Downbeat (Biting Love)

by Hughes, Mary

  “Please. You must call me Dragan, as Raquel does.”

  “Dragan, hmm?” She caught sight of me and waggled her eyebrows, her we’ve-hooked-a-whopper face. “Well, Dragan. You’ll have to come over for dinner.”

  I grinned at her, slid to where Dragan could see me but she couldn’t and flailed at him, danger-danger-danger. SOS. I signaled so hard Nixie almost got an S to the mouth.

  “Sounds delightful,” he said. Then, as if not satisfied with inciting mere disaster, he added, “It would be lovely to join you and your daughter for dinner sometime.”

  “Sometime?” my mother said. “As that great German philosopher Anne Nonimous said, ‘Why put off until sometime what you can do tomorrow? I insist you come to dinner tomorrow night.”

  “No!” I jumped in before he could sentence himself to the only Friday night activity worse than reruns. “After a long week of work? I’ll be too tired to have company.”

  “Oh,” Mom said. “Of course, Rocky. I should have thought of that.” I started to relax. Then she added with a long face, “As your houseguest, I’d never dream of inconveniencing you.” She sniffed.

  I felt like a heel. “You’re never an inconvenience, Mom. And you’re my mother, not a guest.”

  She brightened. “Then we’ll do it Sunday!”

  My muscles knotted up again. Still, lots of things might happen between now and Sunday, like an earthquake or the end of the world. One could hope. “Maestro Zajicek might be busy that day.”

  “I’m not,” he said.

  I facepalmed. Could this get any worse?

  Sure. Mom lit up like a supernova. “Excellent. We’ll have ham!”

  I dropped my hand to gape. I don’t know how rich people do it, but in the Corners, everyone knows the rhythm. An invitation to coffee made acquaintances into friends; lunch turned friends into good friends; dinner cemented ties for bosom friends and close neighbors; and ham for dinner meant “Welcome to the family. See this shotgun?”

  My gape crossed beams with Nixie’s, her eyes wide open and her pupils constricted. We both turned to Dragan and flailed like synchronized swimmers, or maybe synchronized drowners, because he ignored us, difficult because the kitchen was so small—we nearly took off his arms.

  “I’d be delighted,” he said to my mother.

  That nailed it. Dragan Zajicek wasn’t just a bad boy who loved to take risks. He was suicidally insane.

  Chapter Nine

  Maybe if I’d done it differently, events wouldn’t have unfolded as they did. But I wasn’t sure how to do it differently. This wasn’t orchestra, where I could cut my mother off with a circle of the end of my flute, or cue Nixie to jump in with a flick of my head. This was social etiquette, and while other people seem to instinctively know what to do, I hadn’t a clue.

  I want to do what’s right, but I don’t know how to act in Polite Society.

  So I could only stand there, Berlioz’s “March to the Scaffold” looping in my head as Dragan put himself square in front of the ten-fifteen Mother Express.

  I wanted to shrivel into a spitball of embarrassment. I had to do something and do it now, and though I didn’t know what, I consoled myself with the thought that frankly the patient was dead and I couldn’t make things worse. Note to self: that only works in situation comedies.

  But I pumped my spine with iron and tried to fix things. “Nixie and Julian are here too, Mom. You can’t invite Dragan to dinner in front of them. It’s rude.”

  “Of course,” she said brightly, and my spirits rose for a moment, sort of like the kid getting a swirly allowed to come up from the toilet for a breath. “Your friends must come too.”

  Face? Meet toilet.

  Nixie’s horror-stricken expression morphed instantly to a mask of delight. “Play paddleball with my bee-hind, nothing we’d rather do. Right, Julian?”

  His face was stark white. “Nothing,” he echoed faintly. “We’d love to come.” Wow, he really did love her.

  “That’s only five of us,” Dragan said. “Three women and two men.”

  I suddenly remembered even numbers at dinner were important for rich people. Did I say I wanted to shrivel from embarrassment? Try wink out of existence.

  “Right!” Nixie jumped on that. “We’d need another dude, unattached. And since we don’t know any of those—”

  “Except Luke.” Dragan turned to Julian. “Perhaps he would be kind enough to fill in?”

  “Absolutely,” Julian croaked, his subtext of, “If I have to suffer so does he,” loud and clear. “If it’s all right with Mrs. Hrbek.”

  “Please invite him for me,” Mom said to Julian. She handed Dragan his sherry. “Dragan, thank you for taking care of the details.”

  He bowed with a slight smile. “My pleasure. Shall we say seven?”

  My mother beamed.

  I poured Nixie’s and Mr. Hinz’s waters with a shaking hand. Mom got Julian his cider. I opened a hard cider for myself and could only stare at it without drinking. I wanted to curl up in the corner and whimper.

  It was a long fifteen minutes later that Dragan bowed again, said I’d had a shock and needed my rest and left. Julian and Nixie hustled out after.

  I was numb as I helped Mom clean up. Sure, dinner, friends, not so bad, right? Except I knew one of the reasons she’d angled for it was that, no matter how hard I tried to hide it, she’d seen my interest in Dragan.

  This had the potential to end like the last time Mom met a crush of mine, at the end of my eighth grade year.

  Up until eighth grade, I was a plain girl, stick thin with lank brown hair. I couldn’t even disguise my plainness with makeup or pretty it up with glittery hairpins and jewelry like other girls. Dad died when I was a baby and Mom barely made enough to pay for our trailer and put food on the table.

  Some kids don’t know they’re poor. I did. I not only went to Meiers Corners public school, where most of the kids were solidly middle-class, I belonged to the Fashionable East Side Youth Orchestra, where most of the kids were upper-middle to downright rich.

  Parenthetically, my flute is the only thing of worth I own. It was a prototype that cost me three thousand when I bought it as a sophomore in college and has since skyrocketed to twenty large ones. I couldn’t afford it if I had to buy it today and even the insurance premiums eat me alive. Which, frankly, is why I started working at CIC Insurance. I get a discount.

  So anyway, I’d grown up poor, out of place, and knowing it. I only felt comfortable with my close friends, and in band and orchestra which was almost like family.

  Then, in the winter of eighth grade, puberty gave me plump breasts and put a shine and curl in my hair.

  For the first time in my life I felt pretty.

  Spring came, and at the first FES Youth Orchestra rehearsal that March, when I took off my coat revealing my new breasts (in an old, and therefore too-tight T-shirt), Todd, the boy with the instrument locker next to me stared. I’d had a crush on Todd for a while, more realistic than my crush on Dragan but not by much. Even though he ran with a different crowd than me—his dad was a doctor and his family was well-off—he’d been nice to me, holding my locker open once when I was trying to balance flute, alto flute, piccolo and music; buying me an orchestra spirit button when a violinist came around selling them before rehearsal.

  That first time I took off my coat, I caught him looking and waited for…for something, I wasn’t sure what but I was excited…and then popular girl Anna Versnobt called his name and he got his trumpet out and we shut our lockers and headed to practice and the moment was over.

  Then, one day after orchestra, my secret dreams came true. Todd asked me to his school’s graduation dance. He came to pick me up in a limo.

  And he met my mother.

  I cringed and cut off the memory. Just because that had ended so disastrously didn’t mean this would.

  Right?

  The next day was Friday. I did my usual hour practice before work, hauled ass to my car, found the
coral rosebuds, hauled them back in, endured my mother’s delighted coos, escaped back to my car and drove to work.

  While I sat rating policies, assigning brackets to risks, it ate at me—why had Dr. Vilyn risked being caught in the sanctuary?

  None of us ever went into the sanctuary. We didn’t need to since all our gear and rehearsals were in the basement.

  But more, we didn’t want to, not since the time Tony the trombonist got bored counting three hundred measures rest and wandered upstairs.

  Tony found a badly tuned guitar in one corner of the chancel. He really thought he was doing a good deed, retuning it. Problem was, it had been lowered a third for the contemporary worship song leader, who insisted she was a soprano but couldn’t sing above a D.

  That Sunday she went for a high note and nearly ruptured her spleen.

  In turn, she disemboweled Tony in front of the whole orchestra. Not literally, but the blistering lecture rang in my ears for hours, along with her promise to personally ream any of us who ever came into the sanctuary ever again, insuring none of us ever did, wanting to keep our eardrums and other bodily organs intact.

  So either Dr. Vilyn had risked his hearing (which, for a musician is risking an entire career) and had crashed the sanctuary, then happened to die a natural death there—or he’d died somewhere else and was moved afterward. Which would involve a second person.

  Meaning murder.

  It ate on me enough that when I finished work I drove to the little red church. Maybe I should have been worried about my safety, with Dr. Vilyn’s death and Kevin’s heart attack and Camille’s general slinking around. But it was a sunny fall afternoon and I’ve noticed most vampires tend to only show up during the day at places with attached parking structures.

  Besides, my friends and Dragan were the prime suspects. Unhappiness ruffled my belly. The idea of my friends in jail was intolerable; the idea of Dragan being caged was actually painful. Even if there had been danger, I would have gone. Didn’t mean I wasn’t nervous.

  The church’s front doors were locked. I went around the building and found the side door Dragan and I had used Wednesday. It was open.

  Inside, the sanctuary’s side door was locked. The air was cool and silent. The place felt empty beyond the Friday we’re-outta-heres. When I trotted around to the front vestibule, it became obvious why. Crime scene tape sealed all the main doors to the sanctuary.

  “Hey! What are you doing here?”

  I whirled. The barrel of a gun filled my vision. For a few heart-stopping seconds, that was all I saw, that round nozzle staring at me like a huge eye. I swallowed dry air.

  “Oh, Rocky, it’s you. Sorry.”

  The nozzle flipped down. Behind the gun was the curly hair and snapping eyes of Detective Elena Strongwell. The whoosh-whooshing of my heart slowed.

  Elena slid her weapon into a small holster on her belt. She’s five nine of long lean muscle. You’d never know she’d given birth to her first baby in July, a boy named Rorik. Since then she’d gone back to work, training harder than ever, and she’d only gotten leaner and stronger.

  I greeted her. “I was surprised to see you here last night. Isn’t this out of your jurisdiction?”

  “I’ve started a specialty detective agency on the side. This case has some points of interest that are right up my alley.”

  “Do they have cause of death yet?”

  “The medical examiner will give final ruling, but prelim suggests a stroke.”

  She said it in her Official Voice, but the overtones didn’t quite ring true. As I’ve said, my friends behave oddly around the topic of vampires. While I don’t call them on it directly, I do try to signal my awareness, hoping they’ll come clean.

  “Awful lot of strokes lately.” I waggled my brows, inviting her to say more.

  “Something wrong with your eyes?”

  “Um, no. So if Dr. Vilyn expired of natural causes, why are you here?”

  “Clearing up details,” she said, no answer at all. “Anybody who might have wanted him dead?”

  “Implying someone killed him?”

  She had the grace to blush. “Maybe. All right, there’s that smear on the banner and a few other things I can’t go into that may point to an unnatural death.” Her color heightened. “Unnatural like manslaughter, not supernatural or anything.” She cleared her throat. “Right, anybody want him dead?”

  “No. Players grumbled about how he ran the strings, and the associate concertmaster wouldn’t have minded sitting in his chair. But kill him? No. Do you have any suspects?”

  “Well…” She looked away. She had someone in mind, someone I wouldn’t like. “The investigation is ongoing.” Yeah, she was avoiding like crazy.

  My friends were her friends too. But Dragan, as a rival vampire, was fair game. I was pretty sure Elena’s husband, Bo, was the master vampire for Meiers Corners. She’d have no trouble suspecting Dragan.

  “Problem is, too few people with motive, too many with opportunity. Everyone in that orchestra had access to the sanctuary. Not to mention the security on this place sucks.”

  “It’s a church. It’s supposed to be open to the public.”

  “Yeah, well, in this case it means our pool of suspects includes all of Lake Michigan. Anyone could’ve come in from the street and done it.”

  “But you don’t think it was someone from off the streets. You think it was Dragan.”

  Her head swung back to me. “How the fuck do you musicians do that mindreading crap?”

  “Magic. Elena, Dragan had no reason to kill Dr. Vilyn. Besides, he was in front of the orchestra for the whole rehearsal.”

  She searched my eyes. “You’ve got to admit Zajicek’s arriving right now is an awfully big coincidence. Even if he alibis out for rehearsal, Nixie said you guys took a break midway. He could have done it then.”

  “No, he couldn’t. He was mobbed by most of the orchestra. Ask Nixie if you don’t believe me. You should be looking at someone who could have gone upstairs without anyone noticing, like Luke.”

  Her eyes sharpened on me. “Luke Steel? Why?”

  I swallowed the sick feeling that I’d sicced a Rottweiler on a friend. For Dragan. “I saw him go upstairs during break.”

  “You sure it was Luke?”

  “Man shoulders and a butt-long blond braid?”

  She shook her head. “He’s got no motive. He’s from out of town and never met Vilyn.”

  I snapped my fingers. “Camille was here Wednesday night. She might have sneaked in again.”

  Elena hissed. “Damn it, is she back in town? That’s all we need.”

  I let her chew on that a bit, grateful she had her sights on someone other than Dragan. But when she spoke again, it turned out I shouldn’t have let her think.

  “Rocky.” Her gaze narrowed into her cop awl-of-truth. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

  “Something was bothering me,” I admitted. “I wanted to see the church again.”

  “Crime scene. Can’t go in while the tape’s up.”

  “The church, not the sanctuary.” I pointed to a door in the far wall.

  “That’s a closet.”

  “It’s made to look that way.” I walked to it, grabbed the handle and pulled it open. It revealed stairs.

  “Damn.” Elena strode over to peer into the stairwell. “Where do those go?”

  “The choir loft. They’re working stairs—not for the public. That’s why they’re disguised.” I mounted the steps. “Although I’m surprised the police didn’t cordon the balcony off along with the sanctuary.”

  “I’m not,” Elena said. “Not part of the crime scene.”

  “And my bullshit meter is pinging.”

  “Damn it. Really, how do you do that? It’d kick ass in interrogations. If you must know, Julian convinced the local police to leave before they could investigate the rest of the church. Now you.”

  I explained why Dr. Vilyn wouldn’t have been in the sanctuary. At the to
p of the stairs was another door. I opened it and walked onto a room-sized balcony overlooking the sanctuary.

  The choir loft was a jumble of dust, creaky-looking wooden folding chairs and hymnals with cracked bindings maybe three centuries out of date. It smelled of age and mold with an odd metallic overtone. An old-fashioned organ console was at the front of the balcony, its back to the rail and congregation; the organist would use a mirror to see what was happening during the service. The pipes, the actual organ, were in a pair of chests at the front of the sanctuary. An upright piano sat perpendicular to the organ console. On the far side of the loft were a couple of tables draped in cloth with inch-high bumpers, for bells probably, though nothing was on them right now but dents.

  In the back shadows of the eaves was a music stand extended to its full height. One of the puzzle pieces clicked into place.

  Elena went to the rail and leaned out. “Cool. How come we don’t have anything like this at Good Shepherd?”

  “We do. Only the musicians go up in it though. This is where Dr. Vilyn was last night before he died.”

  “What?” She turned sharply from the rail, her surprise swinging her hair out like a thousand tiny black Slinkys. “How do you know?”

  I picked up the music on the stand. “This is Paganini. Violin Concerto No. Two. Wow, that’s high.” It was open to a passage that bopped around A, C#, B, and G# in the sixth and seventh octaves. The C# was three octaves above middle C—which is frickin’ piccolo territory.

  “Donut fried damn. So he was up here, even though it was verboten.”

  “This doesn’t count as the sanctuary. He was probably warming up before rehearsal.”

  “How’d he get from here to the chancel steps?” She strode to the balcony rail and glanced over. “If he fell, he’d have landed in the back pews. There must be forty feet of aisle to the front. Unless he flew…what’re you doing?”

  I’d started walking arcs radiating from the stand, scanning around me. “He was warming up on his violin. The empty case is still here. So where’s his instrument?” Something stuck up behind the piano bench. I headed for it.