WHAT LEADS A MAN TO MURDER

by Joslyn Chase

  Ruthie shrugged. “You hear things about his passionate nature and the time he spent behind closed doors with his female protégées. I’m just saying…”

  “Well, don’t say it about me.”

  ~~~~

  Georgia paused in the doorway to pull on soft leather gloves. A measure of pallid sunshine spilled unevenly through the November haze and spice floated on the air, released from the damp bark of trees. It made the misty morning taste like sparkling cider. She recalled the words of Mrs. Barrett, her first piano teacher. A musician protects her fingers like a dancer protects her legs. Tights and leg warmers for her. Gloves for you. Walking across the quad, she listened to the bells in the carillon and wondered, for the first time, if Stefan Renault had been the one who programmed their sonorous ringing.

  Entering the library, she found a free computer. She typed and printed a brief letter, folded it into a self-sealing envelope, and attached a stamp. It went into the satchel with her music books. As she turned to leave, she caught a glimpse of Jake at a table with a girl wearing a scarlet beret. Her long blonde hair flowed smoothly over her shoulders as she leaned her head into Jake’s. Melissa, his new girlfriend. They were holding hands.

  It was one of those moments, time-stamped in the fluid of eternity. Dismay crackled in the air like a sonar ping. He looked up and saw her, dropping Melissa’s hand like a hot stone. Pushing back his chair, he stood and moved toward her. Georgia spent one and a half seconds on a look of concentrated loathing before she about-faced and walked briskly in the opposite direction. It was five minutes to the hour, class passage time, and she wove her way through a stream of student traffic. Certain she’d lost him, she swerved into the Ladies’ Room, locked herself in a stall, and sank onto the closed commode.

  Mentally, she squashed Jake under an eighteen-wheeler headed for hell and paving the road, not with good intentions, but with Jake’s innards. She savored that image for a moment before moving on to the set verses of her dirge. Unfair having to share the campus with that despicable scum. Unfair having to hear his clarinet in the orchestra pit, rather than Savannah’s cello. Unfair that he’s here and she’s dead.

  Georgia thought about those last weeks before Savannah’s death, how pale and pinched her face, how shallow her smile. How she’d left only an empty husk of skin as a prelude to her leaving an empty vessel of flesh.

  Savannah was her twin, but their connection had been severed by a deep gulf and Georgia blamed Jake for her sister’s suicide. And for the fact that Savannah hadn’t told her about the abortion or even about the pregnancy. So much would be different if not for Jake. His attempts at apology were pathetic. Some things are beyond apology.

  Georgia stood up and flushed the toilet.

  ~~~~

  On her way to Theory class, Georgia took a slightly off-campus detour. Michael waited for her on their usual corner where they exchanged paper bags. Georgia took a peek inside.

  “These look different,” she said, frowning.

  “Same stuff, different maker. It’s all good.”

  “I’ve got a big performance next weekend, Michael. I need to be sure.”

  “You can be sure. Break a leg. Or maybe a finger, in your case.”

  ~~~~

  The ripple effect of Professor Renault’s death was felt throughout the Music Department. Lectures were cancelled, teachers were late to class, student mourners lined the halls, mixing with Lit majors full of morbid curiosity. The police had commandeered one of the offices to serve as their center of operations and were still interviewing students and faculty. Locating the line-up of students waiting to be questioned, Georgia stepped into a circle of her fellow musicians. A long-haired boy in skinny jeans and checkered Vans was putting on a recital for the curious.

  “They pulled him out about an hour ago, all zipped up in a body bag. Dude, I don’t know how the guy was killed, but there was blood, like, everywhere.”

  “Must have been knifed. A slasher, man.”

  “Or maybe bludgeoned. Head wounds bleed like crazy, I oughtta know. See this scar? I was longboarding with a friend of mine and we thought it would be awesome if we—“

  Georgia piped up, cutting off the story of the scar. “What’s all this I’m hearing about his sleeping with students? I’m supposed to believe he was having it off with that Melissa hag? Bull crap. Professor Renault wasn’t like that. And besides, she’s a skank.”

  “Who’s Melissa?” asked a pretty redhead with a pierced eyebrow from which dangled a tiny treble clef.

  “You know, the violinist who always wears those hats.”

  “Oh, third chair?”

  “Yeah. But wait,” interjected one of the techies whose breath indicated he’d had the garlic fries for lunch. “I thought she was Jake’s girl.”

  “Apparently, she was multi-tasking.”

  “Dude, really?”

  The conversation continued with vigor, but Georgia backed away and headed for the stairwell. She had things to do.

  ~~~~

  Georgia drove to Windsor, a bedroom community just north of campus. A lot of faculty and staff made their homes in the modestly appointed housing areas and the small city center benefited from the cultural influence of the school of fine arts. Green squares of well-kept lawn were crisscrossed by strips of sidewalk, dotted by streetlamps, mailboxes, tricycles, and other assorted evidences of harmonious living.

  The crisp November breeze bussed Georgia’s cheek as she lowered the driver’s window and leaned out to drop the sealed envelope into the mail slot. She heard a muffled thwack inside the box and imagined the letter burrowing into a pile of bills and bank statements, anonymous behind its pre-printed exterior.

  She checked her watch and made quick time back to campus, munching on a bag of carrot sticks and chugging bottled water. By six o’clock she was back in her practice cubicle, firing up the metronome.

  ~~~~

  Rachmaninoff Prelude, Opus 23, Number 5. Georgia’s fingers marched over the smooth and polished keys with a military precision matched by the black-booted soldiers keeping time in her head. She always practiced it last. She knew the technical demands of the piece require extensive conditioning and warm-up. Painful experience had taught her that there’s a surprisingly high incidence of muscle strain injuries among serious pianists. Rachmaninoff, in particular, composed physically arduous material and sustained injuries from which he never recovered. Saving it for last ensured well-warmed muscles and Georgia’s excellent technique would minimize the chance of injury.

  There was another reason. The staunch martial quality is broken midway by a haunting, lyrical interlude full of arpeggiated chords spanning the keyboard. Impossible to play without feeling the emotional impact. The swirl of melancholy tones swept Georgia into the fields of Russia, into the heart of a peasant—the plowing, plucking, laboring, back-breaking, languishing, starving, blistering life of a peasant. Squashed by tyranny, trampled by poverty, stamped with the stench of desperation and sustained only by a tiny flame of hope. Playing those chords, rolling out those arpeggios, somehow fanned that flame, nurtured that drive and desire to overcome, and made the last section of the Prelude a declaration of triumph. Georgia considered this piece her personal theme song and made it the grand finale of every practice session.

  In her fitful sleep that night she dreamt she was the peasant. She scrabbled for potatoes in the field, digging into the hard-caked earth, her hands crusted with chilblains and callouses, fingers stiff and clumsy. Her tongue, clinging to the inside of her mouth, tasted of ashes. She clawed into the pebbled soil, touching cold stone, shoving away dirt until she saw the face, staring out from the shredded ground.

  Savannah’s face. Or was it her own?

  ~~~~

  The door uttered a muffled screech in the key of C minor as it closed behind Georgia and her footsteps began a metered clacking on the marble floor of the gallery. She walked past the modern sculptures, swathed in ambiguity, the paintings displayed in minimalist
beauty.

  Suspended from the center of the ceiling was a large mobile titled, in her mind, “Jake.” She liked to think of him that way, hanging, limbs flapping helplessly as he slowly suffocated, head bowed, feet dancing the Spandau ballet. She relished these thoughts for a moment, then mentally kicked him like a giant football, sending him sailing into space to burn up in the atmosphere.

  Turning, she stepped across the marble tiles to gaze upon her favorite renaissance-style painting, the depiction of a captive concubine set free. She studied the joyous planes of the woman’s face and felt an echoing smile touch her own lips as she thought about the note she’d found on her piano when she’d arrived for practice that morning. It was from Marshall Montgomery, dean of the music college, and invited her to meet with the department heads at ten o’clock.

  She entered the outer office at 9:57 and was motioned into a chair by the receptionist whose mouth was busy with the last bite of a cheese Danish. The name plate on her desk read Irma Kirkegard. Georgia watched Irma uncap a thermos bottle, releasing the aroma of an herbal concoction, and take a few swigs before rising to knock at the inner door and usher her into the sanctum.

  Dean Montgomery sat behind his desk, flanked by Harold Cummings and Matilda Clark, the triumvirate of the music school. Georgia was invited to sit. Three smiles beamed upon her before disappearing under circumspect clouds as the dean began to speak.

  “Georgia, I’m sure you are as shocked and saddened by Professor Renault’s death as we are. A terrible tragedy.”

  His eyes wandered out the window as if taking an abbreviated trip over some happier memory before returning to settle upon her expectant face.

  “You may not, however, be aware of the last conversation I had with him. We were discussing you, Georgia; your efforts and ability, your future. Professor Renault thought very highly of you. He recommended you for a student teaching position, giving private lessons and occasional lectures in some of the lower-level music history and theory classes. In light of current circumstances, we are truly in need of someone to help fill the gap left by the Professor until other arrangements can be made. We know you’re very busy preparing for the Bachauer competition, but will you consider taking the position?”

  Blood rushed and sang through her heart, spreading warmth through her body and staining her cheeks a delicate pink.

  “I am humbled by Professor Renault’s confidence in me, and I’ll try my best to fulfill his expectations.”

  Nodding and smiling, she grasped Dean Montgomery’s proffered hand and stood to accept their congratulations.

  She floated from the dean’s office and bounced lightly through the building, gliding past the classrooms and lecture halls where she might soon preside, past the assortment of small offices which might soon include hers. Turning a corner, she was nearly run over by two police officers escorting a girl with long blonde hair and a scarlet beret. The girl’s face was a palette of astonishment, her eyes like smoking holes in a paper target.

  ~~~~

  In the Student Union cafeteria, Georgia savored the creamy tang of a slice of cherry cheesecake. Hugging her news to herself, she sat silently among her peers, listening to their chatter and boasting, the laments and insults they tossed at each other, the ribbon of gossip that ran through their conversation about Professor Renault and Melissa…and Jake.

  She decided to skip English class and treat herself to a nap. In the small dorm room she shared with a perennially absent roommate, Georgia changed into a fleecy pair of sweats, popped a pill, and climbed into bed with a Jack Reacher paperback, letting it drop shut as she hit a light snooze. The room had grown dark by the time she woke to a soft but steady rapping at the door. She swished a mouthful of stale water from a glass on the bedside table and stumbled to the door, flicking on the light switch. Matthew stood in the hallway.

  “Georgia, we got the guy, arrested him about an hour ago. It was Jake Phillips.”

  “Jake?” Georgia sagged against the doorframe. “How could it be Jake? Why would he kill Renault?”

  “The police are still trying to piece together the story, but it looks like he might have got into an argument with the Professor. It seems Jake’s girlfriend was spending too much “alone time” with the Maestro. Things got heated and Jake picked up one of the heavy bookends on the Professor’s desk and hit him with it. They found hairs and traces of blood in the trunk of Jake’s car and a rag which looks like it may have been used to wipe the bookend. They sent the bookends to Forensics, but we’re pretty sure one of them will match up as the murder weapon.”

  “Wow. Jake Phillips. How’d you know to look at him?”

  “The police got an anonymous letter, probably from a staff member who really doesn’t want to get involved. Whoever wrote the letter claimed they’d seen Jake leaving the building that night, stealthily, and with something under his arm. That was a major pointer, but then you’ve also got to pay attention to what people are saying. You know, about the Maestro and Jake’s girl. He’s denying everything, but the evidence is telling a different story. Guess you guys will be needing a new clarinet player.”

  “So it seems.” Georgia bit her lip. “Look, I’m going to need some time to wrap my head around this, Matthew.”

  “Sure, sure. You do look a bit pale. Is there anything I can get you?”

  “No, I just want to lie down for a while.”

  “Of course. Would you like some company?”

  “Matthew, go away. Not that I don’t appreciate your concern, but I need to be alone right now.”

  “Sorry, Georgia. Maybe later we could grab a bite?”

  “Maybe.”

  Georgia closed the door and leaned against it, smiling. She imagined the light falling on her face like the painting of the liberated captive. The one next to the strangled, hanging Jake.

  Really, Matthew was so sweet. Men can be so funny with their compassion, always seeming to have an overabundance where it isn’t needed. Stefan, for instance.

  He’d been so pleased, that night, to tell her about the teaching position, expounding on how it would set her up for the future, open up her prospects, shine on her resume. So proud he’d been, almost like a beaming father. He’d wrapped her in a brief, enthusiastic hug and stepping back, had knocked her satchel to the floor. The bottle of pills rolled out. Rolled right over and stopped at his feet, so of course he picked it up and of course he glanced at the pills. And of course he knew what they were.

  And then he’d been all compassion and concern, fluttering like a mother hen. He knew how to get help for her, had contacts for all the programs and counseling. A drug addiction is so harmful to health and career. She wouldn’t be able to handle the strain of the new teaching position, not now. Perhaps next year, after rehabilitation.

  The words had flurried round her, none of them really touching her until she heard his clear summary.

  “For your own good, Georgia,” he’d said, “I’m afraid I’ll have to withdraw my recommendation.”

  And then the bookend was in her hand and Professor Renault was on the floor. Georgia couldn’t remember having the thought that led to the action. Lightning fast, it was over. For ten seconds, slumped in neutral, Georgia had stood motionless. Then, shifting into gear like a hit and run driver, she’d thought about fingerprints. Her eyes scanned the office for some kind of cloth, moving across the window, and stopped. Jake’s car. There it was, among the sparsely scattered vehicles, in his customary parking spot in the third row and surely unlocked, as usual.

  A few swipes with the bookend on the carpeted covering of his trunk, then she’d borrowed his engine cloth to wipe the remains of the blood and hair from the heavy marble. She wore her gloves—must protect her musician’s hands—and returned the bookend to Professor Renault’s desk, taking care to remove all traces of her visit.

  ~~~~

  Georgia waited until Matthew left the building, then changed back into her jeans, popped another pill, and walked to the Fine Arts bui
lding for her evening practice session. She spent a few moments in the gallery, contemplating the mobile, feeling a sense of completion. The drugs were working. She felt calm, powerful, focused. This is where she belonged, among the fine arts.

  She thought about Jake and the trailer park where they’d both lived, the dingy, dank-smelling school they’d attended, the K-mart where they’d shopped. Until she’d been awarded a piano by a government grant, she’d had to walk down that road, passing the shoddy mobile homes with their sad, straggling rose bushes, to practice on a piano at the community center. A scarred piano with a broken D key.

  With a shudder, she turned her attention to the painting, drawing hope and power from it as she always had. She may have been born a peasant, but she had no intention of remaining one.

  Clasping her satchel, she headed to the practice room where Rachmaninoff waited.

  NOTES

  With this one, I wanted to create one of those characters you hate but also sort of admire. Georgia is talented, determined, damaged, vulnerable, and hard as nails. She’s got a goal and nothing will deter her from reaching it. If she can exact a little revenge along the way, all the better.

  What makes her such a pathetic character, is that she can’t see how empty she’s become and how she’s doing all the wrong things to fill the void. She’s going to be a very successful, lonely, damned soul. The eternal peasant.

  Absolution

  _________

  A dying man. A reluctant priest.

  If listening to the unburdening of a soul could bring

  relief to someone in agony, would you do it?

  Father Lucas did.

  Now it’s your turn.

  The voice that spoke from the other side of the confessional window, wavering and thin with age, held a trace of accent from across the sea. Irish, perhaps?