Murder at the Opera (18 page)

“Is that how you view him?”

“Well, he seems to enjoy a little bit of this, a little bit of that. A dabbler.”

“Listen to this,” she said, rearranging herself so that she knelt beside him. “It says that although he spent his law enforcement career in Homicide, he became involved in a couple of cases handled by MPD’s art squad.”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Mac said. “He told me he does PI work in cases involving musical manuscripts and works of art.”

“The writer cites this one case that I certainly recall. I’m sure you do, too. Remember when that musicologist from Georgetown University was murdered? Aaron Musinski?”

“Sure. It was big news.”

“Pawkins was the lead detective on it, according to this article.”

“As I recall, there was controversy about some missing music. Do they mention that in the article?”

“No. It’s just a few lines summing up some of the big cases he’d handled while a cop.”

She hopped out of bed. “I’m going to Google it,” she said on her way to the study, where one of their two computers was located. He followed and stood behind her as she typed in “Aaron Musinski.” A full page of sites in which the subject was mentioned came up on the screen, with dozens of additional possibilities listed on subsequent pages. She clicked on the first site, and one of the
Washington Post
articles about the murder appeared. They read in silence. She pulled up other sites, too. When they were finished reading, she spun around in her chair. “Fascinating,” she said, but without much animation.

The Aaron Musinski murder had occurred six years earlier. Musinski, a professor at Georgetown University, was considered one of the world’s leading experts on the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He’d written extensively about Mozart, and his most recent book, published the year in which he was murdered, was considered the seminal work on the subject.

Musinski was no genteel academician. Short and built like a wrestler, his head shaved, he was a pugnacious, intensely private man in his personal life who scorned the views of fellow Mozart scholars and wasn’t reticent about attacking them in magazine and journal articles and other venues.
Washingtonian
magazine, in one of its yearly “Best and Worst” features, listed him among the most disliked professors in the D.C. area. His sour relationship with colleagues at the university was openly known and discussed; his tenure was assured, however, because of his stature in his field and his ability to generate large donations to Georgetown’s Department of Music. His frequent absences—he spent considerable time in Europe—were overlooked for the same reasons. One wealthy donor, who requested anonymity, told a magazine writer, “Every time Professor Musinski asks for a contribution, I’m afraid that if I decline he’ll grab me in a headlock and throw me to the ground. I don’t mean that literally, of course, but it sometimes seems that way.”

On the day of his death, Musinski had taught a graduate seminar at the school. According to his students, he’d seemed especially distracted and short-tempered, although as one of them said, it was hard to make such distinctions with the professor. His fuse was always short, and he wore his disdain for his students on the sleeve of the black cardigan sweater and black T-shirt he seemed to never be without.

Others told the police that they’d seen him hurry from the building immediately following the seminar, get into his vintage red MG sports car, and race from the parking lot.

That was the last time Aaron Musinski was seen alive. His only known family member in the Washington area, a niece named Felicia James, called 911 at ten-thirty that night to report a break-in and murder at her uncle’s home, a quaint, albeit poorly maintained Victorian town house on Georgetown’s Q Street. When the police arrived, led by Detective Raymond Pawkins, Ms. James was sitting on a weathered white wrought-iron love seat in the small garden at the rear of the house, a jumbled jungle of vines, heavily laden trees, and tall grass. She was in shock, and it took gentle prodding by Pawkins to convince her to lead them to her uncle’s body.

They followed her inside through a back door off a moss-covered brick patio, which led to a small kitchen. The rest of the house’s first floor had been converted into an office and study, except for a small card table off the kitchen at which he’d obviously taken his meals. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases covered each wall. A series of crude folding tables overflowed with books and papers, which were also strewn on threadbare Oriental rugs with frayed edges. Briefcases and shoulder bags of various sizes and shapes were piled in a corner.

His body rested on a pile of newspapers. His blood had soaked into the papers, prompting Pawkins to think of the old riddle: What’s black and white and red (read) all over?
Newspapers.
Musinski had been bludgeoned to death. The weapon, a bloodied fireplace poker, lay next to him.

“Do you live here, too?” Pawkins asked the niece.

“No, but I visit my uncle often. He lives alone and I worry about him.” She cried.

Other detectives searched upstairs, where the bedrooms were in equal disarray.

“When did you last speak with your uncle?” Pawkins asked.

“This morning. I usually call him before he leaves for school.”

“Anything unusual about him this morning?”

“No. He sounded tired. He’d come back from London two days earlier and was still suffering jet lag. But no, he was his usual self.”

The detective was aware of Musinski’s reputation from having read stories, and hesitated to ask his next question: “Did your uncle have any enemies that you’re aware of?”

“He was—my uncle was a controversial figure,” she replied, “but I can’t imagine anyone disliking him enough to want to kill him. He was actually a very sweet man.”

As only a favorite niece could view him,
Pawkins thought.

Evidence technicians and someone from the ME’s office arrived and went through their required tasks. While they did—and while Ms. James retreated to the garden—Pawkins went through the contents of the large space Musinski had devoted to his life’s work.
How could the man find anything in this mess?
was what he thought as he picked up, read, and dropped materials back where they’d been on the tables. Two hours later, he fetched Musinski’s niece from the garden.

“You all right to drive home?” he asked.

“Yes, I’ll be fine. The shock is wearing off. All I care about now is that whoever did this pay the price.”

“We’ll do our best to make that happen,” Pawkins said. “By the way, did your uncle have a will?”

“Yes.”

“Who’s the beneficiary?”

“I am.”

“I see. We’ll be wanting to talk to you again, Ms. James.”

“Of course. I want you to know that I loved my uncle very much.”

“I don’t doubt that for a minute,” Pawkins said.

As he walked her to her car, patrolmen were stringing yellow crime-scene tape around the house, while neighbors peered anxiously from their front steps and through windows. “The house will be off-limits for a day or two,” Pawkins advised. “But if you want to come back, call me and I’ll arrange for someone to accompany you.”

“Thank you. I appreciate that. Good night.”

Pawkins spent the better part of the following day at the house, and after a dinner break, he returned and continued to search for clues as to who might have murdered Aaron Musinski. At the same time, he methodically examined some of the contents of the professor’s working space. It was a treasure trove of scholarly works on music, with much of it devoted to his favorite subject. Pawkins pulled down one of the books Musinski had written on the musical genius Mozart’s life and read a few chapters. The man certainly knew his stuff, Pawkins recognized, and Musinski didn’t hesitate to harshly condemn the conclusions of others.

Three days later, Pawkins received a call from an obviously distraught Felicia James.

“What can I do for you?” the detective asked.

“I’m at my uncle’s house. You must come right away.”

“Whoa, slow down. You sound upset. What’s going on there?”

“Please, Detective, it’s very important.”

Ms. James met him at the door. Her face mirrored the distress in her voice. They went to the main room that had served as Musinski’s study and office. Ms. James handed Pawkins an opened envelope. The address indicated that it had been sent to her home, and was marked
REGISTERED, RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED
.

“What’s this?” Pawkins asked.

“Read it. It’s been at the post office. I have a box there. I didn’t have the energy to pick up my mail before today.”

The return address was Aaron Musinski’s. Pawkins opened the envelope and read the one-page letter it contained.

“Wow!” he said, handing it back to her.

“It’s not here,” she said flatly, indicating the room with a sweep of her hand.

“Are you sure?”

“I’ve looked everywhere. I picked up Uncle Aaron at the airport when he returned from London. He’d gone there to meet with a friend, another Mozart expert. My uncle and this friend had worked together for years searching for missing Mozart scores. Uncle Aaron was an expert on all of Mozart’s works—operas, symphonies, string quartets, even the one ballet he wrote. But his special interest was in a series of string quartets supposedly written by Mozart with his idol, Franz Joseph Haydn. Those scores have never been seen by anyone, at least as far as the world knew. But as you can see by the letter, Uncle Aaron and his colleague in London found them.” She leaped up from her chair and exclaimed, “They actually found them! Do you know how monumentally important that is?”

“I can imagine,” Pawkins said. “You said whatever he found isn’t here. How do you know?”

“Because I’ve searched everywhere.” She went to the corner where the briefcases were stacked and held one up. It was a battered, supple leather case. Judging from the way it hung from her fingers, it was empty.

“Uncle Aaron had this with him when he returned from London. It was bulging when he came through Customs. I even asked him what was in it; he said it was just a lot of junk. That’s what he called it, ‘junk’! Now it’s empty. Don’t you see? He had the Mozart-Haydn scores in it, and now they’re gone. Whoever killed him knew about those scores and murdered my uncle in order to have them.”

“That could be,” said Pawkins. “Any idea who might have known what your uncle found and would kill to get it?”

“Some of his jealous detractors,” she answered. “I can give you a list.”

“That will be helpful. I’ll follow up on it.”

The murder was never solved, nor were the Mozart-Haydn scores ever recovered.

Annabel read a final line from one of the websites devoted to the Aaron Musinski murder and the disappearance of the scores.

When asked about the possible whereabouts of the scores that allegedly were behind the murder of Aaron Musinski, the lead detective, Raymond Pawkins, said, “Lord knows. There’s a large, black hole out there into which priceless works of art disappear, with wealthy men in it who’ll pay anything, and even kill, to possess them. I doubt if we’ll ever know.”

EIGHTEEN

T
he white Chevrolet Suburban had been sitting at the Al-Karama-Trebil border checkpoint between Iraq and Jordan for the better part of an hour. Finally, the driver, an Iraqi dressed in a flowing white dishdasha, was allowed to pull up to where Jordanian troops checked the steady flow of vehicles heading for Amman on the heavily traveled Baghdad-Amman highway, the infamous and dangerous Route 10. The driver rolled down his window and handed the security guard the necessary papers. The guard frowned as he examined them, handed the papers back, and poked his head through the window to see the passenger in the rear seat.