Deadly Overtures: A Music Lover's Mystery (17 page)

By “we” I assumed she meant me, because I couldn’t imagine her pleading with the detectives to believe in her cousin’s innocence. She might coolly set out the facts to them, but if they didn’t believe her she would no doubt attribute that to their incredible stupidity and walk away in a huff. And I doubted that the detectives would take her word at face value. Igor had a strong motive to kill Pavlina and he easily could have returned to the theater—or never left—to kill her after the concert was under way. The police would no doubt think Elena was trying to protect her family. Heck, I still wasn’t completely convinced that she wasn’t. Although, as much as I disliked the concertmaster, I had to admit I was leaning toward believing her.

“The police will require proof,” I said in answer to her question. “Either proof that Igor didn’t kill her or proof that somebody else committed the murder.”

“He has no alibi. At least not a good one,” Elena said. “He told me before that he was with a friend after he left the theater, but that friend is a criminal too. The police won’t believe them.”

I figured Igor’s friend was the same one I’d seen with him while watching Cameron’s meeting from my storage room prison. Silently, I agreed that he wasn’t the type of person the police were likely to believe.

Elena slipped her magazine into her designer purse. “You’d better get busy. I’m sick of the police poking their noses into everything. Get this sorted out so we can move on.”

Without further parting words, she stood up, snatched her jacket from the back of her chair, and headed for the door. I stared at the spot she’d vacated, stunned by her exiting words, although perhaps I shouldn’t have been. She seemed to think I was her servant, someone she could boss around. While that irked me to no end, I planned on doing as she suggested. I’d continue to work on the puzzle, to figure out who the guilty party was. I wouldn’t do it for Elena, or to make her life easier, but I’d do it for Pavlina, the orchestra, and all the innocent people who were at risk with a murderer on the loose.

Chapter Nineteen

B
EFORE TAKING ANY
steps to further my investigation, I decided to enjoy the rest of my sandwich and latte. I took my time, flipping through the newspaper as I ate, and savoring every delicious bite. Without Elena and Igor at the table with me, the atmosphere in the café was far more pleasant and relaxing. The conversation I’d had with them never strayed too far from the forefront of my mind, however.

After finishing my scrumptious lunch, I returned to my car, thinking over everything they’d told me. Although I was leaning toward believing Elena’s endorsement of her cousin, I wasn’t completely convinced and decided it wouldn’t hurt to get a second opinion. While still parked by the curb, I sent a text message to Hans, telling him that Igor had denied killing Pavlina and that Elena insisted he was telling the truth.

Should I believe her or is she likely to lie to cover for him?
I asked to finish up the series of messages.

By the time I’d sent the last text, a car had stopped behind my parking place, clearly hoping I was about to leave so they could snag the precious space by the curb. Returning my cell phone to my purse, I freed up the parking spot for the waiting hatchback and set a course for home.

While riding the elevator up to my third-floor apartment, I checked my phone to see if Hans had replied to my messages. He had.

Elena doesn’t think much of Igor and wouldn’t lie for him. I’m sure of it. If she says he’s innocent, he is
.

“Innocent” wasn’t quite the word I’d have used to describe Igor, since he was a thief, but I knew what Hans meant. And if anyone knew Elena well, it was Hans. The two of them had been in an on-again off-again relationship for years. Knowing that led me to go with my inclination to believe Elena, and if I’d had a physical list of suspects, I would have scratched out Igor’s name.

Another message from Hans arrived on my phone.
Does this mean Elena’s in the clear now?

I disembarked from the elevator and tapped out a response as I slowly made my way down the hall to my apartment.

Not yet. I can’t prove Igor didn’t kill Pavlina or that Elena knows nothing about her death
.

After sending that message, I let myself into my apartment and shed my outerwear. By the time I’d hung up my coat, I had another message from Hans.

As long as she’s under suspicion, that’s bad news for the orchestra
.

With a heavy sigh, I typed out a response.
I know. I’m doing my best
.

If that wasn’t good enough for him, he’d have to get into sleuthing mode himself.

Fortunately, he sent back a simple thank-you and we left it at that.

I wandered around my apartment for the next several minutes, doing a bit of tidying here and there, my mind elsewhere. What I hadn’t mentioned to Hans was that I wasn’t sure what step to take next. There were still several suspects on my list, but I wasn’t sure what I needed to do to find more clues.

Maybe it would be best to give my mind a short rest, to focus on something else for a while and come back to the problem refreshed in the morning. With that strategy in mind, I called Sharon, a friend from my university days, and arranged to meet up with her for a couple of hours that afternoon. I drove to her place and we took her five-year-old son to a nearby park to play while she and I chatted. As I’d hoped, it was refreshing to do something completely unrelated to the murder case, and I returned home that evening ready to tackle the murder mystery anew during the coming week. I still wasn’t sure how to proceed, but I knew I’d figure that out eventually.

While heating up some soup for my dinner, I shuffled through the small stack of magazines I kept on a shelf in my living room. I was looking for the latest issue of
Classical Spotlight
, the one featuring Pavlina on the cover. I found it easily and took it to the kitchen table so I could flip through it while I ate. The magazine might not prove helpful at all, but I wanted to read up on Pavlina in case there was some tidbit about her that would give me insight into her life, that would help me figure out who might have wanted her dead and why.

I’d read the magazine when it first came out—or had skimmed through it, at least—but that was nearly a month ago now, and at the time I hadn’t had anything more than a passing interest in the story about the young, upcoming composer.

Once settled in at the table with a steaming bowl of vegetable soup in front of me, I studied the cover of the magazine. In the picture, as in life, Pavlina had a certain spunky style. Her hair was stylishly blown about by the power of an unseen fan and she wore several necklaces of different lengths and a collection of bangles on her left wrist. On her right wrist was the charm bracelet I’d seen her wearing at the theater.

The charm bracelet!

With my spoon halfway to my mouth, I stopped, my thoughts kicking into motion, racing through my head.

That was it. That was what my subconscious had been trying to draw my attention to over the past several days. Every time I’d seen Pavlina alive at the theater, she’d had that pretty charm bracelet on her wrist, including on the night of her death. But when Mikayla and I found her body in the washroom, her right wrist was bare of any jewelry. There’d been a smear of blood on her lower arm, drawing my attention to it. At the time, I hadn’t noticed the absence of the bracelet, but now the fact that it had been missing screamed at me with possible significance.

But what exactly was the significance?

If it had come off during a struggle with her attacker, it should have been on the floor of the washroom. It was possible that it had been hidden beneath Pavlina’s body and that the police had found it once they’d moved her. However, I suspected that the killer had taken Pavlina by surprise. The only visible wounds were to the back of her head. There was no injury to her arm that I had noticed, so the smear of blood on her wrist—and the smear I’d noticed on the counter—could have been the result of splattered blood or contact between those two spots with the wound on her head as she’d collapsed to the floor.

So, if the bracelet hadn’t been lost during a struggle, what had happened to it?

My best guess was that the killer had removed it.

But why?

A hum of excitement ran through my body, starting out low and then growing in volume. I didn’t know the answer to that question, but it was likely important. If I knew why someone would want to remove Pavlina’s charm bracelet from her body, that might help me identify the killer.

Judging by the magazine photos and the two nights I’d seen Pavlina at the theater, she made a habit of wearing lots of jewelry. Yet while her necklaces and bangles changed with her outfits, the one constant seemed to be her charm bracelet. What significance had it held for her? Was it a gift from someone special?

I didn’t think the answer would lie within the pages of the magazine, but I returned my attention to it anyway. As I resumed eating my soup, I read through every word in the article about Pavlina before studying the picture on the cover as well as the smaller photos on the inner pages. By the time my bowl was empty and I’d finished reading, I unfortunately had no further insight into the importance of the bracelet or the identity of the murderer.

If the magazine didn’t hold the answers I needed, I’d have to look elsewhere. With a decided lack of enthusiasm, I realized I needed to pay a visit to the police. They were about as likely to tell me if they’d found Pavlina’s bracelet at the scene of the crime as they were to give me a million-dollar check just for the heck of it. But if they hadn’t found the bracelet and they didn’t know it was missing from Pavlina’s wrist, I needed to inform them of that fact. They’d probably dismiss the information as unimportant, but that wasn’t my problem. I felt it was my duty to tell them what I’d discovered. As usual, what they did with the information was up to them.

Deciding to pay a visit to the police station before my teaching hours started the next day, I spent the rest of the evening reading and watching television, thoughts of Pavlina and her bracelet hovering at the edge of my focus, like background music that I was always peripherally aware of.

Even in my sleep that night, the bracelet didn’t stray far from my thoughts. I had a strange dream about it, one where the charms were scattered on the floor. I was trying desperately to gather them up, only to have each one slip through my fingers as soon as I’d picked it up.

In the morning I shook off the dream as well as my residual sleepiness, wasting no time getting ready for the day, despite the fact that I wasn’t looking forward to speaking with Detectives Chowdhury and Van den Broek. It was best to get it over with, I told myself, and—if I were extremely lucky—maybe I’d be able to get a feel for how the police investigation was going.

That was unlikely, but my interminable curiosity pushed me to be hopeful.

M
Y MEETING WITH
the police didn’t get off to a good start. They kept me waiting for nearly an hour in the reception area, where I had little choice but to sit in one of the hard chairs, playing games on my phone to pass the time. I knew the detectives were busy and there was no guarantee they’d be able to see me when I arrived, but I couldn’t help but suspect they were making me wait on purpose.

Perhaps I didn’t really suspect that of Detective Chowdhury, but I certainly wouldn’t have put it past Detective Van den Broek. The guy wasn’t my biggest fan by a long shot, although I doubted he was anyone’s biggest fan. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, though, and made no comment when he finally appeared to accompany me to the back of the building.

“Is Detective Salnikova in?” I asked out of curiosity, my gaze falling on her unoccupied desk.

“Not at the moment.” Van den Broek gestured to a chair by his desk. “She’s not working the Nicolova case.”

“I know,” I said.

I didn’t bother to add that I was interested in simply saying hello. No doubt he would view that as frivolous and a desire on my part to waste police time.

“Cute kid,” I said when I noticed a framed photo of a young girl on the detective’s desk. She had dark curly hair and a big smile with dimples. “Is she your daughter?”

A shadow passed across Van den Broek’s face. “Yes.”

The way he said that one word told me the subject was off bounds. Maybe he was divorced and didn’t get to see his daughter anymore. Whatever the case was, he clearly didn’t want to talk about it. I glanced around for Detective Chowdhury, but it seemed he wouldn’t be joining us, and I counted that as a stroke of bad luck. Spending time alone with Van den Broek wouldn’t be a barrel of laughs.

Deciding it would be best to get our conversation going so it could end as soon as possible, I sat down and jumped right into what I had to tell him.

“There’s something that’s been bothering me lately. Something about Pavlina’s body,” I explained. “I couldn’t figure out what it was until last night. You see, she wore a charm bracelet on her right wrist. She was wearing it on the evening she was killed, but when Mikayla Deinhardt and I found her body, it was missing.”

The detective’s face revealed nothing, no interest or lack thereof, no indication of whether this information was new to him or not.

Undeterred, I continued. “I don’t know if the bracelet was found at the scene of the crime or not. But if it wasn’t, that could mean the killer removed it. And if that’s what happened, there must be some significance to it.”

Van den Broek tapped his fingers against the desktop in a slow, steady beat. “As I recall,” he said after several seconds, “you’d never meant Ms. Nicolova before the composing competition started.”

“That’s right,” I confirmed. “I’d heard about her, of course, but I’d never seen her in person before.”

Van den Broek nodded, his fingers still maintaining their steady rhythm. “And yet you feel certain she was wearing a specific bracelet on the night of her death.”

“Because I saw it on her wrist earlier that evening,” I said, barely muted impatience hovering beneath my words.

“And that was something you took enough notice of to realize that it was missing later that night.”

I didn’t miss the skepticism in his voice.

“Yes. Eventually.”

I wanted to say more. I wanted to clench my teeth in frustration, but I refrained from doing either.

Van den Broek finally ceased the drumming of his fingers, but his face remained devoid of expression and he said nothing, studying me silently from across his desk.

I refused to squirm beneath his gaze, meeting it head-on instead. “It may or may not be important,” I said, although I definitely believed that it was significant. “I simply thought I should share with you what I’d noticed.”

“I appreciate that.”

His tone of voice didn’t match his words, and I fought the urge to roll my eyes.

Pushing my chair back, I got to my feet. “I won’t take up any more of your time.”

Walking with me toward the reception area, Van den Broek said, “We’re working hard to solve this case, Ms. Bishop, despite what you might think.”

I stopped short in the hallway and faced him. “I never suggested otherwise, Detective. I would have thought you’d want people to share any information they might have, no matter how significant or insignificant it turns out to be.”

“We do.”

“Hmph” was the only sound I could come up with in response.

One corner of Van den Broek’s mouth twitched. I didn’t know if it was a sign of growing anger or if he was fighting a smile, but I highly suspected it was the former.

“I simply don’t want civilians getting in the way of our official investigation,” he said.

“All I’ve done is share my observations.”

“And as I said, I appreciate that.” He sounded no more sincere than the first time he’d said those words. “I hope you’ll continue to do no more than observe.”

Not bothering to respond, I pushed through the door to the reception area and left the station without looking back. Once I was safely closed away in my car, I let out a growl of frustration. That man was infuriating. What he had against me, I didn’t know, although I suspected it was something he had against people in general rather than just me.