Anthony Carrick Hardboiled Murder Mysteries: Box Set (Books 1 - 3)

by Jason Blacker

  "Yes what?" I asked.

  "Yes, Kieran gave him a black eye. Paul said that Kieran had followed him home one night. Paul used to walk through the park to get home. Anyway, that one night when it was deserted, Kieran confronted him and they got into a fight. Paul said Kieran punched him in the face a couple of times and told him he better leave me alone. If he didn't, Kieran said he'd be really sorry."

  "What do you think he meant by that?"

  "I know exactly what he meant by it," she said. "Because I confronted him the next day, and he bragged about showing Paul that he wasn't going to allow him to get away with it. He told me that what had happened was just a warning. He told me that if Paul and I didn't call it off that he'd kill us both."

  "Did you go to the police with this?"

  Rosanna looked down and shook her head.

  "So your husband beats you, then he beats up your lover, and then he threatens not only your life but your lover's life and you don't take it seriously. Do I have that right?"

  Rosanna looked up at me, fighting hard to keep my gaze.

  "I took him very seriously, Mr. Carrick, but I promised Kieran that it was over between the two of us.

  "And yet you knew that was a lie. You told me earlier how you and Paul were going to get married next summer."

  "I know."

  Her voice was small and weak like a mouse’s squeak.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't really think Kieran would hurt Paul. I mean, we don't know that Paul's in trouble, do we?"

  "We know enough for me to be concerned. Look, I'm gonna need to talk to your husband," I said. "Where can I find him?"

  "If he's not at home he's at the bar."

  "Which one?"

  "The Pig and Bard," she said.

  I nodded, making a mental note of it.

  "But I don't think you should go and see him."

  "Why is that?"

  "Because he won't like it. He's got a quick temper, Mr. Carrick, especially if he's been drinking."

  "Then I'll have to be quicker."

  I looked at Rosanna steadily for a while. She glanced down at her lap.

  "Look, you're an attractive woman. You can do better than a husband who beats you. Things aren't going to end well unless you leave him. That's my advice to you."

  Rosanna nodded and offered me a small smile. A sample of what she might be capable of if she was a happier woman. I didn't know why I'd just given her advice. On less than one hand I could count the number of battered woman who took my advice when I was on the job. I eventually gave up offering it. It wasn't rocket science.

  "Anything else?" she asked me.

  I shook my head.

  "I've got a lot of leads already. None of which suggest finding Paul unharmed. Is there anything else you'd like to offer?"

  Rosanna shook her head, and stood up.

  "I don't think so. And I really don't think Kieran would do anything bad to Paul."

  "You mean other than punch him in the face like he had before? Listen, Rosanna, you don't seem to understand what's going on here. The best indication of future behavior is past behavior. Kieran has shown a lot of past behavior that doesn't make him a choir boy."

  Rosanna looked at me for a while and then walked off towards the stage. I watched her go. She looked great from behind. This was the kind of woman who owned a gold mine and figured it for tin. From what I'd seen, neither Kieran nor Paul were any good for her. But that wasn't my concern.

  I was trying to figure out why a concertmaster had gone missing. I figured his body would show up soon enough, and there were two suspects who might have something to do with it. And both of them had cheating spouses. If things continued heading in the right direction, I might just have this all buttoned up in the next day.

  FIVE

  Chapter 5

  I called Patrick Francis down from the stage to speak with me. He was thin. Everything about him was thin. He had thin brown hair that was a dog's breakfast and salted with dandruff. His lips were thin and his beaked nose was thin. He looked sick and his pallor suggested the same. He was short. I wouldn't have put him past five eight. He looked like he might have been in his fifties, but I figured he was likely a decade or more younger than that.

  He had on well worn jeans lashed around his waist with a black belt. He wore an old Rolling Stones t-shirt that had half sleeves. He was thin enough to have been a member of the band.

  "Take a seat," I said to him.

  "I'd sooner stand."

  "This might take a while."

  He folded his hands across his chest like a petulant teenager. I didn't need a fight so I indulged him.

  "You told me earlier that you figured Paul was on another bender."

  "That's right."

  "Care to elaborate."

  He just shrugged at me. Now he was beginning to get on my nerves.

  "I get paid by the day," I said, "I bet you don't. I can sit here all day staring at you silently."

  Patrick finally broke off his gaze and looked over at the orchestra. He didn't have his violin with him.

  "It's not secret that Paul was a coke head," he said.

  "And how do you know this?"

  "Because I've seen him buy from Gary a ton of times."

  "Buy what?"

  "Coke, I just told you."

  "Has he ever gone missing like this before?"

  "No, but he's been late before. I think his problems are just getting worse."

  "Which problems?"

  "His drug and alcohol problems. Are you even listening to me?"

  "Well, I see your mouth is moving but you're not saying very much. Were those Paul's only problems?"

  "The biggest ones, and of course the women."

  "What about the women?"

  "He was a Casanova. Or at least he liked to think he was."

  "With who?"

  "The two women you just spoke with before me."

  "Anyone else?"

  "Yeah, there was this administrative assistant that rumor has it he knocked up. She's been gone some months now."

  "What's her name?"

  "Stephanie Perkins. Christina Tedder took her place."

  "How long ago was that?"

  "I don't know, a few months. Maybe half a year, I wasn't Paul's keeper."

  "No, that's right. In fact, I heard you didn't like him much."

  "He was a fucking asshole."

  Patrick said it like it was a fact. There was no animosity in his voice.

  "Tell me about that," I said.

  "What's there to tell, he was an ass, plain and simple."

  "Why did you think he was an ass?"

  "Because he was uncouth and spoiled and a dilettante. Everyone was all over him like he was the best thing since Paganini, and he was nowhere near as good."

  "Paganini who?"

  Patrick rolled his eyes at me and shook his head.

  "Paganini is only the greatest violinist to have ever lived. But you'd think it was Paul the way people fawned all over him. Paganini they say was at least gracious with his talent. The same could not be said of Paul."

  "How so?"

  "I think it must have started with his parents, but if Paul wasn't the center of attention then he would pout, miss rehearsals, or come late and generally act like a spoiled child. I remember one time, when he had just started here, he threw all the music stands over in a fit of anger because the conductor told him he had to practice his piece more. And that's just one example."

  "I see."

  "Lately, he had become even more contemptuous. He was using more drugs from what I can tell and his playing was the worse for it. He and Frank got into it one day after rehearsal about a week ago. It was a helluva shouting match. Frank told him he had to start smartening up and getting his shit together or he'd be demoted from concertmaster. Paul broke some of the chairs of the orchestra after that. In fact, if you go up on stage, you can probably see the marks on the wooden floor where he flung and thrashed the chai
rs all about."

  "That's all quite fascinating," I said, "but I don't think those are the real reasons you didn't like him very much."

  "Those are reasons enough," said Patrick, still standing with his arms crossed over his chest.

  "Yes, maybe they are, but I figure your reasons run a little deeper. Your reasons are more personal."

  Patrick looked at me but he didn't say anything. It looked like if I blew hard enough I could blow him over.

  "A little birdie told me that you were really upset he got first violin and more upset that he got concertmaster."

  "You wouldn't understand."

  "Try me, that's what I'm here for."

  "I graduated from Juilliard two years before Paul. I was promised a similar position in the first violin section just as he was, only it never happened. Before Frank, the musical director was a guy by the name of Doug Goodell. He was a much better director. He wasn't swayed by any of our rich benefactors. He ran the orchestra with an eye on what was good for the orchestra. Sometimes upsetting the benefactors, especially Sonia Varnier. Doug had promised me the first opening in the first violin section. He expected it to open up within three years. Almost three years to the day, after I got hired on by the Phil, Doug was let go. Sonia played a large role in it, and her lackey, Frank, is now the musical director. He was her first choice. Now, I have nothing against Frank except that he's an idiot, and doesn't know how to run an orchestra to save his life."

  "So you don't like Frank or Sonia, because you didn't get your first violin position."

  "That's part of it. Like I said, I don't dislike Frank. Sonia's another matter. I don't know if you know this or not, but the musical director is often the same person as the conductor."

  "I didn't know that. So who was the conductor when Paul had his fit that you spoke about earlier?"

  "That would have been Doug Goodell."

  "Okay."

  "Well, it's not okay. Doug was a superb musician, an outstanding conductor and a fine man. He had a real strong moral compass. I liked him a lot. And that's not just me. Ask anyone else around here and you'll get the same thing, just about everybody liked him."

  "But not Frank."

  "Well no, but you won't hear people complain about him unless they've got a couple of drinks under their belts. And not him. He's alright, it's the whole bit about him becoming the musical director and how Doug was fired that most of us aren't happy with."

  "Why is that?"

  "Like I'm trying to tell you, it's because Doug was excellent. There was no reason to get rid of him and he had no interest in retiring. It was all political so that Sonia could have her way. I mean come on, Frank's last post was as the first violin at the Chippewa Valley Symphony. That's in Eau Claire, Wisconsin for Christ's sake. And then bam, he's here as our musical director."

  "That wouldn't necessarily disqualify him from the job," I said, having fun with Patrick's anger.

  Patrick shook his head and rolled his eyes again.

  "I'll forgive you because you obviously have no idea of what you're talking about. The New York Phil is a top five, some would say top three orchestra in the US. In the world, it's consistently ranked in the top twenty. You don't get to be the conductor at a world class orchestra without having conducted before, I don't care how good you are. And frankly, if you'll excuse the pun, Frank isn't particularly good."

  It was fun seeing Patrick getting wound up about this issue. To me, I probably couldn't tell the difference between the New York Phil and the Chippewa Symphony. But he was passionate about music. That much was clear, and he earned my respect for that.

  "Alright, I'll take you at your word. Frank's not the best conductor, or music director or whatever you want to call him. But you're upset because a first violin position went to Paul and not you."

  "I'm upset because the esteem of the New York Phil is waning because of our incompetent conductor."

  "But you just told me that this orchestra is consistently ranked in the top twenty around the world."

  "Yes, but since Frank's tenure we've been steadily slipping down. We used to be in the top five, now we're number eighteen. The only reason we've stayed on that list as long as we have is because of our history and heritage."

  "Okay then, tell me about what happened when Frank was made conductor."

  "Within the first few months he fired one of the first violins and put Paul in his place. That's a position that should have gone to me. I'm just as good as Paul is."

  "I'll take your word on that."

  "You don't have to. The New York Times said the same thing twenty years ago when all this happened."

  "That's a long time to hold a grudge. Why did you stick around?"

  "I looked for other positions, but the top ten orchestras here didn't have any first violin positions open and I'd have to start from the beginning again as a second violin. I considered it back then, but only the LA Phil had a position and it paid less and they wouldn't cover my moving expenses. I stayed because I thought things would improve and in the early years Frank paid me lip service about getting a first violin position. When Paul made concertmaster it opened up a first violin position that was given to Milo Ellis. But by this time my mother was terribly sick and I'm her only family in town, so I've resigned myself to stay here until she's gone, then I'll likely seek other opportunities."

  "Or not," I said. "If anything unfortunate were to happen to Paul, you'd likely benefit, right?"

  "Hard to say, I was supposed to get Milo's position. Who's to say who gets the next first violin opening. Besides which, Paul was on a self destruct mission. I didn't need to hurt him if that's what you meant."

  "I was thinking you might actually have motive to kill him."

  Patrick frowned his face and looked down his nose at me.

  "That's pretty macabre," he said. "We don't know he's dead and saying such things is rather unpleasant. Look, as much as I disliked him, I didn't wish him dead."

  "In my line of work I mostly deal with the dead. Paul missing now for over forty-eight hours isn't a good sign."

  Patrick didn't say anything for a while.

  "Why would anyone want to kill him?" he asked, genuinely puzzled.

  "You tell me, but I can start. We have two pissed off husbands who wanted him out of the picture. We have you, and you feel like you should have been made first violin. Then maybe it's just a simple robbery gone bad. There's a whole bunch of people who might have liked his violin."

  "So you're saying they stole it. Ha!"

  Patrick tossed his head back.

  "A violin as rare as his would be very difficult to resell. Everybody knows he owned it."

  "Everybody in the violin world. But there is the underworld and there are private buyers for these sorts of things who wouldn't ask a lot of questions."

  Patrick got a quizzical look on his face.

  "Well, Paul isn't Jewish," he said as if that meant something to me.

  It didn't.

  "So what?"

  "Well, Paul said he got his violin from his great grandfather, and his great grandfather got the violin during the Second World War."

  "That's what I've been told."

  "Yeah, well I looked into that a bit, and I found out that Paul's background is German. Paul's grandfather from what I learned was a guard at Mittelsteine. Mittelsteine was a German concentration camp for women. Paul's grandfather got the violin off of one of the first inmates there, a woman by the name of Anke Mueller. Anke died at the concentration camp, and just before the allies arrived, Paul's grandfather left for Switzerland under an assumed name."

  "What was his name?"

  "Ryszard Kucharski, or Richard as he became known. Though his real name I learnt was Swen Boehm."

  "How do you know this?"

  "Because of that first violinist who got fired that I told you about when Frank became the music director."

  I nodded my head.

  "His name was John Stampley and I kept in touch wi
th him for several years after he was fired. He was really choked. He hit some hard times. Anyway, he spent a ton of money on a PI to look into Paul's background and this is what the guy came up with. He showed me some of the evidence the PI had uncovered. John said he was going to confront Paul with it, and if he didn't resign he was going to take the information to the authorities."

  "And did he?"

  "I don't know. I lost contact with him around that time."

  "So you don't know if he ever told Paul that he knew all of this?"

  "No, I don't."

  "So how did Paul get the last name Klee?" I asked.

  "The grandfather I'm talking about is his mother's father. His mother married his father and probably took his name."

  I nodded.

  "Do you know how I can get a hold of this John Stampley?"

  Patrick shook his messy head of hair.

  "No, I lost contact with him a while back. I can give you the last number I have if you'd like."

  I nodded. Patrick fished a phone out of his front pant's pocket. He tapped away at it for a while and then gave me the number. I added it to the other notes I'd been making in my notebook.

  Just as I finished up writing in my notebook, a uniform police officer came walking down the aisle and went straight up to Frank. Frank and he put their heads together, looking down. Frank nodded a lot but didn't say much. Most of the talking was done by the policeman.

  The conversation didn't last long. I could see the cop mouth the word 'sorry', and Frank nodded, put on a brave smile and watched him leave. Frank looked up at us and waved us up to the stage.

  SIX

  Chapter 6

  JUST as Patrick and I were exiting the row the cop came past us. Patrick started for the stage, I started for the cop.

  "Just a second," I said.

  The cop stopped and turned around. He was young, maybe not more than a few months out of the academy. He was clean shaven but still showed a five o'clock shadow. His name tag read 'Castiglione'.

  "Anthony Carrick," I said, offering my hand, which he took instinctively and we shook. "I've been hired to look into the missing person's case of Paul Klee. Do you have any information?"

  He looked me up and down. I smiled at him broadly like we were long last friends. He didn't return the gesture.