Orchestrated Murder (5 page)

Norris looked up sharply. “Not so much with the Lee woman, but that timpani player certainly needed replacing.”

“And hounding someone is an appropriate way to get rid of them?”

“The orchestra has a pretty ironclad contract. It's something our current board would like to get better control of. Presenting classical music is a very costly undertaking. We want only the best.”

“What was your personal relationship with Spadafini like?”

“Cordial and professional. Occasionally, I'd be forced to step in when he went a bit overboard. The man had very little sense about what things actually cost.”

“There was no, ah, friction?”

“Not really. No.”

Pratt tapped his pencil against his notebook for a moment. “I understand his contract was coming up for renewal. How was that going?”

“Very well. Due to Spadafini, our ticket sales have been much stronger, especially since he's had a bestselling cd—with our orchestra on it.”

Norris looked away as he answered, and Pratt was certain he was lying.

“So you're confident that you would have re-signed him?”

“That was the board's feeling, yes.”

Again a lie. “Would it surprise you then to find out that he'd been talking to another orchestra and had in fact agreed to jump ship?”

Bingo! A direct hit on that. Norris's face turned a heavy crimson.

“Who told you that?”

“The chairman of the other orchestra. Spadafini spoke to him as recently as this morning, minutes before he was murdered, I might add.”

“How did you find that out?”

“I'm not at liberty to say. And you knew nothing about this?”

“Spadafini made the intimation that he would leave if we didn't meet his price. Frankly, I thought it was just a ploy to get more money out of us.”

Pratt mentally crossed his fingers with the next question. He really needed it answered. “And the contract renegotiations, how was this handled?”

“Spadafini had no manager. He didn't trust them. I, of course, represented the board.”

“Would you have matched the offer this new orchestra made?”

“Detective, how can I answer that without knowing the dollar amount?”

“You would have let him go, then, if you felt it was too high?”

Norris hesitated a moment before saying, “Of course, we would have tried to retain his services! But we have to keep our bottom line in sight too. We owe that to our community.” Norris sat up straight and leaned forward. “But this is all beside the point now that he's dead, isn't it?”

“Perhaps.”

“Now could you please tell me what progress you've made on discovering who murdered our conductor?”

Pratt was about to answer when his walkie-talkie squawked again.

Two people were trying to talk to him at once.

One was the detective he'd left in charge on the interview detail with the orchestra. “You'd better come down here. We've got something interesting.”

The other was Ellis. “Where are you? I've got some things you need to know.”

“Pratt here. Both of you meet me in the hallway outside the rehearsal room.” Then the detective turned to Norris. “Sorry, sir, but as you can see, there are developments. Will you be around later?”

“Possibly.”

“I'll catch up with you then.”

As Pratt hustled for the elevator, he thought about the three times he was certain Norris had lied to him. Experience told him that people most normally looked away when they were lying. The only decorative thing on Norris's desk was a framed photo of a beautiful young woman. A daughter, perhaps, or maybe a second wife? Each time the man had lied to Pratt, he'd looked at that photo. The last time had been the longest. It had followed Pratt's question about Spadafini leaving the orchestra.

The detective was pretty sure Norris didn't want the horny conductor anywhere near that woman.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

F
ood was being delivered into the rehearsal room when Pratt arrived at its doors. He looked longingly at the boxes. All he'd had that morning was a cup of dispenser coffee. Still, a missed meal would cut down on the gut he'd developed since Dori walked out on their marriage. A diet of fast food will do that to you.

“What do you have for me, Cooper?” he asked the detective who'd called him.

“We found something in the instrument storage lockers.”

The room next door had lockers where the orchestra's musicians could securely store their instruments if they didn't want to take them home. The detective explained that they also used the lockers to store various odds and ends they might need, along with purses and the like.

“I hit on the idea of asking each musician we questioned to open their lockers for us before we talked. I thought maybe our murderer might have stashed something here.”

Two lockers were open as they entered the long, narrow room. One was large and on the bottom row. They went to that first.

Pratt asked, “Whose locker?”

“A trombone player.”

But there was a cello inside. Pratt crouched to look at it. The second-thickest string was missing.

“You said the stiff upstairs had been choked by a string from one of these.”

Pratt got to his feet. “So how did the trombonist explain this?”

“He claims it's not his instrument. He's only keeping it in here as a favor for someone else.”

“Whose cello is it?”

The detective flipped his notebook back a page. “An orchestra member who died last year.”

Pratt felt his heart beat faster. “Annabelle Lee?”

“You know about that?”

“Why does this guy have her cello?” Pratt shot back.

“Like I said: someone in the orchestra asked him to keep it in here.”

“Who?”

The detective consulted his notes. “Someone named Daniel Harvey.”

“Have you spoken to him?”

“Not yet. That's why I called you.”

Pratt's mind was racing. He felt like a bloodhound that had suddenly picked up the scent. A real smile split his face for the first time that day.

He pointed to the other open locker farther down the room. “What about that?”

“That belongs to one of the percussionists.” “Let me guess: he's missing a pair of his sticks.”

The other detective grinned. “Got it in one. Special ones too.”

Pratt already had his walkie-talkie out. “Johnson! You still here?”

It took nearly twenty seconds, but the walkie-talkie eventually crackled and the Scene of Crime tech's voice said clearly, “Yeah. We're still working over the room.”

“The evidence bag with the murder weapon, is that still here?”

“Yeah.”

“I'm going to send someone up for it, okay?”

“Just make sure I get it back promptly.”

“Sure, sure. I also need someone down here to work over the instrument storage room. There's some evidence that needs collecting.” Pratt turned back to the detective with him. “Get one of the uniforms to go up two floors to the offices and fetch an evidence bag. In the meantime, bring that Harvey character in here. I want to hear what he has to say.”

While the detective was out of the room, Pratt found Ellis via the walkie-talkie. “So what do you need to tell me?” he asked.

“Well, based on stuff I found on news sites on the Internet, our boy seems to have been a regular Don Juan. The ladies all seemed to go gaga over him. There's a fan page on Facebook, for pity's sake. Anyway, he lost a chance at conducting one of the big European orchestras because of his habits with the females.”

“Anything else?”

“There's not a peep anywhere about Spadafini possibly jumping ship.”

“I need you to do something else for me. Find out what phone numbers belong to James Norris. I—”

“The chairman of the orchestra's board?” Ellis interrupted.

Pratt shouldn't have been surprised that the kid knew. He was proving to be pretty sharp.

“Yes. Get his home and cell phone numbers, then cross-check it with any numbers that Spadafini has called recently.”

“I'll also check his text messages. I may have missed something when I glanced at it earlier. Most of what is there is soft-core porn chatter with his current girlfriend.”

“That little thing? She seemed so darn innocent when I was talking to her earlier.”

“They're the worst ones.” Ellis laughed.

“Whatever. Find me what I want and then meet me down here. We're finally making some progress—I hope.”

“Right. I'll be down ASAP.”

A tall, slender man with graying hair appeared in the doorway. Pratt looked at him for a long moment just to make the musician a bit more apprehensive. Satisfyingly, he glanced twice at the open locker.

“Are you Daniel Harvey?” Pratt asked.

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

“Could I ask you to look at something for me?”

The man licked his lips nervously. “Of course. I'm happy to assist the police.”

He doesn't look it, Pratt thought. “That's good. Step this way please.”

Pratt led Harvey to the locker where the cello was. They both crouched down.

“Can you identify this instrument?” he asked.

Harvey started to reach for it, and Pratt grabbed his arm.

“Don't touch that, sir. It's evidence in our murder investigation.”

Perhaps that was laying it on a bit thick, but Pratt felt making the musician nervous would get the best—and quickest—results.

“It's, ah, it's…” Harvey was struggling to keep himself together. “It belonged to Annabelle Lee, who used to play in this orchestra.”

“I know. She committed suicide last year.”

“Yes. Yes, she did.”

“And why do you have her cello?”

Harvey looked at Pratt with very frightened eyes.

“She was my cousin.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

W
ithout a word, Pratt stood, and the musician collapsed to his knees.

“I did not kill Spadafini! You have to believe me. Much as I wanted to, I didn't do it!”

“I'd like to believe that.”

“You have to. I…I was with someone during the entire break. I didn't leave this floor.”

“Who?” the detective asked.

“Leanne Shapiro. I was with her the entire time. Other people saw me too.”

Now they had something to run with. “Ellis!” he barked into the walkie-talkie. “Where are you?”

“On my way down the stairs. What's happening?”

“Just double-time it, okay? I need you.”

Pratt walked over to Detective Cooper, who was standing in the doorway, and said in low voice, “This Shapiro woman, if she's already been questioned, find out what she said. If she hasn't, do it now. Don't tell her anything about what's going down. Maybe, just maybe, we've gotten lucky.”

“Got it.” The detective angled his head. “What about this guy?”

“Move him to an empty room. I think I'll let Ellis have a shot at him.”

Ellis arrived, breathless and looking eager. “I've got some news.”

“Not now. Things are moving a bit fast at the moment.”

“There's a break?”

Pratt couldn't help smiling. “I hope so. It's too soon to know.” He filled the young man in on what had been happening. “You question Harvey more thoroughly. I didn't have time to go into why he has his cousin's cello. It may have something to do with the case, it may not, but we need to know.”

Ellis hustled Harvey out. Pratt closed the door and leaned against it to catch his breath—and think.

In his twenty-eight years as a detective, he'd never had a case like this. In one way, it was a dream. Unless there was something he was missing completely, the murderer was still here. Any evidence was still here.

The silliness of the orchestra's massconfession aside, the big problem was that any one of them could have done it. That meant questioning a really huge pool of suspects.

Spadafini had obviously been a bastard of the first water. His womanizing alone was outrageous, but his treatment of the people he worked with was contemptible. Pratt felt sure that was the reason for his death.

So, who did it? Pratt was looking for a crowbar, that bit of information he could use to pry the truth loose. The real issue was being able to pick out the important clues from the mass of information they were collecting.

His biggest enemy was time. All these people couldn't be kept here forever. Getting them fed and watered was only buying him a bit more time. Would the murderer give it up under questioning? He doubted it. For the moment he or she could hide in plain sight.

The tired detective shook his head. And that indeed was the problem: how to smoke out the murderer.

Pulling out his cell phone, he dialed the captain.

“Pratt! What have you got for me?”

The situation was quickly outlined.

“I could really use more people,” Pratt told his boss. “We're stretched too thin, and time is running out. I can't keep the orchestra here forever.”

“I'll have to shake someone else's tree. You've got everyone from here.” The captain changed the subject. “Did you talk to
El
Presidente
of the symphony's board?”

“Yeah, Norris was here. He may still be around, as a matter of fact. He wanted an update on where we stood. I got called away.”

“Not a nice man to cross, I would think. When I got called up to the chief 's office, he was there with the mayor to turn up the heat on us.” The captain chuckled. “I probably shouldn't tell you this, but Norris said he was going to go down there to personally shake things up. On his way out he was grumbling that it was his second trip down of the day and he had better—”

“What did you say? Pratt interrupted. “He was here already this morning? When?”