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

by Blechta, Rick

  “Tony, I assure you we will wait until the last possible second, but I would not be honest if I didn’t tell you that a decision will have to be made soon.”

  After hanging up, Tony went to his computer to see what the media’s take was on Marta’s kidnapping. Was he being a fool for believing they could find her?

  Of course, it was the top story, and the horrible incident in Paris was a large part of their lurid coverage. Everything he read and watched seemed to reinforce that the world was breathlessly waiting for his wife to be found dead. No wonder Tallevi and Grant were thinking of covering their asses.

  Tony opened his mail program. Over three hundred new emails stuffed his inbox, many from the media asking for interviews. But there were also a surprising number from friends and colleagues offering support and best wishes for a speedy and happy end to the ordeal. As he idly read them over, he felt a bit better.

  As he was reading the last few, his mail alert sound pinged. Another one had come in. Looking at the subject line almost caused his heart to stop.

  Marta’s kidnapper had contacted him.

  Tony was in Dan’s face the moment he walked in the door.

  “What the fuck is this all about? What did you do with Marta when you were in Italy? I swear to God I’ll pound you to a pulp!”

  Shannon quickly got between the two men. “What the hell are you talking about, Tony?”

  “He sent me a video. It was shot in Venice. This, this bastard was holding Marta’s hand and then they went into a doorway, and I swear to God they were kissing. You bastard! I trusted you!”

  “Tony,” Dan said calmly. “It’s not what it looks like. I can explain.”

  Shannon put her hands on Tony’s shoulders and forced him to look at her. “Dan and I have already discussed this. He’s right: it’s not what it looks like.”

  “But they were walking arm in arm. You can clearly see that on the video.”

  “Marta had too much champagne at the post-performance party,” Dan told him. “I was concerned she might fall, so I was holding her arm. That is the sum total of what happened — the whole time we were gone. She was just feeling a little too good that night, that’s all. It was stupid for me not to insist that we take a water taxi back to the hotel, but I’d kept such a tight rein on her all week, I felt she deserved the night out. It was stupid, but there you have it. Nothing, Tony, nothing more happened! If Marta were here right now, she’d tell you the same thing. He’s playing with your head, man. He’s playing with all our heads.”

  Shannon said, “And that’s exactly what Dan told me the day after he got back. Now, would it be possible for me to view the clip? We’re going to have to let the cops know about this, but that doesn’t mean we have to do it immediately. I want to study it. Do you have headphones? I’m hoping we might get some clues from background noises.”

  As soon as Tony disappeared into the extra room, Shannon gave Dan “the look,” so he’d be absolutely certain how unhappy she was. He sighed heavily and shrugged, acknowledging he’d completely blown this one.

  Tony handed the headphones to Shannon. He looked and sounded calmer. “It came in while I was reading emails. It’s as if he knew I was doing it.”

  Dan asked, “And the security camera didn’t show him in the apartment?”

  Tony shook his head.

  “Shit! How the hell does he do it?”

  Shannon was watching the video clip, earphones held tightly against her ears, brow furrowed in concentration. She sighed as she removed them.

  “There’s nothing on the soundtrack of any use.”

  Eventually, Shannon called the cops. Dobbin appeared at the door with two tech guys in tow and Dan took them through the apartment yet again. They eventually left, taking Tony’s computer with them.

  Shannon flopped onto the sofa. “It has been a horrible day.”

  Dan agreed, but Tony, surprisingly, was upbeat.

  “I take this as a sign that Marta is still alive. Why else would he send me a video like that? If she was dead, he either would’ve dumped her body where it would be quickly found, or he would’ve sent us a video of her body. She’s alive. I know it.”

  Shannon and Dan looked at each other, but kept their faces carefully blank.

  “But we’re missing something,” he added. “That’s the reason we keep running into walls. C’mon, the bastard can’t be that smart. I refuse to believe that three of us can’t out-think him.”

  Dan was resting his chin on his palm. “Do you think we’re not trying?”

  “No, Dan,” Shannon said. “Tony’s right. He’s trying to make us feel whipped. We’re a danger to him, more so than the police — just as Lili was.” A look of amazement came over her face. “Of course …”

  Dan still wasn’t buying into the new mood in the room. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Why kill Lili this morning? Obviously he could have done it anytime. Why today? It was because of what she was working on. I’ll bet there was something in her profile that pointed directly at him. That’s why she had to die.”

  “The thing I’m wondering is why did he snatch Marta when he did? If he was out to punish her, as Lili said, then why not wait until the last minute? She called him out, and he felt he had to react. But if he’d waited … who would have won, who would have lost?”

  Tony added, “I feel more and more that our guy has something directly to do with The Passage of Time.”

  Shannon nodded. “We’ve struck out everywhere else. We should concentrate there.”

  “Give me your notebook, Shannon,” Dan said. “We need to make our own profile.”

  “Dobbin said they have one of their people working on that.”

  “Not a psych profile — a suspect profile. We need to find the people who fit every one of our search criteria.”

  Tony looked around. “Let’s go somewhere else, okay? I don’t want to take the slightest chance he’ll get wind of this.”

  Shannon nodded. “Good idea.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  My mind was beginning to drift quite badly. I had zero concentration. One moment I’d be singing to myself, then seemingly the next minute I’d be waking up. At least, I thought I was waking up. How do you know? I might have just been in some sort of trance.

  My nose told me I could really use a shower. I could sing and make other noise, touch myself and the things around me, but it was as if life was slowly being sucked out of me by my jailor and his prison.

  Singing, talking out loud, moving around in some form of limited exercise, all held no interest any longer. Memories of my life outside this dark box were becoming grey and lifeless.

  The food my captor sporadically brought was always things I’d eat for dinner, uncannily so, but hardly surprising. Point is, I couldn’t get any clue from the food what time of day it might be. With no light, no information, the passage of time had become completely meaningless. I had no idea how long I’d been chained in the dark.

  Sleep was my only escape. Dreams seemed more real than waking thought. Every time I woke up, I was filled with profound regret. If part of his agenda was to unhinge me, it was working.

  Those mutilated roses were his way of counting down — but to what? My release? I doubted that. The end of my life? Probably. My growing fear was that he would keep me captive, stuck by his whim in this awful purgatory. I was beginning to accept that I would die in this room. My greatest fear was that I would be alone.

  Those horrible spotlights came on again, presage of another visit by my heartless captor.

  What meal would I get this time? Chinese takeout? A bowl of mediocre pasta? A burger and fries? I longed for a bowl of Nonna Lusardi’s wonderful pasta e fagioli soup, but couldn’t clearly remember what it tasted like. I mentally shrugged. All I wanted was something that would fill my achingly empty stomach.

  This time, the door opened but he didn’t enter. Except for the manacle around my right ankle, I would have tried to make a b
reak for it — damn the consequences.

  Getting off the cot, I walked out to the limit of my chain. I raised my forearm above my eyes, attempting to see through the crippling glare of his lights.

  “Are you there?” I called out.

  No answer.

  “What’s going on?”

  Silence.

  “Talk to me!”

  “Get back on the bed.”

  His voice once again sounded completely devoid of emotion. I did what he asked, sitting primly erect with my hands clasped in my lap, waiting for the next move.

  Nothing happened for over five minutes — I was counting — until the tension was absolutely unbearable, all part of his game, I felt sure.

  “Your friend Lili is dead.”

  I’d been toyed with so much, I couldn’t accept anything he might say. “You’re lying.”

  “Suit yourself, but it’s true, I assure you. I had to kill her.”

  “You had to kill her? No one has to kill somebody unless they’re attacked. Lili was half your size, old, and had a broken ankle, for Christ’s sake. How can you stand there and say she had to die?”

  “You know absolutely nothing about it! Your great friend did a horrible thing once. She herself acknowledged that before I ended her wretched life.”

  “You inhuman bastard!”

  I leapt up and walked to the limit of the chain again, straining to break the bond that held me in place. If it had snapped I would have attacked him with my bare hands, trying to do to him what he said he had done to Lili.

  Of course, it didn’t happen. I fell to my knees. Helpless and hopeless in my rage, I began to cry even though I couldn’t bear to have him see me being so weak. She was dead. I instinctively knew he was telling me the truth.

  Eventually shuffling back to the cot, I laid down on my side and curled into a ball. At least now I could feel. I continued weeping for the passing of the woman who had meant so much to me. It was not stretching the truth to say that Lili had saved my life and was responsible for me being able to resurrect my career.

  I had no idea whether he was still standing in the doorway, observing the latest handiwork of his obsession with me, nor did I care. If I was depressed before, it was nothing to what I felt now. Eventually, the lights went off. I didn’t hear the door shut.

  Several minutes passed, then from the darkness, he asked, “Are you hungry?”

  It sounded a bit more, I don’t know … human.

  “Of course I’m hungry! How can you even ask?”

  The anger had just burst out of me, and I immediately feared I had done something very unwise. Surprisingly, though, I got no blowback. He simply left.

  On his return, his entry was more normal: the lights came back on and his voice held its usual arrogance.

  “Slide me the chamber pot. I’ll hand you your meal.”

  I wearily got off the bed and did as he asked. Even through the despair that gripped me, I had an overwhelming hunger.

  My meal was two mediocre ham and cheese sandwiches. I wolfed them down as if they were the best thing ever. The thermos was again filled with cola. Out of the ordinary was the fact that he stayed in the room to watch me eat. Having lived in complete silence for so long, I could hear his breathing quite easily whenever I wasn’t chewing. It seemed rather rapid. Was he anxious about something?

  “Bring me your plate and thermos now!”

  “But I’m not done eating.”

  “I said now!”

  When I didn’t do this fast enough, he screamed at me to hurry. As soon as I’d shuffled over, he snatched them from me, flinging them to clatter in the darkness behind him. “Hold out your hand.”

  “No.”

  “I said hold out your hand, and if you don’t do it now, I’ll wring your bloody neck just like I did your friend’s this morning.”

  An icy shudder of fear ran up my spine and I meekly did as he asked. No sooner was the rose in my hand than he bolted from the room and the lights snapped off. The bolts on the door were slammed into place.

  Something was wrong. I prayed to God in heaven that help was on the way, because when I slid my hand to the top of the rose stem only a one quarter section of the blossom remained.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “How about picking up one of those rent-by-the hour cars?” Tony asked. “I sometimes use them when we’re taking my nonna out for a ride. We should be able to find one within a couple of blocks from here. I’ll book it online while we walk.”

  “Sounds good.”

  After snagging a car, Tony drove up to the Eaton Centre where he ran inside to get something from the store where he worked. He quickly returned carrying a brand new iPad.

  “I want to be absolutely sure that bastard can’t track what we’re doing,” he said.

  Shannon was astonished. “You bought an iPad just for that?”

  “I’d buy five if I thought it would help.” Then Tony grinned. “Besides, as assistant manager, I get a fantastic discount.”

  He drove them down Yonge Street to Adelaide and was soon swinging around the looping northbound ramp from Eastern Avenue onto the Don Valley Parkway.

  “Whenever I need to relax and do some heavy thinking,” Tony told his passengers, “I drive around the city on the big highways: up the Don Valley Parkway, across on the 401, down the 427, and then along the lake front on the Gardiner. It calms me down and helps me to focus on whatever my problem is.”

  From the back seat, Dan snorted. “Driving in Toronto traffic helps you relax? Amazing. It makes me either want to chew the steering wheel in frustration or pull over, get out of the car, and just walk away.”

  Shannon laughed. “Dan, I think Tony’s talking about doing it late at night.”

  Traffic on the DVP was light and moving well.

  “Perfect,” Tony sighed.

  Dan said, “As long as an idiot driver doesn’t do something stupid and bring the whole thing to a halt.”

  “Have faith.”

  Tony stayed in the slow lane and the faster traffic was indeed zooming by at breakneck speed.

  Shannon fired up the iPad. “Okay, troops. Time to get to work. Dan, got my notebook ready?”

  “What do you have in mind?” Dan asked.

  “Lay out the parameters for our suspect, and I’ll use the iPad to do research while we’re talking. Tony, you start us off. You understand Marta’s world far better than we ever will. What should be top of our list?”

  “Besides the fact that our man had to know Lili and had been to her house, I’d say the fact that he knows his way around backstage so well. Those things sort of go hand in hand, though, don’t they? Not only that, he blends in and raises no questions. So say he’s comfortable in the opera world.”

  “Do you think our adversary is a singer?”

  Tony laughed. “No. He has to be wealthy, remember? Most singers only have the kind of money we’re talking about in their dreams. I feel certain our man hangs around with singers, but isn’t one himself.”

  “Good points. We don’t need to worry about how he delivered the roses. That’s what the cops are working on. All right, our suspect is someone who’s wealthy, knew Lili well, and is comfortable backstage. Next?”

  Dan said, “The gadgets being used are difficult to source. You have to personally know the top guys to get hold of some of the things I’ve seen. Money talks in this business, but he’d have to make contact with the right people and they can be pretty skittish. And don’t forget, he has to be very conversant with electronics. You don’t just plug and play with a lot of these devices. You have to know what you’re doing.”

  “Electrical engineer?”

  “Possibly.”

  Shannon nodded. “Check. Now to my mind, it’s his intelligence that really frightens me, and that slides in with what you just told us, Dan. There’s a saying in my world: the only criminals who get caught are the dumb ones or the unlucky ones. Our guy is neither. Anything else?”

  Tony said
, “He speaks rather good Italian.”

  “A small point, but a good one. Right. To be included on our list, a suspect has to fit every one of these points. Agreed?” When Tony and Dan didn’t raise any objections, she added, “Tony, you know this crowd better than either Dan or me. Any ideas who might fit the bill?”

  They drove as far as the exit junction for the southbound 427 before he spoke.

  “Only two.”

  “And all our points can be applied to them?”

  He nodded. “Leonardo Tallevi or Peter Grant, but I don’t know about all the points with either of them.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I can’t say how much money Tallevi has for sure, but I know he gets paid well by the opera company. Previous to becoming the GM in Venice, he was a successful production and lighting designer for many years. He’s the inventor of a very compact and reliable computerized lighting console. It’s used all over the world. I don’t know how well he knew Lili, but he was at her Christmas party the past two years.”

  “I’m looking him up now. You’re right, Tony.” She turned around and handed the iPad back to Dan. “Look at this. He sold the rights to his lighting console a year ago for ten million. I’d say he has enough money to be our man. And he certainly fits our other criteria. Okay, Tony, what about Grant?”

  “Peter Grant made a pile of money early and has been adding to it ever since.”

  “Isn’t Grant too old?” Dan asked. “I think we’re looking for someone young and energetic.”

  Shannon had been staring down at the iPad again. “Listen to this: ‘Peter Augustus Grant remains an avid tennis player, and even at sixty-eight, he is one of the top-ranked amateur doubles tennis players in Canada.’ That’s from a corporate profile for a board he sits on, dated last fall.”

  “Okay, he’s still in. Tony, does Grant speak Italian?”

  “Yes. His wife was Italian. They had a villa in Tuscany. I’ve heard him speaking Italian to Tallevi.”