by Leslie Karst
The director took her place on the podium and looked out at us, chin thrust forward and eyes hard. “I know some of you think it would be best if we canceled our concert, given what happened on Monday night. And I must admit I gave serious thought to doing so. But then Carol’s family contacted me and asked me to please go ahead with the performance—that she would have wanted us to do so.”
Marta bit her lip and frowned, continuing to cast her gaze over the members of the chorus. Was she searching for a guilty face in the crowd?
“And then, the more I thought about it, the more determined I became that whoever did this horrible crime would not succeed in taking from us the most precious gift, the one thing that can best help us heal from this horror we have experienced. The chance to sing the magnificent Mozart Requiem.”
The chorus stood as one and applauded, showing our support for this sentiment.
Marta smiled, then held up her hands for quiet. “Good. And so we will dedicate this Friday’s performance not only to Kyle but also to Carol, and we will keep them both in our hearts as we sing. Now let us begin the healing process, shall we?”
When Nadia took her seat at the piano, we all clapped once more. This would be the accompanist’s last rehearsal with the chorus, since tomorrow we’d have the full orchestra. Red splotches breaking out all over her ruddy cheeks, the young Russian smiled and bobbed her head, then opened her score.
The plan was to run through the entire Requiem, including the solos, this evening, and we made it all the way to the Confutatis before stopping. Marta turned to the tenors. “Boys, boys, boys,” she said, tapping a pencil against the metal stand in time to her words. “We just worked on this, not an hour ago. You must cut your off your esses, not hold them out like you are doing. If you do not do so, Mozart will come down and pluck out your hair!” Directing a pointed look at one particular tenor in the back row, she raised her arm once more to conduct. “You sound like a nest of snakes,” she added with an impatient shake of the head.
But the rest of the rehearsal went without a hitch. I was pleased with my performance during the Recordare, so when we got to the Benedictus, I allowed myself the luxury of closing my eyes as I listened to Allison and her cohorts sing their ethereal quartet. How soothing to let the music simply wash over and still my brain. Cleanse it, at least momentarily, of the chaos that had descended upon me over the past week.
Wow, Allison is really good, I mused, listening as she came in with her lilting opening solo. Allison was soon joined by the soprano’s answer to her theme, and then the two men, and I smiled at the calmness being instilled in me by Mozart’s glorious music.
But then the piano intruded with an insistent, menacing cadence, and a vision of Carol’s body flashed into my head, jarring me from my reverie. The image was vivid and clear, and as I stared at it in my mind’s eye, I noticed something wrong. Something missing.
Opening my eyes, I scanned the room about me. Every single singer wore a tuning fork around their neck. But Carol’s neck had been bare.
Except for the red line from her strangulation. Whoever had done it must have used the tuning fork cord hanging around her neck. And then taken the weapon away with them afterward.
I was still digesting this disturbing brainstorm when the Benedictus moved on without break into the Osanna. Everyone else had stood at the conclusion of the quartet, leaving me sitting there alone, staring blankly at the scuffed hardwood floor at my feet. The woman next to me was kind enough to give me a nudge, however, so I was able to jump to my feet just in time to come in with the rest of the altos.
We had one only more movement after that, and then, to the surprise of the entire chorus, Marta let us out early. “You sound stupende,” she said after we’d finished the run-through, “and it has been a difficult week, so you deserve a little gift. Go home and get some rest before tomorrow’s dress rehearsal.”
Fat chance of that. I made a beeline for Eric and asked if he was going to Kalo’s, as had become our postpractice tradition on Wednesdays.
“Absolutely,” he said. “I had a lousy day at work, so I could use a stiff drink.”
On our way over to the bar, he told me about the case he was working on. A gang member had shot and wounded a bystander who’d gotten in the way of the guy’s intended target. “My boss is insisting I let him cop a plea in exchange for his testimony against another gangbanger, but it really galls me to let the little shit off so easy.” Eric aimed a kick at a Starbucks cup someone had left on the sidewalk, sending it flying out into the street. “Sometimes I really hate this job.”
“Yeah, that does sound hard,” I said, retrieving the cup and dropping it into a trash can just three feet from where it had landed. “I’ve had a stressful few days, too.” I’d just finished telling him about my eureka moment regarding Carol’s tuning fork as the murder weapon and why I was worried it might have been his fellow bass, Brian, who’d killed her when we arrived at Kalo’s. The place was busier than usual, since we were there almost an hour earlier than our normal time, but we lucked out: a table was just leaving as we came in, which we hustled to snag.
A couple minutes later, Marta showed up with Roxanne, another soprano named Sophie, and the tenor, Phillip. The choral director took the seat next to mine and leaned over to tell me I’d done a fine job on the Recordare at rehearsal.
“Thanks,” I said. “I was a little nervous tonight, but I’m sure I’ll be even more petrified at the concert. So wish me luck with that.”
Marta raised an imaginary glass. “In bocca al lupo! In the wolf’s mouth,” she added, seeing my blank look. “It’s our way of saying good luck.”
“Ah. Like ‘break a leg’ for us,” I said. “Though I’m thinking any luck you just wished may well be deemed invalid for lack of a beverage. You’ll have to do it again once we’ve got our drinks. Oh good, here she comes.”
After we’d all placed our orders, Eric and Phillip predictably began talking once again about surfing, and Roxanne and Sophie commenced laughing and shrieking about a fellow soprano’s wedding they’d attended the previous weekend. Since none of them were paying any attention to Marta or me, I said to her in a low voice, “I have to tell you I have this horrible feeling I know who killed Carol—and Kyle.”
“Ah, sì? Who?”
“Brian, in the bass section.” I glanced again at the others at the table before continuing, then explained my reasons for suspecting him.
“Davvero? But why would he have a reason to be angry at Kyle? Or Carol? Or at you and your restaurant?”
“Well, he’s made no secret of the fact that he didn’t much like Kyle. I think it has to do with the bad blood between Jill and his girlfriend, Roxanne.” Here I lowered my voice even more, and Marta nodded acknowledgement of the animosity between the two women. “And Eric told me he thought Kyle was having an affair with Roxanne during the tour last summer—”
Marta interrupted me with a hoot of laughter that caused the others to stop talking and look our way. Once they’d returned to their conversations, I went on. “Yes, I now know, of course, that’s not the case. But what if Brian had heard that same rumor?”
Then I told her about the list of suspects I’d compiled and how I was pretty certain Brian had seen the list and was not at all happy about it. “So you see, he’s now got reason to be angry at me, too. And if he is the killer, good reason to try to get me to lay off my investigation. The way, I’m thinking, he may have done with Carol.” My hand went instinctively to the shoelace holding my tuning fork about my neck. “She must have found something out that—”
The waitress arrived with our drinks, so I shut up. As she distributed the beer, wine, and cocktails, Marta tapped a forefinger on the polished wood tabletop and chewed her lip. Once the gal had left, the director asked, “So what makes you so sure Kyle didn’t just fall by accident, like the police decided?”
“Lots of things.” I told her my theory about the position his body had landed in and then explained what Jill had sai
d about Kyle’s always being cold and being super cautious about everything.
But then I stopped talking. Marta didn’t appear to be listening anymore and was staring blankly past me, out the window at the people passing by on the sidewalk. After a moment, she blinked a couple times, frowned, and then drank some more of her wine.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s Jill. I was trying to think back to when I left Kyle in that room, and when you mentioned Jill just now, I suddenly remembered: I saw her at the top of the stairway as I went back downstairs that morning. So she must have been the last person to see him alive.” And then she stopped and put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, Madonna,” she whispered.
“What is it?” I asked.
Marta leaned over to speak in my ear. “Kyle and I were kissing while we were up in that room,” she hissed. “Remember I told you I was trying to make up with him? Well, he didn’t put up any objection.” She smiled quickly, but her wide eyes showed the fear that had swept over her. “What if Jill had seen us?”
What, indeed.
Frowning, I sipped my Maker’s Mark and tried to recall exactly what Jill had said at the Mexican restaurant that night she’d asked me to investigate the death. The way she’d been so sure Kyle’s death wasn’t an accident came back to me. At the time, even though I’d agreed with her, I’d wondered how she could be so very certain but had chalked it up to her obvious emotion on the issue.
Now, however, my thoughts went back to that conversation I’d overheard on West Cliff Drive: “You may hear what I’m saying, but you’re not listening,” the woman had said to that hippie guy. Maybe that was my problem, too. I’d been hearing what Jill said but not truly listening to what this certitude of hers truly meant. For when she’d told me she was sure it wasn’t an accident, she was indeed sure.
As you would be—if you were the one who’d killed him.
The more I thought about it, the more the pieces of the puzzle started slipping into place. If Jill had already been suspicious about Kyle and Marta, then seeing them kissing in that storage room not only would have confirmed her suspicions but would have also inflamed her anger. And how easy it would have been to simply ask him to open the window and then shove him out onto the cement courtyard below. He would have no doubt turned around in shock as she did so—which would explain the position his body was in—but it would have been too late to stop his fall.
Then I remembered that sign. Someone as risk averse as Kyle surely wouldn’t open a window if there’d been a notice on it saying it was broken. Jill must have removed the sign before asking him to do so, I reasoned. Which was why it had been on the ground next to the window frame, rather than still taped to it.
As grisly as this scenario was, I didn’t find it too hard to imagine Jill committing such an act. The more I’d come to know her, the more I’d detected a sort of hardness in the woman. Things like her derisive remarks about others and the way she’d seemed more concerned with who had killed Kyle than the fact that she’d just lost her boyfriend to a gruesome fall, accident or not.
Of course, this raised the glaring question: if Jill was the killer, why then would she ask me to investigate the death, when the cops had already ruled it an accident? She had been in the perfect position, after all, to get away with the crime.
And then it hit me. Jill didn’t just want to kill Kyle; she also wanted to pin it on Marta—as revenge for their affair and for the mistreatment she felt she’d received from the choral director over the years.
Jill must have stolen or found the St. Christopher medal and then planted it in the crevice. She then convinced me to look into the death and talked me into searching the room, in the hopes I’d find it and lead the cops to Marta. And then I go and walk straight into her trap.
But why kill Carol? I wondered. And then I realized the answer was obvious: Carol must have seen Jill plant the medal. She was, after all, in that room a lot, being part of the dessert team. If Jill knew Carol had seen her, she could have been waiting for the perfect moment, when no one else was around, to shut her up—permanently.
A terrific theory, all right. But how to prove it?
Chapter Twenty-Five
When I walked into the Gauguin kitchen the next afternoon, I was surprised to see that Javier had the eight-burner Wolf range top deconstructed and was busy scrubbing one of its parts with a small brush.
“What’s this?” I said. “I thought the stove had already been completely cleaned after the fire.”
“So did I,” Javier said, blowing on the thin pipe he held in his hand and examining it. “But it hasn’t been working well since then. The burners haven’t been lighting properly, and when I took them out, I could see the heads were plugged up. And then once I got those off, I realized the flash tubes were clogged, too.” He held the dirty tube up for my inspection. “Probably a combination of the ANSUL system foam and built-up grease. So I had to take the damn thing apart again. Just as well, though, because there was still a lot of that greasy foam crap on all the burner grates and gaskets, and also on the cooktop.” He shook his head and went back to his scrubbing. “I guess I shoulda just done it myself, instead of trusting Tomás with the job.”
“How ’bout the other things? The grill and salamander and stuff. They all clean?”
“Well, the charbroiler could use a little more work, if you feel like an upper-body workout.”
“Sure. No problem. I’ve got a few hours before our dress rehearsal tonight.”
“And Brian should be back in a couple minutes to help you out.”
“Oh . . .” He was not high on my list right now of people I wanted to be in close quarters with.
Javier noticed my frown and raised an eyebrow, Vulcan-style. “What?” he asked.
“Well, you may think this is really weird, but . . . okay. You know that guy I told you about in our chorus who died when he fell out of a window? Well, what I didn’t tell you was that I’d been asked by his girlfriend to look into his death.”
Javier smiled and then set down the tube he’d been working on and picked up another one. “I happen to know you’re pretty good at that.”
“Yeah, well, maybe not. So I made this list of everyone I suspected.”
He chuckled. “Not me, I hope.”
“No, you’re safe this time around. But the thing is, Brian was on the list. I knew he had a grudge against the guy who’d died and, well, there were other reasons I was worried about him, too. So when the fire happened and Brian was standing right next to the garbage can where it started, I started thinking that maybe it really had been him who’d killed the guy and that now he’d started the fire to, I dunno, shut me up or something. And then later, after I made that list, I left it in the Gauguin office, and I’m pretty sure Brian saw it there.”
Javier stopped his scrubbing and stared at me.
“It’s okay,” I said, holding out my arms, palms facing the chef. “I know I’m probably just being paranoid.”
Javier was still staring at me, shifting his weight from one leg to the other like he was nervous about something.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Look, Sally, I have something to confess.”
“Don’t tell me you killed Kyle,” I said with a laugh.
But he didn’t smile. “So you know how I told you I’d quit smoking? That I hadn’t had a cigarette in a couple weeks? Well, I kinda fell off the, uh . . .”
“Wagon,” I supplied. “Hey, that’s okay. I understand. It’s hard quitting.”
Javier was shaking his head. “No, you don’t get it. That night of the fire? I’d gone outside to have a smoke, and I didn’t want anyone to see my cigarette lying out there, so I threw it away in the trash can in the kitchen.”
“Oh.”
“I was sure it was out, but I guess I was wrong,” he said, looking down at his feet. “I am so sorry, Sally.”
I was silent for a moment, digesting this information. It was a huge relief to learn t
hat it hadn’t been Brian after all and that no one had started the fire on purpose. But how could Javier have been so stupid to do such a thing? Then again, I had a hard time feeling too much anger toward the chef, since the reality was that Gauguin likely wouldn’t even still exist if not for him.
But I wasn’t going to let him completely off the hook. “Okay,” I said. “I forgive you. But your punishment has already been meted out, since you’ll be working a busy Thursday tonight, and Friday, with both me and Brian gone for our chorus thing.”
* * *
Three hours later, I was standing on my front porch waiting for my ride to the dress rehearsal.
After Marta’s revelation last night at Kalo’s, she and I had discussed how we might prove what we both now believed to be the truth—that it was Jill who had murdered Kyle and Carol. When neither one of us had come up with any good ideas, I’d finally said, “Damn. If only I could get into her house, or her car, maybe I could find a clue of some sort.”
“Why don’t you ask her for a ride tomorrow night?” Marta had suggested. “You could say your car was in the repair shop or something.”
“Good idea. God knows, no one would ever question a T-Bird having engine trouble.”
And so I’d found Jill’s number this morning on the chorus roster and cadged a ride from her. As soon as I’d gotten home from Gauguin, I’d made sure to hide the conspicuous yellow convertible out of sight in the garage and had then run through my solo a couple more times before coming outside to wait for my new number-one suspect to pick me up.
My pulse must have been jacked up to well over a hundred beats per minute, and my palms were sweating something fierce. I had absolutely no idea what I was going to be looking for in Jill’s car, and the thought of trying to conduct any kind of search with her sitting right there was making me nervous as hell. Not to mention the fact that I was about to be trapped in a confined space with a woman I believed crazy enough to shove her boyfriend out of a window onto a cement courtyard below and then strangle a fellow chorus member to keep her quiet.