by Leslie Karst
I was tapping my foot in time to the alto-line melismas from the Requiem, which had been a relentless earworm of mine for the past several days, when Jill finally pulled up, ten minutes late.
“Sorry for the delay,” she called out the open window, “but traffic on Mission Street is nuts right now for some reason. C’mon, hop in,” she added when I hesitated getting in the car. “We wouldn’t want to incur the wrath of Marta for not being on time.”
Jill took off before my door was completely shut and was already speeding down the street as I strapped on my seat belt. I doubted she really cared about Marta’s wrath, but it was obvious she was in a hurry to get to rehearsal.
I looked around the interior. It was an older-model BMW but still in great shape; she obviously cared about the car. The leather seats showed no signs of cracking, and the dashboard was unfaded and dust-free. A far cry from the sorry condition of my T-Bird.
It was also, unfortunately, spotlessly clean. No trash, no loose papers, not even any maps or tour guides in the pockets of the doors. Nothing, in other words, that could even remotely resemble a clue.
Could she recently have had the car detailed? And if so, was it to get rid of evidence?
But then, noticing the coins in the well between the seats—which had been painstakingly separated by denomination—I decided it might just be that she was a bit of a clean freak.
“I’m gonna take Broadway across town,” Jill said as she turned right, down the Laurel Street hill, “and then cut over on Seabright to Soquel.”
I nodded acquiescence. But I wasn’t concerned with the route we’d take to the church. I was instead wondering if there might be something incriminating hidden out of sight in the car. Making a show of dropping my pencil onto the floor, I leaned over and groped around under my seat. Nothing. Damn. I returned the pencil to its place in my black music folder.
“So, have you found out anything else about Lydia?” Jill asked when we stopped at a red light. “Or Marta?” she added, turning to look at me. “Last time we talked, those were the two you suspected of . . . you know.”
Yeah, I knew. More than she thought I did.
I decided a little baiting was in order. “Well actually, I’ve been thinking. What if that St. Christopher medal I found belonged to Marta? She is Italian, after all, so I bet she’s Catholic.”
“Yeah, good point.” Jill’s eyes seemed to perk up at this, and I thought I detected a twitch of her lips as she suppressed a smile.
We hung a left at Seabright, cruised past Gault Elementary and the roller rink, and then turned right onto Soquel Avenue.
“Oh shoot,” Jill said as soon as we’d driven about a block. “I came too far. The church is back the other way.” Glancing in her rearview mirror and then again over her shoulder, she made a sudden U-turn, narrowly avoiding a motorcyclist in the process.
“Watch out!” I yelled, but she just laughed.
“Don’t worry, I saw him.”
The sunlight was now directly in our eyes, heading west as we were. Jill pulled down her visor, but the setting sun was low enough on the horizon that it didn’t much help. Reaching into the well between the seats, she said, “Damn. I left my sunglasses at home. Can you look in the glove compartment? I think I have another pair in there.”
“Sure.” I opened the drop-down door and located a pair of fire-engine-red glasses in the shape of two large hearts. “Nice,” I said.
“Yeah. They were given to me as a joke, but I’m not too worried about my looks right about now.” She took the glasses and put them on, and as she squinted into the sun, trying to locate the United Methodist Church, I took the opportunity to quickly check out the contents of the glove box.
The compartment contained mostly papers—car registration, owner’s manual, and insurance cards—but there was also something that looked like a length of string. As I removed it, I suppressed a gasp.
It was a tuning fork on a thin white cord. And a large section of the white cord had been stained a deep red. Ohmygod. It had been her. But could she really have been so stupid as to keep the murder weapon—and then leave it in her car?
As I was staring at the cord, my mouth agape, Jill, who hadn’t noticed my discovery, made a quick left turn into the church driveway and pulled into a space at the far side of the almost-full parking lot. As she switched off the engine and turned to say something to me, she saw the tuning fork dangling from my hand.
I’d never seen anyone truly “blanch” before, but that’s exactly what she did. It was as if all the color had suddenly drained from her cheeks, leaving her face ashen and bloodless. Like a vampire. And that resemblance grew ever more apt as she curled back her lips, revealing a set of perfectly white teeth.
Opening the car door, I undid my seat belt and jumped out. Two other tardy singers were hurrying across the parking lot and through the large wooden doors of the church, and I ran toward them, still clutching the tuning fork.
Jill charged after me. I would have beaten her easily—I’m long-legged and in pretty good shape from that cycling, after all—but because I was looking ahead instead of down at the ground, I failed to notice one of those concrete parking bumpers in my path.
Tripping over it, I flew forward and slid across the asphalt on my belly. Jill was immediately on top of me. She wrestled for the tuning fork, but since my arms are a lot longer than hers, I was able to keep it out of reach.
“I’m guessing this belonged to Carol, right?” I held the prize even farther away as I managed to twist around onto my back. “And we both know what that red stain is.”
“You’ll never be able to prove where you found it,” she hissed in response. “Give it to me—or I’ll kill you, too!” Each time she tried for the tuning fork, however, I managed to jerk it away. Finally, no doubt starting to tire, she grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked on it, hard.
And that really pissed me off. Having your hair pulled not only hurts like hell, but I consider it to be the height of unfair fighting. So I slugged her, right in the face.
I would have hit her again, I admit it. But at that point, someone reached down and pulled Jill off of me. When he stood back up, I saw that it was Brian, and he now held Jill in a tight waist lock as she struggled in his tattooed arms. Eric and Roxanne stood next to the bass, shock on their faces.
“What the hell is going on?” Brian asked as I sat up and rubbed my scalp.
“I believe we’ve just discovered who killed Kyle and Carol,” I said.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jill never made it to dress rehearsal. Turns out Brian, Eric, and Roxanne had all overheard what she’d said to me, so Eric was calling 9-1-1 before I’d even picked myself up off the ground.
Roxanne dashed inside to tell Marta what had happened, and the rest of us, with Brian still restraining the now-quiescent Jill, waited for the cops to arrive. I was hesitant to say too much in front of Jill, but once Roxanne returned, I did explain to the three of them why she and I had been fighting over a tuning fork.
“And I owe you an apology,” I said to Brian. “After that kitchen fire, I got the harebrained idea that you might have started it on purpose, and it kinda freaked me out. Especially after I thought you’d followed me up to that storage room the night before.”
Brian shook his head. “No, I never did that. But I guess that explains why you were looking at me funny right after the fire.”
“Me? You were the one looking at me funny,” I said, and we both laughed. “Anyway, I’m also really sorry I put you on that list. I know you saw it that time in the Gauguin office. I can’t believe I actually suspected you of being a murderer.”
He shook his head and grinned. “Whatever. I get it now.” Brian nodded at his captive, who was starting to sag in his arms. At the sound of a siren, however, Jill stiffened and then started to struggle again as a squad car pulled into the church parking lot.
Eric stepped forward to introduce himself as a district attorney to the officer and
explained the situation to her. After Brian and I had corroborated the content of Jill’s damning statement, the cop cuffed her, informed her of her Miranda rights, and put her in the back seat of the car. By this time, two other police cruisers had arrived.
I handed the tuning fork to the cop Eric had spoken to, but when I started to explain its significance, she stopped me. “It’s okay,” she said as she bagged and marked the evidence. “You might as well wait and explain it all when we get your full statement.”
They wanted the three of us to come down to the station right then, but after some serious wheedling and sweet-talking by Eric, the lead cop grudgingly allowed us to go ahead to our rehearsal.
“First thing in the morning, we’ll be there, I promise!” Eric assured the officer, who merely waved us off. I walked back to Jill’s BMW, but when I started to reach into the passenger seat to retrieve my music, the young policeman standing guard stopped me. “Sorry, but you can’t touch anything in there. It’s evidence.”
“Oh. But I really need—”
“Don’t worry,” Eric interrupted, taking me by the arm. “Marta always brings extra scores. You can use one of them.”
“But all my markings are in there,” I whined as he led me away from the car. Though even as I said it, I realized just how trivial this sounded.
* * *
The next night, standing on the top row of risers at the back the alto section, I tried to push from my mind all that had occurred over the past twenty-four hours and instead concentrate on the moment. But that was pretty much impossible.
After dress rehearsal the night before, Eric and Marta had both tried to convince me to go out for a drink to talk about Jill, but I’d declined, asking Eric instead to drop me off at home so I could go straight to bed. Exhausted as my body felt, however, my brain refused to cooperate, and I lay awake for hours.
I’d gone to the police station first thing this morning to give my statement to Detective Vargas. He didn’t explicitly say it, but from the way he kept referring to Jill as the “killer,” I got the strong impression she’d ended up confessing to the crime.
Once Vargas released me, I’d returned home to drink more coffee and try to unwind before my Solari’s lunch shift. Fast-forwarding through the day’s Tour de France stage seemed like the perfect ticket, and it worked. As I headed down to the restaurant two hours later, I found myself musing how the race was coming right down to the wire. After today’s grueling Alpe d’Huez climb, only thirteen seconds separated the top two riders, so tomorrow’s individual time trial would likely decide it all for the ceremonial finish on Sunday. (Yes, I was rooting for the Italian to win—naturalmente!)
It was Giulia’s first day back at Solari’s after suffering her burns, and everyone was pampering and making a fuss over the waitress when I got there—and she ate up that attention like a plate of fettuccine Alfredo. She was even being kind to Sean, the hapless busboy who’d knocked the pot of hot coffee onto her, a situation somewhat akin to those nineteenth-century Peaceable Kingdom paintings depicting the leopard lying down with the lamb.
I’d managed to duck out early from Solari’s to take a short nap before call time for our concert and was thankfully now feeling at least slightly more human than I had earlier in the day. Catching my eye from the bass section, Eric gave me the thumbs-up from his spot on the risers, and I smiled back.
This was it. Show time.
Marta stepped onto the podium and bowed to the audience’s warm applause. She then turned around to face the chorus, closed her eyes as she drew a slow, deep breath, and then raised her baton.
The piece began quietly, the string basses and the violins and violas providing a simple back-and-forth accompaniment to the bassoons and clarinets floating above. I’d missed hearing this introductory orchestral passage of the Requiem the night before, as Marta had already moved on to the second movement by the time we’d been released by the police to join the dress rehearsal.
But as I listened now to the glorious, intertwining woodwind melody that opens Mozart’s final masterpiece, I was so entranced that for the first time since the previous evening, I was able to clear from my mind the image of Jill’s face, closing in on me as she hissed that she would kill me, too.
And so entranced, also, that if the tenor standing next to me hadn’t bumped my elbow when he raised his black folder to sing, I would have missed coming in on the alto entrance.
After that tiny hiccup, however, the next three movements went smoothly, and I allowed myself the luxury of savoring the moment. For here in this church, right now, I was finally doing what I had dreamt of ever since my teenage years—performing the fiery, divine requiem mass of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Alas, my “savoring moment” didn’t last long. As soon as the fourth movement commenced, the anxiety started to descend, bringing with it sweaty palms, shaking legs, and, worst of all for a singer, shortness of breath. My solo, the Recordare, was next.
At the finish of the Rex tremendae, I threaded my way through the alto section, down the risers, doing my best not to trip over the long skirt of my black concert dress, and took my place with the other three soloists next to the podium. Marta gave the downbeat for the movement, and as I internally counted the thirteen measures of rest before my entrance, I beamed the least-fake smile I could conjure.
One more measure . . . Deep breath . . . Now.
And then it was done. I’d come in on my F with confidence and verve (and hopefully on key), and now that the other three had joined in, I was able to relax and just sing. Our four voices wove together like a vibrant tapestry, taking turns with the theme and then passing it off to others, until finally coming together in a grand ensemble quartet for the finish.
When the movement was over, I found that I was once more shaking, but this time from exhilaration rather than fear. I could get used to this, I thought as I made my way back to the top of the alto section.
* * *
Eric raised his Martini glass in a toast. “To our newest soloist,” he proclaimed.
“Quartet-ist,” I corrected, clinking glasses with him and then with Marta, Roxanne, and Brian.
“Whatever.” Eric waved his hand. “You still did a superb job. It’s scary your first time out.”
“It’s scary your twentieth time,” Roxanne said with a laugh. “Especially when you have to fill in at the last second for someone who’s landed herself in jail.”
“Totally.” Brian pulled Roxanne in close so he could plant a kiss on her cheek. “You were awesome, babe!”
“To Roxanne!” we all shouted—perhaps a bit too loudly—once more raising our glasses. We were now on to our second round of drinks and, yes, had gotten a tad rowdy. But it was almost eleven, and the crowd at Gauguin had thinned out to just a handful of diners, most of whom were probably also rather in their cups by this time of night. Plus, I didn’t really give a damn, in any case.
“And here’s to justice prevailing in the end!” Roxanne said, slopping half a pink Cosmo down the front of her black dress.
“Oh yeah, that reminds me. Did Jill confess?” I asked, turning to Eric. “Because from what Detective Vargas said this morning, it sure seemed like it.”
“She did, in fact. And I had the pleasure of reading her statement, courtesy of a fellow DA who’s on the case and who surreptitiously slipped me a copy.” (These last few difficult words were somewhat slurred by Eric.)
“No way.” I leaned across the table. “Do tell.”
“Well . . .” He glanced around the dining room in an exaggerated, faux-conspiratorial manner. “Promise it won’t go past this small group.”
“We promise!” the rest of us chimed out in unison.
“Okay,” Eric said, trying to keep his voice down but doing a poor job of it. “So once Jill realized she’d basically already confessed—you know, by what we’d overheard her say in the parking lot—I guess she broke down and spilled it all. It’s not that unusual, actually. People like to get stuf
f off their chest.” Eric sipped from his stemmed glass and set it down carefully on the white tablecloth. “Anyway, the gist of what she said is that she pushed Kyle out that window in a fit of anger after seeing him and Marta up there, you know . . .”
“Kissing,” Marta supplied. At the shocked looks from Roxanne and Brian, the choral director just shrugged. “What can I say? It is true.”
Eric studied Marta a moment, lips pursed, and then went on. “Apparently, she removed the ‘broken window’ sign when Kyle wasn’t looking and then asked him to open the window for her, saying she felt faint or something. When he turned to do it for her, she gave him a good shove, but because he was leaning on the frame, the whole thing came out at the same time. At that point, I guess she freaked out and, terrified that someone would have heard the racket when it all went crashing down, tossed the sign out the window and hightailed it back downstairs.”
“Wow,” Roxanne said. “That’s intense.”
“Yeah.” Eric nodded. “Then a couple days later, she saw Marta drop that St. Christopher medal on the floor and hit upon the idea of using it to try to frame her.”
He glanced at the director, who smiled grimly. “She was unhappy, not only about me and Kyle,” she said, “but I think also about not being chosen for the solo in the Poulenc Gloria.”
“And don’t forget the octets last spring,” Eric added. “She was pretty pissed off about how you called her out for not learning her part.”
“All terrific reasons to frame someone for a murder, I’m sure,” Brian said, then downed the rest of his IPA.
“So she went back and planted that medal . . .” I prompted Eric.
“Uh-huh. But because the cops had already ruled it an accident, they never went back to the scene, and so they never found her evidence.”
“But someone did see Jill with it,” I said.
Eric nodded. “Carol. Yeah. I guess she must have seen Jill pick the medal up and pocket it when Marta dropped it, because she later asked Jill about it.”
I shook my head. “Which signed her death warrant. And then I come in and like a doofus agree to help Jill find Kyle’s ‘real’ killer.”