Bantam of the Opera (23 page)

“We'll be in the Terrace Room,” said Judith, before Renie could beat her to it. “We'll get a table for three.”

“Good work,” murmured Renie as they climbed the wide marble stairs that led into the restaurant. “It's almost one o'clock and I could eat a mule.”

“Right,” replied Judith somewhat vaguely. “At least I'll have time to fill you in.”

“And I'll have time to fill me up,” Renie noted, all but smacking her lips.

As it turned out, the cousins had a great deal of time to devour their crab cakes and spinach salads. Indeed, they
were at the coffee and we-really-shouldn't-have-dessert stage when Inez Garcia-Green glided into the Terrace Room. She wore midnight blue, a tunic over slacks, and a matching turban. The handful of patrons who were still lingering in the Terrace Room watched her progress behind the maître d'.

“Mrs. Flynn?” Inez gazed past the cousins, surveying the rest of the room as if to make sure there was no one of importance that she might have missed. With a regal smile for the maître d', she allowed him to pull out a chair. “I have lunched. Cognac, please. Warmed.”

Sapphire earrings sparkled on her perfect lobes. Gold and platinum rings set with diamonds, rubies, and more sapphires gleamed on her long, strong fingers. She wore her black hair neatly coiled at the base of the turban.

“You requested a meeting, no?” She surveyed the cousins as if they were unworthy of her presence.

Judith cleared her throat. “Mrs. Pacetti felt you knew something about her husband's death. She suggested we talk to you.”

“Talk to you? Why?” Inez's piercing look changed to a smile for the waiter who had hurried over with her cognac.

“My husband is a homicide detective. I sometimes assist him in his inquiries,” Judith explained, stretching the truth. “The woman's touch, you see.”

“And this one?” Inez gazed at Renie. “She was also at your establishment the other night. Your maid?”

Renie's brown eyes snapped, but she held her temper. “Companion. You know, like a duenna. I carry her fan and dispense largesse.”

Inez did not appear to have a sense of humor. Nor did she understand when she was being teased. “I see no fan. To whom do you dispense this largesse?”

Aware that Renie could string Inez along for hours, Judith broke in. “Why should Mrs. Pacetti feel you have information about her husband's murder?”

Inez waved a hand. “Oh! That Amina! She talks without knowing what she says! I sing with Pacetti; I see him two
or three times a season. We are colleagues, no more. What would I know about why the poor man was murdered?”

Renie wasn't about to let Judith hog all the questions. “But you were lovers at one time,” she said, wearing her middle-aged ingenue's expression. Seeing Inez's hostile reaction, she continued. “Everybody knows that. It follows then that you would know more about him than your average soprano.”

“I am never average!” declared Inez. “I am a
prima donna assoluta!
” Obviously, she was more annoyed at being termed run-of-the-mill than by the accusation of an illicit love affair. “And who is Amina Pacetti to cast stones? Has she not also taken a lover?”

“Well—maybe,” Judith murmured, feeling very unworldly. “But I heard she took up with Plunkett as an act of revenge.” Watching carefully for Inez's reaction, Judith was startled when the soprano threw back her head and laughed aloud.

“Plunkett! That miserable creature of repressed passion! You jest, of course.” Inez shot Judith a contemptuous look.

Judith uttered a disconsolate sigh. “Oh, well, I guess I was mistaken. And Amina must have overrated your powers of perception. What a shame.”

Picking up her snifter of cognac, Inez's dark eyes flashed. “I have excellent powers, of perception and otherwise. I know this much—Mario Pacetti was called a fighting cock, but he was all cock-a-doodle-doo. And often, it didn't do. Much.” Inez's face set in hard, sharp lines.

Judith, somewhat mystified, stared at Inez. “Didn't do…Never mind. Or,” she hurried on, seizing the opportunity, “do you mean he wasn't a well man?”

“He was well when we were lovers.” Having had the subject broached, Inez now seemed quite comfortable with it. “You have a phrase in your language—‘able-bodied.' It was that he was not always able, if you take my meaning. But his health was excellent otherwise at that time.”

Fascinating as Mario Pacetti's sex life might have been as a topic of general gossip, Judith pressed on. “You seem
to be qualifying the status of Pacetti's health. Do you mean that he later became ill?”

Inez was sipping her cognac and visibly relaxing. She struck Judith as the type who put up barriers to protect her private self from her public image. Having determined that the cousins were less interested in Inez Garcia-Green's personal life than in Mario Pacetti's, she was beginning to unbend.

“Ill, no, not that I know of. But we singers are always worrying about our voices. Mario worried even more than most. A mere cold to us is a tragedy. A sore throat is near death. Despite his reputation for accidents, Mario enjoyed superb health. Until these past few months, that is. Then there were cancellations. Not many, but starting in the spring, at Teatro Fenice in Venice. Rome, too. A severe cold, I heard.” Inez shrugged, the midnight blue tunic rippling over her impressive figure. “There were rumors, too, that he was postponing
Otello
next season at La Scala, and that he had backed out of doing Radames in
Aïda
this winter at the Met. Instead, he requested Rodolfo in
Bohème
.” She gave the cousins a meaningful look.

It was lost on Judith, but Renie, with her deeper knowledge of opera, leaped into the void. “In other words, he was avoiding the demanding parts. Rudolfo is comparatively easy, as opposed to Radames or Otello.”

Inez nodded gravely. “So it seems. For those of us who knew of his enormous self-confidence—despite his neurotic behavior—there was a feeling of concern. Why was Mario pampering himself? Was he fearful about his voice? He was too young to worry yet about his talent diminishing. Yes, he has been very cautious, avoiding difficult schedules. If anything, he should have gone on for another ten years at least, perhaps not truly peaking until he reached fifty. That's why he'd put off singing Otello this long. He was waiting until his voice had achieved the proper maturity.”

Judith nodded. Her idea was taking shape. “Do you know if he remained in Italy after those cancellations?”

Inez looked puzzled by the question. “I was in Venice to sing Minnie in
Fanciulla del West
. We were not at the same hotel, of course. Mario and Amina had taken a villa near Arsolo, outside of the city.” Her high forehead furrowed in an attempt at recollection. “Now that you mention the fact, I don't recall hearing of his presence in Italy until after the Rome cancellation. That would have been a month, perhaps six weeks, later.”

“Would he have gone home to…Bari, is it?” asked Judith.

Again Inez shrugged. “It is possible.”

Judith couldn't think of anything more to ask Inez. But Renie had another question.

“In all honesty, have you noticed any deterioration in Mario's voice this past six months?”

The soprano considered the inquiry with great care. It was, after all, tantamount to passing judgment on a Raphael Madonna or a Michelangelo sculpture. “No,” she said at last. “No deterioration. But more exertion. That is, he seemed to work harder at producing the notes. Before, it was all effortless, as natural as water from a mountain spring.”

“Ah.” Judith uttered the exclamation softly. “What does that mean to you? As a singer.”

“It could mean many things.” Inez turned the snifter in her long fingers. “It could mean a vocal problem, an incapacity of the lungs, a gain or loss of weight, even a mental condition. What do you call it? A block?”

“Right.” Judith fervently wished she could get in touch with Woody. There was so much she had to tell him, so many things she wanted to ask him to do…She gave Inez Garcia-Green her most gracious smile. “You've been a lot of help. The police will be very grateful.”

It didn't seem to occur to Inez why her musings on Pacetti's vocal status should have anything to do with his murder. It was enough that she had been consulted and appreciated. Renie added to the diva's sense of well-being by complimenting her on her performance of the previous
evening. They left Inez in the lobby, where a trio of opera buffs jumped for joy at the sight of her and humbly requested autographs.

“You didn't mention the vial or the rock,” said Renie as they headed for the parking garage elevators.

“I'm waiting for the handwriting expert to figure out the rock,” Judith replied, stopping abruptly at a row of pay phones. “Those two separate but seemingly equal Strophanthin bottles stump me. I don't even know what to ask anybody. And I didn't want to jar Inez out of her garrulous mood.”

“Who are you calling?” Renie asked as Judith deposited a quarter in the nearest pay phone slot.

“Woody. If he's in, we're going to swing by headquarters. It's only three blocks from here.” She heard another unfamiliar voice answer. Judith's request to speak to Woody was again turned down, but this time an excited explanation was given. Judith hung up the phone and turned to Renie with a wry expression. “It's a boy. Woody won't be in until tomorrow.”

“What!” Renie gaped at Judith. “The baby came early? Oh, rats! What do we do now?”

Judith started for the elevators. “What do you think? Go buy a baby gift. We're headed for the hospital.”

 

Sondra Price was delighted with the blue-and-white checked romper suit from Judith and the green-and-yellow striped coverall from Renie. The cousins had purchased both garments in six-month sizes, causing Sondra and Woody to laugh at the idea that their tiny son would ever fit into such enormous outfits.

“Three months, and he'll be wearing them,” Judith declared. “After all, he weighs over eight pounds now. You'll be surprised at how fast they grow.”

Sondra, a pretty woman just past thirty, with a master's degree in speech therapy, beamed up at her husband. “He's going to be a pilot. I can tell by the way he squints, like he's looking into the sun through the windshield of a 747.
He's wrinkled, too, as if he's been out in the sun too long. Have you seen him yet?” she asked the cousins.

They had. Renie assured the new parents that the wrinkles would go away. Judith said he'd stop squinting soon and start seeing. Woody insisted their baby already did. At the age of eleven hours and fourteen minutes, Woodrow Wilson Price III was obviously a precocious child.

Half an hour later in the hospital cafeteria, the cousins did their best to bring the new father down to earth. As professional as Woody usually was, it took a few minutes to get him off pablum and onto poison. Even then, he was somewhat skeptical about Judith's pip theory.

“You aren't one-hundred-percent positive those pips weren't in the refrigerator Saturday night, right? Isn't it possible that your cleaning lady threw them out? Would she remember doing it? Did you check your garbage?”

Judith couldn't categorically refute the points Woody raised. As for the garbage, it had been collected Monday as usual.

“It's possible,” Woody allowed after Judith had made another pass at convincing him she might be right. “Anything's possible. But somebody had Strophanthin their possession. Why not use it instead of a bunch of flower roots?”

Briefly, Judith was stumped. Then the answer dawned on her. “Because of the tea. Our killer is careful. He or she probably read up on poisons. If the murderer got hold of the Strophantin to use it on Mario and then discovered he always drank what was in effect an antidote, there had to be a shifting of gears. And of poisons.”

“So why leave the empty vials on stage?” asked Woody. “Why one bottle on the table and the other in the flower arrangement? Why put some of the stuff in the thermos and bury it in your backyard?”

“To confuse the issue,” Judith answered promptly. “Those pips are often mistaken for a form of digitoxin. If you're off looking for someone who was running around backstage before the performance leaving vials among the
champagne glasses and the exotic blooms while also dumping toxic substances in thermos bottles, then you're never going to zero in on the killer. It's a smoke screen. The big obstacle is that nobody saw anything suspicious going on before…Oh!” Judith jumped, almost knocking over her Styrofoam coffee cup.

“What?” Woody turned curious brown eyes on Judith.

But Judith shook her head. “Never mind. I'm probably having a minor brain seizure. Let me think this through. What about your handwriting expert?”

Momentarily, Woody looked blank. “Oh—the rock and the sheet of paper. Corazon's tracking that for me. Give her a call.”

“Okay. Can I ask her to check with Customs and Immigration to see if Mario and Amina entered this country in April or May?”

Woody raised his eyebrows. “I suppose. Why?”

Judith settled back in the orange modular plastic chair. “I think Mario came over here to consult with Dr. Sheila Feldman, world-renowned throat specialist. He was having vocal problems, it seems. Now I don't know what that has to do with his murder, but it suggests several possibilities to me. Can you get a warrant to go through Dr. Feldman's records?”

Woody's face broke into a big grin. He shook his head slowly. “Mrs. Flynn—Judith—you come up with the craziest ideas! A singer like Pacetti probably consults a throat specialist at least four times a year. I'll go along with the Customs and Immigration notion, but I'm not getting mixed up with doctors. They always stonewall, if only because they think we're fronting for the IRS.”