A Measure of Murder

by Leslie Karst

  “Anyway,” I went on, “I found a couple things you might be interested in. Who knows, maybe they’re evidence that Lydia was in that room that morning.” I took the St. Christopher medal from my bag and set the folded handkerchief on the coffee table between us. “I wrapped it up to preserve any fingerprints.”

  “Of course you did,” the detective said, leaning over to flip open the cloth with his pen.

  “That was lodged in a crevice at the bottom of the broken window, where the frame had sat before it came loose.”

  “Which means it could have been dropped in there any time between the accident and when you found it,” Vargas said, rewrapping the medal. “And you realize, of course, that my guys did a thorough search of that room the morning of the fall. If this had been there then, we’d have found it.”

  “But—”

  He cut me off with a wave of the hand. “Don’t worry, I’ll have it sent over to the lab to be tested for prints. So you said you found something else?”

  “Yeah.” I handed him the Elixier wrapper. “This was on the floor under the broken window. They’re throat lozenges that singers use, and only a handful of people in our chorus have access to the room. Kyle’s girlfriend swears he never used them, but it turns out that our choral director, Marta, does.”

  Detective Vargas just stared at me, and I realized how weak this sounded. But to his credit, after clicking his pen a couple more times, he reached for the wrapper and read the writing on it: “Elixier Herb. And there’s something in German—Kräuterzucker—whatever that means.”

  I leaned over and examined the small black writing below the brand name. “Huh. I hadn’t noticed that. I don’t know what Kräuter means. Maybe cabbage, like sauerkraut? But I’m pretty sure zucker is sugar.”

  Vargas jotted down a few more notes and handed the wrapper back to me.

  “You don’t want to keep it?” I asked.

  “No, that’s okay. I’ve got all the information here.” He started to stand. “So if there’s nothing else . . .”

  “There is one more thing, actually.”

  “Oh.” He sat back down with a frown. “So tell me: why have you gotten involved in this matter, if I may ask?”

  “It’s because of Kyle’s girlfriend, Jill. She’s a soprano in the same chorus I’m in and that Kyle was in, too. She’s convinced his death was not an accident, and so she asked me to look into it, ’cause, well, she saw those articles about me and my Aunt Letta last spring.”

  “Right.” The detective smiled. “So now you’re the celebrity sleuth in town. I get it.”

  I ignored this dig. “It’s not like I asked to get involved. But after I talked to Steve, the church maintenance guy—and Kyle’s ex-tenant, by the way—I realized she might actually be right.” I told him what Steve had said about the condition of the window frame and also filled him in on the tenant’s gripes against his former landlord. “So I guess that also makes him a suspect.

  “And,” I added before Vargas could interrupt, “there’s one more guy, too. Brian, a singer in our chorus who recently started as a cook at Gauguin. I think he might have followed me when I went up to search that storage room, and I’m also worried that he started the kitchen fire we had at Gauguin the other night.”

  Detective Vargas set the pad back down on the table, clicked his pen closed, and returned it to his pocket. “Look, Ms. Solari. You were very helpful to us with regard to your aunt’s murder, and for that we are extremely grateful. But just because you were involved in that case doesn’t make you a detective. I think if you go home and really think through what you’ve told me, you’ll see all the holes in your arguments and realize that we can’t be chasing phantom suspects all over Santa Cruz County for a death that appears, in all respects, to have been merely a sad accident.”

  He stood up—the meeting was clearly over. “But I do appreciate your coming to me with this information. And if we discover anything further to make us believe your friend’s death was not, in fact, an accident, I’ll be sure to contact you first thing.”

  Right. That’ll happen. I half expected him to make a smart-alecky comment about the steam pouring from my ears as I preceded him back down the stairs and out to the lobby.

  * * *

  Allison and her husband, Greg, have a house in Aptos, a well-to-do community about ten miles down the coast from Santa Cruz. The homes there tend to be newer and grander than those where I live, but I would never trade locations, even if you threw in an ocean view and three-car garage. Because Aptos is also the foggiest location in the whole county. I’ll take the older and funkier sunny West Side any day.

  But it was good fun to spend an evening hanging out in Allison’s ultramodern kitchen with its Viking range and marble countertop and to sit at their polished-wood bar sipping Sauvignon Blanc and gazing out at the perfectly groomed yard and emerald-green fairway of the Seascape Golf Course beyond.

  “How do you like your steak?” Greg asked, poking his head through the sliding-glass door from the patio.

  “Rare!” I shouted back. “Still mooing!”

  “Got it,” he said, then slid the door shut, lest the smoke from the barbecue engulf the house.

  Allison set a Caesar salad down on the dining room table and called out to her daughter, Eleanor, to set the table for dinner. “There’s a Barolo that Greg pulled out to go with the rib eyes,” she said as she returned to the kitchen. “You wanna finish your drink or switch to the red now?”

  “Both,” I said, draining my glass.

  Ten minutes later, the four of us sat down for our meal, which also included scalloped potatoes and a loaf of warm Dutch crunch bread. Allison passed the salad bowl, and I helped myself to a heaping serving. “A real Caesar salad. Nice. With coddled eggs and everything.”

  “Yep,” Allison replied. “You’re the one who taught me the recipe, remember? A couple years ago, I watched you make one at your old apartment, and you went on and on about how you should never order them in restaurants ’cause they always suck.”

  It’s true; they do mostly suck. I think it’s because commercial establishments are leery of preparing them the way they’re supposed to, with raw or coddled eggs. The only time I ever had a really great Caesar salad dining out was while vacationing in Puerto Vallarta. Which makes sense for two reasons: First, the salad was supposedly invented in the 1920s by a chef in Tijuana (named César, no doubt). And second, the Mexican government isn’t nearly so crazy about protecting people from themselves as here in the States, so the restaurants down there don’t live in fear of being closed down if they serve raw eggs, or cheese made with unpasteurized milk, or, God forbid, a rare hamburger.

  I bit into my bloody rib eye and allowed a moan to escape from my throat.

  Greg grinned. “It’s dry-aged. Pretty amazing, no?”

  “Amazing is the word, all right.” I cut another sliver and savored the luscious steak. It was slightly dry but had this amazing melt-in-your-mouth texture. And the flavor—wow. Intensely “beefy,” but not in an overpowering way. More that it tasted like meat is supposed to taste, in some primal, going-back-to-our-human-beginnings kind of way.

  Allison handed me the bread basket, and, after grabbing two slices, I passed it on to Eleanor. “So, have you been practicing for your audition on Saturday?” Allison asked, her wine glass only partially hiding a sly smile.

  “No thanks to you, that’s how I spent the better part of my morning. But even though the last thing I need right now with my crazy schedule is another time-suck like learning a solo, I gotta say the Recordare is pretty awesome.” I swirled my glass and raised it to my lips and was hit by the complex aromas of the Barolo. “Whoa. That’s some wine.”

  “Tar, roses, and leather is how it’s described by Wine Spectator,” Greg said. “I thought you’d like it. Too bad Eric’s missing out.”

  “Too bad, indeed. He’s gonna be jealous as hell when I tell him about this. But it’s his own damn fault for preferring some dumb bir
thday party to coming here tonight.”

  “Wasn’t it for a judge?” Allison asked. “I can see how it would be useful schmoozing for him to attend such festivities.”

  “True. And I can tell you also that this particular judge is no teetotaler when away from the bench, so it should be quite the party. Eric told me he was gonna Uber there and back.” I took another sip of wine and rolled it around my mouth, savoring the flavor. “So how about you? How’s the piece you’re auditioning for going?”

  “It’s tough, but I think I’m getting it down. And I totally agree with what you said about the Recordare. I was practicing the Benedictus this afternoon, and I swear I got shivers at one point while I was singing.” Allison speared a piece of romaine lettuce but then set the fork down on her plate. “What do you suppose it is about music that does that, anyway? I mean, you know how much I adore literature, but I can’t think of a single time when I’ve gotten that kind of shivery feeling from reading something. Not even ‘the man we know as Shakespeare,’” she added with a grin. “It only seems to happen with music.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I said. “Music can evoke emotions for me in a way that none of the other senses ever do. Is that true for you guys, too?” I asked, turning to Eleanor and Greg.

  The twelve-year-old frowned as she considered the question and then nodded. “I guess so,” she said. “I never really thought about it before. But listening to music is definitely what I do when I’m mad or upset, ’cause it’s the only thing that’ll take my mind off it. If I try to read a book or something, I just end up thinking about whatever it is that’s bugging me.”

  “I think you’ve put your finger on it, Eleanor,” Greg said.

  “Really?” She looked surprised but pleased.

  “Absolutely,” he responded. (Though, having just taken an enormous bite of creamy potatoes, it sounded more like “abfohutwy.”) After washing the potatoes down with a mouthful of wine, he went on. “Okay, so try to imagine what the evolutionary purpose of music must have been.”

  “Who says it has to have one?” I said.

  “Well,” Greg replied, “it seems highly unlikely that something as basic to human beings as music would have arisen without some evolutionary reason.”

  “It had to have evolved as a vehicle for remembering things,” Allison said. “You know, the tribe’s cultural history, or what plants were safe to eat. Since there was no written language way back when, the easiest way to pass information from generation to generation would have been by chanting it—music.”

  “True.” Greg poured more wine for me and then took some for himself. “It’s much easier to memorize long passages if they’re set to some sort of music, even if it’s just simple percussion.”

  “And also,” I added, “music doesn’t just evoke emotions but also memories. So it would be a natural way to preserve history.”

  “I agree with all you’re saying,” Greg said, “but surely that’s not the evolutionary purpose of music—the reason it evolved. It’s just not basic enough. Or important enough, to us as a species.”

  He cut a hunk of steak and as he chewed, held his fork aloft to indicate he had not yet finished his thought. I threw a “I know, girlfriend” look Allison’s way, and she grinned back and helped herself to more salad.

  After washing down his primordial meat with some blood-red wine, Greg continued his discourse on human evolution. “I read a piece in some magazine a while back about consciousness that might explain it. The article talked about this theory that several thousand years ago, our right and left brains were separated and couldn’t communicate with each other, so the one side perceived the other’s thoughts as external voices—hallucinations—which people believed to be the gods speaking to them, telling them what to do. But then later on, the barrier in the brain broke down, creating what’s now called ‘consciousness,’ and humans for the first time were able to engage in introspection and independent thinking.”

  I glanced over to see how Eleanor was reacting to the academic turn the discussion had taken. She was blowing bubbles through a straw into her glass of milk, paying her father no heed as far as I could discern.

  “I’m assuming there’s a point about music here?” Allison said, noticing my glance.

  “I’m getting to it,” Greg answered. “So once the two lobes of the brain became connected, this article proposed, people began to feel bombarded by stimuli—by the noise of consciousness, so to speak. You know, the constant chatter of the mind that never stops. And so I’m thinking that one of the primary purposes of music is to help us shut out that mental noise, the constant chatter. Which would drive humans bonkers if we didn’t have a way to alleviate it. Whad’ya think?”

  Eleanor looked up from her glass of milk. “As Mom likes to say, I think it’s an astute observation.” She then returned to her bubble-blowing as we three adults exploded in laughter.

  “Speaking of mental noise, how’s the sleuthing going?” Allison asked once we’d settled down again. “Last I heard, you thought the ex-girlfriend did it for his money.”

  I nodded discretely toward Eleanor, but Allison just smiled. “It’s okay,” she said. “I think twelve is plenty old enough to hear about murder these days. They get buckets of blood and gore in their vampire books and TV shows, right, Ellie?”

  Eleanor bobbed her head in a vigorous yes. “And besides,” she said, “Dad always says it’s important for me to read the newspaper and be up on current events. A murder should count as a current event, right?”

  “I suppose so,” Greg replied, but then he shot me a raised eyebrow, which I took to mean “Do try to leave out the grisly details, though, okay?”

  I filled them in on the basics of what I’d learned so far—the clues I’d gathered and the people I suspected at this point as a result of those clues.

  “Sounds like our chorus has more intrigue than the court of Elizabeth the First,” Allison observed when I’d finished.

  “Yeah, well Detective Vargas pretty much pooh-poohed everything I told him when I went down to the police station this morning. He said that I need to ‘go home and really think about it all,’ and then I’d ‘see all the holes in my theories.’ Sheez . . .”

  “And?” Allison asked.

  “And what? Have I really thought about it? Of course I have. It’s about all I can think about these days. Except that damn audition. Oh, and the two restaurants I have to somehow keep afloat even though we’re losing our head cook for one, and the front-of-the-house manager for the other is about to lose her mind from serving too much pasta and minestrone.”

  Allison ignored this rant and took a sip of wine. “So have you got a prime suspect yet?”

  “Yeah,” Eleanor chimed in. “Who do you think did it?”

  “Well, I have a few possibilities, but at this point, I guess for the prime suspects it’s a toss-up between the ex-girlfriend and our esteemed choral conductor.”

  “Marta?” Allison laughed. “No way. Really?”

  I explained all my reasons for suspecting Marta: the rumor about her and the new music festival, the lozenge wrapper I’d found, and my idea that the murder might have something to do with the music the director had found in Prague. “And I gotta say, there is something suspicious about her conveniently being all alone when she allegedly discovered that new Lacrymosa music.”

  I paused, slightly embarrassed to finish my thought.

  “Well, go on,” Allison urged. “Don’t keep us hanging in suspense.”

  “Okay. So what if Marta actually composed that Lacrymosa music herself and then forged the document to look like it was done by Süssmayr?”

  Allison stared at me for a moment, then burst out laughing once again. Just as I’d figured she would.

  “I get it,” I said. “You think I’ve got Amadeus on the brain and are going to tell me how ridiculous it is to imagine she could compose something like that.”

  “No, you’ve got it wrong. It’s not the composition—it’s
the other part. Do you have any idea what a herculean task it would be to pass off a forgery of that sort? I know, because I’ve worked with old manuscripts. First, you’d have to make the paper—re-create the content of the pulp and then form it in a press—with the correct watermarks from the exact time and location the paper would have been purchased. And then there’s the ink. They can do tests to see what it’s made of and how it’s faded over time. And the writing itself may be the hardest part: she’d have to be an incredibly talented forger to be able to imitate Süssmayr’s hand accurately enough to fool all the musicology experts out there in the whole wide world.”

  Allison shook her head. “Nuh-uh, no way. It’d be impossible for someone like Marta to pull off something of that caliber.”

  I picked up my glass and drained it. Well, so much for that theory.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Ohmygod!” Nichole cried out as the ocean came into view. “Look at the color of the water. It’s so blue!”

  I pulled over to the curb at the end of Columbia Street, shut off the T-Bird’s rattly engine, and yanked on the parking brake. “I’ve never seen it this color before. I wonder what’s going on?”

  Nichole was in town to visit an immigration client currently residing in the Santa Cruz County Jail and had come down a few hours early so we could hang out. Letting Buster out of the car, I hooked on his leash, and we crossed the street to the path along West Cliff Drive.

  Others were leaning on the railing above the cliffs and commenting on the ocean’s vibrant aquamarine hue. “It looks like glacier melt,” a man in a well-worn tweed jacket said to his companion.

  “Do you know what’s causing it?” I asked him.

  “A massive plankton bloom,” he said. “I heard it on the radio this morning. They apparently have these shells made of calcium carbonate, which turns the water this amazing turquoise color. The guy on the radio said the chalk in the White Cliffs of Dover is composed of the same type of shells, compressed into sediment millions of years ago. Pretty trippy, huh?”