Murder at the Opera

SEVEN

Pawkins drove directly home from the Watergate in his 1986 Mercedes sedan. Like himself, he kept the vehicle in pristine working condition. The slightest blemish on its silver exterior was immediately buffed out, and he treated the black seats with a leather conditioner monthly. The engine was barely audible when idling. Particular attention was paid to the windows. Pawkins admitted to being a windshield fanatic, Windexing them at least once a week, often more frequently. People who saw him with the vehicle assumed he was a car fanatic, a man who attended rallies of vintage automobiles and derived great pleasure from owning such a splendid specimen. That wasn’t the case. Cars meant little to him, and he found those who doted on their well-preserved four-wheel beauties to be boring. For Pawkins, it was a matter of practicality and of pride in keeping what you owned in good condition. Like himself.

He’d crossed the Teddy Roosevelt Bridge and proceeded north on the G.W. Memorial Parkway until reaching the village of Great Falls, a wealthy D.C. suburb with palatial, colonial-style homes strung along the Potomac River, the waterway that is as much of a Washington landmark as any of its man-made monuments. Few of the houses had particular historic value, but they were impressive in their size and sweeping views of the river’s swirling headwaters. Another hundred years would do it.

He ended up on a narrow dirt road lined with poplar and cedar trees. He followed its winding course until arriving at his home, formerly the gatehouse to a sizable estate with river frontage. He’d rented the small carriage house until its owner, a wealthy real estate developer, decided to sell it and a surrounding two acres. As the tenant of longstanding, Pawkins had first dibs, and he purchased the house and land. It had been a bargain. The owner had always liked having a D.C. detective on the premises and readily accepted Pawkins’ lower bid.

He parked the Mercedes in a detached one-car garage thirty feet from the stone-and-clapboard house and crossed a gravel patch to the front door. The outside lights, and a few inside, were on, thanks to state-of-the-art programmable timers he’d had installed. Rather than setting times for the lights to go on and off, he’d programmed in the latitude and longitude of Great Falls, using a chart provided by the manufacturer, and the day of the month. From that point forward, the timers adjusted to changes in the time of sunset and sunrise, the lights coming on a minute or so later each day as summer approached, and earlier later in the year. They even adjusted automatically for Daylight Saving Time.

The alarm system was up-to-date, too, including special motion detectors that would not be set off by the movements of his four cats.

He entered the foyer, turned off the system, and went straight to the kitchen at the rear of the house, where he put up a kettle for tea. Using the time for the water to boil, he went upstairs to his bedroom and changed into blue running shorts, a white Washington National Opera T-shirt, and sandals, stopping briefly in the bathroom to check his hair. Time for a touch-up, he decided; gray roots were showing beneath the subtle, artificial brown coloring.

The kettle’s shrill whistle brought him back downstairs. A devotee of green tea, he opted instead this night for orange spice Rooibos, a recent favorite. Because he was tall, and the ceilings were low, he moved through the old house in a perpetual slight stoop, although it actually wasn’t necessary. The habit of a tall man.

But he straightened once through a door off the living room, next to a wood-burning stove that he used in winter to help heat the house. The room he now entered was large and had twelve-foot-high ceilings, multiple recessed halogen lights, a Mexican stone floor covered by multicolored area rugs, and an elaborate built-in desk, its shiny black surface stretching nine feet beneath a series of narrow shelves that held an assortment of office items and small, framed pictures.

The wall opposite the desk, and a second wall spanning the length of the room and broken only by a large window, held floor-to-ceiling bookcases, their upper shelves reached by a library ladder with wheels at the bottom, and whose top ran along a metal trolley. Every inch of the shelves was filled with books.

A computer with a twenty-six-inch monitor sat on the desk. Built into the wall of bookshelves behind was a fifty-two-inch flat-panel TV. Next to it was the control unit for a Bose surround-sound system, its multiple, tiny cube speakers discreetly nestled in the room’s corners. The subwoofer sat on the floor beneath the desk.

Pawkins had personally designed this addition to the carriage house. He’d had to obtain a zoning variance, which took an inordinate amount of time as well as money for a local attorney, but once the legalities had been settled, his vision of the new space was made reality by an old-school contractor whose attention to detail and dedication to quality matched Pawkins’ needs. Construction had been completed a little more than a year ago. Since then, it had become his refuge, his cave where he could enjoy his music, read his books, and conduct what business came his way.

He opened a tall cabinet in which five hundred CD recordings were stored, arranged alphabetically by artist, and retrieved the one he sought, a London recording of Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier, with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by George Solti, and featuring the American soprano Helen Donath, whose airy voice struck a particular chord with Pawkins, whether Donath was playing Sophie in the Strauss masterpiece or Eva in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

He used dimmers to lower the lights, started the CD, and settled in his office chair, one of his cats, a Chartreux who’d adopted him years ago, on his lap. As the rich, melodic music swelled to fill the room, he leaned back, hands clasped behind his head, and reviewed what had happened that evening. After a few minutes of this introspection, he gently pushed the cat, Wolfgang, to the floor and started making notes on a yellow legal pad. The phone rang. He winced and stared at the receiver. The recorded opera had reached an especially pleasing section and he was loath to stop it. The phone kept ringing; the answering machine next to it had been turned off earlier that day and he’d forgotten to activate it. A button on the remote brought the stereo volume down to background level, and he picked up the receiver.

“Ray? It’s Mac Smith.”

Pawkins laughed and lowered the volume even more. “Twice in one night,” he said. “To what do I owe my good fortune?”

“I assume I’m not interrupting something important,” Smith said, “so I won’t apologize.”

“Good. Actually, I’m relaxing and enjoying my music. Strauss. Der Rosenkavalier. A perfect bittersweet comedy opera, so different from the blood and gore of his earlier works, Salome and Elektra, although they were fine, too. Quite daring. But you didn’t call for my analysis of Strauss and his operas. It was good seeing you again after all this time. Thanks again for the drink and snacks. I didn’t intend to freeload.”

“It was my pleasure,” Smith said. “I’ll tell you why I’m calling, Ray. Annabel attended her board meeting. As you can imagine, this murder of the young singer has everyone shaken.”

“And I’m sure there was plenty of histrionics. Opera lovers tend that way.”

“I wouldn’t know about that. Look, the board has decided to take whatever steps it can to resolve this internally.”

“Internally? MPD will love that, a bunch of wealthy opera aficionados playing Sherlock Holmes. Will they break into ‘Di quella pira’ when the killer is apprehended?”

“Raymond,” Smith said, “we might get further with this if you’ll stop playing the obscure reference game with me. I-”

“Hardly obscure, Mac. It’s from Il Trovatore, one of the most famous arias ever written.”

“Be that as it may, they-the board-asked Annabel if I-if you-would be interested in taking this on as a freelance assignment. Ms. Crier evidently told them that her super had been an MPD Homicide detective. Naturally, that piqued their interest.”

“Interesting,” Pawkins said. “We’ll work together?”

“No. I said I’d call you. That’s the extent of my involvement.”

“Then the answer is no.”

“As you wish. I’ve done my duty to Annabel and the cause of opera.”

“You’ll at least let me bounce things off you. I’d enjoy that, matching wits again with the brilliant Mackensie Smith. Not that I won many of those courtroom battles, but it would keep me honest.”

Smith chuckled. “All right,” he said. “You can bounce things off me. I don’t know if they’ve come up with a budget to cover your fee and expenses, but I’m sure they will.”

“Not necessary.”

“What?”

“I wouldn’t think of charging the folks at WNO. Good Lord, Mac, after all these years of them staging world-class opera at my back door, the least I can do is offer my services as a gift. Besides, there might be a book in it. I’ve always wanted to write a book about opera, but lack the credentials. Still, if I use my investigative skills to solve a suitable murder here, publishers will be beating down my door. Meet for breakfast?”

“I, ah-sure, that would be fine.”

They nailed down a time and place to meet the next morning and ended the conversation. Pawkins boosted the volume again and reveled in the final acts, especially the trio in which the three stunning lead voices blended, a moment that brought tears to his eyes.

He returned the CD to its slot in the cabinet, resumed his seat at the desk, and logged on to his computer. He spent the next fifteen minutes reviewing a variety of investment accounts, smiling at their increase in value since last looking at them two days ago. He exited that program, unlocked one of the desk drawers, and pulled out a small black notebook. He opened it and examined the most recent page, on which a number of dollar figures were noted. Then he read off a series of digits written on the book’s first page and fed them to the keyboard. Seconds later, another series of dollar amounts appeared on the screen. Nothing accompanied those figures, no account names, no addresses, no headings or other information. The final figure was larger than the preceding one, prompting another small smile. He noted that last dollar amount in the book, closed and locked it in the drawer, and returned the key to where it had been hidden beneath paper clips in a coffee mug.

He logged off the computer, extinguished the lights, and left the room, stopping in the kitchen to put his empty teacup in the dishwasher. He went upstairs, a satisfied grin wreathing his face as he slipped into bed, the four cats staking out positions at its foot.