A Measure of Murder Read online

  “Speaking of Marta,” Allison said, “that’s pretty amazing about her discovering that new music.”

  “Yeah, totally,” I said. “Did it cause much of a stir when she found it?”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it when it happened. It was all over the papers last year.” Eric licked his fingers and then wiped them on a napkin. “And yeah, there was quite the brouhaha. Not like finding something by Mozart, of course. But any new find having anything to do with the guy is a very big deal. I guess Marta sold them for beaucoup bucks to some Mozart society in Austria.” Eric looked up and saw the choral director climb onto the podium. “Oops, gotta go,” he said, and headed back to the bass section.

  Before starting the second half of the piece, Marta made a few announcements. Rehearsals would be Saturday mornings from ten to noon and Mondays and Wednesdays from seven to ten, with sectionals beforehand from six to seven—men on Mondays, women on Wednesdays. Sectionals were good news, I decided. Getting to sing with just the altos and sopranos should make learning my part a little easier.

  In addition, she told us we’d all need to bring a tuning fork to rehearsals. Displaying the one she wore about her neck on a string, Marta explained the concept that by periodically listening to the A as we sang our parts, we would eventually commit the sound of the note to memory, thereby improving our relative pitch and becoming better singers.

  Glancing around the room, I saw that at least half of the chorus already had tuning forks dangling from their necks. I’d have to go to the music store and buy one before Monday’s rehearsal.

  Finally, Marta made clear that tardiness to rehearsals would not be tolerated and that if we absolutely had to miss a practice, we needed to let our section leaders know beforehand. The section leaders then stood and introduced themselves, to applause and—for Eric—a scattering of friendly hisses and boos.

  When Marta turned to introduce the tenor section leader, however, she noticed that Kyle (a.k.a. Mr. Van Dyke) wasn’t there. Frowning, she murmured something under her breath in Italian and then pursed her lips. “Okay,” she asked, directing her gaze toward the soprano section, “can anyone tell me where Kyle is?”

  When no one gave any response other than a shake of the head or a shrug, she frowned again. “Bene.” Marta raised her hand, pencil poised to conduct. “Let’s sing, shall we?”

  We ran through the second half of the Requiem pretty much without stopping. During some of it I kept up okay, but most of the time, I felt as if the notes were an express train I was trying to leap onto as it whipped by at a hundred miles an hour. As we went along, I found myself singing softer and softer, in the hope that no one would hear my miserable rendition of Mozart’s final masterpiece.

  At long last, we got to the concluding movement, the Agnus Dei, which was marked “Larghetto”—slow. Thank God. I took a few deep breaths to replenish my oxygen and directed my gaze toward the choral director.

  Marta said a few words about the dynamics—to crescendo on the opening half note and then quiet down again at the end of the phrase—and then cued Nadia to start the movement. Three measures in, however, she cut us off with a wave of the hands. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I had to stop you. I simply cannot bear to hear how some of you”—a glare in the direction of the bass section—“are pronouncing ‘agnus.’ We do not say ‘ag-noose.’ It does not rhyme with the big animal from Alaska. It is ‘ahhh-nyoos.’ With the GN like the sound in ‘canyon.’ Please, let’s try it again.”

  We had made it all the way to the second page of the movement and Marta was nodding kudos to the basses when we were again interrupted—this time by a loud bang from the back of the church hall. The director looked up in annoyance, and we all turned to see what had caused the commotion.

  The heavy redwood door to the hall had been thrown open with such force that it had smacked against the wall. Standing in the doorway was a middle-aged woman, eyes wide and panting as if she’d been running.

  “What could possibly be so important,” Marta said, glaring down at her from the podium, “as to justify interrupting our rehearsal in this way?”

  “I just found a man lying outside in the courtyard,” the woman answered, her voice shaking. “And I’m pretty sure he’s dead.”

  Chapter Three

  There was a moment of shocked silence before Marta jumped down from the podium. The rest of the chorus followed quickly as she and the woman who’d made the announcement dashed out the door, along the side of the building housing the church offices, and through a passageway to a secluded courtyard. The crowd came to an abrupt halt, however, as soon as we reached our destination.

  Kyle was lying spread-eagle on his back, and across his chest lay shards of broken glass and an enormous window frame, now splintered into several pieces. There were cuts to his face, and a stream of blood oozed from the back of his head across the cement pavers on which he lay. Though his eyes were open, they registered no sign of life.

  One of the women in the chorus let out a little shriek and was immediately surrounded by a cluster of other singers, who hugged her and held her back from the body. Another woman ran to Kyle and knelt by his side. “She’s an ER doc,” I overheard a man near me say. Placing her fingers on his neck, the woman waited a few seconds and then shook her head and stood back up.

  “Everyone else, keep back!” Eric yelled out as several other singers started to creep forward toward the inert body. “No one touch him. I just called nine-one-one, and the police will be here in a minute. In the meantime, we need to clear the area.” He began shooing people back around the corner but told them not to leave, in case the cops wanted to talk to anyone. The chorus members, most of whom no doubt knew that Eric was a district attorney, complied without complaint.

  I took a good look at the scene before following after the others. Kyle was dressed in a tweed blazer and once again had a scarf knotted about his neck. His glasses must have been thrown off, for they lay some distance from his body, next to a piece of white office paper. I bent to examine the sheet as I passed by. “Broken Window—Do Not Open,” it read in hand-printed letters. Masking tape stuck out from both sides of the notice, as if it had been affixed to the window but came off during its fall.

  Looking up, I studied the hole that gaped from the stuccoed wall of the building’s second story. It looked like the window that had fallen out had been tall and arched—the type you often see in churches—and that it had extended from just above the floor to almost the ceiling.

  Within a couple minutes, we heard the sirens approaching. Two squad cars pulled into the church parking lot, tires squealing, followed almost immediately by a third. Eric went to talk to one of the officers—a tall, skinny guy he appeared to know—and led him to the courtyard where Kyle lay. The other cops, a young woman with a blonde ponytail and a middle-aged man with gray-flecked hair and a paunch, directed the rest of us back into the rehearsal hall and told us to take a seat.

  “Is there someone in charge here?” the policewoman asked. “The minister, or . . . ?”

  Marta stood up. “We’re a chorus who rehearses in the church,” she said, “and I am the choral director.”

  “Okay, good. I’d like to speak with you, then.” The officer led Marta to the corner of the hall, and the two of them sat down to talk while the other cop stood guard by the door. After a moment, the policewoman stood up and walked over to where the woman who had screamed upon seeing Kyle’s body was sitting. Based on the singers who were continuing to console her, I deduced that she was one of the sopranos. Following the cop back to where Marta was still waiting, she took a seat, and the three of them began to speak in low voices.

  One of the altos raised her hand. “I have to be somewhere in a half hour,” she said. “Will you be keeping us long?”

  “Just long enough to find out who we need to talk to,” the guy by the door answered. “No longer than necessary, I promise.”

  With an exaggerated sigh and a pointed lo
ok at her watch, the alto resumed her seat.

  The room had been quiet when we first returned to the hall, but the noise level gradually increased as people’s voices rose from hushed murmurs to loud whispers to excited chatter. After about five minutes, I saw Eric come through the door, and I waved for him to come sit with me. I was about to ask him what he’d learned outside when Marta, the police officer, and the soprano stood up.

  “Okay, thanks so much for your patience, everyone,” the cop said. “I’d appreciate it if the following people would stay a few more minutes so I could talk with them. The rest of you are free to go.” She read out six names, one of them Eric’s. Two I recognized when they came forward as being the other section leaders. Another was the woman who’d discovered Kyle’s body—someone associated with the church, I figured. The last two—a man and a woman—I didn’t recognize. Marta and the soprano also stayed behind.

  Gathering up my music, pencil, water bottle, and jacket, I stuffed them into my day pack and headed for my bike at the back of the hall. No one spoke as we all streamed through the door, but once outside, everyone began to yak loudly once again.

  The morning fog had finally burned off, and the sunshine streaming through the redwood grove across the parking lot cast mote-filled spotlights over the crowd of chorus members. I was pawing through my pack for my sunglasses and cycling gloves when I heard a familiar voice call out my name. A stocky man in khakis and a pale-blue button-down shirt was standing before me. Around his neck hung a police badge.

  “Detective Vargas. Fancy meeting you here.”

  “I could say the same thing,” he replied, offering a beefy hand.

  “Yeah, I guess it is a bit of a coincidence. The guy who died was a tenor in the chorus I just joined. Pretty sad,” I added, though truth be told, what I was really thinking was more along the lines of “instant karma.” Call me callous, but the memory of the bearded man laughing and rolling his eyes at my audition still brought a burning to my cheeks. “So you guys gonna investigate his death?”

  “Not that I should be telling you anything, but I doubt it. From the looks of it right now, the death appears accidental. That window frame is obviously rotted through. It must have come completely loose when he tried to open the window, and he fell out along with it.”

  I frowned and turned toward the courtyard.

  “What?” the detective asked. “You have some information I should know about?”

  “Not really. It’s just that . . .” I stopped, unsure whether I should share with him what I was thinking. Vargas had been the lead detective on my Aunt Letta’s murder case and had not been terribly happy about what he considered to be my interference with the investigation.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “You might as well just tell me.”

  “Okay, fine.” I leaned my bike against the wall and set my pack down next to it. “It’s just that the position of his body seems wrong. I mean, if he was trying to push open the window and fell out when the frame came loose, why would he be lying on his back, with his head away from the building? It would make more sense that he’d either be on his stomach or, if he flipped forward when he fell, on his back but with his head near the building.”

  “Uh-huh,” the detective said absently, pulling out his phone and examining its screen.

  “So it just seems,” I continued, “like maybe instead, he was shoved by someone in the chest, so he fell backward. Or, if he was in fact opening the window, maybe he turned to face whoever pushed him right as the frame came loose. That would explain the position his body landed in.”

  Returning the phone to his pocket, Detective Vargas slowly shook his head. He made no attempt to hide the smirk my theory had elicited. “Not every death is a murder, you know. Don’t you think a far simpler explanation might be that he just spun around as he fell?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Look, I appreciate your concern, Ms. Solari, but I think it’s best that you just let us handle this. Of course, if you come across any actual information, I’d be happy to hear about it.”

  Right, I thought as he turned to walk inside the church hall. Like I believe that.

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, I was bumping my way down the wooden planks of the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf, headed for my family’s restaurant out at the end of the hundred-year-old pier. Unclipping from the pedals, I wheeled my bike through the back door of the restaurant and into the small office I shared with my dad, who—like his father and grandfather before him—now owned Solari’s and ran its kitchen. Ever since my mom passed away two years earlier, I’d been in charge of the front of the house, having quit my job as a lawyer to do so.

  I was in the process, however, of shaking off as many of those duties as possible and had a potential new head waitress to interview at one o’clock. If I could get that position filled, then the current gal, Elena, could start taking over some of my work as manager. Which would mean I could start spending more time at Gauguin, the place I’d inherited almost three months ago from my Aunt Letta.

  There were still a few minutes before my interview, so, after sliding my bike between a tower of cardboard boxes and our ancient green metal filing cabinet, I went in search of my dad. He was in the dry storage room, hefting a case of canned Roma tomatoes off the shelf and onto a utility cart.

  “Just thought I’d say hey,” I said. “I’ve got that interview in a little bit, so I’ll be needing the office.”

  “No problem, hon.” With a grunt, he set a twenty-pound sack of onions on top of the tomatoes. “Oh, I wanted to tell you that Nonna can’t do Sunday dinner tomorrow. She’s helping out at some rummage sale at the church. Though what help an eighty-six-year-old woman will be is beyond me.”

  Giulia popped her head into the storage room. “Hey, Mario, Sally in here?” she asked my dad, and then spotted me in the corner. “Oh, hi. I just wanted to tell you that gal Cathy is here. She’s in the bar.”

  “What, having a cocktail to gear up for her interview?”

  Giulia laughed. “Doubtful. I’m the one who told her to go ahead and wait in there, since it’s pretty empty right now.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” I said. “Tell her I’ll be out in a sec.”

  “Will do.” Giulia grabbed a box of coffee-sweetener packets from the shelf behind me and then returned to the front of the house.

  I turned back to my dad. “By the way, I got into that chorus I was telling you about.”

  “That’s nice,” he said. “Congratulations.” I could tell he was only half-listening, though, as he was peering at a list he held in his hand and ticking off items with a ballpoint pen.

  “Which means I’ll be gone from work Saturday mornings as well as Monday and Wednesday nights.”

  He lowered the list. “That often?”

  So he had been listening. “Yeah, but it’s only for a few weeks. And I’ll make sure we’re fully staffed on the days I have rehearsal. You won’t need to worry about it at all.”

  Dad looked me in the eyes, holding my gaze for several long seconds, as if gauging how much he could trust my assurances. Finally, he nodded. “Okay, bambina. If you say so.” He then went back to his list.

  * * *

  Brandon and the hostess, Gloria, were in the wait station folding napkins for the dinner service when I arrived at Gauguin after finishing up my meeting with Cathy. “Howdy,” I said after stowing my bike in the utility closet off the garde manger. “Javier here yet?”

  “He came in a while ago. I think he’s in the office.” Brandon picked up a serving tray stacked with starched white fans and carried it out to the dining room.

  I headed upstairs and found Javier at the large oak desk, a laptop and several books open in front of him. “Sorry I’m late,” I said, sitting down in the wing chair. “I ended up having to do an interview at Solari’s for the new head waitress position, and it ran kind of long. But I think she might be the one, which is a very good thing.”

  “Well,
I hope you’re right. Here, check this out.” Javier pushed a book toward me—Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cookery—that was opened to a page depicting a platter of yellow-and-orange-flecked tandoori chicken legs atop a bed of fluffy white rice. Wedges of lime added vibrant splashes of green to the photograph. “Don’t you think those colors would be perfect for an autumn menu? We could serve it with a selection of red, orange, and brown chutneys.”

  “I do,” I said, starting to salivate at the sight of the luscious roasted meat. “But I was thinking, before we start looking for recipe ideas, maybe you should give me a kind of broad overview on what all this menu change is going to involve. ’Cause, you know, we haven’t changed the Solari’s menu since I was like fifteen, so I didn’t have anything to do with it. And even then, my dad only changed a few things. So are we going to have all new dishes, or what?”

  “No, we’ve always kept a few of the old standbys that are really popular, like the coq au vin au Gauguin and the pork chops with apricot brandy sauce. But we do change most of it.” Javier leaned back in the sturdy wood desk chair and thought a moment. “So, okay . . . Well, once we have a whole bunch of ideas for the new dishes, we’ll have to make sure all the ingredients will be available for the entire season—or at least that substitute ones will be. Ramps are a good example. You know, those things people sometimes call baby leeks—but they’re really a wild onion. You can’t use them for the regular spring menu since they’re only in season for about a month, but they’re great as a special. Like, once a couple of years ago, Letta came up with this dish where we stir-fried the ramps with kimchee and udon noodles in a sweet-and-spicy Korean sauce. It was amazing.”

  The chef frowned and scratched his head absently, turning to stare out the window. He was thinking about his former boss, no doubt, whose death had left an unfillable void at Gauguin. I took the opportunity to study Javier’s fine features—his high cheekbones, narrow nose, and wispy dark hair. Michoacán, he’d said he was from. Were they Maya there? No, that was farther south. Aztec?