Aria in Ice (34 page)

Johnny tried to sit up. His voice was weak
but determined. “It’s not the flute, Corbin. It’s you and your
greed and evil. You took more than one innocent life. You bastard,
you killed Trina and Fritz’s brother, didn’t you?”

“Those were accidents. The kid was in the
north wing, leaning out of the window and reaching for something
above it. He was so excited I thought for sure he’d found the
flute. So I reached around him to grab it and he toppled out. He
was looking at a bird’s nest outside the sill. Idiocy. And Trina?
The old broad was digging through all this junk in the boathouse
and she found a set of panpipes and held them up like they had been
gold. I grabbed her and told her I wanted the flute. She ran away
toward the moat. I grabbed her again and she started screaming. She
wouldn’t tell me anything I needed to hear. I pushed her and she
fell into the moat.”

A cry that would make a banshee’s hair curl
arose from behind Corbin, in the doorway of the back entrance.
Veronika Duskova was yelling and calling Corbin names that I tried
to remember so I could ask Johnny, if we all lived through this,
exactly what they meant. They sounded pretty rough even in
Czech.

Veronika threw herself on Corbin and began
pounding at him with her fists. He still had the dagger in his left
hand, the one not scalded by the flute. He quickly raised it to her
neck and pulled her in front of him. “Shut up, you hag! I’ve had
enough of screaming women and false hopes. Much as I do not want to
take Ms. Duskova traveling with me, it’s best I do for the
reassurance that you” he pointed to Johnny “and you” he pointed to
a horrified Jozef who’d appeared from the outside of the house with
Shay “won’t be tempted to do something dumb. Back off.”

He turned, shifting the knife to touch
Veronika’s back. Jozef didn’t waste a second. He threw a
leather-bound object at Corbin’s hand. The knife dropped. Veronika
immediately ran to the safety of Jozef’s arms. I noted, with the
interest of an eternal romantic, that he held her with more than a
little tenderness. I foresaw a nice merger between the Duskovas and
the Jezeks.

I shouldn’t have gotten so involved in
watching the pair. Because Corbin, deprived of one hostage, decided
he’d better get another. I was the closest—and the smallest.
Corbin’s arm was around me and the knife was at my neck and I was
being pulled toward the Jeep that was quietly parked by the edge of
the cemetery.

Johnny managed to get up but stopped when
Corbin pricked the edge of my throat with the knife. “Want to see
your girlfriend dead, Gerard? I have no qualms about spilling blood
all over this damn place. It’s not like no one’s done it before.”
He smiled. “ I’ll just drag our ghost detective up to the north
wing for a nice fling right out the window like all the other
losers who’ve been tossed for the last ten centuries.”

Johnny was shaking with rage and frustration
and fear. For me. I was in deep trouble here. Shay was edging
closer to Corbin and me and I knew she was planning to throw
herself on his back but I silently pleaded with her to hold off.
That particular attack could get us both very dead. I stared back
at Johnny while Corbin moved the knife directly toward my
chest.

“Don’t go feeling secure, Miss Fouchet. It’s
more comfortable than holding the damn thing at your neck. In case
you thought I was in danger of dropping it.”

I didn’t answer. I kept staring at Johnny,
then, since Corbin hadn’t moved, I sang the last few notes of the
Queen of the Night
aria. True, it wasn’t in Mozart’s
original key, since I lowered it to one more comfortable to my alto
range, but Johnny caught it. This aria is sung when the Queen of
the Night is trying to persuade her daughter to kill the priest
Sarastro with a dagger. It’s a series of very light notes that
scale up and down in a staccato rhythm. Rather like a flute.

Johnny moaned and sank back to the ground.
Corbin laughed. Johnny quickly grabbed the flute and threw it at
Corbin. It bounced off the hand that held the dagger. Apparently
Corbin was still fixated about the heat because he howled as though
he’d been scalded by boiling oil. His hand came away from my chest
although he still gripped the knife. I rammed my elbow into his
chest, turned and gouged my fingers into his eyes, then ran to the
safety of Johnny. Shay galloped over to Corbin and delivered a nice
kick to his head as he lay on the ground, whining and cursing.

Johnny kissed me until I turned to jelly.
“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. What about you? You looked down
for the count. But you got up and you knew what I needed. I’m damn
impressed.”

“Well, it was a decently hard head blow, but
not as bad as Mr. Lerner thought. I was faking about thirty seconds
after he coshed me. Excuse me a second.”

He ran to Corbin and held him down. “Shay?
You can quit kicking him now. Anyone got a cell to call the
cops?”

Shay offered hers. “Is there a nine –one –one
number here in the wilds of the Czech Republic that hits the Prague
police?” she asked.

Johnny shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. I’d
rather call the police chief who gave me his card yesterday when he
came with the doc to help Marta. From Abby’s favorite village.
Abby? It’s in my shirt pocket if you’d care to do the honors so I
won’t have to let go of Corbin here.”

I carefully reached into the pocket and got
the card, quickly handed it to Shay, then smiled. “I’ll do you one
better, Mr. Gerard. In the interest of absolute security for this
bastard.” I grabbed the long bell pull, now lying limply on the
ground, then neatly tied both Corbin’ hands and feet together
behind his back.

Johnny looked at me with sheer admiration.
“Wow. That’s a better move than Gregory Noble ever imagined.
Where’d you learn that?”

“Remember I did that summer stock season in
Colorado? The big show was
Will Rogers Follies
and our
‘Will’was a ex rodeo star Taught me a dozen tricks during scene
changes. You just saw my favorite. It’s called a ‘tie-down rope’
and it requires a dummy. So I used the biggest dummy at hand.’”

If anyone is wondering where the rest of the
houseguests had been during all the commotion, let me answer with a
simple explanation. Trite, unimaginative, but simple. They’d all
been snoring in their respective bedrooms because Corbin had spiked
their cocoa with sleeping pills when he’d kindly offered to help
Lily in the kitchen making midnight drinks.

I didn’t hear about this until late that
morning because Franz, Fritz, Mitchell and Lily didn’t make an
appearance before well after ten. Which was fine with me. Being
taken hostage, however briefly, with a knife aimed at one’s tender
body parts, is very wearing on the psyche—not to mention the actual
body that owns those tender parts.

My police buddy, whose name I’d discovered
only after seeing the card was
Polici
Captain Wolfgang
Bernstein, arrived promptly after Johnny called him. He took a
snarling and slightly bruised Corbin Lerner into custody to the
village I’d at last discovered the name of—St. Agnes Crossing.
Perfect.

Corbin hadn’t been a good sport during his
exit scene from
Kouzlo Noc
. He yelled and screamed and used
language ill-befitting a University professor and scholar. Then he
whined again and again about how he’d been tricked and destroyed.
The man just unraveled. Not pretty.

“That blankety-blank flute holds no magic!” I
leave it to those possessing lurid imaginations or teenagers to
fill in those blankety-blanks.

After several minutes and different phrasings
but the same intent of Corbin’s theme song, I’d walked over to the
now-handcuffed Mr. Lerner (Captain Bernstein had admired my roping
skills but exchanged the bell-pull for a set of steel handcuffs.)
and stared the killer in the eye.

“You’re very wrong, Corbin. Ignatz’ flute
holds infinite magic. I believe it can change sorrow into happiness
and protect those who hear it. Turn night into day, figuratively
that is, if you see night as evil and sorrow and day as goodness.
Study your
Die Zauberflote
libretto while you rot in prison,
Corbin. The Ladies who attend the Queen of the Night are quite
specific in their explanations as to what the flute represents and
Ignatz Jezek miraculously instilled those powers into this
instrument.”

I held up Ignatz’ flute before the eyes of
the angry Corbin Lerner, then swept my free arm around and pointed
at Veronika and Jozef. “Sorrow into happiness. Right there. And
when I heard Ignatz play I was protected. Shay and Johnny were
protected. You touched it and you got burned. Enough said.”

Corbin had been led away muttering about
sacrificing everything looking for the fortune he’d been certain
he’d possess when the flute magically turned everything he owned
into gold. I guess he thought it would evoke sympathy but instead,
his word choices reminded of the song by the classic rock band,
Foreigner, “
Cold as Ice”
when they sang about greed. I
gleefully made Corbin even more furious by belting it out, every
durn chorus and verse.

Veronika, Jozef, Shay, Johnny and I returned
to the house. We didn’t even bother to conduct post mortems on what
had happened. Exhaustion overwhelmed. We’d been struck down in our
prime. The next—the only—order of business had been sleep.

So this morning, Shay took center stage and
recounted the night’s events to a captive audience in the sitting
room, who rather warily sipped hot chocolate and munched on
cinnamon rolls. I had no idea when the pastries had been made. I
could only assume Veronika and Marta had gotten about two hours
sleep and headed for the kitchen early to work their own magic.

Shay craftily skimmed over any mention of my
other-wordly skills in hearing Ignatz’ flute as she explained how
the clues led to finding the instrument in the wind chimes.

Franz got curious. “Did the book that Jozef
found contain anything about Ignatz and the flute? Or his death?
Who wrote this second book? Did it tell you where the flute was
hidden? How did you know otherwise?”

Jozef stayed honest yet managed skirt the
issue of clues since only he, Johnny and Shay knew Ignatz had been
playing the flute for me. “That second journal was indeed written
by Ignatz Jezek. That much is true. He explains that he poured his
soul into crafting the flute and that he fears for his life while
under the roof of Milos Duskova. Milos was a greedy man who
believed with all his mind and heart that the flute was an
alchemist’s dream. It would turn metal to gold. Ignatz, in the last
entry of the journal only says that he has hidden the flute because
he will be murdered if Milos steals the flute.”

Veronika choked back tears. “I am
responsible. I bring Corbin Lerner here. He iss distant cousin of
that branch of Duskova. Milos, my ancestor. Another killer. I am so
ashamed.”

“Wait” I interrupted. “Are you saying you
brought Corbin here to find the flute?”

She looked horrified. “No, no! I bring here
to help with—how you say—identification—of dead in St. John
Cemetery. I did not know he knew about flute or what evil man he
is. I did not know he would kill my sister and try to kill others
and me and you.”

Jozef patted her hand. “You are not at fault
for Corbin’s wickedness, Veronika. And you also listened to me and
brought Johnny to do the mural. That helped keep a balance.”

“You’d met Johnny before?” I asked.

“Oh yes. He worked with me in the bookstore
those few weeks he was filming his daytime drama. Sweet boy. I love
his show. Yolanda is one of my favorite people and I knew she would
persuade Veronika to bring Johnny to
Kouzlo Noc
.” He smiled
at Veronika. “I did not mean to interrupt you. Please, tell Abby
what you think happened?”

Veronika continued, “We are of belief that
centuries ago Milos was angry when flute is not with Ignatz and he
throws him out of window in north wing.” She paused. “I think that
room needs redecorating?”

I couldn’t look at Shay. If I did we’d both
lose it and I, for one, was sure Veronika hadn’t intended to be
funny.

Veronika added, “We find other journal by my
grandfather, Eduard, who says he hass theory that Ignatz is buried
under boathouse. We look today and if we find him we will gif him
Christian burial in the good cemetery.”

I wondered whom “we” meant. I had a definite
bond with Ignatz Jezek, whom I now felt certain was resting in
peace since his flute had been discovered by people who wanted only
to keep it as a family heirloom instead of test its powers. I had
no desire to go on a grave-digging expedition. Since Corbin, the
resident gravedigger, was in custody in the village of St. Agnes
Crossing, I assumed Jozef would supervise the project, with Franz,
Fritz, Mitchell and Johnny getting to perform the actual labor.

Johnny. He hadn’t joined us for breakfast. It
was now eleven in the morning and I was getting worried. Had Corbin
coshed him over the head harder than we’d thought? Was he now
writhing in pain with a severe concussion—or worse?

Jozef caught me glancing at the door for the
sixteenth time in two minutes. He rose, went into the ballroom,
then returned moments later with a box. He handed it to me. “I am
so sorry. I was supposed to give this to you an hour ago when you
awoke.”

Inside the box lay a cute little “stuffie”—a
model of a
przewalski
, the miniature horses Johnny had told
me he tended at the Prague Zoo in his guise as Gregory Noble. The
horse was dressed in Eighteenth Century garb, including a
waistcoat, ruffled shirt and a wig that bore a striking resemblance
to one that Mozart wore that’s been depicted in hundreds of
different images. And the horsy came with a prop—a small
harpsichord nestled against its hooves. A tiny white handkerchief
had been tucked into a pocket of the waistcoat. Embroidered in red
was the word, “
Amadeus.”
Now that indeed was sweet.