Murder at the Opera

by Margaret Truman

  His sudden appearance startled them. The woman, slender and wearing a simple dress made of a shiny black material, as black as her hair, quickly stood; the man remained seated.

  “I’m sorry,” Berry said. “I’m looking for the parents of a Ms. Charise Lee and—”

  “Yes, yes,” the woman said. “I am her mother.”

  “Oh,” Berry said, introducing himself. “I checked with the desk and—”

  The man stood. Berry pegged him to be in his early seventies. Bald on top, spigots of unruly black-and-gray hair poking out on the sides of his head, and tufts of hair protruding from surprisingly large ears. He needed a shave, and was slightly hunched, the posture of a man who’d stood bent over for too much of his life. He wore a wrinkled gray suit and a plain black tie whose knot did not meet his throat.

  “I’m Charise’s father,” he said in a raspy voice.

  He and Berry shook hands. Berry surveyed the lobby. “Maybe you’d rather we went to your room,” he suggested.

  “Yeah, that’d be better,” the man said.

  His wife looked at a sign pointing to the hotel’s lobby-level restaurant.

  “Would you like to go in for something to eat?” Berry asked. “Coffee or tea, maybe?”

  “We don’t have to eat,” the man said. “Maybe a cold drink.”

  Berry saw that the restaurant was virtually empty. He motioned for them to follow as he went inside and told the hostess he needed a table for three, preferably in a corner where they could talk. She took them to just such a table, placed menus on it, and left. Seated, Berry said, “I’m a little confused. The hotel doesn’t have any record of you having checked in.”

  “The name’s not Lee,” the man said. “That’s Betty’s name.” He indicated his wife.

  “But—”

  “Yeah, I know,” the father said. “It’s confusing. My name’s Seymour Goldberg. Charise decided Goldberg wasn’t a good name for an opera singer, so she took Betty’s name. I told her names don’t matter and that she should be proud of her real name, but you know how women can be.”

  Berry glanced at Betty for a reaction and received a blank look. “It was a better name to use,” she said in a soft, flat voice.

  “See what I mean?” Seymour said.

  “Yeah, well, I am really sorry to be meeting you under these circumstances,” Berry said, “and I am very sorry about the death of your daughter.”

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Lee-Goldberg said.

  It was tea for her, coffees for the men, and Berry insisted upon a double order of English muffins to be shared.

  “Have they asked you to identify the body yet?” the detective asked, wanting to get that question out of the way.

  “We’re going later today,” Charise’s father replied. “Who did this to her?”

  “We don’t know yet,” Berry said, “but we’re working hard to find out. I’m hoping you might have some information that will help us.”

  “What could we know?” Goldberg said. “We live in Canada. Charise decided to come to Washington to study opera with the big names here. I didn’t want her to go, but—”

  “It was her choice,” the mother said. “She said she would learn so much and become a better singer.”

  “I admit I don’t know much about opera,” Berry said, “but I understand your daughter was a very talented young lady.”

  “Yes, she was,” the mother agreed.

  “She had the voice of an angel,” the father said. He placed his hand on top of his wife’s, and tears formed. Embarrassed, he wiped them away with the back of his other hand. “She got involved with the wrong people,” he declared.

  “I’d be interested in hearing more about that,” Berry said, their drinks and muffins on the table.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about it,” the mother said.

  “Why not?” Goldberg said. “It’s true. I warned her about the sort of people who take advantage of talented young women like her. Those two agents got ahold of her and—”

  “Mr. Melincamp?” Berry said.

  “That’s right. Melincamp and that woman he works with.”

  “Zöe something,” Berry said.

  “That’s her,” Mr. Goldberg said.

  “What about a piano player named Warren?” Berry asked.

  “Christopher,” Betty Lee-Goldberg said. “He’s a nice young man.”

  “I don’t agree,” her husband said, taking a bite of muffin and a sip of coffee heavily doctored with sugar and half-and-half.

  “Oh?”

  “He used her, Mr…. you said your name was?”

  “Berry, Detective Carl Berry.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Berry—Detective Berry—I don’t remember names that good anymore. Christopher Warren used Charise’s talent to make his own career better. I saw through him the minute I met him.”

  “He accompanied Charise when she sang,” the mother said. “He’s a very good pianist.”

  “Were they more than just friends and professional colleagues?” Berry asked.

  “Meaning, did they sleep together?” Goldberg asked.

  Berry nodded.

  “I suppose they did,” the older man said. “I warned Charise about that. She was such a naïve young girl.” Tears again formed and he angrily rubbed them away. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just can’t believe this has happened. It wouldn’t have happened if she’d stayed home and not come here. She had a wonderful voice teacher in Toronto, but Warren and those agents convinced her to audition for the opera school here.” He hit the table with his fist. “And all that talk about saving the world. Her friends were full of that stupid talk. They sounded like Communists!”

  “Communists?” Berry said.

  “Radicals. Believe me, I know about such things. I lost people in the Holocaust. Family. Radicals! Like Hitler. I told her that if she wanted to save the world, she should become successful and be a good citizen, make money and give some to the poor. That’s the way to save the world, not the way her friends with the long hair and tattoos said. The wrong people. That’s why she’s dead. Always the wrong people.”

  His wife touched his hand and said, “Please, Seymour, it doesn’t help.”

  “Excuse me,” Mr. Goldberg said, using the tabletop for leverage as he stood unsteadily and shuffled off in the direction of the restrooms.

  “I know how difficult this is for both of you,” Berry said.

  “You must forgive Seymour,” his wife said. “He had such hopes for Charise. We both did. It has not been easy for him to support her career. He has worked as a tailor all his life, worked hard, and always found the money for her university and the private lessons.”

  “Was Charise your only child?” Berry asked.

  “Yes.”

  Berry was pleased that the conversation, in Seymour’s absence, had turned to something less grim for the moment than the murder of their daughter. He’d graduated with a degree in Sociology and had always been fascinated with the way people lived their lives, the decisions they made, and the paths and many detours their journeys took through this temporary life. That was one of the reasons he’d become a cop. It offered a unique and rich vantage point from which to indulge his interest in the human condition.

  “You say he’s a tailor. Does he still do that for a living?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. You noticed his hands. Arthritis. He can no longer work with needle and thread. We have a small launderette in Toronto.” She smiled. “I was working in a laundry when we met. I think Seymour thought it was appropriate for a Chinese woman to be doing laundry.”

  Berry joined her gentle laugh. “A little typecasting, huh?”

  She nodded.

  Goldberg returned and resumed his place at the table.

  “Tell me more about Christopher Warren and the two agents,” Berry said.

  Charise’s mother supplied, “Charise said it was important for an opera singer to have an agent. She said it would open doors for her, doors she her
self could not open.”

  Her husband started to speak, but his wife added, “Besides, Mr. Melincamp made it possible for Charise to come here to study. He has been paying for where she stayed with Christopher.”

  “How did she get along with them,” Berry asked, “the agents and Christopher Warren?”

  “We don’t know,” Seymour said.

  Berry’s eyebrows went up. “She never confided in you about them and her relationship with them?”

  Husband and wife exchanged a nervous glance before she said, “Charise has been estranged from us for some time.”

  “Over what?” Berry asked.

  “She wouldn’t listen to us,” Seymour said, his voice taking on sudden strength. “She was headstrong.”

  “Like young women these days,” his wife defended.

  “I know what it’s like out there in the world,” Seymour said, the weary tone having returned. “I didn’t want her ending up taking in other people’s dirty laundry, their soiled underwear and smelly socks. I told her what it takes to succeed, but she had her own notions.”

  Berry sympathized with the older man, but wondered whether he’d been too heavy-handed with his only child and pushed her away. It happened, he knew. His own father, a college professor, had been furious when his son announced he intended to go into law enforcement after four successful years in college, and had basically shut down communication between them for the two years before his father died one afternoon of a massive heart attack while lecturing a classroom full of students. Their rift should have been healed, but it was too late for that now. His relationship with his aging mother, while long distance, was good, and he worked hard at keeping it that way.

  He checked his watch. It had been an interesting meeting, but nothing tangible had resulted that would aid in the murder investigation.

  “Are you sure there’s nothing you can tell me about people in your daughter’s life that might shed light on her death?” he asked.

  “Something like whether Warren or the agents might have had a reason to kill her?” Goldberg asked.

  “Yes,” Berry said.

  Husband and wife looked at each other.

  “That couldn’t be,” the mother said.

  “Couldn’t be?” Berry said.

  “They would not have hurt my daughter,” she said. “Everyone loved Charise.”

  Somebody didn’t, Berry thought.

  He gave them his card and urged them to call if they thought of anything. After paying the bill, and again offering his condolences, he left them at the table, one half of a cold English muffin the remnants of their having met.

  TWENTY

  The meeting of the Opera Ball committee was spirited, and at times contentious.

  The pressure was on, the date of the gala rapidly approaching. Adding to the sense of urgency was the murder, the tragic nature of Ms. Lee’s death, and rampant speculation about who’d killed her. Since Mac Smith had arranged for the private detective to investigate the crime, Annabel was a target of probes into what progress her husband was aware of.

  “I really don’t know any more than you do,” Annabel replied. “I just know that Raymond Pawkins, who used to be a Homicide detective, has agreed to work with us, and that the police are vigorously pursuing it, too.”

  “Oh, come on, Annabel,” one woman said, “I just know that you and that handsome husband of yours already know who the murderer is and are just waiting for the right time to announce it.”

  Annabel was tempted to educate her questioner about why that scenario was unlikely, at best, but instead simply denied it. Another member of the committee who’d overheard the exchange said, seriously, “It would be wonderful if it could be announced prior to the ball. That would make the evening especially meaningful.”

  Another woman disagreed: “I don’t think it would be wonderful at all. It would only deflect attention from the ball.”

  As with any undertaking of the scope of the Opera Ball, there were bound to be mishaps, and thorny issues to be resolved. On this day, the ongoing and nettlesome chore of seating arrangements topped the agenda.

  The festive evening would begin with sit-down dinners at more than thirty foreign embassies, hosted by their ambassadors. Five hundred leaders of Washington’s diplomatic, corporate, government, and arts communities would pay handsomely for the privilege of attending these relatively intimate, pre-ball dinners featuring food indigenous to each embassy’s home country. Some couples lobbied for seats at the British, French, and Spanish embassies as hard as professional lobbyists fought for pet bills in Congress. Others, who prided themselves on an appreciation of ethnic food, happily signed up for dinners at less popular venues. But no matter where you ended up sitting, the Opera Ball was a yearly social event not to be missed. As Thorstein Veblen’s seminal work on status in America, The Theory of the Leisure Class, had proffered, we’d gone from hunting and fishing skills as signs of social standing to what he termed the “modern-peaceable barbarian” stage, in which social status now involved signs of affluence, tuxedoed men arriving at galas in large, expensive cars with ladies in designer fashions on their arms. See and be seen. It was a lot better than being skilled with a crossbow, Annabel thought when first reading it.

  Following those private dinners, everyone would head for the main event, the ball itself, hosted this year by the Brazilian Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue, where Brazilian desserts—Manjar Branco, a coconut flan with prune sauce; Cream Sago, tapioca pudding with red wine; and Peach Mousse—would be savored, and couples would dance the night away beneath a massive tent to the music of one of D.C.’s favorite society orchestras. Later, as whiskey and wine and heat and humidity loosened lips and lacquered hair, two Brazilian samba bands would send the revelers home filled with fond memories, and with the Washington National Opera’s coffers fatter as well.

  The seating charts for the various embassy dinners were displayed on a large easel, with problem ones circled in red on the master layout.

  “The Zieglers insist upon being seated next to the Carlsons at the Colombian Embassy,” the woman in charge of seating said. “Ken Ziegler has a deal pending with the bank where Carlson is CEO.” She threw up her hands. “I simply can’t juggle this anymore.”

  “You have to accommodate the Zieglers,” ball chairwoman Nicki Frolich said. “He’s funding the Mexico vacation door prize.”

  “Fine. You call Dr. Federman and tell him we’ve changed his seats. I’m tired of being growled at.”

  “All right, I will,” Frolich said.

  Another board, on which personal likes and dislikes were listed, was placed on the easel as a reminder of how such details must be honored—nothing with peanuts on a certain senator’s meal, keep a certain journalist far away from a member of the administration who’d been savaged in a piece written by the journalist, and other admonitions that, if ignored, could result in unhappiness for those involved.

  The woman in charge of party favors reported that the manufacturer of the custom-designed velvet bags in which an assortment of donated goodies would be placed had suffered a wildcat strike and might not be able to fulfill the order in time. A subcommittee, one of many, was formed on the spot to come up with a contingency plan, including driving to New York to pick up substitutes.

  As the meeting wound down, Annabel, who’d agreed to be on the subcommittee exploring other sources of favor bags, sat back and reflected on this ambitious undertaking of which she’d chosen to take part.

  There were those who viewed the Ladies of the Balls as dilettantes, wives of wealthy men, who clamored to serve on fundraising committees to advance their social status within the community. But Annabel knew that was flippant and often inaccurate. Yes, there were such women, but Annabel had observed that they were generally shunned by those in charge. It was serious business, this mounting of a major social event in the nation’s capital, with a lot at stake, and the women with whom she’d been working closely were anything but dilettantes.
They put in twenty-hour days, and their painstaking planning would make any military commander about to launch a major invasion proud. Huge society events like the Opera Ball, and others, didn’t just happen. They resulted from the hard work and creativity of countless volunteers, and Annabel was proud to play a role, no matter how inconsequential.

  Detective Carl Berry also had more meetings on his agenda.

  He left the Holiday Inn after his introduction to Charise Lee’s parents and went directly to the Round Robin Bar at the Willard Inter-Continental Hotel, where Ray Pawkins sat nursing a mug of Irish coffee minus the Irish. The Round Robin was Pawkins’ favorite D.C. bar, which put him in good company. Looking down upon him were the photographs of former distinguished guests—Abraham Lincoln, whose first presidential paycheck went to pay his bill there; Mark Twain, whose white-suited forays from the bar into the hotel were, as his biographer Albert Bigelow Paine put it, “…like descending the steps of a throne room, or some royal landing place, where Cleopatra’s barge might lie”; Charles Dickens; Buffalo Bill Cody; John Philip Sousa; and Carrie Nation, the hatchet-wielding prohibitionist who prompted management to place a sign above the bar: ALL NATIONS WELCOME EXCEPT CARRIE.”

  Berry slid onto a stool.

  “Drink?” Pawkins asked.

  “Too early for me,” Berry said. He ordered a tomato juice. “You’re buying, of course,” he said with a playful tap on Pawkins’ shoulder. “This place is too rich for my blood.”

  “True,” Pawkins agreed, “but the drinks are large and the ambience agreeable. Besides, we’re surrounded by the ghosts of Washington history. So, tell me what’s going on at the great law enforcement agency in the sky.”

  “There’s never anything new over there,” Berry replied, “but you know that.”