Murder at the Opera (30 page)

“You can’t figure people.”

“Did you know him?”

“Sure. I must have done half a dozen interviews with him.”

“No, I mean before the murder. You were taking courses at Georgetown around the time Musinski was killed, weren’t you?”

“As a matter of fact, I was. I’d just started my master’s program, thanks to the Metropolitan Police Department’s largesse. That education program really helped.”

“You never ran across Grimes while you were there?”

“No.”

“But you must have known Musinski. He’d been there a long time, a high-profile guy.”

“I might have met him once or twice. He was in the Music Department, I was art history. But yeah, I think I was introduced to him once.”

“I never saw that in any of your reports.”

“Never occurred to me to include it. Didn’t have any bearing on the investigation.”

“Right. Despite Willie’s conviction that Grimes is guilty—you know Willie, he’s never met a suspect who wasn’t guilty—”

“Not a bad way to police,” Pawkins said.

“That aside, what I can’t figure is why Grimes would have killed Musinski.”

Pawkins thought for a minute and shrugged. “Those missing musical manuscripts aren’t a bad motive.”

“I have a problem with that.”

“Why?”

“A couple of reasons. To begin with, you indicated in your reports—and I remember having conversations with you about it—you questioned whether there ever were such manuscripts.”

“I still do. All we had to go on was a letter from Musinski to his niece, and her claim that he came back from London with them. I never saw them. Neither did anyone else I know of.”

“There was his partner over in Europe, wasn’t there?”

Pawkins nodded. “I spoke with him a couple of times. He mentioned the scores but didn’t press it. If anybody had a reason to raise hell about them disappearing, it was him. The fact that he didn’t raise hell tells me that maybe they never existed in the first place.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Berry said, “but there’s something else that bothers me.”

“I’m all ears.”

“If anybody took those manuscripts—what were they, string quartets written by Mozart and Haydn?”

“So they say.”

“If anybody took them, they would have sold them as fast as possible.”

Pawkins pondered Berry’s analysis. “Not necessarily,” he said. “There are art lovers who steal paintings, or pay to have them stolen, who just want them to look at them every night over a snifter of brandy. Gives them some sort of solace.”

“I can understand that with works of art, Ray, but musical scores? Not much to look at there, brandy or no brandy. I could understand recordings, or if whoever stole them plays the piano. By the way, Grimes doesn’t play—the piano, that is.”

“Still.”

“I’m not ruling out what you said.”

Berry did a decent impression of TV’s Columbo about to leave a scene but having a sudden new thought. “What bothers me, Ray, is that Grimes doesn’t live like a man who’s sitting on a million dollars’ worth of rare manuscripts. He, his wife, and two kids live in university-subsidized housing, nothing fancy. He drives a beat-up old car. His bank account gives him maybe a couple of months of living expenses. No savings, aside from a self-funded pension plan at the university. If he murdered Musinski to get his hands on those scores, what the hell did he do with them?”

“Beats me,” Pawkins said. “What about the niece? Maybe she grabbed them the night she reported her uncle murdered.”

Berry shook his head. “We checked her out, too, recently. Another modest liver, nothing to point in her direction.”

“If I were you, Carl, I’d forget about these so-called Mozart-Haydn scores and concentrate strictly on the forensics where Grimes is concerned. I’d love to see you nail him. That case has bugged me for six years, the fact that we couldn’t bring it to a conclusion. Grimes did it.” He laughed. “Hell, even Willie knows that. Well, got to run. Great seeing you again. If I come up with anything in the Lee case, you’ll be the first to hear—no, the second, after my esteemed client, the Washington National Opera.”

TWENTY-SIX

M
ilton Crowley decided to extend his stay in Washington for a few days. He didn’t feel well, chalking up his general malaise to the fatigue of the traveling he’d endured over the past week. He was staying at the Hotel Monaco, a relatively new boutique hotel in what once had been a post office and the home to the Tariff Commission. It had been recommended to Crowley by a colleague who’d recently visited Washington: “It’s a small oasis of sanity, Milton, in an otherwise insane city.”

Crowley dismissed his friend’s characterization of D.C. Truth was, he liked Washington, and enjoyed strolling its wide avenues and seeking out unusual shops on its side streets. He also found the hotel very much to his liking, particularly its restaurant, Poste, with its pleasant outdoor terrace, where he enjoyed sitting, a single-malt Scotch and crab cocktail with papaya on the table, along with an ashtray. Crowley was a smoker—a discreet one, to be sure, but genuinely fond of the pleasure it gave him, the crusading fanatics be damned.

This day, after checking in with the British Embassy, he decided to spend a portion of the day leisurely strolling the National Gallery of Art’s West Building. He’d visited the museum on earlier trips to Washington, marveling at its size and the scope of its collections; truly, the entire history of Western art from the 12th century to the present was contained in the building’s half-million square feet of interior space, one of the world’s largest marble structures. He was particularly fond of the Italian collection, which included
Ginevra de’ Benci,
the only work of Leonardo da Vinci’s on permanent display in the Americas. During his last visit, Crowley stood in front of that portrait of a young merchant’s wife and wept. He saw in the woman’s face the face of his own wife, Cora, who’d died a dozen years ago of cancer. It had been a childless marriage, which had suited them fine. Now Crowley sometimes wondered what it would be like to have a son or daughter bearing his name and carrying his blood. He’d never remarried, nor had he seriously pursued a new mate. His work became his mistress and spouse, but that, too, had provided less compensation in recent years. Whoever had invented the concept of retirement had done so with Milton Crowley in mind.

Soon.

Rather than begin in the Italian gallery, he stopped first in the East Hall, off the Rotunda, where 17th and 18th century French paintings were displayed. Renoir’s
A Girl with a Watering Can
captivated him, and he spent many minutes taking pleasure from it and recalling what Renoir had said about the work: “A painting should be a lovable thing, gay and pretty; yes, pretty. There are enough things to bore us in life without our making more of them.”
How true,
Crowley thought as he moved from Fragonard to Manet, Cézanne to Monet, and Renoir to Seurat before exiting that space and going to the West Hall, home of Italian art, of
Ginevra de’ Benci,
which he now almost considered a portrait of his beloved Cora.

His cell phone rang. A guard gave him a stern look.

“Sorry,” Crowley muttered, cupping his hand over the phone and speaking in whispered tones. “Now?” he said. “Can’t it wait?” He was told it could not. “All right,” he said. “I’ll come immediately.”

Sour over having been deprived of spending time with Cora, he replaced the phone in his pocket and abandoned his leisurely pace for a faster one in the direction of the main entrance, where taxis would be waiting. He grimaced against a stabbing pain in his hip and leaned against a wall for a moment to allow it to pass. He squeezed into the back of a cab and gave the address of the British Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue—Embassy Row, as it is known.

He closed his eyes as the driver lurched from the curb and executed a tight U-turn. What could be so important that he had to be there immediately? he wondered. They knew he’d elected to take a few days off before heading back to his post at the British Foreign Service’s Baghdad office. He’d discharged his responsibilities by briefing Browning at Homeland Security. He was now sorry that he’d decided to extend his stay. Better to be on an airplane, where no one could reach you.

He was deposited at a small brick guardhouse at the gated entrance to the sprawling embassy, arguably the most stately in a city of stately embassies. The guard confirmed his credentials, called inside the main house, and allowed Crowley to enter. He was met at the front door by the embassy’s head of chancery. “Mr. Crowley,” he said in a pinched tone, “right this way.”

They went down the main hallway, a long, wide corridor with bloodred walls and a checkerboard floor of white Vermont marble and black Pennsylvania slate. Huge portraits of British leaders past and present peered down at them as Crowley was ushered into a room with unmarked double doors. Heavy maroon drapes covered whatever windows were behind them. A large Tabriz carpet dominated the small, square room whose furniture was distinctly in the Louis XVI style, chairs and side tables all gold and blue. On the walls were four carved plaster friezes of Grinling Gibbons motifs, interspersed with landscapes by the hand of an artist unfamiliar to Crowley. Maybe Constable, he mused as the other men in the room stood at his entrance.

He knew two of them. Joseph Browning, replete in a three-piece suit different from what he’d worn when they’d last met at the Department of Homeland Security’s headquarters, offered his hand. The second face familiar to Crowley was Jillian Thomas of the British Foreign Service home office in London.
What is
he
doing here?

The third man, a stranger to Crowley, introduced himself: “Wendell Jones, Mr. Crowley, Canadian Security Intelligence Service.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Crowley said after shaking Jones’ hand. The representative of the CSIS was a portly man, probably in his mid-fifties, Crowley judged, with a round, shiny face, gelled black hair, and heavy lips defined by a too narrow black moustache above them.

Thomas, tall and as slender as a javelin, was slightly hunchbacked, referred to in his circles as a “socialite slouch.” In his sixties, he possessed a full head of flowing silver hair in which he obviously took immense pride, judging from the care with which it was arranged. An almost perpetual sneer, like his curved back, would be considered a sign of world-weariness and keenly honed cynicism. Crowley did not like him and never did, although his subservient position in the Foreign Service’s hierarchy precluded him from demonstrating it.

“Enjoying your holiday?” Thomas asked Crowley after everyone was seated in a circle in their gold-and-blue chairs.

“I hadn’t considered it a holiday,” Crowley said, not pleased with how defensive he sounded. “Just a day or two between assignments.”

“Yes, quite,” Thomas said. “Well, I see no reason to delay the topic of our gathering. Mr. Browning, please.”

The American reached into the recesses of a large, battered, top-opening briefcase and extracted a sheaf of papers. He looked through them, chose one, and handed it to the Canadian, Jones, who slipped on a pair of half-glasses and frowned as he read. Crowley waited patiently, adjusting himself in the lovely-to-look-at, uncomfortable-to-sit-in chair to accommodate his nagging hip.

“Yes, this matches what we’ve been told,” Jones said, handing the paper back to Thomas.

“May I ask what this is about?” Crowley asked, after first clearing his throat.

“It’s about what the bloody terrorists are planning, Milton,” said Thomas. “It’s about what your people in Amman have been hinting at for months but never quite delivered.”

Crowley extended his hand to Thomas. “May I see what is of such interest?” he asked.

Thomas grimaced, ran fingertips down his prominent nose, and handed Crowley the dispatch. Milton was aware that six eyes were trained on him, awaiting a response. He read slowly and deliberately, ignoring the tendency to want to accommodate them by reading faster. Finished, he looked up and said, “Yes, the Canadian connection is very much in line with what my people in Jordan were able to gather from their Iraqi sources.”

“Hardly a great revelation,” Thomas said. “The question, Crowley, is why these gentlemen’s intelligence agencies were able to pinpoint with greater specificity the threat, while your people only pussyfooted around it. You run a flaming expensive operation. A king’s ransom. And for what?”

Crowley began to respond, but fell silent.

“I might also say,” Thomas added, “that the leaks coming out of Amman are enough to sink the
Queen Mary II.
”

Many thoughts ran through Crowley’s mind. If he was being made a scapegoat, it wouldn’t be the first time. It occurred to him that the three intelligence agencies represented in this faux Louis XVI room were competing with one another for dominance, or at least for the most slaps on the back. He found it distasteful, at best. Terrorists were out there planning to kill as many non-Muslims as possible, and here they were, men jockeying for political position and kudos. Thomas, his boss at the Foreign Service, was not a man to take criticism with aplomb, Crowley had learned over the years.
Of course!
Crowley thought. Thomas, and the British intelligence services he represented, had been made to look, at best, inept. How handy for Thomas to have Crowley on hand to take the blame in front of his bosses’ counterparts. The Canadian, Jones, was cheeky to sit there and claim success. From what Crowley knew, the Canadians had squandered much of their counterintelligence resources worrying about foreign governments spying on Canadian industry, money obviously of a higher priority than lives.
Bastards! How dare they subject me to such embarrassment? I’ve given the best years of my life to the fugging Foreign Service, and have done a damn fine job, to boot.