Death Of A Rock Star

by Nancy McGovern

  The fettuccine had been drained and the cake layers were cooling on wire racks when she heard the gunshot. The loud report seemed to ring through the house, drowning out the sound of the incessant rain outside. Nora jumped as she heard it, and her eyes instantly darted to the stairs. For a confused second, she wondered if it could have been thunder she heard, then the uproar from upstairs had her changing her mind.

  She could hear Lenu screaming, and heavy footsteps as the men rushed out of their rooms. Throwing her apron to the ground, Nora ran up, taking the stairs two at a time in her rush. She nearly tripped at the very top, and managed to just right herself. In front of her, Lenu was on her knees, sobbing, while Martin Schwartz held her in his burly arms, commiserating. Rafael stood by the door of a room, trembling slightly, one hand held to his mouth. Victor and Seth were nowhere to be seen.

  Fearing the worst, Nora pushed past Victor and stepped into the room. Seth’s room. Seth Sultan, once a world- famous rock star, now lay on the carpet with a pool of blood slowly forming under him. A pistol was clenched in his hand, and a red hole visible in the very center of his forehead.

  Victor was standing next to him, looking blank and dazed. Nora could barely breathe. Seth was dead, no doubt about it. She leaned down and checked his pulse anyway, hoping against hope that a miracle might have occurred. His hands were cold. She frowned a little. There were pen marks on his hand, his left hand. The telltale smudge of ink that left handers often receive as their hand trails along in the ink of freshly created letters. The gun, however, lay in his right hand.

  She saw Rafael take a step forward into the room. She dropped her eyes and noticed that his shoes were wet. Funny, she hadn’t seen him come downstairs.

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?” Rafael asked. “Oh my God, we have to call the police.”

  “Lines are down,” Martin said, from outside the door. “I tried already. One of us should go to the main lobby and alert the men there. They’ll know what to do.”

  “I don’t know if we’ll be able to,” Rafael said. “The river was swollen enough when we arrived, and there’s only a thin bridge connecting us. By now, it’ll be impossible to get across.”

  Nora stood up, and looked around the room.

  The room was spacious, with portraits of men in suits hung all over it. There was a four-poster bed on one end, so huge that it had a small set of stairs to climb up before you could sleep on it. Underneath, she saw a red suitcase and a smaller black duffel bag. Opposite the bed stood a magnificent writing desk, and a leather chair. The body, however, was lying in front of the door, as though Seth had been standing when the bullet entered him. Nora walked over to the desk, and looked at it. A notepad stood in its very center, with a piece of paper torn off. A fountain pen lay next to it. A fresh gust of air made her shiver a little. The window behind the desk was wide open, and drops of water were slicing their way into the room. Nora walked over, not sure if she wanted to close the window and help prevent the notepad from getting soaked, or whether she wanted to follow protocol and leave the scene of the crime undisturbed. Her eyes grew a little wider as she looked outside. The rain was already washing it off, but there was a very distinct boot print on the ledge outside. Hastily, she whipped out her phone and took a photo.

  “I found the key!” Martin cried out, “It was here, under the bed.” Nora turned around to see him rising up beside the bed, holding a key aloft.

  “Why were you looking for the key?” Nora asked, confused.

  “Well…” Martin shrugged. “Victor was at the door when Rafael and I came running up. He said the door was locked and we broke it down.”

  “The door was locked.” Rafael nodded. “From the inside, at that.”

  “Poor Seth. I can’t believe he did this!” Martin said.

  “Did what?” Nora narrowed her eyes.

  “Why, killed himself, of course! It’s suicide for sure!”

  *****

  Chapter 6

  Nora’s Doubts

  There was a lot Nora didn’t know. She didn’t know how the universe was created, or how some people managed to effortlessly be charming, or how ants drank water. But one thing she did know was that this was no suicide. Seth’s death had been premeditated. She was sure of it. A chill went through her now, as she looked at the other people in the room with her, and realized that it had to be one of them. A bigger chill seemed to follow in the wake of the first one as she realized that at least for the next few hours, she was going to be trapped in the same house as the killer.

  “You ok?” Martin Schwartz put a hand on her shoulder. “I thought you were going to faint for a moment there.”

  “I’m fine.” Nora’s voice was brittle. “We should all get out of this room. The police won’t be too happy with us.”

  “I’ll try and cross the bridge,” Rafael said. “We really do need to alert the police.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Victor chimed in. “Let’s go.”

  “Let’s all three go,” Martin said.

  Lenu, who seemed to have recovered somewhat, handed them all an umbrella, although, she shrugged, “I don’t think it’ll help much. The rain’s coming from all sides.”

  Nora found herself back downstairs in the kitchen. Lenu was sipping at some wine she’d found in the pantry. Nora, needing time to think, busied herself with preparing the rest of the dinner.

  “I don’t know how you can do that,” Lenu said, her voice dull. “How can you cook at a time like this?”

  “Keeping busy helps,” Nora said. “I’ve found that when my brain is going into overdrive, the ease and precision of cooking helps soothe me. Everything’s orderly, you know? It’s precise, I can follow a series of steps and know exactly what I’ll get at the end of it.”

  “Unlike real life?” Lenu sighed. “True. Life’s so much more messy. When I was younger, I tried my best to follow all the steps that were supposed to make me happy, you know. I focused on my looks, my career, my husband…and look where it got me. Out in some barn in Wyoming with a dead body above my head.”

  A dead body. Nora wondered if that’s all Seth was to Lenu now. Funny, considering she’d spoken to him with barely disguised passion in her voice earlier in the day. “Were you friends with Seth even after your marriage…fell apart?”

  Lenu shook her head. “No. After his precious Ayla committed suicide, I never spoke to him again. I mean…there wasn’t much left to say.”

  “It must have hurt you so much when he left,” Nora said.

  Lenu shook her head. “Some part of me always knew that I couldn’t keep him forever. Seth wasn’t a forever sort of guy. When he fell in love with me, he put me on a pedestal and worshipped me, and it felt wonderful to be worshipped. Being with Seth made me feel so alive and important. Imagine a song written for you that’s playing on stereos all over the country! But then, just as suddenly, his passion seemed to evaporate, and I might as well have evaporated with it. That was the thing about Seth; he didn’t fall in love with women as much as he fell in love with his fantasy of who the woman was. In a way, I guess he never loved the real me, just…some other Lenu he conjured. It just took me years to come to terms with that.”

  Nora nodded. “And Ayla?”

  “Ah. Ayla.” Lenu smiled. “He never got over her. He never got a chance to get over her, did he? She killed herself, and he was permanently stuck with his imaginary Ayla. In a way, that’s the only woman he could ever love. It was weird in a way, to see him obsessed with another woman the way he’d been once with me. I envied her.”

  Nora noted the bitterness in Lenu’s voice. No matter what she said, Nora didn’t quite believe that she’d ever come to terms with Seth abandoning her. There was a bright vein of hurt threading through her words.

  “Do you really believe Ayla killed herself?” Nora asked. “Seth was so sure someone killed her.”

  Lenu scoffed. “Of course, he was. Seth was convinced Victor had murdered her. He hired an investigator to try and find pr
oof, but nothing ever came of it. The police were certain it was a suicide because the room was locked from the inside, you see.”

  “But what about the fact that the window was open?” Nora mused. “Nobody ever explained that.”

  Lenu paled suddenly. “A-are you saying that Seth was killed, too? After all, we found him in a locked room with an open window. Just like Ayla.”

  “I’m not saying anything of the sort,” Nora said. “I just… I’m not sure that everything adds up to a suicide. Seth was left handed, but the gun was in his right hand. Also, if it was a suicide, why was Seth standing randomly in the middle of the room? Why wouldn’t he sit on his bed or the writing desk?” There was the bootprint too, of course, but for now, Nora had decided to keep that to herself.

  Lenu’s eyes were wide, her face scared. “But who would kill Seth? After all these years! It isn’t possible. Unless…unless Seth was right, and Ayla had been murdered!”

  Nora nodded. “I wonder.”

  “No. No. Surely not. Seth was old and depressed. He self-destructed the way rock stars often do. That’s all there was to it.”

  “Did you ever get over your guilt about Ayla’s death?” Nora asked, suddenly changing tack. She caught Lenu by surprise, clearly, because the older woman’s mouth fell open. “Guilt? Why would I feel guilt about Ayla’s death?!” Her voice was shrill. “She killed herself! Sure, I was drunk the night before and I gave her a piece of my mind, so what! I called her a homewrecker, and it was true! But I didn’t make her kill herself!” Lenu paused. “Unless you’re implying that I killed Ayla all those years ago?”

  “I’m not implying anything,” Nora said. In her mind, though, she wondered. Had Lenu killed Ayla all those years ago? Had she lived her life happily, knowing she’d gotten away with the murder? And now, years later, had she been frightened when Seth called her to this gathering, and killed him in a panic? It was possible. Lenu looked thin and frail, but her body was corded with muscle from a lifetime of running marathons. Nora thought it perfectly possible for her to sneak up to Seth’s room, kill him, and then run back down. She remembered now that Lenu’s scream had coincided almost perfectly with the gunshot. Why? Nora had taken a little while to process the gunshot, thinking it was thunder, but Lenu immediately knew. As if she’d been expecting it.

  “What did you do after you went upstairs today?” Nora asked.

  “I didn’t plan a murder, if that’s what you’re implying. In fact, I tried to console poor Victor. He was furious that Seth had tricked us all into this gathering. Poor Victor, sometimes I think he took Ayla’s death even harder than Seth did.”

  “Was Victor with you all afternoon, then?”

  “No.” Lenu frowned. “Let’s see. We went up at about five, right? The gunshot was heard around seven thirty. I was with Victor till five thirty and after that, he went to his room and was asleep for two hours.”

  “You recognized the gunshot as one, almost immediately?” Nora asked. “I thought it was thunder for a minute.”

  Lenu nodded. “I do target practice every Tuesday with a bunch of friends. It’s a fun hobby. I realized it was a gunshot as soon as I heard it.”

  Nora wondered if Lenu realized what she’d just admitted; that she was very capable with a gun.

  The door burst open as Nora was about to ask her another question, and the three men tumbled in, soaked to the skin.

  “It’s useless,” Martin said. “The rain’s coming in too strong. We couldn’t cross the bridge.”

  “What!” Lenu exclaimed. “Then you couldn’t call in the police?”

  Victor nodded. “For now, we’ll all just have to stay here and wait for the storm to abate.”

  “But…” Lenu looked at Nora, and Nora subtly shook her head. If the murderer was trapped in here with them, it was best to let him continue thinking that everyone considered it a suicide. But of course, there was the possibility that the murderer already knew Nora thought it was not a suicide.

  Because there was a possibility—a very real one—that Lenu had done it.

  *****

  Chapter 7

  Rafael’s Reminisces

  While Martin and Victor went off to bathe and Lenu went to lie down, Rafael sat at the table, and consumed cup after cup of hot green tea. His hair was still damp from the rain, but he’d mostly dried himself off. He was sitting bare-chested now, wearing gym shorts, with a blanket wrapped around him.

  “Sorry,” he said to Nora. “Since we were just here for a weekend, I didn’t pack too many clothes, and all my shirts are wet now.”

  “That’s alright.” Nora smiled. “As long as you’re comfortable.”

  “Well, I doubt I could be comfortable in the same house as a dead man,” Rafael sighed. “What a terrible waste! How could he kill himself? He had money, fame, fans… it’s unbelievable.”

  Nora shrugged. “People are unpredictable.”

  Rafael nodded. “People are selfish. Suicide is the ultimate act of selfishness. You can’t bear your own pain, so you kill yourself and distribute it to those who love you.”

  Nora looked up at him. His face had darkened, and his brows were pulled together in a frown. He looked up at her with eyes full of pain, and Nora felt a twinge of sympathy. He’d only been a teenager when his mother died, all those years ago. As if sensing what she was thinking, he said, “I guess I’m just bitter. My mother killed herself when I was just seventeen, you see. It messed me up for a long time. I never saw it coming! I never even knew she was depressed. Then one night… bam. She was gone.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Nora said.

  Rafael shivered a little. “Don’t be. I mean… it took me a long time to come to terms with it, but I guess she’s in a better place now. At least, I hope she is. I just wish… I just wish she’d shared her problems with someone, instead of killing herself. I was so young, and I was thrown to the mercy of a cruel world. I didn’t just lose her, I lost my house, my friends, my entire life.”

  “But you pulled yourself together eventually,” Nora said. “You made something of your life. She’d be proud of you if she could see you today.”

  Rafael gave her a weak, but grateful smile. “Thanks. I hope she would. I hope Seth finds peace, too, whatever his reasons were.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking, where were you all afternoon?” Nora asked.

  Rafael shrugged. “Let’s see… well, I was smoking on the terrace.”

  “Upstairs?” Nora raised an eyebrow. “In the rain?”

  “Yep. I know it’s weird, but to be honest, I was a little shaken up when I realized Seth was trying to recreate the night of my mother’s death. I needed to calm myself. I went up on the terrace and smoked, but when the rain got too heavy, I came downstairs again, and changed my outfit.” Rafael frowned. “We heard the shot around seven thirty, right? I must have come down at about seven.”

  “Was anyone else in the hallway then?”

  “No,” Rafael said. “It was empty. Although,” he frowned a little, “there was a wet patch on the carpet right outside Martin Schwartz’s room. Make of that what you will.”

  Nora nodded. “I’m sorry this happened,” she said, after a brief pause. “I mean, it must be traumatizing for you to relive that night again, even if it’s been years ago.”

  Rafael shrugged, though his lower lip trembled just the slightest bit. “What can I say? Bad stuff happens sometimes.”

  Nora patted him on the shoulder, ready to turn away, when he suddenly piped up. “The thing that gets to me—the thing I never really got over—is what if? What if…” He left his words hanging, as though he didn’t want to complete it.

  “What if?” Nora turned around.

  “What if she was murdered?” Rafael asked. “Seth always suspected it. I know who he suspected, too.”

  “Lenu?” Nora asked. “His ex-wife?”

  “What? No. Victor.” Rafael bit his lip. “The night my mother died, I wasn’t supposed to be in the house, but I was. We’d ha
d a fight because she caught me with some weed in the bedroom. She said some really harsh things, but I suppose I understand her anxiety better now that I’m grown up. Back then, I was just mad. Part of the reason I was mad was that I knew she was overreacting, and part of the reason she was overreacting was that she was nervous.”

  “Nervous?”

  Rafael nodded. “I don’t know what the nervousness was about, was it meeting Seth for the first time after his divorce? Was it the fact that she knew Victor was going to be there too...”

  “Why does Victor factor into it at all?” Nora asked.

  “Well, you know, the two of them were exes,” Rafael said.

  “What?!” Nora gasped.

  “Sure. Victor met my mom long before Seth ever did, while doing some solo work. He dated my mother for two years, before they broke up. When my mom found out she was going to be working with Victor’s group, she told him that she wanted things to stay professional; she didn’t want the others judging her for having been with him. So Victor never disclosed his old relationship to the rest of the band.”

  This shed a whole new light on Victor’s behavior. Nora bit her lip. “What do you think of Victor?” she asked Rafael.

  “He’s violent,” Rafael said. “He’s not over the top and extroverted like Seth was, but there’s a real streak of violence in him, underneath that brooding, melancholy exterior.”

  “The night your mother died—if it’s not too painful—Victor was at her door before you, correct?”