only one thing: can you continue with this opera production?”

  “That’s the problem. Despite what’s happening in my personal life, I have to go through with this opera. It is the biggest opportunity I’ve had so far. If I bow out, who can they call in at this late hour? No one knows the part but me and my understudy — and who knows how good she is. Bottom line: I do this, or the show might not go on. That’s what’s so awful. Right now I just want to run away and hide. What do you think I should do?”

  “How can anyone but you make that decision? I can tell you that it will not look good unless you make it clear to everyone what is happening to you. This is not a time when an opera singer can say she is ‘indisposed’ and get away with it.”

  I drew myself up, well aware that I was being psychologically kicked in the butt by my friend.

  “I’m being a big baby, you mean, and I should get on with it rather than feeling sorry for myself?”

  “No! Not at all. I am thinking that this is a very dangerous time for you. As I feared, this stalker is changing, becoming more aggressive, more out of control. He is taking chances. And now he has made contact with you. It is not the time to talk about this, but I must hear exactly what he said to you in Venice. I will be frank. These latest developments have me very worried.”

  “I am just so pissed off I could scream,” I said to Tony as I looked out the window at the headlights of the cars on Richmond Street fourteen storeys below. “I spend my professional life living in places that aren’t my own. Finally I’m performing in my own city, and I still have to live in a frigging hotel!”

  While I had been talking to Lili, it had been decided for me that I needed round the clock protection. Frustratingly, Lili immediately agreed with Tony, Shannon, and Dan. I thought out of all of them she would understand. My husband at least had the grace to look guilty about it. He knew how much I was looking forward to being able to go home after rehearsals or performances. Now, two hours later, I was trapped in yet another hotel room.

  “Marta,” Shannon had said back at Lili’s, “you have to be reasonable. The less available we make you to your stalker, the safer you are.”

  “It’s a done deal,” Dan added. “We’ve already arranged for security guards to be with you at all times.”

  I threw up my hands. “Oh, won’t that look great at the opera house. You think no one is going to notice these guys? What about keeping all this quiet?”

  Shannon spoke my
doom. “The police in Rome are going to hold a news conference in a few hours. Of course an ‘unnamed source’ has blabbed to the press some of the details about the investigation of that singer’s death. It’s gotten out that he was murdered. Now they have to say something because the press is all over them.”

  “I don’t have to tell you what the press is like in Italy, do I?” Dan added.

  I passed a tired hand over my eyes. “What are they going to say?”

  “We have no idea. They haven’t told anyone over here what kind of progress they’ve made on the case.”

  Shannon said, “I finally had some luck prying something out of the police today, probably because of what’s been going down in Rome. If Rome says anything about you, then Toronto will obviously have to respond because you’re here right now. What happened in Venice will probably come into play.”

  I looked around the room at everyone. “So I should prepare for a shit storm.”

  Tony, who had been sitting next to me on Lili’s sofa, took my hand. “That’s why we’ve arranged for you to stay at the Hilton. All you have to do is cross the street and you’re at the opera house. Easy-peasy.”

  “And your security guards?”

  “We’ve booked a two-bedroom suite. You and I will be in one, and they’ll use the other. This clown will never be able to get near you, I swear.”

  I squeezed his hand. “I suppose I would be a complete ingrate if I didn’t thank all of you. It’s just that … I hate this so much.”

  “We understand,” Shannon said. “We’re going to get this bastard. He made his first mistake in Rome.”

  “Venice, too,” Dan added. “Every time he comes into the light, he makes it more possible to unmask him.”

  I had looked around Lili’s living room again. “Is everyone feeling as confident as I am? No? Well, why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  While Tony had gone back to our apartment with Dan to pick up some clothes and other things, Shannon had sat with me in my Hilton prison.