Killing in C Sharp

by Alexia Gordon

  Hardy only shrugged and ambled listlessly to the front desk. Gethsemane overheard him ask for messages. No point in trying to talk to him. She’d get nothing of any use if he managed to remain conscious long enough to speak. Poe, on the other hand, promised to yield more substance. Assuming she didn’t literally rip Gethsemane’s head off. Or impale her or beat her to death with a camera tripod. She checked with the desk clerk after Hardy stumbled away. Poe hadn’t returned to the hotel. That narrowed down her probable locations to two: the Rabbit or the Athaneum.

  Hardy called her back as she reached the front door. “Hey, how are the boys doing?”

  “Still breathing.” But, if they were as ill as Hardy, for how long?

  “I’m sorry they got mixed up in all this. Sucks when kids get dragged into things. When they get hurt.”

  “Tragic.” Was Hardy thinking of any specific kids? Gethsemane waited to see if he’d go on, but he just stared at the floor. She prompted him. “Have you seen anything like this before? If you know something that might help…”

  “I’ve never seen anything like this before. Not ever. I was thinking of some other kids.”

  “Kids who got sick?” Hardy nodded. “Kids who died?”

  “One did.”

  “Was it your child, Hardy?”

  “I don’t have any kids.” He grinned. “At least none that I know of.” The grin faded, replaced by an expression Gethsemane couldn’t read.

  “Who died?”

  “My little brother.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It happened a long time ago. He was four. An outbreak of a stomach bug at the pool. E. coli H-something.”

  E. Coli O157:H7. Gethsemane remembered helping her brother prepare an epidemiology report for his infectious disease rotation. E. Coli O157:H7 produced toxins that caused gastrointestinal bleeding. Infection could be fatal. A dangerous bacterium, especially for young children.

  “A bunch of kids got sick, and my brother didn’t make it. I blamed myself. Mom blamed me, too, I think, although she never said so to my face.”

  “How is an infectious disease outbreak at a swimming pool your fault?”

  “I was supposed to take my brother to the movies. One of my friends got some new video games, so I weaseled out of going to the Cineplex. I promised him we’d go for ice cream later, figuring he’d just forget. Turns out he was pretty bummed about the movies, so Mom took him to the pool instead.”

  “I’m really sorry, Hardy. How awful.”

  He didn’t seem to hear her. “The worst of it is, the pool knew. There’d been a couple of cases a month earlier. The pool operators claimed they increased the amount of chlorine or whatever in the water and it was safe. They lied. The real problem was they needed a new pump or filter or something. An expensive part. They didn’t want to spend the money.”

  “That’s beyond awful,” she said. “That’s criminal.”

  “I can almost understand the pool operators. They cared more about money than some stupid kids from poor neighborhoods. What I don’t get, who I’d really like to grill, are the newspaper reporters who covered the story after the first incidents. The reporters just took the pool’s word for it that the problem was solved. They didn’t investigate. They didn’t ask for water quality reports to see if the water was safe, they even implied the parents who expressed doubt were just angling to file lawsuits against the pool. One reporter even said he’d let his own kids swim there. Of course, he didn’t. He had a country club membership. His kids used that pool.”

  “I don’t get it. Why would a newspaper—”

  “Let’s just say no one in the neighborhood thought it was a coincidence when it came out that the pool operator’s daughter played soccer on the same team as the newspaper’s senior editor. This was a top-tier paper. A lot of people read those articles and thought the pool was safe. Mom believed the water was safe.” Hardy gasped and collapsed into a club chair. He wiped his face on the hem of his t-shirt. His color had worsened since he’d first bumped into her.

  “Okay, Hardy, enough. I’m calling an ambulance.”

  “No, don’t. I hate hospitals. My brother—I hate hospitals. I’ll go to my room and lie down. I promise.” He hoisted himself from the chair and staggered more than walked to the stairs.

  “The elevator’s back that way.” Gethsemane pointed.

  He changed direction then turned back to face her. “The reporters. That’s who I’d like to kill.”

  Sixteen

  The rain showed no sign of letting up, so Gethsemane called a cab.

  “Where to, miss?” the cab driver asked.

  She played a hunch. “Drop me near the Athaneum theater, please. Not right at the front entrance. About a block away.”

  The cab driver stared at her. “You and your bike will get a soaking.”

  “The bike needs a good cleaning and the dress is wash-and-wear.”

  The driver left her where instructed. She left the bike near a tree and crept around the rear of the building to the stage door. She borrowed a key during rehearsals for the All-County and had neglected to return it. She found it on her keyring. Only one garda stood watch at the entrance. She walked up to him.

  “Excuse me, sir.”

  He looked her up and down and back again. His expression held more suspicion than lechery.

  Gethsemane smoothed her wet skirt, pulled her jacket tighter, and pretended the rain had no impact on her natural hair. “I got caught out while riding my bike.”

  “We’re no taxi service. Don’t give rides home.”

  “I don’t want a ride. I was waiting across the street for the rain to stop when I saw a woman with blue hair and cargo pants trying to climb in through a window.”

  “Where?” The garda craned his neck back and forth, trying to see the windows.

  “On the other side.” Gethsemane pointed off in the distance.

  “Damn manky gobshite weirdo,” the guard muttered as he headed around the building. His radio crackled as he warned his colleagues.

  As soon as he rounded a corner, Gethsemane slipped inside. She had no trouble finding the stage. She’d led St. Brennan’s to triumph on that stage four months ago. She could find her way in the dark. But she didn’t have to. Maja’s blue glow illuminated the theater like emergency path lighting in an airplane. Gethsemane kept an eye out for the entity but saw only the glow.

  Then she found Poe. The photographer, intent on adjusting equipment, didn’t notice her. Gethsemane called up to the grand tier. “The guards are looking for you.”

  Poe’s hands stopped moving, but she didn’t take her eyes off the machine she’d been calibrating. “I’m right here, let’s see if they’re smart enough to find me.” She resumed her work. “I’m not worried.”

  “Subtlety” and “Poe” didn’t belong in the same sentence. Best use the direct approach. “How long have you been in love with Bernard Stoltz?”

  Poe dropped a camera lens. “What? I’m not—In love with? Who told you—What the—” She sputtered.

  “Don’t deny it. I have proof. Isn’t that what Ghost Hunting Adventures is all about? Proof on film?” She held up the photo booth strip.

  Poe came down from the grand tier and looked at the pictures. And laughed. She tried to grab the strip, but Gethsemane snatched it away.

  “Keep it,” Poe said. “Hang it on your fridge. It means nothing.”

  “It means you had an affair with a man who’s lying in the morgue.”

  “That’s not me.”

  Gethsemane looked at the photos, at Poe, and back at the photos. “It’s you. Different hair color but—”

  “That’s my sister, J. Sheridan. Yes, I’m a twin. Sickening thought, huh? Two of me.”

  Kind of sickening, yeah. Mildly nauseating, at least. Two Poes. An identical twin sister.

>   Poe went back to her gear. “We got tired of people mixing us up so we decided to color our hair. We drew straws. J. lost and had to go with pink.”

  Her sister. Hard to imagine Poe with a family. Easier to picture her in a cave being raised by wolves. “How long’s she been with Bernard?”

  “A few months. Long enough to fall for his B.S. Get it? B.S. Bernard Stoltz. His name describes him. Whole family hates him. So, natch, J. Sheridan sticks that much tighter.”

  Family dinners with Poe and J. Sheridan must be a riot. “Did he love her?”

  Poe snorted. “What do you think? Still, my sister’s convinced she loves him and can save him. She’ll be the one to turn him around and make him want to be a better man.” Poe made a retching motion. “Makes me glad I’m Ace.”

  “Ace?”

  “Asexual. One of the plus signs after LGBT.”

  Gethsemane studied the photo again. “That’s really not you in the picture?”

  “Look closely. See J. Sheridan’s left forearm?”

  A tattoo. “Is that a dagger piercing an alien?”

  “See my left forearm?” Poe pushed up her sleeve. A teddy bear with a dagger in his belly surrounded by a heart adorned the front. A long scar adorned the back. “Punched through a window.”

  Gethsemane put the picture away. “But you did buy Bernard’s plane ticket? Arranged for the hotel? Unless your sister pretended to be you and swiped the company credit card.”

  Poe frowned. “How did you—Never mind. Yeah, I paid Bernard’s way. I did it for J. Bernard, got a letter from some rinky-dink music magazine offering to buy a piece on Aed Devlin. I don’t know Aed from Zed so I wasn’t impressed, but Bernard convinced J. this was his big break, his comeback. He was broke, as usual. He always mooched off J. He claimed poor mouth until time to buy himself a new suit or new shoes. Then he managed to ‘scrape some change together.’ He begged J. to pay his way to Dunmullach, and she begged me once she found out we were coming for the investigation.”

  “And you paid with the company credit card.”

  “My money.”

  “Company money.”

  “Same thing.” Poe turned on an EMF pod and cranked up the energy level. Gethsemane’s head throbbed and she felt queasy. “For Maja,” Poe explained. “Anyway, as they say in the theater, ‘All’s well that ends well.’”

  “It didn’t end well for Bernard.” Gethsemane massaged her temples. The blue glow brightened. “He got stabbed.”

  Poe shrugged. “I’m good with that. Now he’ll leave my sister alone.” She cranked up another pod. “You might want to leave. High doses of electromagnetic energy make some people sick. Headaches, nausea, hallucinations.”

  An angry blue face hovered just beyond Poe’s shoulder. A ghost, not a hallucination. “I bet you and Maja would get on real well.”

  Poe smiled the first genuine smile Gethsemane had seen her give. “You think so? Or are you just being nice?”

  Gethsemane cocked her head and studied the photographer. “I don’t get you, Poe. What makes you so, so—”

  “Devoted to my cause.”

  “Mean. And hostile. Anger radiates off you like the blue aura off your paranormal idol. Did something happen to you? Did some trauma leave you this way?”

  “What? The only possible explanation for a woman not being nice,” she spat the word, “is because a traumatic experience scarred her for life, damaged her beyond redemption? She must have suffered abuse or abandonment or lost a child. Why else would she behave this way? Her husband must have dumped her for the nanny. She must have been abducted by a cult. Otherwise, she’d be sweet and meek and mild. I expect that crap from guys, but from you?”

  “No one said you have to be ‘nice’ just because you’re a woman. I’m not nice. Competent, confident, intelligent, and driven, but not ‘nice.’ All I ask of life is to be taken seriously, not to be ‘likeable.’ I’d rather be the respected one than the nice one-slash-doormat. But, Poe, c’mon. An ocean exists between ‘not nice’ and ‘vicious, misanthropic, sadistic champion of an evil, child-killing spirit.’”

  “I’m in an industry dominated by men. They show up, do their jobs, no one gives them grief as long as they do those jobs well. Performance is the only standard they’re measured on. If they’re high performers everyone’s cool with them. If they succeed, it’s just normal. Of course, they succeed, that’s what men do. I show up and get gobsmacked with expectations. It’s not enough for me to do my job well. My behavior’s up for discussion. My attitude matters more than the outcome of my work. Would you have even noticed my behavior if I was a man?”

  “In your case, yes. Attitude’s hard to miss, female or male, when the person with it beats everyone else over the head with it.”

  Distant voices echoed through the theater. Angry voices. “Where are you?” “Over this way.” “No, over there.” “Damn them.” “What’s that smell? Peppers and grease?”

  “The gardaí,” Gethsemane said. “My plans for the evening don’t include being arrested, so I’ll leave you to your—spectral bonding or whatever. I’m going.”

  Gethsemane raced to her Pashley. Rain or not, the gardaí on her heels nixed thoughts of calling a cab. She pedaled to the Dunmullach Dispatch office and pulled to a stop in front of an oversized red umbrella canopy.

  The canopy tipped back and Venus peered at her. “Drowned rat is not a good look.”

  Gethsemane secured her bike. “Thanks for the fashion tip.” She shook rain from her hair. “Have you been inside yet?”

  “I have.” Venus shared her umbrella. “I chatted up the crime reporter, told some war stories, swapped some lies. You know, became BFFs.”

  “And?” Gethsemane tucked her hands in her armpits and huddled as close to the center of the umbrella as she could.

  “And we’re in. He’ll give us access to the WorldNews database for fifteen minutes.”

  “Let’s get to it, then.” She held the door while Venus folded her umbrella. “Where’d you get that?”

  “I brought it with me. It’s Ireland. It rains.”

  Inside, Venus introduced Gethsemane to the crime reporter, Pete Donovan. They followed him to a small office at the back of the building. They squeezed through a maze of file cabinets and boxes and crowded around a computer perched on a small desk. Donovan logged on and turned the desk chair over to Venus. Gethsemane read over her shoulder. A few keystrokes and mouse clicks later, front pages of newspapers from London, Paris, New York, Washington, D.C., places from all over the world, dating back ten, twenty, fifty years...

  “Not that far,” Gethsemane said. “Bernard wasn’t wielding a poisoned pen as a toddler.”

  Venus scanned the available titles. “Where do we start?”

  “How about with the search box?” She pointed over Venus’s shoulder to a box in the upper corner of the computer screen.

  “Step back,” Venus said. “You’re dripping on me.” She typed Bernard’s name and clicked “go.” A list of links to newspaper articles popped up on screen. “Bingo.”

  Gethsemane read the titles. “Sour Sibelius. Chopped Tchaikovsky. Massacred Mozart. Concert reviews. With titles that would fail a third grade English course.”

  Venus selected the Sibelius review and read, “The composer surely spins in his grave after tonight’s criminal performance of his ‘Violin Concerto in D Minor, Op. 47.’ Vinegar tastes sweeter than the maestro’s interpretation of Sibelius’s masterpiece.”

  “An alliterative hatchet job. Are the others just as blistering?”

  They were.

  “If this is typical of Bernard’s work,” Venus said, “I’m amazed someone waited this long to kill him.”

  Gethsemane pointed to a link. “Josephine’s Joke. I don’t know of any composers named Josephine.”

  “Maybe it’s a musician.” Venus clicked th
e link. “‘When one enters a Parisian dining establishment…’ It’s a restaurant review.”

  “Must be the one he wrote when he met Sylvie in Paris.”

  “Look at these others,” Venus said. “Marco’s Mashup Marvels Marry Two Cuisines. Tara’s Truffle Triumph. Petra’s Perfect Pastry. Louie’s Lamb Shanks Suck Lemons. How did the headlines sneak past an editor?”

  “Maybe the editor wrote the headlines. A print version of click bait.”

  “A print version of cringe bait.”

  “At least he wrote one or two favorable ones.” Gethsemane pointed at a title. “I assume Tara’s Truffle Triumph is positive.”

  “Positive crap.” Venus wrinkled her nose. “Confection Confidential voted Tara’s truffles the worst in Westchester County. Tasted like dirt and mouthwash. Customers sued Tara’s to get refunds, alleging the candy was so bad it made them physically ill. And Petra’s pastries? Far from perfect. Her bakery closed after outbreaks of salmonella poisoning from tainted eggs and listeria from under-pasteurized milk. They didn’t cook the pastries all the way through. Raw dough in the middle of the muffins.”

  “Then why would—? Oh, they paid Bernard for the good reviews. Guess Louie refused to pay?”

  “Louie started over and opened up a new restaurant about two years after that review ruined him. Same recipes. Won a James Beard award.”

  “Bernard honed his graft skills on chefs before taking aim at musicians.”

  “There are so many. More good than bad.” Venus scrolled through the list. “If these were all paid for, Bernard must have made a nice living. He was as prolific as he was crooked.”

  “Maybe he had some expensive habits to support. Gambling, a secret family.”

  “If you think Bernard would have been stand up enough to support a child or the child’s mother, don’t. Bernard looked after Bernard.” Venus slammed a finger on the left mouse button. The list of articles vanished.

  Gethsemane protested. “Hey, wait, we need those.”

  “Why? We’ve proved Bernard was a two-genre jerk.”

  “Names. We need people’s names. There’s a good chance someone he knifed on paper repaid the favor by knifing him in the back.”