Death in D Minor

by Alexia Gordon

  Praise for the Gethsemane Brown Mystery Series

  MURDER IN G MAJOR (#1)

  “The captivating southwestern Irish countryside adds a delightful element to this paranormal series launch. Gethsemane is an appealing protagonist who is doing the best she can against overwhelming odds.”

  – Library Journal (starred review)

  “Gordon strikes a harmonious chord in this enchanting spellbinder of a mystery.”

  – Susan M. Boyer,

  USA Today Bestselling Author of Lowcountry Book Club

  “Charming debut.”

  – Kirkus Reviews

  “A fantastic story with a great ghost, with bad timing. There are parts that are extremely comical, and Gethsemane is a fantastic character that you root for as the pressure continually builds for her to succeed…in more ways than one.”

  – Suspense Magazine

  “Just when you think you’ve seen everything, here comes Gethsemane Brown, baton in one hand, bourbon in the other….There’s charm to spare in this highly original debut.”

  – Catriona McPherson,

  Agatha Award-Winning Author of The Reek of Red Herrings

  “Gethsemane Brown is a fast-thinking, fast-talking dynamic sleuth (with a great wardrobe) who is more than a match for the unraveling murders and cover-ups, aided by her various–handsome–allies and her irascible ghost.”

  – Chloe Green,

  Author of the Dallas O’Connor Mysteries

  Books in the Gethsemane Brown Mystery Series

  by Alexia Gordon

  MURDER IN G MAJOR (#1)

  DEATH IN D MINOR (#2)

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  Copyright

  DEATH IN D MINOR

  A Gethsemane Brown Mystery

  Part of the Henery Press Mystery Collection

  First Edition | July 2017

  Henery Press, LLC

  www.henerypress.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including internet usage, without written permission from Henery Press, LLC, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Copyright © 2017 by Alexia Gordon

  Author photograph by Peter Larsen

  This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Trade Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-63511-231-3

  Digital epub ISBN-13: 978-1-63511-232-0

  Kindle ISBN-13: 978-1-63511-233-7

  Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-63511-234-4

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication

  To Mom and Dad

  To Nancy Willard, 1936-2017

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you, Rachel and Erin, for turning my messy manuscripts into good books.

  Thank you, Kendel, Art, Amber, and the rest of the Hen House, for believing a cozy mystery series with an African American sleuth and a snarky ghost is something people want to read.

  Thank you, Paula and Gina at Talcott Notch.

  Thank you, Wendy at Lifeworking.

  Thank you, Professor Terry Myers of the College of William and Mary, for teaching me about the Bray School.

  Thank you, “Ann Wager” and “Gowan Pamphlet,” for sharing your stories with me at Colonial Williamsburg’s St. George Tucker House.

  Thank you, Charlotte Courtney of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, for going above and beyond to help me find answers when I asked you a random question about embroidery and Colonial-era black schoolgirls.

  Thank you to all my friends for your unwavering support and your hilarious Facebook posts.

  Thank you to all of the authors who ungrudgingly shared your time and advice to help a newbie figure out what this writing business is all about.

  Thank you, Mom and Dad, for that first library card. This is all your fault and I love you for it.

  One

  He showed up two days after Christmas.

  Gethsemane Brown awoke to the crunch of tires pulling into the gravel drive of Carraigfaire Cottage, home for the past few months. She’d moved into the whitewashed thatched-roof house perched near the base of Carrick Point lighthouse after a job loss and a theft stranded her in Dunmullach, a cliffside village in southwestern Ireland. She found a new job as music director at the local boys’ school. Which was closed for the Christmas holidays. Which was why she was still in bed at—she reached for the clock on her bedside table—seven thirty in the morning. A night owl since childhood, she’d chosen a career—concert musician—that allowed her to stay up late and sleep in. However, in the three months she’d been in Ireland, solving murders and preparing a school orchestra for an important competition had robbed her of the chance to sleep late.

  She threw back the covers and got up, shivering as her bare feet hit the cold floor. She reached the cottage’s entrance hall by the time her unexpected visitor knocked. No one she knew from the village would trek up to Carrick Point to make a wake-up call. She grabbed the shillelagh her students had given her as a Christmas present.

  “Who is it?” she asked through the heavy wooden door.

  “Hank Wayne,” came the reply in an American-accented voice like hers. Not just like hers. Her Virginia drawl rang far more melodious than the flat tones of the man’s Midwestern English. Although her loathing for the speaker may have biased her. He’d been after Carraigfaire Cottage since before their first meeting several weeks ago.

  “It’s early,” she said to the hotel developer. “What do you want?”

  “I want to come in. Billy didn’t think you’d mind.”

  She hadn’t spoken to Billy McCarthy, the cottage’s owner and her landlord, since he brought Hank around to look at the cottage. He’d gone off on another business trip right after. Billy hadn’t come right out and admitted it during the visit, but the men’s talk made it clear he planned to sell Carraigfaire to Hank. Who’d convert this quaint postcard-perfect two-hundred-year-old cottage into one of his tacky tourist monstrosities and destroy the cultural and historical character of the area. Gethsemane knew his track record. She’d even stayed in a few of his horrid pink motels while on tour with the Cleveland Symphony. That had been four orchestras before she landed in Dunmullach. A lifetime ago.

  “Billy didn’t say anything to me.” She put down the heavy walking stick and tugged at her pajamas. “I’m not really dressed for company.”

  “Miss Brown.” A note of irritation crept into the practiced, businesslike tone. “My assistant and I have a flight to catch this afternoon and this is the only convenient time for us to do a walk-through. I can get McCarthy on the phone so you can discuss it with him, but it would streamline the process if you’d just let us in now. This will only take a few moments, then we’ll be out of your way.” He spoke like a man used to getting what he wanted.

  Gethsemane eyed the shillelagh. Would it be worth spending life in an Irish prison to really get him out of her way?

  More knocking. “Miss Brown?”

  Why prolong it? She opened the door wide enough to see onto the porch. Hank stood closest to her,
bundled in the familiar gray cashmere overcoat and scarf, silver pompadour with every hair in place unchanged from his last visit. A woman in a leather car coat huddled behind him. Her tight bun pulled veins into high relief on her temples. She wore a fake tan that failed to hide the underlying paleness of her skin. She muttered about the deficiencies of gravel driveways as she stood on one foot, the other leg flexed at the knee, and examined a stiletto-heeled boot.

  Hank stepped forward. Gethsemane stepped back to avoid a collision and opened the door wide enough for Hank and his assistant to come in.

  “Thank you, Miss Brown,” Hank said.

  “Doctor Brown,” she corrected.

  “Oh, that’s right, you do have some sort of degree in, what is it, music?”

  “A Ph.D. From Yale.”

  “You must forgive me, Doctor Brown. I believe I mentioned before I don’t pay much attention to music. Too busy earning money.”

  Gethsemane clenched her jaw as the duo filed past. Sarcastic comebacks filled her head, but she suspected Hank would prolong his walk-through in retaliation for any comments. Best to keep silent for now and wait for a better opportunity to deal with Hank. An opportunity when she had the upper hand and could deal with him on her terms.

  Hank led the way to the music room. His assistant trotted behind him. She paused by the coat rack and lifted the sleeve of a mackintosh between a gloved thumb and forefinger. She sneered, then let the sleeve fall as if she feared it might be infectious or vermin might crawl from it.

  She wiped her fingertips on her coat. “How do you stand it?”

  Gethsemane pegged her accent as New York, filtered through vocal coaching. “Stand what?”

  “Living out here with the leprechauns? Mr. Wayne’s is-it-miss-or-is-it-doctor routine is for show. He knows exactly who you are. He paid people to find out.”

  Gethsemane held her tongue as she vacillated between anger at being spied on and being creeped out. At least Hank did his homework.

  The assistant continued. “We know all about you. Degrees from Vassar and Yale. Certification in orchestral conducting. Multi-instrumentalist. Prize-winner in several important competitions, often the youngest female and only African American to win some of them. World traveler who’s performed with first-class orchestras on nearly every continent. And you turned down a job offer back in Boston—an offer from Peter Nolan, no less—for the privilege of being stuck out here in some dreary cottage straight from a Brontë novel without a Starbucks or a Neimans or a nail bar in a hundred-mile radius. I’d throw myself off the nearest cliff. How do you manage?”

  Gethsemane couldn’t hold back. Her inner snark demon won out over discretion. “Being out here’s not so bad. Fresh air, beautiful view. And it could be worse. I could be playing flunky to a megalomaniacal narcissist with the aesthetic sensibility of a toddler beauty pageant coordinator.”

  The woman gasped. Hank’s voice bellowed down the hall. “Where the hell are you?” The woman sniffled and hurried after her boss. Gethsemane followed. The assistant whipped out a tablet and stylus and scribbled as Hank gestured at walls. “We’ll knock that one out, push that one back a few feet,” he said.

  Gethsemane slammed the Steinway’s keyboard, interrupting Hank’s soliloquy with a cacophony of notes. She strode to Hank and stared up at him, hands on hips. “You have no right to barge in here and talk about knocking out walls and auctioning off furniture. This is Eamon McCarthy’s cottage—”

  Hank cut her off. “Was Eamon McCarthy’s cottage. Eamon McCarthy’s been dead a quarter century. Now it’s Billy McCarthy’s cottage, and once he sells it to me, it will be my cottage. In no case is it any concern of yours.”

  “Carraigfaire isn’t some random building no one’s going to miss. Eamon and Orla McCarthy made important contributions to music and literature. Their home was their creative space and has major cultural significance. As an artist, and a decent human being, what happens to this cottage concerns me and would even if I didn’t live here. Your mutilating this place just so you can install a cocktail bar and park an extra car or two in the front is—is—sacrilege. Eamon’s and Orla’s fans won’t sit quiet while you destroy their legacy.” She counted herself among those fans. Eamon McCarthy, brilliant composer and pianist, inspired her musical career.

  “Dr. Brown.” Hank’s tone dripped oil. Gethsemane wanted to run upstairs and shower. “I don’t want to destroy Carraigfaire. I want to enhance it, make it accessible to the new legions of McCarthy fans—fans garnered thanks to you.”

  Leave it to Hank to throw her success in her face. Twenty-five years ago, Eamon McCarthy had been suspected of murdering his wife in a jealous rage then killing himself in a fit of remorse. A month ago, Gethsemane proved him innocent and uncovered the real killer. Her investigation made the news, and news generated publicity. She pictured oversized tourist buses lining the road and a parking lot crowded with cars where the garden used to be. And the thought it might be partly her fault…Hank rubbed salt in her wound. She’d pull the scab off one of his.

  “Aren’t you afraid remodeling the cottage will upset the ghost?”

  Hank had been terrorized by traumatic childhood paranormal experiences. Violent entities drove his entire family from their Michigan home in a well-publicized incident dubbed “The Wayne Terror” by the press. Gethsemane only hinted Carraigfaire was haunted the last time Hank visited and he’d gone into near apoplexy and scurried from the cottage. His reaction this time differed.

  He laughed. “No need to worry about a ghost, once again, thanks to you. Billy assured me his uncle’s ghost rested in peace after you cleared him of those dreadful false charges. Well done.”

  Damn. Damn. And damn. Bluff called. Carraigfaire had been haunted when she’d moved in, by Eamon’s ghost. The ghost convinced her to investigate the murders and became her friend in the process. But she hadn’t seen him since she’d solved the mystery.

  “Too bad the cottage isn’t haunted,” Hank’s assistant said. “Paranormal tours are still trending.”

  Hank’s eyes narrowed and he clenched his fists. The woman froze like an animal caught in the crosshairs of a high-powered rifle.

  “I, I mean, I, um,” she sputtered.

  Hank’s voice dropped and he spoke through a clenched jaw. “Out.”

  “But, Mr. Wayne, I—”

  He lowered his voice further, to almost a whisper. “Now.” The cold intensity of his tone seemed to drop the room temperature several degrees. Veins pulsed in his temples.

  The assistant clamped a hand over her mouth and ran from the room. The front door slammed.

  Hank scowled at Gethsemane, all pretense of nothing-personal-it’s-just-business gone. “Are you religious, Dr. Brown?”

  Gethsemane nodded. “I’m an Episcopalian.”

  “Then you’re familiar with Twelfth Night.”

  Epiphany. What did the magi’s arrival at Jesus’s manger have to do with anything?

  Hank didn’t wait for her answer. “Billy invited me to his Twelfth Night party. I’m expecting him to give me a gift. One that beats the hell out of twelve drummers drumming. I suggest you start looking for other living arrangements before then.”

  Hank headed for the hall. Gethsemane followed him out. His assistant held his car’s rear passenger-side door open, but Hank ignored her and got behind the wheel. He peeled out with a spray of gravel. His assistant hung her head as the car disappeared around the corner and walked after it.

  “I can call a taxi,” Gethsemane said.

  The woman halted, tugged her coat, squared her shoulders, and continued down the hill without looking back.

  Gethsemane paced the hall and tried to calm her nerves. “Floyd Gardner, two-eighty-four; Vic Harris, two-ninety-two; Smokey Joe Williams, three-thirty-three; Buck Ewing, three-seventy-five.” Reciting Negro League batting averages usually worked to calm her nerves. N
ot this time. Hank had a point. The sale and destruction of Carraigfaire didn’t concern her. She loved the cottage as much as Eamon had, but she had no rights to it. She didn’t even pay rent. Billy let her stay in exchange for upkeep. Billy had every right to sell what he owned, and Hank undoubtedly made him an obscenely generous offer. So why did the thought of walking away feel like betraying a friend? She went to the piano. Eamon’s piano. The piano where his ghost had composed “St. Brennan’s Ascendant,” the concerto she’d used to lead the school’s honors orchestra to victory in the All-County School Orchestra Competition. She played. The concerto’s movements flowed from allegro to andante to allegretto, mirroring the school orchestra’s journey from defeat and humiliation to sacrifice and determination and, finally, to triumph and restoration of pride. During the competition, Gethsemane had ridden the notes, along with the musicians and audience, from despair to hope for a bright future. Today, however, the music only highlighted her sense of loss and desperation and brought her to the brink of tears.

  She slammed the keyboard. “Eamon McCarthy, where are you? I need you. Carraigfaire needs you.”

  She listened. Silence. She searched the cottage. No dimpled smile, no curly hair, no green eyes, not even a blue orb. She sniffed. No trace of leather-and-tobacco cologne mixed with the freshness of soap, the telltale sign Eamon was about to appear. Nothing. She had nothing.

  She caught sight of herself in a mirror. Rumpled pajamas, red-rimmed eyes, hair sticking out in all directions. She scolded herself. “Stop it. Get a grip. You don’t quit. You didn’t quit when you had six weeks to lead a boys’ orchestra from zero to first place, you didn’t quit when the body count rose and everyone told you to go home before you got killed. You don’t quit.” The only way to save Carraigfaire from Hank’s “improvement” plan was to convince Hank he didn’t want the property. And a full-scale haunting was the only way to do that. She needed a ghost to save this house from that smarmy SOB. She’d find a ghost.